Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 117

“The prophet’s word is a scream in the night. While the world is at ease and asleep, the prophet feels the blast from heaven.” (Essential Writings pg. 63)

Rabbi Heschel says in his interview with Carl Stern that we have forgotten the prophets, we don’t study the prophets, and, I would say, that we don’t experience the prophets in our world today. The power of the prophet’s word is that it is still screaming at us and has been screaming at us throughout the millennia. Yet, we seem incapable of hearing their scream, we are too “asleep” to respond to their scream.

For some of us, the scream is ear shattering, it is cuts through us as a knife cuts through butter. We continue to responding our own ways and we are aware of the inadequacy of our response, we encounter the stubbornness of most people who plug their ears to the scream and instead hear the call of their egos and of their desires towards self-aggrandizement. This battle has been raging since the time of the prophets and continues to engulf those of us who feel the “blast from heaven” each and every day. This is, I believe, the war spoken about in the words of the prophets; not a day of destruction as many have interpreted their words, rather a war for the sake of heaven and earth, a war between those who hear the “scream” and those who are “at ease and asleep”.

I do not hear Rabbi Heschel teaching us  that “the world is at ease and asleep” is a literal experience, rather he is calling to us to WAKE UP! Of course there is anxiety and awareness of the ills of the world by most people and they are still “at ease and asleep” to the fact that “the prophet’s word is a scream in the night”. The words of the prophets are not giving them nightmares, rather they are using them for weapons against their ‘enemies’, against all who do hear and respond to this “scream” which gives us nightmares and calls us to action. When we go to our respective corners of progressive, conservative, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc and block out all other conversations, when we are xenophobic, authoritarian, when we seek power for the sake of power, when we seek to uplift ourselves over everyone else, we are “at ease and asleep” and unable to experience “the blast from heaven” even though we can quote scriptures, we can wrap ourselves in our particular faith, we are unable to hear the “scream”!

The prophet cannot help himself(yes the prophets were men), because of feeling “the blast from heaven” he is unable to contain himself, he forces us to choose sides, either we are “at ease and asleep” or we hear the “scream” and take action. While I am not a big proponent of either/or; there are times when we have to make a choice and I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to make such a decision: are we going to immerse ourselves in the words and “screams” of the prophets or not? Are we going to stand up and speak truth to power, are we going to stop using prayer to comfort us as the Israelites and Judean priests used sacrifices to feel “at ease and asleep”? Are we going to welcome the stranger, help the poor and the needy, care for the widow and the orphan? Are we going to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein or continue to subtly and not so subtly continue to use people for our selfish good?

These questions and more arise from hearing “the prophet’s word is a scream”. It is time for all of us to get our hearing checked, attune our hearing to the decibel the prophet’s spoke at and join in their horror at ‘the way things are’. It is time for all of us to wake up with the trembling awe and horror of our actions that have ignored “the blast from heaven”. It is time for us to end our being “at ease and asleep” through our actions of false piety. We have to have a “dark night of the soul” as individuals and as a global community if we are to move toward the light of the universe instead of continually hiding from it. Just as God continues to call to us to HEAR each day from Mount Sinai, so too do the words of the prophet continue to “scream” at us, continue to awaken us to “the blast from heaven”. It is our job to wake up and hear, listen and understand-this is the call, the demand, the essence of the Hebrew word Shema which is also the beginning of a central prayer in the Jewish tradition.

Recovery occurs when one finally hears the “scream” of the prophets, when one finally experiences “the blast from heaven” and we can no longer deny either. Both hearing the “scream” and experiencing “the blast from heaven” become undeniable and we have to respond to them with a new way of being. This spiritual awakening is so overwhelming we become able to return to our basic goodness of being, we learn/re-learn how to be a decent human being, and we commit to living our lives in service to the teachings of the prophets and the call of “the blast from heaven”.

I have awoken many a night because I hear the “scream” of the prophet’s word and realize how I have ignored it. I have night terrors from the experience of “the blast from heaven” which I have missed. These experiences have not led me to despair, rather they have led me to resilience and to action. I know many of my imperfections and learn more through these ‘nightmares’ caused by the “scream” and “the blast”. I am elated that I have not blocked my ears from them and I am never “at ease and asleep” for too long. In my recovery, I do not seek ‘inner peace’, I seek progress in fulfill the call of the prophets and allowing the “blast from heaven” to propel me to new insights and new discoveries of how to be one grain of sand better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark