Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 323

“We must not underestimate the difficulties of moral living. It takes great courage, wisdom, defiance, and depth of faith to remain moral. We have been guilty of oversimplification. We maintain that virtue pays, we forget that vice pays more.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 58)

The Rabbis say the reward for doing a Mitzvah is another Mitzvah, the sense that we have accomplished something that is in our best interest and the best interest of another, the knowing we have done something that connects us more to the power of the Universe and to another human being. They say the ‘punishment’ for a ‘sin’ is another ‘sin’, the truth that once we taste the ‘honey’ of negativity, we will be moved to get more of this ‘honey’. Both of these statements are true and, I believe, an “oversimplification”. No one is all good nor all bad-each of us has the potential to do both good and not good because we have both inclinations. It is even more nuanced because what may seem not good in one moment may, in the long run, turn out to be a mitzvah! Even when taking the action of a mitzvah, aka a good action, we may be doing it for our personal gain, to get an advantage and use it for not good outcomes.

“Moral living” is not black and white, unfortunately. While it is simple to be moral, it is also very complex and causes great introspection, great maturity, and the power to choose more than what our inclinations are pulling us to. In Numbers 15:39, after the missing the mark of the spies and the people Israel, we are told: “do not scout out after your heart and your eyes which you will whore after them”. The power of our heart to move our eyes to find what it desires can be applied to the brain as well, because the Rabbis thought the heart was the seat of both emotions and wisdom. To tell someone to “just do it” is an oversimplification of the complexity of being human, a failure to acknowledge the constant war within, pulling us to do the next right thing and the next wrong thing at the same time. The war gets even more complex because both inclinations can seem to be right in the moment and, maybe they both are! Allowing my ‘evil’ inclination to protect me when someone is a danger to me, to themselves, and/or to another is a good thing; allowing it to lie to me and think someone is a danger when they are actually a friend who is speaking truth is not a good thing. We have to engage in the nuances and the complexities that are inherent in being human in order to engage in “moral living”. It ain’t easy!

One of the lessons of the prophets is that “vice pays more”. The priests and the royalty along with the rich and powerful subscribed to this belief. We know this because they bastardized the rituals and the ‘laws’ of morality. They kept, like the sons of Samuel and Eli before them, using their positions to extort bribes and more wealth from the people rather than serve God, serve the populace, serve the good inclinations of their own beings. And it worked for a long time! We see this today with clergy promoting the welfare of the rich and the powerful, the liar and the charlatan, the fascist and the authoritarian. They do not believe in the Bible’s dictate: “One law for the stranger and the citizen alike”, they do not believe in equal justice under the law, they laugh at “freedom for all”! Some of the people in chaste in the Clergy of all faiths have sold themselves to their benefactors, their patrons in order to keep their positions-not caring that the words they speak are in direct conflict with the teachings of Moses, of Jesus, of Mohammed, of Buddha, of the entire Hebrew Bible. They will lie and attend rallies for people who believe that Hitler was a good guy! They will call Latinos and Blacks ‘vermin”, they will blame the Jews if Trump doesn’t win, they are calling out false claims about the election if they don’t win! These ‘men of god’ are descendants of the Priests in the Bible who Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, et al railed against, and, in the end, who the populace believed to their own ruin. While good wins out, eventually, these liars teach us how much ‘sin’ pays and how the aftermath of their ‘sin’ can last for centuries-19 in fact till Israel was re-established as a state!

With all of this about ‘sin’ we cannot forget that “virtue pays”! While the wages don’t seem to be as much, it doesn’t seem to win all the time, it does pay dividends in the long run. Herein is the dilemma: are we in our lives for the long haul, the long run or are we so caught up in instant gratification that we can’t wait? For virtue to pay, for us to be able to live with ourselves and not constantly want to jump out of our skin, we have to accept that we will not see the fruits of our labor in our lifetime sometimes. There is a story of a boy who asks his grandfather why he is planting a tree when he will never see it bloom and nor taste its fruit and the old man answers: for you to enjoy, for the sake of future generations and because it is the right thing to do. We don’t seem to have a lot of people telling and living this story right now and we have many more than we think. Each of us can choose to do the next right thing and read the immediate ‘payment’ of being able to quiet the war within, to let go of our expectations of glory, our resentments for not being noticed, our anger at being excluded for the ‘club’ we don’t want to be part of anyway. Doing the next right thing gives us a connection with another human being that is precious, a connection with the universe which is comforting and a connection with our souls which is life sustaining. So, yes “virtue pays” and it is up to us to choose this form of payment over the other one.

Having wrestled with this truth all my life, having given into the belief that “sin pays more”, I can attest to the truth that virtue is “the easier, softer, way”. The wages of ‘sin’ paid more in the moment and cost me friendships, relationships, a way of being okay with myself. Seeing “moral living” as a ‘sucker’s way’, I did things that I regret to this day and I impacted many people in harmful ways. I almost lost myself completely in ‘sin’ and I am grateful that I was shown, often, the enslaving ways of the Pharaoh of this way of living. Finally I made the decision to change, after about 20 years of being employed and paid by ‘the wages of sin’. I am testifying to the truth that “virtue pays” and the dividends are more than one can see on a balance sheet, they are within us. I can live with myself and my errors each day, I can forgive those who have ‘trespassed against me” just as I ask them and God to forgive me m ‘trespasses”. I don’t have to worry about the cops, look over my shoulder to see who is following me, keep my back to the wall so I can see the doorway at a restaurant, etc. I can walk into a room or a place where I know there are people who think poorly of me and hold my head up. I can breathe free and care about everyone without resentment nor fear. These are some of the ways “virtue pays”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark