Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 276

Last writing for 3 weeks-restart on Sept. 2/3

“Our premise is the certainty of being able to educate the inner man; to form as well as to inform the personality; to develop not only memory but also the capacity for insight; not only information but also appreciation; not only proficiency but also reverence; not only learning but also faith; not only skills but also inner attitudes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.56)

Today is Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of Av, the day the Rabbis proclaimed as a national one day of mourning for the destruction of both Temples and, have since, added every other cruelty, destruction of community that has happened to the Jews ever since-except for the Shoah, the Holocaust. Orthodoxy was defeated when they wanted to add the Shoah to the list of “bad things that happened to good people” by the rest of Jewry because Tisha B’Av represents the calamities we brought about because of our bad behavior and the Shoah was pure hatred of Jews just for being Jewish. The destruction of the 1st Temple was because of the ways the people in power, including the Priests, treated the widows, the orphans, the poor, the needy and the stranger, according to Rabbinic lore and the 2nd Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred between people that caused embarrassment and harm with the lies and mendacity that was the way of the world in Judea at the time. Isn’t it wonderful that we commemorate these terrible ways of being that caused destruction and ruin on Tisha B’Av, that we mourn the destructions all the while we continue to engage in the same behaviors that caused them!!!

The last phrases that are bolded above, along with our current situations in the world,  point out the danger in “only learning” and “only skills” being our reason d’être. What good is learning if we are not also going to have faith-isn’t the reason to learn to deepen one’s faith in, and trust in what we are learning and to use the lessons of our past to have “sincerity” and “be genuine” in our dealings with one another and be in truth with oneself? We have learned how to pray, how to beg, how to bluster, how to beat our chests, how to be victims, how to be superior and we have failed to have trust that being genuine human will suffice and move us forward as individuals and as humanity. We have failed to grasp sincerity and faith the lessons from Tisha B’Av, from the Bible impart upon us because we are too busy being ‘victims’ and living in ‘identity politics’ and/or worried about ‘optics’. We watch the same people who are causing or trying to cause the destruction of another person/people wailing on the floor this morning in Temple Services or this Friday at the Mosque or Sunday in Church- mourning some fantasy glory rather than putting their learning to good use, using their “learning” to make life better for all-they are being led by mealy-mouthed people for whom being political is more important than being faithful! Rabbis and Clergy who are more worried about their jobs and status than about truth and leadership. These ‘learned people’ like Mike Johnson and Ben-G’vir care only about their power and Sinwar cares only about getting his and getting even-not using their “learning” to be more human, more genuine, more in line with the divine. The great question is how they and their ancestors for the millennia have gotten other learned people to go along with them and allow them to cause more and more reasons to mourn on Tisha B’Av! How sad for them and for us, how irresponsible of the rest of us for allowing them so much oxygen in the room.

We have the skills to pray, we have the skills to read texts in the original, we have the skills to learn and to gather information, to be proficient, to remember, etc and what we have done with the teaching and learning of these skills is forget to use them to influence “the inner attitudes” of human beings. We have forgotten that just teaching our children to read prayers and to learn a Torah Portion for their Bat/Bar Mitzvah means nothing if we haven’t influenced and helped them learn how to change their inner life, grow their spiritual selves, and live life as decent human beings. It is not enough, my dear Rabbinic Colleagues to go along with the status quo and throw up our hands, it is not enough to read the words of the prophets each Shabbat Morning and not fulfill them, not be moved by them. It is not enough to extol the ‘sages of old’ in their mendacity and their move away from what our Holy Bible teaches us in the prophets, from King David, Moses, etc. It is not enough to teach the adults that they only have to drop their kids off and make their lack of participation palpable to them and to yourself. It is not enough to hide behind ‘your contract’, ‘your livelihood’ as the reasons for short-changing the very people you have been “Called to Serve”!

It is time for all of us to re-assess ourselves in relation to Rabbi Heschel’s teachings above. It is time for all of us to end our self-deceptions and denials, our deceptions of another(s) and our lies. We have to start with ourselves and then broaden our approach. I have been using “learning” to be more “genuine” and “sincere” since my recovery. As a friend of mine told me yesterday, “Mark, you are not political, you do not play the game” and he is right. What you see is what you get because I was a thief and a con, a drunk and a liar, a hider and it almost destroyed me and harmed so many people who loved/love me in those times. I refuse to “go along to get along”, my current situation of retirement is a direct result of my lack of political correctness, my lack of worry about optics, and, I was wrong in the way I acted-full stop! I was not wrong in my assessment and my concerns all along nor was I heard. While the prophets of old were not heeded, they kept talking from Amos to Micah, even Jesus was heard and not heeded to this very day. It is time for us to end our “ritual mourning” for the “good old days”, stop our “make America Great again” and “from the River to the Sea” as well as all the other stupid slogans.

It is time for us to cut the cord of lies and mendacity, it is time for us to be genuine and sincere in “love your neighbor as yourself”, its time to embody “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. It is time for us to use the “learning” of Tisha B’Av, the “skills” of mourning to deepen our “faith” and grow our “inner attitudes”, raise up our souls and the souls of those around us. My new way of doing this is through this blog and the way I greet people, the reaching out of my hand over and over again-whether someone takes it or not. I am engaged in living the lessons from my errors as well as from my ‘victories’ each day. I pray you will use today to be more “genuine” with yourself and engage in daily spiritual growing. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark