For now it's here but since I expect that link to change I have included the text after the jump.
What is the meaning of life? Does
God exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? What happens
after we die?
These are just a few of the questions that
resound through the ages, demanding to be answered again and
again in every generation, refusing to go away. When it comes to
spiritual and religious matters, we have a lot more famous
questions than we have famous answers but which is better?
In this week’s parasha of Toldot, Rebecca has
her own question. She feels the twins growing inside her womb
and cries out from a place of deep pain and confusion. She had
been childless for so long, and now that she is pregnant it
isn’t going how she expected. What does Rebecca do? In Genesis
25:22 she goes ‘lidrosh ha’Elohim’, to search for, or to ask
God.
What exactly is it that she is
doing?
Rashi, the classic 11th century commentator,
explains that she went to the Beit Midrash, the house of study,
of Shem (son of Noah), hoping that Shem would tell her what
would happen in the future. The rabbis calculated the ages of
the different characters in the book of Genesis and, realising
that according to the numbers given Shem should still be alive
at this time, imagined Shem leading a house of study and
teaching Torah to the patriarchs. As a prophet of God, Shem
would then be the obvious person for Rebecca to reach out to in
her search for answers.
For Rashi, Rebecca’s journey is answer
focussed. She is trying to find out the hidden future, the
secrets of prophecy that Shem possesses that will reassure her
about the present.
But Ramban, writing in the 13th century,
disagrees.
He argues that lidrosh haElohim means that
Rebecca went to pray to God
While for Rashi, Rebecca went to get answers,
for Ramban, Rebecca went to express her question - to give voice
to her pain, to reach out to God and express her deepest
thoughts in the form of her doubts.
In the search for God, Rashi stresses the
importance of answers, Ramban prefers a powerful question.
This disagreement between Rashi and Ramban is
at the heart of what it means to be a religious Jew. We ask the
same questions over and over - why are we here? What does it
mean? And in every generation we explore the answers of our
ancestors, and try to find in them answers that work for us
today.
Notice also that they each prioritise a
different religious activity. The pursuit of answers is the
domain of the Beit Midrash, the study hall, where we consult
with religious leaders and our authoritative texts. But the
expression of questions is located in prayer, in the Beit
Haknesset, the synagogue, when each of us is surrounded by
community but alone with our thoughts.
As Rabbi Louis Finkelstein said, “When I pray
I speak to God; When I study Torah God speaks to Me”.
In the balance between the questions and the
answers, the Beit Midrash and the Beit Hakneset, perhaps we too
can speak with God.
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