Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 27
“Soldiers in the horror of battle offer solemn testimony that life is not a hunt for pleasure, but an engagement for service, that there are things more valuable than life; that the world is not a vacuum. Either we make it an altar for God or it is invaded by demons. There can be no neutrality.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)
“Either we make it an altar for God or it is invaded by demons.” This wisdom from Rabbi Heschel is so needed today, now and, if we are to last as a democracy, if we are to see freedom survive around the world, we have to engage in making our world “an altar for God” because we are witnessing how easy and how insidious the demons are! Last night there was another mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, number 565 this year. The war in Israel, where Israel is fighting for its very existence is ongoing, hostages seem to have become lost in the media coverage of the devastation in Gaza-not even the Red Cross has visited them- the Republicans in the House of Representatives have elected an election denier as the Speaker of the House, a man who doesn’t believe in freedom for all-only those who agree with his far-right views. So much of these incidents are done by ‘people of faith’ and for ‘religious reasons’ as have so many wars, conflicts, etc. So often, these horrors are the result of people who believe they are acting in God’s name and people who wrap themselves in some garment of ‘righteousness’ and validate evil, validate their prejudices, validate their oppressive actions.
It is important, as I wrote yesterday, to see the nuances, to not have myopic vision, AND it is just as important to call out evil, to be involved in the fight for freedom, not the fight to continue prejudice, hatred, racism, religious fanaticism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia. Since October 7, when Hamas murdered, tortured babies, elderly, and everyone in between in their homes and, for some, while sleeping, took over 200 hostages, paraglided into a music festival and mowed down young people having a good time celebrating peace and love, there have been 312 anti-semitic incidents in the United States and this increase is happening all around the globe. Yet, we are not paying attention to these facts, we continue to vilify Israel for its devastating bombing of Gaza with no mention of the hostages that Hamas refuses to release, with no mention of the fact that the people of Gaza have allowed Hamas to rule them, they have celebrated the rocket attacks, parents praised their children for the terrorism, the murders their children perpetrated. And, the media believes the ‘news’ coming out of Gaza as truth even though it comes through the terrorists of Hamas! We are being invaded by demons and, unfortunately, many of us ‘good people’ are succumbing to the demons inside of us, our prejudices, our inability to discern truth from fiction, our sympathy for ‘those poor victims’ who are actually perpetrators.
Of course the people of Gaza are suffering! Of course there upticks in Anti-Muslim actions, of course faith has a place in our society, and of course we have to see the whole picture of what our world has become, is becoming, and could become. There are no “good old days”, there is no “make America great again”, because these slogans keep a myth going that never was! We are told to read the Torah, the Bible each year and see new ways to live into the will of God in this moment, not living the same as we did last year. We have to take a stand, we have to stop using seeing both sides as a path of having our being, our world “invaded by demons”. Terrorism is demonic-full stop! We have allowed terrorists to hold us hostage for far too long! Be they Islamic terrorists, like Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Iran, or domestic terrorists like the far-right MAGA crowd, or world terrorists like Orban, Putin, Xi, etc. As Charles E. Weller taught generations of typing students: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”
Recovery in general and in my personal recovery; our daily goal is to make this day “an altar to God”. I am aware of my imperfections, I am aware of my shortcomings, I know each morning I make commitments to God, to people, that I fall short of completing by nightfall. I also know I am progressing, I am on guard for the demons that invade me, the demons that live within me and I wrestle with them everyday as does everyone in recovery. We do not hide from ourselves nor anyone else. Prior to recovery, I terrorized my family, people around me and people who didn’t really know me, in my recovery, I make amends for those actions and I realize-sometimes sooner, sometimes later-how I have terrorized people in my recovery-there is no perfection. I have made my T’Shuvah, I have forgiven myself, I have changed. Each and every day, I know the demons, inner and outer, want to and do chip away at the altar to God that is my life and I know I add more than is chipped away with my dedication to Godliness, to truth, to awareness, to discernment, to forgiveness. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark