Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 156
“We are never alone in our struggle with evil. A mitsvah, unlike the concept of duty, is not anonymous and impersonal. To do a mitsvah is to give an answer to His will, to respond to what He expects of us. This is why an act of mitsvah is preceded by a prayer: “Blessed be Thou …”(God in Search of Man pg 375)
As I understand Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, when we “give an answer to His will,” we say a prayer that begins with gratitude to God for our ability “to respond to what He expects of us.” Immersing myself in this thought, I find it counter-intuitive to human nature. Most people, upon doing something for someone else, expect the gratitude to come from the receiver rather than us thank someone for being able to do something for them. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that we are the ones to be grateful for doing a mitzvah and serving God, another human being, etc. In a world that seems to be lacking in gratitude, this is revolutionary and extremely important.
In the Bible, 3 days after walking through the Red Sea, being saved from the Egyptians, the Israelites complained and throughout the journey to the Promised Land, they complained when things were not to their liking. This is in direct conflict with the teaching above and we still haven’t learned the lessons Rabbi Heschel is teaching! We are living in the world of selfishness, of competition, of bastardization of God’s will and the teachings of the Bible. Instead of being grateful and saying a prayer when we can help someone, when we care for the stranger, the needy, the poor, we lord it over them, we remind them of how much we have done for them, we put our names on buildings, have them printed for the levels we give at, etc. We have expectations of another(s) when we help, we think they should be grateful to us, rather than us be grateful to God for being able “to respond to what He expects of us.”
Rather than being concerned with having “an answer to His will”, many people who perform mitzvot are still losing “our struggle with evil, because we are not responding “to what He expects of us”, we are doing a mitzvah by rote, for the merit, not for the sake of heaven. Watching the lies that are spoken in God’s name, listening to fundamentalists of all stripes speak of their rigidity, their ‘rightness’, is not giving “an answer to His will”. Continuing to treat the poor as criminals, the stranger as an alien, the needy with disdain, is not “to respond to what He expects of us”. Even helping people as a means to an end, as a way of raising up our own names, as a “benevolence”, goes against the teaching above.
Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to return to a way of being that rejoices in our ability “to give an answer to His will”, in a way of being that helps another person(s), grows our connection to God, and keeps us in a state of gratitude no matter our economic station in life. Many surveys have shown that poorer people give more of their income to charity than those of great wealth. We are taught in the Bible that 10% of our income should be given to charity, beginning with our own community, then the larger community we live in and then outside of us. For these donations, these tithes, we are the ones to say a blessing, we are the ones to be grateful to God for being able to participate in this mitzvah, not wait for someone to ‘kiss our tuchus, kiss our ring’ to get us “to respond to what He expects of us”!
It is time for us to realize that our treatment of one another is either furthering our response to “what He expects of us” or retarding it. When we extol the anarchists, when we call for the death of the rule of law, when we intimidate lawyers, judges, everyday people so the ‘rich and famous’ don’t have to be accountable, we are not giving “an answer to His will”, we are satisfying our selfish nature. When we manipulate the truth into a lie, when we use our intellectual skills to twist truth, love, kindness into their opposites in order to serve our selves, our bank accounts, our stature, we are not responding “to what He expects of us.”
Since my recovery began, every mitzvah I have performed, I have said a prayer of gratitude to God. This is how I live my T’Shuvah each day, in every action possible. I am grateful to God for the good I bring and for the errors I make in doing mitzvot because I repair the damage from my errors and learn from them as well as examine the good so I can enhance it. I have fought evil for a long time as well as succumbing to it at times. My gratitude to God for being able to have “an answer to His will” and “respond to what He expects of me” has made it possible for me to serve and help save many people. How can I not be grateful for this? My gratitude is to God for giving me the opportunity to use my gifts and enhance my corner of the world. Whether people are grateful is less important to me because I am grateful. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark