Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 93
“Freedom is a gift which may be taken away from us. It is not an absolute but a relative possession, an opportunity. We are free only when living in attachment to the spirit(Avot 6:2). The blessings and opportunities of living in a free society must not make us blind to those aspects of our society which threaten our freedom: the tyranny of needs, the vulgarization of the spirit are a particular challenge.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 18)
Continuing this quote from Friday, the words I have bolded above are the warnings given to people throughout the ages. Moses in his farewell speeches to the fledgling Israelite people, warned against this, the prophets, the book of Samuel, the Psalms, and, in reality, most of the Bible does. Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Marc Anthony, and so many more throughout the ages remind us of the warnings of the Bible and the consequences of us turning a deaf ear to “those aspects of society which threaten our freedom”. Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King were two in a long line of “descendants of the prophets” who continued to speak their message and their warnings, their solutions and their passion for our well-being and their passion for us to do the next right thing. Both King and Heschel did the prophets proud and, reading the words above, studying Dr. King’s speeches for more than a headline, we can see neither one was truly understood by the majority or even a strong minority-otherwise we would not be in the situation we are in today.
We have entered a time where the issue is not “right or left”, democrat or republican; the issue we face today is, once again, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure”! We are re-fighting the Civil War, or should I say we are fighting it anew, because the South never truly surrendered, they only capitulated for a minute and we have been wrestling with bigotry and hatred ever since; be it against the latest wave of immigrants or people of color, people who are not ‘christian nationalists, Jews, Muslims, etc. While the ‘good christian folk’ of the KKK, the Bund, the John Birch Society, Gingrich’s guys, the Tea Party, MAGA, claim to ‘love Christ’, they go against the teachings, the words, the actions of Jesus as described in the Gospels and I have to ask these ‘good christian folk’ how they reconcile their actions with Jesus’ words?“The tyranny of needs” is so evident in the words and actions of Trump, Musk, Lutnick, Netanyahu, Orban, Putin, etc and yet, most people have stood idly by not only the blood of the brother, they have stood by the blood of themselves! The “Hands Off” demonstrations are mobilizing We the People and we all have to pray it is not too late!
This is not to say the “left” is so great either. They have also engaged in “the tyranny of needs” and forced their “politically correct” bullshit on all of us. When a person can get fired because they made a joke, told a story that relates to themselves and their upbringing and be fired because someone else ‘took offense’ we have gone to far with the bullshit. When companies, businesses, settle with people bringing lawsuits that are ridiculous on their face and could be defended but it is ‘cheaper’ to settle, giving liars and scammers the idea they can continue to abuse companies that give them jobs and they fuck up and then get paid to leave-we have gone way too far. When someone can get another person to ‘pay them off’ with the threat of ‘going public’ with some accusation, true or false, we have gone too far. When we care only about ‘the underdog’ without putting the situation at hand into context, when we applaud terrorism and senseless killing on one side and applaud it on the other side of a conflict-we have gone too far. The “need” of the progressive to demonize Jews, all wealthy people, etc is as bad as the “need” of the right to demonize Jews, poor people, immigrants, etc. “The tyranny of needs” is the basis of “the vulgarization of the spirit” that has been happening here in America for a long time, we did not even have respite during WWII, as Blacks were segregated from White soldiers and Jews were always subject to anti-semitic remarks and actions. While our Declaration of Independence knows “all men are created equal”, Lincoln re-affirms this truth in his Gettysburg Address, we have rarely lived up to this goal in our 248+year history. We the People have participated in and initiated this “vulgarization of the spirit” both wittingly and unwittingly. Today’s administration is engaging in this “vulgarization” in new and dangerous ways that threaten not only our freedom, they threaten our humanity and our ability to be human.
We the People can turn this around, however. We can read, hear, listen and understand the words above in new and profound ways. If Rabbi Heschel isn’t your jam, then re-read the words of Moses, the prophets in the Bible, re-read and understand the words of Jesus in your soul, allow these great teachers to reach into your inner life and clarify the confusion of your rational mind. If they seem too far away, read/re-read Thomas Merton, Rev. King, Shai Held, and so many others to be both informed and fortified. “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their countrymen” is a sentence I learned the first day of typing class and it is as true today as it was then and We the People need to do this RIGHT NOW!! Passover is one week away, now is the time to be clearing out the schmutz because we have an advantage that neither the Israelite people in Egypt nor the Black people of the South have- we know what Passover is about, we know when it is coming well in advance so we have time to prepare for our exodus, we have time to pack the essentials and know the difference between “the tyranny of needs” and the “needs” that make us human. We the People know how to find our true self and liberate our soul’s voice with a “little help from our friends”-the people on this journey with us. We the People are being called to do this, We the People need to respond with Hineni, not like the 80% who stayed in Egypt!
Letting go of “the tyranny of needs” no longer vulgarizing my soul has brought me the freedom and joy, I was seeking in my drinking. I have experienced this liberation each Passover since 1987 and I still need to get the fuck out of my own way so I can become free. Liberation and falling back into a new or old slavery, and I have hope and each year I get a little more liberated and by Shavuot, I know I am freer than I was last year. Little by little, as Torah says, I can defeat my inner enemies and then the outer ones don’t seem as big. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark