Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 47
“The central commandment is in relation to the person. But religion today has lost sight of the person. Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment. It has fallen victim to the belief that the real is only that which is capable of being registered by fact-finding surveys.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)
I do not know which “fact-finding surveys” were being done in the late 1950’s or how many/how often. I do know they have become fast and furious in our times and everyone seems to believe whichever “survey” suits their needs. Religious institutions use negative “fact-finding surveys” to raise money and alarm bells that dogma is more important to “bring people back into the fold”, they use them to enshrine the “institutional loyalty” of the ‘faithful’. They use them to see what “activities” people want to engage in so they keep paying their dues, keep tithing, etc. They are being used as proof that being stricter in our observances, screaming about the “liberal attitude” of caring for the poor, the stranger, etc, preserving freedom for all the inhabitants is not what is in the Bible, is not what Jesus said and did! In other words, just as politicians use polls for their benefit and “spin” them as they want, so too do religious institutions!
When someone becomes a member of their particular faith, joining the covenant with others and with God, it puts an obligation upon us, not an entitlement. Yet, so many religious institutions strut around like peacocks, proclaiming that “God loves me most”, “I have turned my life over to Jesus”, “It says it in the Bible so I do it”, and other such bullshit. These same religious institutions promote lies and deceptions, they care little for their congregants, their parishioners, they only care about staying afloat and having power, being close to power and they have lost the sense of the person, they have become shells of what their founding principles are, bastardizing their inheritance from the messengers sent by the Ineffable One, and believing they will escape any consequences. I see a parallel with King David, once he had Uriah killed, he changed and his life became harder, more complicated and he lost the connection with God that had propelled him to greatness. The same seems to be true of our religious institutions- what propelled them to a higher spiritual level has been shit-canned and replaced with ‘how do I stay in favor with the powers that be’. So sad, terrifying, and disgusting.
“Religion” is a deeply personal affair, the commandments are given mostly in the singular, the stories are about people (real, perceived) just like us. None of the heroes of the Hebrew Bible were the top of the heap (Moses was thrown out of the palace and fled for his life, remember). God “speaks” to and through individuals, sometimes to the masses like at Mt. Sinai, so we can have a “personal relationship” with God, Higher Consciousness, whatever the power greater than yourself is. When speaking of “institutional loyalty”, the Bible’s only request for loyalty is to the Covenant-“if you listen to my voice and guard my covenant”(Exodus 19:5) not to an institution nor a person, just the covenant. In Judaism a boy is ushered into the covenant with circumcision, a girl with a naming ceremony. The rest of our lives we are to stay loyal to the covenant, stay loyal to the principles-whether we carry them out or not. Loyalty doesn’t mean perfect adherence, it means we never stray from the goals of: Proclaim liberty…, Love your neighbor…, welcoming the stranger, caring for the needy, etc. Loyalty is not to a person or a place, not to a country or religion, it is to the Covenant God made with us when we were in need and lost; like after the flood, after our exodus from Egypt-that narrow place of slavery-, for some of us it is when we have a spiritual awakening and realize the emptiness inside that “institutional loyalty” never filled. At these moments, we know that only through a personal attachment, a personal commitment to the covenant we make with God, through a return to hearing the call, listening for the still, small voice, and understanding our importance, our worth, our being a divine need will we be able to go to sleep each night knowing we did our best and our best is always good enough!
The only “fact-finding survey” that is important, I believe as I hear Rabbi Heschel’s words roll around in my head and pierce my soul’s the one We, the People initiate and fill out which asks us how we are fulfilling our covenant with truth, our covenant with justice, our covenant with mercy, our covenant with being obligated to do the next right thing, our covenant to “do T’Shuvah one day before we die, since we don’t know the day of our death, do T’Shuvah each day”(Talmud, Shabbat 153a), our covenant to be loyal to our inheritance from Abraham and Sarah, from the Prophets, etc. The issue is most of us do not fill out this survey! We are too lazy, we don’t see the point in “religion”, we may go out of an obligation a few times a year and we are not ‘into it’. This is the result of “religious institutions” being stale, being “impersonal”, not allowing for the “stillness of commitment”, instead trying to entice people to join and participate in “activities” that belie the foundational principles of the Covenant they proclaim to be attached to. This is true for fundamentalists and progressives, they still do what they want to, they wrap themselves in the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran in ways that are anathema to the words, the deeds, the lessons of these Holy Texts. Their bastardization of the texts has led us to where we are in Israel, in America, in Arab countries that say Sharia Law is the law of the land, into a quagmire, into quicksand where God, freedom, justice, truth are slowly and maybe not so slowly are sinking into the quicksand and mendacity, deception, worship of a person is taking the place of these “religions” that say-worship no man-only God. We, the People have to stop with our “fact-finding surveys” and listen to the still, small voice of commitment and take action to once again be loyal to the principles, not the person.
I am enraged and devastated, sad and mad, crying for what is being lost, wailing for the Desecration of God’s Name that our “religious institutions” are perpetrating upon all of us. I am calling us all to join with God, to read and study the Bible with another(s) so we can discuss the myriad of meanings and actions we can take so the paths of justice, peace, mercy, truth, love, kindness prevail over the bullshit being promoted by so many clergy, “religious institutions”. Even the ones who are not promoting the lies and are not Screaming at the Top of their Lungs, are doing what Martin Niemoller did when the Nazis came to power. I hear Rabbi Heschel in my soul, I am bombarded by the prophets, by the Bible each hour of every day and I can’t “stand idly by” so I get into trouble with people, and I believe it is “good trouble, necessary trouble” so I take the blows and do it the “prophets way”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.