Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 250
“People act as they please, doing what is vile, abusing the weak, not realizing they are fighting God, affronting the divine, or that the oppression of man is a humiliation of God. He who oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, He who is kind to the needy honors Him.(Psalms 14.31) (Thunder in the Soul pg. 46)
Yesterday I looked at these words from a global, national, communal level. Today, on this Shabbat of Sukkot, when a Hostage Deal and Ceasefire has been accomplished in the Middle East, I am delving into these ideas on a personal level.
It is a conundrum we face on a daily basis: on one hand we have individuals doing “as they please” in the name of freedom when in actuality they are living in the liberty stage of life. Just as we learn in Exodus, we go from under the thumb of Pharaoh to the liberty that happens after we cross the Red Sea to the freedom we attain when we accept the Torah from Sinai. Each of us has a Pharaoh, be it the voice inside that bedevils us, that lies to us, that controls our good urges and supplants them with the spiritual malady of thinking good is bad and bad is good; be it the taskmaster that is our parent who refuses to see who we are and speak to us in ways we can understand, who denies our uniqueness in an effort to ‘keep up with the Jones’ and ‘not be embarrassed by their children’; be it the boss who keeps us down, the ‘friends’ who indulge the darkness within both of us; be it the President of the country who is dismantling our freedoms, looting the national treasury and treasures, etc; we all have a Pharaoh that is inside and outside of us.
Our job, our call, the demand put upon us is to Shema, hear the words of King David, take in and allow these words of Psalm 14 above to penetrate “the foreskin of our hearts”, know that we are not alone in our fight against the inner Pharaoh nor are we the first to engage in this battle, this is the battle that has been raging inside every human being since Adam and Eve hid from God in the Garden of Eden! After all, do we really gain a good life by “doing what is vile, “abusing the weak”, “fighting God”, doing what is “a humiliation of God” and a refutation of God’s will like these ‘good christian nationalists are doing? Yes, people gain money, power, prestige, fame, celebrity, etc from doing these actions, is this what a good life is? This is the most important distinction one can make-distinguishing between what is a good life and what isn’t. As King David says in his lament over the death of King Saul and his dear friend whom he loved, Jonathan: “Oh how the mighty have fallen” so too have all of these ‘mighty’ people who enjoy engaging in “the oppression of man” and “a humiliation of God” fall-maybe not in ways we can see and they fall into their self-deception, their hatred and these ways of being eat them up from the inside out. All of the great despots eventually go too far, they make themselves into caricatures and, either during their lives or after their deaths, they are seen for the small, cruel people they were/are.
We the People are being asked to look inside of ourselves and see how and when we revel in the misfortune of another, friend and foe alike. We the People are being called to be accountable and responsible for the abuses of “the weak” that we have and still are committing. We the People are being given the opportunity to see the vileness of our vindictive behaviors, the doing what we want when we want rather than serving the person in front of us. We the People get to see how we have fighting God, humiliating God and ignoring the God-Image of another human being in they myriad of ways we denigrate another human being a denigrate ourselves. We the People are given a choice to live into the holiness that is inherent in our being, live into the decency that the commandments bestow upon us, live into our authentic self, enjoying freedom rather than partaking in liberty, doing what is good, right, and needed in this moment rather than indulging in our whims and fantasies.
We the People live into the good, the right, the meaning and purpose of our life by letting go of our need to be vile, our need to forget the goodness and the assistance of those who have helped us in years prior and whom we no longer ‘have any use for’. We the People live into the connection we crave with God, Higher Consciousness by being “kind to the needy” which in turn “honors Him”. We the People live into the meaning and purpose of our life through spiritual growth, not material gain. We the People are getting the opportunity to stand with the poor, the needy, the stranger, and love them as the Bible teaches, appreciate the divine image in them and grow into sharing our talents, gifts, love, kindness to the 1000th generation, as the 13 Attributes teach us to do, it is one of the best ways to imitate God and truly be God’s voice, hands right here, right now.
I have, of course, acted in the ways listed above and I have been “kind to the needy” much more often in these past 38 years. Even when I was stealing and being a no-goodnik, I rarely took advantage of those who had less than me. I have spent my recovery repairing the damage from my past, I engage in living amends, I release the resentments I once carried, I don’t need anyone to thank me for the good I have done because I have the knowing my deeds bring me closer and closer to being the fully authentic Mark I was created to be. I am still bewildered by those who engage in cruelty and vileness for its own sake. I pray for the individuals who carry out these ICE raids, I pray for the military who are going against the Oath they took, I pray for the IDF soldiers who committed horrific deeds, I pray for all of us to live into the 2nd half of the quote from Psalms. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark