Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 94
“On the most sacred day of the year the supreme task was to atone for the holy. It proceeded the sacrifice, the purpose of which was to atone for the sins.” (God in Search of Man pg. 371-2)
Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is like a fastball coming at us at 100+ miles per hour, we don’t really see it until it is right on us, we are not sure which way to turn to hit it and/or not be hit by it. We Jews have gotten it all wrong for centuries, I believe. We have not spent the time and the effort to atone for the holy either because we erroneously believed/believe that our holy is pure and clean and/or because we were/are too oblivious to see the need to atone for the holy. I believe each and every Synagogue and Temple, each JCC and Federation Buildings, each home needs to atone for the holy by searching their holy spaces and doing T’Shuvah for the transgressions in our holy spaces and the sins we commit wittingly and unwittingly in all of our affairs. We have to no longer depend on clergy to do this, as they did in the Temple of Jerusalem and the Tent of Meeting, we have to all pitch in “to atone for the holy.” We are being called by Rabbi Heschel to remember that prior to our atonement for our sins, we have to first atone for and make clean the holy. I believe his teaching above is for our physical spaces and our inner lives.
Once again, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom encompasses all human beings and is eternally timeless. We are engaged in a great spiritual war with the forces of holiness who don’t believe they have anything to atone for! We are living in a world where humility before God, before one another is seen as weakness because we already KNOW what God wants and we are ‘the chosen’ who can, must, and will carry out God’s Word. Yet, these same people are unable to, oblivious to the teaching above, they conveniently forget the verse in Leviticus that teaches us “to atone for the holy”. Instead, they engage in such self-deception that it is impossible to reason, to negotiate, to compromise with them until we succumb to their demands. While their demands are totally selfish and self-serving, their self-deception has given them the persuasive powers to deceive millions upon millions of people around the globe and in every country. Our unwitting and/or willful ignoring the teaching above by our clergy contributes legitimacy to these charlatans because our clergy support their lies, their mendacity though a complete misreading of Scripture. Whenever Scripture is read for the sake of power over the people, whenever religion is practiced as oppressive, insipid, irrelevant and tone deaf to the spiritual progression of people and the world, whenever religion is used to support tyranny, slavery, class and caste systems, it is not religion as God intended. This extremism points out the need “to atone for the holy” that Rabbi Heschel is teaching us.
We have become so engaged in pointing out the sins and transgressions of another(s) that we have forgotten to and/or have become willfully blind to our own. Rather than being responsible and aware of the holy in our living, the holy opportunities that are constantly put in front of us, we are oblivious to them and this could be our greatest transgression that points out our need “to atone for the holy”. I call out the churches, mosques, the Jewish Federations and Jewish Institutions as well as Temples and Synagogues to clean their houses and “atone for the holy” in their midst. I call on my colleagues in the Clergy to stop trying to keep their jobs and remember who our employer is: God and our employer is demanding we DO our jobs rather than engaging in the mendacity and self-deception we practice in order to keep them. I call on all of us to search our innermost selves in these next 76 days prior to Passover and “atone for the holy” that we have neglected to do. I am calling on all of us to send the charlatans -anyone and everyone who is not taking care of the stranger, the poor, the needy; everyone who is not “doing justly, loving mercy and walking in the ways of God”-packing from our governments, from our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples so we, the remnants, the people who have left Egypt, can clean our holy spaces, clean our holy souls up and “atone for the holy”.
This is the essence of recovery for so many of us. We have let go of our false egos as the driving force in our lives. We have come to believe we can’t save our face and our ass at the same time. We know how insidious our imperfections are and how powerful the lies we tell ourselves are. We “atone for the holy” each and every day by searching what we do well and how we are of service to make these actions and deeds as clean as we possibly can knowing we will always have some self-interest involved. We are engaged in reciprocity, we give away what we have so we can keep it, we donate, we show up for service and we reach out to one another and those who are not in recovery yet with an open heart and willing spirit. We cleanse our inner lives daily so our outer lives are cleaner, more open and transparent and relevant, free and peaceful.
I have made mistakes, I have done well, I am human. I have engaged in atoning for the sins and transgressions a lot over these years. I have cleaned the sanctuary of my soul for years and the physical plant of where I worked as Rabbi for 20+ years, and I realize when I allowed the shmutz to build up, when I allowed ego to triumph over truth, I was making my inner and outer sanctuary unclean. I am deeply remorseful for these times and I continue to make living amends. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark