By Rabbi Alex Freedman
Do you know someone who could really use some company or a visit from the clergy or friendly congregants? Please let me know.
We at Beth El need your help with the crucial Mitzvah of Bikkur Cholim (visiting the sick).
When someone is in the hospital, the family often tells the clergy, and we do our very best to call and visit. Now we have a fantastic “Thinking of you” card that we bring or send to have a familiar picture of Beth El in the room. This is one of many terrific ideas by the Bikkur Cholim Caring Community, a committee led by Jan 
Channon, Barbara Hochwert, Jackie Melinger, Basia Retsky, and Pam Schlosberg. As its name implies, we have a whole group of friendly Beth El members trained in the Mitzvah and ready to assist. While we can always improve, I think Beth El succeeds when it comes to meeting the needs of congregants who are in hospitals.
Yet there are many people who could use a visit and conversation who are out of the hospital. Maybe they’re in a rehab facility like Whitehall. Or maybe they’re at Gidwitz or at home but unable to go out during the day. They should enjoy company as well – if they would like – from the clergy and maybe members of the Bikkur Cholim Caring Community.
But I don’t know who is homebound because they often don’t tell me. So if you know somebody like this who could use some company or a visit, please tell me (with their permission).
Please let me know if you have a family member who might benefit from this Mitzvah. My email is afreedman@nssbethel.org. This will be confidential.
Beth El does its best to be a caring community. We feel we’re ready to take the next step, which will really benefit all of us.
Bikkur Cholim is a Mitzvah because when we keep company with someone who is challenged in these ways, we are emulating G-d Who visited the sick, in the case of Abraham (Talmud: Sotah 14a). Through this Mitzvah we make G-d more present in the world.
By Hazzan Barbara Barnett
I am writing my Thursday Thought on Monday, Rosh Chodesh Shevat. As some of you may know, Rosh Chodesh is considered a holiday specifically for women. (The “why” will be the topic for another Thursday thought.) So, why do I mention it now? We are, in the annual Torah reading cycle, in the midst of retelling the story of the Israelite enslavement in Egypt and our eventual exodus, and I’m reminded of the amazing women in the story, and want to share them with you, and their goals and actions that made them both partners with G-d and heroes of our freedom from slavery.
The story begins with the midwives Puah and Shifra. For without them and those like them, the story never happens at all. We don’t know for certain whether the two women were Israelites or Egyptians. We only know they were midwives who refused Pharaoh’s order to kill each male baby born to an Israelite family. We know they assisted with the births of both Egyptian and Hebrew babies, but not whether they, themselves, were Israelites. They, and any others like them, made a dangerous decision to refuse to “follow orders,” doing the right and just thing, rather than the expedient, safe, thing.
The preeminent Torah commentator Rashi 1040-1105 explained that the name Shifra originates in the Hebrew root m’shaperet, “to beautify” or “to swaddle or cleanse, perhaps to “make things better.” Puah’s name may signify a gentle, soothing way of speech. Both were courageous and, perhaps, saved an entire people.
Then Moses is born, and his mother Yocheved, defying Pharoah’s orders to hand him over and be murdered, instead hides him, until she can no longer can. Miriam, then, as you all know, places Moses in a basket and sends him down the River Nile, where he is found by Pharaoh’s daughter, known as Batya. Batya knew that Moses was likely an Israelite baby, yet she took him in and raised him as her own. But her action, quietly defiant, saved Moses for his yet-to-come (co-) starring role in saving the Israelites from slavery. Her name can be translated as “bat yah,” no less than a Daughter of G-d, and in a profound way G-d’s partner in the redemption of the Israelites from their Egyptian slavery.
Last, but certainly not least, is Tziporah, Moses’s wife, who saved Moses from G-d’s wrath while they were encamped on the route to Egypt before the Exodus.
Miriam, Yocheved, Shifra, Puah, Batya, Tziporah: five women who embody the idea of smart, courageous women, who knew their value and acted upon it when called to do so! As we begin this new month of Shevat and continue to read about these brave women, I wish you a (slightly belated) Chodesh Tov.
by Hazzan Ben Tisser
Next Monday we will celebrate Rosh Chodesh Shevat, the beginning of the new month of Shevat. Of course this month is best known for being the host to the Tu B’Shevat holiday, which we celebrate as the “birthday of the trees.” I have many fond memories of being a student in day school in Los Angeles, attending assemblies where we sang Israeli songs about trees and nature, and then went up into the Santa Monica Mountains to plant evergreen trees. We were taught that children in Israel were doing that very same activity that very same day in the hills around Jerusalem.
As a child in LA, it was perhaps more challenging to understand the nature (pun intended) of Tu B’Shevat than it is here in Chicago. Winter brought cool mornings, yet the sun still shined brightly most days, and the majority of trees and flowers remained in bloom throughout the year…so there wasn’t this sense of transition out of winter in the same way. In Israel, it is around this time that the shkediyah, the almond tree, begins to bloom, signifying that although we are still in the throes of winter, spring isn’t far off, and that the promise of nature renewing itself is very real.
Last year, Shevat took on a new meaning for me and my fiancée, Robyn. On 5 Shevat, Robyn lost her teenage son; and on Tu B’shevat, we brought him to his final rest. There are certain details I don’t wish to discuss here. What I do want to share, however, is that there is something painfully beautiful about recalling Isaac’s memory each year at this time.
When we experience a loss of any kind, there is a period of sadness. Obviously it’s on a completely different scale, but even when we get to the end of autumn and the trees are bare, our mood changes. We know that for the next few months we will have lost something significant in the beauty of nature. And then comes the end of winter with the promise of renewal. Life moves forward. Trees grow new leaves; flowers bud and blossom anew…none exactly as the year before, and none with any hint of how things will develop in the year ahead…but there is this sense of renewal nonetheless. And so on Tu B’Shevat we have a seder. We celebrate the promise of nature by tasting sweet fruits and nuts, saying blessings over the beauty and wonder of nature.
In our home, Tu B’Shevat will be different. This year it marks one year since we buried a beautiful young man. It has been a difficult year. And yet, as our family has taken new shape, it has been a very wonderful year. This year we will be sad as we remember Isaac, but we will be filled with hope and wonder at the power of the universe to propel us forward, as we look ahead to days of celebration, of love, and of new stages in life. And that is the very miracle that makes life so wondrous.
I would suggest to us all that this year we make something special of Tu B’Shevat. Let us find that for which to be grateful in our lives. Let us look ahead with hope to the warm, beautiful days of spring. Let us remember that which has transpired since the last New Year of the Trees, and let us be filled with wonder and excitement for that which is yet to come.
By Rabbi Alex Freedman
Be kind to the stranger: they may grow up to change the world, or at least yours.
If courage had a hall of fame, Shifra and Pua would stand at its entrance. These two women star in Parashat Shmot, this week’s Parsha that begins the saga of the Exodus. These two women are largely unknown, which is a shame. For their example continues to lead us.
Shifra and Pua are the Hebrew midwives charged with delivering the Israelite babies. Pharaoh commands them to kill the baby boys but let the girls live. The Torah continues, “The midwives feared G-d and did not do as the King of Egypt instructed. They let the boys live” (Ex. 1:17).
When Pharoah saw Jewish babies being born, he confronted Shifra and Pua. “How could you let them live?” he cried out. They replied, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; they are vigorous. Before the midwife can reach them, they’ve given birth.”
Their act of bravery is the first recorded act of civil disobedience, so timely in the days leading up to Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Are these remarkable women Jewish? I don’t believe so. “Hebrew midwives” can mean midwives for the Hebrews. Why would Pharaoh ever expect a Jewish woman to murder Jewish babies? Instead they are two Egyptian women who fear G-d more than Pharaoh, who refuse to take part in a crime against humanity. Shifra and Pua see the stranger as themselves and are thus worth saving. Who knows who these innocent babies might grow up to be?
We do. Moses was one of them. Moses, whose people would one day create in the state of Israel a Tel Aviv maternity hospital at the intersection of Shifra and Pua Streets.
There’s an inspiring story in my favorite Haggadah, called A Different Night. It goes like this:
“One Sunday morning in 1941 in Nazi-occupied Netherlands, a mysterious character rode up on his bicycle and entered the Calvinist Church. He ascended the podium and read aloud the story of the midwives who saved the Hebrew babies and defied Pharaoh’s policy of genocide. “Who is today’s Pharaoh?” he asked.
“Hitler,” the congregation replied.
“Who are today’s Hebrew babies?”
“The Jews.”
“Who will be today’s midwives?”
He left the church, leaving his question hanging in the air.
During the war seven families from this little church hid Jews and other resisters of the Nazis.”
Shifra and Pua inspired these families to see the stranger as an insider, not an outsider. They changed the world for these families.
This time we read the Exodus story, let us not only condemn Pharaoh but also praise his midwives for their unmatched bravery. The Exodus experience reveals humanity at its lowest point and at its highest.
by Rabbi Michael Schwab
In life, consciously or unconsciously, we often search for how to bring good into the world and positivity into our lives. This can seem to be a challenge because we sometimes perceive that there is so much that is not in our control and that evil forces abound. Yet, we do indeed possess a significant power (amongst others) to bring goodness into our lives and into the lives of others. And what is more, we can use this power as often as we wish — the power of blessing. In this week’s Torah portion when Jacob knows he will die, he calls his family together and blesses his children and grandchildren. When the Jewish people are assembled together in front of the mishkan, their portable sanctuary, God blesses them through the priests. We use these words in the name of Jacob’s blessing to his grandsons on Friday nights to bless our children, at weddings to bless newly married couples and at various other moments to bring hope and positivity into the lives of those present. Yet we need not wait for such special occasions and we need not use only these traditional words. We each have the power to bless others at any moment, sharing our love, positive reflections on the character of others and the hopes and dreams we have for them. Giving blessings is a powerful way to roll back darkness and to create space for the goodness we all want in our lives and in the world. May we all realize the potential for blessing in each other and in ourselves as well. Amen!
By Hazzan Ben Tisser
These last weeks have been difficult for our country, particularly for the Jewish community. From a ransacked synagogue in Beverly Hills (where, incidentally, I have taught and sung) to a kosher market shooting in New Jersey to a stabbing in a Rabbi’s home in Monsey, this has been a painful time for us. I will share that my morning ritual is to have a cup of Elite instant coffee while watching the last 15 minutes of the 6 AM news before heading to Minyan, and that for the past while I have actually debated in my head whether or not I wish to turn on the TV for fear of more devastating news.
I am not going to use this space to speak against these most recent anti-Semitic acts. The media, our institutions and other organizations are doing plenty of that. I am not going to speak of politics, for that is not my place. What I will write about are two words that, at their core, are very Jewish: faith and hope.
Our entire history as a people has been based on faith and hope. Without faith and hope, we would never have endured centuries of slavery in Egypt, all the while retaining our identity while living and slaving in a land not our own. Without faith and hope we would not have survived the destruction of our Temples or the expulsion from Spain. Without faith and hope, those brave souls who survived the Shoah and those who did not would not have tried with their whole beings to make it through. And without faith and hope we would not have a Jewish homeland in the State of Israel today.
At first glance these words are very similar, but there is an important distinction between them. Faith is the firm belief in what is, and hope is the desire for and commitment to ensuring a better future. Faith grounds us and hope drives us. Faith is what allows us to go to sleep at night peacefully, and hope is what encourages us to set our alarms and make plans for tomorrow.
This week we end a decade. I see lots of Facebook posts and receive greetings from friends of “Happy Secular New Year.” I must tell you that I am bothered by the addition of the word “secular” to the greeting. My grandparents and my father came to this country with hope for a better life for our family—a life in which we could retain our rich and special Jewish identities and at the same time be part of the fabric that is America. When we add “secular” to the greeting, we create a separation between “us” and “them,” and I think that particularly given recent events, we would do well to reconsider that. When we separate ourselves out, even internally, we give permission for “them” to do the same. By virtue of living in this country at this time, we share in the joy of a new year. It is a time for families and friends to be together, for us to watch whomever the new host of the Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve is, and to count backwards from ten as we watch an enormous crystal ball descend where a large Minolta sign was once hung on a New York City skyscraper as millions of people crowd the street below. Yes, it is a time for celebration. It is a time to dream and to resolve. And, it is a time for hope.
I hope that next year will be better—for us, and for the world. And what drives my hope is faith. I have faith in our values, I have faith in our ability to catalyze change, and I have faith in each one of us as a leader in our own circles. If we each take charge of a small, broken corner of the world, as a community we may be able to repair one pane in the large window of the universe…and that will make a difference.
We pray that the memories of those lost to acts of senseless violence and hatred be a blessing, and serve as an inspiration for us to continue the sacred work of tikkun olam, repairing or improving the world. We pray for their families. We pray that those injured will heal, in body and in spirit. We pray that communities directly affected will again find a sense of calm and security.
May the third decade of the 21st century be one of greater peace and stability, of understanding and appreciation of the other. May we know good health, deep love, and only good things. I look forward to seeing you in shul and being able to personally wish each of you a Happy New Year.
By Hazzan Barbara Barnett
We are in the midst of Hanukkah, the Festival of Light. Exactly why we celebrate it has been a matter of debate for generations. Yes, we celebrate a miracle, for as it is written upon the letters of the dreidel (Nun, Gimel, Hey, Shin—or if you are in Israel, Peh) in acronym: “a great miracle happened there” (or in Israel, “here.”)
But which miracle are we celebrating? The miracle of a small band of zealous Jews who refused to give into the oppressive demands of the Syrian-Greeks, led by the tyrant Antiochous? Or the later traditional explanation: that a small cruse of pure oil, needed to relight the menorah in the Temple lasted for eight days? Or is the real miracle that the people, despite knowing the oil would last only one day, lit it anyway, and in so doing demonstrated that while much had been destroyed, their hope and courage could not be quashed? In the end, does it matter?
Perhaps, the miracle of the tiny vessel that prevailed against all odds to last far longer than anyone might have anticipated is a metaphor for the rebellion. The defeat of the mighty by the small and inspired—it is a proud tradition for us to remember. A miracle in the midst of certain defeat—the spirit of the few prevailing over the physical might of the powerful.
We recall the miracle in ritual, song, and even (of course) in our gastronomic choices. We light the chanukiah, beginning with a single candle for the first night, and each night increasing the light by one candle, until all eight (plus the shamash) are ablaze. The second blessing we recite: “she-asah nisim l’avoteinu, ba-yamim ha-heim, baz’man hazeh” thanks God for the “miracles that God made for our ancestors in their days at this season.” We eat latkes and jelly donuts (sufganiot) fried in olive oil to recall the miracle (metaphorical or not) of the oil.
Hanukkah, which, in Hebrew, means “dedication,” is also the Festival of Light, and many other religious traditions celebrate winter festivals of light, at this, the darkest time of the calendar year. But I think, the connection between Hanukkah, the light of the candles, the spirit of a small band of people (the Maccabbees) to defeat a much bigger foe, the miracle of a small vessel of oil lasting a week has another dimension.
The Baal Shem Tov, 18th Century founder of Chassidism, said, “From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven.” Each of us has within us the light, the spark of the Divine, to prevail against the odds and do amazing things.
The prophet Zechariah says in the haftarah for Shabbat Hanukkah, “Not by might, and not by power, but by my spirit…” Perhaps we are meant, at this time of the year (“ba’zeman hazeh”) to rededicate ourselves in the darkest, coldest time of the year to renewing that spark of light that resides in all of us.
Each of us has that light, no matter how dimmed it might have grown over a difficult year or other adversity, or how brightly it still shines in your life. In this joyous season of Hanukkah, surrounded by the light of the chanukia, by celebration, by song, and community can be rededicated, relit, renewed for another year.
by Rabbi Michael Schwab
Watching this video made me so proud to be a rabbi at NSS Beth El. It brings to life our commitment to disability inclusion, which I see as fundamental to being a synagogue.
Every person wants to feel a sense of connection. And every Jew should be able to feel that they have a synagogue that feels like home. We are a Beit Knesset (Hebrew for synagogue) and therefore we are literally a “house for all people to enter.” We are an address for any Jew in our community to engage in our beautiful heritage, to connect with God and to draw close to fellow Jews.
Therefore it is our sacred task to make sure our synagogue community is accessible and inclusive. And inclusion isn’t simply a program or an initiative, but a deep, abiding framework and viewpoint through which we see the world. Just as we all stand together before God with all of our quirks, faults, strengths and blessings, hoping and knowing that God sees the infinite value in each of us, so too we should be able to all stand before each other with our abilities and disabilities and know that the other sees in us that same infinite value. We should feel secure in the fact that our synagogue affords us the opportunity to share in the blessings of our wonderful community.
I am so proud that our congregation has taken this value so seriously. I invite you to view this new video of the Ruderman Family Foundation and USCJ which features NSS Beth El. It was featured at the recent United Synagogue convention. If you would like to become more involved with disability inclusion, please contact me at mschwab@nssbethel.org. Shabbat Shalom and Happy Hanukkah in advance!
by Rabbi Alex Freedman
I bet you too have recently received lots of phone calls, emails, and letters recently from charities asking for your money. Fine charities. Worthy charities. But so many charities. The flood began recently with Giving Tuesday and will continue through the end of the year. This raises an important question: to whom should we give?
I explored the question with my seventh graders in my New Jersey religious school by conducting an experiment. I identified a few charities that focused on different needs, each with a Jewish and non-Jewish counterpart. For example, I would introduce the International Red Cross and Magen David Adom (The “Red Cross” in Israel). Then I asked the students to write “checks” totaling $100. If a student felt each charity is equally important, then they would all get $16. But if a student felt one is superior, that charity alone might receive almost $100. It was up to the kids.
The following week I shared the totals with them to see how they allocated their dollars, and we discussed. I asked them if they think it’s more important to share with Jewish causes or general causes, and most said general causes. They said we Jews are citizens of the world and have a responsibility to care for the world at large. And they were not wrong, I said (and believe). I reminded them that the Torah says that all people are created in G-d’s image. This is said about Adam and Eve, who were not Jewish but simply human beings.
There’s also the line from the Talmud, Gittin 61A: “We sustain non-Jewish poor with Jewish poor … for the sake of peace.” Giving to local and global causes is itself a Jewish value.
The students sometimes hesitated to make a case to give to Jewish causes. Perhaps because it feels tribal, which has a negative connotation. But the funny thing is how they voted with their “dollars”: about 45% of their “charity” went to Jewish causes. After realizing this they might have said that if we Jews don’t care for our own, who will? They were not wrong, I said again. And believe.
The Talmud in Bava Metzia 71A says,
“If you lend money to a Jew and a non-Jew, a Jew has preference; the poor or the rich, the poor takes precedence; your poor and the [general] poor of your town, your poor come first; the poor of your city and the poor of another city, the poor of your city have priority.”
The Talmud teaches that we have to first care for our own. There’s nothing at all provincial about caring for family first; the Jewish world is our extended family.
In the end, I think we have a Jewish responsibility to give to both Jewish and general causes in about a 50/50 distribution. Fortunately, we can split up our dollars. It’s not all or nothing.
Giving to both Jewish and general causes is how I put these teachings together. We should always be aware of our Jewish backgrounds and responsibilities toward our own community while not being so narrow-minded that we neglect the world around us. That sounds simple to do, but it’s not at all.
Best of luck navigating that path in your own giving this year and beyond. The exciting thing is that you get to choose what percentage of your dollars to allocate to the causes that matter to you.
For a practical guide to giving to charity, consider this article from Money Magazine I found helpful:
http://time.com/money/4118017/charity-donations-giving/?iid=sr-link3
On a related charity topic, check out my sermon about how to best assist beggars on the street:
https://www.nssbethel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Shabbat-Toldot-5780.pdf
Shabbat Shalom.
by Hazzan Ben Tisser
The Bible is full of stories of our ancestors encountering God – sometimes in conversation, and sometimes “face to face”; sometimes through grand acts such as revelation or pillars of fire, and sometimes in dreams; and sometimes in prophecy. We learn these stories as children in school and quickly come to accept the magic of them. After all, how are we to understand the nature of the Divine if we cannot understand God in human terms, particularly from a young age? So we have in our tradition a God who speaks, and through that speech the world is created. Through that speech, waters pour from the heavens, flooding and destroying that very creation. Through that speech people are put to the ultimate tests. Through that speech we receive rules, laws, and guidelines to help us live holy lives.
This week in Parashat Vayeitzei we read of a very famous encounter with God. It is so incredible, in fact, that artists from William Blake to Marc Chagall, and songwriters from Huey Lewis and Pete Seeger to Chumbawumba and Rush, have created art and music related to this story, which is comprised of all of ten verses (Gen. 28:10-19). There are so many midrashim and commentaries on this story, but I’d like to highlight something which Rabbi Jonathan Sacks brings to our attention in his volume entitled Covenant and Conversation. It is also something which my childhood rabbi, Rabbi Harold Schulweis, spoke about often as he taught us about the importance of interaction with God and with each other.
Rabbi Sacks writes the following:
This week’s parsha relates a powerful, primal vision of prayer: Jacob, alone and far from home, lies down for the night, with only stones for a pillow, and dreams of a ladder, with angels ascending and descending. This is the initial encounter with the “house of God” that would one day become the synagogue, the first dream of a “gate of heaven” that would allow access to a God that stands above, letting us know finally that “God is truly in this place.”
There is, though, one nuance in the text that is lost in translation, and it took the Hassidic masters to remind us of it. Hebrew verbs carry with them, in their declensions, an indication of their subject. Thus the word yadati means “I knew,” and lo yadati, “I did not know.” When Jacob wakes from his sleep, however, he says, “Surely the Lord is in this place ve’anokhi lo yadati.” Anokhi means “I,” which in this sentence is superfluous. To translate it literally we would have to say, “And I, I knew it not.” Why the double “I”?
To this, Rabbi Pinchas Horowitz (Panim Yafot) gave a magnificent answer. How, he asks, do we come to know that “God is in this place”? “By ve’anokhi lo yadati – not knowing the I.” We know God when we forget the self. We sense the “Thou” of the Divine Presence when we move beyond the “I” of egocentricity. Only when we stop thinking about ourselves do we become truly open to the world and the Creator.
So the question for us is, how does this apply to our lives today? God no longer makes grand appearances, nor does God show God’s self, speaking directly with us. We no longer live in a nascent Israelite society which required divine intervention in order to function, nor do we live in a world of prophecy. This reality poses a great challenge, but also offers us a fantastic opportunity.
The challenge is in trying to make sense of the world. How could the same God who split the sea and destroyed creation for its evil allow such atrocities to happen in the world as the Shoah, the genocide in Darfur, or even simply allow innocent children to starve to death around the world? How can that be?! How can God who was willing to save Sodom and Gomorrah for but ten righteous people, and who challenged Jonah to help the Ninevites to repent so God wouldn’t have to ultimately destroy that city, allow regimes of terror and dictatorship thrive in the world? It doesn’t make sense. But then, putting it all on God in Heaven isn’t terribly fair, is it? The Torah teaches us that “…it is not in Heaven…” (Deut. 30:12). The very same verse which the Rabbis of the Talmud used to take ownership of interpreting the Torah is one of the keys to help us understand our opportunity and obligation in facing this great challenge.
The opportunity is a fantastic one. It takes work to really take advantage of it, some of which goes against the grain of our modern society, but then again that is the beauty of a religion which challenges us to think beyond the confines of societal norms. As Rabbi Sacks notes above from Rabbi Horowitz’s commentary on the Jacob’s ladder story, Jacob was able to encounter God because he was able to stop thinking about just himself, thus being fully open to the world around him in its entirety. We live in a society that teaches us to fend for ourselves. We live in a time in which virtually anything can be had instantly—with the tap of a finger we can order any product on Amazon and have it delivered the very same day, or find a variety of answers to any question in the universe without having to open books or speak with other people to research. It’s incredible! And yet at the same time, these most wondrous conveniences which allow us to get so much done in smaller amounts of time, also train us to be more self-centered than perhaps any generation before us. We walk around looking at our screens, or drive through town engrossed in a conversation over Bluetooth, and thus miss out on what is truly beautiful and important in this world. We literally miss out on the opportunity to interact with the divine.
In the first creation narrative, we are taught that God created people in the Divine image. God gave each living creature a soul. That is a radical concept, particularly today. The great philosopher Martin Buber gives us an idea of how to live with this concept in what is perhaps his most famous work, I and Thou. He teaches that there are two main types of relationship: “I-It” and “I-Thou”. An “I-It” relationship is when we interact with a person or object which is separate from ourselves…we merely experience it, and then we move on to the next interaction. I would venture to guess that this is the experience many of us have most often as we go through our day – ordering food at a restaurant, speaking with the bank teller, or even with our neighbors. There is nothing inherently wrong with this type of relationship, but it doesn’t do anything to truly enrich our lives.
“I-Thou” is Buber’s ideal, and this is, I believe, how we come closer to encountering God. “I-Thou” is an interaction or relationship in which the other (or the “Thou”) is not separated by discrete bounds from the “I”. In other words, we allow ourselves to get deep into the interaction. There is nothing utilitarian about the relationship. We recognize the unique value in the other. If we are to define this in Jewish religious terms, we recognize the nitzotz—the sacred Divine spark which resides in every living thing since the time of creation—in the other. In other words, if I know that I am created in the Divine image and I recognize that the salesperson in Nordstrom is also created in that very image, my interaction with that person changes greatly. If I know that is the case, I will stop thinking just about me and recognize that the interaction goes two ways. It is not merely about the salesperson finding the pair of shoes I want in my size in the stockroom; rather it is an opportunity to connect with another person created in the Godly image. And in that interaction, I just might get a little closer to experiencing God.
God doesn’t appear in clouds or in pillars of fire anymore. God doesn’t split seas or stop wars. “It’s not in heaven” anymore. It is here, it is real, and it is ours. When we see the humanity in the other, we encounter God. When we recognize our sacred and moral obligation to stand up in the face of atrocity because another person is suffering, and we step back from our particular needs in order to address that, we encounter God. When we are children and learn the stories of the Torah, it may seem to us that God only appears to specific people at specific moments. But the truth is, we all have the opportunity to encounter the Divine on a very regular basis, just as Jacob did that fateful night in his dream…we just have to seize the opportunity.
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