Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 104
“The modern man has not only forgotten how to be alone; he finds it even difficult to be with his fellow man. He not only runs away from himself; he runs away from his family. To children, “Honor your father and your mother,” is an irrational suggestion. The normal relationship is dull; deviation is where pleasure is found.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.19)
I continue to be amazed at Rabbi Heschel’s prescience. There is a movement, an offshoot of Bowens Family Systems Therapy, that is called the “estrangement movement”, where children stop talking to their parents, stop communicating in any and every way, and do this for their protection against abusive parents. While there are many cases of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by parents, this ‘movement’ has become a catch-all for children who do not want the responsibility of “Honor you father and mother”. This commandment does not say love, it says “honor”, which I understand to mean acknowledging they did the best they could and they brought us into the world. Yet, there are online chat groups for these ‘children’ who want to absolve themselves of their responsibility to fulfill this commandment, abdicate their responsibility to their parents, and, basically, punish the ‘offending’ parent by withdrawing themselves and their families from them. Since Murray Bowen started using his theory in the 1950’s, maybe Rabbi Heschel heard about it and realized the horror and destruction it would bring. Of course there are many of these cases where detachment is necessary and not necessarily estrangement. I believe there are many cases where the ‘child’, who is an adult, just doesn’t want to deal with the truths that their parents are speaking, accept the wisdom of their parents, and/or don’t want to admit their own errors in the relationship. It is a sad state of affairs that therapists recommend this drastic measure and we are seeing how this “estrangement movement” is happening in all areas of life.
“Honor your father and your mother”, when understood as the Kotzker Rebbe tells us to understand the 10 commandments, personally, could also mean to honor the wisdom of our ancestors, of those who have come before us. The Bible is a source of wisdom that is to be honored, the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence of both the U.S. and Israel, are also our “father and mother” in the spiritual and moral realms. Yet, as we see today, these holy texts are being abused, torn to shreds, misused, abbreviated for the ‘good’ of the autocrat and charlatan, etc. When people cheer Miller and Homan for their cruelty in snatching people off the street, when Trump declares he doesn’t have to abide by the Amendment granting birthright citizenship, when Musk says he can do what he wants to the different departments created by Congress, we are watching in real time the destruction of our holy document, the U.S. Constitution. The fact that this shredding of our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, by so-called ‘religious people’, the ‘good christian folk’ and ‘god-fearing jews’ who are promoting this way of being are IDOLATORS, they are using the guise of religion to enrich themselves, to have power over the people and remake the U.S into a dictatorship using the playbook of Stalin, Putin, Hitler, Orban, etc. These people do not worship anything other than themselves, their power, their bank accounts. To them, honoring the wisdom, the sacrifices of our ancestors is stupid, it is for “losers and suckers” just like Military Service is to Donald Trump. For people who believe that Mein Kampf should be kept in the Military Library and Maya Angelou should not, for people who repeat the lies of Vladimir Putin that Ukraine started the war, “honor your father and your mother is an irrational suggestion”.
We the People are being called to act in this moment, just as we were called to act in 1958 by Rabbi Heschel. It is almost past time for We the People to stand up for truth, to stand up for our fellow human beings, to stand up for honoring our ancestors and the foundational documents of morality, equality, decency and freedom. We the People are experiencing the confluence of the end of Passover, the season of our liberation and journey to freedom and Easter, the season of resurrection. This confluence, I am seeing, as a sign from the Universe, from the Ineffable One, our higher consciousness, that it is time to “resurrect” our veneration for the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, to to “resurrect” our love and learning of how to be human from the Bible, the New Testament, whichever spiritual text is the foundation of your faith/non-faith.
We the People are being called to resume our “normal relationships” with one another, these include helping the poor and the needy, welcoming the stranger and embracing the widow and the orphan, ransoming the captive and redeeming our kinsmen. Sending people off to some terrible jail in El Salvador without due process is wrong, it is scary and it sets a precedent that Trump and his cronies like Vought, Miller, Bannon want to use on American Citizens as well as on ‘illegal’ aliens. We the People are being reminded to repair the relationships we have caused to be severed, do our T’Shuvah and to accept the T’Shuvah of another person. I have defined Unconditional Love as what God practices: Openness our return, wanting to reunite with God’s people. This is the same for us humans, I believe. Being easily appeased, wanting to repair the relationships that have been torn apart is the essence of unconditional love and what we would want for ourselves. Unless you are like Trump and some of these children who believe they do nothing wrong and everything is someone else's fault! Isn’t it time to heed the call of the universe to find ways to be more human each day?
I am thinking of my own rejection of my father’s teachings from 1967-87, where I knew what was right and did the opposite anyway. I was so deep in my own “estrangement” and anger that my father died so young and when I needed him most, I was so alone because my mother just did not get me, that I failed to “honor your father” and this still brings tears to my heart. I did, however, find ways to “honor your father” in my recovery by honoring my mother, even though she did not understand me nor care to know me. I realized she did the best she could and that was enough along with knowing my father would want me to honor her. I also began and have continued to honor the Bible’s teachings and wisdom in how to live which makes me all the more enraged when the Charlatans and Idolators spew their lies about what the Bible says by picking words, phrases out of context and purposely ignore the real message. I will continue to speak truth to power, I will continue to fight for reconciliation with the texts, with the people, with our spiritual knowing and our inner life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark