Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 84
“Words have become pretexts in the technique of evading the necessity of honest and genuine expression. Sometimes it seems as if we were all engaged in the process of liquidating the English language. But words are the vessels of the spirit. And when the vessels are broken, our relationship to the spirit becomes precarious” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 17)
I am in constant reflection of what it was like in the 1950’s, men back from WWII and Korea, going to school on the GI Bill, the baby boomer generation being born, Ike in the White House, Tricky Dicky as VP, economy growing, and yet, here is Rabbi Heschel seeing things that most of us miss, hearing the undercurrent of racism, mendacity, self-deception in all things because it was also the time of Brown vs. Board of Education, Rosa Parks, the emergence of Dr. King as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement and the uptick in the Klu Klux Klan activities. I wonder how much the defeat of Adlai Stevenson, a statesman as opposed to a politician, impacted him during those years, if he saw that politics had become a breeding ground for “evading the necessity of honest and genuine expression”.
Looking at the landscape of today, reading these words, drilling down on them and having them reflect our own inner life, inner language, we will experience how “words have become pretexts in the technique of evading the necessity of honest and genuine expression” within us, ie how we use words to lie to ourselves, how we use them to rationalize what should be abhorred, using words to deny what is evident and using them to obfuscate our errors and fill our ‘need to be right’ all the time! Before We the People look at Trump, Musk, Thiel, Vance, Hegseth, it is imperative to look inside of ourselves. Seeing how we have used words to negate the experiences and beliefs of people on the other side of any given issue, how we have neglected the needs of the many in order to satisfy the loudest voices of the few, how we have labeled and vilified people because they have different points of view than We the People have. Looking inside we see how the ‘good christian folk’ who support Bibi may be doing this for their own agenda, not in the best interests of Israel, we may see how we do the same thing with Trump as well as the rest of the oligarchs, Putin acolytes, ‘so-called religious people’ who have taken “words” hostage, abused them, and “engaged in the process of liquidating the English language” as well as the languages of countries all over the globe. While it is satisfying to “point the finger” at another(s), We the People have to first look inside ourselves, as Rabbi Heschel is doing when he uses the word “we” above.
We are living in a time when “words” are being used as weapons of mass destruction! They are destroying our ability to discern what is fact from what is fiction, what is true from what is false, what is real from what is fantasy, because of the ways people are using them. “Spin” is the name of the game, be it in sales, in politics, in governing, in interpreting the Constitution, the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc. Everyone seems to use the words of Covenantal Texts and turn them into Transactional texts instead. Be it Bibi quoting from Samuel and only using the first half of the quote negating the rest of the story because he would have to admit his own errors, Trump hocking Bibles that he has never read nor cares about what they say, Vought, Vance, going against the principles and teachings of Christ but claiming this is what Christ meant, ‘hate the poor, unwelcome the stranger, forget the needy and take advantage of everyone because you are rich and you can’!
Watching the hearings re: the Intelligence group of the Cabinet ‘face the music’ for their gaff at inviting a journalist into their chat group AND having classified discussions over non-secure phones and apps, We the People witnessed exactly what Rabbi Heschel is speaking to in his words above. Listening to Trump speak about Ukraine, Greenland, Canada, Panama Canal, Social Security, Musk is another example of these words. Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King both had “been to the Mountaintop” and seen the “Promised Land” and knew how far our journey still was to reach it. They both knew it would take We the People being in truth with ourselves, using the words of the Bible, of the Prophets to help us “return to God” so God would “heal our backsliding”. Without doing the inner work of being in truth with oneself, we are more susceptible to the deception of another(s) because we are deep in our own self-deception. The lies of Bibi, Trump, et al are eaten up like the video game PacMan, because We the People have been unwilling to let go of our own self-deceptions, because We the People continue to use “words” as a “technique of evading the necessity of honest and genuine expression”. We the People are so down the rabbit hole that we have come to believe that the Mad Hatter, aka Trump and his goons, is good and kind while the people who care for one another, who stand with the stranger, the poor, the needy, et al are the bad guys!!
The assault on truth, the use of words to manipulate and convince people to go against their best interests and be indecent towards their neighbors, their communities, is happening again, as it has throughout history. When Putin is believed over what we saw with our own eyes, when Putin is rewarded for taking Freedom away from people in Ukraine, when he is praised for his cruelty, we are in big trouble. Because of the use of “words” as “pretexts in the technique of evading honest and genuine expression”, we are left wondering: what is genuine? Our social media sites like twitter, Facebook, etc don’t care about truth or facts, they only care about revenue, the rule of law is under attack here, in Israel, has been in Russia forever, the words on the Liberty Bell and in the Bible about proclaiming freedom throughout the land mean nothing to those wannabe Mafia Bosses, and “love your neighbor as yourself” has been bastardized to “suspect your neighbor as you suspect yourself” which Rabbi Heschel articulated in his interview with Carl Stern. We the People have to demand of ourselves to clean out the lies and deceptions within us and then demand the same from our leaders and neighbors.
I have been doing this work for over 36 years and it is never-ending. There is no ‘arrival’, no time when I am not susceptible and/or in self-deception so I have to seek out the lies I tell myself daily. I have to have gratitude, respect, and engagement with my teachers, with texts and with the people around me. I have to keep my relationships covenantal, this is the path for me to use “words” to transmit what is in my soul and in my heart. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark