Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 266
“What is an idol? Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not you, is an idol. Faith in God is not simply an afterlife-insurance policy. Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: satanism, blasphemy.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 51)
In this era of religious governing, as Mike Johnson likes to portray his style of government, we find that the “god” being worshipped is as described above. The idea that ‘my god loves me and not you’ is so foreign to the Bible and to Jesus’ words and ways, it boggles my mind how people who can read, understand, think critically buy into the lies, the bigotry, the idolatry of their “god”. Yet, many people seem to be doing this, many people are claiming that Trump and his cruelty, his lack of taking responsibility, his tearing down of sacred spaces to American Democracy, has been sent by their “god”!! WTF!!??!!
The insanity of this moment cannot be lost on We the People. The people who worship their “god”, who are trying to refine “racial and religious bigotry”, are the ones who claim they are being discriminated against because of being white, being christian nationalists, accusing everyone who is not a White Anglo Saxon Christian Nationalist, of the very actions they are taking. Josef Goebbels has NOTHING on Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, JD Vance(or whatever his real name is) et al. When the ways of Goebbels is used to deflect responsibility, when the ways of the Anti-Semites is used to make a ‘common enemy’, when appealing to the lower angels of humanity is the goal, we are deep into the worship of “an idol” and it is time for We the People to realize what is happening, smell the fucking manure that is being shit on us daily and STAND THE FUCK UP!
The Mike Johnsons of our time are reminding their constituents, many of whom are people of true and deep faith, that following them, going along with the harshness and heartache that the policies of Project 2025 will bring to them is so their suffering will ‘be rewarded in heaven’, ‘they will dine with kings in the afterlife’ and other such bullshit. I am so enraged that the conmen, the grifters, the idolators are taking advantage of truly good Christian people who are absolutely believing in the goodness of the people who are lying to them, who are grifting them, who are abusing and enslaving them. This is what idolatry leads to, this is how easy it is to convince people to do the next wrong thing by invoking enough of “god” who loves me and you, but not those people!
We the People find ourselves at another inflection moment, facing another Pharaoh, engaging in a fight for democracy and freedom vis a vis authoritarianism and slavery. It begins and ends with the question: Are you going to worship the “idol” of your choosing or are you going to follow the “way of God” in the Bible? I am not talking about the ways of humans in the Bible necessarily, I am speaking about the ways of Adonai at Mount Sinai and throughout the Bible, God who stresses how to treat the stranger, the widow, the poor, the needy and the poor. God who reminds us in the beginning that we all are created in the Image of the Divine so no race is inherently better than another! God in the Bible who, through the prophets including Moses, reminds us of our need to do justice, to act with righteousness, to do TShuvah because everyone screws up, no one is perfect! This is God who is called by many names, Yud Hey Vav Hey, Adonai, the Ineffable One because there is no description, no name that can encompass all that is God, so We the People let us stop trying, let us stop comparing ‘my god’ to ‘your god’, and join together to learn how to live better with the guidance of the Ineffable One.
In this reoccurring moment of “racial and religious bigotry”, it is imperative for We the People to get off our asses and DO SOMETHING! We the People are being called to live into and up to the souls we are created to be, to live into and up to the call that is reverberating deep inside of all of us to BE FREE, to BE DECENT, to LOVE THE STRANGER, to BE LOVED FOR WHO WE ARE, TO LOVE OURSELVES SO WE CAN LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS! This is the angst that causes us to lash out, our knowing what we need to do to feed our souls, to repay the debt we owe to those entities and people who have helped us reach the place we are, and our rational egotistic denial of a debt, our rational and egotistical comparative nature which causes us to hate our neighbors, blame the stranger, live a narcissistic life. This is the war of binary thinking versus Both/And thinking, the war between living in Truth and living in mendacity, in living in the societal norms and living in radical amazement. It is the choice in front of us and we make our choice with both our actions and our inactions-which do you choose?
Having been an idolator in my earlier years, because I knew God existed and I ran away which is a subtle form of idolatry-I didn’t deny God, I just ignored the call which was screaming inside of me to do T’Shuvah, to change-I know the pain and sorrow of the slavery I willingly walked into with my eyes wide open and shut. These years of recovery have been a daily slog to keep my eyes open, to make sure that I stay out of the “racial and religious bigotry” that is happening now. I watch in horror the “the satanism and blasphemy” that is passing for faith and I keep screaming, I keep protesting, I keep writing. My fear is that I am not being heard, I am not getting to the people who need to hear this message, that the study of the Prophets is dead and/or being bastardized and my grandson and his age group will not learn the beauty and power that the Biblical Revolution brought about. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark