Jews do not often talk about God. We are comfortable with mitzvot, commandments, but we speak less than other religions directly about God. Perhaps this is because God is abstract—we are physical beings, and God is infinite—so we approach the Divine by obeying God’s word, by studying and keeping the Torah, which is a way of coming to know God and eventually loving God.
Like many other Orthodox Jews, my personal belief in God is due to the tradition which has reached me via my ancestors and also from the beauty of living Jewish life. But my belief in God also emerges from two other sources. The first is the nature of human beings. We are conscious beings who can think about the infinite and who have a sense of our own existence. I cannot accept that all of this is for naught and that nothing we do really matters in any ultimately profound or moral way. The second is that the history of the Jewish people itself “proves” God to me. It is no coincidence that the people who are promised by God to be chosen, to be a light unto the nations and to exist until the time of redemption, against all odds and predictions do just that. Those who have persecuted us are gone and we not only still exist but time and again, following our greatest lows, reach the highest highs.
Less than 100 years ago, one-third of the Jews in the world were murdered and the rest of the countries closed their doors to us. Today we miraculously are not only successful but have a country which, despite being at the center of the world’s hostilities (or perhaps because of it), thrives. Less than a year ago, we were sure that if Hezbollah decided to use their enormous stockpiles of weapons they could destroy Israel, God forbid, many times over, and now they are a vanquished, dusty shell. Indeed, “in every generation they stand over us to destroy us and God saves us from their hands.” Less than a year ago, the world feared the Iranian nuclear threat, negotiating with the Iranians and trying to hold them to international standards and inspections. Now, as journalist Thomas Friedman wrote, “the Oct. 26th attack on Iran ‘was lethal, precise and a surprise,’ [according to a senior Israeli defense official]. And up to now, the Iranians ‘don’t know technologically how we hit them. So they are at the most vulnerable point they have been in this generation: Hamas is not there for them, Hezbollah is not there for them, their air defenses are not there anymore, their ability to retaliate is sharply diminished…’” (New York Times, Nov. 26, 2024). Friedman makes it clear that without our tiny country’s advanced intelligence-gathering methods and military strategy, none of it would have been possible.
God has miraculously preserved the Jewish people for two millennia in exile while we were the injured underdog, weak but persevering. Now, for the first time in two millennia, God preserves us, though still we are constantly under threat, with the ability to defend ourselves in ways that seem more advanced than those of most other countries. We must take a moment to appreciate the miraculousness of Israel’s defensive success and to see God’s hand in it.
In this week’s parsha, Toldot, the Torah describes the struggle between Yaacov and Esav for the blessing of being the Jewish people within the Land of Israel, from which all of this began. Jacob ultimately receives the blessing and Esau wants to kill him for it. Jacob, who is a simple man, must become strategic in order to survive; Jacob, a “dweller of the tent,” must become a fighter. I pray that, as in the Torah’s narrative, in the end Esau will come together with Jacob peacefully for a greater purpose: “And Isaac died and was gathered unto his people in ripe old age and Esau and Jacob his children buried him.”