Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 134
“We must act even when inclination and vested interests would militate against equality. Human self-interest is often our Nemesis! It is the audacity of faith that redeems us. To have faith is to be ahead of one’s normal thoughts, to transcend confused motivations, to lift oneself by one’s bootstraps.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 97)
In the wake of the senseless murders of two young Israeli Embassy workers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, these words are resonating deeper and deeper within me. In a time when idolatry is trying to pass itself off as ‘faith and once again being used as a reason for hatred, as a “weapon of mass destruction”, the only response has to be for people of “faith” to stand up, to rise up and say NO to the hatred being spread by the ‘good christian folk’ who want to make Jesus a warrior and a friend of the rich and powerful, rather than the man who hung out with the poor, the outcasts and railed against the very people he is now the ‘hero’ of, say NO to the ‘good jewish folk’ who want to go against the words of Samuel in the Bible who says the land of the Philistines, current day Gaza, is not for Israel to take and who forget that we are told 36 times in the Torah to “love, care for the Stranger because we were Strangers in Egypt, say NO to the ‘good muslim folk’ who say Islam is about killing the infidel rather than seeking peace. We the People are being called today and everyday to stand the fuck up and say NO to these liars, vote/Impeach these autocrats out of office, live the principles of our different faiths rather than go along with the PAGANS who have taken our faiths over and choking the spirit from them!
Yes, I am pissed off about the senseless killing in the name of ‘free Palestine” by someone who probably has no sense of the history of this conflict, nor the intricate issues and agendas surrounding this conflict, nor the arrogance of both sides in rejecting any offers of settlement as well as the pressure put upon both sides by their ‘religious parties’ and their ‘neighbors’. I am also pissed off by the feeding of racism, the promotion of senseless hatred by the ‘religious right’, I am over the moon about the ridiculous slogans of those ‘progressives’ who want to support an authoritarian government, a terrorist organization like Hamas over Israel, a flawed democracy and a democracy nonetheless! Most of all, I am so angry that throughout the years since the Bible was written and codified, We the People have rejected the ways of faith laid out in it, since the New Testament was written, We the People have rejected the ways Jesus lays out how to live in faith. We the People are being called by the words above and the times we are in to “Repent, Repent” as Jonah says to the people of Nineveh who LISTEN and do their T’Shuvah so they can live!
Isn’t it amazing, the people of Nineveh, the most corrupt and indecent people on earth at the time, could hear Jonah, the reluctant prophet, and change their ways but We the People cannot? Isn’t it disgusting that people are using “faith” to uplift their “normal thoughts”, to deepen their “confused motivations” and make them good, right and decent? Isn’t it the height of Avodah Zarah, idolatry, to use faith to put We the People into positions of hatred, greed, racism, confusion rather than engage in “faith’s” true purpose as Rabbi Heschel teaches us above? Yet, none of this makes a difference to so many of We the People! None of the desecration of God’s Name that is taking place in the White House, in the Churches, in the Temples, Mosques across the country bothers a strong minority of people. None of the tearing apart of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Amendments, that is happening seems to bother the Republican Majority in both houses of Congress, doesn’t seem to impact the ‘conservative’ Supreme Court Judges who are in the majority there also. These ‘conservatives’ are doing everything they can to support NOT conserving the principles of our founding documents and they still call themselves ‘conservatives’! What are we missing here?
We the People of authentic faith, who struggle each day to live the principles of our faith one grain of sand better, who know of our “confused motivations” and “normal thoughts” are being called upon to transcend these lower ways of living and live into the call of the Bible, “you shall be a holy nation”, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”, “proclaim freedom…”, and all of the rest. We the People who know that faith is “loyalty to an experience and loyalty to our response”, is really faithfulness to the principles and actions that will change our thinking. We the People who committed to “doing and then understanding” have to stop using our “servant” mind (the rational one Einstein talks about) to make decisions and, instead, use our “gift” mind (the intuitive one Einstein speaks of) to make the decision and the servant one to carry it out. When this happens, the confusion becomes clear, the fog is lifted, the veil is taken off and We the People once again experience the Covenantal Love/Marriage we agreed to at Mount Sinai. This is the ultimate pathway to “lift oneself up by one’s bootstraps” and find the wholeness and holiness that is inherent in each of us, that is our inheritance and then we find our place, we want what we have, and we do not need to compare more compete with anyone else for our place in the world.
We do not need to continue to allow the PAGANS on the right to use senseless hatred to separate us, we do not need to continue to allow the PAGANS on the left to use ‘political correctness’ to separate us. It is truly way past time for We the People to find our commonality, to remember we are ALL CREATED EQUAL, that all of us have “certain unalienable rights.. life, liberty(freedom) and the pursuit of happiness”. For far too long, We the People have engaged in and allowed the denigration of people to be defined as someone else’s ‘pursuit of happiness’ and this too has to stop. No GRIFTS, No PAGANS, No more lies and idolatries is our slogan and We the People have to implement this way of being and demand it of the people around us and the leaders we elected.
It is hard to write this because senseless murders anywhere, under any ‘cause’, are unwarranted and put a tear in the fabric that makes us human. I experience this tear getting larger and wider each day as more and more people believe the PAGANS and bend the knee to TRUMP the CHUMP. I don’t know what will be, I only know I live in T’Shuvah and in faith each day so I don’t contribute a lot to the senseless hatred I see around me. It isn’t easy! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark