Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 267

“Without minimizing the corroding influence of the general social climate, I insist the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction is the major cause of this failure.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 53)

The “failure” Rabbi Heschel is speaking of is the “spiritual illiteracy, ignorance as well as idolatry of false values” that I wrote about yesterday. If the “general social climate” was corrosive in 1962, what would Rabbi Heschel call it today? If there was  a “vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” then, what would he think of the ‘over-the-top’ Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations of today? What would he think of the numerous ‘religious’ schools who have cut down to once a week and believe it is okay for young people to attend soccer, baseball, flag football, etc rather than spend Shabbat in Temple, with family, etc? OY!!

Remember, Rabbi Heschel was speaking to his colleagues and students who were Rabbis and Spiritual leaders, teachers and Executive Directors of religious institutions. He was not speaking to parents or educators, he was speaking to the people most responsible for the “religious instruction” in their institutions. While we have siloed the role of Rabbi more and more since the 1960’s, it is still the Rabbi who should be overseeing and participating in the “religious instruction” of the children and their parents. It is the Rabbi who has to hold everyone in the Synagogue responsible to stop making excuses and easing the slippery slope of “vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” -full stop! It is the Rabbis who have failed all of us, as I am hearing and understanding the words above, which is actually an indictment of the religious establishment some 60+ years ago that has only gotten worse.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam, are such rich spiritual traditions and disciplines and the myriad of attempts to trivialize them are, in my opinion, criminal. When Rabbis speak about God wanting war with ‘those people’, and point to one verse while ignoring the myriad of verses that speak about finding ways to “love your neighbor as yourself” which was the most important principle according to the sage Rabbi Akiva, when they make another people, their cousins actually, into Amalek, and call for their destruction and treat them as ‘not even human’, and forget the story of Cain and Abel in the Bible where Cain is told “your brothers’ bloods cry out to Me”, is mind-boggling. When they refuse to realize they are acting more like Pharaoh than like Moses, they contribute greatly to “this failure”, they make “the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” easier to accept and to promote. When the Rabbis refuse to take a stand on what is good and right, when they are afraid of ‘pissing off’ the major donors and/or congregants, when they act as employees of the institution instead of employees of the Tradition and/or God, “the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” is apparent to everyone.

When ‘good christian Clergy’ anoint Trump and his MAGA crowd as Jesus incarnate, when they preach that ‘those people’ are evil, and Jesus only loved the rich and powerful, their bastardization of Jesus’ principles as written about in the Gospels is over the top! When they speak of locking the stranger up in cages, when they speak of white power, when they see the Jew, the Muslim, a person of color as less than they are because they, the ‘good christian Clergy’ are white, how is anyone to believe the tenets of Christianity? How is anyone not going to see Christianity as Vapid and Trivial?

When Imams and Ayatollah’s preach “death to the Jews”, “Death to America” how can anyone take them seriously as people of God? When they help to cover up bombs and arsenals under and in their Mosques and then decry the explosions that happen because the intelligence points to their hiding weapons of destruction, how can anyone put their faith in the tenets of Islam? When they seek to kill their own adherents because they are not ‘religious enough’ is it difficult to understand how people experience “the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction””?

There is “vapidity and trivialization” going on in all spiritual disciplines by the charlatans and the people ‘out to make a buck’. We, the People, have to demand more from our religious leaders, from our Rabbis, Imams, Priests and Ministers. We have to demand they speak to us about the beauty of “religious instruction”. We have to demand they stop “taking the spirit out of “ the spiritual disciplines that have, in many ways, held the world together for the millennia. We have to demand they end their incessant manner of making the stories and the lessons, the commandments and the ways of living “of little or no importance” in our daily living. We, the People, have to demand of our Spiritual Leaders that they be Spiritual Leaders! We, the People, have to demand from the Lay Leadership they no longer treat the Rabbi, Priest, Minister, Imam as employees of the institution and respect them as employees of our tradition and of God/Allah, etc and hold them accountable to live into the tradition and judge them on their willingness and ability to lead all of us to a higher standard of living, to a level of failing forward, helping us up the steps of imperfection so we can celebrate our own spirituality and helping us fulfill the mandate to grow in Holiness. This is the only way for things to change, it is the only way to restore meaning, importance, flavor, spirt and joy into “religious instruction” and, by extension, our daily lives.

I have been fighting this fight for a while and I have the battle scars to prove it:) I am also aware of what Rabbi Heschel’s words above mean in real time, in our time. For so many recovering people, being turned on to a Judaism that is meaningful, hip, fun, that touches their souls, was the catalyst for their recovery. Not all attend Temple, not all of them join religious institutions, and all of the people found meaning and purpose through study and engagement in “the religious instruction” they received at Beit T’Shuvah in those years. We wrestled with the Text and argued with one another in order to learn more and better how to live well. Cancel Culture, political correctness, optics are the current killers of meaning and purpose through religion, they are the instruments being used by ‘the powers that be’ to keep “the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” alive and well in today’s world. We are engaged in a war for the soul of America and for the soul of “religious instruction” and while separation of church and state is necessary in a democracy, is a prerequisite for freedom, without meaning in our “religious instruction”, there is no freedom nor democracy. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark