Tag: Yuval Noah Harari

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High Holidays Sermons

Into the Future, Part I: It’s About Us – Rosh Hashanah 5784, Day 1

Once upon a time, I was a big fan of science fiction. I loved the work of Arthur C. Clarke, and in particular 2001: A Space Odyssey, both the book and Stanley Kubrick’s fantastic 1968 film version. Clarke’s visions were often of future worlds where humans interacted with usually-benevolent alien powers. Humanity was not inclined to destroy itself; rather, humans found their way off of our home planet and out into the universe with gradual technological innovation, facilitated by alien assistance. Sure, in 2001 the computer HAL 9000 goes on a murderous rampage in an epic fail of artificial intelligence, but that is just a small hiccup on the way to the creation of the Star-Child by some vastly superior alien power to aid humanity.

I think that many of us are concerned that the future may not be as bright as science fiction writers like Clarke and others envisioned. In our current moment, it may seem as though Clarke misread the future by being hopelessly naive about our species. After all, many things have gone horribly wrong. Consider where we are today:

  • The very people who created artificial intelligence are warning that it may in fact be a real threat
  • We are being relentlessly tracked and mined for data by commercial and government interests
  • What is objectively true has become relative to your political perspective
  • Culture wars have pitted us against our neighbors on multiple fronts
  • Anxiety and depression are on the rise
  • Anti-Semitic activity has increased dramatically
  • Authoritarianism is also back with a vengeance while democracy is in decline

I could go on. Global warming. Opioid abuse. Homelessness. Loneliness. The list of society’s ills continues to grow.

One of my primary jobs as a rabbi is to try to keep us inspired and optimistic about the future. It’s not so easy in today’s environment.

But we Jews have an ancient secret that has enabled us to survive the worst of times for thousands of years. We have survived persecution and dispersion; we have survived exile and genocide; we have survived forced conversions, forced conscriptions, anti-Jewish legislation and regimes of all sorts. We survived the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians 2600 years ago, and the Romans 2000 years ago. We survived accusations that the Jews caused the Black Death in the 14th century and we survived the Expulsion from Spain a century-and-a-half later. We survived the Holocaust. Even as we in Pittsburgh continue to mourn the 11 holy souls whom we lost on the 27th of October, 2018, we as a community survive and continue to thrive.

And what is that secret Jewish super-power? It is our holy framework, which has unfolded over the last 3,000 years through Torah and its ongoing interpretation. It is the story of our past, coupled with our willingness to continue to engage with it, to retell it, to cling to it, and to apply it to navigate the present. And it is our inclination to gather with other Jews, to be together in community for mutual support and meaningful engagement.

In short, it’s about us. Our story, our community, and our rituals, all intertwined.

One piece of ancient wisdom we learn in Pirqei Avot (4:21):

רַבִּי יַעֲקֹב אוֹמֵר, הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה דּוֹמֶה לִפְרוֹזְדוֹר בִּפְנֵי הָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. הַתְקֵן עַצְמְךָ בַפְּרוֹזְדוֹר, כְּדֵי שֶׁתִּכָּנֵס לַטְּרַקְלִין:

Rabbi Ya’aqov taught: this world is like a vestibule before the world to come; prepare yourself in the vestibule, so that you may enter the banquet hall.

If we are to enter the future in a way that is healthy and sustainable, we have to be ready for it. And the way that we the Jews can do so, for the benefit of the rest of the world, is to use the framework that we have received from our ancestors, because it has worked for thousands of years. It is our fervent desire, for our collective benefit, that humanity makes it to the banquet hall of the future.

Over these High Holidays, we will be talking about moving “Into the Future” from different angles. Today, it’s about us. Tomorrow, we will be discussing the future of Conservative Judaism. On the evening of Kol Nidrei, we will discuss our future vis-à-vis the State of Israel. And on the day of Yom Kippur, we will be speaking about retaining our humanity as artificial intelligence infuses itself into our lives.

***

In all of the challenges that we have faced at any point in time, the Jewish inclination has always been to look to the past. How did our ancestors survive? By re-reading the Torah, by arguing about it, by following its guidelines for behavior and emulating the better qualities of its major characters, and by applying it to our lives wherever we have been and whatever we have faced.  

And this formula still works today. 

In his 2017 book Homo Deus, the Israeli history Yuval Noaḥ Harari explains what fundamentally differentiates humans from other animals. While there are many species, from ants to chimpanzees, that form social groups in which the individuals cooperate by playing distinct roles, only humans have the potential to act collectively in a way that can change our destiny. In other words, a bee hive is a kind of community, but bee colonies will always more or less be the same – the same structure, the same system of “governance,” with, as far as we know, no long-term sense of past or future.

But humanity is different, particularly due to our ability to gather around shared stories. And all the more so for us, the Jews. Our stories, our texts, our wisdom hold us together and help us move forward, with an eye to our past. Our strength as a people is on our collective bookshelf, and in our hearts and minds. 

One essential lesson, fundamental to Jewish life, is the idea that we are all connected to one another. Two pieces of wisdom in particular say, in essence, that we have to think about “us” before we think about “me” or “you” or “them.” 

  1. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh (Midrash Sifra on Vayiqra / Leviticus 26:37)

We are all “arevim” – guarantors for one another. The word arevim comes from the Hebrew for “to mix.” We are all mixed up, or integrated with one another. And given the way we live today, not just with fellow Jews, but with our non-Jewish neighbors. We must all be responsible for one another.

  1. Al tifrosh min hatzibbur (Pirqei Avot 2:4)

Do not separate yourself from the community. We cannot all be individuals in complete isolation from one another. Our shared, just, sustainable future depends on our willingness to be in relationship, to acknowledge each other’s humanity. That is, we have to think about us as a collective with a shared destiny. And that is harder to do than it is to say, particularly given that the way our society is constructed today tends to isolate, rather than bring together.

And to universalize once again, the same is true for the entire world. It has become woefully easy to divorce yourself from the people around you. And this is not good for humanity.

Back in August, my son introduced me to a YouTube channel online produced by a “YouTuber” who goes by the name of Mrwhosetheboss. What he does is review hi-tech products, and we watched a review of a new gadget: Apple’s virtual-reality headset, which will be available early next year at the low, low, bargain-basement price of $3500.

After gushing about the revolutionary marvels of this gadget he makes a stunning confession: 

There’s already very little separation between us and our technology. You only have to take your phone out of your pocket and your screen auto-turns-on and you’re blasted by notifications. When the device is on your face, there’s no escaping it, and that’s slightly worrying… But the key thing about this headset that I don’t think any future or vision of this headset can solve is the potential for isolation. I am so incredibly excited that this new era of tech is here, but I’ve never wanted, and NOT wanted, a product to exist at the same time as much as I do with this one, for the simple fact that I do think this is the start of the end for shared experiences.

That is not the future for me, in which we are all in our own sensory bubbles, where all of our communication with others and the outside world is through an intermediary, which controls every aspect of the experience. That seems to me a wee bit too close to The Matrix, rather than Arthur C. Clarke.

Now, I need to state clearly:  I am NOT anti-technology. In fact I believe technology will do wonderful things for us if we use it cautiously. 

But here is the point: every one of us in this room has a wonderful tool at your disposal to build social capital and fight isolation: Judaism. Our faith is one of the best sources of social capital. This synagogue is an ancient technology that still does an amazing job at bringing people together as a force for good in the world. 

Here is a four-point plan (out of many more possible Jewish points) to save our future:

  1. Shabbat (or, setting aside sacred time)
  2. Kashrut (or mindful consumption)
  3. Shemirat halashon (or mindful speech)
  4. Tefillah (or, meditative moments)

Each of these items are among the most important principles of Jewish life, located at the nexus of the personal and the communal. They unite the “me” with the “us.”

Shabbat / Setting Aside Sacred Time

Many of us observe Shabbat in a traditional way in this congregation: we have luxurious family meals, often with guests, on Friday night and Saturday afternoon; we attend synagogue; we “unplug” for 25 hours from sunset on Friday till dark on Saturday night to devote time to family, friends, ritual and reflection.

In my own home, Shabbat is when the imperatives of our busy lives are placed on hold and we play games: Settlers of Catan, Wingspan, Rummikub, building with Legos. And of course, dining and napping as well.

But there are many more of us who do not unplug and reconnect on Shabbat. And even if you have some sense of what you might be missing by not observing Shabbat traditionally, I understand. It’s not so easy to close all your digital devices for that time, to disconnect, to not go shopping or watch YouTube. It’s not so easy even to plan Shabbat meals with family or friends.

But once you have truly tasted the traditional observance of Shabbat, where our range of activities is minimal and our relationship with the Earth and each other is more immediate and organic, you understand the value of setting aside sacred time.

And furthermore, when the news-and-outrage cycle goes non-stop, as Big Tech vies for your eyeballs and your money, shutting all of that down – even if just for 25 hours each week – is a mitzvah not just for you, but for the future of humanity.

Shabbat is good for your soul, but it also helps you connect with the people in your neighborhood, which is where we should all be at least once a week.

Shabbat / setting aside sacred time: it’s about us.

Kashrut / Mindful Consumption

Sure, you might think that holy eating is just an annoyance, an obstacle to living a full gustatory life, unencumbered by antiquated rules. Come on, Rabbi, what’s wrong with shrimp? Didn’t God also create shellfish? And beef is beef, whether an old guy with a beard blessed it or not, right?

Ask any parent whether they can properly raise children without boundaries. Kashrut is just that: a daily reminder that we cannot merely take all we want when we want it. Kashrut is Jewish mindfulness, a structure to help us maintain a sense of holiness in this world. And if we embrace a mindful consumption practice, it leads to a sense of interconnectedness with each other and all of God’s creatures. If we were all to practice this mindful way of eating, we have the potential to spread that awareness of our consumption patterns far and wide.

Even during my years as a young adult when I was not going regularly to synagogue, I maintained my kashrut practice, because it reminded me on a daily basis of my connection to our people and our tradition. Paying careful attention to what we eat, where it came from, and how our consumption affects God’s Creation models behavior for the rest of the world to appreciate.

Kashrut / mindful consumption: It’s about us.

Shemirat haLashon / Mindful speech

Our tongues need guards. We have to be ever-vigilant about the way we talk, and text, and tweet. With the dissolution of guardrails in speech, and with social media platforms which exercise little control over what is acceptable, we are in danger of creating a future in which words will be weaponized in unimaginable ways. It has never been so easy to destroy a person, an institution, an idea as it is today. If we are to maintain any sense of togetherness as a society, we have to be careful about what we say and how we say it. 

But sanctified speech is that where we acknowledge the power of our words and their potential for danger. Too many today are focused on dividing people through speech; only through shemirat halashon may we succeed in bringing people together for a better humanity and a better future.

Mindful speech is about respecting the humanity in each person.  Shemirat haLashon is about us.

Tefillah / Meditative Moments

There are many paths through Jewish life. But there is only one thing that gathers the Jews like no other, and that is being together in our house, the beit kenesset, the synagogue, the ancient and modern house of Jewish gathering.

Now, I know that tefillah is hard. It requires intent, concentration and practice, all things that can be challenging in a busy sanctuary during the High Holidays. And there is a high bar to entry. To fully participate, you have to be able to read Hebrew, or at least puzzle through transliterations. And there are tunes and choreography and ritual gear, which can be off-putting to the uninitiated.

But when we have prayerful moments together, when all the people in this room sing together, or meditate together, or even mumble together, it is breathtaking. And it is also be liberating – an upward spiral of energy that moves us as a community and ascends heavenward.

The Hebrew word, tefillah, does not mean, “to recite a jumble of ancient words in a language that nobody speaks.” It actually means “self-judgment.” When we stand together, ideally in silence, reciting the words of the Amidah, we create a strong sense of power in the room – hearts united in deep, meditative analysis of the self. If we allow ourselves to be swept up in the sense of tefillah as a community, it will help us all be better people, opening our hearts and bringing us together as a community. And this too has the potential to infuse the whole world with awareness and connection.

Tefillah / meditative moments: it’s about us.

***

OK, Rabbi, that all sounds great, but you have not convinced me. How exactly will this framework create a better future?

We have the power, when we think and act together, when we draw on our shared stories and ritual, to face all the challenges of our world in a way that will enable us to overcome. That is why the Jews are still here. We are a model for resilience, a model which can be shared with others.

My goal as your rabbi is, in facing the future, to recognize the awesome power of our Jewish framework, of your heritage, and to give it to the world. This world, God help us, needs to set aside sacred time, needs mindful consumption, mindful speech and meditative moments.

And indeed, the situation is urgent. We all have the potential to think, “Hey, I’m a good person. I am respectful of my neighbors. I make charitable donations. I replaced my incandescents with LEDs. I buy organic produce.” And hey, those things are great. 

But we have to think wider and greater than that. We have to think not just about ourselves or our immediate relations, but rather how we can influence the world for the better. Our future as a species depends on you to consider how your personal observance of essential Jewish principles can bring us safely and sustainably into the future. And this may only be realized if we take up the reins of our own personal Jewish observance and demonstrate its value to the world.

So here is a suggestion: Take one element of Shabbat – a holy moment every Friday evening at sunset to light candles as a family, for example -and build on that. One element of kashrut. Come once more to synagogue for a service than you ordinarily would, to learn a new prayer, a new tune, a new idea from our rich textual tradition.

And as you come to appreciate these aspects of our tradition yourself, you must share them with your friends and neighbors. Our ancient secret can be universalized and presented to the world. Not that we should try to make non-Jews practice Judaism, but to understand the eternal value of these principles so the whole world can derive the benefits of the Jewish secret. 

Do it for yourself, but all the more so, do it for us, so that we may all enter the banquet hall together. Into the future.

***

Next in the series:

Rosh HaShanah, Day 2: The Future of Conservative Judaism

Kol Nidrei: The Future of Israel

Yom Kippur: The Future Must Be Human

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, first day of Rosh Hashanah 5784, 9/16/2023.)

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Sermons

AI Will Never Be Human – Bemidbar 5783

Artificial intelligence illustration with blue text AI over binary code matrix background. Abstract concept of cyber technology and automation

There has been much concern lately about artificial intelligence. You may have heard that last week a Senate subcommittee hosted the CEO of OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, Sam Altman. In his testimony, Altman (who is, BTW, a nice Jewish boy from St. Louis) actually asked the Senate to regulate AI. Many tech companies have zealously fought against regulation, so to hear Mr. Altman express concern about the potential dangers of AI and to seek regulatory controls may have been a relief for some. 

But the complicated part, and perhaps Mr. Altman is gambling on this, is that (a) Congress moves much more slowly than the rate at which widespread use of AI is unfolding, and (b) it is not immediately clear how exactly to regulate it. The devil (not that we Jews believe in such a thing) is in the details.

Nonetheless, this is clearly something to which Jews, as people whose tradition teaches us to be responsible for humanity and our world, should be paying attention.

Speaking of details, Parashat Bemidbar opens with a commandment to count people, to take a census of the Israelites while they are encamped in the wilderness, for the purposes of determining the fighting strength of their army. Much of the parashah is dedicated to these numbers.

This report of numbers by tribe might appear as a dull, bureaucratic endeavor which obscures the personhood of all of those counted, not to mention the women and people under the age of 20 who are not even counted. The first three chapters of Bemidbar come off looking something like the tape from an adding machine – lots of numbers and then a bottom line, which in this case is 603,550. (The extrapolated estimate of the entire population who left Egypt is therefore about two million, which seems like an impossibly high number. But far be it from me to say that something in the Torah is not true…) 

But here’s something that you might miss if you are not looking closely. The Hebrew instruction to perform this census is phrased thus (Bemidbar / Numbers 1:2):

שְׂא֗וּ אֶת־רֹאשׁ֙ כׇּל־עֲדַ֣ת בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל

Se-u et rosh kol adat benei Yisra-el

Now, your translation of this verse in the Etz Hayyim ḥumash says, “Take a census of the whole Israelite company.” But the Hebrew speaks idiomatically. A more literal translation is “Lift up the head of the entire group of Israelites.” The suggestion of “lifting up the head” sounds much more personal: Do not merely count heads; lift them up. Take each individual’s face into account. Acknowledge each member of the group as a human being, and as part of the greater whole. As if to drive the point home, the passages about counting are followed by the  the birkat kohanim, the Priestly Blessing of Bemidbar / Numbers 6:24-26, which occurs in Parashat Naso (which we won’t get to until the week after Shavu’ot). The third verse is as follows:

יִשָּׂ֨א ה’ ׀ פָּנָיו֙ אֵלֶ֔יךָ וְיָשֵׂ֥ם לְךָ֖ שָׁלֽוֹם׃

Yisa Adonai panav elekha veyasem lekha shalom.
May God lift up God’s face to you and grant you peace.

It’s the same verb: נשא / to lift up. 

When it comes to counting people, the details matter. It’s not just a strip of adding tape. Every one of us counts. Every one of us must be acknowledged and lifted up.

A brief report caught my eye this week, regarding the state of religion in America. An organization called the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) published the results of a recent survey of Americans’ attachment to religion. And, as you might expect, the percentage of us for whom religion is important is going down, and the number of unaffiliated folks continues to rise. 

And the Jews, of course, are the same as everybody else, only more so. 

Now, you certainly have all heard me make the case for the value of Judaism, if not religious practice in general, and I don’t need to do that right now. (But just wait until Rosh HaShanah!). Some of the statistics in this report show that people who attend religious services at least a few times a year tend to be more engaged in civic and political activities, particularly those things where people gather and work together. And I think we all know from anecdotal evidence that religious practice actually induces pro-social behavior in many of us.

So all the more so: religion brings people together, and is good for us as individuals and for society. It lifts us up, and helps us to see each other’s faces and acknowledge our shared humanity. And every one of us counts.

Nowadays, we have many fancy adding machines which help us through our lives: silicon slaves which do our bidding, and can help us achieve things which our ancestors could not even have imagined. 

The Israeli historian and social philosopher Yuval Noah Harari opens his book Homo Deus with an explanation for why people no longer need religion: because we have effectively vanquished plague, famine, and war. Yes, we have just been through a minor plague, and war is clearly still around, but the numbers of people who perish due to these things is far fewer than did so in previous centuries. Harari argues that our ability to live and thrive and not be so concerned on a daily basis for matters of life and death have obviated the need for religion, and for God. And indeed, when we have created tools such as artificial intelligence which may seem to have personality, perhaps we have achieved the status of Homo Deus, of God-like people. 

Sam Altman, in his testimony on Capitol Hill, pointed to the fact that when Photoshop was first introduced, it fooled some people initially, but we quickly learned to distinguish between an actual photo and something which had been altered. That sort of technology will of course continue to improve, and I am certain that it is only a matter of time before our adding machines will be able to deceive us in ways we would never have considered before.

And so too with language models like ChatGPT. They may ultimately sound human. But I do not believe that they will ever replace actual humans. And they will certainly never possess the Divine spark that is at the core of each of us.

ChatGPT will never be able to make a minyan. AI will never be able to give a proper hug to comfort those who mourn. It will never be able to get up and dance with joy as we name a new baby or celebrate a couple who is about to be married. It will not seek atonement on Yom Kippur, or sing moving melodies that turn the heart to God, or pray silently or yearn for God’s presence as we welcome Shabbat with Yedid Nefesh. A computer will never understand the value of Shabbat, or the conscious choice to take the holy opportunities of Jewish life, which give our lives framework and meaning.

Rabbi Danny Schiff, toward the end of his book, Judaism in a Digital Age, which we will be discussing after qiddush, addresses the question of whether the future necessitates a human presence. He writes,

Judaism’s answer to this question is yes. No matter how animated, intelligent, responsive, or reliable our AI creations might become, AI will never attain the combination of qualities that will merit the status of being “created in the image” [betzelem Elohim, a reference to Bereshit / Genesis 1:28]… The gulf between achieving convincing human-like qualities and being human is almost certainly unbridgeable. Jews are mandated to expand the Divine image in the world, not to lessen it. That goal demands the preservation of humanity. Judaism provides no license to contemplate an alternative… The irreplaceable human perspective and the poetry inherent within the grandeur and the struggle of human existence are exquisite… Each human life contains the potential for untold significance, and that will remain true even if AI comes to be viewed as functionally superior.

