Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 358
“Our error is in the failure to understand that creed without faith is like a body without a heart. Just as faith may become blind, cruel, and fierce, creed may become shoddy, sterile, and deaf. Let us insist that alienation from dogma does not necessarily mean the loss of faith.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 66)
“Dogma” and “creed” can be and are usually used as synonyms and, according to the Oxford Dictionary, they are supposed to include faith as an integral foundational ingredient. Yet, as Rabbi Heschel reminds us above and as we witness on a daily basis from the charlatans who proclaim their allegiance to some ‘god’ that is unknown to the words of the Bible. While it is good, right and easy to blame these charlatans, it is crucial for all of us to look inside and testify, be a witness to the moments when we live from a place of “a body without a heart”. When have we ignored another human being’s plight because we are so caught up in our own bullshit? When have we been “blind, cruel, and fierce” for our own sakes and not for the sake of the principles of morality, decency, kindness, truth, justice? When have our actions been “shoddy, sterile and deaf” to what is needed in the moment for the greater good because we are so intent on doing what is ‘good’ for ourselves?
Writing this today, the day after Pearl Harbor Day, the day after Bashar al Assad is deposed in Syria, throwing an already volatile region into more chaos, seems more than appropriate. On December 8, 1941, FDR called December 7, 1941, a “Day of Infamy” and war against Japan and then 3 days later, against Germany and Italy. 83 years ago the world was in chaos and war-today we are at war once again. This war is not just the war in Ukraine, where a country is fighting for its sovereignty against a much supposedly stronger opponent, they are fighting for their way of being, for their right to be free and make free-will moral choices instead of surrendering to a mean, ugly, cruel dictator. As the new administration gets ready to take and Donald Trump meddles in the business that is Joe Biden’s to run, many are wondering if DJT and his gang of thugs, grifters, liars are going to embellish on their “cruel” behaviors, their being “deaf” to the cries for freedom and decency, their “fierce” loyalty to corruption and power!
The fact that so many so-called ‘religious’ leaders are falling at the feet of an idolator, so many ‘religious’ and ‘devout’ ‘christians, jews, muslims’ are kissing the ring of the ‘wanna be mafia don’ is disgusting and a true representation of the “error is in the failure to understand” that Rabbi Heschel is speaking about. It is true here in America, it is true in Israel, it is happening throughout the Middle East, it is happening in France, and it is up to We, the People to do something to restore true faith and make sure our credo doesn’t fall back into the unhealthy ways, the destruction ways it has in the past. It is time for We, the People to stop sitting on the sidelines and give silent acquiescence to the lies of the liars, to the worshiping of idols and autocrats, to the cruelty of Bannon, Miller, Vance, Musk, Bibi, Ben-G’vir, Smotrich, MBS, Putin, Hamas, etc. It is time for We, the People to educate people about what it means to be used by Saudi Arabia and Iran calling for “freedom from the river to the sea” and for going along with the puppets of Putin on Fox News, etc while proclaiming their ‘loyalty to America’. Speaking truth to the myriads of people who think MAGA is forward thinking and caring about the very people and ways that Jesus, Moses, Mohammed speak about and help them realize MAGA is going backwards to pre-1860 America, where slavery was good, righteous, and necessary, where immigration, poverty, etc were considered criminal unless it served the wealthy class and where the rich decided everything.
The “dogma” of Judaism is, according to Rabbi Akiva, a famous Talmudic Scholar and personality, summed up in “Love your Neighbor as you love yourself”(Lev. 19:18). With this as the “dogma”, the “creed”, a “body without a heart” can’t survive, it becomes almost impossible to be “blind, cruel, and fierce” to anyone, to anything that God has made! When the foundational principle is love, for all three major Western Religions, the actions of the charlatans, these idolators, these autocrats, the Bannons, Millers, Vances, Netanyahus Ayatollahs, etc just do not stand, they should be wilting and dying-yet, We, the People keep allowing them oxygen and water, we keep allowing them to nourish themselves so “the south will rise again”.
I hear Moses “call heaven and earth” to witness the criminal behavior and ways of We, the People in allowing this evil to flourish and allowing the love, we are commanded to live from, rot. The words above are both a warning, a teaching and an indictment. I am calling upon all of us to look deeply at our actions and inactions, to take an inventory of the ways we have ‘been on the right side’ of things and still acted with cruelty, been fierce in our blindness to our errors, to our failures, choosing instead to blame ‘those’ people. We see this with the autopsy on the election by some democrats, we witness the ‘pearl-clutching’ of the progressives about Joe Biden being a father and a leader by pardoning his son rather than having him face another onslaught from Trump et al. We see how the elite have fooled so many by getting them to believe they care about the poor people in our midst. We see how these ‘good christian’ and ‘frum jews’ ‘devout muslims’ promote the exact opposite of what Christianity, Islam, and Judaism stand for and there is little outcry! Where is a Rabbi Heschel, a Joachim Prinz, a Martin Luther King, a John Lewis; We, the People need to imitate them all NOW.
I am guilty of error and failure-full stop. I also do my T’Shuvah and make my amends. It is sad to me to be the one blamed for all the messes I have been involved in rather than just being accepted for my amends for my part. I know the people who refuse to make rapprochement are just too afraid to see their part, too insecure to make their own amends and I acknowledge that they don’t want me around because, as I was told, I cause chaos. Of course I do because I my living Jewishly is based on the fact: “alienation from dogma does not necessarily mean the loss of faith”. I have more faith, I am less cruel and blind, I am not shoddy nor sterile nor deaf in my part of every interaction, and I am fierce in my advocacy for the soul of every person I come into contact with. I will not apologize for who I am, I will always do T’Shuvah for the inappropriate ways I live out who I am. I believe that we all need to live more consciously and more in tune with the principles we proclaim we cling to.. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark