Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 166
“Religion and race. How can the two be uttered together? To act in the spirit of religion is to unite what lies apart…” (Essential Writings pg.65)
These words are from Rabbi Heschel’s address at a conference of “Religion and Race” in 1963. Yet, humanity has succeeded in using both words to separate us, we hear all the time about the differences in religion, we hear the call of one religion or another to ‘come to us, we have the answer’, we see religions proselytize on television, in the marketplace, etc. We hear about ‘christian values’ from some people as opposed to the values of any other religion, we hear the call of Islam from some ‘adherents’ that anyone not associated with us is an infidel, we hear some Jews speak poorly about non-Jews as if they are less than, all to promote separation rather than to “unite what lies apart”. Race, of course, does the same thing-we ‘stick with our own kind’, we have White Supremacists, Black Power, Mexican Mafia, etc, we have ‘christian nationalists’, ‘jewish zealots’, ‘islamic terrorists’, etc. Humanity has sought to separate us, pigeon-hole us, keep us at odds with one another using religion as the separator rather than as a uniter. We are experiencing another cycle where this need to separate, to define us as “better than”, in order to hold onto power is reaching a breaking point, a zenith.
As I hear Rabbi Heschel speaking in my head, I hear the anguish and the anger, the passion and the purpose of his words. I hear his demand and his call to all of us to end our silliness, stop our separating, and cease our senseless hatred. I also hear him calling out the leaders of religions, the people who are running religious institutions and those who proclaim to be foundations that promote religious values to seek paths of uniting one another instead of separating one another.
These words are infuriating me, because I know how often religion has been used to separate, we are witnessing one political party wrap themselves in a Christianity that has no relationship to Christ’s words, to the values he spoke about, to help the people he loved. We are experiencing the Religious Right in Israel demeaning the humanity of Palestinians and their fellow Israelis who they oppose! We see what happens to Muslims who go against the ‘orthodoxy’ of the Iranian dictator, MBS, etc-they are stoned, hung, dismembered. Yet all of these ‘religious’ people use God, Christ, Allah to validate their hatred, their killing. No wonder people are not so keen on hearing God’s name! When Donald Trump, when treating the stranger like a felon, when calling people not like us “vermin”, becomes acceptable, we have bastardized religion totally.
When we judge people based on the color of their skin, on the religion they belong to and practice, we are forgetting that we are all created in the Image of God, that we all have a higher consciousness that belies this type of judging. Race and religion are descriptors that we can use to bridge the gap, not make the chasm wider. We can see people of different skin colors and inquire about their culture and their stories. We can ask questions of people who belong to a different religion to learn the tenets of their faith and their values. Doing this will bring us to the realization that we are all “kin under the skin” as a friend of mine says. We do not have to keep people at the margins of society, rather we can “erase the margins” and bring everyone into our tent of being human.
Imagine, this conference was held some 61 years ago, during the Civil Rights movement, and we are still dealing with this problem-using race and religion to separate us rather than unite us. We are, once again, at a boiling point in our country and across the world with one group of people, in our case white ‘christians’, decimating the rule of law so they can dominate every other group of people. Instead of using the power of their religion to unite, they use it to separate and dominate. Instead of using their race and religion the power it has afforded them, they use it to deny dignity and value to any other race and religion. Isn’t it time for us to stand up and say NO?
Growing up Jewish in the 1950’s and 1960’s in Cleveland, Ohio, I witnessed the separation race and religion brought about and the destruction of the human spirit it caused. In our household, my father would not give in to this way of being, he sent us to religious school to learn how to be more compassionate and more open to all. His actions were to greet everyone with respect and courtesy, he believed in paying people the same wages for the same job which brought us into conflict with many-we were called “N” lovers by fellow Jews, non-Jews, etc. When my grandfather was in the Jewish Home in Cleveland, our housekeeper would visit him and one time she was asked why she called my grandfather “uncle”, she said “I am his niece”, my grandfather agreed with her. When I was asked ‘what’s the story’ I said the same thing-the people running this Jewish organization were flummoxed to say the least.
In prison, the Jewish Chapel was open to all, I helped people of all races and religions in any way I could. Beit T’Shuvah was created as a Jewish Halfway House and it is a faith-based recovery center that takes all people regardless of race, religion, ethnicity. A Muslim man’s mother prays for us each week! We are all one race, the human race and living this way has opened me up to so many unique experiences and joys. I am grateful for my upbringing, I am hopeful we can return to a way of unification through religion, rather than separation. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark