Once, Rabbi Baruch's grandson Yehiel was playing hide and seek with another boy. Yehiel hid himself well, and waited for his playmate to find him. He waited a long time, and finally decided to emerge from his hiding place. When he did, he saw that the other boy was nowhere in sight, at which point Yehiel realized that the boy had not looked for him. Weeping, he came to his Zayde to complain of his faithless friend. Rabbi Baruch's eyes, too, brimmed over with tears, and he said, "God says the same thing: I hide, but no one wants to seek Me!"
What a wonderfully intimate portrayal of God this is which emanates from the Hasidic tradition! Here our relationship with God is imagined not as the more familiar Creator and Creature, nor as Judge and Accused, nor even as Redeemer and Oppressed. In this story, our relationship with God is one we can all relate it to - it's a friendship, albeit a problematic one. And in this friendship, according to the story, we are, remarkably, the stronger party. For if God is the hidden Yehiel, then we are the ones who are supposed to seek according to the rules of the game, but don't. The hider - God - ends up being the Seeker. God-Yehiel in this story is sad, lonely, vulnerable; we, on the other hand, like Yehiel's friend, have power - the power to heal the relationship by apologizing and resuming the search, and the power as well to quit the game and sunder the friendship altogether.
There are two pieces to this story which I'd like to explore with you this Yom Kippur morning. One is the whole notion of thinking of God as our Friend. Particularly on a day which repeatedly emphasizes God's awe-inspiring power to seal us for a good year, or not, how dare we be so bold as to use such a familiar metaphor to describe our relationship with God? Do we put our very fate in the hands of our friends? our chums? our buddies? Yet according to our tradition, that is what we do with God each Yom Kippur. We put our lives in God's hands. Clearly, as nice and poignant as the story of Yehiel is, Rabbi Baruch's image will require some further consideration. The second piece of the story that I'd like to explore with you this morning is the idea of hiding and seeking. What do we really mean by associating this child's game with what goes on between ourselves and God? Can this image helpfully be used to describe our spiritual quest? If so, who plays which part?
If we want to take the story of Yehiel seriously as a Yom Kippur text, then one way to understand the purpose of Yom Kippur is that it gives us the opportunity to seek, and to say we're sorry for not having sought before. To acknowledge that we have been the faithless friend, too busy with other things to play with God. To take the opportunity to heal the relationship, to become intimates of God once again. For our relationship has been broken. We have betrayed our Friend, and many of us have felt betrayed as well. Tears have been shed, pain and anger and suffering have been endured. These are challenges which test our friendship with God annually. But this year our friendship with God bears the additional strain of the questions we ask about God's seeming inaction in the face of the monstrous evil we have just witnessed in New York. Yet despite that strain, and all the other lapses of the preceding year, the abiding value of the relationship is affirmed this day. And renewal is attempted once again - both by us, and by God. For in this model, we and God are in an ongoing, committed relationship; to use more religious language, we are in covenant, Brit. In Rabbi Baruch's image, we are friends.
Now this might not sound like the model of a relationship with God that we grew up with. The God-human dynamic that is much more often conveyed as being traditionally Jewish is hierarchical in nature. God is above, and we are below. God is the Lord, and we are the servants. God is the King, and we are the subjects. These metaphors, which emphasize the distance between ourselves and God, are authentic Jewish understandings of our relationship with God, there can be no doubt. But existing side by side with those descriptions are also other images, perhaps less emphasized but still very much present, that stress the closeness and the intimacy and the friendship between us and God. These are the images I'm thinking about this Yom Kippur.
One much beloved yontif prayer emphasizes how different metaphors can serve to enrich our understanding of our complex relationship with God. It's called Ki Anu Amecha. In this prayer, based on the Midrash on Shir HaShirim, a series of metaphors describing various ways of understanding our relationship with God are listed. Anu Amecha, ve-atah Elohenu - we are your people and you are our God. Anu Vanecha, ve-atah Avinu - we are your children and you are our Father, Anu Avadecha ve-atah Adonenu - We are your servants and You are our Lord, etc. Two of the other images in this prayer which I'd like to call your attention to though are Anu Rayatecha, ve-atah Dodenu - we are your friend, and You are our beloved, and Anu Segultecha, ve-atah Krovenu - we are your Chosen, and You are our Close One. This Yontif prayer clearly demonstrates that along with the fearsome images of God's overwhelming power to judge us at this time of year stands a very different image of God as our Friend, God as someone very close at hand, God as our lover. The Hasidim, by the way, when they speak to God in Yiddish, use the familiar pronoun Du instead of the more formal Ihr to express their intimacy with God. It is this side of the relationship that Rabbi Baruch was trying to teach his young grandson about, and it is this side that is often forgotten - both by people of faith anxious to call down God's awesome wrath and by people not of faith, anxious to have a bogeyman to point to which explains their disaffection from religion. The question is, how comfortable are we with a God who is our Friend? What do we gain by that image, and what do we lose? What does it mean for God to be so close? Is it even possible?
I believe that it is possible, indeed it is our destiny. For over time there has been an inexorable movement pushing us ever closer to God, to a more intimate relationship with God, to become ourselves more like God. And to understand what I mean by this inexorable movement we've got to go back to the very beginning. After all, think how far we've come! Initially, according to both Sefer Bereshit and modern science, there was no life at all on this planet. As science describes evolution, there was then a time when in the primordial soup the only creatures were one-celled microscopic organisms. Well things have changed. Today, there are 100,000 species of orchids alone! And today as well, there are people, homo sapiens, billions of us, human beings with characteristics like consciousness, power, freedom, love, intellect, ethics that provide grist for the dissertations of many an evolutionary biologist.
Now think about the Torah. So many people find the Genesis Creation account inconsistent with science but at least on this level it's all there·First the light, then the water, and the sky and the dry land. A beautiful but lifeless Creation. Then in succession the vegetation, the insects, the birds, and the fish and the cattle and the beasts. A once barren earth now teeming with life! And finally on the sixth day it was our turn. Human beings, the Johnny-come-latelys of Creation. Is the structure of the Genesis account so different from the structure of the scientific theory? They seem quite parallel. Of course, the language used is very different. In the language of Bereshit, B'tzelem Elohim we were created - in the image of God. No other creature got that designation. What does it mean? The commentaries are endless, but it clearly means that in some way that we are like God.
Note: we are not the same as God, we are like God. An analogy notes what is the same, but also leaves the essential separateness of the two parties intact so we have godlike characteristics but remain very clearly distinct. The philosopher Martin Buber uses the term I-Thou to describe certain kinds of deep relationships that we have with other people, and with God. In that phrase, there is a little hyphen between I and Thou. This hyphen both connects and separates. We are not God. That's where, I believe, the mystics got it wrong. The goal isn't to become one with God (for that would mean the end of us), but rather to become two with God. In other words, to be in relationship with God. At our best, at the pinnacle of our evolutionary and religious potential, we are friends with God. We have godlike powers which seem to grow ever stronger. Each year, our science and technology help us to draw ever nearer to the secrets of Creation - whether by means of particle accelerators or the human genome project or stem cell research or so many other avenues of scientific inquiry.
And of course, sometimes we use these powers for good, and sometimes for evil. The destructive potential of our knowledge is enormous, yet another lesson reinforced by the tragedy of September 11. God took a big chance by creating us, and sometimes as the Torah makes clear and as current events often demonstrate, there has been ample cause for God to regret it. That's the story of the Flood. We broke the rules of the game and God decided to start all over again. The story of Yehiel and his friend is not a new one. We have always been susceptible to giving up on the search, straying off the field of play. Our betrayals have been countless. This is not an easy friendship. That's what Yom Kippur is about. When we hurt a friend, there are consequences. When we feel hurt by a friend, there are consequences. Yet whenever we see a rainbow, we can remember that stopping the game altogether again is an option that God at least has forsworn. When things get tough, all that's left is the process of healing what will at times inevitably be an uneasy friendship.
How wise of our tradition to give us this annual day of healing! A day to come closer if we've distanced ourselves. A day to remember to seek out our friend, and hopefully find our friend, if we've been too busy of late to play. A day to limit our own freedom - the freedom to eat, to drink, to bathe luxuriously, to wear leather, to have sex. We limit our freedom in these ways this day in order to demonstrate how important this relationship is to us and because we don't want to give up on it, no matter how far we've strayed. That's why, I'm convinced, so many Jews come out on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur whom we don't see the rest of the year. To acknowledge that this relationship is important to us despite all the other things that tend to preoccupy us.
Of course, God doesn't always make it easy for us to find Her. And now I'd like to talk with you a bit more deeply about this notion of hiding in the Jewish textual tradition. Whereas in the nimshal of the Yehiel story, God is the seeker, in much of the Tanach God is portrayed as the Hider and this image is often used to explain the suffering of the people. At the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, God tells Moshe that after his death the people of Israel will sin and God will become angry with them, ve-histarti fanai me-hem, and I will hide My face from them. They shall be ready prey; and many evils and troubles shall befall them. And they shall say on that day, "Surely it is because our God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us" (Dt.31:17). In this example it is clear that the concept of God's hiding Her face is associated with a punishment. This verse may be seen as standing over against another verse, which is much more famous: Yisa Hashem Panav Elecha Ve-yasem lechah shalom - God will lift up His Countenance upon you and grant you peace. Both examples use the metaphor of God's face to convey a sense of God's presence or absence. In the blessing, the image is of the radiant divine visage shining warmly and benevolently on the person or people being blessed. But in the Deuteronomy verse, God's face is hidden and all we're left with is coldness, a harshness, a sense of abandonment as a response to our sins.
The prophet Isaiah quotes God as saying to the people of Israel in their exile, "In slight anger, for a moment, I hid My face from you; But with kindness everlasting I will take you back in love."(Is.54:8). And in Psalm 27, read daily during the month of Elul and all the way though the end of Hoshana Rabba, the poet begs God "Al Taster Panecha Mimeni·Al Titsheni ve-al ta-azveni." Do not hide Your face from me, do not abandon me, forsake me not." The image of God's hiddenness (brought about by our sins) is suffused throughout our textual tradition as one of the ways in which Jews of faith tried to understand where God was during times of overwhelming suffering.
Martin Buber helped infuse this ancient theological idea of Hester Panim with contemporary resonance when he wrote of the "eclipse of God." Just as an eclipse involves a celestial body being hidden from view, so too can God sometimes be hidden from us. This image is how Buber hoped we could understand a tragedy like the Shoah - just as all relationships ebb and flow, just as all relationships have moments of great intimacy and moments of distance, so too can God's presence be felt in our lives very strongly at certain times, and God's absence be felt equally strongly at other times. The key to the Hester Panim idea, whether in its biblical or contemporary articulations, is that God's hiding doesn't last forever. The eclipse comes to an end. The sufferings pass. Closeness and intimacy are achieved once again. The seeker does find the hider eventually. The challenge for us is, how do we manage to hold on to our hope during those times when we experience God as hiding from us? How do we keep the faith? Perhaps some reflection on our own, human tendency to hide, might be instructive here.
In Genesis chapter 3, we read about the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Gan Eden. It's a very complex narrative. You know it I'm sure -- the serpent convinces Eve to taste of the fruit of the tree that God had expressly forbidden. She does, and gives some to Adam as well. Their eyes are opened, they realize for the first time that they are naked, and they sew loincloths for themselves. And then come these verses: "Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of day; vayitchabeh ha-adam ve-ishto mipnei Hashem -- and the man and his wife hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord God called out to the man and said to him, "Ayeka? Where are you?" He replied, "I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid" (Gen.3:8-9).
So God is not the only one who hides in the Tanach. We hide too. Adam's first reaction upon sinning is to hide, to cover up. For many of us, the pattern is the same. We try to hide from our friend God out of shame. Or sometimes to avoid doing what we know in our heart of hearts to be the right thing. This afternoon we're going to hear the story of the prophet Jonah, who tried to hide from God by fleeing on a ship in the opposite direction from where God wanted him to go, descending all the way down to the bottom of the ship to get as far away from God as possible.Yom Kippur says, no such thing. Just as God does not conceal His face forever, neither can successfully hide from God. And this is the day set aside for us to find each other and to make up.
In this sermon, I have been arguing for an alternate model of conceiving of our relationship with God. God as Ruler. God as Judge. God as Creator. God as Lawgiver - these have been the traditional repertoire of God images which have been passed down to us as being authentically Jewish. My goal is not to replace that repertoire but rather to enrich it with another image - that of God as friend, God as intimate. I hope I've demonstrated three things about this image - first, that the idea of God as our Yedid Nefesh, our Beloved Friend, represents an authentic strain within Jewish tradition going all the way back to biblical days; second - that the emergence of this concept as a more dominant theme in our time is part of a natural progression of life becoming increasingly more complex and godlike; and third - that this image of God as friend doesn't necessarily make our relationship with Her any simpler or easier because the game of hide-and-seek still continues.
What do we gain from such a shift in emphasis? I believe we gain a sense of our own mature responsibility for helping make our relationship with God work, a responsibility which imparts to us stature and dignity as full partners in the covenant with the Divine. In the friendship model, we aren't passive or weak and we don't cower. Rather, we love and respect and cherish our Beloved as our Beloved loves and respects and cherishes us. And in an age when so many of us feel alone and friendless, the concept of God as a friend who is close by can, I believe, bring great comfort. These are fearful times we live in since September 11. Things we've taken for granted like physical safety, a growing economy, a nation at peace -- no longer feel so certain anymore. We can sure use a good friend to help get us through the unknowns ahead.
But there are losses as well that go along with this image of God as Friend, and these must be acknowledged too. What do we lose? At least three things that I can think of. The first is one I'm personally happy to be rid of - it's the image of God as a stern looking old man in a white beard sitting on some big throne way up in the sky looking down at us and deciding on our fate. That image, which is what most kids will draw if you ask them to draw a picture of God, has been a stumbling block to faith for many, who aren't aware of other authentic Jewish models for imagining God and who therefore assume that if they don't buy into the Old Man with a White Beard portrayal that means they don't believe in God at all.
Another loss that might result from the image of God as Friend is our faith in God's power. The friend metaphor doesn't tend to sit so comfortably with the idea of omnipotence. And many of us draw great comfort from our faith in God's power, especially in dark times, for this is a power which She has used in the past to save or redeem the oppressed. The attractiveness of this image was brought home to me at last week's Bar/Bat Mitzvah class when, during a discussion of God's role in the World Trade Center tragedy, one of the students offered the viewpoint that God had actually arranged what happened in such a way that a lot fewer people were killed on that awful day than would otherwise have been the case. That belief in a powerful, saving God clearly meant a lot to this particular student, so much so that the theological problematic of his position didn't even occur to him. My purpose is not to take this image away. God as Redeemer. God as Saviour. Our liturgy, our holidays, our Scriptures are replete with these images, and I don't want to undermine them; I just want that image balanced by another authentic image -- that of a close, loving God who is our friend.
Finally, in a list of losses that this shift of focus will force us to contend with: if God is our friend, what will happen to the concept of mitzvah, of obedience to God's commandments, so central to Jewish tradition? Would we obey the commandments of a friend? Would we even think of them as commandments? In this friendship model, it may well be that the grounds for participating in the system will shift from externally imposed obligation to a more friend-oriented internally accepted discipline, which is how it probably operates for most people anyway in our time. Will that be enough? Only time will tell, but I have faith in the staying power of the Jewish people's love for their tradition. Friends can make claims on us, in this case the mitzvah system, and if we value the friendship we will honour those claims, or at least as many as we feel we can.
Today is Yom Kippur. Our friend God is in the room with us, wanting to make up with us. He's right here on Brunswick Ave, in the midst of this great city and this world so teeming with life in all its wondrous and infinite variety. This friend, who set the process of life in motion, is hiding, but on this day She wants desperately to be found. Let's look for our friend together this Yom Kippur, so that our broken friendship may be healed.