Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 138
“Humanity can thrive only when challenged, when called upon to answer new demands, to reach out for new heights. Imagine how smug, complacent, vapid, and foolish we would be, if we had to subsist on prosperity alone. It is for us to understand that religion is not sentimentality, that God is not a patron. Religion is a demand, God is a challenge, speaking to us in the language of human situations.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.97)
Rabbi Heschel’s description of the ways in which haters and their followers behave and the results from same would be humorous if not so true, so repetitive, so happening in this moment! The vapidity, foolishness, smugness of Mike Johnson and the Republicans makes the Democrats like Bernie Sanders, AOC, seem like they are amateurs! That this way of being has ruled our politics for so long is what is sinful, destructive, and the pathway to where we are right now. While Trump, Project 2025’s Heritage Foundation and the rest of the PAGANS in charge right now are definitely guilty, we are all responsible! Remember Rabbi Heschel’s words: “In a free society, some are guilty all are responsible.” We the People have to stop pointing fingers outwardly only, we have to look at the three fingers pointing back at us.
The way Trump and his thugs are using religion, him proclaiming how much he loves god at one of his rallies on Monday, is disgusting and the fact that We the People are not demanding of our religious leadership and institutions they scream from the rooftops that he is a PAGAN, that they are misrepresenting religious behaviors, religious life, religious tenets is unbelievable! Another area of We the People shirking our responsibility to Truth, to Justice, to Mercy, to “walk in God’s Ways”. God, Jesus Christ, Allah is not the Patron Saint of criminality and these ‘god-fearing christians’ like Trump, Cain-White, Bondi, who wear their crosses as a badge are guilty of the crimes of cruelty instead of justice, of imprisoning the stranger rather than loving the stranger, of putting stumbling blocks before the blind, cursing the deaf instead of not doing either. They are guilty of “suspect your neighbor” instead of “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”, they are “false witnesses” each time they open their mouths instead of not being “false witnesses”, they steal at every opportunity, they “covet” anything that someone else has, they whore themselves for money and prestige, and they revel in murdering the souls of as many ‘enemies’ as they can. This is not done in the name of GOD, it is done in the name of greed, of contempt for principles, in the name of Pharaoh. Just as in the 1930’s Germany, we have seen this picture before, what We the People have to realize is; with social media, with their studying of what went wrong with Hitler and his thugs, the Puppeteers behind Project 2025 are smarter, more devious, and better equipped with more hatred, more greed, more power-seeking hubris than at any other time in history. These PAGANS make the Roman Emperors look like punks.
There was a song: “Gimme that old time Religion” and the lyrics say: “It was good for the Hebrew Children, it’s good enough for me…makes me love everybody, it’s good enough for me”. In the Desert, as we are in the last few days before Shavuot and receiving the Torah, (and living in the desert now), We the People, are being reminded, just as there was a demand in the gift of Torah at Mount Sinai, just as there is a demand in our receiving Torah each year, just as the Bible itself is replete with demands to be human, “religion is a demand”! It demands we raise our self up to the standards it sets for us so We the People can live life free from the burdens of slavery, for us “to do T’Zedakah, righteousness/charity, so we can leave the corners of our fields for the poor and the needy to have food and dignity. “God is a challenge” that lives us each day, every moment, nudging our conscience to “do the next right thing”, the prophets were God’s mouthpiece in an attempt to bring to the forefront our guilt in straying from the principles of holiness, the foundational principles of how to live together without hatred, with as little strife as possible, with a sense of obligation and purpose of making our corner of the world a little better. This is what “religion demands”-not the pap of comfort and bullshit, not the idolatry being spewed by these ‘god-fearing christians, jews, muslims’!
We the People have to make a choice: are we going along with the PAGANS, are we going to be smug, complacent, vapid, and, possibly, rich; are we going to hear, heed and live into “religion is a demand”, worship “God is a challenge”? Doing the latter doesn’t negate God’s love for us, in fact it proves how much God does love humanity. Each of the ways delineated in the Torah, that we accepted at Mount Sinai with “we will do and we will understand” the doing comes first, is how to live in the light of spirit, the glow of the “holy spirit” being reflected on the face of the human being we are with, treating them as a precious infinitely worthy and dignified human being. Of course it is easy to misinterpret the Torah for one’s own use and greed, power and whitewashing, because it is “speaking to us in the language of human situations”. Abraham was wrong in not arguing for his son Isaac-no matter how much the commentators try to clean him up. Jacob was wrong in his treatment of Esau, especially when Esau came to welcome him home; Jacob’s guilt was too much for him to accept Esau’s kindness. Judah’s guilt is admitted by him just as David admits his. These “human situations are the key for us to live by-not the clean-ups, not the misinterpretations that empower evil, that give strength to the cruel. We the People are being called to change the trajectory of the United States, of Israel and to promote and “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”!
I have experienced Torah as a path to wholeness since Rabbi Mel Silverman z”l, taught it to me in prison some 38 years ago. I receive Torah each day, seeing something new and bold, understanding it differently and more poignantly. I am enraged at how my colleagues of all faiths are pandering to the newest cruelties, the newest evils of those in power now. In the ways they are acting I hear their denial of the Shoah. While they give lip service to it, they also are coping much of the German playbook; “accuse others of that which you are guilty of”, “weaponizing government to destroy opposition”, etc. I accept the demands and challenges that God and religion give me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark