My God

For one of my classes, I was asked to find a text that speaks to my relationship with God and write a reflection on it. In looking for some Bubery ‘God in Relationships’ material, I stumbled across Rabbi Rachel Halachmi’s writing on Buber and Heschel, ideas that jointly represent my understanding of God very well.  Growing up, I was a Jew whose doubt in God was incontrovertible.  I heard rabbis at camp say it (though I probably misinterpreted what they said) and I was never introduced to any intriguing alternatives, so why would I?  I was born, raised and educated on science, and the absurd thought of a man in the sky looking down on us and interfering in the mundane did not sit well with my reason.  

Not until college did I find alternate ideas on God.  It started with my introduction to Baruch Spinoza, another idea machine that greatly factors into my current understanding of God.  It was my first introduction to personal interpretations of God, one in which you find the divine in the mundane. Soon thereafter I was introduced to Buber’s ideas on God in relationships and finally Heschel’s own weaving of the two plus some.  As Rabbi Halachmi writes, “the presence of God in nature and in the human encounter” is a beautiful idea that I quickly made into my own.  To find holiness in the beautiful nature about you, in your relationships, in something so much more tangible than ‘a man in the sky’, really allows you to create a unique religious experience and redefine prayer for you and only you.  To make the way we treat nature, the way we treat animals, the way we treat each other, religious, divine experiences makes life holy and makes us better people.

I am often asked why I want to be a rabbi, how someone as irreverently religious could make a good spiritual leader. I will not hide the fact that I don’t wear a kippah or that I occasionally (read: regularly) indulge in deliciously antithetical Philadelphia cheesesteaks.  But I think a lot of Reform Jew are like me and they need to know that that is ok. They need to know that believing in God doesn’t necessarily mean the God from the Tanakh; that it can mean the holiness of mother nature or our relationships.  They need a leader to teach them why traditional Jews don’t eat milk and meat together, and let them make a decision for themselves and their families like I did for myself.  They need a leader who will help make the High Holy Days meaningful for congregants that don’t love the choir.  But more than anything, they need a leader that teaches them that Judaism and God are vehicles to living a good life and being a good person.

Spinoza’s God and Buber’s God and Heschel’s God - they aren’t my God. I have my own God. But their ideas shaped my God, opened my mind to allow me to understand God, and that at the end of the day, God is what you make it - hopefully a driving force letting you wake up each and every day inspired to be a better person.