Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 86
“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)
Rabbi Heschel’s challenge to us is to absorb the profound from the impenetrable, as I am hearing him today. It is not that the profound is too far away, it is not that the profound is too etherial, it is our obstinance and self-centeredness, our immature ego and our rationalizations that prevent us from absorbing and acting on the profound that is revealed to us. It is not for lack of knowledge, it is our lack of effort that prevents us from being human, I believe.
It is a profound idea to “care for the stranger, the poor, the needy” and it is revealed to us through Scriptures and Eastern Philosophies. Yet, we seem to be incapable of seeing the “stranger, the poor, the needy” as us, both our inner experiences of being a stranger, poor and needy in the sea of humankind and to see the stranger, poor, and needy that surrounds us, meets us, asks for our help each and every day. We have turned this profound idea into a “mark of Cain” instead of an opportunity to fulfill a Divine command, to engage in actions that befit what being human means. Of course, it is a command precisely because we are so reticent to act from our humanity, our souls direction to “care for the stranger, the poor, the needy”. Our reticence seems to stem from our fear of facing our greatest fears and acknowledging our own inner feelings such as feeling unworthy, not good enough, not fitting in, helpless, powerless, etc. We are being taught by Rabbi Heschel and the Zohar (the Jewish Mystical Text) to unwrap the opposing forces of dark and light so we can penetrate the impenetrable and live a life that is worthy of being a partner of God, a life that is compatible with being God’s partner in creation.
We continue to keep light and dark, good and evil, mercy and judgement wrapped together and deceive ourselves into believing that we are actually unwrapping them. When people go on social media and claim that the Covid-19 vaccines were the cause of Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest and believe they are warning everyone, believe this proves their anti-vaxxer actions, they have completely confused good and evil, light and dark, mercy and judgement! Yet because of this confusion, they are unable to learn, to listen, to engage in meaningful dialogue as they wrap themselves in their ‘truths’ and deny everyone else’s beliefs. While for a long time, I thought these people were being stubborn and stupid, I realize from the wisdom above that they are just unable to unravel these opposing forces which have been unraveled, have been disclosed and, we humans, have stubbornly hidden from. This is the real tragedy of human history, I believe: our inability to absorb the path of unraveling that is in our spiritual DNA, in our higher consciousness.
We saw this in the House of Representatives yesterday, 20 Republicans stopped the workings of one branch of Congress because of their self-deceptions, even people like Jim Jordan who ‘stood up’ for Kevin McCarthy spoke about tearing down the progress we have made in caring for “the stranger, the poor, the needy”, blowing up our progress in unraveling mercy from judgement because he is all about judgement according to Jim Jordan! We have people who supported the coup attempt of Jan. 6, 2021 still in Congress, still deciding the fate of America. They have been voted into office by people who believe them when they say they are for American Values, like authoritarianism, Christian Nationalism, racism, anti-semitism, and other such prejudices. We, the people, have to cure our “eye disease” of prejudice, as Rabbi Heschel describes prejudice. We, the people, have to cure the “cancer of the soul”, another description by Rabbi Heschel, that hate has infected us with. We, the people, have to return to our original state of being able to unravel and discern light from dark, good from evil, mercy from judgement and live into our need to live profound lives instead of the false, shallow, ego-centric ones that we are living now.
In recovery, we engage daily in peeling back the layers of the onion of falsehood and mendacity. We are constantly and consistently seeking truth, seeking to discern light and good and mercy from their opposites which we have a PhD in practicing from our time prior to our coming into recovery. We are not perfect nor are we so arrogant to believe we have and need to have power over anything other than our responses to what truly is happening in life, ours and the world’s. We are powerless to fix, we realize, and we are not powerless to be in the solution, we are powerless to open the eyes of another human being and we are not powerless to share our experience, strength, and hope. We know we will never unravel all the opposing forces in the world and in ourselves and we know we can be in the solution and, one step at a time, one day at a time, one grain of sand at a time, be able to discern more of the light, the mercy, the good and the truth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark