Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 55
“Even more frustrating than the fact that evil is real, mighty and tempting is the fact that it thrives so well in the disguise of the good, that it can draw its nutriment from the life of the holy. In this world, it seems, the holy and the unholy do not exist apart, but are mixed, interrelated and confounded. It is a world where idols may be rich in beauty, and where the worship of God may be tinged with wickedness.”(God in Search of Man pg. 369)
The more I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words and the more I see the horror of human beings sink to our lowest selves, the more I experience the trembling, sadness, grief, fear Rabbi Heschel is conveying through his words and teaching. 10 years after learning of the death of most of his family, 10 years after first seeing and hearing of the almost complete mass murder of a people because of their faith, skin color, etc, 10 years after the almost complete annihilation of a city and its citizens from the Atomic Bomb, he is witnessing the same evil come alive and flourish through the same people who supported Fascism and Hitler 20+ years earlier! We are witness’ to this same animalistic, Apeman stronger than you, hate you for the color of your skin, hate you because you are a Jew (Jews will not replace us chant is alive and well), hate you because you have more than me, hate you because I deem you less than me behaviors and attitudes and so many people who can help stop this are not because hatred serves their purpose, they believe.
When we hear people invoke their faith in the service of anti-semitism, dropping bombs on innocent children, discriminating against someone because of the color of their skin, believing women are inferior to men, spewing out their evil speech in service of their prejudices, we are witnessing how evil “can draw its nutriment from the life of the holy.” I watch the news, read the blogs, see the tweets and am appalled and I am beginning to understand the way it all happens. Because of the human desire to be deceived, which is what Eve portrays in the Garden of Eden story and Adam is a willing participant in the deception, we want to believe this evil that draws power and ‘rightness’ from the ‘holy scripture’. We want to believe the deception of another(s) so we can be ‘on the right side’ of things when judgement day comes. We want to deceive ourselves into believing that God doesn’t love the widow, the poor, the orphan, the stranger and the needy. We want to believe the lies of the people who say “the rich are loved by God more and therefore everyone should follow them and when God loves you poor people because of your service to the rich, you too shall be redeemed and enriched” and other such bullshit from the ‘prosperity gospel’ of the charlatans purporting to be god’s True Messengers. To many people, it seems good that we separate the wheat from the chaff, the good from the bad; recognizing the bad are everyone who doesn’t fall into lockstep with the ‘party line’-sort of what Stalin, Hitler, Putin, Xi, Orban, Jim Jordan, etc have said and are saying.
Hmm, maybe it is time for leaders and followers to seek truth rather than popularity. Maybe it is time for us all to stand up and march to our capitals and demand we live the moral, ethical, legal and spiritual principles that are implanted within us, that we learn from the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the Constitution, the Torah, the Talmud, even Hammurabi’s Code. Maybe it is time for us to wrestle with the best ways in our day, in our time, in our situation to put these principles into practice. Taking a page from the Talmud, knowing that there is more than one way to live our principles and using them for evil, using them to deceive, using them to tempt another into doing evil is not one of them. Hmm, maybe it is time for all of us to rise up and say NO to the lies of Fuentes, NO to the silence of the GOP leadership, NO to the lies of big business, big Pharma, small people who lie to get by. Maybe it is time for all of us to look in the mirror and see how we are bastardizing the holy in favor of our own gains, in favor of expediency, in favor of getting along.
In recovery, we are so sensitive to our ability to disguise evil, to use the holy to feed the evil ways we used to practice. We know evil so well because we were to a greater and/or lessor degree practitioners of exactly what Rabbi Heschel is warning us about in the first sentence above. We search out each and every day our subtle ways of evil and take contrary action to what we think we can/should do in these situations because we are aware of how cunning and baffling evil is, we are aware of how real, strong and tempting evil is, and we know how easy it is to deceive ourselves into believing it is actually for the greater good. In recovery, we work to stay hyperaware of anything that even smells like evil and run away from these actions.
I am hyperaware of my ability to disguise evil, I am hyperaware of the ability of another(s) to disguise evil and I realize that many people are not aware of the wisdom and teaching of Rabbi Heschel above. I have been quick and loud in pointing it out about someone else, something else and I work to be as quick and loud with myself and about myself. While nothing will ever be done with 100% good, as I/we are not perfect, I strive to always make sure the evil doesn’t get too much nourishment and stays as small as I can make it and I let people know what my agenda is and work hard to serve the agenda of the WE instead of just the agenda of me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark