Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 216
“Worship and living are not two separate realms. Unless living is a form of worship, our worship has no life. Religion is not a reservation, a tract of time reserved for solemn celebrations on festive days. The spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)
Rabbi Heschel’s teaching, “living is a form of worship” is a very profound one. Immersing oneself in his wisdom, we can see what entity is being worshipped by us and by another(s). Rather than spouting great religious phrases or quoting the Bible, either in words or by citations, we have to look at our actions and the actions of those around us to determine what our “worship” truly is. Far too many of us say one thing on the Sabbath and “festive days” and do another during the rest of the week, month, year. To say one is a follower of the Bible, of a religion because one performs mitzvot, the ‘proper’ deeds while being exclusive, cruel, denying the dignity of all human beings, comparing and competing with their friends and enemies to see who can have the most power is a complete bastardization of religion, a denial of God’s will and self-deception.
As Rabbi Heschel teaches throughout this book, his other books, and how he lived his life, if one is not moved inside, if the deeds and the actions don’t change the inner life to one of compassion, love, kindness, truth, justice, mercy, then they are empty actions. Unfortunately, many people take actions that are antithetical to the core religious beliefs they espouse and are change their inner lives to be harder, more entrenched in their ‘rightness’, less open to dialogue, unable to see the many faces and facets of the Bible, weaponize their religious beliefs to harm another, practice senseless hatred of their fellow citizens and strangers, etc. All of these ways are the ways the prophets pointed out to the powers that were prior to the destruction of the Temples, all of these ways are the ways Jesus railed against in his time, yet we continue to see people extol these evil paths as virtuous, as God’s will! What we are witnessing is actually idolatry, what we are witnessing is evil disguised as ‘good’, what we are witnessing is deception and mendacity in the name of power.
We are witnesses to some people taking part in religious celebrations, espousing false morality, attempting to make their will God’s will instead of making God’s will their will, selling a way of being that is in direct conflict with the Biblical values and actions they supposedly ‘worship’. When we see people vote to not pay the bills they and their predecessors billed yet complain about the people who are truly unable to pay their rent, pay for food and call them criminals, call them people who are unloved by God, we are witnesses to power plays, to mendacity and to inhumanity. If we are to judge people on the “content of their character”, as Rev Martin Luther King Jr, a dear friend of Rabbi Heschel’s, teaches, then these false prophets, these false ‘religious’ people need to be called out and judged by their actions; as our actions are the true testaments of our character, not our words.
When we live in ways that go against our “worship” we have to be real about it, we have to acknowledge our imperfections, we have to repair our thinking, understanding, we have to make our amends and we have to take actions that will bring us into more congruence with “worship”, we have to take actions that will change our inner life, improve our character, put our traits to use in “proper measure” as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz teaches. We are witnesses to “the spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation”, we are witnesses to the crimes committed in the name of the spirit, in the name of God, in the name of religion and it is time for us to stand up and shout from the roof tops: Mendacity, Mendacity. It is time for us to fight against the deceptions of these charlatans, it is time for us to hold our selves, one another, our institutions-religious and secular- to the higher standards of morality and being more human!
We have been watching “A small light” on Hulu, the story of Geip Mies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family. I am aghast and amazed once again how ‘good’ people could transform into inhuman people from fear, from blame, from self-deception and from buying into the deceptions of another(s). I also realize the importance of the teaching above because this transformation happens in stages, it happens because we don’t practice what we preach, we don’t heal ourselves, we live a ‘do as I say not as I do’ life. I am guilty of this, as is everyone. The difference my recovery has made is I am aware of these ‘missing the marks’, I make the necessary repairs quicker, my inner life grows and matures, I am in denial and self-deception for shorter periods of time and I do my amends. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark