Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day156

“Our task is to open our souls to Him, to let Him again enter our deeds. We have been taught the grammar of contact with God; we have been taught by the Baal Shem that His remoteness is an illusion capable of being dispelled by our faith. There are many doors through we have to pass to enter the palace, and none of them are locked.” (Essential Writings pg. 92)

“Grammar comes from the Greek meaning “(art) of letters”, contact comes from the Latin meaning “to touch together with”. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, cajoling us, to regain our “contact” with God through the letters that are in our hearts, in our souls, as I hear him this morning. He is also pointing out what Moses teaches in Deuteronomy, what is good, what is Godly is not far away from us, it is not hidden from us somewhere in the universe, we have the letters, we have the words, we have the ability “to touch” and to be “together with” God, Godliness, one another, our inner wisdom and our inner strength to carry this wisdom out.

Yet, we seem to relish in our beliefs that God is remote, hidden, the wisdom and ways of God too mysterious. We seem to substitute our intellectual mendacity, our need to control the narrative, our inability to be responsible to accept our errors and regain our “contact with God”. I believe, once again, Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to end our indifference to God, our indifference to the evil we perpetrate by exiling God, our indifference to the suffering of people around us, people we do not know and the suffering of our own inner life that is at the root of our indifference to everything else we don’t want to see, our indifference to our lack “of contact with God”.

We seem to be too afraid of ‘losing control’ to use the “grammar” “we have been taught”. We seem to be more concerned with power, with our own authority than with our inability, unwillingness to use “the grammar” “we have been taught” to have “contact with God”. The more we immerse ourselves in this phrase, the more we can realize how our intellect, our emotions, our traits are so out of proper measure that we use “the grammar of contact with God” to abuse people and to deceive people into believing our idolatrous ways are actually holy. We use the same words, the same syntax, to foist lies and deceptions on the masses, and in our masses, prayers, etc, so they follow us instead of God, so they do our bidding instead of God’s will and we call this ‘religion’, we call this deception ‘from Moses on Sinai’, we call this mendacity ‘holy’. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel’s rebuke of these deceptions, these lies, these misuse of “the grammar of contact with God” very strongly this morning, given the state of the world, the state of the Middle East, the attack on democracy we are experiencing in America today.

Many people believe the central prayer of Judaism is the Shema. The first word is to “Hear, Listen, Understand” and the last word is One, Oneness. The last letter of the word Shema and the last letter of the word Echad, form the word for witness, for testifying. We have a problem today, as we have throughout history, of people giving false testimony, knowingly or unknowingly, and using the “grammar of contact with God” in their testimony. In Jewish Law, a false witness is fined and not allowed to give testimony again, in today’s America, in today’s Israel; politicians, pundits, business leaders, ex-presidents, ‘eye-witnesses’, give false testimony all the time and don’t seem to suffer any consequences, in some cases, they are exalted by their cult followers for their false testimony! Religious leaders of all sects and denominations validate their lies and deceptions by mis-quoting Scripture, by ignoring the “call of the Bible”, by quoting Jesus, Mohammed, the prophets yet twisting their words and the meaning of their words and the lessons of their experiences to fit the mendacity these ‘religious’ leaders want to spread.

We have to take back “the grammar of contact with God”, we, the people, have to return to the wisdom and charge of Moses who set before us blessing and curse, life and death, Choose Life! We choose life, we accept the mantle of being a blessing each morning when we are grateful to be alive, when we are aware of the Grace we experience just by waking up. We choose life and accept the mantle of being obligated to honor the gift of life we have been given by using “the grammar of contact with God” to live a little more from our inner life, from our soul. We honor the gift of being alive through uncovering our eyes a little more to see what truly is, rather than accept the self-deceptions and delusions we have been living under. We honor the gift of life by using the “grammar of contact with God” to seek the wisdom that we have within us and to ask for help from those who also are seeking to honor the fit of being alive through service, “to let Him again enter our deeds”, through enhancing our inner lives and no longer hiding from God nor exiling God from our consciousness or life.

Re-learning and using “the grammar of contact with God” without guile nor deception has been my mission since I began my journey back to wholeness. I use words, teachings, connections, and writing, prayer and song, study and spiritual guidance to continue my journey out of self-deception and into more connection and “contact with God”. I am painfully aware of when I fall back into self-deception and believe the mendacity of another, yet, I know I leave these two states of being much quicker today-progress not perfection. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark