Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 328

“Most people are afflicted with false problems. They fail to be aware of what really ails them, of what is ultimately at stake in the life of man. Our most precious insights come from encountering that which is greater than ourselves.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 60)

The reason to study the words and deeds of people in our history and in our present is to educate, cultivate, grow our own sense of truth and let go of the myriad of self-deceptions we have cultivated and the ones we have adopted from another. These deceptions, be it self or outer, are the root cause of our being “afflicted with false problems”, I believe. When we buy into the deceptions and mendacities of the ‘leader’, of the authoritarian, we find ourselves condemning the good behavior of ‘the enemy’ and extolling the bad behavior of ‘our side’. These deceptions and mendacities lead us to becoming blind to truth, unable to hear what is real and hold tight to the “false problems” we are being told about by another and/or our self-deceptions.

What are we to do when the ways of Josef Goebbels is more advantageous than the ways of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha? What are we to do when the embrace of ‘false problems” leads us to take fake cures and after “drinking the Kool-Aid” we find ourselves sicker than before. What are we to do when the ‘fearless leader’, is a coward who denigrates everyone else except the ‘white folks’ he is talking to and promises them  superiority while “picking their pockets” as President Lyndon Johnson taught us? What are we to do when almost 1/2 of the country seems to like being led to the slaughter by Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson, Right-Wing Christian Nationalist billionaires, Donald Trump and their gang of crooks? What are we to do when the words of Rabbi Heschel from 1962 go unheeded and our religious education, our moral education, our civics education is so MEH that we find ourselves in this predicament 60 years after we passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, 60 years since we came to believe that equality was afoot, that the sacrifice of the Union Soldiers was being redeemed?

We have to stand up and speak TRUTH to the masses, we have to stand up and speak TRUTH to the powerful, we have to stand up and say NO to the lies of the billionaires, to the MENDACITY of the christian nationalists who go against all that Christ taught and did. We have to stand up and say NO to the bastardization of the ‘orthodox Jews’ who claim to be following God’s command while actually only following their desire for control and power, just like the priests, the royalty and the wealthy did during the times of the two Temples and we know how that turned out. We have to go to the heart “of what really ails” us, “of what is ultimately at stake in the life of man”-the ability to make “free-will moral choices”, the ability to “Choose Life”. We cannot do this as long as we “are afflicted with false problems.”

The cult leaders, the dictators, the authoritarians want us to be “afflicted with false problems” so that we don’t see how they are manipulating us for their own gain, for their own power and how they will treat us just like they are treating the so-called ‘enemy of the people’, ‘the vermin’, the “low IQ” people, the minorities, the Jews, etc. They have to keep us at each other’s throats because, like the Pharaoh of Egypt who pretended to “not know Joseph”, they are afraid of our strength, our resourcefulness, our healthy spiritual and moral courage when we gather together to CHOOSE LIFE. They are “petty tyrants” like King George, like the myriad of “petty tyrants” throughout history and they will be defeated-the question we have to ask ourselves is how much devastation, how much death, how much freedom do we have to lose before we revolt as the people of the colonies did in 1776? The “enemies within” are the ones that are in our inner life, the ones that keep us in self-deception, in blindness, in deafness, in the belief that we don’t have to follow the lessons of morality, the ways of being good citizens. We can jettison the truth in order to serve the selfish needs of ‘the leader’!

We have the solution! It is in our hearts and our souls, it goes beyond the rational mind which will believe ‘logical’ arguments even when the premise of such arguments is false! We have to hear the call of our souls, we have to encounter “that which is greater than ourselves”. This can be God, it can be nature, it can be another human being, it can be being part of a group that serves an ideal, a teaching of the Bible like, “in righteousness you shall judge, don’t put a stumbling block before the blind, don’t curse the deaf, don’t go around as a slanderer, don’t stand idly by the blood of your neighbor, don’t avenge a grudge, Love your Neighbor as Yourself”. When we see the commonalty, the humanity in another human being, in another group; skin color, religious belief, spiritual practices fall by the wayside because we see another image of the divine that compliments ours. We are given these teachings in the Holiness Code in Leviticus, Chapter 19. Many of them are followed by “I am the Lord” which can mean that just as we encounter “that which is greater than ourselves” in spirit, we have to take the actions we learn in the real world. We, the People, have to take back our power, we have to once again stand at Mt. Sinai, we have to once again encounter “that which is greater than ourselves” and hear the Shema, we have to once again listen intently to the words of the Sermon on the Mount, we have to imbibe the teachings of the Buddha. We have to be human in all our affairs and choose life!

I am a veteran of being “afflicted with false problems”. It is hard to rise above the self-deceptions and the outer lies I encounter, it is hard to sit with the sadness of being blamed for things I did not do, for not being forgiven for things I did and have done T’Shuvah for. It is hard to listen to the mendacity of the “holier than thou” people who, like the ones at the times of the Temple in Jerusalem, spread lies and deceptions to hide their own agendas, to hide their theft of the soul of freedom. It is hard to rise above what ails me truly when it seems like I am in my self-deception. I have the experience, however, of recovery. I have survived this condition with the grace of God and the help of so many people. I have come to see what truly ails me and continue to live the life that is authentically mine. It is so joyful to live a life of hope and possibility, a life of acceptance and moving forward, a life of reaching out to help another and learn so much about myself in the process. It is joyful to keep “encountering that which is greater” than me and knowing all is going to be okay as long as I stay in this embrace and do the next right thing and help another(s) do the same. My gift is to bring others to their own “encountering that which is greater than” themselves and I pray I keep living my purpose. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark