Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 33
“Rules are generalizations. In actual living, we come upon countless problems for which no general solutions are available. There are many ways of applying a general rule to a concrete situation. There are evil applications of noble rules. Thus the choice of the right way of applying a general rule to a particular situation is “left to the heart,” to the individual, to one’s conscience.” (God in Search of Man pg. 327)
I have been immersed in these words for the past 24 hours and I have thoughts bouncing around in my head and my heart, in my conscience and in my consciousness. I am thinking of the phrases: ‘this is the way we have always done it’ and ‘it was good enough for me so it is good enough for you’ and other such idioms. Rabbi Heschel’s words above remind me to stay in radical amazement at all times, to constantly be maladjusted to these generalizations and these rules that we feel compelled to follow exactly as written. Rabbi Heschel is demanding that we actually be present in our actions, in our living situations and stop hiding from what is in favor of some mirage we see or want to see.
I am thinking of the ways the “noble rules” are being bastardized by our Court system from the Supreme Court all the way down to local courts. The Supreme Court has ruled that a corporation is to be treated like a person, they have ruled the legitimacy of secret and dark money for political contributions. They have opened the door to abuses of power by Senators like Lindsey Graham and shut the door on the civil rights and voting rights of minorities. They have applied the power of the Court to tell a woman what she can do with her body and the government that can’t tell men to be vaccinated! Our Court system has become so politicized by K street money and the Federalist Society, the prove the verse in the Bible that says: bribes blind the eyes of the wise. Rather than seeing the Constitution for what it is, an amazing document that is purposely left to interpretation and being amended, they want to put it in stone and make it a fossil. We, the People, have to say no to this hijacking of our courts. We, the People, have to say no to not holding people in power accountable. We, the People, have to take Abraham Lincoln’s words and put them into action: “that government of the people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from this earth.”
We, the People, are able to say no, we are able to vote our heart, our spirit, our true self if and when we stop making it okay for us to use “evil applications of noble truths.” When the rules become weapons to denigrate, enslave, isolate and force people into hard labor in order to put food on the table, we have become like the Pharaoh in Egypt. When we go along with the bastardization of “noble truths” we are going against Moses’ many exhortations in Deuteronomy. When we become drunk with power and believe the rules don’t apply, we are acting like the people prior to the flood. When we spread lies about someone else in order to feel good about our self, in order to build our self up, we are engaging in the behaviors that caused the destruction of the Second Temple. When we are treating the stranger, the poor and the needy as criminals, we are acting the same way the people in power did prior to the destruction of the First Temple.
What we are failing to realize is that this is what leads us to exile. What we are failing to realize is that we are already in exile! We have separated our self from God, from one another with these “evil applications of noble truths”. We have used rules to keep people “in their place” like the Caste system of India. We have taken the revolutionary spirit and the reasons their is America and turned them against the very people America was created for; “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. Instead of “lifting my lamp” we are allowing a minority to turn out the lights on our democracy. Rather than “the golden door” we are allowing a minority of prejudiced people, scared people open the iron bars of prison literally and figuratively. We, the People, are the only ones who can turn the tide back. We, the People, are the only ones who can re-light the lamp of Lady Liberty. We, the People, are the only ones who can open the iron bars and help people through “the golden door”. We, the People, have to act our ways back into right thinking, We, the People, have to respond to the demand of Rabbi Heschel’s words and the call of God to BE HUMAN!
In recovery, we leave the prison of old behaviors, we leave the iron bars blocking us from seeing how to apply a general rule to a specific situation. We do this by using the spirit of the rule to point us in a direction. There is a general rule to acknowledge our powerlessness over a substance and/or behavior and we, in recovery, have to use this rule to realize we are powerless over people, places and things. We also realize that what works in one situation will not work in another in the same way. We are acutely aware that each moment is different and if we don’t adapt the rules to the situation, we will fall back in our recovery.
I am still swirling with thoughts and experiences of this wisdom of Rabbi Heschel. I am still seeing how I fall into the trap of finding the wrong way to apply the general to the specific and that I do this less and less with each day. More tomorrow, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.