Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 174

“The redeeming quality of man lies in his ability to sense his kinship with all men. Yet there is a deadly poison that inflames the eye, making us see the generality of race but now the uniqueness of the human face.”(Essential Writings pg. 67)

These words both spoken and written in January of 1963 are as timely today as they were then. Everyone can sense one’s “kinship with all” humanity, we know we have more in common than we are different. Most of us know the pain of losing a parent, a friend, a lover; most of us know the joy of family, learning, exploring with another human being. We recognize our similar traits to love, to care, to be just, to love mercy, to speak and hear truth. We all want to live in some comfort, we all want food, clothing, shelter, a respect of our dignity and to be treated equal. We all want to experience freedom and have limits put upon us. This “ability to sense” our “kinship with” all humanity is what “buys back” our humanity after we have fallen into the slavery of willful blindness, the narrow place of an “eye disease”.

The second sentence above, of course, is what we have to be redeemed from! We are in desperate need, again, of a Moses to “tell old Pharaoh, let My people go”. The issue here is that we, ourselves, are the Pharaoh, it is us who are infected with “a deadly poison that inflames the eye”. While we are hearing from politicians and pundits, Imams and Priests, Ministers and Rabbis that someone else is the ‘devil’, the ‘satan’, the ‘pharaoh’, etc - the truth is we are the people with the disease and the people with the cure. And, we are, seemingly,  incapable of hearing this truth and holding onto this truth long enough to change. We are bombarded by these so-called ‘holy people’, these ‘people who know something’ to believe the lies that this “deadly poison” is actually good for us. “Here drink this and you will see things clearly, follow me and I will show you the real and lead you to the promised land” are the messages of the charlatans, the racists, the Mengele’s who want to experiment on people to see what it takes to control them and make them into robots, people who will relinquish their minds and their souls for us.

Be it Bannon or Putin, Xi or the Ayatollah, the fundamentalist Jews or Arabs, the Christian Nationalists or the far left progressives, all of these groups are suffering from the “deadly poison that inflames the eye”. When anyone is on the extremes, when fundamentalism is the call and return, we are unable to “sense his kinship with” all humanity. When men are so afraid of women they have to make laws that take away freedom, take away their ability to choose, return to a way of being that makes them into chattel and slaves who have to ‘listen to your man, woman’; these men are infected, these men are poisoned, and, they believe they are seeing clearly! This is how insidious and deadly this poison, this “eye disease” is.

While Rabbi Heschel was speaking about the plight of the Black people, he also could have been speaking about the irrational, ridiculous hatred of the Jew, mistrust of the Muslim. The poison is the same, the inflammation is the same and the spreading of the disease through words, through actions is the same. Be it Ben-Gvir or Sinwar, they both use the same delivery system of their poison-hatred, lies, violence. Putin, Orban, Trump, RFK Jr., all use this same delivery system of their poison, they use the same poison that has been used throughout the millennia and we, the people, are infected unwittingly and willingly.

The first sentence above, of course, is the vaccine, it is the cure for this eye disease which is a “deadly poison”. We have to hear the call of Moses to Pharaoh “Let My people go”, as a call from a higher source to return. We have to allow our spiritual life to redeem, to buy back, our minds and emotions which have been injected with the lies and hatred of power-hungry puppet masters who fancy themselves Pharaohs. They believe they are the ones who should rule, they believe they are the ‘second coming’, they believe they are the ‘ones who will bring the messiah’ by enslaving everyone else to do their bidding, to hate one another and to kill the true prophets who speak out against them. With Passover a week away, it is important to look inside of ourselves and see where this “deadly poison that inflames the eye” is blocking our ability to see and hear truth. How and when are we insensitive to our “kinship with all” humanity? What is the delivery system of the vaccine that will allow us to be part of the people who truly leave Egypt, leave our narrow places, leave the constriction of our souls this year?

I believe the universe knows our susceptibility to poison, to lies, to wanting the warmth of slavery, the certainty of slavery so each year we proclaim our willingness to enter slavery and our hunger to be free. We relive the errors of the Israelites and the joys of the multitude of slaves who left Egypt and made their way to Canaan. We are told “every human being has to see him/herself as if they too left Egypt”. This verse puts an obligation upon us to burn the slavery we want to leave in the burning the Chometz ceremony prior to the Seder, it allows us the opportunity to share what ‘Egypt’ we want to leave this year and ask for help from our fellow newly freed slaves. I have done this for the past 36 years and each year I have been a little freer; each day I seek to find the beginning of the “deadly poison” and take the cure for the “eye disease” which we are all susceptible to. The vaccine is truth, study, song, chant, soulful living, hearing and answering the call of help and service that rings continually, love, compassion, righteous justice, and acts of lovingkindness. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark