God, Suffering, and Redemption

I started looking for God when I was 7, after my family was in a car accident. I don't want to tell the whole dramatic story blow-by-blow since that is not the purpose of this post... basically we were driving on a winding mountain road and Dad missed a turn. We fell off the road and tumbled down the side of the mountain about 50 feet where we landed almost-but-not-quite-upside-down against a tree. Miraculously (and I DO MEAN miraculously... the rangers who showed up eventually to clean up the mess had taken their time in getting there because they assumed we were dead: "No one EVER survives that fall!" they said...), aside from very minor scratches and bruises, no one was injured. It was my mom and dad, myself, my 9-year-old sister and my 4-year-old brother. All just fine.



While we were down there on the side of the mountain waiting for help to arrive, Mom said that we should say Shema. It made me uncomfortable and I refused to do it because I wasn't sure why we would. When we got home, we were to bentch gomel, that is, to have an Aliyah and say a prayer of thanksgiving for our narrow escape. Again, I didn't get it, and didn't want to be a part of it- but that was when I was sort of introduced to the idea of God having something to do with bad things happening or not happening to people. But a little later, I think still around the age of 7, when I asked my mother "what is God?" she responded "God is an idea." So I started trying to figure out this idea. That was what got me into theology.

In my early teens, something became newly apparent to me: my father was physically abusing us. He was perpetrating child abuse, and we were child abuse victims. It wasn't new behavior (though it became more violent as we got older) but the realization that getting hit wasn't normal and acceptable as I'd always sort of assumed it was, was (forgive the pun) quite a blow. I'd always had a sense of the injustice of Dad's arbitrary tantrums and punishments, the fact that there was no way for me to defend myself against either his accusations or his hands, but I'd always also assumed that there was nothing to be done about it, that I must somehow be wrong when I thought I didn't deserve to be hit, maybe even crazy, that there was something wrong with me because I was apparently so very bad even when I was trying so hard to be good, as good as I could possibly be, as good as anyone could be... Up until that point, I had thought of God as The One Who Understood, the invisible Presence that knew that I was trying so hard, the One Who Listened when I cried, and to Whom I could voice (or rather think) my confusion, and silently pray to understand what I was doing wrong, to make me better so Dad wouldn't yell and hit me and my sister so much.

When I realized that it wasn't ok, that my behavior hadn't justified the method of punishment for all of those years, when I was finally told that, no, I wasn't that bad, that he was wrong, that my initial sense of injustice had been correct, it threw me for a loop, theologically. What could this possibly mean? Who was the God Who I'd thought I'd known? To Whom had I been silently appealing for understanding and guidance? Who was this God Who had created this world in which I could be so mislead for so long, so twisted from so early an age as to believe that I deserved everything bad that was ever thrown my way? I began to think of God as the abusive father figure Whom I could not escape, against Whom there could be no appeal, no reasoning. Who could bring a case against God for injustice? God is the ultimate arbiter of justice, after all. At the age of 14 or so, I became Job... I didn't stop believing in God, I didn't curse God, I was just baffled and upset and afraid... if this is God, then what was right? What was justice? How did this work?

After a year of this was when I met a professor of Theology at the school where I am now studying to be a rabbi. This rabbi took me under his wing and changed my approach to theology. I found a conception of God that was philosophical and abstract in nature. I no longer had to ask why God allowed things to happen because that no longer had to be the kind of God I believed in. It was a huge comfort and relief to see that there had been other Jews who had had the sorts of troubles with God that I'd had, and had been able to reconcile their world to a concept of God that could go with it, and not make them crazy... even if they were called crazy, or heretical, or atheists. I understood why Spinoza and Maimonides and others could deal with such an impersonal and abstract God. It allowed me to look and the world and at my Jewish practice as rational and driven by this-worldly purpose. It allowed me to distance myself from a God that allowed pain and suffering while not resorting to the cop-out of angry atheism.

I stayed in this theological mindset for about a decade. It started to shift when I began to study in Yeshiva. I'd wanted to go to rabbinical school since I met this rabbi, my theological mentor, but 10 years later, I felt that I needed more Jewish education and a better level of Jewish practice than I had before diving in. I made a decision to set aside the philosophy and questioning in order to absorb as much practical Jewish knowledge and practice as possible. I was coming to Yeshiva to learn and to do, not to ask... I'd been asking my whole life. This part was about training.

As I learned and practiced, though, it became more than just practical training. Diving into classical texts, praying three times every day, finding myself surrounded by other Jews, by the holy sites of Jerusalem, by the piety and humility of my teachers and especially my Rosh Yeshiva, I began to talk to God again. I began to ask God questions again. I began, for the first time, to ask God WHY? I began to scream and shout and be angry with God. I began to cry to God, to pray to God, to beg God for some understanding, some way of making Midrash of all of my experience to make some sort of sense, to give me some idea of how the pain I'd been subjected to, the abuse, the bullying, the loneliness, the depression, the bulimia,  could or should be used to benefit me or others. Sometimes I felt like I was getting answers. More often, I felt like I was being laughed at, mocked.

This year, something huge happened. In talking with a friend over dinner, the subject of eating disorders came up. This friend mentioned a 12-step fellowship for people with eating disorders. I was reluctant at first, but recognizing an opportunity of an outlet to share and vent in an appropriate context, I came back to this friend and asked to be taken to one of the meetings they went to. I was immediately and warmly welcomed and accepted. I was told that, in this fellowship, love was unconditional... because God's love was unconditional. I was suddenly surrounded by people... people who knew suffering and loneliness, many who had very similar experiences to my own... who could talk seriously and with intelligence, sincerity, and sophistication (and also humor) about a Higher Power Who Loves Us, listens to us, talks to us, comforts us, and restores us to sanity. Some were religious. Many were not. Many were Jewish, many were not. We met mostly in churches. Sometimes individuals mentioned specific names for their Higher Power, including God, Jesus, HaShem, Force, Spirit, The Group, HP... but in essence we all meant the same thing: a Power Higher than our individual selves, that is personal, benevolent, and loving. Through my participation in this group, I have found a sort of spiritual training that I have never encountered before. I have learned a new way of thinking about God in my life, and of listening for God's voice and guidance. I have found new and deeper meaning in everything I thought I knew about Judaism... I've found a way to look for and find the primary principle of love behind every law and practice that I follow, every text that I encounter.

I have found this for one reason: because I was taken in by a community that had a interest in teaching me how to look. And now, my primary purpose in life is to demonstrate the possibility of a joyful and loving relationship with God to everyone I encounter, and more specifically, to bring it back into Judaism where I feel it is lacking. I needed to find this God when I was young, but I didn't know how to look. If I can teach one person how to find God when they need it, then I've redeemed my entire story.