Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 162
“It was not a lack of religion but the perversion of it that the prophets of Israel denounced. “Many an altar Ephraim raised, altars that only serve for sin”(Hosea 8:11)…The greater the man, the more he is exposed to sin(Sukkah 52b).” (God in Search of Man pg 369/70)
The words above have never truly been taken to heart by We the People which is what leads to the constant return and strengthening of cruelty, of the horrors of evil, of our indifference to evil, etc. Because of the ways ‘religious’ people have bastardized what “religion” is truly meant to be, it has become irrelevant, a joke to many and a new fanaticisms for some. Rather than live into the teachings of the Bible, rather than accept our “duty to disobey” which Rabbi Harold Shulweis wrote a book about, these ‘religious’ leaders have made deception, mendacity and disobedience to truth, to principles, to holiness ‘the way of Jesus, the way of Moses, the way of Mohammed’ and We the People are suffering greatly for these perversions.
Granted, as stated above, this is not a new phenomenon, “the prophets of Israel denounced” these charlatans 2500 years ago! We read the prophets in the Bible and we forget to marvel that their words and actions have been preserved! They should have been killed and their words forgotten because they did not ‘win the day’. They were the assholes running around with their ‘pants on fire’, screaming at the rich, the powerful, the royalty, the priests that they were idolators and practicing mendacity, not Judaism, not the word of God. They were accusing these PAGANS of crimes against humanity and told them their fate if they refused to change. Yet, We the People went along with the rich, powerful, priestly class in rejecting the words of the prophets, rejecting the teachings found in the Bible, and we suffered for it in 586 BCE, 70 AD, and ever since. Maybe one of the reasons Jews are universally hated is because we preserved the words of the Prophets and these words are a thorn in the side of the PAGANS who claim to be ‘religious’ in every faith!
We the People are witnessing a new incarnation of “the perversion” of religion and the consequences of which are monumental. “The perversion” is so great, as the prophets must have felt in their time, that we are in danger of losing the remaining strands of humanity left in our society. While Ron Reagan may say he is “not afraid to burn in hell”, he fails to realize the “humanistic” ways come from the Bible! He fails to realize that rejecting “religion” is a sure fire way to bring HELL here now. As do We the People fail to realize the idolatry we are practicing and calling it faith is sure to be our downfall and ruin. When we have to ask “who is that Masked Man” and realize it is not the “Lone Ranger” of early television but rather the fascists of the Trump Era, the Nazis of Kristy Noem, the SS of Herr Stephen Miller, We the People need to wake up and realize what we are smelling is the burning flesh of decency, “the perversion” of our moral values, the descent into sinfulness. All of this in order to support a liar and cheat, a grifter and criminal??
Really it is to ‘get mine’ in all of the grift going on, we are watching “the bagman” bring the money right to the White House front door and be divided amongst the ‘faithful’. These ‘faithful’, seeing how easy it is to fleece the poor, the needy, the stranger, (all of whom we are told to love, care for, protect, be just with), they just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. While this behavior has been going on for a long time, it is reaching new peaks and heights, the violation of the 3rd Commandment is so gross and great, one can feel the disdain and sadness of God, one can feel the shift in the spiritual energy of the universe and one can witness these changes and sadness in the ways of the people who are protesting daily against cruelty, mendacity, grift and senseless wars.
The last line above, from Sukkah, a tractate in the Talmud, is a cautionary line for all of the “great” men and women. It is a warning that goes unheeded so often because of the “greatness” people feel, the egocentric belief in themselves, and the surety that they are the “smartest people in the room” causes them to be blinded to their own narcissism, their own propensity to “sin”. We the People have seen over and over that our “heroes” have clay feet, from Noah to Moses, from Joshua to King David, from Solomon to the Maccabees. We the People have witnessed the downfall of the great empires of antiquity and their no longer even having remnants remaining while the Jews keep schlepping along-not because we are so wonderful mind you, rather because the Bible has kept us seeking to be one grain of sand better-hence the revulsion at the ways of Netanyahu and his ‘coalition’ of thugs and ‘perverts of religious beliefs’. We the People have seen the clay feel of Jefferson and Washington, of Lincoln and both Roosevelts, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon! We have watched in horror at the incongruence of Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, Biden and known that they were human beings who cared and erred, who were decent men who were exposed to the “sins” and the self-deception of those whom they trusted and their trust in their people made them more exposed to their sins as well as their own propensity to follow their own “evil inclinations”. Trump is a different animal, however. Trump is the one who exposes the rest of us to sin! This is the greatest sin of all- to lead others to sinning, to be the pied piper of mendacity, indifference, and have the power to enslave so many to be his “taskmasters”, his henchmen/women, his private army. We the People have to end this reign of SIN, stop the spread of this terribly contagious and infections way of being and RETURN to living in our “religion” and ending the “perversion of it”.
I know both sides of this coin-I perverted religious teachings by holding other people accountable for them and not myself. I engaged in the perversion of the teachings I was taught so I could con people to get what I wanted/needed. I know the dangers of exposing people to sin because this was my modus operandi-if I could get another to engage in their own larceny, I would win. How sick is this!! All of this prior to my recovery, in fact this is what I am really in recovery from-the way of living was my real perversion and disease. Only through engaging in “religion” truthfully and with a desire to connect to the spiritual source of the universe have I been able to live a “richer and more meaningful life” and “be the change I want to see”. I still have those other parts within me, as Jung says: “the brighter the light, the darker the shadow”, and I work to keep them in proper measure each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark