Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 78
“God is presented to us as a comfort, not a challenge, a rumor, as if it is nice to have Him around. But God means defiance, rejection as well as affirmation. We have relinquished our roles as educators. We surrender, we abandon, we desert, and we forget.” (Essential Writings pg. 87)
Merry Christmas! Immersing ourselves in the second sentence above and thinking about the stories about Christ, knowing that the entire Torah relates to us God’s will and God’s words of rejection of indecency, defiance of the outsized false ego and false pride of kings, priests, false prophets, etc, we can know that Rabbi Heschel’s teaching of God meanings “defiance, rejection as well as affirmation” are at the foundation of our faith, at the foundation of our being human. Yet, too many people want to deny this truth, too many people have decided that “deep affection”, a definition of love, doesn’t include “defiance”, “rejection”.
When we immerse ourselves in the thoughts of the Bible, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us to do, we can see that God’s love is expressed through both the stories of connection with our ancestors and rejection of their bad actions! We can hear the defiance of God in relationship to the “conventional notions and mental cliches” of societal norms. The Torah, the Bible are, in my experience, stories and instruction manuals for defying the “ways of the world”, for rejecting “the status quo” and affirming spiritual truths that are the foundation of being human, that speak to our souls so we have the same experience as the Israelites at Mount Sinai, at the Red Sea. The more Rabbi Heschel’s teaching reverberates in my soul, the more I am certain of it’s truth and it’s importance.
Whether we are talking about our political realm, our religious realm, our business ethics, our personal relationships, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom in the second sentence above has to enter into our equations if we are to be human in all of our affairs. If we are to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God” in our living, we cannot ignore what God calls us to be defiant of, what God demands we reject and what God tells us to affirm. We have to honor the protestors in Israel who are living “defiance” with their feet, who are telling Bibi and his band of thugs: NO. They are engaged in actions of rejection of Bibi’s status quo, of the lies of the far-right, so called ‘religious groups’. They are affirming one of the truths of the Book of Genesis, we are all related, Jews and Arabs are cousins, it is time to end the feud and find ways to live in peace with one another. We have to stand in “defiance, rejection” of the protestors who are promoting the false claims of Hamas, who are ‘standing up’ for the Palestinians who have rejected peace deals in the past, who go along with Hamas, with other terrorists in claiming Jews should be driven into the sea. These ‘protestors’ are not caring about truth, they are not seeing the nuances of the situation, they are not forcing Hamas and the other terrorists to return the hostages NOW, they are not even going along with the latest Ceasefire proposal! These ‘freedom fighters’ and their allies are not being Godly, they are not in “defiance” of lies, nor are they in “rejection” of mendacity, they are in “affirmation” of the same prejudices, the same hatred they are accusing Jews and Israel of! Sound familiar-“accuse others of that which you are guilty of” Josef Goebbels. The political far left and far right, the religious far right and far left seem to be incapable of living Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom because of their adherence to ideology rather than Truth, their adherence to what gives them comfort rather than what and when we ought to be in “defiance, rejection” of comfort and ideology, ask religious behaviorism. Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, the other members of the Jan 6th committee, Charlie Sykes, the Lincoln Project, and so many more are heroes for their “defiance” of the mendacious lies of Trump and his gang of thugs. Tomorrow I will write more on the ramifications of living into this wisdom from Rabbi Heschel in our business ethics and personal life.
In recovery, we begin with the spiritual principles of acceptance, hope and faith. We affirm these three every day. Living in acceptance of what is true and right forces us to live in “defiance” of the lies we used to tell ourselves and another(s) as well as the lies that creep into our consciousness in our recovery. Acceptance is a “rejection” of our false egos that want to convince us and another(s) as to what is ‘really going on’ and what should be going on. Acceptance is an “affirmation” of truth, of clearer vision, of taking action on what the next right action is. The spiritual principle of hope affirms our ability to defy societal norms, to reject the deceptions of another(s), to defy our urge to “scout out after our heart and eyes which causes us to whore after them”. The spiritual principle of faith is the affirmation that there is a higher wisdom and logic than our ‘rational minds’. It is a “defiance” of conventional wisdom and mental cliches that, while ‘logical’, are not true nor valid. It is a surrender of ‘our best thinking’ to the will of God, a rejection of our self-deceptions.
My actions of T’Shuvah help me live into the spiritual principles of recovery. I have lived a life of “defiance, rejection” and “affirmation”. For the first 35+ years I rejected God’s will more often than not, I defied truth, and affirmed mendacity. In these 35+ years of recovery, I live in defiance of “political correctness”, of being ‘nice’, of ‘accepting as valid the lies of another(s). I live in rejection of the lies I tell myself and seek to root out the ones I hide from myself. I am loud, abrasive, in your face in my “defiance, rejection” and I am just as loud, abrasive, in your face in my “affirmation” of what is good, what is true, what is holy, and of everyone’s ability to change, I accept what is, hope for the strength and wisdom to change me and the faith that all of us can live into what God’s will for us is. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark