Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 94

“Its aim is not to record history but rather to record the encounter of the divine and the human on the level of concrete living. Incomparably more important than all the beauty or wisdom that is bestowed upon our lives is the way it opens to man an understanding of what God means, of attaining holiness through justice, through simplicity of soul, through choice. Above all, it never ceases to proclaim that worship of God without justice to man is an abomination; that while man’s problem is God, God’s problem is man.” (God in Search of Man pls 243-244)

Rabbi Heschel’s call to us in the second sentence above is the same call as the prophets demanded of the Israelite people and the people of Judea. It is the same demand as the prophets demanded of the priests, the wealthy, the powerful and the royalty of both kingdoms. This wisdom needs to be applied in every generation and within every human being. We are all guilty of separating holiness from justice, at times; blocking the simple call of our souls with the noise of our inner life and our minds; making choices that our hearts and eyes desire rather than the ones that increase our holiness. These issues are at the heart of being human, the wrestling of within ourselves to attain a level of holiness in all of our affairs and we have the practice of T’Shuvah-a daily inventory of our actions- to determine the paths we have taken to rise up to the holiness we are capable of and the paths we have taken where we have failed to rise up either through ignorance, willful blindness, and/or choice.

The separations of justice and holiness, the blockage of the soul all of us engage in to a greater or lessor degree, as well as the choices we make from self-deception, self-seeking, from societal norms harm us and everyone around us in overt and covert ways. We are witness’ to the practice of some ‘religious’ figures who defend injustice as ‘God’s will’, as in Israel right now where some of the ‘ultra-religious’ are proclaiming that Oct. 7th is a punishment for not taking all of the land; as in the Arab world and the world at large, the imams, ‘radical muslims’, ‘good christians’  who defend Hamas’ brutal attack against civilians, the rape and murder of women, children, men of all ages, the taking of hostages and the refusal to return them as just and right! We have seen ‘religious leaders’ defend the injustice towards immigrants, legal and illegal, in this country, laud and celebrate the domination of women’s bodies and the belief that women and minorities are not ‘capable’ of good decision making so white men should be in charge. This separation of holiness and justice is so insidious that even men who belong to minorities in this country are willing to ‘kiss the ring’ of the MAGA crowd!

We seem to be so narcissistic and in love with our minds we are unable to relate to nor hear the simple calls of our souls. Our souls are the essence of who we are as humans, I believe. Our souls are formed from the Ruach Elohim(the spirit of God) that is breathed into us at birth. In Hebrew as in most languages the word for soul is associated with the word for breath. In Latin, the word is spiritus meaning breath, also anima which is described in the dictionary as the “irrational part of the soul as distinguished from the rational mind”. This last definition is the root of the problem most people have with hearing and following the “simplicity of soul”. Because we are so enamored with “the rational mind”, we live at a lower level of being! Einstein’s quote: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift” is exactly where we are at today as we have been throughout history. Because of the emphasis society places on the ‘rational’, because we want to have power over people, because we are afraid of those ‘dreamers’, those ‘descendants of the prophets’ who can cause a rebellion of spirit, a freeing of the soul from the prisons we have forced them into, society shuns the words of the prophets and their simple meaning. Instead they use these words for their own twisted ends, society has bastardized the Bible, the prophetic voices of old and of today, worked hard to silence the words, teachings and actions of Rabbi Heschel’s, Rev. King’s, Rev. Niebuhr’s, Rev. Barber’s etc voices and/or twisted their words, taken them out of context and abused them for their own selfish and unjust ends.

Rabbi Heschel’s phrase “simplicity of soul” describes, as I hear him in my being in this moment, a way of being that follows the “sacred gift” Einstein speaks of, the will of God in this moment as the universe is speaking to us, a higher logic that needs no proof other than we ‘know the truth in our bones’, we know the ‘next right action to take’ without knowing how or why, we follow the wisdom and ‘third’ eye of being human and connected. We crave the holiness that “simplicity of soul” enjoins upon us. We celebrate the Sabbath, in every religion, as the day to connect, to look back and look forward, to allow the past week to catch up with us, to ‘rest’ from creative work, enjoy the creations we have made, see where we have been and where we are going, and at the end of the Sabbath, we distinguish between the Holy Day and the mundane days. Mundane is not bad, in fact it is on the ‘mundane days’ that God created the world! And, as Rabbi Heschel is demanding of us, we get to “understand what God means” more each week.

This is the work and the foundation of recovery. We are constantly seeking to “know God’s will and the power to carry it out” each and every day. We do our inventory(tshuvah) each day and we grow one grain of sand more holy, our choices are based in justice, decency, and the wisdom of the prophets, Bible, Big Book, Buddhism, etc a little more each day. This is how we grow the simplicity of soul within us. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark