MAY 30 • 2024 | 43

basic principle is clear. “If you 
act toward Me with keri, — says 
God — I will act toward you 
with keri.
” But what the word 
means is not clear. The various 
translations include rebellious-
ness, obstinacy, indifference, 
hard-heartedness and reluc-
tance.
Maimonides, however, 
relates it to the word mikreh, 
meaning “by chance.
” He inter-
prets the overall message as: If 
you behave as if history were 
mere chance, and not Divine 
Providence, then, says God, I 
will leave you to chance. The 
result will be that Israel — a 
small nation set in a highly 
hostile neighborhood, then 
and now — will eventually be 
defeated, devastated and come 
close to destruction.
This is a remarkable reading 
and points toward a distinc-
tion that we sometimes forget: 
between Divine punishment 
on the one hand, and the with-
drawal of Divine Providence 
on the other — what the Torah 
calls “the hiding of the face” of 
God. When God punishes, He 
punishes the guilty. But when 
God “hides His face,
” even the 
innocent may suffer.
God hides His face from man 
when man hides his face from 
God. That is how Maimonides 
understands the parshah, 
and it is strikingly similar to 
Nietzsche’s claim that “God is 
dead.
” When God is eclipsed, 
all that remains is “infinite 
nothing” and “empty space.
” 
What dies is not God but man, 
the meaning-seeking animal. 
In his place, as Nietzsche knew, 
comes man the power-seeking 
animal. From there it is a short 
step to nihilism and barbarism.

OUR LIVES HAVE 
MEANING
To be a Jew is to have faith 
that our individual lives and 
our collective history have 
meaning. God is there even if 
we cannot feel him. He hears 

us even when we do not hear 
Him. That is the blessing. It 
gave our people the courage 
to survive some of the worst 
blows ever to befall a people. It 
is what gives us, as individuals, 
the strength to come through 
“the slings and arrows of outra-
geous fortune.
” Lose that faith 
and we lose that strength. We 
are “left to chance.
” That is the 
curse. Chance is not kind but 
blind. The curse is not a pun-
ishment, but a consequence.
Hence the life-changing 
idea: search for meaning and 
you will discover strength. Life is 
not mikreh, mere chance. It is a 
story of which you are a part, a 
question to which you are the 
answer, a call directed to the 
smartphone of your soul. That 
is our people’s collective desti-
ny, within which each of us has 
a specific and individual pur-
pose. Find it and your why will 
carry you through almost 
any how. 
Or as Jordan Peterson puts it: 
“Meaning is the Way, the path 
of life more abundant, the place 
you live when you are guided 
by Love and speaking Truth 
and when nothing you want 
or could possibly want takes 
any precedence over precisely 
that.
” Hence his Rule 7: Pursue 
what is meaningful, not what is 
expedient.
For everything there is a 
meaning. It does not always 
say: this is why such-and-such 
happened. Sometimes it says: 
given that such-and-such hap-
pened, this is what you must 
do. Once we find the why, even 
a curse can be turned into a 
blessing. Without the why, even 
a blessing can become a curse. 
So, search for the why and 
the rest will follow: strength, 
fulfillment, peace. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 

served as the chief rabbi of the 

United Hebrew Congregations of the 

Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teach-

ings have been made available to all 

at rabbisacks.org. 

Commitment 
to Our Faith
E

lie Wiesel, Holocaust sur-
vivor and Nobel Laureate, 
would often share his 
struggle and disappointment 
with his personal belief and 
faith in G-d. In his book 
Night, describing his first 
night in the concentration 
camp, he writes: “Never 
shall I forget those flames 
which consumed my faith 
forever … Never shall I 
forget those moments, 
which murdered my G-d 
and my soul and turned 
my dreams to dust.”
However, over the 
course of years, his posi-
tions and relationship 
with G-d changed. There 
is a well-known column 
of his (published in the New 
York Times, Oct. 2, 1997), titled 
“
A Prayer for the Days of Awe,” 
in which he expresses his genu-
ine interest in reconciling with 
G-d. He concludes with, “Let us 
make up: For the child in me, 
it is unbearable to be divorced 
from you so long.” 
In expressing when and 
what changed, he would share 
the following interaction with 
Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, 
of blessed memory: “Rebbe,” 
I asked, “how can you believe 
in G-d after Auschwitz?” He 
looked at me in silence for a 
long moment, his hands resting 
on the table. Then he replied, 
in a soft, barely audible voice, 
‘How can you not believe in G-d 
after Auschwitz?’”
This reminds me of a similar 
expression I once heard from 
another Holocaust survivor, 
in relation to his faith in G-d 
after the Holocaust “Whom else 
would you like me to believe 
in? Man? We certainly saw how 
well that went.”
I believe that the aftermath 
of Oct. 7 has inspired a similar 

reaction. The uncertainty of 
the world’s stability has been 
a universal feeling throughout 
the Jewish world. Regardless 
of political, religious or social 
leanings, we have been exposed 
to the vulnerabilities of 
trusting systems that may 
have made us feel secure 
until now. 
The one reality, which 
has given us strength and 
fortitude to persevere 
during these difficult 
times, is G-d. The history 
of the Jewish people is 
replete with experiences 
that should have nat-
urally wiped us off the 
map. However, we have 
survived thanks to G-d’s 
intervention. As we recite 
in the Passover Haggadah 
“
And this (G-d’s blessings and 
the Torah) is what kept our 
fathers and what keeps us sur-
viving. For, not only one arose 
and tried to destroy us, rather 
in every generation they try to 
destroy us, and G-d saves us 
from their hands.”
This week we will be con-
cluding the third book of the 
Five Books of Moses, with the 
reading of the Torah portion 
Bechukotei. Upon its conclu-
sion, it is Jewish tradition that 
the congregation respond with 
Chazak, Chazak V’nischazek — 
Be strong, be strong and let us 
strengthen ourselves. The mes-
saging implied is that the con-
tinued dedication to G-d and 
our Torah and its command-
ments provides us with a frame-
work with which to be resilient 
in the face of great uncertainty.
May we all commit ourselves 
to internalizing our faith in the 
eternal and unshakeable Rock 
of our life, G-d, His Torah and 
mitzvot. 

Rabbi Mendel Polter is a rabbi at the 

Woodward Avenue Shul.

SPIRIT
TORAH PORTION

Rabbi 
Mendel 
Polter

Parshat 

Bechukotei: 

Leviticus 

26:3-27:34; 

Jeremiah 

16:19-17:14.

