Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 112
“The power to make distinctions is a primary operation of intelligence. We distinguish between white and black, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, gain and loss, good and evil, right and wrong. The fate of mankind depends upon the realization that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, is superior to all other distinctions. As long as such realization is lacking, pleasantness in alliance with evil will be preferred to unpleasantness in alliance with good. To teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message.”(God in Search of Man pg.372)
Rabbi Heschel’s observation regarding the “pleasantness in alliance with evil” and the “unpleasantness in alliance with good” is counterintuitive to what most people think they believe. Most of us equate good/right with pleasantness in our self-deceptive thinking. The truth, as Rabbi Heschel illuminates for us above, is that we are more comfortable and joyous in our alliance with evil than with good.
It is unpleasant to do the right thing, to take the next right action, to admit our flaws and errors, to stand up to the majority who are running to do evil, to act in ways that are Holy, to live the 10 Sayings, etc. It is unpleasant because we will not always be popular, it is unpleasant because we reveal what is underneath the facades we wear and humanity wears. It is unpleasant because we have to face the truth of our actions, we have to no longer blame anyone else, we have to accept our self for who we are, we have to make the commitment to change and grow in goodness and in being one grain of sand better each day. It is unpleasant because we have to stand with the poor, the stranger, the needy not just to help them, we have to see how we ourselves them. We have to feed our souls so we are not a stranger to our self, we have to enrich our learning and our actions in order to not stay poor and we have to fill the needs of our soul for connection with authentic connection, with covenantal connections not just the transactional ones we have been engaging in.
It is unpleasant to do a daily T’Shuvah, a weekly T’Shuvah inventory. It means we have to take a truthful look at our self, we have to acknowledge our errors, our missing the marks, we have to see our imperfections and not hide, blame, reason, explain, deny them! This is not a pleasant activity. We have to take our part in our interactions that go south, most of us are not all innocent in any interaction, in any experience- exceptions being made for the assaulters on us, on our freedoms, ie, Ukraine, driving while black, being a Jew, a Muslim, an Irish, an Italian. It is not fun to say, “I made a mistake”; we know this because so many people are unable to say it, to mean it, to correct their mistakes. We see this in the ways we continue to do incarcerate people for drug offenses and other crimes caused by addictions rather than treat them, help them. It’s far better to validate our “tough on crime” stance than look at our failures in this area, it is very unpleasant to look at our own ‘criminal’ behaviors in the ways we treat another(s) person, the ways we deny the dignity of groups of human beings because they are not like us.
It is much more pleasant to deceive ourselves that we are denying freedoms to groups of people ‘for their own good’, ‘because they would not know what to do with it’, and other such lies we have told ourselves, our children, our neighbors. It is far more pleasant for Jim Jordan and his cronies to berate and investigate the Justice Department regarding Hunter Biden than investigate themselves for their part in the Jan.6th insurrection. Kevin McCarthy will investigate so he can retain power, so Republicans can serve Tucker Carlson-a Russian favorite talk host-, serve the rich donors and corporations rather than care about the poor, the needy, the stranger. They can say all they want about Ilhan Omer and her inappropriate anti-Semitic comments from years ago without confronting their own White Supremacist agendas, remember Marjorie Taylor Greene’s quote about Jewish Space Lasers and she is rewarded?! It is more pleasant to quote the Bible and live in opposition to the principles of the Bible, of God, of Jesus that it is to confront their idolatry, their taskmaster mentality, their insatiable thirst for power to hurt another, to deny the dignity of human beings.
In recovery, we are engaged in turning away from the pleasantness of evil because we were so engaged in it prior to our recovery. Recovery itself is about dealing with the “unpleasantness in alliance with good”. We are constantly engaging with our better natures in battle against our more negative natures. We know we have to be aware of the cunning and baffling nature of evil with it’s pleasantness and ability to disguise itself as good. This is a daily challenge and we do a 10th step to keep ourselves accountable.
T’Shuvah is the response that has made my life what it is. It is my solution for every day living-I am not always aware of the missing the mark I did each day, yet eventually I realize them. I engage in the unpleasantness with good with excitement and humility. I am also aware of the traps of the pleasantness with evil and am constantly checking myself when I am feeling too good about my actions. Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom reminds me to stay in touch with my inner life and not allow my emotions to tell me what is right, what is good because I can easily deceive myself! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark