Where is God? This profound question has been the subject of important post-Holocaust Jewish theology, a wide range of reflections by different Jewish denominations, and an incredibly catchy children’s song. It’s also a subject of speculation on today’s daf — which, like the children’s song, approaches the question less philosophically and more … geographically.
First, the Talmud cites a beraita, an earlier tradition, in which Rabbi Akiva states:
One may establish a tannery on any side of the city and distance it 50 cubits, except for the west side, where one may not establish it at all, because the western wind is frequent.
Tanning leather involves a number of chemicals which are particularly smelly, so there was real incentive to keep it far away from where people lived and downwind. The Talmud next interrogates what exactly Rabbi Akiva meant by the word “frequent.” Rava explains the problem:
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Doesn’t Rav Hanan bar Abba say that Rav says: Four winds blow every day, and the northern wind blows with each of them; as, if this were not so, the world would not exist for even one hour. And the southern wind is harsher than all of them, and were it not for the angel named Ben Netz, who stops it, it would destroy the world, as it is stated: “Does the hawk [netz] soar by your wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south?” (Job 39:26)
Rava has a tradition that the northern wind blows most frequently among the winds, bringing some kind of positive effect on all others. Apparently, winds blowing from the east and the west, and especially from the south, would be cataclysmic without the north wind’s modulating effect, as well as some angelic intervention. But if the north wind is the most frequent in terms of time blowing, then Rabbi Akiva couldn’t have thought that the west wind was the most frequent! What then did Rabbi Akiva mean by “frequent”? Rava continues:
Frequent with the shekhinah as Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: Come and let us be grateful to our ancestors who revealed to us the place of prayer, as it is written: “And the hosts of heaven bow down to You.” (Nehemiah 9:6)
Frequent, perhaps, doesn’t mean the wind that blows most often but the wind that is more often accompanied by the divine presence, the shekhinah. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and so do the moon and stars every night. While modern astronomers attribute this phenomenon to the earth’s rotation on its own axis, Rabbi Yehoshua reads this as the hosts of heaven running from west to east (where the shekhinah dwells) in order to bow before her.
Rav Aha bar Ya’akov objects to this: But perhaps they are like a servant who receives a gift from his master and walks backward while bowing!
Then again, maybe the shekhinah actually dwells in the west, and the celestial bodies are respectfully backing away from her each day.
The Talmud then offers us a third opinion:
And Rabbi Oshaya holds that the divine presence is in every place, as Rabbi Oshaya says: What is that which is written: “You are the Lord, even you alone, you have made heaven … you preserve them all alive and the hosts of heaven bow down to you” (Nehemiah 9:6)? Your messengers are not like the messengers of flesh and blood. Messengers of flesh and blood return to the place from where they were sent to report on their mission. But your messengers return from their mission from the place to which they are sent, as it is stated “Can you send forth lightning bolts, that they may go out and say to you: Here we are?” (Job 38:35) It does not state: They will come and say, but: “They may go out and say,” which teaches that the divine presence is in every place.
Usually, people come to their superiors to report to them. But Rabbi Oshaya reads the verse in Job as saying that celestial bodies don’t come to God to report on their missions; instead they go out from God to report. If we assume that they had to travel to fulfill their missions, that means that God, and the shekhinah, must be everywhere. Even in all their travels, the angels never left the presence of God.
As expected, the Talmud does not offer us a neat resolution as to the location of God. But today’s discussion testifies to the long history of Jews asking, where is God? And also to the many ways that Jews have answered that question, while looking to the Bible, our traditions and our own lived experiences.
Read all of Bava Batra 25 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on July 20, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
