Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 298

“The mind is never immune to “alien thoughts,” and there is no easy way of weeding them out. A hasidic rabbi, asked by his disciples in the last hours of his life whom they should choose as their master after his passing away, said:”If someone should give you advice on how to eradicate alien intentions, know he is not your master.””(God in Search of Man pg. 393/4)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is so crucial to our well-being and so important to our freedom. Accepting the truth of the first sentence above is the beginning of our journey towards freedom from being ruled by our minds, being ruled by our emotions. Yet, too many of us believe we can think our way into and out of all situations, as Einstein says: “we have come to worship the servant”. It is a daily task to recognize the “alien thoughts” and not succumb to them out of force of habit and our own self-deception.

Living in today’s world, as in every era, we are confronted with “alien thoughts” by people who have “alien intentions” and they are intentional about their mendacity, they deceive both on and with purpose. This is their way and while condemning them is good, rebuking them is holy, we have to stop just pointing the finger at everyone/anyone else and look inside of ourselves. We have to delve into our own “alien thoughts”, we have to ask for help to release ourselves from the prison of self-deception and the prison of needing to be deceived so we can once again be free. This is the freedom we experienced at the Red Sea, this is the freedom we experienced at Sinai, this is the freedom that caused us to have a spontaneous declaration of “we will do and then we will understand/hear” (Exodus 24:7) when we were called upon to accept the Torah. And as the Bible teaches us, human beings immediately and continually broke this promise, forgot this covenant with God, with one another and with themselves.

We need to re-covenant with God, not a new covenant, not a new testament, rather reviving the original dynamic covenant, remembering we are to interpret it anew each year, in each generation. Just as nature is constantly changing and growing/contracting, so too do we humans change, grow, contract. Staying stuck in an old interpretation, staying stuck in old understanding of eternal ‘laws’, is a by-product of “alien thoughts” just as bastardizing the meaning, the purpose of eternal ‘laws’ is a product of our “alien intentions.”

We are in the month of Elul, we are in the time of the year when it is suggested/told that we should do a deep dive into our actions, our intentions, our thoughts and see which were actually “alien” and how we deceived ourselves into believing they were actually holy. Judging someone else’s “alien thoughts” and “alien intentions” is the path most of us take while wrapping ourselves in the cloak of righteousness, and this could be the most dangerous of our “alien thoughts”! While someone else is ‘fair game’ and an ‘easy target’, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above speaks to us, individually, and is calling to us to give up our own “big lie” of righteousness, our own “big lie” of how we have taken “the easy way of weeding them out”. I hear a demand to remove the mental make-up and the various masks we have been wearing, take off the outer clothes that protect us/shield us/fool everyone else and look truth in the face, see ourselves without the self-deceptions and lies we have used to feel okay and see the truth of our soul, admire and be guided by the light of our soul. September is “recovery month” and September usually coincides with the Jewish High Holy Days. I don’t think it is a coincidence, I believe the recovery movement along with the Jewish tradition knows this is the month the spiritual forces of compassion, mercy, kindness, justice, truth are at their zenith, and God knows we need all the help we can get to begin to recognize and weed out our “alien thoughts”!

I have not always done a good job of weeding out my “alien thoughts”. I have given in to them at times and each time, some damage has been caused either by me or the person/situation that these “alien thoughts” brought up/were caused by. I am sorry for not recognizing them earlier in the process, I am sorry for the damage I have caused to people for engaging in them. I am sorry for being deceived by my “alien thoughts”, by another’s “alien thoughts” and not weeding them out sooner. Each year, as I look back, I know that I was better and, I also know that I made many errors over the years because of these “alien thoughts”. The one that stands out to me is the “alien thought”; ‘these are my friends and they will have my back’ and deciding what “having my back” meant. What I learned is some of the people were/are my friends and others not so much. I also learned that “having my back” comes in many different forms and sometimes God and another(s) know better than I! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark