Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 331
“The Bible is an answer to the supreme question: What does God demand of us? Yet the question has gone out of the world. God is portrayed as a mass of vagueness behind a veil of enigmas, and His voice has become alien to our minds, to our hearts, to our souls.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 65-66)
The first sentence gives us a strong indication of the humility of a person of faith, of a truly religious person. Please notice that the quote from Rabbi Heschel is “the Bible is an answer”, not THE answer as so many so-called religious people (think Mike Johnson, et al) claim. I believe the humility comes from knowing that there are (at least) “70 faces of Torah” according to the Sages, there is the duty to disobey when the Bible is immoral as Rabbi Harold Shulweis teaches in his book: Conscience; The Duty to Obey, the Duty to Disobey. Rather than buy into the bullshit of Ezra, the lies of the Romans, the lock-step way of evangelism, people of faith, of all faiths, know there is dignity in their humility of never being CERTAIN, of never saying THIS IS THE ONLY WAY, because we know, as Rabbi Heschel knows, there can never be only 1 way because every human is unique an each of us has our own path, our own purpose, and our own passion to fulfill.
The question itself is an example of humility as well. Asking “what does God demand of us is certainly different than what passes as humility and faith today. Rather than search the Bible, the New Testament, these so-called ‘religious zealots’, ‘keepers of the faith’, take whatever they can out of context and massage it, bastardize it, abuse it to promote their ways, their prejudices, their gain. There is no way for this question to NOT be “gone out of the world”! To have this question rattle around means wrestling with the whole experience of God at Sinai, God in the Bible, God in the New Testament, Jesus’ ways and words, Moses’ call to “Choose Life”, God’s plea to “Be Holy”, God’s demand to “Love the Stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt”, etc. The demands of God are not the 613 Mitzvot, they are the 10 sayings, they are the Holiness Code, all of the other mitzvot fall under these major proclamations, everything else is a help, an aid to being human, to living a life of meaning, purpose, decency and TShuvah.
We are witnessing, once again in a slightly different form, the “children of darkness”, as Reinhold Niebuhr describes these people, taking control of the body politic for their own gain, for their own power, and for their own satisfaction. That they did it through “democratic means” is especially galling. Hatred for the sake of making a “common enemy” is NOT “what God demands of us”! Power for personal gain and fuck the community is NOT “what God demands of us! Racism, based on skin color, race, religion, ethnicity etc is NOT “what God demands of us”! Niebuhr’s response for the “children of light” is to have the wisdom of the serpent” without the malice; in other words like the Arbinger Institute teaches about going to war with a heart of peace, I hear Pastor Niebuhr teaching us to hate with a heart of love. A tall order, for sure and, given human history, given human nature, I believe this is the way out of our current situation and, very possibly, a way to stay out of the depths of depravity we are witnessing, we hear being promoted by these so-called ‘fine upstanding christian, jewish’ men and women!
The issue is, as it always is, PERSONAL! Each one of us, every one of We the People have to search our souls, our hearts, our minds and find the “enigmas” we have created to hide from “what God demands of us”, we have to search our past and our present to root out “the vagueness” we have enveloped ourselves in so we can avoid “what God demands of us”. This is the work of a person of faith, a person seeking wisdom, seeking truth, seeking to live into the call of their soul, a person searching for their “acorn” as Hillman puts it, their individual, unique addition to the world that only they can bring, the “divine need” only their individual self can fulfill. It is incumbent upon We the People to get our ears cleaned out, as we say in AA, “take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth”! It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to hear the Voice from Sinai, to listen to the wisdom of Jesus and to understand the Biblical insights as to “what God demands of us” and fulfill those demands, practice the humility of the real person of faith, engage in the work of the redemption from our bondage of self, the bondage of another human being, the injustices being done in the name of freedom, the cruelty done in the name of mercy. We the People have been called upon to engage in redeeming the world, not waiting for someone else to do it, as the story about the flood that happened in modernity and, after three rescuers tried to save a man, he refused saying “God will save me” and, at the ‘pearly gates’, God says to the idiot, who do you think sent the rescuers? WE THE PEOPLE are the REDEEMERS GOD HAS SENT!
The question that was asked of me some 60 years ago is the same one being asked of me, of you, today: Where are You? When my father died, I now know I was absent, I was enveloped in “vagueness”, I hid behind “a veil of enigmas” and this is my recovery, this is my TShuvah-I am so afraid of these “veils” that I am too loud, too quick and, unfortunately many other people pay the same price as me-especially Harriet and Heather. I keep listening and responding to “what God demands of me” with passion and purpose, with power and love, with steadfastness and impatience with the bullshit the mendacity we see today. I also am working on Niebuhr’s challenge to hate with a heart of love and I believe we all need to defeat the “children of darkness” currently spreading their hatred, their venom on the world! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark