Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 258
“To be human involves the ability to appreciate as well as the ability to give expression to appreciation. For thousands of years authentic existence included both manipulation and appreciation, utilization and celebration, both work and worship. In primitive society they were interdependent; in biblical religion they were interrelated. Today we face a different situation.” (Who is Man pg. 116)
Manipulation comes from the Latin meaning “handful” and is defined as “the act of manipulating something in a skillful manner and the action of manipulating someone in a clever or unscrupulous way”. Appreciation means “to prize, to set at a price, to appraise, and is defined as “a full understanding of the situation and recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities”. We can have a ‘genuine come into being’ only when we are able to appraise and set at a price the handful of living we have in front of us. We can have an “authentic existence” only when we are willing to manipulate our unique purpose in life with a skillful manner and with a full understanding of the totality of our beingness, including our earthly inclination, as Rabbi Harold Kushner calls the Yetzer HaRa, as well as a recognition of and enjoyment of the ups, downs, joys, sadness’, hitting the mark and missing the mark of our living. To engage in manipulation in this sense is to take the handful of life, to take the handful of experiences, the handful of knowledge, and handle them skillfully for the sake of heaven, rather than handle them in a clever and unscrupulous manner.
I am, like many, obsessed with the hearings from the Jan. 6th Committee. It has given all of us the proof of what some of us knew and most did not: Trump, his crew, his ‘family’ were manipulating our country for their own clever and unscrupulous results. Jared Kushner is so supercilious and such a terrible example of the way of living Jewishly that Rabbi Heschel teaches us, that Torah teaches us, it is disgusting. The real RINO’s in our country are the people who call themselves Republicans and support Trump, support all of the ideals that go against Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, the heart of what the party used to stand for. Mendacious Mitch, Crooked Cruz, Hooligan Hawley, Groveling Gommert, Mealy-Mouthed McCarthy to name a few. I ask myself why now are these people who witnessed the degradation of our democracy for all 4 years of the Trump Presidency speaking out now. I pray and hope that they have been struck truthful, struck ‘sober’ in their thoughts and actions because they had a “dark night of the soul” and found themselves at the cross-road of either genuine existence, manipulation for good and appraising their past actions and decided to make things right. I have no idea of what they will do next, I do believe many of the witnesses have had a spiritual awakening and a renewal of an authentic existence.
We need to manipulate our selves back into alignment with God, with decency, with ethical and moral behaviors and stop the clever and unscrupulous ways we demean our selves and another(s). We need to realize we are able to handle the hands we have been dealt and to “play our cards” for the sake of heaven, for the sake of humanity and for sake of our humanness. It is high time we stop setting the bar so low, we stop with the false appraisals of our self and of another self. It is high time we stop seeing how clever we can be. We need to answer the call of Rabbi Heschel in a telegram he sent to President Kennedy, we need to respond to the call of our time, the call of the stranger, the needy, the poor: the call to engage in “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity”. We all have the ability, we all have the tools, we just need the will to respond to this call from God, from another human being, from our souls.
In recovery, we are constantly appraising our self, we are constantly seeking to use the raw material of our being and manipulate this raw material into a life that we are proud to live. Having had so much experience in manipulating our raw material, our talents, our fears, our egos and our false egos for the sake of self and into actions we regret, this shift in focus is refreshing, exciting and we find ourselves eager to engage in all that life has and continue to learn and progress to a fuller understanding of our purpose and passion in life.
Just as with a Chiropractic visitation, my manipulation of my soul to be in alignment with God, with my purpose, is in constant need of appraisal and re-adjustment. I am aware of the moments when I get out of alignment just a little now whereas prior to recovery, I was unaware and thought being out of adjustment was the ‘normal’ way of being for me and their was no hope to ever be aligned. The manipulations that God, Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, Rabbi Mel Silverman, Jerry Borovitz, my siblings, Stuart, Neal and Sheri, nieces and nephews, my daughter Heather and grandson Miles Stuart, along with Harriet Rossetto, my wife, partner, lover and friend have given me and still give me keep me much more in alignment with truth, justice, kindness, mercy, compassion than ever. Each day, my prayers, this writing, my interactions with people keep me skillfully using my talents to serve another, to serve God-not my false ego. The manipulation only lasts a while, the joy and hope though is each time my getting out of alignment is incrementally smaller and more painful, easier to be reset and, upon recognizing the full extent of my actions when I am even a little out of alignment, infinitely more painful to appraise. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark