Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 223

“Religion is not made for extraordinary occasions, such as birth, marriage, and death. Religion is trying to teach us that no act is trite, every moment is an extraordinary occasion.”(God in Search of Man pg.384)

Taking Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above to heart, we find ourselves in a conundrum, we have to make a choice each day, each moment, how are we going to meet life. We decide if we are going to “live life on life’s terms”, as we say in recovery, or are we going to keep trying to bend life to our making/desires. This is an internal question that we answer with our actions. It is a choice, question that most people are not even aware they have to answer. “Life on life’s terms” to many people means bending life to our way of reasoning, our desires, our belief in what is ‘right’. It is a narcissistic path and it seems normal to most of society. Radical amazement, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, is the maladjustment to conventional notions and cliches and is a “prerequisite for an authentic understanding of what is”. Yet, so many people resist this way of being, so many of us want what we want when we want it, so many of us are willing to be deceived, deceive another(s), and engage in self-deception in order to be willfully blind to the truth, the necessity of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above.

With the arraignment of Donald Trump today, we have an opportunity to live into the teaching above; the Bible teaches us that there is one law for the stranger and the citizen alike, it teaches us to not show favor to the rich nor the poor in justice, it tells us our judges have to be people of good character and not susceptible to serving the rich, the famous. It tells us that righteous judgement is true justice. No matter what our political leanings are, no matter what our desires are, in judging this case, we have to wait for the facts to come out in court and we have to make our decisions based on the facts, not on our prejudices, not on our political leanings. Yet, we are hearing of the weaponization of government from the very people who are weaponizing it, Ron DeSantis. We should be watching in horror the ways Pence, DeSantis, Scott, et al are using their false faith, their power to harm the poor, the needy, the stranger, women, people not like them, and blaming everyone else-never taking responsibility and seeing each moment as an “extraordinary occasion” for themselves to have more power. Rather than being in radical amazement, they stay in their reasoning, they continue to try to bend life to their will rather than live in God’s will.

Today, as is every day, is an opportunity to end our triteness, end our compartmentalization of religion, spirituality, faith. It is an opportunity to have pathos for Trump, for the judge, for the country. It is an opportunity to celebrate our justice system and re-imagine it as it was meant to be according to the Bible; a search for truth. This is the goal for each of us; search for the truth of our existence, search for the truth of how we can better serve, how we can, as the Psalmist says, “repay the Lord for all His bounties to me?”. We are being called to live in the wonder and the joy, the pain and the angst that life is and respond to everything with the faith, the teachings that religion gifts us with. When we see each day as a gift and we get to use the gift to the best of our ability, when we are present in this moment, in every moment, and dedicate ourselves to making our corner of the world a little better each day, we become infused with each and every “extraordinary occasion”, we use each of these extraordinary experiences to fuel our next right action, we use these “extraordinary occasions” to strengthen our inner resolve to rise above pettiness and pride, falseness and willful blindness, prejudice and our need for power over another(s). We engage in a truthful look at our actions, repairing the ones that “miss the mark” and enhancing the ones that “hit the mark”. Religion calls us to this task, it is not a salve for our conscience, it is not to make us feel good, it is here to teach us to savor the moment, seize the moment, enhance the moment, to use the moment to engage in wonder, in spiritual growth.

It is difficult to see each moment as an “extraordinary occasion”! Yet, knowing death of a parent at a young age, I work hard to do so. As I write this, I am seeing all of the times during the day when I don’t treat moments as “extraordinary occasions” and I am remorseful for this. While I know that perfection is way out of reach for me, for anyone, I also realize how I indulge in the trite, how I indulge in ignoring some moments just because I want to ‘veg out’. I do this with everyone at times and today’s writing makes me recommit to the wisdom, the call, the demand of Rabbi Heschel’s words above. It is a subtle reminder of how gratitude leads to recognizing these “extraordinary occasions” and how easy it is to miss them, and I commit to living in and being in to gratitude at least one grain of sand more today and every day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark