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January 5, 1957

To Teach Religion, We Must Be Truly Religious (1957)

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Nature and History (1965)

There are two universal categories of thought that are especially significant in Jewish religious consciousness: Nature and History. By Nature, I mean the whole complex of things that follow the eternal laws of the physical world in space. By History I refer to the flow of events in time, that which gives people the memory of the past, meaning in the present, and defines for them a vision of a destiny in the future. In the realm of Nature there is rigidity and sameness; once the world was created, all natural laws were fixed and one has no choice but to live within the framework of these laws. History, however, is unpredictable: men are free to shape their own future by exercising their free will.In Nature every object is the same as every other object; one fate befalls them all. There is no distinction in value between the mind of the genius and the bark of the tree, between the heart of a saint and the digestive system of a worm. In History, however, values play a key role. Some ideas are greater than others, some people better than others, some objects holier than others. It is History which contains these specifically human moments; it is that which makes man unique. Here we find the spiritual element.That both are important for Judaism can be amply illustrated. The Shabbat, for example, is celebrated – as we proclaim in our Kiddush – as a memorial for two events: זכר למעשה בראשית, the fact of the creation of Nature by God; and זכר ליציאת מצרים, the historical event of the exodus from Egypt. Similarly, each of the great holidays has both a natural and historical dimension. Passover, Sukkot, and Shavuot are all harvest festivals; they emphasize man’s religious reliance upon God, and his gratitude to Him, for the bounty of nature He has bestowed upon him. At the same time, each of the festivals celebrates a specific historic event: the crossing of the Red Sea, the protection offered to our ancestors in the desert, and the revelation on Mount Sinai.The two blessin…
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The Unmasking of Evil (1964)

There is a remarkable contrast between the key verses of the Haftorah of last week and the one we read this morning. Last week we read of the prophet Ezekiel addressing the Pharaoh of the Egypt of his day. Even in predicting Pharaoh’s downfall, the Prophet seems awed by his power and arrogance. He calls him ha-tannim ha-gadol, the great sea-monster or dragon, the one who boasts li ye’ori va-ani asitini, this river, the Nile, is mine, and I am self-made. This week, Ezekiel’s older contemporary, Jeremiah, addresses the same Pharaoh in quite different terms: karu sham, Paroh melekh Mitzrayim sha’on, “they called out there, Pharaoh the King of Egypt is but a big noise.”What a comedown! From ha-tannim ha-gadol to sha’on, from great dragon to hollow noise, from a monster to a mouse!What this juxtaposition of prophecies teaches us is that the ultimate victory of God and the forces of truth and freedom will consist not so much of destroying falsehood as of demonstrating its emptiness. Pharaoh is defeated by being deflated. More tyrants have been toppled by the weapon of irony than by iron weapons. Military victories are won by powerful arms; moral triumphs are achieved by perceptive hearts and eyes and ears which can expose the vast vacuum at the heart of evil.It is in this manner that we must understand the Ten Plagues about which we read these weeks. The plagues wrought against the Egyptians were not meant simply to satisfy the sadistic, vengeful feelings of a persecuted people paying back their tormentors in kind. Rather, they have specific moral purposes. That is what the Torah means when it says u-ve’elohei Mitzrayim e’eseh shefatim, “and against the gods of Egypt will I execute judgment.” God, in punishing the Egyptians, aims primarily at teaching them that their gods are false, their ideologies pernicious, their principles perverted. The late Prof. Casuto, that eminent Italian-Jewish Professor of Bible at the Hebrew University, has demonstrated that the Ten Plagues …
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When God Plays Games (1974)

Does God play games? The question sounds anthropomorphic and primitive, but it isn’t. If it appears frivolous, it is not meant to be. At a key point in the Exodus drama, as we read this morning, God says to Moses בא על פרעה, “Come unto Pharaoh,” ולמען תספר באזני בנך ובן בנך את אשר התעללתי במצרים, “In order that you shall tell your son and your son’s son all that I have wrought in Egypt.” That is the King James translation. But it is quite inadequate. Rashi interprets התעללתי as שחקתי, not “wrought,” but “played.” In other words, God played games with Egypt! A more accurate translation, therefore, would be, “made sport of,” or “made mockery of Egypt.” So, indeed, God does play games! He plays games – but not in order to entertain Himself. You can while away time in order to ward off boredom, but you cannot while away eternity. When I speak of God playing games, I do not mean it in the sense that Prof. Albert Einstein did, when he made his famous statement (in opposition to the Indeterminists) that, “I do not believe that God plays dice with the universe,” in other words, that God is arbitrary. Of course he is right; God is not whimsical. I agree with Dr. Einstein that God does not play dice – but He does play games. Not games of chance, but games where effort and decency are rewarded, and where offenses against righteousness are punished. David said (Psalm 2) יושב בשמים ישחק ה' ילעג למו, though the kings of the nations plot and conspire, “He who dwells in the heavens shall laugh (or ‘play’); the Lord will mock them.”The laughter of God is no laughing matter. It entails the most serious theological issues and demands spiritual insight.The game element comes in the developing and emerging realization when a pattern of justice begins to crystallize into a coherent structure from within the chaos of practical events. This awareness of a divine-moral pattern that overlays our daily, petty, devious strategies, means that history is not completely caught up in causality; t…
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