Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 172

“The Bible does not say, God created the plant or the animal; it says God created different kinds of plants,… In striking contrast it does not say, God created different kinds of man, men of different colors and races, it proclaims, God created one single man. From one single man all men are descended.” (Essential Writings pg. 66)

Ramadan is over, Easter has passed, and Passover is upcoming. All three Western Religious and Spiritual disciplines have, at this time of spring and rejuvenation, ceremonies, rites, holy days which embody liberation of the soul, spiritual renewal, and the journey to freedom. Yet, how can we engage in any of these with our bigotries and hatreds, our competitions and separations of human beings by highlighting our differences of color, of race, of religion? I believe it is impossible.

As Rabbi Heschel reminds us, we are all descended, according to the Bible, from the first man, Adam-“male and female He created them both” (Genesis 1:27). It also states that Adam was created “in the Image of God”(ibid). Given this, it is impossible for people of faith, people who claim to worship God, to separate themselves according to race, color, religion. Yet, we do!! How sad, how destructive, how ignorant.

While learning of the different species of plants and animals is necessary so we can ensure we are growing the ‘right’ plants in the right climate, we can make sure that we keep animals in climates and habitats that are in accordance with their needs, it is a desecration of God’s name, it goes against our higher consciousness to separate humans according to their races, their colors, their religions. It is an insidious form of slavery, it is an Egypt that we have not been able to leave and the perpetrators of this way of being are the Pharaoh’s of modernity.

We are 10 days from celebrating Passover, extolling the miracle of leaving Egypt, leaving the harsh labor of slavery, the burdens of our inner slavery. And we are far from free, hence this is called the ‘time of our liberation’. The promise that slavery will end is one that has yet to be realized, not because it is not ordained, not because the opportunities have not presented themselves, rather because humanity has not availed itself of these opportunities. Humanity has chosen to stay stuck in the burdens of our inner slaveries and continue to separate ‘according to our own kind’.

Rather than immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s repetition of the words of Genesis, much of humanity has bastardized these words and used them as weapons against people of color, people of different races, people of different religions, different sexual orientations, different genders! Instead of discerning the difference between different plants, different animals, and being descended from a single human being, some of the so-called ‘religious’ people have equated not mixing the races, not mixing religions, not mixing colors as ‘godly and holy’ with plants and animals. These same people, of course, will gleefully mix seeds to create new fruits, veggies, etc and not see their incongruent ways.

It is way past time for humanity to catch up with ancient wisdom, we are on the brink of losing our humanity, our sense of what it means to be human. Bi-racial, interfaith, LGBTQ+, women’s rights are all ways of celebrating the differences of each human being, ways to acknowledge that we are all descendants of Adam, we are all struggling to come out of hiding, we are more similar than different and we all belong. Islam, Christianity, Judaism all celebrate the human being, all confer upon humanness the ability to act Godlike, to live from our higher consciousness, to, in the words of Rodney King, “all just get along”.

The separations of human beings is man-made, the enslavement of women, of people of color, of Jews, Muslims, Christians, is man-made, hence we can change these ways of being, we can undo what we is man-made and use our higher consciousness and the spirit of the universe to make the promises of Easter, Ramadan, Passover into realities. Not as a parochial hierarchy, not as a ‘holier than thou’, not as ‘my religion, race, color is the best one and I should rule over you’; rather as ways of inviting “all who are hungry come and eat” and “all who are need partake in the Passover”. Remember, more than just Israelites left Egypt once the gates were opened by Pharaoh, and more than just Jews can leave at least one of our inner slaveries this Passover. It will take a concerted effort to come together to leave our current day Egypts, our current narrow places of mean-spiritedness, our current desires and acting like Pharaoh, because we erroneously believe ‘god talks to me alone’.

I grew up knowing people of different colors, races, religions were no better nor worse than me. I know this and have practiced this way of being in my recovery more and more each day. I also have a problem when people who are addicts/alcoholics believe they are different from ‘normies’, that only another addict can understand them. Every human being suffers from some form of spiritual, emotional pain and we all are in need of liberation of our souls, liberation from the harshness with which we treat ourselves and/or another human being. We are all in need of crossing the Red Sea that is the boundary line between liberation and slavery. Each Passover, I get to leave some inner bondage and walk through the desert, knowing I will not reach the “promised land” and I will be less prone to focus on differences and more attune to our similarities. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark