Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 314

“Supremely sensitive as the prophets are to the wickedness of man and deeply conscious of his stubbornness and callousness, they also insist upon the ability of man to change, to repent, to return to God and live by justice and compassion. Prophecy may be defined as a formidable effort to change any spiritual status quo, as an everlasting protest against any fatalistic conscription of life, against those who teach that human nature will never change.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 56)

Rabbi Herschel’s dissertation for his Doctorate at the University of Berlin was on the prophets and his book The Prophets published in 1962. He speaks often in his writings about the prophets, the need to study them, learn from them, etc. In the first sentence above, he is using the experience of the prophets, their raison d’être to remind us of both our ability to be stubborn and callous as well as “the ability of man to change”. Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to read the prophets, to imbibe the words, the experiences of the prophets, to learn what happens when we hold onto our “stubbornness and callousness”, destruction and exile, loss of self and purpose as we see from the 10 “lost” tribes and the exile of Jews from Judea for almost 1900 years! The “Idols in the Temple”, the title of this essay, are very clear to one in the writing above; they are the lack of true education, the lack of knowledge of the prophets, the insistence to ignore the truth and wisdom of the prophets, the digging in of human beings to ‘prove their rightness’, and the willingness of some to heed the call of the prophets “to change, to repent, to return to God and live by justice and compassion.”  Yesterday I wrote about our need for education of our inner life and the words are the beginning of our education, the truth that we can change, that we can repent, we can be forgiven, we can return to the person we believe we can be, that we are born to be, we can “live by justice and compassion” and thrive, not be weak.

I hear Rabbi Heschel call out to us to let go of the fallacious beliefs of ‘the rugged individual’, ‘the strongman is needed to protect me’, ‘it is my enemies fault I have to do this’, ‘a leopard doesn’t change its spots’, etc. Learning the prophets, hearing their innumerable calls “to return”, “to repent”, can give us both hope that God will truly “heal their backsliding, love them freely” as the prophet Hosea says. Educating our inner life through studying the prophets teaches us “Return, you backsliding children and I will heal your backslidings” as Jeremiah teaches. Throughout the Hebrew Bible we learn of God’s waiting for our “return”, we witness the changes of Joseph, of Judah, of the Israelites, we witness the return to God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and especially King David. We also are witnesses to the “stubbornness and callousness” of the Kings of Israel following King David, even his son Solomon! We learn from Elijah that the voice of God is not always so loud, is not always earthshaking, that most often it is the “still small voice” inside of us, in our inner life that without education we dismiss, silence, imprison.

We are witnessing today a phenomena that began with the Rabbis of old who were afraid of the prophets, a re-interpretation of the Biblical text to suit their needs, to give them power and to ignore the truth and the call of the prophets and the Torah, to take the text out of context to further their goals, not necessarily the goals of God, of higher consciousness, of the people we are supposed to be serving. We have so many False Witness’ in the clergy today in every faith it is stunning. When a group can call themselves “Rod of Iron Ministries” and glorify the AR-15, when a Pastor can preach hatred towards the stranger and the poor, when a Rabbi can call for the death of a prime minister of Israel (Yitzhak Rabin) and consider Palestinians not human, we are in deep shit! Not because the majority necessarily believes them, rather because a large minority does! We have become a world that has no relationship to truth, no desire to live with inconvenient facts, no willingness to leave the “stubbornness and callousness” of their need to be right-be it in governments, corporate offices, non-profit boardrooms, or family get-togethers. Rather than study the prophets, learn how “to change, to repent, to return”, we study the dictators, worship at the feet of the authoritarians, wring our hands at what is happening and lose our voice to say NO to falseness, to bastardizing Holy Texts, to “callousness”.

It is not ‘their fault’! Trump, Putin, Bibi, Omar, Tliab, are all characters we have created and nurtured, put up with and encouraged precisely because our inner lives are so chaotic, so immature. We, the people, have to return to living with compassion and justice in our daily lives. We, the people, have to learn from the prophets the way back to our true selves, the way to live authentically no matter what society is demanding and accepting. This is the life Rabbi Heschel, Rev. King, Einstein, Harriet Tubman, Theodore Herzl, Bobby Kennedy, and so many more lived and we can use them as guides. We, the people, need to repent for the injustices we have witnessed and not corrected, the compassion we have refused. We have to change our ways by seeking knowledge through “maladjustment to conventional notions and cliches”, by never seeing something the same way twice, by letting go of our need to be right. We do this by seeking our spiritual guidance, we do this by educating our inner life and taking the next right action, we do this by admitting our fallibility and our need for collaboration rather than ruling. We let go of our false need to dominate and we realize the truth of Genesis Chapter 2-“it is not good for humans to be alone”. We, the people, have to take back our world, our control and no longer seek to win, rather seek to be just, no longer seek to ‘get even’ seek to be compassionate, no longer speak lies, seek the truth.

I have studied the prophets, I wrote about them daily from Jan-Sept. In 2021, and they changed my life. I seek them out often for guidance because they speak to my inner life in a powerful manner. Knowing the scorn they felt, the impossibility of their task, the danger of speaking truth to power and to the people, I am in awe of their steadfastness to live their purpose and be the person they were born to be-no matter what. Being a truth teller is not a popular position and, truth be told, it gets one into trouble often-I know this from experience, it is why I went over to the dark side as a teenage because I was shunned when I spoke truth. In my recovery, I have taken the blows that my truth telling causes, I have admitted when what I thought was true wasn’t, I have changed, repented and returned over and over again-making me stronger not weaker. I hear the lies of people, the need to be callous and stubborn of former friends and I am sad. And, I keep the faith that change is possible. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark