Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 306

6th Day of 10 Days of Awe and Repentance

“If, to be sure-as is often the case among us-instead of deliberate decision we have a coerced conversion; instead of a conscious truthfulness, a self-conscious conformity; instead of remorse over the lost past, a longing for it; then this so-called return is but a retreat, a phase.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg 69)

In the world we are living in today, these words from 88 years ago are prescient and ones we did not hear then nor are we hearing now! Listening to one of the political parties here in the US, one or more of them in Israel, of course Putin reminds us of the truth of these words and the misuse of the word “return”. The MAGA crowd, the far-right religious parties here and in Israel, Putin, et al all want to ‘return’ to the glory days of slavery here in the US, the Stalin years in Russia with the countries he usurped being returned to Putin, and to some misbelief that during the reign of King David all the land “from the river to the sea” was under his control-not true! None of these lies are true nor is it true that Palestinians enjoyed freedom under the Muftis, under the Ottoman Empire, etc and they certainly are not free under Hamas nor the corrupt Palestinian Authority under Abbas. The “return” that people speak about is not the “return” of Yom Kippur, it is not the “return” that God is asking for. It is, as he says above, “a retreat, a phase”.

We are in desperate straits, we are at another precipice in world affairs and in our country’s future. The demonstrators who are in favor of Terrorists rights to murder, terrorists right to take hostages and keep them for a year, to hold dead bodies for ransom want to ‘go forward’ to where? They are supporting a group that wants to go backwards in terms of freedom and the dignity and humanity of people. They are supporting a group whose sole reason for existence is to annihilate the Jewish People. This is what the people in Michigan who came here to be free want? This is what the demonstrators around the world want for themselves-to be singled out because of their ethnicity, their religion, their skin-color?? I think not-yet these “fine people on both sides” as Trump says, want to “return” to a past that was in their favor, where they had all the power. They want to return to a way of being that was not free, that did not “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, that “proclaimed freedom throughout the land and to” only some “of its inhabitants therein.

This “so-called return” is anathema for Jews! In his book, Gift of the Jews, Thomas Cahill says one of the greatest gifts the Jews gave the world was to change the belief that life was a circle and instead teach life is a continuum, one where we grow from each action and inaction, each hitting the mark and each missing the mark. Our return is not to some way of being in power over another human being or a country, I believe. As I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words above, I know that the return is to our core being, our soul’s knowledge, to our connection to higher consciousness, our souls.  Yet even religionists are trying to promote their lies through Scriptures so they can bastardize the words of Jesus, Moses and the thoughts of divine revelation to serve them. They are trying to return to a world that was like the world the prophets encountered and we know their reaction to the “so-called return” of the priests, royalty, wealthy- it was a “phase” not a change in their ways of being.

On this 6th day of the 10 days of Repentance, 10 days of Awe, isn’t it time for all of us to look inside and see the ways we have been engaging in a “so-called return”, in “a longing for the past” instead of “remorse over the lost past”? As Rabbi Hillel says: “If not now, When”??? We have to come face to face with the person we see in the mirror, we have to cry with our self not tears of longing for the “good old days” rather tears of remorse for being stuck in the past, tears of sadness for the errors we have made in this past year and years, for being in “a retreat, a phase” rather than in “return” and authentic repentance. We have to shed tears so we can wash away the phoniness and the bullshit we have been buying and selling. We have to shed tears of relief because we are finally engaged in the work of repentance, finally willing to experience the “miracle of repentance”.

We are in the final days before we get cleaned of the errors we committed against the universe. We need to reach out to those we have harmed and to our inner life to bring together the inner and outer, to “return” and/or turn to a state of wholeness and integrity. We do this by seeing the deceptions we have bought into both from another and from our minds. We do this by remembering Einstein’s words: “the intuitive mind is a gift, the rational mind a servant. We have forgotten the gift and worship the servant”. Returning to appreciating the gift of our intuitive mind and using our rational mind as a servant is a key component to this return. Shunning the lies of these “so-called religious people” like Ben G’vir, Wilks in Texas, the people who believe in their dominion over everyone not a white christian male, the ‘christian’ nationalists who don’t live Christ’s teachings, the Jews who are willing to vote for Trump because he is ‘good for Israel’ which he isn’t and because he goes to the grave of the Rebbe all the while hanging out with Holocaust deniers, anti-semites, loving Putin who puts Jews in jail for being the ‘wrong kind of Jew’! Knowing he is a white supremacist, these Jews must believe, like the some Jews in Germany did, that he doesn’t really mean the shit he says, who cares if he abuses the rule of law, etc.

My return has never been “a retreat”, it has been, since the beginning, a move forward. I do not want to ‘go back to the good old days’, nor do I want to go backwards in time. I miss having a community and a pulpit-I just don’t need to go back to what was, rather I am intrigued and excited about what can be, what I can do in this moment, because living in the past is not living T’Shuvah, it is not living in repentance, return and new responses. I have new responses to the situations that keep repeating in my life and in the world. I support Freedom of Choice for everyone-even if I disagree with their choice. I have remorse for my past errors, I have made my amends, it pains me that some want to hold on to their anger and self-righteousness and I accept what is. Nothing is all good nor all bad, no one is devoid of the Tzelem even if they choose to bury it so deep it seems to have left them. I shed tears of remorse, of sadness, of forgiveness of another who is so stuck they are unable/unaware of their need to forgive and their need to return. I am returning to more of the primordial me so I can serve the real you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark