other words: Don’t try to talk me out of this; I need to vent my spleen; I need to wipe these flunkies out. And then God throws in the same “covenant” deal to Moses that he offered Noah. Basically, God will start all over again with Moses as the progenitor. Although in this case, God is killing Hebrews exclusively, not dunking the whole Earth and the entirety of creation.
How does Moses react? First of all, he reacts. Completely disregarding the offer of his own lineal covenant, Moses responds: “Why are you so furious with your people that you freed from Egypt with such great authority and a mighty hand? What will the Egyptians say? That you freed them just to destroy them?” And then, with unabashed chutzpah, Moses actually challenges God: “Turn from your fierce wrath and repent of this evil against your people.”
Whenever you pray (and it doesn’t matter where you pray), aren’t you negotiating with God? It’s important to know that Moses—who had a pretty successful career as a rabbi and civil rights leader—regularly contended with God about what Moses thought was right. Even if what God was doling out appeared wrong. This is what you can believe: A relationship with God is not about simply acquiescing to heaven. It’s about arguing with fate and eternity and angels and even with God. Sometimes religion helps us to accomplish this, especially when it’s not skewed by the arrogance and self-importance of its leaders or the dogmas of its liturgies. All of these kinds of things are readily serviced by our understandable fears and insecurities, and sometimes preachers and cultists feed off them.
Religion should not take advantage of us. It should take us home. And the way home is discovered along the path of a vibrant and, yes, contentious spirituality. You can look this up in the Bible.
It turns out that Moses completely convinces God to spare the Hebrews. By lowering the temperature on top of that mountain, by exhibiting some spiritual muscle, Moses saved religion for that day.
THE RULES SOMETIMES GET IN THE WAY
“The Bible was not given to angels.”
—THE TALMUD
WHAT THE ANCIENT RABBIS meant by this insightful declaration, this expression in favor of human intellect and creativity, is simple: Scripture (Torah in Hebrew) wasn’t meant for implementation in heaven; it only works in the imperfect world of human life. That means even scripture has to bend to the ebb and flow of our tough and vital experiences as people. Just like us, the characters in the Bible are confronted by many unforeseen circumstances: They fight with their kids; they fall in love; they bury their dead; and they struggle through faith crises. And they didn’t have any divinity books to consult. They managed on their own wits, savvy, and spirits.
Look out into the crowd you walk through in the mall or on a downtown street; the folks you pass are just like the people in the Bible, they are strangers with stories.
In another Talmudic gem, the sages wrote: “If all you have is Torah, then you don’t even have Torah.” How intuitive and wonderful is that? In other words, if all you do is proclaim and stay locked in the writ, then you’ve missed the point and you’ve lost the writ. Therefore, scripture (according to its most zealous advocates and interpreters) doesn’t fly unless it’s carried aloft and adjusts to the winds and whims of our existences as human persons. We have to adapt to hard situations and sudden calamities. People die in Florida but their cemetery plots are back home in Connecticut. Their survivors are not (this applies to the Jewish community that has traditionally required burial within twenty-four hours) going to achieve interment by the next day. But that does not mean the dead are going to be forgotten.
And now comes the starry-eyed couple who wants to celebrate their wedding ceremony on a Saturday evening. If traditional Jewish observance is at play, then they would not be able to enjoy their feast until 10:00 P.M. or later during the spring and summer months after a 9:00 or 9:30 P.M. nuptial because they can’t have it until the Jewish Sabbath is completely over. That means at least three stars are visible in the evening sky. Really? Are we more stuck on such literalism than we are moved by love?
We need to bend outmoded laws, given the new modalities. Not to discard the laws. And certainly not to wantonly dispose of meaningful rituals. They enrich both the joyous and bittersweet milestone moments. But they should not devour such moments. The Bible was written long before refrigeration and sanitary standards modified the strict urgency of dietary laws and before mechanized and jet transportation altered our demographic relationship with these edicts.
The old laws should still make you think about what you put in your mouth, what we all should do to conserve good harvesting soil, clean air, and a fair distribution of food to a planet plagued with hungry children. If you are Jewish and keep kosher or you are Christian and don’t consume meat on Fridays or Muslim and don’t eat pork, that’s truly commendable. It just needs to be more than a bunch of feel-good pieties.
If you do such things but are indifferent about poverty or immoral in your community values, then what’s the difference if your daughter gets married exactly after sundown on Saturday evening or if you support your church on Sunday morning while rationalizing the intermittent hypocrisies and felonies of your ordained church leaders?
People are buried, married, and even circumcised throughout the scriptural narrative. In no case is a specific day or time of day invoked—what resonates is the spiritual impact of these rites. The Sabbath day is certainly venerated and structured in the Torah; both Christianity and Islam have adopted its concepts of rest, renewal, and creativity on Sunday and Friday, respectively. The Old Testament specifies that one should not work on the Sabbath. How does a ban on “work” conceived by a nomadic desert people four thousand years ago transfer into an injunction against driving your Toyota to visit your grandchildren on a Saturday afternoon?
We need the safety valve of spiritual honesty to service and liberate the old texts from the dust of their ancient caverns. Truth is portable as sure as the sun and the moon are in constant motion. Life is a river of informative situations and mysteries but only when the river is not frozen. It needs the heat of the sun as surely as we need the warmth of pastoral kindness. Judaism and Christianity both assert that the ultimate law, the supreme concept, is “love thy neighbor.” Compared to this nonjudgmental, peace-seeking idea, the rest of the text is commentary. And it is vulnerable to manipulation by clerics or cultists who have forgotten about love and just have a need to control.
Every religion survives not because of its restrictions, but via its freedoms. When people dictate what you think and do and the intent is to supervise your soul, invariably there will be a problem. Liturgies and laws aspire to line up things into some kind of order that can be helpful, especially when certain rituals link you to the past and help you walk to the future. The reality is that life rarely lines up itself; it is not a grid and it does fall into place neatly.
When I remember my relatives and friends who have died, I surely recite what the Jews call the “Mourner’s Kaddish.” This old Aramaic prayer (most Jews mistakenly assume it’s in Hebrew) joins me to my parents and other elders and some departed young people as well because it links my grief to a calendar cycle—and that’s fine. But if I just voice the Kaddish as a procedural and then resume my business, not much has really happened. Religion is grammar, but spirituality is language. Religion is words; spirituality is love.
When I remember my dad while saying the Kaddish, really remember him, then I’m thinking about his deep brown eyes, his magnetic smile, his strong hands, and, yes,
