For many Jews today, Judaism is a culture, a way of connecting with our history and our people. On the other hand, for many rigorously observant Jews, Judaism is a system of rote practices that are kept simply out of habit. In other words, for many Jews today, Judaism is so many things other than what it should really be – a spiritual journey, a way of life that connects us with the infinite God.
As Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzatto reminds us in Mesilas Yesharim, our tradition teaches that the Torah is the way to connect with God. The word “Torah” is often translated as Law but it really means the Teaching or the Way. By walking along the Way we achieve deveikus,which literally means sticking or cleaving to God. This is why it is so important to keep the mitzvos, which are the details of the Way. The word mitzvah is similar to the Aramaic word tzvaas, which means join or attach. By performing a mitzvah, we connect with God in a specific way. And, by collectively keeping the Torah, we as a people bond with God.
Now, for those who believe in it, nothing can be more meaningful than bonding or connecting with the infinite God. But for some it may be difficult to imagine bonding or connecting with an infinite and invisible entity. The skeptic inside of us wonders… how can we really bond with the infinite God?
Indeed, if we think of God as an entity separate from ourselves, as an invisible Being that stands apart from the universe, then perhaps it is difficult to envision ourselves as having a bond with God. So here’s a suggestion.
Many great spiritual masters, including Rav Schneur Zalman of Liadi and Reb Chaim of Volozhin, teach that ultimately God is Reality or Being itself. After all, the most sacred and proper name of God is the Tetragrammaton or Yud, Kei, Vov, Kei, which is based on the Hebrew root of the word for Being. Viewed in this way, everything that exists, from a tiny grain of sand to a huge blazing star, reflects or expresses God. If God is Being itself, then God’s “attributes” are the ways in which Being is expressed in the world.
For example, when we speak of God’s mind we are talking about the orderliness and structure in the universe. When we speak of God’s benevolence we are talking about the fact that there are so many good things we experience in the world – the warmth of the sun, the nourishment of food we eat, the air we breathe, the millions and millions of tiny events that must occur in order for even just one person to live, let alone the human race or the myriad species of our planet. Finally, when we speak of God’s providence we are talking about our faith – and it is a reasonable faith, based on our collective experience – that human history is not arbitrary or haphazard; there is a Guiding Hand, a positive destiny toward which Jewish history and human history are headed: a world of universal justice and peace for all humankind, a world in which ultimately all mankind recognizes that the entire universe is an expression of Being Itself.
From this perspective, the Torah is Derech Hashem. In other words, the Torah is an expression of the Way that we must follow in order to live a divine-like life and to bond in the highest way possible with God or Being Itself. When we contemplate the orderliness or structure of the world, we are connecting our mind with God’s mind. When we perform acts of benevolence, we participate in the divine benevolence that fills the earth. When we work for justice and peace, we are partners in divine providence. In general, when we keep the mitzvos, we are partners in God’s Way. And when we study Torah, we are at that very moment participating in God’s expression of His Way.