Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 162
“There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God. The fear lest we hurt a poor man must be as deep as the fear of God, for He that oppresses the poor blasphemes his maker, but he who is gracious unto the needy honors Him (Proverbs 14:31).”(God in Search of Man pg.375)
Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above we have to ask ourselves how we are oppressing ourselves. As Passover is 3 nights away and we are all supposed to “see our self as if we too had been taken out of Egypt”, I believe we can apply Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom to the way we treat ourselves. How often have we berated ourselves for our errors in actions, in judgements, in our economic status? How often have we ‘bought into’ the way society sees us and feel bad because we are “not more like”__(fill in the blank). How often do we compare, compete and make ourselves feel bad for not being ‘where we think we should be’ or ‘where we thought we would be’?
None of these ways of speaking to ourselves honors God, according to the teaching of Proverbs above. Yet, we continue to do this, we continue to “blaspheme our maker”. There is a famous story in the Talmud about an ugly man who is berated by a famous Rabbi and the ugly man tells the Rabbi to complain to his Maker about the reason for his ugly exterior. The Rabbi immediately sees the errors of his way. If someone else is not to denigrate us then, all the more so, should we stop denigrating ourselves!
We live in a world of comparisons and competitions, yet we learn in the Bible that all of us are “created in the image of the divine”. We also learn in the Bible that each of us have different ‘jobs’ to do in this world as partners with God. Extrapolating these teachings we are all different, unique, needed, precious and we are all similar in these traits. We are not created to be “Stepford Wives”, we are created to be different and similar, urges for good and for evil, some to lead and others to follow, some to be clergy and some to be congregants and all to be engaged in learning, in making mistakes and doing T’Shuvah, being nonjudgmental about another person and, most importantly, non-judgmental about ourselves.
We have to leave the Egypt of self-deprecation, we have to leave the Egypt of self-deception, we have to leave the Egypt of comparisons and competitions, we have to leave the Egypt of our eye disease towards our selves. We are supposed to use this time of Passover and the 7 weeks till Shavuot, till the Pentecost, as time to cross the Red Sea of ‘beating ourselves up’, of not seeing the beauty and worth of our self, of oppressing ourselves and blaspheming God. All of these Egypts help us do the same to another human being, where leaving these Egypts will cause us to see the same beauty, need, uniqueness in another and we will no longer fear one another, we will work together. Leaving our own inner Egypts of self-denial, self-deprecation will end the eye disease and cancer of our souls that prejudice, hatred, fear bring. We do this one step at a time, one day at a time. We make a list of all the ways we have harmed ourselves, we look at our foibles and errors as stepping stones of learning, we make the needed adjustments in our actions and our thinking. We make a list of everything we have done and continue to do well. We remember to honor God, rather than blaspheme God, we make a commitment to honor our self rather than oppress our self.
Chuck C wrote a book called “A New Pair of Glasses” and this is what recovery gives us, a new way of seeing our lives, a new way of seeing life itself. With this new way of seeing, we are able to admit our errors and imbue our self with the knowledge, strength and vision to move forward as God designed us to. Doing our daily inventory helps us stay current, let go of our errors, learn from them and move forward. Each day we are sober based on our spiritual condition and without a better view of our self, without honoring our self, without being gracious to our self, we know we will stay stuck in everlasting ignorance.
This is difficult for me to do, I have to work on being gracious to myself each day, sometimes each hour! I am better than I was and there are times where I “blaspheme my maker” by oppressing myself. It then, of course, leaks out into my actions and I oppress someone else and I am sorry for those actions as well. I see myself clearer and clearer each day through Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and I am making the necessary changes so this Passover I can leave another Egypt. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark