Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 251
“Life is clay, and righteousness the mold in which God wants history to be shaped. But human beings, instead of fashioning the clay, deform the shape.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 47)
Please God, the Hostages are returned today! Please God both sides continue to talk and resolve this war! Please God, Qatar doesn’t have an Air Force Base in the United States! Please God the Jewish world realizes Bibi’s role in all of this destruction! Please God the world realizes Qatar, Saudi Arabia, et al role in funding Hamas and supporting them all these years!
Reading these words sends shivers up and down my spine, gives me a pain in my heart, causes me to deny this truth in my mind and causes my soul to cry. On Kol Nidre we read the prayer, Ki Hinei KaHomer, We are like Clay in Your hands and we keep asking God to heed the covenant, not give us the decree we have earned with our actions which “deform the shape”! We read this, there are beautiful melodies this prayer is sung to and We the People refuse to SHEMA, to hear, to listen, to understand the predicament We the People are in!
We the People have the ability to make our lives whatever we want them to be, even though we may be limited by birth order, where and to whom we are born, how we are raised, socio-economic status, etc. Given all of these, We the People still have free-will choice, the predominant trait of what makes us human beings, as Rabbi Abraham Twerski teaches. We the People, for far too long, have used different factors to rationalize, normalize, and defend the fact that we “deform the shape”, that we refuse to be “clay” in the ‘hands’ of God, that We the People reject and continually try to break the “mold in which God wants history to be shaped”, that “righteousness” is not in vogue. This is true for all people, not just the ‘unchurched’, it is especially true for so many of the ‘good christians, good jews, good muslims’ who continue to preach hatred and xenophobia, continue to make someone else ‘the other’ and call them vermin, blame them for “poisoning the blood of the citizens”, and other such lies and vitriols.
“When will we ever learn” is a refrain from Pete Seeger’s “Where have all the flowers gone” and I find myself asking this question again and again. “When we ever learn” that “righteousness the mold in which God wants history to be shaped” is a gift to every human being, is the only way we will “long endure” as a species, as nations, as divine reminders and as instruments of Godliness. This is our inheritance and We the People continue to squander it, We continue to bankrupt our spiritual and moral bank accounts that have been left to us by our ancestors, the deposits of which have cost lives in wars to maintain freedom, which have cost headache and poverty when doing the next right thing is not only not rewarded, it is used as cudgel against those of We the People who believe that being molded by God to be righteous is the path to wholeness and a good life. We the People are not a monolith, of course, and what is constantly perplexing and not understandable to many of us is, how the loudest voices get the attention and, if the lies are spouted long enough and loud enough, even the people who believe in the Biblical Demand to: “Love the stranger”, to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, to “love your neighbor as yourself”, to “rebuke your neighbor and not bear guilt because of them” etc, fall for the loud consistent lies we are being fed!!
What are We the People to do? It seems just too much for us to overcome, to fight against, since there has never been a time when “human beings” have never stopped our pull/drive to “deform the clay”. There is a solution and it is to be found when We the People realize our spiritual bankruptcy AND our need to live from our values and morality, from the inside out, from our souls and not our rationalizations. As it states in Deuteronomy 30:14: “But the word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it!(bold is mine). We the People are being called each and every day to SHEMA, to hear, listen and understand that living into the “mold” of “righteousness” is not too hard, it is not going to deprive us, it is not going to make us a fool. Rather, living into the “mold” of “righteousness” is the path to living life to its fullest, being okay with our missing the marks, learning from our errors, finding ways to honor, if not love, the stranger, learning to love our true self and not the false one we/society has created, welcoming the rebuke of another(s) as a show of deep faith in us that we are not a ‘lost cause’ and we can grow, and replenish the withdrawals from our spiritual bank accounts with these deposits of morality, goodness, justice, love, and righteousness! This is the way, this is the path and it is available to all of us, we have to allow ourselves to return to “righteousness” and the “mold in which God” wants us to live into.
I know this way of being, I know how badly I deformed the “clay” of my life and I know I had to reach a bottom in order to come face to face with righteousness and how far I had strayed from the “mold”, how distant I had become from the lessons of my father, grandfathers, relatives who believed in “righteousness” even when they missed the mark. Once this became so apparent I could no longer resist the truth, my recovery began. I didn’t stop drinking then and I began to recover my humanity, I came to realize that I had to fill up my spiritual bank account and have an inheritance for Heather to be able to draw on. I pray that there is enough for my grandson Miles to draw upon as well. It is simple and not easy to live in the “mold” of “righteousness” and each day I do the best I can knowing it is never perfect and being on the journey will just have to do for now.. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark