I would like to wish you and your families much health and happiness in this new year of 5769. I was asked by a number of people to publish my sermon on faith that I gave on the Eve of Rosh Hashanah, and it is my pleasure to put my sermon in this month’s newsletter. The article deals with faith in light of today’s difficulties facing us as individuals, families, and as a society. Have you ever tried to make a prediction? Many of us have made predictions that have come true, and the reverse is true as well. For on many occasions our predictions also turn out to be incorrect. I would like to share with you some famous predictions from the past, all given by trusted individuals.

Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, in 1943 said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” This was a great prediction back in 1943, however as we all know in today’s society many of us have multiple computers in our homes and places of work.

In 1949 Popular Mechanics made this prediction: “Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.” Today cell phones which way no more than a few grams all have calculators within them.

There was an inventor by the name of Lee DeForest. He claimed that “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is impossibility.” How many of us don’t have at least one TV in our homes? I don’t think many live without a TV.

The Decca Recording Company made a big mistake when they predicted in 1962 that a few lads from Liverpool would never make anything of themselves. Their band was called the Beatles.

There is also a midrash that tells of us of another prediction stated by an anonymous rabbi during the time of the second temple who looked back at the Temple and predicted, “Do you see all these great buildings. Not one stone will be left on another.

To the disciples this was bedrock. Nothing could bring down these walls. “Look, teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” they said to the rabbi. The Historian Tuvia Sagvi wrote that smallest stones in the structure weighed approximately 6 tons with many of them weighing 50 tons.

The largest existing stone was 12 meters in length and 3meters high and it weighed hundreds of tons! The stones were so immense that neither mortar nor any great binding material was used between the stones, for their stability was attained by the great weight of the stones.

The walls towered over Jerusalem, over 400 feet in one area and inside the four walls was 45 acres of Bedrock Mountain shaved flat, and during the time of the second temple a quarter of a million people could fit comfortably within the structure.

No sports structure in America today comes close!

You can then understand the rabbi’s students’ surprise. As they walked down the Kidron Valley; they wanted to hear more. The rabbi’s prediction that a structure so immense would be leveled to the ground seemed implausible. But they pressed the rabbi for more information.

They wanted to know when? What would be the sign that this was about to take place?

In their voice was fear: A) Fear of the unknown, B) Fear that their lives were about to change forever, for this rabbi had always stuck to teaching of the torah and had never made any predictions like this one. This was different. His students could not understand what had prompted him to make such a prediction.

The rabbi’s prediction came true. In 70 CE the Temple was destroyed by Rome.

What are we to learn from this prediction and its fulfillment?

1. The Bedrock of Faith Is Not in Temples.

2. The Bedrock of Faith Is Not in Signs.

3. The Bedrock of Faith is in God.

So, how do we in this time of economic hardships, when it seems that all of our personal bedrocks (the economy and stock market, housing prices, job security and personal wealth) are falling down around us find faith?

I would like to attempt to answer this question.

At one time I believed that faith was one and the same thing as belief; that is, a person of faith believes what is taught. In Hebrew School we were always warned against asking questions that have no answer as I might “lose my faith.” As I was told to “have faith” in something is to believe in it even in the face of no answers.

Later in life I ended up reading during my post graduate studies in a pastoral care program an article from Paul Tillich, a prominent theologian, who had quite another view.

“Faith”, he said, “is not so much about believing things as it is about being concerned about things, specifically about issues that are beyond our day-to-day crises and joys. Faith means that we make the effort, at least sometimes, to extend our horizon and look further out for meaning”.

Tillich went on to say that the way we exercise faith is through both belief and doubt.

The person of faith is the person scanning the horizon and learning from past experiences.

As we learn more, we may come to believe some things we used to doubt and doubt some things we used to believe. Otherwise, we’re not really experiencing the world.

To Paul Tillich, a person of unwavering belief would no more qualify as a person of faith than would a nihilist who doubts all.

This came as a stunning insight for since when did Faith embrace doubt. In the end it became apparent to me that Tillich’s form of religious faith can be compared to the Hebrew word ruach. For ruach in Hebrew which is the root of the word “soul” or “spirit” also means “breath” and “wind”.

Perhaps it’s not totally surprising “breath” is a kind of wind, and both breath and wind are invisible things that can be felt-hence their association with spirit.

Applying the Tillich lesson, I came to believe that faith is to the life of the soul as breathing is to the life of the body: it’s the animating principle.

Believing is like inhaling-taking sustenance into ourselves.

Doubting is like exhaling-letting go of the material that’s no longer useful and is, quite literally, exhausted.

The person whose faith is alive “breathes” absorbing and expelling, believing and doubting.

For no one can only inhale and survive.

Nor can any person only exhale and survive.

And no one can simply stop breathing.

So during this time of economic and personal turmoil let us find faith in God and ourselves by simply continuing to breathe on both a physiological and spiritual level.

B’shalom and friendship,

Rabbi Andrew Bloom