Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 304
“The fear you must feel of offending or hurting a human being must be as ultimate as your fear of God. An act of violence is an act of desecration. To be arrogant toward man is to be blasphemous toward God….” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 42-43)
I have been writing on Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and teachings for 3 years and 303 days and I understand why people think he is too dense, too terse, to really immerse oneself in, why it is just better to use sound bites. It is hard to deal with the truth and reality that Rabbi Heschel teaches and he lived. Not perfectly, of course, and always striving to live into the ways of God, the words of the prophets and the wisdom of the sages. Today’s quote has me churning inside because of the subtlety of what is being said. “Offending or hurting a human being” is not a subjective phrase as I am reading it this morning. The root of both words is “to strike against”. “The fear you must feel of ‘striking against’ a human being must be as ultimate as your fear of (striking against) God” is another way of understanding the first sentence above.
Using this understanding, when we sit idly by and do nothing while people are killed because of senseless hatred, because of ‘individual rights’, because of a bastardization of the 2nd Amendment, because our elected officials are too afraid of saving our children at the expense of losing donations, We the People are guilty of “offending or hurting a human being”. When we buy into any type of hatred, prejudice against a group of people because of their skin color, their faith, their sexual orientation, when blowing up supposed drug running boats is cheered, when Hispanics are targeted in ICE raids and not white people who are here ‘illegally’, We the People are guilty of, as Amos says: “despising the Torah of God”. When we forget that each person is a divine reminder, each human being, no matter what they believe or what action they may be taking, is created in the “likeness and image of God”, and treat one another less than, enslave people for our own entertainment, forget the commandments, the social ordinances, curse the deaf and put stumbling blocks before the blind, We the People are guilty of having no respect, no fear/awe of God, our spiritual corpus colosseum is broken and we are in need of spiritual healing, we have to see a “physician of the Soul” to heal our separation from the divine, our separation from the covenant, our separation from our humanity and from another(s) human being.
Yet, we are not doing this, we are insisting that God wants us to act this way-just ask the prosperity gospel people. We are proclaiming “it is written” that we should indiscriminately kill people in the West Bank, that we are not to dwell with the lion and the lamb together, that we are to ‘hate the Egyptians” even though the Torah forbids this, that we are to abuse the stranger even though the Torah tells us 36 times to love the stranger, that we are to support theft of property, theft of money, bribery of elected officials, grift by elected officials, etc even though the Torah, the Constitution say otherwise. We the People have drifted so far away from the opening sentence above and keep putting blinders on so we don’t have to see nor be responsible for the “offending and hurting of a human being” that we are engaged in, so we don’t have to see, admit, be responsible, change our ways for the ways we have been “offending and hurting….God”! Each day I wonder to myself WTF, is written on a Coffee Cup we have. I would say the ways We the People keep “offending and hurting a human being” and by extension God, is a WHAT THE FUCK, people!! It is not too hard to see the strikes we the people are co-responsible for, and unlike Rabbi Heschel, we seem to be able to pray, to sleep well, to laugh, to continue on as if everything is exactly as it should be, with the White Supremacists, the White Christian Nationalists (men only of course) in charge.
How is this possible, I ask myself and I respond to myself; it is the same spiritual crisis and malady as any addiction, any immersion in self-deception and mendacity. We the People must wake up and realize any hatred is senseless and dangerous. We the People must stand up and do the T’Shuvah necessary to bring about a change in our actions and then our thinking, realizing We are not the end all/be all and the person next to us is as precious as we are, the person next to us is in need of spiritual healing just like we are.
I am being forceful/bolding my words because I watch people accept pap as spirituality, I listen as people speak with such enthrallment at what an empty suit says from the pulpit, I experience people proclaiming their faith in God while following a hateful, spiteful Rabbi, Priest, Minister, Imam and I AM SICKENED! I know that I have offended and hurt people and each time I learn, I grow, I make my amends and I move forward. I am accused of hurting and offending people because I say things they don’t want to hear, I also say things in ways that people feel are ‘not proper’, ‘not becoming a Rabbi’ and this is not the same as the “offending and hurting” that Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. I experience the consequences of my behavior, I accept the disdain and the exile that is sent my way by people I have helped and who feel that I have offended and hurt them. I continue to offer spiritual counseling to those who want, I continue to grow along spiritual lines, I continue to seek spiritual progress, I jettison the call for me to be spiritually perfect or spiritually whole as unattainable and the pursuit will only leave me emptier. I pray we all find the spiritual healing we need and change the world to love the Torah of God as Amos would want. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark