When will G-d speak to me? As a yeshiva student in my early twenties, I was on a serious spiritual quest. I would pray intensely, and yearned to receive a response from G-d. I was looking for direction in making some difficult decisions, and wanted G-d to guide me. I was also struggling with questions about faith, and I hoped that a divine revelation would banish my doubts.
I became interested in the Goral HaGra, the lottery of the Vilna Gaon, named for the 18th century Rabbi Elijah of Vilna (though this practice is far older than the 18th century, and quite controversial as well; Maimonides condemns this practice as a desecration of G-d’s name). There are multiple versions of how to conduct this lottery, but the basic practice is to take a Tanach and to turn pages at random in different directions seven times; then a verse is picked at random on the chosen page. This verse is believed to provide divine guidance for one’s decision.
The most famous use of the Goral HaGra occurred on December 17th, 1950. In January 1948, the Haganah had sent a group of 35 reinforcements to the kibbutzim of Gush Etzion, which were besieged by Arab forces. They were killed in an ambush, and buried in temporary graves. After the 1949 Armistice Agreements, the 35 soldiers were returned from Jordanian-controlled territory for burial in Har Herzl. However, when they were brought back, only 23 of the original graves were still properly marked; the remaining 12 were reburied in unmarked graves. The families of those 12 unidentified soldiers were extremely distressed. They turned to Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, who referred them to Rav Aryeh Levin, the famed tzadik of Jerusalem, to ask him to use the Goral HaGra to identify the graves. Rav Levin initially said no, but after meeting the families, agreed to do so.
On the night of December 17th, Rabbi Levin, together with two representatives of the bereaved families, his son, and his son-in-law, gathered in a small beit midrash. They lit 12 candles, and recited Tehillim. Then they began the Goral HaGra, selecting a verse in Tanach to determine who was in each unmarked grave. And each time they did the Goral HaGra, the verse chosen contained the first name or last name of one of the unidentified soldiers. With this miraculous revelation, the graves could now be properly marked.
Sometime after I read this remarkable story, I faced a significant personal decision, and decided to try the Goral HaGra myself. It was an abject failure. Each time, the verse seemed comically irrelevant, an absolute non sequitur. Not only did the Goral HaGra not give me guidance, it seemed to mock my very interest in it. Several times over the following months, I tried this method again, and each time, it failed.
I was not going to hear the word of G-d by flipping the pages of a Tanach. So where would I find my revelation?
Shavuot celebrates a moment of awe and trembling when G-d spoke to the Jewish people at Sinai. While prophecy has long disappeared, the quest to hear G-d’s word never stopped. Some sought to find revelation in the everyday. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch thought that our moral intuitions carry traces of the divine, and that humanity and justice and all the spiritual and ethical qualities of mankind received their eternal confirmation through this divine echo in man’s heart.
Rav Chaim of Volozhin was asked by another rabbi to rule regarding an agunah, a woman whose husband was assumed to have drowned, but there were doubts regarding the evidence. He felt compelled to find a way to release this woman from her marriage, and wrote, “I have consulted with my Creator, and saw it was my obligation to use all my might to find a solution for agunot; may G-d save me from mistakes.” In his quest to help this agunah, Rav Chaim heard G-d’s voice urging him to help her; he saw this moral imperative as nothing less than a divine revelation.
Everyday revelation can also be found in the ordinary and mundane, in what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel calls “radical amazement.” It requires us to look at the world with wonder and experience revelation in the song of a bird and the blossom of the tree. This form of everyday revelation extends beyond the historical moment at Sinai. Even those who were not present can hear the divine voice echoing through both the natural world and the depths of their own hearts.
Still, many of us thirst for more. And sometimes, if we keep looking, we can experience the extraordinary. The Gemara refers to a divine communication called a bat kol, which the 12th century commentary Yad Ramah translates as an echo, when one hears G-d’s voice indirectly. But the bat kol need not be an actual voice; sometimes there are coincidences that seem just a bit too remarkable to ignore, and are an extraordinary revelation. Yes, I know that mathematicians will tell you that you need to always expect the unexpected, and that life will always have random moments. But when you see the world with radical amazement, you see beyond the numbers, and recognize these coincidences as a moment when G-d is winking at you.
As I grew older and moved past my yeshiva student stage, I became much more of a rationalist, and I was no longer on a quest. But even rationalists can sometimes experience a coincidence that makes them pause; and so it was for me.
My wife Lisa and I had struggled to have children into the third year of our marriage. One Friday night, after a long week, we chose to have dinner at home alone. During kiddush, we heard a knock on the door. Outside was a young Chassidic man with his very pregnant wife. They had gotten stuck in traffic and had to exit the highway before Shabbat began. After finding their way to the local Reform synagogue, they received directions to our home over a mile away. Though unprepared for guests, we happily welcomed these unexpected visitors into our home. Lisa and I felt a special obligation to offer hospitality; after all, that Shabbat was Parashat Vayeira, where we read of Avraham and Sarah’s exceptional hospitality to three strangers.
In the Torah portion, the three strangers who visit Avraham and Sarah are revealed to be angels bearing news that the elderly couple would finally have a child. Avraham and Sarah indeed have a son one year later. Remarkably, after hosting our own unexpected, pregnant guests, Lisa and I welcomed twin boys ten months later. This young couple were not angels in the literal sense, but we have no doubt they were malachim, messengers from G-d. In their visit, we heard a divine echo.
When will G-d speak to us? Perhaps we should first examine how attentively we are listening, for a moment of wonder can transform what we’re able to hear.
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He has been a congregational rabbi for over 30 years, and previously served pulpits in Montreal, Quebec and Mount Vernon, New York.