Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 83

“The omnipotence of God is not always perceptible, but the omnipotence of the Bible is the great miracle of history. Like God, it is often misused and distorted by unclean minds, yet its capacity to withstand the most vicious attacks is boundless. (God in Search of Man pg.241)

Living into Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above gives us the opportunity to examine ourselves and those around us for our “unclean minds”. The Bible is the revelation of an encounter between God and humans. It is a guide and a roadmap for spiritual growth. As I immerse myself in it more each day and year, as I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, the wisdom thoughts and teaching of our ancestors, we can all realize that our souls are supposed to be the arbiter of our minds and emotions rather than our minds be our arbiter!

Study of and immersion in the thoughts and wisdom of the Bible are two of the best ways to ‘wash’ our “unclean minds”. We are, and have always been, subjected to an onslaught of ‘dirty’ thoughts, an onslaught of resentments, a war with one another over competition and comparison, a fierce battle for power and prestige. We seek to find an enemy and make ‘them’ the cause of everything that is wrong with our lives, with our country, with our world. We stereotype groups of people in order to hide from our selves, hide from our own flaws, try and keep secret our “unclean minds”. Yet, through it all, the Bible continues to have power, the Bible keeps calling to our souls and to our “better angels”, it keeps giving us the hope and the power to truly be free of our “unclean minds”. While it is true that some people, maybe a lot of people, use the Bible as a cudgel, they distort it, take it out of context, wrap themselves in their interpretation of it, Rabbi Heschel’s words above come to remind us that the Bible has withstood these “vicious attacks” in the past, as it does now and will in the future.

The challenge of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is for us to end our “vicious attacks” on the Bible, for us to stop our misuse and distortion of the Bible to satisfy our “unclean minds”. We can only do this by experiencing the Bible in our inner lives, by opening our souls up to the teachings, the guidance and the spirit of the Bible. It is, after all, a compendium of spiritual wisdom and spiritual principles. We, the People, have to wrestle with our ‘lower angels’ and our “unclean minds”, we need to restore our souls to their proper place in our living-as the arbiter of our minds, as the power of our bodies, as the controller of our emotions. This is very difficult, it is counter-intuitive, it is a maladjustment to “conventional notions and mental cliches”. While we may never have totally clean minds, we can ‘wash’ them each day and night, we can continue to monitor our thoughts and actions and ask ourselves “is this in line with the teachings of the Bible?” When we realize we are a “contemporary of God” as Rabbi Heschel teaches us, we can catapult ourselves to the spiritual level we are meant to live in. Not the level of pettiness and pride, not the level of enmity and hatred, not the level of making someone else bad so I can feel good, rather living into the wisdom of Ben Zoma, “who is rich, one who rejoices in what one has”. This is the plane of existence where we want what we have rather than continuing to seek more and more to ‘be happy’. When we want what we have, we are not settling, we are rejoicing in what is in the moment, we are present in our lives, and we no longer have to make excuses, blames, start wars, be envious, be miserable, seek certainty, treat another(s) poorly to feel better about ourselves. We already feel good about ourselves by rejoicing in what we have.

The Bible is our “Big Book” of recovery from the human condition of “unclean minds” according to Harriet Rossetto. When we immerse ourselves in it, when we use it to look at our daily actions, when we heed the words of the prophets and the psalmist, the wisdom we glean from each chapter, we are moving away from our “unclean minds” and towards the dream/promise of the Bible, “nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall men learn war anymore”(Isaiah 2:4). We, the People, have the opportunity to imbibe Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance and use it to look within our inner life and see how we have allowed our “unclean minds” deceive us, how we have been seduced by the “unclean minds” of the charlatans and idolators who claim to ‘know’ the Bible. We are, once again, in a world where “unclean minds” are launching “vicious attacks” against the Bible, against humanity, against the dignity of anyone not ‘with’ them, against the inherent value of humans they want to conquer, destroy, eliminate. We witnessed this in WWII, we witnessed this throughout history. Now is our opportunity to stand up for and with the Bible to defeat these “vicious attacks” and purge the “unclean minds” from power.

While recovery is a spiritual discipline, it doesn’t promote one faith over another, it doesn’t require people to ‘believe’, and it doesn’t ‘define’ God. And it is a path of spiritual principles, a path that has grown out of the teachings and wisdom of the Bible. It is a path that acknowledges our “unclean minds” got us here, it is a path that has us look at the “vicious attacks” we have led and participated in against decency, truth, love, kindness, compassion, mercy, justice, etc. It is a path that has us do our own inventory of our “unclean minds”, root out our resentments and our self-deceptions. It is a path that has us constantly be on-guard for the subtle ways our minds retreat back into unclean thoughts and the ways  we drift into unclean actions. It is hard, we are not perfect nor are we expected to be according to recovery and the Bible. Yet, we can and must seek spiritual progress away from our “unclean minds” and its power so we can end our “vicious attacks” on truth, on love, on one another.

Happy New Year, stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark