Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 202
“Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and the sacred.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.93)
Rabbi Heschel’s words above come after he reminds us of a “white preacher” who said in condemnation of any clergy being involved in the Civil Rights Movement with the words: “the job of the minister is to lead the souls of men to God, not to bring about confusion by getting tangled up in transitory social problems.” This is indicative of the “tragedy” he is speaking about. While this was true in the ’60”s, it is even truer today.
We hear many preachers condemn the social problems we have today and using God to validate the error of those who want voting rights for all, the words on the Statue of Liberty to once again be true, the spirit of the Declaration of Independence to finally take precedence, the Constitution to be upheld and understood in today’s world as a dynamic document rather than a static one for only one era. Many clergy today are supporting the ‘status quo’ as they did in the past, many clergy are actively engaged with the “segregation of God” that we know and hear in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the Koran.
God, as the prophets tell us, is very involved in the world. God is not segregated from us, there is no “bifurcation of the secular and the sacred”. In the Bible, God sends the flood because humanity had become so corrupt that “men of renown” were taking any of the daughters (we do not know how young they were) they wanted. These “men of renown” had polluted the earth so badly the entire world had to be cleansed. God speaks about the widows, the orphans, the strangers, and the poor, 36 times in the 1st 5 Books of the Bible, more than anything else. God comes to the prophets and sends them, often against their own will, to tell the people to return to Godliness, to leave the “bifurcation” they have cultivated so well.
The prophets railed against the Priests the most. Isaiah tells them their sacrifices as not needed and, basically, bullshit because of the ways they act towards the people in need. They are castigated by the prophets for their “segregation of God” . These people throughout the ages, the clergy, the priests, who should know better than anyone how involved God is in our world, how much God cares about the doings of the human being, how much God wants us to be human, have constantly tried to separate the sacred and the secular, have believed their power, which they want greatly, comes from segregating God to the Church and being the arbiters of what God wants ‘the people” to do. This behavior is exactly what the prophets railed against then, Rev King and his fellow clergy railed against in the ’60’s, and we hear from a few brave souls today.
It takes all of us to call out the clergy who continue to segregate God from the every day actions of people. It is a lie that someone can be ‘pious’ because they go to Church, Temple, Mosque, daily/weekly, they pray and study daily and they cheat people in business, they believe ‘those people’ are poisoning the blood of the ‘good folk’, they agree with detention of people who are trying to find a better life here in America, they rail against the ‘godlessness’ of people who practice compassion, pathos, love towards all-“hating the sin and loving the sinner”. We, the people, have to call out these charlatans standing on the Altars and those in the pews who have the power to make these lies become our reality. We, the people, have to end the “segregation of God” whether we believe in God or not! We, the people, have to rebel against these deceivers in the Clergy, in the Government, in the Courts, in the Colleges, in the streets. We, the people, have to engage in the call that has been resounding throughout the spiritual world and the physical world: “Let my people Go”!
In Judaism, as I understand and practice it, the commandments are the paths to combining the “secular and the sacred” rather than bifurcating them. Every time we do an action, we can say a prayer, a gratitude, experience joy for doing the next right thing. We bring God into our lives when we wake up and throughout the day we are able to remind ourselves of the myriad of opportunities that present themselves where we can help another human being. Kindness, truth, love, obligation, return, repentance, forgiveness, concern, caring, are the choices we are taught in the Bible to take. We are given the consequences of our actions when we choose selfishness, when we choose to relegate God to the Temple and not the everyday. None of them are good! Yet, we have to read the Bible anew each year so we do not forget our responsibilities and our connection.
In my recovery, I have not segregated God from my living nor have I bifurcated the “secular and the sacred’. I have made mistakes, I have used my inaccurate understanding at times of what God is calling for, I have mistaken, at times what is sacred and what is secular, I just haven’t separated them nor believed that God is not present in all my affairs. I know “that no human power can save me…and God could and would if God were sought” as it says in the Big Book of AA. I also know that living with Godliness involved in my actions, not separating secular and sacred is an unpopular way of being. It causes people to be suspicious, to seek the chinks in my armor, to denigrate me when I make my errors and even more when I call them to account. It is a hard life to not engage in “the segregation of God”, to not bifurcate the “secular and the sacred”. Enobling the common is the goal, according to Rabbi Heschel. I am grateful that I do this more often than not. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark