Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 19
“This, indeed, is the purpose of our religious traditions: to keep alive the higher Yes as well as the power of man to say, “Here I am”; to teach our minds to understand the true demand and to teach our conscience to be present.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7)
My thoughts, prayers and wishes for safety and the control of the fires in and around Los Angeles are foremost in my mind. I am praying and asking for everyone to pray for the victims of these horrific fires and not make this about politics, no matter what Drumpf says or his mindless minions do. The response from the President-elect and his ‘good christian nationalists’ have nothing to do with compassion, with spirit, with wholeness, only the ugliness that has become de rigueur for Republican politicians and elected officials. They show every day how their non-religious leaders have bastardized the “purpose of our religious traditions”!
While I know that Rabbi Heschel’s words will not change the minds of the mindless, nor give people who are indifferent to evil a sense of purpose and energy to fight with their own evil inclination, I believe that for the majority of the people who are actually “on the fence” of believing they can effect change within themselves, they do want to stand up to evil, they are desperate to make a difference in their world, these words and the thoughts can help these people move forward. To do this, of course, we need true practitioners of “our religious traditions” to step up, to push the idolators and charlatans out of their comfy lies, out of their joyful hatreds, like the prophets of the Bible begged us to back in the day and call out to us even today to “throw the bums out”!!
Until this happens, which it never has throughout the history of humankind, We, the People, have to stand up for the truth and “purpose of our religious traditions”. We, the People, have to delve into our foundational spiritual texts to find the myriad of ways they give us to “keep alive a higher Yes”. We, the People, are being called to stand up to the mendacious idolators and take back our Temples, Churches, Mosques and return them to being the places of worship for all people, ‘saints and sinners’ alike. We, the People get to cleanse the altars that the liars sacrificed the truth upon, we get to do our own T’Shuvah for allowing these bastards in our holy places in the first place, we, get to clean our ears of the wax that has prevented us from hearing our souls’ desire “to say, Here I am”. We may not be heard in the halls of power, we rarely have been, and we may get spit upon by the ‘faithful’ and ‘useful idiots’ of the politicians and leaders who thrive on lies, the so-called religious leaders who thrive on bastardizing scriptures, and, like Don Quixote, we have to “dream the impossible dream”, “right the unrightable wrong”, “run where the brave do not go”. “This is (our) quest” because only by engaging in the things we feel are not winnable, only by staying loyal, faithful and true to our own particular “religious tradition”, will we be able to change the world, like Rabbi Heschel, Rev. King, the Berrigan brothers did in the 60’s. It is true that the “higher Yes” is always under attack, the Trumps et al of the world will always lay siege to it, it is the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Tibetan book of the Dead, etc that have survived longer than any of the Imperialists that tried to keep their hateful dynasties going.
We, the People, have “the power…to say, “Here I am” in response to the call: “Ayecha, where are you?” This is one of the calls that continues to reverberate throughout history and, for people of any and all faiths, is the call that nags at us, bothers us, gives us a bad conscience. When the poor come calling, the “higher Yes” is to respond in any way we can, the highest being helping them become self-sufficient so they can help the next person. We don’t have to make the poor into criminals, we don’t have to look down upon them and say, ‘God doesn’t love you and that is why you are poor, so just shut up and serve me’, which seems to be the way some people have turned the Gospels into ‘prosperity gospel’ and these ‘preachers’ are flying around in private jets, etc.-this is not the idea we get from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or his feeding people, nor the way he hung out with the very people these ‘prosperity gospel’ people reject! The Bible teaches us to forgive the debts of another every 7 years, it teaches us to care for the poor and the needy, welcome the stranger and RANSOM THE CAPTIVE, no matter what it costs. Do you hear this Bibi, Ben-G’Vir, Smotrich, et al? Here in the United States, the world is asking us if we are still dedicated, after all these 248.5 years since the American revolution, to the principles of our founding document, The Declaration of Independence. We, the People, are being asked to respond, “Here I am” to the call to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” and, each night we have to look in the mirror and, as the poem says, “the fellow whose verdict counts most in life, is the man staring back from the glass.” What is your “man in the glass” saying to you this morning, last evening?
“To understand the true demand”, we have to “teach our conscience to be present”, and it is so hard to do. It has been and is the greatest challenge of my daily living. I wake up each morning ready to “take care of business” knowing that it is God’s business I have to be engaged in only to get sidetracked by false ego, by fear of financial insecurity, by inauthentic desires and for over 20 years, I never even fought with what was sidetracking me, my own evil inclination. The people, ways of being that I rail about used to be my modus operandi, believing that the conning you, stealing from the banks, etc was righteous because you were ‘my enemy’ and I believed that ‘with money you are something and without it you are nothing’. While many people still live this way, I no longer choose to. It is a choice that each human being makes, whether to hear and “understand (Shema) the true demand” as we committed to do at Mount Sinai or not. It is a choice to feed the poor, ransom the captive, “rebuke your neighbor and not bear guilt” because you “stood idly by the blood of your neighbor”. These are the choices I make each and every day, whether I fulfill them each day is a different story. For the past 36+ years, I have been able to face the “man in the glass” and abide by his verdict, change what I need to, repair damages I have wrought, and enhance the good I do. I have returned to the boy my father, z”l, raised- the one who fights at windmills because truth and “a higher Yes” are more important than praise and false friendships. I know the scorn of Don Quixote, just as every one who does the next right thing does and I am joyful that my “conscience is present” even when I act in ways others deem inappropriate because I am standing up for and firm in what my “religious tradition” teaches us all what is mandatory: justice, mercy, truth, kindness, love. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark