Knowing G‑d
Shmuel Klatzkin
You were shown so as to know that the L-rd is G‑d, none else. (Deut. 4:35)
Taste and see that the L-rd is good. (Psalms 34:9)
Suppose I wanted to convince you that my favorite ball team was going to win the pennant. If baseball is not a particularly important part of your life, you might put on your most tolerant smile and agree with me. If on the other hand you were somewhat knowledgeable about baseball, you might test me a bit, and ask, say, about the weak pitching staff, or the indifferent health of the team’s best hitter. And if you were a passionate fan of another team, you might engage me in a long argument over the matter, in which your agreement would not be cheaply won.
Consider now that instead of desiring to convince you of the merits of my ball team, I were to try to convince you to accept the notion that there exists a G‑d who creates and governs the universe and who seeks to be known by us and to communicate to us His will. The purely theoretical question of the existence of a deity might not excite you one way or another. But when I propose that G‑d not only exists but communicates and bids us to act in certain specific ways and not others – this is harder to remain indifferent about.
More than likely, in the face of such a proposition, you would react more like the passionate fan than the person uncaring about baseball. You would require more than “Believe me.” You would want to be convinced yourself.
When the Torah describes the crucial moment of Mt. Sinai, when the People of Israel entered into the covenant with G‑d, it paints the picture of an overwhelmingly vivid experience that engraved itself into the mind. They were not exhorted to believe in something that only others had access to. It was on the basis of personal knowledge that Moses exhorted each Jew: You were there - you saw - you heard.
While the Torah asserts that there will not be another giving of the Torah, the necessity to receive the Torah ourselves still remains. In its essence, this is not a process of forcing ourselves to accept incredible things, or of taking other peoples’ word. Only through a process of coming to know will we be able to establish the credibility of authorities and doctrines. We will gladly accept the authority of G‑d and join our will to His—but I must know that it is truly G‑d that I serve. To serve another thing than G‑d is the gravest of sins – idolatry. Nothing less than sure knowledge will do.
Not many are used to speaking about knowing G‑d nowadays. Religion is equated with the personal, not the public. Its truths are assumed to be so relative to situation and personality as to be considered merely subjective in nature. Certainly, the larger society of which most of us are a part does not consider religious truth to be publicly available in the way that scientific truths are assumed to be.
It is our contention that this as an assumption only, and one that will be deeply challenged by objective examination. And the canons of that observation will be shared with the broad human search for knowledge that we call ‘science’ in its most universal sense.
As in any science, the establishment of methodology is crucial. What investigations are relevant? What experiments will shed light? This is no small consideration when we are dealing with the proposition of an incorporeal G‑d, who by definition is not subject to apprehension by our normal methods of apprehension and measurement. We must be searching ultimately for a way of knowing that is adequate to the problem we face. And that will involve us in a journey of self-discovery—as the pursuit of the truth invariably does. We may very easily find ourselves as both the conductor and the subject of our own experiments.
But we do not expect you to accept this simply because we have asserted it. Test and try these ideas, and join in the conversation.
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