Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 165
“Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions, is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg.372)
These words are a call to We the People who have a spiritual life to stand up for what is real and true. “Religion” is not just a ‘comfort’, nor is it something to fear. God is not an indulgent parent nor a co-dependent, nor is God going to ‘save us’ unless we engage in saving ourselves. Hence, “religion, therefore, with its demands and visions” is the only way to truly engage in being “religious” as I am reading and hearing Rabbi Heschel today. We the People are being called upon to stand up and say FUCK YOU to to the idolators, the charlatans, the PAGANS that are controlling and/or trying to control “religious teachings”. The demands of these “prosperity gospel” deceivers like Paula White-Cain, Joel Osteen, et al, the mendacious visions of Ultra-Orthodox assholes like Ben G’Vir, Smotrich, the Rabbis who support them, the cruelty of the call of “death to the infidels”’ by Muslim Clerics like the Ayatollah, are BULLSHIT and not the “demands and visions” of “religion” as one can tell from the Bible’s “demands” to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”-not in front of God, not follow God, rather to “walk humbly with God”.
These words along with the fact that after receiving the 10 Commandments at Mount Sinai, we first learn the laws of Mishpatim, the ways to live together and the first lesson is to never be so dependent upon a person, never be so lazy to do our own thing and make our own contribution to our world that we willingly and completely buy the bullshit that we ‘deserve’, or ‘need’ to be a slave to another human being! We are also taught that harming a slave, in any way like knocking out their tooth, is reason to free them. Slavery in any of its forms, incarnations, is not the norm, it is not the way of Godliness, it goes against the “demands and visions” of “religion”! Jesus fed people, lived amongst the strangers, the lepers, the hookers, people that Rome thought were ‘outlaws’ and ‘illegals’. The Bible commands us to “love the stranger”, to feed the poor, to care for the needy, to set aside the corners of our fields, aka a portion of our earnings, for the poor and the needy to harvest themselves. Can you say you are doing this??
Of course not because We the People have turned the education of our children over to the care of these deceivers, people who are best described by: “true, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition.” This is not the fault of “religion”, it is the fault of We the People who have gotten so lazy, so spiritually bankrupt, so dependent upon our “rational mind”, that we have abdicated our “intuitive mind”, we have forgotten the lessons of our ancestors and spent the moral capital of our inheritance. The pedantry done by the Rabbis who wanted to forget the prophetic inspiration for fear of becoming extinct and assimilated, who wanted to establish themselves as the power and the controllers of “religious life” has been bastardized by later generations because they have misused the Talmudic way of including the minority opinions, the knowing of our own limitations and imperfections, and the allowance of our majority to have it wrong. Yet, the ‘rabbis’ who do say “we are the only true Jews” are the real IDOLATORS, the actual PHARAOHS of today’s world-caring nothing for the spiritual health and well-being of We the People, instead caring only for their power, control and ability to gain wealth-forgetting that “justice, kindness, mercy, love, truth” are the foundational principles of the Bible!
Again, however, We the People have to look at ourselves, not just at “them”. While we have been victims of their bullshit and lies, We, the People have not taught our children the Bible, not encouraged our spouses to have a voice and be our Ezer K’Negdo, our spiritual partner who helps us when we are doing well and grinds against us when we are off the rails. We the People have outsourced the spiritual health and well-being of our children and of ourselves to people who have no idea of our spiritual, moral, emotional needs. We the People have rejected the entirety of “religion” because of the “externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition” of the ones who call themselves “religious” and are, in fact, not! Yet, because of our susceptibility to deception and our desire to engage in self-deception, because of our laziness and our willful blindness, We the People find ourselves in a country that is being run by ‘Christian Nationalists’ who believe that Christ hated black, brown, people and hated Jews, even though he himself was Jewish and practiced Judaism his way, and White Power is the only solution to the ills of the world. We the People have to take back the ways of God, the words of the Bible and the “Path of the Just” and do it now!
I have lived the death of not engaging in and with the Bible. It was horrible for me and for everyone around me because I was the antithesis of everything holy and good. I still have regrets that I lived this way, when I knew better in my gut and didn’t have the wherewithal to withstand the onslaught of my negative inner voice. This is what my recovery, my “return to the path” as the prophets call out to us to do, has been all about. Making living amends, changing my ways and using “religion” to enhance life rather than bastardize it to bring about death. I don’t follow all the demands, I do not have the same visions as the Rabbis, rather, I have used the demands to question what I am doing each day, I use them as the yardstick for my actions, I ask myself is it moral, is it right, is it what is necessary for this moment and if I can say yes, I take the action, no matter what the result may be. This is not to say I am always right, there are times when my ego got/gets the better of me, and much more often than not, I find the solution in the “demands and visions” of “religion”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark