Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 83
“A major root of freedom lies in the belief that man, every man, is too good to be the slave of another man. However, the dynamics of our society, the cheapening and trivialization of existence, continues to corrode that belief. The uniqueness and sacred preciousness of man is being refuted with an almost cruel consistency.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 16)
Every human being has, what psychologists call a split in their personality, consciousness. In Judaism this is called the two inclinations, good and evil. Evil is not pejorative, it is descriptive in that letting it run wild will lead us to doing evil. Christianity turned this into, I believe, that we are born in “sin”, because the evil inclination is a part of us. Judaism says: “the good inclination is good and the evil inclination is very good”. Without this inclination, according to the Talmud, our sages, nothing would be built, there would be no children, not even an egg would be fertilized! In the quotation above, we are made painfully aware of what happens when we don’t tend to this ‘split’ in our inner life. When the evil inclination runs rampant we are “cheapening” and trivializing the existence of both ourselves and everyone else. This is the situation that humanity has faced since the beginning of time, it is where wars come from, it is what makes autocrats and freedom fighters, it is what makes people of faith and the ‘so-called religious practitioners of idolatry’.
This split has to be “healed” from the inside out, there is no amount of outer success, money, property, prestige that can heal it-God knows people have tried for the millennia to make this so and it hasn’t worked. “We were slaves in Egypt” we cry during the Passover Seder and “God brought us out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” we recount. To return to “a major root of freedom”, we have to, once again, hear the call of the redeemer inside of us, take the actions necessary to “put our own house in order” and take “the outstretched arm” of another person who will help us heal our split, open our eyes, our minds to the truth of our soul’s knowing, return us to using the rational mind as a servant to the intuitive mind, as Einstein teaches. Without learning how our two inclinations work together to move our world forward, to move our lives in the direction of healing, health, purpose and meaning, we will stay in the cycle of hatred, resentments, “getting mine”, racism, anti-semitism, anti-muslim, etc. When our two inclinations work together, we are able to live in radical amazement, we are engrossed in an authentic awareness of what is and what should be, we live in the “both/and” world of the Bible. Since Cain, we have been exhorted to “master” the evil inclination because it “desires us much”, it “couches at our doors”. This is how “the dynamics of society…continues to erode that belief”. Both the belief in our ability to “master” it and our belief that “every man is too good to be the slave of another man”!
This idea, that we are all “too good to be the slave of another” is so radically simple and true, we keep missing it, ignoring it and trying to complicate it so we can prove it false. It is the antithesis of racism and all forms of hatred. It is the antithesis of autocracy, kleptocracy, dictatorship, even monarchy. Yet, like Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto says in his preface to his book Path of the Just, because this truth is so plain and apparent, we continually ignore it, forget it, violate it. We have become oblivious to the “good” in every human being, we have become willfully blind to the divine image, the purpose of every human being, we have disregarded the “infinite worth and dignity” of all human beings as well are our kinship to everyone else since we all come from the first human, Adam. This blindness, forgetfulness, ignorance, competitiveness, comparing, has led us to the state we are in right now, worse than we were in 1958 when Rabbi Heschel first spoke these words. Yet, so many people who will celebrate Passover, Easter Ramadan, continue in their ignorance, rejoice in their blindness, “spin” their evil inclination and actions into ‘good and right’, follow the dictators, the cult leaders to their ruin, we have not come so far from our historical roots of forgetting the call and demands of our souls.
I find it prescient that I am re-reading this chapter at this moment when the convergence of Passover, Easter and the “cheapening and trivialization of existence” is happening at such a rapid pace. While we speak of following Nazi Germany’s lightening pace, the playbook of Project 2025, Christian Nationalists, White Supremacists, Trump/Musk is very old, it goes back to the Pharaoh in Egypt: “a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph”, so he would not have to respect Joseph’s heirs, just as the current administration does not know “every man is too good to be a slave”. Not just the administration, all of MAGA world believes in their goodness and no one else’s, if you are not all in-you should be jailed, enslaved, beaten, etc.
It is up to We, the People to once again restore the “sacredness and preciousness” of the human being in our society. It is up to We the People to end the cruelty of so many people who seek to enhance their wealth, their power and control and deny the truth of “a major root of freedom”. We the People are being called just as we have been called throughout history to stand up for what is good and true, what is right and holy, what is sacred and precious- the dignity and worth of every human being! We the People can only do this when we have healed our own internal split, when we make a decision to live in the “both/and” instead of the either/or style of living. When We the People take our inner life seriously and nurture our soul, our passion, our purpose and find the meaning that we are created to live, we can repel the onslaught of the “cruel consistency” of the idolators, the charlatans, the autocrats, the grifters, the mendacious ones, and their guppies who follow their every word. We the People have to call our Howard Lutnick, Peter Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, et al for their lies and their deception and stand up for and with one another, honoring the fact that “every man is too good to be a slave”, throwing off the shackles of impotence, slavery, that have bound us and taking our rightful place in our world.
I have been adhering to this truth for the past 30+ years, it took me a minute after my spiritual awakening to fully integrate this way of being, to make my evil inclination serve my good inclination. I am not perfect in doing this AND I know that every one is “too good to be a slave” to me, to themselves, and certainly not to some asshole autocrat, grifter, deceiving MoFo! I believe in the sacredness and preciousness of the human soul and do my best each day to honor this truth. God Bless, Rabbi Mark