Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day101
“The Bible does not deal with divinity but with humanity. Addressing human beings about human affairs, whose language who’d be employed if not man’s? And yet, it is as if God took thees Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power and the words became a life wire charged with His spirit. To this very day they are hypes between heaven and earth.”(God in Search of Man pg. 244)
Rabbi Heschel’s words and teaching are to be experienced, I believe. The experience of the first sentence above is one of humility and grace, trembling awe and joy, revelation and T’Shuvah. Many people read the Bible, or parts of it and reject the claims it makes upon us as religious folly. Experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence is what has made the Bible the foundation for our morality and our ways of living. Even those who claim God doesn’t exist, that the Bible is a book of folly and control, upon experiencing the words of Rabbi Heschel’s are hard-pressed to deny their wisdom and truth.
There are ‘religious’ people who claim because it is written in the Bible, we have to do all the commandments and, I believe they are missing the brilliance of Rabbi Heschel’s words. That the Bible deals “with humanity” gives all of us a doorway to a “richer and more meaningful life” because we are able to see our lives through the stories and wisdom of our ancestors/archetypes of the Bible. All of us can understand the error of hiding from our mistakes and being found out causing us to experience shame and then blame someone else, as Adam did. We all are aware of sibling rivalry and denial as the story of Cain delineates. It is not about Godly, angelic thinking or acting that Genesis is about, it is about how to get along as a family. It is about how to be a better father, mother, son, daughter, brother and sister. It is about our need to be accepted and respected for who we are and not attempt to deceive or hid in order to be loved. It is about how we deal with our jealousies and our feelings of being left out. It is how we deal with our loved ones and being in truth, telling the whole story of family life without needing to ‘hide our dirty laundry’. Throughout the Bible we are made aware of our ‘dirty laundry’ and how it impacts us and everyone around us! While God ‘speaks’ to us throughout the Torah, God is speaking to us for our benefit, giving us ways to better connect with our own soul, with the souls of another(s), and with the spiritual energy of the universe; not how to be angelic. Rather we are given pathways to being holy; separating ourselves from our negative desires in the moment, and recognizing that our mundane actions have sparks of holiness, elevation in them, if we are willing to perform them for more than our selfish desires.
Being immersed in the experience of the first sentence above helps us find our path to our humanity; find our pathway to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”; reach out to welcome the stranger, lift up the needy and feed the poor; to search within ourselves what we do well and where we miss the mark each day, week, month, and year. We find ourselves on the road to wholeness as well as holiness. We understand the flaws of the people of the Bible, we marvel at their goodness, we are in trembling awe of how the same errors are committed over and over throughout the Bible and then face ourselves in the mirror and ask the questions: “where do I make these errors” and “when I am living my own goodness out loud”. Using the Bible as the measuring stick of our humanity gives us the opportunity to experience the humility of being right-sized, of living our unique gift and promise out loud and in the world. We can let go of our envies and jealousies, we can end our incessant need for ‘how we look’ , we can stop worrying about how many ‘likes’ we have on social media, and we no longer have to compromise our morals, our values, our truth to ‘make it’ because living into the Bible’s teachings of how to be human is what ‘making it’ is all about.
In recovery, this is our goal, to be human, to live up to the best of our ability and be seen rather than sink to our lowest common denominator and hide. The Big Book of AA is an offshoot, a commentary on the Bible, AA is an outgrowth of the Oxford Group, the steps of AA are filled with calls to live into God’s will, the words of the Bible and how to be human and deal with our addictions and our erroneous belief we are supposed to be perfect. In recovery, we are recovering our dignity, our integrity, our humanity and we use a myriad of spiritual texts to achieve this, be it the Big Book, the myriad of Daily Meditations, the Bible, Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, the Talmud, the writings of the Buddha, the teachings of the Dalai Lama, etc. “We are not saints”, “we seek spiritual progress not spiritual perfections” are key phrases we live into in our recovery and they are paths for us to be a little more human each day.
Since my last incarceration from1986-1989, I have used the Bible as my guidebook, roadmap to being more human each day. The Bible gives me the path to my imperfection, to my changing, growing, nurturing my own spirit. It has given me the Good Orderly Direction for living well and I never take it for granted, nor do I use it as an excuse for my inappropriate actions. Studying the Bible with people ensures that I don’t bastardize the teachings, the roadways to being human that it gives me. I study Rabbi Heschel daily along with others, I pray each morning and day so I can continue to improve my goal of being human and being a little better , a little stronger, a little more loving human being each day. I have learned and continue to learn from the wisdom of the Bible and the archetypes of the Bible to continue to evaluate my actions in light of the today’s growth, sometimes this means I have to make T’Shuvah for past actions that I hadn’t realized were harmful! It always means I can give myself a break for what I did not know and what I could not see, respiring the damage and not shaming myself! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark