Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 103
“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)
What are the “rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer”? I believe the top 2 are our spirit’s craving to be free, to be human, and to respond to the God’s call/demand to “do justly, love mercy and walk in the ways of God”. Freedom is not to be confused with liberty, doing what we want when we feel like it; freedom is our ability to make free-will moral choices, as I understand the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Twerski, z”l, Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, etc. It is the fundamental craving and cry of our spirits as we hear from the Israelites, the slaves who were in Egypt. When the Israelites groan upon a new Pharaoh making their slave labors even harsher, this is the cry of their spirits yearning to be free. They are unable to make free-will moral choices because they were so burdened by their tasks, beaten so often by their taskmasters, their spirits were so broken they became hopeless. This was the point where they almost gave in totally to their despair and the moment God sent Moses to redeem them. Religion/spirituality give us pathways to being and staying free. Religion lays out the blueprint for freedom in the 10 Sayings/commandments, which’s the Kotzker Rebbe teaches we have to make and take personally. Here is my way of making them personal and satisfying the cravings of my soul. 1)accepting that God is God and we are not; 2) not making false images of God and/or my self, living my authentic life; 3) not taking my name nor God’s name in vain; 4) taking time to connect with my soul each day; 5) honoring the wisdom of my ancestors and my inner wisdom; 6) not murdering my soul nor any other soul; 7) not prostituting my self, not whoring after ‘other gods’, not taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of another human being; 8) not stealing from my self, not stealing from another; 9) not lying about my self, not lying to my self, not lying about another self, accepting me and you for who we truly are; 10) Wanting the life I have, the life I am created to live, adding to my corner of the world in my own unique way, no longer comparing my self to another self, being “happy with my portion”.
These paths come from religion and spiritual disciplines that we get to live each and every day-if we so choose. These paths will always satisfy the “cravings of the spirit” and respond to “the eternal voice of God” that we wrestle with each and every day. None of us will be perfect in them, our heroes in the Bible were less than perfect as we see from the stories. Yet each of them, in their own way, did their best to satisfy the “cravings of the spirit” more often than the cravings of their ego, the call of their lower/negative/selfish self. Again, these pathways will not eliminate the cravings of our selfish, egotistical selves, they will give us the strength, the discipline, the habit of rising above them. These pathways lead us to the freedom of knowing our deepest truths, speaking of them when we are alone and with another human being(s), and living them a little more each day.
Without religion/spirituality being lived out according to our texts rather than through the lies and mendacity of some clergy and practitioners, we will always fall back into the negativity/evil that disguises itself as good. We will buy into the false stories of “those people are out to get us”, “they are trying to take our wives, children, money, etc”, “they are heathens, they don’t have the same rights as we have”, and other such bs that is spread of some ‘god-fearing’ people. Doing justly is a demand of God that is universal, not just for ‘our people’, it is a demand that “there is one law for the stranger and citizen alike” as the Bible teaches us. Doing justly means each case has to be decided on its own merits and, as we learn in Deuteronomy, we are called to mete out charitable justice, righteous justice, not strict letter of the law justice, rather justice that satisfies the combination of the letter and the spirit of the law.
In recovery, we use the 12-Steps to find “freedom from the bondage of self” and to “act our way into right thinking”. We seek freedom from the first moment we surrender to the truth that we need to recover, we continue to seek more freedom as we “peel the layers of the onion” that has been starving our spirits. We recognize that we are not the end-all/be-all and there is a “power greater than ourselves” which “we came to believe could restore us to sanity”. In recovery, we readily admit that we acted in insane ways prior to being awakened by God and/or God’s angels that are always around us.
I am not perfect in the living the 10 Sayings as I outlined them above. I get better each day, I make amends for the errors I make, I continue to lean into these pathways so I can respond to “the eternal voice of God” and satisfy “the cravings of the spirit”. I work hard each day to take one more step into a deeper freedom than I have experienced already and I know if I am not moving deeper into freedom than I am closer to being enslaved again by my own negative/evil impulses. My journey into freedom has taught me how to transform the negative/evil impulse energy to enhance my desire to do good. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark