Presence

What do we know about God from the Torah and Halacha? Our God, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, is a God we have a personal relationship with, as individuals and as a nation. He is not the abstract and distant unmoved mover of Aristotle. When we have problems, we don't deal with bureaucracy and red tape, we go straight to the top. Our God is the God of the widow and the orphan, of the poor and the hungry. He stands at the bedside of the sick and comforts the bereaved. We look forward to a time when His imminent Presence brings about a level of kindness and justice that all but eliminates human suffering. He is the ultimate ruler, a King with immeasurable power, yet He takes the time to welcome each of us into his palace and consider our needs as individuals. This is the portrait of God that we get from the Torah and Halacha.

As Jews, our job is to take example from our deity, to immitate his actions in this world, in our community. A Jewish society that is awash in uncaring, in bureaucracy, of social castes and elite cartels, is not a true Jewish society. A Jewish instituion that misleds its consituients, even for practical reasons, is not acting in a Jewish fashion. We are charged with a special mission, to create a world (not the whole world, but our own world) where people are not treated like objects, but are engaged in relationship with their fellow man. When Man stands alone, deserted by his fellow Man, helpless with none to come to his aid, with none to listen to his pleas, the covenant is broken. What happens when we come upon this Man's lifeless body, lying outside the city walls, beside broken tablets, the ground under his body infertile and incapable of further sustaining life? We proclaim that our hands are clean, we did not spill this blood, and we look to God for justice, but He is not to be found. Somewhere along the way, God's Presence has withdrawn, sitting alone in the Heavens, weeping for the lost city, which lays in ruins.

How fare the walls of our own city? Are our walls built strong, held together by the solid bonds of relationship, of kindness, justice and truth. Or are our walls breached, gaping with holes of inconsideration, bureaucracy, injustice and falsehood? It's a good question; I think in certain places, our walls are strong, impenetrable. But in others, many others, there exists an endless void that we continue to turn a blind eye to, despite the fact that we are daily reminded of our failures.