Faith

Take your words to God even amid challenges

RABBI IRWIN WIENER

Columnist

We certainly live in very distressing times. There is domestic violence, international terror that has taken untold lives for no reason. Our economic uncertainties vex us to shifts in attitudes that move as fast as our doubts.

Everywhere we turn the news is depressing. It is now so numbing that we are amazed if a day passes that does not contain some horror.

Imagine, if you will, some 4,000 years ago, a simple shepherd, Abraham, content with all that life has to offer, receives a message. The message: Take your son Isaac to Mount Moriah, there you will sacrifice him to God. No debate, no doubt, just blind obedience. Can anyone imagine receiving such a call, and answering it?

The angel may have saved Isaac, but the doubt of such a request lingers. That we would even consider such a test of faith boggles the mind.

Elie Wiesel wrote a cantata involving this story in which he laments:

“Do you God recall the sacrifice requested over there on Mount Moriah?

Among all the men on earth it was me you claimed.

In the Holocaust you made me climb, then descend Mount Moriah crushed and silent.

I did not know, my Lord, I did not know I was to see my children, old and young, arrive in the flames of hate. Alas, there was no rescuing angel.”

Yet, Wiesel survived this horrendous ordeal to become an author, a husband, a father, and most of all a humanitarian.

We look around us and see illness and despair. We visit tragedies and look for consolation. Think about all the horrors experienced by so many, perpetrated by a few, and then ask, “for what, O Lord, for what?”

When we measure our discomfort with life to the forgotten, perhaps we can determine that life, with all its difficulties, is not so bad. We may endure pain for a moment, but lifelessness seems forever.

Is it a coincidence, or even ironic, that the Israelite’s Temple was built on Mount Moriah? To me it is a lesson in survival. To me it is a lesson in fortitude. To me it is a symbol of faith. On the very spot where history almost died, a new chapter in the people’s journey began.

To me it is also a clear message that our humanity’s search for understanding took a new route as we learn from the Prophet Hosea, “Take your words to God.”

Everyone needs to take their words, whether they are words of praise, or of condemnation, to God. We are given, if you will, a permission slip by tradition to yell, scream and bargain with the Divine.

Perhaps we even cry out, as did Elie Wiesel, “You can live with God, you can live against God, but you cannot live without God.”

Words are the essential ingredient in communicating. And these words which contain all the thoughts of whatever we are thinking remind us that even as we question, and utter words of disgust and despair, we also announce that it is God’s will.

The challenges we face in life contain all these doubts and fears, but they also contain the ingredients of hope and faith. We question, we doubt, we even argue-at times; we have become faithless, but here we are. Are we wondering if all that we know and yet to learn has any meaning?

The challenges we face include speaking out when we witness injustice, or the indiscriminate annihilation of innocent people for no other reason than the color of their skin, or challenge the right to worship a God; fight tyranny and hatred.

All of us cannot be legions in the fight for survival, but we can, and must support the institutions designed to lead the fight and show the way. That is how we participate. We are a different kind of soldier – a soldier who proudly declares that life is worth living, and we are part of the response available to us to ensure continuation.

Above all, the challenges we face each and every day involve the understanding that even though we feel helpless, at times, we still speak out in the hope that someone will hear, will listen. There will be victories, and there will be defeats, but even when we lose, we win because we can say the words, and perform the deeds that will change the world.

Rabbi Irwin Wiener, D.D., is spiritual leader of the Sun Lakes Jewish Congregation.

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