Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 179
“What is a mitsvah? A prayer in the form of a deed. And to pray is to sense His presence. “In all thy ways though shalt know Him.” Prayer should be part of all our ways. It does not have to be always on lips; it must always be on our minds, in our hearts.” ( God in Search of Man pg. 375)
Rabbi Heschel’s definition of “a mitsvah” above says it all to me. Doing “a mitsvah” cannot be done by rote any more than prayer should be done from memorization and become routine. When people are accosting people in the street to ask “are you Jewish?, did you wrap Tefillin today? Let me wrap it for you”, they are not fulfilling a mitsvah, no matter what you are told, they are fulfilling a check list! They are not sensing “His presence” in what they are doing, they are only showing off their ‘devotion’. The people who are being ‘wrapped’ in Tefillin may think there is something magical/mystical happening and without the experience being a “prayer in the form of a deed”, without the commitment to continue doing it and wrapping the Tefillin in the morning as we are told to do, it is a magic show that denigrates the “mitsvah” and cheapens our tradition.
The same is true in Christianity, in Islam, in Buddhism, when one is promoting and/or looking for a magic show, the essence of the faith, of the spiritual path is lost. Hence, these ‘good christians’ and ‘good jews’ who are promoting and perpetrating great harms against Latinos, Blacks, Jews, and Arabs are FULL OF SHIT! They are not fulfilling “a mitsvah” as they claim; they are not living Christ’s values, teachings, actions as they claim; they are living out their fantasies of power and prestige, money-grabbing and autocracy. They are living in self-deception and spewing out deceptions to We the People so fast and so furious we don’t have time to debunk one because there come in droves, these deceptions. Whether it is in politics or in the street, in the Church or the Synagogue, any time and every time ‘magic’ is used to ‘convince’ people of the primacy of der fuhrer’s position, to ‘convince’ people of the ‘rightness’ of the preacher’s words and ways, we are witnessing and experiencing the opposite of what “a mitsvah” is, the opposite of “a prayer in the form of a deed” and this is the tragedy of our time because most of We the People are unable to discern the difference.
In Judaism there is a prayer for just about everything! In immersing myself in the words above, I realize the Rabbis did this so that “prayer should be part of all our ways”. If we are constantly reciting a prayer upon seeing rainbow, an ugly person, a national park, the Grand Canyon, Old Faithful, upon eating and drinking, then were are really living the V’Ahavta prayer: we are loving God with everything we have, we are speaking of the teachings, the miracles, the mitzvahs while we are walking on our way, we are never forgetting that we are not the end all/be all, and we are constantly affirming our position as beings who are compatible with being a partner of God’s, we are actively seeking and making our corner of the world one grain of sand better each day. Making “prayer” a “part of all our ways” is to take life seriously, to realize our “destiny is to aid and serve” as Rabbi Heschel teaches. It causes We the People to be a little more deliberate in our actions, to be a little more disciplined in our ways of being and a little more aware of what is around us, beauty, holiness, ugliness and unholiness. “Prayer should be part of all our ways” is the antidote to willful blindness and indifference to evil, “indifference to the sublime wonder of living”. We cannot be blind nor indifferent when “prayer” is a “part of all our ways”. Living into this phrase will help us discern the lies from the truths that we tell ourselves and that we hear from the mouths of those ‘good christian folk’, those ‘good jewish men’ etc. This is the antidote to evil and ugly-making “prayer” a “part of all our ways”!
Before you complain, I don’t believe in prayer, look at the last sentence of this quote. “Prayer” is not about saying some words by rote and routinely, “prayer” is about action, it is about doing the next right thing, it is about being engaged in the activities one is doing and participating fully in THiS MOMENT. “Prayer” is not something done with our lips alone, it is an action that consumes our minds and our hearts, it is an action that reminds us of our station in life-infinitely worthy and dignified, equal to all and unique/different from everyone else. “Prayer”, in this sense, gives We the People the vision to see what is ahead, the spiritual sustenance to weather and defeat the fascists in our midst and the Pharaoh that resides within us. “It must always be on our minds, in our hearts” gives each and every one of us the ability to hear the call from Sinai, to respond to the cries of the Jews, Palestinians, the Hispanics, the Blacks, the Asians, etc-every minority that the fascists in charge of our Nation and Israel want to blame for all our troubles, want to discriminate against and want to deport from “the land of the free”! “Prayer” is what makes We the People know we cannot “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor” and, as Ben Franklin taught, hang together or we will hang separately, cause the fascists in charge want to split us so they can divide and conquer. “Prayer” as described above will not allow this to happen!
I do the best I can to live these words each and every day of my recovery. I am loud, abrasive and dedicated to prayer, to the inner wisdom of “a mitsvah” and a better person because of living this way! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark