Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 297
“Those of us to whom the crimes of the world are mere incidents, and the agony of the poor is one of the many facts of life, may be inclined to describe the God of the prophets as stern, arbitrary, inscrutable, even unaccountable. But the thought of God and indifference to other people’s suffering are mutually exclusive.” ( Thunder in the Soul pg. 39)
Being a member of We the People both as a Jew and an American, as a person of faith and a person in recovery, knowing the spiritual truths of the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Law, the Constitution, the thought of “indifference” by God, by me makes my soul tremble, my body shudder, and my entire being scream out at this lie. Throughout the Bible, the very essence of both theDeclaration of Independence and the Constitution the knowing of God’s caring about the suffering of the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan is abundantly clear!
So WTF, PEOPLE, what in the world is the basis for the cruelty, the meanness, the inflicting of suffering on ‘those’ people that is so rampant today? How does anyone explain away the attacks on Maduro as a leader of a drug cartel while PARDONING the Ex-Honduran President who was responsible for 500 million pounds of Cocaine coming into the U.S? How does one reconcile the treatment of women, calling them stupid, ‘piggy’, ‘low IQ’, etc when ‘christian’ values say that respect for women is so important, when Mike Pence consults ‘mother’ on everything and then these ‘fine christian men’ treat women with such disrespect.
In what world is a ClergyPerson who spouts hatred for their perceived ‘enemy’ and a ‘kill them all’ attitude going against so many commands in the Bible, hailed as a ‘man/woman’ of God- WHAT GOD are “THEY” talking about? Certainly not Adonai, certainly not God at Sinai who begins the explanation of the 10 sayings by detailing how to live with one another, how to be kind, decent, with and towards one another, the consequences when one isn’t and to “treat the stranger well because you were strangers in the land of EGYPT”! Everyone who lives here, with the exception of Native Americans, are/were strangers and the treatment of immigrants/strangers is abominable, it is Anti-Christian, it is Anti-Jewish and Clergy, people of both of these faiths are leading the parade to cause the stranger in our midst more “suffering” and calling it GODLY! OY!
This is, I believe, the main reason people leave religious life, why the Synagogue and the Church lose members, why the teachings of Christ, of Moses, are ignored: because young people smell and detect bullshit and lies, mendacity and deceptions in the Clergy, in the so-called leaders of the institutions, and reject the lies, reject the cruelty. In this way, they are closer to God as the prophets experience God than the supposed ‘people of God’, the clergy who believe and justify cruelty, suffering, because ‘those’ people deserve it. Miller, Noem, Trump, Vance, Kushner: HOW IN THE HELL CAN YOU CONTINUE TO CAUSE THIS SUFFERING WHEN YOUR PEOPLE, YOUR ANCESTORS WERE STRANGERS, WERE PIMPS, WERE PERSECUTED? I am aghast at the actions that these elected and, mostly, non-elected officials are taking. It is a joke that the worst crimes being committed today are by the un-elected officials who are heading up different parts of the government supposedly run by THE SLEEPY DON, not the strong DON, not the smart DON, the SLEEPY DON who makes Joe Biden look virile and strong, with it and on top of everything!
God does not inflict suffering upon people! When the consequences of human behaviors are delineated in the Bible, by the prophets, it is not God’s choice to see the suffering people cause themselves and one another. God cries each night, according to the Talmud, because “my children are in exile”, while the prophets remind us over and over again that God wants our return, each day in the daily prayers, 3 times a day, we refer to God as “the One who desires our return”!
God doesn’t punish us, no matter what the Rabbi, Priest, Minister, Imam may lie to us about, no matter what our parents may have spewed to us. God gives us the path to wholeness, to peace, to creating a holy, kind, loving society and We the People choose to fuck it up, to become jealous, envious as Cain was towards Abel and, like Cain we seek to kill our brothers, literally and/or figuratively. Be it actual blood relatives or another human being of any gender. WE THE PEOPLE MUST STOP THE LIES, STOP THE BLEEDING AND STOP SAYING IT IS ‘god’s’ WILL. The God that these mendacious deceiving creeps portray is another IDOL, like BAAL in the Bible-these ‘good christian, jewish, muslim, folk’ are the Money-Changers in the Temple that Christ railed about, the whores that Hosea speaks about and for this carnage to end, WE THE PEOPLE must act NOW!
I am writing a new book, using the prophets and God’s call through them to help us live in this moment, in every moment. I know that God and “indifference to other people’s suffering are mutually exclusive” because I have been the beneficiary of God’s love, direction, connection for the past 38+ years, since I began my return. II continue to write this blog to help all of us gather the strength to serve God, to serve one another, to serve the call of our souls by STANDING UP AGAINST CRUELTY, CALLING CRUELTY WHAT IT IS: IDOLATRY and serving God by eliminating or at least diminishing the suffering around us. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark