Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 318

“The study of Torah is a challenge to the mind as well as an act of being involved in the dialogue of God and man, an act of sanctification of time. True learning is a way of relating oneself to something which is holy and universal.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 57)

“True learning is a way of relating oneself to something which is holy and universal” makes one think not just of religious teachings, but of all learning. When we learn science, humanities, mathematics, language, as well as the Torah and all spiritual texts we are relating ourselves “to something which is holy and universal”. Thinking about this, hearing Rabbi Heschel’s call to us I am in awe of the simple truth of this sentence. Whether our learning is about our actions or the actions of another, whether our learning is discovering the ‘secrets of the universe’, or leads to a vaccine to prevent some terrible illness or at least mitigate it, or it is about how to live a better life from the inside out, or it is about a deeper understanding of our unique purpose and how to fulfill it; all of it depends on our willingness and ability to relate ourselves to something greater than ourselves, to relate our selfs to that “which is holy and universal”.

In the beginning, this discovery of what “true learning is” was found in “the study of Torah” because one could not learn Torah with only one’s mind nor only one’s soul. “The study of Torah” has to involve both mind and spirit, body and soul because it is an experience of matter and energy, hence it “is a challenge to the mind as well as an act of being involved in the dialogue of God and man”. Just as “true learning is” an act of our whole being and can be present in all learnings, so too is “the study of Torah” an action which involves all our faculties. Without our mind engaging in this study, we will be woefully deficient in understanding and in maturation of our intellect, without our soul’s engagement we will find the rationalizations and become dismissive of the wisdom of Torah that doesn’t make sense to our rational minds.

We are in desperate need of hearing the words above, of engaging in “the study of” all religious texts in the ways described above in order to let go of our self-deceptions and the deceptions of another. Thinking about the stories of Jesus in the New Testament, he hung out with all the people that the Christian Nationalists, the Prosperity Gospels adherents, the Project 2025 architects and believers, the Billionaire Trump Boys Club hate, denigrate, use as props for their authoritarian desires! In the Torah, we are challenged to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, and the orphan 36 times! We are taught that God dwells among us when we make a space for holiness to reside within us and around us. While many people understand this as an edifice, I hear it as a space within our souls, within our minds where we engage in and are “involved in the dialogue between God” and ourselves-not just “man” as a separate entity from the individual, rather each of us as people wrestling with our minds and navigating the dialogue and the arguments between our soul’s knowing and our mind’s thinking. Hence the need to bring both of these ways of understanding and thinking, knowing and doing together to find the right action for this moment. It can never be to vilify someone for our own gain, it can never be to spew hatred and lies, in the name of God, it can never be to proclaim that ‘they’ need to be vanquished, ‘they’ are “enemies of the people”, “vermin” because another human being disagrees with someone, because another person is holding us to the standard of decency learned from Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. When ‘religious’ people proclaim adulterers, coveters, thieves, false witness’, and soul murderers as “the anointed ones” we know they are Full of Shit and we have to say STOP.

It is crucial in this time of war, both civil and between peoples, that we go back to the basics of Torah and of “true learning”. Of course there are times when we have to go to war, when we have to battle, and the first arena any war, any battle has to take place is within ourselves. We have to “challenge our mind” and be “involved in the dialogue of God and man” before we make any outer decision and because of the bastardization of holy texts, because “true learning” is no longer important to these religious charlatans, to these False Prophets, we find good people being led like sheep to their own ruin and destruction and the ruin and destruction of freedom and our holy scriptures.

This is what we are fighting for right now in the US election, in the war in Ukraine and in the Middle East quagmire. We have to call upon the leaders and the people to “challenge the minds” of conventional wisdom and old hatreds that no one really knows the origin of anymore and engage in being “maladjusted” to these conventional notions, to these old animosities, so we can find a new solution, a way forward in, at the very least, respect for the divine image of each individual no matter what “side” they are on. We have to find pathways to reach out and help people who have ‘drunk the kool-aid’ on either extreme come back to a middle path, at least 10% away from their respective extremes. We have to say NO to the likes of Bannon and Flynn, Trump and Vance, Sanders and AOC, Bibi and Ben G’Vir as well as Putin, Orban, Kim Jung Un. We have to fight for that which is “holy and universal” like freedom, respect, justice, compassion, truth, kindness, etc with all we have against the forces mentioned above who want to be in control of all of us and have the world be a kleptocracy, which is what Elon Musk is trying to make happen by bribing people to vote for Trump! We have to demand better of ourselves and we do this by voting out the charlatans, the liars and voting in fighters for decency, democracy, freedom and truth.

I have been engaged in this challenge most of my life, even when I was a drunk and criminal. I have always been fighting the inner war I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to wage and, unfortunately, my mind won far too often in my youth; my rationalizations won and I was the people I describe in the paragraph above-indecent, uncaring, lying, cheating, etc. I am remorseful to this day for the damage I caused. I am remorseful for the damage I have caused since 1987 and I realize the vast majority of my actions, whether someone found them good or not good, were the result of the trying to serve something “holy and universal”, they were after “being involved in the dialogue of God” and me. There were/are times when I hear me and believe it is God and more often than not, God wins the dialogue and people don’t want to hear it. I am continuing to “challenge my mind” and I continue to engage in “true learning” so I become a better version of me that I was yesterday. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark