Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 5 Day 31
““How can I repay unto the Lord all His bountiful dealings with me?”(Ps. 116.12) How to answer the mystery that surrounds us, the ineffable that calls on our souls? This is, indeed, the universal theme of religion.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 91)
I am a loud, outspoken brash, audacious human being. I say what is in my soul, on my heart and, usually, completely unfiltered. This has gotten me to live well, to reach people thought unreachable and caused great angst, anger, and retribution on the part of many people. I am called ‘not a real rabbi’, a ‘niche rabbi’, a ‘rabbi for those people’ and it is ALL GOOD! While I have regrets for some of my outbursts, reading the words above, I know that the outbursts that have been hurtful to my family, my friends, my colleagues, my community are NOT GOOD, I also know stifling them is part of what led me to my addictions to crime, to booze, to mendacity, to self-deception. In answering “the ineffable that calls on our souls”, I and We the People have to learn to monitor and discern time, way and place to be loud, to be silent, to be persuasive, and to be prophetic.
“Repay unto the Lord” being “the universal theme of religion” is exactly what is NOT HAPPENING right now in the circles of power in America nor in Israel! What IS HAPPENING is people calling themselves ‘religious’ are bastardizing the very tenets, ways, morals, deeds that Christ called upon us to do, that the Bible exhorts us to live, and calling it Judaism, Christianity! IT IS INFURIATING, thank God for Pope Leo! He is speaking the truth to power, he is following in the footsteps of Christ, of the prophets and We the People have to listen to him, follow his lead and TAKE BACK WHAT RELIGION STANDS FOR!! I know I am yelling, I know how indignant I am being, I know that it is not always easy to hear me, to experience this type of anger, AND I know that this is the way of the prophets, this is my inheritance from them, my inheritance from my father, z”l.
The ways Donny boy and Bibi man believe “to answer the mystery that surrounds us” is to exploit the fears, the inner need to ‘beat the bastards’, the spiritual void that allows us to hate our neighbors in our hearts rather than love them, that allows us to have one law for the citizen and another for the stranger, that gives us permission to practice racism, anti-semitism, islamaphobia, with reckless abandon and call it “white pride”, call it discrimination against white men, etc. Backed by their gangs of THUG FALSE PROPHETS, these two men have caused chaos, taken no responsibility for their failures, their fuck-ups, their lies and their cruelty and there are still parts of we the people who clap for them like trained seals! WTF???
We the People are being called upon during this season of the counting of the Omer, on this 6th day of Passover when the liberated slaves were at the edge of the Red Sea, trying to choose certain death by the advancing Egyptians or repaying “Lord for His bountiful dealings” by liberating us from the physical slavery of Egypt. It is a moment, a “dark night of the soul”, as St. John of the Cross wrote about; it is a moment We the People all experience and the question is: will we face it, will we go through it, will we realize the message and the deed that “the ineffable” is calling upon us to perform? In this “Season of Freedom” as We the People count the days until the Holy Day of Shavuot, when We the People remember and engage in once again, receiving the Torah, the Bible, the “universal theme of religion” our response to the “the mystery that surrounds us, the ineffable that callus on our souls” has to be TRUTH! We the People are being called upon to RISE UP, to exercise our PROPHETIC VOICES, to go through our fears and trepidations and VOTE the assholes, the IDOLATORS, the MENDACIOUS IDIOTS OUT OF OFFICE and IMPEACH TRUMP, VANCE, and the rest of their ilk, their sycophants, their enablers. In Israel, it is time to try Bibi for the HIGH CRIMES he as committed as a THIEF, as ASLEEP at the WHEEL on OCTOBER 7, and as a LIAR IN CHIEF! This moment is calling upon We the People to take these
ACTION STEPS:
Each morning make a list of “all His bountiful dealings toward me” acknowledging the truth, kindness, goodness, charity extended to us by another(s)
Each evening make a list of all the kindness, truth, goodness, charity, we extended to another(s) during the day
Each day stand for the principles that present themselves and do not waver, do not allow the deceivers to convince you that you do not know what you know
Each evening review your day, making note of when you “repay unto the Lord” and when you STEAL from God.
GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark