Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 91
“The wisdom, teaching, and counsel of the Bible are not in conflict with the ultimate attainments of the human mind, but, rather, well ahead of our attitudes. The idea of the equality of man, for example, has become commonplace in our mouths, but how far is it from being an irresistible insight or an honest ineradicable conviction? The Bible is not behind the times, it is ages ahead of our aspirations.” (God in Search of Man pg. 243)
“The idea of the equality of man, for example, has become commonplace our mouths, but how far is it being an irresistible insight or an honest ineradicable conviction” has to penetrate our beingness, as I hear Rabbi Heschel’s call today. This is the great challenge for all people, to allow “the wisdom, teaching and counsel of the Bible” to penetrate our souls, our actions, our inner and outer ways of being. We, the people, are the ones who have made the Bible irrelevant through twisting it to suit our own desires rather than change ourselves to live up to and into the Bible’s path of wholeness and holiness. There is, always has been, a desire on the part of human beings to give lip-service to the Bible, to the ways of being human that the Bible teaches and commands us. The Bible is “ages ahead of our aspirations” by telling us how we can be human and the traps we can/will fall into that prevent us from attaining this goal. Many people complain, point out that the Bible is obsolete, it isn’t ‘scientific’, God in the Bible is vengeful, mean, capricious, etc, and there comments show a complete lack of understanding of and engagement with the spirituality of the Bible, an unwillingness to learn anew the ways of the Bible in order to enhance their lives and the lives of those around them.
A case in point is the quotation above: Racism, Slavery, Anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia are in direct contradiction with he “idea of the equality of man”, yet people will ‘use’ the Bible to engage in these despicable ideologies and actions. While there are some ‘religious’ Jews who think the Palestinians are ‘less human’ than they are-this is not what the Bible teaches. In the Bible we welcome the stranger, we have one law for citizen and stranger alike, we are constantly reminded that “we were slaves in Egypt” so we know what it is like to be treated as subhumans. Ergo, we are not to do the same to another human being. Rabbi Hillel the elder teaches: “What is hateful to you, do not do to another human being”! So, these so-called ‘religious’ people are actually idolators, bastardizers of the Bible, false prophets and we have to disregard what they are saying and live into the Bible, because “it is ages ahead of our aspirations.”
The same is true of the Hamas, the Palestinians, the Iranians and their proxies who consider Jews to be subhuman just as Hitler preached with the idea that the world would not go to war to save the Jews. Their inability to agree to a peace deal that would allow both peoples to live in peace, side by side, only seeks to perpetuate their propaganda to “blame the Jews” is not found in the Koran, it is not the way of peace, nor the path of Allah, yet the idolators of Islam, the charlatans, the liars, the deceivers all continue to deny “the equality of man”. The same is true of the people seeking to make America a “Christian Nation”, to join in an “America First” ideology, all seeking to make an hierarchy of human beings with White People at the top of the food chain. No where in the Bible does it proclaim the supremacy of white people, no where in the Bible does Jesus nor Moses call for a caste system with White People in charge. Yet, these idolators keep claiming white supremacy as a ‘christian value”, was Jesus white, was Paul white, we have no idea except they lived in Israel/Judea which is in the Middle East-just saying.
The issue for us today is whether we are willing to engage with the Bible for it’s “wisdom, teaching and counsel” or we are going to continue to have “contempt prior to investigation”. As the Big Book of AA says: “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” – HERBERT SPENCER. We are living “in everlasting ignorance” as long as we see the Bible as a weapon against our enemies, twisting it, turning it until we get the answer we want rather than being willing, in truth and open to the ideas, claims, paths to wholeness and holiness of the Bible.
We have the path to doing this, it is called recovery. We need to recover our desire to rise above “everlasting ignorance” by taking “the equality of man” from “our mouths” and put these words, this truth into action. In recovery, we stop seeing and classifying people by the jobs they have, the color of their skin, the religion they practice and instead see them as fellow travelers on a journey to wholeness and holiness, fellow companions who have made the same and different errors of judgement and action that we have. We discern the “content of their character” and pay no attention to “the color of their skin”. This is the path of T’Shuvah, the path of recovery, the path of the Bible. The prophets call us back to God, back to being open to the rituals changing us, not us using them to look good. We, the people, have to return to the roots of being, our souls and use the Bible to mature our spiritual life so we can all live well.
I have been using the Bible as my guide for the past 35+years. I have lived “the equality of man” most of the time in my recovery and I see where I haven’t. I also see how people have used the Bible against me, against so many others, how people have twisted the spiritual nature of our actions against us and I resolve to forgive them and to be more aware of when I do the same. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark