Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 5 Day 40
“Man may be replete with selfish motives but a deed and God are stronger than selfish motives. The redemptive power discharged in carrying out the good purifies the mind. The deed is wiser than the heart.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 94)
While I firmly and deeply believe in “the redemptive power”, having been a recipient of it, I also know that the “selfish motives” are very powerful and without God, without “hitting bottom”, our self-deception can and does lead many good people to miss their own “selfish motives” while condemning those of another. “Don’t scout after your heart and your eyes”(Numbers 15:39) because “the deed is wiser than the heart” and We the People seem to be unable to grasp this truth no matter how many times we experience the negative consequences of “following our heart”, of believing in another who “knows what is best”, etc! How ridiculous that we the people continue to “looked like grasshoppers in our eyes and so we must have looked in their eyes”(Numbers 14:23) This projection is insane and we the people contnue to do this, we continue to not SEE whom we really are: partners with God, divine reminders, here to fulfill a divine need that no one else can. Yet, between our terrible eyesight, our self-deceptions, our need for power, prestige, wealth, control, and our greedy selfish inclination-we the people fall backwards over and over again. Rather than “fail forward”, learning from our own mistakes and those of our ancestors, we the people fall back into our selfish, bad habits that have gone on for the millennia! WTF, PEOPLE?!?!?
This the 1500th day of my writing on Rabbi Heschel’s teachings. It is the last I am going to do for a while. Tomorrow, I will begin a new Blog: Ghosting God, Ghosting our Self. It is also the title of my next book to come out some time this year. It is precisely what I hear Rabbi Heschel’s teachings call to us to end! God in Search of Man, Man is Not Alone, The Insecurity of Freedom, Who is Man, etc all give us life lessons on how to answer HINENI to the call of AYECHA and, since the time of Adam and Eve, we the people continue to miss the truth of our existence and ‘see’ ourselves as “grasshoppers”, as ‘gods’, bouncing back and forth between “my shit don’t stink” and “if you ony knew”, between “I am trapped in this narrow place(Egypt)” and “I am the Captain of my destiny”, living in the either/or of societal norms, denying the truth that is in our souls, that is in our intuitive mind, in our guts. The refusal to engage in “a deed and God”, ignoring the truth of “the redemptive power” and denying that “the good purifies the mind” has gotten We the People, once again, to a spiritual crisis. When the President of the United States speaks so disgustingly about the Pope who is pushing back against the bastardization of Christ’s words, when the Vice-President of the United States declares the “Pope should be more careful when talking about theology, when the Republicans do NOTHING about this, we the people are in a SPIRITUAL CRISIS!
I am ENGRAGED that there are not more Jewish Voices joining Pope Leo, I am BEYOND the BEYOND that Rabbis, Cantors, etc are afraid to speak to their congregants about the WRONGS of ISRAEL, the WRONGS of the Jews who supported Epstein, the WRONGS of the Jews helping Trump wage war on the stranger, forgetting that “We were strangers in the Land of Egypt”! I am a Zionist, I am NOT a BIBI’ist! I do not believe in the JDL and I am appalled that equating calling out the wrongs of Israel is tantamount to being a “self-loathing Jew”. In the Holiness Code we are COMMANDED to “rebuke your neighbor and don’t bear guilt because of them”(Lev. 19:17) so, my fellow Rabbis: WHERE ARE YOU?? AYECHA is being called out each day from Sinai and it seems the Jewish response has become: “I’m HIDING” just like Adam and Eve, learning NOTHING from the Torah, believing in the hubris and the hatred Ezra put into the Torah, forgetting that we were brought out of Egypt to “be a light unto the Nations” (Isaiah 42:6). This is the job, this is the privilege, this is the Call from Sinai and the JEWISH PEOPLE are not ANSWERING the CALL with light, with hope. It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to stand up, be counted, and respond to what is happening with justice, mercy, love, truth, kindness and not with ‘where’s mine, what’s safe, I’m afraid I will offend someone, I may lose my job, etc.’
I have never believed in going along to get along, even though I am guilty of doing it. I have fought for the truth, I have listened to my intuitive voice, I have heard the call from Sinai and I continue to speak out through my writing, regardless of no responses. I am a pariah, it seems, I am deemed too crass because I refuse to put up with the “Ghosting of God”, the “Ghosting of self” that continues to be de rigeueur in our world. Rabbi Heschel has been a constant companion on my journey and these 1500 days, my book 365 Life Lessons of Rabbi Heschel are my repaying the debt, knowing I can never fully repay the gift of living well he gives me.
GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark