So, are you smarter than a 5^th grader?

Not when you compare yourself to the 5^th graders in the religious school class who were asked to look at television commercials and see if they could use them in 20 ways to communicate ideas about God.

Listen to what they came up with –

God is like – Bayer Aspirin - He works miracles.

God is like – A Ford - He’s got a better idea.

God is like – Coke - He’s the real thing.

God is like – Hallmark Cards - He cares enough to send His very best.

God is like – Tide - He gets the stains out/ others leave behind.

God is like – General Electric - He brings good things to life.

God is like – Wal-Mart - He has everything.

God is like – Alka Seltzer - Try Him – you’ll like Him.

God is like – Scotch Tape - You can’t see Him, but you know He’s there.

God is like – Delta - He’s ready when you are.

God is like – Allstate - You’re in good hands with Him.

God is like – VO-5 Hairspray - He holds through all kinds of weather.

God is like – Dial Soap - Aren’t you glad you have Him? Don’t you wish everyone did?

God is like – the U.S. Post Office - Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor ice will keep Him from His appointed destination.

God is like – Chevrolet - The Heartbeat of America.

God is like – Maxwell House - Good to the very last drop.

God is like – Bounty - He is the quicker-picker-upper…can handle the tough jobs…and He won’t fall apart on you.

I hope you enjoyed these comparisons.

They are intended to make all of us think about God, seriously, especially tonight.

All the statements about God I just shared with you are clever and they sound wonderful – but which are the statements, if any, that really help us the most if we were to take them seriously?

I like, “God is like Dial Soap – aren’t you glad you have Him? Don’t you wish everybody did?”

Of course, not everyone does have God – and I guess that also is good for me, because who knows, if everyone did have God, I might be unemployed.

So perhaps, these wonderful commercials for God can help you think about your relationship to God and how that works for you, or doesn’t, in your lives.

My thoughts tonight were not only prompted by those commercials but also by a sermon I recently read.

Rabbi Benjamin Blech is an orthodox rabbi and one of his sermons was sent and recommended by another colleague who doesn’t know me at all.

It was sent to all of us who subscribe to Ravnet, the Rabbinical Assembly list serve.

The main point of that sermon is that in our relationship with God, we should not be afraid to ask for what we want.

Here’s how he put it in the sermon –

“I was a very young boy and I didn’t understand something we learned about Moses.

The Torah tells us Moses was “heavy of speech and heavy of tongue;” he had a speech defect.

Here was the man destined to be the greatest leader of the Jewish people, whose stuttering should have made him as unsuitable for his role as the English monarch in the recent Oscar winning movie, The King’s Speech.

“Since God can do anything,” I asked my teacher, why didn’t God heal Moses?

That teacher shared with me the answer he personally preferred, and told me to always keep it in mind, in how I relate to God with my problems in the future.

Yes, Moses would have been far better off had he possessed the gift of eloquence in addition to all of his other virtues.

His stuttering was a disability and of course God could have easily removed the stigma.

So why didn’t He?

Because Moses never asked.

In all his humility, Moses didn’t feel worthy of making the request.

And God wanted to show us by way of His dealings with the greatest Jew in history, that the prerequisite for His answering our prayers is for us to verbalize them.”

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I think most of us know that Moses made other requests which were not granted.

Moses pleaded with God to be allowed to enter the land of Israel.

This request was denied – he was allowed to see the land, which he also requested, but Moses was not allowed to enter.

Rabbi Blech though continues – “Never be afraid to ask anything of God.

If you’re withholding the request because you think it’s too much to ask for, that’s an insult to the Almighty, almost as if you’re implying it’s too hard for Him to accomplish.”

Now the next line is critically important in this sermon – Rabbi Blech includes it yet he doesn’t spend any time elaborating about it – that line is, “If God wants to say no, that’s up to Him.”

Rabbi Blech continues with one more important sentence that I will share with you –

“Your role is to make clear you believe in His power to accomplish anything, no matter how difficult.”

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, I do believe it’s important to ask God for help, for assistance, for whatever it is that we need.

I agree that it’s even critical to ask.

Asking God for help, turning to God at critical times in our lives, is extremely important, but maybe not for the reasons we usually associate with a request.

We need to turn to God to ask for help, despite our not knowing for certain whether or not God literally hears our prayer, and responds in the affirmative or negative.

Rabbi Blech wants us to remember that God sometimes says no – I’m amazed that God ever says yes.

I’m really amazed that it ever feels as if or seems as if, God is really listening to our prayers, and I pray a lot.

I don’t know for sure if there is a one-to-one correspondence ever between my prayer and God’s response, but this I do know for sure.

I know that when I pray and turn to God and ask for help, I acknowledge there is a force in the world beyond my abilities - that there is a power in the world that is greater than whatever I can accomplish.

I admit that there are forces beyond my control, which can make me change my plans in an instant, like the fear of driving on a Maryland road in the middle of a blizzard.

I happened to write the first draft of this sermon on the day after an earthquake which measured 5.8 on the Richter scale shook all of our communities.

At the same time, there was the threat of Hurricane Irene that was bearing down on communities up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

How can a person not feel tiny, powerless, helpless, when facing the reality of such powerful forces in the world?

There is a paradox, almost a contradiction, in the way we have to try to understand God.

God’s presence is so much a part of the world that it is impossible to truly believe that anything we have accomplished, happens without some sort of assistance, if not blessing, from God.

We are warned in the book of Deuteronomy not to say

כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי, עָשָׂה לִי אֶת-הַחַיִל הַזֶּה

My strength and the power of my hand has brought me all of this “chayal – wealth – material.”

On the other hand, while we should ask God for help, for assistance, and while we should always be grateful when we receive it, and sometimes we do – my feeling is that we should never be chutzpatidik – so self-entitled, to expect that we will receive it.

In the deepest, most mysterious levels, I believe we can’t accomplish anything without God – on the most practical, achievement-oriented levels, I believe we can’t accomplish anything if we only depend upon God.

We must try to make the most out of every situation we face, even when, God seems to be nowhere around.

In the book of Deuteronomy there is a section of law which permits soldiers whose deaths in war might be considered extremely unfortunate, to return home before the battles begin.

In the Etz Chayim Chumash we use here in synagogue, you will find the following comment on that biblical passage:

"Why do they not rely on God to prevent tragic death?

Although God may work miracles, protecting the righteous from harm, we may never force God's hand by demanding a miracle – putting good people in danger and expecting God to protect them.

We cannot ignore our obligations to make the world a safer and more just place by depending on God to set things right."

Let me share with you a most amazing insight from Rabbi Yisochar Frand who teaches this lesson in the name of the Brisker Rav –

Every attribute, no matter how bad, has its place in the world – even anger, haughtiness, jealousy, and argumentativeness.

These are generally bad attributes, but there are times when one needs to become angry.

There are times when it is appropriate to stand up for one’s honor. There is even a time when it is right to start an argument.

There is another bad attribute called “kefirah – heresy.”

A person who knows Torah, but rejects God – a “kofer” – possesses such an attribute.

Where is the proper place for this attribute of “kefirah?”

The brisker rav explains, “When your friend needs a favor, that’s when you should be a kofer.”

In other words, when someone else has a problem, do not have the attitude that God will take care of him, God will find him a job, God will give him the loan.

At such times, the Brisker Rav says, a person should “not believe” in God. A person should feel that God will not take care of him.

Rather, a person must take the responsibility upon himself.

That is no time for faith. It is a time for rolling up one’s sleeves.

Yes, we cannot do what God does, and we do not have God’s power.

But we are partners in the world along with God.

Asking for God’s help is very important, and always must be employed, but it is never the only thing that must be employed, when there are other options as well.

If what we want in our lives, calls for more work, then we must do it.

If what we want in our lives, calls for more caring, then we must share it.

If what we want in our lives calls for more love, then we must provide it.

Even after all that, God may say no, but sometimes, God fills in the gaps and brings us to a position that we would never have achieved without our own efforts as well.

Branch Rickey is famous for having said, luck is the residue of design. Do all you can, to get luck in your favor, to give it a chance to appear.

Martin Luther King Jr. taught that “faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.”

Faith does not mean that we move ahead in order to secure the answer, yes.

Faith instead means, taking every single possible step forward, even when the answer is possibly, probably, likely to be, no.

Faith is not a tool that necessarily leads to reward.

Rather, faith is a tool, a bridge that carries all of our human efforts as close as possible to God.

A former nun, Joan Chittister, writes the following in a book titled Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope:

“Courage, character, self-reliance and faith are forged in the fire of affliction.

We wish it were otherwise.

But as Harold Kushner wrote in one of his books, it is rarely otherwise.”

I would like to share with you an example of how character and self-reliance is forged in the fire of affliction.

I learned this example this past year and I was incredibly moved by this testimony.

I learned it when I watched a DVD entitled Saved by Deportation –An Unknown Odyssey of Polish Jews.

Some of you saw this DVD as well when we viewed it for our powerful Yom Ha-Shoah program last spring.

It is the story of several Jewish men and women during the years when they were deported into the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland.

One of the Jewish men interviewed in the film is our own Rudy Weiss.

At one point, Rudy’s friend, Professor Alexander Schenker, who later became a professor of Polish at Yale University, is interviewed and he becomes very introspective.

He was in the midst of speaking about the difficulty of work and of long hours working in the frigid outdoors while living deep into the Soviet Union where he had been deported.

He states, “I don’t even regret the incarceration – that is, the resettlement, the camp – because I think that – it’s only then that I became a human being.

Well, I became a man. I became –

I was a pampered child and part of a very well-to-do family – and I don’t think I would have liked to have been my own friend – the way I was growing up in Poland.

But the whole Russian experience – made something out of me.”

I doubt that Prof. Schenker or Rudy would claim that these experiences which transformed their lives were part of a specific plan created and designed by God.

But I do know that this whole Russian experience made something out of Prof. Schenker that was quite different and really more acceptable to him than what he was before.

And when that happened to him, and when something similar happens to us, we may not discover the God who is outside of us, but I am confident, we do discover the godliness that exists within each of us.

And I think that Judaism is the bridge from one to the other.

The sensitive, spiritually adept person, finds God everywhere, and throughout life.

Each stage of life, each experience, has the potential to reveal to us something more, or something less, about God.

I conclude with a poem which teaches this lesson about life.

It was written by a well-known Israeli poet, Rivka Miriam.

Rabbi Steve Sager, who will be our scholar in residence on the weekend of November 18 – 20 introduced me to the poem.

It is an example of the types of texts he will bring as springboards for discussion in his presentations.

I read to it to you in English translation – I Spread Out My God’s Names In Front Of Me by Rivka Miriam

I spread out my God’s names in front of me

On the cold floor of my room.

The name by which I called Him when His spirit breathed in me.

And the name by which I called Him when I was a girl.

The name by which I called Him when I was given to a man.

And the name by which I called Him when again permitted to all.

The name by which I called Him when my parents were a roof to me.

And the name when I had no ceiling.

The name by which I called Him that I might fear Him.

And the name that I called Him so that I would not be afraid.

The name by which I called Him so that He would remember me.

And the name, so that He would not remember.

In the heat of the day, I will prostrate myself

On the cold floor of my room.

Throughout this day, even throughout our lives, we call God by many different names.

Tonight, tomorrow, we call God, Rachum V’chanun, merciful and gracious, patient and long-suffering, searching for God, looking for God, praying that we have a place with God.

And so, my dear friends, on this most holy night of the year, we pray to God, and we ask God, for help and for forgiveness and for acceptance.

Time will tell, whether the response is yes, or no, or something else altogether.

But without a doubt, the time to turn to God, is now.

Amen.