Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 61
“He is told to abhor self-complacency, to enjoy freedom of choice. He has been given life and death, good and evil, and is urged to choose, to discriminate. Yet freedom is not only the ability to choose and to act, but also the ability to will, to love. The predominant features of Jewish teaching throughout the ages is a sense of constant obligation.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)
In the words bolded above, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that “freedom” is more that our ‘doing our own thing’, being ‘free’ to do as we wish. Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word “ability” is interesting to me. I hear him asking us to realize our “ability to choose and to act” doesn’t mean do what we want to do, it means we have “the ability to will, to love”. In other words, any actions that go against our “will”, our intuitive minds, our soul’s cravings is probably not true “freedom”, hence the last sentence above. Living in “a sense of constant obligation” could be anxiety producing, (look at how many Jews go to therapists:) and in is, the essence of “freedom” according to my reading of the Torah. After the Israelites/slaves left Egypt-they went from being slaves to completely doing what they wanted to, they had no ‘instruction’ manual, they were being led by Moses and, given how many people were on that journey, the people who were not right in front didn’t hear much from him directly-it was a game of telephone. It was only when we reached Mt. Sinai, where the Aleph of Anochi was ‘spoken’ that everyone heard the essence of the Ineffable One. It was only at Sinai that our “freedom” began. Up until then, we did not have choice, we did not know any different that to be ruled by our emotions, by our rational thinking, we were even afraid to dream so as to not be broken hearted once again. Once we accepted the way of decency, morality, ethics, spirituality, we gained the “ability” to make free-will moral choices; which had been impossible up until then.
This is an important point in our ways of being. Just like a child who doesn’t know what is good and what is not good, the Bible shows us that people need to learn about “will, love” as actions of “freedom” not rebellion. We are able “to choose and to act” as assholes, as pernicious, as deniers, liars, grifters, we are able “to choose and to act” as oligarchs, as dictators, as idiots, as addicts, as, as, as…! Yet, this is not the “freedom” of one who has “a sense of constant obligation”. This was a radical experience for the Biblical human being that occurred after Sinai and throughout the wanderings in the Desert. Holding on to this radical experience, this inheritance has proven difficult for Jews and non-Jews alike. Jewish people have called obsessive exacting attention to detail over the 613 commandments fulfilling their “constant obligation”. I disagree, in Genesis Rabbah, we are taught that “every day God makes new laws in the Heavenly Court” - why are we bound by the ones from 200 years ago?
“The ability to will, to love” is the “constant obligation” that makes us free as I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words above. Of course, the goal is to fuse our will with God’s will, to surrender our need to be right to the spiritual truths and forces that hover over us at all times. Yet, even the ‘religious’ zealots have forgotten this goal, as the Talmud teaches us the Rabbis told God to fuck off when God showed signs that the Rabbi they were in opposition to kept being supported by God’s signs in the Tanour Shel Achni story. This is, unfortunately, a common action by human beings ever since. In the desert, there were wrong choices and actions and there was acknowledgment that they went against the will of God, the Rabbis of the Talmud and many ever since, have bent the will of God to meet their will instead of the other way around, as have most people. Instead of asking ‘where is/was God’ in Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, on October 7, 2023, we should be asking where were we? Why did We, the People not take the next right action, why did We, the People not listen to the calls of our souls, the messages of people around us who told us to get out, to stop stirring the pot of hatred between peoples, to stop funding Hamas’ terrorism, etc? These are questions that no one wants to respond to, because it shows how enslaved we are to our emotions, to our rationalizations, to our lies.
We, the People are being called to live into the “constant obligation” of ensuring “freedom” for ourselves and for humanity in today’s quotation and in today’s happenings in our world. We, the People have to renew our sense of “constant obligation” to mean we are needed, we are wanted by the force of the universe to ensure that “freedom” is not only proclaimed throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein, “freedom” that is in concert with the 10 sayings, with the ways the Torah lays out using our lived experience to these paths. “Freedom” is not doing life the same way life was lived in Ancient Judea, nor in the ways that caused the destruction of the Northern Kingdom nor the loss of the Temples, Judea and made us wanderers once again from 70AD till 1948. “Freedom” is our “ability to love” one another whether we like or agree with one another. It doesn’t say “like your neighbor”, it doesn’t say agree with one another, it says to “love our neighbor as ourselves”. This is a “constant obligation” that is rarely fulfilled, unfortunately. We, the People are being called to stand up for the “freedoms” the Bible gives to us, the ability to “make Free-Will Moral choices” as Rabbi Twerski teaches, the “ability to will” so that our will becomes like God’s will as Rabbi Tarfon teaches in Pirke Avot. We, the People need to come together once again, we need to re-visit the Sinai experience this Passover-not as a historical fact, rather as a call to action. We, the People in our preparations for Purim have to remember there will always be those out to kill us, either literally or spiritually-are you listening BIBI? We, the People, have to gather at Passover to once again be like the Rabbis at B’nai Barak, planning the revolution against the new Roman Emperor and his minions-Trump, Musk, Putin, Bibi and how we are going to once again ensure that a “government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth”? Otherwise, since the Revolutionary War, all those brave men and women who died for our freedoms, all the immigrants who faced brutal conditions on ships and once they landed in the “golden Medina” have all died in vain and this is the greatest desecration of God’s name and the height of Avodah Zarah, idolatry!
I fight to ensure that I keep it fresh, I keep using the principles to fuel my “constant obligation” and it brings me joy, a feeling of accomplishment, a sense of failing forward. I am living in “freedom” of choice, actions, will and love more each day! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark