Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 262
“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)
Immersing ourselves in the last phrase of the second sentence above, allows us the opportunity to experience the relationship between work and worship. In Hebrew, they are the same word, Avodah. There is another word for work in Hebrew that is used in conjunction with the keeping of Shabbat, that word is Malacha, which is usually defined as more creative work, more ‘holy’ work such as building the Temple. Online it says the root for work is closely aligned with the word torture. The word for work is the same word as the yoke Roman masters put on their slaves and beat them with.
Since genuinely taking a stand and coming into being includes both work and worship, what can we learn from this wisdom. Both words are pointing us to see the interplay between these activities which many see as opposites. Yet, here again as with the other pairs in this sentence, they are complement each other more than oppose each other. There is a Yiddish phrase upon seeing someone, a sort of greeting that is: “Vus Machts Du?” What are you working at? The normal response is “Macht a Leiben” Working at life, making a living. To make a life is the connotation of the word work in this Yiddish phrase to me and the double entendre is to point out the need to have basic financial needs met, as the Torah teaches us, and to know our worth as human beings, our ability to be genuinely evolving and standing for and with God, people of spirit, is made up of our inner work, our worship of our soul, of our adoration of something greater than ourselves! One cannot encounter this sentence, this last coupling and ever worship a person again, I believe. It is counterintuitive to worship any human being who puts a yoke on you, who demands total loyalty, who beats you, blames you and takes no responsibility when they make an error. It defies rational and spiritual thinking to work for, to be yoked to and then worship someone who doesn’t work for, with you, someone who is so self-centered they cannot even see you as a human being.
I am struck with this coupling because, as I said above, in Hebrew they are the same word and I find this brilliant! Our ancestors knew that worship would take work, doing the next right thing was not necessarily an automatic response from our youth on. As the Bible teaches, “man is evil from his youth”. So the Jewish tradition has Mitzvot to help us stay “yoked” to the path of justice and mercy, truth and love, kindness and compassion. And we need to be yoked because our tendency is to stray, our tendency is to believe lies and deceptions, our tendency is to lie and deceive. We have to work to make a life that is compatible with being a divine need, that is compatible with being a ‘child’ of God, that is compatible with being a partner with God in completing creation.
Which brings us to questions that religion and spirituality come to respond to: “Who/what do I worship? For whom do I work?” While the answer seems like a “duh”, it is more nuanced that just God because we have seen how people bastardize the teachings of God and twist them into their own power trip, they become the arbiters of what God wants, what God is saying rather than encouraging each person to have their own revelation, their own experience and encounter with God. At the Red Sea and at Mount Sinai, everyone there had their own experience unlike anyone else’s because one cannot encounter God, one cannot work at building a life, one cannot copy what someone else does in the same way and expect to learn, gain, enjoy and or achieve their own unique purpose. Every day, we are asked the question: “Where are you?”, Rabbi Heschel, in this last phrase, is asking us to answer this question with “Here I am”.
In recovery, we learn early on that we have to release ourselves from the yoke of indecency, mendacity, power-seeking, false pride, false ego, self-deception. It is not an easy thing to do and it takes a lot of work, a lifetime job. Yet, we also learn that we have to choose to yoke ourselves to what is right and good, we have to put spiritual blinders on so we don’t stray from our new path as the old one beckons us back with all sorts of enticements. In recovery, our commitment is to change what we are yoked to and to whom we are yoked.
For many years, I was yoked to negativity, I was yoked to evil, I was yoked to deception and the need to be accepted, loved, recognized. My recovery began in a jail cell when I, unbeknownst to me at the time, heard and spoke the words God put in my mouth, not the words of the negativity and mendacity I had been yoked to for so long. This is how I threw off the yoke I had been wearing, almost. What I have come to learn, the remnants of the yoke, the scars of the beatings and impressions of both stay with me, they rear their ugly head from time to time and my worship of God, my work at recognizing the scars and impressions quicker keep me on this path. I have to work at my worship, I have to take action on my imperfections, I have to not apologize for who I am, only the wrongs/harms I commit. I have to stop being yoked to the old needs and be freer each day by strengthening the Yoke of Heaven that I wear. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark