Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 310

“Abstaining from cultivating inner attitudes is an abdication of responsibility. It means turning over the child to other agencies of mass culture that powerfully affect attitudes and value judgments, such as television or comic books, Hollywood and Madison Avenue, the impact of which represents a major threat to the independence, sensitivity, inner balance, and freedom of the individual.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 56)

Continuing where I left off prior to embarking on the 40 days of repentance, today being the day after Yom Kippur, I find Rabbi Heschel’s words, once again, disturbing and an apt description of what it was like, what it is like and what it will be like unless and until we heed his thoughts in whatever way we choose to.

Every word of the Bible, every Holy Day in Judaism and all other faiths I believe, point to and address “inner attitudes”. We are awash in ways to hear, grow, nurture our “inner attitudes” through religious education, prayer, meditation, developing our higher consciousness, with Rabbis, Priests, Ministers, Imams, Zen Masters, etc. Yet, we continue to be “abstaining from cultivating inner attitudes”! What is stopping us is the question that arises today, 41 days after beginning a deep dive of introspection of our inner life? I believe there are probably many reasons, I am going to focus on a few.

First of all, cultivate means “to prepare the land”, “to develop” , “to grow and nurture” so we can see Rabbi Heschel’s belief that we all need to prepare our inner life so we can develop, grow, and nurture a life worth living-which is at the core of every person’s raison d’être, everyone’s need to pursue a passion and live their unique purpose. This “cultivating” takes time and energy, it takes a commitment by the parents and the child, by the adult and the people around the adult-this cultivation can and must be happening at all times and when it doesn’t happen as a child, we the children are obligated to cultivate our inner attitudes ourselves. Just as if a parent doesn’t teach their child Torah the child is obligated to learn it when the child is old enough to find their own teacher. Herein lies the problem facing us today: The parent doesn’t see the benefit of “cultivating the inner attitudes” unless there is a ‘mental/psychological issue’. They will send their kids to shrinks at an early age, they will get them pills to help them ‘concentrate’ better, they will send them to Synagogue long enough to have a Bat/Bar Mitzvah, the party and the gifts AND not cultivate their “inner attitudes” because it doesn’t do them nor their children any economic nor social good. If we can’t ‘make money’, get more ‘likes’ achieve fame the attitude is “why bother”. Since there is no outward apparent advantage from “cultivating inner attitudes”, most people don’t. Another reason is that it is difficult and there is no ‘quick fix’. It takes time and work, there is no perfection nor ‘done’ to this endeavor. We are constantly in need of “cultivating inner attitudes” until we die. So, why bother if one can’t master it? What is the payoff for this work?

We have abdicated our responsibility and we are paying for it dearly and, once we realize the true cost of our abdication of “cultivating inner attitudes”, once we are presented with the bill for our “abdication of responsibility” we will cry out like the Israelites did in Egypt, we will realize as they did that we were, once, “more numerous and more mighty” than the Pharaohs and taskmasters and because we were “abstaining from cultivating inner attitudes” we find ourselves enslaved to the ‘strongman’, to the ‘dictator’, to the ‘christian nationalists’ , to the white supremacists, to the fascists, to the friends of Orban, Putin, etc.

Abdicating our responsibility to cultivate our “inner attitudes” causes us to lose our essence, to lose our inner compass, our ‘north star’ and this leaves us open to buy the lies and mendacities of those seeking power for their own sake. It allows us to accept their deceptions and revel in our own self-deceptions because they do not ask anything of us. These charlatans seeking power and their ‘friends’ in the religious communities tell us they will do it all for us, ‘god’ will do it all for us, believing they can sell us on these ideas because we are so gullible and infantile in our inner life. We see how this has happened in Russia with Putin, Hungary with Orban, Turkey with Erdogan, Israel with Bibi, Ben-G’Vir, Smotrich, etc. We watched in horror, all of us at the time and now only some of us, on Jan. 6th, 2021 as the Capital was breached and, even after being threatened and running to safety (like Josh Hawley did), some Republicans still tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power! Today, these same insurrectionists in the Congress claim Jan.6th was a ‘peaceful protest’ with people who were just tourists! These same people have spread the ‘big lie’ so often people don’t know what to believe precisely because of abstaining from cultivating inner attitudes.

We know how to cultivate our inner attitudes and it is not only therapy. Therapy will deal with depression and anxiety, it won’t deal with the matters of the soul-our reason for existing, our need to find the unique need we can fill, our relinquishing our power so we can be in a covenantal relationship with another human being. We are being called to stop the “abdication of our responsibility” to learn and grow our inner life, our spiritual life. We are both human and more than human, we are both matter and energy, we are both body and spirit, and without cultivating our spiritual life, without growing our connection to something greater than ourselves, we are not only abdicating our responsibility, we are becoming fertile ground for the next Pharaoh who appears, the next Trump, Netanyahu, Orban, Putin, who wants to rise from the ashes. The deceivers are never vanquished forever, we have to continue to learn and grow our inner lives so we can discern between falsehoods and truth, between deception and reality, between profane and Holy.

I ignored the inner attitudes when I was a teenager, I was too caught up in my own sorrow. In the past 37 years, I have spent a part of every day learning and growing my “inner attitudes”, I no longer abdicate my responsibility nor do I abstain from cultivating my soul’s knowing. I am dedicated to daily spiritual growth, to leaving the self-deceptions I have fallen prey to, to finding my new place to serve. I can’t do this without my inner life being clear-eyed, without hearing and following the call of my soul over the call of my mind and/or false ego. It is hard, it is a daily struggle and I fail at times and, I know, I keep coming back! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark