Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 78
“The dreadful confusion, the fact that there is nothing in this world that is not a mixture of good and evil, of holy and unholy, of silver and dross, is, according to Jewish mysticism, the central problem of history and the ultimate issue of redemption.”(God in Search of Man pg. 371)
It is imperative that we face this “central problem of history” rather than point fingers, make excuses, engage in self-deception and mendacity concerning it. The ‘winners’ blame the ‘losers’ in each round of culture wars, the people in power blame the “riffraff’” as we see as far back as the Rabbi’s blaming the slaves who were not descendants of Jacob for the Golden Calf. We minorities blame the people in power for their status, etc. While some of this blaming may be valid and true, it doesn’t help us face, meet, and find a solution to the “central problem of history” that Rabbi Heschel is reminding and/or teaching us about.
Whether it is ‘the devil’, ‘the riffraff’, ‘those people’, ‘them’, when we look outside of our self, we are deflecting ourselves from this “central problem”. The “central problem of history” begins inside of each one of us. We are not bad from our birth, we are not incapable of goodness, kindness, love, justice, truth, we just have an issue of learned evil, learned confusion, learned how to mix up what is good, holy, silver with their opposites from our youth, as we are taught in the Bible. We learn this at home, we learn this in school, we learn this in business, we learn this in our Houses of Worship. We learn this when we learn to compare and compete with someone else in order to ‘win’. We learn this when we are called “bad boy/girl”, when we are asked “why can’t you be like ___”. We learn this when we begin to believe that our worth is determined by outside measures, when our validation has to come from another human being(s) instead of from within ourself, when we are either good or bad depending on the clothes we wear, the weight we are at, the car we drive, the home we live in, the spouse/significant other we are with, etc. We learn this when our Houses of Worship teach us that we have ‘the only right way’. We learn this when we believe that our might makes us right. The subliminal messages and teachings we receive are powerful and we learn how to mix everything up, at times, unconsciously.
It is sad that in our Houses of Worship we learn how to mix things up when they are supposed to be helping us develop our spiritual life, mature our souls, imbue us with morality and strengthen our inner desire to follow the words of the prophet Micah: “Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God” and instead are teaching us how to be xenophobic, how to be martyrs, how to see danger in anyone and everyone who doesn’t believe what we do, how to berate our self when we don’t follow the ‘rules’ for the sake of the ‘rules’ and the dictates of earlier men. When the ‘laws’ are worshiped instead of God, when there is only one way to understand and interpret the Words of God in the Bible, etc, our Houses of Worship, our spiritual disciplines have become a source of the “dreadful confusion” Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us. They become a source of mixing up the “good and evil, holy and unholy, of silver and dross” instead of a place to separate these ways of being, recognize when we are the cause, the participant, the victim of this “dreadful confusion” and learn how to recognize, change and repair our souls from this dreadful and soul crushing path. It is time for us to demand of all spiritual leaders to get involved with their self/their soul and deepen their inner life experience so they can better relate to the rest of us, so they can examine the subtle and not-so-subtle ways they engage in this “dreadful confusion” all the while proclaiming their righteousness and the righteousness of the people who first taught how to deceive all of us including themselves. It is time for our spiritual leaders, the elders, the boards, the hierarchy of our Spiritual Disciplines, our Houses of Worship to be accountable to themselves and to all of us, it is time for them to lead by example of doing T’Shuvah, taking their inventory, admitting the myriad of ways they have engaged in, promoted, and turned off the light of many souls with their participation in the “central problem of history”, this “dreadful confusion” that has perpetuated racism, anti-semitism, hatred, war, prejudice, etc. It is time for our religious leadership to make their amends for the state we find ourselves in because of their need to make everyone a “christian” according to how they bastardize the words of Christ, of Mohammed, of Moses, of God!
I am calling out my fellow clergy, I am calling out the people who would fire Pastor John Pavlovitz because he stood with and for marginalized people as did Christ. I am calling out the leadership of our Spiritual Centers who claim love and kindness while being ruthless and uncaring about their paths of “dreadful confusion” and their adding the “central problem of history” while wrapping themselves in their ‘rightness’, in their support of “the right causes”. I am calling out the people who compartmentalize their living rather than engaging in un-mixing what is good, holy, silver from their antonyms. I call myself out regarding this every day. I am constantly seeking to separate evil from good, false ego from authentic self, my holy actions from the unholy ones, my excuses and reasons which hide the truth from me to doing T’Shuvah and making the changes and repairs necessary to be in the solution of this “central problem of history” rather than adding to it more. I am a work in progress and always will be. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark