In this week’s parsha, Bishalach, the Jewish people witness the splitting of the sea, manna from heaven and water from a rock, and yet at the end of the parsha they seemingly have the audacity to ask, “Hayesh Hashem bikirbenu, im ayin?,” “Is God in our midst or not?” (Exodus 17:7). God clearly is doing miracles for them and taking care of their needs in the desert, so what is the meaning of their question?
The Hamek Davar, Rabbi Naftoli Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (1816-1893), the head of the famed Lithuanian Volozhin Yeshiva, gives two explanations. The first is that they are unsure if God will still be among them when Moshe and the miracles are gone. The second is that the word “bikirbenu”, “in our midst” can have multiple meanings, it can also mean “within us” or “in our guts.” When read in this way the phrase indicates that the Jewish people doubted if God could know what they really need on the inside, for example if they are hungry or thirsty. Rabbi Berlin concludes with something perplexing: He says that the two explanations are actually interdependent- if God knows what we each personally need, then God can help us, even if God is not manifest through miracles.
I think Rabbi Berlin is saying that there are two ways we can connect to God by which we can have “hashgacha pratit,” Divine providence. Through miracles or through a personal relationship with God. If it’s a miraculous world in which water comes from a rock and bread from heaven, then there is no need for a personal God who knows what we need. God can be the great miraculous vending machine in the sky and there will surely be enough for us. But if, as in our time, God relates to us within nature, then for God to guide and help us, God must know us as individuals, we must have an I – Thou relationship with God, we must relate to God personally, God must be bikirbenu, “in our guts”. But how do we achieve this?
Each of us is a body and a Divine soul, what Rabbi Shenur Zalman calls “an actual part of God from above.” Thus really God is within us, the question is how to access the Divine that is within us, that is “in our guts”. Perhaps the following idea from the Piesetzner Rebbe, Rabbi Klonomus Kalmen Shapira, who was the Rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto before he was killed by the Natzis, will be helpful:
“We have many inner feelings, which have the potential to be tapped like gushing water, but if not tapped will dry up, never to see the light of day. For instance, sometimes we feel ill at ease, we think maybe we are thirsty or hungry or need a drink of whiskey. But in truth this is our soul extending a limb to become more manifest and an opportunity to tune into our spiritual self. We often mistake this spiritual desire for some physical need and we eat or drink or use some other physical thing to drown out this spiritual stirring, and then the sound of the soul is not given the space in which to be heard. By ignoring our soul’s spiritual stirring and covering it with something physical we cause a kind of spiritual miscarrage. We must learn to be mindful, to focus on the soul’s stirring in order to birth such spiritual moments and potential into ourselves (Bene Machshavah Tova 2:11, translation mine).”
Mindfulness, focusing on what we feel instead of drowning it out with the physical pleasures of food, sex, music, leisure, netflix, or shopping -whcih we all do- is the key to finding God within us. The rebbe is saying those moments are really a gift. Before we reach for the ice cream or the scotch, let’s take a moment to close our eyes, to breathe into the desire which we feel, to feel something deeper instead of tamping it down, to tune into this subtle call of our soul. Then later, when we are ready, we can eat the ice cream, and make a bracha, and I am sure the experience will then be not only one that is physical, not only one whose aim is forgetting, but a real, meaningful, holy experience in the here and now.