Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 98
“Important as they may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem. Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision 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)
We hear often from people that they are not religious and they are spiritual. Another line we hear is: “Religion are for those who are afraid of going to hell, spirituality are for those who have been to hell”. Both these and many other sayings like them miss the point of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. As I learned from Rabbi Jonathon Omer-man over 30 years ago: “ Religiosity enhances Spirituality which enhances Religiosity”, they are not separate from one another, rather, as I understand Rabbi Omer-man’s teaching, there cannot be one without the other. Spiritual disciplines need structure and consistency, as do Religious disciplines, Religious disciplines need letting go of old ideas, of our rational minds which harm our connections as do Spiritual disciplines. We have to stop pitting one against the other and use both to further Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above; “religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death.”
The word religion comes from the Latin meaning “to bind, obligation, reverence, bond”, in Hebrew the words for religion, according to the Oxford Languages dictionary, are Daat, and Emunah; the first meaning “knowing” and the second meaning “faith”. Spiritual, from the Latin means “breath”. We have to begin anew to breath ourselves into the obligation to bond our souls, our life with the life and soul of God, of a power greater than ourselves so we can truly ‘know’ how to connect with one another rather than need to have power over one another. We are in desperate need of letting go of diluting and distorting the call of religion through our pedantry, through our need to twist the demands of God, of our souls, of higher consciousness, of spiritual yearnings to selfish desires and grabs for power. We have to stop using our minds to control what is uncontrollable, God. We have to stop using our words to prove that we our desires are God’s desires. We have to stop being so concerned with the minor issues and the minor rules, our showing off of our ‘academic brilliance’. We have made religion and spirituality into business’ for profit, for power, for abuses, for self-centered needs and this is the tragedy of not adhering and living into Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom. This is the tragedy of not responding to the demands of God’s call through religious teachings.
Our world, our country are in desperate straits because of our inability to actualize the visions of spirituality and religion. We are suffering mental health crisis’, homeless’ crisis’, health crisis’, economic crisis’ for most of the people, and they all lead back to the root cause, in my opinion, willful blindness to the visions of religion, obliviousness to the call of our souls, the call of God, the call of our neighbors. We have treated religion and spirituality as tools rather than as pathways. We have decided to use them for our own benefit and not allow them to go through us. When religion goes through us, we change, when spirituality goes through us, we change. The change is that we live differently, we let go of our concern to control and to wield power, we let go of our bastardizing principles to soothe our false egos, we live a more authentic life, we seek and do justly, we see and respond to life with more mercy, more gratitude, more grace, more love, and we seek out truth. When religion goes through us, rather than our going through it, we become servants, we worship God and we use our intuitive mind, our soul to experience and get through the trials and tribulations, we embrace the joy and the sorrow, knowing we are safe and secure in our beingness, in our connection to God and to the people around us.
In my recovery, I remember the day this shift happened. Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, and I were studying Rabbi Heschel’s Interview with Carl Stern and Rabbi Heschel said we have to immerse ourselves in the Bible, not just pick it apart. Rabbi Mel and I spoke about this idea of immersing myself in my living rather than just playing at life. Years later, when studying Numbers 15:37-41 with Rabbi Ed Feinstein, he taught me not to be a tourist in my life. I am painfully aware of when I slip into using pedantry to prove a point for my sake rather than for the sake of another person. I am painfully aware when I have used my knowing for power and control, as a buffer against my fears and I am also joyfully aware of how much more often I have surrendered to Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance of “Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions is not a luxury, but a matter of life and death”. It has, is and will continue to be a matter of life and death for me, as it is for every recovering person, whether it is religion, spirituality, to surrender to these “demands and visions” because surrendering to our own has brought us to the point of destruction and annihilation. I have immersed myself in Torah, in tradition, in Rabbi Heschel, the 12-Steps of AA, and they have gone through me and changed me in so many ways-not completely, not perfectly, yet a helluva lot better! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark