Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 37
“The ancient Rabbis knew that excessive piety may endanger the fulfillment of the essence of the law. “There is nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life … . Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stake one may disregard every prohibition of the law.” One must sacrifice mitsvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitsvot”. (God in Search of Man)
We are facing the danger “the ancient Rabbis” knew about and were worried about. Many people are becoming/have become so obsessed with the fulfillment of the laws they have come to make up, rather than the laws of the Faith and Spirituality, we are watching the loss of life happen and not even noticing it. We are watching people be beaten and hosed, gassed and bombed for their desire to be free, to be treated with dignity and respect, to be seen as equally worthy and valuable. Rather than live the thoughts and the warnings of “the ancient Rabbis” we are watching demagogues, authoritarians, deceivers, liars, cheats, dullards and even our Justice system treat the life and dignity of anyone not like them, anyone not genuflecting to them, anyone not bowing down to them, anyone not proclaiming their fidelity to them as not human, not important, not mattering, needing to be destroyed, locked up, put in cages.
We have seen this for years in this country and many of us believed it would be different with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and it was for a minute. Then the South rose again and got statues of insurrectionists, of treasonous people put up across the land. When Black people were starting to come up, the Klan got more violent, more murderous and, nothing happened to them. We watched the Klan march in New York City in the 1920’s with Fred Trump proudly among them and, unlike the Kennedy boys, his son carries on in Fred’s tradition of racial animosity, religious hatred. In 1964, with the passing of the Civil Rights Act many of us, again, believed it would be different, only to have Nixon/Agnew work with Thurmond, et al to begin to tear it apart, something that would be accomplished by Trump’s court and the Tea Party/Maga combination.
We have watched every immigrant group be scapegoated since the mid-1800’s. Whether it is the Chinese brought here for slave labor to build railroads, etc, the Italians, the Irish, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and of course, the Jews and the Hispanics forever and always; the country who has Lady Liberty in it’s New York Harbor to welcome people, to give new immigrants hope and light has berated, been prejudicial and continually used their immigrant status against them. Believe it or not, there have been many whites who have raped, robbed, pillaged, murdered and done other sundry actions, yet we only hear about the Hispanics and Blacks. There are many whites who have laundered money, done insider trading, who run the banking system, the media, financial markets, yet we only hear about ‘the Jews’. There are many white people who are organized crime and have been throughout our history, making some of their crimes legal now, yet we only hear about the Irish, Italian, Hispanic, Jewish, Black gangsters-amazing isn’t it?
These god-fearing people of NO FAITH, are extolling scriptures and bastardizing the words of spirit and of God. They have made it their business to, as Trump did, turn the Bible upside down and inside out to suit their purpose. Rather than fulfilling Scripture, rather than fulfilling spiritual truths, rather than fulfilling what our higher consciousness tells us, they are dead set on fulfilling their needs for power, control and wealth. They are dedicated to the proposition that only they are equal and every one else is inferior. I know this because, while they offered consolation and ‘comfort’ to Speaker Pelosi, none of the Republicans stopped talking or condemned the rhetoric that makes the attack on her husband possible. Just as Yitzchak Rabin was killed because of violent rhetoric, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, so too has violence been perpetrated by many, including Jan. 6, 2021, because of the violent, evil rhetoric of Trump, Jordan, Meadows, McCarthy, McConnell, and the rest of the people who have “stood idly by the blood” of their brothers and sisters. It is time to speak up and vote them out of power, it is time for them to experience the logical consequences of their actions, it is time to say NO to this insidious hatred! VOTE, VOTE, VOTE for truth, kindness, justice, mercy and compassion-vote in ways that are in concert with God’s path, not the path of Oligarchs, Pharaohs, Putins, Trumps, Koch’s, etc.
In recovery, we are acutely aware of how we murdered people’s souls by our deceptions, our mendacity, our rape of their trust and the shattering of their hopes that this time we meant what we were saying. We are so overcome with regret for our past actions we made a vow to remember them in order to stay away from them today and tomorrow. We have made/are making our amends and changing our ways because of these past actions. We have a new way of living that makes us want to and need to live a moral and ethical life, no longer engaging in the deceptions of the past and preventing new deceptions from taking root.
I am enraged at how these people of NO-FAITH continue to bastardize God’s desires through their ‘strict adherence’ to the laws as they want to understand them. More tomorrow! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark