After my Yom Kippur morning message on “Fear, Faith, Death and Resurrection” I was asked by several members if there was something about my health that they should know. There isn’t, I’m just fine-- though I need to lose a few pounds! No, my message was not prompted by a cause for concern, but because this is what people “of a certain age,” sometimes think about!

Among other increasingly apparent realities, it’s harder for me to get moving in the morning, and I can’t stay up as late at night. And I’ve come to the sad realization that when others refer to “middle aged”-- they’re talking about folks younger than me. And in my line of work: making hospital visits and writing eulogies-- I am regularly aware of the frailty of life and living. Thinking about all that, these days more than in former years, prompted my Yom Kippur message.

We and everything around us is finite. We can ignore that reality, or we can deny it as only a this-world illusion, or we can accept it as a significant, even determining factor in how we live our lives. And religion, all religion, is in essence, a response to our finitude. We choose our faith community, at least many of us do, by how well it helps us deal with our finitude, with our finite nature.
I first encountered the truth of this relational connection between religion and finitude in seminary, at Hebrew Union College. My philosophy professor impressed upon us that Judaism, like every religion, is a response to humanity's fundamental dilemma. He said that religion, in its essence, is a quest to overcome the inability of finite human beings to fulfill their infinite desires. Thus religion’s promise is to achieve what he identified as soteria, a Greek word that might reasonably be translated into English as "salvation".

There is an innate finite/infinite tension that exists within every person. As individuals, our existential existence moves between two opposite poles: one is the reality of our daily lives, and the other is the "ideal" toward which the individual continuously strives. Isn’t it true that each of us wants to be infinite, yet we know we can never be?

The struggle that defines our life is how to most effectively and satisfactorily stretch our finite beings in pursuit of the infinite. Because I am finite, there are places in this world that I will never see, people I will never meet, and ideas that I will never have the opportunity to explore. I will never be the athlete I yearn to be, nor the parent, husband or friend I thought I could be. Listed in my mind are countless could-have-been's and wanna-be's. And the ultimate demonstration of my finitude is the persistent (and very apparent) aging of my body. I am daily reminded that health is a moving measurement on a scale of definite "degrees", pointing to an ultimate, and certainly finite, end!
Existentialist philosophy acknowledges the tension between personal finite reality and infinite personal desires, by saying that the sooner one learns to live with this truth the better. Therefore, the existentialist says, happiness can exist only in the moment, in the immediate appreciation of the present-- and to look for anything of significance beyond this moment is foolish. For the existentialist this is a sufficient and satisfactory response. But religions are built upon the premise that we can resolve the tension by taking it to a higher plane. Thus the ultimate goal of religion, said my seminary professor, is to achieve soteria, salvation—which he defined as an ultimate well-being of happiness and satisfaction that transcends the tension between my finite reality and the infinite ideal.

Judaism, early on, recognized and struggled with, the dualism that human existence is caught between the infinite above and the finite below. Thus we find in Hebrew Scripture the distinctive and very different qualities of the heavens and the earth. The heavens are described as the ideal realm of infinite, unlimited perfection. The earth is the world of limitation and imperfection--the chaotic, finite reality of human existence. We see this especially clearly in the poetry of Psalm 115 [v.16] The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth God has given to the children of men.

And it is of the earth that we were formed, at least in part! In the second Creation story in chapter 2 of Genesis we are reminded: [2:7] then the LORD God formed the man out of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. Humanity is a unique union of upper and lower opposites: the "dust of the earth": our physical, finite existence, but also filled with God’s "breath of life": that infinite, spiritual aspect of our being that compels us to transcend the boundaries of existing reality, to move from "what is" to "what could be, might be, should be."

This, God’s greatest gift to us is also the source of our persistent anxiety: we are limited beings with unlimited horizons. Every other creature is endowed with a natural ability to shrink its world down to a manageable, controllable size. But we, we are pressed to see beyond the immediacy of our senses, we are aware of what could be, and we desire what might be. And there’s the rub: unless we can give real and substantive meaning to our finite reality, despite having infinite desires, we will be frustrated, and probably not very satisfied with life. And because this is a universal human dilemma, we’ve developed a variety of religious responses, each offering a different solution, a different promise of "salvation"!

Each faith-system defines its own, qualitatively different response, but all would affirm, I think, that “salvation” is the end-goal of faith, belief and religion. But we don’t all mean the same thing when we talk about "salvation"! I find it interesting that many Jews have unconsciously adopted the Christian, western religious expectation of salvation, meaning: "to be saved or rescued from death". This understanding proposes that correct faith, with proper prayer, of the right religion-- rescues me. Thus the One-True-God is the authoritative and active agent in my salvation. My responsibility is to "open myself" to the One-True-God who is just waiting to transform my life, who, in abundant and unconditional grace, is looking for the opportunity to rescue me from the limitations of my life and ultimate death. God promises that on the other side of finite reality, exists an infinite salvation. God will “save me” from the ultimate finitude of death with an eternal life in Heaven.
That understanding of "salvation" defines some religious systems, but it is not Judaism! Salvation for us is not a rescue from the finite, rather it is a transformation of the finite into a value that transcends the finite. You will not hear rabbis, for the most part, speak of salvation as God’s promised rescue of my person or soul. Rather a more appropriate expression is Judaism’s ultimate promise of: "well-being", a better, more satisfying translation, my philosophy professor said, of the Greek word soteria.
Thus the most significant difference between soteria as ‘well-being’ as opposed to ‘salvation,’ is that in the former, we are our own active agents! It is our responsibility to bring God's Presence into our lives as the bridge connecting our finite reality to the infinite ideal. This is the two-fold challenge that is Judaism: on the one hand “How can we give the infinite ideal a finite reality?”, while on the other, “How do we, with our lives, transcend the limits of our mortality?”

Rabbi Harold Kushner offers a response in his book Who Needs God?: “[the message and meaning of communal worship is] to join in song and prayer with fellow worshippers [finding] God in the exhilarating experience of transcending our isolation, our individuality, and becoming part of a greater whole. When the service works we feel different about ourselves and the world..." [p 150]

The experience he describes of feeling “different about ourselves and our world” is the realization that “I am more than me.” I am part of this community of the moment, and also part of the community of the People Israel that transcends my “me” and even our “us.” The community is a "transcendent connecting,” not only of each with each other here and now, but a connecting with all Jews, past and future, who have and will identify themselves as Am Yisrael. Because I belong to this historical enterprise we call Judaism, my soul, my presence becomes part of the “collective”. I recognize that the dreams and hopes of generations past have become (can become) realized through me, and I believe that my desires for an infinite existence will be realized in generations yet unborn.

We are certainly aware that the first reality of living is that there will be death. We know we are finite, that in the end— it is the end. Most of us, I believe, accept our finitude, reluctantly admitting that there are finite limits to our persons and the world we inhabit. And yet, we pursue the infinite. But because I am a Jew, I affirm that I am already connected to the past and future, in an unbroken chain of tradition that ties us all together. My actions, if I make them clear and strong, do echo beyond the limits of my life, touching other lives that touch more lives. I am connected in a matrix that reaches worldwide and through time, a matrix that stretches from what was into what will be: connecting my finite, limited being with the infinite presence of God and my people. In confronting my finite nature, there is neither paradox nor tension, there is only an infinite Presence that is as much a part of me as I am of it. Soteria, ultimate well-being, is the surety that in my finitude I have already touched the infinite.

Shabbat Shalom