January 12, 2026|כ"ג טבת ה' אלפים תשפ"ו God in History: Encountering the Divine Through Memory and Responsibility
Print ArticleWhen I started out in the rabbinate, I remember hearing senior rabbis lament about the fact that pulpit rabbis no longer speak about God. Not because faith had disappeared, but because speaking about God responsibly had become complicated. Our tradition urges theological humility; our communities contain people with very different beliefs, questions, and doubts; and easy answers – especially after so much suffering – can feel more harmful than helpful. And so, almost instinctively, we learned to speak more comfortably about mitzvot, values, and practice, even when God remains at the center of it all.
That is why today I want to speak about God. Not in abstract terms, but by asking a very specific question about our relationship with Him: How do we define God? How do we speak about God?
The answer, of course, is that we have many names for God and many ways of encountering Him. One central way we define God is as Lawgiver – the God of Torah, the One who gave us a binding way of life. Whether we consciously think about it or not, we acknowledge this every single day. In the blessing asher bachar banu mikol ha’amim v’natan lanu et Torato, we thank God for choosing us and giving us the Torah. God as Lawgiver is fundamental to Jewish life.
But that role begins in Parshat Yitro, at Sinai. This week, we are still in Parshat Shemot, before revelation, before Torah. So the question becomes: How does God present Himself before He is the Lawgiver? What name does God use then?
At the very beginning of the Torah, God is introduced as Creator: Bereishit bara Elokim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz. God is Elokei hashamayim va’aretz – the God of heaven and earth, the God of nature. This is, in many ways, the most intuitive way to understand God. We may debate the mechanics of creation or the relationship between Torah and science, but at a basic level, God as Creator is accessible. We live in His world; we celebrate Him as the One who brought it into being.
So one might expect that when Moshe encounters God at the burning bush, God would introduce Himself in those terms – as the God of nature. But that is not what happens. Instead, God tells Moshe to gather the elders of Israel and say:
Hashem Elokei avoteichem nirah elai – Elokei Avraham, Elokei Yitzchak, v’Elokei Yaakov…
“I am the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Moshe does not come to Bnei Yisrael in the name of the Creator of heaven and earth. He comes in the name of the God of the fathers – in other words, the God of history. And this is no accident. When God later introduces Himself directly to the entire nation at Sinai, He again does not say, “I am the Creator of the universe,” but rather, Anochi Hashem Elokecha asher hotzeiticha me’eretz Mitzrayim – I am the God who took you out of Egypt. Once again, God defines Himself through history.
As Professor Yosef Yerushalmi famously observed, ancient Israel was the first civilization to assign decisive religious meaning to history. God is not known only through philosophy or nature, but through lived experience – through His interaction with humanity, and especially with the Jewish people. Collective memory is central to Judaism. We are not commanded to remember everything, but we are commanded to remember those moments when God entered history in ways that shaped who we are. Moshe’s charge to introduce God as the God of history teaches us to encounter God not only through nature and not only through Torah, but through history itself.
This dual relationship is woven into our rituals and prayers. The shalosh regalim – Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot – are agricultural festivals rooted in nature: spring, harvest, and gathering of the crops. At the same time, they are historical festivals: leaving Egypt, receiving the Torah, and journeying through the desert under God’s protection. We celebrate God as both Creator and Actor in history.
But what does it actually mean to speak about God in history – and what does it not mean? This is where things become more complex, and where humility is essential.
Why should we care about God in history at all? First, because history teaches values – about the nature of God, justice, responsibility, reward and punishment, and the covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people. When we study Tanach, we are not just learning what happened; we are learning what matters. Our rituals, holidays, prayers, and commemorations are expressions of these values drawn from historical memory.
But there is a second, more challenging dimension: the belief that God is not only present then, but involved now. That God did not simply create the world and withdraw, but continues to interact with it – with the avot, with Bnei Yisrael, and with us. This belief can be spiritually nourishing, but it also carries responsibility. If God acts in history, then we are obligated to try – carefully and humbly – to interpret those events and respond to them.
That is how Chanukah and Purim were established. And more recently, it is how the religious Zionist community established Yom Ha’atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim – by interpreting historical events as moments of divine significance and acting on those interpretations to deepen our connection with God.
Over the past few weeks, there has been lively discussion in Israel’s religious Zionist community about whether Israel’s recent victories – against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the collapse of Syria – should be understood as open miracles, perhaps even greater than some described in Tanach. Rabbi Uri Pilichowski, in a widely shared talk, pointed to a series of extraordinary, seemingly improbable developments: the Hezbollah pager operation, the dismantling of its command structure, the collapse of the Syrian military, covert operations inside Iran, massive missile attacks with minimal casualties, failed terror plots, and the unraveling of Sinwar’s strategy. Rav Yosef Rimon emphasized achdut – the renewed unity among Jews after the deep divisions of October 6th which led to our unprecedented success on the battlefield. Some even spoke openly about the imminence of Mashiach in the aftermath of October 7th. All of these responses represent attempts to interpret the God of history – and, in some cases, to act on that interpretation.
It is natural to seek God in history, and I don’t believe this impulse is wrong. But it must be guided by humility. When Chanukah was established, the Gemara tells us l’shanah acheret— at a later year – it took time, distance, and perspective before the victory was recognized as worthy of celebration. We, too, must allow patience and restraint before declaring the meaning of contemporary events. Some people find God primarily in nature, others in Torah, others in history – and some remain skeptical, precisely because certainty can be dangerous. Judaism’s response, I think, is that we are allowed to try: to interpret, to reflect, and even to act – but always responsibly, humbly, and with the awareness that we may be wrong.
Just as Moshe approached Bnei Yisrael in the name of the God of our fathers – the God of history – so too we are called to approach the events of our own lives and our collective story with open eyes. We may not fully know God’s plan, and we may never fully understand why things happen as they do. But our task is to notice God’s presence, to interpret it humbly, and to act on what we learn, while recognizing the limits of our understanding. Noticing God in history is not a claim of certainty, but a call to responsibility: to strengthen our values, to build unity, to act justly, and to respond with courage and faith. In doing so, we honor God and the enduring legacy of our people – and follow Moshe’s example that history itself can become a mirror through which we seek to encounter the Divine.