Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 275
“It is the new perception of evil that drives man to despair. For what is ghastly about evil is not so much its apparent might as its cryptic ubiquity, its ability to camouflage.” (God in Search of Man pg. 390)
God in Search of Man was published in 1955 and Rabbi Heschel’s teachings stand the test of time, in fact, I would say they were/are prophetic. He is so concerned with evil, with integrity, with faith, and gives us a roadmap to our inner life, to our ability to question ourselves, and too many of us ignore his wisdom, his concern, his care for each of us as individuals and for humanity as a whole.
Our integrity is directly linked to our ability to perceive evil in ourselves, to be humble and seek out the self-centered, self-serving aspects of our actions. While every good action serves us, serves God, serves another, when they are done for our self-centeredness, they easily turn to the “cryptic ubiquity” of evil. Cryptic comes from the Latin meaning “hidden” and ubiquity’s root is “everywhere”. Rabbi Heschel’s use of these two terms together teaches us to seek and find the evil that is hidden everywhere, that is ‘hiding in plain sight’. Yet, too many of us are willfully blind to this truth, we are too lazy to ask ourselves the right questions.
Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man, z”l, taught me (and many others) “what is the question this experience is the answer for” and I began to realize that I had to right answers to the wrong questions. When we are not asking ourselves the ‘right’ questions, we will add to the “cryptic ubiquity” of evil even when it seems we are doing the good! Our inability to question ourselves, to ask the right questions for this moment, to realize that our experiences are not answers, rather they beg certain questions from us is at the root of adding more evil to the world rather than adding more good. This is not to say that anyone is all good nor all bad, it is to remind us to not be smug, not be so certain, not be so impervious to outside opinions and suggestions when it comes to our actions, our thoughts.
We are living in a time where certainty reigns, where humanity’s quest for certainty and our fear of the unknown is so great, we listen to the false prophets, we turn our will and our lives over to ‘the supreme leader’, rather that to God, rather than to listening to and responding to the calls of our inner life. The evil that is hidden everywhere, that we willfully ignore is running rampant in our time, possibly more than in any other time in the history of humankind. We have become so afraid of living in truth, so scared of truly seeing ourselves and maturing our inner life, we ‘go along to get along’ even when we are going along with evil, even when we see the error of our ways. Defend, defend, defend is the way of our world, no matter what the issue is. We are engaged in a battle for democracy, for faith, for religion today, as we have been before, because so many people are willing to believe lies, mendacity, deceptions of another and give in to our own self-deceptions
As we approach the Hebrew month of Elul, the time when we are to take an inventory of our year, a Cheshbon HaNefesh-accounting of our soul, Rabbi Heschel is calling upon us to uncover the hidden evil that we have perpetrated ‘in the name of good, in the name of being conservative, in the name of being progressive, in the name of doing nothing. For me, Rabbi Heschel is demanding a T’Shuvah for all the “cryptic ubiquity” that I/we have engaged in. He is telling us that our very way of being depends on our taking off our blindfolds, “lifting up our eyes to see” as God tells Abraham in Genesis, reaching into our inner life with courage and desire to serve God, not idols, to fulfill the calling we were created for, and to live in truth. We have to make a decision to root out the hidden evil within us, the hidden evil that is everywhere around us, to be like the boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes and say what is, not what everyone wants to believe. We have to take back the words of Christ, Mohammed, Moses from our Holy Texts that the charlatans, the perpetrators of this hidden evil, have stolen and bastardized.
In recovery, we constantly are searching for our part in every interaction, the good and the not good that we do. We have the experience of spreading the hidden evil, adding to it from our times prior to our decision to live differently. While we are not perfect, each day we seek progress in our war with our own hidden evil, with our own self-deceptions. We are asking ourselves more of the right questions so we wind up with the right answers. Each day we root out some evil we were unaware of through prayer, meditation, growing our inner life and connecting to, learning from another human being. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark