The Intellect & The Exodus

Developing emuna, or faith in God, is extraordinarily challenging in our day. Recognition of God may have sat comfortably in the context of the ancient Near East out of which the Jewish people emerged. But several thousand years of exposure to rationally based Western cultures have transformed our personalities and outlook so that God often seems like a concept pasted incongruously onto our vision of reality. How can we achieve anemuna that is integrated, consistent with our rational context, yet still retains its Near Eastern soul?
 
Award-winning author Rabbi Jeremy Kagan here presents us with keen and powerful insights into the nature ofemuna in the modern world. He shows how the experience of the Exodus from Egypt was structured to teach us to engage reality in a manner that sensitizes the various facets of our character to see creation reflected in the world around us – to become conscious of God through our perception of reality. Yet the perceptual component must be complemented with an inner sense of God that has a genuine basis, and that basis is to be sought in the depths of the self.