Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 109

“Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common. (Essential Writings pg. 62)

The eternal gift of the prophets is the mirror they hold up to us, their words, their actions look at us with questions, comments, rebuke and hope. Rabbi Heschel’s words above come to remind us of their teachings and he is imparting to us a call to action. What is the moral state of our country, of our world, of our communities, of our families, of our selves? The call of the prophets is to return, to turn away from our selfishness, from our mendacity, from our deception of another(s) and deception of ourselves. They call to us to remember the demands and call to connect with God, with our higher selves, to practice the principles of decency, love, compassion, truth. Yet, for time immemorial, we turn a deaf ear to their call, to the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel, to God’s call from Mount Sinai to Shema-Hear.

Reflecting on “the moral state of a people” in the United States, it is apparent that we are, like Jonah, running away from the call of God, from the words of the prophets and, like the people of Ancient Israel and Judea, we believe we are impervious to the dangers our running away bring. Listening to the lies of politicians and the mendacity of Mike Johnson and his crew of deceivers who use Jesus as their source of meanness, blaming the democrats for the ills of our nation, we can discover the rot, the subterfuge, the twisting of what is good and right into a grab for power and domination. Rather than seek to help the poor, care for the needy, welcome the stranger, some ‘leaders’ of our American society seek to criminalize poverty, need and those seeking refuge. Rather than living up to the words on the Statue of Liberty, a large portion of our population have forgotten their ancestors came here with little, came to America seeking refuge from their native lands and needed help to “breath free”. The progressives also show the rot of our “moral state” when there is no discernment between ‘the poor underdog’ and their acts of terrorism-giving aid and comfort to enemies of freedom, enemies of LGBTQ+, abandoning their allies for the sake of ‘the cause’.

“Few are guilty but all are responsible” is ringing in our ears, is being called out from Mount Sinai each and every day. This phrase conveys to us what it means to be human, what it means to live life as the prophets have laid out for us, what it means to be a person of faith, a humanist, to live a life compatible with being a partner of God. Yet, we continually ignore Rabbi Heschel’s words and the teachings of the prophets for our own selfish desires. We are all responsible for what goes on in our families, in our communities, in our faith, in our countries. We  are being called upon to stand up and say NO to the injustices of our leaders, our laws, our courts, our policies and our selves. We are being called to stop blaming “the other” and take responsibility and action to ensure justice and liberty for all. We are all responsible for ensuring our actions and laws are in concert with: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. While the “founding fathers” were not able to actualize these words completely, they wrote them into our Declaration of Independence as a guide for future generations. All of us are created equal, all of us are endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, justice, love, truth, kindness, care and concern. Ergo; we are all responsible to ensure the same for every human being in our society and, I would add, the world.

We are all separate souls, we are all individuals with our own unique gifts, talents and purposes, and we are all responsible for the society within which we live. We are all responsible for the actions of the government, we are all responsible for the hatred and violence perpetrated in our cities and communities. We are all responsible for “equal justice under the law”, we are all responsible to integrate the immigrants coming into our land so they can become part of the fabric of our society and we share customs, laws, ways of being human with one another. We are all responsible to stand up to bullies and authoritarians, stand up to meanness and hatred, blaming and shaming of another human being/group of human beings. We are all responsible to seek peace and to end the humiliation of those we disagree with, we are all responsible to find compromises that fulfill the words of the prophets, that are in concert with the spiritual values and principles our society is founded on. We are all responsible for the deaths of innocents, for the imprisonment of innocent people, for the crimes against the soul of our nation and the souls of individuals that is rampant in our country today.

The mirror the prophets hold up to us is what we in recovery use to live into our daily inventory, our yearly look back at our ‘past life’. We seek to find our part in the problem, we take responsibility for our part in every interaction, positive or negative. We do not blame someone else for what we have wrought nor do we take on the weight of a situation that is not ours to carry. We use each interaction to improve our moral state, to rise above the selfishness of our emotions, the ‘dog eat dog’ mentality we see practiced in our world, we know we have to continue to “grow along spiritual lines” and “practice these principles in all our affairs”. We are also aware of our imperfections and we use them to grow, to be unique and to live one grain of sand better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark