The Message, Volume 20, Number 9, March 1993 Page: 4 of 8
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The following sermon was delivered by Rabbi Jack Segal from the Congregation Beth Yeshurun pulpit Friday evening, January 15,1993 - (Parashot Shemot)
continued on Pa9e 5
Moses came to that conclusion through a personal ex-
perience. Abraham came to that conclusion by deductive reason-
ing.
In addition to these experiences, I remember one man who
once said to me: “Rabbi, I was an atheist, or at least I was an
agnostic, until my son was born. However, I was together with
my wife in the birthing room when my wife was in labor. I was
there when she gave that final kvetch. From that act of strain-
ing, from that motion of pain, from that sound of ‘of vay’ came
forth a 7 1/2 pound boy with two eyes, two ears, one mouth, two
arms, and two legs. Right then and there I became a believer in
God.”
Another man said to me when I visited him at M.D. Anderson
Hospital: “Rabbi, in previous years I never gave much thought
to God. But two days ago when my surgeon visited me and said,
‘I removed all of the cancer. I can now tell you that you are
cured. You should have no more trouble in the future.’
“From that moment on, Rabbi, I truly saw God, I truly felt
God, and I truly experienced God.
“Rabbi, it took a shock. It took a traumatic experience. But
thank God, better late than never. I now know that there is a
God.”
My friends, for 35 years there have been Gallup Polls attemp-
ting to discover how many people in the U.S. believe in God.
In 1944, 96% of the people of the U.S. answered, “I do.”
In 1981, 37 years later, 95% of the people in the U.S.
answered, “I do.”
It should therefore be obvious that belief in God is pretty
steady, pretty uniform, and pretty unvarying in the U.S. Almost
everyone claims to believe in God.
In fact, 84% of Americans stated that they consider religion
to be either “important” or “very important” in their lives
(1989).
In addition to this, from 1939 to 1988 (49 years) approx-
imately 42% of the people in this nation stated that they attend-
ed a church or a synagogue service during the past weekend
-religious services were obviously an important dimension in
their lives.
Unfortunately, I also noticed that when the American
Psychiatric Association was polled, only 43% said, “I believe in
God.” This was upsetting to me because Jews have always been
highly represented in the psychiatric profession, and it hurt me
badly to notice that when a group stated that a majority did not
believe in God, that group had to be one of Jewish professionals.
In fact, 22 years ago when I was doing my doctoral dis-
sertation at the University of Houston, I asked approximately
700 Jewish coeds attending universities within the radius of 350
miles of Houston whether they believed in God, and only 75%
stated, “Yes.” The remainder stated that they considered
themselves either agnostics or atheists.
This, too, hurt me - but I personally feel that if this study
were repeated in 1993 the statistics would be even worse.
Maybe one of the reasons why I came to believe in the
existence of a God years ago was because I could not understand
what made one way of life proper and another way of life
improper - if it weren’t that God had told us what was right and
what was wrong.
i‘What’s Wrong With Voting Last Year’s
Immorality’ As Being This Year’s ‘Morality’?”
Belief in God is a personal and subjective matter. It is like
falling in love. Some can fall in love immediately with a girl who
looks like Marilyn Monroe, while others will say, “After the first
ten minutes she couldn’t hold a conversation. Yes, she was
beautiful - but you need more than beauty if it is going to be love
and if it is going to last for a long time.”
So, too, it is with a belief in God. Some will say, “God is a ma-
jor dimension in my life.” However, others will say, “God is a
crutch for the weak.” Or, as Karl Marx said (1844),
“Religion...is the opium of the people.”
Some people can find God quickly; however, others miss God
even when He is directly in front of them.
Tomorrow morning we are going to read how Moses
discovered God. While Moses was growing up in Egypt he never
knew God and never experienced God’s presence. Even when he
was outraged by the way the Egyptian taskmasters were
treating the enslaved Jews, it was not because God had said it
was wrong. It was simply because Moses believed in social ac-
tion. He felt that people should learn to work together, not
against each other. But, obviously, that was not the general at-
titude in Egypt. Egyptian leaders and people believed that
“Might makes right”. They believed that if one is strong, he had
the right to subjugate his neighbors and make them his slaves.
But then, one day, while Moses was in the desert, he looked
up and could not believe what he saw. He rubbed his eyes, but
that did not change what he saw. Beside him was (Exodus 3:2)
“Ha’sneh bo’er ba’esh, v’ha-sneh ay-neh-nu u-kol,” “A bush was
burning and on fire, but it was not being consumed.”
At that moment, while in the desert, while taking care of his
father-in-law’s sheep, something happened. I do not know if it
was simply being together with nature. I do not know whether
he saw what he considered a miracle. I do not know whether it
was a mirage. I also do not know whether this might have been
the first time when he could spend some time with himself and
think about the concept of God. But the Bible says (Lev. 3:4),
“Va-yikra ay-lay Elohim“Moses heard God calling him,” and
Moses replied, “Hee-nay-nee”, “Here I am.” That was Moses’
first encounter with God - in the solitude of the desert.
The Midrash tells us that Abraham came to the conclusion
that there was a God because he could not understand what his
eyes saw. He was only three years of age, and the Midrash tells
us that he asked himself a simple but basic question: “Mee bara
shamayim, va’aretz, v’otee‘1”, “Who created the heavens, the
earth, and me?” It should be obvious that Abraham was a
precocious child.
At first, Abraham thought that the bright sun was God
because it was so strong and so powerful; however, later in the
day he saw the sun set and the moon emerge. It therefore quick-
ly became obvious to him that the sun could not be God.
However, Abraham quickly said to himself, “I made a
mistake. The sun is not God. It is the moon that is God because
the moon overpowered the sun.”
However, several hours later he saw the moon disappear, and
eventually the sun reappeared.
Abraham therefore quickly concluded, “Adon yesh
alay-hem,” “Neither is God. There must be a God who created
both of them and who also created me.” The Midrash states that
it was in this way that Abraham came to the conclusion that
there was a God.
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Congregation Beth Yeshurun (Houston, Tex.). The Message, Volume 20, Number 9, March 1993, periodical, March 5, 1993; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1298735/m1/4/: accessed July 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.