Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 126
“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)
Today is Presidents’ Day in America. It is a celebration of our Democracy and a celebration of our ability to move forward in making this a “more perfect union”. I remember when we celebrated George Washington’s Birthday and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday as two separate occasions in the month of February. It was a time to reflect on two people who led us through very dark times-one with the approval and support of all the people and one with a populace that was severely divided. As I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words and look at our country and our world today, I am dismayed by the deep truth of his question and what seems to be a constant response of Yes, our “sense of beauty and ugliness, of gain and loss” is “more acute than our sense of good and evil”!
What is it in our human make-up that gives such power to our “drive for cruel deeds” as Rabbi Heschel speaks of in his interview with Carl Stern? What is it that pushes us further and further away from our sense of good and evil and towards ugliness, beauty, gain and loss? It is, as Rabbi Heschel continues in the same interview, “You need some greater help. And that greater help, I believe, is a little fear and trembling and love of God”. Yet, the some of the most ‘god-fearing’ people, some of the ‘holier-than-thou’ people are pushing the sense of beauty, ugliness, gain and loss and trying to disguise it as a war between good and evil! These charlatans have bamboozled a myriad of people, they are the authoritarians who disguise themselves as revolutionary leaders, they are the clergy who are promoting a white christian agenda, they are the religious and spiritual leaders who are promoting their own power, their own ego, their own agenda for their own self-gratification. They are the elected officials who want to make a circus of deceiving the public with their ‘investigations’ into the supposed wrong-doing of their adversaries, ie the opposing party, rather than seek truth and do what is good and right for our country. Yet, these people will lead parades and make speeches about Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Reagan, Kennedy, etc, all the while living in opposition to the peaceful transfer of power, in opposition for a search for truth, in opposition to “shining city on a hill”, in opposition to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. These liars and deceivers claim to believe and be following God, yet they have no “little fear and trembling and love of God” and we know this by their actions of loving to spread ugliness and loss onto anyone who stands up to them and demands truth and they love the beauty and gain of their mendacity and power.
While it is easy to point the finger at the charlatans who are so blatant about their mendacity and deception, Rabbi Heschel’s words are spoken to all of us. What is our path to the “fear and trembling and love of God” that we are following? Is it a path that leads to truth or is a path that allows us to engage in self-deception? Is it a path that leads to caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy or a path that aggrandizes our self and our power? Is it a path that leads us to connection with another human being seeing their divine image and honoring their infinite worth or is a path that seeks to enslave everyone else to our way? We, as individuals, have to ask ourselves what is driving us to cruelty more than to goodness, we have to ask ourselves what to do about our “sense of beauty and ugliness, of gain and loss” being “more acute than our sense of good and evil”. We, the individuals that make up this country, that are celebrating Presidents’ Day, have to recommit to living with “fear and trembling and love of God” a little more each day-not through our words, rather through our actions. Care for the stranger, the poor, the voiceless and the powerless, give comfort to the needy and the bereaved, take the “leap of action” that Rabbi Heschel calls us to do each day, in a place where there is no humanity, strive to be human-to paraphrase Rabbi Hillel in Ethics of the Ancestors 2:5.
We in recovery know the pull of darkness, of evil very well as we succumbed to it and practiced it with a mastery that, in our recovery, disgusts us. Not to the point of self-flagellation, just to the point of knowing the power of evil and our need to rely on God’s help to overcome our drive to and inability on our own to not fall into it. Paraphrasing the first 3 steps of AA-1)We Can’t 2) God Can 3) We surrender to God’s Will. Doing this each and every day allows us to ward off our drive for evil and engage in the actions that God wants us to, helping another(s), living with and learning from our imperfections, no longer blaming another and having compassion for the people who need to continue in their cruel ways while letting them know we see them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark