Senior Sermon, October 2015

“Once upon a time.”

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

Opening lines spark our imaginations, and some are truly grand and memorable. The words encourage us to settle in for what promises to be an epic story. Opening lines are important; they set the stage for the drama yet to come.  They are the first brushstrokes as the author paints an elaborate background. They are the first etchings before the author begins introduce the plot, or sculpts complex characters. Indeed, opening lines have the ability to make or break a story before it even begins.

And perhaps, the most famous opening line in history is the one that we read this week: bereshit bara Eloheim, “In the beginning, God created.” And yet, unlike most other opening lines this one consists of three words that skip over any introduction. Unlike most other opening lines, these three words jump straight to the action. Nevertheless, these three words, which have been spoken, chanted and written time and again, serve as the preeminent opening line for the number one bestselling book in history.

Yet, the words, Bereshit Bara Eloheim, are beyond what we can imagine. The phrase is almost impossible to translate: The grammar is unclear. Is Bereshit the subject, object, or a temporal clause? When does “bereshit,” refer to? What’s more is, as opposed to etchings, which are definite and precise, here, there is no clear meaning of bara. Nor is there a clear a description of who or what is Eloheim.

Think about it: if you had to describe, draw, or sculpt, or even videotape God on the first day of creation, how would you do it? Where would you start? What exactly did God look like in process of creation?

I have become extremely familiar with these kinds of questions. At URJ Six Points SciTech Academy, where I had the privilege to work this past summer, campers learn and experience all sorts of complex material.

From robotics to geology and meteorology, from digital media, web, graphic and game design, to forensic science, campers are constantly challenged to expand their knowledge and skillsets. But when it comes to even more complicated and less tangible topics campers can have trouble articulating their thoughts.

And this is to be expected. For the most part, these campers are transitioning between what psychologist Jean Piaget called the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage of development. At this stage, their frontal cortexes are still in formation, and these children require concrete events or objects in order to problem solve. At this point in their lives, many of my campers have not yet mastered the ability to think in hypothetical terms.

At camp, this poses an interesting problem. How would we engage the campers with Jewish values and theories according to their developmental stages? How would we make essential Jewish philosophical ideas and beliefs relevant to a child who could not yet think abstractly? How would we interest the campers in lifelong Jewish inquiry while they were still curious?

We asked them “what does it look like on a video camera?”

Like a good opening line, asking about a video camera helps to bring things into focus, moving from purely abstract to concrete. When campers attempted to visualize their actions and beliefs through an imaginary camera lens, they were able to begin describing the specific behaviors, making complicated concepts much more real.

I imagine, for these kids, and many others at the same developmental stage, a phrase like bereshit bara Eloheim is not easy to see without that lens.

Perhaps they are not alone. It seems like from the moment the words “bereshit bara Eloheim” were first uttered, questions have plagued our sages. They, too, had trouble imagining what the God of creation looked like. And so, to bring God into focus, they created a theology heavily based on metaphors explaining God as the creator.

 The prophet Isaiah likens Eloheim to a sovereign, and believes that God is the creator of the heavens as a palace to rule from, and the creator of the earth as the footstool to rule over.

Genesis Rabbah compares Eloheim to an artisan, imagining the Torah as providing the blueprints of creation – bringing divine intangible thought into human tangible experience.

The Zohar understands the Eloheim in Genesis 1 to be “Binah,” understanding, the third sefirah, like a mother, she gives birth to the seven lower sefirot through the act of creation.

Each of these, and many other theological metaphors, provides a clearer image of God-the-Creator than the one provided by bereshit bara Eloheim. 

The problem is, for a metaphor to work, the abstract concept must be compared to something that we already understand.

So, while theological metaphors like sovereign, artisan and Binah might work for those of us with fully developed cortexes and cultural context, these concepts don’t necessarily resonate with the younger generation. These children have no concept of an absolute monarchy, or of what it takes to design a stable structure by hand. For sure, they cannot yet grasp the implication of a vast infinite being who is present, but not.

Many of us in this room have taken on the task of educating and connecting these developing children with Judaism and with God. But I worry that when we do so, despite our best intentions, we only confuse them more. To them, our metaphors seem out-of-date, on their way to becoming culturally extinct. To them, our metaphors only compare one abstract concept to another, forcing the image of God further out of focus. This is because we supply them with our metaphors, the ones that we understand, the ones that mean something to us. We do not give these children, our children, a metaphor or a camera lens with which they can work. During the critical periods of their social, emotional and neurobiological development, we do not provide our children with metaphors for God to which they can connect.

Lucky for us, it seems as though some of our children have taken the task of divine metaphor upon themselves.

At SciTech I had multiple conversations with campers about God… Earnest, passionate, enlightened and creative conversations about what God is, and what God’s role in the world might be. In these conversations, it was obvious that these campers needed to understand God through their own theological metaphors, metaphors that are relevant and meaningful to them.

In these conversations, the campers provided the metaphors, not our ancient traditions. And in doing so, added their own voices to a tradition that dates back all the way to the beginning.

Now, I’d like to tell you a story.

At SciTech we began each morning with a daily ritual where the camp gathers to hear a neis b’chol yom, a drash and watch a fun and educational explosion.  One morning, during his drash, a member of our faculty team posed the question “how did God create the world?” He expected to hear “God spoke it into being.” However, the answer he actually received was from a 14-year-old camper, who while sitting in the back, raised his hand. This particular kid had spent the summer learning how to make his own computer game by using a platform called “Scratch.” “I know!,” the kid said confidently. “God made the world from Scratch!”

For this child, God comes into focus by being a goal-oriented planner, dealing first with the foundational elements of creation as they combine and interact to fulfill God’s divine vision.

In other words, for this child, God is a computer programmer.

This God didn’t create the world by simply speaking mountains and rivers into existence. This God had to go through the painstaking procedure of storyboarding, strategizing, writing code, fixing bugs, beta testing and updating creation to better versions. For this God, the user-interface become our human experience, only a fraction of the whole creative-process yet an essential component of knowing if result is functional. For this God, the task of creation is a long drawn out process, with many versions, each improving on the one preceding it. God-the-Computer-Programmer creates more than we could ever see, knowing that our meaningful, positive and satisfied interaction with the end product of creation is an indispensable goal. 

Another story.

I firmly believe that a wonderful way to connect with a child is to wear a t-shirt with a kid-friendly, conversation-starting graphic. Most of the time, this takes the form of a cartoon character or superhero. And while those shirts worked at SciTech, I had one other that worked even better. This shirt has no graphics at all, only words and symbols. The words read, “And God said…And there was light.” However, instead of God saying, “let there be light,” God said James Clerk Maxwell’s set of differential equations for electromagnetism… and then there was light. Now, I only understand the very basic principles of Maxwell’s equations, and how they are a five line summary of the properties of energy, of light, electricity and magnetism. But, these kids, let me tell you, were nothing but excited to come up to me and explain, in great detail, how electromagnetism works. They told me what all the symbols stood for, and how if you change one it changes everything. They told me all about the influence Maxwell’s equations has on optics, circuits, gravity and even space-time.

But the best comment I got was when a camper came up to me and said “wouldn’t it be great if God actually did decide what all the laws of physics were. Like, if God just decided on the rules that put the universe in order. ‘Cuz then that would totally explain why physics works for everything, everywhere!”

For this child, God isn’t a sovereign, nor is God an artisan or even “Binah.” For this child, God is not the explanation of the things that science and rational though cannot. For this child, God is science.

This child looks through the camera lens and sees God as a Physicist.

This God concerns God’s-self with how elements of matter and energy interact. This God focuses on the structure and order of the universe, and uses those tools to create majestic anomalies and holy phenomena. This God is in control from the subatomic to the intergalactic. God-the-Physicist does not create by “speaking.” Instead, God-the-Physicist posits the laws of physics on which all of creation is dependent.

One last story.

Near the end of my summer, I had a conversation with a camper who had become fixated on the concept of God the Judge and Punisher. After a long and exhausting summer filled with the typical high-highs and low-lows of camp, she had begun to conceptualize every low as intentional, as a penalty for not living up to unknowable divine expectations. One day hot day, in the coolest place we could find,  we spoke about how despite struggling with the idea, her mind always came back to God the Judge, and how she felt like this was the only metaphor provided by her relatives, her teachers and the world at large.

And so, I stopped her and asked “If you could create God, one that you were happy to believe in, what would that God be like?”

At first, she was shocked. She asked me if she was even allowed to think about creating God – worried that the question was maybe too audacious to be appropriate at a Jewish summer camp. Eventually though, this sweet, precocious twelve-year-old began to brainstorm her transcendent God. She told me; “I want a God who’s like me, who cares and sees and interacts.” She told me that she wants a God that changes based on experience, a God who won’t make the same mistake twice and continues God’s own best practices, a God who becomes more intelligent, more complex, and more mature over time. When asked to give her God a metaphor she said, “I want a God who’s a student.”

For this child, God and theology are understandable and relatable only because they go through the same process as her. She is able to understand God-the-Student, just like God-the-Student is able to understand her. This child is able to understand herself as being b’tzelem Eloheim, because God is the divine reflection of her human experience in which child and God emote, learn and grow in harmony. As she grows, so does God. As God grows, so does she.

These three children are just a small example of the rich and complex theologies of which our younger generation is capable. They are already thinking about God, trying to figure out how the world works and the meaning of their own existence. But, too often, our children are left to ponder life’s biggest questions alone. Our children have become accustomed to hearing us repeat the same metaphors of an un-relatable God, and as such have been forced to create their own metaphor in isolation. Right now, our children, the next developing generation of passionate Jews, is alone and disconnected. And we are not doing enough to help them.

Yet, if we were to look closely the metaphors of our sages and the metaphors of our children are not so far apart. For example, Sefer Yetzira, one of the earliest cosmological Jewish texts, suggests that God created the world with three books: with sefer, with sefar, and with sippur, with text, with number, and with communication. Together these three books represent the totality of the process that began with bereshit bara Eloheim. And without even knowing it, my three campers came up with the same concept: God-the-Computer-Programmer creates the world with the sefer of code; God-the-Physicist creates the world with the sefar of theoretical equations; and God-the-Student creates the world with the sippur of experience and relationship.

Both our traditional metaphors and our children’s new metaphors are trying to understand the same God. The difference lays in the videographer.

I believe that all of us are able to read the words “bereshit bara Eloheim” and picture the divine component of our earliest beginnings. There is no difference of ability between the young reader and the old one, the educated and the unexperienced. Each of us is equally capable of finding an authentic connection to God, if only we go back to the beginning.

But we cannot expect our children to look through the same lens as we do.

For millennia, Judaism has understood that the world is perpetually changing, and in order to survive Judaism has changed with it. So we must allow those who are most in tune with the changes of modernity to theorize and hypothesize about Judaism’s role in it. We must make space for them to experiment with new models of ritual and community. And we must make space for them to experiment with new metaphors for God.

If not, we risk them being so alienated by our metaphors, so turned off by our camera lenses, that they reject the need for a camera all together. If we don’t work with our children’s theological metaphors now, our children will begin to believe that they can exist without God, without metaphor, and that they have no role in advancing the Jewish concept of God at all. Their lack of engagement now threatens their Jewish enthusiasm for the rest of their lives.

But, if we can manage to accompany our children on their exploration of God and creation, we can also encourage their curiosity of their own Jewish selves. We can offer our own experiences, our own knowledge and wisdom as guideposts along the way, but when our children stray from the traditional paths to God, we must stay with them, we must validate their perspective, and we must learn from their divine possibilities that we cannot yet imagine.

If you read the commentators you know that no one really knows the meaning of “bereshit bara Eloheim.” The opening line is inscrutable. All we know is that those three words are the beginning of everything – the beginning of creation, the beginning of our Jewish story, and the beginning of divine possibility.

We must help our children to create their own theological metaphors, allow them to explore every aspect of divine possibility, and expand the limits of God.

We must have meaningful theological conversations with our children, and encourage them to add their own perspectives to the progress of the Jewish reality.

We must have personal theological conversations with our children, and help them form their own meaningful relationship with God in a constantly changing world.

And then, and only then, we will all truly begin to see the unfolding of bereshit bara Eloheim.