Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 188
“Indebtedness is given with our very being. It is not derived from conceptions; it lives in us as an awareness before it is conceptualized or clarified in content. It means having a task, being called.” (Who Is Man pg. 108)
Having had the Sabbath to ponder these words of wisdom and disturbance, I am more convinced than ever at the need for us to study, immerse ourselves, engage with Rabbi Heschel’s teachings in-depth. That he is not learned in most Rabbinical Schools, most Jewish Day Schools, is atrocious to me. That Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and ways of being engaged in the world, in the Bible, in spirituality that welcomes people of all faiths and creeds, is not the way of being for most Jews and non-Jews is insane to me. And, I understand people’s reluctance to engage with him, to feel him and his words deep in their soul, to have their minds overcome with these truths would mean to be in a constant state of disturbance. It is not a way for the faint-hearted, it is the way for people who want to grow their inner life through meditation and study, through prayer and deeds. Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and demands, to me they are demands, cause us to never be in a state of nirvana, inner peace-rather they constantly challenge us, they are pointing out the deep problems of how to live well and together in harmony and strife. This writing is not just for people who are in recovery, it is for people who want to live better, more aware lives.
The truth of the first sentence is an example of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom that is disturbing and, at first blush, makes no sense. “I didn’t ask to be born” many people say when parents, teachers, friends, family remind us of our obligations. “Who are you to tell me what to do, it’s a free country” is another such refrain. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is telling us that upon entering the world from the womb, we have a debt to repay. This is a marvelous thought to me. We are born, our very beingness is a loan to the world as well as to us and we have to find “our home base” to repair, repave, to enhance and chisel away the stone to reveal the sculpture; in doing so, we are repaying the debt we have for being alive. Writing about this makes me realize Rabbi Heschel’s view of the preciousness of life, the joy of living, the need to repay and the awe of indebtedness even more than I have previously.
While most of us do not want to be held responsible for our errors, we are even less desirous of being help responsible for our gifts, for our talents, for the divine need we are created to fulfill. We are seeing this in our politics with McCarthy and McConnell kissing the ring of Trump all the while knowing the danger he is to our freedom and our country. We also see it in the ways of people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who have done some pretty awesome things in our lifetime and rather than accept the praise and the dollars with humility, they have decided they know it all and can do what they want when they want. We also know of people who are constantly complaining about what they don’t have and how bad it is for them and how no one can understand them, etc,-sometimes with, as my grandmother uses to say, two loaves of bread under their arms. These are people who see being owed by the world, by their families and are perpetual victims. Rather than see their indebtedness, they experience life as being owed. We see this in the 2nd/3rd generations of the financially wealthy and we see this with the 2nd/3rd generations of the financially poor. We do not see this in the descendants of the those who are engaged spiritually and morally in the world, we do not see this in the descendants of those who are raised with meaning, purpose and a knowledge that their destiny is “to aid, to serve” as Rabbi Heschel teaches. “Indebtedness is given with our very being” is a view of life that is uplifting, enthralling, exciting, engaging, enlightening for those who believe that “you matter” is more than a political, advertising slogan. For those of us who believe that each person matters, beginning with our selves, “you matter” informs each and every deed we do, every breath we take, every inventory we make at the end of each day. “You matter” is another way of saying: “we owe” and we are determined to repay as much of the debt that being alive is that we can.
In recovery, we are aware of our debt, hence our commitment to “practice these principles in all our affairs”. We stop living situational ethics and we live ethically in all of our affairs, our ethics no longer change given the personal situation, the personal gain, rather, even at the cost to ourselves we refuse to create more debt for our self and we refuse to create more damage in the world and in our own inner life.
Over the past two years, I have gone back and forth with this truth. Being exiled for my mistake and watching what I created with a lot of help be slowly torn down hurt me and in hurt I was unable to remind myself that I still owe, that I am able to repay the debt of life to God and to God’s creations. I kept helping and I kept being available as well as forgetting at times that not only do I owe, I also am capable of still repaying and finding the next chapter is the path to continue doing this. Writing this blog for over 31 weeks and the blog of the Prophets for 40+ weeks is one way of repaying the debt for me. Continuing to work with people who are in need and offer wisdom, guidance, an ear is another way of my repaying the debt. I am seeking more ways and being more consistent. I know the way out of hurt is acceptance and the way to repay is to serve. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark