Mitzvah #1 - Believing in God.

Easy.

Not.

Where does this idea even come from? The Torah doesn’t begin, “I am God believe in me!” Interesting when you think about it.

Rabbi Chavel quotes (Ex. XX, 2) “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” Really? He waits until the second book before a clear declaration like that? (Do I really have to read back through Genesis, so see if he’s said it sooner. Hlp anyone?) And sure, here God identifies himself in association with that great miracle we’re supposed to be indebted to him for the rest of our collective lives, but even there he doesn’t say ‘believe in me’. He’s just saying who he is as defined by his deeds…of generosity to us. Not I am God, creator of all. Just the guy who delivered us from slavery.

But still, do I believe even that? Do I believe in that God?

First of all, I’ve had a problem with the word God lately. It’s been too wrapped up in images of a finite character. Supreme Being or Supreme Cause as Chavel’s book uses doesn’t fly with me either and while I know there are a few dozen names for God, none I’ve heard work for me. So I’m gonna go with The Divine.

Do I believe in The Divine? Uh. Yeah, I guess. I believe there’s stuff in the world we can’t see or ever fully fathom. Do I believe it’s the beginning of everything? Could be. Sure, why not? Something was the beginning of everything. Does it know my heart and every thought? Well, then you start getting into some kind of religious police that I have trouble with. But let’s get back to the book.

Now Rabbi Chavel tells me “without a firm conviction and clear sense of His All-transcendent Reality…understanding of the Torah and observance of its Commandments become utter impossibilities.”

Great. FIRM conviction? Nope. CLEAR sense? Definitely not. But let’s look at a moment who’s telling me this. Who is this Chavel? And what are some of his basica assumptions?

First, I take objection with the Rabbi Chavel’s use of “HIS” as a way to describe God. That puts a dick on an idea and that’s just not cool. That gendered vision of The Divine is not only ass backwards, as women are the life givers in our experience, but it boxes God in, leaving him far from transcendent. He can’t even supercede gender. At least in Christian Science (you’ll get getting many more references to this, so just prepare), Mrs. Eddy (founder and discoverer of CS) makes the radical step of rewriting the most basic and revered Christian prayer the “Our Father” calling the Divine “Our Mother-Father.” Pretty ballsy for a chick to make that move in the 1880s – decades before Suffrage, much less anything like the equality we’re still striving for a century later. So I’d say the author has a flawed view of God. If that’s Rabbi Chavel’s CLEAR sense of God, then he isn’t even seeing God accurately at all. He’s indulging in idolatry by throwing a penis on The Big Guy and offering up a sliced chicken neck. And if his flawed interpretation is so rooted that he doesn’t even notice it, how am I going to listen to anything he says?

Hell of a beginning rabbi.