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Our Rabbi's Message
March 2008
THE TRUTH AND THE WAY
By Rabbi Aaron Kriegel
What is the job of a religious leader? Should he be the one who tells what truth is? Is he the one who you expect to know the truth? Does he have a special relationship with the divine? Are the words that he speaks especially holy because of his relationship with the divine? Can he just use a small library of holy books to uncover and explain the intricacies of science, which take biologists and physicists and chemists life times to begin to understand? Can he rely on a shelf of books, and sometimes only one book to make pronouncements that detail what is good and what is sinful behavior?
Do the Guru in India and the Imam in Saudi Arabia and the President of the Mormon Church in Utah and the Pope in the Vatican and the various and sundry religious leaders who populate the earth all have the truth about history? How can one holy man say that a certain marriage is sinful while another will hold that that same marriage is holy and blessed? How can one group opt for asceticism while another opt for community living? How can some reject the world and others accept the world?
How can different religious leaders hold that certain people and groups of people are evil and should be killed? During the Reformation could the Protestants and Catholics justly murder each other in the name of same God? Today can Shia's and Sunnis both fight to the death in the name of Allah? Can any man or woman hold that certain land belongs to them because Gods said so? If two have a dispute about God's Word with regard to that land, which of the religious men truly can be relied upon to report what God is saying?
When you ask me what the Talmud says about this or that, do you think that what I tell you is the Mind of God, or the ideas of man? When you have questions about the World to Come do you believe that your rabbi holds the key answers in large measure because he is your rabbi and you trust him? Am I, because I am a rabbi, the spokesman of God?
We live in a world of fundamentalists where almost all religion has been molded by what the most extreme believe. Since the most extreme believe that God speaks clearly to them and through their books, many religious of the world look to their particular religious leaders to mimic those fundamentalists and share religious truth with them.
Religious doctrine should not hold that one man or woman knows the truth. Religious doctrine should hold that no person, no matter who he is and no matter how many believe that he is messiah or god on earth, knows truth so completely that doubts never arise in his mind. The fact is just this. Religious leaders are not supposed to teach the truth. They are not supposed to know the truth. They cannot speak face to face with God and live. They cannot see God's Face or even understand the concept of God Who lives beyond understanding and infinity.
What religious leaders can do is show people the way. That way is not their way. It is always an inheritance. It always is culled from generations of thought and faith. Hardly has there ever been a religious leader who did not have a mentor. In this modern age there is no religious leader without a mentor and there is no religious person who does not have a spiritual guide. That guide, like him or her, is human and makes mistakes, but often has traveled the way for a long time. He has taken moments to contemplate where he is on the way.
Certainly the way is a Jewish concept. Rebbes, the heads of Chassidic groups, are nothing more than the teachers and guides who lead their followers on a special way that they have learned from generations of Rebbes and rabbis who lived before them. However, more than that, for the Jew the way is just another term for halacha. We like to call it the law, but law is a petrifying world. It does not bend. It is not flexible. It cannot be molded or turn the way that living people turn in their actions and beliefs.
Halacha, on the other hand, is a path that others have taken. It is rich with difference. It contains varied life styles and varied beliefs. Any place on the path is enriching, and anyone on that way knows where he is and knows where he wants to go.
Life, by definition (We live and we die), is not an end. We cannot walk the way with the hope of finding ultimate meaning as the days pass. Yet, what we call halacha or the way does bring us closer to Godliness. It can bring us nearer to the divine. It can allow us to know that life has meaning.
The function of the rabbi is to entice people to do halacha, to walk the, to follow the path. The purpose of the rabbi is to provide people the map to make the way more clear. His role is to teach the deeper meaning of words, to show by his actions what right decisions are. His role is to be a guide who with trust makes his way into the unknown excitement where past, present and future merge.
If he says we have reached the end of the way. If he implies that he can give you the complete truth, and then recognize him for the false teacher that he is. Unless he can help you find your way, he is an inauthentic teacher. Cast him off and find another.
You see, the rabbi and every religious leader does not speak for god, but he or she can map out the way to find what is holy, what is Godly and what is true.
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