Put more bluntly, our devices may count us. But no computer will ever lift up our heads and appreciate the fullness of our humanity, of who we are as individuals and as the significant constituent parts of a human collective. 

And furthermore, no amount of technological modification of the human body or mind will make us God-like. God is far too elusive to enable that. Contrary to what Yuval Harari says, the need for religion – for Judaism – will never go away. We will always need to yearn together, to mourn together, to gather for prayer and celebration and comfort. We will always need a transcendent framework which brings us back to the spark of Divinity; no microchip will ever be able to recreate that.

ChatGPT, Google Bard, or whatever else comes after them will surely know Torah. They will be able to recite gemara with ease and probably teach and interpret for knowledgeable Jewish people. But they will hardly be able to convincingly sing ‘Etz ḥayyim hi lamaḥaziqim bah” / The Torah is a tree of life for those who grasp it.

Our strength comes from grasping the words of Torah. And we let that go at our peril. So we just might have to keep holding onto and holding up our tradition, paying attention to the details, and lifting our heads together for the sake of humanity.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning, 5/20/2023.)

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Sermons

The Trust Deficit – Va-era 5782

Like so many other people I tested positive this week, and I am fortunate that due to the fact that I am vaccinated and boosted, I have experienced a mild case of Covid-19 – a sore throat and some congestion. Thank God for the human ingenuity that has produced vaccines. (And it’s worth it to remind you all that if you are not boosted, you really should be: Friday mornings – walk-in at the JCC in Squirrel Hill.)

A curious bit of fake news came across my computer screen this week. It was an article about a fake New York Times headline, which read, “Teachers Should Tolerate Bullying Towards Unvaccinated Students.” It seems that somebody out there with nefarious intent wanted to rile up people who are anti-vaccine, and produced a mock-up of a NYT opinion piece suggesting violence against the unvaccinated. 

Now, of course, there are people out there who will believe anything that they see on the Internet, and of course will repost or retweet extreme content. So as ridiculous as this sounds, the fake headline traveled far enough, provoking its intended reaction, for there to be a genuine news article about it.

The challenge here is that we have reached a point where many of us are willing to believe anything that fits our particular worldview, and not to trust anything that does not. The entire world, it seems, is having trust issues. 

Whom do we trust?

I feel this affecting my own behavior: I was recently shopping online for KN95 masks, and I found myself thinking, how do I know that these are really manufactured to the N95 standard, meaning that it filters out 95% of airborne particles? I certainly cannot test that myself. Am I buying a genuine product?

I read elsewhere that a survey determined that 1 in 5 Americans say that it is acceptable to fake one’s vaccination status to keep a job. One might extrapolate that, kal vaḥomer, all the more so for people who are out for a night on the town, where the stakes might be even lower. This does not breed confidence in our fellow human beings.

Maybe the reason I contracted the virus is because the KN95 that I have been wearing in public is not legit, and the people around me who claim to be fully vaccinated are not. Who knows?

Parashat Va-era, from which we read today, includes a handful of questions surrounding trust. As God gives Moshe his mission to liberate the Israelites from the grip of Egyptian slavery, the text challenges us to wonder, does Moshe trust God? Does Pharaoh trust Moshe and Aharon? Does Moshe trust in himself? Will the Israelites trust Moshe, or God? And so forth.

Tied into all of this are the questions surrounding God’s name. Last week, in Parashat Shemot, we encountered in the burning bush episode one take on the name when Moshe seeks to be reassured about the trustworthiness of this whole operation. He asks God directly (Shemot / Exodus 3:13), “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”

Exodus: Moses and the Burning Bush, Marc Chagall, 1966

God answers, “Ehyeh asher ehyeh.” Not easily translatable, we might read this as “I am what I am.” Not so reassuring, right? 

And this week in Va-era, God does not wait to be asked. The parashah opens with, (Shemot / Exodus 6:3)

וָאֵרָ֗א אֶל־אַבְרָהָ֛ם אֶל־יִצְחָ֥ק וְאֶֽל־יַעֲקֹ֖ב בְּאֵ֣ל שַׁדָּ֑י וּשְׁמִ֣י י-הֹוה לֹ֥א נוֹדַ֖עְתִּי לָהֶֽם׃

I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name י-הוה [YHWH].

In both cases, the names given are apparently conjugations of the verb, “to be.” That is, God’s very name is a form of existence. 

And, as you may have heard me mention before, all of those forms of God’s name, and in particular the Hebrew yod/heh/vav/heh which we often express as YHWH, consist of consonants that are formed only from breath. (In ancient Hebrew, as with contemporary Arabic, the “vav” is actually a “w” – hence “waw”.) With all of those letters, no part of the tongue or lips or teeth obstruct the flow of air to create a percussive sound. In fact, all of these letters, alef – heh – waw – yod, serve as so-called matres lectionis, the fancy Latin term that Bible scholars use to describe consonants that sometimes serve as vowels. 

If God’s name consists solely of breath, then, how indeed might we be able to trust this mysterious character who somehow surfaces in an inflamed shrubbery in the desert?

Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the point is that trust in God is elusive. There will never be a hard consonant in God’s name because you will never be able to see God, to touch God, to perceive a solid surface or a concrete hint of God’s existence. Maybe the point is that the Torah wants us to take the proverbial leap of faith, to trust in something ethereal, because that is sometimes how life works. 

It is, after all, trust in the unseen which has held people together throughout our history. In his monumental review of human history, Sapiens, the Israeli author Yuval Noah Harari points out that basic trust between people erodes in groups larger than 150, since that is the human limit on close acquaintances, and therefore the only way to create trust between people in any larger group is by sharing a common story: 

Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins.  

Harari is an atheist; he pointedly denies the existence of God. But he speaks to the power which the very idea of God has. Or the ideas of a specific shared culture, or state, or peoplehood, or judicial system, or currency. 

Harari’s observation implies that trust in God yields trust in each other. If I know that you are an observant Jew, even if you are from far away and speak a different language and prefer ghormeh sabzi to gefilte fish, then we share a common bond. We adhere to the same traditions, we trust in the same God, and therefore I can trust you.

A fundamental challenge that we are facing today, particularly with the decline of religion, is a decline in trust. In a world that is rapidly transcending statehood, peoplehood, and shared theological principles, how will we trust one another? Will we be able to maintain nation-states, let alone synagogues, if we cannot trust the information we receive? Without a shared story, we have chaos.

The cynics among us will say that it is the bad actors in our world who are creating the trust deficit: Russian or Chinese or Iranian spies, or evil politicians or corrupt public health officials or mad scientists or soulless corporations. But consider how we live today: We are all living in our own silos. We are far removed from where our food is produced, from where our clothing is manufactured, from where our policies are made. And, of course, we are far removed from where our information is emanating, and we often lack the skill, the time, and the patience to verify it. So how can we trust anything?

There will not be a burning bush to show us the truth. 

I look out at the future, at the potentially untrustworthy landscape before us, and I can see only one thing that can help us return to a state of trust. And this may be because I am a rabbi, but we have to lean into the traditional institutions that we have, ailing though they are: religious observance. Trust in and fear of God. The democratic processes of our nation. Our sense of shared peoplehoods – the Jewish one, of course, but also the American one, and all the ways we express those relationships. Our sense of the common good. 

As much as the forces of chaos want to tear these institutions down, as much as each of those institutions are flawed in their own way, a future without them seems bleak indeed.

We need to support, and likely re-imagine, the institutions that we still have, while we still can. We need to uphold the principles we have received: of democracy, of learning and teaching our tradition, of prayer and academic inquiry and shared culture and music and all the things that build trust between people. 

It is inscribed on every dollar bill, a reminder that trust intersects with theology, commerce, and nation at every turn, the official motto of the United States of America: In God We Trust. You won’t find that on any cryptocurrency.

If we cannot live by that motto, I am not sure we can live together at all. 

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning, 1/1/2022.)