Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 1
“Inherent to all traditional religion is the peril of stagnation. What becomes settled and established may easily turn foul. Insight is replaced by cliches, elasticity by obstinacy, spontaneity by habit. Acts of dissent prove to be acts of renewal.” ( Essential Writings pg.106)
As I begin my third year of daily writing on Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and teachings on the day after Yom Kippur 5784, I want to acknowledge the depth of my gratitude to Rabbi Heschel and, by extension, his daughter, Dr. Susannah Heschel. Rabbi Heschel’s words and teachings, his calls and demands along with the devotion of his daughter to keep the flame and fire of his life alive have changed me through the past 35 years I have been learning from him. The wisdom above is from an unpublished manuscript found in Dr. Susannah Heschel’s editing of a book published by Orbis Books in their “Modern Spiritual Masters Series”.
Rabbi Heschel is stating a fact in the first sentence that many religions, many religious people do not want to face, do not want to acknowledge, deny and decry. Traditional religion, traditional people fail to realize the peril of stagnation that Rabbi Heschel is teaching us is inherent in each and every tradition, be it democracy, autocracy, religion, eastern philosophy, as well as in each and every human being. In his interview with Carl Stern, Rabbi Heschel changes the phrase: “There is nothing new under the sun” to: “there is nothing stale under the sun except human beings who become stale”, as I am understanding his teaching above, religion can suffer the same fate. The word stagnate comes from the Latin meaning “settled as a pool”, which means it is like standing water, never flowing, never letting new water in, everything is ‘settled’ which, of course, gives people certainty which in turn keeps everyone in the dark, in the past, stuck in the deception of another(s) and their own self-deceptions in order to feed their need for certainty, for sameness.
We have just come from our places of worship after fasting the entire 25 hours of Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur, we beat our breasts calling out the sins of our individual and global communities, we asked for forgiveness, we made our amends, and we did it the same way this year as we did last year. We used the same melodies and the same rhythms as in years past, we spoke the same words with the same (in)sincerity as we have in the past. Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence above is calling to us to be aware of the stagnation we have succumbed to, he is demanding we stop our ‘sameness’ and our ‘adjustment’ to ‘the ways we have always done it” and be more involved, more aware of our self and the selves we are praying with, living with. We asked God for forgiveness, yet we haven’t asked those around us for forgiveness for our actions of stagnation, our ways of being that make us oblivious to the dynamic nature of life, the dynamic being we call God, the dynamic way of living we call Judaism. We haven’t asked for forgiveness for the harms our actions in service of certainty, in service of power, in service of our false egos, in service of our masks and mental make-ups have done.
“An examined life is painful” says Malcolm X, an examined religious tradition is painful also, because both entail truth about our ways of being, on a personal level and on a communal level. Both entail seeing where we have been stuck in old ways and ideas, how we have tried to recreate what was done 100-2000 years ago, rather than seeing what is needed right now. This is what the Recovery Movement is all about. A constant examination of our ways and actions, personally and communally. We call it “a group conscience” and we are open to hear and stay current with what is rather than hide behind “this is the way we have always done it”, Bill Wilson, a co-founder of AA, was tinkering with and learning more about his humanity and ours till he died. We know that stagnation will lead us to fall out of recovery!
Rabbi Heschel’s teachings have kept me from stagnating for too long. I have rarely, in my recovery, been “settled” and at times, overreacted to the stagnation of my self, of my work, of my workplace, of people around me. I am afraid of certainty, I am fearful of stagnation and I have to live in acceptance. I write each day in order to stay fresh, I study each day so I can continue to learn, I pray each day with different eyes, I ask for forgiveness for things that I did in the past because I see them in a different light. Staying stagnate leads to living in a rut, living in the past, living in denial, living in fear, seeking what isn’t available, certainty. I choose to be aware of “the peril of stagnation” and continue to grow and learn new ways to understand old ideas. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark