THIRTY-ONE

If God were living on earth, people would break

His windows.
Yi d d i s h p r o v e r b

E v e r s ince Noa’s second-grade teacher approached me, my

mood had taken a nosedive. Why was Noa having so much
trouble learning? Why?
It was only 5:00 p.m., but it was dark outside. The room was
stuffy and overheated. I was sitting in a therapist’s giant leather chair
feeling small and nervous, not knowing what to expect or what to
say. His name was Dr. Bittman. He was a big man, lumbering, with
droopy eyes, and his office was dusty and the furniture was heavy.
Dr. Bittman was slouched in his worn leather chair; from where
I was sitting I could hear his stomach growling. Finally, he looked
at me and spoke up, “Ms. Levy, what brings you here?” I got very
emotional, and I wanted to talk about God. I asked him, “Where is
God?” I said I’d been praying for an answer. I started tearing up, and
I looked over . . . and he was sleeping. My therapist was out cold.
I woke him up. I said, “HELLO!” And his whole body jerked the
way it does when you wake up suddenly. “You were sleeping,” I said.
And he said, “No I wasn’t.”
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 Hope Will Find You

“Yes you were.”

“No I wasn’t.”
“I woke you; your whole body jerked.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he insisted.
It got really quiet in the room except for his stomach, and then he
looked at me and said, “Well, hypothetically, if I were sleeping, how
would that make you feel?”
I thought to myself, I can’t even hold a therapist’s attention, how can
I expect to hold God’s attention?

I was a rabbi and God was no comfort to me.

Who was my God? I thought about the way God appeared in the
Bible through so many different lenses. Every biblical personality en-
countered God in a very personal and specific way. Abraham’s God
was an aloof, even sadistic, God of tests, who was willing to pit mo-
rality, love, and compassion against faith. Jacob’s approach to God
was all about Monty Hall and Let’s Make a Deal—“If you do this for
me, I’ll do that for you.” Moses’ God was all Hollywood, a God of
special effects and pyrotechnics—ten plagues, seas parting.
On the High Holy Days, I was taught to see a God who was pun-
ishing and judgmental. A God who sits on a throne evaluating all our
deeds and decides who will live and who will die.
Who was my God?
There certainly were times in my life when I hated God. Times
when I could not pray. Times when I could not even bring myself to
say Kaddish, the Jewish memorial prayer, for my own father, who
taught me to love God, who taught me how to pray, who brought me
to synagogue every Sabbath and let me hide beneath the wings of his
prayer shawl.

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 The God Who Sees Me

There were times in my life when I couldn’t say Kaddish for my

own father because the Kaddish praises God, and I had no words of
praise inside me for a deaf God. For a God who did not prevent my
sweet father’s murder.
Then years later, when I was in my freshman year of college, I
was walking on campus with an umbrella one rainy spring day. Every-
one was carrying an umbrella. And a simple question popped into my
head. Did I actually think God was my personal umbrella? My shel-
ter? Was God going to keep me safe and dry? It suddenly seemed
strange to me the way people would say, “God’s watching over me”
when innocent children were dying all over the world every day.
Shouldn’t God be watching over them too? I began to see that it was
my faith in the Superman God that had caused me to hate God. My
belief in a God who swooped down to protect good people from pain
and to punish wicked people for their sins made me doubt God’s
existence. It wasn’t true. God wasn’t anyone’s personal bodyguard.
One day at the end of that year I said to myself, “It’s time to bury
the vision of the old man. It’s time for the network to cancel Super-
man, he’s had a good long run, but it’s time for him to go.”
It wasn’t easy to let go of the picture of God from the children’s
Bible my father used to read to me. I loved that old man with the
flowing white beard looking down on me almost as much as I loved
my father. I missed Him. I wanted to say Kaddish for Him. A grand
Kaddish for the mighty God who once inhabited the great dreams of
my youth.

So if God wasn’t Superman, who was God?

My worries over Noa’s physical health were now compounded
by my worries over her cognitive health. Even though I was meditating,

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 Hope Will Find You

even though I was less fearful, even though I knew I had so many
blessings, I still felt like I was floating above my life. For two years
I had scheduled my days around Noa’s therapies and doctors’ ap-
pointments. Now there were new appointments to face—Noa needed
to be assessed by learning specialists and neuropsychologists.
One day in February, I was sitting in a café sipping coffee when
these words suddenly popped into my head: “Where are you coming
from and where are you going?” I kept repeating these words over
and over again to myself. I knew these words. An angel spoke them to
a slave lost in the desert. But as I sat there with my coffee, a mother
lost in her worry, I was sure these words were summoning me.
When I got home I opened the Bible and began poring over the
ancient story. I’d known the story of this lost slave named Hagar all
my life, but I’d always glossed over her because she seemed to be a
relatively unimportant character in the Bible. I had never tried to
see the world through her eyes before. On that day I began read-
ing her story with new eyes. There she was standing before me. So
strong and dignified. I envisioned her, this young beauty with smooth
olive skin, thick black wavy hair, deep brown eyes, and callused
hands from a life of hard labor. It was she who taught me how to see
God.
In the Bible, Hagar was a slave to Abram and Sarai. Sarai was
infertile, so Abram slept with Hagar in order to have a child through
her. Sarai grew jealous when Hagar conceived and began to torment
her. And Hagar ran away.
As she was wandering alone in the wilderness, an angel of
God found her. The angel asked her, “Where are you coming from
and where are you going? ” Hagar told him she was running away
from her mistress Sarai. The angel promised Hagar she was going

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 The God Who Sees Me

to be the matriarch of a great people. He told her to go back to

Sarai and assured her that the child she was carry ing would grow
up to be a leader of men. The angel instructed her to name the baby
Ishmael—which means “God will hear”— because God had heard
her suffering.
Hagar took in the angel’s prophecy and she said to God, “You are
El Roi; You are The God Who Sees Me.” Others looked at Hagar and
saw a slave. God saw a matriarch.
Hagar did go back to Abram, and she had a child. A beautiful
boy named Ishmael, God will hear.

What a relief to fi nally be seen. I understood that God didn’t do a

thing for Hagar except to remind her of her own power. And that’s
why a lonely, lost slave gave God a new name: The God Who Sees
Us as we are and reminds us of who we can be.
I couldn’t pray to Rob’s Just In Case, the God of candles on birth-
day cakes. I wanted more than a wish and a breath. But Hagar’s El
Roi spoke to my soul. God sees me, God is listening.
I walked out to my backyard, sat on the grass, and whispered to
Hagar’s God, “Can You see my Noa? What do You see? Is there a
beautiful future awaiting her? Can You see her strength? Her wis-
dom? Her greatness? I won’t ask You to fix her, but I’m pleading with
You, teach me to see hope for her future. Tell me about the rabbits,
George.” Tears streamed down my face. I continued, “And what do
You make of me? Do You see how lost I am? What do You see that I
can’t see?”
I was quiet for some time and then a sensation of warmth began
traveling through my body. I don’t have words for this feeling except
to say I suddenly felt un-alone. An overwhelming sense of fullness.

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 Hope Will Find You

A calm descended upon my chest; I could feel its heat in my breath.

A palpable Presence seemed to be telling me, “I am with you.” And I
broke down and wept tears of gratitude.
I lay down in the grass with my arms spread wide, staring at the
blue sky. In my times of great fear and worry I had pushed God
away. When Noa dreamed about God being near her, I imagined that
God wanted to take her from me. That’s why I told God to stay
away from her. But now I understood that God never left me or Noa
or anyone else. God was with us all along. Noa knew this instinc-
tively. It took her mother the rabbi a bit more time to figure it out.
God wasn’t a body snatcher looking for the right moment to steal
our loved ones away from us. And God wasn’t a cruel judge looking
for ways to catch us and punish us. God wasn’t Superman ready to
swoop down and protect us from all harm, and God wasn’t Santa
Claus reading our minds and giving us whatever we prayed for.
I understood that even with God, life wasn’t necessarily going
to be a picnic.
El Roi made some promises to Hagar, but not promises that it
was all going to be perfect. Her son was going to give her heartache.
God told her things would get better, and they would also get worse.
Yes, I thought, life is a blessing and it’s also a curse. No one’s got it easy, no
one’s immune to suffering, no matter how good we are.

Later that night I wrote down these thoughts to myself in my jour-

nal: God believes in Noa. God believes in all people. And God is praying we
will come to see in ourselves what God already sees. God is hoping we will live
out the life that’s lying within us.
God is trying to make eye contact with us. The God Who Sees Me is call-
ing, “Where are you coming from and where are you going?”

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 The God Who Sees Me

We don’t have much time. The Psalm says, “Our days on earth are like
a shadow.” One commentary on this verse asks, “What sort of shadow?” The
answer offered is, “Not as the shadow cast by a wall, or as the shadow cast
by a tree, but as the shadow cast by a bird flying overhead.”
So, I asked myself, what are you waiting for?

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Hope Will Find You
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