Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 219

“What is decisive is not the climax we reach in rare moments, but how the achievements of rare moments affect the climate of the entire life. The goal of Jewish law is to be the grammar of living, dealing with all relations and functions of living. Its main theme is the person rather than an institution.”(God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Immersing ourselves in the words and thoughts of Rabbi Heschel brings us to a new meaning of how to live a “life compatible with being a partner of God”. One of the definitions of grammar is: “the basic elements of an area of knowledge or skill”. Using this definition, the second sentence above can give us a new understanding of Jewish law, a new way to experience “all relations and functions of living.” Jewish law alone, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, is not sufficient, we have to add the aggada, the stories that elucidate the morals and ideals of what Jewish law seeks to accomplish for us, for the world and for God.

The more we immerse ourselves in this sentence, the more we understand that to live well, we need structure, we need “the basic elements of” how to live well, how to live with one another, how to fulfill the divine need we are. This is what is missing from our teaching and learning of Jewish law, of morality, of how to be free, I believe. We are so concerned with our success, we are so concerned with ‘getting ours’, we are so concerned with the minutia, we have lost the big picture, we have lost our way in life. The goal of living, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, is not to ‘win’, but to serve; not to ‘get over’, but to be engaged in making our corner of the world better; not to take advantage of loopholes and/or another(s) person, but to serve as divine reminders and “to do justly, love mercy and walk in the ways of God”. Too many people are too concerned with the minutia, with fulfilling the law and not understanding that the law is here to serve as guideposts, as “the basic elements” not the entirety.

When we see the foibles of Biblical heroes like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, Moses, Aaron, Miriam, King David, etc, we are get a picture of how the law alone, the strict adherence to it, can cause grave danger, much harm to another and to our way of living well. All of these people/stories (aggada) come to remind us that we have to use these “basic elements of…knowledge” and build upon them. We have to hear the words of the prophets and see their commitment to what is right and good, not just the fulfillment of the law. As they screamed out to the Priests, the Kings, the wealthy and powerful-“God doesn’t want your sacrifices, God wants your heart”.

We are so focused on “how things look” that we trample the essence and the true function of law. We see this in Judaism, we see this in Christianity, we see this in our country. People use the law to validate their prejudices, their inhumanity towards anyone not like them, they use the law to justify their own lawlessness and immoral behaviors. We hear Christ’s name, God’s name invoked to validate disdain for the stranger, hatred of the poor and the criminality of the needy. We witness laws being passed to stop the “woke” culture without “woke” ever being defined. We hear about “American Values” being used to deny people’s ability to vote if you are not ‘our kind of American’. We are onlookers as anti-semitic acts are on the rise, people are killed because of the color of their skin, white people are exonerated for killing black people because they of “stand your ground” laws. We don’t have the decency to hang our heads while lawmakers make criminals of LGBTQ+ people and condemn them for all of our problems today. We bastardize the law, Religious and Secular, to feel good about our actions of prejudice. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is to use “the basic elements of” Jewish law and build on them, to ensure that fulfilling any and all of these basic elements change our inner life, “affect the climate of our entire life” and not make us enslavers, rather make us freedom riders, freedom fighters.

This teaching is not very popular today; I have experienced people being more concerned with how things look, with the letter of the law than the spirit of the law. I have watched people go along with ways of being that they know are not right because they don’t want to be ostracized from ’the group’. I see how I have gotten too much in the weeds as well and I am remorseful beyond words for the harms I brought by staying in the smallness of ‘the law’. I also am joyous over the myriad of times I used “the basic elements” as a foundation to ‘make new law’. We are taught that God makes new laws everyday in the Heavenly Court, and to “walk in God’s ways” means we have to as well. There is pain and rejection in this way of living and, after all is said and done, I rather have this pain than the pain of being small, petty, prejudiced, and unkind. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark