 It's pretty clear to me that when it comes to these issues of God and faith, there's often tremendous confusion that exists. There's an old saying that if you don't know where you're going, there are unfortunately many ways of getting there. And ultimately, we're going to see tonight that faith, from a Jewish perspective, is not simply a matter of giving our intellectual assent to the existence of a Creator, the existence of God. That's not what in Jewish terms faith is about. Maimonides writes in the very first paragraph of his massive 14-volume compendium of all of Jewish law. And he begins right away by saying the foundation of all foundations is to know that there is a primary being who brought into being all existence. He doesn't use the Hebrew word for belief so much. He uses the Hebrew word for to know, lay da. So what Maimonides asserts is that from a Jewish perspective, what is required ultimately is not just faith or belief but knowledge of God. And clearly knowledge is something that is based upon reason, it's substantial, it's not simply something that you take on faith that has no substance to it or no backing to it at all. It really is a more substantial kind of basis for why we accept something as being true. You might take, for example, a sports fan of the worst baseball team in the major leagues. And this sports fan might say, well, I have faith that my team is going to win, dependent this year. Well, that's exactly what they have. They have faith. It's a blind faith that's not based upon any reasons to believe it. It's the worst team on the planet. They have the worst record, the worst players. So why would you think they were going to win the World Series? But if you're talking about a fan of the very best team that has the greatest record, the best players, they might say, I have good reason to believe that my team is going to win. And sometimes in the world, if you have enough reason to believe something, those reasons to believe can actually approach knowledge. So my mind of these really says that we're supposed to have actually da'as, knowledge of God that goes beyond this, not just a level of certainty. In Hebrew, the word da'at, knowledge, is the word for connection. We know that in the creation story, the Bible speaks about Adam knowing his wife Eve. So in Hebrew, the word da'at is the word that refers to connection. In the Bible, to know someone biblically is the sexual connection. It's the most intimate kind of connection. So the idea of my mononies is proposing is not simply that we say that we believe there's a God, but the idea is that we become connected to that knowledge. That knowledge becomes a part of who we are. Give you an example. You might find someone who would tell you in a big office with lots of employees, sure, I know Bob who works down in accounting on the fourth floor. You might say, I know Bob. I know who he is. But the reality is you may have nothing to do with Bob. You may never speak to him, have no relationship with him. So it's one thing that you happen to know there's a guy named Bob on the fourth floor in accounting. But that doesn't really mean that you know Bob, that you have any connection to Bob that there's a relationship. And so what the Torah asks us is not just to be able to fill out on a form, yeah, I think there's a God. It goes way beyond that to developing a connection to God. That's really the goal. It's not simply to acknowledge that God exists, but to become connected to our belief in God so that it animates our lives, that that belief animates our lives, it informs our lives, it becomes really the jet fuel that makes everything in our lives happen. Ultimately, we know that every element of Judaism is geared toward connecting to God. Nazar says, the holy book of Jewish mysticism, that the Torah is really a book of 613 pieces of advice, uses the Aramaic etin. The Torah is 613, not commandments do this, don't do that. They're pieces of advice, advice on how to attach ourselves to God. How to establish intimacy with God. That's what the entire Torah is about. And unfortunately, it's very easy to lose ourselves in the forest of Judaism. Judaism has a forest of 613 trees. It's often easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. The forest is God. And the trees are the 613 pointers to God. And unfortunately, so often, people forget about God while they're practicing Judaism. Ravleva Yitzchuk of Burditshiv, the great Hasidic master, once walked into a bustling Batemijrash, a study hall where people were engaged in the study of Talmud. And he banged on the desk and he says, there is a God in heaven. Because these are people he thought that sometimes get so caught up in the details of what they're doing, they forget about the big picture. They lose the forest for the trees. Ravleva told a story, probably an apocryphal story, about a young student at a Lithuanian Yeshiva who tells his Rebbe one day, Rebbe, I heard in Meserich, which was the seat of the Hasidic Revolution. He said to his Rebbe, Rebbe, I heard in Meserich there's a great fire that's burning. And his Rebbe said, what are you talking about? Meserich, Meserich, you're here in Yeshiva. We're learning Talmud all day long. We're praying. We're studying Torah. What else do you need in life? And the young student decided, no, I'm going to run away to Meserich. And he spent three years in Meserich. Comes back and his teacher says to him, oh, look who's here. The big shot from Meserich. So, Nuu, what did you learn when you were in Meserich for all those years? He says, Rebbe, you know what I learned in Meserich? I learned how to read minds. So the teacher says to him, you know how to read minds? What am I thinking about right now? And the student says, Rebbe, I know that you're meditating on the verse in the Bible. Shivisi Hashem l'negdi summid. I have set God's presence before me at all times. And the teacher said, I wasn't thinking about that. And the student said, that's why I ran away to Meserich. Now it would go way beyond the time that we have tonight to be able to accomplish in one short session a comprehensive case for a faith in God. There are entire volumes of books written on this. What I want to do is, at least for the first part tonight, share a number of large ticket items, so to speak, that could be used to think about whether belief in God is something that might make sense. One of the major arguments, not just among Jewish philosophers, but even among non-Jewish philosophers, for the reality of God is what's called the evidence from design. The Rabbeinobachia, who wrote in the 10th century a famous Jewish ethical work, the Chobos Levobos, the duties of the heart, he basically focuses on this argument. And he gives, I'm going to paraphrase what he says, but he says, imagine that you go into someone's office and let's say they had gotten married the week before and they have sitting on the desk in their office a beautiful kasuba, the wedding document that was made, it's illuminated, and it's got beautiful script, and you're admiring this kasuba. And the fellow says to you, you know, you wouldn't believe how I got this. This blank parchment was sitting on the desk of the artist and they accidentally knocked over a couple of bottles of ink, and it turned out this incredibly beautiful kasuba. Now, anyone that you would tell this to would think that you were out of your mind. What are you talking about? This beautiful work of art was created by some bottles of ink getting knocked over. But like someone's saying to you, you know how the Mona Lisa got there? There was an explosion in the paint factory and it produced the Mona Lisa. So we obviously intellectually and instinctively recoil from the possibility that something that exhibits so much design and it looks like it was made on purpose to say that it came about by accident, we recoil from that. And the Talmud itself actually in the Midrash, famous story in the Midrash where someone challenges Rabbi Akiva. And he says to Rabbi Akiva, I think he was a heretic actually, not just a regular person, the heretic. The mean says to Rabbi Akiva, who created the world? Rabbi Akiva says, the master of the universe, God. And the heretics said to him, show me clear proof. So Rabbi Akiva says, come back tomorrow, I'll give you some clear proofs. So the fellow comes back, says to Rabbi Akiva, new, what's the proof? So we all know that the Jew answers a question with a question. So Rabbi Akiva says to him, what are you wearing? He says, I'm wearing tunic, whatever they would wear back then. I'm wearing a Schmatta, I'm wearing a jacket. So Rabbi Akiva says to him, who made it? He says, what do you mean who made it? It was made by a tailor, by a weaver. Whoever made it, we're talking about who made it. Rabbi Akiva says it was made by a tailor, prove it. So the heretic says, what do you mean prove it? Isn't it obvious that this just didn't happen by itself, that the garment was made by a weaver or a tailor? So Rabbi Akiva says to him, do your ears hear what you yourself are saying? If to you a tunic testifies to the fact that it was made by a tailor, obviously this incredibly complex world we're living in testifies to the creator of the world. Now, I recommended last week already that you purchase a number of books that deal with the incredible beauty and complexity and precision of the natural world. It is absolutely mind-blowing. I remember when I was in university, I was in a graduate school course in sensory psychology. We spent six months just studying the eyeball, how incredibly complex the eyeball is, how it works. It's just beyond description, I could spend here tonight, several hours just painting a brief picture of how amazing our eyeballs are. And that applies to every organ of our body, every part of our body, every part of the universe. We live in an incredibly beautiful and complex universe. And it's difficult to imagine studying how this universe was created specifically with all of the characteristics needed to support life. When you think about it, there would be no life on planet Earth if we were a little bit closer or further away from the sun. It just so happens by coincidence that the Earth is situated in exactly the distance needed to support life on Earth. And the fact that it spins around at the rate that it spins around, and the fact that it's on its axis, the rate that it's on its axis. If you examine every element of the way our world is structured, it's clearly designed in such a way precisely to support life on our planet. It's hard to see this as an accident. The truth is, though, that even though this argument from design is very compelling, in Jewish history and in Jewish consciousness, it was not the go-to argument. The interesting thing that when God introduces himself to us at Mount Sinai, in the first of the Ten Commandments, and says that I am the Lord your God, God does not say, and I happen to do amazing things like create the entire universe, God does not say that. God introduces himself as the God of history that took us out of Egypt. There's a very popular, well-known verse in the Book of Dvarim in Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verse 35. Many people say this in their Shabbat prayers. Ata harayt al-Adha'at ki adhanaihu ha'alohim ay'n-odh. That God showed us that we should know. It's not that God expected us to simply read in a book about his existence, that God is telling us in the Bible that our connection to him, our knowledge of him, is not theoretical. It's not something that we read about in a book. God literally showed us who he was so that we should have knowledge of him. Ata harayt al-Adha'at so that we should know with that level of knowledge, of belief and knowledge that we are connected to because it's so strong. The 10 plagues in Egypt were not just to help free us from slavery. The Bible repeatedly says that these 10 incredibly amazing supernatural events, which didn't justify the laws of nature and punish the Egyptians, but they were able to somehow segregate out the Jewish people. The Jews were not affected by these plagues. Only the Egyptians were. And so the Bible says repeatedly that these plagues are being executed by God in order to demonstrate the reality of God. It wasn't simply to free the slaves or punish the Egyptians. It was to demonstrate the might and the power and the control of all of nature that is in the hands of God. This, of course, was followed by an incredible encore. After all these plagues in Egypt, the Jewish people come to the yamsuf, and we find ourselves up against an implacable army chasing us, and we're at the sea. What do we do? Do we turn around and fight this army? We have no weapons. We're just freed slaves. Do we just jump into this ocean and drown? We really felt between like a rock and a hard place. And God performed an incredible miracle for us. God split this sea, and we were able to walk through on dry ground. And as soon as we got to safety, the sea closed in on our attackers and pursuers and drowned the Egyptian army. This experience itself was such a dramatic experience that our rabbis teach us that the simplest Jew, the most unsophisticated Jew, had a clearer understanding, a clearer connection to God than the prophet Ezekiel, who had an incredibly dramatic and powerful mystical vision of God. But this experience of crossing the Red Sea was incredible, even more powerful than the templates in Egypt. But then there's the grand finale. We come finally to Mount Sinai, where three million people literally hear God speak to Moses. In the book of Exodus chapter 19, verse nine, God said to Moses, behold, I come to you in the thickness of the cloud so that the people will hear as I speak to you and they will also then believe in you forever. The reason that we believe Moses was a prophet was not because Moses was very charismatic and was able to convince us that God spoke to him. We literally heard God speaking to Moses. That experience of three million people achieving the level of prophecy where we actually hear God speak in the credible dramatic expression of the Mount Sinai, a smoking, firing mountain. That event with the preceding events of crossing the sea and the plagues in Egypt was seared into our national consciousness. These were moments in our history when we became electrically aware of God's presence. When God wanted to send Moses to Egypt, Moses was not living in Egypt for many years. He was in Midian. And God wants to send Moses to Egypt and says, Moses, I want you to go down to Egypt and redeem the Jewish people. Moses is a little bit incredulous. I'm gonna go down to Egypt and redeem the Jewish people and Moses asked a peculiar question. He says, God, what if the Jewish people ask me your name? And this seems like a non sequitur. You mean of all the things that Moses is worried about, he's worried that the Jews are gonna ask for God's name. But it's a very meaningful question in Hebrew. The name of someone always reflects the essence of who they actually are. So Moses is saying to God, God, you want me to go to Egypt, tell the Jewish people that God's gonna take you out of Egypt and they're gonna wanna ask me, what's his name and who is this God? How are we to understand him? And God says to Moses, my name, you'll tell them my name is I will be what I will be. I will be what I will be. What God is basically saying is what my grandmother always used to say, you'll see. What God is basically saying to the Jewish people is, you wanna know who I am? You want to understand me? I will be what I will be. Meaning you will experience me on the stage of history. You'll walk with me and I'll be what I will be. You'll see exactly who I am. Not by me giving you a name. I'm gonna say my name is Fred. What's that gonna tell you? God is telling you you'll experience me. I will be what I will be. And that's how you'll get to know who I am. When Moses was questioning his own ability, he says to God, who am I that I'm gonna be able to do this? So God says to Moses in Exodus chapter three verse 12, I'm gonna be with you, Moses. And this will be the sign that I have sent you. Moses, what's gonna be the sign, the ultimate sign that I've sent you? God says when you take the people out of Egypt and you will come to serve God on this mountain. Meaning when you finally come out of Egypt, it's not the plagues in Egypt. It's not the splitting of the sea. What will seal the deal is your experience of the revelation of God at Mount Sinai when God speaks to the entire nation. Now it's significant, incredibly significant that Judaism is unique among all the world's religions. There are probably 10 or 15,000 religions in the world. And we're the only religion that is rooted in a national revelation to three million people. All other religions in the history of the world begin essentially with one individual claiming that God spoke to them. And they're able to convince other people, yeah, I'm a prophet of God, God spoke to me. The uniqueness of Judaism is it begins not with a private revelation, but with a national revelation. It's very important to understand that this idea that God spoke to three million people is not just simply something that we read in the Bible and we take it at face value. If we really think about it and we try to understand it, we realize on some level this has to be true. Because if we try to assume the possibility, well maybe it never happened. Maybe three million people never heard God speak. Maybe at some point later in history, someone just made up the story and tried to pass it off as true. I mean that at the end of the day, there are only two possibilities, either the revelation and sign I happened or it didn't happen. So Judaism is based upon the proposition that it happened that our nation experienced it. But the counter argument, I mean those who would question it would say, no, it never happened. And the fact that it's written in the Bible, big deal, someone wrote in the Bible that it happened but it never happened. And the Bible was given to Jewish people, not by God, some people made up the story and they're passing it the story off as if it's true. Here's the problem. The problem is that, and you have to sort of follow the thinking here, we're saying Yiddish Halt cup, pay attention. If this really happened, just imagine for a moment, imagine three million people standing at the foot of a mountain hearing the voice of God, a smoking mountain on fire, an incredibly cataclysmic event and they're hearing the voice of God. That would be probably in the history of the world, the most dramatic, amazing event in the history of mankind. Do you think it's possible in your wildest imagination that people who were at that event would never mention it to the children that were born later on? I would imagine that this is the kind of thing you probably speak about quite often. You know, we remember much smaller things in life. We reminisce about very minuscule things sometimes. We reminisce about the big fish we caught when we were fishing when we were 12 years old. Imagine that you're with three million people hearing God speak. So you have children born years later that weren't there. Can you imagine people not telling their children and grandchildren, do you know what happened? When we were back at Mount Sinai, children, it's very important you hear this. This is incredible. And so we would not be able to entertain the possibility that if it really happened, people would not pass the knowledge on to the next generations. This would be the kind of experience that could not escape the attention of anyone. However, the alternative theory is saying, no, it never happened, never happened. But what did happen? Someone wrote in the Bible. They just made it up. They wrote in the Bible. This is what happened. And they then tried to pass off the Bible as true. The problem is very easy to spot. If it never happened and someone is giving people a book and the book says, do you know what happened? All of your ancestors were at Mount Sinai and they heard God speaking. People would immediately say, no way, what are you talking about? If that's really what happened, heck, I'm not, I'm now hearing it for the first time. If you're telling me that many years ago, God spoke to our entire people and all of our nation heard God, if that really happened, I would have heard about it already from my parents and my grandparents. So the idea that someone's gonna come along at some point later in history, make up the story and try and pass it off as true is absurd because no one would accept it. If the story said, meaning if the Bible said, you know what happened? Many years ago, Moses heard God speak at Mount Sinai. And if that's the story that's being invented, that can be credible. Meaning that you say, oh, that's interesting. There was a great prophet named Moses and he heard God speak at Mount Sinai. It's very interesting. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. How would I know? You either take it or leave it. But when the story writer says it wasn't just Moses receiving a private revelation. Every Jewish person who came out of Egypt stood there at Mount Sinai and heard God speaking. If that happened, everyone would know about it. And if you try to invent the story later in history, people are gonna say, what are you talking about? I'd never heard about this before. And it's the kind of story where you would have had to have heard about it before. It should be just another point here just worth thinking about is that if you were going to invent a religion, wouldn't it be more powerful to say in your religion not that you had a personal private revelation from God? Meaning that all religions begin with one person claiming to have received a private revelation. Wouldn't it make more sense for people to make up their religion and say, oh no, this was a revelation in front of thousands and thousands and millions of people? What's amazing is not one religion in history did that, even though it would be much better way of presenting your religion. Meaning if you're going to invent a religion, why not make a story that's more powerful and gives you more credibility? And what's really amazing is that the Bible predicts, the Bible predicted 3,000 years ago that no nation would ever make such a claim that they received a national revelation. It's quite incredible. The Bible makes the bold and daring prediction that what happened to you Jewish people will be unique event in history of the world and no other people are going to claim it. In Deuteronomy chapter four verses 32 to 33, God says, you might inquire about time's long past from the day that God created men on earth and from one end of heaven to the other. Has there ever been anything like this great thing or has anything like it been heard? Has anyone ever heard of such a story? Has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fires as you have heard and survived? So God is saying here that this is a story that's not going to be replicated. No one else is going to make a claim that they heard a national revelation by God. Now how was a Torah able to make such a prediction? How could a Torah predict that no other people in history of the world, and it's been true for 3,000 years, would ever claim to have heard a national revelation? And why is it that no other religion tried to do this? The answer is very simple, because you cannot fabricate the story of a national revelation. Once you claim that an entire people heard something that didn't really take place, they're going to say, what are you talking about that this took place? We never heard about it. So you can only fabricate a private revelation. You can never fabricate and get away with a public national revelation. Now, I want to go beyond this and say that aside from the incredibly strong historical foundation of the Torah having been revealed by God, I mean that when we think about why we as Jews believe in God, our foundation is because we actually experience God in history. But there's another indicator of God's role that can be found by examining the contents of the Bible itself. Not just how we got the Bible, but when you really look at what the Bible says, it becomes fairly clear that it could not have been put together by human beings. And there are only two possibilities. Either the Bible comes to us through human beings or it comes to us from God. Let's try to examine just a few of the many hints that it's difficult to be impossible to understand the Bible as anything other than the product of an omniscient, omnipotent divine being. I wanna just tell you that the core of what I'm gonna be sharing over the next few minutes is based upon a really fascinating presentation on the seven wonders of Jewish history that is offered by Esha Torah. I wanna recommend that you study their presentation even deeper than I'll do tonight. But I wanna share with you some of the highlights. Number one, the Bible predicts that the Jewish people will be an eternal people. Quite amazing. That more than 3,000 years ago, the Bible predicted that the Jewish people, the people of Israel will last forever. We're gonna be around forever. And the Bible says this many times. Now when you think about it, this is an incredibly bold and daring thing to predict. Because if you go back 3,000 years in history, you'll find that virtually every single culture from back then disappeared. You don't find any more of the ancient Moabites, Hittites, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians, Edomites, Persians. You go through all the ancient cultures, they're just not here. They disappeared. So how could anyone be bold enough to say, but you Jewish people, you will exist eternally. And it's more than 3,000 years, we're still here. Who could have ensured, forget about who would have the boldness to make such a prediction? Who could ensure that this would take place? And that the Jewish people would never cease to exist. It's a famous story where King Louis XIV in the 17th century asked the famous philosopher Pascal, he wanted some proof of the supernatural existence in the world. And Pascal says, the Jews are majesty, the Jews. You want evidence of the fact that the world is not just simply natural and physical, it is a supernatural realm, there's a godly realm, the Jews will prove it to you. The second wonder of the Bible and Jewish history is that what would make the prediction of survival even more counterintuitive is that the Jewish people didn't have anything going for them to survive. Meaning that once the Bible predicts that the Jews will survive forever, you would hope maybe we'd have some things in our toolkit to help us survive. But the reality is we didn't have anything that would help people survive. For example, the Bible predicts that we would be exiled from our land. By the way, the Bible predicts it twice, once in Leviticus and once in Deuteronomy. Now this is unusual. It's unusual because normally in the ancient world, if one nation conquered another nation, they didn't exile the people, they would enslave the people, throw the people out of the country and lose the benefit of them working for you. So the idea that you're gonna come into a country and kick everybody out is just counterintuitive. It's weird. And yet the Bible predicts twice that the Jewish people will be exiled from their land. But being an exile is not a great thing to guarantee survival. I mean, normally if people will survive, you would think if they're rooted in a land, they're staying booked, they have some stability. And once the people of Israel go into exile, they didn't just lose their land. We lost our language. What keeps a nation together? If a common language? Look at the Jews throughout the world. These speak Yiddish and these speak, you know, Ladino and these speak Spanish and these speak every language into the sun, Jews speak. So here we're people that are scattered. We don't have a common language and we don't even have a common culture or a common history. The people that are growing up in Morocco don't dress like Jews growing up in Lithuania, don't eat the same food, don't hear the same music. So we don't even have the kinds of things that are needed to keep a people stable and together and to preserve them. Now who could have made such a prediction that we would be scattered exiled from our land twice? Who could have known that? And more importantly, who would be able to engineer that despite that dispersion, we would survive the exile. And not disappear. Wonder number three, what also might help a scattered people to survive? Meaning once you're being scattered, what might help you to survive? Well, one thing that might help you survive is if everybody loved you, if you were the most loved people in the world, people are gonna make sure that you don't disappear. If the whole world thinks you're the most valuable people in the world and you gotta have those Jews around, they're so important and everybody loved the Jews, they'd be fighting for us, that would help us survive. But the Torah says no, on the contrary, we're gonna be hated and despised and persecuted and rejected and tortured and killed. That's gonna be our situation in the exile. That's been the experience, by the way, quite amazingly, not just for a few years or in a few countries. The Bible says that's going to be our experience and that has been our experience since we went into exile. No matter where we go, they hate us. And it isn't like we have a couple of good years in between, it's basically been non-stop hatred, no matter where we go. And when you think about it, the hatred itself doesn't even make sense. When you think about the hatred of Jews, it is totally irrational. We're accused of being miserable communists and yet we are greedy capitalists. Well, why do you hate us? Because we're greedy capitalists or miserable communists. We're hated for being different. You Jews are just too different, you look different from everybody and yet we're often hated because we refuse to blend in and be like everybody else. And if we are blending in and we are becoming like everybody else, we're hated for trying to blend in and be like everybody else and trying to become a fifth column and trying to infiltrate us. So why are we being hated for being like everyone else or being not like everybody else? We are hated for being cowards, those cowardly Jews, cowardly Jews and yet we're hated for being aggressors, violent aggressors. We're hated for being people who are blind to the truth, cannot see the truth. And yet people are jealous of us because we're so brilliant. We are considered to be inferior beings and yet we're called the chosen people, even by those who hate us. We're hated despite all of our contributions to the world. You would think that a people who contributed so much to the world, people would be grateful, happy, keep it up Jews. No, despite all that we've given the world we're hated and despised. We are blamed for the problems of nations where there are no Jews. If you go to many countries in the world today, like in Japan, you know Jews in Japan, the best selling books, there are books about the Jewish plan to control the whole world. We're accused of being immoral butchers at the same time that we have the most moral and just army in the history of mankind. The history of the Jewish people is irrational hatred. Now who could have predicted, who could have known that for over 3,000 years they small people who don't bother anyone are gonna be consistently hated throughout the entire world no matter where they go. Who could have imagined that would be possible? And who could ensure that we would survive our dispersion even though we were hated? The fourth wonder, what other factor might there be to help ensure that a people would survive even in exile? What might help them survive? So you know what might help them survive? If they were big, huge nation with billions of people. You know we have for example today India and China. These are nations with over a billion people. They've been around for a very long time. So we know that if you have billions of people it helps with longevity, it helps you last as a nation. It's hard for other people to come in and just take over. And yet the Bible predicts incredibly that we will never become a large nation that we will be of the smallest of the nations in the world. Amazing. That despite we have been just one of the smallest peoples in the world we've survived exile for over 2,000 years. It's amazing is that the world is totally clueless about how many Jewish people there are. Years ago there was a film here in Toronto at Nathan Phillips Square called, I think it was called What is a Jew? And they asked passerby in Nathan Phillips Square how many Jewish people you think they're in the world today? Back then I think when the movie was made there were five billion people in the world. I think there was almost seven billion. But when the film was made there were about five and a half billion people in the world and they asked people in Nathan Phillips Square how many Jewish people do you think there are? And the typical answer was hundreds of millions. One person said over two billion. It's amazing. People in the world think that there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of Jews. And when we realize that they're in the world today 13 or 14 million in the world today people's minds are blown. And by the way that's been our population for most of our history. Sort of hovering between eight, nine, 10, 12, 16 million. But that's about it. We never really broke the threshold of about 16 million people. Who could have predicted? It's not natural. That even though we've been in existence for 3000 years we're never going to break this barrier of growth. Most populations over time they grow and they grow and they grow. And yet after being around for so many thousands of years we still have the same number of Jews. Who could have predicted that? We're gonna always remain the smallest nation in the world. And who could have ensured that despite being a small nation and despite being dispersed and despite being hated we would still survive our dispersion. Who could have predicted that and who could have made sure that would happen? Wonder number five. The Bible predicts another wild thing that despite the fact that we're gonna be dispersed and despised and tiny we're going to be a light to the nations. Meaning despite the fact that we have every handicap in the world the Bible says you're gonna have an amazing impact upon the whole world. You're gonna change the world. How do you explain that? Rabbi Ken Spiro from Asia Torah has a wonderful book and a presentation called World Perfect. I recommend that you either see the presentation or read the book where he documents the incredible impact that our tiny nation has had upon the world. And he's not speaking about having 25% of the Nobel Prize winners. He's speaking about the impact on the world over the past thousands of years. It is mind blowing. And the Bible incredibly predicts our Bible predicts thousands of years ago that the world will ultimately come to our light. We're supposed to be a light to the nations. And the Bible says, you know what? It's gonna happen. One day the world was gonna turn to our light. And I've been speaking about this a lot lately that this is beginning to happen in our generation. The prophet Zechariah says that in those days 10 people from every nation of the world are gonna grab hold of a Jew and say we want to follow you or we heard God is with you today for the first time in history. We see this happening. We see the beginning of a huge movement of people today that are not chasing after us to kill us. They're chasing after us and they're saying, you know what? We think that you have the truth. Please teach us. Who could have made such a prediction? Mystery or incredible feature number six. The Bible predicts an incredible relationship between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. The Bible predicts that when the Jewish people are living in their land, the land will be incredibly fertile and productive. And yet the Bible says that when the Jewish people are not living in the land of Israel, it will become incredibly non-fertile and non-productive. People that come in to live and usurp our land will never really get it to produce or to grow much of anything. Mark Twain went to Israel in 1867. And he wrote a report about what he found in Israel in 1867. He found Gurnish Med Gurnish. He found absolutely nothing, a barren wasteland, nothing growing at all. That was his report in 1867. The land simply was not putting forth produce. Who could have predicted? That's not normal. Who could have predicted that the land's destiny would be connected to a people? That's not normal science. And yet the Bible predicts exactly that. That our land will not be hospitable to other people. And finally, the last wonder of Jewish history that's in the Bible is the Bible makes the most amazing prediction. That despite the fact that we're going to be exiled from our land and we're going to be despised and dispersed and tiny, the Bible says, and yet one day you will come back to the land. That is absolutely incredible. Such a prediction was made and the prediction is taking place. We're fortunate that it's taking place during our lifetimes. And when we returned to the land of Israel, it became incredibly fertile. The book was written not long ago called Startup Nation. Israel today is just the most productive nation on the planet, not just agriculturally, but technologically, science, research. What's happening in this tiny little land of Israel is quite impressive and amazing. And the Bible predicts it. So who could have predicted thousands of years ago that a small, scattered, hated, despised, tiny nation would survive their long exile and come back to their land? I mentioned in other contexts as a famous passage in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 30, I believe, verse three, where the Kabbalists say that every verse in the Bible describes a year in history. The first verse of the Bible would be year number one. The year 1,000 is the 1,000th verse of the Bible. The year 5,000 is the 5,000th verse of the Bible. Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse three, is the 5,708th verse in the Bible. So if you wanna see what the Bible says about the year 5,708, read Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse three. The Hebrew year 5,708, by the way, was the English year 1948. And this verse in the Bible speaks about the regathering of the Jewish people from their exiles and dispersion and returning to the land of Israel. The verse in the Bible corresponding to the year 1948 describes exactly what happens in 1948. There are many other things in the Bible that drive home the point that the author could not have been a human being. I wanna just share with you three such examples, but again, there are many. One example is the Shemitah. This year we have in Israel the Shemitah, the sabbatical year. It's not a bad idea that every seventh year the land should lie fallow, give it a rest, and let people maybe instead of killing themselves working, spend the year on their own sabbatical, study, grow, learn, develop themselves. It's a great idea. The land gets a chance to rest so it can become more productive. But then you ask yourself, that's a very nice idea, but what are we gonna eat? We're not planting or harvesting during the seventh year. So any normal human being would have said, okay, what are we gonna do? We'll either import food during that year, or we'll just do this at a rotating basis, meaning we're not gonna have the entire nation not use the land during the seventh year. We'll have different tribes during this year, you'll do it this year, you'll do it, so that we'll be able to survive as a people. The Bible doesn't give any of these answers. The Bible says, don't worry what you're going to eat, because if you observe the laws of Shemitah, you're going to have a bumper crop in the sixth year that'll produce enough food for the sixth year, the sixth, seventh year, and the eighth year. Now what person would have written such nonsense? What human being would have said, you know what, I have this great idea called a Shemitah, the sabbatical year, and it's gonna be very, very helpful to our nation, and don't worry, because during the sixth year you'll have enough food each time to produce during that sixth year a bumper crop for three years. Who would ever write such a thing? Who would know that that could be true? Another example, the Bible says that every Jewish male has to go to Jerusalem for each of the Jewish holidays, it's called aliyat regal. These are called the pilgrim festivals, because we're supposed to be pilgrims and go to Jerusalem, spend the holiday, what a nice thing to do, go to the national headquarters or a people, go to Jerusalem, spend the holiday, but you know what, there's a small problem. If every Jewish male goes to Jerusalem three times a year, isn't that leaving all of our cities vulnerable? Who's gonna protect the cities from attack? So again, a human being would have said, you know what, it's nice to go to Jerusalem for the holidays, but we'll exempt the soldiers, soldiers stay home, or you could have said, you know what, we'll do it in rotation, so we'll do it just one tribe at a time. But the Bible says, don't worry, you can all go to Jerusalem, and God says, I'll make sure nothing happens to you. Would a human being write such a thing? It's not likely. Another example, the Bible says that for kosher animals, to eat a kosher animal, it has to have two characteristics. Kosher animal has to have split hooves, and it has to chew its cud. It has to have split hooves, and it has to basically chew its cud, it regurgitates its food, it chews it again. So animals are either kosher or not kosher. The Bible says, you know, there happen to be four animals, and only four animals that have only one of these characteristics, meaning most animals in the world have neither, or they have both. But the Bible says, but there are only four animals that have only one. There's the pig, there's the camel, there's the hyrax, there's the, there's the hare. That's a pretty weird thing to say 3,000 years ago. We know now there are over 5,000 species of animals in the world. How would anyone living 3,000 years ago in the Middle East know what's going on in the rest of the world? And make the prediction that in the whole world there are no other animals with only one of these two characteristics. And yet the Bible says that. Now again, these are three of many, many, many examples where you just study the Bible and you say, you know what, it makes no sense to think that a normal human being would have written such things, or had the capability of writing such things. Another argument for the reality of God, and this is a little bit more subtle. I'm gonna have to do it quickly, is what's referred to as the moral imperative. Bertrand Russell was a famous atheistic philosopher. And he's quoted as saying, listen carefully, Russell said, I refuse to believe that the only thing wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like it. Now he was struggling with something here because as an atheist he realized that he didn't really have many good arguments to say that anything was really right or wrong. Meaning at the end of the day, what makes murder wrong? What's wrong with it? So you could say, well, every society makes its own rules and society generally prohibits murder. Now would that say, however, that if a society changes its mind and says, you know what, we think murder's a good thing. Would that make murder okay just because the government said it's now okay? I think most people would recoil. And that's exactly what Bertrand Russell was saying. He was saying as an atheist, the only thing that he could really say about murder or stealing or rape, the only thing he could say is, you know what, it offends me, it bothers me. But he was saying, I refuse to believe that the only thing wrong with it is that I don't like it. Meaning that he was acknowledging that there must be something intrinsically wrong with murder, cosmically wrong with murder. Not that it's just a convenient social convention. He was recognizing that some acts in this world are so heinous that they have to be intrinsically evil and wrong, not just because we voted on it or that it's practical. And he was saying as an atheist, he feels he can't really offer more than his own personal revulsion. But he suspected there has to be more. Now how can there be the possibility of moral absolutes? It only happens when the author of creation, the author that said, let there be light, is the same being that says, thou shall not murder. Meaning when the author of natural law, when the author of the world, of nature is the same being as the author of moral and ethical law, that means that the moral and ethical laws become inbuilt into the fabric of reality. It's not some external thing that human beings do as a convention, but the creator of the world, the being that brought everything into existence, made this part of reality that it's wrong to kill because the creator said so. There are many other evidences of the hand of God in the world. Again, we are so limited on time tonight, but one is just simply that people continue to experience incredible supernatural miracles even to this day. Miracles demonstrate that the world does not simply function in a natural realm. And there are many more subtle experiences that people see the hand of God in their lives. I wanna share with you a chapter from a book. This actually is a beautiful series of books put out in England every year. They do 60 days for 60 years. It's a commemoration of the howl quest in the state of Israel. This is an article written by Yita Haberstam who wrote a series, she co-authored a long series of books, Everyday Miracles. And this is an article she says, coincidences are God's way of saying hello. She writes the following. Traditionally, Miami, Los Angeles, and New York are the three cities in the United States to which most Israelis flock, both as tourists and as immigrants. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the other hand has never proven to be a major magnet for the expatriates. And Hebrew is certainly not the lingua franca of the grassroots natives there. So, Eric Blauchstein pricked his ears attentively on Rosh Hashanah. When he heard an uncommon language in Pittsburgh, Hebrew being spoken on the street outside of synagogue in Mount Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh. People often laugh about how much Hebrew is spoken in New York, but certainly no one has ever made the claim about Pittsburgh. Nostalgic to hear the language that he once knew well, Eric Blauchstein listened depreciatively and then unable to suppress his curiosity, approached the Hebrew speaking group. Who were they he wanted to know? And what were they doing in all places of Pittsburgh? Well, my company just transferred me a young man in the group explained. And of course, my family has relocated with me. He said introducing his wife and children. He then gestured toward an older man and woman at his side. And these are my parents. They don't live here, but they came here to visit us for the holidays. Eric fell drawn to the father, a man close to his age, and began a halting conversation with him in his own rusty Hebrew. The older man was visibly impressed, even though Eric wasn't very fluent. Where'd you learn to speak Hebrew? The Israeli asked, pleasantly surprised. I'm a survivor of the concentration camps. The German born Blauchstein replied. I went to Israel after the war in 1948. I fought as a volunteer soldier during the Israeli War of Independence. I served with the 12th Brigade, the seventh regiment. The Israeli looked at Blauchstein with quickened interest. I know this is a long shot, but were you by any chance in the second company? Indeed Blauchstein said he was. A variety of emotions which Eric couldn't quite decipher danced across the Israeli's face. You weren't in the third platoon, were you? Right again. Then the Israeli asked a startling question. Were you a second lieutenant? Yes, as a matter of fact Blauchstein answered in amazement. I was a second lieutenant. And your unit had only one second lieutenant, right? The Israeli pressed on. Now how would you know that Blauchstein demanded? Flustered by where the line of questioning was leading. How could you possibly know that? Because I've been looking for you for 52 years. The Israeli shouted, grabbing Eric's hand and pumping it vigorously. Remember the French commandos? You saved my life. It happened 52 years ago, but the memory was vivid as if it happened yesterday. In a flashback, Eric Blauchstein remembered it all. The Negev, the Israeli advance unit, made up of French volunteers under enemy attack by the Egyptians and almost out of ammunition. His own platoon being called on to rescue the stranded soldiers caught in a line of fire. Eric's unit had broken through enemy lines to pick up the dead and injured and bring them back to safety. And then there had been one wounded soldier whom Eric had carried on his back all the way to the field dressing station. Eric made sure the soldier was tended to and then left never learning the man's name nor his fate. But Eric was not easily forgotten by the man who had been conscious throughout the ordeal and instead of Eric's second lieutenant soldier insignia burning them into his memory. All of his life he'd wanted to meet the man who had rescued him so he could thank him. To think that I had come to Pittsburgh to meet you again, the Israeli exclaimed. And we're not to say this was his first time here. Eric Blauchstein stared at him incredulous, but I wasn't even supposed to be here tonight, he told the man. Every Rosh Hashanah, my wife and I travel to Chicago to be with our daughter whose husband is a rabbi and who obviously can't leave his pulpit at this time. It's practically a tradition. We've done it for several years straight. But this year, he and his wife had suddenly decided to stay home in Mount Lebanon for the first time since their daughter has moved to Chicago. Eric told the Pittsburgh Post, the Israeli wound up coming to Pittsburgh for the first time and I wound up staying for the first time. And we both wound up in the same synagogue together. Both men felt that they had been touched by a miracle. The Israeli was thrilled that he'd finally was able to thank his benefactor and Blauchstein was touched to witness the miracle of life he had given to this man, his son and his grandchildren. Three generations stood before him now, testifying to the impact of his one action 52 years before. It was a great way to start the new year. Coincidences are God's way of saying hello. They are the miracles that happen in our daily lives and show us we're not alone. Ultimately, faith is a process. It's a process. The word emunah in Hebrew faith is related to the word Omenet, which is a nurse and it's related to the Hebrew word Omanut, which means art, an artist. That's because faith has to be both crafted and nurtured. And the path of nurturing and crafting our faith is through yearning and through seeking. The Bible says in Deuteronomy chapter four, verse 29, from there you will seek God and you will find him if you search for him with all your heart and all your soul. We know of course that there are many obstacles to faith. It's not so simple. Number one is an unhealthy understanding that we have of God. People often see God as cruel, as punishing, as an ogre. And obviously no one is gonna be attracted to believing in such a being. I mentioned earlier in this course the market of Meserich who once met an atheist and said to the atheist, look to God that you don't believe in that, I don't believe in that God either. So one of the problems that we have in our faith is that we have unhealthy conceptions of God. It's not going to help us connecting with God. The truth is that when the Bible begins its creation story, the Bible says that after each day of creation, Vayar Elohim Ketov, and God saw that it was good. And one of the commentaries to the Bible, Rivyakovsky Mecklenburg, says that really, Vayar Elohim Ketov doesn't simply mean and God saw that it was good. He says, Vayar is the he feels, the causative form of the verb. And he says what it really means is, not that God saw that it was good, because what does that mean? That God made something and he said, hey, that's pretty good. Like what do you think God said that it makes something that's junk? So of course, if God makes it, it's good. So the Ketav v. Kabbalah says, no, what the verse is saying is that God caused it to be seen. Not that he saw it, he caused it to be seen Ketov because he is good. Meaning that God made the world because he is good. The Bible says, olam chesed ibaneh, the world is a creation and it's a product of love. God is love, God loves every single one of us. God has our good in mind and God is incredibly patient. So if we have a healthy concept of God, rather than being some punishing evil tyrant that's always saying no to us and being an obstacle to our happiness, the Bible makes it very clear that God created us as an act of love. God wants us to have the greatest blessings in the world. We refer to God in our liturgy as avinu av harachaman, our father, our merciful father, that God is like a parent that only wants our good. The Bible speaks about God's 13 attributes of mercy. He's completely long suffering and forbearing and forgiving and patient and generous and kind. That's the essence of what the Bible really teaches about God. The Bible never says that God is one mean guy out to get you. The Kabbalists say that God is far more complex than we could ever understand. The Kabbalah refers to God as the Anesoph, the ultimate infinity. Our minds cannot grasp God. So when we want to dismiss God because we think we've got them all figured out, Judaism says not so fast that God is way beyond our understanding. Number two, I believe another obstacle to faith is that the faith in God in our world today is very unpopular. We know the Bible, the rabbis teach us, Adam nimshach achar svivav, people are drawn after their environment. Rev Cook, in a famous letter to a father who was very bereaved because his son had rejected faith, Rev Cook said to this father that your son is an emotional Anus. He is basically someone who is operating against his own free will due to the spirit of the age in which we're living. He's captured. He's captured by the spirit of the age. What do you expect? It's almost impossible today for people to be people of faith when the entire world militates against it. It's almost like growing up today at a Western university and being someone who supports Israel. When the entire academic world vilifies and hates Israel, it's hard to be the one person that sticks up for Israel. There are a few people who do it, but it's incredibly hard. A third reason why faith is difficult is found in an article, a famous article by Revokhan Vasserman. He was the Russian Shiva in Baranovich and he was butchered with his entire Shiva during the Holocaust. He wrote an article called Alha Emuna on faith and he proposes that really when you think about it, faith in God should be the most natural, normal, default position for human beings. He says that it's impossible in his mind to imagine a person really thinking that the world that we're living in just came about by accident. To him, the reality of God was the clearest thing in the world and what he couldn't understand is how is it possible for someone not to believe in God? It was to him a miracle that you could have people that would deny the reality of God. Revasserman proposes that in the Bible we're taught that we should never accept a bribe because bribes will blind the eyes of the wise. What's interesting is that Jewish law says that you'll be blinded by a bribe even if it's a small amount of money, even if the litigant gives you a dollar or 50 cents, you're disqualified from being a judge. And the Talmud is a famous case where one of the litigants is approaching in the morning on the way to the courtroom, he passes one of the judges in the street and says, good morning. And this judge recused himself from the trial. He says, because this guy gave me a nice greeting in the morning, I'm now predisposed to him. I might be blinded to favor him. To that extent, the Bible says we cannot take a bribe, even if it's the greatest judge in the world, even Moses, if Moses takes a bribe, he is disqualified from being a judge. Revasserman says that we have in our world today a huge bribe. And the bribe is that it's very, very attractive to many people to be able to live a life with no restraints. It's not attractive to know that you're gonna have to live a life where this is a supreme being telling you what you can do and what you can't do. And he says that that reality that we would be preferable, we would prefer to live with a life with no restraints, he suggests is a bribe that blinds our eyes to the truth. It's inconvenient, it's uncomfortable to have to live your life in the reality and presence of a God. You can't do whatever in the world you wanna do. There's a boss and the boss decides what we can do and not do. So it's easier not to have to worry about the boss and say, I don't believe in God, that's the bribe. Of course, one of the huge problems that gets in the way of people's faith is suffering and evil in the world. I once was teaching a class in New York on the dietary laws, laws of keeping kosher downtown in Manhattan and a woman walked into the middle of the class, we were about halfway through, she stands up in front of the whole class and she announces, I don't believe in God. And I said, excuse me, what did you say? And she says, I don't believe in God. And I said, well, why not? She says, because of the Holocaust, because six million Jews were killed, I cannot believe in God. And I said to her, you'll excuse me but I think you really do believe in God. And she got angry and she said, what do you mean? I just told you, I don't believe in God. And I said to her, you know what, I think you do believe in God, I think you're just very angry with God. And she's angry, she said, I'm furious with God. She said, well, it seems that you do really believe in God. So the truth is that when we see evil happening in the world, evil does not ipso facto mean that there's no God. What evil might do is make it very difficult for us to feel close to God. But it cannot lead logically to a denial of the reality of God. When philosophers deal with what they call theodicy, theodicy is the justification of suffering in the world, theodicy only becomes a problem. Theodicy is only a problem if you have a totally powerful supreme being that can do everything. And this supreme being is totally benevolent and good. And you have suffering in the world, then you've got a problem. Because you have to figure out how is it possible that a God that can do everything, control everything, and that wants what's best for us, how does he allow evil to exist? But you only have the problem if there's a God. Because if there's no God that can control everything in the world, why would we expect good things to happen? Why would we expect that things in the world should be any different than the way they are? So our kicking against evil and our being upset with suffering only works. It only kicks in because there is a God that can make things different. And it bothers us that he's not making it different. It bothers us that he's not stepping in and getting in the way of evil. But again, that problem, that being upset does not get off the ground if there's no God. There have been many, many Jewish attempts to reconcile the sufferings in the world with the goodness and the power of God. We won't have time to get into all the solutions to this conundrum tonight. But I just wanna share the ultimate answer that the Bible gives. There's an ultimate answer. And the ultimate answer is that we have to recognize that we're asking here for the impossible. I'll give you a simpler example. If we wanna ask God, God, why did you prohibit the eating of shrimp? Why are we not allowed to eat shrimp? Now what are we expecting? Are we expecting that God's going to have a conversation with us and explain, well, I am the ultimate being in the entire universe and I have incredibly deep and profound reasons for doing what I do and for making the laws that I make. And I think it'll be very easy for me to explain my thinking to you. I mean, the absurdity of the question is that we're supposing that we have the ability to penetrate the thinking of God. That we think that God can simply explain to us human beings how he thinks and what's in his mind. The reality is that human beings, human beings, God is God and we don't have the ability. It's, we would like to, but we don't have the ability to think on God's level. The book of Isaiah says in chapter 55, lo mach shavotai ke mach shavotai haim. My thoughts are not your thoughts, God says. And in the Bible where Moses says to God, show me your ways. Moses was asking, according to the Talmud, the ultimate question. When Moses says to God, show me your ways. Moses, the Talmud says, wants to know why do the righteous suffer? And God says to him, you cannot see me and live. The word see meaning understanding, like I see what you mean. So God says to Moses, you are trying to understand how I run the world. You can never understand me because you're a living, breathing, finite, physical human being. You're not God. The ancient philosophers would say if you could understand God, you would be God. There's an entire book of the Bible, the book of Eov, Job, that's dedicated to the question of suffering. The very conclusion of the book basically has God telling Job and his three friends, you want to understand how I run the world? So God asks them rhetorically, when was the last time you ever created a sunrise? When did you ever create a universe? How could you possibly understand how I run the world when you have no clue about the simplest things about creation? So we have to realize that suffering and evil bothers us, but that ultimately it doesn't prove that there's no God and we have to accept on some level the limits to our ability of understanding. Our sages explain that deep down inside of us, we really do believe in God. That's what our sages teach, that deep down inside every human being, we have a almost instinctual recognition of Goddess. Prophet Isaiah says like an animal who recognizes its master, the source of its food, just like an ox recognizes the master, we as human beings just naturally recognize God. The problem is that just like our body can become sick, so too our souls can become sick as well and they can slip into a spiritual coma. That if we have a persistent disregard of Torah, of Mitzvot, of working on our Medot, of our character traits, of pursuing spiritual things, if we consistently deprive ourselves of this spiritual nourishment, it can lead to our spiritual muscles becoming atrophied and ultimately falling asleep. Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz, great rabbi from Israel, said that doubt is a part of the process of human spiritual growth, it's natural. Faith is not a package, he writes, that one receives neatly wrapped up and sealed and that stays that way forever. So going through periods of doubt and questioning Rabbi Steinzaltz says is natural. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov wrote in the Lkut-e-Maharan that people are very mistaken when they think at times that they have suddenly fallen in their service of God. This is not really a fall at all. He says it's precisely because they are ascending from level to level that all the old obstacles, the desires, the confusions, the fantasies, the doubts, the impediments, they reawaken and they attack again. A person must constantly work to subdue the barriers on every level, the truth is this is not a fall at all. When we have these difficulties and doubts we're not falling down, we're not wiping ourselves out spiritually like a surfer that crashes in the waves. Natalmud is a famous story, tractate Shabbat, page 31a, where someone wants to convert to Judaism and he wants to learn the entire Torah while he stands on one foot. The Margaret of Mezorich said that what he wanted to do is he wanted to be a Jew without all the ups and downs. He wanted to stand on one foot and have none of the low points and none of the high points, just even keel. And Shammai chased him out with a builder's rod because Shammai felt that this is not the structure of creation. Shammai felt that we come into the world to build and to repair, and therefore ups and downs is an integral part of God's plan. It was a famous story where Jewish students in Berlin were having doubts as a result of the Haskelad, the Enlightenment. These were Yeshua students. They were having tremendous doubts about God. It decided that before they broke with Judaism forever, they would send one of their group to Volozhin, the great Yashivan Volozhin to see if in that citadel of Torah, they can have answers to their questions. So one of the group went there and got completely immersed in the learning of Torah in Volozhin. When he came back to Berlin, he told his friends that he had never experienced such intellectual delight as he experienced in Volozhin. But they said to him, did you bring us back any answers to our questions? He says, no, I haven't brought back any answers, but the question no longer plagued me.