Dialogue With The Divine
Dialogue With The Divine
Parshas Naso: Piercing the secular frame
In today's chaotic, noise-filled world, we frequently find ourselves adrift in a sea of banality. To experience modernity is to inhabit an age empty of God. The influential philosopher, Charles Taylor, describes Western culture's secular worldview as existing within an imminent frame. With this terminology, he intends to capture our society's historically unique way of interpreting reality. It is an outlook that excludes all mystery, all transcendence and all divinity. According to this belief, we can account for our entire existence through natural forces and justify anything that matters with human reason. For Taylor, the immanent frame is not necessarily an objective portrayal of fact but rather a secular value-driven position which shapes our attitudes, aims, and aspirations.
Our biblical forefathers inhabited a realm where God's presence was palpable, a world in which the miraculous and mundane merged. They would have experienced the psalmist's declaration that all creation sings God's praises as a given reality. Yet, we encounter it as an intangible abstraction. What should our approach be to an existence that so deceptively masks the truth?
Let's look to our parsha for enlightenment. The verse states:
Each time Moshe entered the Sanctuary to converse with God, he heard the voice addressing him from above the Arks cover . . . and it spoke to him {Bamidbar 7:89}
The Torah describes God's communication as 'the voice', and Rashi understands this to be conveying critical information:
One might mistakenly think that only Moshe heard God because he spoke quietly. Therefore the verse stresses that it was THE VOICE, as in the same voice which spoke to him at Sinai. But when the voice reached the doorway, it stopped and did not extend outside the Sanctuary.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe formulates a brilliant idea based on Rashi's textual exposition. Through the prism of his thought, I will address our original difficulty. He suggests the divine voice's performance of a shortstop before the Sanctuary doorway carries profound metaphorical weight. At Sinai, the words "I am Hashem your G‑d" cascaded across the universe, infusing all creation. As if sent by a tsunami, those words rippled into the ether, striking every being with their irresistible resonance. To doubt God's existence at that moment was inconceivable. To reject his will would have been impossible. But then silence enveloped the world once again, pressing down on its inhabitants like a thick fog. And what happened to God's voice? Rather than disappearing, it retreated. It wasn't lost but hidden. Withdrawing to linger over the Ark containing His Torah, concealed within the Sanctuary that housed it.
Critically, the Lubavitcher Rebbe points out God did not suppress His spoken word. Even today, His voice remains as loud as it was at Sinai. God is eternal, and His utterances are ever-present. Upon entering the Sanctuary, one encounters a steady, unwavering call. It is the voice of eternity, a voice that is infinite and immutable, the voice of God.
Of course, in exile, there is no Sanctuary, no physical 'dwelling place' to encounter God. So where can we turn to hear Him speak? We can carve out a path to an answer by taking this idea's symbolism a step further. We know that the Sanctuary, in general, represents prayer. God himself calls the temple a 'house of worship'. Yet when the verse describes God speaking to Moshe, it is notably from above the Ark. The Ark contained the luchos, the two tablets and is thus seen to embody Torah.
These two functions of faith, prayer and study, will prove critical to our approach. Prayer is a way to express our gratitude, hopes, and fears to God. Studying Torah allows us to understand God's will and plan for us. When we pray, we speak to God. When we learn Torah, God speaks to us. In other words, the dual obligations of prayer and study foster an ongoing dialogue between us and our creator:
For us to hear God's voice, our religious activity must serve as a framework for meaningful conversation.
Our imminent frame makes it difficult to perceive God in daily life. As Rabbi Jeremy Kagan points out in his books, we can never entirely remove ourselves from the preconceived lenses through which our time and society view reality. Even so, we can still open a window that penetrates beyond this constrained view. Breaking through the immanent frame means challenging our secular perspective, giving rise to the possibility of transcendence and transformation within this world. Prayer enables us to transcend the mundane. Torah helps us transform the ordinary, imbuing it with once-undiscovered spirituality. Through this, we can gain access to a greater truth. We can dialogue with the divine.
Good Shabbos, and Keep Pondering