Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 132

“There are no proofs for the existence of the God of Abraham. There are only witnesses. The greatness of the prophet lies not only in the ideas he expressed, but also in the moments he experienced. The prophet is a witness, and his words a testimony to His power and judgement, to His justice and mercy.”(Essential Writings pg. 64)

Thinking about the last phrase above, I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to end our belief that the “justice” and “mercy” we practice is the same as “His justice and mercy”. The prophet came as a gift from the Ineffable One to help us re-align our human practice of justice and mercy with “His justice and mercy.” We have failed to heed the demand of the prophet and the hope of God throughout the millennia. Yet, by hearing “his words a testimony” we can re-align our practice of justice and mercy with the practice of “His justice and mercy.”

To do this we have to, first, let go of our hubris and our deep-seated belief that we know what is just and what is merciful on our own thinking, with our own prejudices. This belief is based, in large part, on our spiritual bankruptcy, the lack of spiritual knowledge, spiritual maturity, living by our spiritual experiences. This belief, also in large part, is based on our reliance on our intellect, on our emotions, on our need to hold power over another. We have to surrender our reliance on our intellect alone, realize our intellect is only a part of us, be grateful for the gift of our intellect, and make it subservient to our “intuitive mind” as Einstein calls our “gut instinct’, that teachers and spiritual leaders like Dr. King, Thomas Merton, Rabbi Heschel, etc call our soul’s knowledge.

God’s “justice and mercy” is based on teaching, on helping people return to their rightful place, live a life of kindness, concern, love and truth, compassion and service. Throughout the Bible, God doesn’t want ‘bad’ things to happen to people, God calls out to us on numerous occasions to return, God gives us prophecy through Moses and the prophets as to what will happen if we “stay fat” and forget who we are, who we serve, and what our purpose is. While many people call ‘the god of the old testament’ an angry god, they are only practicing Avodah Zarah, idolatry. Labelling God, limiting God is the worst sin, I believe. It is the sin of believing one can be better than God, it is the sin of believing one can control God, it is the sin of believing that God will take care of them only, that their cause, their way is the only right way, and this makes these people authoritarians, dictators, theocrats, etc, to the ruination of “His justice and mercy.”

Throughout “his words a testimony”, the prophet calls for us to return, to let go of our false beliefs, selfish ideals, harmful treatment of the widow, the stranger, the orphan, the needy, the poor, one another. The prophet reminds us of our covenant with God, that God is God and we are not. The prophet is a witness to a power greater than ourselves which most people, including the Priesthood and the Royalty who are named servants by and of God, ignore, denigrate, believe they are not bound by the same rules because they “the chosen”. We are still spreading this deceit today; in our political world, in our business world, in our personal world-to the defeat of democracy, to the ending of freedom for all.

God’s mercy is so great, as the prophet testifies to, that all we, the people, have to do is return, admit our errors, sincerely be remorseful, ask for forgiveness, and make a plan not to commit the exact same error in the same manner again. Yet, we, the people, seem incapable of allowing God’s mercy to overwhelm us, we seem to disbelieve the testimony of the prophet, we denigrate what he is a witness to and we discard his call to us. Again, at our own peril, we complain about God’s strict justice instead of hearing the command to engage in “righteous justice”, to temper justice with mercy, to be quick to forgive. We, the people, seem to relish in our resentments, we continually find what is wrong with another, be judgmental and call it justice, be unwilling to believe ‘a leopard can change its spots’, and live a ‘holier than thou’ existence. What rubbish, what hubris, to believe we can go down the same path as our ancestors from Antiquity and not experience the same result.

There is a solution- “His justice and mercy” is found in the principle of T’Shuvah! Each day, we are taught by Rabbi Eliezer, we should do T’Shuvah- take an inventory of what we have done well,, where we have missed the mark, make a plan to not repeat our errors, make our sincere amends to those we have harmed, make a plan to enhance what we do well and be grateful for the spiritual growth we make from being aware of both our misses and our hits. Each year we are supposed to do this with God on Yom Kippur, yet most people only give lip service to this holiest of days. God’s “justice and mercy” is so great, as the prophet witnesses, that even knowing most confessions, most vows made on Yom Kippur are not done wholeheartedly, God accepts them because of the belief that, one day we will circumcise the foreskins of our hearts forever. God is slow to anger and quick to forgive, abundant in lovingkindness, in need of our return from our self-imposed exile.

Isn’t it time for us to return? The recovery movement is based in God’s loving mercy and justice, God’s forgiveness and desire for our return. My recovery began in prison because Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, taught us about T’Shuvah and gave us a path back to decency, to family, to community, to God. I find it sad that many people who ‘think they are normal’ and in charge of institutions that are supposed to be spiritual, don’t believe in this basic tenet of spirituality; the “Spirituality of Imperfection” as the book is called. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark