Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 84
“The confusion goes back to the very process of creation. “When God came to create the world and reveal what was hidden in the depths and disclose the light out of the darkness, they were all wrapped in one another, and therefore light emerged from darkness, and from the impenetrable came forth the profound. So, too, from good issues evil and from mercy issues judgement, and all are intertwined, the good impulse and the evil impulse..”(Zohar Vol. III pg.80b)”(God in Search of Man pg.371)
Rereading Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and teachings above are overwhelming in light of today’s happenings, today’s wars, today’s promotion of the confusion Rabbi Heschel is warning us about. Rather than engage in uncovering what is “hidden in the depths”, rather than disclosing “the light out of the darkness”, humanity has been deeply engaged in wrapping up mercy with judgement, good with evil, truth with lies, etc so humans are able to gain power, wealth, live in a transactional world rather than in a covenantal one. It is hard for me, at least, to realize this light that Rabbi Heschel is shining upon us has been and still is dimmed by people who are afraid to have revelation and disclosure, uncovering and separation.
We are willing to separate the Sabbath from the rest of the week, be the Sabbath on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Jews have a ceremony called Havdalah, which means to distinguish, to separate, at the end of our Sabbath. Yet, we are not willing, nor have we throughout the millennia, to separate the evil from good, the judgement from mercy, the lies from truth. Rather we work hard to keep them intertwined so we are able to do terrible things in the name of God, Christ, Allah, etc. We see this in Iran, we see this in Saudi Arabia, we see this in Israel and we are bombarded with this in America.
I believe there is a very good reason for our resistance to Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance, Rabbi Heschel is not speaking just to everyone, he is demanding action from each of us. He is calling us out individually to stop hiding what is deep in our spirits, what is embedded in our minds, to reveal our fears, our hopes, our dreams to our self, to another(s) and to begin to separate what is self-centered egotistical and what is Godly and holy, what is ‘just because I want it’ from ‘how does this help another(s) human being, for the sake of service rather than ego/money/fame’. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel demand that we engage in the work of personal revelation; the work of disclosing the light within us rather than hiding from it and hiding it from the world. Being good is not a weakness though there are many who exploit the goodness of another(s) for their own power and gains. This, as I am reading Rabbi Heschel today, is not our concern, just as God had faith in humanity (maybe more than is deserved) that we would use God’s revelations and disclosures for our good, for our health, for our service, for our unique gifts to shine, for the sake of everyone not just hoard and abuse what is revealed and disclosed and we haven’t yet! Yet, Rabbi Herschel is optimistic about the human capabilities, he keeps calling us to the task of personally looking inside of our being, to search our soul so we can reveal our authentic purpose and disclose our unique talents and brilliance in service of God, in service of another(s)!
We have learned to hide our self, our authentic self from the world because it is a cold, cruel place. This is the teachings we receive from our youth, we learn of ‘stranger danger’ which makes it hard to reveal our self to anyone for fear of being hurt. We are berated for “missing the mark” and sold on the idea of perfection which we work hard to accomplish on the outside and for everyone else to see. This way of being has also caused us to hide our true self from us as well. One time someone asked:”If you live a false self long enough doesn’t this become your true self?” I was almost speechless as I realized how great is our intertwining of true and false, light and dark, good and evil and how this intertwining has led to obliviousness and willful blindness, led us to cover up what is disclosed in our depths.
In recovery, we dedicate ourselves to pulling apart what is evil from the good we do, knowing we will never be “good for goodness sakes” alone, there will always be some self-interest involved. The major self-interest involved in our pulling apart the lies we have used as our north star from the truth is we learn how to live with our self, we learn how to stop depending on substances, process, ways of being, ‘normal things’ to validate what we know, in our depths is not right, is not okay and we are aware of the myriad of ways we confuse our self and confuse everyone around us.
Looking back, I realize that I have been seeking to unwrap the confusion Rabbi Heschel is speaking about forever. I would talk about, cry and whine about “it’s not fair” when I saw evil triumphing, when I watched deception win, when I witnessed and experienced people using goodness, kindness as weakness and the ridicule, the taking advantage of that ensued. I remember being outraged when a couple of young people held up my grandfather in his small tailoring shop and threatened him for a couple of dollars and his desire to deliver all of the dry cleaning he had in his store to the people who had left it for years, in some cases. His ability to reveal his light, his goodness, his morality was overwhelming to me, yet, I succumbed to the dark side of society and have made amends to him at his grave. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark