Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 5
“Inherent to all traditional religion is the peril of stagnation. What becomes settled and established may easily turn foul. Insight is replaced by cliches, elasticity by obstinacy, spontaneity by habit. Acts of dissent prove to be acts of renewal.” ( Essential Writings pg.106)
The more I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words, wisdom and brilliance both above and for these past 36+ years, the more amazed and bewildered I am. I am amazed at Rabbi Heschel’s vision and understanding of what it means to truly be human, how we can grow into our own unique humanity, and what the stumbling blocks to being “the souls we were created to be” are! We are witnesses to another dark time in the history and we are witnessing the stagnation, the cliches, the habits that religion, politics, and humanity have fallen into. Rather than stay fresh and dynamic, the need to be right, the need for certainty keeps us stuck in old ways, victims of previous thoughts, ideas, successes. Whether it is the deception of MAGA, the self-deception of people all along the religious, political, social, economic spheres, we arrive at the same place-stagnation; ‘the good old days’, and other such mendacious ideas.
The last sentence above is a radical one, it is one that people in power and those who believe the lies of those in power or are great at oratory fear the most. This has been true throughout history and Jews have been discriminated against because of our refusal to accept the status quo, to do things as we always have done, to accept cliches, habits, stagnation in our service to God, to one another, to the stranger in our midst. While some Jews today want to go back in time, Judaism as a way of life is dynamic and marches forward, learning new ways to understand, to live into what is and how to navigate the world as our tradition teaches us: keeping the lights of our souls bright, seeking the truth of the moment and the eternal truth, and living ARTfully-authentically, responsibly, and truthfully.
Rabbi Heschel’s involvement in the movements of the 1960’s that brought about change in the Catholic Church, change in the rights of Black people, change in the ways we treated and saw both our soldiers who were sent to Vietnam as well as the Vietnam people, is the prooftext that “acts of dissent prove to be acts of renewal.” Rabbi Heschel inspires generations of Christian and Catholic ministers, priests, thinkers; he inspires generations of Jewish thinkers, teachers, Rabbis, and Jews in the Pews; he inspires us in our acts of dissent be they in Israel, in the United States, anywhere in the world with his words and his deeds.
How are we participating in “acts of dissent” when we so many people still want to vote for Donald J Trump-no matter how much information is available that testifies to his unworthiness? How are we participating in “acts of dissent” when we continue to allow our Congress, our government be held hostage by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, et al? How are we participating in “acts of dissent” when we make it impossible for people seeking asylum receive it, when people who are fleeing totalitarian governments want to live in freedom like the Jews in the 1930’s and 40’s did and they are rebuffed, locked up and hated as was done to the Jews fleeing Nazi Germany? We are not! It is imperative that we begin again to initiate, participate and infiltrate our society, our daily living with “acts of dissent that prove to be acts of renewal” because we have become stuck in political gridlock, religious behaviorism, and societal decay.
Recovery is constantly fresh, each day we say NO to living as we have in the past, NO to the addictive thinking and actions that kept us stagnant, kept us locked in habits and slaves to old and outmoded cliches. In recovery, we “continue to seek God’s will for us” and we admit that knowing God’s will in this moment is not the final say, we have to be open to what is, living in today and always putting on “a new pair of glasses” as Chuck C reminds us.
I have said NO to many things and ways of being in my life-sometimes my “acts of dissent” were not renewals they were actions of going backwards, staying stagnant, enslaving myself to old habits. When I was young and participated in “acts of dissent”, my peers, my family discouraged me and I settled into the cliches and habits Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. I have, for the most part, in my recovery, initiated and participated in “acts of dissent” that “prove to be acts of renewal”. I stay fresh and open to this moment, I am open to seeing my own stagnations and prisons of habit. I am grateful for the myriad of people who join in my “acts of dissent” and “acts of renewal. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark