This week’s portion – Be’Shalach, roughly translated as
“when [Pharaoh] sent [the People of Israel] away” – is extremely interesting in
that it is extremely visual. It
essentially tells the story of the first days following the Exodus – the
departing of Egypt; yet it is written more like a screenplay, a compilation of
visual images, than a regular biblical story.
And thus, some of the most captivating scenes ever envisioned (and later
attempted to be captured on the big screen by Cecil B. DeMille’s epic “The Ten
Commandments”) are reported here in great detail: The parting of the Sea, the drowning of all of Pharaoh’s cavalry,
the “pillar of cloud” walking in front of the People of Israel during the day,
and the “pillar of fire” by night, and many others. Indeed, it is for a good
reason that our sages concluded, following this portion, that “what the
lowliest of woman slaves had actually seen by that sea, even Prophet
Ezekiel hasn’t seen in his grandest of visions.”
But beyond its powerful imagery, this week’s portion is also
unique in that it consists of a many a contradiction: On the one hand it
contains some of the greatest revelations of faith of the People of Israel as
well as of Moshe, God’s first (and only) slave. On the other hand, it also
contains some of the most bitter revelations of disbelief, non-faith, and
continuing complaints against God by the same people. This tension – of faith
and non-faith, belief and disbelief – was wonderfully summed up (although in
other context) by Israel’s first national poet, C.N. Bialik, in the opening
lines of his famous poem, My Father:
“Odd were the ways of my life,
and puzzlement ruled their
direction,
Between the gateways of purity and vile
have they
constantly circled,
The sacrosanct constantly intertwining with the profane,
And the glorious with the loathsome wallowed …”
(My translation, obviously doing little justice to the
sublime original).
Indeed, immediately following their experience as witnesses
to some of the most beautiful visions of divine miracle ever observed by a
human, the Children of Israel are quick to remind us of the mundane,
frustrating, and – somewhat unbelievably – faithless lives of this
recently-freed nation of slaves. My two short comments today would relate,
first, to the notion of “how quickly we forget” (or its Latin cousin), and then
– in close proximity – to the false notion of the requirement for “a proof of
the existence of God.”
I. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi . . .
Right after God commits some of His most astonishing miracles
– the parting of the sea, the drowning of the enemy’s cavalry, etc., etc. – we
find the newly-freed nation, not surprisingly, in a very faithful mode: “And
Israel has seen the wondrous hand which God laid upon Egypt, and the people
have seen God, and they believed in God and in Moses His slave,” the
text informs us (Exodus 14:31). Recall that the Father of our Nation,
Abraham, also was first described as “believing in God” right after God showed
him His power, promising Abraham that he would receive all the best in this
world (Gen. 15:6).
But God usually doesn’t end there – believing in Him when
things are good is easy; what happens when things don’t go so well? Well before
the story of Job, God tests Abraham despite the textual testament that
Abraham believes in Him, and asks Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son (Gen.
22:1). Abraham’s belief is not shaken –
perhaps even strengthened – by the ordeal. God also tests Abraham’s descendants, the People of Israel, but this
time with much less success. The same
people who just witnessed some of His greatest miracles are now threatening to
soon stone His slave Moshe (Ex. 17:4),
and are quick to wonder “whether our Lord God is present among us or not” (Ex.
17:7).
Indeed, as the Latin saying goes, “thus passes the glory of
the world,” or, in modern English usage, “how quickly we forget.” But why is that? What caused the People of
Israel to turn their back on God so quickly?
Of the many answers offered to this question, allow me to
suggest a much less spiritual and much more mundane response: the people's change
of heart stems, first and foremost, from the physical conditions in which they
found themselves. Despite the fact that the People of Israel were slaves in
Egypt – and thus used to hard labor in the hot desert sun – they were not used
to walking in the desert. As you may
recall, they were walking the entire first night, and then – without mentioning
any break – continued to walk onward for days. It also seems they did not have
water with them, nor did they see any clear indication of a nearby water
source. Their first Divine test,
therefore, their first test of faith, was a very concrete one: Fear of dying in
the desert of dehydration, or placing their utmost faith with God: “And they went
three days in the desert and they have not found any water” (Ex. 15:22); “And
they were encamped in Rephidim, and there is no water for the People to drink”
(Ex. 17:1). Viewed in that light, it’s
not completely facetious to assume that quite a few reasonable people – perhaps
even some readers of this blog – would turn instantly atheist, even after such
a show of miracles.
But what is also fascinating is not merely the fact of
the people’s rapid turn of heart, but rather the content of their
grievances. Only a short period has
passed since these slaves complained (harshly) to Pharaoh of the dismal
conditions of their employment: “Straw you failed to provide to your slaves,
yet bricks you order us to make! Thus your slaves are being beaten. . .” (Ex. 5:16);
only a short time has passed since God himself confesses to Moshe that He has
“heard the crying of the Children of Israel that are slaving under Egypt” (Ex.
6:5), and already Egypt seems like Paradise Lost, a place they crave to return
to: “How we wish we were dead at the hand of God [here in the desert; unlike]
in the land of Egypt, where we sat by the pot of meat, where we have eaten
bread until we were full – and now you have taken us all out to this desert to
starve this entire congregation to death.” (Ex. 17:3). But what is really happening here? How can
their memory be so short?
One possible answer, while somewhat surprising, is by now well-researched and well observed. Economist and psychologists – mainly Kahnman
& Tverski (the former received a Nobel Prize in economics for his research in this field) – remind us that we prefer what is available to us over things we have no familiarity
with, even if the thing that is available is not beneficial to us. (Oversimplified, this is what they called the “availability heuristics”
in their seminal 1973 article published in Science magazine.) Thus, for example, we tend to prefer our known and familiar environment – even if we do not
particularly like it – over venturing off to a new start, somewhere we have
never been before. The quintessential
paradigm here is – just like in the Bible – our workplace: Most people
complain about their workplace, yet very few leave of their own accord. Is that the “People of Israel”
syndrome? One might wonder.
II. Can We “Prove” that God Really Exists?
Here I want to make a very short, but crucial point on the
great issue of Faith. Many times, ever
since the fourth grade, I heard a lot of people tell me: “If you prove to me
that God exists, I will then – and only then – believe in God.” Two things are wrong with that
argument: First, as we have seen in
this week’s portion, “proof of God” has nothing to do with the notion of faith.
Indeed, even when every person of Israel (including “the lowliest of woman
slaves”) standing on the beach of the now-departed Red Sea have seen, in
their own eyes, the glory and mighty of God like no one before or since, those
same people turned away from this very God only days later, in a heartbeat, as
soon as things went wrong for them. In contrast – and that is Prof. Leibovitz’s
point – for many generations Jewish people who have never seen God or
could have ever imagined that they would see him, not only believed in Him wholeheartedly but were willing to
sacrifice themselves on “Kidush Ha’Shem” – for the sake of God. And they did so
while reciting the Sh’ma, only not to become converts to another religion. That alone goes to show that the
correlation between the so-called “proof of His presence” and actual “faith” is
anecdotal at best.
But on a deeper level, the sentence itself – “prove to me X,
and then I will believe in X” is simply a non-sequitur. If one chooses to believe in
something, than they must relinquish any desire for proof that that same
thing actually exists; otherwise, there is no room for belief. By the
same token, if something is proven to you, you can’t be said to believe in
it, since there is no room for “faith” once something is proven. At that point,
you simply know, or are aware of its existence; you can no longer
be said to “believe” in it. Thus, you
cannot believe that the computer on which you are now reading this blog
exists; you know it does; similarly, you can’t know that the
Patriots will win the upcoming Super Bowl on Sunday, though you may
certainly believe in that (or not).
Indeed, belief and proof are mutually
exclusive. You either believe in
something, or you have proof (know) it exists. For that reason, many
scientists were – and still are – religious: They had (or even created) proof
for many areas in their respective research fields, but they did not have
(and would never be able to produce) any proof that God actually exists (or
not, for this matter); therefore, they feel free to believe in Him.
Accordingly, you may stop asking yourself (and others) for
the proof of the existence of God in the world, and simply ask yourself that:
do you believe in Him?
Shabbat Shalom,
Doron
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