My mother taught me, from when I was young, that a good question matters more than a good answer – and is harder to come up with. Life has proven her right again and again. Very few people can come up with a question of their own. Almost anyone can write an essay answering someone else’s question.
The hardest questions are the personal ones: the questions that help us find our own path – in marriage or career, or in how we invest in our friends, our children and our parents. Questions like these can sound self-centered, even narcissistic. I don’t think they are. “Why me?” is a great question. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Rebecca (Rivka), Isaac’s wife, shows the way. When she was pregnant, the Torah tells us:
But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, “If this is the case, why do I exist?” She went to inquire (drash) of G-d. (G.25:22 (Genesis 25:22))
Look at her question! She isn’t saying, “I want to know what G-d thinks.” She is asking about herself: “Who am I? Why is this happening to me?” That is almost an existential question – which is surprising in a text older than the Greek philosophers.
Some religions teach that everything that happens to us is fated, “written in the stars,” and that questioning it is pointless or even wrong. The Torah is different. Rivka demands an answer – and she gets one.
The way the Torah uses her word for “inquire” teaches us a lot about the value of asking questions, especially of G-d:
If you search there for G-d, you will find Him, if only you seek (drash) Him with all your heart and soul. (D.4:29 (Deuteronomy 4:29))
The key word is drash (Hebrew דָּרַשׁ): to inquire, to challenge, to seek. G-d clearly wants us to drash. Not just to look for G-d, but to understand the relationship each of us can have with our Creator. Everyone asks this question – but each person gets an answer of their own!
Rivka’s question becomes the model for how Jews relate to G-d. The people take her example to heart. Much later, after the Exodus, Moses tells his father-in-law, Jethro, what he does all day:
The people come to me to inquire (drash) of G-d. (E.18:15 (Exodus 18:15))
You might assume drash is the language of obedience, of quietly accepting what we are told. It isn’t. It means dogged, determined questioning. How do we know? Because G-d is the first one in the Torah to use the word – about murder. After the Flood, G-d tells Noah:
But for your own life-blood I will require a drash: I will require it of every beast; of man, too, will I require a drash for human life, of every man for that of his fellow man! (G.9:5 (Genesis 9:5))
When G-d says He will demand a reckoning for every murder, He uses the very same word that describes Rivka’s question, and the questions Jews bring to G-d. The Torah is setting up an equivalence: we should be just as determined in questioning G-d, and our connection to Him, as G-d is in pursuing murderers. Our drash toward G-d should match G-d’s drash against murder.
How can those two possibly be compared? A murder snuffs out a life – and with it, a chance to touch the infinite. By using the same word for our questions to G-d, the Torah is telling us that an unexamined life, like a murder, is a terrible waste.
If you search there for G-d, you will find Him, if only you seek (drash) Him with all your heart and soul. (D.4:29 (Deuteronomy 4:29))
What is remarkable is how personal all of this is. Rivka’s question is about her own pregnancy. The verse asks each of us to invest our own heart and soul. G-d does not deal with humanity, or even the Jewish people, simply as a group. We find the answers only when we seek them with everything we have – and the answer is different for every person, just as Rivka’s pregnancy was hers alone.
The result is a trait the Jewish people have never lost. From Rivka to Holocaust survivors to parents of children with disabilities, we are the people who drash. We push. We ask. We are not satisfied with easy clichés like “It is G-d’s will.” After all, maybe it is G-d’s will that our challenges are there precisely to make us ask! Our forefathers asked questions and challenged G-d, and argued when they thought they were right. The Torah is clear that we should follow their lead.
Like Rivka, we don’t need to route our questions through a sage or a prophet – though if Moses happens to be around, asking him makes sense! We don’t know exactly how Rivka got her answer, and I think that is part of the point. The Torah simply says she “went to drash G-d.” She stepped outside herself and went looking for answers.
When it is G-d who does the asking, drash seems to mean a divine reckoning – paying the price for what we have done, as it did with Noah and the consequences of murder. We see the same thing after Joseph is sold into slavery, when his oldest brother, Reuben, scolds the others:
Then Reuben spoke up and said to them, “Did I not tell you, ‘Do no wrong to the boy’? But you paid no heed. Now will come the drash for his blood.” (G.42:22 (Genesis 42:22))
Elsewhere in the Torah, drash is the word courts use for investigating: gathering facts and deciding consequences as part of a legal process. And G-d uses drash for watching over how we live in the Land of Israel – checking whether we are making good choices. When it comes to G-d, the word is closely tied to taking responsibility for our own lives, and to making our decisions consciously and thoughtfully.
On the other hand, we are forbidden to drash of the dead – to consult them. That is probably because Judaism always focuses on what each person can do next, not on looping endlessly back into the past. Civilizations that worshipped the dead show us where that path leads: to standing still, existing without really living.
In the same way, we are warned not to look into how other peoples worship their gods:
Beware of being lured into their ways … Do not drash about their gods, saying, “How did those nations worship their gods? I too will follow those practices.” (D.12:30 (Deuteronomy 12:30))
Idol-worshipping religions share a key feature: whether the god is Mother Earth, Baal or Zeus, individual people don’t matter much and aren’t distinguished from one another. These belief systems end up treating people like animals – valued for what they produce, offer or emit – rather than as individuals, each with a unique soul and a unique path to making the world better and holier.
So if we go looking into paganism, we throw away each person’s ability to ask their own questions and find their own answers. The Torah’s view is the opposite, and deeply egalitarian: every person rightly has their own opportunities and pitfalls, their own path in this world – a path we discover only in conversation with G-d.
The Torah tells us that questioning our own lives, and what G-d expects of us, is not just acceptable. It is an essential part of what it means to be a Jew.