And He said, “You will not be able to see My face, for man shall not see Me and live.”
Shemot 33:20
Faith is deeper than knowledge. While scientific data is absorbed only in the brain, faith permeates all parts of the human personality. Nothing is untouched, all spiritual limbs quiver, and everything is transformed. It is thus more difficult to acquire faith than knowledge, and faith has a more radical effect on the human being.
Faith is difficult, especially in times of misery. Huge effort is required to maintain it, apply it and cherish it. “To relate your Kindness in the morning and Your faith in the nights”[1] can be understood in the following way. If one invests in one’s faith by singing God’s praises during times of prosperity and good health, then, in the loneliness of difficult and sorrowful times, one may be able to continue believing in God’s faithfulness even when there is little evidence of such Divine allegiance.
One cannot inherit religiosity. One needs to discover it on one’s own. And this means struggle and spiritual warfare. It must be accompanied with some kind of a personal religious-spiritual crisis, doubt, and rebellion, perhaps even with psychological despair. If you have not been in the abyss, you cannot get to the peak of the mountain.
The struggle with religious ambiguity
In fact, this kind of religious struggle pervades the entire Torah. All the great biblical figures lived in constant ambiguity about God and about what He wants from us. Avraham’s great doubts concerning the reliability of God in connection with His request to sacrifice his son Yitzchak was a most traumatic experience. It was the pinnacle of religious uncertainty.
In the desert, the Israelites asked whether God was among them. This came close to pantheism or even atheism. Nadav and Avihu’s unauthorized offering of a “strange fire” in the Mishkan came from a feeling of ambiguity about whether the only way to serve God was by following the strict demands of halakhah as given by God, or whether one could explore new avenues to divine service.
On one occasion, the Israelites were not sure whether the Torah was indeed the word of God. Korach challenged this very belief and declared that it was not from heaven and that Moshe and Aaron were not prophets. This must have caused a major crisis of faith among the Israelites.
The Torah gives evidence to a most difficult religious journey by the Israelites, full of doubt, struggle, and trauma. Surely some of these doubts were more existential than intellectual, but the latter cannot be disregarded.
Once we realize that uncertainty was part of the biblical personality, we will have a much better grasp of the text and what Judaism is actually claiming. But this is only possible when we find ourselves challenged by those very existential doubts.
Seeing God’s back
Moshe’s request that God reveal Himself is the climax of intense religious struggle. Moshe asked of God, “Please show me Your glory.”[2] He was eager to understand God’s presence, as well as His way of dealing with the world and with human beings. God responded, “You will see My back, but My face will not be seen.”[3]
Indeed, this metaphor has great meaning. In our world everything looks topsy-turvy, confusing and contrary to what reason dictates. The world stands with its back to reason. It’s not that Moshe simply “saw” God’s back and not His front; it’s that he saw the front from the perspective of the back. It was as if he was looking at an X ray whereby what is last is really first and what is in the front is really in the back.
Had he been able to see the front as the front and the back as the back, everything would have made sense. He would have realized that time is “broken eternity”, that the real clock ticks to infinity. We are only able to see its flipside, like the letters on an ink stamp, which is a mirror image. Had Moshe indeed seen the final imprint, he would have immediately departed from this world, since humans, being bound by the limitations of time, can never grasp this face-to-face encounter and survive.
To die is to be permitted to see the full story, in its infinity. For some, this takes a lifetime to realize; for others, it is altogether beyond their grasp. And then there are those individuals who, however young, seize it at a moment’s notice and are therefore asked to come Home.
Notes
[1] Tehillim 92:3.
[2] Shemot 33:18.
[3] Ibid. 33:23.
Questions to Ponder from the DCA Think Tank
- Rabbi Cardozo says that scientific knowledge is absorbed only in the brain. Have you ever been transformed by scientific study? Might reading The Biology of the Cell be a deeply religious and inspiring experience?
- Rabbi Cardozo says that it is more difficult to acquire faith than knowledge. Does this depend on whether one beginswith faith or with knowledge? Some people seem to acquire faith quite easily and unshakably. Certainly, an atheist scholar may have difficulty in acquiring faith. Would a traditionally believing Jew have equal difficulty in gaining certain kinds of knowledge?
- Rabbi Cardozo says that had Moshe “been able to see the front as the front and the back as the back, everything would have made sense.” This is a faith-based statement based on no possible knowledge. Was this faith of Rabbi Cardozo’s easier or harder to acquire than the knowledge that would confirm or deny it? Does knowledge endanger faith, enhance it, neither, or both?
- A simple explanation for why things do not make sense is that they do not make sense. Is it more praiseworthy to believe a more complicated explanation, in which things actually make sense in a way verifiable only after we die? Does God have to make sense? Can we believe in a God who does not make sense?
- Rabbi Cardozo appears to base his belief that to die is to be permitted to see the whole story on the verse fragment, “ … humans shall not see me and live.” Do you think that this verse is a guarantee that when we die, we will see the whole story?
- Rabbi Cardozo implies that at least some people who die young do so because they have understood that God cannot be fully grasped until one dies, or because they have indeed understood God. Where (and how easily) did Rabbi Cardozo come by this faith? This is an unverifiable claim. That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong, but does one have an obligation to try to believe it? Is one meritorious for believing or trying to believe it?
