Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 132
“What we face is a human emergency. It will require much devotion, wisdom, and divine grace to eliminate that massive sense of inferiority, the creeping bitterness. It will require a high quality of imaginative sympathy, sustained cooperation both in thought and in action, by individuals as well as by institutions, to weed out memories of frustration, roots of resentment.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 96)
Continuing from yesterday’s blog, experiencing these turbulent times, realizing that the anger/rage at how the most vulnerable are being treated in “the land of the free and the home of the Brave” is one way of using the “devotion, wisdom and divine grace” to rid oneself of “that massive sense of inferiority, the creeping bitterness”, it is not time to be in the solution.
We are living in a moment where “memories of frustration, roots of resentment” are in control and running the show. President Trump promised a retribution presidency and he is following through on his promise. The Project 2025 people promised to end their “frustration” at not ‘being kings’, their “resentment” towards people of color, those of religious affiliations that are not ‘christian nationalism’, ‘prosperity gospels’, and those dreaded LGBTQ+ people who are ‘poisoning our youth’! And both were elected to run the country, to deny our alliances that support freedom for all, that denigrate people who follow the words and deeds of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, all the while proclaiming their ‘deep religious fervor’. In other words, we are under the thumb of some of the biggest PAGANS the world has seen, the people of antiquity had nothing on these IDOLATORS, these PAGANS, these Blasphemers. Listening to Trump denigrate Zelensky while extolling Putin is like listening to Lindbergh, Father Coughlin, the German American Bund! Watching him accept gifts from Qatar, make deals with MBS, both sponsors/friends with Hamas, Bin Laden, (remember most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis), and just so we know completely where Trump the Chump is at, he extols the new leader of Syria-who killed AMERICANS!
What surfaces from these behaviors is, besides treasonous behavior that he wants Congress to make not a crime in his “big, beautiful bill” that will ruin the lives of millions of Americans while helping the 1%, how much “frustrations” and “resentments”, when allowed, to rule will destroy the freedom that has lasted almost 250 years. When Putin, MBS, Orban are called heroic and “strong, good looking” we are in a crisis of our own making that could tip us over from a fragile democracy to an evil autocracy with the ‘christian nationalist’ haters being in charge, using Trump the Chump as a frontman. Since the Civil War, since the 14th Amendment, ‘the south’ has wanted to make Black people slaves again, since around the same time, ‘the north’ has wanted to make “no Irish need apply” universal to all immigrants,(even though they were immigrants or descendants of same), and Trump the Chump is the vehicle for these frustrations of 165 years are being worked out on the masses of Americans who just want to get along with one another, who just want to find ways to “love the stranger” as we are taught throughout the Bible, who believe in “love your neighbor as yourself” from Leviticus Chapter 19, who believe in the principles of the Bible, the love Jesus showed the poor and the weak. The Bible has no place in the governing nor in the living of these PAGANS and their mendacity in using the Bible, in using Jesus’s name to shade their idolatry may be the most vile of all. Be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian they are engaging in the ways of Avodah Zarah, idol worship and Hillul HaShem, Desecration of God’s Name!
We the People must respond to this “Human Emergency” immediately, forcefully, and with “imaginative sympathy, sustained cooperation both in thought and action”! There is no time to waste, We the People have to take to the streets, we have to find ways to stage our own individual and united Boston Tea Party in our neighborhoods, in our cities, in our States, in Washington DC. To have “imaginative sympathy” is not to condone nor appease these PAGANS, these wannabe autocrats; it is to realize they suffer from a Soul Sickness from which they cannot recover as long as they are in power, as long as Stephen Miller can celebrate doing to immigrants what was done to his Grandparents in Nazi Germany, as long as Vought can lead the charge to harm the poor and the needy, as long as Cain-White can extol a ‘white Jesus’ who is a lion and who denies that “the meek shall inherit the earth” and believes the Sermon on the Mount is a liberal fake. We the People are being called to imagine how sad it is for these sick assholes and take away their power to harm, figure out how to cooperate with one another in ways that sustain one another rather than vie for power and control between progressives and conservatives. We the People are being called to find the solutions to today’s lies and “eliminate…the roots of resentment” that we have towards one another! We the People must remember the senseless hatred between the people of Judea that helped Nebuchadnezzar breach the walls of Jerusalem and destroy the Temple so we don’t make that error. We the People need to join together to take the next right action and follow the Bible’s pathway for being human, for living together, to “welcome the stranger”, to “do justly, love mercy, and walk in the ways of God”. We the People are in desperate times and we have to NOT react in desperate ways, rather We the People can and must live the principles of Decency, Truth, Love, Kindness, Justice, Righteousness and be the example of how to be FREE so that the fence straddlers join our uprising against the “resentments and frustrations” of the PAGANS that threaten our democratic norms.
I have learned, from Dr. Susannah Heschel, how to have rachmones, compassionate pity for these PAGANS. They are pathetic, in need of Divine Pathos, and We the People have to show it to them while rebuking them over and over again as an action of holiness! I do this with myself, I do this another(s). It is humorous how much easier it seems to be for someone to rebuke me than accept a rebuke for themselves. I find the rebuke to be a great statement of faith, someone believes in me so much, they know I can do better than I am in this moment! This is the thrust of T’Shuvah, this is the path to reconciliation, this is a prime example of unconditional love. Knowing where the “roots of resentment” gets me, I do not resent these PAGANS because I can’t go there and be human, rather, I engage in “sustained cooperation” with people and institutions that are built on and dedicated to Truth, Justice, Kindness, etc. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark