Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 59
“As a free being the Jew must accept an enormous responsibility. The first thing a Jew is told is: You can’t let yourself go; get into the harness, carry the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. He is told to bear loads of responsibility.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)
Reading this, immersing ourselves in these words, thoughts, wisdom only makes the actions of Jews, of all people of faith who believe that ‘trump is the messiah, Bibi is god’s instrument of justice and restoration of Israel’ are idiots, and have thrown off “the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”! Rather than “accept an enormous responsibility to speak truth to power, to stand with the voiceless and powerless, to care for the stranger, to feed the poor, to extend dignity to all human beings because they are created in the Image of God, Trump, Bibi voted with a dictator that kills people just because. They voted against a country fighting to stay free while proclaiming the right of Israel to defend itself against terrorists. Yet they both are celebrating the greatest terrorist of our time: Vladimir Putin! They both voted with Iran-that great democracy and friend of Israel, to destroy Ukraine, where many ancestors of Jews were from both in Israel and America. There are many Hasidic dynasties from Ukraine, Reb Noson, Reb Nachman’s scribe, the Twerski family, etc all come from the Ukraine so the betrayal by Bibi and his ‘frumma yidden’ (orthodox jews) is all the more horrific. These assholes, these liars, these ‘keepers of the flame’ have taken one another out of “the harness”, thrown off the “loads of responsibility” they are called on to carry, and rejected the “enormous responsibility” that comes with being a Jew, that comes with being human!
What is happening in America, in Israel, around the globe is atrocious and odious. The inability of people, especially people who claim to be ‘the faithful’ to not see the warning signs of the Bible, to not see the similarities in history, to rejoice is ridiculous.The enslaving of a people, to celebrate the cruelty shown to the needy, the poor, the orphans and the widows as well as the stranger, is beyond words. The alliances with dictators like Orban, Putin, Xi, Kim Jung Un by the Unfaithful is enraging to people who celebrate our ability to “carry the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”. Watching the Republican elected officials in Washington DC go along out of fear of reprisals from the Proud Boys and/or Oath Keepers reminds me of Benedict Arnold! The party of Lincoln, the party of Reagan is the party of Putin via Trump and Musk, Miller and Bannon and the ‘unfaithful’ anti-religion people calling themselves ‘christian nationalists’ are loving this change. Likud, the party in Israel of Begin, who made peace with Sadat, has become the lover of dictators, the lackeys of Putin and Trump-all the while believing their own lies that they are in charge and god wants them to hate the poor, mistreat the Ger, the stranger in their midst, pour salt in the wounds of the hostages’ families, allow the hostages to die in Gaza rather than make this deal happen 450 days ago.
In the Tractate Yoma on page 86b, it says:”Reb Meir says Great is repentance(T’Shuvah), for one person’s T’Shuvah, the entire world endures. As it is said: I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely for my anger has turned away from him”(Hosea 14:5). It doesn’t say “from them” rather “from him” because he repented everyone is healed. While it has a hint of Christ in this statement from Reb Meir as my friend and teacher Danny Maseng points out to me, I hear the words above echoed: we are “told to bear loads of responsibility” and what we are seeing right now from the Far Right Jews, the MAGA crowd, the supposed ‘conservative’ groups is the throwing off of responsibility-“some people say”, “I was told”, “I heard” are the clean-ups on Fox News, from Trump, from his Press people who, like almost everyone else is hired for their looks, for the ass-kissing not for their expertise. How can Marco Rubio look himself in the mirror when he supports the very dictator, the very system that his parents fled from Cuba?? How can the Hassidic Sects support the very system that killed so many of their own in Ukraine and Russia??
We, the People have to get enraged, we have to tell the trolls to shut the fuck up, we have to stand up for the voiceless and powerless, we have to change our governments back to democracies, back to the foundational values and principles of our founding. Israel was not founded to be a theocracy, America was founded because of people seeking religious freedom and both were the places where people seeking freedom, opportunity, change came to in droves. We, the People have to take on the “yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven” and pull together to push the charlatans, the idolators, the Desecraters of God’s Name out of power. We, the People have to accept the “enormous responsibility” that comes with being human, that comes with living a spiritual life, with being a partner of God. We, the People have to “get into harness” and pull together carrying the heavy load of “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev.25:10). We, the People are being honored with the call to “rebuke your neighbor”, to “not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor”, to not “bear false witness”, to “not murder the soul of another”, to “not make false images of God”, etc. All of these commandments from the 10 sayings, from the Holiness Code are meant to guide all people of faith and spirit to reject the lies of the False Prophets and speak the Truth and NOW IS THE TIME!
I am enraged, my grandparents came from Ukraine, my nephew was a Peace Corps volunteer there. Zelensky has fought off the paper tiger that Putin is and is being ‘rewarded’ by Trump and Bibi with betrayal, with venom and vile. I know this way of being-I acted in similar ways prior to my recovery-I took advantage of good people for my own gains. Since 1987, however, when I first began to accept “the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”, when I began my journey of T’Shuvah - return, repentance and new responses- I have run to be responsible for the good and for the not good I have done. I bear “loads of responsibility” in living free, I have to honor the journey of my grandparents from Russia/Poland and the Ukraine to give me a life of freedom and possibility by living the best I can in this moment. Both of my grandfathers were members of Workman Circle, both fought for freedom and decency in their own ways, both treated everyone who crossed their paths with respect, both sent money to relatives in Poland, in the Ukraine even during the war-whether they could afford it or not. From this lineage, I am over the top with shame and embarrassment at what the heads of two countries that I love are doing to democracy, to loyalties, to allies, to us. Please join me in being outraged and fighting back. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark