The ancient rabbis certainly did. They grappled with questions of creation, divine presence, and the seeming paradoxes of faith. And sometimes, they used the most unexpected methods to find answers.

One fascinating example comes from Bereshit Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic interpretations of the Book of Genesis. In this particular passage, a Samaritan—often portrayed as a theological sparring partner in rabbinic literature—poses a series of challenging questions to Rabbi Meir.

First, the Samaritan asks: "Is it possible that the upper waters are suspended by the word of God?" He's talking about the waters mentioned in Genesis 1:6-7, separated by the firmament. It's a question of physics, almost! Can something so vast really be held in place by divine decree?

Rabbi Meir, ever the resourceful sage, doesn't just offer a theological explanation. Instead, he conducts an experiment! He asks the Samaritan to bring a tube of water. When a gold or silver plate is placed on top, the water spills. But when Rabbi Meir puts his finger there, the water stays put.

The Samaritan objects, “You are placing your finger there!” Rabbi Meir's response is pure brilliance: "If I am flesh and blood and my finger can suspend the water, the finger of the Holy One, blessed be He, all the more so." It's an a fortiori argument—if a lesser power can achieve something, surely a greater power can as well. Thus, the upper waters are suspended by the word of God.

Next, the Samaritan shifts to a question of God's presence. "Is it possible," he asks, "that the One in whose regard it is written: 'Do I not fill the heavens and the earth' (Jeremiah 23:24), would speak to Moses from between the two staves of the Ark [in the Tabernacle]?" How can an infinite God be contained in such a small space?

Again, Rabbi Meir turns to a practical demonstration. He uses mirrors – large ones, then small ones. The Samaritan sees his reflection change size, mirroring the container. Rabbi Meir then says, "If you, who are flesh and blood, are able to change yourself into anything you wish, the One who spoke and made the world come into being, blessed be He, all the more so." God’s presence can be both vast and intimately focused.

Rabbi Ḥanina bar Isi adds another layer to this idea. He says that sometimes, "the world and its contents cannot contain the glory of his Godliness; at other times He speaks with a person from between the hairs of his head." Sometimes God’s presence is concentrated into such a small area that it is comparable to the space between hairs. Rabbi Hanina even connects it to Job 38:1: "The Lord answered Job from the tempest [hase’ara]" – playing on the similar-sounding word for "hairs" [saarot].

The Samaritan persists, this time with a question about the waters of the world: "The stream of God is full of water" (Psalms 65:10) – it has rained since the six days of Creation and yet nothing is missing?" Where does all the water go?

Rabbi Meir suggests another experiment. The Samaritan is asked to weigh himself before and after taking a bath. He finds no change in weight. Rabbi Meir explains that just as the Samaritan's body replenishes the water lost through perspiration, so too does God replenish the "stream of God."

Rabbi Yoḥanan offers a different perspective. He says that God took all the primordial waters and situated them half in the firmament and half in the ocean. "The stream [peleg] of God is full of water" – half [palga].

What do we take away from this? The rabbis weren't afraid to wrestle with big questions. They used logic, analogy, and even simple experiments to try and understand the divine. They saw God not as a distant, abstract concept, but as a force intimately involved in the workings of the world. The Midrash, the method of interpretation, reveals that God can be found in the grandest of cosmic events and the smallest of human experiences.

And perhaps that’s the most profound message of all. God is both everywhere and here with us, all at once.