Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 272
“Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and the sacred. We worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love. (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53-54)
The sentence that I have emboldened above is so apt a description of the history of humankind and, of course, what we are in the throes of right now, it took me two days to begin to digest it. “Dogma" is defined as “a set of principles laid down by an authority as inconvertibly true”, yet it comes from the Greek meaning “seems good” or “opinion”! “Integrity” is defined as “the state of being whole” “internal consistency”, “moral uprightness” and comes from the Latin meaning “intact”.
The sentence above could read: we worry more about the purity of following the principles laid down by an authority than about the intactness of our love for one another. It could also read: we worry more about opinions of another(s) than we do about keeping our love for one another, for God intact. In either of these three readings of this sentence, I hear Rabbi Heschel asking us to wake up and see how our dogmas are ruining our love, how following the leader is trashing our consistent and persistent reach for being loved and being loving. I hear his call to We the People to end our need to look good, to ‘follow the rules’ that are cruel and mean, that are societal norms and not prophetic rebellions, and to realize that their is only ONE GOD and no human is it!
While one can make the case that “dogma” is needed, the issue is that “dogma” becomes what is worshiped and adored, not God, not love, not humanity, just the “dogma” of our tribe, our cult, our religion, etc. This is the great problem facing human beings today and for all times. How to use principles to bring us closer to the Ineffable One without falling into the trap of worshiping the principles, how to use our rational minds as servants and not worship our intellect and reason as Einstein warns us, are questions that this idea brings up and, as we can see from the MAGA crowd and the Progressive Crowd, no one is searching for a solution to these questions, rather both extremes are pointing the fingers at one another and those of We the People who seek to find middle ground, who embrace the Ineffable One and know life is not binary, not either/or are left adrift. While many people are dissecting the elections and what they foretell about the next election, We the People, especially those in the middle, are being cautioned by the teaching above to watch and see which is more important to the Democrats, to the Republicans, to the Mandami and his constituency, to the two women who won Governorships and their followers-do they care more about keeping love for all, freedom for all, intact or are they more concerned about hewing to their dogmatic beliefs, to their own prejudices and biases? Politicians have, historically, hewed to their dogmatic belief that getting re-elected is most important, that satisfying the needs and wants of their big donors/the leader(s) of their party, holding firm on ‘core’ issues no matter how it affects the people they represent (think Mike Johnson) rather than kept intact, had/have integrity with their constituents, the people who elected them, the people they are supposed to represent and love! Is this new breed of politicians any different-only time will tell.
The same way of being is true in the lives, personal and professional, of We the People. We are always at the crossroads of serving our agendas or keeping the love we have, or are commanded to have, for the stranger, our neighbor, our spouses, our children. Do we keep our moral standards when to violate them ‘just a little only this once’ will allow us to buy something needed for a loved one, will make it possible for us to stop living paycheck to paycheck, will help with the medical bills and treatments our loved one needs? The “Heinz dilemma” addresses this so well and is not taught early on in Middle School or High School. It needs to be. We the People are constantly wrestling with what the next right action to take is except when we are worrying about “the purity of our dogma”, when we are more concerned with what Trump/Netanyahu/Putin, et al think of how we ‘carry out their orders’ than with keeping the love for our humanity, for God intact. Isn’t it time for We the People to immerse ourselves in the Bible and learn what love is? Isn’t it time for We the People to realize that the “dogma” spouted by der fuhrer using Biblical Verses, the ‘christian nationalism’ that is not found in the New Testament are just bastardizations of holy scriptures for the sake of misogynists to have control over everyone else?
This is the dilemma we find ourselves in ONCE AGAIN, as We the People have throughout human existence; hence our need to fall back, re-read the prophets, learn from their words about “the integrity of love” and take their Good Orderly Direction and find our way out of extremism and back to God.
I have been more concerned with living an integrated life than with “dogma”. I am more concerned with seeking truth and knowing my fallibility will continue to dog me throughout my life than with hewing to some arbitrary way of being that ‘The Man/Men’ came up with or that ‘this sect’ comes up with . I am good at taking direction and not good at following the ‘party line’. I am good at immersing myself in the Bible, in the prophets words, thoughts and deeds and I am not good at ‘do it because I say so’ from another human being. I continue to monitor my dogmatic ways, I continue to be engaged in keeping my love of people, my concern for another, my ability to smell bullshit when I hear it, intact, so I do not get caught up in trying to prove my “dogma” is more pure than yours. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark