The children's classic "The Runaway Bunny", written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd, might seem an odd place to begin a theological reflection.
The Runaway Bunny begins with a young bunny who decides to run away: "'If you run away,' said his mother, 'I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.'" And so begins an imaginary game of chase. No matter how many forms the little bunny takes--a fish in a stream, a crocus in a hidden garden, a rock on a mountain--his steadfast and protective mother finds a way of retrieving him. For a child who has ever tested the strength of a parent's love, this story offers both reassurance and challenge.
Brown's book asks its readers how can the love of a parent for a child be explained, defined, demonstrated? The mother bunny responds to the many incarnations her child adopts, following him as he changes, not restraining his imagination while simultaneously (and doggedly) refusing to let him slip away. She changes along with him.
What do we believe? Did the ancient Israelites who authored our holy Torah, believe that God was describable, or locate-able? Perhaps an answer may be found in the dramatic and tragic moments when the Jerusalem Temples were destroyed in 586 BCE and 70 CE. For when we were exiled from our land, carrying with us both the sights and smells of a burnt Jerusalem and the dream of one day finding home again, the rabbis created a new midrash, a new vision of God's "location." They taught that when the Jews were exiled, God's holy Presence, the Shechinah, went with them. "God adapted, morphed, changed along with us," taught the rabbis.
Deep in the soul of the Jewish people is the conviction that our "Avinu Malkeinu", our own "Mother Bunny," won't let us go. But the deepest part of this is that we've never run away. Even when we've rejected one image of God, chosen one notion of the Sacred over another, our relationship with God has remained strong. For the Torah, God is an intervening character in history. For Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, God is "the Power that makes for salvation." Definitions only accomplish so much, given their rootedness in limits of language. Words like Source, Elohim, Adonai, Spirit - all sublime pointers - affirm the infinite potentiality of the universe to be purposeful, to respond to the particulars of today.
I pray that we never run away from our Divine potential, that the challenge of belief is a compelling conversation we remain determined to share. May our precious communities always feel the Presence of God. And may the way we treat each other and the world around us always demonstrate the most sacred of ideals.
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Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Joined: September 20, 2007
A prolific writer, musician, and leader in the Conservative Movement, Menachem Creditor’s rabbinate has taken him from coast to coast. For the first 5 years of his rabbinate he served as the assistant Rabbi of Temple Israel in Sharon, Massacusets. His work within that community lead to meeting Rabbi David Paskin, with whom Rabbi Creditor created Shirav and recorded two albums. Their album Deeper & Deeper contains the track Olam, which has become a spiritual anthem in the Renewal, Reform, and Masorti world. Rabbi Creditor's first solo album "Within" was released in 2011. Described as “a vocal proponent of gay and women’s rights”, Rabbi Creditor co-founded Keshet Rabbis, the alliance of gay friendly conservative rabbis and recently, Rabbi Creditor became the international co-chair of Rabbis For Women of the Wall.
Since becoming Rabbi of Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, CA in 2007, the synagogue’s membership has swelled, the participatory nature of the synagogue has flourished, and the outreach programs generated, including Bay Area Masorti, which Rabbi Creditor currently chairs, have achieved regional, national, and international recognition. Rabbi Creditor currently serves on the Executive Council of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Board of Trustees of the UC Berkeley Hillel, and on the Rabbinic Advisory Committee of Shalom Bayit. Rabbi Creditor’s writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Forward, The Jewish Week, J. Weekly, The Jewish Advocate, The Boston Globe, Kolot: Voices of CJ, JewsbyChoice.org, Conservative Judaism, and in several Jewish anthologies, including the recently published Paths of Torah. Rabbi Creditor has been called a "power-blogger" and his rabbinate is a constant vehicle for Jewish connection within social media. He blogs at rabbicreditor.blogspot.com.
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