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I like to tell about how my faith developed. I started out as an absolute
rationalist. To me, ‘faith’ was not
about belief at all, but about intellect.
‘Jewish Faith’ meant having enough of a grasp of the principles,
philosophies, and history of Judaism, to where one could participate with
competence. And speak with authority.
Along the way,
experiences added to make me understand that it’s not all rational. There were many stages along the way.
Once, a Christian
colleague, a female evangelical pastor, reminded me of Genesis 15.6: Abraham believed Hashem, and he credited
it to him as righteousness. In other
words, belief = righteousness. We had
been having a discussion, okay perhaps an argument, about the centrality of
faith.
I dismissed my
colleague’s point. The Hebrew ‘he’emin,’
in my colleague’s NIV Bible as ‘believed’ more properly means, ‘was faithful’
as in ‘was steadfast.’ I felt really
clever. In retrospect, I should have
felt glib.
Because ‘he’emin’
really does mean ‘he believed.’
There is righteousness in belief.
But in our rationalism we are so afraid of irrational faith that we
rebel against the idea. Judaism is not
a religion that requires irrational faith of us.
And I stand by that
view. But just because something isn’t
rational, does not mean that it is irrational. The opposite of rational is arational. This isn’t semantics. Irrational means contrary to
rational. That is, in opposition of that
rationality might argue. Arational on
the other hand, simply means, not dependent on rationality. And that’s a big difference. Jewish faith is never irrational. But it is often arational.
There is a delightful, and
instructional, midrash on this week’s Torah portion. This week’s portion is Beshallach, in
which appears the Song of the Sea. This
is the Israelites’ song, celebrating their rescue when the Red Sea parted for them
yet closed in on the pursuing Egyptians.
We’re very familiar with a couple of lines of the song, because we sing
them in every service: Mi chamocha b’eilim
Adoshem; Mi kamocha nedar bakodesh; Adoshem yimlock le’olam va’ed.
Well, the midrash tells us that the
Israelites stood at the shore of the sea looking at the deep before them, aware
of the advancing Egyptians, and despaired. But one man, Nachshon ben Aminadav, had the
faith to step into the waters. And when
he did – only when he did – the sea parted for the Israelites to pass
through.
There are a number of important
lessons to be learned from this midrash. For one, Hashem provides miracles, but it is
not until we recognize and accept them, that they do us any good. This reminds me of the story of the man who
drowned in the floodwaters when Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans. First there was ample warning over the radio
and television, not to mention loudspeaker trucks cruising around the city’s
residential neighbourhoods advising residents to evacuate. But this man did not. “G-d will save me,” he said. When the floodwaters began rising, the Coast
Guard came around in a boat, urging residents to hop aboard and be saved. “G-d
will save me,” the man said. As the
waters continued to rise, an Army helicopter came around looking for people to
save. The man did not signal for the
helicopter. “G-d will save me,” he said. Finally, the waters completely engulfed his
house. As he was about to drown, he
upbraided G-d. “Why didn’t You save me??!” he demanded. And G-d answered with a shrug: “I sent you
advance warnings. Then I sent you a
boat. Then I sent you a helicopter. What else was I supposed to do??!”
Jewish audiences love this story,
because it points out that faith, in the end, is rational. But what it also points out is that, at some
point, you have to believe. You have to
believe that G-d will save you. Only
then will you be ready to recognise and accept salvation when it comes. The man in the story, although he kept
repeating “G-d will save me,” didn’t really believe it.
It’s like in the 21st chapter
of Genesis, where Hagar is despairing because her son, Ishmael is about to die
of thirst in the desert. The Torah tells
us that Hashem opened her eyes, and she saw a nearby spring whose water kept
them alive. The implication is that the
spring was there all the time. Hagar
only had to have enough faith to actually see it, for it to save them.
When the movie The Prince of
Egypt came out, I like many others watched in wonderment as our Jewish
story came alive in a big-budget animated production on the big screen. But some of my more-rationally minded
colleagues felt the need to nitpick the film. Among the parts they didn’t like was the central
song, When You Believe, which later became a hit recorded by Whitney
Houston and Mariah Carey. There can
be miracles when you believe, to some rabbis, was not only simplistic but
smacked of Christian faith more than Jewish. Whilst the debate raged, I felt a bit
self-conscious. I’d been moved by
hearing the little girl sing sweetly ashira ladoshem ki ga-oh ga’ah / Mi
chamocha ba’eilim Adoshem / Mi kamocha nedar bakodesh. Wow! I’d
thought. The entire world is hearing the
words of our central text, sung in Hebrew on the big screen. I’d been so moved that the theological
difficulties of the song went right over my head!
But of course, there were no
theological difficulties presented by the song. If it resonated, that’s because it should! There can be miracles when we believe. If we refuse to believe, we close ourselves
off to the miracles that surround us. Shabbat
shalom.
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