Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 56

“What is sin? The abuse of freedom. A failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge. The root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart, lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.” (Essential Writings pg 85)

“What is at stake in being alive” is a daunting question for most of us. Our “lack of understanding” is what causes most of the strife we are all experiencing in world events, communal events, and in our personal lives, I believe. Rabbi Heschel’s call to us is to delve deeper into what it means to be alive, to enhance our understanding of “being alive”, to end our willful blindness of and our indifference to “being alive. This is a concern of a spiritual nature and goes beyond religious differences, it is a call to activating our spirit in our everyday lives.

Rabbi Heschel teaches us elsewhere that “our destiny is to serve”, so “being alive” begins with our engagement in service to humanity, to God, to our authentic self. Yet, we witness and engage in service to our lower selves, to our false egos, to power for our own sake, and to selfish desires. Hamas, Putin’s Russia, Iran, and the other terrorists organizations, while wrapping themselves in either ‘godly’ or ‘patriotic’ garb are actually serving their own selfish desire for power, for “world domination” that denies “what is at stake in being alive”. The murdering of children, elderly, adults for the sake of one’s ego and power trip is an “abuse of freedom”, an example of “free will run riot”. Without the rest of us standing up and saying NO, terrorists will continue to strike fear in the hearts of humans, continue to make the world unsafe for anyone who is ‘not like them’, and continue the “callousness, hardness of heart” that we witness, that we are subject to, that is overwhelming our consciousness. While there are many legitimate differences with Netanyahu and the way some Israelis think and act towards the Palestinians, the terror, the evil of Oct. 7th changes all equations, requires that we not give into terrorists, that Hamas has to be banished from Gaza if there is any chance at a solution to dignity for both peoples.

In America, we see and hear Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Steve Bannon, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and the majority of the Republican Party exhibit a “lack of understanding of what is at stake in being alive” also. Their obsession with power over the individual rights of women, people of color, Jews, Muslims in their commitment to: making America a “Christian Nation”; to their “America First” insanity; to their belief in “white power/rule” is another grab for power for the sake of power only. They have convinced themselves that the “Prosperity Gospels” is the true word of Christ, that their unwelcoming of the stranger, their mistreatment of the poor and the needy, their need to control the reproductive health of women, their obsession with LGBTQ+, is in accordance with the New Testament and with the teachings of Christ and the prophets! These ‘good christian fellows’ have usurped the Biblical teaching of not taking bribes because bribes blind the eyes of the righteous, they have usurped justice, kindness, love, truth, with their lies, their bastardizing of what is just, their inability to be kind and loving towards anyone who is not like them. They are feeding their false egos, their lower selves while proclaiming their actions are for the sake of Heaven!

Business leaders are more interested in ‘the bottom line” than in serving the greater good, even in serving their customers and clients. “What’s in it for me” is the underlying theme that runs through every board decision in many companies, how do I ‘kill the competition” is a question heard in many C-Suites, maximizing profits for shareholders takes precedence over what is good for humanity. Money, power, prestige are the key ingredients to success in our business communities, no matter what the cost is to another human being, to humanity in general. We see this with Health Care providers who are so inundated with the ‘rules’ of both government and insurance companies, they are unable to provide the care they want to because of these constraints. Everyone is looking at ‘the bottom line’ in dollars and sense rather than in how to help another human being, rather than taking seriously their responsibility to be good stewards. They respond to the worries of their backers, their shareholders, while failing “to respond to God’s challenge”!

Jewish tradition believes that God is calling to us each day from the mountain top, in the gates of our cities, in the fields of our farms with the same question: “Ayecha, where are you”. Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is reminding us to “take the cotton out of our ears and put it in our mouths” as some people in recovery suggest to newcomers. The Recovery Revolution, like all spiritual disciplines, is a revolution against inauthenticity, against false egos, against giving into selfish desires and against indulging our lower selves uber alles. In recovery, we love one another until and even after a person can love themselves again. Love in the forms of acceptance, brotherly love, understanding, humility and service. Rather than see how we can use our recovery to ‘be in charge’, we use our recovery to be of service. Rather than use our recovery to dictate, we use our recovery to accept people where they are and help them to understand how much more they can be. Rather than see and point out our differences in a show of power, we use our recovery to join with and see our similarities and celebrate the uniqueness of each and every human being.

I still suffer, at times, from “a lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive”. I continue to read, learn from, study, and be informed by Rabbi Heschel, by spiritual sources, by my previous errors, by my successes and the successful living of people. One day at a time, I grow in my understanding, I respond to God’s challenge a little better, and I wake up energized and excited to learn. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark