Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 24
“Religion is not a way of satisfying needs. It is an answer to the question: Who needs man? It is an awareness of being needed, of man being a need of God.It is a way of sanctifying the satisfaction of authentic needs.” ( Insecurity of Man pg 8)
Religion is not our salvation, it is not our salve, it is not a warm blanket. Religion, as Rabbi Heschel says, “is an answer to the question: Who needs man? This question has led so many ‘good Christians, Jews, Muslims’ to bastardize the very core of their faiths, twist the stories to fit their narrative, their particular political, power-hungry, misogynist bent. The question is too overwhelming for most people to even contemplate, what does it mean to be “needed”?
For most of us, we want our needs to be satisfied without considering the needs we are here to fill, without any reciprocity of generosity on our part. So many people are too concerned with their own well-being that the idea of caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy is unfathomable. We are watching this in real time with the Speaker of the House denying immediate and automatic FEMA aid to the victims of the fires in Los Angeles, because in California it is the fault of the Democrats, while in Florida, North Carolina, the hurricanes are a natural disaster. This man who says “look at the Bible” if you want to know my thoughts, denies help to the very people Jesus hung out with and calls himself a Christian??? The soon-to-be President and his bromance partner, Elon Musk have been speaking out against the victims, they have been promoting the Alt-right party in Germany, a self-proclaimed Neo-Nazi party, and elsewhere, they are sowing more disinformation and chaos over Panama, Canada, Greenland, etc, while selling Trump Bibles, collecting big money at the Government Trough, while wanting to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, etc. And these are the ‘good Christian folk’ who ‘love Jesus’ and hate following his directives and despise imitating Jesus’ actions!!
The Rabbi who is going to speak at the Inaugural, Rabbi Ari Berman, is an enigma to many people. How can an Orthodox Rabbi, President of Yeshiva University in New York, speak at the Inaugural of a man who embraces Nazis? How can a man who claims to be a “Torah Jew” praise the work of a man who surrounds himself with haters of Jews, the poor, the stranger, the needy? How can a man who claims to be “a man of deep faith”, bless a man who is a racist, who has made caricatures out of fellow Jews (remember Rabbi Berman, Hitler and the Nazis never asked anyone’s level of observance), who supports autocrats, dictators, who will not even talk to someone unless they kiss his ass first or ….? Rabbi Berman, how can you pray when you are putting the deaths, spiritual and/or literal, of innocent people from deportation, support of regimes that use killing as a way of getting rid of opposition (like Putin), over your religious values in order to curry favor with power? Isn’t there something in Pirke Avot about the error of this path?? The Republican Senators who are going to vote Hegseth into Secretary of the Pentagon, are also cowards and examples of people who shirk their duties, who bastardize their “being a need of God” while proclaiming their undying faith and fealty to God, who has ‘come back to earth in the form of Donald J Trump’ according to Tommy Tuberville and his cronies. Rather than see the truth of Hegseth’s incompetency, the depth of his depravity towards women, the problem his drunkenness causes, Joni Ernst, a woman vet, is going to vote against her conscience and in favor of the political pressure. She is going to put party over Country, she is willing to endanger the millions of Military service people and Vets so she will not be primaried! This is what is passing for “being a need of God” in some Christian, Jewish, Muslim circles these days!
We, the People are being called upon to say NO to these charlatans, to stand up against the lies and mendacity of these power-hungry, wealth-seeking idolators. Yet, when people like Mark Zuckerberg, who has all the money anyone would need, and Jeff Bezos, who has tarnished the Washington Post-the newspaper who took down Richard Nixon, go and bend down so Donald Trump, et al can put it in their ass, many of us are bewildered, angry and lost. Hearing the words above ring in our ears, penetrate to our souls and going against the “need of God” to satisfy the needs of a pagan, the needs of Trump/Musk, is the most disgusting action one can take and, unfortunately, when people who have money and power bow down, kiss the rings and lower parts of Trump/ have to go beyond the cowardice of these rapists and cowering sycophants, we have to remember that every great rebellion for the sake of God’s name, every great orator that “proclaims liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, who takes the actions that teach all of us how to “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. With the examples found in the Bible which sanctifies “the satisfaction of authentic needs” and those that do the opposite, We, the People have the blueprint, the game plan, the road map to making our lives “richer and more meaningful” and doing the same for our neighbor!
I am still enraged about the destruction of everything that Democracy promised, of the dismantling of the Declaration of Independence, the bastardization of the Constitution, the disobeying of the Rule of Law by people who are assuming power next week and those in power in our Congress. I am still enraged at the myriad of ways Jews here and in Israel have bastardized the answer Rabbi Heschel speaks about above. Bibi, et al, Berman and his cronies are not concerned with “being a need of God” nor are they caring about “sanctifying the satisfaction of authentic needs”; they care only about satisfying their desires and interests. This makes me volcanic! It makes me so volcanic and enraged because I lived for over 20 years as a charlatan, as a liar, as a thief, as a drunk who terrorized so many people, who committed the same “spiritual rape” of trust that these ‘good christian, jews, muslims’ are doing and I have witnessed the results of my pillaging and robbing. This is what I turned from 37+ years ago, this is what I have fought against for all these years of recovery both in myself and in another(s). The path of faith, the path of recovery is too precious not to fight for, the path of mendacity is too powerful not to fight against both inside of me and inside of you. While I am powerless to change anyone else, I can have an impact. I know my loud, volcanic, enraged way is not ‘politically correct’, not ‘woke enough’ for many and I know it is my particular way of “being a need of God”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark