Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 146
“Man was the first to hide himself from God (Genesis 3:8), after having eaten of the forbidden fruit, and is still hiding (Job 13;20-24). The will of God is to be here, manifest and near; but when the doors of this world are slammed on Him, His truth betrayed, His will defied, He withdraws, leaving man to himself. God did not depart of His own volition; he was expelled. God is in exile. (Essential Writings pg. 91)
“His truth betrayed, His will defied, He withdraws, leaving man to himself” is a frightening phrase for all of humanity. We, the people, have to reconcile our actions with Rabbi Heschel’s words of wisdom. He is speaking from a historical and global viewpoint as well as a personal and current perspective. While I believe that God is always near, as the prophets teach, as our psalmist sings, we, the people, have to look at ourselves as individuals and communities to see how we have betrayed God’s truth, how we have defied God’s will.
When left to our own devices, we can see throughout history what has happened; war, famine, slavery, etc. Our situation today is bleak because people in power, both governmentally and personally, religiously and economically, have engaged in such mendacity that we are hard-pressed to discern God’s truth from our lies, we seem incapable of understanding the simplicity of God’s will and have substituted our lust for power, wealth, prestige, for the will of God. In other words, we are left to ourselves because we want to be alone, we want to not be accountable, we want to suffer and indulge in our spiritual maladies. How is this possible?
I agree with Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, God withdraws because we forsake the covenant we have made with God and God has made with us. The psalmist sings of his/our despair, our fear of another and how the only path is to ask for God’s help to face the inner and outer demons we face daily. The prophet calls upon us to return, to end our false sacrifices, our false piety and prayer and surrender our oversized, out of proportion egos to God’s will and to end our mendacity. Yet, some of our clergy preach ‘prosperity gospel’, some of our clergy preach human retribution and annihilation as God’s will, some leaders preach authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, Sharia law as God’s truth, some business say it is ‘dog eat dog’, etc, all the while conveniently forgetting God’s call for Tshuvah, God’s call for caring for those less fortunate, God’s will “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”.
In Exodus, God’s will is to build a way of living that allows “God to dwell among us/in us”, yet we continually build structures to keep God out of our daily living. We preach the falsehoods and lies of “only I can fix it”, that politics should blind the eyes of the righteous and pervert justice, that people can and are bribed to go along to get along. We have no use for God’s truth unless it goes along with what we want and if it doesn’t, we can find a verse, a phrase out of context to validate our desires. We can find a priest, Rabbi, Imam, minister to preach our way of thinking because they fear for their positions rather than fearing for their mendacity. We say the shareholders have to be satisfied more than caring for the customer and what our product does to the psyche and spirit as well as physical well-being of people. We believe the lies and distortions of politicians rather than what we see with our own eyes because we have defied God so often, so completely, we believe the false gods we have created; we believe and follow the words of those who tear goodness down; rather than hear and obey God’s will for us to live together in ‘peace’; rather than the lamb lie down with the lion we believe the lion should eat the lamb!
Left to our own devices because of our denial of God’s truth, our defiance of God’s will, we have wrought a world that no longer cares about the voiceless and the powerless, a world where Pharaoh(Putin, Orban, Netanyahu, Religious zealots) is celebrated and Moses (those who love democracy, who care about their enemies, seek freedom for all) is denigrated. We are living in a world where justice is no longer blind, it can be bought. We have created a world where a woman is chattel, a person’s individuality is seen as rebellion, there are ‘alternative facts’, the Bible and all Holy Texts have become weapons. False prophets and false redeemers are elevated to holy people and the epitome of holiness by the idolatrous priests, rabbis, imams and ministers. We are a spiritually sick world that is so blind and so stuck we believe we are healthy!
Rabbi Heschel’s words and teachings from 70+ years ago have not been heeded because he was an inconvenient prophet, a thorn in the side of ‘religious people’ as well as ‘regular people’. He is calling out to us, warning us, revealing truth to us and we do not want to hear it. We are more defiant of God, we are more impervious to God’s truth today than when these words were written. Seeing how sick we are, isn’t it time to surrender to God’s will, to imbibe God’s truth? Isn’t it time to recover our covenantal relationship with God rather than shred it? We, the people have to join the revolution to recover God’s truth, to carry out God’s will so we can fulfill our duty to make the world a better place than when we found it. We have to heal our spiritual maladies, as Maimonidies teaches, so we can live with one another rather than against one another. We have to circumcise the foreskins of our hearts so love can come in and flow out, we have to take the cataracts off our eyes so we can see the beauty of another soul, recognize the divine reminder each person is, and our best to live God’s truth and will out loud each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark