Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 176
“Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam. The fact that we were given the knowledge of His will is a sign of some ability to cope with evil. The voice is more than a challenge. It is powerful enough to shake the wilderness of the soul, to strip the ego bare, to flash forth His will like fire.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374-5)
I have been thinking about the first sentence forever, in a way, and more specifically since Friday when I first copied it down. What was the failure of Adam? It certainly wasn’t the disobedience because the Garden story is a setup and since the Torah is Eternal Wisdom and Truth, I believe “the failure of Adam” was to hide, to deny, to blame rather than be responsible for his actions. “Sinai” is where there was no hiding, no one was left out, everyone had their own experience there, no two being the same according to the Torah, and everyone felt seen and saw something, everyone believed they were heard and heard something, everyone experienced being invited in and they knew they belonged. Everyone experienced the will of God, their higher/highest consciousness and ‘saw’ the possibilities of living free, living whole, living holy after years of being slaves to Pharaoh and slaves to their own immature inner life. What a gift in the face of the evil of Egypt, in the face of the fear of the unknown: to be known, belonging and supported by one’s ‘tribe’, one’s community, one’s higher power!
I’m hearing Rabbi Heschel remind us of our own power and to use it, our own voices and own them, our knowing of what is right and not right and choosing good, choosing what is right, choosing life!
Our “knowledge of His will is” the beginning. After Sinai we have no excuse for not carrying it out, for not using it to combat the evil that is within us and the evil that surrounds us. When the Minister of Defense of the State of Israel declares that killing a Palestinian in the West Bank is not a terrorist act, that it is ‘okay’, when IDF soldiers murder an entire family who had been guarded by Jewish volunteers the week before so they could pick the olives from their trees, and claim that this is god’s will, we know that Sinai had no effect on them, we know they are the idolators and false prophets Moses warned us about. We know that Anochi is not their God, their god is an idol and they are part of the PAGANS that have taken power across the globe. When we have the second tax cut for the rich at the expense of the poor, at the expense of medicaid, at the expense of so Pepfar the USA is being run by the same fascist cult that lived 100 years ago in Nazi Germany. When masked Latinos are arresting, beating, deporting other Latinos and won’t show their faces for fear of being recognized by their community, we know that Jesus’ words have no effect on them. When Miller, Holman, Cain-White, Bannon, Osteen, Hagee, all agree that Jesus is the LION, that Jesus doesn’t care about justice, mercy, or walking humbly with God, we know that Sinai, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection has no impact on them and the “knowledge of God’s will” is overtaken by the desires of their will, the call of power, cruelty, hatred, prejudice has become their raison d’être!
Yet, there is hope and the hope lies with We the People! Because we all stood at Sinai, according to the Jewish Tradition, and in Parasha Nitzavim, we are told that all of us from the heads of the tribes to the water-carrier stood and were a community at the edge of the Jordan river, we all hear, know, recognize “the voice” and “the voice” “is powerful enough to shake the wilderness of the soul, to strip the ego bare, to flash forth His will like fire.” We the People are being called to once again STAND AT SINAI and once again HEAR THE VOICE so our egos can be stripped bare, so our soul can find its way home to connection and maturity, so His will burns within us like fire and we fully claim our prophetic inheritance. This is the path for us every day, and it is especially important for this to be the path we follow in this moment when the powers that be are more interested in giving into their inner Pharaohs than their inner Moses’. When Netanyahu and Trump can join forces to exile the Palestinians, to think that building concentration camps like the one Bibi has proposed and Alligator Alcatraz Trump has built in Florida, Pharaoh reigns. When they can make the streets of Los Angeles look like the streets of Germany in the 1930’s, when they can kill children at hospitals seeking attention, when they are more concerned with power and staying out of jail, more concerned at never being held responsible for their actions, we are being led by FASCISTS and PAGANS, no matter what halos they put on their heads, no matter what Jewish stars they put on their bodies, no matter what pins they wear depicting the flags of either/both countries. We the People are being called to use “the knowledge of His will” to not just “cope with evil” we are being told we can defeat “evil” and it is up to us to join together as we did at the Red Sea, as we did at Sinai, as we did on the other side of the Jordan River to fight and defeat the evil within us and outside of us.
I ma watching in horror as the two places I always believed would put principles above personalities, would always seek to do the next right thing, would hold anyone accountable for their actions have caved into cravenness so quickly and easily. I know the power of seduction that evil has, I know the power of the rational mind to make evil seem like the good and I know that “Sinai” is the response to the “evil” within us. I have been blessed to have the “voice” “flash forth His will like fire” and, at times, flashed fire at another(s) and been told I am inappropriate. All of the ‘appropriate’ people and ways helped “evil” flourish and it is time for a “Fire” to burn the evil away so we can live in the good. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark