Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 280
“The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or spectacle.” (Who is Man pg.117)
The third sentence above is the goal of living, as I understand Rabbi Heschel this morning, yet it is very hard to maintain and even harder to sustain for most people. At least in the manner Rabbi Heschel is speaking about celebration. Because of the confusion of celebration and amusement/entertainment, people have become deceived and/or have deceived themselves that they are in the active state of celebration, they are “expressing reverence or appreciation” to God, to the Universe, to the Ineffable One all the while they are being entertained by idolators, by charlatans, by fascists, by wolves in sheep’s clothing, and, in turn, amusing their puppet masters greatly.
To express reverence to God one must stop engaging in idolatry, in self-deception and this is much too difficult for most people, judging by the state of the world and seeing the world through a historical lens. The prophets called out the Kings, the Priests, the wealthy for their substituting entertainment for celebration, for substituting mendacity for truth, for substituting empty rituals for authentic engagement, for substituting lip service for T’Shuvah. We have the record of this, which in itself proves the concerns of the Rabbis at the time for the human ability to forget, to deceive, to engage in self-deception so the Prophets are included in the Bible. The farther we get from truth, the deeper we engage in self-deception, the louder are the lies we are hearing, the closer we are to confusing celebration and entertainment/amusement. The more confusion we experience and engage in the more freedom we let go of; which leads us to liars and falsehoods. Which leads to the destruction of the human spirit, the deconstruction of the Bible, and the imprisonment of the spirit.
Today, we are finding ourselves in the midst of an onslaught of amusement and entertainment. We are being berated by so-called ‘freedom fighters’ who want to make Capitalism king-who want to have a Plutocracy-and want to control every aspect of how everyone but them lives. Reading about Blake Masters and J.D.Vance is pretty scary because they are graduates from “elite schools” consider themselves above everyone else and attack the “elites”. They are willing to kill anyone who stands in their way, according to some of their campaign ads. They are bought and paid for by Peter Thiel who only complains that Donald Trump did not go far enough and destroy enough of our norms so the Plutocracy could take over. Masters, Vance, and their comrades are talking about “a hundred year reign”. Sound familiar, it should because this is what the Nazi’s promised. Yet, many people are showing reverence or appreciation for these people who want to take their freedoms from them, who excel in deception and selling their lies!
We are unable to be in the active state of celebration whenever we take positions that are extreme in nature, when we want to blow up the Biblical mandates and paths it is impossible to be appreciating what God has given us, it is antithetical to revering and loving God. Yet, we are seeing this a lot right now with the Midterms coming closer and with the polarization of our society. The Bible is a manual for how to live together with one another, how to appreciate the different visions, understandings each person has in order for us to get a better and truer picture of what is. The Talmud is a book chronicling 800 years of conversations regarding the best ways, in their time, to fulfill God’s instructions, commandments, desires and revere the Covenant we have with God. This is our inheritance from our ancestors as well as the inheritance of evil, of mendacity, of power-seeking, of slavery. We have a choice to make each and every day-celebration of Godliness, celebration of self and power.
In recovery, we are engaging in being more consistent in the active state of celebration, more consistent in appreciating this moment, this day, the people around us, the ability to learn and discuss similarities and differences in opinion and in ways of being. Learning about traditions of other faiths, other people, other recovery groups across the nation brings us a wider lens in which to see life and how to live well.
I am enraged at the lies of the Peter Thiel’s the Blake Masters’ Keri Lake’s et al, I am aghast that Kevin McCarthy is so focused on himself that he will kiss the ring of Trump, kiss the ring of Thiel and the Koch’s and the rest of the Plutocrats in order to be ‘speaker of the House’. I am enraged at my own lies, my own confusion of deception and reverence. I am grateful for the awareness of my self enough to recognize and return to celebrating Truth, revering God, connecting with humanity. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark