Rabbi Joseph B. Meszler

What I Believe About God

Rabbi Joseph B. Meszler, Yom Kippur 5769

When I was a teenager, I went on a trip with my hometown rabbi, Gustav Buchdahl, to Germany. I was part of an exchange program that he was heading up between American Jews and German Christians. On the trip, we visited Berlin (which was then still a divided city), Dachau, and my rabbi’s birthplace from which he escaped as a child. 

The trip made a profound impact on me. Walking around in Dachau, I felt that my survival as a Jew was something of an accident, that somehow, I was lucky to be alive, that looking back at Jewish history, including the Holocaust, the pogroms, the Crusades, and many more atrocities, the Jewish people by all rights should have been wiped out and I shouldn’t actually be here.

The second feeling I had was how painfully ignorant I was about my own Judaism. I couldn’t remember all of the holidays and what they meant, I could at most stumble through Hebrew, and I had never studied anything that was called the Talmud. On Yom Kippur, the prayer book says that the gates are open, but too often I felt that the gates to Judaism were shut.

It was these two feelings, the feeling that I was fortunate to be alive and the embarrassment of my ignorance, which put me on a trajectory through those gates and led me to be standing before you today.

I have since studied Judaism and loved every minute of it. I have lived in Israel and loved it. I have served in Washington DC and loved it. And I now have the privilege of being the rabbi here at Temple Sinai and love it. But I share this personal story with you because when I bump into some of you while in my bathing suit at the lake with my children, people often do a double take and say, “That’s the rabbi?” One person even remarked, “Hey, it’s the man of the cloth without the cloth!” I didn’t tell them that “man of the cloth” usually refers to a priest. And if people think that I don’t look like a rabbi (at least as rabbis are depicted in Fiddler on the Roof), you can imagine what my wife must go through.

But the questions we get are more than just about appearances. They are also what we believe and stand for. For many, Reform rabbis, and by inference Reform Jews, are somehow considered lesser than the real rabbis and Jews who look the part. Further, I would like to tell them that as a Reform rabbi, I do not believe that God literally created the world in seven days. I do not eagerly await the day when God will send a single person called the Messiah who will resurrect the dead. I do not look forward to a time of a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem and the reinstitution of animal sacrifice. Some may ask, if you don’t believe any of those things, then why be a rabbi? Why not be something else? To which I say, “Phooey!”

All joking aside, if you do hold those beliefs, I respect you, as I do my many colleagues. But I would like to share with you what I really do believe because my guess is that a lot of people in this room have similar doubts. I believe that, for me, there is a healthier way to believe in God, Torah, and the people Israel that is closer to human experience. I will restrict myself to God, as if such a thing were possible, and leave Torah and Israel for other times. Otherwise we would be here all day. (Actually, some of us will be here all day!) You, then, be the judge as to what is a true, authentic spiritual path.

The Ever-Present Power Within that Makes for Peace

First of all, I believe in God more as a power or presence than as a person. For much of history, the only way we could talk about God was in human terms, as if God were a person. Our Bible describes God as kind, as angry, and as having thoughts and feelings. But those are human terms, and God is above being human. Our prayer books today speak of God being a Judge or a Shepherd above us, but judges and shepherds are also human beings. We ought to understand these terms as symbols, pointing to higher or, paradoxically, deeper truths. As Maimonides encouraged, we have to think of God figuratively. God is above our understanding, incomprehensible, and the best thing we can say before God is “I don’t know” or “I don’t really understand.” In other words, God is a mystery, or, as my intellectual hero Leo Baeck put it, “the presence of something lasting, of some reality beneath the surface.”

Some God-metaphors work for me, and some metaphors don’t. The idea of a big man up there who has a plan does not work very well for me. It does not take much to start questioning if there is really a plan or why certain things had to happen. How do hurricanes fall into God’s plan?

But I find tremendously compelling the idea that there is a force inside of me and you that is part of a creative presence in the world. Is God looming above me, making a list and checking it twice, like Santa Claus? Not so much. But within me, in acts of compassion and the demands of the conscience: there is the divine. Rather than think of God up above, I prefer to think of God within. When my children ask, “Where is God?” I put their ears to my chest and let them hear my heart. I then let them feel their own heartbeat. God is in there, I say.

There are times when I feel very close to God, and there are times when I feel very far away. During lonely, depressed days I feel cut off from the world, as if my room is a prison and my own anxiety is my jailer. But I have felt closest to God when doing what I felt is right, as if I were answering a voice in my conscience that says that I must do the ethical thing. Or, as Baeck put it, “moral consciousness teaches about God.” I feel a kind of high when walking the halls of Temple Sinai on Mitzvah Day, seeing the concrete ways that we help make the world a better place. I feel an enormous amount of pleasure in dropping off a donation to the Stoughton Food pantry, or writing a check as an act of tzedakah, or even helping to create family harmony or release in talking with people. In doing what I know is right, I feel that I am helping to fulfill the divine. In fact, doing good is sometimes the exact tonic I need to pull me out of a moment of cynicism or despair.

The Zohar, the central text of Jewish mysticism, puts it this way: Shechina hee mitzvah. God’s presence is the commandment. When we fulfill the commandments, God is manifest.

For me, God is a mystery that is eternal. I cannot say for certain anything about God. In fact, the people who are so certain about what God is, what God wants, and what God has told them to do scare me not a little. Such certainty can too easily become dogma and intolerance. But if I had to pin down a definition of God, I would have to say that God is the Ever-Present Power within that makes for peace.

This power gives me the consciousness that I have been created, and so I feel compelled to create. I attempt to create a beautiful and honorable life in which I fulfill my responsibilities to others and make a more peaceful and just world. God will not do it for me, fixing things from up above. Rather, God makes for peace by empowering us all from within. It is my job to help us live in harmony with each other and with nature. If the Jewish people can survive so much and continue to produce good in the world despite its history, then anything is possible. We are living proof of what is possible, of rebirth and renewal, of optimism, of the possibility of tikkun olam, the mending of the world, that we are empowered to do good.

Reform Judaism

I have found my beliefs about God fit well into Reform Judaism. The denominations of Judaism all believe in a covenant with God, the sacredness of Torah, and the community of the Jewish people. What distinguishes them is a matter of emphasis on one point or another. Reform Judaism, in a nutshell, believes that ethics are the essence of Judaism. Ritual and worship can change with time and place, that is, they can be reformed, but the ethics of Judaism are universal. In other words, Reform Judaism believes that ethics are always more important than rituals, as beautiful as many of our rituals may be. We are much more concerned with buying solar cookers for the women of Darfur than at what exact minute one should light the Shabbat candles on Friday night. Is lighting the Shabbat candles important? Of course. Our rituals deepen our lives and engage us in spiritual meditation and reflection. We show reverence for tradition and love of our heritage. But “doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God,” as was articulated by the prophet Micah? These commandments are rooted in a deeper source and take precedence.

So Reform Judaism is my home, not only because of its creativity when it comes to worship, but also because of its primacy of ethics. We are the only Jewish denomination with a social action and lobbying agency. It is called the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, and it is located in Washington, DC. The RAC, as it is called, has a website that lays out an agenda of social justice. With this and through other means, we pray and act in the spirit of the prophets who told us to “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

And in our communities, we strive to realize universal ethics by making inclusiveness a principle by which we build our congregations, believing that all people are made “in the image of God.” Fairness and compassion should be manifest at home. Even before we are Jews, we are human beings with a conscience, and it is that common humanity that makes us respect and appreciate one another and the world at large. To put it in religious terms, I believe that there is a bit of the Messiah in each of us, and the world will be a better place if we would learn to see it.

The Challenge

And now that I have shared what I think about God, I invite you to do the same. The Hebrew name for the Jewish people, Yisrael, means to wrestle with God. You do not have to be certain. You are allowed to doubt. You are encouraged to ask questions that have no answers. It is healthy to say, “I do not know.” But you should give yourself enough credit to ask the questions, to discuss them to try to figure out what you believe.

What does the word God mean to you? Do you feel empowered to change your definition if it is dissatisfying? When have you felt close to God? When far away?

God gave each of us two gifts. The first is an individual conscience. Your divine image within is the capacity to make moral decisions, to struggle with right and wrong. The second is a beautiful tradition of moral inquiry, so that you do not have to make those decisions alone. Libraries of Jewish books await you to help you discover new dimensions to the world.

And as you wrestle with God, discuss it with others. Write it down. Share it with your children or grandchildren. Do it today, for today is Yom Kippur, the most spiritual day of the year. Dare to actually be spiritual today, to talk about God as a reality in your life, to share your doubts and convictions.

Use today as a day to actually pray, to open up your mind and start talking. It doesn’t have to be in Hebrew or in poetry. Just start talking in your mind to God. See what happens. Ask questions. And when you’ve asked those questions, ask some more. Will things become clearer? Maybe or maybe not. Will you be able to get to even better questions? Yes. Will you feel solidarity with those around you? I hope so.

On Yom Kippur, the gates to God are open. As our prayer book says: Go through. Go through the gates.

An Inclusive, Progressive, Thoughtful Spirituality

Rabbi Joseph Meszler, Thanksgiving Interfaith Service,

November 19, 2006

In the Washington Post and in Newsweek, a new section has been started that has been called, “On Faith.” Individuals like the Reverend Robert Mohler, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Rabbi David Saperstein, and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu submit brief articles on the subject of faith. One could cynically say this news agency is doing so because, truth be told, religion on the front page sells more copies than any other subject. The stated mission of the forum, however, as written by Jon Meacham, is claimed to be as follows:

Religion is the most pervasive yet least understood topic in global life. From the caves of the Afghan-Pakistan border to the cul-de-sacs of the American Sunbelt, faith shapes and suffuses the way billions of people - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and nonbelievers - think and act, vote and fight, love and, tragically, hate. It is the most ancient of forces. As Homer said, "All men need the gods." Even the most ferocious atheists find themselves doing intellectual battle on a field defined by forces of the faithful. And so, in a time of extremism - for extremism is to the 21st century what totalitarianism was to the 20^th - how can people engage in a conversation about faith and its implications in a way that sheds light rather than generates heat?

In a time when religion has become synonymous with politics, there seems to be no public discourse about faith that does not have its agenda. Consider some of the labels that we use that push people to the extremes. The decades old debate about reproductive choices and the sanctity of life divides people into the camps of “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” as if those who favor abortion under certain circumstances are somehow pro-death and those who believe in the sanctity of life from conception are somehow anti-freedom. And our most recent series of elections has generated a constituency labeled by the media as “values voters,” as if people who do not fall into that particular social group are somehow without values.

Indeed, the Washington Post’s online forum has already attracted people claiming different forms of uncompromising truth, despite the mission statement. One person writes of his access to “a biblical authority that is absolute, universal and timeless,” while another retorts that it is “sad that you have committed your life to spreading such nonsense.”

What is troubling is that the rhetoric that carries the highest pitch does not reflect the reality of the American family or the latest insights into the human spirit. It is the same rhetoric that calls for the teaching of creationism in public schools and would impose one person’s prayer on another. On the other hand, there are some who question the value of religious searching at all, exacerbating religious groups’ defensive posture. Let us ask honestly: Has the theory of evolution robbed our origins of their miraculous nature? Has archeology and literary criticism made our Scriptures somehow less sacred? Has psychology somehow demystified the human spirit? Or should these brave thoughts enhance our understanding of the smallness of humanity and the greatness of God? Yet some would turn these theories into absolute truths the same way others would quote Scripture with literal certainty.

Thanksgiving is the antidote to such black-and-white rhetoric. It is this week that we gather together and count our blessings around the dinner table. We eat too much, and the Protestant grandfather passes the gravy to the Jewish son-in-law. In my family, there is a lot of translating that goes on: New York accents mix with New England manners, and thank God turkey is the traditional meal instead of ham. If it hadn’t been, we would have made it so.

When the Israelites left Egypt, it says that a mixed multitude, the erevrav, followed them, and they created all sorts of heresies like the Golden Calf. And yet, as Rabbi Jennifer Kraus once wrote, sometimes I feel we have all become part of a mixed multitude, and ideas that were once considered blasphemy are now commonplace. The boundaries have blurred, and life is less certain. We live with such ambiguity because we need our families, and the picture of the American family has changed. We Americans are now of interfaith families, interracial families, single parent families, gays and lesbians, converts, and traditional families of multiple generations. It will be the religious tradition that makes spirituality and inclusiveness the center of its agenda that will thrive in the 21^st century.

Make no mistake: we all should live out our traditions with integrity and with respect for boundaries. We have our values, and we stand by them. Our values include not only integrity and respect but also tolerance and empathy. Most religions come together with faith in a Supreme Being who compels morality, and many of us strive for insight into a Deeper Reality that gives meaning to life. We must never lose sight of the fact that we have more in common than in difference.

Never before has there been more of a need for calming voices of an inclusive, progressive, thoughtful spirituality. We can, as another writer put it, introduce innovation while preserving tradition, …embrace diversity while asserting commonality, …affirm beliefs without rejecting those who doubt, and … bring faith to sacred texts without sacrificing critical scholarship.

We can have faith, but it need not be blind faith. It can be faith with eyes wide open to the divine image in which each person is made, thankful, in this season of thanksgiving, for different varieties of people. I will conclude with a blessing from Jewish tradition, a blessing for seeing those whom we may have once considered to be strange or different and recognizing the beauty of another as a creature of God. I say this blessing standing before you, looking out on the blessed togetherness of different people of different backgrounds gathered here for the common purpose of expressing gratitude before the Almighty.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam mishaneh habriyot. Praised are You, the Eternal One our God, who makes all living creations different.

Egypt Today

Rabbi Joseph Meszler, April 10, 2009,

Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach

You can learn a great deal about something by what you call it. The Hebrew word for

The rabbis teach that it is forbidden to dwell in Egypt. It says in Deuteronomy 17:16, You shall henceforth return no more that way. The rabbis clarify that one can go there on business, but the prohibition is on settling there. In other words, visiting as a tourist, learning as a student, or for engaging in commerce is permitted because they are only brief stays, but to actually choose to live in Egypt permanently is to break a negative mitzvah, a “thou shalt not.”

The question for us today is whether the rabbis meant Egypt as a geographic area or

Instead, perhaps the rabbis were teaching that Egypt is a state of mind. It is a place in our lives where we get stuck. What are the Narrow Places where we may occasionally find ourselves, but we are only allowed to stay a short while?

Occasionally, like it or not, we find ourselves stuck. Our Egypt may be financial distress, where we feel caught between powers that are beyond our control. We feel squeezed. Today, more and more people are discovering feelings of pride and shame in that they are in need of help when they never imagined that they would be. In fact, in the Vilna Gaon’s Haggadah (18^th century), he identifies several types of poverty. Two of the types are 1) not having any food and 2) having some food but not enough. Why does he make this distinction? Because the first type, not having any food, refers to the poor who are obvious out on the street before us. But the second type, having some sustenance but not enough, refers to a much larger group of people who tend to be invisible. It refers those who labor constantly and cannot make ends meet. It refers to the working poor who are one accident away from disaster. It refers to those who simply try to make a living wage. This, certainly, is a form of Egypt

today that defies geographic boundaries.

Another form of Egypt, however, has nothing to do with material goods. It is an Egypt of anxiety or depression. In the words of our High Holy Day prayer book, we think of “who shall be troubled by the passing breeze, [and] who shall be poor in the midst of possessions.” These go well with the other forms of poverty that the Vilna Gaon identifies, the poverties of exile, slavery, and knowledge of God. We can feel alone in the midst of a crowd, isolated even though we are surrounded by people. Loneliness is a form of exile. We can be a slave to destructive habits, to addictions, and to others who have too much control over our lives. And we can be starving for a spiritual connection, for the knowledge that God is near, that there is a deeper reality beyond what we can touch and see that gives life purpose and meaning. This Egypt of our emotions is a narrow place that can have physical symptoms and can really hurt.

The part of the rabbis’ commandment I find most interesting, however, is that we are allowed to visit

How do we get out? How do we depart on our own exodus, leaving Egypt behind?

One step has to be to admit that we are in Egypt in the first place. We might be saying to ourselves: I am an important Egyptian citizen! You see those cities over there: Pithom and Raamses? I helped build those! But then a little Moses voice whispers to us, saying, “You are a slave.” We have to admit that we are stuck.

And so perhaps the second thing we should do is to listen to that voice within us. God speaks to very few of with dramatic wake-up calls and lightning strikes. I personally have never had one. I don’t think God is like Zeus throwing lightning bolts. The Jewish God, let’s face it, is a nudge. God nudges all of us at one time or another, and we have to learn to listen internally for nudges from God. What should I be doing? What feels right, and what feels wrong? What does my conscience say? Am I going to keep doing that even though it always causes me pain, or I am going to get out of my own way and do what’s necessary?

And one more thing Judaism teaches us is that we need to be together. As the civil rights anthem goes: “the only chain that we can stand is the chain of hand in hand.” Community means coming together as a team, as a family, as people unafraid to trust and to lean against each other. Asking for help is hard, but living without help is harder.

Rabbi Jonah Pesner, at the recent Union for Reform Judaism service, taught a midrash, a rabbinic parable. Many of us are familiar with the story of Nachshon, the man who, when the Israelites were being pursued by the Egyptians, did not wait for Moses to raise his staff but instead took the plunge himself and jumped into the water. It was because of this daring individual that God parted the sea so that he would not drown. But the rabbis teach right after this passage an alternative explanation. It says that in fact all of the Israelites, hand in hand, rushed at the water and jumped in together. It was because of their faith in each other and their working together that the sea parted.

I pray that we are all able to identify our respective Egypts today. I hope we are able to listen to the nudges that God gives us. But most of all, I pray that our community, the Jewish people, our

A good Pesach to all.