Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove
March 10, 2007

I want to share with you a thought that I hope you find to be as shocking…and as obvious as I do.  The thought is as follows:  Our God, the God in whom we believe, pray to, listen to, and respond to, is as much, if not more, a reflection of ourselves as of God.  Let me frame it another way: The God to whom we are all praying is very different than the God to whom our parent’s generation prayed, to whom our grandparent’s prayed and for that matter to whom our grandchildren will pray to.  It is a shocking thought, I think, I hope, for reasons you can intuit.  God is eternal, a constant, Adon Olam. Surely God does not change, based on the people, the context, and the community praying to that God.  But it is also an obvious thought, what we believe, what we hold sacred, the God to whom we pray, must necessarily emerge out of our own experiences.  Every religious school child is taught the rabbinic explanation of why we begin the Amidah, the standing devotion, with the words God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, wouldn’t it have been enough to say merely God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, why the repetition.  And, the rabbis explain, the prayer teaches a simple theological truth.  Abraham had a different relationship to God than Isaac, which was different than that of Jacob.  The God, was the same God, but each patriarch, each matriarch articulated and understood their God differently.  No Jew, wrote Schechter, can pray with the heart of their parents.  Every generation of Jews has its own relationship with God.

The Jewish theologian who gave this idea methodological expression was Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.  In 1934 he wrote his most famous book Judaism as a Civilization.  And while there is much I could say about Reconstructionist Judaism, in a sense the title of the book is all you need to know.  For Kaplan, the focus of Judaism is not about the Jewish religion, but it is about the Jewish people, the civilization: Judaism as a Civilization, it is the Jewish people in every age who define what Judaism is and what Judaism isn’t.  For Kaplan, the constants are not a given, they change, as often as the generations.  Every age, every context reconstructs Judaism in its own Image.

And so, by extension for Kaplan, it is not God who creates man in the Divine image, but Man who creates God in his image (I don’t think Kaplan would have said it that way).  In one of the most quoted passages of Judaism as a Civilization, he writes as follows: “When we trace the history of the religious behavior of the Jewish people, we find that the God-idea which was the source of that behavior varied with the different stages of its Civilization.”  Kaplan goes on to survey Jewish history and he demonstrates that  the biblical idea of God is very different than the God the Rabbis had in their Hellenistic context, which was very different to the medieval God as presented by Maimonidies. Every generation maintains a God, and in every generation it is reconstructed. It is a rather obvious point when you stop to think about it, but it was Kaplan who had the insight and gift of expression to popularize the idea.

And, if you are starting to wonder why I have chosen this week to consider this idea, it is because the first example that Kaplan uses, is the example of the Golden Calf.  At this preliminary stage of Israel’s religious development, when given the opportunity to worship a God, when left to their own devices for 40 days as Moses received the law on Mount Sinai, they made a Golden Calf.  It was a horrible and heart wrenching moment for God and, as Alex had discussed so ably, it took all of Moses’ powers of persuasion to stay the wrathful hand of God.  But Kaplan’s point is that while we may still be shamed by Israel’s actions, at least we understand them.  Ancient Israel did what was totally natural in their Ancient Near Eastern Context, somewhere in between their Egyptian bondage and arrival in Canaan – they engaged in idol worship.  Disappointing -absolutely, surprising – absolutely not.

There are many explanations for why Moses smashed the tablets at the sight of the Israelites worshipping the calf.  Maybe he did it in anger, casting them down in rage.  Alternatively, the Zohar explains that the tablets given by God were easily carried, because though they were made of heavy stone being etched with the word of God.  When Moses descended the mountain, God’s words flew off the stone and the tablets became heavy – he didn’t throw them, but he dropped them.

The explanation I found to be most intriguing was offered by a late nineteenth century Talmudist Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk (1843-1926) whose posthumous work is called the Meshech Hochma.  He explains that something clicked or snapped inside of Moses as he was coming down the mountain.  The Meschech Hochma writes: “Moses perceived the mental state of the people…and promptly broke the tablets…Had he brought the tablets intact, they [the Israelites] would have substituted them for the calf and not reformed their ways.  But now that he had broken the tablets, they realized how far they had fallen short.”  Smashing the tablets, was a sort of Kaplanian “aha moment” for Moses, Moses saw the mind set of the newly liberated Egyptians slaves and he needed to signal that their context had changed – thus breaking the tablets.

Now I imagine that Reconstructionist Kaplan and the Mesech Hochma would have very little in common, they would probably be a bit shocked to find their names in the same sentence.   But the two men share a certain religious sensibility when it comes to understanding how belief in God works.  Both men understood, that for better or for worse, Israel, ancient, medieval and modern believes in what they believe based on who and where they are. 

And it is this insight, that raises what I think are the two really interesting and interrelated questions for us to ask today and in the future:
 
First of all, if Kaplan is right, if our belief in God constantly refashions itself in the image of man and history.  If, our supernatural God is defined by our natural world, then what exactly are the stopgaps from everyone believing in what they want?  Kaplan’s theology, however sensible, is very problematic.  Are we really willing to allow, if you excuse the expression, humanity to be the tail that wags the dog of God? It was one of the greatest theologians of America, Arthur Cohen, who saw the problem clearly.  He wrote “Theology, of necessity addresses the supernatural vocation of the Jew.  When the Jewish vocation is abandoned, not theology but religious sociology takes over.  The question of Jewish survival becomes an issue of stratagems, opinion polls, and community surveys”. (Natural and Supernatural Jew, p 281).  It is inconceivable to me that the God who created me and will care for my soul long after I am gone, is also defined by me. I am reminded of the story of the four blind men who come across an elephant and each one grabs onto a different part of the elephant:  They decide to feel the elephant to determine what sort of creature it is. One feels the back leg of the elephant. He says, "An elephant is like a tree." The second blind man feels the trunk. He says, "An elephant is like a snake." The third blind man feels the tail. He says, "An elephant is like a rope." The fourth blind man is afraid. He doesn't feel the elephant at all.  The problem with Kaplan is, it would seem, that we are left feeling like the fourth man.

Finally, if we are going to consider that Kaplan may have a point, if not religiously, then at least intellectually – then it insists on asking a final question.  The question is, of course, what is our God, the God of our generation, of our context.  We know who the God of the Israelites was, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Maimonides.  If we read them closely enough, we even know who the God of the Mesech Hochma and Kaplan were.  But the question we need to grapple with is who is our God - here today.  Even for Kaplan, as sure as he was that there is no specific or dogmatic formulation of God, the Jewish civilization cannot survive with the God – Idea as an integral part of it.

Let me begin, or more precisely, end, by saying that I don’t have the answer to this question.  But perhaps there is no question more appropriate for us all to consider as we begin the musaf service.  There is no better theological question that I think we can have as a community, because after all, in trying to define our God, I think, we will not only turn our attention to our faith, but we will also be forced to define who we are as Jews.

But lest you think I am ducking the question completely, let me leave you with one final image from the parasha, an insight once again from the Mesech Hochma.  We know that Moses broke the first tablets, those tablets were solely the work of God.  But the second set, the ones that remained whole, the one that endured, weren’t from God, rather they were carved by Moses.  The letters were inscribed by God, but the stone was quarried through human effort.

I think it is this image by which should begin our conversation.  In a world which is defining itself increasingly by the choice of secularism or evangelical fundamentalism, I think there is something compelling, and mind you, refreshing, about a faith that understands its power not merely in humanity and not only in God, but in the holiness that resides at the crossroads of the divine-human partnership.  Each one of us has the God given ability, to render God’s will present here on earth.  Through our human efforts, through observance of Mitzvot, through study of God’s Torah, through acts of kindness and tzedakah, each one of us can, in our own lives, rip down our share of the heavens.  And how do we know God? How do we know God’s Will? Through prayer, through study, through a life time of trial and error, through a steadfast belief, that though we may never be entirely sure whether it is we who are created in God’s image or the other way around, maybe, just maybe, it is in that disorienting condition, which is where God can be found.