A few weeks ago, Attorney General Dana Nessel, the highest-ranking Jew in Michigan, made a remarkable statement.
Speaking to a gathering of Jewish Democrats, she argued that there may come a point when Jews have to “place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest and, yes, even our own survival.”
She went further. We may need, she said, to sacrifice “the very future of our own people” for the opportunity to save humanity.
The response was fast and furious from all corners. What a bizarre, dumb, and dangerous thing to say.
As bizarre, as dumb, and as dangerous as her comments were, I admire her altruism, I really do. Buried in her comments is an important truth – When we really believe in a cause, we should be ready to give up our lives for that cause. In Jewish law, we have the three cardinal sins. Or as MLK once said, “If you haven’t discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live.”
I’d love to have the opportunity to speak to Dana. I’d love to ask her, “What do you, Dana, believe to be the higher cause that Judaism exists for?”
There were some Jews who challenged Dana by suggesting that the entire enterprise of Judaism is survival – that is why we exist. They were upset with her: How can we give up our nation’s existence if our purpose is survival?
Those Jews, for the record, are wrong. What they are essentially arguing is that all of Judaism is one big game of Frogger (kids, ask your parents). We’re just running back and forth, trying to outjump our enemies. That’s not a life; that’s not a purpose.
Perhaps Dana read Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ book called the Dignity of Difference in which he argued that the purpose of a Jewish nation, a deliberately small nation, is to serve as a reminder to the world-at-large that we should not all conform, that we should respect those who are different. It’s a beautiful book and I usually love what Rabbi Sacks has to say, but this theory leaves me with some lingering questions. I struggle to apply this idea to us living in the State of Israel. In Israel, we are not a small group of people, Jews are the majority of the population. Does that mean to say that Jews outside of Israel are better Jews than those inside of Israel? I find that hard to believe.
I imagine Dana would tell me that the reason the Jewish People exist is to be a light onto the nations. We are expected to bring a basic code of morality to the world. If that is what she believes to be our raison d’etre, I kind of get where she’s coming from, I do.
Being a light onto the nations does not mean teach the nations of the world the laws of the Torah – they are not applicable to non-Jews. Rather, it means trying to ensure that all people live by a moral code. And if that’s the case, Jews who believe that Israel is committing war crimes, who likely believe that a nation state is immoral, could justifiably say, supporting Israel contradicts our purpose. Better that we give up our homeland, better that we allow the State of Israel to crash and burn, so we could live up to this ideal.
To be very clear, the State of Israel is not an immoral state. It is by far, the most moral state in the middle east, and possibly the world. But let’s put that aside. “Dana,” I would love to ask her, “What version of morality should we teach the nations of the world? Don’t you think being a light onto the nations is a little vague and open to endless possibilities? And more fundamentally, if our entire purpose is to teach morality to the world, why did G-d give us so many commandments?! I feel like I’m missing something Dana.”
I imagine she wouldn’t have a reply. Well, I imagine by this time she would have called security and had me escorted from the building. But bear with me.
If I had my way, I would like to introduce Attorney General Dana Nessel who thinks Jews should all give up their lives for a higher cause to a young Jewish man who almost gave up his life for this “higher cause” of hers. He’s someone who had an even more limited Jewish education that Dana. His name is Omer Shem Tov.
Omer Shem Tov is not a philosopher, he is a survivor of 505 days of captivity in Gaza. I would invite him to share his story because I believe his story is the answer, the true answer to why we exist, to why we have survived, to why we have so many commandments and to what it means to be a Jew.
For more than a year, Omer was largely alone. At one point, he spent fifty days in a tunnel over 130 feet underground, with barely any food and almost no light.
Before his captivity, Omer had never really spoken to G-d. But underground, he started. Not with formal prayer. He didn’t have any Jewish education; he didn’t know the words. He simply talked. He asked G-d how G-d was doing, which is kind of charming. He thanked G-d for food when there was almost no food, for water even when the water was salty. And day after day, Omer said, he began to feel Hashem beside him; as a friend and as a protector, as a part of his life.
While Dana Nessel’s statement justified more Jewish deaths, Omer Shem Tov stumbled upon the starting point of Jewish purpose: the reality of G-d’s presence.
We are going to say tonight and tomorrow and through the entire holiday season: Atah v’chartanu, You, G-d chose us, v’shim’cha hagadol aleinu karata, and Your name is called upon us. In other words, You, G-d, chose us to represent You. Or in the succinct words of Isaiah, “atem eidai,” we are G-d’s witnesses.
Our mission as a people is to testify – through our lives – that there is a G-d, with all its implications; that this world is not an accident, that human beings are not simply sophisticated animals, that history is going somewhere, that our personal lives have purpose, that there is an objective standard of right and wrong, and that there is a Creator who knows us, cares about us, and calls us into a relationship with Him.
That explains why Judaism is all-encompassing.
If we are Hashem’s witnesses, then every part of life becomes testimony. B’shivtecha b’veisecha uv’lechtecha vaderech. On the road and in the privacy of our home. It’s not about other people. Even when we are all alone, hundreds of feet underground, everything we do is meant to testify to this reality.
But there is one enormous problem.
You cannot be a witness to Someone you have never experienced.
A witness cannot say, “Someone told me this happened.”
A witness says: I was there. I saw it. I experienced it. It is real to me.
Before we can testify that Hashem is present in the world, we have to experience His presence ourselves.
In a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, a Jewish author and law professor lamented the lack of G-d-talk in non-Orthodox circles. She argued how desperately we need to recognize that we can have a personal relationship with G-d, but unfortunately G-d is not discussed often enough outside Orthodoxy.
I hate to be the one to burst this bubble, but we don’t talk about G-d and a personal relationship with G-d all that much in Orthodox circles either. Maybe some of us say, Baruch Hashem, or thank G-d, but are we really imagining a personal G-d in those moments? How many of us talk to G-d outside of formal prayer?
This summer I read a small book called Glimmerings. It’s an email exchange between a poet, Christian Wiman, and a theologian, Miroslav Volf, both Christian professors at Yale. The entire book revolves around honest discussions of faith and their personal relationship with G-d. It was a majestic book, truly breath-taking. But I was also devastated as I read it. Why are there no Jewish books like this? Why can’t we talk about G-d with the same intimacy as they do? I am jealous and ashamed.
One chapter began with a discussion of where they feel G-d. Not like which places, but where, in relationship to themselves, do they feel G-d.
Volf, the theologian, described G-d as beneath and behind him – propping him up, supporting him as he moves forward. Wiman described almost the opposite. For him, G-d is always just beyond reach. He experiences faith as yearning, forever reaching toward a Divine presence he can almost – but never quite – touch.
I reached this passage and stopped reading.
Where do I feel G-d?
Where do you feel G-d?
Inside you – an inner voice and presence?
Behind you – a steady hand holding you up?
Beside you – Someone you speak to throughout the day?
Ahead of you – Someone drawing you forward?
Or perhaps, painfully, nowhere at all?
What a profound and all-important question to ask ourselves; where do I feel G-d?
Personally, I relate most to Wiman. If I had to point somewhere, it would be just beyond me. I experience a thirst for G-d, knowing that even in those fleeting moments of deep connection, I will spend my life yearning for a Divine presence that always seems just beyond reach.
But the answer is different for every one of us.
If I could make a recommendation. If you want to make the next 24 hours meaningful, spend some time trying to answer this question: Where do I feel G-d?
When we feel Him, that changes everything.
I believe that what holds us back from our spiritual potential is not that we didn’t get the best Jewish education or that we don’t know this or that law. What holds us back is that we don’t really feel G-d in our lives.
When we do, then we become His witnesses.
We build lives in which G-d is real. And that impacts everything we do or say.
We raise children for whom Hashem is not merely Someone their parents told them about. He is a steady presence in their lives.
We create communities in which holiness can actually be felt.
Dana Nessel has a lot of repenting to do this Yom Kippur. We don’t need her encouraging our enemies that our lives do not matter.
But we also have a lot of repenting to do. Because we have lost sight of why our lives matter.
“Where is G-d?” the Kotzker once said. “Wherever you let Him in.”
This year, let us live our purpose and let G-d into our lives.
Perhaps we can commit, once a day, instead of saying “Thank G-d,” we say, “Thank You, G-d.” Because He’s right there.
Perhaps we can commit to take thirty seconds a day and talk to Him. No siddur. No Hebrew. Just talk. He’s right by our side.
The most remarkable part of Omer Shem Tov’s story came after he was freed.
He came back. He had his family, his friends, food, sunlight, freedom.
But when he got home, he got busy, he fell back into his old routines, and he stopped speaking to G-d.
For 505 days, Omer dreamed about everything he was missing outside the tunnel. And when he finally came out, he discovered there was something from inside the tunnel that he missed. Hashem.
Each and every one of us are G-d’s witnesses. It entails a lot. But it starts small. It starts with a relationship with Hashem, something we can develop.
Let’s find Him, let’s feel Him, and let’s let Him in.