Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 109
“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)
This is the last day I will spend on this teaching of Rabbi Heschel’s. It has profoundly changed my being and my way of living. While I knew much of what Rabbi Heschel is saying, I didn’t really know it. This is the wonder of Rabbi Heschel for me, he gives us a doorway, a window, an insight into how religion can help us live better, how hearing God’s call, while challenging, is not impossible. Yet, he also calls religious people out for the ways they have cheapened, bastardized, diluted and distorted the wonder, beauty, awe, live giving and enhancing necessities religion/spirituality give us.
10) Don’t hate your brother in your heart, take no vengeance against the children of your people. What a strange statement at first blush and it tells us much about sibling rivalry. Since Cain and Abel brothers have hated one another in their hearts which I understand as a basic hatred that my brother/sister are going to get more than me, be better liked than me, etc. This competition and comparison that has been going on forever is destructive to family life, it is destructive to communal life and it is destructive for our inner life. Our need to be #1, our need to be ‘the best’, causes a rivalry that the Bible calls hatred! We are told not to hate our brothers in our heart precisely because we were, we do, we will if/when we think we are not getting ‘our fair share’ of attention, love, money, etc from our parents, from our extended family. “My son, the Doctor” is something that Jewish Comedians made/make jokes about, yet it comes from a very real pain of anything less didn’t measure up. “Why can’t you be more like your brother” was/is a popular refrain as well. This commandment calls us to see one another for who we are, accept each other for our strengths and weaknesses, and work together to make family, community and one another one grain of sand better each day.
The second phrase reminds me of when this started, back with Noah. When he cursed Canaan for his getting drunk and Ham’s uncovering/making fun of him, this began the vengeance against the children of your people. It continued with Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, on to Esau’s rage against Jacob. It has continued to this day; the Arabs and Jews are cousins, we share the same father, Abraham and his sons are the different branches of his family-Jews and Arabs. Isn’t it time for us to put down our swords, stop being vengeful and stop hating our brothers/cousins in our hearts. I believe once we see each other as kin under the skin, acknowledge our shared lineage and accept one another as worthy human beings, we will find a solution to the current conflict-that was stoked by the British to keep control of Palestine for themselves!
The last commandment is: “You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself, I am God”. The addition of “I am God” gives us an idea of how important a demand this is. While this is used in other verses of the Holiness Code, I mention it here to emphasize how important love between one another is to God. We are not told to love our siblings, to love our parents, only to love God and our neighbor! I believe the call here is to remember that each and every neighbor is a representative of God, reminds us of God’s presence, is a partner with us in our endeavors as we are in theirs, etc. We are also being told to love ourselves, that living these earlier demands, living the 10 Sayings, will bring us to love ourselves as we love our neighbors, love our selves as God loves us, and then we will create space for love, kindness, rebuke, charity, kindness, justice, mercy, truth. This is the goal of these demands, not to serve some power hungry human being, not to serve some false idol, but to create a world that honors and relishes God as our neighbor, that honors and loves the Divine Image of one another so we can each be better at being human.
In recovery, as in my living these past 35+ years, this is what we strive to fulfill; a world of love, justice, mercy, kindness, truth. It is a world that honors the divine image of another and see’s our own reflected in the eyes of one another. We welcome the stranger in recovery, we learn from one another, we truly practice love for our neighbor-one of the phrases we use in recovery: “Let us love you until you can love yourself” is our way of fulfilling the ultimate demand of the holiness code. It is our way to acknowledge the importance of every human being and the spiritual awakening that results from opening our hearts, our arms, our minds to care for “the alcoholic who still suffers”.
I have more love for my neighbors than I might show, I have no vengeance for my people, which is God’s people, I have no hatred for my siblings only love. I have seen how much I have fulfilled these demands of God, I have witnessed how many people fulfill these demands all the time, every day. I am aware of when I have fallen short and am deeply remorseful and apologize to the people I have harmed by not loving them, I also know that not loving another human being is a sign that I am not loving my self also. I commit to loving you and me more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark