God of Us? (Shabbat HaGadol, March 22, 2013)
God-of-Us?
Since Passover begins at sundown on Monday night, and I have spent the past two Sundays sitting in the temple lobby talking to people about their Haggadahs and their seders, I thought I would begin my sermon tonight with a news article from last year’s New York Times, March 9, 2012.
By ALEX WILLIAMS
New York Times Published: March 9, 2012
AFTER a lengthy interview with President Obama in the Oval Office two weeks ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic, had one more question, and it had nothing to do with Iran.
“I know this is cheesy …” Mr. Goldberg started, but before he could finish, the president interrupted him. “What, you have a book?” Mr. Obama asked. Turns out, Mr. Goldberg did, but “it’s not just any book,” he replied.
Mr. Goldberg reached into his briefcase and handed the president an advance copy of the “New American Haggadah,”a new translation of the Passoverliturgy that was edited by Jonathan Safran Foerand contains commentary by Mr. Goldberg and other contemporary writers.
After thumbing through the sleek hardcover book, Mr. Obama looked up and asked wryly, “Does this mean that we can’t use the Maxwell House Haggadah anymore?”
Mr. Goldberg was impressed. “Way to deploy the inside-Jewish joke,” he later said. Since the 1930s, Maxwell House has printed more than 50 millions copies of its pamphlet-style version of the Haggadah. It has been the go-to choice at the Obamas’ White House Seders, though Mr. Goldberg hoped the president would consider using their version this time around.
In the end, the White House decided to stick with the Maxwell House…
Score one for the president! I happened to receive a copy of this New American Haggadah as a gift from Josh Fixler last year. Truth be told, I did not have a chance to study it until I was preparing for my Sunday morning sessions. I didn’t put this haggadah out as a suggested choice for a family seder, because I found it a bit difficult to navigate and much too traditional in text for our community. But, it is worthy of this sermon, which is part of our L.I.F.E. (newly renamed adult ed program, now Learning is for Everyone) series on “In God’s Image.”
Where to begin? If some people have problems with the God of the prayerbook who receives praise, and seems to be constantly in need of positive feedback from us, then the haggadah is even more problematic from a theological perspective. A study of the traditional haggadah would reveal that its primary theological message is that God, not Moses, saved us from Pharaoh and redeemed us from slavery into freedom. The Torah is clear that the Exodus culminates in the receiving of the Torah at Sinai with the Ten Commandments extravaganza, which I know some of you watch each year as part of your Passover tradition. An entire generation believes that Moses looked like Charlton Heston, alav hashalom, who joined Moses in the world-to-come in 2008.
A textual study of your haggadot reveals that God has many names and is responsible for many wonderful acts. Our four cups of wine are for four of God’s redemptive gifts to us this holiday, listed in Exodus 6:6-7:
I will free you (from the labors of the Egyptians)
I will deliver you (from their bondage)
I will redeem you (with an outstretched arm)
I will take you (to be my people)
And the final promise for which we have a cup of Elijah, which has been fulfilled in our lifetime:
I will bring you (into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) and I will give it to you for your possession.
If we are created in God’s image, then from the social justice agenda of our Reform movement, we must free the captive, deliver those forced to labor, enslaved or victims of human trafficking, we must redeem the oppressed and we must take our Judaism seriously as a people and a nation. That would be the haggadah’s message of what it means for us to live in the image of God – we would parallel the redemptive qualities of our God, and I would be all for that.
In fact, that is how I strive to live every day. We are engaged in these redemptive actions, as mitzvot that guide our congregational community. And the haggadah’s messages to welcome the stranger and feed the hungry, are guiding life principles, as well.
But, tonight, I want to go back to the translation choice of the New American Haggadah edited by Foer and translated by Englander.
The very first blessing, and all those that follow, uses the following form:
Baruch Atah Adonai Elohaynu Melech ha-olam…
You are blessed, Lord, God-of-Us, King of the Cosmos, who….
Wow! Lord and King are back. Nothing like forgetting gender sensitivity in the 21st century. And Elohaynu, for the first time to my knowledge, is translated as “God-of-Us” in a haggadah. Seems there are popular songs that use this phrase according to Google. This didn’t sit well with me. The translation was designed to make us think, but it ruins the seder for me. A Google search revealed this explanation:
He uses “God of us” instead of “our God” because it’s not “our God” like “our cellphone” or “our Lexus” that we own, rather it is “the God over us.”
In an article in the NY Jewish Week, Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of the New Republic is quoted as saying:
[No More Questions: Leon Wieseltier and the New American Haggadah03/27/2012 – NY Jewish Week
Eric Herschthal
If Leon Wieseltier would for once drop his surly, admonitory tone perhaps more people would listen. For what he delivers in his scathing reviewof the New American Haggadah is certainly worth reading. There are precious few people who are as learned in both Hebrew and English literature as he. And that’s why, even if you disagree with his reading of the new Haggadah, you will undoubtedly learn something from it.
Wieseltier’s first target is the Haggadah’s translation, by Nathan Englander. Like Englander, Wieseltier also had an Orthodox yeshiva education, so he knows a bit about Hebrew and Torah. So take note: he argues that the main problem is Englander’s insistence on over-interpretation. Many of the Hebrew words Englander translates eschew the original Hebrew’s deliberate opacity. And rather than let that vagueness come through in the English, Englander chooses to give his own take, Wieseltier says.
“The trouble begins almost at the beginning,” Wieseltier writes, calling attention first to Englander’s translation of the ubiquitous She-hecheyanu benediction. Here’s how Englander translates it: “You are blessed, Lord God-of-Us, King of the Cosmos, who breathed life, and sustained life, and shepherded us through to the current season.”
As someone with only an cursory knowledge of Hebrew, I found Englander’s translation perfectly fine. Ignorant of the original Hebrew, the translation does have a nice rhythm, a pleasant bit of alliteration, and seems to evoke just the right balance between the concrete, natural world (“the current season,” “shepherded,” “breathed life”) and the celestial, other-worldiness of God (“King of the Cosmos”).]
But not for Wieseltier. “What is this ‘God-of-us’?” he says, in his characteristically mocking tone. “Why torture one of the most common and comprehensible words in Jewish worship?” His problem is that “God-of-Us” complicates the simple, straightforward translation of “Our God,” which has been used for centuries. And then there’s the “King of the Cosmos” bit, which Wieseltier finds too, well, Greek.
Going to the actual review in The Jewish Review of Books, Wieseltier continues:
What is this “God-of-Us”? Why torture one of the most common and comprehensible words in Jewish worship? Englander retains this infelicitous locution for all the blessings in the Haggadah. But eloheinuis a limpidly clear word: it means “our God.” And “our God” is more intimate, and therefore more provocative, than Englander’s hyphenate version—it is a possessive, grammatically and theologically.
When I saw God-of-Us, I read something else. I read the need to make God a part of us these days — to make ourselves equal to God and therefore, not accountable to any Higher Power. If we posit that we are in God’s image, then we are to emulate God and strive to be like God, or strive to be holy beyond our human capacity for evil and pettiness.
“God-of-Us” smacks of our God, “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” being a derivative of us, making God just one of the many manifestations of human imagination or need. God would no longer be the Source and Inspiration of what we aspire to emulate and become, rather God would be OF US, created by US for a purpose that we then have the ability to accept or reject at any given time or moment. If a blessing, any blessing, is supposed to “make holy” that which, without the blessing, would remain unholy in our temporal world, then we need to invoke not a God-of-Us, but a God BEYOND US:
Bread is flour/water/salt and in the case of challah, egg without the blessing that transforms it into a vehicle for making this Sabbath day holy.
Matzah is that which constipates and symbolizes deprivation for so many of us, unless we bless it as a way to rediscover and appreciate our freedom and our ability to be God’s partners in the redemption of our world.
God is not OF US. We are OF GOD. For when we fail to be OF GOD, we are no longer in God’s image.
Elie Wiesel tells the following story that the phrase God-of-Us reminded me about the moment I read it:
Legend tells us that one day man spoke to God in this way:
“Let us change about. You be man, and I will be God. For only one second.
God spoke gently and asked him, “Aren’t you afraid?”
“No,” said man. “Are you?”
“Yes, I am,” replied God.
Nevertheless, God granted man’s desire. God became man and man took God’s place and immediately availed himself of God’s omnipotence. But, then something happened. Man refused to revert back to his previous state. So neither God nor man was ever again what he seemed to be.
From The Town Beyond the Wall, 1969, as quoted in The Jewish Woman, Elizabeth Koltun, Schocken, 1976
God-of-Us. Man becoming God explains the failures of our world. But, the realization that we are God, God-like, in God’s image, and therefore, obligated to do that which is just and right and true in our world, is a huge burden and an enormous responsibility and blessing.
“Our God,” is simpler and easier for us to digest at our seders. “Our God” enables us to access the Redeemer who heard our suffering and acted. “Our God” is with us in our current suffering, offering strength, even when there is no answer or cure.
“Our God” embraces an awareness of God’s existence beyond us that we access when we live the mitzvot as commandments, as well as good deeds, as obligatory, not optional. Passover with our God is something we do because we have to, not as an option when it fits into our travel and personal schedules. “Our God” is like “our family” – for some not easy, for others pure joy, and for most, a bit of both.
“God-of-Us” didn’t work for me. Just thought I would share that thought with you.
May you have a thoughtful and meaningful seder and Passover. Shabbat Shalom.