Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 40
“The ancient Rabbis knew that excessive piety may endanger the fulfillment of the essence of the law. “There is nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life … . Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stake one may disregard every prohibition of the law.” One must sacrifice mitsvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitsvot”. (God in Search of Man)
Immersing ourselves deeper into Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom allows us the opportunity to examine our daily actions, our beliefs, our authentic needs, our self. Since there is “nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life…” how are we preserving our own? How are we preserving the life of our neighbor? How are we engaging in life-affirming activities that are life-enhancing for each of us as individuals and for all of humanity as a whole?
The central prayer in Judaism, the Shema, is a prayer that ends with the Oneness of God and, as Rabbi Harold Shulweis taught me, we are all part of this Oneness. At our core, in our being, in our humanity, we are all part of the Ineffable One, part of the Oneness that holds our world together. We are created in the Image of the Divine, ergo, we are part of the Divine, we are “God’s reminders” as Rabbi Heschel teaches, so we have to stop our erroneous belief that we have to murder the soul of another in order to ‘win’.
There is no ‘win’ in the ways people are trying to ‘win’ today and forever, there is only Pekuach Nefesh, saving a soul/life. While there is, of course, the physical aspect to saving a life, helping someone who is sick, caring for the wounded in battle, stopping to help when we see someone stuck/sick on the road, etc, of more concern for me as I dive deeply into Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance, is the spiritual aspect, the psychological aspect of saving a life, of preserving our spiritual health and the spiritual health of people around us, people we can(and I would add must)touch and reach out to. This is a much ignored authentic need, this is a much maligned and forgotten action, this is a belief we have shunted to the side in favor of puffing our selves up to think well of our self, we have shunted to the side in favor of feeling downtrodden and enslaved, etc.
Many people think little of their spiritual health, little of the spiritual health of another, even people who go to Churches, the Mosques, the Temples do not put a lot of stock in their spiritual health. Rather they are, like the pious people, endangering the essence of the law, of prayer by paying lip service rather than attention to preserving their spiritual life and nurturing the spiritual life of people around them. Given the state of the world today I believe it is imperative we start paying more attention to our spiritual health and well-being. We are in desperate need of connection for the sake of learning and growing, not for the sake of ego and ‘winning’. We don’t need to determine our worth by how many likes we have on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. We don’t need to determine our well-being based on what designer clothing we just bought, what ‘star’ we just met, what deal we just closed, what promotion we just got, how much our home is worth, what our spouse looks like, etc. All of these externals have been pushed on us by societal ‘norms’ and they are controlling our inner life, our spiritual health and they are killing us, making us susceptible to the lies and deceptions of another person, making us kiss the ‘tush’ of people we know could care less about us as humans and our actually using us for their benefit, etc. We do not need to continue to kill our inner life, to feed poison to our soul anymore. In fact, Rabbi Heschel is telling us we have an overriding obligation, a sacred duty to preserve our inner life and feed and nurture our souls to grow and flourish.
We do this reaching out to the people closest to us and letting them know what we need to do to preserve and grow our spiritual health and well-being. We engage our higher self/higher consciousness and look into the depths of our being and listen to what our soul, our higher consciousness, God, intuition, higher knowledge is telling us. We stop connecting on a self-serving basis with our traits and brains and/or with another and connect with our traits and brains to serve our spiritual insights, our spiritual needs and the spiritual insights and needs of another(s). Remembering Einstein’s wisdom-we need to remember the gift of our intuitive mind and have our rational mind serve it, rather than continuing to forget the gift and worship the servant. Each day we are given a myriad of opportunities to preserve and grow our spiritual well-being, lets take advantage of them more that we seek to take advantage of another human being.
In recovery, we have had to face the wreckage of our self-serving behaviors and have the atrophy of our spirits reflected back to us through the faces of those around us and the people, who for some unknown reason, still love and care for us. We know, as is said often, our recovery is based on our daily spiritual condition and if we are not right inside, we will soon return to the scenes of our worst behaviors and situations. Each day we seek to grow one grain of sand more together, healthier and wiser in our inner life.
I have, at times, engaged in preserving the souls of another(s) at the expense of my own. This has caused me angst, problems and sadness. More tomorrow. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.