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This Jewish essay has been sitting on my computer a long while. I sat down to finish it, trying to make sense of my scribbles. If you remember, I wrote this essay to lay down principles about Judaism that have been coalescing in my little brain from my Jewish reading and classes. My plan was to apply these principles to my analysis of the Silfkin book, which I have not been reading because I wanted to finish this essay first.[1]

[1] I amaze myself with my convoluted logic. It’s as if when I procrastinate on one project, all related projects somehow attach themselves to that procrastination. I guess it’s true what they say: procrastination has many arms. (Okay, I made that up, and I’ll stop babbling and get back to writing the essay so I can return to analyzing chapter 2 of the Silfkin book with these principles in mind.)

I realized as I went through the principles that this exercise was much more useful for me than just a way to discuss the Silfkin book. These principles present a very interesting view of the world that is slowly bringing order to the world for me. A gentile friend of mine who is converting to the orthodox-brand of Judaism told me that what was amazing about Judaism’s laws and customs was how internally consistent they were. The more you dig, the more sense they make. While I don’t agree that this is always the case, these principles and my readings and discussions are forcing me to rethink what I believe about my religion and about God.

As always, remember, this essays my fabrication from my Jewish readings and my rabbis’ teachings. I’ve taken what they taught and pulled at the edges, tugged at the middles, and for the most part misinterpreted and misunderstood the real teachings. I’m very dense, and I doubt any of this is close to accurate or reliable or useful to anyone except me—and even that is questionable. (Humility is a mitzvah that I’m trying to cultivate. And that winking you imagine me doing when I write this is all part of your highly active and very wrong imagination.) Either way, here it is, in all of its throat-clearing glory.

Principle #1. God doesn’t need anything from us.

My rabbi, who was a late bloomer when it comes to religious study, learned this at his first Jewish lesson in Israel. God does not need anything from us. This is not obvious.

Here’s one basic explanation of this: God does not need anything from us because (a) God is infinite; (b) an infinite being is by definition complete because he has no end or limitation; and (c) a complete being has no need of anything. This is a somewhat simplistic argument as it contains many premises. God is unlike humans because he is infinite. God is not human and he does not share our characteristics. (That “man is created in God’s image” is a lot less literal than it seems.) God does not grow angry or judge or throw lightning bolts. God does not have emotions (or logic for that matter). God doesn’t do anything. But more about that later.

There is a very powerful conclusion that you come to when you accept that God doesn’t need anything from us. What you realize is that we cannot provide anything to God. He doesn’t need our prayers or (and this is sometimes misconstrued, particularly by the newfangled religions), he doesn’t need us to “fix the world.” If he wanted the world fixed, he could do it quite easily through that whole omnipotent thing that God has going for him.

We do not follow God’s commandments for him; we follow his commandments for us. Judaism introduced this basic understanding along with monotheism. (There is a debate as to whether Judaism introduced monotheism or merely popularized it).

Before monotheism there was paganism, which was a human response to man’s inability to understand nature. It was a way for early man to understand a pattern in something chaotic. Humans’ are very good at this: we apply patterns to observations to arrive at explanations.[1] Think of being an ancient person when an earthquake or volcano explodes or the crops die because there are no rains. It’s not only that you can’t do anything to prevent these catastrophes (modern man can’t do much in either case), it’s that you don’t understand why these events happened. Ancient humans lived in perpetual fear of nature. Fear is often more about understanding than it is about control.

[1] While humans are good at creating patterns to explain observations, they are not good at selecting the correct pattern. We can see this by our natural inability to grasp statistics. As a simple example, how often do you find yourself surprised that a person you’ve just met shares the same birthday as you? Many people believe that fate places a heavy bearing on this coincidence[2] (my older sister and her husband share the same birthday—I’m not sure how much of that relationship was based on this simple pattern, but I’d bet that a small part was). The truth is that there are only 365 days every year. From a statistical analysis, that means that one in every will share you exact birthday. Think about that: for every people you meet during a day, __ of them will have your birthday. That’s a rather big number.

[2] Judaism does believe strongly in Divine Providence, or that God’s will influences all events in the world. To observant Jews, a coincidence is not a coincidence, but a divinely influenced event. You will hear observant Jews say, “Baruch Hashem,” or blessed God, often. They say this not to ward off evil, but to acknowledge that God controls every event. In their worldview, there is little in the way of coincidences. (The last part is my understanding based on being around observant Jews, but I’ve never heard them describe it exactly this way.)

Pagans believed that they could appease nature in the form of their gods, by sacrificing for, praying to, and praising them. In return, the gods would not rain misfortune on them. Where paganism differed from monotheism is that the gods enjoyed or gained something from the praying or sacrificing or praising. It was a form of appeasement: you give me five dollars and I don’t punch you in the nose. If you didn’t need the five dollars, then you wouldn’t make the deal.

One of the understandings that monotheism brought to the world was that God does not need anything we can provide him because he infinite. We do not pray or praise or present offerings (the difference between a sacrifice and an offering is important) for his benefit. Everything we do in his name, we do not do for him, but for us. He does not need our five dollars. Counter intuitively, he still wants our five dollars, but it’s not for his benefit but ours.

Some examples: When Jews praise God, they do not praise him because God needs or even enjoys their praises. They praise him because it is the humans that need to praise God to understand whom they stand before. The last part relates partly to humility and partly to our relationship to God and the “meaning of life,” which is discussed at length in principle number 3.

I use the next example because it is so foreign to modern peoples. When Jews presented animal offerings at the holy temple (which was destroyed many thousands of years ago), they did not present these offerings because God enjoyed the smell of burning animals or because the slaughtering of animals amused God. Instead, it was the humans that needed this offering. According to Orthodox belief, at the time of the Messiah, there will be a return to animal offerings. The Orthodox pray for this to happen. The rabbis explain that the term “sacrifice” was mistranslated form the Hebrew. It is not a sacrifice because the animal offerings were not for the benefit of God but for our benefit (why this was they don’t have as good an answer for—it’s something “you have to experience to understand”). This was diametrically opposed to the Pagan sacrifice, where they sacrificed to appease their gods.

This brings us to the obvious question: If God doesn’t need anything from us, then why do we bother praying to him. Before we get there, we need to know more about God.

Principle #2. The only thing humans can know about God is that he is infinite.

I probably should have started with this one. While Jews may describe other aspects of God, we usually do that by referring to human characteristics, e.g., a merciful God, a good God. We use these words because we’re human and we can only understand things in human terms. We do not use these words because they’re an accurate representation of God. (This is somewhat true. The Jewish understanding of God is a merciful, loving, good God. He has those characteristics, just not in the way that we understand them.)

There are huge ramifications to God being infinite that the early Jews realized (the patriarchs and matriarchs of Judaism). First, by being infinite, God must be one. There cannot be two infinite powers in existence.

Additionally, there’s nothing that we could provide an infinite being that he doesn’t already have. That’s the nature of infinity. (Of course, there’s a huge paradox called the creation paradox, one of many paradoxes when you begin discussing an infinite being: how can we and creation exist outside of God if God is infinite. Wouldn’t everything necessarily be part of God and therefore infinite? And, no, I don’t have any answers to that.)

I’ve written about this before, but during college I came up with what I thought was a strikingly original and deep insight into the existence of God. First premise: God is all-powerful. Second premise: God is infinite. First argument: Since God is infinite he must exist outside of the human perception of time. If you think of time as a physical timeline, God would be floating above that timeline. Second argument: If God exists outside of time then he cannot “do” anything, since “doing” something involves changing from one state to another. And changing states requires existing within a timeline. Third argument: God has no power because he cannot change anything. Conclusion: God does not exist because of a contradiction between the first premise and the third argument. Therefore, an infinite, omnipotent God does not exist.

because he is an infinite being. Going further, God doesn’t do anything because “doing” involves existing within our perception of time.

he is infinite and therefore outside of our conception of time. But I’ll return to that in a moment.

Principle #3. The meaning of life is an opportunity to move closer to the infinite.

There you have it. I’ve solved all of your dilemmas, all of the big ticket questions out there. The big question, the one everyone ponders about: according to Jewish tradition, there’s a very simple answer. What we’re on this planet for (and it’s more than just the planet—it’s our entire existence) is to move closer to God. Think of this way: you’re on earth for, what, 70 or 80 years? We’re finite beings with very finite lives. What Judaism teaches is that during that lifespan, you have one real job: to learn about and grow closer to the infinite.

Every challenge in your life is an opportunity to do just that. It’s not that God is testing us. It’s not about testing because God already knows the results (how that meshes with free will is a bit more complicated). God provides the challenges to give you an opportunity to grow closer to him. And when you stand up and meet those challenges? You are rewarded with a chance to move closer to the infinite. The closer you are to the infinite, the more your finite life doesn’t matter as much. It’s not that you die and go to heaven (although the Jews do believe in a variant of that). When you die, it’s your body that dies and your soul goes on. Your soul is a piece of God, and depending on how well your soul and body did while living together, that is how close you’ve moved to God.

This is an important concept, and I don’t think I’m explaining it that well. The world after death isn’t a punishment or reward. It’s a reality. It’s about how close you moved your soul in its direction based on the challenges that God picked out for you during your lifetime. The next world is not the reward, the next world is the reality: your soul can only understand God based on its experiences in this world. The closer it grew to God on this world, the better its understanding of God in the next world after it sheds its body. (Again, there’s so much stuff here to talk about, but at the time of the Messiah, your soul will be reunited with your body, only your body will be different. No longer will it weigh against your soul’s desires to move close to God. It will assist you in that goal. But by then free will is gone and I guess you are left with whatever level your soul reached. There’s no more moving closer at this point. Of course, to move closer to God, something of which you are a part of, is contradictory in and of itself. But that’s for another time.

My rabbi tells a story about a Chassidic rabbi. It’s relevant to this discussion, so I’ll try to capture its essence. A religious Jew visits a famous Chassidic rabbi, and watches him throughout the course of the day. People visit the Chassidic rabbi and he wishes them well, listens to their problems, and occasionally provides tidbits of Jewish wisdom or advice. The religious Jew is not impressed. The advice he gives in common, the type of advice he himself could give. When there’s a break, he goes up to the rabbi and asks him what makes him so special. The Chassidic rabbi pulls on his long gray beard (although I added that part, all Chassidic rabbis have long gray beards), and tells the religious Jew this: “When you walk outside and you see a beautiful apple tree, you pray to Hashem [one of God’s names] and thank him for the beautiful tree. You then walk over to the tree and pick an delicious look apple. You say a prayer and eat the apple. When I see a beautiful tree, I pray to Hashem and thank him for the beautiful tree. I then walk over to the tree and say a prayer. And because I said a prayer, I have to eat the delicious apple.”

It’s a subtle story. What it explains is that the truly pious Jew understands that his job is to improve his relationship with God, and every opportunity he gets to pray to God or follow one of God’s mitzvahs, is an opportunity for him to grow closer to God. It’s not about eating the apple, but being given a reason to talk to God, the infinite and only power in the universe. The pious Jew understands that he is given only a short time on earth and wants to make the best of it. He wants to overcome the challenges God, through divine providence, puts in front of him.

This is what is some comforting: once you die, you do not disappear. You exist and always will exist as part of the infinite. At its core, this is what most religions try to explain and reassure its followers.

4. The Big Plan

A Jew’s relationship with God makes sense at almost a visceral level. There is a bigger part of it. Something I’m only beginning to see and appreciate. There is a strong ethical problem with God. There is a lot of unhappiness. The religious Jew believes that as you move closer to God, through prayer and following the mitzvahs, your life is blessed. There’s a direct correlation between the two. The more piousness, the more blessing. Of course, this does not seem true and any level. There are plenty of worthy and good people who are killed by very bad people. And many of those bad people never get their just rewards. So why aren’t these bad people judged on earth, like tough in the Torah? This is where we tie back to the third principle.

Speaking of plans, there is something that I have not yet put my mind around and therefore probably doesn’t belong on this list. It relates to the purpose of creation—which is a separate question from the meaning of our individual lives. This is a macro question, something that we need to expore.