Your Choice to Accept the Facts - Va’etchanan 5785

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I was approached by an author to give him my “elevator pitch” to prove there is a G-d.  An elevator pitch is a short 30 second hard-hitting sales pitch you could give an executive that you happen to meet in an elevator.  I told him that I can’t prove to you that there is a G-d, but you can prove it to yourself.  Faith in G-d is a choice we make.  We can have incontrovertible evidence and still deny it, because Hashem Himself created us with free choice and a voice inside us that questions.


I recently heard a story about two people arguing about what a creature on top of the roof was, a bird or a cat.  As they were getting into a heated argument, a passerby suggested a simple way to settle the question.  He suggested they throw a stone onto the roof and see what happens.  If the creature runs away, it’s a cat, and if it flies away it is a bird.  What a brilliant idea!  So they threw a stone onto the roof, and the thing flew away.  “See,” said the bird person triumphantly, “it’s a bird.”  The other one said with astonishment: “if I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would never believe that a cat could fly!”


In the Parsha of Va’etchanan that we read this week, there is a remarkable statement (Devarim 4:32-33):”You need only inquire regarding the early days that preceded you—since the day that G-d created humanity on the earth—and from one end of heaven to the other, whether there was ever anything like this great phenomenon, or was the likes of it ever heard: Did a people ever hear G-d’s voice speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and remain alive?  This is referring to the great revelation at Sinai, when Hashem Himself spoke to the entire Jewish nation.  


On the verse (Devarim 4:4): “G-d spoke with you at the mountain face to face out of the midst of the fire,” Rashi comments: “Face to face. Rabbi Berachyah said: This is what Moses said: “Do not say that I am misleading you with unsubstantiated claims, as a middleman acts between a seller and a buyer, for here the seller himself is speaking to you!”  The Jewish claim is that Hashem Himself spoke to every single one of us, man, woman and child.  Note the words in the first verses I quoted: “or was the likes of it ever heard.”  


There is no other religion that makes the claim that they started with a revelation from Hashem to every single person.  They are all based on visions by a prophet or a few people, who then told the people about their prophecy.  The reason that we are able to make that claim is because it actually happened.  I can convince you that I was in Hawaii yesterday, but I can't convince you that YOU were in Hawaii. It would certainly be impossible to implant such a memory to an entire nation.


This historical narrative has been faithfully passed down from parent to child for thousands of years, and the book that records it has been faithfully copied letter by letter on parchment scrolls, going back to Moshe himself.  It’s impossible to fake such a fact.  But as i said before it can always be denied by people who choose to deny it.  There are those who deny the Holocaust that happened a generation ago.  But in general people accept historical events, like Napoleon and the Roman Empire as historical fact.  They are both facts by historical measures, the difference is only that some people choose to deny facts.


We have a tradition that has been faithfully passed from generation to generation, beginning with Hashem speaking to my parents and yours - well, their parents told them that and their parents before them going back to Sinai.  Does it prove that there is a G-d?  Does it prove that this G-d actually gave us a code of conduct that the Torah describes as “...your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of other peoples, who will hear all these rules and say, ‘...this great nation is such a wise and understanding people’” (Devarim 4:6)?  It’s up to you to decide.  But in order to make an informed decision, it is imperative to learn the narrative as it is in the Torah, written and oral.  Only then can you really say that you understand the claim, and only then is your choice a real choice.

 

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