Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 115

“The prophet disdains those for whom God’s presence is comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand. God is compassion, not compromise; justice, though not inclemency. The prophet’s predictions can always be proved wrong by a change in man’s conduct, but never the certainty that God is full of compassion.” (Essential Writings pg. 63)

In the second sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is describing not only God’s attributes, he is teaching us how to be human, how to be in order to “live a life that is compatible with being a partner of God’s.” Compassion comes from the Latin meaning “to suffer with” and Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that God “suffers with” human beings. While many of us feel alone in our suffering, Rabbi Heschel and the prophets call out to us that we are not alone, that God is with us in our suffering as well as with us in our joy. Living a life with God as our partner doesn’t mean we will not have suffering as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, it means we never suffer alone. God also doesn’t compromise which is a jarring statement at first blush. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to never “accept standards that are less than desirable”, as one definition of compromise states. Having “compassion” and no “compromise” gives human beings a great challenge. How can we “suffer with” one another and not “accept standards that are less than desirable”?

The pathway to living in this ‘both/and’ is difficult, it means we have to look inside of ourselves and see how, when, and where we compromise our morality, our spiritual values, where we give up ourselves and put on the masks and facades that society wants. Once we do this inventory, once we determine the self-deceptions and obliviousness we have engaged in, we are able to engage our emotions and intellect to “suffer with” our soul’s angst. Turning away from our false compromises, turning to God, we join together to know we are not alone in our suffering, we do not have to turn to despair. We are able to rise above our current state of affairs through the forgiving hand of God, through the knowledge we are not alone, and we always have a way out of our suffering and back to being compassionate and kind, holding ourselves to the standard of being human, with our imperfections and our uniqueness.

We witness our own compromises and the compromises of society daily. Yet, rather than live into God’s call for “compassion, not compromise”, people are compassionate for the compromises they make and the groups they belong to make. Accepting Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’ is one example of people living in “compromise” not “compassion”. While many talk of compassion for the Palestinian people, few are able to have the same compassion for Israelis! While many people want Israel to accept “standards that are less than desirable”, they do not believe the Palestinians should. While there is not any doubt of the horror that Hamas perpetrated upon innocents in Israel, people compromise their own humanity when extolling Hamas’ efforts. Another example of compromise not compassion is the way the House Republicans are treating Ukraine, Israel, our border issues as a political wedge rather than as a humanitarian issue. Rather than “suffer with” the Ukrainians, the Israelis, the border states and the people seeking a better life, the Republican Party seems to favor cruelty and harshness towards their fellow human beings all the while extolling their ‘christian values’! Rather than live into Christ’s words and ways, these ‘good christians’ “accept standards that are less than desirable” for their political and power-seeking selfishness, not to uphold Christ’s teachings, not to be more Godly, more holy!

We, the people, have to call an end to this way of being. We, the people, have to engage in the battle for our own souls and for the soul of our society. For far too long, we have allowed the liars and deceivers to tell us what God wants, what it is to be human. Rabbi Heschel and the prophets are demanding we return to a way of being that the Bible calls for, that the New Testament, the Koran, the Eastern Philosophies demand of us instead of the “compromise” we have allowed ourselves to become mired in. We, the people, are called each day to “Hear” the voice of God that is within us and all around us and is calling on us to end our ‘rugged individual’, our aloneness attitudes, our self-seeking way of being and allow God’s compassion to overwhelm us, to join us in our suffering and help us rise above the “compromise” we have made. Receiving “compassion” from God is a gift and we have to use this gift to raise our own standards back to the standards of God, we have to raise our awareness of how capable we are to meet God’s standards and we have to let go of our false sufferings, our mendacity and our selfishness. We do this by joining with one another and recognizing our common “suffering” and we “suffer with” one another so we all rise above our “less than desirable standards” and be human a little more each day.

“God is compassion, not compromise” is a constant theme of recovery. We “turn our lives over” to a power greater than ourselves; so that we can once again, or for the first time, engage in living decently, living with love for one another, love for oneself. We greet one another with a ‘knowing’ of their “suffering” and we “suffer with” one another in life’s hardships. We reach out and help one another through our sufferings not as experts but as fellow travelers on the path of being human. In recovery, we accept the standards that God has given us, we know we will never be perfect and we learn how to live with “compassion” for self and another(s) while never “compromising” the standards of kindness, truth, love, caring, decency. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark