God’s Majesty and Our Human Dignity
Sara Paasche-Orlow

Most American Jews lack a coherent theological system. What is God? What does God have to do with us? And how does our view of God influence our behavior? It is much easier to identify theological concepts that have been abandoned than to elaborate the new language and metaphors that will help define a modern Jewish theology. One of the most common traditional metaphors for God that has fallen out of favor is God as King. The image of God as King, seated on a high and lofty throne ( haMelekh yoshev al kiseh ram v'nisah ), no longer has salience and comes to mind mostly as an idea that is broadly rejected and lampooned.

Today, the most prevalent contemporary framework for conceptualizing Jewish theology is to see the godliness of human beings. God is the movement for good in history, and glimpses of this good can be seen by the good acts people do that reflect the divine spark within each person. This is an amalgam of: Martin Buber's view of imatatio Dei , the notion of being made in God's image to act in God's ways; Mordechai Kaplan's notion of God elaborated through human action; and the neo-kabbalistic idea that each person contains a mote of the original light of creation. In different ways, these three schemas place human beings into the center of the conversation about the essence of God, which appears to be quite distinct from the distant God as melekh, king on high.

I serve as the rabbi at Hebrew SeniorLife, an organization that serves the elderly of Boston in diverse ways: community-based housing, long- and short-term care, community-based services, assisted living, adult day health, and a continuing care retirement community. I work with the elderly and infirm, people in their nineties, some whose minds are hidden in an ailing vessel and others whose minds are failing or have failed them long ago. Often I am with people whose minds and bodies are betraying them, and they understand that they have a progressive condition.

We frequently talk about God and they ask me: where is God? They want to know if I believe a loving God would have created such a slow endurance-at-the-end existence of suffering. Our conversations return again and again to the issue of accepting the human condition and trying to find strength and comfort in the face of adversity. And we return to these very simple answers: somehow, in the face of suffering and loss, we are called upon in even the smallest of ways to be caring, to understand the situation of the other, and to do whatever is within our power to ennoble ourselves and the people around us.

Through being able to understand the needs and feelings of the other, we create connection and provide each other with an emergent form of interpersonal revelation. We rescue each other from aloneness and allow ourselves to encounter the God inherent in the Other. God happens when we reach out to care beyond ourselves.

At Hebrew SeniorLife there are more than 400 people at the High Holiday services; approximately 150 people come in wheelchairs, helped by volunteers and aids. The High Holiday nusakh begins with the old fashioned, theologically out-of-date, image of God as King seated on a high and lofty throne. Suddenly, I am transfixed. Here, in front of me, are the thrones of our godliness! The throne is not off floating in the heavens, but here in our midst, found in our every effort to create moments of dignity for the most vulnerable in society. This is a sea of wheelchairs full of God's majesty and splendor -- a vivid scene of dignity radiating from each person. When human dignity is degraded anywhere, each of our godliness is diminished. Such is the dignity that emerges from God's majesty, malkhut;. it serves to increase the dignity of all who dare to behold it.

Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow, a Wexner Graduate Fellow, was a CLAL Fellow and a program officer at the Jewish Life Network. She helped found spark: Partnership for Service and currently serves as Director of Religious Services at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston.