Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2- Day 1
“The mystery of prayer on the days of Rosh HaShanah presents itself with characteristic familiarity: it reveals itself to those who want to fulfill it, and eludes those who only want to know it.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity).
As we approach Rosh HaShanah in 9 days, Rabbi Heschel’s essay on “The Meaning of Repentance”, written in 1936 has much to enlighten us with. The opening sentence of this essay above is, I believe, crucial for us to understand and know the difference between fulfilling and knowing.
Mystery is defined as something that is difficult or impossible to explain or understand, which is the essence of prayer. Communal prayer, personal prayer, on most days is a mystery as to our explaining the impact on us and on Rosh HaShanah, as Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, it is even more difficult to understand and explain the power of prayer, the need for prayer, even for many the meaning of the prayers themselves. Yet, we continue to go to services, we continue to show up late and leave early AND we go. Whether we understand the prayers, whether we believe in God, we show up for Rosh HaShanah services because we are afraid not to, because we are in the habit of doing so, and/or because we know we get something and, even though we cannot explain or understand what we get, we want to participate in this mystery, participate in the prayer experience and hope we learn a little bit more of what is happening for and to us. This is, I believe, the “characteristic familiarity” that the ‘three day a year Jews’ as they call themselves, experience.
Mysteries are here to be solved, according to our rational minds and we need to just ‘put our thinking cap on’ and find the solution to the mystery so we can be assured that everything has a reason and there is no mystery that we cannot solve. This attitude could be a result of being partners with God and our charge to care for our corner of this world, it could be as a result of our arrogance and hubris, it could be as a result of our fear of the unknowable and the unexplainable. For many people, the only peace they have is when they know and can understand what is happening, very few people actually ‘go with the flow’ and, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, “accept the things we cannot change”. Most people believe in their own power to think themselves into and out of any and all situations that life presents. Rabbi Heschel’s words above are teaching us that there are mysteries we will never solve through trying to know something.
While he is speaking about prayer, I believe his wisdom applies to all of life’s mysteries. Our constant need to know is what gets in the way of our ability to experience, to be immersed in what is, to live with and in “radical amazement”. We are so dependent upon conventional notions and mental cliches in order to function well, we have lost the ability to have the clarity/serenity to know what we don’t know and accept what we are powerless over. We are so dependent upon conventional notions that scientific breakthroughs are either overblown or go unnoticed. Our colleges are teaching how to get a job, how to be on the “right” side of issues, not how to explore and discover the mysteries of living, the mysteries of life itself. Our society is based on power and who has it in the moment, not on how to live with the mysterious nature of life, of community, of covenantal love. We have become more and more obsessed with knowing everything rather than immersing ourselves in whatever is happening in the moment. We are so obsessed that any departure from the conventional notions and mental cliches society has adopted and adapted is seen as heresy, it is seen as stupidity, it is seen as a crime.
Yet, only through our maladjustment to these notions and cliches, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, can we have an authentic awareness of what is. On Rosh HaShanah, this is what Judaism is providing for us, truthfully it provides us with this opportunity every day, and we have to be open to what this authentic awareness is for us, for everyone. There is a universal authentic awareness and a unique authentic awareness that comes to all people on these days. It is necessary, however, for us to let go of our conventional notions, our historic ho-hum about Rosh HaShanah and have a new experience. For most people, this has not happened because they are waiting for the Rabbi, the Cantor, the Choir, the prayers, to awaken them, to show them this awareness in a rational manner. It can’t happen and people are bewildered as to why they go and when will it happen-maybe next year. This is, I believe, one of the reasons so many people have chosen to become unaffiliated and disconnected from Judaism in particular and religion as a whole.
In recovery, we are painfully aware of what our so-called rational thinking did to our souls, our families, our friends, our communities. We are aware of the depths of depravity that our rational thinking took us to. We mourn the loss of our innocence and our joy that our pre-recovery days brought about. We are sorry for the loss of trust, belief, joy, kindness, innocence, etc, that those days brought upon so many others. We are, today, in rapt awe of the mystery of recovery, the mystery of prayer every day, and the mystery of repentance and forgiveness.
God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark