RELIGION

My dearest Aaron Hershel,

 

I am pleased that your business goes well, and somewhat envious of your travels. You observe many different religious people on your trade journeys and you wonder what is the purpose of religion. I will do my best to explain.

There are people among us who have the ability to set Neshamah aside and perceive the world from the perspectives of Chayyah and Yechidah. These are the prophets and great sages that have arisen in every age among every people. Since most of us cannot attain these prophetic heights we create a system to preserve the teachings of those who do. Religion is that system.

There is a game the children play where one child whispers a message into the ear of a second child who in turn whispers it to a third and on and on until the last child speaks aloud what has been passed on. This received message is then compared to the original message and the distortion of the first to the last sends the children into gales of laughter. This game can teach us a lot about religion.

What does the Pirke Avot (The Sayings of the Fathers) say? “Moshe received the Torah from God on Mount Sinai. He in turn passed it on to Joshua who passed it on to the Prophets who passed it on to the Men of the Great Assembly,” (Pirke Avot 1:1). Is this not the same game? Does it not lend itself to the same problem of distortion?

Of course, I know that our sages deny this, and claim that the word received by Moshe is in fact the word read each week in shul (synagogue), but what else can they say? Imagine our rabbis saying to the Jews: “Our message to you is a distortion of God’s Word, but it is all we have to go on, so let’s do the best we can with it.” Where would their authority be then? Who would listen to them?

I once met a Muslim who told me that his bible, the Koran, was the only ancient revelation that had not become distorted in its passing from one generation to the next. The Torah and the Gospels of the Christians were once revelations from God, he explained to me, but over centuries of transmission they have become corrupted. Only the Koran has escaped this fate.

I never debate things such as this, but I could not help thinking to myself: What else could he believe? If Moslems did not have faith in the accuracy of their Koran they would not be Moslems. If Christians did not have faith in the accuracy of their Gospels they would not be Christians. And if we Jews did not have faith in the accuracy of Torah we would not be Jews. But just because our social solidarity demands belief in the accuracy of our respective scriptures, this does not make them accurate.

If a group of children cannot maintain the integrity of a message over the course of a few minutes, can we really expect the integrity of the Torah—or the Gospels or the Koran—to be maintained while passing through hundreds of hands over hundreds of years?

No. Scriptures of all types contain fragments of revelation and great chunks of accumulated misunderstanding. The proper study of scripture is to separate the one from the other. Loyalty to scripture should be a loyalty to the truth and not to the distortions. The problem with religion is that it is often incapable of telling the one from the other.

Imagine our group of children at play. The first child provides the original message to the second and then is called home by her mother. By the time the message reaches the end of the line of children there is no way to know how distorted the message has become because the creator of the original message is gone. All the children can do is argue over which version contains the least amount of distortion.

This is the problem religion must deal with. Moshe received the Torah from God on Sinai. Moshe then passes it on to Joshua. Moshe then dies. Now how is Joshua to know if he is passing on the message as intended? While Moshe lived he could correct any errors that Joshua may make in delivering the message, but after his death there is no way to know for certain what is from God and what is from Joshua.

I imagine you must be thinking that I am about to condemn religion. God forbid! I love my religion and believe it is a repository of great wisdom. But I am not afraid to admit that it also contains great distortion. The question is how do we distinguish between the two?

It is not as difficult as it may seem. The truth is universal or it is not true. The principle upon which all religious truth rests is l’chayyim. Teachings that honor life and hold it precious are true, those that denigrate life are false. Teachings that free human beings to find God for themselves are true, those that enslave people to tradition are false. Teachings that celebrate the unity-through-diversity that is the presence of God in the world of Beriah are true, teachings that seek to reduce nature’s vitality and humankind’s creativity by enforcing conformity in thought, word, and deed are false.

The history of religion, all religion, is the history of the struggle between these two types of faith: the one that liberates and the one that enslaves. This is the struggle, if you will, between the prophets and the priests. I believe that there are people among us who have the ability to move from the world of Beriah, of separate competing selves, nationalities, ethnicities, and religion, to the worlds of Atzilut and Adam Kadmon where all differences are seen as part of the diversity of God’s greater unity, and the truth at its purest. They experience that unity and then return to Beriah filled with it. As they read their respective sacred scriptures and examine the traditions that inform the lives of their respective peoples they make corrections, changes in our understanding and our practice. These changes and corrections bring their scriptures, traditions, religions and people into better alignment with the original message. These people are our prophets, our great sages, our holiest rebbes, and they exist among every people in every age.

What is the message with which these prophets reconnect? While the nuances are unique to each one’s community and circumstance, the principle of all of them is the same: l’chayyim. The corrections they teach bring people into alignment with the ultimate truth of one God, one world, one humanity, and one moral code—justice and compassion for all beings. Their message honors not only the particular people and tradition to whom they speak, but the global community of men and women to whom the one God speaks through the many voices of faith.

Religion is too important a part of human life, however, to be left solely to the workings of these prophets. We, too, must struggle to free ourselves and our faith from the falsehood that accrues to it. Through our personal practice of inward walking, of freeing ourselves from attachments to culture, tribe, and family we, too, enter into the promised land of Atzilut and Adam Kadmon and correct for ourselves not only the distortions of our faith but the distortions of our lives. When we move beyond the Neshamah and access the higher more inclusive wisdom of Chayyah and Yechidah we broaden our perspective and can free ourselves from mitzrayim, the narrow places of prejudice and fear that too often shape our lives under the guise of religion and nationality.

While you and I may not be prophets, Hershele, we are capable of tapping the greater truth of God’s shlemut and seeing for ourselves what is true. And we can tell the difference between truth and falsehood in faith. If the teaching promotes peace, justice, and compassion among humans and between humans and nature it is true; if it promotes violence, division, and exploitation it is false.

So, what is the purpose of religion? The purpose of religion is to preserve the original teachings of those great saints and sages who tap the higher worlds of Atzilut and Adam Kadmon. What is the problem with religion? The problem with religion is that once these prophets die the religion falls into the hands of priests and religious professionals (yes, even rabbis!) whose loyalty is to their own status and power, rather than to the truth. Periodically new prophets appear seeking to correct the distortions, but they are often resisted by these powerful professionals. If they succeed in driving the prophets away, the religion becomes totally corrupt. If the prophets are allowed to correct the distortions, the religion continues to carry truth from generation to generation.

Given all this, truly religious people should say of their respective faiths: “We know this is not the pristine message, but we believe it points the way toward it. Let us study this pointer and seek to fathom that to which it points.” This they should say. What do they say? “These are the words of the living God given to the Elect. If you would find redemption you must follow us. All others are damned.”

Such arrogance!

 

B’Shalom