Once again, the security of the land of Israel and its people has been summoned to the forefront of our minds. At our breakfast tables, during our lunch breaks, and in our Facebook and Twitter feeds we encounter and and share deep concern and strong opinions about who should be doing what, and exactly how they should be doing it.

Securing the safety of the people of Israel is an objective that is — at best — extraordinarily complex. Politics, economics, and military and defense ‘strategics’ dance an intricate tango together, and they all need to be accounted for in trying to create a safe and livable environment. All, against the backdrop of an increasingly hostile world in which antisemitism is once again rearing its grotesque head unabashedly.

But it is not just up to the politicians and the military and defense experts to secure our safety. As they go about their jobs trying to dance the dance as best they can, there is far more to this tango than meets the eye.

The Multiverse

The existence of multiple realities is a fundamental tenet of Judaism. Wikipedia describes the existence of a Multiverse as hypothetical, and many think of the concept as being fictional, but as far as Judaism is concerned it is a fact.

Humans relate naturally to things that can be perceived by our senses — we know and believe that which we can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell; but this reality that we experience sensorially, this reality made of physical matter and energy, coexists with uncountable other realities that are equally real, although entirely different in nature.

We cannot feel things that are not made of physical matter, and we can not see or hear things that don’t emit or reflect physical energy. One could even say that spirituality (including souls, angels etc.) does not actually exist, because it doesn’t — in terms of the parameters that define the physical world as we know it.

But the fact that something doesn’t exist physically, does not mean that it does not exist at all. If spirituality did exist physically, if it could be measured in grams and joules and it could be sensed by the body, it wouldn’t be spirituality; because it would be physical.

The Interface

Another idea that is fundamental in Jewish tradition is the fact that as different as matter and spirit are, they are at the same time incredibly deeply in touch with each other. They may be entirely different dimensions, and they may not relate to each other, but the worlds of matter and spirit coexist in a highly interactive equilibrium and a small event in any one reality has real outcomes in the others.

The interface between matter and spirit means that every choice we make, everything we think, say, and do sets off a chain reaction that weaves its way through the many layers of reality, making waves that that ripple through countless dimensions, with real consequences — both material and spiritual.

The User Manual

This interface between matter and spirit is why mitzvahs (biblical commandments) are not only commandments, but also connections. ‘Commandment’ and ‘connection’ are two distinct translations of the word mitzvah, both are correct and they deeply related: the commandments are guidelines for getting, and staying connected to the divine Infinity. They are the user manual that came with the universe.

A thick wire made from high quality materials can carry more electrical current than a thin cheap one and the same is true of the ‘connections’ we form through mitzvahs: the stronger and healthier the channel connecting our bodies with Divinity, the greater the flow of blessing between them. Oh, and also, the more blessed our actions are the more successful they are likely to be.

Micro and Macro

The Creator has a relationships with each of us individually, with us all collectively, and with the universe as a whole. Every ‘connection’ we form increase the flow of blessing to ourselves, to us all, and to the universe, and the added blessing enhances the ability of our efforts — individual and collective — to succeed.

When we invest energy in making an effort to do the right thing it sets off a reaction that ripples up through all the layers of reality and back, and can bring real positive outcomes with it, for our selves, for us all, and for the universe.

Back on the dance-floor

Every act of kindness, every coin given to charity, and every time one puts on tefillin or lights shabbat candles (etc.) creates a connection, allowing light, warmth and blessing into the world, making the world a better place and allowing the tango behind Israel’s security to be more graceful and successful.

Every mitzvah makes the world a better — and safer — place in a very real way, adding blessing to the valiant efforts of all those who work on the ground to protect our people, and protecting them as they protect us all.

Almost every single time I finish a talk, regardless of the topic, one of two things happens. Either someone asks a question in front of the crowd or one of the people in the crowd asks to speak to me individually on the side; in both scenarios the question is the same: “Rabbi, how could God allow the Holocaust to Happen?”

And every time I sigh.

I sigh because mention of the Holocaust is painful, and I sigh because I do not have an answer.

And then I go on to talk about computers. I talk about computers and the difference between the ways computers and people ‘think’.

Computers spend all day asking us questions and reacting to our responses; “would you like to save changes before closing your document?” “closing this browser may result in lost work, do you want to proceed?” and on and on, but the fact that they ask and then react appropriately to our responses does not mean that they understand what we have responded — at least not at all in the way that we as human beings think of understanding.

When a computer saves the changes you made to a document because you clicked “yes” when it asked you whether or not you would like it to do so, it is carrying out processes that it has been programmed to carry out:
1. It arranged pixels on a screen in a way it was programmed to, in a way that you see a question on the screen.
2. It then carries out a specific process that it has been programmed to carry out based on where on the screen you click.
It does not understand the question it asked you and it does not understand your response; it doesn’t understand anything because it doesn’t have a mind.

As you read this article now you are seeing words on a screen — words that carry a message about how the device itself helps me accept something that is difficult to accept, but even as the device displays this message to you, it is not aware of how it helps me accept anything; if we want to say that it is aware of anything, it could be only that it is supposed to be presenting a specific arrangement of different colored pixels on the screen.

The fact that a computer does not understand things the way a human mind does is not because it is not advanced enough, conscious thinking is simply not part of its job description — it is not a mind that has been created to think or understand. What it is, is a device that has been designed to carry out processes that help us get things done. When it comes to the things that computers were created to do they are incredibly capable BUT they will never think or understand the way that a human mind does because that is not one of the things that they were created to do.

Now to bring this all back to people.

We as people do consciously think and experience ideas in ways that computers never will — our minds do many things that computers were not designed to do, but just our minds do still have specific functions that they were designed to carry out just like computers were. They were designed to understand and experience a great many things and the Creator of the Universe is just not one of them.

And so, the human mind will never grasp or relate to God, not because it is not advanced enough, but just because it was not designed to do so. There is plenty that we can understand about Godliness, the entirety of Jewish mysticism addresses the things that we are capable of understanding within the realms of the spiritual and the Godly, but the true essential nature of the Creator, God as opposed to Godliness, that is something that our minds were not created to understand the same way that computers were not created to have conscious thinking experiences.

And this all helps me accept that a good God could allow the Holocaust to happen.

Thinking about reconciling the Holocaust with my faith brings me back to a very memorable conversation with an agnostic Jewish professor in Grand Forks ND in 2009; an all-afternoon-long extremely intense discussion about the nature of the Creator and Its relationship with the universe. Four hours into the conversation he suggested “maybe the reason I am hesitant to believe in God is that I am too arrogant to accept that there is something that is beyond the reach of my ability to understand.”

It was a powerful, humbling moment for both the professor and for myself. This same realization that allowed the professor to accept that God could exist despite the fact that his mind is not capable of grasping Its true nature, allows me to accept that an infinitely good God could have allowed the Holocaust to happen despite the fact that there is no way for any human mind to understand or explain it.

I use the word accept, because I will never understand it — nor will any moral person — but with a little [OK, maybe a lot] of humility, we are capable of coming to the realization that if we believe that everything that exists was created by a Being that is truly infinite and undefinable, and that that same Being created the human mind and gave it the ability to process and understand specific forms of information and logic, there may be other truths that remain beyond its reach despite being true.

The same way computers can process the information they were designed to process but will never experience conscious thought the way people do, the human mind can understand that which it was created to understand while other truths will remain forever beyond its reach.

And perhaps the greatest of those truths is that it is somehow, unfathomably, God — infinitely great and absolutely good, voluntarily allowed this horrific atrocity to happen.

There isn’t a single person, alive or dead, who is, or would ever be in a position to offer ANY explanation for how or why it was OK for God to allow the slaughter of six million innocent Jews. Any attempt by any person to justify the suffering and literally unfathomable cruelty that was perpetrated during the Holocaust would be at best terribly misguided, and generally, disrespectful to the millions of people who were murdered and downright offensive.

What happened during what will always remain one of the darkest events in human history and it was not OK. Period. It was not OK and I don’t want to ever hear anyone try to explain why it was.

Thanks to computers, and to a wise agnostic professor in ND, I can both accept that the human mind is a limited creation with a defined role and that there will always be truths that it will not be part of its role to understand, and remain adamant that no person has any right to try to justify that which is indefensible.

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