Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 205
“The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)
OY! Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is so appropriate for the times we find ourselves in right now. While I believe redemption is an act of grace, it is not “an act of sheer grace”, as Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above reminds us, we have “to make the world worthy of redemption.” It would be great if someone, ie Elijah the Prophet, the Messiah, could/would come and make everything wonderful, cause a world-wide redemption, according to Jewish wisdom and experience, this is not going to happen on it’s own.
It is a radical statement to many; “man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption”, yet whether Christian or Jew, we realize that Jesus, Moses, Torah, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, all speak of the ways we humans have to act. In the Hassidic tradition, Reb Moshe Sassov of Leib says: “If you treat the person next to you as the Messiah, you will come to watch your words and your hands. If he/she chooses not to reveal her/himself, it will not matter.” Maimonides, the famous Medieval philosopher, wrote about a messianic era, where we change our ways so the Messiah can come and be heard, so we are worthy of redemption.
We do not seem to be doing so well in this regard right now. We are still suffering from our moral infection and we seem to have turned it into a moral pandemic, as I wrote earlier. We have made the world more unworthy of redemption, believing we can do whatever we choose and be exempt from the consequences of our actions. Our Climate Crisis is an example, climate change is undeniable, yet many people want to deny it, want to carry causing the problem to get greater because of their comfort, their denial, their pandering to the baser instincts of themselves and another(s).
“Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall men learn war anymore”(Isaiah 2:4) is not just a nice saying, it is not just a wonderful tune in the Hebrew, it is God’s dream, God’s demand, God’s call to all of us to lay down our weapons, to stop the seemingly endless and cruel ways of war. We are witnesses and participants to not just the war in Ukraine, Russia’s attempt at an unadulterated land grab, we are witnesses to politics being a battlefield for power, not for the people. We are witnesses and participants to the rich using a myriad of weapons to keep their money and not pay their fair share of taxes and help redeem their brethren, their neighbors, their fellow citizens and the strangers they don’t know. We are witnesses and participants to the hatred and vitriol brought about because of mendacity and permission to oppress anyone ‘not like me’. We are witnesses and participants to the opposite of what Isaiah says in the same verse above, we are turning plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears. We are witnesses and participants in making the world less safe, more ruthless and being held hostage to the lunacy and indecency of a few.
The Republicans in Congress who are holding our credit hostage are so full of it, it is inconceivable to me that more people are not calling their hypocrisy out. They say we have to be responsible financially, yet they approved the spending that we causes the debt, they are now saying not to pay for what we already spent while berating people who are in default over their enormous student loans! This is taking personal responsibility? This is the way these ‘good christian folk’ believe Jesus would act and this is what they believe will bring about the ‘second coming of Christ’? As Pete Seeger asked in 1955, “when will they ever learn?”
In recovery, we have laid down our weapons of mass destruction, we have put down our swords and our spears, we work each and every day to turn them into the tools we need to live well, to live decently, to live responsibly, to live according to the will of God and not the will of our demons, our negativity. The only requirement for membership in recovery is a desire to lay down our guns, our knives, our lies, our deceptions, and rebuild our lives according to the principles that will make us worthy to be redeemed. Just as prayer will not redeem us, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, it will only make us worthy of redemption, in recovery, we know our actions are towards the goal of “trudging the road to happy destiny”, it is a slog and we are committed to slog it out together. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark