Sidrah
Parashah of the week: Va’etchanan
“But if you search there, you will find the Lord your God – if you seek with all your heart and soul” Deuteronomy 4:29
August 7, 2025 11:26
“But if you search there, you will find the Lord your God – if you seek with all your heart and soul” Deuteronomy 4:29
August 7, 2025 11:26Even in the dark place of exile, we are reminded: if you search for God there, then you will find God there.
It may seem obvious to us that God is accessible everywhere. However, deities of the ancient world were often tied to places. Here at the edge of the Promised Land, the people are being told a truth both fundamental and strange: for the God of this land, the boundaries of space and time provide no limitations.
Wherever the People of Israel might find themselves, they could find God there, too.
Jacob the runaway, all those generations beforehand, laid his head on a rock to sleep and dreamt of a ladder, of angels, and of the God of his father and grandfather. The phrase Jacob uttered on waking was: “Surely the Lord was in this place, and I did not know” (Genesis 28:16).
Even Jacob, the ancestor whose name (Israel) would become the name of all the people, needed to be reminded of God’s presence from his own experience of darkness.
There is a famous rabbinic reading of Jacob’s dream which casts the backdrop of the narrative as Mount Moriah, where the Temple would some day be built. Rashi explains this as hanging on the word hamakom, “the place”; each time the Torah refers to “the place”, Rashi argues, it truly refers to Mount Moriah.
This reading paints Jacob’s experience as an interesting counterbalance to our promise in Parashat Va’etchanan. At that foundation stone, that place in which the Temple would soon stand, Jacob needed to be reminded of the presence of God – and therefore the presence of God found Jacob.
In exile, Deuteronomy 4:29 promises that God can be found anywhere, but only “if you seek with all your heart and all your soul”.
In some places, it may be easier to feel the presence of God. But the fundamental truth of our religious tradition demands an understanding that God is in all places, even when it takes more work and perseverance from us.
The rabbis even refer to God as Hamakom (“the Place”). This name subverts the idea that the sole important place is “the Place” of the Temple. Hamakom instead refers to the All-Presence of God.
Ours is a God of all places.
Image: Jacob's dream: José de Ribera, 1639 (Wikimedia Commons)