God Talk

 

Today for my God Talk class, Rabbi Eliyahu Yaakov, an orthodox rabbi with a long scruffy beard, came to teach our class instead of our usual teacher. His passion and perspective on the subject of God inspired me and captivated my interest right away. Of course I don’t agree with everything he offered us, but for the sake of writing, I’m going to lay it out in his perspective to the best of my ability.

First of all, everyone in the world wants pleasure and happiness. Because of this strong desire, people are attracted to many different things such as rock and roll, sex, and drugs. But all of those things are finate. The only thing in the universe that we can connect to which is infinite is god. The Jewish idea is that by building a dynamic relationship with the infinite, we can experience the deepest joy possible to human.

Then we talked about human relationships versus god to man relationships. God isn’t gaining anything whether you believe in him/her or not. Even if you don’t acknowledge his presence, he is still the infinite and the all-knowing so really, he’s not benefiting off of your relationship with him in any way. The only side that’s benefiting is you. Because of this, god is the ultimate giver by allowing us to have the opportunity of connecting with him because all other animals (that we know of) do not have this capability. 

Next, we talked about the pure goodness that god possesses. To understand this, we brought the discussion down to a connector of God; the angel. If an angel ONLY attains pure goodness, then the angel never actually expresses goodness because with bad, there is no good, just like there is no Ying without Yang. If there is no contrast between good and bad, then goodness can never be manifested. So just like the angel, how can God, who has never made a mistake and is pure good, express goodness? That’s where we, humans, come in to the picture.

Each person has a spark of god within them and our souls are a reflection of god himself.  His goodness is represented in each person. Every person is born pure and when a person commits a sin or an act against humanity, he is driving away from his natural intuition because of all the garbage that’s dumped on him/her during his/her lifetime. My question was, “Why does god get the credit for all the good we do but not the bad?” The rabbi said that god gave us all the tools to be good, but there’s a difference between our internal essence and our external expression. Everything good that you do brings you closer to god and when you are “bad”, you’re pulling away from god. This can explain why suicide bombers believe they are doing good. They believe that they are carrying out god’s wish and performing a godly act, which in truth, is the best thing a person could do. Of course I am not justifying the acts of these terrorist bombers, but it’s foolish to call these people “crazy” or “evil” when they are actually doing something which they think is heroic and pure.  The difference between the commandments made by god and the commandments made by man is this: in Western society, there is basically one commandment that all of the laws follow which is do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t bother anyone else. Commandments made by god are all to improve your relationship with god, which in turn, refines yourself as well.

Because all humans are a spark of god, we all came from the same light which means we are all metaphysically and spiritually interconnected. This is why when orthodox Jews wear Tzistzit or perform mitzvoth, they believe they are bettering humanity as a whole because when one becomes more connected to god, the entire human race benefits. 

Just like when an author writes a story, each character is as aspect of that author. In every writing class I’ve taken, my teacher has always told me, “write what you know.” In the same sense, I have to relate to each character at least a little bit in order to write about them. God, too, created each of us in his image and every single character has a purpose. The villain in stories are there to bring out the awesomeness in the hero. Without Haman in the Purim story, Mordechai wouldn’t have had the ability to be a hero. Bad people in our world should be thought of as “yeast to the bread,” because without them, there would be no need for amazing people to step up and do sensational things. Because of this, we must pray for both the hero and the villain.

            Because our class was only two hours and there was a billion questions (how do you expect us to learn about the entire existence of god in one class time?) the Rabbi invited all twelve of us over for Shabbat at his house this weekend! We’re all going to the cotel (Western Wall) tomorrow night and then he’s taking us back to his home in the old city. My first Shabbat dinner in the old city! He also told us about his website which is www.lightontoournation.com . Feel free to look through it!!