Faith: A Personal Manifesto

What does “faith” (in Hebrew, “emunah”) mean to you?

Here’s what it means to me:

Pray for good stuff happen and for the strength to get through the bad stuff.

And to me, this kind of faith precludes asking the question, “Why?” Why did this bad thing happen to me? Why did this bad thing happen to my family, to my friends, to good people I don’t even know? This question could have weighed on my mind a lot recently.

Why did Hurricane Sandy happen? Why did people lose their homes, their possessions, even their lives?

I don’t know. But I would never presume to try and figure it out. There were some rabbinic figures—admittedly, and thankfully, not any in the mainstream—who tried to point a finger and lay blame somewhere. New York was devastated by Sandy because New York legalized gay marriage. The recent war in Israel was brought about because Israel tried to draft Haredim into the army.

Even though I am not a rabbi, nor do I play one on this blog, I feel with some certainty that thinking along those lines is misguided, even dangerous. Bad things happen because sometimes, bad things happen. Yes, it is God who is behind it all—the terrorist, the natural disaster, the cancer, the car accident—but thinking that we can point out a causal relationship between our actions and devastation is wrong and in fact, egotistical. We are not living on such a high spiritual plane that we can divine with any certainty why God does what he does. In fact, Rabbi Mosheh Lichtenstein, a prominent rabbi in Israel, rules that we should no longer fast when Israel experiences a lengthy drought, for many reasons, including this one. We are not living in an age of prophecy. We cannot definitively say that our X caused God to do Y.

God does not, at least I hope not, use massive destruction as a message to teach the rest of us a “lesson.” He does not carelessly throw away the lives of some so that others can “correct their ways.” He does not strike people with illness, or infertility, or unemployment, because they “angered” Him.

Sometimes, bad things happen. Our job, as Jews, as human beings, is to use the best of what is in us to overcome the hard times and help others to do so as well.

A few weeks ago, I quoted a verse from Micah as the basis of our understanding about tzniut (modesty):

Micah (6:8) decides: “… What is good? What does God want from you? To do justice, to love kindness and walk modestly with your Lord.”

This time, let’s focus on those first two points. (Micah has a knack for really zeroing in on what’s important.) What does God want from us? To be just, kind, loving people. That is what it means to be a Jew, to have faith. Don’t ask, “Why did this happen?” Ask, “What do I need to do to get through this?” Or, “How can I help someone else through this?”

At least, that’s what I think. So I ask again—what does faith mean to you?