Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 271

“”Love thy neighbor as thyself” is, according to Rabbi Akiba, the essence or epitome of the Torah. However, according to Rabbi Ishmael, the epitome and the design of the Torah is the design to keep our people away from idolatry. Rabbi Akiba’s view is known to all of us; Rabbi Ishmael’s view is forgotten.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 543)

Are we so arrogant as to not heed Rabbi Ishmael’s view? I think we have been for a long time, as his “view is forgotten”! We continue to promote the positive aspect of the “Love thy neighbor” which is critically important and holy, while we forget to see how even this commandment has, within it, the possibility of being evil. As I quoted yesterday from the Ramban, in his commentary on the verse “You shall be holy because, I, God, am holy” which comes prior to “Love thy neighbor…” that it is possible to be evil within the boundaries of Torah. “Love thy neighbor” can result in making someone into a celebrity and ‘worshiping’ them, it can lead one to follow them into a descent into hell, to forget all that one knows to be true and buy into the lies of authoritarianism, buy into the self-deception that going along to get along will allow one to ‘fit in’, etc.

There is nothing wrong with “love thy neighbor”, in fact it is at the end of following the holiness code in Lev.19, that we reach this way of being. Yet, as I think about the teaching above, I realize more and more that to reach this state of being, we first have to look at the myriad of ways we practice idolatry and call it love, the myriad of things we  use to push away what we ‘know in our soul’ to be true and buy into the falsehoods, deceptions, cliches, conventional wisdom of societal norms. It is too hard for most of us to truly look at ourselves and, therefore, we hide from the different idolatrous practices that we have acquired over the millennia. We do not want to know Rabbi Ishmael’s view precisely because we would have to let go of and give up on habits and ways that have become established norms. We would no longer be able to lie with impunity, there would be no way for us to tolerate hatred, racism, slavery of any kind. We would no longer have a two-tiered system of justice, we could not make women into second-class citizens anymore. There would be no using the Bible as a weapon, there would be not be any path to deny the dignity and worth of another human being. We would find solutions to extreme poverty, malnutrition, end the incessant wars for the sake of power and learn to live together in some type of coexistence.

We would no longer allow the Church to hate on Jews and Muslims, we would no longer go along with the Rabbis who preach hatred towards Arabs and “Goyim”, we would no longer permit the Imams to preach suicide bombings and “death to the infidel”. It would be impossible for us to misrepresent God in the myriad of ways we do now. Governments would not be able to oppress those who disagree with them, everyone would have the promises from Exodus 6:6-8 we all will be taken out of from under the harsh labors of the taskmasters who rule us, we will be set free from the inner taskmaster that lies to us in such believable ways, we will be redeemed and know we are worthy of being alive and we will be pointed to our rightful place and know we belong. We will be pursuers of righteousness and justice, kindness and love, truth and goodness and we will reject the evil thoughts that arise within us and those of the people around us-we will not stop them from coming we will be able to not act on them, finally.

Idolatry takes so many forms, it is so insidious, and yet, we ignore it so often. We have people in our government who claim to be ‘god-fearing’ people who go against the very principles and examples of Jesus, of Moses. We have people in government who are so tied to their ideology they are unable to discern the nuances of situations and just spout rhetoric that hurts good people. The Rabbis who are preaching ‘death to the Palestinians” are idolators, they are using the Bible to validate their evil- they are the epitome of the Ramban’s teaching- they use the Bible to do evil rather than heed Rabbi Ishmael’s warning about idolatry. The Christian Clergy who are preaching the ‘prosperity gospel’ are calling millions of their followers to worship the “Golden Calf” they have made of money, themselves, the rich, the powerful, etc. The Muslim Clergy who are promoting hatred and “Death to America, Death to Israel”, who cheered at 9/11 and Oct. 7th, are idolators as well leading people away from Allah to themselves. All of these ‘clergy’, ‘people of God’ are nothing more than idol worshipers and the people who follow them are also guilty of idolatry. We are given two brains, one in our head and the other in our gut-the one in the brain can be convinced to go along with idolatry. The one in our gut, ie our intuition, our soul, can’t and is what we have to engage along with the brain in our heads in order to have understanding, wisdom and knowledge in every situation. Yet, we continue to ignore what our ‘second brain’ tells us in order to satisfy what we can rationalize and what we fervently believe is in our best interest. It is only when we are back in Egypt do we realize the folly of our thinking and then cry out for freedom.

In looking both backward and forward, I realize the ways I set up idols for myself. I believed my own press, I acted, at times, with impunity and a lack of grace. I sought out people to worship and my worship was always rewarded with rejection at some point, because once my usefulness was over, these ‘gods’ didn’t need me anymore. Hence the power of T’Shuvah and recovery came into my life and I have been plugged into this power ever since Dec. of 1986 and the current surges and recedes and it never stops. I have stayed connected to God and continue to examine the ways I have engaged in “Avodah Zarah” strange worship/idolatry over these past 35+ years. I am aware of how this practice has led me to deep sorrow and deeper pain, how bereft I felt whenever I moved from the space where God dwells within me into the space of letting someone/something else control me-especially when it was my out of proper measure ego that took over. I have learned, through the different trials and tribulations, that I can’t go down the path of idolatry at all, as soon as I step in that direction, I fall into the abyss and it never works out. I also know that my way of being is not everyone’s “cup of tea”, hence I am not always welcomed into ‘polite society’, which truth be told, I don’t want to be in anyway. What it takes for me to “fit in” is another form of idolatry for me and I can’t practice idolatry in any form. My daily writing has taught me this and I am constantly seeing my errors and my foibles in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark