Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 1

“The most serious obstacle which modern men encounter in entering a discussion about the ideas of the Bible, is the absence from man’s consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers. This, indeed, is the status of the Bible in modern society: it is a sublime answer, but we no longer know the question to which it responds. Unless we recover the question, there is no hope of understanding the Bible.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.4)

Here we are, 66 years after these words were written and delivered and we still face this “most serious obstacle” and what is worse, in my opinion, is that we have so many people who are only interested in what serves them, how to use the Bible to their advantage, rather than filling the void in our “consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers”. We are farther and farther away from Rabbi Heschel’s warnings above and throughout his writings, we keep getting farther and farther away from the “problems to which the Bible refers” because we seem to be unable to relate the wisdom, the pain, the joy, the struggles, the spiritual awakenings and the thickheadedness of the Bible to our own lives. It seems as if “that old time religion” that is sung about has lost its meaning, its purpose, and its shine because it is not dealing with the problems of today nor did it deal with the issues of humanity “in the good old days”.

Hawking the “USA TRUMP BIBLE” doesn’t address “the problems to which the Bible refers”, calling Trump ‘the anointed one’, giving his the status of a descendant of King David by doing this, is not going to whitewash the ethical, moral, spiritual flaws, missing the marks, and sins of the man. Selling the big and little lies of autocrats, setting up a kleptocracy, bending the knee and kissing the ring of the Grifter-In-Chief, will not bring us closer to filling the void in our “consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers.” I am positing that the very issues we face in our society today from the need of business to provide for its shareholders and not its customers, the need to deny, defend, depose by not only health insurance companies but by everyone who is called out for their crimes against the spirit of the law, the letter of the law and their inhumanity towards their fellow humans like racism, anti-semitism, hating the stranger, etc.

What happened, one might ask, how did this absence occur? The answer is a simple one, once the ‘people in the know’, once the ruling class got tired of hearing the words of the prophets because they did not want to change their ways and did not want to surrender to the wisdom and “sublime answer” of the Bible, the absence began followed by the need to spin the meaning, the words, the lessons, the warnings and the questions the Bible gives us and responds to. When one is not willing to change, one doesn’t want to hear about what they are doing wrong, what they need to do better at, what they need to change. Hence, a cottage industry has grown up around going back to “that old time religion”, back to the “good old days”, back to “Make America Great Again” times of slavery, of the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire era, back the union-busting days of Ford Motor Company, back to the days of “America First”, etc. “The absence from man’s consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers” is so great and dangerous, the idolators and charlatans at the core of these old/new ways have conned the very people they disdain, the people they are going to ruin and take unfair advantage of to vote for them and their sycophants while they steal their homes, their livelihoods, their meaning and purpose!

We, the People must change “the status of the Bible in modern society”! We are being given the opportunity, the task, the demand is upon us to “recover the questions” for which the Bible is the answer. We, the People are being presented with the joy of and the gift to bring to the world what the Bible stands for: Righteous Justice without taking bribes of any kind; Truth in all our affairs and the willingness to keep learning more and more, circumcising the foreskins of our hearts; Kindness and mercy towards all including ourselves, knowing we are imperfect and our goal is to grow one grain of sand better each day; Love our neighbor, ourselves, God, and the stranger, poor, widow, orphan, and needy as the Passover Haggadah tells us to; remembering the words of Rabbi Hillel, “in a place where there is no humanity, be human”! Because the Bible has these and more as responses, because the Bible helps us to stop committing adultery by worshiping the idols of the rich, powerful, like Trump, Bibi, Orban, Putin, MBS, etc; because the Bible helps us learn to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, because the Bible teaches to “righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue”, because the Bible reminds us to rebuke our neighbor when they are doing something wrong so we don’t bear any guilt by staying silent, because the Bible tells us to not run after the majority to do evil, We the People have to recover both the questions and the responses the Bible gives us. Unless and until we do, we are not engaging in the authentic work we are created for and we will always feel the nagging of not being right-sized nor in the right place, we will be constantly trying to fit in rather than belong.

Yesterday I celebrated 36 years of continuous recovery from alcohol and crime, double Chai-2 x life. I have had two lives, one as a son of Jerry Borovitz, z”l, learning the lessons of the Bible, learning the questions that the Bible has the responses to, then a break after Jerry died and a return to the earlier ways that Jerry, Abe, Harry, taught me. Of the two lives, I find this one, filling the “absence from my consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers” more fun, more fulfilling and richer than the other way. I know these guys who are grabbing power in all the ways the Constitution gave us the power to stop, they are liars and grifters-better ones than I was evidently-and they have no interest in finding the “sublime answer” nor “the questions to which it responds”. I am not one who “fits in”, I am not good at playing the ‘politics’ of a situation-, I am the guy who can’t control himself in the face of mendacity and bullshit, I am the guy who, in the woke climate, is considered a liability, no matter how much good I have done. I get it, I know it is a lonely existence at one level and I can attest to the warmth and belonging I experience knowing that: I am connected to the spirit of the universe, I am connected to the people whom I have helped and who have helped me, I am loved and loving, I am connected to so much greater things than just my selfishness and self-centered ways which, for the most part, I have left in my years of non-recovery, and much more. All because I listen each week, each day for the “sublime answer” to the questions that this experience is the answer for. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark