Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 352
“Religion is not a reservation, a tract of time reserved for solemn celebrations on festive days. The spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation. What is decisive is not the climax we reach in rare moments, but how the achievements of rare moments affect the climate of the entire life.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 78)
“Religion” gets a bad name, not from any particular “religion”, rather from the people who use “religion” to assert power, control and use ‘the name of god’, in that “GOD” voice to validate their bastardizations, their abuses, etc. “Religion” was never about the hierarchy that we see now, it was given in the desert, to a bunch of ragtag newly freed slaves as a way of integrating themselves into society with a new goal, a new purpose, a new way of living so they did not return to being a slave (do not return to Egypt) and they didn’t make anyone else a slave either (love the stranger, remember you were strangers in the land of Egypt). Yet, it has become so institutionalized, it has become a parasite upon which clergy find their power, many use their voice for good many times and, almost as many, for their own selfish desires, for the desires of the wealthy, for evil! We know this from the prophets, they did not come to tell the people to be more ‘observant’, they came to tell the We the People to stop deceiving ourselves, to stop believing the deception of the priests, the rulers, the wealthy and follow God’s commands as they were delivered in the Desert, as the Voice from on top of Mt. Sinai ‘spoke’ and We the People agreed with “we will DO and then we will understand”. The only way to see the nuances, the different ways to understand the mitzvah is by the DO-ing of it, then we can see the 70 ways to DO and understand instead of trying to understand before we DO. There is no checklist for fulfilling our religious obligations, there is only being decent, kind, truthful, caring, compassionate, loving, recognizing our imperfections, making our amends, and knowing the greatest ‘sin’ is to HIDE!
This is what I believe Rabbi Heschel is speaking about, at least today I hear him calling out to us to NOT HIDE! Hiding forces our being “confined” and when we buy the self-deception that hiding is really just isolating to ‘find our happy space’, or to ‘enjoy the spiritual experience we just had’ we tend to stay hidden. How many of We the People are truly transparent in our living, how many of us are willing to put our authentic self on display and be the messenger, the divine need we are created to be? How many of We the People are being guided by the inheritance of the prophets which we all have a share of? I am thinking of the wrapping ourselves in the various garments we do, Clergy wearing robes to hide what, exactly? We are NOT the High Priest, we are the Levites, caring for and tending to the needs of the people, we do not need to put on our ‘Sunday best, Shabbat finery’ to pray, to engage in our “religion”. As the prophets tell we the people God doesn’t want our sacrifices, God doesn’t want our “splendid isolation” of religion only in the Church, in the Synagogue, in the Mosque-God wants us to LIVE THE PATH in our everyday affairs, as the 12th Step of AA says: “Practice these principles in all our affairs(italics are mine). How often have We the People not waited even till after the service to critique it, the Priest, the Rabbi, the Imam? How often have We the People said AMEN to something, meaning “it is true, so be it” and then ignored the needy, the lame, the beggar, who according to Jewish lore might be Elijah waiting for some human kindness and then call the Messiah to show up, and/or hate the stranger and blame “those people” for our troubles? Not having a clue that we are negating the power of the AMEN we spoke at the end of the prayers, that we are denying the TRUTH we just agreed to during our prayer experience, We the People continue to “confine” the spirit to “splendid isolation”, with ‘that is just for church, it doesn’t play in the REAL world’-refusing to change this world of illusion and make it into the REAL world that is envisioned in the Bible, in the words of Jesus! How sad, how tragic, how CRIMINAL that this BULLSHIT passes for “religion” Mike Johnson, Erika Kirk, Bibi Netanyahu, and the “Believer in Chief” Donald Trump!
I am at a loss to understand the depths one has to go to in order to be a ‘religious’ person who goes against the tenets we find in the Bible, who knows right and does wrong, who values their dignity while demeaning and defiling the dignity of another(s). What is even harder to understand is how We the People act like guppies swallowing up the bullshit of the charlatans, the idolators, the autocrats and keep returning them to elected office! What is more and more difficult to understand is a Pam Bondi who knows right from wrong and rather deflect than seek truth, a Kash Patel who would rather go to the Rock Concert, find the ‘enemies’ than enforce the Constitution on the people in charge. The selling of the souls that Rubio, Lutnick, Bessent, Vought have done is, to me, surreal and inexplicable. I know the cost of doing this, I sold my soul for a pot of gold that turned out to be nothing but coal and everyone around me payed the price-this is the truth of what happens when one sells one’s soul-everyone pays. I am grateful for my spiritual awakening and more grateful that I allowed it to “affect the climate of my entire life”!
ACTION STEPS:
How do you compartmentalize your religious practice, your spiritual practice?
How are you buying your self-deception and the deception of another(s) as to what God wants us to do?
What are the ways you continue to ‘look good’ while doing wrong?
How do you engage in using what is Holy as cover for your UNHOLY actions?
How are you allowing a spiritual experience to “affect the climate of your entire life?
God Bless and Stay Safe, Rabbi Mark