Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 148
“The concern for the Negro must be an explicit tenet of our creeds. He who offends a Negro, whether as a landowner or employer, whenever as a waiter or salesgirl, is guilty of offending the majesty of God. No minister or layman has a right to question the principle that reverence for God is shown in reverence for man, that the fear we must feel lest we hurt or humiliate a human being be as unconditional as fear of God.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.98)
The events that are unfolding in America with Trump focusing our attention on Los Angeles in a made-up false narrative so he can stop the heat from his fall-out with Elon Musk, so he can stop the negativity around his ‘big, beautiful bill’, and continue to steal and grift, cheat and lie, while he works hard, as did P.T. Barnum, to keep our attention off his mendacity, his indifference, his evil doings is his ‘strength’ and his ‘super-power’. For decades Trump has focused the Press on his bullshit and his double-dealings and they lapped it up, for the past decade We the People are paying the price for this ridiculous behavior by the tabloid press including, of course, Fox UN-News. Than he has the backing of “ministers and laymen” is a blot on all of us. That the same people who go to church and synagogue, mosque and temples supported, and still support these horrific ways of being, antithetical to every spiritual principle of every spiritual discipline is beyond understanding for me. “That the fear we must feel lest we hurt or humiliate a human being be as unconditional as fear of God” is not just Rabbi Heschel’s thoughts, it is the thoughts of Moses, of the Hebrew Bible, of Jesus, of the Gospels, of Mohammed. The issue is, of course, what do we do when the “minister or layman” bastardize the texts and the teachings for their own greed and grift, for their own power and fame? A correlating issue is what do we do when these same “minister or layman” promote “hurt or humiliate a human being” as being done in God’s name!?!
That we are, once again, going through a time when to “hurt and humiliate a human being” is seen as a ‘good thing’, a ‘patriotic duty’, a ‘godly mission’ is horrifying to many of We the People. That it is not horrifying to all of We the People is even more tragic. Yesterday I quoted from Proverbs about giving food and water to our enemy, how can these ‘good christian, jewish, muslim, etc folk’ twist the minds and souls of people to come around to seeing Jesus as a dictator, as an authoritarian? How can they see God and the Hebrew Bible as “vindictive and vengeful”? Because they want the power and prestige, the wealth and fame that comes with ‘being #1’, they want to control and become the modern day’s Pharaoh and his Courtiers, they believe they have the right to rule because of their skin color, their christianity, their superior intellect, their capabilities to do evil at every turn without a care. These Pagans have no “fear of God” because they have violated every one of the 10 Commandments, beginning with the 1st-“thou shalt not have any other gods before me”, by making themselves into gods. Just as the cause of the flood can be traced to “men of renown” taking girls and having sex with them whenever they felt like it, that the flood was caused by the “Hamas”, in Hebrew meaning, “violence”, the plague we are experiencing in America and in Israel can be traced to our spiritual malady, our violating what we know to be true in favor of “retribution”, in favor of “hurt and humiliate a human being”. This is the tragedy we are facing, the plague being mendacity, violating basic spiritual principles, making god over in our image.
We the People must stand up against the Spiritual Rape of human beings, the Spiritual Rape of democratic values, the Spiritual Rape of freedom. Like Pharaoh in the Bible, like the “money-changers in the Temple”, the “minister or layman” that supports what is being done by Trump, Miller, et al, by Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben G’Vir, et al, has decided that they(either these charlatans or the people themselves) are god! We the People have to bring back “that old time religion”, the one of Moses and David, the Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, the Gospels, etc. We the People are being called to order, called to service, called to stand for and with God, to stand for and with those who these “minister or layman” continue to “hurt and humiliate”. We the People have the wherewithal to stop the Spiritual Rapes delineated above-full stop. We the People have the wisdom to know the truth of what the Gospels say, what Moses taught, what the Prophets tried to lead us to: FREEDOM and SERVICE to something greater than ourselves. As Hillel says: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me”-which I understand as a call to know oneself and stand for the principles of decency, kindness, justice, mercy, and love- he goes on to say: “If I am only for myself, what am I”-before we had diagnosis of sociopathy, narcissism, we had Hillel teaching us that I am not human if I don’t care for another human being, if I allow people to be “hurt and humiliate”, I am no better than the people of Judea who ‘caused’ the destruction of the 2nd Temple because of senseless hatred. We the People can and must demand of our elected officials that they stop their “senseless hatred” , their “hurt and humiliate” of people, ‘not like them’ in color, socio-economic status, etc and stop being BOUGHT by the PAGANS of “populism”.
There can be no “fear(awe) of God” when Paganism is allowed to rule. There can be no “fear(awe) of God” when mendacity is the name of the game. I know this because I lived a mendacious life for 20 years. I was afraid to ‘do it right’ because I was afraid of failing, I was afraid to “turn my will over to God” because I had been abandoned by my father’s death. Instead, I turned to the criminal life, the life of ‘getting mine’. It is a terribly hurtful life to those whom I was in contact with. I hurt family, friends, the stranger and everyone in between because I became the embodiment of mendacity, of “being only for myself”. This knowledge still pains me some 38 years after beginning my return, my T’Shuvah. I know Trump, I know Miller, I know Vought, I know Clarence Thomas, I know John Roberts, I know Jared Kushner, because I acted like them when I was “out there” and I also know they, like me, know better and are choosing to be Spiritual Rapists and associate with people like MBS and other Pharaoh-types so they can form their own brotherhood. That We the People are going along with and validating their cruelty, their ‘sinfulness’ is what amazes me. I pray for all of us to have a Spiritual Awakening like I had in a jail cell in 1986 and follow it up with study, spiritual counseling and a commitment to spiritual growth as well as living a life of T’Shuvah, imperfections that get corrected when we become aware. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark