Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 219
““The good is carried out in acts, and there is an intense fascination that comes from a good deed counteracting the pressure and ardor of the ego. The ego is redeemed by the absorbing power and the inexorable provocativeness of a just task which we face.” (God in Search of Man pg. 404)
We are a society that, if you are rich and powerful enough, allows people to ‘get away’ with having “good intentions” and bad actions. This is not true for the ‘regular person’, hence Trump’s Jan. 6th tirade, insurrection, his “stolen election” bullshit was rubber-stamped by the Supreme Court! Rather than hold the rich and powerful accountable, depending on if the Republicans are in power or not, rich people will be held accountable by them if they are Democrats-certainly not one of their own. Rather than experience the “intense fascination that comes from a good deed counteracting the pressure and ardor of the ego”, too many people succumb to “the pressure and ardor of the ego” resulting in making the United States of America ripe for an autocratic takeover which is what is happening right now. In Israel, Likud help Olmert responsible and Bibi is untouchable, so far-sounds the same as here in America. WTF?? Have we lost our way so badly, have we bought into the idea that faith alone will redeem us so we don’t have to do the deed??
Rabbi Heschel’s words above deny the idea that faith alone will redeem us-“faith without works is dead” it says in James 2:26! The teaching above comes to take Netanyahu and Trump, Putin and Erdogan to task saying: ‘check your egos, gentlemen’ and do the next right thing-treat the stranger well, love your neighbor, do not hate your kinsman in your heart and we are all kinfolk, etc. The beauty of “a good deed” is that it doesn’t counteract “the pressure and ardor of the ego” and, even more so, it begins to transform “the ardor of the ego” into wanting to more good, be a better human being, just ask anyone in recovery, ask anyone who had a spiritual awakening of any and all kinds, ask good, decent people and they will tell you the good propels them into a different state of being-one that validates their worth, their dignity and opens them up to being loving and able to receive the love of another(s).
“The ego is redeemed by the absorbing power and the inexorable provocativeness of a just task’ is a revolutionary statement, an outrageous statement to many and it is truthful, factual, and the most necessary step in our journey to freedom, to living our spiritual calling, our “acorn” as James Hillman puts it. Redeemed in Hebrew is the same word as “kinfolk” according the the Biblical Dictionary, so we are not denying the need for “ego” in a human being, we are not trying to kill the ego, we are redeeming it because societal pressures, genetics, inner immaturity have made us egomaniacs, focused on “what’s in it for me”, doing deeds that serve us, extolling the evil that is found in every good, bastardizing Holy Texts and Holy actions to the point where they become meaningless. This has to STOP! We the People are being called to “redeem the ego” of our country, of Israel, of the world and we are doing a piss-poor job of responding to the call.
We the People have to have our own ego’s “redeemed by the absorbing power and the inexorable provocativeness of a just task”. To do this, We the People have to take the rest of the month of Elul and the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, 28 days, and do the work necessary to realize the numerous “just tasks” we have engaged in this past year, going through them again so they can “redeem” us, they can tame our ego, put our ego in proper measure to our souls, our spiritual knowing-no longer allowing our egos to override what we know to be true, no longer giving into “scouting after our heart and eyes which makes us whore after them” as the 3rd Paragraph of the Shema teaches us.
“A just task” redeems us by forcing us to be engaged in it, to think about what we are doing, to focus on the act and be transformed by the “provocativeness of a just task” in a society that is interested in power and wealth, lust and greed, lying and mendacity. The people running the government, some of whom are Gay according to an article in the NY Times yesterday, are interested in themselves and their ‘supreme leader’ because the ‘supreme leader’ has the power to cut them off at the knees and they are afraid of him. It is provocative to engage in justice, mercy, kindness, truth, love in a society that rewards “winning at any and all costs”, it is provocative to believe that good redeems the evil within each of us and causes our egos to participate in doing the next right thing rather than the next expedient action. Doing the good not only counteracts the power of the ego, it transforms us from slaves to our desires, our societal pressures, our need to ‘get ahead’ to FREE PEOPLE, doing the good for the sake of the good, doing the good for the sake of being able to live with oneself, doing the good for the sake of spiritual wholeness and doing the good because we are being compelled to. If this isn’t provocative, what is?
Being engaged in this way of being for the past 38 years, doing the work of TShuvah, of Elul, has given me new perspectives each and every year. No longer worrying about “what will the neighbors think”, I only concern myself with “what will God think”. I am not always right and I am able to say when I am not right, I don’t need for people to admit their errors towards me anymore because I feel compassion for their inability to own their errors, their being stuck in ego and unable to experience the “absorbing power” of having their “egos redeemed”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark