If you want to know
just how far out of touch, measured by years, modern Rabbis are from the Jewish
people, then look no further than the concept of Gd, always, always, always
compared to a king. Of course it’s in
the liturgy, of course it is in the whispered response to the Shema. And if you believe, as I do, that this
liturgy is divinely inspired, then there is one obvious reason that the divine
inspired this metaphor—because people could relate to it. There was certainly a time in human history
where those who ruled other people were thought to possess intelligence and
some kind of supernatural favor that allowed them to command armies and wealth
almost, but not completely, beyond the conception of regular folks. And for this reason kings inspired and
natural respect and even awe. And all of
this ended in 1215 C.E. at the signing of the Magna Carta. From that moment on, kings and rulers,
although powerful, were also, not to put too fine a point on it, assholes. The last king of North
America was tossed out in a revolution—because King George III was
a royal asshole.

And yet year after year, book after book on Jewish thought,
the Rabbis trot out the king metaphor—using parables to illustrate halachic
principles revolving around the proper etiquette one should use around a
king. As if any congregant or
unaffiliated Jew, even an Orthodox Jew, would really care how to behave in
front of the British Royals. The most
mistreated person in the world, defining mistreatment as gossip and innuendo,
is always the President of the United
States.
Down a one mile stretch of street where I live there are four
synagogues, because the people living on this one mile stretch get fed up with
one Rabbi after another and begin a completely new shul. Those with authority are now the most reviled
people in society.

But come Rosh Hashanah, it’s kingtime, and not even good
king time. Gd is a bad king, Gd holds our life in his hands, and for just the tiniest thing you did wrong, your life
can be snuffed in the most violent ways imaginable. And the Rabbis expect us to, what, come to
love Gd as a result of this completely inept teaching. What kind of teacher is absolutely clueless
about the thoughts and feelings of the student?
What kind of teacher does not adjust the curriculum for 793 years?

Clearly, that teacher, or those teachers are very close to
lacking all bit of wisdom—and therein lays the problem. The Rabbis are not capable of teaching Gd as
a wise king, a king that we can love, a king less concerned with his own power
and exercising it than with the welfare of the people that—right here—that he
rules over or looks after? That’s the
question, does Gd rule over us or look after us? It’s possible to answer both, but that
wouldn’t be the strongest answer. We don’t
do ‘rule over’ anymore. It connotes
abuse. It doesn’t inspire awe or fear
but disdain and suspicion. To choose any
bit of ‘rule over’ fans those negative feelings.

But wisdom is rare, so rare that is has to be explained
carefully, taught with delicacy—not hammered into our minds. And this is where the Jewish people, led by
the Rabbis, have our fissure with Gd. If
you study the Torah looking for wisdom and talk with someone studying the Torah
to affirm Gd’s absolute power, I mean sit at the same table, you each open up
the same translation of the Chumash, you each turn to the same page, you each
read the same passage, in the course of this discussion you will be convinced
the ‘power’ reader has another text sitting before his or her eyes. We are reading the same words that Moses gave
us, but we aren’t even close to the same meaning.

It doesn’t require much.
A Rabbi I studied with taught that the Torah only contains knowledge
that humans cannot discover without Gd’s guidance. If you can figure it out, it won’t be in the
Torah. And that means that all knowledge is in play when studying
and interpreting the Torah. Especially
scientific knowledge, which falls into the category of things we can figure
out. But modern, or I should say contemporary
Rabbis rule out science by fiat.

Let’s apply this and see what happens—applying science where
the Rabbis won’t. Let’s go to most
fearsome moment in the Torah, when Moses strikes the rock rather than speaking
to the rock and is punished with death.
How do the Rabbis interpret this?
To them it illustrates this lesson—that Gd is most strict with those who
have attained the most, thereby of course, encouraging people to delve into the
Torah with all of their hearts knowing a fine punishment awaits them for their
efforts. Just overflows with wisdom,
don’t it?

Now let’s apply simple science to this issue. We know, from the Torah, of the delicacy of
cavanah. We know from the Midrash that
everything this water touched was healed.
It touched the desert, and there was lush greenery for animals, we know
that the people did not get sick, because drinking the water caused immediate
healing before we could even feel that something was wrong. We know that before Tisha B’Av, no one was
going to die. This is very fine water
indeed. Now let’s add the science. We know that water evaporates, we know that
it forms clouds, we know that clouds rain, and now think what the earth would
be like if this water, for thousands of years, was added to the normal water
cycle of this planet. Imagine life with
this water—if Moses could have taught us all how to bring this water by
speaking. The consequences of a planet without this water have been horrific, and had Moses lived he would have suffered terribly watching this day by day. What you see is not a harsh Gd
but a merciful and loving Gd. What you
get is a desire from the deepest and most pure cavanah to study the Torah. There is so much more that one can glean from
this, simply by adding basic observations.

One more, can’t help myself.
Water from the rock—miracle?
That’s what the Rabbis teach, it was a miracle, Gd altered the laws of
nature to produce water from a rock—ignoring what is so obvious, that the earth
itself is a rock that produces water.

To me this teaches a world created on the principle of
fractal geometry, a nature of repeating patterns, even down to the microscopic
level. Which is why I wasn’t surprised
when I showed my neighbor at the time, a molecular biologist who wasn’t Jewish,
a picture of a man wearing tefillin. She
gasped a light gasp looking at the shel yad—that is exactly how our DNA is
wound into the nucleus of a cell, she said.
Figured. Gd—very smart, very
wise.