Rosh HaShanah Day 1: A New Metaphor for G-d

(This sermon has been modified from its original version — it has been optimized for written form.)

Allow me to begin by saying that in this sermon I will be speaking about G-d in the theological sense, and that everything I needed to know about G-d I learned from chickens. 

This past Pesach I decided, initially much to Audrey’s chagrin, to get three laying hens, and although Audrey has come around, they are still primarily my chickens. Roni enjoys guessing how many eggs they have laid in the morning, usually “two EH-gg!” It’s fun and gives an opportunity to connect us to the source of our food, which I feel is much needed in the world. Spending some time every day with these birds, I have come to some insights I want to share with you.

Have you ever really looked at a chicken? Not just the outside, the feathers and beak, but looked into the consciousness of the chicken and tried to put yourself into its shoes or, feet.

If you haven’t, then for what it’s worth, you should go to Holmdel Park one day to sit and watch the chickens at the farm—Roni will go with you. Sit for 15 minutes at least and just watch them. Here’s what you will learn: Chickens are delightfully and disastrously funny, and insightfully yet insanely stupid. Chickens exist in a world of their own comprehension, and there is something incredible about the look in their eyes that just says, “I’m completely incapable of complex thought and is that food?… I will try to eat it.” I wonder sometimes as I tend to our hens, if that is kind of how G-d looks at me.

Throughout the ages, the Jewish people have described G-d through metaphor. Rabbi Neil Gillman z”l, the Conservative Movement’s resident theologian for most of the last three or four decades, described these metaphors as word pictures, saying,

“Our ancestors were not permitted to make pictures of God. Yet even though they had this prohibition, they painted marvelous mental images of God through language. Jews didn’t draw pictures of God, but we carved our images of God in words.”

Take these word pictures for example, G-d as Avinu – Our father. Malkeinu – Our king. Adonai ro’i – G-d as my shepherd. Adonai Ori v’ishi – G-d as my light and my rescuer…G-d as The Rock, the stronghold, the shield, Yedid Nefesh - the beloved of my soul, to mention a few. So many different ways of trying to relate to G-d and to put that relationship into words and into context have been used, and yet we often find that they fall short of the relationship we have or want now.

In fact, after the Shoah, Rabbi Richard Rubenstein wrote in (a form of) agreement with Christian theologians Paul Tillich and Gabriel Vahanian who were among proponents of “God is dead” theology. Rabbi Rubenstein wrote that now, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, G-d has died; not in the sense that G-d has actually died, as we humans have no way of knowing that, but rather the metaphors we have used for the last millennia have “died” and lost meaning. Now, it is upon us to create new metaphors for our relationship with the divine power that creates and sustains existence.

In that light, I would like to propose a metaphor that has come to have great meaning and relatability for me: G-d as chicken keeper.

When I began the process to keep my chickens, I first had to build a habitat they would thrive in. I had to draw out the boundaries within which their world would exist. Bereshit bara – in the beginning, I created their haven and their earth-lot. I function for these animals as a stand-in for G-d insomuch as I provide them with shelter, food, and water. “The Lord provides me with green pastures” the Psalmist says.

From my perspective, in order for there to be a space in which the chicken coop could stand, I had to constrict my presence—performing a tzimtzum in the phrasing of the kabbalists, as Isaac Luria taught:

“before the emanations were emanated and the creations were created, there was a simple supernal light that filled all of existence, and there was no empty space in the form of void and empty air. Rather, everything was filled with that simple infinite light, which had no beginning or end. It was simply one equal light, and it is called the ‘Ein Sof’ light. And when it arose in God’s Will to create... then God contracted in the middle point, and that light was then contracted and withdrew to the sides surrounding the central point, and then a void, air, and empty space were left.”

It is in this void that G-d created the world in which we live, according to the kabbalistic tradition. Now, in my yard, I had to constrict myself and leave a void in which to construct a place for the chickens to live. I may have access to it, and in my state of existing outside the dimensions of the coop, I have a more complete vantage point from which I can see a totality they cannot. Yet, I have also made a world for them in which I am unable to operate except within the confines (meaning the natural laws) that I have set, without completely destroying said world. Naturally, this leaves room for miracles, such as the occasional need to move the entire coop or the like.

Let us turn to more serious issues in our metaphor, and how to solve them. You might feel that the metaphor falls short in its ability to describe the nature of G-d as an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent deity. I would suggest that you are half right, because the metaphor does not set up the chicken keeper to be those things, but neither does the Torah set G-d up to be those things.

Already I’ve suggested through the kabbalistic lens that in order for the “heavenly chicken coop” to exist it must be in a place where G-d has restricted G-d’s presence. In this sense, G-d may not be omnipresent (being everywhere) all the time. G-d may not know everything before it happens, G-d may only know everything that is knowable. G-d may not be all-powerful, but is certainly the power that began creation. G-d may not be all good in the way we have been accustomed to think. These four criteria are well-known in the realm of theology and many of you have likely encountered them either in college philosophy classes, or film and television, music, or novels, but we need to establish here and now, that these criteria were established for Christian theology. They are not really native to Judaism and are not fully seated in the canon of Jewish sacred text (especially Biblical literature).

Let’s reduce each issue in turn using our metaphor: there are times when the keeper is not visible to the chicken, and there may be times when we feel we cannot see G-d in our lives. That may be because G-d is on the other side of the building, in eclipse of us, to borrow a term from Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, who suggested that there are times when G-d is seemingly absent from the world, like the sun in eclipse, that we feel abandoned and faith fails. Although the sages and mystics have taught ke-vodo maleh olam – that G-d’s glory fills the universe, nevertheless there may be times when darkness comes, and we are left to suffer under the power of our circumstance.

Likewise, from the point of view of Process Theology, popularized in the Conservative Movement by Rabbi Bradley Artson, G-d cannot be all-knowing, because that would take away our freewill. Rabbi Artson sees G-d as ever-becoming, learning in the process, a power that is shaped by its will and the choices that are made in the universe. G-d may be able to see all of the next possible choices we each have, but until we choose, the next layer of choices cannot be seen. As such, G-d is ever-present Rabbi Artson says:

“after you make the choice, the selected option becomes part of God’s consequent nature. God holds our another choice to you so that you are free to take or free to reject—and then God meets you in the next choice, with the next possibility. That means the future is radically open...”

Even when offering a clear choice to a chicken, you never know which option it will take. Sometimes what it took and fought over yesterday, it will trample in disgust today. Yet only the keeper truly knows what is being offered at that moment.

What is the potential issue with G-d’s omnipotence? To my chickens, I am all-powerful. But before I had chickens, I had no power over chickens. Does that make sense? Rabbi Artson gives a Process Theology explanation of G-d’s power:

“For God to be omnipotent implies that no power exists that is not God’s, which means, first of all, that anything that happens is God’s responsibility.”

At first, this seems to fit the biblical narrative, that G-d is oseh shalom u-voreh ra’—making peace and creating calamity, as well as the many times that we see conditional terms in the Torah, “If you keep this commandment, [reward]—if not, [punishment]…” But is that how we experience G-d today? Even to the sages and elsewhere in Tanakh there are times that G-d seems limited in capability. Rabbi Artson explains:

“Power is always relational. One has power only to the extent that one has more of it than someone else does. To the extent that one has *all* the power, one actually has no power whatsoever, because power only works when there are two parties engaged in a dynamic, one the object of the power of the other... Absolute power is self-erasing... The Bible and the Rabbis portray God as vastly, persistently powerful, but not as all-powerful.”

For me, I see omnibenevolence as a characteristic that I hope belongs to G-d. With the caveat that G-d being only desirous of good for us does not mean that only good things will happen to us. Some things may be beyond our understanding, or they may be beyond the desire of G-d. This disrupts the “everything happens for a reason” line of thought, as Maimonides addresses by identifying three types of evils: 1) those that befall people because of the nature of coming-to-be and passing-away; 2) those that people inflict upon one another; and 3) those that are inflicting upon any individual among us by his own action. Notably not among these are evils inflicted upon us by G-d. Yet, does G-d have a responsibility to us for those evils inflicted by nature? If G-d made the rules of nature, is it not G-d’s responsibility when nature imparts suffering on those living in it?

I have a friend, a farmer, had well over a hundred chickens that would sleep in a covered area he built. Last summer, there was a terrible storm that dropped a tree on the roof, and the roof collapsed, killing almost all of them. In this case, as the farmer, he prepared in a way that should have been adequate, yet nature prevailed. Perhaps G-d tried to prepare the world for us in a way that would be adequate, but in giving nature power to perform its function, also took the power out of G-d’s hands and now, nature happens on its own terms.

With these understandings in mind, I want to turn to the Covenant, or the relationship, which I will discuss in much more depth on Erev Yom Kippur, but in keeping with the metaphor and to provide a closing, I want to give a glimpse into how my chickens changed my understanding of covenantal theology as well.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, who I mentioned, proposed that “in light of the Holocaust, G-d’s covenant with Israel and Israel’s acceptance is totally voluntary.” Rabbi Gillman commented on this view,

“The power of the relationship has shifted. The Jewish people now have the power and the authority. God can no longer command; God simply waits for the Jewish people to responds in whatever way they wish.”

I have a covenant with my chickens. They lay eggs, and I keep them alive, to put it bluntly. In this way, the chickens perform their mitzvah, and I provide “rain in due season, the early rain and the later rain…” But, I admit, I have one that doesn’t seem to be laying—she is failing to uphold her end of the covenant. I haven’t punished her, holding her sins against her children to the fourth generation. I try to be compassionate to her, and offer love and mercy, hoping that she will make teshuva and turn to egg-laying. It is so validating when there is an egg, I can only imagine the satisfaction that G-d derives from seeing a mitzvah performed by a Jew. I cannot force the egg any more than G-d can force the mitzvah. They are, however, both actions that bring great joy to the one who performs and the one who receives.

This is the meaning of mitzvah for me: it is the mechanism by which we come close to G-d. The Keeper would not enter the covenant with the chicken without the promise to perform, yet it is in the coming close, living in proximity, that we come to understand a little bit about the other through the revealing of self that occurs over time in the give-and-take of relational living. We cannot truly know G-d because, like me as chicken keeper, G-d is learning with us and about us as we all go along together.

My hope for this year, is that we can come to know more of G-d, and that we never cease to surprise G-d with our choices and our curiosity; that we seek to be the power that is needed when and where we are needed; That we strive to bring more goodness into the world and to aid in reliving the suffering of others; that we find joy and bring G-d joy in mitzvot. And finally, I want you to know that even when my chickens don’t lay eggs, I care for them, and G-d loves humanity and the Jewish people, whether you are doing mitzvot or not… But it sure is a special time when we go out and find “two Eh-gg!”