Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 143

“We have trifled with the name of God. We have taken ideals in vain, preached and eluded Him, praised and defied Him. Now, we reap the fruits of failure. Through centuries His voice cried in the wilderness. How skillfully it was trapped and imprisoned in Temples! How thoroughly distorted!” (Essential Writings pg. 90)

“Now, we reap the fruits of failure” is truer today than when Rabbi Heschel wrote these words. Then, as now, his words must have been dismissed, thought to be hyperbole, many were basking in the glow of victory over the Nazis in the Second World War, while fearful of Russia believed in the might and right of America, Israel was a State again, the baby boom was on, etc. Yet, Rabbi Heschel, in his prophetic eyesight, could see how we were reaping the “fruits of failure” of our religious institutions, our moral deficiencies, of our bastardization of God’s Name, God’s will, God’s path for us. Today, we hear how “skillfully” God’s will and God’s name has been “trapped and imprisoned in Temples” and how God’s name and God’s will is used for reaping “the fruits of failure”.

We have more poverty at a time when there is such great wealth in the world, we have more mendacity when truth would serve us better, we have more hatred when love is talked about so much, we have more moral decay when the Bible is used as a weapon when it preaches love, kindness, forgiveness, community. We are witnessing and participating in the failure of humanity to hear God’s voice as it “cried in the wilderness” of yesterday and still cries out to us today. God is calling to us from Mount Sinai, from our Temples and our Churches, our Mosques and our homes, from our souls and yet, we continue to imprison it with our intellects and rationalizations. Our clergy fail us too often, our teachers fail us too often, even our parents fail us.

Our clergy fail us, in many cases, from their fear of their congregants, parishioners, boards. To speak the truth, to end our trifling “with the name of God”, to embrace and praise God, rather than eluding and defying God calls for a deep sense of courage, of outrage, of overcoming the fear of ‘losing our positions’ of being the Kohanim that God calls us to be in the Bible. Rather than speak the words of the prophets, rather than call out the name of Jesus, our clergy have to have a renaissance of spirit, to allow their souls and their morality to overcome their desire for political power, their wanting to keep their ‘job’ while missing the call from God. We, clergy, have to willing to follow the examples of the prophets, of Jesus, of Moses, et al, and stand up for truth, stand against the desecration of God’s name, we have to end our taking “ideals in vain” and stand with God instead of trying to make God stand with us. We have to be spiritual leaders and spiritual healers, rather than spiritual charlatans offering pap to the needy while catering to the wealthy, to the powerful. We have to end our crusade to ‘be the only way’ and embrace all paths to God knowing that there is no path that fits all people. We, the clergy, have to do our own T’Shuvah, our own Chesbon HaNefesh, accounting of our souls, then make our amends and find our way back to serving God rather than a board, be willing to go to jail like Jeremiah and the Berrigan brothers and Dr. King, attend the protests against mendacity, against immorality, against Godliness as Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Prinz, and so many others did.

Our institutions of learning are no longer free to teach the whole story. In colleges and universities students no longer go to learn about life, to discover the vast wealth of knowledge of history, science, religion, humanities, they go to get trained and indoctrinated. In some places learning about the abject horrors of slavery and holding those slaveowners to account is verboten, against the law! In some places ignoring the truth about Hamas and how often they have failed to say YES to a deal for the return of hostages and a cease-fire is de rigueur, learning how many times the Palestinians turned down a deal for a two-state solution is forgotten. In our schools today, active shooter drills are commonplace and many schools are waiting for the next shooting, praying it won’t be on their campus’ while extolling the bastardization of the 2nd Amendment.

We “reap the fruits of failure” in our families as well. We have forgotten to raise our children’s spiritual life while concentrating on their physical, intellectual, and mental health growth. We are reaping these “fruits of failure” by the apathy, the attachment to lies and deception that the internet and social media have created, and the focus on “getting mine” that has overtaken our world-both with children and parents. Raising our children to be decent human beings who care for the needy, welcome the stranger, treat each person as a divine reminder, has been lost in our quest for ‘success’, for ‘enlightenment’, etc.

We, the people, are in desperate need of recovering our hearing and our eyesight, of healing our spiritual “holes in our souls” so God’s voice isn’t unheard anymore in the wilderness. We need to remember that we have to build a “Mikdash”, a place within us and our community so that “God dwells among us” is a call that was made in Exodus and is still being called out today. We have to open our ears and our eyes, our hearts and our minds to more than what we can readily see, hear, feel and think and follow the calls of Rabbi Heschel, the prophets, Dr. King and Thomas Merton, the Dalai Lama and the Hasidic Masters, Moses and Jesus: CHOOSE LIFE. We, the people, have to stop choosing death and curse, we need to be blessed and bless others so we can reap the fruits of our success at being human. This is my quest and I pray it is yours! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark