Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 140
“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.”(God in Search of Man pg 374)
Immersing ourselves in the last sentence above causes us to hold a mirror up to ourselves and see how we live into the failure of Adam and how we live into the Sinai experience. We have to delve into the failures of Adam, hiding, blaming, lying, and disconnection as well as seeing how we are still engaging in these mendacious ways and how we follow through on the Sinai event of transparency, truth, openness, willingness and connection.
Adam’s failure was not in disobeying God by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, I believe. Adam had a choice and he chose to disobey, he chose to be curious, he chose to engage in learning the difference between good and evil. His failure was to use his newfound knowledge to hide his body and himself from Eve, from God. He then chose to lie about what he had done by blaming Eve and not taking responsibility for his errors. We engage in the same failures on a daily basis and call it good, call it smart, call it business, etc. When we are ‘caught’ in our lies, when our errors are uncovered, we quickly blame circumstances, another(s) person, even God for our missing the mark. When we are caught in our misdeeds, many of us continue to deny and obfuscate the truth; calling our visions “alternative facts”. We are all spin masters in these ways.
We see over and over again throughout history how people chose “the failure of Adam” over the Sinai experience, all the while wrapping themselves in the cloak of religiosity, of rationalizations, and we have witnessed the destruction that ensues from this choice. Yet, we are, today, still unwilling to allow the experience at Sinai, the experience of being unmasked and accepted for who we are with our foibles, the experience of hearing the word of God, the connection and transparency, the aid of God to overcome “the nature of man” to penetrate us. Many of us would rather listen to and adore Tucker Carlson who denies that the Insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 happened. Many of us would rather listen to the lies of Kevin McCarthy who now endorses alternative facts as to that day in the face of what happened to the Capital Police who suffered greatly to protect him from the mob! We have the Freedom Caucus who wrap themselves in ‘christian values’ and lie about everything they can, who are unwelcoming to the stranger, who criminalize the poor, and who trample on the needy. We have Rupert Murdock and his minions who care only about the green and the greed rather than truth, transparency, connection. Kudos to Mitch McConnell and the other senators for standing with the truth and defying McCarthy, Carlson, et al.
Yet, rather than just blame any of these entities and more, rather than repeating “the failure of Adam”, we have to look inside our self, search our inner life to find the source of our own self-deception, the source of our believing either the lies of another and/or the lies we tell ourselves. We have to let go of our rationalizations and our mendacity so we can, once again, experience the spiritual experience of Sinai and let go of our own dishonesty, our own blaming and be responsible for our errors and our hitting the marks. We, the people, are the only ones who can stop repeating “the failure of Adam” and to do this takes the hard work of stopping our continued efforts to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.
This is a tall order for most of us, this is what we all need to be in recovery from: “the failure of Adam”. This is what the spiritual experience of Sinai rescues us from when we immerse ourselves in it. My experience with “the failure of Adam” is long and extensive and, in reality, never ends. It is a constant inner war, a daily struggle to not give into these failures, they seem so natural, so easy. Since I am not perfect, I will engage in these paths of failure and only the Sinai experience of connection and transparency can help me return to God, to my loved ones, to my community. Only through being serious about my commitment to the covenant with God can I stay 51% in the Sinai experience, only by listening each day to and for the word of God can I retain the imprint of Sinai that is on my soul, only through truth and transparency with myself and hearing the truth and transparency of another(s) can I lesson the severity and the amount of times I engage in “the failure of Adam”. Acceptance and connection are the solutions to my problems today, they are the path to retaining the experience at Sinai, to honoring the covenant with God and living a joyous life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark