Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 265
“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)
Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above haunts me and should haunt all of us. Maimonides, the famous Jewish Scholar of the Middle Ages, said: “What is in the heart should be on the lips”. Moses taught us not to say one thing, seemingly agree with truth while in our hearts think I can do what I want. What we say and what we do have to be interrelated, interdependent otherwise, we are engaging in living a false life, a hiding life, a fearful life, a lonely life. While we may achieve accolades, riches, etc, we know that we are engaging in a sham life and nothing except returning to an “authentic existence” will give us rest, give us inner harmony, give us our self-respect back.
Today, we are living a compartmentalized life, a life where we believe our actions have no relationship to each other, we can be a ruthless businessman and a kind, loving parent/spouse, ‘don’t bring your home life to work nor your work life home’ is a favorite saying of many. If I am sad, I should just put on a stiff upper lip and grin through it, etc. All of these phrases point to the separation that most people today believe they should achieve. We are a society badly in need of interdependence and interrelatedness. We are all suffering the consequences of our compartmentalized lives; isolation, boredom, addiction, misery, senseless hatred of another who is “different” than us, going against our self-interest for one issue/reason. We go along with people we know are bad because they will ‘protect’ Israel, they will ‘protect’ what we say the Bible says, even though it really doesn’t. We see the alliances of strange bedfellows because they can agree on one issue, in 2016 it was defeat Hillary Clinton so the Republican Party coalesced behind a known democrat, a known misogynist, a known liar and a known bigot! Now, the Republican Party is denying the truth of their own eyes by still saying it wasn’t their people who rioted, it was the mythical THEM. How can they believe this dribble, these lies? They can because they live inauthentically, they live bifurcated lives, they live lives where there is nothing important except winning, power and wealth. They live lives that have been bought and paid for by their ‘benefactors’ and they are unwilling to stand for truth, for love, for kindness, for justice, for democracy!
We are in a time of great distress caused by our refusal to live an “authentic existence”, by our refusal to live interdependent, interrelated, integrated lives. We are unwilling to acknowledge our need for one another, we are unwilling to acknowledge our relatedness to one another as human beings, we are unwilling to integrate our seemingly opposing forces within and outside of us to become a whole human being. Instead, we go through life with a hole in our soul which only grows larger and larger because we refuse to live an “authentic existence”. We continue to reject the simple yet complex solution that our faiths give us, “return to God, return to your truth”.
We do this by engaging in the process of T’Shuvah, of a fearless and moral inventory. We have to see our actions in a larger context, of seeing them through the eyes of the people around us, seeing our actions through the ‘eye’ of our soul, through the ‘eyes’ of God. We get to look at and repair the damages we have done, we get to let go of our irrational need for recognition, power, control, we get to embrace the both/and of existence and reach out for the assistance we need at any given moment. We join with people for a better life for everyone, we don’t overlook the bad and give a wink and a nod to people doing bad things because we can “use” them to meet our own ends. Living a life of interdependence and interrelatedness shouts out that the ends never justify the means! After our inventory/T’Shuvah and after we make our amends, we make a plan on how to not get trapped by our self-deceptions, our mendacious thoughts, the deceptions of another and join with other people of faith and spirit to live together to raise one another up and hold one another to the higher standards we know to be true.
In recovery, we say “practice these principles in all our affairs”. We walk our talk and no longer hide from truth, no longer disregard the love of God, of our family, of our friends, of the strangers we meet. We embrace our need for one another and we give what we have to embolden and uplift the lives of everyone we meet.
I have always known of the interdependence and interrelatedness of life, I just thought for about 30 years that this was a sign of weakness, now, in recovery I know it is a sign of strength. I am interdependent on you, on strangers, on loved ones because I am not an island, I am not always right, I am not capable in all areas of living, I am not able to do everything. I practice my interdependence and my interrelatedness with my wife Harriet Rossetto to whom I have been married for 32 years today. Our interdependence created and sustained Beit T’Shuvah for over 30 years! I am aware of my need for you and I pray to never lose this awareness. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark