By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin
PIKESVILLE, Maryland — In this week’s weekly biblical portion, we read a surprising fact.
Virtually all people are convinced they know something about God. The truth is we know nothing. What we think we know is nothing more than wishful thinking. If so, what should we do?
In Exodus 33:18-23, Moses asked God to tell him what God is. Moses requests God: “Please show me your glory,” meaning, “Show me what you are.” God replies that He will make the divine goodness pass before Moses. But He tells Moses that he cannot see God’s face. Moses should stand behind a rock. Then, only after God passes, “You will see my back, but my face will not be seen.”
Many ancient Jewish sages, including Maimonides, explained that God is telling Moses that because human intelligence is limited, humans cannot understand what God is. However, they can understand much about God by seeing and understanding what God has done, seeing God’s “back.” They see what God created. They learn about God by seeing and understanding what exists on earth and in heaven, the laws of nature.
After having this vision and knowing that Judaism requires two witnesses to attest to something, Moses reflected on this idea by telling us in Exodus 32:1 that he called as witnesses Heaven and Earth to reveal God. The prophet Isaiah did so also in 1:2.
Once we understand that the only way to know God is to know the world and how it functions, we realize that the fundamental teaching of the Torah, what God wants us to do, is to study the sciences. Many scholars have recognized this. In his 2011 book, Maimonides the Rationalist, the scholar Herbert A. Davidson states this and adds we should show our love of God by seeking scientific knowledge.
In his book Apology, the Greek philosopher Plato’s account of Socrates’ trial and death in 399 BCE, Chaerophon, a friend of Socrates, traveled to the Oracle at Delphi and asked whether anyone was wiser than Socrates. The Oracle replied, “No man was wiser.” Socrates explained he was the wisest because he knew he knew nothing with absolute certainty. Others thought they possessed knowledge they did not have. They were unjustifiably confident in their beliefs. Socrates was always skeptical.
Knowledge of the sciences helps us be all we can be and prompts us to help all God created.
Many rabbis accepted the idea that we cannot know anything about God. But they said there was no problem in thinking God is all-powerful, knows everything, lives forever, answers prayers, and similar ideas, even though we do not know this as a fact because it does us no harm to think it and makes us feel good.
But what is essential is not beliefs, but to act, to improve ourselves and all God created and formed. Our first step to do so is the study of the sciences, the “back” of God, the two witnesses God set before us.
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Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin is a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army chaplain corps and the author of more than 50 books.