Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 26
“As if the task (of religion) were not to ennoble human nature but to enhance the power and beauty of its institutions or to enlarge body of doctrines. It has often done more to canonize prejudices than to wrestle for truth; to petrify the sacred than to sanctify the secular. Yet the task of religion is to be a challenge to the stabilization of values.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pls. 8,9) (I added (of religion) to the quote because I am continuing yesterday’s paragraph and did not want to write the entire paragraph again.)
THANK GOD THERE IS A DEAL FOR THE RETURN OF THE HOSTAGES!!!
This is an indictment of the dark path that many ‘religious’ leaders have taken their religious institutions. The Catholic Church in their desire to ‘save the heathen’; has killed so many people, they have taken so much land, they have amassed so much wealth, they have taken so many of Christ’s values and bastardized them, all for the ‘glory of the Church’, not for the good of their congregations. In Orthodox Judaism the ‘spiritual’ leaders are interested in control, their actions “to enlarge the body of doctrines” is not for the good of the people they are supposed to be serving, rather it is for their hold onto power-they do things because they can, because their people invest them with so much power because they supposedly ‘know’ what ‘god’ wants. In the more liberal branches of Judaism, the Rabbis have to answer to their boards of directors and the board sets the parameters for what the Rabbi can do and not do, they are interested in enhancing their power as board members, in most cases, rather than to “enoble human nature”. They are on the ‘right’ side of issues (according to them) and they denigrate “human nature” by their insistence on ‘being right’, their inability to admit their own errors, their demands that the Rabbi, Cantor be ‘perfect’, rather than “enoble human nature” by embracing their imperfections and those of everyone else.
Leaders of the Catholic Church, of the Christian Church have made anti-semitism a prime tenet of their faith! I know how many ‘good christians’ profess their love of Israel and at the same time, hate Jews. Yes, the far right is rallying to the side of the Jews being targeted on College Campuses and they also have dinner, joke with, pal around with self-proclaimed Neo-Nazi’s! They have a vested interest in Israel being a nation/state so they can cause Armageddon to happen, the Rapture to take place and they will be ‘saved’-while all the Jews and Muslims will not be! This is so loving isn't it???
The Jews and Muslims are not any better. Rather than taking to heart what the Bible says: “One law for the stranger and the citizen alike”, many Jews have decided it is okay to “cheat the goyim(non-Jew)”, it is okay to have different laws for some Jews(Orthodox not serving in the Military, Bibi can take bribes and is above the law) because they are so ‘holy’! They have gone so far as to bastardize the raison d’être of Judaism, “to be a light to the nations”(Isaiah 42:6) by acting in dark ways. Today, there are many Rabbis calling the Palestinians “not human”, there are many right-wing Jews calling those in the middle or on the left: traitors, uncaring Jews, self-loathing Jews, etc. The Muslim Imams calling for Intifadas, calling for the destruction of Israel, the United States, etc are radicalizing young men and women to take their own lives as well as so many innocents listening to concerts, shopping for food, etc.
The amount of hatred and prejudice spewed from the pulpits of our ‘religious’ institutions is reaching new heights, even as we speak! Rather than “wrestle with the truth” clergy of every stripe would rather “canonize prejudice” because this will ‘keep the people coming back’ because our “indifference to evil” is as prevalent as ever, if not more so. Our need to feel “better than”, our need to have ‘someone to blame for our situation’, our immense desire to, as Lyndon Johnson said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” This is what ‘religious’ institutions have been doing for a long time and it keeps working!
We, the People, have to take back our religious institutions! We, the People have to demand that we return to learning how to “enoble human nature” rather than help it sink lower and lower, “enoble human nature” rather than codify evil as good. We, the People have to return to our Holy Texts for guidance and pathways to “enoble human nature”! We, the People have to say NO to the ‘religious’ establishment’s enlarging of doctrines which petrify truth and Protest for Truth! We, the People have to end the spreading of hatred, lies, grifts, mendacity, cruelty that is so prevalent in our society today. We, the People have to stand up for the poor, the stranger, the needy, the widow, the orphan, we have to welcome the stranger, not stand idly by while someone hurts themselves or another(s), rebuke someone when they are going down the path of hating, blaming, shaming, Love thy neighbor rather than suspect them. This is the calling of the words above today, this is the demand that has been upon humanity for all time and we have ignored it for too long. To the ‘haters’, to the charlatans leading ‘religious’ institutions, to the lying politicians and their grifting minions, WE, THE PEOPLE have to stand in opposition to them so we can STAND WITH TRUTH! This is the job, this is our mission, this is what we “get” to do with our lives-please God, let’s do the work and be successful in stemming the tide of hatred and prejudice that some ‘religious’ folk have been pushing.
I have been engaged in the path “to enoble human nature” in my own particular way-never nice and usually kind, never mealy-mouthed and always passionately. I am spending my second career doing this as my first was the exact opposite-I played on the prejudices and the desire to get ‘something for nothing’ of most people and was a liar and cheat, a con and a thief. I believe in TRUTH and I know it is something that I have to keep seeking and growing because, as we say, God is truth and God is everything/the whole picture and I only have a small view of the whole. I work daily to let go of my bias’ and prejudices, I am more interested in helping you than in enriching myself beyond what I need. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Rabbi Heschel’s death in 1972, and Tuesday is the anniversary of my father’s death in 1966, according to the Jewish Calendar. Both of these men have been guiding lights in my recovery and my world since my spiritual awakening in 1986 and I am forever grateful to them for my life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark