Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 33
“They speak and act as if the sky were about to collapse because Israel had become unfaithful to God…The prophet’s words are outbursts of violent emotions. His rebuke is harsh and relentless. But if such deep sensitivity to evil is to be called hysterical, what name should be given to the deep callousness to evil which the prophet bewails? “They drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils; but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph”(Amos 6:6) (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 10)
Rabbi Heschel is speaking about the prophets in the first sentence above, of course. He is also speaking to us, the descendants of both the prophets and the people who “had become unfaithful to God”. Immersing myself in this sentence, I find it very interesting to see how many more people claim and reflect/repeat/find new ways to emulate, copy, deepen, their paths to “become unfaithful to God”! And, as the progenitors of this way of being showed us, the most ‘holy’, the loudest prayers, the ‘best’ students, and those who proclaim to ‘know the word of god’ are the biggest whores! They are the ones for which Numbers 15:39 is speaking to-“Don’t scout out after your heart and your eyes because you will whore after them!” Yet, Mike Johnson, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Tommy Tuberville, and so many of these ‘righteous christian nationalists declaimed the spiritual message of Bishop Budde, called her out, sent their minions to send threats and prayers for her demise, demanding apologies for the message of Jesus, the message of both the Bible and the New Testament give out often! How much more unfaithful can we be? Earlier in Numbers 15:15-16, we learn “there shall be one law for you and the stranger amongst you, one Torah, one judgement”. Twice in two verses we are told to not pervert justice for ‘our people’, we are not to have one law for democrats and another for republicans, Mr. Trump, North Carolina Legisture, Tennessee Legislature,- you boastful god/idol-fearing people!
How can we not think, feel, believe “the sky is about to collapse because Israel (we) had become unfaithful to God”? Because so many were not afraid of this happening, because so many people gave in to the machinations and lies of Trump, Musk, et al, because the Congress is full of isolators, liars, descendants of the people in power in ancient Israel, because so many people were uninformed, ill-informed, buying the lies and believing they would be ‘saved’ by their ‘messiah’, we are in the situation we find ourselves in: a drunk is the Secretary of Defense, Equal rights for LGBTQ have been suspended, strangers are subject to different rules and laws, strangers are unwelcome, the poor deserve to be poor and ‘tough luck sucker’ attitude seems to be in vogue, the rights of the people of California to FEMA money is being made conditional, possibly, and so many other perversions of justice, so many other desecrations of God’s name by Trump, Vance, Musk, Johnson, Ernst, et al-all ‘god/idol-fearing people’! Isn’t it time for us to face up to the truth of our ancestry, isn’t it time for us to face up to the “sins of our fathers” so we can not repeat them? Isn’t it time for all of us to stand up and be “Face to Face” with God as our ancestors were and re-affirm the words, “We will do and we will understand”, the emphasis being on doing to understand rather than lying to make you understand the ways ‘they’ want to cheat, lie, steal, have power over you?
Is it any wonder that the prophets “speak and act as if the sky were about to collapse”? The wonder, to many, is why more people are not engaged with, studying the words of the prophets, beginning with the prophet Nathan in the 2nd book of Samuel? Nathan stood up to King David and told him a story to find out if he had lost his sense of moral outrage or was the death of Uriah a lapse of morality- had he lost his way for a moment or forever was Nathan’s question to himself and God’s question to Nathan. King David was outraged on behalf of the poor and when Nathan said he was the sinner: King David admitted it, said “I have sinned”, asked for forgiveness. This is not what is happening in our time, just as this was not the example the kings and priests of Ancient Israel followed! We speak every day of the Exodus from Egypt in our prayers, yet we continue to enslave another and ourselves to the lie of “the good old days”, of “make America, Israel, Russia, Hungary, etc great again”. We were never “great”, we are never “there”, we are always on the journey and the prophets, seeing the whoring of the people, watching the Pimps in the Castles, Halls of Justice, Government, Houses of Worship, etc; were outraged on behalf of God, on behalf of the innocents, the strangers, the poor, the needy.
We, the People have to hear the prophets of today calling to us. We, the People have to re-read, re-learn the lessons of the prophets of Ancient Israel. We, the People have to stand up for our souls, for the souls of the people we care about and the souls of our enemies as well! It is up to We, the People to send clear, unequivocal messages to those in power who are trying to Pimp the rest of us out that we are NOT WHORES. We, the People are NOT JOHNS who will sell our souls for their fake bullshit! We, the People have to stand up and tell Mike Johnson and those other idolaters in the Congress that we know the Scripture and we know the message of God through Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, because we are living it in our daily life. Caring for the marginalized, ransoming the captive, redeeming our brothers and sisters, rebuking our neighbors when they are doing wrong, not standing idly by the blood of our neighbors, loving our neighbors as ourselves is our modus operandi-not the willful blindness, the bullshit buying crap they are trying to sell us. We, the People have to tell Johnson, Trump, Thune, Vance et al that we are servants of the Holy One, we answer to our the Higher Consciousness of the universe-not be lackeys, whores, johns for them!
I got stuck on the first sentence above as I am so enamored, engaged with and feel kinship with the prophets. I understand their fears, I understand their passion and their need to call bullshit on the lies and subterfuges of the ‘people in power’. I get why they are considered angry, cantankerous men because they went against the societal norms of the day, of today. When the Orthodox Jews bastardize the text, fail to heed the warnings of the Bible, believe they know God’s will better than what the Bible says, we are in trouble!! When the ADL gives cover to Musk using the Nazi signal, when Jews praise Trump letting white supremacists out of prison to be his ‘private militia’ we are in trouble!! I know the “fire in the belly” of the prophet because I have it, I know the outrage because I experience it, I know the need to speak it loudly because I do it. I know the trouble it can get one into because I experience it. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark