Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 - Day 14
“Godliness is an absolute reality which exists through itself. It existed prior to the creation of the world and will survive the world in eternity. Sovereignty can exist only in a relationship. Without subordinates this honor is abstract. God desired kingship and from that will creation emerged. But now the kingly dignity of God depends on us.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)
One of the words in Hebrew which denote sovereignty is an offshoot of the word teacher. In Latin, sovereign comes from the word meaning “above”. One of the Hebrew words which denotes relationship is the same root as the word for Holy. Hence, the 3rd sentence above could be understood as a Teacher who ‘stands’ above can only exist when we are connected and elevated. Without students, the Teacher’s honor is abstract. God desired an opportunity to be in connection and be a Teacher for humanity, for all creatures, and from this Will, this desire, creation occurred. Yet, it is only upon humans that the dignity of God depends. Dignity in the Hebrew is honor and in the Latin is worth.
Teacher, Sovereignty can only exist in a relationship, in a connection. With God this is always true, with humans, unfortunately, not always. We have, since the time of the Tower of Babel, tried to usurp God, be God, be the Ruler of the world, etc. We see this today with Putin and Ukraine, we saw this with Hitler and Nazi Germany, we see this with Orban and Hungary, with CPAC and the extremist right-wingers, with the prosperity Gospel believers, with any and every ‘only one-way’ philosophy/path. Rather than create a relationship based on respect, kindness, love, these deceivers create one based on fear, on power, on death-just as the Monarchs of olden times did. We say we are benevolent dictators and, while for a very few this may be true, we are not so benevolent when we are challenged, when our words are argued and debated and proven inaccurate. Then, most of us, become mean, scared and have to show how strong we are.
With God, our relationship is Kodosh, holy. It is a connection that we can take a time out from, and all of us do, and return to, hence this time of year being an intense period of returning. With God, we are respected, loved, cared for and missed. There are numerous stories in the Talmud about God’s pain when God’s children (us) are in exile and we humans are too stubborn, dull, blind to cling to the words of God, to the Will of God and to the connection to God. We want to ‘stand on our own two feet’ not realizing that with God as Teacher, as Sovereign, we are standing on our own two feet, living the life we are created for and, the greatness of God is that God’s always waiting for us to return, desiring to “heal our backsliding” and “take us back in love” as the Prophets teach us. This is what a relationship is meant to be, never without strife, never without hurt, never without errors, and always with a way back, always with a memory of the kindness and love that was freely given prior and always with healing and love.
Here again, we humans fall short. How many of us write someone off after one error. How often does one OH SHIT, wipe away 100 accolades? How often do we blame the one who makes the error without ever seeing our complicity, our part in the erroneous actions? How often can we, like God, say: “my children have defeated me” as God does in the Talmudic story of the Oven of Achnai? Yet, this time of year is replete with the spiritual forces of compassion and love, of forgiveness and return. We can, and I believe, must return to being compassionate with self, with loving our souls, with appreciating the dignity and worth of our being, with being teachable and in a connection with God that allows us to know we are forgiven, to forgive our self and to forgive all who ask for forgiveness. In these ways we return to our basic goodness of being, in these ways we return to our rightful place and in these ways we are never alone because we know God is with us always!
In recovery, we remain teachable and open to the words of another(s) as we know God speaks through people. While we may not always agree with these words and/or opinions, we remain amenable to the possibility that someone has a better view of/perception of/understanding of a situation than we do. We desire to be “taken back in love” and for God to “heal our backsliding”. We are engaged in return and forgiveness each and every day.
As Yom Kippur nears, I want to again acknowledge my errors, my missing the marks in this past year and in years past. I am quite sorrowful for the harm known and unknown that I have caused. Knowing that everyone has a different perception of events, I cannot stand on ceremony or on my own “rightness," my own vision and deny someone else’s. To the people who feel harmed by my actions, I sincerely ask for forgiveness. For the people who have harmed me either knowingly or unknowingly, I forgive you. For people who don’t understand me, I am sad and for those who get me, I am grateful. This blog enriches my life, and while I have been told I sound like a ‘victim,' I am not nor do I feel like one. As all of us know, we harm and we are harmed and each of us has a different experience with this truth. I am moving forward, without regret for the past and with remorse for some of my actions. I pray you are too. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark