Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 181
“In the light of the Bible, the good is more than a value; it is a divine concern, a way of God. This is the profound implication of the oneness of God: all deeds are relevant to Him. He is present in all our deeds.” (God in Search of Man pg. 375)
All of our lives most of us seek “oneness”/wholeness. We proclaim, in the Shema prayer, Adonai Ehad, God is One, yet we may not have a true understanding of what “oneness” truly is. Dwelling in this idea of “oneness” presented above by Rabbi Heschel gives us a picture that doesn’t have everyone in sync with one another, doesn’t have all of us locked arm in arm with one another, doesn’t have Am Yisrael Chai as the only chant, it is teaching us that “oneness” with God, with one another comes from adhering to “a divine concern”, to attaching ourselves to “the good” as “a value” above all others. This, of course, flies in the face of both Religious and Governmental leadership for the millennia, since King David’s time, I believe. “The good” as the supreme value, as “a divine concern” places upon all of us the burden, the yoke of caring about what is happening in the world around us and what is happening in our inner world. The “profound implication” of this way of being, that “all deeds are relevant to God”, that “He is present in all our deeds” is overwhelming! Just as God was present in Pharaoh, so too is God present in the evil/wrong deeds we commit, I use evil to signify willful actions and wrong to signify unwitting actions.
If We the People truly want to find “oneness” rather than just being perpetual seekers, we have to begin with making “the good” “a value” above all others. We the People have to end our willful blindness and our lack of spiritual, moral maturity; we have to stop putting the servant(our rational minds) ahead of the gift(our intuitive minds) and live into what we know in our soul, what our kishkas are telling us. Rather than being self-serving and self-seeking, rather than being self-centered, “oneness” calls upon us to be part of something greater than ourselves. “Oneness” requires us to surrender our inflated ego, our need to be right and our ‘political correctness’ and engage in what is right, what is good, what is “a divine concern”, ie being human. Since “all deeds are relevant to Him”, it is time for us to stop saying and acting “it is my life and I can do whatever I want to”. While this is true since we are given free will, it is a lie that belies the gift of free will. Just as with everything we have, free will is a gift, not an entitlement, it is to be used in conjunction with our intuitive mind, in tune with and as a means to “the oneness of God”, not as something that serves our greed, our sense of fascism, our need to be right, our desire to be the power of the universe.
The evil that surrounds us today is a direct result of not heeding Rabbi Heschel’s words which reflect the spiritual truths of the Bible, the call and demand of the prophets, the words and deeds of Jesus in the Gospels, etc. The willful actions of Trump, Vought, Vance, Miller, Netanyahu, the IDF, Smotrich, et al are selfish and self-centered, they do not believe in God of the either Bible, nor do they seek “oneness with God”. They do not even seek “oneness” with one another, ‘how can I use you today to get more for me’ is their only concern. They wrap themselves in the language of holiness, in the language of religious fervor, and they are LYING PAGANS! The ‘clergy’ who support them are the same as the Priests who oversaw the destruction of both Temples, those lying PAGANS who sucked up to power and money rather than serve God, rather than seeking the “oneness with God” that the prophets begged them and the People Israel to do. The assholes in charge now in the U.S.A. and in Israel mistake the fact that “He is present in all our deeds” to mean approval of the evil they perpetrate which, of course, is the exact opposite of what is being said. God being “present in all our deeds” reminds us that we cannot hide, we have within us a voice, a power, a spirit that seeks to help us do the next right thing and find our ways back to decency, to justice, to mercy, to walking humbly with God once again.
We the People have to demand of ourselves first and then our leaders a return to having the same “divine concern” for “the good” that God has. We the People need to reinvigorate our spiritual health and clean out our spiritual arteries so we can find God “in all our deeds” and realize that the deeds of another, especially of leaders, are “relevant to Him” and to US! We the People need to re-attach ourselves to the spiritual force in the universe which changes lives, as President George W. Bush said to a group of us: “God entered my heart and I didn’t have to drink”. When We the People allow God to enter our hearts, when we “circumcise the foreskins of our hearts and stiffen our necks no more”(Deut.10:16), our lives change and so do the lives of the people around us and around the globe. When We the People make a decision to be part of the “oneness of God”, we fulfill the Shema prayer and our lives are never the same nor are we at ‘peace’ because the injustices, the lack of mercy and kindness, the bastardization of “the good” by both evil doers and wrong doers makes us walk the floors at night. This is the way of the prophets, this is the way of God crying out each night “my children are in exile” and this is the way to making “the good” the supreme value for all.
I knew God was present in my evil and wrongs, today’s teaching solidifies this truth and explains why I could never commit fully to evil and how I kept getting caught! I could not ‘kill’ God being “present in all my deeds” and this is what saved me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark