Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 44
“The terror and anguish that came upon the Psalmist were not caused by the calamities of nature but by the wickedness of man, by the evil in history.” (God in Search of Man pg 368)
This wisdom from Rabbi Heschel is as true today as it was in the time of the Psalmist, as true as it was when Rabbi Heschel wrote these words. Yet, we forget this truth, we paper over it by blaming it on another human, any group that is not us, even on it being God’s will! We have to recover our terror and anguish, we have to look inside of our own beings and see when and where we create terror and we create anguish in the hearts of another for the wrong reasons.
Calling someone else a terrorist is normal in our society today. We throw the word around to describe anyone who doesn’t agree with us, who is trying to change things, who is working to upend the status quo. This is not to say there are not terrorists who use fear, bombs, violence, hateful rhetoric as a method of putting anguish in our hearts, who are trying to take over control of everything we do. Rather, as I am reading this brilliance from Rabbi Heschel, I realize we relegate another to being a terrorist, we live in anguish and fear of ‘the other’ which doesn’t allow us to see the terror and anguish we cause.
Anguish comes from the Latin meaning “narrow, tightness” and the Hebrew word is “tzar”, the root of Mitzrayim/Egypt. When we are in anguish we are in a narrow space feeling the tightness of being enslaved. Isn’t this what the terrorists want? They want us to feel the tightness of slavery, they want us to feel as if we are helpless and powerless over our fears and them. They are trying hard to sell us a lie that terror wins, that we deserve to be enslaved, that we no longer are able to discern between truth and mendacity, that our best choice is to go along to get along. These are the tactics of every terrorist, be they in politics, running a nation, a business, a family, being a member of a group that wants power, an employee who feels wronged, a family member who wants all the attention to be on them, in other words: we are all capable of bringing terror and tightness, fear and narrowness of vision to each and every group, endeavor, nation we belong to and/or are trying to conquer.
We are watching this play out in our politics, in our businesses, in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: so many people are in fear of what will happen if they buck Putin, if they say no to Trump, if they stop Musk, etc that we have all become enslaved to the whims of people who perpetrate evil just because they can! They are all ‘evil geniuses’. Yet, we “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor” because we are afraid of the consequences of standing up to these evil bullies. No matter how many times we have seen good triumph over evil, we still are afraid to stop it when it begins. Kevin McCarthy is afraid he won’t be Speaker of the House, so he is going to go along with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, et al and impeach Joe Biden? He is going to investigate Nancy Pelosi? He is going to go along with wielding his gavel to punish anyone who disagrees with Trump, with Jim Jordan, with Gaetz and Greene etc? This is an example of the evil and wickedness the Psalmist is speaking of. Richard Nixon used the FBI, IRS, and any branch of government he could to spy on and punish his enemies-he covered up a break-in at the Democratic Headquarters when there was no way he was going to lost the election anyway! Yet, here we are some 50 years later witnessing the same types of behaviors in our elected officials. We still haven’t learned much from our recent nor distant past have we?
There is hope, however. Being in Cuba where things are desperate because of the embargo alone and then we have to, for some reason, keep tightening it-I couldn’t bring a box of cigars back because just before we went, that and Rum were put on the things we couldn’t bring back anymore. The desperation is also because of the Cuban government and, like here in the US, in Russia, in China, in the entire world-those in Government live better than the average Cuban. While seeing the poverty and the disrepair of Habana, we also witnessed the amazing resilience and spirit of the Cuban people. Their music is fantastic, they have government schools that teach music, dance, art, etc and the young people are so engaged in the arts that they use them as an outlet for their despair. Adults flock to concerts by Chamber Orchestras, bands, Symphonies, etc and are respectful, engaged and wowed by the talent. We say a concert by a group whose leader plays all over the world and he had his two daughters play with the band-it was a family affair as the whole group play and live like family.
We recovering people are aware of terror and anguish. We practiced it, caused it and felt it. Terror and anguish is one of the roots of our addictive behaviors, I believe. We were afraid of everything and most people, we felt the tightness of our fear and we became enslaved to the erroneous belief that life was so narrow we had to go along to get along, we had to follow the leader and, in turn, made our lives narrower and we became terrorists to those around us. More tomorrow.
God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark