Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 80
“Loyalty to freedom means loyalty to the substance of freedom. But such loyalty must be actualized again and again. Here our way of living must change: it must open the sight of sublime horizons under which we live.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 16)
I am stunned, outraged, and bewildered that this wisdom, this insight, this prophecy has been ignored for all of these years. While it would be nice to point to ‘those people’ who ignored or silenced Rabbi Heschel’s voice, the truth is We, the People are the silencers, We, the People are the ones who have ignored this truth and so many other that Rabbi Heschel gives us. And we continue to ignore and deny the truth of all the sentences above and, for today, lets look at the one in bold.
“Our way of living must change” and, unfortunately it hasn’t. We are still as prejudiced and insensitive as the founding fathers were when they declared a Black Man, 3/5’s of a person for census taking. We are still as ruthless as the Slave Owners were when they raped their Black Women slaves and thought they were their chattel. We are still as idolatrous and bastardizing of the Bible and New Testament as Americans ever were in denying equal rights for all people, treating the immigrants we brought over (Chinese) to do work and then discriminated against them. We are still as self-righteous and evil as we were in starting the Civil War with firing on Ft. Sumner! There are differences, of course, many of us are despondent over the ways people have deepened their prejudices and are using any excuse possible to proclaim their ‘whiteness’ and that “white makes right” in any and all circumstances. Still many people voted for our current chaos to happen, both here and in Israel. Many people still support their own demise by supporting the leadership in both countries who believe they are “Der Fuhrer” and can do anything they want to, including but not limited to destroying their ‘opposition’, and setting themselves up as ‘king for a lifetime’. If we look at our history since 1958 when these words were spoken, written, we can see glimpses of leaning into “our way of living must change”, with the Kennedy Presidency, the Johnson “Great Society”, Rev. King, Bobby Kennedy, only to be followed by Tricky Dickie, then Gingrich et al who wanted to go to war with their colleagues rather than seek ways to cooperate.
On a personal level, people have been trying to “keep up with the Jones’” forever. We the People have decided it is okay to put our thumbs on the scales if we can make a few more pennies, We, the People think it is cool to “jew someone down” so we can squeeze the last penny out of a working person, a store owner. We the People believe “might makes right” and other such bullshit. We, the People lie to ourselves by saying ‘we are religious, good and right, because we follow the commandments’ while bastardizing the very words and examples the Bible gives us or ‘we are committing these atrocities in the name of Jesus Christ, our lord’! I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call to all of us to commit to a “religious revolution”, I hear him crying out to us to hear the call of the prophets, to hear God’s crying at night that God’s children are in exile and we cannot return until We the People bring about a change in “our way of living”! This goes along with the prayer where we ask God to cause us to return and we will return-while and this is the proof that we have to make the first move, we have to know that “our way of living must change” and follow through on making the appropriate changes. We are wearing blinders, as Moses says to the Children of Israel we couldn’t hear nor see until ‘this day’. The use of “this day” (HaYom) reminds all of us that we have the opportunity to change “our way of living” any day we choose. It is not a ‘certain day’, rather following the dictate above: “our way of living must change” is open to us at any time and on any day we choose to hear the Truth once again and to Understand what is really happening and to Listen to the call of higher consciousness, the Ineffable One to return home to being “the self we were created to be” as Thomas Merton teaches. In other words, to live the Shema prayer!
We the People reading the words in bold above, hopefully are stirred to engage with the “sublime horizons under which we live”. These horizons strengthen our spiritual health and living, they give us the insight to see and the courage to “change the things that should be changed” as Reinhold Niebuhr says in the Serenity Prayer. Thinking about it in this context, the Serenity Prayer, according to Niebuhr’s daughter in the book by the same name asks for Grace, acceptance, clarity in our daily living so we know what cannot be changed: Truth, Spirit, Holiness and what should be changed: Mendacity, Self-deception and deception of another(s), Profaning the words and teachings of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. This is the path to changing “our way of living” because right now, if one hasn’t noticed, we are heading down a path that will bring pain and sorrow, war and famine, civil unrest and familial infighting-just like we see in the Books of Samuel! What will it take for We the People to wake up and engage in the words above, staying loyal to freedom and the “substance of freedom” rather than buy into the lies of the autocrats, the idolators, the charlatans? What will it take for We the People to see the wisdom and the vision of “the sublime horizons under which we live”? I believe it will take a Spiritual Revolution that follows the call of the final verse of Lamentations: “Turn us towards you, Adonai and we will return”. The Book written to commemorate the destruction of the Temple ends with a prayer, a call, not to God because God is always seeking our return as the prophets remind us, rather it is a call to our inner life, to our souls, to our intuitive mind to put the rational mind back in it’s proper place as a servant instead of worshiping it, as Einstein teaches us. We the People are capable of this, We can and must change “our way of living” so we stop our sinking back into the slavery of Egypt. It is up to us, what will you say when someone asks what did you do as your country was sinking into autocracy?
I heard this call some 38+ years ago after being arrested again! I heard that my “way of living must change in my soul, not my mind and it has stuck with me for all these years and I am constantly seeking to have sight of the “sublime horizons under which we live”. I am not always here and I get here for most of every day. I engage in the “things which I should change” and I keep turning towards God so I can return to the authentic Mark. I know that without staying loyal to the covenant I made with God, with Harriet, with Heather, with my siblings, and with all of you, I will sink into Egypt and live a life of regrets. Staying loyal to “the substance of freedom” allows me to hang out with you! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark