Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 287
“The style of legal, objective utterance is alien to the prophet. He dwells upon God’s inner motives, not only upon His historical decisions. He discloses a divine pathos, not just a divine judgement. The pages of the prophets are filled with echos of divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation. The God of Israel is never impersonal.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 35)
I have decided to spend another day on this writing of Rabbi Heschel. The words in bold above tell a story that many of We the People never learned, never heard of, never thought relevant to/for our daily lives. The prophets are quoted in snippets, the book of Ecclesiastes is read in full on Sukkot-a book that my friend and teacher, Rabbi Hazan Danny Maseng and I are having a difficult time with because it is Greek writing style and denies the words of the prophets, gives a wink and a nod to the ways that the prophets railed against, much like what is happening now in Churches, Mosques and Synagogues throughout the land and in Israel. What the prophets’ words and actions tell us is that GOD CARES! God is deeply involved in the doings of humanity because, We the People are created in the Image of God, We the People are divine reminders, divine messengers, divine representatives, partners in completing the creation begun oh so many billions of years ago. Yet, we continue to cease and desist from reading and immersing ourselves in “the pages of the prophets”. A lot of this has to do with the power-hungry misogynistic Rabbinic tradition that included Ecclesiastes and did not include The Wisdom of Ben Sira, the book of Judith, the Maccabees, all for their own political benefit, while having the Chutzpah to quote the prophets, often times out of context, to further their goals-not God’s goals, not the goals of the prophets, rather to further their stature, their power, their authority. We have been dealing with the bullshit of people like the “prosperity gospel” clergy for a long, long time and now is the time for We the People to revolt!
The “divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation” that are found in “the pages of the prophets” are meant to move We the People to have the same experience! Of course God loves humanity! This is not a parochial love, it is a love for all of humanity which is found throughout the Bible except where Ezra or whomever edited the Bible decided to become xenophobic and ‘wipe them all out’ bullshit which is antithetical to “love the stranger”, “feed your enemy”, care for the powerless and voiceless, slavery must end, etc. Because We the People are so spiritually immature, because no one goes to the “physician of the soul”, as Maimonidies describes the role of a Rabbi, teacher, We the People continue to live a stunted life, a life of “not substantial” as Kohelet describes. Rather than provide the necessary education to grow and mature the soul of an individual, a community, Clergy have forever wanted to use their ‘superior spirituality’ as a weapon, to keep power and control over the masses, for fear of losing their place, being found out to be full of shit when it comes to: the control they want to exercise, their false/narcissistic readings of the text, their need to make the people in power happy and go along to get along, all of which was happening in the times of the prophets and, eventually, led to the complete destruction of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and the exile of Judea-twice-the last one spanning some 1900 years!
Do We the People care about “divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation”? Only when we can proclaim ‘our god’ always loves me and is disappointed in you (the other) and always shows me mercy and grace while is so indignant towards you (anyone who disagrees with me). “Divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation” is all encompassing not only in “the pages of the prophets” they are all encompassing in the Bible, in prayers, in the soul of each and every one of us. This is, in my opinion, the goal of spirituality; to experience, like the prophets, these 4 aspects of the universe, plus so many more, to live as mature spiritual beings instead of being infantilized by the Clergy we hear, the ‘god’ we worship. While it is wonderful and necessary to have a “personal relationship” with God-this doesn’t mean that God becomes proprietary, there is no ‘my god’ in “the pages of the prophets”, there is no ‘my god’ in the words of the prophets, there is only GOD-hence the Shema prayer, which Jews are to say 3 times a day declares our commitment to being a witness, testifying to the truth that God is ONE, and we are all part of the Oneness since we are created in the Image of God.
This moment, in America, in Israel, in the world calls for a REVOLUTION. The revolutionary document, the principles and ways of being we are REVOLTING TO, are to be found in “the pages of the prophets”. We the People have the duty, the obligation, the authentic need to return to the pages of the Bible, to the words and deeds of Moses and the Israelites, the prophets and King David, the Psalmist and grow the fuck up, mature our souls and BE THE PARTNER WITH GOD WE ARE CREATED TO BE! Yes, it is hard, it is daunting and, like the creation of the world, it this revolution begins with a big bang, a lot of chaos and darkness, and We the People joining with the Spirit of the universe to bring light, order, form to the chaos and find the light in the dark, know the dark that is in the light. IT IS POSSIBLE- Ask anyone in recovery, ask anyone who has had a spiritual awakening, ask yourself. These are the ways I helped people find their souls, grow their spiritual maturity and health, and live lives they are proud of, lives that give back and receive, lives that echo “the pages of the prophets. Will you join us? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark