Why Ayeka? Bringing God Back Into the Conversation

Because we need a venue in which Jews can reflect upon and deepen their personal relationship with God.

Ayeka is the first question in the Torah. In the Garden of Eden, when God asks Adam – “Where are you?” – Adam is hiding. This is an eternal paradigm. We all hide, at times, in different ways.

The goal of Ayeka is to create a venue in which we can stop hiding in order to explore our personal relationship with God, and to see how this relationship can impact our lives. It is possible to imbue our relationships, our work, and our entire lives with a sense of living in the Image of God.  In the language of the Torah, we are called upon to ‘wrestle’ with God.

In my 25 years of teaching Jews of all backgrounds and beliefs, I consistently found one quality common to all – it is difficult for Jews to talk personally about God.

Conversations about God don’t naturally happen. It will virtually never come about that you or your friend will start a conversation by asking “Oh, by the way, how is your relationship with God?”

Yet, if asked to tell my truth, boldly and unapologetically, I would assert that a Jewish identity that does not have a vibrant relationship with God will eventually wither and become hollow, regardless of the level of knowledge or commitment.

There are many branches on the tree of Judaism: Learning & Praying, Family life, Community work, Social action, Cultural activities – but they are all branches stemming from a single root, a single seed – from which our name “Yisrael” is drawn. At its root, Judaism began by one person – Abraham – having a relationship with God.

Now, let’s be completely clear about this: no one at Ayeka is going to posit exactly what this relationship should be for anyone else. Everyone has to do their own wrestling. 2,000 years ago the rabbis wrote that at Mount Sinai everyone heard a different voice of God. Every relationship is different. At Ayeka, we are less concerned with the question: “What is God?” than with the question: “What is God – to you?” We each need to wrestle in our own way with God.

At Ayeka we are providing an agenda-free (, safe space) environment, in which every person can explore their own relationship with God with full personal integrity. I wish I would have had this opportunity earlier in my life.

In Sunday School I was taught that God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. I had absolutely no idea what that meant. That was a lot of “omni’s” for a kid. How could I even begin the conversation?

In college I learned about evil and about the Holocaust, and that there are no great answers. So I left the conversation.

After college in yeshiva, we studied Talmud and Halacha. Endless details. Incredible intellectual challenges. But God did not come up in our conversation.

In my adult life I had the privilege of teaching Jewish wisdom in both formal and informal settings. We focused so much on conveying knowledge that once again God did not enter the conversation.

The goal of having a relationship with God is not to experience nirvana, to be uplifted, or to feel spiritual. At Ayeka we began by focusing on personal and spiritual growth, but in the end chose to return to our core relationship with God.

We sensed that the expressions “personal and spiritual growth” were too “I-centered.” They kept coming back to how I feel about myself. Am I centered? Am I calm? Am I happy? And while I want all of these things, it seemed to me that Judaism was asking more of us, and that the essential element was missing.

The Torah does not ask us to be spiritual. In fact the word “spiritual” never appears, neither in the Bible nor in the Talmud. The Torah tells us to go out and “Be a blessing.” We are being challenged to fulfill a divine mission. Hopefully wrestling with God will lend greater clarity and dedication to fulfilling my unique divine mission in this world.

How does the Torah understand this mission? In my relationship with God, I am told that I have been created in the “image of God”. I have been instructed to go out into the world and “be a blessing.”

The Torah does not explain what these terms mean. They are intentionally left ambiguous for us in order that we may struggle with them in our own unique way.

Ayeka was created to allow us to wrestle with these ideas and to further clarify how they can impact not only our lives, but also the lives of all those around us.