Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 101
“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)
Humanity is in desperate need of immersing itself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, brilliance and teaching; not just quoting it, not just reading them, not just studying them rather to immerse ourselves in the wisdom above, the cautionary calling and the spiritual demand to be human. This means we have to be changed by these words, we have to be in dialogue with these ideas inside of us. To immerse ourselves in the wisdom above is to become more acquainted with, in dialogue with and adhere more to the call of our souls, meeting and engaging with our unique Divine Image so we can bring this to the world instead of the distortion of religion and spirituality “by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition” that seems to be employed and amplified by the charlatans, the idolators, the deceivers.
What are “the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence” facing us today? They are no different, I believe, than they were from the time of Adam and Eve: how to live into, lean into our humanity a little more each day; how to stop the blame game; the need to be right; the search for and taking of power for our sake instead of using our power for the sake of heaven; taking care of our fellow human beings rather than using their vulnerabilities against them; continuing the Exodus from Egypt for all people, all races, colors, creeds, religions; continuing to bring ourselves our of our internal slavery and the self-deceptions we live in like a warm blanket covering us because we are shivering we will be found to be imperfect; etc. There are more urgencies, I know, in fact each of us has our own personal urgencies and emergencies that we are afraid to speak of, afraid to face for fear we will be seen as weak and useless in the eyes of another(s) and in our own eyes as well. This is how much distortion and dilution has happened in our time and before, we are afraid to go to our clergy to seek spiritual guidance, spiritual progress, spiritual counseling, because we don’t want to “look bad”. We are afraid to ask our community for help for fear of being seen as ‘one of those people’ who are incapable, maybe lazy, ‘tsk, tsk, you poor unfortunate’, etc. We are so far away from the truth of religion and spirituality that we make it a crime to be poor, to ask for help, asylum, equality, etc!
We have to stop this way of being, it is imperative to recall the urgencies of the Bible, New Testament, Koran, every other text that is the foundation of the numerous spiritual disciplines. They are there not just as stories, not just as ‘history’, they are in our Holy texts to warn us, to educate us and to urge us to become aware of and respond to the “urgencies and perpetual emergencies” that life will always bring to us. We are told it is a command to do whatever it takes to “Ransom the Captive”, even sell our Holy Torah Scroll. Yet, we have come to worship the law and forget the spirit of our Torah, we have come to bow down to our Torah instead of imbuing the spirit and words of it. We have seen how ‘good christians’ are using the New Testament as a weapon against the very people Jesus called “his people”! We are witnesses to the bastardization of the Koran to make terrorism and killing innocent people an act of god! It is time for this to stop, it is time for us to engage in these urgencies as responders rather than exploiters.
We begin and do not end with our self. Until we open our minds and emotions up to hearing the words, the wisdom, the call and demand of our soul and of God, nothing will change. 70 years from now we will still be in awe of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and still stuck in the morass of our deceptions and the deceptions of another(s), of society. We have to come out of hiding from God, from one another, from our own self. As our souls become the voice we listen to and heed more often, we begin to find new and healthy responses to our “urgencies and perpetual emergencies of human existence”. We begin even to solve some of these urgencies and emergencies so they don’t have to re-occur. We are in desperate need of finding teachers and friends, study partners and intimate partners who are willing to fight us and we them to find truth and solution rather than mendacity and self-serving bandaids to our urgencies and emergencies. In fact, being in truth, living with one another as equals and being “my brother’s keeper” could be one of the urgencies and emergencies we face now as we did at the time of Cain and Abel!
I have learned, through recovery and my return to living an imperfect Jewish way of life, that I have to embrace the emergencies and urgencies I had run away from most of my prior life. I embrace the emergencies and urgencies of another, pretty well, I am responsive and responsible when it comes to helping another human being for the most part. I am, however, not always aware of the urgencies and emergencies of my own soul, I do sublimate these urgencies and emergencies at times to those of another and this always proves to be disastrous either sooner or later. I have learned also that some people dislike being responded to because it makes them feel inferior and/or they are in debt. I repay the debt I owe to my teachers, friends, family etc each day by giving away what I have rather than using it for my sake. More tomorrow, God Bless, Rabbi Mark