Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2- Day 5
“The world has fallen away from God. The decision of each individual person and of the many stands in opposition to God. Through our dullness and obstinacy we, too, are antagonists. But still, sometimes we ache when we see God betrayed and abandoned.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity).
Many of us are unable to hear Rabbi Heschel’s words, too willfully deaf to understand he is talking to all of us, too enamored with our false self, all of the mental make-up that Rabbi Heschel speaks about in later writings to ever believe he is speaking to us. Yet he is. Historically, he is writing the Jews in Germany and surrounding Europe as Hitler’s rise to power and hold on power is more and more concerning, while many Jews see this as another progrom they will weather. So many people since 1936 have been unable/unwilling/too willful to hear, take in, immerse themselves in these words of warning and wisdom.
So, what of us here and now? What is it about our nature that keeps us wittingly and unwittingly “in opposition to God”? Knowing what we know from our history as human beings, knowing what we know about the dangers of the angry rants and ramblings of demagogues, we still make a decision to “stand in opposition to God”, stand in opposition to our best interests? It is, on the surface, ridiculous and, yet, it isn’t. Our need to go along to get along, our need to be part of ‘the group’, the ‘cool ones’, the ‘power circle’, the ‘right side of things’ is so strong it moves us to applaud sending migrants to Kamala Harris’ residence in DC, to support dark money, to chant ‘lock her up’ while praising the real criminals. This need to be part of is an authentic need, just one that is being used against us by the grifters and charlatans and we are mistaken in what group we need to be part of.
Human beings, throughout the ages, have been drawn to authoritarians and demagogues all the while forgetting that what someone will do to someone else, they will do to you unless they do T’Shuvah. Humanity has suffered at the hands of these authoritarians, these demagogues to the point of revolutions, beginning with the Pharaoh in Egypt and continuing to this day. Yet, we forget these painful lessons of being enslaved by another because we are too enslaved by our own fears of being left out, by our FOMO fears. We then allow ourselves to stand with the liars and practitioners of mendacity and “in opposition to God”! We are so good at self-deception we believe our own lies in order to be in the “in group”. Jews are not going to be part of the “In Crowd” of white supremacists, demagogues, authoritarians no matter what Netanyahu and others may believe. When Jews try and out demagogue the authoritarians to show their bona fides, they definitely are being willfully deaf, dumb and blind to Rabbi Heschel’s warning above. They are definitely standing “in opposition to God”!
We do, however, are gifted with the antidote to our usual behaviors. We are shown the path back to God, back to a way of living that honors our authentic needs, serves the authentic needs of another(s) and allows our soul’s knowledge to lead us forward through T’Shuvah. In these next 13-14 days, we have the spiritual sustenance in the universe to unblock our hearing, to wipe away the mucus from our eyes that blocks our ability to see our foibles, to let go of optics, to stop blaming everyone else and be responsible for our part. Through T’Shuvah we can stop our fall from God, stop our fall from grace, stop our fall from our status as God’s Partners, stop our fall into slavery. We do this be being in truth with our self, being more afraid of hiding from God anymore than we are in seeing our errors and missteps. We do this by being scrupulous about our Soul Inventory, listing the assets AND the liabilities, we do this by taking seriously the inner meaning of the words of the confessionals on Yom Kippur, asking our self how we have been guilty and of what, how we have betrayed and whom, including God and self, what have we stolen from God, self, another(s) and how have we defamed our self, God and another(s) with our negative speech. Doing the same for how we have been decent, stayed loyal, used gifts wisely and uplifted with positive speech is crucial for us to get the whole picture of our year, our life.
In recovery we call this being rigorously honest with our selves. We then tell another human being who is a guide, a spiritual counselor, a sponsor, as well as God and our own self the ways we have erred and the ways we have improved from one year to the next, one day to the next. We know the dangers of believing our own press, we know the dangers of standing “in opposition to God” because we did for a while and it brought pain, suffering, degradation and defeat to us and the people around us!
I hear Rabbi Heschel’s words loud and clear. I hear the call to examine the ways I have stood “in opposition to God” as well as the ways I have stood with God, stood for and with the next right action, stood against the charlatans and the liars. I am embarrassed at the times I haven’t out of fear, out of ‘is it worth it’ attitudes. It is always worth standing for truth, standing for God. Rabbi Heschel’s words are calling to me to stop hiding, look deep within to see what I am hiding and whom I am hiding from. More tomorrow on this. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark