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Rabbi Jack Bemporad is one of three rabbis who blessed Pope John II before his death.

He also had a personal audience with Pope John XXIII.

And, he is the first person to receive an honorary doctorate degree from Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome since its founding in 1577.

Earlier this month, the renowned religious scholar led a discussion at Saint Leo University on the topic of faith and message of the prophets — through the college’s Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies.

His talk centered mainly around the Book of Amos, the first prophetic book of the Bible to be written. In the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament, Amos was one of the Twelve Minor Prophets. An older contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, Amos was active during the rule of kings Jeroboam II and Uzziah. He was from the southern Kingdom of Judah but preached in the northern Kingdom of Israel.

Bemporad outlined Amos’ series of teachings that began around 750 B.C., in the northern Kingdom of Israel, where he claimed to have been selected by God to spread his word and confront sinners — specifically judges and leadership who accepted bribes and exploited others.

Bemporad pointed out Amos is credited as “the first person ever in history” to condemn a society that is unjust and takes advantage of the vulnerable, the poor and needy, and so on.

The prophet also foretold the northern Kingdom of Israel would one day be destroyed, because of their behavior of “trusting in weapons,” Bemporad said. The kingdom was destroyed about 30 years later, in 722 B.C.  Said Bemporad, “If you trust in weapons, guess what? There’s no end to that.”

The scholar explained people in that era believed “the day of the Lord” was a day when your country wins all its battles and conquers all its enemies. Amos, however, preached the “day of the Lord,” in its ultimate sense, is a time “when all human beings live a life of peace and tranquility,” Bemporad said.

The rabbi circled it back to present times: “Imagine you could live a life where you don’t have to worry that we’re building trillions of dollars’ worth of nuclear weapons, that we’re not making all kinds of wars and guns so that we can destroy each other, (but) we can really sit and no one be afraid.”

Bemporad mentioned Amos, too, spoke out against animal sacrifices to God — which was a groundbreaking position at that time.

In those days, the priests’ main function was to offer as many animal sacrifices as possible, mainly to absolve sins of the wealthy, Bemporad said.

The religious scholar observed, “They felt by offering animal sacrifices to God, they were fine, ‘Why do I have to worry about the poor and needy, if I’m offering up sacrifice?’”

But, Amos felt and expressed it differently.

God is interested in justice
Bemporad explained: “He’s the first person in history to say, ‘God’s not interested in sacrifices. God’s interested in justice and righteousness.’ That’s a revelation. That’s an absolute revelation. All the other prophets, in one form or another, say something similar to that.”

Bemporad went on to explain the prophet deals with “a fundamental, more profound problem” throughout his teachings: “If you continue living a detestable lifestyle, you will no longer have access to that which is spiritually nourishing.”

Otherwise known as “the great despair,” the rabbi put Amos’ sentiments in different terms.

“Because you pursue exploitation, and wealth and bribery, and lying and cheating, and all that,” Bemporad said, “you won’t have access to God, because it’s not that God isn’t available, it’s that you’re not allowing God to be available.”

It’s a dilemma that proves to be a major theme throughout the Bible, Bemporad said.

“You have so many instances in the Bible where people find, because of the way they live their life, that their habits become such that they sort of have an overlay that prevents them from really experiencing real life in anything that is truly meaningful and truly life — which is that we’re standing up for something that is just and true, and we’re connecting to what is true and what is real,” he said.

Put another way, Bemporad said biblical history is simply about, “how do we relate to God, and how do we relate to our fellow human beings?”

Beyond that, Bemporad stated everything else in this world should be treated as secondary.

He put it like this: “Who cares about the politicians? Who cares about all the businesses? Who cares about all the voyeurism that we see in the press and on TV? Is that really real? Is that really truth? Seek the truth, and it’ll make you free. And, the Bible is the path to find it.”

Bemporad then challenged the audience to spend the rest of their lives studying the Bible.

Of the Bible, he said: “It’s something that you will never fully understand, because it’s too profound, it’s too deep. It’s not only a word of wisdom, but in our respective (Jewish) religion, we believe that it contains in some form or another the word of God, and so anything that has that wisdom to it… is the sort of thing we have to approach it, with first, humility; second, respect; and thirdly, a real sense that if we understand it, if we spend time with it, we will benefit greatly from it.”

Bemporad currently is director of the nonprofit Center for Inter-religious Understanding (CIU) in New Jersey, which he founded in 1992. He also is director of the John Paul II Center and professor of inter-religious studies, both at the Vatican and St. Thomas Aquinas University in Rome.

Published February 19, 2020