After a painful and depressing week, with a large-scale invasion of Ukraine and funeral services for Leslie Shuman Kramer, the immediate past president of our Buffalo Jewish Federation and an all-around terrific human being, it is easy to ask the question – “where is God in all of this?”
For our Biblical ancestors, the answer was easy. As described in the last verses of this week’s Torah portion Pekudei, the final portion of the Book of Exodus: “The cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.” (Exodus 40:38)
God was always present for them: either in the form of a cloud or in the form of fire. In fact, it is this image that adorns our CSS ark, a reminder that the Almighty is always present within us and among us. What a contrast these bursts of fire we see at night in the Torah are from the intensive bombing in Ukraine, and the smoke that covers the sky of Kyiv during the day.
Indeed, finding God for us is much harder. We must look in the faces of our loved ones, in the spectacular beauty of nature, and in the inner workings of our own bodies. God is there, just not in as obvious places as we see in Torah. We must search for it especially hard in war, sickness, and death, but it lies even there, something beyond description, ephemeral and elusive as the clouds overhanging the Tabernacle, and the fires that blazed in the wilderness every night of our journey toward a Promised Land.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex