Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 80

“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)

How is it possible that we have abandoned, deserted and forgotten what God means, what God has commanded us? When we read the surveys about how religion has lost so many adherents, when “none” has risen in numbers so greatly, it seems as if Rabbi Heschel’s words and wisdom are, again, prophetic. Yet, we hear so much from the “religious right”, we hear how abortion is against Christian doctrine, though it is not mentioned in Scriptures as a prohibition, we hear about “those people” who are “invading our country” “poisoning the blood of our people”, etc from these ‘religious’ people. “We abandon, we desert, and we forget” when we use God as comfort only, when we seek to find a word, a phrase taken out of context to prove the points we want to make for our own self-interest. When the “nones” want to denigrate and deny the existence of God, using a phrase or the mendacious ramblings of these so-called ‘religious’ people, it makes rational sense to “abandon, desert, and forget” the true meaning of God, of faith, of religion.

We people of faith have, as Rabbi Heschel says in his book God in Search of Man, made religion ineffective. We have perpetrated the downfall of religion through making it “irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid(God in Search of Man pg.3). The “religious behaviorism” that Rabbi Heschel rails against is oh so prevalent today. The “religious” people have hidden behind God’s defiance of indecency, God’s rejection of injustice and bastardized both of these ways of being. They are not rejecting injustice, rather they are promulgating it! They are not defiance of indecency, they are promoting it, all under the banner of religion, under the flag of piety and purity. Bullshit!

We, the people, all of us, those of us who are people of faith, the “nones”, have to stop the “desecration of God’s Name” by these infidels, by these idolators. Rather than becoming “nones”, we have to double and triple our efforts to overcome the deceptions of the Mike Johnsons, the Ben-Gvirs, the Ayatollahs, the far right and far left media who seek to spread lies by telling only one part of the story, the passivity of people who are unwilling to stand up to these idolators. We have to be engaged in the war against the mendacity of Netanyahu, Putin, Trump, the Heritage Foundation, et al. We have to be in “defiance” of the rhetoric of the Rabbis, Imams, Priests, and Ministers who spew hatred and prejudice. We have to stand up against the stereotyping of groups, of individuals by these ‘holier than thou’ charlatans. While these liars continue to promote perfect adherence to some doctrine that human beings have discerned from our Holy books to aid in their search for absolute power, we, the people, have to say NO, we have to end our abandonment, our desertion of God, of the prophets, of truth.

“Never Forget” is a phrase that has special meaning for Jews and Armenians because be it the Turks, the Holocaust deniers, there will always be people who want to blame the victims. I think we have to also use this phrase for all of us to “Never Forget” the ways God is calling upon us to live-“do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”- as well as not forgetting that caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow and the orphan” is spoken 36 times in the Torah, it is the basis upon which the prophets railed against the priests, the royalty, the wealthy. We have to not forget what our ancestors went through to come to America, to give us a life in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”. It is our duty to not forget our obligation to make America a little more free and to be a little more brave each and every day in order to honor the sacrifice our ancestors made to come here, to fight for our country’s safety and the principles of democracy. As I was taught by my 9th grade Civics Teacher, Ed Roach, all of our freedoms come with the responsibility to use them well, to not take advantage just because we can. We cannot “forget, abandon, desert” God, humanity, our soul’s call anymore! We have to be Godly in our “defiance, rejection as well as affirmation” of mendacity, fake religious people and false doctrines that these idolators claim God is calling us to do. We can no longer afford to abandon the prophetic tradition, we can no longer afford to desert the pathways of Godliness, we can no longer afford to forget to hear and respond to the call of the universe, the call of our souls.

In recovery meetings, I say “my name is Mark and I am a grateful recovering alcoholic” not to shame myself, rather to never forget how far down the rabbit hole of mendacity I fell as well as to remind myself of how grateful I am to God, to the people who love me, to the people who have helped me-they are not always the same- to stay the course of recovery. It is not a linear course, and one that I am compelled to never abandon this path and to never desert the spiritual principles of recovery, of Judaism, of Godliness. Introducing ourselves in the above manner, is an act of “defiance”, it is telling ourselves and those around us we do not have to fall into the lies of “conventional wisdom”, we are in “rejection” of the stigma society has placed on those of us who have erred and returned. We are in “affirmation” of the healing power of God, the ways God ‘opens God’s arms” and welcomes back the stranger, the ‘sinner’, the children who have been in exile. We have a choice to make and we have to make is soon-live Godly or give in to the mendacity of ‘pious’ people. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark