It's arguable that within mainstream Judaism, direct experience of God isn't the point -- and it certainly isn't a prerequisite for Jewish practice. We do what we do because it is the Jewish path. Whether or not we feel confident that actual access to God is the endpoint, we follow the mitzvot anyway. Belief arises through action. If we waited until we felt called to act Jewishly, we might never get there -- but if we act Jewishly even absent that "call," we can bring the call into being for ourselves.

For many Jews today, though, that answer is dissatisfying -- and can serve as a distancing factor that keeps us from engagement with the tradition in the first place. 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.

Of course, relationship with God -- or knowledge of God, to use the terminology of this week's portion -- is a self-perpetuating phenomenon. If I understand myself to be in continual, evolving relationship with the Source of Being, everything I experience comes through that lens. But if I find God to be distant and unknowable, that's a self-perpetuating phenomenon, too.

That sense of distance may have something to do with expectations. We feel we "should" encounter God in our texts and our liturgy: a loaded notion, because if by chance we don't, it's easy to feel that we are somehow deficient or that God isn't available to us...which can be especially stressful, even painful, as we approach the Days of Awe, a season during which we expect (and intend) to be especially connected with our Source.

One solution is to let go of expectations, and connect with God in whatever way opens itself to us. Maybe that means prayer, offering the words of one's heart to whatever one understands God to mean. Maybe that means encountering the splendor of the natural world, waterfalls and mountains and rolling hills. Maybe that means finding holiness in relationship with a beloved friend, and extrapolating from that sanctified relationship a sense that all relationships can be sanctified.

And then we can live up to Moses' exhortation. Instead of harnessing ourselves to other people's priorities, other people's understandings of who and what is worthy of worship, we can live out our covenant with God from a place that's authentic, rooted, and unshakable. May it be so!