Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 141
“Embarrassment is the awareness of an incongruity of character and challenge, of perceptivity and reality, of knowledge and understanding, of mystery and comprehension.”(Who is Man pg.112)
Continuing to experience this teaching, I am embarrassed by the inability of so many of us to be embarrassed and/or aware of the incongruity of knowledge and understanding we display. This inability to be both aware and embarrassed has led to war, famine, rejection, slavery, racism, caste societies, bastardization of religious principles, idolatry, authoritarianism, etc. It is the root cause of the crash of 2008, our gridlock congress, the search for absolute power in government, the cruelty of authoritarianism, etc.
The greatest problem, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is we are not embarrassed at our incongruities, not that we are unaware. In some cases, of course we are, and in the majority of times we live incongruity of knowledge and understanding it is with full awareness of this fact. There is no way the Republican Party did not know what they were unleashing when they continually called the election of 2020 “a stolen election” and called upon their supports to “stop the steal”! Not only were they aware of what they knew and how they were using their knowledge, they were the perpetrators of stolen elections for years by limiting the availability of voting places in minority neighborhoods, making it harder for people of color and older people to vote, etc. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell can stand up and straight-faced lie to the people and use their knowledge of truth to twist the facts, to denigrate the actions of their opponents and turn around and do the same action is disgraceful and they are not embarrassed by it! McConnell would not entertain talking to Merritt Garland during an election year, yet pushed through a Supreme Court Justice one month prior to the 2020 election! He is aware of his incongruence he just doesn’t care nor is he embarrassed by them-he wears them as a badge of courage and honor!
We see this in our religious institutions as well. When we are more concerned with cozying up to power than with the principles of our faith; we are in trouble. When we use the knowledge we have as religious leaders, scholars, to take advantage of our congregants and the people who trust us, we are aware and not embarrassed. When religious institutions are more concerned with optics and lawsuits that with staying true to the foundational principles of their faith, we are aware and not embarrassed. When we take the principles of our faith-decency, love, compassion, truth, justice, kindness-and use them for our benefit or the benefit of power, we are using our knowledge in an incongruent manner from our understanding of how to use it. In the Jewish tradition, there are 70 ways to understand Torah and some ardent fervent practitioners believe their way is the only “right” way-they are using their knowledge for power, control and self-aggrandizement, not for understanding God’s Will in the moment and how to use their knowledge for the sake of God and another(s) human being. Yet, they and others like them are not embarrassed at their awareness of their incongruities, they seem proud of them while denying they are being incongruent. What a conundrum!
In our families, we see denial of incongruities all the time. Parents try to put up a facade of all knowing, my way or the highway, if you don’t like my rules…, don’t you question your father/mother in the home or in public, etc. Parents are constantly telling children how much they love them all the while being too busy to know their inner lives. Parents forget what it was like to be a child, adolescent and treat their own children like they were treated, which they hated! We see how parents ignore the spiritual health and growth of their children just as theirs was and only want them to be happy. We parents have to be more embarrassed so we can be more congruent with our children and teach them a different path than we were given.
In recovery, we are absolutely embarrassed by our awareness of our incongruity of knowing and understanding. We realize early on how much we understood and knew and our myriad of ways to bastardize both knowledge and understanding. We come to the awareness of our incongruities through our inner work and spiritual growth. Then we are able to put our knowledge and understanding together to hear the call of our intuition, the call of our soul.
I have come to realize how incongruent my knowing and my understanding of the best ways to use my knowing have been, at times. I am embarrassed as I write this at my unawareness of my incongruence. Immersing myself in this teaching is helping me rectify my incongruence and be more committed to ensuring my using my understanding of a situation is in concert with my knowing and my knowing, my skills, my talents are used in concert of my understanding of how to use them in the moment, making the necessary tweaks to meet the situation at hand and not rely on yesterday’s understanding or knowing. I am embarrassed that I was aware at times of my incongruence and I fell prey to it because of fear. I am embarrassed that I failed to speak and act from my knowledge and understanding of a situation and see that every time I failed, the situation got worse and more hurt was sustained by me and another person. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark