Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 170
“Living in “the light of the face of God” bestows upon man a power of love that enables him to overcome the powers of evil. The seductiveness of vice is excelled by the joys of the mitsvah. “Ye shall be men of holiness unto Me” (Exodus 22:30).”(God in Search of Man pg 376)
Rabbi Heschel’s influence on America in a very turbulent time is historical. What many people miss, I believe, is his concern and influence on our inner lives. It is easy to blame “them” and march against racism, homophobia, antisemitism, Islamaphobia, greed of corporations, etc, it is harder to look inside of ourselves and see how we have been seduced by vice, how we have allowed evil into our hearts and minds willfully and unwittingly. Rabbi Heschel’s words above are directed at our inner lives as much as the outside world, if not more in my opinion and experience.
Immersing ourselves in these sentences necessitates a dive into our actions, our thoughts, our inner world. “The seductiveness of vice” emerges from our insecurity, our feeling of less/lacking, a poverty of our spirit because we have rejected the truth that we are “living in the light of the face of God” and we have the “power of love” to draw on. Instead we focus on what we don’t have, we focus on what another does have, we focus on quick, fast and in a hurry, etc. The other day I read an article in The New Yorker about the run on Ozempic as a weight-loss miracle drug and how diabetics who actually need it can’t get this life-saving drug because the rich, famous, etc are buying it up! Full-disclosure, I asked my doctor if it would help me in my struggle with weight and she said she didn’t want to take it away from her patients who have diabetes. This is how seductive vice is in our inner lives, we will selfishly use something that is meant for people who really need it for our own desires and wants. We live in a world where the inner life, while spoken about often and loudly by many clergy and eastern philosophy practitioners, is left adrift, is left unmoored and unattended to.
Rabbi Heschel’s words are meant for us to look inside ourselves, to see how we can overcome the “seductiveness of vice” by doing mitzvot, by taking the next right action no matter how/what we think or feel. Before Nike, Judaism taught: “just do it” (the mitzvot) and then the understanding, the feeling, the thinking will come. Before Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”, Judaism, through the mitzvot, acknowledged ‘I am a human being endowed by my Creator, therefore I think’. Looking inside of ourselves to see how we fall into “the seductiveness of vice” is crucial if we are to separate truth from lies, deception from reality, and make the changes necessary to “live in the light of the face of God” and experience “the joys of the mitsvah.” Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us and calling us out on our facades of piety, our fake religiosity, I believe. He is calling all the people who perform mitzvot, who wrap themselves in Jesus, who praise Mohammed and treat another person with disdain, use people for their own selfish needs, bastardize the Torah, the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Eastern Philosophies for their aggrandizement and riches.
We have to end our dependence on “vice” and engage in “the joys of the mitsvah”; our inner lives depend on it. Without a stronger inner life, an inner life devoted to truth, love, compassion, justice, kindness… our outer lives will continue to be in the shambles they are in right now; democracy in the US teetering on its foundation, racism being flouted in State Capitals, the Halls of Congress, the Supreme Court, as well as in the streets, marketplace, workplace, hatred of Jews for no reason other than we are Jews, 2.4% of the population and 55% of the hate crimes, from many of ‘the good people’. We have “the power of love”, we have “the joys of the mitsvah” to save us. Tomorrow more on how they can.
I have seen a shift in my inner life since I began writing this blog. Rabbi Heschel’s words above reverberate truth and power to and for me. I have found a myriad of ways I had been seduced by vice and have repaired them through “the joys of the mitsvah” and “ the power of love”. I have no resentments, no angers, no blame, no shame, about the past. I still review it every so often to see how and where I erred and seek to repair my inner damage, my inner life and, of course, the damage anyone else experienced. I also know that I cannot change the opinion of someone else and if they take what I write, what I say, in ways I did not intend, if they consciously misinterpret my words and actions for their own false narrative, I am powerless and I rely on “the power of love” to send them prayers of healing and goodness. No hate, just love! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark