Surely I can ask why You need to do all this. If You want to teach us something, is there no other way? After all, the only thing You accomplish is that fewer and fewer people will believe in You. You provide them
with all the arguments that atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens love so much. You know just as well as I do that all these tragedies work against You, causing much damage to Your name. And yes, I am most concerned about Your name. Why aren’t You? ...
There is really nothing that we know. We don’t know who You are and why You created the world. We are completely ignorant about why You need us to exist. You are not a Who, What or even When. The world
around us, including baby universes, black holes and millions of stars, just alludes to one mysterium magnum (great mystery). How, then, do we dare challenge You regarding, murders, earthquakes, tsunamis and human tragedies? “I know nothing,” said Socrates, “except the fact of my ignorance.”
I am jealous of the atheist who needs not deal with the problem. Your total Otherness doesn’t bother him. He simply denies it. He doesn’t have to deal with the terrible tension that
exists between what I want You to be and Who You really are. I don’t have that luxury. While he allows himself a childlike escapism, I am forced to face the problem head on. After all, I am not as much a believer as he is. He believes that the universe and our existence are just an accident. But I cannot access this kind of belief. It is beyond my capacity. I am too much of a skeptic. ...
I still realize that we Jews are the greatest miracle of all. We have outlived all
our enemies — the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and many others. After exhausting themselves trying to destroy us, they all vanished in a puff of smoke, and we are still here against all odds. Not even the Holocaust succeeded in wiping us out. The State of Israel is an ongoing miracle in a region that has gone completely mad. How, then, can I deny Your existence?
The grandeur of all creation is too powerful to allow us to deny You, though Your constant hiddenness is
very disturbing. Yes, You are everywhere, but You show it in a rather strange manner.
I will continue to believe in You, but I cannot deny that, emotionally, it is a tour de force. How, after all, can I live with Someone Who sometimes violates all that my own limited thoughts and feelings can grasp and express? Oh, how wonderful it would be if I were an atheist! But how fortunate I am that I was not granted that option of naiveté....
So,
forgive me for having asked these questions, but I had to give voice to them. After all, “men are but children of a larger growth.” And You owe us a human answer.
In humility and awe,
Nathan ben Ya’acov Lopes Cardozo”
(Beklemtoning my eie.)