Seek and Ye Shall Find

Parshat Va'Etchanan 

by Rabbi Avi Billet

One of the more profound verses in the Torah is Devarim 4:29. After describing a sort of exile, a kind of distancing from Judaism-central that a person may experience, Moshe tells the people that when you’re out in that lonely place, the following will happen:

וּבִקַּשְׁתֶּ֥ם מִשָּׁ֛ם אֶת־יְקֹוָ֥ק אֱ-לֹקֶ֖יךָ וּמָצָ֑אתָ כִּ֣י תִדְרְשֶׁ֔נּוּ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֖ וּבְכָל־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ

“Then you (p) will begin to seek God your Lord, and if you pursue Him with all your heart and soul, you will eventually find Him.” (Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s loose translation)

The “p” in parentheses indicates a form of “you” that is written in the verse in the plural. Every other “you” and “your” in the verse is written in the singular. In his “Nitfei Neumim” Rabbi Yehuda Levinson noted that many people seek out God (hence the plural on who will be seeking), but each individual pursues this avenue using one’s own natural abilities and strengths. To the extent that groups work, there is limited to no success. It is only select individuals who merit to find that which they are seeking. For example, in order to find Him through seeking Him with all your heart and soul, you need to have fulfilled “don’t be turning after your heart and eyes…” (a quote from the 3rd paragraph of Shema).

Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch wrote, “Even as subjects of a heathen world, you will be aware of His illuminating, ennobling, an liberating nearness, which ennobles you and brings happiness… All of Israel’s history in exile, with its triumphant perseverance externally and its yearning for inspiration and refinement internally, is an ongoing revelation of the living God, in contrast to dead and deadening heathenism.”

The Rebbe Simcha Bunem of Pshischa took a different spin on the verse, noting that “When you seek from there” (a more literal translation of the first two words of the verse), meaning when you are seeking meaning from distant places, from philosophical and ontological sources that are beyond your comprehension, then only if you are truly seeking to find God there will you find success, if you are seeking Him out with all your heart and soul.

I think that all of these interpretations speak to a particular challenge our generation has. It is true in the Jewish world, and it is certainly true in the secular world.

There was a time when entertainment in this country consisted of going to an outdoor lecture for 2-3 hours. It was the pre-film equivalent of going to the movies. The speaker had to be entertaining, of course, but he was also well-read, well-thought-out, and had to keep the people interested in what he had to say.

There are certainly wonderful speakers today, some of whom could hold audience attention for a length of time. But how many people who are admired today for their speaking are very well read, extremely thoughtful, come to their knowledge from a full grasp of history and philosophy, understand the science of economics and politics and sociology?

And in the Jewish world, who are our heroes? More importantly, what do we do for ourselves that helps us emulate the greatest of Jewish thinkers and teachers?

We may find ourselves in present times in a difficult place, removed from shul, removed from community, removed from normal life as we know it. How are we filling the void? How can we seek out God when finding ourselves, as two verses earlier describe our predicament as “God will then scatter you among the nations, and only a small number will remain among the nations to which God will lead you.” (4:27)?

It is not expected that every one of us becomes a philosopher or a scholar. However, each of us can ask questions about our relationship with the Almighty, and what it means to follow the Torah and keep the mitzvos, a common theme presented by Moshe throughout the book of Devarim.

What do we feel when we reread the 10 Commandments? What do we commit to when we hear the Shema as part of the Torah reading this week?

What drives our relationship with the Almighty? How do we scale up our connection to Him, how do we “seek Him from there” – from wherever we find ourselves, physically, emotionally, spiritually?

A great start to answering some of these questions is to open a musser book, and to read through the table of contents, simply to get ideas of what we ought to be thinking about. Or perhaps we can look at the table of contents of Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed.

There are many directions we can go, but the truth is that the avoidance of complacency, the avoidance of remaining in a rut, stuck in a rote routine, is taking steps out, venturing into territory which is a little uncomfortable because it is unfamiliar. Reading more. Asking more. Seeking out more ways to understand things. Challenging assumptions.

We live in a dark time in which one of the founding pillars of Americanism, free speech, is being censored at every turn. "Big tech" and "media" easily apply the term "misinformation" to ideas that don't jibe with the views of their sponsors (or the government?), so videos and websites are being deleted, deplatformed, and labeled "misinformation" without a debate or an honest effort at countering the information people find either difficult to hear, or even encouraging to hear!  It is becoming increasingly harder to have conversations, to have debate, to try to “learn from everyone,” and to enhance our greater efforts at expansive knowledge if information is denied to us.

In whatever way we can learn from opposing views, this is to the glory of humanity.

Certainly this is true in the realm of Torah, where people with opposing views appear in the same Talmud, and on every page of a commentary-laden Chumash. Seek, and you shall find, as long as you open your heart and soul to being expanded by all the new knowledge and information you find, and allow it to change you… hopefully for the better!