Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day74

“Man is what he thinks. Man dwells where his mind dwells. What is intellectually irrelevant is imprisoned in Temples and has no access to our minds. We repeat cliches; we remember platitudes.” (Essential Writings pg. 87)

I sit here amazed, awed, and saddened by Rabbi Heschel’s words above. HIs knowledge of the human condition is so broad and smart, so exacting and eviscerating at the same time. I am, as always, disturbed by his demands, his teachings, his truthfulness, his ability to go to the heart of the challenge before us, as he says, “to be human”! His words evoke Einstein’s quote: “the intuitive mind is a gift, the rational mind a servant, we have forgotten the gift and worship the servant.” Another Einstein quote also comes to mind: “great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Both Rabbi Heschel and Albert Einstein know the limitations of the mind in human beings as well as the way we have come to worship the mind since at least the time of the Greeks of antiquity. We have so identified with our minds, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words above and Einstein’s quotes, that we identify ourselves in a very narrow way, we have come to believe that our thinking defines us and we work hard to push away ‘alien thoughts’. While “alien thoughts’ can be and are, at times, dangerous, the ‘alien thoughts’ I am hearing Rabbi Heschel and Albert Einstein speak of are the thoughts for which our rational/logical thinking cannot handle. Rabbi Heschel is also speaking to us about our inability to have our minds opened and changed once we ‘settle’ on a place to put them. “Just put your mind to it” is a common refrain when someone says “I can’t do this”, It is not my place, my way”, etc. Rather than go beyond the limitations of our minds, the rut of the neural pathways that have galvanized our thinking around an idea, a concept, a person, anything, we stay stuck in the space our minds tell us to be in, we are committed to defend our thinking no matter what evidence is shown to change it. In the political world we accuse people of ‘flip-flopping’ when they change their position based on new information.

I am a little stuck in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above and the words of Einstein this morning because they give me wings, they validate my experience, and they demand a response from me/us. How narrow is our living? How narrow is our thinking when we limit ourselves to “the servant’s” demands rather than use “the servant” to enhance and carry out the ideas, the thoughts, the vision of our “intuitive mind”? How desperate is our way of living when we define ourself and another(s) by what they/we are thinking, how boring is it to never travel anywhere new because our mind is so comfortable in where it is dwelling now? Yet, humanity seems to have trouble going beyond the rational, the logical, and we witness the “violent opposition” to “great spirits” “from mediocre minds”. Rabbi Heschel was opposed and by much of the Jewish Intellectual world for much of his time at JTS as the stories go, he was vilified by people for his involvement in the Anti-Vietnam protests, for his civil rights work, because they thought he should just ‘stay in his place/stay in his lane”. Rev King and John Lewis come to mind regarding “violent opposition from mediocre minds” as well as Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney-the three young men killed in Mississippi because they were signing people up to vote. We witness it today with Bibi, with Trump, with Putin, with the far right and the far left, this violent opposition to new ideas, new ways of seeing things. Once they have become entrenched in an idea, ie “stolen election”, “Trump is the real president”, “Jews are oppressors”, “from the river to the sea”, “Hamas are freedom fighters”, etc-they hold on to their thinking and defend it with everything they have and nothing is going to change their minds nor change where there minds are comfortable dwelling.

We have to hear the demands of Rabbi Heschel, of Albert Einstein, of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., of the Prophets, of the Bible, and begin to respond to them with open minds and with open souls, hearts. We have to become more interested in seeking truth, going on a treasure hunt to find more of the picture, be in radical amazement and wonder rather than gibe in the mediocre minds of another and even of our selves. We are blessed with the capability to hear the call of our souls, to use our intuitive minds for good, for exploration, for apprehending the mystery of the universe, and we have to grow this capability, we have to engage with it, not repudiate it in the manner Einstein tells us we are doing.

The war in Israel is a war that needs to fought after Oct. 7th and it does not need to be fought the way Bibi and the Far Right coalition running the government are fighting it. They are stuck in their thinking and is causing great immorality in the West Bank and in Gaza. They are putting on lies and deceptions because that is the way their minds think, they lie about what the Torah teaches and they use God as weapon and justification, all the while knowing that God commands us to ‘treat the stranger well” and “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. God doesn’t issue these commands because this way of being comes naturally, it is exactly because God, the Torah, knows how “men think” that we have to be commanded to do the opposite. This is why it is imperative to join the Recovery Revolution. While most people associate recovery with drugs and alcohol, it actually began with the Torah, with the Bible and has continued to be promoted through different ‘holy’ texts since including the Big Book of AA! Bill Wilson’s stories, Einstein’s words, Rabbi Heschel’s teachings are all continuations and variations of the Bible’s call, God’s demand for us to be human and that means going beyond our thoughts and the narrow paths of our minds. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark