Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 37
“The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had winded. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 150)
Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence above is as true today as it was when he first spoke it/wrote it! We are in dire need for “the conscience of the world” to be rebuilt, to be rebuilt as the Bible, the prophets have imbued us with, have given us examples of, have reminded us of our purpose in making the world a little better than when we found it, a little better because we are here. The generation that fought against senseless hatred, unchecked power, rampant greed, in Europe and in Asia gave to us a world they believed would learn from what happened in World War II. Yet, today we have Holocaust deniers, rabid anti-semitism, senseless Islamaphobia, fear of the stranger, hatred of anyone we feel threatens our hold on power, terrorists who claim to be ‘freedom fighters’ and people willing to believe the mendacity and deceptions of so-called leaders. Many of We, the People, have become willfully blind to the lies of these so-called leaders, these people who traffic in conspiracy theories, who are “wont to blame others rather than themselves” and follow them down into the tunnels of self-deception, hatred of ‘the other’, blaming the Jews, the Arabs, the LGBTQ+, the Blacks, the Asians, etc for all of the ills of society. Never once do these followers of the deceivers look inside of themselves, never once do these pathetic people hear the call of God “Ayecha, Where are You” nor do they answer “Hineni, here I am”. We are living in a time where most people are pointing their fingers at everyone else, calling out the incongruities of everyone around them, that don’t agree with them, rather than look inside of themselves.
Whether it is Netanyahu in Israel who continues to shirk his responsibility for what happened on Oct. 7, in Israel, who continues to blame everyone else and be bellicose in his denials and his ‘strongman’ attitude, or it is Donald Trump who also is bellicose and blaming of everyone who opposes his lies and mendacity by calling them “thugs, insane, leading a witch-hunt, etc” or it is Putin in Russia who jails his political opponents for calling out his lies, his thievery, or it is the Iranians who fuel, feed, financially support Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorists around the world-they all use the same playbook-blame everyone else, wear down the people of conscience, confuse people with lies so the truth becomes indecipherable. This is a ‘winning’ political strategy, as long as one can convince people of the ‘truth’ of their deceptions, of them mendacity, one can gain political office, one can bastardize the principles of Christ, the teachings of Mohammed, and the examples of the prophets, including Moses.
How is this possible, one might ask. It happens because We, the People, have not learned the lessons for our ancestors from Biblical times till now. We have become so enamored with our own sense of progress, our erroneous belief that we are so ‘advanced’ from the time of antiquity, that morality is so imbued within us, that we don’t need to learn from the prophets, we can put words in Christ’s mouth, we can deny the truth of the Hebrew Bible and our need to see the imperfections of our heroes, etc. We have let go of the teachings that are the foundation of our moral, judicial systems, we have jettisoned truth in favor of feelings, in favor of hiding, in favor of running away from looking in the mirror! We have forsaken God, we have forsaken the spiritual courage of our ancestors in coming to America, we have come to believe in the myth of freedom rather than the truth of it. While many of us “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants thereof” (Lev. 25:10), we have not made it our ‘battle cry’, we have not made liberty a reality for all people of our land. We have singled out different ‘minorities’ for scorn, for blame, for prejudice. Even the word ‘minorities’ is a misnomer because we are all, supposedly, Americans, yet we find ways for “the conscience” of our country to be “destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves”.
We do have a solution, however. It is called Recovery! We need to recover not only our sobriety, our clear-eyed, clear-headed vision and thinking, we need to recover our spiritual essence, our connection to our ancestors, our commitment to goodness, decency, living God’s will, “turning our lives over to the care of God”. There are millions of us who have ‘returned from the dead’, come back from our destruction of our own consciences, had a rebirth of spirit and re-learned the lessons of our ancestors, committed/re-committed to living life along spiritual principles rather than the principles of mendacity, greed, prejudice. As Harriet Rossetto says: “You don’t have to be an addict to be in recovery.”
While my conscience was never completely destroyed, prior to my being in recovery which happened before I stopped drinking, it began in prison thanks to Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, it was so buried under blame and shame I could not access it. It was also buried under the fear that change wasn’t possible and no one would believe my change. T’Shuvah and the Bible, AA and Spirituality gave me hope and I have continued to regain my conscience through the bombardment of negativity and mendacity, through my own self-deceptions and the abandonments and being used by another(s). Each day, I am blessed to regain a conscience that allows me to live a life that is compatible with being a partner of God, as Rabbi Heschel teaches. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark