Undeserving of Victory Unworthy of His Love Parshas Ki Sisa
Does G-d love you? Does G-d, who knows exactly what you did and did not do, who knows what you are capable of and how far you are from where you should be, does He still care about you? Or is He just so disappointed that He has moved on? That’s a question I recently received from a non-Jewish therapist.
He was not asking for himself; he claimed to be agnostic. This therapist, we’ll call him Brian, was asking me this question because he has many Orthodox clients who believe in a G-d that gave up on them. They believed that G-d has seen their dark side and wants nothing to do with them. And so, Brian wanted to know: “Does Judaism only believe in a punitive G-d, or do Jews also believe in a loving G-d, and if so, can you please share sources?”
“Yes,” I explained to him, “contrary to what Christian literature may have you believe, Judaism most certainly believes in a loving G-d and there is no shortage of sources.”
In Devarim (14:1), Banim atem laShem Elokeichem. “You are children to Hashem.”
In Yirmiyahu (31:2), Ahavas olam ahavtich. “My love for you is eternal.”
There is a debate in the Talmud (Kiddushin, 36) if we are still considered G-d’s beloved children when we sin, with one opinion saying that G-d’s love is conditional and the other, Rabbi Meir, arguing that G-d’s love is unconditional. (See Maharal, Netzach Yisrael, 11, who explains that this dispute is about individual sinners.) The Rashba, one of the most influential scholars of the Middle Ages, rules like Rabbi Meir (Shu”t haRashba, 1:194). Yisrael af al pi she’chata Yisrael hu. “Even if you sin, you are still considered a Jew.” We are G-d’s children. No. Matter. What.
But after rattling off a few sources, I stopped. “Brian, do you really think that the reason your clients don’t believe that G-d loves them is because of theology? Like if I just overwhelm them with sources that will change everything?!”
He acknowledged that most of these clients had a parent figure who was domineering, who was unforgiving, who did not know how to show them unconditional love. And so when they think of their Father in heaven, they end up thinking about their father who made their lives a living hell. Of course they had a negative image of G-d. How could they not?
And now I was curious because I too hear from so many people who believe that G-d hates them or wants nothing to do with them, and I was hoping he would have some insight. “How do you reprogram such a person?” I asked him. “How do you spend twenty years of your life being told explicitly or even implicitly by a parent that you are not good enough – that if you want my love you have to earn it, and then be expected to believe that there is a Being out there who loves you no matter what?”
It’s not a new question. It’s a question that, according to Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (Likutim Chadashim, Ki Sisa, h/t Rabbi Rael Blumenthal), G-d Himself grappled with when we first became a nation. Hashem took the Jewish People out of Egypt, He gave them the Torah, He protected them from the elements and from enemies. But you could imagine these Jews thinking to themselves at every step along the way, “What if we mess up? What if we stop obeying His Torah? Will He still love us?” It’s like the child who comes home every week with an A+ on his test. He wonders to himself if his parents will shower him with the same love if he comes home with a B- or a D. It’s only when he does come home with a bad score, or even better, when he comes home one day after getting into a car accident, and his parents still show him how much they love him, it’s only then that the child knows that the love is real.
Suggests Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, that is exactly what happened with the Golden Calf. G-d caused the Jewish People to sin with the Golden Calf (see Avoda Zarah 4b) to teach them this lesson. That’s right. He knew they were anxious (they’re Jewish after all). He delayed Moshe from coming down the mountain, He confused them, He set them up to sin. Why? So that they could know that they are deserving of annihilation for their terrible sin, and then He could then embrace them and say, but I forgive you. But I still want you. Not only that, but I will build a Mishkan, a home together, even though you’ve strayed so far. In other words, for G-d to convey His unconditional love they needed to experience it, through failure and subsequent embrace, which they did through the episode of the Golden Calf.
Which is all very nice if you lived in the Sinai desert three thousand five hundred years ago. What about this therapist’s clients who believe that G-d is out to get them? What about the many people in this room who grapple with this question – does G-d love me even though I am falling short of what He expects from me daily, if not hourly?
I don’t know how I would have answered that question a few years ago, or even a week ago, but I know how I would answer that today:
There was not a single Jew who did not acknowledge that the infighting among the Jewish People, and the State of Israel’s arrogant complacency contributed to the tragedies of October 7th. That’s why the slogan for the war was b’yachad nenatzeiach, we will win, but only if we are together. That’s why there was such an awakening of spirituality over the past two years. Everyone knew it – we needed more faith in G-d and we needed more unity.
Tragically, not only did it not last; it completely fell apart. Over the past few months, we have witnessed extreme infighting over the Charedi Draft with fatal consequences. Two weeks ago, for reasons completely beyond me, someone decided it would be a great time to bring up one of the most divisive issues in Klal Yisrael – the usage of the Kotel by groups that are not Orthodox. As Rabbi Gil Student pointed out, you could not have chosen a worse time. We forgot the lessons we just learned and fell into old patterns of hate quickly and deeply.
I don’t know about you, but when the US started flooding the region with warships and planes, I was shocked by the confidence of Jews all over the world. The memes that were already celebrating the downfall of Iran, the cavalier attitude of so many Israelis. Personally, I was petrified. Yes, it’s great to have the support of the strongest army in the world. But I thought to myself, are we deserving of victory? Are we, who remind ourselves every year on Tisha B’av how Jerusalem fell over infighting, we, who before the dust had settled from one of the rudest reminders of this terrible lesson already forgot it, are we really worthy of G-d assisting our armies to fight our most powerful enemy in the region?
No, we are not.
We are not deserving. And yet, Ayatollah Khameini, the evil architect of so much bloodshed and evil was eliminated on the first day of battle.
We are not deserving and yet, the campaign against our primary enemy for the past three decades is finally happening and has been wildly successful.
We are not deserving and yet, the casualties in Israel are miraculously low.
We are not deserving and yet, for the first time since King David, we not only have sovereignty, but we have military dominance over all our enemies. There are virtually no enemies left!
If I were to take one message out of the incredible success of this past week it would be that no matter how undeserving I am, He still values me. He still wants to have a relationship with me. G-d loves me, and you, no matter what.
Some of us may have received this message from our parents. Some of us may have not. And that’s terribly painful. It could take a lifetime of internal work to learn how to accept ourselves. But we do not need sources to tell us this truth, we do not need to go back 3500 years to see Hashem’s eternal and unconditional love. What we need to do is recognize that our generation has been chosen, like the generation that left Egypt, to be told through events unfolding right now in the Middle East, that no matter how undeserving we may be, G-d still loves us. All we need to do is open our eyes.