Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 175
“This is the most important experience in the life of every human being: something is asked of me.” (Who is Man pg.108)
Today marks the beginning of the 30th consecutive week of writing on Rabbi Heschel’s teachings. This writing and immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and wisdom is giving me more freedom, more insight and more joy than I have experienced previously with Rabbi Heschel, which is saying a lot.
Rabbi Heschel’s life, prophetic voice, teachings, his belief in the possibility of human beings to be human, his writings, his activism, his ability to deal with scorn and with ridicule, with love and friendship, with the reality of his world of his youth being utterly destroyed all speak to the wisdom above. Rabbi Heschel kept listening to what was being asked of him and he responded, Here I am (Hineni) and he knew that to live life is to serve another(s) human being.
One of the “something”s being asked of all of us is to end slavery! As we prepare for the Seder and the Holiday of Passover beginning next Friday, as we prepare for Good Friday and Easter beginning next Friday, as we are in the midst of Ramadan now, it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to know we are able to leave the slaveries we have become accustomed to, accept the help of our own particular ‘Moses/Israelite community’ and make haste to leave quickly before the portal to liberation and freedom closes. We also have the honor and privilege to bring our families and friends with us as well as allow them to lift us up out of our enslavements. To do this we have to recognize the slaveries we are currently in, remembering that to leave Egypt is to leave a narrow place.
Slaveries come in all shapes and sizes, most of them are very subtle and go unnoticed by people. This is why living in Radical Amazement, as Rabbi Heschel did and defines, is crucial to leaving slavery and going to the Promised Land. We are enslaved to optics- how we look, how the people we engage with make us look, what will people think of me, how many likes to have, how many followers do I have, etc. We are enslaved to ‘the right causes’- making sure we are on the ‘right’ side of any and every situation-having no impact on our actions towards another person or in any other area of our living. We are enslaved to either/or, win/lose, zero sum thinking and living. If we don’t ‘win’, if we are not ‘right’, if we don’t ‘crush and destroy’ our ‘opponent/competition’ then we have failed and will be laughed at, will be out of the club. We are enslaved to being a victim and blaming everyone else, accusing another of that of which we ourselves are guilty of. We hear and see this in the political realm, we hear and see this in the courtrooms, we hear and see this in our media, we hear and see this in our institutions, we hear and see this in our homes. Unfortunately we are unable to hear and see these behaviors and slaveries in our own selves!
Looking at the world as it is right now, listening to the outrage of some people at the injustices and knowing how they practice the same injustices, indecencies and lack of humanity towards people who are not ‘their people’ or how ‘embarrass’ them, is truly sad. Granted they are not bombing or massacring people, yet, when we take the soul of another person and denigrate it through lies, through “on advice of counsel”; when we forget what another person has done for us throughout our relationship and only judge them on the last bad action, we are truly killing their soul and their spirit. This need to do this, the need to use people and throw them away when it is convenient, this is committing spiritual murder and many of us are enslaved to this way of being without realizing it-‘it is just business’, ‘it isn’t personal’, ‘you caused this yourself’, etc are some of the tropes that denote the enslavement to transactional relationships, using and abusing people and forgetting that we owe, forgetting that “something is asked of me”.
In recovery, we reconnect with this voice that is asking/demanding something of us. Recovery is our path out of the narrow places of self-centeredness, self-conceit, self-obsession and onto the path of freedom, service, connection, truth, etc. In our recovery, we are the Israelites and the other slaves who left Egypt and the road to the Promised Land is not smooth and easy, it has a lot of potholes that we fall into, a lot of errors we commit and, the beauty of being on the road to freedom is, we can return over and over again to our calling, to our community and to our authentic self.
One of the slaveries I have been in is despair and I wasn’t aware of how much I was in it! I lost ‘my place’, was exiled and have watched the myriad of changes that are taking place with some sadness and some hope. I did not realize how ‘lost’ I felt until we began packing up to leave LA as home this past week. I have been lost and enslaved to looking okay so no one knows how I am, not even myself! The narrowest of places for me is the place where I lie to myself so well, I am unaware of the lies. I am both sad and excited, scared and hopeful, worried and elated, seeking the promised land and stuck in old paths. I am leaving the slavery of optics, falseness, worry about what another thinks of me and heading for more authenticity, true love, connection and kindness. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark