The rabbis of old tell us that God decided to leave the world imperfect. It would be our job, the job of mortals, to perfect it. To that I say, “Good going, God, imperfect it is!” And I might also say, “God, you overestimated our ability – or our will – to fix the mess!” And so I, and perhaps you as well, might ask of God, “Far be it from me, a humble rabbi to ask, but looking at the world around us, what would You do? 
What would You do if You were in our shoes? And, God, what, if anything, are you going to do to fix this mess in which we’re finding ourselves? 
   I know that what I’m asking is the ultimate in chutzpah, even if it’s just a question, and the assumptions I make might be part of the theology of some Jews, but not mine. I go back to the comment made by my father. When asked how he, a Holocaust survivor whose mother and sisters were murdered by the Nazis, could be so involved in his religious community, attending worship and praying to God, and serving on the Temple Board, his answer was straight to the point, “God had nothing to do with it.” 
   But I know that there are plenty of our people, regardless of the branch with which they identify, whose idea of the Deity is a personal one, who expect prayers to be answered, who want God to act in their lives. I think God would tell them, “I hate to disappoint you, but it doesn’t work that way.” And God would continue, “You hold up tikun olam, the repair of the world, as a value. Indeed for some of you it has become the phrase du jour, your motivation for being 
Jewish.”  
   God goes on, “You insist – and correctly so – that your synagogue must inspire the congregants to do as the phrase instructs them to do, and, yes, I left that world of yours imperfect for you to do something.”     And then God might add, “Remember that saying you have included in your various prayerbooks, a powerful one even though it was Saint Augustine who penned it… ‘Pray as if everything depended upon God, but act as if everything depended on you’? God goes on…You see, It’s a partnership. You ask me what I’m doing. Let me ask you what you’re doing?” 
   So God is challenging us, as it were. Since we’re created in the Divine image, what we do might indeed be a mirror image of God’s deeds, only a little more reasonable since we’re obviously not God.  
   What God might do? Take so many stories in Hebrew Scriptures. Our enemies attack, create various degrees of havoc, destruction and turmoil. We hit them back, and we hit them back hard! Who gave the orders? The Torah doesn’t refer to God as, among other descriptions, Adonai tz’vaot, the Lord of Hosts, just for the heck of it. A “host” is an army, and God (at least in Hebrew Scriptures) is best described as Commander-in-Chief.         Now across the centuries ours has been accused of being a “vengeful God.” Is that what God does, what God is doing? God might respond to that, saying, “Excuse me, you say that I’M vengeful. If that means that I responded to the violence found in Scripture, you’re right. But what about you? You who have started one religious war after another. You didn’t react; indeed, you acted. Just take the Crusades. What did the Jews do for you to take entire towns and throw them into buildings only to burn them alive? And you call 
ME vengeful!”  
    Well, my friends, that was then and this is now. And it’s now that we see suffering all around us. Israelis and Palestinians both are suffering terribly. Jews in Europe continue to suffer from the antisemitism they’ve experienced in the past few decades; and though we Jews in America were also taken by surprise, as it were (though Jew-hatred was always just below the surface), we’re suffering as well, suffering as never before.  
   God’s got a major job on His hands, on Her hands. And as I said, our petitions for help are shooting heavenward from people who hardly ever prayed in their lives. “Pray as if everything depended on God, but act as if everything depended on you.”  
   “Act”? If you ask me – and someone did a few weeks ago – what God is doing is pleading with us to be Jewish now more than ever. God might be saying, “I feel your pain…indeed I do. But you know how I’ve given you strength ever since you became a People, a self-defined entity and not a rag-tag group of individual women and men who left slavery and degradation? Let me tell you how…when you stood on one side of the sea hearing the thundering din of the Egyptian army, you had no idea that you would become a People with a purpose, and in My eyes an Am Segulah, a “treasured people.” You believed your days were numbered. And then you stood at the shores of the sea when the Egyptian army was defeated. It was your ‘ahah!’ moment. I’ve given you an identity as a People. Shall we say, ‘Under God, Indivisible’? Well, you’ve never been indivisible. But nonetheless, it’s ok to use that phrase though it’s been taken.” 
    God continues, “You’ve got so many rituals to define you. You’ve got mitzvot – moral, ethical obligations - to fulfill. You’ve got history to learn, and lessons from that history that are vital for survival. In so many words at so many times I told your distant ancestors, Be a Hebrew! Be an Israelite! And today? Be a Jew and be proud of it! That’s what your enemies have never believed across the centuries, that amidst all your tribulations you didn’t falter in your, pardon the expression, in your God-given package of what it means to defy the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Cossacks, and, yes, the Nazis. And in case you’ve forgotten, let me remind you, y o u   a r e   s t i  l l  here…and they are not!”  
    God is God and is allowed to talk a lot, and so God says, “Don’t think I am minimizing what you’re seeing and what you’re feeling in your very souls. Don’t think that I don’t know the trepidation of the Israelis…and of course I know of the suffering of the innocents in Gaza, and I too would do what I can to create bonds of understanding that have and still do exist in that troubled region. I am not a triumphalist. I am furious about the treachery of uncontrolled settlers, and incensed at the bluster of a crooked Prime Minister. But…” as God goes on, “but I am not a Deity that lifts a finger and the deed is done. There’s no magic wand, no potion, no hocus-pocus on my part.” 
   Friends, it’s obvious I don’t know what God would do. I can only project myself onto an image of the Divine that moves me, that informs me. It’s an image out of focus, as it were, and I’m just as confused as the next person. There’s no black and white here; there’s never been black and white when it comes to Israel, indeed, when it comes to the world God has so imperfectly created.     And God concludes, “So what would I do? I hope I give you the strength to face adversity as you have faced it in the past. I hope I have given you the tools to self-define your unique purpose in the world, and that you’ll never forsake that purpose.  
   It’s interesting that in the Torah I tell you, ‘Do not deviate from these mitzvot either to the right or to the left.’ You know, never in a million years – and I know a million years – did I ever think ‘right’ and ‘left’ were more than directions, that they defined the thoughtpattern of politicians and laypeople alike. But since they do, at least in your lives, I want you to take the middle course which prompts you to compromise, at least to listen.     What would I do? For God’s sake, for My sake, I’ll do what I have always done…guided you, cared for you, loved you, and nurtured you. And you can do me a favor; you can continue to be unto me an Am kadosh, a Holy 
People. 
 
   Friends, earlier in my talk I alluded to the fact that someone asked me point blank, “Rabbi, what would God do?” She stopped me in my tracks. As I’ve thought many times over the decades when something occurs, or someone says something profound, or even not so profound, “There’s a sermon in that!” Well, that someone is here tonight. Marla, I want to thank you for asking. If you, or someone you know, has the true answer, let me know. As I just said, I sure don’t.