Knowing God
An article in The Jerusalem Post:
My comment:
It is true that we can’t “directly” get to know the Creator of reality, meaning we cannot “see Him face to face.”.
But as our greatest sages explained and wrote in several places, “We know You through Your actions.” And they refined and explained that we can get to know the Creator by learning and practicing how to act “like Him.”
Like famous “method actors” who dissolve and invest themselves into their role until they become the character they want to play, we can also learn and practice how to act and exist towards others “like the Creator” — being purely and utterly loving, bestowing and giving, meaning acting the Creator who is Good and Benevolent.
This is what “Old Hillel” explains to the convert that if one wants to start learning the Torah, one at least has to learn how “not to do to others what he himself hates.”
By at least not causing harm to others, we already achieve partial similarity with the Creator.
And when we learn and practice how to “Love your friend as yourself,” meaning we reach a state where we become capable of selfless and unconditionally accepting and serving others above and against our instinctive self-interest, we achieve full compatibility and equivalence with the Creator’s actions.
And then, through the acquired similarity of qualities and actions, we will get to know the Creator as if we “knew Him face to face.”
Then we can taste and feel that He is truly Good — by ourselves becoming good towards others, above and against our instinctive nature.