Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman teaches, “There is a fundamental question that all of us must answer: what is the nature of existence, our own and eternity’s.”

For Hoffman, there are only three answers. We can go through life as if it is a power game on a cosmic scale, casting ourselves as robber barons of the earth. Or we can believe that life is essentially random.

“But Judaism,” says Hoffman, demands a third approach: what Heschel called “radical awe.” To exist in the world is itself a miracle. That there should be a universe at all and that it should be ordered as it is – these are miracles that demand our attention.

This third approach, says Hoffman, places demands on us – on the way we act, on the way we treat others, on the way we bring God’s presence into the world:

Three world views, three ways to exist in the world. We can hide in our houses, afraid to face a world that is capricious and random. Or we can become robber barons, wresting power by force. Or we can acknowledge, in the words of the Psalmist, that the earth is the Lord’s, that we have only been sent here to be stewards of God’s sacred bounty – to bring God’s presence into the world through our acts of kindness, our acts of justice, and our acts of grace.

More than anything else, those world views shape our attitudes towards those who are suffering – the widow, the stranger, and the orphan.

If the world is chaotic and random – or if life is a battle between robber barons – then we must keep everything for ourselves. The poor, the suffering are just dirt beneath our feet – or sinners who get what they deserve. But if we are stewards of God’s bounty, then we must help those who have less. In Rashi’s words, we must bring a ray of kindness into the lives of the downtrodden.

.For thousands of years, kings and tyrants have risen around us – robber barons who steal from the weak and the hungry, as if power and riches were the only important things in life. But our prophets and our teachers stood up for a different kind of world.

“You shall build a world of kindness,” the Psalmist told us. And the prophet Micah was clear about what what the Holy One wanted:

For countless generations, our ancestors defended these values. And now it’s our turn. On election day, we will determine what kind of country America will be. And in a very real sense, we will determine the future of God’s world.

May the Holy One bless our country. And may He guide our hands as we vote on the future of His world.