This week's portion: the God we know
August 18, 2006
In this week's Torah portion, Re'eh, Moses warns the Israelites against giving in to the temptation to worship "other gods whom you have not experienced" (elohim acherim asher lo-y'datam.) That phrase leapt out at me, and sparked this week's d'var Torah over at Radical Torah.
Here's a taste:
Our culture privileges direct experience; it makes sense that in this area of our lives, we feel a particular longing for something we can access in our hearts. We want God to be at the center of our practice. We want our practice of mitzvot to follow from a preexisting closeness to God, not the other way around. We want, as this week’s Torah portion suggests, to be in relationship with a God Who we already know.
Read the whole thing here:The God we know.