Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 135
“Mere knowledge or belief is too feeble to be a cure of man’s hostility to man, of man’s tendency to fratricide. The only remedy is personal sacrifice: to abandon, to reject what seems dear and even plausible for the sake of the greater truth; to do more than one is ready to understand for the sake of God.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 97)
The first sentence above is the lie that the ‘progressives’ live under. They believe with the ‘right’ knowledge, the ‘right’ belief system, people will stop hating and hurting one another, they erroneously think/believe that the Cain and Abel story is just a myth put into the Bible(which many of them may give lip service to and don’t have a clue as to it’s import nor personal meaning) to control people. The MAGA PAGANS, however, know this first sentence to be true and they have capitalized on it to the ruin of our democratic norms, to the ruin of “let freedom ring”, to the ruin of the very people who support them, the young, the poor, the disenfranchised. To this moment, the PAGANS continue to use the truth of this first sentence while the ‘progressives’ continue to deny its truth-no wonder we are in the state we are in!
We the People have to stand up and SCREAM ENOUGH!! Demanding what is right and good, demanding “freedom to all its inhabitants therein”, demanding to “love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt” are not ‘pie in the sky’ ideas, they are the very foundation of the freedom from bondage the Bible speaks to, the core principles of finding one’s place in the world, recovering one’s passion and living one’s purpose. These demands are the commandments that have made America possible, they are at the core of our historical myth of coming into being, America is made up of immigrants, gang-members, neer-do-wells, and other such “riff-raff”. People, by and large, came here seeking a better future, escaping some autocratic, lunatic monarchy, and they were people of all faiths. Today, we are watching the PAGANS round up the very people their ancestors were and put them in horrific conditions, we are witnessing the BIG LIE aka the Big Beautiful Bill, being shuttled through the Congress and the Republicans are like sheep being led to the slaughter because they are afraid, they are cowards, they are “too feeble to be a cure” for Trump’s “hostility to man”. Trump is a person who has “killed” his brother’s memory, made sure he would not be a ‘nice guy’ like his brother, screwed over his brother’s children re: their inheritance, and people cheer him, people support his racist, xenophobic ramblings and send money to him through crypto, bitcoin, etc. WTF!!
We the People have to engage in “personal sacrifice”. We have to because our lawmakers, our elected officials will not, they will not “reject what seems dear and even plausible for the sake of the greater truth” because their status as Senators, Congresspeople are more important than their souls, than their integrity, than their faith, than democracy, than God-for these ‘find upstanding christian IDOLATORS, for these PAGANS who claim ‘Jesus’ is telling them to screw over all the people he loved, ‘Jesus’ is telling Mike Johnson to cozy up to the money-changers in the White House and fuck over the poor, the widow, the stranger, the leper, etc. While autocrats have always used this type of playbook, the only remedy has been when We the People stand up, march, protest and say NO, NO, NO to these lies. Alexei Navalny was such a person, he knew what would happen when he returned to Russia, and he did anyway because “personal sacrifice” for the “greater truth” was more important to his very existence than his life. This is a man of faith, a man of truth, a man who teaches us how to be human!
We the People are being called upon to do whatever is necessary to protect TRUTH in this age of Trumpism that denies truth, that provides alternative facts with the use of a sharpie, that promotes bleach as a cure/prevention for Covid, that believes it is okay for kids and adults to get Polio, that says who needs True Science, when they have their own storytellers saying it is okay for the US to have measles outbreaks, smallpox again, etc because it will be good for our children! We the People need to demand that TRUTH be spoken and all the lies of Trump, Vance, Miller, Rubio, et al be exposed and they be made to repent, to repeal their acts of “hostility to man”, of their “acts of fratricide”. We the People are being called upon to demand of our elected officials, Democrats and Republicans alike to REPENT their sins of commission and omission, to do REPAIR the damage they have wrought, to CHANGE their paths of mendacity and speak truth to their constituents, their colleagues, to the courts and the President. We the People are being called to demand of the Supreme Court and the entire Judicial system including the DOJ, “Justice/Righteousness, Justice/Righteousness shall you pursue” not personal agendas, not the agendas of your donors, your benefactors. “Bribes blind the eyes of the wise” so the Judicial system has to stop taking the bribes of the parties, of the people, of the wealthy and the powerful. We the People must ‘take to the streets’ and demand these changes right now before it is too late. We the People have to stand for and with the ‘clerks’ that are being fired who have kept us safe, who have made sure the money from FEMA rolls into the places needed, the IRS is secure, the Social Security checks keep coming, the Medicare covenant is sacred, the Medicaid covenant is seen as caring for the poor, the needy, and not as an ‘entitlement’, that the rich pay their fair share, nothing more nor less, like everyone else. We the People have to end our tendency towards hatred, we have to end our pointing of fingers and be the change we want to see.
I had all the knowledge, I knew what was moral and what wasn’t and I was still a drunk and a thief! When God/Spiritual awakening hit me over the head with a 2x4 while sitting in a jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca. is when I first became truly aware of the hostility, the fratricide I had committed and been involved in. It was shocking and disgusting, this is when I began to read Torah as a personal path to wholeness and my desire to live free, to stop being a slave to my inner Pharaoh began. I am grateful to Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, for not laughing at me when I wanted to study, for “getting me” and introducing me to Rabbi Heschel. I have lived these past 38 years taming my “hostility to man” and using this energy to help my fellow human being; I have spent these 38 years in “personal sacrifice”, “to do more than I am ready to understand for the sake of” something greater than myself-another person, God, etc. It is a much better life! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark