Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 76
“For freedom is not an empty concept. Man is free to be free; he is not free in choosing to be a slave; he is free in doing good; he is not free in doing evil. To choose evil is to fail to be free. In choosing evil he is not free but determined by forces which are extraneous to the spirit. Free is he who has decided to act in agreement with the spirit that goes beyond all necessities.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 15)
I am reading these words and re-reading them to hear the logic, the wisdom, the truth and the demand of them. The idea that one is not free when one is a slave seems obvious, duh!! Yet, as I allow these words to wash over me, I realize all of the slaveries we are in, be it work, the almighty dollar, our inner slaveries, our self-deceptions, our need for certainty, for surety, our need to be right and to argue to the death our point of view, our addictive behaviors and substances, and so much more make us not free and we are too oblivious to this truth to realize it! Rabbi Heschel is pretty careful with the words he chooses and “he is not free in choosing to be a slave” points me to hear his warning, his demand, his calling out to us to look at our lives differently, not that we can do whatever we want and this makes us free, rather freedom is not “choosing to be a slave”.
Writing about this, of course, forces me to ask so many questions and look at life, both mine and what is happening in the world from the lens of slavery vis a vis ”freedom” and our awareness of our being “free to be free” and “not free in doing evil”? “Free in doing good and not free in choosing to be a slave”. As I listen to people speak and they realize that our current political climate is fraught with danger, both here and abroad, they complain of their lack of agency and, in reading this, my new response is we had agency in November of 2024 and we didn’t use it to the best of our ability, we knew what was planned and, maybe for the first time in his life, Trump is being true to his words, retribution, weaponizing the government, tax cuts for the rich, tariffs, and taking over Greenland, Panama, and Canada! We the People, chose to be a slave because we did not exercise our freedom to see, to think, to hear, to know what is true and what is false, what is freedom and what is slavery, what is good and what is evil. By ignoring our basic freedom to know, we find ourselves in the quandary of our own making and too many people are unwilling to admit this and/or see the mess we are in and heading towards.
Trump wants “Hitler’s Generals”, Musk praises Stalin, Mao, Hitler and blames their “public specter employees” for the mass murders, and people still believe in them! Talk about “choosing evil” and “not free but determined by forces which are extraneous to the spirit”!!! AND, the political turmoil, the undermining of our freedoms and our democracy are also “forces which are extraneous to the spirit”. These actions, our “choosing to be a slave” last November(remember some are guilty, all our responsible), are the outer manifestations of our inability to accept the freedom we received at Sinai, the freedom of following a path of decency, kindness, justice, mercy, imperfection, and truth. It seems as if our mendacious need to be perfect, to be certain, to know what the future holds, overrides our need to be present in the moment, rejoice in our imperfections, immerse ourselves in the spiritual texts we read so we can be one grain of sand freer today than we were yesterday.
I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call us to take stock of our inner lives, to do the inner work necessary to “know the difference between cursed be Haman and blessed be Mordechai”. I hear the demand to properly prepare for Passover because we, unlike our ancestors, have the forewarning that Passover is coming, we are going to be able to leave whatever Egypt, narrow place, we are currently in and walk through the desert to freedom at Sinai, on Shavuot. We the People need to do this inventory, this inner work so we can clear out the plaque in our spiritual arteries and the wax in our spiritual hearing. We, the People are in desperate need for a “new pair of glasses” and maybe even Cataract surgery because we seem to have lost our hearing, our eyesight, and our ability to discern truth from lies, freedom from slavery, good from evil. “We got trouble, right here in River City, with a capital T” which could stand for Trump or “rhymes with a capital P” and that could stand for Putin!.
The issue is, however, as we are in Lent, Ramadan, and preparing for leaving Egypt, to see our inner Trump, Putin, Musk, Pharaoh, as well as the inner Moses, the inner spirit, the inner prophet. We have all of these ‘voices’, ‘ideas’, ‘ways of being’ within us and we have to be constantly choosing which one will speak for us, which one will determine our actions- the one that is free or the one that is a slave to greed, power, etc. Remember the prophets railed against the very same type of leadership that We the People chose last November. It is not as if we are not constantly warned about the fragility of freedom, the need to “act in agreement with the spirit that goes beyond all necessities”-the entire Bible has stories of what happens when we go against our basic need to be free, what happens when we “choose to be a slave”, yet we seem incapable of learning from it, from the experiences of our ancestors who fled tyranny to be free in “the new world”. We the People are being called to use this time when all three Western Religions come together to celebrate being free and take the time to do the inner work to be free, to “act in agreement with the spirit that goes beyond all necessities” because the greatest necessity is for We the People to live in freedom and choose the good!
I know the subtleties of “choosing to be a slave” and I am repulsed by the times I knowingly and unknowingly chose slavery over freedom-UGH! I am also aware of the times when I gave into “forces which are extraneous to the spirit” and chose evil, not necessarily EVIL, rather the small things that have such great impact on another and my spiritual health-DOUBLE UGH!! I am also aware of how often I have chosen freedom, I have done the good because it is the next right thing to do, how often I have nullified my will before God’s will so God’s will becomes mine and how often I choose to be free, no longer giving my dignity and worth over to someone else to validate, rather the knowing of freedom and the engaging in acts of freedom that are “in agreement with” both my spirit and “the spirit that goes beyond all necessities.” Truth, justice, kindness, mercy, using my prophetic voice, speaking truth to power, all are expressions of being free. Grateful to all my teachers and friends who help me to stay free! Let’s leave the Egypt of our own making this year!! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark