Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 81
“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)
Once we have taken the ‘mirror test’ and begun our own road of redemption, we realize we can’t always redeem ourselves alone. We need help, we need guidance, we need to surrender to our own powerlessness. While the ‘rugged individual’ is a wonderful idea and the ‘self-made’ person sounds so courageous and wonderful, both of these conventional notions are falsehoods. We are taught in the 2nd Chapter of Genesis: “it is not good for human to be alone”. Yet, we keep getting more and more isolated, lonely, resisting of help and connection. We use “likes” and “friends” and clicks on social media to our connections and to determine our worth, ie faux connection, rather than having real connections. In order to be redeemed, as we learn throughout the Bible, we need help from another. Asking another person to redeem us is a strength not a weakness. The Bible also teaches us to “redeem our kinsman”, the Rabbis call this “ransoming the captive”. We are told to sell the Sefer Torah, our holiest object, if we have to in order to ransom back a person who is being held in captivity. We are taught to help one another, to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” so helping another human being(s) achieve freedom, achieve redemption, buying back their soul, acting like a kinsman is a learned way of being. Unfortunately we seem to be missing this lesson in our daily living.
The story of “Lady Bountiful” has played out over and over again in history as well as in today’s world. This is antithetical to truly engaging in “the ultimate issue of redemption” as I understand Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above. We have to stop ‘doing things for those poor people’ and begin to engage in our own redemption and help another(s) find theirs. It is not just about the money we donate, while it is important to donate to the causes that are near and dear to our hearts, it is about how we stop seeing “those people” and relate to another human being as ‘my people’. We are in desperate need, as we have always been, of seeing the similarities, the humanity of everyone, the needs of each one of us to be redeemed and experience the reflection of our own soul in everyone we encounter.
We are, as we have always been, at a crossroads right now. We have to decide how long we are going to travel the road of senseless hatred, of scapegoating another race, religion, ethnicity, gender, etc for our own self-satisfaction, our own gain (political and otherwise), our own need to look outward rather than inward. I believe it is time for us to stop this bastardization of spiritual values, of moral living and take our proper place with everyone else in this road towards redemption: in acting like a kinsman rather than a taskmaster, a freedom rider rather than a slave owner, a scared kid like everyone else rather than a bully, a seeker rather than a master. We can do this when we actively engage in redemption of another, knowing it is a way of moving forward our own redemption. We have so many examples of this way of being: Father Greg Boyle and Homeboy Industries, Rabbi Iggy Gurin-Malous and the T’Shuvah Center, Pastor Ed Treat and the Center of Addiction and Faith, Pastor Mark Whitlock and Reid Temple, Rev. Andy Bales and Union Rescue Mission, to name a few of the myriad of people and causes that are actively redeeming our people. Rabbi Heschel is inspiring me, and hopefully, you to see everyone as ‘our people’ and reach out in any and every way we can to redeem our kinsmen/kinswomen. It is not just for clergy or government, it is the responsibility, the gift we all get to participate in. I pray we all will.
In recovery, we know we have to continue to work with and help ‘the newcomer’ so we can give away what we have, so we can help them achieve their own redemption-never deciding what redemption looks like for another, only helping another human being see their unique road map to redemption. We help them personalize the steps to recovery and “act like a kinsman/kinswoman” towards all we meet-in and out of recovery as we “practice these principles in all our affairs”. While, like Jews, we in recovery don’t actively seek converts, we do intervene when called upon, we visit the ‘addict’ who is still suffering from their behaviors, their actions, their substances, their depressions and anxieties, and give our fellow human beings our hands to hold on to for the rest of our lives, if they want. In recovery, we know we are responsible to and for one another, we know we are connected to all of humanity and we seek to help in the redemption of everyone as another step on our road to redemption. We are acutely aware that we can’t keep what we don’t give away.
As we are reaching the end of 2022 and there is a huge push to donate to different charities to redeem our kinsmen/kinswomen, I am asking people to consider the charities above, I am asking everyone to donate to their Churches, their Synagogues, their Mosques to support the different ways these Homes for All support and engage in redemption. I ask you to help the organizations above who are saving souls as well as the bodies of people young and old. I do, I am also grateful beyond words for the myriad of ways people have helped me along my own road of redemption. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark