Emunah–The Life of Faith

Emunah ("faith") emerges from our lived experience.

Parashat Va-et'chanan can be read as a guidebook for constructing a life built on faith. In the parashah, the people are reminded repeatedly to trust what they see, hear, and feel as a path to knowing God. Alan Morinis writes that "faith is not something to be understood intellectually but rather to be appreciated from experience." We must learn for ourselves, through moments of our own awareness, that we are part of something larger. Only then will we be able to recall that awareness during times when we are not actively feeling it. A life that acknowledges the possibility of awareness of the Divine, even when we don't feel it in the moment, is a life of faith.

Early in Va-et'chanan, the people are reminded of their experience at Sinai, our paramount moment of living in the immediate presence of the Divine.

Afew verses later, we are reminded of the form, or lack thereof, that God took atthe moment of that amazing encounter:

Even at this moment of clearest divine communication, God cannot be fully seen or known, but rather is heard and sensed. Often, it is in moments of blindness, of mere sensing, that we become aware of our embeddedness in something larger than ourselves. When we see the ocean, contemplate the vastness of space, or feel the loving embrace ofafriend, we don't get full proof of God's existence. We must trust that that amorphous sense of knowing, knowing with our whole being, is a glimpse of the Divine.

Next, our parashah calls on us to remember that awareness and to base our life on the confidence that arises from:

Why do we need to be told not to forget? Because we tend to forget! Over and over, we experience something larger than ourselves; and then, we forget. Building faith is hard; we must work to develop it throughout our entire lives. But life in covenant, whether expressed through adherence to halachah or by commitment to Jewish community and ethics, holds us to faithfulness even at times when we forget.

A person may believe that the Torah is from heaven, but their understanding of heaven may be so skewed that it allows for not a shred of true faith.

Va-et'chanan reminds us of our need for this immediate, personal awareness of God. After a warning of what can befall us should we go astray, we are told:

A life of faith, and a life of behavior built on faith, must always return, return, return to the search for immediate awareness of God...In our parashah, we then move to the restatement of the Ten Commandments, the first of which is "I the Eternal am your God" (Deuteronomy 5:6). This essential commandment is the beginning of faith, on which all of spirituality and religion is based...Further in our portion is the verse that is the pinnacle of faithful affirmation in our daily liturgy:

After finishing reading the parashah, we are left with one question: How can we recall moments of awareness on a daily basis? How can we build a practice of seeking awareness of God in our lives?...A life of faith moves back and forth between the opposing states of feeling and not feeling God's presence. Moments of awareness re-ground us. At all other times, our liturgy reminds us of our prior awareness and sparks our search for future awareness.