Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 218
“If faith were the only standard, the effort of man would be doomed to failure. Indeed, the awareness of the weakness of the heart; the unreliability of human inwardness may perhaps have been one of he reasons that compelled Judaism to take recourse to actions instead of relying upon the inward devotion.” (God in Search of Man pg. 404)
Rabbi Heschel stresses the connection with the Ineffable One and human beings so often that the teaching above may sound counter-intuitive and it isn’t. While prayer, meditation, study were so very important in Rabbi Heschel’s life and work, he knows that none of it means much if one is not involved in the actions of the world. In his interview with Carl Stern, Rabbi Heschel tells us that writing his book on The Prophets caused him to get out of his study and into the world of activism. Prayer, meditation, study showed him how and where to lend his voice-to help the poor, the needy, the voiceless and the powerless, to stand for justice and mercy, truth and kindness. Ergo, in my opinion, the words above reflect a deeper knowing, a personal lesson after the inactions of the the people of the world when Hitler was on the rise and after he took power-until, of course, it affected them!
While many Rabbis and Priests, Ministers and Imams preach ‘faith, faith, faith’; the truth of the first sentence puts faith in its proper place-not as the cure, the end all/be all, rather as a first step. An important one, no doubt, yet as we learn from Samuel1 15:22, “does God delight as much in burnt offerings as in obeying the voice of God?” It is not how much faith we have, it is not accepting the messiah or not, our connection, our well-being is dependent upon the actions we take, the ways we carry out the call of God, not the call of the PAGANS who, like our ancestors who inserted different phrases and stories to promote a human agenda rather than the Godly one of “Moses, our Teacher”. In Deuteronomy, Moses is exhorting the people over and over again because he has “awareness of the weakness of the heart”, he has witnessed it over and over again. The same people who proclaimed “This is my God and I will exalt/praise/follow also whored themselves with idol worship, with senseless hatred, with abusing the widows and orphans, the poor and the stranger. The later is the reason given for the destruction of the first Temple and the former the reason for the destruction of the 2nd Temple. We are not asked to take a “leap of faith”, as Jews we are called to “take a leap of action” as Rabbi Heschel teaches.
Rather than teach our children how to revere, how to appreciate, how to make sense of the inner war that we all wage, society gives a regimented way of being, society has its own ’10 sayings’ and the punishment for not being ‘politically correct’ on either side of the spectrum, is banishment, scorn, maybe even imprisonment in ‘Camps’ as Germany did, as America did in WWII, and as we are doing today! Have we learned nothing? Are We the People going to continue to allow our children’s inner life to stay chaotic, to remain empty, vapid? Are We the People really going to stay unaware of our intuitive minds, of our soul’s calling, of our ikigai, our purpose so we can make a living, stay in the good graces of ‘der fuhrer’? How sad and how anti-American, anti-Spiritual and anti-Jewish!
The Rabbis who back up Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, et al, are charlatans, they are going against every precept in Torah, they are denying the ability and the command of “righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue”, they are denying the command to “love the stranger” which is said 36 times in Torah. What is even worse about what some Rabbis are doing today in the name of “Am Yisrael Chai”, the Jewish People Live”, is that it goes against the dictates of the very Rabbis they venerate, the ones they quote in half-measures, in “midrashic moves” to prove their ‘rightness’. They go against the concept and precept above: “one should always do the good”. They are participating in and promoting the evil of hating the stranger, the despicable action of putting stumbling blocks in front of the blind and cursing the deaf”. We the People are committing, promoting, and condoning these evil doers when We the People fail to Rebuke our neighbor and bearing guilt because of them. The same is true for Clergy of all faiths, they are relying on “faith” and not recognizing the limitations of it and the need to act.
I am thinking about Rabbi Heschel’s teaching: “In a free society, some are guilty and all are responsible”. While it is easy to blame Trump, etc for where we are in America, and to blame Netanyahu, and his thugs for what has happened to Israel, it is more important, in this month of Elul, how I put these people in power, etc. I am responsible and this responsibility is unbearable, it is overwhelming at times and I CAN DO SOMETHING! The beauty of being guilty is that TSHUVAH is available to get rid of the guilt, TSHUVAH is the gift of repentance, return and new responses, it gives us redemption, repair, and hope/change. TSHUVAH is an action, not a prayer, not a meditation, an action that each and every human being is commanded to take, yet most of us don’t. It is hard to be responsible, it is hard to admit our guilt, it is harder to not be responsible and to not admit our guilt, I have found. I know the ‘ruff and stuff’ of blaming another, claiming innocence and what it does to another human being’s sense of dignity and worth, I also know how it continues to take bites and chunks out of my soul and I will not do this to me nor to you anymore. I am doing my Elul work and finding a greater field of vision, a greater capacity for compassion and forgiveness, a deeper love of self, Harriet, Heather, family, friends, and humanity. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark