Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 44
“The Almighty has not created the universe that we may have opportunities to satisfy our greed, envy, and ambition. We have not survived that we may waste our years in vulgar vanities. The martyrdom of millions demands that we consecrate ourselves to the fulfillment of God’s dream of salvation.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)
“We have not survived that we may waste our years in vulgar vanities” hopefully, causes us to take a pause and do an accounting of the way we are living. While this was originally written in 1938, it was updated in 1943 and modified for publication in 1954. Rabbi Heschel is, of course, speaking of “the martyrdom” of both the soldiers who fought and died in WWII as well as the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and the millions killed in the Concentration Camps and innocent civilians killed by the bombings and battles it took to defeat Germany, Italy, Japan. He was seeing the forgetfulness of humanity and the willful blindness of people so they could ignore the horrors and ‘go on with their lives’, I believe.
This has been the way of humankind forever, unfortunately. We go through life-changing world events and then, in our search for certainty, in our desire to not learn from past failures/mistakes, we believe we can ‘just pick up where we left off’. Yet, so many soldiers came back changed from WWII, for Korea, from Vietnam, from the myriad of wars and skirmishes in the Middle East, the 2 Gulf wars, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without the rest of us helping them to recover from these traumas, with most people thinking, including the soldiers themselves, ‘lets just move on’. So, we have watched history repeat itself, we have witnessed terrorists become ‘freedom fighters’, we have ignored the root causes of the wars and conflicts believing we can just return to wasting “our years in vulgar vanities”. How sad, how treacherous, how demeaning to those who survived and those who died. It is time for all of us to end our desire to “waste our years in vulgar vanities”, to cease and desist from our engagement with self-centered and selfish goals to ‘get ours’, our denial of the rights of every person to live free from terror, our need to enslave another people, our belief that if we can put someone else down we will seem better, the “win at all costs” mentality which permeates our world view.
We see the subtlety of this way of being in the ways the Congress of the United States is operating; what it takes to fund the government, how some of the members of Congress refuse to do their job to help the poor, the needy, to welcome the stranger, to send aid and comfort to our allies in their fight for their own freedom from the terrorists of Russia, Hamas, Iran, ISIS, etc. We see how they fight with one another over stupid shit, how they “waste their years” in Congress “in vulgar vanities”. They are not “humble servants” here to aid and serve the greater good, they are selfish, “vulgar” people kissing up to their wealthy donors and shitting down on every one eel. They could care less what their constituents want, what they need, they only care about their getting elected and holding power so they can line their own egos and pockets. This is true for our many members of our government and governments all over the world.
It is time for us to face truth, to face ourselves, to look at the “man in the glass” as the poem says. We have the power, the urge, the spiritual strength to end our “vulgar vanities”, we just have to surrender to something greater than ourselves. This is the issue: Are we willing to serve the Almighty, are we willing to serve the universe, are we willing to serve the spiritual needs of ourselves and everyone else? Are we going to continue to wrap ourselves in the cloaks of ‘self-righteousness’, the cloaks of ‘we are the only ones who are right’, the cloaks of ‘needing to blame another and make everyone who doesn’t think the way we do bad’? Are we going to put up with Trump’s calling anyone who doesn’t agree with him “vermin”? Are we going to allow the Freedom Caucus to hold up our governmental business? Are we going to allow Tuberville to hold up the necessary Military appointments for his own right-wing craziness? Are we going to stand idly by while Hamas puts out false propaganda and blame Israel for the war in Gaza? Are we going to only call for a cease fire by the Israelis again while the hostages are not seen, nor checked on, not returned? Are we going to abandon the people who have stood by us so we can feel good about ‘helping the underdog’ who have allowed terrorists to rule them, to speak for them with their rockets, who have denied them any help while making themselves rich and famous in Qatar? There are a myriad of “vulgar vanities” we seem to “waste our years in.”
Recovery is the solution, the revolution we need in this moment. Just as the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Living, Confucius’ teachings were all revolutionary, we need to re-join the revolution of recovery, spiritual recovery. Whether one’s recovery is based on the Biblical teachings of the prophets and Moses, Jesus’ Gospels, Mohammed’s revelations, Buddhist teachings, AA spirituality, being rebels for service, being a rebel for the sake of a power greater than ourselves, being rebels who see the dignity, worth, uniqueness of every human being, is the goal. These paths entail a deep look inside ourselves, a decision to no longer “waste our years in vulgar vanities”. Living a life of faith, of spirit is letting go of our need to be right, our need to live in hierarchies, our need to be ‘king of the world’-that job is taken by our Higher Power/God. I have been a rebel for most of my life, prior to recovery I rebelled against everything and in my recovery I rebel for the greater good, for the sake of another, for caring for me and you. Isn’t it time to honor the Martyrs who made it possible for us to live free? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark