Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 7
“It is therefore of vital importance for religious people to voice and appreciate dissent. And dissent implies self-examination, critique, discontent.” (Essential Writings pg. 106)
Rabbi Heschel’s daughter, Dr. Susannah Heschel, in her compiling different writings, most of which had been published by her father earlier, has given us some unpublished ones, “fragments” as she describes them in the acknowledgements in the beginning of this volume. Being part of the Orbis Books “Modern Spiritual Masters Series”, this except from an unpublished manuscript gives us another insight into Rabbi Heschel’s spiritual beliefs, his spiritual foundation, his path of living spiritually, and spiritual, moral, as well as actions we need to adopt for ourselves to live one grain of sand better each day!
Of course, Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is counter-intuitive to the way most religious people think and act! Today, as has been true in the past, most religious people, especially religious leaders, want everyone to go along with their way of seeing religion, their way of ‘doing God’s will’, everyone following their lead and no arguments. Most religious as well as political leaders want a ‘groupthink’ that empowers them to dictate what the next right action is, what ‘god’ wants of the people who follow them, etc. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is telling us it is: “of vital importance for religious people to voice and appreciate dissent.” Dissent comes from the Latin meaning “differ in sentiment”, so Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that it is vital for us to differ if we want to be known as religious people, it is vital for us to voice our dissents with our religious leaders, with our fellow ‘parishioners’, with our students and teachers, with our political leaders, with everyone we are in contact with-otherwise we risk falling into to “peril of stagnation”, buying into tired old “cliches” and allowing a beautiful, meaningful relationship with God, with “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”, with one another, with our very selves shrivel and die on the vine of boredom, taking something vibrant and allowing it to “easily turn foul”. Without this vital action of dissent, we lose the “life” of living.
We are in a battle for the soul of democracy, we are in a battle for the soul of religious living, we are in a battle for our own individual souls. This battle, like anti-semitism and racism, is being fought on two fronts, the far right and the far left, both poles are fighting against dissent towards them while they are voicing dissent towards anyone ‘not like them’. The dissent being voiced is not within these movements, not within these religions, within these ruling parties of government; the dissent is from ‘the other side’ and those of us who see the middle, who understand the need for compromise, for decency, for dissent within our own ranks, we are being shunted to the side, we are being called ‘too old’ to serve, etc. Because we are not as ‘showy’ as a Donald Trump or a Robert Kennedy Jr., because we are not trying to wield power as a meat cleaver like Matt Gaetz, we are seen as old, tired, while the charlatans, the Kardashian-like people, are seen as hip, slick, cool and worthy of being listened to.
Recovery is one of the battlegrounds for these battles, we are recovering our voices, we are recovering our foundational grounding in God, as we understand God, we are recovering our ability to live life based on principles, not personalities, we are “circumcising the foreskin of our heart” so we can let the light in, we are welcoming the cracks in our armor, the breaks of our heart so we can once again feel human, be alive, hear the dissent of those who loves us and appreciate the wisdom of their dissent, the care of their advice. In recovery, we know the battle for our souls that has been waged and lost in prior years, we are acutely aware of how we have to stay grounded and in the middle so we can hear all sides, we can voice and accept dissent, we can make decisions that honor our knowing, our intuitive mind and not get stuck in the morass of someone else’s rationalizations and lies.
I have voiced dissent for most of my life and most of the time it was against what is/was wrong, what was/is unjust, immoral, etc. Of course, there was that little period of 20 + years when I could not hear anyone else’s dissent towards me and my actions:)! In my recovery, I have voiced my dissent loudly, often, and powerfully-some say too loudly, too often and too powerfully and they may be right. I know that I can not stand idly by injustice, racism, unkindness, the stranger, the poor and the needy when they appear before me. I know my dissent got me in trouble at times because I was not ‘politically correct’ in my voicing of it and, at least once, I was inappropriate in both the manner and timing of it. Yet, I believe in dissent, I will not stop voicing it nor hearing it towards me! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark