Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 106
“Judaism claims that the way to nobility of the soul is the art of sanctifying time. Moral dedications, acts of worship, intellectual pursuits are means in the art of sanctification of time. Personal concern for justice in the market place, for integrity in public affairs and in public relations is a prerequisite for our right to pray.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.20)
WOW! Can you imagine what Rabbi Heschel, Rev. King, et al would be saying today? Trump using the Easter Holiday to denigrate a different political party, spew hatred and lies, and calling it a “happy easter” message, is not exactly what I envision the Church Leaders had in mind when they speak of the resurrection! Also, yesterday, Pope Francis died, a man who epitomized the values above and exhorted all of us to live into them.
“Nobility of the soul” is attained through “moral dedications, acts of worship” and we seem to be lacking in these areas greatly, as a human race. While there are many specific instances of great moral courage and acts of worship that individuals do, when Churches, Synagogues, Mosques are encouraging their congregants to support an immoral person as ‘leader of the free world’, when they are celebrating and extolling the cruelty of the current administration and the cruelty around the world of autocrats, wanna-be dictators, authoritarian leadership, humanity is in serious decline. When “intellectual pursuits” are condemned as “elitist”, when worship becomes a way to bow down to “der fuhrer”, when “moral dedications” are denigrated and called stupid or only for suckers and losers, when the rich and the powerful forget they have what they have because of another(s), when they forget their obligations to those who have less, we are teetering on the brink of the abyss. We have been here before, Rome, Greece, Ancient Israel, Spain, England, France, Germany, have all fallen because of their mistreatment of their citizens and strangers alike.
We seem to conveniently forget the lessons of history, we use the term “reflect” instead of “repeats” to further distance ourselves from these lessons. Yet, “moral dedications, acts of worship, intellectual pursuits” are the only way to achieve “nobility of the soul”, the truest path to raising humanity to the level we belong on and is compatible with being a partner in creation with God. These are the paths to engaging our higher consciousness so we do for another that which we want for ourselves and we follow the words of Hillel: “what is hateful to you, do not do unto another human being”.
Yet this way of being seems ‘out of vogue’ in today’s political climate. It is only for “suckers, fools and losers” according to Trump, Lutnick, Vought, Musk, Miller, Vance, Hegseth, et al. The Republican Congresspeople, the Republican Senators all are like trained seals and we can see the light leave their eyes, replaced by anger, hatred, and in some cases, fear. They all deride “elite institutions” while being alumni from them. They all complain about the “criminal immigrants” while not looking at their own criminality, their own drunkenness, their own giving away of state secrets, their own love affair with Putin, their own debasing of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. “Personal concern of justice in the Market place, for integrity in public affairs” is laughed at in today’s America by at least 40% of Americans and a whole lot of Israelis. What is so fascinating to me, to many people, is these attributes which help us attain nobility of the soul are at the core of Christ’s teachings in the Gospels as I understand them, they are at the core of the demands of the Prophets, and the core of the Torah. “Justice, Justice you shall pursue” is quoted often, the Holiness Code is the core of Leviticus, the 10 Commandments call upon all of us to “not bear false witness”, yet the ‘good christian folk’ in the White House do every day! Marco Rubio knows that Russia started a war with Ukraine and now he lauds Putin? We are declining as a society, as a country precisely because we are failing to engage in acts which help us attain “nobility of the soul”!
With the death of Pope Frances, one must hope the new “Conclave” will not choose his successor to be someone who wants to be more restrictive and more isolating. With the news of Pete Hegseth sharing attack plans with his wife, lawyer, etc and, possibly, being drunk on the job, one must hope that Joni Ernst calls for his resignation. With the ways of the Trump White House, J.D. Vance(what is his real name), one can only hope that the Republicans in the House and Senate will say NO to Elon Musk, to the cruelty being shown to hard-working Americans in our Government Jobs. In this moment We the People must STAND UP and call for a return to “moral dedications, acts of worship, intellectual pursuits, personal concerns of justice in the market place, integrity in public affairs”! We the People are being called by the words above, by our hearing of the words from Mt. Sinai, by the teachings of Christ, by the meditations of our mind which lead to higher consciousness to demand these from leaders, to practice these actions in all of our affairs, to be in recovery from our addiction to cruelty, our adjustment to lies and self-deceptions, our engagement in idolatry and other forms of debasing our humanity. We the People have to demand from ourselves, one another, and the assholes in DC and in Jerusalem, what the prophet Hosea says: Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for oyou have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the LORD;(Hosea 14”1-2). We the People can and must take the reins back, take back the reigning of our country and:”Proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev. 25:10).
As one who engaged in the exact opposite of the pursuits of “noflitlity of the soul”, I know the people in charge right now, I know the people who are part of the MAGA crowd because, while I never held their political views, I certainly adhered to their disregard for everything that helps raise one’s soul, that would detract from me “getting mine”, for a period of 22 years. In those years, I was, in my core, miserable, angry with myself and believing I could never return. It took being arrested again, an ecstatic intervention by God, and a dedication to learning to bring me back to engaging in acts which infuse “nobility in my soul”. Mendacity on every level makes me crazy, whether it is me or another human being engaging in it, I get volcanic when I see what is and my vision, my truth is constantly denied by rich and poor alike, when my contributions to society are deemed less than because I had a ‘niche rabbinate’ serving ‘those people’. What most don’t realize is that volcanic eruptions are hallmarks of Judaism, just read the Bible:), and lets all of us engage in them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark