Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 149
“More grave than Adam’s eating the forbidden fruit was his hiding from God after he had eaten it. “Where art thou?” Where is man? is the first question that occurs in the Bible. It is man’s alibi that is our problem. It is man who hides, who flees, who has an alibi. God is less rare than we think; when we long for Him, His distance crumbles away.” (Essential Writings pg.91)
We are so ensconced in our hiding that we have come to believe we are responding to “the first question that occurs in the Bible.” We are so ‘into our disease’ of self-deception that we are woefully unaware that we continue to “hide”, to “flee”. Rather than saying “hineni”, “here I am”, we have “an alibi” for not being real, for not being authentic, for not responding to essence of God’s call and the essence of the call of another(s) who is need. We are so accustomed to the “lies we tell ourselves” that we have forgotten the question, changed the question, and we berate someone else for asking the question.
We are unwilling to face the problem of our hiding, our lack of answering the call of the question that God asks in the 3rd Chapter of Genesis, and most people have continued since the time of Adam to ignore this fundamental question ever since then. What makes Abraham so ‘great’ in the Bible is his search for and response to God’s questions and directions. What makes Moses so important and such a great leader (for the most part) is his willingness to turn towards the “burning bush” instead of ignoring it. What makes the prophets so powerful is their ability to go against their nature to hide from the call of God, which they know will make them subject to ridicule, imprisonment, maybe even death, to deliver God’s message, help the stubborn and egotistical Priests, Royalty, wealthy to change. Even Jonah, who tried to flee, is unable to run away from the call of God.
Yet, we continue to do so, like humanity throughout the millennia, we even use our clergy, our leaders, our elected officials to hide from “the first question”. We are locked in a terrible prison of our own making that gives us cover, gives us rational reasoning and tells us we are being open and honest and not hiding, we are responding and not fleeing, we are so deep in our mendacity that we believe the actions we take to defame, to deny, to lie about, to ignore the call of everyone ‘not like us’ is actually God’s will! When we look at the poverty that abounds, when we ignore the truth of good people in order to believe the lies of the terrorists, in all their forms, when we deny the dignity due to people of color, women, LGBTQ+, in the name of God, we are hiding from “where art thou?” We are facing, as humanity has always faced to a greater or lessor degree, a fork in the road, a decision-making moment, that has nothing to do with ‘who is right and who is wrong’. It has nothing to do with winning and losing for personal, financial gain nor party politics.
This fork in the road is are we going to continue make “man’s alibi that is our problem”? Are we going to continue to use the myriad of lies, the distorted mirror we have been using to navigate through life with? Are we so afraid of the truth, so afraid to “face” God and ourselves that we are willing to destroy what makes us human? We have been living like Alice in Wonderland, turning demagoguery, authoritarianism, blaming ‘the other’, etc into ‘holiness’! We are continuing to promote the terrorism of Hamas by only blaming Israel for what is happening even though Hamas continues to hold hostages against International Law. We are so enamored with our ‘identity politics’ that we demonize people for the actions we disagree with while decrying their demonization of us! Clergy are extolling fundamentalism, re-reading of the Holy Books so they can have control and power, rule and domination over everyone else and calling this God’s will! In democracies, there are people running for the highest offices in the land, President, Congress, Prime Ministers, Houses of Government who are extolling the ending of democracy so they can have absolute power, so they can be “in office for life” and name their own successor-in their family of course. And, we, the people, are buying into these lies and so many more.
We have to break the “looking glass” once and for all. The sages say T’Shuvah was put into the world before the world was created, the prophets call for our return because God wants to heal us, embrace us. Adam had the opportunity and he blew it, we have the gift and opportunity to amend Adam’s error, to amend the errors of our ancestors, amend our own errors of hiding, fleeing, making alibis. It takes courage to face oneself, it takes admitting the deep longing we have for truth, authentic connection, with God and with human beings, it takes willingness to surrender our armor, let go of our lies, leave the narrowness (Egypt) of self-deception and self-delusion, ignore the calls of the deceivers and liars in the media, in our political discourse, in our Churches, Temples, Mosques, and shatter the distorted mirrors that the funhouse provides and return to the reality and the call of “Where is Man?”
We are being called each day to respond with Hineni, to repair the woes of the world instead of adding to them. We are called to respect one another, to end our egotistical ‘war’ with each other, to stop excluding people for being who they are and making mistakes. We are being called to allow one another the opportunity to do T’Shuvah, to repair relationships, to be “fast to forgive”, we are being called to rebuke one another so we can get to the truth rather than to continue the falsehoods we have come to worship. Most of all, we are called to respond to God, the Ineffable One, not the idols that we have created to replace Adonai, God. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark