Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 130
“Surrender to despair is surrender to evil. It is important to feel anxiety, it is sinful to wallow in despair. What we need is a total mobilization of heart, intelligence, and wealth for the purpose of love and justice. God is in search of man, waiting, hoping for man to do His will.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.96)
The first sentence above is pretty strong and definite, there is no room for questioning what Rabbi Heschel is saying and many people will find it offensive and a denial of their experience. Yet, is there anything untrue about the first sentence? Despair means “down from hope” in the Latin and the definition used is “the complete loss or absence of hope”. If one is completely without hope, living so far down from any semblance of awareness of the miracles that abound, rejecting the outstretched hand and strength of another human being and of the spiritual force of the universe, isn’t that a “surrender to evil”? This is not a statement about an individual, it is not a pejorative against someone who is in despair, it is a truthful description of what total despair is, which doesn’t mean one cannot come back from it, just knowing the respective paths is important. Also, most people who suffer from despair seek help and want to raise themselves up so they already have some hope in order to seek help. This is not “surrender to despair”. The people who sat at home and wrung their hands while Ukraine was invaded, the people who hide their heads in the sand while Trump and his gang rape the country and applaud these PAGANS, these are people who have surrendered to despair, these are the people who have surrendered to evil because they do nothing to stop these grifters, they only moan and groan, yell and scream at the TV, they don’t donate to the causes fighting evil, they don’t march in the protests, they just give in and give up-this is surrender to evil and We the People must fight against this, we must infuse hope into the people who “wallow in despair” rather than “feel the anxiety” of the moment. Knowing how many people have surrendered to despair and were found to “surrender to evil” We the People have a clear choice in front of us-“feel anxiety” and fight the fight or “wallow in despair” and “surrender to evil” finding ourselves killing babies and women just because Herr Fuhrer tells us to!
We are in a time where the “total mobilization of heart, intelligence, and wealth” has been “for the purpose” of hatred, injustice, more wealth for the wealthy, and hatred towards anyone not ‘on our side’, and even, as we will see, for some of those ‘on our side’. Trump’s snub of Netanyahu is a clue for the Jews who support him and they will do nothing except explain him away because they are making MONEY with his insane tariffs etc. The cuts in Medicaid and other programs that the poorer MAGA crowd depends on will soon be apparent to them and, they will blame the libs, just like the people in Churches who call out their Pastors, Ministers, Priests, Rabbis for quoting the words of Jesus, of Torah, which sound like ‘weaklings talking’ not realizing the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels of Jesus give voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. God rails about injustice and no love, prophesies what will happen to a people who become so callous they let the most “underprivileged” suffer, they want people to “surrender to despair, surrender to evil”. The ending is never good, we will eat our own, we will destroy everything good, we will forsake the foundations of faith, of community, of truth, of justice found throughout the Bible, and we will be overtaken by our enemies. Yet, people still “surrender to despair” and people still are drawn to the PAGANS in the White House, the Grifters in our Congress, and the Haters in our streets. Hence, “surrender to despair is surrender to evil” because with hope We the People, will not allow the takeover, will “have a total mobilization of heart, Intelligence, and wealth for the purpose of love and justice”.
This is the challenge we are facing, it is the challenge every generation, every era faces, and how we respond will resonate for a long time. In the late 1930’s America figured out a way to help Britain and Europe, in the 40’s we fought the Germans and Japanese, since then we have promoted democracy throughout the world, not always well, sometimes foolishly supporting dictators, etc. and we never lost hope, we never went against, totally, the principles of “love and justice”. We the People are facing the moment when the elected officials are perverting justice, engaging in fucking rather than loving, and We the People cannot stand idly by the blood of our constitution, the blood of our free society! The call to arms is been/being sounded, be it by phone calls, postcards, donations, showing up at rallies, voting, voting, voting, demanding of the Democrats to stop their extremist bullshit, and get back to being a party that cares about the working person-which is most of us, cares about the principles of “freedom for all” rather than just for their ‘progressive groups agenda’. Stop making the wealthy the enemy, the ‘bad guy’ because this is what got Trump elected! We the People have to demand the Democrats tell us what they are FOR, not what they are against. What do they Stand For, what principles have they made a Covenant with. What can We the People trust them to do? Absent these commitments, We the People have to make a 3rd Party that includes center-right, center-left and centrists so we can see the entire picture without “despair”, we can engage all of our resources; material, mental, spiritual, to find the best solutions for the myriad of challenges we face each and every day. This is living into the promise of America, this is living into the words of our Declaration of Independence, this is how we live into the Constitution and this is how We the People promote love and justice.
I surrendered to evil in my teens because I was in such despair over the loss of my father. I didn’t realize the depth of despair I was in until much later in life and my recovery is about not falling back into despair again. I see how it can creep in and I keep mobilizing all my resources, especially my spiritual resources to not give into the despair around me and within me. It works most of the time, when I feel myself waning in this daily encounter, I start yelling in frustration because of my fear of where despair take me/us. I have been blessed to be with people who continually join with me and we have a “total mobilization of heart, intelligence, and wealth for the purpose of love and justice”. I also have mobilized everything to help another person experience the love, dignity and uniqueness that is them, help them find and live their purpose, so we all can be better human beings. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark