Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 65
“The prophet is a person who suffers the harm done to others. Whenever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet’s angry words cry. The wrath of God is a Lamentation. All prophecy is one great exclamation. God is not indifferent to evil!”
As we continue to celebrate/observe the holiday of Hanukkah this year, and in every year, these words hopefully are resonating within our souls. We are all descendants of the prophets, we are all imbued with the same sensitivities as the prophets, yet we seem to have become inured to the evil, the harms, the crimes being committed in our name, in God’s name!
Hanukkah translates to mean “dedication”. Each year, at the winter solstice, we are being called to dedicate ourselves to the freedom, to decency, to justice, to goodness, to fighting for God’s will to be front and center in all of our actions. Yet, as Rabbi Heschel reminds us, we cannot do this as long as we turn a blind eye to the crimes committed against another, as long as we continue to commit crimes against our own souls. We are all guilty of being perpetrators in the crimes of our times through our silence, through our going along to get along, through our mendacity and our self-deceptions. In each moment we are able to dedicate ourselves to being more like the prophets and less like the Greeks, the Romans, less like Putin, Hamas, Trump, et al. We are called by the prophets, we are called by God to “suffer the harms done to others” rather than commit these harms. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, again and again, to stand with the prophets instead of being the people they called out, the people they railed against. And, we continue to be deaf to their call, we continue to believe we are right, we continue to be inured to the evil, the violence, the terror we perpetrate upon another human being and upon ourselves.
While some portray God and the prophet as angry in the Hebrew Bible, Rabbi Heschel is opening us up to a different reality, the spiritual reality of God’s cry, of the prophet’s cry over what we are doing to the gift of life, the gift of creation we have received. The only remedy for us, the only way we can begin to redeem ourselves, dedicate ourselves to God’s will, to God’s call, to the wisdom of the prophets, is to end our criminal behaviors. As we can see in the world today and throughout history, very few of the criminals are ‘put away’, are brought to justice, rather they seem to be running the world today as they have in the past. We, the people, have a wondrous opportunity to dedicate ourselves to dealing with the evil inside of us, to end our self-deception of ‘rightness’, of believing the lies we tell ourselves, of participating in the crimes of nations, communities, of clergy, and of our own indifference to the crimes that happen on a daily basis. We have to stand up to the people who believe that Palestinians are less human than Jews, we have to stand up to the people who believe Hamas are ‘freedom fighters’, we have to stand up to the people who believe the hostages should not be seen by the International Red Cross and they deserved to be taken hostage. We have to stand up to the fundamentalists who believe the United States is or should be a ‘christian nation’, we have to stand up to the people who look down upon the homeless population, seek to blame the stranger for the ills of society, engage in Anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia, anti-LGBTQ+ behaviors.
Most of all, we have to stand up to the evil inclination in all of us. We are given the tools by the prophets, by God, by our spiritual traditions to harness our evil inclination in the service of good, yet we seem to enjoy indulging in negativity. Be it the impugning of reputations because of our imperfections, be it the cries for the extermination of the Jews and of Israel, be it the denigration of the dignity and value of any human being, we have to say NO to ourselves, we have to rise above the internal fray and hear the call of our souls, the call of the prophets, and suffer the harms we have done to another, suffer the harms that are done in our name by another, and stand up against the people who enjoy their criminal behaviors and validate these behaviors by wrapping themselves in the flag of their country or their misinterpretation of God’s will, no matter who it is.
Those of us who are part of the recovery revolution observe and celebrate Hanukkah each day. As my Rabbi, Rabbi Ed Feinstein teaches, the most important day of any holiday is the day after the holiday: “how has it changed you”, he asks. We, who are engaged in our own recovery ask and answer this question each day-no matter which holiday we have just celebrated. We are constantly seeking to spread the message to people who are still suffering from their inability to see the crimes they are committing, hear the words of the prophets and heed them. We are dedicated to self-improvement, to spiritual growth, to service and to truth.
I live in self-deception less and less each day. I am dedicated to growing and I suffer whenever I see crimes committed against anyone. I also have committed crimes against another and am dedicated to not repeating them. Rabbi Feinstein says I am more a prophet than a rabbi and my prophet self sounds angry when in reality, I am crying out to people to hear me, to hear the call of their own souls, to change, to not reject me, not reject their spiritual life, not reject the words of the prophets nor the teachings of the Bible. My cries have sounded angry because I see mendacity and deception as the root of the “7 deadly sins”. I have indulged the anger at times, I have been unable to control myself and this has led to harms as well. I am sorry for these harms and I am sad that I have been misunderstood by people as well. I am responsible and I re-dedicate myself to goodness each day. Happy Hanukkah and God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.