Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 66
“The danger begins when freedom is thought to consist in the fact that “I can act as I desire.” This definition not only overlooks the compulsions which often lie behind our desires; it reveals the tragic truth that freedom may develop within itself the seed of its own destruction.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.14)
I began to listen to President Trump’s address to the Joint Session of Congress and I had to stop- his denigration of the Democrats, President Biden, his praise of the way he treats the people and countries that have been our allies, friends and partners and his joy at firing people, like he is on his ‘reality’ TV show were too much. I watched the sycophants of the Republican Party praise him, I watched Mike Johnson call for decorum while praising the release of the people who brought destruction to the Halls of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, it was just too much for me. It brought the opening quote to life in a most powerful way and the cautionary words of Rabbi Heschel’s that I am delving into today.
I want to make very clear, Donald Trump is not the biggest problem facing Americans today, nor is Elon Musk, RFK Jr., et al. The biggest problem we are facing as Americans is that we are not looking into the dark “compulsions which often lie behind our desires”. Trump, Musk, the Republican sycophants, are just giving into these “compulsions” as are the people who believe every word these lying grifters are saying. All of the hullabaloo around tariffs, firings, etc-while real and necessary, is masking the real issue facing all of us. We, the People are engaged in a denial of the “compulsions which often lie behind our desires”, we seem to be willfully blind to how we are participating in growing “the seed of its own destruction”. I sit at my computer each day, I read a few sentences from Rabbi Heschel’s vast wealth of writings (haven’t touched the unpublished works, the works in magazines, etc) and I wonder how we have wound up so far from our roots, so far from the ideal as portrayed by the prophets, so far from our own basic goodness of being, so far from the words of the Bible propelling us to care for one another, to “love your neighbor as yourself”, to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
One of the ways we have wound up here, I believe, is that we have not raised the souls of our children, just as many of our parents did not raise our souls. We and they raised our minds, our bodies, our emotions and, the most important part of every human being, the soul, our spirit, were ignored! This is not an indictment of parenting nor parents, it is just a fact that I have observed over my 70+ years of being alive. We allow our children to go to religious schools, to Temple, Church, Mosque and when they come home they see the opposite of the behaviors and ways of being they are learning. We give over the spiritual education and maturing to a group of people, Clergy, who themselves in most cases are spiritually immature, who are more into dogma than spirit, who “act as I desire” and call it “god’s will”, who promote a xenophobic, nationalistic, prejudice that has torn our country apart in earlier times and is tearing us apart right now. Maimonidies, the famous 10th Century Jewish philosopher, teacher, physician, wrote a treatise called “Shemonah Perakim” which goes into great detail about the spiritual sickness human beings fall prey to and how “the physician of the soul” is to help them heal their spiritual malady. At issue for him is that most people who are spiritually sick don’t believe themselves to be and need the “physician of the soul” to diagnose them. Today, these people are supposed to be the Clergy people and most Clergy are too afraid, too drunk on the Kool-Aid of the dogma of their faith, too afraid to stir the pot and piss off their board of directors and lose their job, to stand up and BE the “physicians of the soul” that are needed in this moment.
We, the People need to demand more from the Clergy of our time, in our neighborhoods. These are the people who should be leading the march on Tesla and across the country as the Clergy did at Selma, Alabama 50 years ago this month! We the People need to do our own introspection into the “compulsions” that underlie our indifference to the undoing of freedom that we are engaging in politically, morally, individually, and spiritually. We, the People are needed to stand up to the lies we are telling ourselves, to the ‘worms’ in our brains that are convincing us that bad is good, that up is down, that lying and grifting is truth and generosity, that stealing is giving, that hating is loving, that treating people as animals, calling them “vermin” is welcoming the stranger, that cutting Medicaid and other social service programs is caring for the poor, the needy, etc. We the People have to begin again to heal these “compulsions which often lie behind our desires” we have to recognize “the tragic truth that freedom may(has) develop within itself the seed of its own destruction”. We are witnessing it today, the breakdown of spiritual health is due to our unwillingness to engage in soul work, to honor the wisdom of our souls, of our “gut instinct”, and follow the truth especially when it is inconvenient. We the People have “become fat and kicked…forsook God and ignored God’s rock of Salvation”(Deuteronomy 32:15). We the People need to “return…and I will heal your faithlessness”(Jeremiah 3:22), we need to hear the words of Hosea, chapter 14:2-5, ringing in our ears, tasting them in our mouths and guiding our hands and feet:”return to God for you have stumbled in your iniquity…I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely”. We the People are being called by the words above, by the forces of the Cosmos, by the stirrings of our souls and our hearts, to heal our spiritual maladies, to return to the person we are meant to be, to be the divine need only we can fill.
I have been engaged in this quest for spiritual health for 38 years, since Rabbi Mel Silverman became my teacher in prison. Each of my spiritual guides, along with my constant companionship with Rabbi Heschel- keep me disturbed! I can never rest on my laurels or accomplishments because there is always more spiritual growth to engage in. My first spiritual guide was my father and his death caused me to be spiritually bereft and I did not recover from that trauma until some 22 years later. My diagnosis of the problem for most people today comes from my experience of being adrift after his death and my years of helping thousands of people find their spiritual health and live productive lives. I refuse to buy into the lies and the subterfuge of societal norms, I stand against the ‘good people’ on the ‘right side’ who are still spreading spiritual disease so they can have power and prestige-on the right and left. I believe we can heal and I commit to continue to help. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark