Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 110
“Ultimate commitment includes the consciousness of being accountable for the acts we perform under freedom; the awareness that what we own we owe; the capacity for repentance; that a life without the service of God is a secret scandal.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.20)
The truths, values, morals expressed in the sentence above are undeniable for people of faith, people of spirit and, knowing this, people of non-faith, people who are mendacious, thieves, spiritual rapists use these tenets in the most egregious manner. We are, once again, witnessing this phenomenon today, when Trump gives Putin kudos for raping Ukraine and says “Russia is giving up taking the whole country” as some sort of sacrifice or compromise, accountability is thrown out the window. Of course, when Trump refuses to be accountable and the Supreme Court says only he is not accountable for his actions, what can one expect? The people who help him be unaccountable, who support his betraying the tenets of “freedom” and our Constitution, they will find out they are accountable and suffer for their rape of “freedom”.
Accountability is the first lesson Adam, Eve, and their son, Cain learn in the Bible. While they have free-will choice, they quickly learn that this doesn’t lead to them being able to do whatever they want to do. Cain is marked, Adam and Eve have to leave their beautiful home they were gifted, all because they did not think they would be held accountable. When they were held accountable, Adam ‘divorced’ himself from God (an interpretation of the Hebrew) and Cain cried like a stuffed pig! “I do what I want AND being held accountable-how outrageous” they seem to be saying, just like Trump and the Jan.6th rioters, the white people who lynched so many Black people, who killed Leo Frank, the Germans who helped, participated in the Shoah, the Polish people who joyously killed the Jews in their midst, ad infinitum throughout history. Yet, as the first phrase above comes to remind us, there can be no real, no “ultimate commitment” without the “consciousness of being accountable for the acts we perform under freedom”. When we are enslaved, when we are threatened with death, we are not doing anything “under freedom” and this is a very important distinction.
The law firms, the corporations, Columbia University, and all of the other entities that are bending the knee, kissing the ring, have their noses so far up Trump’s ass that if he stops short they will need surgery to have it removed, all believe they will escape accountability. The Republican lawmakers who are meekly going along with this carnage, this rape of our Constitution, the desecration of the Declaration of Independence, the dishonoring of the men who fought at Lexington and Concord 250 years ago, think they can skate by and they are refusing to be accountable even to their constituents, because they believe they don’t have to worry about being re-elected because Trump is going to cancel elections as we know them! We are being taken advantage of by the very people and institutions we believed we could trust to keep us safe, to keep one another in check, to honor the Oath of Office they take. How foolish we are/were.
Religious Institutions are, in my opinion, the worst betrayers of the first phrase above. When ‘orthodox’ jews, ‘prosperity gospel’ christians, ‘radical’ islamists claim that they are doing what God wants, what it says in the Bible, Koran, We the People have to start calling BULLSHIT on them. When these charlatans keep spouting that “Trump is the anointed one of Jesus Christ” We the People need to stand up and demonstrate outside of their churches, temples, mosques for Truth, for Justice, for Mercy, and demand that these idolators stop walking in the footsteps of Pharaoh, end their incessant drive to destroy Judaism, Catholicism, Christianity, Islam and be accountable for their theft of the souls and the minds of their followers. We the People are being called by this first phrase above to call these desecrators of God’s name to account, to hold them responsible for their free-will sins and lies, for their using the vulnerabilities of people against them, thus engaging in the most evil of actions, as M.Scott Peck teaches. These so-called ‘people of faith’ are the same as Laban, the same as Bilaam, opaque MF’s who are for sale to the highest bidder, liars and cheats, spiritual rapists, and crooks. Yet, they are so ‘revered’, Trump has given them an office in the White House and he has instituted an “anti-christian bias” campaign in the Department of Justice-because christians like the KKK, the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys all have been discriminated against whenever they are held accountable. In this upside down ‘religious’ view, accountability for anything ‘we’ do is wrong and accountability for everything ‘those people’ do is good, even if it is lawful, if it promotes freedom as promised in the first amendment. We the People have to STAND UP and hold these assholes accountable, beginning with the Clergy, beginning with these so-called ‘good christian, jewish, muslim folk’! Remember, what someone will do to another human being, they will do to you!
I had planned on writing on the whole sentence when I sat down and got carried away with the idea of “ultimate commitment”. The difference between me 39 years ago and me since 1987, is that I possess the “consciousness of being accountable for the acts I perform under freedom” and, while I do not always agree with someone else’s interpretation of my acts, I do agree that I am accountable for my actions. I have taken the hits and the kudos and have grown in my equanimity in my responses to both. This is in direct contrast to my earlier days when I denied all responsibility and always had someone, something else to blame for my failures, my actions. This is the difference between Mark Borovitz the slave and Mark Borovitz the free person. This is the difference between living under ‘the rules don’t apply to me’ and living a covenantal life. Having the “consciousness of being accountable” gives me pause before I take an action, it also causes me to trust what I know in my soul as the next right thing to do-no matter the outcome-because we all know that we can do what is right and good and not ‘win’. Being accountable has also made it easy for people to target me and I accept this truth with greater serenity, greater clarity than I ever have. I am not afraid to be asked Reb Zuysa’s question:”why were you not more like Mark Borovitz?”. I live me, messy, error-filled, fallible, imperfect, infinitely worthy and full of dignity, equal to all and honoring the uniqueness of me and of you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark