Guest Blog Post: God is Irrelevant

It never fails.

I’m teaching a Torah class or another Jewish studies class, and, because it seems appropriate, I bring God into the conversation, seeking a response from my students, an expression of belief, a question, anything. Instead, inevitably, heads begin turning downward or upward, or sideways, and eyes go dull. Silence fills the Zoom universe (lately the environment of necessity). Once I even brought up the subject of the Master of the Universe in an informal ma’ariv service and received the same silent treatment. When I queried my fellow davveners’ understanding of the Eternal, one member of the group said that he believed that God was a personal matter, one he preferred not to speak about with others.

Occasionally, as happened recently when I raised the issue on a Shabbat Torah study class, one of my congregants delivered a familiar lecture to the effect that God has become irrelevant. One can be an ethical person, my congregant said, without recourse to God, so of what value is God?  Noting that he is a regular attendee at my Torah class, he added that he comes to Torah study for the opportunity to study Bible as literature not for “religious” reasons.

Now, don’t misunderstand. I’m delighted that he comes.

But I’m unhappy that he thinks so little about God that he can’t see beyond what he perceives are the similarities of basic liberal ethics and what Jewish ethics teaches (which, by the way isn’t true). More, far more, the meaning of God, the topic and the actual Being, extends well beyond the ethical, important as the Jewish tradition understands the ethical to be.

That same congregant reminded me how during my Kol Nidre sermon, when I asserted God’s existence (something I thought appropriate on Kol Nidre), I confessed to a certain theological ambiguity. I read Martin Buber, I said in that sermon, and I find his theology helpful. But then I read Mordecai Kaplan, whose theology is at odds with Buber, and I find him helpful, too. The same with Soloveitchik (who’s Orthodox). This shows, my congregant said, how if I cannot settle on one view theology is irrelevant even to me.

To an extent, my interlocutor has a point. Theology is incredibly varied. This does not render theology irrelevant, just as the variety, say, of theories of democracy does not make thinking about democracy irrelevant. I will grant that the wrestling match that seeks an understanding of God constitutes a pursuit of uncertainties. This, however, does not render theology useless, and it surely does not render God irrelevant.

All of those faces looking away from me when I bring God into the discussion is not, I think, a matter of theology fatigue. It is, rather, a long developing modern Jewish agnosticism that I frequently encounter. Jews have long become uncomfortable thinking and speaking of God, and we have long become comfortable packing the Master of the Universe in a box and placed the box in the rear of our intellectual closets. And along with this loss comes a loss in the authority granted to the Torah, which is, after all, the Jews’ primary connection with God. We’ve lost a great deal to our agnosticism.

I’ve long held that the struggle to find God is a worthy effort, perhaps even the worthiest of efforts, even if that effort leads the mind to fluctuate among the many models of the Divine that Jewish thinkers have crafted. Entering into that struggle takes an a priori commitment to enter into the struggle. I know that sounds circular, and perhaps it is. Stepping into the search for God requires an openness, and openness requires leaving agnosticism behind, at least for a while. Opening that door requires a powerful mental effort.

I do not here intend to construct an argument as to why I think a world in which we seek the Divine is a richer and more meaningful world than a world absent of the divine. That’s perhaps for another time. Here I wish only to assert what’s been my companion now for a shocking number of decades: An assumption that God exists, and that reaching out to this Being is an ultimately worthwhile endeavor. Would that I could convince my Shabbat morning interlocutor of the importance of this task.

Rabbi Phil Cohen

Rabbi Phil Cohen is likely completing his life as an interim rabbi this year , serving Temple Beth El in Riverside, CA. He is busy at work on the sequel to his award-winning novel, Nick Bones Underground, and beginning work on a Doctor of Hebrew Letters in the area of Judaism and bioethics. In November 2023, Rabbi Cohen launched a podcast series, The Making Aliyah Podcast, featuring conversations with people who have decided to make Israel their permanent home.