Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 232
“Alone we have no capacity to liberate our soul from ulterior motives. This, however, is our hope: God will redeem where we fail; He will complete what we are trying to achieve. It is the grace of God that helps those who do everything that lies within their power to achieve that which is beyond their power.” (God in Search of Man pg. 407)
These words in bold capture this moment in time, I believe. As we enter the final week prior to Rosh Hashanah, we are 15 days away from Yom Kippur, I know it is essential for We the People to see the path to redemption, the wilderness we need and are able to go through and achieve a new sense of freedom, a freedom of spirit, a freedom from resentments, a freedom to be who we authentically are and a freedom to welcome the authenticity of another human being. The caveat, of course is: We the People have to “do everything that lies within (our) power to achieve that which is beyond (our) power.”
We are living in a moment in time, that has repeated itself over and over throughout the history of humankind; we keep regressing to autocracy, to seeking someone to take care of us, someone to make it right, to beat up our enemies, etc. We seek hatred and destruction rather than community and creativity, we are ensconced in resentment and blaming the ‘other’ rather than honoring the inherent dignity that the Bible tells us all people have. We the People have to demand from ourselves to “love the stranger” as the Bible tells us 36 times in the first 5 Books, we have to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly in the ways of God” as the prophet tells us, we have to guard against being “ a scoundrel within the bounds of Torah” as Moses Nachmonidies warns us. The paths that our country is on, in my opinion, is the path deeper into the wilderness, deeper into the loss of freedom, deeper into the path the Israelites took to become slaves to Pharaoh. It is up to We the People to seek the redemption necessary so we are able to, once again, cross the Red Sea and move towards Sinai, accept the 10 sayings and live as free people, honoring the freedom of another, serving something greater than our self-centered desires, jettisoning the practice of following our hearts and eyes whoring after them. We the People can do this, not completely, not once and for all, and we can move forward step by step, little by little and, on Yom Kippur accept the “grace of God” to be clean and free.
How do we do this? It ain’t easy! Yet, it is simple. We the People are being asked, commanded, pleaded with by the spiritual forces most prevalent in the world right now to tell ourselves the truth about our actions, our desires, our passion and purpose. It is called doing TShuvah, an inventory of what we have done well and what we haven’t. This process begins with giving up our claims that we are innocent, we aren’t in every circumstance, it continues with letting go of the lies of society that we are supposed to be perfect-only the Ineffable One is and my wife, Harriet Rossetto, is not so sure this is true:)! Upon doing these first two actions; knowing they will seek to enter our thinking because, after all, we are not perfect; we begin our review of our ways of being over the past year(s). Looking backwards is difficult because, as we know, hindsight can be 20/20, and we see where we actually harmed ourselves and another human being, where we were oblivious to what was going on within us and around us, and what we need to repair within ourselves and with another human being. This is not to beat ourselves up because we know better now, it is an acknowledgment that we did the best we could in the moment given everything that was happening within us and outside of us at that moment, in that experience; unless we planned to do evil and were excited to get over and be king of the mountain! This is not to whitewash what we have done, it is to put it into it’s proper context, to not get into shaming and blaming ourselves nor another, unless it is warranted as a “rebuke, rebuke your neighbor and don’t bear guilt because of her/him”. We the People are also commanded to see the GOOD we have done, relish in our goodness and be grateful for finding places and people to live in community with. We the People are called to see how we have lived spiritually, covenantally, and freely in the spirit of the universe and from our souls rather than our egos! Doing this list is crucial to our own redemption, crucial to doing “everything that lies within our power to achieve that which is beyond our power”.
This is my 38th year of being on this journey through the wilderness of Sin, to being imbued with the power of the experience at Sinai, and the journey to freedom and my proper place. It is a trip to see how far I have come, to rejoice in the good I have done and, while acknowledging my errors, not focus on the shit anymore. After speaking with a dear friend, my writing may be seen as my beating myself up for old errors, and if this is how it came across, I am sorry. In my desire to be in the both/and I acknowledge my imperfections and I am not sorry for them, I rejoice in them because they make me who I am and I think I am pretty cool, good, passionate, and purposeful. My sharing in this blog is inspired by Rabbi Heschel’s words because he shows me where I am not living up to the call of the Ineffable One and I will never “GET THERE”. Redemption is a forgone conclusion, as I understand living Jewishly. When I am kind, just, loving, truthful, forgiving, non-resentful, merciful, compassionate, friendly, welcoming of the stranger and the friend alike, I am living my redemption and living in these ways is the path out of the wilderness to the edge of the promised land, it is the repayment of the debt I owe to God, to the universe, to the myriad of people who have helped me grow into being authentically me. We are all redeemable, no one is beyond redemption to live into this truth and to do whatever is in our power in this moment , so we can “achieve that which is beyond our power”-redemption, community, belonging. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark