Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 152
“I am afraid of people who are never embarrassed at their own pettiness, prejudices, envy and conceit, never embarrassed at the profanation of live. A world full of grandeur has been converted into a carnival.” (Who is Man pg 114)
How is it possible to never be embarrassed by one’s own pettiness, prejudices, envies and conceits? I have thought about this phenomenon for many years in my own life and in helping people recover from their addictions. The people Rabbi Heschel describes are not addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, criminals that I was nor were they those I was privileged to meet and help for the most part. The people Rabbi Heschel is afraid of, unfortunately, seem to gain control through deception and looking like they care without every really giving a damn.
We all share in the profanation of life, to a greater or lessor degree. This teaching is not asking us to never engage in our own pettiness, prejudice, envy and conceit, as I am experiencing it today. Rather, Rabbi Heschel’s fear is our inability to be embarrassed by these distasteful and self-degrading behaviors. This is the problem-we all engage in these ways of being, unfortunately, with the hope that we learn from each encounter exactly because we are embarrassed by these ungodly ways of being. In the Torah, we are told to help our enemy if his ox has fallen; care for the stranger, poor, needy, etc; we are told not to hate the Egyptians even though they enslaved us and we are told to stop the senseless hatred with our brothers, the Edomites. We are told this, I believe, because God knew that we could fall prey to the ways Rabbi Heschel lists above and we needed a path, an instruction, a command to not give into to our lowest thoughts.
Seriously immersing ourselves in Torah, living Jewishly prevents us from not being embarrassed when we fall prey to our worst ways of being. Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings force us to confront the ways we are profaning life, ours and another’s, so we can be embarrassed and aware and change our patterns, do our T’Shuvah and move forward. Unfortunately, this is not the norm, in families, in work environments, in Boards, in politics. We see more and more the need to deny and defend our worst behaviors and do so convincingly. In my experience with families, there were so many times the parents could be embarrassed by what their child/children had done because of how it reflected upon them, not because they profaned life so badly. Yet, after the entire family was in treatment, the parents could finally admit their own ways of profaning life and be embarrassed for their own pettiness, prejudice, envy and conceit. This led to a family healing and understanding that had never been there before and parents could see their children as independent and children could see their parents as human. This led to being able to help each other whenever anyone was heading down the path of profaning their life, which in turn would profane the lives of the entire family because we care for and are responsible for one another.
And, unfortunately, we had about 35% of the families/parents who would not participate in this type of healing and awareness. They needed to hold on to their ‘rightness’ and their blaming so they never would break the facade of perfection, the mask of ‘holier than thou’ and be red-faced embarrassed, aware and responsible for their prejudices, pettiness, etc. These people are/were pathetic, as Dr. Susannah Heschel explained to us when she visited Beit T’Shuvah. Pathetic as in ‘isn’t it sad that someone is so stuck’, as in we need to show the same pathos for them that God would and God has shown/given to us. These people are still human beings, they still have an Image of God in them and this teaching reminds me/us that we have to rise above our own hurts and angers, pettiness and prejudices, to create a space for people who are stuck to come to for help, to return to for help and be open to their T’Shuvah and forgive them. Being embarrassed allow us to not carry the resentments that would cause us to act out against them in the same manner as they have towards us.
In recovery, we are always on guard against the above-mentioned ways of being and we become acutely aware of the ways we have profaned life while also realizing our embarrassment at acting in these ways had pushed us to hide more. Only upon realizing that being embarrassed is a healthy reminder of the impact of our actions and we can only be embarrassed when we become aware of our errors, we welcome facing truth, admitting when we have erred, and making the amends necessary to repair the damage we wrought as well as take the necessary actions to improve our spiritual awareness and our intellectual and emotional intelligence so we don’t do the same action again.
I have profaned life and I am embarrassed by these actions, I have been embarrassed for most of my life and in my recovery, I have welcomed this state more and more. I argued when people would point some flaw out and, my arguing was not to be right, it was to understand. I am a little stubborn and stiff-necked, I am a Jew after all, and I argue to learn and it is the way I am able to keep the learning with me-I am an active learner, just like I am an action junkie. I know there are people who think I defended to the end and I am sorry for this. I know there were times when it took me too long to be embarrassed and this is what I have worked on-being aware and embarrassed quicker when I give into the ways taught above. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark