Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 134
“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)
Surrender and acceptance are necessary in order to practice self-restraint and self-denial. To live a life of goodness and virtue means we have to surrender our false ego, our inauthentic needs to a power greater than ourselves and accept our proper place as a being compatible with being a partner with the Ineffable One. Being human, as our religious and spiritual disciplines teach us, means we have to not only follow the 365 ‘thou shall nots’ of the Bible, we have to engage in the 248 ‘thou shall’ demands. We are faced each day with choices of how we are going to engage with the world and when guided by these ‘thou shall’s’ we find ourselves enriched and able to live with our self and one another in dignity, respect and concern.
Virtue is not easy to achieve because self-restraint and self-denial in service of something greater than ourselves is a difficult task. We are taught from an early age it’s a ‘dog eat dog’ world, we learn conspiracy theories and we listen to the bias of media that enriches them and impoverishes us. We are watching in real time the ways that Fox News and their hosts knew they were spreading disinformation and did not care what it did to the nation. We are witnesses to the deceiving marketing of products that will ‘make us young, fix our ailments, make us look like new’, etc. We are watching, hopefully in horror, as our Congress is more concerned with theater than with governing. We are seeing the upsurge of anti-semitism, racism, criminalizing the poor and the stranger precisely because some of the people in power, owners of media, everyday people are fearful of losing power, money and status. Lyndon Johnson once said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” This is what Fox News, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, et al are doing and their mendacity and deceptions are unrestrained and they are denying themselves nothing in their quest for power, for status, for wealth. They have, ingeniously, put together a coalition of “lowest white” men and women along with the “religious right” and added in the wealthy who want to hold onto their wealth at all costs to the country and to their fellow human beings. This coalition is not surrendering to nor accepting the laws of the Universe as written in the Holy Books of Religions and Spiritual Disciplines-no matter how much they wrap themselves in the Bible. Jesus would not recognize their interpretations nor would Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, etc.
We, the People, are Divine Reminders and fulfill a unique Divine Need according to Rabbi Heschel. We cannot fulfill these massive undertaking without self-restraint and self-denial. We are faced many times each day with the choice to live a life of virtue or live a life of selfishness, without a deep knowing of ourselves, without a strong commitment to self-denial and self-restraint, virtue will not prevail. Yet, even in our commitment and knowing we have to be aware of the ways we deceive ourselves into believing we are acting for the greater good and not for the greater good of self. Too often we are faced with a choice of looking good and self-aggrandizing while believing it is for the greater good for all. This is an area of great concern to our ancestors and their solution is T’Shuvah, their solution is the Bill of Rights, their solution is care for the stranger, the poor, the needy in our midst and see the parts of our self that feel like the stranger, that are needy, and that are poor in dignity and value. Then we will be able to relate and join with another(s) to raise all of us up, then we will deny our selfishness and greed, then we will restrain our power and rejoice in virtue.
I have wrestled with these concepts my entire life. In recovering my self and my purpose, I have learned how to practice both of these principles and know when I am not. I am attuned to my self-deceptions more and more each day. I work diligently to engage in more virtuous activities each day, I am remorseful for the times I do not. I fight against the mendacity and the deceptions that people use and I surrender to God’s Will more often than not. I have acted my way into right thinking by accepting that God is in charge and I am not, accepting that I am blessed to be a servant and my service is my reward, my virtue and my joy. I am enriched by each ‘next right action’ I take and that is a reward in itself. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark