Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 269
“The prophet is a person who suffers the harms done to others…All prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53)
Rabbi Heschel’s words above remind us that God’s relationship with humanity is personal. It is not ethereal, it is not too far away, it is not about reward and punishment, it is all about connection. When human beings engage in evil, when human beings harm another human being, especially for sport, God ‘suffers’. What is more important, to me as I immerse myself in the words above: We the People, being descendants of the prophets, need to “suffer the harms done to others” and we are not! This is the tragedy of our time, of every era where cruelty and power went unchecked, unchallenged, whenever slavery was seen as good, and serving the power structure was more important than serving God, serving Truth, serving Kindness.
Throughout the Bible, we learn that “God is not indifferent to evil”, what we have failed to put into practice is the command to We the People that We cannot be “indifferent to evil” either since we are divine reminders, fulfilling a divine need, a spiritual being connecting with the spiritual force of the universe. Yet, we continue to give in to the baser parts of our nature, rather than learn from the incident of Cain and Abel, we continue to find reasons to “hate our brother in our heart” going against the commandment in the Holiness Code. Rather than understand the despicable ways Rebecca and Jacob treated Esau, rather than admonish Jacob’s inability to connect with his twin, with his sons, with his wives, even Rachel, we laud Jacob as some kind of hero-when the Bible tells us that he gave up the gift of prophecy when it was needed most, on his deathbed, in order to admonish all of his sons except Joseph and Judah and continue to favor Joseph by giving him the double portion. The Biblical stories point out both the good and the not good in human behavior and We the People are charged with seeing both and doing good! Jacob never made the full transition from con-man to leader, from thief to citizen, from being like Laban to being more like Isaac and this is sad, not something to be celebrated, IMO.
The Bible tells the story of the evil of slavery and then continues to make the Exodus story central to Jewish thinking and, hopefully, in the minds of all people. Our job as Jews is to remind people that the Exodus story comes to announce that SLAVERY, CRUELTY, MENDACITY is EVIL-FULL STOP! Yet, as we see in both Israel and the United States, Jews in power positions both in Government and Business are worshiping at the feet of cruel people, rejoicing in the cruelty done to another, agreeing with the Christian Nationalist Preachers who proclaim God loves cruelty done in the name of KEEPING WHITE PEOPLE IN CHARGE! WTF Bibi, WTF Lutnick, WTF Kushner, WTF We the People?!?!?!?
Rabbi Heschel teaches elsewhere that God created humanity in God’s Image so we would be the representatives of goodness, truth, kindness, love, compassion/pathos here on earth. We the People have FAILED miserably. I am using capital letters because I am enraged with the current situation which is reminiscent of other times in history and We the People fail miserably to learn from our previous errors. It is time for We the People to live into the ethical will left to us by the prophets, to live into and act upon their words and deeds, to stop hiding from our souls, from our truths, from the call to action that the Voice from Sinai emanates each day. It is time for We the People to engage with one another as human beings, not as objects to conquer. It is time for We the People to say NO to those who promote cruelty and hatred, racism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia as ways to get people to ‘be on our side, the white race’s side’. The fact that even people of color, even people of the marginalized groups join with the cruelty and hatred people is beyond my comprehension and it shows the depths of our separation from what God demands, what the Bible teaches us, and our rejection of decency, truth, love, kindness as the pillars upon which a good life is built.
Yet, we still have people today who care, who are able to emulate the Pathos of God, who revel in being concerned about the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow and orphan, who demand justice for all, equal justice under the law, who believe that dogma alone will enslave us much like Pharaoh did, and are, like the prophets, affected by what humans do to another human being. This is the call of today’s situation in the world, in our country, in our cities and in our homes. It is time for truth to win out, it is time for compassion to be in the forefront, it is time for We the People to remember that our family history is replete with immigrants who came here legally and illegally to find a better life for themselves and for us. It is time for We the People to end the tyranny of Christian Nationalism, Trumpism, Maga-ism, and every other ism and “Proclaim Freedom throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev 25:10) which is the ultimate goal of God and the prophets!
I cannot believe “how the mighty have fallen” and how so many of us allowed the fall from grace to happen. I look at the numerous warnings given and the ways the warnings of myself and colleagues from all faiths were silenced by “political correctness”, by worrying more about “optics” than truth, by ignoring the calls of the prophets for the call of quiet, of nice, of binary thinking. I am saddened by the current state of affairs and angry that we got here. I have hope that We the People will wake up soon and I will keep reminding us to! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark