Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 143
“The greatest heresy is despair, despair of men’s power for goodness, men’s power for love. It is not enough to exhort the Government. What we must do is set an example, not merely to acknowledge the Negro but to welcome him, not grudgingly but joyously, to take delight in enabling him to enjoy what is due him. We are all Pharaohs or slaves of Pharaoh. It is sad to be a slave of Pharaoh. It is horrible to be a Pharaoh. (Insecurity of Freedom pg.98)
At the first reading of the words in bold above, one could easily argue that Rabbi Heschel is seeing the world through a black/white lens, an either/or way of living rather than the both/and that most of his writings embody. Yet, immersing myself in the words, knowing his history in Poland, Germany, I realize he is reminding all of us of our power, of our inclination, of our sinfulness towards, in his time, Blacks, in our time everyone who isn’t a ‘good old boy/girl, aka a good white christian’. The anti-semitism on the left that is being exploited by the anti-semites on the right is overwhelming and, a money-making machine. The anti-muslim on the right is countered by a whitewashing of what happened on Oct.7th, 2023 and a call for annihilating the State of Israel. The anti-Catholic rhetoric of the current administration is only surpassed by their bastardization of Jesus’ teachings and ways.
These words are not accusations as much as descriptors, there are many among us who have hardened their hearts to the plight of the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow and the orphan. They are so excited to make those of us “not in the club” of the super-rich their slaves and their minions. Isn’t this what we are seeing happening right before our eyes with Trump and his ‘big beautiful bill’? I believe that Trump and his sycophants like Mike Johnson who claim to ‘love Jesus’, live in some kind of world that sees cruelty as holy, good as bad, harming the poor as following Jesus’ ways, and everything they do will bring about the Messiah-Oh Yeah, Trump is the Messiah for Johnson and the Republicans in Congress and the MAGA in the street. Is there a better example of Pharaoh than Joni Ernst and her callousness to her own constituents when she said, “we are all going to die” and then follows it up with her “tooth fairy” comment ending with a call for people to “accept Jesus as your lord and savior”! The hardheartedness of Ernst is pretty unbelievable, especially as a Senator for her entire State, a veteran, a woman- just goes to show us how correct the sentences above are.
We the People however cannot blame “them” for the situation we find ourselves in. Just as in Egypt when the Israelites were more numerous and mighty than the Egyptians and they fell for the oki-doke of Pharaoh, We the People willingly elected Donald J Trump to a first and then a second term, We the People chose to be under the thumb of a person who told us he would be a Pharaoh, We the People chose to allow a person who promised retribution and chaos back into power and We the People chose to be “slaves of Pharaoh”. This is a reality We the People also have to face. While many of us can go on and on about whom we voted for, enough of us who believe in democracy, who believe in “man’s power for goodness, men’s power for love”, did not show up and vote. So We the People are stuck with the Pharaoh of our choosing and stuck being his slaves! The worst thing about this predicament is that for many of us, we will not experience personal enslavement, personal fallout from the ‘big, beautiful bill’, so we can easily ignore the effects of Trump being Pharaoh and Miller being his Goebbels, with Lutnick being his Goring, and Loomer his Eichmann, Wytkoff his Ribbentrop- of course I am mentioning all the Jews who bow down, kiss his ass and fuck everyone else for the “Sake of the Pharaoh”. There are many others like Bannon being his Borman, RFK Jr. his Mengele, etc.
The sadness we must experience because of our being “slaves to Pharaoh” is not to defeat us, rather we must have this experience so we can taste the bitterness of our complicity in our own demise. We must, as we do each year at the Passover Seder, not allow the memory of the bitterness of being a “slave to Pharaoh” to diminish, hence 3times a day we remember “leaving Egypt”. Three times a day we remember our commitment to love God with everything we have which necessitates NOT loving the Pharaoh! Yet, even these reminders have not kept We the People out of slavery, out from under the thumb of Pharaoh Trump and his Courtiers; Miller, Bannon, Musk, Loomer, Wytkoff, Kushner, Lutnick, Zeldin, etc. That there are Jews who help the Pharaoh is both unbelievable and totally believable-these Jews choose money and power over being Jews, they choose to live OUT OF the teachings of Torah, of the Bible and proclaim their fealty to Israel and against anti-semites while they practice the greatest acts of Anti-Semitism possible-Unwelcoming the Stranger, hating the stranger when we are told to “love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. That these Jews are mini-Pharaohs is despicable, it is horrible and it is indefensible.
I am railing on and on about this because each day I witness more and more Pharaohs surfacing, globally, in our governments-state, local and federal, and in our communities, in our families, in our work places. When people cannot earn a living wage, when they have to have two people in the household working two/three jobs a week to make rent and necessities we are witnessing Egypt. When people impose their “political correctness” upon everyone so no one gets their feelings hurt and they can be on the “progressive side” which is as repressive as the far rights, we are witnessing Egypt and Pharaoh. When we treat each other with disdain and look down upon ‘those people’ from our perch in our exclusive Country Clubs where we can ‘blackball’ someone we don’t like from entering and/or make it so expensive to join that the “riffraff”, that came out of Egypt with the descendants of Jacob and who joined with them to make the Israelite nation, can’t come near them-all the while extolling one another for their ‘charity’ work on behalf of the very people they won’t associate with! If this isn’t a prime example of “it is horrible to be a Pharaoh” then I don’t know what is. We the People have to be aware of the Pharaoh’s on the left as well as those on the right and FIGHT AGAINST BOTH OF THEM! I have been a Pharaoh and I am living my T’Shuvah for this way of being each and every day. I have been a slave to Pharaoh and am acutely aware of the many disguises of Pharaoh, in retrospect of course. I implore all of us to take off our blinders, live into Exodus from Egypt each day and say NO to the PAGAN Pharaoh’s in our lives. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark