Daily life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 14
“Judaism in its very essence came into being as an act of dissent, dissent from paganism, as an act of nonconformity with the surrounding culture. And unless we continue to dissent, unless we continue to say NO to idol worship in the name of a higher YES, we will revert to paganism.” (Essential Writings pg. 106/107)
Our need to dissent, our strength to dissent comes from our ability to dissent stems from our ability and inner desire to say “YES”. We all have this ability, we all can summon the strength to say “YES”, we just need to be willing to. Our ability comes from our spirit, our soul’s knowledge and strength, yet we have to have our own house in order before we can use our ability and our strength to say “YES”. Putting our own house in order is the goal of the Bible, it is the path God gives us and the prophets demand of us. Yet, in our search for certainty, in our search for ‘the easy way’, in our search for the protection of wealth, power, we continually follow a path of inner chaos and outer destruction and ruin. Most human beings are unwilling to be Israel, to wrestle with our inner angst, our inner turmoil, our self-deceptions and mendacities and we surrender to the societal norms and conventional ideas, we seek medicines to quiet our minds, we engage in habits and ways that we believe will bring us ‘spiritual peace’ all the while seeking something that is unattainable. Our spirits can never be nor should be at peace when there are terrorists seeking to massacre innocent civilians. Our spirits can never nor should be at peace when there is poverty, homelessness, neediness, meanness towards one another. Our spirits can never be nor should be at peace while there is racism, anti-semitism, dictators, unlawful intrusions on a country’s borders. Our spirits can never be nor should be at peace when “there arose a new Pharaoh who knew not Joseph”(Exodus 1:8).
One of the major self-deceptions and mendacities that we promote and tell ourselves and everyone else is the concept of ‘spiritual peace’. Rabbi Heschel teaches: “In a free society, some are guilty and all are responsible”. He cries out his inability to pray when the death of thousands of innocent Vietnamese is on his conscience. Yet, we have charlatans who sell us on the idea of ‘spiritual peace’, we have despots who support Hamas and other Terrorists while condemning and warning Israel not to defend itself. While any death of innocent civilians is horrific, when terrorists like Hamas use their civilian population to shield themselves, when they care so little for the lives of another human being as to slaughter them, use them as pawns to save their own lying, evil selves, I ask Qatar, Egypt, et al-why don’t you, why didn’t you take these people into your countries after you told them to leave their homes, to kill Israelis ever since 1948? Why is it that only Jews are condemned for defending themselves? Since Qatar and other Arab countries give money to Hamas, why are they not demanding the release of the Hostages held, why are they not saying YES to a higher authority, to Allah’s call for decency, for Islam’s call for peace? Because, like their leaders, they are proponents of ‘spiritual peace’ so they don’t want to do anything that upsets their carefully made applecart!
All of us need to ask ourselves how is our misguided search for ‘spiritual peace’ bastardizing the very principles we claim to hold dear? How can any Jew hate all Arabs because of the evil of Hamas? How can any Jew rejoice at the death of innocent civilians in Gaza even though rooting our Hamas is necessary? How can anyone in our Congress not give aid and comfort to all people who fight for democracy, however imperfect their democracy may be? How can we not support Ukraine, Israel, and countries all over the world who are fighting for democratic values like the dignity of all people, the freedom of choice for all people? How can this happen?
It happens when we are so blind to truth through serving some self-deception and/or mendacity of another regarding the ‘rightness’ of our path to ‘spiritual peace’. It happens when we “revert to paganism” and, instead of emulating the Israelites at the Red Sea and at Mount Sinai, we try to dictate what God is and what God says in only one way. We end our dissent when we go along to get along, when we give up our own experience of our Biblical text, our own experience of the Ineffable One in favor of someone else’s interpretation and description.
I have wrestled with my soul for almost 72 years now. In 1987 I began to recover the tools to wrestle and I have used these tools to this day and I am not in ‘spiritual peace’. I have learned to hear my soul’s call clearer and better and I cannot stay silent in the face of mendacity. This gets me into trouble yet it is “good trouble”. Rabbi Heschel disturbs me in the most wonderful of ways, he keeps me wrestling and growing. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark