God suffers with us

(RNS) — I have spent the last 48 years of my life in an intensive journey through higher Jewish learning. I had thought that I had heard of every Jewish thinker and every Jewish philosopher.

But I had never heard of Otto Weiss, and it was Weiss who would turn out to become one of my profound teachers — and almost no one knows about him.

I remembered Weiss because I was recently going through my phone and found some photos from a trip to Theresienstadt, in the Czech Republic, not far from Prague, eight years ago.

Theresienstadt (Terezin) was the so-called “model ghetto,” the internment place for not only the simple Jews, the regular Jews, but, notably, the intellectuals, the artists, the musicians, the composers. The art and the theater and the music that emerged from Theresienstadt was powerful and beautiful.

Consider the collection of children’s poetry and art called “I Never Saw Another Butterfly.” It typifies the power of art and the human spirit, even and especially in the midst of unspeakable degradation.

One of the works that emerged from Theresienstadt is one of the most obscure, and one of the most powerful, Jewish texts that you could ever read. It is called “And God Saw That It Was Bad,” and its author was Otto Weiss, who wrote the book with his daughter Helga as a gift for his wife.

Every day, Weiss would write a little bit of the book and then get the pages to Helga, who created beautiful, intricate illustrations for what he wrote. Weiss was like a Jewish Scheherezade, telling one more story to keep himself and his family alive.

Otto Weiss died at Auschwitz in October 1944, almost 80 years ago. His wife and daughter survived.

In the book, God wonders why fewer prayers than usual have been ascending to heaven. “On the earth a war was continuing to rage,” he wrote. “Not even God’s power had been able to prevent this war. Mankind had stopped believing in Him, and bowed down now before other gods.”

So God comes down to Earth to see what is happening to our people. God disguises Himself (as it were) as a Jewish man and takes the name Aaron Gottesman — Aaron, the man of God.

Aaron Gottesman visits Theresienstadt. The ghetto policemen take him into custody. He winds up living in the ghetto. There, Gottesman/God sees what is happening with the Jews.

Thus, the name of the book: “And God Saw That It Was Bad,” a grim parody of the refrain in the early verses of Genesis that describe the days of creation, “and God saw that it was good.”

In Theresienstadt, Aaron Gottesman/God contracts typhus, and there, Aaron Gottesman dies.

Which is to say: God dies.

Right now, you are shuddering. I cannot blame you. The idea that God can come to Earth and become human — the idea of the Incarnation — and that God can suffer, and even die doesn’t sound particularly Jewish. It sounds like Christianity.

You could stop right there and decide that this is simply a heretical tale. I would instead ask that we focus on the real point of Weiss’ fable.

When Weiss wrote that God died in the ghetto, it’s not that he believed that God really died. What he meant was that a particular view of God had died. Our belief that God is all-powerful — that is what died.

Why is God not all-powerful?

At the precise moment that you enter into a relationship with someone, what happens? You become vulnerable. Lovers are vulnerable to each other. Parents and children are vulnerable to each other. Teachers and students are vulnerable to each other. Employers and employees are vulnerable to each other.

If you don’t want to become vulnerable, I have the perfect solution for you. Don’t ever, ever enter into a relationship with anyone.

As soon as God entered into relationship with human beings, God became vulnerable. God lost a little bit of power.

God gave the world ethical teachings. God gave us Torah. But God also gave us free will. That means that we are free to reject God. Which means that God is not all-powerful.

Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is a Yom HaShoah unlike any in recent memory, because of Oct. 7.

In the wake of the attacks on Israel from Iran several weeks ago, a few of my friends suggested that God protected Israel on that night of deep anxiety. I begged to differ. “No,” I suggested. “It was not God. It was actually the Iron Dome, and the laudable efforts of the United States, the U.K., France, Jordan and, most likely, the Saudis.

“Moreover,” I suggested, “if God was present in the protection of Israel on that Saturday night, it begs the question: Where was God on Oct. 7? Asleep? On sabbatical?”

I believe I am correct that God did not protect Israel from Iran, any more than God failed to protect Israel on Oct. 7.

God does not work that way; at least, not anymore. Since the end of the biblical epoch, miracles are over. This is precisely what the great teacher of our time, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, taught in his session “Wisdom Without Walls.”

So, where was God on the night of the attack from Iran?

God was not micromanaging the Iron Dome system. God was with those Israelis who huddled in fear. When they felt fragility, that was God. When they felt hope, that, too, was God.

And where is God now?

In the words of poet Alicia Ostriker: God is “reduced to a hostage among hostages.”

I think of the hostages still alive in Gaza. I think of the Passover that they did not have, wondering if they even knew that it had been Passover, wondering if they have even seen daylight over the past half-year.

I think of their fear. I think of their hope. I think of their courage.

God is in that fear. God is in that hope. God is in that courage.

“And God saw that it was bad,” Otto Weiss wrote.

It is bad. It is very bad.

God is in the hope that it will get better. And God is in the present affirmation that God is not done with us, the Jewish people, and that while Jews will die, the Jews will always live.

That is the meaning of the retrieved slogan “Am Yisrael chai,” the people of Israel live.

Let us remember the second line of that song.

“Od avinu chai” — Our Supernal Parent lives, as well.