Daily life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 276
“Self-suspicion looms as a more serious threat to faith than doubt, and “anthropodicy”, the justification of man is today as difficult a problem as theodicy, the justification of God. Is there anything pure and untinged with selfishness in the soul of man? Is integrity at all possible? Can we trust our own faith? Is piety ever detached from expediency.?” (God in search of Man pg. 390)
Rabbi Heschel brings us face to face with ourselves in his teaching above, he is, as he usually does, speaking truth to power-not just powerful leaders, not just wealthy people, but to the power we all have to choose self-suspicion, to falsely justify our suspicious minds and ways, and to justify our regulating God to the Church, the Mosque, the Synagogue. Just prior to this sentence, Rabbi Heschel reminds us of the power of evil to camouflage itself, to hide itself and our suspicious ways make us partners with evil, help hide evil from ourselves in plain sight, and imbue evil with more power, with more logic, with more rationalizations.
In our political world we are witnessing and participating in the self-suspicious evil and its dangers when we make moral equivalence between Trump and his crime gang/crime family and Joe Biden; we seem to not question Jared Kushner’s 2 Billion dollar deal with the Saudis, nor his selling of his New York building that wasn’t worth much for a profit to Qatar, I believe. Our willingness to just believe the lies of Fox ‘News?’, NewsMax, OAN, etc is an indicator of how deep into suspicion we have fallen, how unaware of the evil that blindly following and/or believing lies causes and promotes. The same is true on the other end, just going along because it fits into the “self-suspicions” we hold dear. This is a recipe for disaster, for promoting evil and for being part of the cover-up of that evil.
Jews have promoted suspicion in our questioning of people who want to convert, Shammai, a famous Rabbi prior to the Common Era, when asked to convert someone “while he stood on one foot”, chased him away, which many Rabbis and congregations still do, making it difficult for someone who wants to join with the Jewish people. Rabbi Hillel, his counterpart, on the other hand, when confronted by the same person, instead of being suspicious, he was welcoming and told him: “The main principle of Torah is what is hateful to you do not do unto another, all the rest is commentary-now go study.” Ruth, was a convert and she was the great grandmother of King David and her conversion was simple: Wherever you go, I go, whoever is your people is my people, whoever is your God is my God, to paraphrase her words to Naomi, who told her to stay home in Moab. Yet, today, with all of our suspicious minds, we reject people at first who want to be part of and, we reject one another because we are suspicious of their ways of being Jewish. How sad we are unaware, willfully blind, and/or just so suspicious that we let evil flourish in our own midst, within the Jewish people, within our Synagogues, within our homes. I fear for Israel with the Ultra-Orthodox trying to take over, with their outlandish and unholy suspicious natures destroying the democratic state and Israel becoming an authoritarian state run by people who, with all their ‘studying’ are unable to hear the call of the Prophets, “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”.
Our faith, as Rabbi Heschel is indicating to me today, is dependent upon our letting go our our self-suspicious natures, letting go of our ‘rationalizations’ of evil and promoting the evil that is hiding in plain sight. Doubt doesn’t impede faith, in fact, I believe doubt enhances faith. God is so ineffable, that God can handle our doubt and understands humans are incapable of 100% surety, without doubt we wouldn’t learn more, and doubt presupposes a fact already known-God exists, God loves, God is ineffable. Suspicion, on the other hand, prevents true ‘devekut’- true connection and union with God, with another human being. Because of our self-suspicions, we suspect everyone else, we are waiting to be screwed over, we want to make everyone else bad and wrong so we can be in the right and have power. Our self-suspicion retards our living, yet we believe we are using it to move up the ladder!
In recovery, I have found it imperative to heal my self-suspicion and believe in my inner worth, believe my inner truth, and know I have so much more to keep learning. My belief in my soul causes me to keep maturing my soul, seeing where I still have to ‘grow my soul’ so I am never 100% sure I am right. Surety leads to separation from God and a bastardization of faith. I keep open to learn new and see clearer and trust my self a little more each day as well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark