Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 158
“What is a mitsvah? A prayer in the form of a deed. And to pray is to sense His presence. “In “all thy ways thou shalt know Him.” Prayer should be part of all our ways. It does not have to be always on our lips; it must always be on our minds, in our hearts.”(God in Search of Man pg. 375)
Rabbi Heschel’s merging of prayer and Mitzvah is, in some ways, revolutionary. Most people think of mitzvah as a deed and prayer as a petition. Yet, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s teaching today, I hear him reminding us that mitzvah as a “prayer should be part of all our ways”. While it is important to pray, to commune with God, with our higher selves, prayer alone, study alone will not change anything, including us. We have to take action, we have to respond to God’s call to us through our actions, not just our words.
Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to be congruent, to be alive, to be aware, to serve our self, our community, God, with all of our hearts, minds, and actions. He is demanding we stop regulating prayer to the synagogue, church, mosque; he is calling us to account for our daily actions; he is asking us to “take a leap of action” as he says often. In order for change to happen, in order for us to be a partner of God in making the world better, in order for hatred and strife, prejudice and power-grabbing, self-deception and mendacity to end, we have to “sense His presence” in all of our actions. We have to stop using prayer and mitzvah for our advantage, to build our selves up, to bastardize God’s ways and desires, as we have throughout the millennia.
“What is the next right action” is the question that we have to ask and answer for ourselves constantly. I believe this is what “must always be on our minds, in our hearts.” Yet, we continue to ask and answer a different question: “what is in my best interest” and we find ourselves in the morass of deception, selfishness, hatred, prejudice, etc. We find ourselves going against what is truly in our best interest, serving God. We find ourselves thinking about how to get over, how to get ahead, how to deceive another into going against their best interest to serve ‘the leader’, ‘the group’.
Netanyahu and his band of merry men are trying to destroy the democratic state of Israel, they say they are Ultra-Orthodox Jews serving God while in reality they are serving their selfish desires. They have deceived themselves and their followers into believing that “prayer is on our minds, in our hearts” all the while going against a foundational tenet and mitzvah of God-“do justly, love mercy, walk in the ways of God”. They are not doing justly, they want to control justice, they do not believe in nor love mercy for anyone who is not in lockstep with them and their thinking, they are do not “sense His presence” because they do not see the divine image in anyone who doesn’t go along with their ways! While they may practice Judaism in an orthodox manner, they do not follow the words of the prophets, they do not allow for any other opinion but theirs, they do not follow nor engage in a discussion and exchange of ideas and ways to find “the next right action”, they only know and want what they want when they want it. This will lead to destruction and ruin.
In America, the Republican Party has been the home of ‘the unreligious right’. As in Israel, the leaders and followers are not congruent with the teachings of their faiths. They do not “do justly”, they also use their brand justice as a weapon against their enemies and a gift for their cronies. Rather than “love mercy” they show none to the people whom they consider enemies (anyone who doesn’t agree with them and/or stands in their way of total domination). They give shelter to people who use prayer for their own selfish desires, they lead people into believing God loves them more so everyone should follow them, they shun the stranger, the poor, the needy and show them disdain rather than mercy. How are they “walking in the ways of God”?
In recovery, we learn to serve God is to serve another. Each morning, each day we begin with prayers that lead us to serve, lead us to do mitzvot. We are acutely aware of how our actions shape us, shape those around us and the world. We pray each day with the action of turning “our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand God” because without the “sense of His presence” we know how lost we can become. Each and every hour, day we carry our prayers, our actions in our hearts and in our minds so we can grow in our knowledge of “what the next right action” is and how to carry it out. We seek each day to be one grain of sand closer to fulfilling the words of the prophets, return to God, do justly, love mercy, walk with God. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark