Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 253
“Justice is not an ancient custom, a human convention, a value, but a transcendent demand, freighted with divine concern. It is not only a relationship between man and man, it is an act involving God, a divine need.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 47)
The first sentence above has a couple of words that I looked up in the Dictionary: “transcendent” means “surpassing the ordinary” and “not subject to and existing outside of the material universe”; “freighted with” means “burdened with, charged with”. As I use these definitions, the first sentence reads to me: “Justice is not an ancient custom, a human convention, a value, but a extraordinary/outside the material/usual worldly demand, charged with divine concern”. As I write this, I am overwhelmed with the power and call of this piece of teaching from Rabbi Heschel, looking at the Injustices that have been going on for the millennia, experiencing the lawlessness of Trump and his cronies, both here and abroad. Hearing the lies and bullshit of those ‘good christian nationalists’ like Mike Johnson and the mendacity and bastardization of Biblical principles by those ‘good jewish nationalists’ like Howard Lutnick, Steve Wytkoff, Jared Kushner, is infuriating-especially since they all used the system they are destroying to gain power, money, and prestige and now have decided no one else should have what they have. Good jews, good christians all act this way, Rabbi-you just don’t understand the ‘word of god’ I have been told and I say FU, I forgive you your stupidity, I forgive you your narcissism, I do not forgive you your bad actions and your terrible crimes until you come to a spiritual awakening and do TShuvah-Mr.’s Lutnick, Kushner, Johnson, and the rest of the MAGA crowd like Kristi, Pam, Steve, etc.
When “justice” is seen as retribution rather than repair, when “justice” is used as a club rather than a trauma relief center, when “justice” is dependent upon one’s political persuasion, one’s gender identity, one’s ethnic makeup, then “justice” is denied and as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”! When We the People SHEMA, hear, listen, and understand the voice on Sinai, we will realize “justice” is meant to be a burden, laden upon us by a force that is so much more powerful and greater than any of us. When We the People come to join the covenant with this power greater than ourselves, come to join with one another to form a “more perfect union”, than we will hear the charge of “justice” that is delivered each and every day. When We the People engage with our inner life, then we will hear that “justice”, like rebuke, like tzedakah, tshuvah, helps us see our own authenticity, it causes us to find our truth, do the next right thing, and live into “surpassing the ordinary” and we will no longer be “subject to” the societal norms that have made injustice so prevalent, that continue to reward retribution rather than justice, that cause unsuspecting people to believe that lies are truth, that evil is good, that wrong is right, “greed is good”, and autocracy is freedom! OY, how the mighty United States has fallen!
The relationship between one another has to have God in it, as we have seen throughout history-otherwise we have transactional experiences where today you are my ‘friend’, my ‘ally’ and tomorrow I have to kill you, destroy you. Today I will use you to get ahead and tomorrow I will forget the debt I owe you. This is the breeding ground of injustice, this is the breeding ground of a ‘rugged individual’ type society that teaches I gotta get mine and if screwing you over is the path-oh well! It is the breeding ground of forgetting those who have saved my life. The Chafetz Chaim, an authority on LaShon Hara, evil speech, says: “if a person doesn’t recognize the kindness of his fellow, how will he recognize the kindness of the Creator”, Rambam says: a person should not be cruel and ungrateful…but must remember the good that others have done for them and speak of it”. Today, we see over and over again a lack of gratitude, a disdain for those who have helped us “climb the ladder”, and the practice of injustice has become so normal that some of We the People have become unable to discern truth from lies, justice from injustice and become blind to the divine image in every human being and the stake that God has in justice being delivered, that God has in the act of being just and true. We the People are being called to REBEL towards Justice, Truth, Kindness, Compassion, and Love and until we do, the injustices we are witnessing will continue to grow and grow and, even those who believe they are ‘protected’ by ‘their people’ will come to find themselves either in the Gulag, the torture chamber or the plantation.
SHEMA is the key action, mitzvah for me in living well. I have to “hear, listen, and understand” the wrestling, boxing match that goes on inside of me is to help me obtain the truth of what is just and right for this moment, for this experience-remembering that the experience is the answer and I have to find the right question for this experience in this moment. I am constantly being called to hear, listen and understand what someone else is saying, especially those close to me. I am constantly having to listen, hear and understand what my inner life is saying. It is hard, it is work and it is never easy nor clear/clean. My inner life is messy and disorganized, it is loud and forceful, I don’t know any other way-I just can’t “sit idly by the blood of my neighbor”, I cannot watch quietly the “perversion of justice” nor can I watch demurely the shitting up of the Temples, the Churches, the Mosques that is happening by those ‘good jewish, christian, muslim nationalists’. I know that the demand for justice that I hear and experience is way beyond anything this world knows, I am aware that the burden of “justice” puts upon you and me AND I welcome this charge because the burden of injustice, the burden of lies and the burden of ingratitude is so much heavier to carry and we all have to ‘pay the piper’ at some point. God Bless and stay safe,Rabbi Mark