Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 56
“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)
Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to be careful and to never be so sure of ourselves, of our rightness, of our righteousness because “the holy and the unholy do not exist apart”. Yet, we find ourselves, so often, believing in our rightness and unable to hear any argument that is in opposition to what we think, what we believe. So many of us are so sure of our ability to separate the holy and the unholy and this surety, as I am immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, is exactly what makes the holy and the unholy be “mixed, interrelated, and confounded.”
Confound comes from the Latin meaning “to pour together, to mix up” and one of the Hebrew words is babel, as in the tower of Babel story in the Bible. Because we have the two inclinations, as I have described earlier, the ‘good/divine’ inclination and the ‘evil/earthly’ inclination, the pouring together and mixing up of the holy and the unholy seems natural, instinctive. By this I mean, without a rich inner life, without a deep dive into our soul’s natural way of being, our minds and our desires will confuse and confound us into believing in the rightness of our actions, of our beliefs, of our surety. This mixing up, this pouring together of the holy and the unholy is at the root of our problems/challenges to make the prophet’s words: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”(Isaiah 2:4) a reality.
Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address said: “a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war…”. While that was true then, it is still true today. In fact, it has been true for the entire history of humanity! Because we confound, mix up, interrelate the holy and the unholy, we are constantly at war with this basic principle of faith: every soul is precious to God, every soul is a Divine Image, every soul is a Divine reminder. The civil war that Lincoln spoke about so eloquently, is not only between people, it is within each one of us.
We have to engage with God in Search of Man not by searching for God, rather by searching for our true self. We have to engage each and every day in the search for our inner truth, for our connection to our authentic beingness. We have to stop confusing our rationalizations, our desires, our earthly desires for power, prestige, property, etc with our divine need for connection, with our divine calling to make peace with one another, to find our similarities and respect our differences. We have to engage in a spiritual discipline that allows our earthly power to be subject to our goodness. We have to cease and desist from our need to be right and engage in our need to be in connection and in covenantal relationships with one another.
We cannot do this when we are confusing the “holy and the unholy”. We cannot do this when we pour together our FOMO (fear of missing out) with our fear of being powerless. We have become subjects to and of the liars, the charlatans, the powerful by believing they like us, they are like us and they understand us. How can anyone else understand me unless we understand ourselves? How can we subject my self to another’s power until we know and understand our own power? How can we be connected to another until we are connected to our self? This is the root cause, I believe, of the holy and unholy being “mixed, interrelated, and confounded”! Nothing will change until we go to the root of the challenge, our inner life. This is the challenge I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to, this is the demand of God that Rabbi Heschel is articulating for us in these words in this reading, on this day, in this year.
In recovery, we realize we have “undergone a profound alteration in our reaction to life;” and we are aware that we would not be in recovery without the aid of “inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a power greater than themselves”(Herbert Spencer-Appendix II Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous). Each and every day we are engaging with our inner life, we are engaging in the struggle between our soul’s knowing and the rationalizations of our intellect and the desires of our emotions. In recovery, we never get it perfect, we are aware of how easy it is to mix up the “holy and unholy”. We no longer hide from the challenge and we are quicker to heed the call and the demand to distinguish one from the other.
OY! How often do I confuse holy and unholy is like asking how often do I think, how often do I speak, act, etc. Yet, over the years I have seen the difference more and more, I have come to know when I am confounding myself and another, as well as God by mixing them up. I am able to distinguish one from the other in subtler ways and, while not always understood by another(s), I am unafraid to take action on the holy and respond to the challenge and demand Rabbi Heschel is articulating above. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark