The joke is told about the researcher doing a study on belief in G-d. He enters a church during midnight mass and sees it packed to the rafters. He asks the first person he sees, “what are you doing here?” “What do you mean? It is midnight mass!” “Ah,” says the researcher, “so you believe in G-d?” “Of course!” says the parishioner.
Next our researcher makes his way to a packed mosque during Eid. “What are you doing here?” He asks the first person he sees. “What do you mean? It is Eid!” they respond. “Ah,” says the researcher, “so you believe in G-d?” “Of course!” says the worshiper.
Finally our researcher visits a busy shul on Yom Kippur. “What are you doing here?” He asks the first person he sees. “What do you mean? It is Yom Kippur!” they respond. “Ah,” says the researcher, “so you believe in G-d?” “G-d?” says the Jew. “What, do I look like the Rabbi?”

Jewish people have always had a complicated relationship between belief and practice, but our search for understanding goes back to the very beginning of time.
 

In the dramatic moments following the Creation of Adam, a confrontation broke out between G-d and the angels. The Midrash tells us that the angels came to G-d and said, “This one: What good is he?”

G-d answered, “His wisdom is greater than yours.” And to test the proposition G-d paraded the beasts, animals, and birds before the angels and asked them to give them names. But they were speechless: they did not know. 

G-d then made them pass before Adam. And Adam said “This is ox/shor, and this is donkey/chamor, and this is horse/sus, and this is camel/gamal.”

“And you,” G-d said, “what is your name?” 

Adam replied, “It would be fitting to call me Adam, since I was created from the ground/adamah.” 

“And what is My name?” G-d asked.

He said to him, “It would be right for You to be called “my Master”/Ado-nai, since you are Master/Adon to all the creatures.”

Adam’s first activity on earth was to give names to the realities he saw around him, the animals, himself, and G-d. 

What is the significance of this odd beginning to Adam’s life? There are many ways that G-d could have demonstrated humankind’s intelligence to the angels. Why did G-d choose this particular feat, of giving names, to express the uniqueness of His new Creation?

Human beings are meaning-seeking creatures: we yearn to give shape to the events, characters, and phenomena in our lives. There are essentially two options to choose from when confronting the universe: We can select explanations that reduce our world to “random happenstance” and the pointless collision of particles. Or we can strive to tie ourselves to purposes that are higher than ourselves. 

When we give names to something, we make sense of it. We assign it a role within the larger world. We impose order on something chaotic. 

Giving something a human name is a way of exerting control over it: a reminder that it works for us. This is why we give human names to all sorts of things we can’t control in nature - like hurricanes and spiders. 

By giving names to the reality around him, Adam was creating meaning out of disorder. He was granting each creature a place in the world, revealing the unique role and purpose of every item. He was revealing the Divine order in the universe.  

Ultimately though, his search for meaning was the search for G-d. The discovery of G-d was the discovery of meaning. 

Although Jewish people aren’t especially comfortable about talking openly about G-d and our belief in Him, that doesn’t mean that we don’t think about it. This autumn I will be teaching an all new course that will answer thirty common questions about G-d. Join us as we go back to the beginning of time to answer questions that still bother us today.