Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 145
“The fact that we were given knowledge of His will is a sign of some ability to cope with evil. The voice is more than a challenge. It is powerful enough to shake the wilderness of the soul, to strip the ego bare, to flash forth His will like fire.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374-375)
Using the “knowledge of His will…to cope with evil” means we have to hear the voice of God, universe, power greater than ourselves, etc, as more than a soothing voice that is cool with our misdeeds, with our bastardization of this knowledge. We have to hear “the voice” as more than a suggestion, more than a way for us to validate our joining with evil, our intentional and unintentional mixing evil, mixing our own egotistical needs in with good so we are unable to distinguish one from the other. “The voice is more than a challenge”, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom today is a call to hear the demand of “the voice”, the demand of our souls, the demand of the people around us, the demand of the widow, the poor, the orphan, the needy, the stranger and respond to this demand instead of the demand of our selfish desires, of our need to be powerful, right, our need to win at any and all costs. “The voice” is also a commander for us, it is constantly speaking to us in our inner life, causing a dissonance of the soul and mind, a dissonance of our hearts and heads, a dissonance of between love and ‘where’s mine’.
We, the people, are all children of the Creator, are all given “knowledge of His will”, all hear “the voice” and it is up to us to stop blaming God, universe, luck, parents, ‘those people’ for whatever is not ‘right’ in our lives. Letting go of our rebellion against God, against ‘those people’ is necessary for those of us on the right and on the left. Immersing ourselves in our “knowledge of His will” will lead to differences of opinion on how to fulfill it, just as the Rabbis of the Talmud disagreed. It will also lead to ways of living together with our differences of opinion and how to carry out our interpretations and implementations of our “knowledge” in harmony rather than acrimony. Letting go of our need to blame God, blame ‘those people’ allows us to be more responsible for our actions, for our following the demands and commands of “the voice”. It shifts responsibility unto us, as the Haggadah tells us: “every person should see him/herself as if they had been redeemed from Egypt.”
By realizing the freedom that “knowledge of His will” gives us, we then can choose to use it to enhance our “ability to cope with evil”. Cope is defines as “the ability to deal effectively with something difficult”, it is not just to accept and cry about, coping means dealing with the evil that is present in all of us; the part of us that blames another, that part of us that stays in rebellion from “the voice”. We have the opportunity, as we approach both Passover and Easter, to redeem ourselves and one another by dealing with the evil that resides in each of us, transforming the evil to energy we can use to do good, to follow the demand of “the voice”, to rise above our pettiness, pride, envy and enmity, to serve our souls, the souls of our communities, and “the voice”. We can let go of our old hurts and resentments, we can and must see one another with divine pathos as Rabbi Heschel reminds us. Each night, when we say the Bedtime Shema, “we forgive those who trespassed against us” so we can be free of resentments, not live in the past, and we ask “forgive us our trespasses” knowing we cannot be forgiven if we do not forgive. Evil flourishes not only when good people do nothing, it also flourishes when we “harden our hearts” and do not forgive nor hear the pleas of another, like Pharaoh and we know what happened to him!
In recovery, “we sought to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out.” The 11th step comes after we have released our resentments, after we have asked for forgiveness from those we have harmed, after we stop blaming anyone else for our errors, for our situation. We are aware of the many layers of living, the layers of our inner life that are as thin as an onion, that we have to constantly be pealing away so we can hear “the voice” clearer and clearer each day. We also know we have to live the demands of “the voice” and carry out the “knowledge of His will” a little more each day.
This is my greatest challenge and my greatest defeat and victory. I have, over these past 76 weeks let go of all of my resentments, have pathos and forgiveness towards everyone, open to receive what the universe has in store for me and continue to seek what is next. I am grateful beyond words to God, to you all, to my family and friends, to Harriet and to Rabbi Heschel for believing in me, and helping me live better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark