The Problem of Existence

It is a familiar finale—after thought opposed thought, argu-
ment collided with argument, philosophers would arrive at
the solemn conclusion: We cannot know what God is, we only
know that God is; which means: We know nothing about God's
attributes, all we can ascribe to God is existence. But admit-
tedly, existence is an indefinable concept, it cannot be imag-
ined per se, unqualified, in utter nakedness, it is always some
particular, specific existent, or a mode of existence, a being
dressed in attributes, that we grasp. Thus, all that such spec-
ulation about God brings forth is an ineffable category. Exist-
ence is, moreover, not only the end, but also the starting point
of all thinking about God, for without assuming the possibil-
ity of God's being in existence, we could not begin to contem-
plate God.
      In their eagerness to avoid the possibility of ascribing
anthropomorphic features to God, philosophers have tradi-
tionally adopted the procedure prevalent in general ontology,
in which the notion of existence that served as a subject
matter of analysis was derived from the realm of inanimate
rather than from the realm of animate and personal existence.
The subsequent efforts to fill the ontological shell with spirit-
ual or moral content have encountered insurmountable diffi-
culties, primarily because of the disparity of inanimate,
animate and spiritual existence.
      A pencil, a pigeon and a poet have being in common; not
only their essence but their existence is not the same. The
difference between the existence of a human being and the
existence of a pencil is as radical and intrinsic as the difference
between the existence of the pencil and the nonexistence of
the Flying Dutchman. This becomes apparent when we com-
pare a living person with a corpse. They both contain the same
chemical elements in exactly the same proportions, at least
immediately after death. Yet a person who is dead is nonexistent
as a person, as a human or social being, although the person is still 
existent as a corpse.

Life is Concern

Temporality and uninterruptedness express, as we shall see,
the relation of existence to time, a passive relation. What dis-
tinguishes organic from inorganic existence is the fact that
the plant or the animal stands in an active and defensive rela-
tion to temporality. All finite existence, a stone or a dog, is
constantly on the verge of nonexistence: any moment it may
cease to exist. But unlike the stone, the dog is endowed to a
degree with the ability to fight or avoid the ills of life.
      Life, we know from biology, is not a passive state of indif-
ference and inertia. The essence of life is intense care and
concern. For example, the life of the cell depends upon its
power to manufacture and to retain certain substances that
are necessary to its survival. These substances are prevented
from diffusing out, because the outer surface of the cell is
impermeable to them. At the same time, the surface, owing
to the selective permeability of the protoplasm, allows other
favorable substances to penetrate into the cell from the out-
side, while refusing admission to substances that are unfavor-
able. Every cell behaves like an accordion, contracting when
brought into contact with something destructive. On the basis
of these observations the following biological principle may
be established: every living organism abhors its own de-
struction.
      We may, therefore, say that just as the peculiar quality of
inorganic existence is necessity and inertia, the peculiar asset
of organic existence, or life, is concern. Life is concern.
      Such concern is reflexive: it refers to one's own self and is
rooted in the anxiety of the self about its own future. If a human
paid no attention to the future, if they were indifferent to that
which may or may not come, a human would not know any anxiety.
The past is gone, at present a person is alive, it is only the time to
come of which the person is apprehensive.

The Transitive Concern

A person entirely unconcerned with its self is dead; a person ex-
clusively concerned with its self is a beast. The mark of
distinction from the beast as well as the index of maturity is
the tridimensionality of a human's concern. The child becomes
human, not by discovering the environment which includes
things and other selves, but by becoming sensitive to the inter-
ests of other selves. Human is one who is concerned with other
selves. A human is a being that can never be self-sufficient, not
only by what they must take in but also by what they must give
out. A stone is self-sufficient, a human is self-surpassing. Always
in need of other beings to give themselves to, a human cannot even be
in accord with its own self unless they serve something beyond
themselves. The peace of mind attainable in solitude is not the
result of ignoring that which is not the self or escaping from
it, but of reconciliation with it. The range of needs increases 
with the rise of the form of existence: a stone is more self-suffi-
cient than a plant,  A vital requirement of human life is transitive 
concern, a regard for others, in addition to a reflexive concern, an
intense regard for itself.
      At first the other selves are considered as means to attain the
fulfillment of their own needs. The shift from the animal to the
human dimension takes place when, as a result of various
events, such as observing other people's suffering, falling in
love or being morally educated, a human begins to acknowledge
the other selves as ends, to respond to their needs even regard-
less of personal expediency. It is an act of de jure or even de
facto recognition of other human beings as equals, as a result
of which they become concerned with their concern; what is
of importance to them becomes vital to them. Cain when asked
about the whereabouts of his brother, gave answer: "Am I my
brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9). Abraham, unasked, un-
solicited, pleaded for Sodom, the city of wickedness. But why 
was Abraham interested in saving Sodom? Abraham could
plead with God for Sodom because there is eternal, uncondi-
tional justice, in the name of which he was able to say: "Far be
it from Thee to slay the righteous with the wicked...Shall
not the judge of all the earth do justice?" (Genesis 18:25)
      It is not a mechanical, lateral extension of the concern for
oneself that brings about the concern for others. The concern
for others often demands the price of self-denial. How could
self-denial or even self-extinction be explained as a self-exten-
sion? Consequently, we cannot say that the concern for others
lies on the same level as the concern for oneself, consisting
merely in substituting another self for one's own. The motiva-
tion of our transitive concern may be selfish. The fact of our
transitive concern is not.

The Three Dimensions

The concern for others is not an extension in breadth but
an ascension, a rise. A person reaches a new vertical dimension,
the dimension of the holy, when they grow beyond their self-
interests, when that which is of interest to others becomes vital
to them, and it is only in this dimension, in the understanding
of its perennial validity, that the concern for other human
beings and the devotion to ideals may reach the degree of self-
denial. Distant ends, religious, moral and artistic interests, may
become as relevant to a human as their concern for food. The self,
the fellow-human and the dimension of the holy are the three
dimensions of a mature human concern.
      True love of humanity is clandestine love of God. But why?
What bearing has the affection or the kindness of one person for
another upon the mystery of all mysteries? Should we not 
dismiss the proverb:
      He that oppresses the poor reviles his Maker:
       He honors his Maker who is gracious to the needy.
                                                            (Proverbs 14:32)
as rant and reverie? Is there anything intrinsic in the existence
of God that would justify such a correlation?
       Moreover, are we right in saying that a person is capable of ris-
ing beyond their self? Does not any honest self-analysis reveal
how the motivations of our conduct are entangled in the func-
tions of instinctual desires, how the vested interests of the ego
penetrate our moral motivations as well as our acts of cogni-
tion? And yet, while granting all this, it would be wrong to
regard our concern for others as self-concern in disguise.

A Coercion to Forget Oneself

It is not true that a person is condemned to life imprisonment in a
realm wherein causality, struggle for existence, will to power,
libido sexualis and the craving for prestige are the only springs
of action. A person is involved in relations which run beyond that
realm. There is no person who does not strive, at one time or
another, for some degree of disinterestedness; who does not
seek something to which they could be attached regardless of
advantage. It is not true that all people are at all times at the
mercy of their ego, that promoting their own prosperity is
all they can do. It is not true that in the conflicts of honesty
and expediency the first is always defeated. In every soul there 
lives incognito a coercion to love, to forget oneself, to be in-
dependent of vested interests. It is against their selfish interests
that a person yields to the coercion to brood over purpose, mean-
ing or value of living; that they insist upon judging themselves by
nonselfish standards and is concerned with ends they do not
even fully comprehend; that they often resist the tempting re-
wards of wealth, power or vulgar popularity; that they forego
the approval or favor of those who dominate the financial, po-
litical or academic world for the sake of remaining loyal to a
moral or religious principle. 
      Our first impulse is self-preservation. It is the essence of
organic living, and only they who have contempt for life should
condem it as a vice. If life is holy, as we believe it is, then
self-regard is that which maintains the holy. Regard for the
self becomes only a vice by association: when associated with
complete or partial disregard for other selves. Thus the moral
task is not how to disregard one's own self but how to discover
and be attentive to another self.
      The self is not evil. The precept: "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself," includes the care for one's own self as
a duty. It is as mistaken to consider the duty to oneself  and the
will of God as opposites as it is to identify them. To serve does
not mean to surrender but to share.
      The statement: "Thous shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,"
concludes with the words: "I am the Lord." It is this conclu-
sion that contains the ultimate reason for that solemn com-
mand. True and timeless is that command; but if God were
not God, there would be no truth, no timelessness and no such
command.
      It is a useless endeavor to fight the ego with intellectual
arguments, since like a wounded hydra it produces two heads
for every one cut off. Reason alone is incapable of forcing the
soul to love or of saying why we ought to love for no profit,
for no reward. The great battle for integrity must be fought
by aiming at the very heart of the ego and by enhancing the
soul's power of freedom.

Freedom is Spiritual Ecstasy

For integrity is the fruit of freedom. The slave will always
ask: What will serve my interests? It is the free person who is
able to transcend the causality of interest and deed, of act and
the desire for personal reward. It is the free person who asks:
Why should I be interested in my interests? What are the
values I ought to feel in need of serving?
      But inner freedom is spiritual ecstasy,the state of being be-
yond all interests and selfishness. Inner freedom is a miracle of
the soul. How could such a miracle be achieved?
       It is the dedication of the heart and mind to the fact of our
being present at a concern of God, the knowledge of being a
part of an eternal spiritual movement that conjures power out
of a weary conscience, that, striking the bottom out of con-
ceit, tears selfishness to shreds. It is the sense of the ineffable
that leads us beyond the horizon of personal interests, helping
us to realize the absurdity of regarding the ego as an end.
      There is no other way to feel one with every human, with the
leper or with the slave, except in feeling one with them in a
higher unity: in the one concern of God for all humanity.

The Divine Concern

God's existence—what may it mean? Being eternal, temporality
does not apply to God. May reflexive concern be predicated of
God? God does not have to be concerned about Itself, since
there is no need of God's being on guard against danger to God's
existence. The only concern that may be ascribed to God is a
transitive concern, one which is implied in the very concept of
creation. For if creation is conceived as a voluntary activity of
the Supreme Being, it implies a concern with that which is
coming into being. Since God's existence is continuous, God's
concern or care for Its creatures must be abiding. While
a person's concern for others is often tainted with concern for its
own self and characterized as a lack of self-sufficiency and a re-
quirement for the perpetuation of their own existence, God's
care for God's creatures is a pure concern.
      According to Cicero:"The gods are careful about great
things and neglect small ones" (De Natura Deorum, Book ii,
ch. 66, 167). According to the prophets of Israel, from Moses
to Malachi, God is concerned with small matters. What the
prophets tried to convey to humanity was not a conception of an
eternal harmony, of an unchangeable rhythm of wisdom, but
the perception of God's concern with concrete situations. Dis-
closing the pattern of history, in which the human is inter-
woven with the divine, they breathed a divine earnestness into 
the world of humanity.
      In mythology the deities are thought of as self-seeking, as
concerned with their own selves. Immortal, superior to humanity
in power and wisdom, they are often inferior to humanity in moral-
ity. "Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all the
things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings
and adulteries and deceivings of one another" (Xenophanes).
      The Bible tells us nothing about God in Itself; all its say-
ings refer to God's relations to humanity. God's own life and essence are
neither told nor disclosed. We hear of no reflexive concern, of
no passions, except a passion for justice. The only events in
the life of God the Bible knows of are acts done for the sake of
humanity: acts of creation, acts of redemption, (from Ur, from
Egypt, from Babylon), or acts of revelation.
      Zeus is passionately interested in pretty female deities and
becomes inflamed with rage against those who incite his jeal-
ousy. The God of Israel is passionately interested in widows
and orphans.
      Divine concern means God's taking interest in the fate of humanity,
it means that the moral and spiritual state of humanity engages God's
attention. It is true that God's concern is, to most of us, one of
the most baffling mysteries, but it is just as true that to those
whose life is open to God, God's care and love are a constant
experience.

Continuous Expression 

In ascribing a transitive concern to God, we employ neither
an anthropomorphic nor an anthropopathic concept but an
idea that we should like to characterize as an anthropopneum-
ism (anthropo + pneuma) We ascribe to God not a psychic
but a spiritual characteristic, not an emotional but a moral
attitude. Those who refuse to ascribe a transitive concern to
God are unknowingly compelled to conceive God’s existence,
if it should mean anything at all, after the analogy of physical
being and to think of God in terms of “physiomorphism.”
      Creation in the language of the Bible is an act of expression.
God said: “Let there be”; and it was. And creation is not an
act that happened once, but a continuous one. The word
Yehi , “let there be,” stands forever in the universe. If it were
not for the presence of that word, there would be no world,
there would be finite being. 
      When we say that God is present within all beings, we do
not mean that God inheres in them as a component or ingre-
dient of their physical structure. God in the universe is a spirit
of concern for life. What is a thing to us is a concern to God;
what is a part of the physical world of being is also a part of a
divine world of meaning. To be is to stand for, to stand for
a divine concern.
      God is present in God’s continuous expression. God is immanent
in all beings in the way in which a person is immanent in a cry
that they utter: They stand for what they say. They are concerned
with what they say. All beings are replete with the divine word
which only leaves when our viciousness profanes and over-
bears God’s silent, patient presence.
      It is as easy to expel God as it is to shed blood. And yet even
when God hides, even when our souls have lost God’s trace we
may still call God out of the depths: out of the depths of all
things. For God is everywhere save in arrogance.
We may not know what God is, but we know where God is.
No tongue can describe God’s essence, but every soul may both 
share God’s presence and feel the anguish of God’s dreadful
absence.
      Immured in our pompous selfishness, we usually forget
where God is, forget that our own self-concern is a cupful
drawn from the spirit of divine concern. There is, however, a
way of keeping ourselves open to the presence of that spirit.
There are moments in which we feel the challenge of a power
that, not born of our will nor installed by it, robs us of inde-
pendence by its judgement of the rectitude or depravity of our
actions, by its gnawing at our heart when we offend against its
injunctions. It is as if there were no privacy within ourselves,
no possibility of either retreat or escape, no place in us in
which to bury the remains of our guilt feelings. There is a
voice that reaches everywhere, knowing no mercy, digging in
the burial places of charitable forgetfulness.
  
Civilization Hangs by a Thread

The course in which human life moves is, like the orbit of
heavenly bodies, an ellipse, not a circle. We are attached to
two centers: to the focus of our self and to the focus of God.
Driven by two forces, we have both the impulse to acquire,
to enjoy, to possess and the urge to respond, to yield, to give.
      It seems as though we have arrived at a period of a divine
eclipse in human history. We sail the seas, we count the stars,
we split the atom, but we never ask: Is there nothing but a
dead universe and our reckless curiosity?
      Horrified by the discovery of humanity’s power to bring about
the annihilation of organic life on this planet, we are today
beginning to comprehend that the sense for the sacred is as
vital to us as the light of the sun; that the enjoyment of beauty,
possessions and safety in civilized society depends on humanity’s
sense for the sacredness of life, upon a human’s reverence for this
spark of light in the darkness of selfishness; that once we per-
mit this spark to be quenched, the darkness falls upon us like
thunder.
      We are impressed by the towering buildings of New York
City. Yet not the rock of Manhattan nor the steel of Pitts-
burgh, but the law that came from Sinai is their ultimate
foundation. The true foundation upon which our cities stand
is a handful of spiritual ideas. All of our life hangs by a thread
—the faithfulness of humanity to the concern of God.
      What is the hope of humanity with its faithfulness being so
feeble, vague, unstable and confused? The world that we have
long held in trust has exploded in our hands, and a stream of
guilt and misery has been unloosed which leaves no person’s
integrity unmaimed. But humanity has become callous to catastro
-phes. What is our hope with our callousness standing like a 
wall between our conscience and God?

Compassion

Dark is the world for me, for all of its cities and stars, if not for
the breath of compassion that God blew in me when God
formed me of dust and clay, more compassion within my nerves
can bear. God, I am alone with my compassion within my
limbs. Dark are my limbs for me; if not for Thee, who could
stand such anguish, such disgrace?
      “Let me understand Thy ways,” Moses prayed. Only weeks
had passed since the Hebrew slaves were redeemed from
Egypt; only forty days had passed since they heard the Voice
proclaiming: “Thou shalt have no other gods beside Me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image,” when they
made a golden calf. Moses blazed out in anger, flung down the
tablets and broke them. Yet, when, following that bitter event,
Moses stood again on the top of the mountain with the second
tablets in his hand. God came down in a cloud and swept past
him, declaring, “God is compassionate and kind, slow to
anger, abundant in love and truth, forgiving iniquity, trans-
gression, and sin, but one who will never acquit the guilty, one
who visits the iniquity of fathers on their children, and upon
their children’s children, down to the third and fourth genera-
ion.” God’s compassion is not mere emotion; it is a blazing with
the power of which only God is capable.
      When the soul of a person is asked: What is God to you? there
is only one answer that survives all theories which we carry to
the grave: God is full of compassion. The Tetragrammaton,
the great Name, we do not know how to pronounce, but we
are taught to know what it stands for: “compassion.”
      The moral and spiritual adjectives which the Bible ascribes
to God such as zaddik, hasid, ne’eman, it also employs in char-
acterizing humans who lead good lives. Only one attribute is
reserved for God. God alone is called in the Bible rahum
the Merciful One.
      God is not all in all. God is in all beings but God is not all
beings. God is within the darkness but God is not the darkness.
God’s one concern permeates all beings: God is all there, but the
absence of the divine is also there. God’s ends are concealed in
the cold facts of nature; God’s concern is wrapt in the independ-
ence of the universe which is so well arranged that we are
often led to believe that there is no need for occasional repairs.
Our perception, therefore, is like listening to a foreign tongue:
we perceive the sounds, but miss the meanings. To a person, their
self is but an exclamation in the speech of creation, things seem
to function and to behave as if God were an alien whose pres-
ence is neither required nor desired. Some of us are haughty
and harry the downtrodden. The ungodly boasts of their ra-
pacity, the plunderer disowns, despises God, they think, in their
insolence, ‘God never punishes’; all their thoughts are: 'There is
no God at all.' (Psalms 10:3-4). Others despair in the fog of
the crystal-clear laws of necessity, in which our hopes often
freeze to death.

Display and Disguise

To know God is not to whistle in the dark, as if exemplify-
ing the world’s roaming in impenetrable fog. True, darkness
is where we live; yet, though deep and thick, it is neither sor-
did nor weird. The impenetrable fog in which the world is
clad is God’s disguise. To know God means to sense display
in God’s disguise and to be aware of the disguise in God’s most
magnificent display.
      God is within the world, present and concealed in the es-
sense of things. If not for God’s presence, there would be no
essence; if not for God’s concealment, there would be no
appearance.
      The song that nature sings is not her own. She is ablaze
with a fire she barely contains, her independence, her unity, 
her beauty, are borrowed perfection. Only those who do not
notice that their knowledge is a pretext for higher ignorance
fail to sense the marvel of her fortitude to endure, the marvel
of her not being consumed; not seeing the bush, they also miss
the voice.
      If the universe were explainable as a robot, we could assume
that God is separated from it and God’s relation to it would be
like that of a watchmaker to a clock. But the ineffable cries 
out of all things. It is only the idea of a divine presence hidden
within the rational order of nature which is compatible with
our scientific view of nature and in accord with our sense of
the ineffable.
      The soul dwells within, yet the spirit is always hovering
above reality. God’s infinite concern is present in the world,
God’s essence is transcendent. God includes the universe, but, to
quote Solomon’s prayer in dedicating the Temple: “Behold,
the heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain Thee”
(I Kings 8:27) The awareness of God as the dwelling-place
of the universe must have been very poignant in post-Biblical
times, if Makom (“place”) was a synonym for God.
      The soul is within: passive, hidden; the spirit is beyond:
active, infinite.