Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 91
“It is dangerous to take human freedom for granted, to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation, as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal. It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the fact of our being free.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.18)
We are 9 days from the beginning of Passover and 17 days from Easter, both celebrations of liberation leading to freedom. We have been on this journey towards freedom for over 2 millennia and still, we, humans, take what freedom we have for granted! In today’s America, many people are walking around bewildered at the speed with which the freedom to be who one is has been decreed not allowed in some cases because of an executive order. Many people are in a stupor over the capitulation of the Republican Party to give up their assigned duties and responsibilities from our very Constitution to a wanna be dictator/king. Still others are in abject fear over their choice to elect this administration and watch as ‘their guys’ ruin their nest egg of Social Security or at least threaten to; cut their health insurance, Medicaid; increase the cost of goods for everyday items, tariffs; and watch their quality of living decrease and their voices mean nothing to the people they elected. As we enter this “season of liberation”, it is important for We the People to realize how much we have taken “human freedom for granted” and the quicksand we are finding ourselves in because of this. The danger is being realized, once again, on the human stage and our unwillingness to learn the lessons of history, to see the reflections of Germany in our own time, is criminal; we are all responsible and we are all guilty, we are all criminals for contributing to the downward spiral of “freedom” we find ourselves in this moment.
I am thinking about Rabbi Heschel saying these words in 1958, 13 years after the end of the War, the prescience, the vision, the prophetic voice he had and I am both angry and sad, in awe and in humiliation, at his ability to tell us what is and what will be and our ability to ignore it and, as we are experiencing in this moment, suffer because of our ignorance. “Ignorance is bliss” is a bullshit phrase for human beings who don’t want to join in the “obligation” to be free. It is not a right granted by some king, oligarch, autocrat, it is a gift from the Ineffable One that has to be nurtured and grown, guarded and lived, appreciated and deepened. “Freedom” is fragile and humanity’s treating it like a ragamuffin doll has proved over and over again to lead to fascism, communism, autocracy, oligarchy, etc. At each juncture, at each takeover, the people walk around bewildered that this has happened so they buy into the bullshit of ‘der fuhrer’ that they are ‘truly free’ now that someone is telling them what to do and when. We the People need to WAKE UP! The roses we are smelling stink and we think they are fragrant because we have deceived ourselves so much, we have put on so much mental make-up in order to live our enslaved lives and think we are free. It is time to change, as Hillel the Elder says: “if not now, when?”
This change has to come about as another revolution that starts within each person and then spreads to a group and another and another. It is a revolution that is inherent in the story of Passover, in the ways of Christ, it is an “inside job”. The second of the 5 promises God makes to the Israelite people and the other slaves that come with them is that our inner slave will vanish and be replaced by an inner servant, the rational mind that Einstein talks about. We the People have to transform the slave within us, our self-deception into a servant and a truth teller and seeker. Rather than “go along to get along”, we are being called this Passover and Easter, as we are each and every one of these two celebrations, to move towards freedom instead of towards more self-deception and more enslavement.
Rabbi Heschel, after being a witness to what was happening in Germany in the 1930’s, having so much of his family perish in the Shoah, knowing he was saved by a miracle, devoted his life to seeing “freedom” as “an obligation” and he never felt entitled to it, always grateful for it. Yet so many of us forget the journey of our ancestors to this land so we could be free and rather than accept the yoke of freedom, we want to “do what we want” and bastardize the Constitution, take care of the fringes and not care about the center, the foundations of freedom and of the people of this country. Be it only looking out for the marginalized and not care about the rest of the poor, or only caring about the rich and fuck everyone else- our government has lost its way and its raison d’être, to be a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”! We the People have to demand our elected officials serve us, not Trump, Musk, the rich, the lobbyists. We the People have to march for our freedom, let them know that We the People want them to see their jobs as obligations and not entitlements, to do their work as trusted servants of We the People not Trump, Musk, Vance, Vought, et al.
To do this We the People have to begin to get rid of the Chometz in our beings. The puffed-up places in our egos, in our bodies, in our minds that prevent us from seeing and hearing truth, that lie to us about what being free truly is, that blind us to the pitfalls and dangers of taking anything for granted much less our freedom! Only then can We the People be in “amazed at the fact that we are free”. Only then will We the People live in the promises of Exodus 6:6-9. We the People can achieve the “goal” of freedom if and only if, we are willing to let go of our bullshit, transform our slaves into servants, join with others in being truthful and honest about our needs and desires, come together as human beings with respect and awe for one another as well as care, love and kindness to journey together-hence don’t celebrate Easter or Passover alone.
Living into the words above, I want to scream and hide at the same time when I see how I bastardized freedom for over 20 years and was a slave to my fears, my evil inclination and the deception of others. I am so grateful and humbled by the grace of God that I was awakened from the nightmare that I was living and forcing others to live with me. I have dedicated myself to living free each and every day-learning that I was freer in prison than I had been ‘on the streets’ was a shock that I have never forgotten. This Passover, I will find some enslavement I have to leave and I will ask for help from my Seder mates. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark