Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 90
“At the ritual of the Day of Atonement the High Priest would cast lots upon two goats: one lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel The purpose of the ritual of the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel was to atone for the evil. The High Priest would lay both his hands upon the head of the goat “and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions, all their sins”” (God in Search of Man pg 371)
Tonight is the 50th Yarzeit of Rabbi Heschel’s death and I encourage everyone to participate in one of the webinars/zooms honoring him and his teachings. Rabbi Heschel saves my life and helps me live a life of meaning, purpose, and joy each day and has saved 1000’s of people lives through his wisdom, brilliance, kindness and empathy.
Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that the ritual of the Day of Atonement included was two-fold, “one lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel. I hear him calling us to remember what the rituals were for, to stop bastardizing the ritual of the goat for Azazel. We have to end our need to use people and things as ‘scapegoats’, we have to stop blaming and shaming another rather than confessing our sins, instead of taking responsibility for our “iniquities, transgressions, sins”.
Yet, we seem to have forgotten this, we seem to have made this ritual into a ‘ritual’, a performance art rather than a solemn act. Religious comes from the Latin meaning “reverence/obligation” and obligation comes from the word oblige which means “to bind”. Rabbi Heschel’s words are telling us to bind ourselves to these solemn actions that uplift our spirits, that help us discern “evil’s intrusion into the sphere of the good and holy”. When we participate in the ritual of the Day of Atonement without binding ourselves to the meaning, to the solemn actions of the day; when we go and recite a formulaic confession, when we ask people to forgive us through the ritualistic emptiness of “please forgive me for anything I may have done to harm you…” we are not bound by the ritual, we are not taking responsibility for our transgressions, iniquities, sins, we are filling a deeply meaningful ritual with performance art, with mendacity, with self-deception. This is how religion has become “irrelevant, dull, oppressive and insipid” as Rabbi Heschel reminds us on page 3 of God in Search of Man.
We, the people, are the perpetrators of the irrelevance, dullness, oppressiveness and insipidness that has come to characterize religious life today! We have forgotten how to discern “evil’s intrusion into the sphere of the good and the holy” because we are the people who are infusing evil into these spheres! We have infused our rituals with blandness rather than obligation, we have turned our Houses of Worship into shrines to history, we have bound ourselves to irrelevance rather than binding ourselves to the rituals that give life meaning, purpose, passion, truth and service. We have forgotten to look at our sins, our transgressions, our iniquities and make atonement for ourselves, we erroneously believe the ritual of confession will be enough, the majority of people go to Temple on the Day of Atonement out of superstition, because this is what Jews do, to be seen, etc. Sitting in the pews is not for our entertainment, it is not to complain about the Rabbi’s sermon being too long or boring, it is to make atonement for the wrongs we have perpetrated on those closest to us, those farthest from us, everyone in-between, and God. It is “to bind” us to living differently in the coming year, it is to engage in an inner transformation from blame, shame, irresponsibility to a reverence, truthfulness, kindness and being responsible for our actions, both good and evil. It is to mature our inner life more each day so we can more easily discern “evil’s intrusion into the sphere of the good and the holy.”
This is the power of T’Shuvah, which in the life of a person in recovery, would be steps 4-10. In T’Shuvah, as in recovery, we search the darkest corners of our inner life, we search out the lies we have been telling ourselves and we confess them-not on the head of a goat anymore, rather to another person, aka Spiritual Guide/Sponsor, and make a plan to repair the damage we have wrought. We are engaging in a ritual that dates back to Biblical times, we are then obligated to go to those we have harmed, make restitution (financially and/or spiritually), seek the forgiveness of those we have harmed through confession and having a plan to not do the same actions again. While we and they know we will “miss the mark” again, it will not be malicious and purposeful. Then we can ask God for forgiveness and complete the ritual of T’Shuvah by binding ourselves to what is good, what is right and what is our unique service to God. We accomplish this by first forgiving our selves completely and being responsible for our daily living through a 10th step in the program of AA and by doing T’Shuvah each and every day. Then, on the Day of Atonement, we are engaged in the ritual and know we are clean and have been forgiven by God and people.
I have been practicing T’Shuvah for the last 36 years and each year I find more from my past that I need to make T’Shuvah for, things that did not occur to me before. I know my inner life is maturing because I am able to see things that I have never seen before from my past and my present. Tonight, I will say a prayer of gratitude for Rabbi Heschel, his life has made mine so much better, so much worthwhile and so much more connected. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark