Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 357
“We are living through one of the great hours of history. The false gods are crumbling, and the hearts are hungry for the voice of God. But the voice has been stifled. To recapture the echo, we must be honest in our willingness to listen, unprejudiced in our readiness to understand.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 66)
At the end of Year 3 I am going to be writing daily on “Pirke Avot”, literally translated as “Chapters of the Fathers” and I am using the title, Wisdom of our Ancestors.This will coincide with launching my new adventure/venture: Conscious Living!
These last two sentences are crucial for our time, just as they are crucial for all times. “The voice has been stifled” is evident in the MAGA followers belief in Donald Trump being ‘the anointed one’, that he is the ‘messenger from Christ’, that he will bring the “Second Coming”! It is evident in the ‘good christians’ who want to enact Project 2025 harming all the people Christ hung out with and doing exactly what Christ accused the “money-changers in the Temple” of doing!
Yet, the solution seems so difficult to attain in today’s world, just as it has been throughout history. While it is a “simple solution”, it does very, very hard! “We must be honest in our willingness to listen” seems like a ridiculous phrase, both extremes say and believe they are honest and willing to listen to ‘the other side’ and they are both full of shit! People only want to listen if you agree with their point of view. Engaging in serious conversations with the people on the far right and far left is almost impossible when one begins to challenge their propositions, their foundational ‘truths’, their actions and their words. To “be honest” is a great challenge in itself, because we are so full of self-deceptions and bias’ that we are willfully blind to, too many of us are unable to see, hear, experience honesty “in our willingness to listen”. “Listen” comes from the German meaning “pay attention to”. How often do we hear and not pay attention to what is being said? How often are we dishonest when we say “I really want to know your thoughts and consider them” when we already have made up our minds, when we are closed off to any other solution? Paying attention to what truly is takes a commitment to see what truly is, not what we want it to be. Paying attention means we have to see the whole story and the truth, as beautiful and ugly as it is. “Hones in our willingness to listen” means our governing bodies have to work out compromises because the ones yelling the loudest, the ones who showboat the most, are neither “honest” nor willing “to listen” to anyone other than their own echo chamber. Rabbi Heschel is crying out to us to “recapture the echo” of God’s voice at Mt. Sinai, to “recapture the echo” of God’s cry to SHEMA, hear, listen and understand!
While people give lip-service to the wisdom and ways in the quote above, we can see from the latest anti-semitic event in Melbourne, Australia, a synagogue being lit on fire, that without being “unprejudiced in our readiness to understand” there can never be peace nor freedom. Democracy, freedom, die in dishonesty and in prejudice, there are so many examples throughout history and we are seeing this truth daily in America, Israel and across the globe. Russia, Iran, Hungary, China, the Middle East countries all engage in false flags on social media, they all engage in prejudicial language to promote hate, especially Jew-hatred masquerading as anti-Zionism, flooding social media with lies, distortions and hatred. There has always been dishonesty in politics in this nation, the prejudice and ‘alternative facts’ of the past 14+ years makes the earlier periods look like people like Gingrich were willing to listen and ready to understand!! The way things are, the lack of truth, the unwillingness to listen, the prejudices that abound against people of color, Jews, Muslims, poor, strangers, has to end NOW!
Yes, I am angry and passionate about this way of being. We are reborn each day, to a certain extent because we believe sleep is like a mini-experience of death so each day upon arising we say the Modeh Ani Prayer: Gratitude for having our souls returned to us with compassion and we proclaim God’s faithfulness. Each day, we have to tune our ears and our souls to the frequency that God’s voice, if one prefers the voice of our Higher Consciousness is broadcasting on. It is only when we “make a decision to turn our lives over to the care of God/Higher Consciousness” that we are able to be honest, willing and ready to not only listen but to understand as well. The voice that keeps urging us to end our hateful speech, to stop giving into our baser ideas and ways, to cease and desist in blaming anyone for our lack of listening and understanding-our parents are not at fault-we, as adults have the responsibility and the choice to learn how to listen, how to be honest with ourselves, to be unprejudiced so we can learn to understand the call within us, the call from another human being who is in need and the call of the universe so that we “Let Freedom Ring”. There is no 1-way to understand “the echo”, we are told there are 70 ways to understand the Bible so it is hard to believe the Evangelicals and the Orthodox who proclaim they know the “way” and it is even harder to buy into the bullshit and lies of the ‘christian nationalists’ who are actually nihilists seeking absolute power. “Unprejudiced in our readiness to understand” means we see the text, we hear the voices around us new each time, each day with new meanings and we can only do this when we “honest in our willingness to listen” rather than listening with the intention to argue for ‘our side’. When we “recapture the echo” there is only one side-what is right and good in this moment.
I wrestle each day to be fulfill these ways of being. I want to think what I think and be right, be certain and everything that spiritual learning teaches me is I can never be certain! There is no one way, there is no arrival, the Torah ends with the Israelites on the edge of the Promised Land and this is the story of my life and, I believe, everyone’s. We are always “on the road again” like Willie Nelson’s song says. I cannot stay in willingness and readiness all the time, I cannot always be honest because when I am in self-deception the blinders are too difficult to see through and I need help which I am blessed to receive from those closest to me. I cannot always be unprejudiced because I fall into fear, even though I am also in faith, I still want my team to win, I still want to ‘be right’, I still want to be forgiven, and, at times, I need you to be either the good one or the bad one. Whenever I am in either/or, I am prejudiced, dishonest, unwilling and not ready. Thankfully I experience either/or fewer and fewer times since my recovery began. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark