Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 9
“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)
“Critique, discontent” are part of our daily life. We hear them on the news, we listen to then over coffee with friends, we participate in them in our meetings, we engage in them in our inner life. Yet, these are not the same as the “critique, discontent” Rabbi Heschel is speaking about above. While we hear both from the pulpits in our Churches, Temples, Mosques, we do not put them together with “self-examination”, we do not “voice and appreciate dissent” when it comes to our own actions, when we are speaking of the challenges that are “of vital importance” to “walking with God”.
The more I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, the more I realize society’s misuse of “dissent”, “critique, discontent”. We use these vitally important ways of being to tear down another human being, to reject the stranger, to overpower the poor and the needy, to serve our human masters, to puff up our chests in our ‘rightness’, to crash democracy. We use these ways of being to promote racism, to enhance our phobias regarding Muslims, Jews, people of color, progress, to impede our progress towards “a more perfect union”. These are not the paths that lead us to growth, these are not the ways of “self-examination”, these are not the roads that lead us “to love our neighbor as we love ourselves”, “to love God with all our heart, our soul, our everything”!
Yet, we continue to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to what we need to do, what is “of vital importance” as people of faith. We complain about the sermons of our clergy, we moan at the length of services, we opt out of engaging in human beings to find solutions to the challenges of today in order to relive the “splendors of the past” and live in the mendacity of believing in ‘the good old days’. We do not need to “make America great again”, we are in desperate need to make us better at being human right now. This is the call I hear from Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. This is the call we all need to hear from Mt. Sinai today and everyday. We are in the middle of the Holiday of Sukkot, reminding us of our action of “dissent” towards slavery, towards the depravity of following a Pharaoh, towards the “discontent” of being in narrow places-physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Only through self-examination can we achieve the “dissent” Rabbi Heschel is demanding of us, that God demands of us. Only through T’Shuvah, inventory, can we say NO to the selfishness, self-centeredness, obstinance that prevents us from growing into the “self we were created to be” as Thomas Merton writes. Only through acknowledging our foibles as well as our strengths, only by admitting our need for one another as well as what we bring to the table, only through taking the actions that validate our being a partner with the Creator, the Ineffable One, can we experience the “discontent” I understand Rabbi Heschel to be teaching us about. We have to live into the “discontent” with the status quo, we have to be willing to change our ways, to respond to the current situations with new and innovate ways of applying the wisdom of the ages and sages, to believe the words of the prophets: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely”(Hosea 14:4), “If you return to me, I will take you back”(Jeremiah 15:19). Rabbi Heschel is calling us to examine our selves, to take our inventories and be critical of our bad actions, to be “discontent” with the well-worn paths of our mendacity and self-deception.
In recovery, this is a daily routine that we never do routinely! We are constantly aware of the “vital importance… to voice and appreciate dissent”, to live into our “self-examination, critique, discontent”. We live the principles of decency, love, kindness, truth, justice, compassion in all of our affairs and we talk ourselves out of the selfishness, the meanness that we practiced before our recovering our moral compass and our spiritual path.
I am “discontent” with the ways of the world, with the chaos in Washington, with the bastardization of democracy and Judaism in Israel. I am “discontent” with the foibles and errors I see within myself from past years that I did not recognize before. I am “discontent” with the betrayals I have perpetrated and those perpetrated upon me. I am “discontent” with the lies I told myself and the lies people tell about me. I am glad to be “discontent” with the mendacity, deception of another(s) towards me and my self-deception in past years. I pray for truth, for awareness, for more “discontent” for me and for you! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark