Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 124
“They imparted to justice the violent imperative character which it as kept, which it has since stamped on a substance grown infinitely more extensive. Could it have been brought about by mere philosophy? There is nothing more instructive than to see how the philosophers have skirted around it, touched it, and yet missed it. But how is such a supremacy possible? Is not our sense of beauty and ugliness, of gain and loss, more acute than our sense of good and evil?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)
The word violent comes from the Latin meaning “having a marked or powerful effect and the word imperative comes from the Latin meaning “to commend, specially ordered”. Rabbi Heschel’s quoting Henri Bergson above is reminding us that the Prophets’ mission was to make known to us, to communicate to us, the supreme importance of justice. While in theory justice has kept this character, in practice not so much and herein lies our challenge. Rabbi Heschel, by using this quote, is, I believe, also demanding, challenging us to realize how extensive justice is in all of our affairs, in our daily living, in our inner lives. “Justice, Justice you shall pursue” we are told by Moses in Deuteronomy. Since he is speaking in the imperfect tense, Moses is reminding us that we are on the road to justice, we have begun the long arduous journey of justice-leaving Egypt was our first leg of this long journey-and we cannot stop moving forward, we cannot stop pursuing justice in all of its forms, in all of paths.
Immersing ourselves in this first sentence above is awesome and terrifying. This is the trembling awe that is spoken about in all spiritual disciplines. While we use violent to connote evil, bad, etc for the most part, Rabbi Heschel is using the word to move us forward towards fulfilling the Prophets’ call, to move us forward in serving God, in serving one another, in serving the deepest call of our soul/spirit. We are hardwired to hear this call, we are created to pursue justice, to make our corner of the world a little better, to fulfill the divine need each of us is uniquely qualified to fill and we have to learn how to close our ears to the words of the prophets, we have to learn how to stop hearing the “still small voice” that is within each one of us.
Throughout history, some of us have watched in horror the bastardization of the words and thoughts of the prophets’. We have watched in dismay how justice has lost it’s powerful effect on our world and people in it, we have been witness’ to the false claims of the deceivers who believe they can define justice to meet and serve their own needs. Some of us have been gleeful that we can so easily get away with injustice and falseness because people are willing to be deceived and want to learn how to “get ahead” through our ill-gotten gains. Rather than having a powerful effect on this group of people, justice has become something to ‘spin’, something to twist and pervert. This group of people is the group the Prophets’ were railing against, warning of the destruction these behaviors would cause and they fell on deaf ears because the people engaging in injustice believed they could get away with anything and there would never be a day of reckoning. They were wrong in Israel, they were wrong in Judea, they were wrong in Assyria, they were wrong in Babylonia, they were wrong in Greece, they were wrong in Rome, they were wrong in Spain, they were wrong in England, they were wrong in Germany, we are wrong here in the United States. Yet, we continue to violently oppose justice in our halls of justice for religious, political and philosophical reasons, we continue to violently oppose justice in our halls of government for religious, political, philosophical, power-hungry reasons, we continue to oppose justice in our treatment of one another in daily living for philosophical, political and religious reasons. Our hubris is that we will not suffer the same fate as the societies that came before us and opposed justice-how arrogant, how ridiculous, how scary!
We are witness’ to the rolling back of justice, of human rights, of voting rights, of freedoms for the majority because of a vocal and violent minority. Rather than see the individual worth of every human being, rather than embrace people who are different than us and learn their wisdom and spiritual truths, we seek to crush ‘those people’ and call them ‘the other’ rather than seeing them as fellow travelers and the divine needs and divine reminders that each of us is. We are witnessing people in power, people with bully pulpits and microphones purposely lie to increase their vote tallies, to increase their viewership, to increase their personal power and personal bank accounts. We are watching people like Lindsey Graham bastardize his friendship and fellowship with John McCain for the sake of Donald Trump?? We are cheering the people who instigated the Jan. 6th insurrection and vilifying the people who seek to uncover the truth. We are witness’ to Mike Pence denying the separate and equal call of one of the three branches of Government and then speaking about the constitution that he, his cronies, his boss, stepped on and continue to trash!?! All of this in the name of ‘justice’, all this in the name of Jesus?
In recovery, we hold ourselves to the “violent imperative character” the prophets teach us about and call us to. We know if we don’t we are lost and we relish the joy and growth that living a just life brings to us. We are constantly pursuing justice knowing we will not attain it wholly or completely and we can move forward as we “trudge the road to happy destiny”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark