Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 148
“To the Jew, Sinai is at stake in every act of man, and the supreme issue is not good and evil, but God and His commandments to love good and to hate evil; not the sinfulness of man but the commandment of God.” (God in Search of Man pg. 375)
For the good of humankind, we have to return to following “the commandment of God.” In this moment, when the “sinfulness of man” is so great, when the false ego has overtaken “the voice”, we are being called to return to “the commandment” to love good and hate evil”. Yet, we seem to continue to be deaf to this crucial need, we seem to be continuing to immerse ourselves in the mendacity of brutality being good and “doing justly” being hateful. We are in desperate need of living the words of the prophets and “return” to God, return to “the commandments to love good and to hate evil”. To do this we must first leave the mendacity we are ensconced in. We have to let go of our spiritual sickness of power, greed, deception; we have to let go of our practice of power being right, we have to let go of seeing the stranger, the needy, the poor as pawns, and we have to let go of our twisting and bastardization of “the commandment of God.”
To do this, we have to have a reawakening within us of Sinai, a cleansing of our ears, our hearts and our minds so we “the voice” reverberates within us rather than hearing only what our rationalizations, fears, false egos are telling us what is good and what is evil. We have to stop being in fierce competition with one another and see how we need one another, we have to re-experience the leaving of Egypt and the convocation at Sinai, when we helped one another leave the burdens of the Egyptians and have our own unique experience of God and God’s commandments. We have to remember how we needed one another to be able to achieve the goal of entering the Promised Land. We need to stop seeing our differences as threats and renew our commitment to one another as partners in fulfilling the “commandments of God”. Nowhere in the Bible do we learn of ‘doing it alone’, we only learn how we come together to defeat the enemies of God, the people who put themselves above God, and, with God’s help, defeat Goliath. We all have within us the determination and power of David to defeat the Goliaths of deception, greed, power, hatred, evil; we just have to live into this power rather than live into the Goliath that also dwells within us. Only through “the commandments of God” can we transform our Goliath energy to assist our David energy and ensure that good triumphs and evil loses. Yet, our David energy seems to be losing to the Goliath energy. We are seeing people as enemies who are actually either trying to help the poor, the needy, the stranger or our the stranger, the needy, the poor who are trying to join with us to serve God, to live into “the commandments of God.
I am suggesting that we declare a National Day of Repentance; a National Day of Forgiveness, a National Day of Return to “the commandments of God to love good and to hate evil”. While it will take more than a day to achieve these ways of being, these declarations will begin the process. Just as with Yom Kippur, we begin our inventory of when we loved good and loved evil during the past year 40 days before, we can begin to do the work today! Whether it is done as a country, a state, a city, a community, a family, and/or an individual; we have to begin to repent for our lack of commitment and fulfillment of “the commandment of God”. We have to begin to ask for and give forgiveness to the people we have harmed and give forgiveness to those who have harmed us, including forgiving ourselves for our spiritual sickness that led to our confusion of what is good and what is evil. We have to begin to engage in the work of returning to “God and His commandments to love good and to hate evil” by returning to fulfill the call of “the voice” that is calling to all of us from Sinai.
As we say in recovery: “What an order”! Yet, we learn from Pirke Avot, it is not our job to finish the work, yet we are not free to invalidate it. We are not free from engaging in the work whether we will finish it or not, as those of us in recovery affirm each day by our daily 10th step, our daily inventory of what we did well and where we missed the mark. We make a daily gratitude list to remember how God continues to show us what is good, what is helpful and reminds us to continue to turn our lives towards “His commandments to love good”.
I believe it is possible, for my fellow clergy people to make this declaration as an ecumenical experience. Just as Rabbi Heschel joined with so many different faith leaders to fight for Civil Rights, the end of the Vietnam War, etc; so too can we faith leaders declare these National Days of Repentance, Return and Forgiveness. I engage in this work each day and I am grateful for “the commandments”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark