Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 52
According to Cicero:”The gods are careful about great things and neglect small ones.” (De Natura Deorum. Book ii ch.66, 167). According to the prophets of Israel, from Moses to Malachi, God is concerned with small matters. What the prophets tried to convey to man was not a conception of an eternal harmony, of an unchangeable rhythm of wisdom, but the perception of God’s concern with concrete situations. In mythology the deities are thought of as self-seeking, as concerned with their own selves.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 143).
Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the difference between the Greco-Roman way of living and the Jewish/Faith-based way of living. In the former, these mythological creations of human imagination are remote, uncaring, with their focus on their needs and wants, desires and abilities to take what they want, when they want it. The Greco-Roman way of living, as described above and lived in antiquity and now, is a zero-sum game, a dog eat dog world, survival of the fittest, power for the sake of pleasure, etc. This is why the Greco-Roman path has to be authoritarian and needs to either co-opt religion, denigrate it, or kill it.
This has been our history, while people are decrying Critical Race Theory and people are saying everything in American history is based on racism, while people are speaking about the exploitation of the masses and people are speaking about the need for law and order, no one speaks of the beginning of this way of being, as eloquently and powerfully as Rabbi Heschel is speaking to me right now. I hear him saying ‘look at how Jews were feared, hated, persecuted, killed for being Jewish and following a path of living that serves God. A path that is concerned with our fellow people and sees each person as a unique being created by God with certain unalienable rights, the right to dignity, the right to freedom, the right to uniqueness, etc. and along with these rights, each human being has the responsibility to honor their dignity and the dignity of every human being regardless of gender, race, religion, creed, sexual orientation; the responsibility to make free-will moral choices and help and hold every human being responsible to make free-will moral choices; and they are responsible to live the unique gifts they have been given by God/the Universe/the Ineffable One/etc and help/hold every human being responsible to live their unique gifts.
In the Greco-Roman way of being, this is foolishness and stupidity! All that is important is power, control and pleasure. In the authoritarianism that has come back in a most powerful manner today; power and control are the only paths to pleasure and the lies these practitioners tell are so outrageous many people are believing them! The more outrageous, the more blame on an “outside group” the more believable it is to more and more people. I have found people who profess to be ‘good christians’ ranting and raving at my friend John Pavlovitz for believing in the words of Christ and the New Testament as well as the Old Testament. I have found people who, while quoting holy texts, bastardize the spirit of these texts for their own gain. How sad, how disgusting and how destructive doing this is. Instead of being the opponent of this way of being, many “people of faith” have been co-opted to believe the exact opposite of what the basic tenets of their faiths teach. Which is the way of authoritarianism always, look at our recent past with Nazi Germany, Boznia, Rwanda, etc.
In the Greco-Roman way of living, everyone is expendable, relationships are transactional and the foundation of society is utilitarian. If one can prove their worth to the people in power, they are rewarded; if they can’t, they become either slaves or prisoners. The real criminals, as we see in Russia, in other authoritative countries, and here in the US, are exempted from responsibility, looked up to as so smart to be able to do this and envied because their followers want to live the same way. In the Greco-Roman way of living the only ones being served are the gods and the people the ‘gods’ put in power.
In recovery, we know that the small stuff is what is important.We have lived in the Greco-Roman manner and we crashed, so we have had to find a new way of living/being. We call it spiritual, we call it religious, we call it a discipline, and what we are really saying is ‘I can’t live life in a utilitarian way anymore, there is something inside of me that is screaming out to change before I go mad and/or kill myself and hurt the people I care about’. In recovery, we recognize the dangers and the harms that relationships that we made seem covenantal and were really transactional brought. In recovery, truth and transparency are our number one goals/actions each day.
I will write more about this tomorrow. 18 years ago, my High Holy Day theme was: “Beat the Greeks”, it was timely then and it is timely now. I also realize how insidious this way of living is, I am guilty of succumbing to the Greco-Roman way of living at times. I am remorseful for giving into these kind of societal norms. I also know that most of the time, I rebel against this way of being and, unfortunately, get so incensed by it that I get bombastic and discounted. I feel the “fire in the belly” at this ‘normal’ way of being and rail against it, sometimes to my own detriment. I continue to speak out and reach out and find new ways to speak so another can hear. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.