Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 361
“The purpose of faith is not to satisfy curiosity or to fulfill a human need, but to confront man with a sublime challenge, to satisfy a divine need.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 67)
“The purpose of faith” is delineated here in a way that seems totally out of step with most people’s understanding of it today, and probably for most of our existence. People use faith as a way of fulfilling the “human need” to understand something, to accept something as “God’s Will” and as I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning I have become aware of my revulsion to this phrase. Most people use their ‘faith’ as a salve, as a comfort rather than as “a sublime challenge”. “Faith”, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, is defining it as the pathway to the test of our excellence, our ability to excel past our selfish desires and power grabs “to satisfy a divine need.”
When we look at our predicament today where people put party over the constitution, allegiance to people rather than standing firm in principles, when autocrats sound like ‘populists’ to the very people they have taken advantage of for years, and the Church and Clergy praise this type of living, the following of these undivine needs, we are truly in for a wild ride where the autocrat and his/her collaborators in the Churches, in the Temples, in the Mosques, along with their sycophants will support and fulfill the needs of the autocrat rather than the “divine need” that is “the purpose of faith”. This is the greatest challenge for humanity-end our incessant need to only fulfill the selfish ‘needs’ of the rich and powerful, the kings and queens, the leaders of governments, etc and begin again, begin anew “to satisfy a divine need.”
Think about all the times we have heard “it is God’s will, Inshallah, B’ezrat HaShem” and other such lines from the ‘religious’ of different faiths, rather than asking themselves: “how can I “satisfy a divine need?”, “how do I allow myself to be confronted “with a sublime challenge?” These questions fall by the wayside when I want to control people rather than help them find the “divine need” they were created to satisfy. When we hear that people who are rich are more loved by God than those who are poor- we should stand up and scream IDOLATOR to those mendacious autocrats. In the Bible, according to some commentaries on the flood-it was caused by the inability of “men of renown” to treat the poor well, to not rape the women, etc. 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible we are told to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow and the orphan, we are warned against false prophets, anyone who becomes King has to follow certain rules, etc. This is not the way of some of today’s clergy who see themselves as the true inheritors of Biblical traditions, who believe they can ignore the Books of the Bible like Samuel I &II, the different books of the Prophets, the stories of the destruction of the Temple, the rebuilding of the Temple and the subsequent destruction because of our actions, because we tried to use “faith..to fulfill a human need” rather than “to confront man with a sublime challenge, to satisfy a divine need.” As Pete Seeger wrote and sang: “When will they ever learn?”
We have to end our reliance on “God’s will” etc, we have to begin to hold our clergy, our religious institutions and ourselves accountable to fulfill “the purpose of faith” as Rabbi Heschel is defining it above. Beginning with the call of the Bible to “love your neighbor as yourself”, to remember that everyone “is created in the Image of God” and we all have within us “the spirit of God breathed into our nostrils”. There is no better than/less than in the world of faith and spirit, there is only those who accept the “sublime challenge to satisfy a divine need” and those who don’t. Those who seek to hear the call of their souls and those who seek to satisfy their more negative, selfish urges to have power and dominion over people they are afraid of so they deem them inferior. Anti-semitism is a way of people using Jews as scapegoats and prosecuting us for the very crimes they commit, from antiquity forward. In the Middle Ages, since Jews could only be merchants and money-lenders, the Princes and Kings forced us to take the heat and hatred that their policies, which we were powerless to go against if we wanted to survive, caused. It is true today as it was then and the defiance of Bibi and his right-wing sycophants don’t help the cause of the Bible, “the purpose of faith” at all-in fact they detract from it just like the mendacious clergy in America who extol the life-threatening policies of Trump and his band of oligarchs.
We, the People have to stand defiant, we have to break off, go away from these liars and deceivers. It is up to us to stand up and let our voices be heard-not for a special interest group, not for just one people, rather for all people including those who are in charge, We, the People have to call out idolatry just as our ancestors, the prophets, did. We, the People, are needed to stand up for the divine needs each of us represent, respond to the call of the poor and the weak, give aid and comfort to the stranger and the needy, surround the widow and the orphan with love, financial support and good counsel in navigating life without their father/husband. We, the People have to once again accept and live into “the purpose of faith”. We, the People, have to rise above our self-deceptions and selfish desires to “satisfy a divine need”. Only you can answer this call that has reverberated in the souls of humanity and the universe since the beginning, only you can decide to serve something greater than yourself. This is the real “Will of God” as the Bible teaches us.
I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my father and grandfathers, grandmothers and mother, aunts and uncles, who showed me with their actions how to go beyond my desires and help another human being, how “to satisfy a divine need”, how to face a “sublime challenge”. Even while I was ‘out there’ doing crime, indulging in my alcoholism, I still did some good, I knew better even when I ‘couldn’t’ do better. In the past 37 years, I have shown up to “satisfy a divine need” and risen above selfishness and power most of the time. The “sublime challenge” that I face each and every day is how do I be in truth with myself, how do I surrender to and fulfill the desires/calls that God and humans ask me to? I wrestle with taking care of me and not only me, I seek to fulfill the words of Rabbi Hillel; being for myself and not only for me and doing it NOW, in each moment, in every day, in every year a little more and a little better. It isn’t a perfect science, nor is it a linear progression, and I see the progress, little by little, one grain of sand at a time. I am grateful to all my teachers who help me on the journey of growing my faith and my purpose. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark