Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 266
“Thus the predicament of modern man may be characterized as an escape to suspicion. There is a tabu on the idea of objective validity, of sacredness or supremacy of a value. It is our implicit belief that there is a vicious underground beneath all action, that ulterior motives are the humus of all virtue, no reality to integrity.” (God in Search of Man pg. 389)
Reading these words some 68 years after they were written and given the latest indictment of Donald Trump, given that he is the frontrunner of the Republican party’s nomination for President race, they seem prescient, and Rabbi Heschel was a prophet in his time and for our times. Yet, no one truly heard his words, people did not take action on this teaching so we find ourselves even deeper in “the predicament of modern man”. We live in an era of ‘alternative facts’, in an era of denial of what we witness, in an era of suspecting anyone and everyone who does not march lockstep with our views and our actions/tactics.
Our situation is so dire precisely because even our ‘religious institutions’ are hotbeds of suspicion, have forsaken the words of the prophets, have lost touch with God’s will and with reality. We are witnessing the decline of religion and religious values, of morality and truth not because of the foundational tenets of religion, morality, nor truth rather because all have become “irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid” as Rabbi Heschel states in the first paragraph of God in Search of Man (pg.3). Rather than being the place to counteract suspicion, rather than being the home of sacredness and supreme values, the leadership of religious institutions give loud voice to the suspicion that is inherent in today’s world, in each individuals’ nature. We no longer “love our neighbor as ourselves” we are fearful of everyone, we have deep mistrust of ‘the other’ and our preachers, our imams, our Rabbis exploit this implicit suspicion rather than lead us to the paths of decency and holiness, love and concern, Godliness and connection. Rather, too many of our spiritual leaders are leading us to the supremacy of suspicion, remember David Koresh, Jim Jones, Jerry Falwell Jr., etc?
The response of the Republican Party to the latest indictment is to go after Hunter Biden, to call this indictment, which is based on factual evidence, based on what we all went through and witnessed, based on the public words and actions of Trump and his un-indicted co-conspirators, a ‘weaponization of the Biden Justice department against the frontrunner of the Republican Party nomination for President’. Kevin McCarthy knows the truth because he called out Trump on the floor of the House of Representatives days after Jan. 6, 2021 as did Mitch McConnell, yet McCarthy is kissing the ring of Trump, kissing the asses of the Freedom Caucus, all to stay Speaker of the House, to get re-elected. His suspicion is of his own people, his ‘tribe’ his caucus, not the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives. He has fallen into the morass of “the predicament of modern man” and is rolling around in it, sinking deeper in it and acting as a trained seal.
What do we do? We, the People, have to acknowledge our faith in idols and in the idolatry of suspicion. We have to look inside of ourselves with love and with truth, to seek the sacredness within, to use this sacredness to root out our suspicious natures that are dominating the majority of our actions and our thoughts. We have to begin to do T’Shuvah, make amends and ask for forgiveness from ourselves, from those we have harmed, from God so we can transform and use the powerful energy of suspicion for goodness, for holy actions, to fulfill the divine need we are uniquely qualified to do, to live life in communion and in community with everyone. This new way of being allows us to go to sleep at night with goodness and clarity, with hope and joy, and wake up in the morning with more determination to live into this way more today than yesterday.
In recovery, we call this surrendering our will to God: “God, I offer myself to Thee-to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!”is the 3rd step prayer and in recovery, we are painfully aware of where our suspicious minds, nature and actions have taken us-to our bottom, to depression, to despair so we remind ourselves each day of our need to let go of our suspicions, let go of our need to ‘play god’, our need to worship idols and turn back to God, to experience and use God’s power, love so we can live into a new way of life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark