Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 5 Day 36
“The prophets are forgotten. No one reades the prophets. They have not touched the mind of America. And this is why such statements come out. What is the greatest concern in the Bible? Injustice to one’s fellow man. What is the greatest dream of the prophets and of the Bible? Peace.” (Continuation of Rabbi Heschel’s intervew with Carl Stern for Eternal Light)
Given the defeat of Viktor Orban, the end of authoritarianism in Hungary, at least for the moment, one can hope that America, Israel will come to their senses and back to their roots. Of course, Hungary is a nascent democracy, remember the Shoe Memorial by the Danube where Hungarians were so eager to kill Jews they didn’t even want to wait for the transports at the end of the war, they shot them in the back of the head and kept their shoes! Israel is also a nascent democracy and both of these countries show us the danger of democracy: it can be used as a weapon by the authoritarian, by the fascist, by the people who have “forgotten” “the prophets”! In America, where we have more experience with democracy, the same is happening; Trump and his minions and handlers are destroying the basic tenets upon which our country was founded: Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to vote, Freedom of Religion, Checks and balances of the SEPARATE branches of Government, etc.
While Trump and his ‘good christian nationalist folks’ continue to invoke the name of Jesus in all they do, We the People of faith like Pope Leo continue to speak out against the lies and the idolatry of these charlatans. We the People like Bishop William Barber continue to support and stand with the poor, the needy, the stranger. The resistance is here, the question is if we are going to have to wait years until Trump and his Gang of Thieves are gone? Or, are We the People going to stand up and throw the bums out right now? I ask the same question of the Israeli people who know that Bibi is killing the principles Israel was founded on, who know that he is a thief and a liar, who know…
Teaching the prophets is imperative for the health of a democracy, without this knowledge, without understanding We the People are the descendants of the prophets, the inheritors of the prophetic spirit, without opening our beings to hear the call from Sinai, the call from the burning bush, the call to wake up, to speak up, to save we the people from our small minds, our ego-driven desires, our hateful, spiteful actions, We the People are doomed to continue to repeat this cycle of freedom, authoritarianism, liberation, freedom, authoritarianism…
NOW is the moment for We the People to be like Hosea and see how we have WHORED ourselves for a pot of gold that is actually coal, how our naked desires and rampant rationalizations have spun a web of deceit that seems impossibel to break free of. NOW is the moment for We the People to be like Jerimiah and call out to one another the power of spirit, the desire of God to “heal our backsliding”, to “take us back in love”. NOW is the moment to hear the call of Isaiah to end our incessant subterfuge of rituals and bastardizations of God’s will and surrender to the spirit within each of us, to appreciate and use the Gift of our intuitve minds rather than worship the mendacity of our rational minds. NOW is the moment for We the People to say NO to the injustices that surround us. NO to the senseless hatred being sprewed and promoted by those ‘fearless leaders’, the wannabe ‘fuhrers’, the whores we the people elected to screw us over! The injustices being practiced in the name of we the people are disgusting, dismantling the fabric of our society, disfiguring the Image of God that is in each of us and deflecting the TRUTH of who We the People can be.
What better day to think, speak, write about this subject than today, Yom HaShoah, the day of remembering the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto and it is a day of mourning. I remember when it was called Warsaw Ghetto day-honoring the uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto which lasted almost a month! When We the People arm ourselves with the words of the prophets, when We the People uncover the spirit of the prophets that is within each of us, when We the People believe in, fight for, and engage in paths of “peace”, miracles happen! This is the call of today, it is the call of the prophets.
ACTION STEPS:
1) Write down how you answer the call of the prophets each day for a week
2) Make notes of how you still want to believe the lies of your rational mind, 3) Make a list of the ways you whored yourself each day, asking yourself for forgiveness and changing your ways, your eyesight
4) Make a list of the ways you honored your prophetic spirit, doing justly, loving your neighbor and the stranger
5) Make a plan for this day to strengthen the prophetic voice within and follow it a little better.
GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark