Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 312
“To the sense of indebtedness, the meaning of existence lies in reciprocity. In receiving a pleasure, we must return a prayer; in attaining a success, we radiate compassion.” (Who is Man pg. 118)
The last phrase of the teaching above of Rabbi Heschel’s is what we all need to live more! We have taken success as an entitlement to radiate ego, power, hatred, ‘getting even’, deception and mendacity rather than compassion. Taking a deep dive into these two sentences forces us to submerge our self in a shocking awakening of who we are at our core and who we are acting like. We are awakened to the discrepancies in our beliefs and our behaviors, we are made aware of the deceptions and lies we tell ourselves and another(s), we are given the opportunity to make amends for the harms we have caused to another(s) and to make amends to our self for abandoning our truth, our authenticity, our purpose, our Higher Power/God.
This is what the Hebrew month of Elul, Rosh HaShanah, and Yom Kippur do for us when we participate in more than the religious behaviorism of this time. I have heard many people say the formula prior to Yom Kippur “if I have done anything to hurt you please forgive me” and I ask them if they think they have done anything to hurt me. When they are not sure, etc I thank them, I make whatever T’Shuvot I am aware of and end the call, meeting. These people have not dived into the ocean of awareness and looked at the reflection of themselves that God sees, that their mirror has been showing them. Rather, they are believing the lies and deceptions of their minds and their minions. We spend so much time in the beauty parlor making ourselves look pretty all the while not realizing the atrophy of our spirits and our souls, the atrophy of our society and our families. The number of people who are shocked at the addictions of their family members, the lies of their politicians, the anger of the poor, the wretched who came here “yearning to breathe free” and are enslaved as much if not more than where they left, is amazing to me.
These are the people who believe their largess will protect them from the logical consequences of their deceptions and mendacity, their willful blindness and self-serving actions. These are the people who believe they are owed rather than owe, the people who are entitled to their pleasures, guilty or otherwise, and believe that gratitude is owed them rather than a daily action they are obligated to engage in. These are the people who think if the optics are good/right no one will look behind the curtain. These are the people who, like the Wizard of Oz, keep denying truth even when they are uncovered and their mendacity and deception is exposed.
These are the people like all of us! We are these people every time we deny compassion to another, every time we forget to say a prayer for all the joys in our lives-no matter how down we feel. We are the entitled ones who build ourselves up on social media for our sake, not for the sake of sharing our gifts and talents. We are the people deceiving our selfs into believing we are doing a real deep dive into the Torah, the Bible, the Koran, etc and we know what God wants and act tyrannically and hatefully towards anyone and everyone who doesn’t agree. We are the people who have forgotten we owe and only through our debt can we connect with God, with another human being, with the world, with our authentic and true self. We are the people who need to take these next 10 days and the 10 days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur to face our self, see our success’ and have compassion for our missing the marks, review our pleasures and say a prayer of gratitude. See what the universe has blessed us with and reciprocate by putting goodness and joy back into the world somehow, somewhere. We are the people who can and must take an accounting of our indebtedness and find the meaning of our being, our purpose and passion and live them out loud in this next year a little more.
In recovery, we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings, not as a ‘poof they are gone’ action, rather we are asking for help to overcome the barriers to living Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom a little more each day. We are not asking to be ‘cleansed’, rather we are acknowledging the power of the lie, the hold of the deception and the magnet pull of mendacity. We are reminding our self to be on the lookout for the paths that take us deeper into the forest of mendacity, that take us farther and farther away from compassion and gratitude and closer and closer to entitlement and self-serving.
Today marks 52 weeks of writing on Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom. I am humbled by your readership, I am grateful for Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and I have changed greatly during this year. My indebtedness is more palpable and more welcoming, my reciprocity grows daily and I am aware of the reciprocity of generosity that Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man taught me about some 33 years ago. I offer prayers throughout the day and take pleasure in all of life’s gifts-ones I like and those that are not so much to like. My success as a human being is my compassion and, as Dr. Susannah Heschel taught me years ago-to show those who have harmed me (whether in act or in my interpretation) diving pathos, God’s compassion. In this way, I am able to truly “love my neighbor as I love my self.” See you tomorrow! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark