Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 42
“The supreme problem is all of life, not good and evil. We cannot deal with morality unless we deal with all of man, the nature of existence, of doing, of meaning. The prophets tried to overcome the isolationism of religion. It is the prophets who teach us that the problem of living does not arise with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)
While Rabbi Heschel’s prose is, at times, also poetry and the lens through which he sees life, religion, decency, serving God is unique and, to me, powerful. He is also repeating, saying anew, what everyone knows is true and throughout history has known is true-yet we keep ignoring this and so many other Truths because we take them for granted, because we forget them, because they are inconvenient at times, and because we relegate them to only certain issues, only certain experiences, only certain times.
Society’s need to deal with morality as a separate issue from human beings and what we do, who we are, and add in the “morally neutral” issues is at the heart of our problems today! There is no “morality unless we deal with all of man” and we see what happens when people take their isolationism to the extreme, when they buy into the “morally neutral” concept, the evil becomes good and the good becomes evil. The law is broken because it was never ‘truly understood’, the systems are upended because they are not serving the rich and the powerful enough, responsibility is ignored if you are rich enough, crafty enough and rewarding the scoundrels, the law breakers for their loyalty becomes the “way things are”.
The “nature of existence” of humanity is to do good, this is our basic nature and, as I have said before, our hearts/minds learn/devise evil from our youth. Evil actions are learned, the evil drive is given. The issue that society, that religion has not dealt with or at least not dealt with well, is how to harness the “evil inclination” early on in the life of a child. Lets not berate our children for their bad acts, lets not call out “God will punish you” for their errors, lets begin to give them the power to say NO to their inclination to do wrong, to “learn evil”, and lets stop giving them mixed messages with our own bad acts, with our defending our evil actions and calling them moral, telling them ‘you just don’t understand’, ‘wait till you are older’, etc. Morality is inextricably tied up in our existence, there is no neutrality when speaking about morality nor when we take an action-all of it is linked to our morality or lack therein. We, the People are in desperate need of shoring up our moral cores, we are on the precipice of losing our freedoms because too many people either stayed home or bought the bullshit of Trump last November. Today, we are watching the richest man in the world overtake our institutions, fire the loyal civil servants and look for ways to screw over those who have less than him-the 99.9% of us Americans! We, the People listened to Trump speak of cruelty, promise to be a dictator, remind us that “only I can fix it”, and his idea of “Make America Great Again” is to unilaterally take over the Gaza Strip and build, baby, build-probably giving the contract to the Trump Company or the Kushner Company to develop. We, the People watched him get elected, have witnessed people bowing down to him, some of us get trolled for speaking up for morality and against the dictator. We, the People have to STAND UP against not only his tyranny, not only against Musk, et al, we have to STAND FIRM in our morality, we have to RISE UP and say NO to the immorality of our current affairs, we have to say NO to the immorality of our own ways, we have to be the GUARDIANS of our spiritual heritage, of the lessons of the Bible, of the call of God.
We, the People have to deal with both our actions and the meaning of them and of our existence. Like the times of the prophets, many messengers come to us with the reports of our immorality and “morally neutral” actions. Rather than ignoring them because it makes us uneasy to admit our errors, to take their rebukes as love and faith in us, we the People get to accept their observations, we get to do our T’Shuvah, make new plans on how to deal with these situations because they will come up again, and we get to belong to a group of people who truly have one another’s back-helping one another do the next right thing. There are no “morally neutral” acts, in my understanding of the prophets, of Rabbi Heschel, of spirituality. Paying our bills on time is a moral action, paying a living wage is a moral action, not being responsible for our errors is an immoral action. The issue is whether or not we are willing to admit our own agendas and bias’ in our dealings. When we are told to “not stand idly by the blood of our neighbor”, there can be no “neutral” issues in our existence. As I am writing this, I realize we deny meaning and purpose when we use the excuse “morally neutral” or turning immoral into moral. “Life and death I put before you, blessing and curse, choose life that you and your seed may live”(Deuteronomy 30:19). CHOOSE LIFE is impossible when one isolates oneself from what is moral and right, when one decides to sell a lie as the truth, when one blames others for what they do, when we allow an autocrat, a “new pharaoh” to arise and we stand idly by.
As a recovering person, as a Jew who lost his way and found it again/for the first time, I can attest to the truth that morality is involved in everything we do and the “supreme problem is all of life”! How do I determine what the next right action is? How do I know that my actions are moral and just? Which parts of me are in control when, ie. Rational mind, intuitive mind, emotional mind? These questions still baffle me at times and I have a path of finding the right answers to the RIGHT questions instead of how I was before-finding the right answers to the wrong questions. When I ask myself: what is the next right action; I have to bring into the equation, what is the morality of my response, I have to ensure that truth, kindness, morality are leading my response. I do this by asking mentors and friends, studying with people, learning from our shared history, hearing Rabbi Heschel, my father in my head constantly, and listening with my soul, connecting with the spiritual forces of the universe and my own soul to get my marching orders. Doing this each day is my way of CHOOSE LIFE, it is my way of STANDING UP, RISING UP and saying NO to the liars, the grifters, the autocrats, the idolators, the charlatans that are so prevalent in our world. As Rabbi Tarfon says: it isn’t up to us to finish the work and we cannot ignore it either! The prophets knew it was a ‘fools errand’ to do what they did and I have to follow their example and do what I can without worrying about the results. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark