Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 89

“Irrefutably, indestructibly, never wearied by time, the Bible wanders through the ages, giving itself with ease to all men, as if it belonged to every soul on earth. It speaks in every language and in every age. It benefits all the arts and does not compete with them. We all draw upon it, and it remains pure, inexhaustible and complete.” (God in Search of Man pg. 242)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in the last sentence above is crucial if we are to truly appreciate, learn and use the Bible as the road map to living well! While many people draw upon the Bible to validate their misuse of it, to abuse it, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us earlier in this section of God in Search of Man, the Bible remains “pure, inexhaustible and complete”. It is humanity that seems unable to immerse itself in the Bible to improve our ways of being, our actions towards one another and our covenantal relationship with God.

As we read the news, listen to the ‘religious’ people who spout hatred, destruction, demeaning of another group of people, it becomes more difficult for people to appreciate the truth, the wisdom and the guidance of the Bible. When Ben-Gvir in Israel speaks about the people of Gaza and his band of thugs who claim to be ‘religious’ Jews attack the people of the West Bank, using the Bible as their reference, it is hard for many to “draw upon it” for good, for decency, for truth, for connection to God. When the Ayatollah claims to kill and maim, to terrorize and brutalize in the name of Allah it is hard for many people to believe in and learn from the wisdom of the Koran. When Mike Johnson, Evangelical preachers claim that God doesn’t love LGBTQ+, the strangers trying to immigrate to the US, women who have abortions, when they engage in the practice of mendacity, racism, antisemitism, how can anyone have a desire to learn from the brilliance of Jesus?

Herein lies the challenge we face and, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us, “because man has problems. And the more complicated, the richer he is, the deeper are his problems. This is our distinction, to have problems, to face problems.”(Interview with Carl Stern, 1972). Our greatest problems today, I believe, lie in our inability to “draw upon it”, to allow the Bible to not only belong “to every soul on earth” to allow the Bible to penetrate “every soul on earth”. Hence Rabbi Herschel’s teaching that we should be “immersing ourselves in the thoughts of the Bible”. Yet, we continue to be lazy, to ignore “the thoughts of the Bible” and abuse these thoughts to validate our desires. We continue to use the ‘cliff notes’ of the Bible that someone else provides and we take these lies to be truth. For the people who want to believe the charlatans, this gives them the comfort to hold onto their prejudices, to allow the “cancer of the soul” that prejudice is to fester and spread throughout their mind and body. For the people who want to ‘be humanists’ and ‘don’t need God’, these ‘cliff notes’ allow them to be smug and self-satisfied with their ignoring of the brilliance, the “pure, inexhaustible” wisdom and guidance of the Bible.

Rather than use the Bible to face our problems, rather than adhere to the wisdom of the Book of Numbers, 15:39, part of the last prayer of the Shema that is said twice each day in Jewish prayers: “don’t scout out after your heart and your eyes because you will whore after them”, we do the exact opposite, whether we are ultra-religious, secular and anywhere in-between! We seem to be unable to meet the challenge of our times with the wisdom and the “inexhaustible” guidance of the Bible, yet, it is “this instruction I give you this day is not too baffling for you nor is it beyond your reach. It is not in the heavens… not beyond the sea… no it is close to you, in your mouth and in your heart”(Deut. 30:11-14). We need to face our greatest challenge: how to be human; with the guidance, the teachings, the wisdom of the Bible and the stories of how our archetypes met and didn’t meet the challenges of their day. We are in desperate need of ignoring the call of our egos to have power and dominion over another human being, to judge harshly the choices of another, and to look inside of ourselves, to become an active partner in our covenant with God and with one another.

This is the wonder and joy of recovery! In recovery, we return to the “pure, inexhaustible and complete” wisdom of the Bible and its commentaries-which I believe the Big Book of AA is one. Whatever text one uses in recovery, in our meetings we hear the stories and the testimonies of how drawing on them improves our life, guides our steps, and helps us see the ways our actions both ‘hit the mark’ and miss the mark’. In recovery, we draw upon the wisdom of our elders, the principles that the Bible first laid out for us and we use these principles and the wisdom to make better and more informed choices each day. We seek to do right rather than be right, we search for connections and similarities rather than building walls and seeing the differences. We are careful to not bastardize the gift of recovery God has given us by claiming to be the one and only arbiter of how to live. In recovery, we are know we are flawed and need to draw on the Bible, on the Big Book, on the wisdom and experiences of another and we know we have to continue to be teachable and to learn something new each and every day as well as being grateful for “this day”.

I continue to “draw upon it” and in doing so, I find new and deeper meanings and lessons from the Bible, from the wisdom of my teachers and friends, family and ancestors. The charlatans, the mendacious ones who spout the ‘politically correct’, ‘progressive’ ways still enrage me, especially those who use the Bible, Jewish teachings to validate their lies and deceptions, and I continue to draw on the words and ways of the prophets and teachers like Rabbi Heschel for better responses. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark