Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 230

“It is not by the rare act of greatness that character is determined, but by everyday actions, by a constant effort to rend our callousness. It is constancy that sanctifies. Judaism is an attempt to place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance, to relate all scattered actions to the One. Through the constant rhythm of prayers, disciplines, reminders, joys, man is taught not to forfeit his grandeur.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

In Rabbi Heschel’s interview with Carl Stern, found in the appendix to Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, he teaches: “The role of learning is decisive. First of all, the supreme value ascribed to learning and learning being a source of inspiration, learning being the greatest adventure, learning being a source of joy, and, in fact, learning for the purpose of discovering, of the importance of self-discipline; the realization, namely, that a life without discipline was not worth living.” This teaching reminds we are never finished, we always have something to learn, we must continue to “stand firm” in the “flow” of learning and discipline. We have to continue to discover new, different, truths about ourselves and life in general.

We hear the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ often in describing people’s orientation to life. Neither one precludes the truth and wisdom of Rabbi Heschel about learning and discipline. In fact, ‘conserve’ comes from the Latin meaning “to keep together” and ‘liberal’ comes from the Latin meaning “free”. “Standing firm” in the “flow” of keeping together the wisdom and experiences of our ancestors while continuing to learn, grow, and discover new ideas and new applications of what has already been learned is of supreme importance “not to forfeit” our “grandeur”. Even though the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ are thrown out as negative epithets, they actually go together quite nicely and are necessary to our learning, in my opinion. In fact, as I experience Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, he was able to integrate both into his writing and his living.

Without being in “the constant rhythm” of a daily discipline of learning, of discovering, we become, as Rabbi Heschel also says in his interview with Carl Stern, “I would say there is nothing stale under the sun except human beings, who become stale.” When we use labels to define ourselves and/or another human being or group of human beings, we become stale, we leave our discipline of learning, we leave a basic truth of all spiritual and religious disciplines; we always have to be open to new discoveries, new truths of what our disciplines have for us. When we stay stuck in the conventional wisdom rather than being in wonder and radical amazement, we stop our learning, we stop our ability to discover, we cease to grow, and we become stale which leads us to fall into authoritarianism, stuck in old ways that do not honor our spiritual thirst for learning and growing, that cause, what Maimonidies calls, soul sickness. In our soul sickness we turn truth upside down, we see evil as good, believing we are always correct, we stop growing our inner life and our discipline turns into a weapon against anyone who doesn’t “do things our way”.

Living into Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above pushes us to stop our staleness, stop our misuse of terms, end our need to “forfeit the grandeur” that accompanies being a person who “stands firm” in the “flow” of learning, in the “flow” of our spiritual and/or religious disciplines. The hubris to believe that we, finite humans, can know everything that the Infinite, the Ineffable, calls to us each day is unbelievable as we learn from Rabbi Heschel. In Genesis Rabbah, a commentary on the book of Genesis, we learn “every day, God makes new law in the Heavenly Court”! Since God, the Ineffable One, learns each day, what is stopping us from emulating this attribute of God? We have stopped “keeping together” the goal of our founding fathers, the goal of the Bible, which is to keep learning, adjusting our ways as more is revealed to us through our immersion in our prayers and disciplines.

In recovery, we know that “old ideas availed us nothing”. We are so aware of our need to continue to read the Big Book of AA so we can learn and relearn the wisdom of our founders, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, the wisdom of the people who’s stories are found within. We are acutely aware of our need to continue to learn and grow, to “stand firm” in the “flow” of our journey of recovery, accepting that we are never “there”, that “we trudge the road to happy destiny”. We know we cannot do this alone, we cannot do this without a discipline of learning, of prayer, of meditation. Just as Jews keep reading the Torah each year, make new laws because of new inspirations from our learning, those of us in recovery are constantly seeking to learn how to “keep together” and grow the “free” spirits we have become. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark