The first of Judaism's big ideas: human empowerment. Our responsibilities in the human/Divine partnership. And Judaism's focus on Tikun Olam - improving the quality of life in this world.

A FAITH GARDEN:

Empowerment

As the first step in replanting my Faith Garden, I focused on Judaism’s big ideas – the core values that provide its sense of purpose and meaning. This is what I meant by back to basics. I would take a fresh look at it for the first time as an adult – harnessing my life’s experiences in the process. What exactly are Judaism’s big ideas? And do those core values resonate in my soul.

The first big idea had to be: how does Judaism see my role in this world? It’s a fundamental question in the search for meaning. What picture does a Religion paint of my ability, or inability, to effect change in the world? What are Judaism’s goals for me in life? If I don’t uncover an inspiring picture of my role – I won’t end up with a very vibrant Faith Garden, will I?

I want to connect this question – what is my role in the world – with the idea introduced in the last podcast: the metaphor of strategic diversity. Remember that the goal in most team sports is the same: score more points than the opponent. But the individual strategies to accomplish that goal are varied and diverse. Defensive-oriented teams, high-flying risk-taking teams or even slow, methodical teams, each try different strategies to achieve the goal of winning. The same is true with Religions, they often propose diverse frameworks of meaning to achieve a meaningful life.

If you’ll stick with me here, I want to peel that onion a little deeper. I believe there are similarities between how Religion’s see my role in the world and how coaches approach this idea of strategic diversity. Here’s how it usually plays out in both sports and Religion: in sports, if I’m coaching but I don’t have great confidence in my team’s abilities, I will nearly always opt for a defensive and methodical strategy. Burn time. Keep the score and the expectations low. I see the same tendency with Religions that lack confidence in our ability to transform the world, either because we are viewed as inescapably and irredeemably sinful or because there is no higher purpose at all – we are merely randomly evolved and arbitrary specs in a vast collection of universes. Now I know that those two Religious views have completely opposing ideas of the God-human relationship – one always seeing man as insignificant and sometimes even damned in this world and the other seeing the very idea of a creator as a mythical invention of our imagination. But I find their view of my role to be similarly uninspiring – that is, a sense of being doomed to life as a passive passenger. Both require submission to fate and a need to dramatically lower my expectations for a meaningful and transformational journey. Not a very optimistic, empowering or hopeful vision.

On the other hand, if I’m convinced my team is comprised of superior talent -- talent with great athletic ability and a high sports IQ -- I will usually implement an aggressive and innovative strategy. Dream big. Put yourself out there. Take risks. You see this with elite teams in football, soccer and basketball. They play with remarkable joy, confidence and self-esteem. Isn’t it the same with Religion? When a Religion embraces the miraculous gift of my soul, when it sees the potential of my self-awareness, my unique human consciousness – that Religion typically promotes and encourages my ability to “change the world” as the slogan goes. As the Renaissance Catholic thinker, Pico della Mirandola said, armed with free choice and dignity, we can fashion ourselves into whatever form we choose. This Religious outlook espouses an optimistic, empowering and hopeful vision of my role in the world.

Turning to Judaism, my role in the world would depend on which of these two models it ascribes to me. And as a traditional, God-based Religion, that model would turn on Judaism’s view of my relationship with God. Obviously, Judaism believes in a creator God. But that’s just the beginning. What does that creator God want of us? I love how Rabbi Shay Held framed this issue when he said, “the question of whether or not you believe in God is important, but the question of what kind of God you believe in is a heck of lot more so.” A subgroup’s vision of God really matters. Is God dominating? Controlling? Passive? Distant? Empowering? Connected? Caring? Loving? Judging? Forgiving? Hopeful? A Religious subgroup’s specific view of God will dictate the nature of the God-human relationship. In other words, the way that Judaism allocates expectations and responsibilities between each party to that relationship will paint Judaism’s picture of my role in this world.

The answer I found really surprised me. Centuries before the Enlightenment, and in a world believed to be controlled by petty, warring gods, Judaism introduced a radical view of my role in this world, as expressed most clearly in Psalm 115. There, the psalmist declares: הַשָּׁמַיִם שָׁמַיִם לַיהוָה וְהָאָרֶץ נָתַן לִבְנֵי אָדָם (“The heavens are God’s dominion… but the world was given to humanity”). Wait a minute. God turned the world over to us? Exactly. Judaism believes that the creator intended a real allocation of power and authority. Judaism is not a Religion of passive submission. Instead, it believes that God, like the coach of those talented teams previously described, sees me as Tov Me‘od, “very good” – to borrow the phrase from Genesis creation story. So what kind of God does Judaism believe in? A God that sees each of us as a primary agent of change in this world. Judaism sees me as a talented star on a team of stars – capable of extraordinary feats of innovation, caring and goodness in this world. And capable of creating relationships with others to maximize our collective potential at Tikun Olam – fixing and improving our world. In short, Judaism challenges me to act and to be accountable.

I have to admit though, that this is a curious phrase - what does it mean that our world was “turned over” to us? It suggests a partnership is at play here. God is responsible for the heavens, and we are responsible to clean up the mess down here. There are numerous places where the Jewish sources tease out this unique partnership perspective, where we are empowered to fulfill our partnership obligations, but my favorite is the following story recorded in the Talmud:

A group of Rabbis sat together, debating a thorny legal question. They reached a stalemate, with Rabbi Eliezer on one side and the other rabbis on the other. After failing to persuade the others of his position, Rabbi Eliezer called on God to create a series of miracles as demonstration that his opinion was the correct one. First, he caused a tree to relocate on its own; then he reversed the flow of water in the local river; finally, he forced the walls of a building to cave in. After each miracle, his peers seemed unimpressed, responding that Eliezer should know better: laws are settled by a democratic vote of the judges and not by supernatural events. Frustrated, Rabbi Eliezer raised the stakes, demanding that God intercede more directly and declare Eliezer the winner of the argument. On que, a heavenly voice rang out, revealing that Eliezer spoke the truth – his opinion was the correct one. But like a courtroom lawyer, another Rabbi jumped up and yelled, “Objection your honor!” – explaining that after the handoff at Mount Sinai, the interpretation of the law no longer resides in Heaven. God delegated that power to our hands, and only a majority of sages can establish the law. In other words, after the handoff, the heavenly voice was inadmissible evidence!

The Heavens belong to God, but the world was turned over to us…

This colorful story reveals that, according to Judaism, not only did God handoff the powers of interpretation and creation of the law, but God did so in an irrevocable manner. Judaism believes that even if God wanted to interfere, the authority granted cannot be subsequently limited or revoked. Wow!

God turned this world over to us...

Even better, the Talmud drives this empowerment message home with a stirring epilogue. It reports that, years later, a certain Rabbi Nathan wondered how God reacted to the Rabbi Eliezer debate. So Rabbi Nathan asked the spirit of Elijah the Prophet, who reported: would you believe it? God simply smiled and kept repeating: My children have defeated Me.

God turned this world over to us…

The Rabbi Eliezer story is not only a colorful affirmation of Judaism’s partnership idea. It also reveals something essential about how you and I find meaning in life – we have to work hard for it. All those doubts I had and have, the ups and downs, the struggle to replant my Faith Garden – all of that is natural. I’m not damaged goods. It turns out that there is nothing wrong with me. The Rabbi Eliezer story reinforced the fact that human interpretation of meaning is inescapable, even in the aftermath of revelation. In other words, we have to be more than meaning-seeking beings; we are challenged to be meaning-discovering beings as well. There shouldn’t be easy answers in this search for meaning. Rabbi Eliezer tried to reach “beyond” our superpower of consciousness – beyond our individual responsibilities of interpretation. He wanted to skip over our essentially personal need to find meaning that resonates in our soul. But his peers rejected his efforts to sidestep this reality. We cannot escape the responsibility and the opportunity to discover and then infuse the world with meaningfulness.

God turned this world over to us…

Seen this way, the psalmist declared that Judaism is a religion of supreme human empowerment. We are partners with our creator. We were given the challenge to do a job here on earth. Of course, this division between heaven and earth, this empowerment, comes with risks. Are we up to the task of Tikun Olam, the Jewish charge to improve, or fix, our world? Or will we succumb to darker forces and impulses and instead further shatter the pieces that surround us? The recently departed, extraordinary religious humanist, Lord Jonathan Sacks summarizes the essence of this Divine gamble when he notes, “there is no faith humans can have in God equal to the faith God must have had in humankind, to place us here as guardians of the vastness and splendor of the universe.”

God turned this world over to us.

I don’t think many of us understand traditional Religion this way. To be sure, there were and continue to be a wide diversity of interpretations of the God-human relationship. However, I find that this big idea – that God has granted us enormous bandwith to do good or evil in this world – to save but also to destroy – fits the events of this world and the horrors we’ve witnessed in the last Century. It is also reinforced by another surprising element of Judaism’s empowerment model. Biblical Judaism never focuses on an eternal afterlife as either a personal goal or an explanation of our suffering. The Old Testament doesn’t emphasize the afterlife. The eventual human transition to heaven or hell never plays a central role in the Bible as a motivating factor in the lives of the Patriarchs, Matriarchs or the lawgiver, Moses, and isn’t promoted by the prophets. Instead, the various covenants and promises sought by and granted to those founding fathers and mothers primarily involve worldly goals – including standing up to injustice, transmitting values, legacy-building, property ownership and accumulating material wealth. In one example, God promises to Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great… all the land you see I will give it to you and your descendants forever… I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth…” Hardly the markings of an ascetic Religion. Judaism’s focus on what we can accomplish in this world, and on our critical role in this partnership model, is further embedded in the Jewish Psalms and liturgy, with phrases like, כִּי אֵין בַּמָּוֶת זִכְרֶךָ. בִּשְׁאול מִי יודֶה לָּךְ (“in death there is no witness to God’s existence; in death, who is aware of you?”), or similarly in the continuation of Psalm 115: לֹא הַמֵּתִים, יְהַלְלויָהּ; וְלֹא, כָּל-יֹרְדֵי דוּמָה (“the dead and those who go down into silence cannot praise you.”)

Lord Jonathan Sacks drives this point home when he says:

“To a remarkable degree, the Hebrew Bible is reticent about life after death and never uses it to reconcile people with their condition on earth. The religious drama takes place here. This world, this life, is where we meet God and either do or fail to do God’s will. The universe is good, but humans are free to do evil. This frames the entire drama of humankind.”

At this point I will admit that these two big ideas – that Judaism is focused on our acts and potential as expressed in this world, and the faith that God, for reasons we will never comprehend, empowered us to either make or break the world around us, resonated with me and excited me. This worldly empowerment jives with my perceived reality, as well as recent history. These ideas could be a foundation for my new Faith Garden. However, these ideas are only valuable if we are worthy of those responsibilities, if we are uniquely able, on our best days, to deliver the goods, so to speak. An examination of human history, or even our own society today, reveals that it’s not obvious we have the ability to accomplish those goals. Let’s turn next to examine why Judaism believes in our unique potential to fulfill that end of the God-human partnership.