Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 2
“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)
We are in the midst of living these words in our country, in our communities, in our families, in our religions, etc. While it is important to have form and order, when we come to worship the past, when we close ourselves off to ‘the one right way’, we experience Rabbi Heschel’s words in the second sentence above and “what becomes settled and established may easily turn foul.” In Deuteronomy, we are told that each generation has to understand and interpret the Bible, the Jewish way of being for itself, each generation has its own priests and leaders and they have to live the commandments in a dynamic fashion. In the Talmud, there is a story about Moses going to sit in the back of a class given by Rabbi Akiva and as he listens to Rabbi Akiva expound on the Torah, he has no idea what he is talking about until he hears Rabbi Akiva say “it is a law derived from Moses, our teacher” and this is an example of how what is “settled and established” doesn’t turn foul, it stays dynamic.
Whether it is the Bible, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta, the New Testament, the Koran, the philosophies of Eastern traditions, all are susceptible to “easily turn foul.” The reason being, of course, is human beings who want to control, human beings who want to use dynamic documents, dynamic religions and religious thought to satisfy their personal cravings and narcissism, human beings who “easily turn foul”! We face this in our homes when we hear “because I said so” rather than a response that a child can understand or at least try and understand. This arbitrary way of being begins for a child when “because I said so” is said so often the child believes the parent, the adult wants to control them in all areas of their lives. This, of course, leads to rebellion and takes a myriad of forms; drugs, alcohol, depression, bed-wetting, overeating, anorexia, underachieving, overachieving, a lack of meaning and purpose in life, etc.
We hear about isolation and loneliness being at epidemic levels since the pandemic, what is true is these killers of spirit have been at epidemic levels for years, we just did not want to admit it, we needed to be able to blame this condition of “something outside of ourselves”, rather that see the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel’s words in 1971 about drug addiction being the result of our false search for celebration and his words about the ‘fall of religion’ in 1955 being due to its becoming “irrelevant, dull, oppressive, and insipid”! We have isolated ourselves from one another for a lot longer than the 3.5 years since the Pandemic began. This isolation begins in childhood when we begin to hide who we are, hide our selves in order to fit in. It is what we learn from being constantly told “because I said so” rather than having truthful talks with our children. It comes from “this is the way we have always done it” being told so often that our creative spirit gets pushed down and crushed. This is one of the reasons we see people come to Temple for the High Holy Days and at no other time unless there is a specific lifestyle event reason to show up. We have turned the beauty, the dynamic ways, the spiritual sustenance religion gives into a “foul” odor! We take the wonder and awe of childhood, adolescence, and turn it into a “foul” odor by instilling our needs, dreams, desires, fears, etc into our children from an early age.
In recovery, we are recovering our integrity, our sense of self, our individuality and our worth to a group, to God, to our corner of the world because of our dynamic way of living, because we refuse to keep ‘stinking’ the odor of stagnation, the “foul” smell of settled and established ‘ways we always have done it’. Recovery is a spiritual path that believes we must return to “the self we were created to be” as Thomas Merton teaches. Recovery is a spiritual path that sends us back to our religious path so we can rediscover the dynamism and the joy that we missed before.
In my life before recovery, I stank! In recovery, in my return to Judaism, I have lived dynamically, I have kept things fresh. I hear Rabbi Heschel, the wisdom of my ancestors, the fresh outlook of my siblings, my daughter, my wife, my nieces, nephews, teachers, friends, enemies anew and more each day. I continue to grow along spiritual lines and am unafraid to admit my errors because I learn from them, I realize many of them come about because I am stuck in my ways which can “easily turn foul”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark