It fits with the U2 song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” How can someone look and look and look, and still not find? Maybe they’re not ready to recognize it, because the implications would change their life. Maybe it’s easier, as you wrote, just “numbing themselves out and then pretending that they don’t know what would help.”

Taking off from what you’ve said — maybe the mistake of the Israelites was to think that wisdom resides in a place. It’s interesting that the Exodus Rabba passage taeks us from speech to wisdom, from voice to knowledge.

A voice exists in the material world. One must be where the speaker is to hear it. Wisdom exists as a abstract - it is something we find, but not in things.

Interesting, too, that the Exodus passage dates from a time when the Israelites had a kingdom - their religion was anchored in time and place. God had a designated home.

Exodus Rabba, I think, dates from the exilic period - and shows a more abstracted, amaterialistic or anti-materialistic notion of God.

“tzama l’cha nafshi”- This Torah project is definately worth while!