Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 87
“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 and the mystics who put the Zohar together make many of us very uncomfortable with the teaching above. The last sentence is very difficult for many of us to take in and accept, I was speaking with someone yesterday about this sentence and the difficulty this person was having with it. We both came to realize the humility involved in accepting the truth stated above.
“From good issues evil and from mercy issues judgement, and all are intertwined” teaches us humility by reminding us to not be ‘so sure’ of the ‘rightness’ of our attitudes, our beliefs, our stands. To be human, as I am understanding the teaching above, is to know that even my best intentions, my best actions could bring about evil. One of the ways this occurs is our good actions could give us a false sense of self, a surety that will blind us to any negative consequences of our ‘good actions’. Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People precisely because we erroneously believe our good actions protect us from negativity. Yet, as God tells Cain, “sin couches at your door, it desires you much, and you can master it”. Negativity, evil, missing the mark will never leave us, we are not perfect, we do not know everything and yet, so many people either believe these lies about themselves and/or believe these lies should be true and there is something wrong with them because evil, negativity, missing the mark has not left them! This is a classic example of how “good issues evil…and all are intertwined.”
Rather than facing the complexity of being human, rather than engaging in and deepening what has been and is being revealed to us humans, we have bought into the deception of society that we have unraveled or are unraveling what is good and what is evil, what is hidden in the depths and we have found the light in the darkness. It is the hubris of being human, it is our self-deception that allows us be oblivious to the mystery and believe we have solved it and/or can solve it. We have always lived in a world where some people believe they know what is good and what is evil and they take power when they can, by any means, and impose their sense of good, their sense of mercy upon all they believe they should rule. Even today, there are people who believe that slavery was good for our country and for the slaves themselves! While one could say we are doing wonderful in our low unemployment which is good, giving someone a job and not paying a living wage is not so good. Watching the advertisements for charities during the end of the year giving season was painful for many, seeing people with disabilities, children suffering cancer and other illnesses beg us for money was painful. It evoked feelings of mercy in many and along with mercy comes judgement about the way we are being asked, the constant barrage of asks after we have already given, etc.
Listening to the debacle on the floor of the House of Representatives is another example of people being deaf, dumb and blind to what the wisdom above comes to impart upon us. Jim Jordan and others of the “freedom caucus” want to not raise the debt ceiling, not support infrastructure improvements, not bring chip manufacturing back to our country, lower taxes for the rich and the corporations, support the insurrection of Jan.6, 2021, get pardons for themselves and their friends, close our borders to people of color while cozying up to Russia, white people who want to immigrate, get rid of any ethics restrictions on them, etc. all the while proclaiming this is what America wants! While, at first, I thought this was just pandering to the White Supremacists and white people who are fearful of anyone who is ‘not like them’, part of their tribe, I have come to realize that they believe their bullshit and their lies, they believe they are doing what Christ wants, they believe this is what America was founded for, they have no idea of the evil that issues from their ‘good’, they are incapable of unraveling what is intertwined. One of the evils that issued from the good of Christianity, of course, is Anti-Semitism against Jews and the Anti-Muslim since the Crusades!
I have been immersed in this teaching and unwrapping my confusion of good and evil, unraveling the profound from the impenetrable for a long time and I am constantly finding new confusions, new insights, new evils, new darkness and new good and new light in my living. I have worked and am working diligently to accept my powerless over the truth Rabbi Heschel and the Zohar give us. I continue to refine my mercy to be merciful without being judgmental, to do good for the sake of doing good rather than for my gain, I work hard to lessen the evil and the darkness that I bring to the world and I fail often enough to remind me of my humanity, my fallibility. This is what keeps me humble, keeps me right-sized, or at least brings me back to humility when I get too puffed up:) This is the cornerstone of recovery for me and for many. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark