Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 319
“What have we done with our power? What have we done to the world? The flood of wretchedness is sweeping away our monstrous conceit. Who is the Lord?” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 61)
These words once again send shudders up my spine and, hopefully, yours as well. “What have we done with our power” is the question that hangs in the air in every moment, every experience. It seems, if the events of this moment are the barometer, that we are using our power to destroy another and build up our own wealth, power, our own Pharaoh-likeness, and make those whom we have designated as ‘enemies’, ie anyone who wants to stop us, anyone who still believes in freedom, government of the people, by the people, for the people, suffer as our slaves.
That this behavior, this abuse of power, this denigration of another human being, the need to make another group our ‘subjects’ is being done by and with the support of Jews is infuriating to me. It is antithetical to everything we know as Jews, everything our founding myth is based on - being brought out of Egypt by “a strong hand and an outstretched arm”! “Like the ways in Egypt where you dwelt, do not do”(Lev.18:3) seems to have escaped Bibi and his boys, Donny and his thugs like Lutnick, Kushner, Wytkoff, Miller, et al.
While I could go on and on for days about this question regarding these supposed pillars of democracy, of freedom for all, and other lies they tell themselves and too many of we the people still believe, I know it is more important to ask each individual “what have you done with your power”? The only reason a Hitler, a Stalin, a Putin, a Ghengis Khan, a Trump could come to power is because of the acquiescence of we the people. It is so hard for most people to realize and use properly our individual power, our ability to choose to do the next right action, to rise above dogma of any and all groups, faiths, politics. Instead, those who feel powerless and ‘go along to get along’, often use their power to abuse anyone and everyone they deem ‘lower’ than them-be it spouses, children, underlings at work, the stranger, the resident alien, the poor, the needy, the blind, the deaf, etc. Hence we are told, in the Holiness Code: “don’t put a stumbling block before the blind”, “don’t curse the deaf” to remind us what it is like to be caught blindsided and fall into a hole that we can’t crawl out of, to be constantly told one thing and then find out something else was meant, all because we have become slaves to ‘the man’!
We the People don’t have to stand for this bullshit anymore! We the People need to do an inventory of our own based on how we have used, abused, forgotten: our personal power; our ability to discern fact from fiction; our enslaving and/or being slaves to mendacity and evil, our indifference/fight against being indifferent to evil; our desecration of and lifting up of God’s name with our actions/inactions; and our treatment of, caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the needy.
Doing our own Chesbon HaNefesh, accounting of our souls, allows us to see where we have hit the mark and where we have missed it, allowing us to build on our success and repair the damage so we can respond to the 2nd question above: “what have we done to the world”-we are fixing it, we are repairing it, we are honoring the dignity of every human being, we are NOT taking over lands and countries based on our whims, our desire for control and power, we are NOT trumping up charges against one dictator while pardoning another who was MUCH worse and truly added 500 million pounds of Cocaine to the US market.
What are we doing “with our power”? Are we the people taking it back from the Millers, the Voughts, the Trumps, the Kushners, the Lutnicks, the Noems, the Bondis, the Hegseths, the Patels? Are we the people using our power to lift up our kids, our neighbors, our schools, our universities to being places of discord and debate, being places of ethics and obligations, are we championing rights and responsibilities as twins? Are we the people making sure the stranger is comforted, that we are NOT doing what was done in Egypt nor what was done in Canaan, as Leviticus tells us? These are some of the questions that these two sentences bring up for me. “WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO THE WORLD” is not just about politics, about nations, it is about how we the people treat another human being, as a likeness of Adonai, or do we not see the individual and only see either a helper in our climb to the top or a barrier to our climb to the top? When our vision is focused on the latter, we enslave, we become Pharaoh, when it is focused on the former, we rise up to our humanness and make the world a little better for having been here. YOUR CHOICE!
I made this choice some 39 years ago and have been recommitting to it each day. It has to be a conscious choice, I have learned because without consciousness of choosing to be committed to the covenant, being responsible for the mitzvot, live into the holiness code, etc, I found it too easy to fool myself, to fall backwards into either the slavery of another or being the Pharaoh to someone else. I am disgusted by these behaviors because I know the harms they bring and this is why I am committed to using my power for good. Each morning, I am grateful to be alive and know that I have to be compassionate and faithful to God, to my commitments. I also know that I have to help someone else ‘come back to life’ so I have dedicated myself to “restoring the lost souls” who come to me and I am grateful and honored to do so. For the people who need to use their power against me-God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark