“And you who cleave to God, your God, you are all alive today” (Numbers 4:4). The Sages ask how the mitzvah of cleaving to God can be accomplished when He is described in this very portion as a “consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24)! They answer that by cleaving to Torah scholars, we are, as it were, cleaving to God (Ketubot 111b). The boldness of this idea raises many questions and forces us to define more clearly what the meaning of our relationship with God is. The notion of cleaving to God by attaching ourselves to his prophets, judges, Torah scholars, and cohanim, is an ancient tradition. Today we do so by drawing close to Torah scholars, tzaddikim, Rabbis, Rebbes, and Rebbetzins. We experience holiness by drawing close to those who are holy, ascending nearer to God on the wings of those who know how to fly that high.
Yet, notwithstanding this time-honored tradition, we must always ask at what point cleaving to a holy individual causes us to abdicate the obligation and responsibility to nurture our own unique relationships with God. When have we become too dependent on others and forsaken our own efforts to reach God. Just as Jewish tradition teaches us to connect ourselves to holy people to catalyze the process of drawing nearer to God, it also teaches us not to place any intermediary between ourselves and God. We must depend on ourselves. Idol worship is based on the notion that intermediaries – human beings and the forces of nature (which in fact do the bidding of the one God) – should be turned into independent divinities, worthy of worship in their own right.
As we have throughout this book, whenever we discover that Judaism propounds two equally valid contradictory positions, we should attempt to find the correct balance between the two by finding their common ground, where they complement one another. Here too, we discover that we must balance between acknowledging that others possess spiritual powers and abilities we do not and, therefore, it is an honor and privilege to learn and emulate their ways, and the necessity to guard against losing our own identities, our own free will, and the sense of responsibility necessary to develop our own unique relationship with God.
These two ideas are beautifully expressed in this portion in what seems to be a contradiction between two consecutive verses: “Face to face did God speak with you on the mountain from the midst of the fire. I was standing between God and you at the time, to relate the word of God to you, for you were afraid of the fire” (Deuteronomy 5:4-5). In the first verse God seems to speak to the people directly and in the second Moses clearly relays God’s message to the people. How can we explain this phenomenon wherein God spoke directly to the people, yet Moses stood between them and God? The peshat explanation might be that first God spoke to them directly and then, because they were frightened, Moses transmitted any further revelations. Indeed, according to tradition, God delivered the first two of the Ten Commandments directly to the people, while the concluding eight commandments were transmitted to the people by Moses, as they were afraid that the awesome power of God’s words might overwhelm and kill them. However, on a derash level, we can explain that these two verses embody the fine balance between the role the holy person plays and the importance that God speak to the people “face to face.”
Another question related to the obligation to cleave to God is how near we can actually expect to get to Him. On the one hand, God informs Moses that no one can see His face and live, as He is an all consuming fire; yet, on the other hand, God explains to Miriam and Aaron that “mouth to mouth do I speak to him [Moses], in a clear vision and not in riddles, upon the image of God does he gaze” (Numbers 12:8).
These verses convey a paradoxical reality: God is both intimately accessible and awesomely beyond anything we can grasp, at one and the same time. These two aspects are referred to as the simultaneous states of Divine immanence and Divine transcendence. God is so close yet so far, present yet beyond all perception. There are unique moments in life when through prayer, meditation, being surrounded by pristine nature, or experiencing intense joy or sorrow at a lifecycle event, we feel God all around us and even within us. By the same token, at other moments we feel abandoned and utterly alone, as God seems nowhere to be found. God has promised us that the covenant He made with our ancestors is eternal and unbreakable; however, if we turn to other god’s he will surely hide His face on that day (Deuteronomy 31:18).
The desire to cleave to God, whether in a mediated or unmediated fashion, coupled with the awesome reality of drawing close to an infinite and Omniscient God, is certainly fraught with spiritual tension and uncertainty. Yet the soul, which is likened to a burning flame, is naturally drawn to the fire and light of God. No matter what the obstacles or impediments, the soul always desires and seeks to be (re)united with God, its ultimate source.
