Daily Prophets
178
“Why when we fasted did You not see?…because on your fast day, you see to your business and oppress all your laborers. Because you fast in strife and contention, you strike with a wicked fist…Is this the fast I desire?…No, this is the fast I desire, to open the fetters of wickedness, unite the cords of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and break off every yoke. To take the poor of your neighborhood into your home, when you see the naked, clothe them and to not ignore you own kin.”(Isaiah 58:3,4,5,6).
Second Isaiah is calling to the community to stop living in Mendacity! This is an age-old issue for God, for people of faith and for people of non-faith. Mendacity is what angers God according to my reading of this passage. We complain “but we did what you wanted, what the job description says, what the question was on the test, etc” and fail to see beyond the literal. We do this not because we can’t see, rather so we can look good while doing bad as stated in the first verse above. Sure, they fasted on the proper days and did the fast properly, however, they chose to ignore the reasons for the fast and the purpose of the fast! On Yom Kippur, we fast so we can go beyond physical needs to attend to our spiritual needs and ends. If we are doing business, oppressing our laborers, arguing with each other and other people, we are missing the point of the fast and the spirit of the law as well as the Spirit of God that is in search of us.
Yet, many people continue to live this way. One ‘oh shit’ wipes our 1000 ‘atta boys”, people go to services to see and be seen, not to worship and look inside of themselves, we expect perfection from another and, sometimes ourselves, in order to blame someone when perfection doesn’t happen. All of these and so many more are insidious ways of performing rituals and not have the rituals go through us. Rabbi Heschel teaches us:”Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit;…when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion-its message becomes meaningless.”(God in Search of Man pg.3). The fast days, the Holy days, Shabbat, the six days of creating, all are meant to bring us one grain of sand closer to God, to authenticity, to joy, to clarity, to serve another, to create stronger bonds of community, etc, yet this is all impossible when we go through the motions and stay in strife, contention, wickedness, oppression. We are the causes of the decline of religion, not science, not modernity, not the internet, us-the people who have shown the younger generation that religion is a ritual that we do without really meaning to fulfill the spirit of the actions, the spirit of the law, just lets look good, like we do in the rest of our living. Religion has become a transactional relationship rather than a covenantal one. What do I get out of it, is the question people ask and they do not stick around long enough to hear the response. What do we get from immersing ourselves in religion? Awareness, wholeness, ability to live in our skin, truth, transparency, help and service, love, kindness, connection, compassion, integrity, in our outer and inner lives. This is what Second Isaiah is calling us to engage in, I believe.
God wants us to immerse ourselves in the purpose of the fast day-to take truthful inventory of ourselves and our actions. God wants us to let go of our need to control and to oppress. God wants us to clothe the naked, take in the poor homeless people, and be connected to our kinfolk, stop the sibling rivalry, the compare and compete of families. Second Isaiah is calling to us all to be more congruent, live with integrity and leave our mendacious ways. T’shuvah was put into the world before the world was created, according to our sages, I add: because God knew we will screw up and wanted us to have a path back. When we do our daily truthful inventory and see what we have done well and where we have missed the mark, we are able to move forward and use the Mitzvot as stepping stones to ‘a richer and more meaningful life’. God is calling us out, God is confronting us with the truth of our actions and the consequences of these actions.
In recovery, we are aware of how we bastardized many of the good things in life, how we used people’s vulnerabilities against them and how we took advantage of most situations and tried to bend them to our will. We realize how much terror we caused prior to our recovery. We are recovering from the human condition of hiding and shame. In recovery, we adopt and adapt rituals that help us see truth, be of service, practice kindness, compassion and hope and live a principled life. We use the holiness of each day as tools to connect to God, help another(s) and grow along spiritual lines.
In my recovery, I have been contentious and caused strife and I have lived the spirit of our tradition, imperfection and growing each day. I have witnessed the mendacity of myself and the mendacity of another(s), I have learned more truth about me from this witnessing and attempted to help another(s) see more truth about themselves. Being a witness to mendacity is a painful experience-whether it is one’s own or the mendacity of another(s). I am grateful for this pain as it has made me more aware of the ways to serve God and another(s), to clothe them, to house them and to be more present with them. This is the joy of prayer/looking inside for me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark