Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 289
National Repentance and Change Month
“The world has fallen away from God…Through our obstinacy we, too, are antagonists. But still, sometimes we ache when we see God betrayed and abandoned.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg.68)
These words, written almost 90 years ago in Berlin Germany to a Jewish world that was on the brink of total destruction, the Nuremberg Laws having been passed the year before, it was coming apart at its core, people were trying to leave, others believed ‘this too shall pass’, ‘what’s another pogrom-we have survived them all’. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that these ‘good christian’ Nazis have “fallen away from God.” He is reminding us that the leaders of the countries that are appeasing Hitler, allying themselves with him have “fallen away from God.” And he is calling out the Jewish people for being obstinate, for being antagonists. What have we, people living in America and beyond, learned in these almost 90 years since these words were written?
Today, we see how “the world has fallen away from God” in a myriad of ways. We listen to the hatred spewed towards the immigrants, ie stranger, the ways some Republicans describe them as “vermin”, “spoiling the blood of Americans”, etc-propaganda that was used against the Jews of Germany. While these Republicans are not Hitler, they are also using the ways of Josef Goebbels in their political rhetoric, they are cozying up to Holocaust deniers, haters of immigrants, white supremacists, chaos actors, etc. Watching clergy of all religions spew hatred and go along with the racist rhetoric supporting Jew Hatred, Stranger Hatred, Muslim Hatred, is more than disgusting, it is another proof of Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence above!
We have “fallen away from God” by not wrestling with the Holy Texts we have been given. We have “fallen away from God” by the ways we treat one another-we certainly are not following “love your neighbor as you love yourself” very often in our business, political, nor personal lives. We have “fallen away from God” by making spiritual principles optional for our children, by not growing their souls while we feed their minds and bodies with trief - unkosher thinking and actions. We have “fallen away from God” with the laws of Caveat Emptor-let the buyer beware instead of the laws of spirituality-let the seller disclose. We have “fallen away from God” by using deception, mendacity, lying as our default way of communicating and ‘winning’, abusing people with these ways so we can have power, prestige and wealth.
We, Jews and non-Jews, have all “fallen away from God” and we need to end our antagonistic attitude towards God, towards the force in the Universe, towards one another. NOW IS THE TIME! THIS IS THE MONTH! We have the luxury of being able to look back upon the past year and, unlike Jan 1, repair the harms we have wrought. We have the luxury and obligation to see where we have “fallen away from God” in the past, where we have betrayed and abandoned the spiritual principles we know to be true and right, the treatment of another we know has been self-serving. We have the opportunity to see how we have failed to respond to the call and the cries of people in need. We are able to recognize the myriad of ways we betrayed our core principles in order to ‘get ahead’, to ‘get ours’, to use people for our own gain rather than connect with them soul to soul. We have the moment to review the times we acted from our ‘roles’ rather than from our souls. We have the time to “ache when we see” how we have abandoned our friends and family, when we have let go of doing the next right thing in order to do the next expedient thing. We have an opportunity to “ache” because we have sold our soul to the highest bidder rather than dedicate our soul to serving something greater than money, property, prestige, fame, etc.
This is the month of Elul, the month of Repentance and Return, Repair and Change! It is built into the cosmos, the air is filled with compassion, forgiveness, it is charged with awareness and aching, with truth and reconciliation. The climate is changing, we are moving from summer to fall, are we willing to change our inner climate? Are we willing to do the inner work necessary to rejoice in a new year, a year in which we commit and do the work of growing in kindness, forgiveness, compassion and goodness? A year where truth uber alles is our motto, a year in which we let go of more of our selfishness and self-serving actions? Is this the year we achieve a solid 51% foundation in doing the next right thing, in growing one grain of sand better each day? We have to make this decision, we have had many false starts, we have voted our ‘pocket book’, ‘voted for Israel’ which has gotten us to where we are today-spiritually bankrupt politicians dedicating themselves to a false christianity, a Christian Nationalism which has always been terrible for the Jews and everyone else who isn’t ‘one of them’. It has gotten us Bibi allowing Hamas the money to build their tunnels, buy their weapons and plan Oct. 7th. We, Jews, from secular to Orthodox, have a lot to repent and change because of our abandonment of principles found in the Bible! King David repented, but Bibi and Ben G’vir can’t, Johnson, Trump, Vance can’t??
In December of 1986, I had my first soul awareness of how I had abandoned and betrayed God, betrayed the principles I had been brought up with. I knew these truths in my mind and I could rationalize them, blame someone else for ‘making me do it’, etc. Yet, in a Jail Cell in Van Nuys, Ca. I faced my abandonments and betrayals within myself and my soul cried out for God. “Out of the Depths I cry to You” became a reality not just a verse in Psalm 130. I have not stopped crying from the depths of my inner life. I have made the same errors more than once-I just do a little better each time, meaning the errors are not exactly the same, they are less harmful and I recognize them sooner. I am less sensitive to being hurt by people, I feel betrayed in my core by some and I realize that my way of being is the way I have to be in order to live with myself. I also have stopped expecting another to do things the same way I do, in fact I am grateful for the myriad of ways we all fulfill spiritual principles and the ways we don’t-because I can keep learning. I have not “fallen away from God” since December of 1986 as I know I am free-fall into the abyss and the 9th circle of hell if I do! I am more forgiving and more bewildered when people don’t respond-life is too short to hold onto grudges. I stay grateful and connected to the people who helped me. I am engaged in staying connected and never abandoning people as my best way to never abandon God. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark