Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 79
“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)
Immersing ourselves in this sentence should make us all shudder with trembling awe. It is apparent from our history as humankind and as individuals that we are wither willfully blind and/or oblivious to “the dreadful confusion” that we engage in daily. We especially engage in and add to “the mixture of good and evil, of holy and unholy, of silver and dross” in our politics, in our business, in our communal life, in our family life, and in our personal lives. Yet, because of our need to be right, because of our distortion of religion, of God’s teachings, of our fragile egos, etc we are unwilling to experience the trembling awe of our confusion and the ways we mix up good and evil in everyday life. Rather, we become more and more oblivious and blind by accusing another(s) of doing this, of being the “evil ones”, while we are doing the same actions. It is a problem that we continue to repeat from history, truthfully we use history to validate our blindness, our obliviousness and our continuing to engage in these ways of being.
It is evident in the political mismanagement of our country and nations throughout the world. Our leaders are more interested in serving their own ego needs for power and/or the needs of a certain group, be it the wealthy, the identity politics, etc rather than serving the needs of all people, rather than helping us come together to wrestle with this “dreadful confusion”, we engage in our need to be right and grow our confusion. Politics, supported by the media has, maybe always was, the petri dish for mixing up holy and unholy, silver and dross rather than be the laboratory where we separate the good from the evil. While it is easy to blame the politicians, the responsibility resides with us, the people who elect them, the people who believe and/or don’t care about their lies, their deceptions and mendacities.
We, the people, have learned how to deceive ourselves into believing in the ‘rightness’ of our confusion by believing we are doing “God’s Work” by enslaving another people based on race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. We, the people, are unwilling to follow the teachings of Jewish Wisdom that reminds us to do T’Shuvah every day. We, the people, are unwilling to look at the ways we have harmed our own souls, the souls of another(s), daily because we are too interested in defending ourselves so we don’t have to deal with our own imperfections, so we can blame another(s) for our foibles. We, the people, are turning a blind eye to the truth of our imperfections and how they harm and how they can help us grow. We, the people, have made a decision to be oblivious to the myriad of ways our unwillingness to do T’Shuvah each day, our unwillingness to look within ourselves and out towards another(s) to see how we have engaged in “the dreadful confusion” Rabbi Heschel is teaching and reminding us of. We, the people, do this so we don’t have to change, we don’t have to be responsible for the emotional, physical, spiritual harms that we cause through “a mixture of good and evil, of holy and unholy, of silver and dross”. It is amazing how we use our history to validate this way of being, we use history and position to wrap ourselves in self-deception and call it true and valid. It is sad, it is scary, it is destructive it stops us from experiencing the trembling awe Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance needs to cause within each of us, and it has to end or we will stop being human.
In recovery, we are constantly putting on a “new pair of glasses” as Chuck C writes about in his book of the same name. We go back over our history in our daily inventories, in our 4th step “searching and fearless moral inventory” so we engage in the separation “of good and evil, of holy and unholy, of silver and dross” from our past so we can change our present. Seeing the myriad of was we engaged in the “dreadful confusion” Rabbi Heschel is writing about, causes us deep remorse and a trembling that reverberates throughout our bodies and minds, that makes us want to hide and defend/explain, and, through our recovery, with the help of guides, family, friends, we, instead, face the confusion. This allows us to separate and distinguish what is good and what is evil, what is holy and what is unholy, what is silver and what is dross. This process of inventory/T’Shuvah propels us to make our amends, realize when we are in our “dreadful confusion”, carve a new path of living so we can stay away from our historical actions, and reach out to serve instead of taking what we want and living to be served.
I tremble each and every day since my spiritual awakening some 36 years ago this month, when I was arrested for the last time. I tremble at the wreckage of my past, I tremble at the times prior to and since December of 1986 when I tried to “save my face rather than my ass” as we say in AA and the wreckage I wrought. I tremble at the myriad of times I engaged in “dreadful confusion” for my self and the impact on so many people. I tremble each day from awe as well. It is with awe and humility that I can sit here and write each day, it is with awe and humility that I get to be with the woman I love each day, it is with awe and humility that I get to be the father of an amazing woman, a grandfather to a beautiful boy, a brother and an uncle, a Rabbi for so many even though I am ‘retired’. I wake up with trembling awe each morning and am extending it longer and longer each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark