Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 54
“What is sin? The abuse of freedom. A failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge. The root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart, lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.” (Essential Writings pg 85)
What is so difficult that we have a “failure to respond to God’s challenge”? We are in a world that seems to continually abuse freedom and have “a failure in depth”. Vladimir Putin scolds Israel on the death of “innocent” people, Hamas is celebrated as ‘freedom fighters’, Iran is put in charge of the UN Human Rights commission, immigrants are vilified in the United States and across the globe, Donald Trump is the favorite of the Republican Party’s nomination for President in 2024, Joe Biden is excoriated for being a decent human being, etc. Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is a call to action and humanity seems to be missing in action, absent without leave.
Watching the news, reading social media gives me heartache and headaches. Listening to students on College Campus’ who march for the extermination of Jews and the destruction of Israel, hearing the xenophobic rants of Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu, and their allies in Israel, seeing how Qatar honors the leaders of Hamas, wondering where the billions of dollars given to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority go when their citizens are in poverty, all point to our “failure to respond to God’s challenge”, our “failure in depth” and we hear cheers for these actions. How sad, how dangerous, how depressing.
I believe the “failure in depth” comes from our love affair with vapidity. We seem to be unable to stay grounded in the foundations that God has given us, decency, morality, love, kindness, justice, compassion, truth. Our society has fallen in love with mendacity, deception and promotes the latest lie that sounds good, that makes our worst impulses seem holy, and bastardizes the word of God, the teachings of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, our holy texts. We witness and celebrate the liberation of our negativity with joy, glee and are willing to sacrifice our spiritual health for more likes on social media, for a promotion at our job, for a lawsuit that has little merit just to settle and get more for ourselves.
We, the People, have to “fail forward”, we have to learn from the “failure in depth” of our ancestors, of our selves and repair the damage to our inner lives, to our souls and to the inner lives and souls of people we have harmed. While we are overjoyed at the release of the hostages by Hamas, we are failing to hold them accountable for taking the hostages in the first place. We are failing to condemn the actions of Oct. 7 and blame the victims, Israel, for what is going on in the Middle East. Not one Arab country has condemned the actions of Hamas, Joe Biden is losing support among the progressives and young people for standing with Israel, for condemning Hams, for resisting the lure of terrorism, while the progressives in this country celebrate the terrorism of Hamas, abandon the Jewish people who have stood up for the downtrodden. I hear Rabbi Heschel’s call to us to end our love affair with “sin”, to end rejoicing in our “failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge”. I hear his cry to us to return to our humanity, to being human in response to the failures of another. I am overwhelmed with his demand we return to the words and deeds the prophets have spoken to us.
We can do this! We can “fail forward”! We do this by demanding of our politicians and elected officials to be “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” once again. We have to demand our elected officials and politicians no longer pay attention to the special interests, to the lobbyists, to the false claims of people, to the idolators claiming to represent God’s will. We need to be more discerning in what we are teaching our children, we have to be more discerning in promoting truth rather than mendacity, we have to end our self-deceptions so we can discern the deceptions by another(s) and not buy into them. We have to look inside of ourselves and end the “cancer of the soul, the eye disease” of prejudice and hatred.
Every spiritual discipline has a remedy for our “failure to respond to God’s challenge” our “failure in depth”. The remedy begins with a “fearless and searching moral inventory” as it is called in AA, it is called T’Shuvah in Judaism, confession in Christianity, “lifting the veils” in Islam, meditation brings this about in many Eastern spiritual disciplines. In other words, the Recovery Revolution begins in earnest for all of us when we are willing to look at the myriad of ways we have had a “failure to respond to God’s challenge”. We have “a failure in depth” because, prior to being a part of the Recovery Revolution, we have not looked beneath the surface, have not engaged in the work of maturing our inner life, not cared about our love affair with self-deception. The Recovery Revolution is how we “fail forward”, I believe, in whatever path we take to find our inner core of decency, our inner connection to the creative force of the cosmos, our inner connection to goodness, truth, grace, kindness, love and compassion.
I am aware of the many times I have been guilty of “a failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge” and I am deeply remorseful for allowing my false ego to overrule my soul’s knowledge. Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance shows me how, at times, I have worked to save my face rather than serve God. I shudder at these thoughts. AND, I also know how often I “respond to God’s challenge” with Hineni, here I am. I am experiencing serenity (clarity) at the overwhelming experiences of delving deeply into my soul, into prayer to hear the call of God, the words of the prophets and act in concert with them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.