Writing God into our lives

Written by Rabbi Elliott Karstadt — 3 January 2023

In the Torah reading we focused on the narrative and the story-telling, but now I want to take a theological turn (apologies).

In the first paragraph of our Amidah, we recite:

… elohey Avraham, elohey Yitzchak, velohey Ya’akov; elohey Sarah, elohey Rikva, elohey Rachel, velohey Leah

(‘… the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; the God of Sarah, the God of Rebecca, the God of Rachel, and the God of Leah’)

In doing so, we quote from the book of Exodus, when Moses is first introduced to God through the burning bush. As progressive Jews we add in the matriarchs in recognition that they play an equally important part in the journey of our earliest ancestors.

Why does each character get their own elohei? – surely one at the beginning of the sentence would have been enough? But that would not capture the fact that each of them had their own unique encounters – their own distinctive relationship – with God and with their Jewish identity. There is also the challenge that this poses to us as twenty-first century Jews: that we not only maintain that relationship, but that we aim to make ours just as unique and meaningful.

Elohey Avraham, elohey Yitzhak, velohey Ya’akov … but no mention of Joseph? We are told on a number of occasions that God is ‘with’ Joseph (Gen. 39.2-3, 5-6, 21), but never does God commune directly with him in the way that God had spoken to the last three generations of his family. God wrestled and negotiated with Jacob and blessed Isaac. God debated with Abraham, made him and Sarah many promises and troubled him by commanding that he sacrifice his own son. But Joseph has no such intimate moments with God. And he would be entirely justified, sitting in the pit into which his brothers had thrown him – initially intending to kill him remember – had he simply decided to live a life free of religious observance and faith in God.

Instead, Joseph finds God. At first, he finds God through dreams – as in the last two weeks’ Torah readings. In this week’s Torah portion, we find Joseph revealing his true identity to his brothers, and recounting to them a narrative that incorporates God into the tribulations he has endured.

‘Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither,’ he says to his brothers, ‘for it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you’ (Gen. 45.5).

And later: ‘And now, it was not you who send me here, but God, and God has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler over all the land of Egypt (Gen. 45.8).

Joseph finds God in the journey of his life without ever having a direct encounter.

And this is where many – if not most – progressive Jews find ourselves today. Joseph does not lead a saintly life – once he has liberated himself from the prison thanks to his success interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams – he is very much concerned with the practical issues of governing Egypt, and he is immensely successful in this. We do not hear of his prayers or existential crises along the way. But in the emotional reunion with his brothers, we do get a glimpse of Joseph’s inner life, and it is rich. And so, perhaps the story of Joseph is a preparation for living life both inside and outside the Jewish world.

Like Joseph, we no longer have the privilege of speaking to God face to face like Moses did. We no longer have the burden of being directly challenged by God as Abraham did. And we cannot grab God as Jacob did, refusing to let until he was able to procure a blessing for himself. At the same time, the world seems to become a nastier and more brutal place each time we turn on the news. How can God be in a world like this?

And yet we continue to come together in community to celebrate the rites of passages of our loved ones. We continue to remember those who have come before. We continue to love. We maintain many of our traditions and continue to tell our ancient stories. We continue to say: ‘We are Jewish.’ There is faith in that, even if we do not call it God.

And it is clear why we continue to search for meaning – in a world that is incomplete and in which we feel continual discontent – that creativity of which Abraham Joshua Heschel speaks in our study passage this morning: ‘Self-satisfaction is the opiate of fools. Self-fulfilment myth which the noble mind must find degrading. All that is creative in man stems from a seed of endless discontent. New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been said, seen or done looks like a distortion.’ Part of that creativity is how we find meaning in our lives.

We have the power to bring the divine into our own lives, whether it is through a synagogue service or through the pursuit of justice. So, let us remember the challenge that Joseph poses for us, and rise to the task of making God real in the world.