The Mysteries of Truth and Faith

There is no Truth without Faith. There is no Truth unless first there be a Faith on which it may be based.

-Milton Steinberg
As a Driven Leaf

The Torah was given to us in the barren, ownerless desert to emphasize that no man may claim any superior right to the word of G-d. It is equally the heritage of every Jew, man, woman, and child, equally accessible to the accomplished scholar and the most simple of Jews.

-Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory
As related by Rabbi Yanki Tauber at Chabad.org

Ben Hei Hei would say: According to the pain is the gain.

-Pirkei Avot 5:21

What is truth and where do you find it? I suppose the answer to that depends on the individual. In Yossi Halevi's book At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, we learn that holiness can be found in many unexpected places. It was certainly surprising to Halevi, the son of Holocaust survivors and an Israeli (he made Aliyah from New York in 1982) journalist to find holiness equally displayed among Muslim sages and Christian monks. Each of us, in our own way, searches for the Divine, some by gazing into the cosmos and others by searching the core of our souls.

I am seeking the part of God that dwells in me. Each person is created in the image of God and encapsulates a mystic spark from beyond the limits of Creation. It's as if that spark is continually trying to return to its Source. Jewish mystics believe that when we die, the animal or earthly part of our souls dies with us but the spark of the Divine flies upward and rejoins God.

Milton Steinberg says that we can find no truth unless it is based on faith. This crashes head-on into the typical secular understanding of "truth" based on facts and the belief that faith is irrelevant (or at least unspoken), but there can be no relationship with God without faith. Only God holds the truth of our existence in His hands.

When Rabbi Schneerson says that the Torah was given to us in the barren, ownerless desert to emphasize that no man may claim any superior right to the word of G-d, he is specifically speaking of the Jewish nation and that the Torah belongs equally to the Prince and the pauper; to the Priest and the woodcutter, yet it is also said:

Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. -Isaiah 2:3

Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations. -Isaiah 51:4

If we can believe the words of God as related through the prophet Isaiah, then we can add another meaning to Rabbi Schneerson's comments and say that the giving of the Torah in the desert may apply also to all of humanity. I'm not contradicting my position on how the Torah applies in a different manner to the Jew and the non-Jew, but I am saying that God is One and His Word is One. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and He is the God of Adam and Noah, too. He is the God of the Jewish Messiah, of the Apostle Paul, and of all the Jews and non-Jews to whom the Apostle taught the way of salvation and the path of Jesus.

How the Torah is applied to the Jewish people may seem obvious, depending on your viewpoint and tradition, but how the nations are supposed to understand the Torah as it "goes forth from Zion" isn't always clear. Certainly not all of you reading this blog will agree on how or perhaps even if the Law or any part of it is accessible to the non-Jewish nations:

Any dispute that is for the sake of Heaven is destined to endure; one that is not for the sake of Heaven is not destined to endure. Which is a dispute that is for the sake of Heaven? The dispute(s) between Hillel and Shammai. Which is a dispute that is not for the sake of Heaven? The dispute of Korach and all his company. -Pirkei Avot 5:17

While discussions between Jews and non-Jews over matters of Torah may not be accurately compared to the debates between Hillel and Shammai, I will be so bold as to say that our exchanges are still "for the sake of Heaven". While many Jews will agree that Hashem is the God of both Jews and Gentiles, they will apply the Noahide Laws as the obligation the nations are bound to in relation to God. Yet as I confirmed recently, from the teachings of the Jewish Messiah, we can allow the non-Jewish disciples to access more. How much more is a point of conjecture, but part of my personal journey is to pursue these questions and to attempt to live out the answers.

To paraphrase Ben Hei Hei, "it won't be easy".

Yet I don't believe my interest in the wisdom of the sages or the teachings of the man some have called "the Maggid of Nazeret" is the result of a random collision of interests. God is purposeful and His Creation is designed; nothing is truly irrelevant.

You ask me, “Why did G-d allow it to happen?”

You recognize that everything in this world has purpose and meaning. Examine any aspect of His vast Creation, from the cosmos to the workings of the atom, and you will see there must be a plan.

And so you ask, where does this fit into the plan?
How could it?

I can only answer, painfully, G-d alone knows.

But what I cannot know, I need not know.

I need not know in order to fulfill
that which my Creator has created me to do.

And that is, to change the world
so this could never happen again.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Chabad.org

Tragic events, such as the horrible effects of the recent storms in the midwest, the ongoing nuclear reactor crisis in Japan, and the struggle to serve the needy in Haiti are all a part of God's plan that completely eludes us. We live in a broken world where people are scared and hurt and dying.

My modest seeking of God's "face", so to speak, from the writings of such men as Maimonides and Steinberg and Schneerson is just as much a part of God's plan, perhaps just as mysterious, and completely purposeful. I live a human life in a broken world, but I'm seeking the means by which I can repair my small corner of it.

Soon, I will launch a new blog (I'll provide a link) and begin a new journey. I invite you all to join me.

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." -Matsuo Basho, Japanese poet

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.