Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 124

“The words the prophet utters are not offered as souvenirs. His speech to the people is not a reminiscence, a report, hearsay. The prophet not only conveys, he reveals. He almost does unto others what God does unto him. In speaking, the prophet reveals God. This is the marvel of the prophet’s work: in his words, the invisible God becomes audible. He does not prove or argue. The thought he has to convey is more than language can contain. Divine power bursts in his words. The authenticity of the prophet is in the Presence his words reveal.” (Essential Writings pg. 64)

Rabbi Heschel defines the problem most people have with the prophet: “He almost does unto others what God does unto him. In speaking the prophet reveals God.” While many people purport and deceive themselves into believing they agree with and adhere to the golden rule: “do unto others as you have them do unto you” or as Rabbi Hillel the elder says: “what is hateful to you do not do to another”; the exact opposite seems to be true. The prophet goes even further in his actions as Rabbi Heschel teaches us, he embarks on a mission of connecting with us, the people, in similar ways as God connects with him. For most of us this experience, like the one at Sinai, is too overwhelming, too fearful, too awesome, too…

Humanity, for all of our talk, has over the millennia been unwilling to delve into the prophet’s love for all of us. Living into Rabbi Heschel’s teaching of the prophet’s doing “unto others what God does unto him” fills most of us with dread rather than trembling awe. We have, as history proves and modern day practices show, tired to make a source of comfort, a whitewash of our foibles, a weapon to use against those we consider enemies. The prophet is doing to us what the Bible does: speak truth, look inside of ourselves, change our actions so our spirits can heal, grow, and mature. Yet, most people reject this message, resist the ways of the prophet, even the Rabbis are afraid of the prophet because he is too abrasive, too obstinate, too unrelenting in his Godly actions towards his people, towards humanity. The prophet cannot allow the slightest mendacity, the ‘white lie’ to prevail because God doesn’t allow him this luxury. As we see with Jonah, even when the prophet tries to run away from his mission, exile himself from God, he is found, he is forced by his ‘better angels’ return to his purpose and, interestingly enough, Jonah is the only prophet who ‘succeeds’ in his mission- the people of Nineveh repent and God forgives, welcomes them back and does not fulfill God’s original decree. Why is it that the people of Nineveh, who were so evil, are the ones who hear and heed the prophet’s experience? Maybe what Jonah did to them was what God did to Jonah-make them return to their spiritual life, make them see the error of their ways and repent so they return to God, to one another and find ways to co-exist with humanity.

We seem to be too scared, as the Israelites in the desert were, to have God revealed completely, to come face to face with the divine. The prophet reveals the divinity in all of  us, the possibility and charge to be Godly. He reveals God’s desire for justice and mercy, kindness and compassion, forgiveness and return, healing and wholeness. He also reveals God’s belief that we are capable of achieving these ways of being and it is only our hubris, our facades, our self-deceptions that keep us from connecting to and living into the Covenant we made with God at Sinai and we recommit to each day. Prayer, confession, t’shuvah, forgiveness, fighting for justice rather than seeking special treatment, not buying into the smarmy lies of people, no longer shunning the truth seekers and truth speakers of our age and of all ages is the call of the prophet echoing God’s call to him, to all of us. The prophet is God’s microphone, God’s spokesman because, on our own we seem incapable of engaging in truth and justice for all, unwilling to see the divine in every human being and ensure everyone’s freedom and calling to be who God created us to be. The prophet wants us to return to our uniqueness and recognize the uniqueness of every human being, the prophet is revealing God’s desire for all of us to “walk in God’s ways”, to “judge people on the content of their character” and help everyone mature their character to reflect the divine need we each fulfill.

The prophet’s revelation of God, his doing “unto others as God has done unto him” is the gold standard. Unfortunately, many ‘religious’, ‘pious’ people, many spiritual leaders and public servants, claim to know God’s will for the rest of us that their mendacity is so strong they believe prejudice is good, racism is the way of God, God loves people who are rich and the rest of us are unloved by God, anti-semitism, islamaphobia, anti-LGBTQ+, human beings are less human than they-white folk who should be running the world. God is not the authoritarian these charlatans make God out to be. The prophet reveals and hammers at us to end our senseless hatred, stop mistreating the widow and the orphan, end our unwelcoming of the stranger, cease and desist in making the poor and the needy into criminals. The prophet reveals God’s reflection that we are all poor and needy, we are all estranged from our authentic self, we all have orphaned ourselves from the source of being, the Ineffable One.

The prophet is, in many ways, our eskimo: the one who leads us to recovery of self, recovery of purpose and passion that is in concert with our soul, recovery of our relationship with God, with humanity. The prophet helps us recover our dignity and value, truth and goodness, love for self and one another. This is what the prophet “does unto others as God has done unto him”, this is the great reveal of God through the words and deeds of the prophet- we all need to be in recovery!! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark