42 | MAY 30 • 2024 

T

he most often quoted of 
all Nietzsche’s remarks 
— indeed one of the 
most quoted sentences of all in 
recent times — is his statement 
that “One who has a why to live 
can bear almost 
any how.
”
If life has a 
meaning, if our 
own life has a 
purpose, if there 
is a task we have 
yet to fulfill, then 
something within 
us gives us the strength to sur-
vive suffering and sorrow. The 
call of the future helps us get 
through the pain of the present 
and the trauma of the past.
Ironically, it was Nietzsche 
himself who saw more 
clear-sightedly than anyone else 
that loss of faith in God would 
result in the death of meaning. 
This is what he has his madman 
say as he is announcing the 
“death of God”:
“What did we do when we 
unchained the earth from its 
sun? Whither is it moving now? 
Whither are we moving now? 
Away from all suns? Are we not 

perpetually falling? Backward, 
sideward, forward, in all direc-
tions? Is there any up or down 
left? Are we not straying as 
through an infinite nothing? 
Do we not feel the breath of 
empty space? Has it not become 
colder? Is it not more and more 
night coming on all the time?” 
Infinite nothing. Empty 
space. A world without God is, 
in an ultimate sense, a universe 
without a why. It may have 
beauty, grandeur, scale and 
scope — but not meaning.
Almost precisely the opposite 
insight occurred, more than 200 
years earlier, to one of the most 
brilliant mathematicians of the 
17th century, Blaise Pascal, who 
wrote, as if in anticipation of 
Nietzsche, “The eternal silence 
of these infinite spaces terrifies 
me.
” During the night of Nov. 
23, 1654, Pascal, then aged 
31, had a life-changing reli-
gious experience, which he 
described in the following note: 
“Fire. God of Abraham, God of 
Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the 
philosophers and the scholars 
…
” He ended by quoting Psalm 
119:16: “I will not forget thy 

word. Amen.
” He sewed this 
note into his coat, kept it with 
him always and dedicated the 
rest of his life to exploring reli-
gious faith.

A GOD WHO LISTENS
The God of Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob is the God who speaks, 
who calls, who listens. The 
infinite spaces are not silent. 
Beneath and beyond them is the 
still, small voice of God, and it 
is this that gives meaning to his-
tory and to our individual lives. 
As the historian J.H. Plumb 
wrote: “The concept that within 
the history of mankind itself 
a process was at work which 
would mold his future … seems 
to have found its first expression 
amongst the Jews.
” 
For the Jews, said Plumb, 
“the past became more than a 
collection of tales.
” It became 
“an intimate part of destiny, and 
an interpretation of the future, 
more certain, more absolute, 
more comprehensive, than any 
divination, either by the stars or 
oracles could ever be.
”
Jews were the first to find 
meaning in history. They dis-

covered the why. That is why 
they were able to bear almost 
any how. Judaism is the oldest, 
deepest expression of humanity 
as the meaning-seeking and 
-finding animal.
These are, relatively speaking, 
modern thoughts. Yet they lie at 
the heart of parshat Bechukotai 
— if we follow the interpreta-
tion of Maimonides. Bechukotei 
begins with the blessings that 
will ensue if the Israelites are 
faithful to their mission and 
covenant with God. Then 
come the curses that will follow 
disobedience. They are long, 
terrifying and relentless — even 
if they end, as they do, with 
a note of consolation; “Yet, 
despite all this, when they are in 
the land of their enemies, I will 
not spurn them, or abhor them 
so as to destroy them utterly 
and break My covenant with 
them; for I am the Lord their 
God” (Lev. 26:44). 
How, though, are we to inter-
pret the blessing and the curse?
The key word of the curses 
is keri. The word appears here 
seven times — and nowhere 
else in the entire Tanach. The 

In Search of the Why

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

