Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 236
“To believe in freedom is to believe in events, namely to maintain that man is able to escape the bonds of the processes in which he is involved and to act in a way not necessitated by antecedent factors. Freedom is the state of going out of the self, an act of spiritual ecstasy, in the original sense of the term.” (God in Search of Man pg 410)
I picked this quote because today is the day before Erev Rosh Hashanah and, in my opinion, Rosh Hashanah is the 6th month mark since Passover-the season of our liberation and is the time to see how fat we have gotten since the lean days of being liberated with only Matzah to eat and then Manna. Now that we have the 10 sayings, now that we have experienced once again the miracle of Mount Sinai, the destruction that Tisha B’Av commemorates, it is time to stand in self-judgement and see where we are in our quest to make our corner of the world a little better. It is time for us to review and discern how we have helped to “bend the arc of the moral universe towards true justice” to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In order to do any of this, we have to be free, we have to be present “in events” and be “able to escape the bonds of the processes” that tend to make us robots, automatons, blind followers, and, eventually, slaves. Slavery is not just being under a taskmaster or a master, it is also the inability to make free-will moral choices, it is the abandoning of what one knows in one’s bones, in one’s guts and either choosing or feeling coerced/forced to choose to go along with the majority in order to make a living, to keep the money they have, the status, to keep from being isolated and lonely. It is such a time we are in right now, I believe, and these words above give me hope for our future, a future where “the Torah shall come from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem…and they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation nor shall men learn war anymore.”(Isaiah 2:3-4). What a wonderful prophetic vision!!
I believe this vision is the guiding light We the People need to face the moment we are in, to “act in a way not necessitated by antecedent factors”, to see what is and not respond as humanity has forever; with fear of rocking the boat because it will get worse, with acceptance that ‘we have lived through this before and it will blow over, with resignation that we are too weak to win this war with the forces arrayed against us, to wait for a redeemer to come from God, for the second coming, or first depending upon one’s beliefs, to save us by destroying everything and other such “antecedent factors”. NO! NOT ANYMORE!!
This Rosh Hashanah, this day of Judgment and Celebration of the creation of the world and of humankind, is the moment to break out of the bonds of societal norms, the moment to end the reliance on the strongman, the worship of the money and class status that gives us closeness to power, the mealy-mouthed compliance of a slave class that believes their money will keep them free, etc. It is precisely this moment of Rosh Hashanah, this moment of judgment and mercy, of fear and awe, this moment where we realize the Judge is internal, it is our soul’s calling to us to SEE, to HEAR, and to UNDERSTAND,(SHEMA) what we have been doing, how it is helping to promote freedom and how it is helping to retard freedom for both ourselves and another(s). This is the experience that this Rosh Hashanah, and every Rosh Hashanah, gifts us with-will We the People avail ourselves of this gift and use it wisely? While we pray in community on Rosh Hashanah, the response to this question is personal and individual, it has to be made by a majority of the community one is in to make it a communal decision to BE FREE. If the majority of the community is not willing to “escape the bonds of processes” We the People need a new Rabbi, Clergy, Board of Directors who want to live into the prophecy of Isaiah, the words and actions the prophets scream, cry, whisper to us in a combination of horror and awe, in consternation and love. The haunting question that hangs over us, especially this year, is: Are We the People willing to do what it takes to be free, to honor the Torah “from Zion” and “God’s word from Jerusalem”?
It will take “the courage to change the things we should” as Reinhold Niebuhr teaches us in the Original Serenity prayer. We the People will gather in our Temples and Synagogues on Erev Rosh Hashanah and on Rosh Hashanah to be together, to begin the 10 days of Awe, the 10 days of TShuvah (repentance, return and response) and allow the prayers to fill us with trembling awe, the words of the Rabbis to fill us with the strength to be free in this moment and in many moments, to not “run after the majority to do evil” and to stand in truth and love to ensure that justice, mercy, kindness ‘win’ the day! This can only happen if and when We the People make a conscious decision to leave the Egypts we are currently in, when We the People be deliberate in our choosing to cross the Red Sea, when We the People believe the words of Isaiah quoted above more than the words of the autocrats, the idolators, the mendacious deceivers who are ‘in charge’ here in America and in Israel. We the People “should” change the ridiculous “anything Israel does is good and right”, the stupidity of “Trump loves the little guy and is our redeemer” and instead, on this day of Judgement and Celebration, look inside of ourselves, see the lies we tell ourselves, seek out truth, wisdom, love, kindness, mercy and justice and rejoice in our ability to rise above our “processes” and connect to the source of all and to our innermost self.
This is my practice each Rosh Hashanah and I find myself being free more and more each day and more days than ever before. Shana Tova U’Metuka, a Good, Sweet Year to all. God bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark