Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 324

“To educate means to cultivate the soul, not only the mind. You cultivate the soul by cultivating empathy and reverence for others, by calling attention to the grandeur, the mystery of all being, to the holy dimension of human existence by teaching how to relate the common to the spiritual. The soul is discovered in response, in acts of transcending the self, in the awareness of ends that surpass one’s interests and needs.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pg. 59)

“Cultivate” comes from the Latin word “colere”, meaning ‘to inhabit’ as well as “to develop”. While it seems as if Rabbi Heschel is using “cultivate” to mean “to develop”, I wonder what he would say if we were to rewrite the first sentence above as: to educate means to inhabit the soul, not only the mind. It changes the emphasis a bit, I believe Rabbi Heschel is using cultivate to mean both “develop” and “inhabit” because without living into our soul, how can we develop it? Without developing our soul a little more each day, how can we inhabit it? “To cultivate the soul” is to live into the values, the spirit, the purpose and the passion that is unique and inherent in each human being. Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to end our senseless abandonment of our soul, to end the ridiculous dependence on our minds alone, to let go of our fears of exploring and “cultivating” our soul.

Of course he then tells us how to “cultivate the soul”, how to inhabit our soul’s knowledge and wisdom, how to live from the inside out rather than from the outside in. While we know we have to experience the truth, do the mitzvot and then understand them, we do this so we can “develop” our soul’s knowing, our soul’s maturity, our soul’s strength to deal with the onslaught of outside influences and the war that our rational mind wages upon our intuitive one. These words, written 62+ years ago, ring in our ears, penetrate our souls if we are willing to be human.

Listening to the rhetoric of the current Republican Party, listening to Jews like Rosenberg and Miller spew hatred of immigrants when they are living in America because their families immigrated and were allowed in is disgusting and the reason Rabbi Heschel’s words needed to be heeded and followed in 1962 and ever since. Yet, alas, we haven’t. We have not developed “empathy and reverence for others”, we have not learned to inhabit “empathy and reverence for others” and so we are in the situation we are in today-people blaming innocent people for their own troubles, people looking to point fingers away from themselves so they can hide their evil doings. Rather than “calling attention to the grandeur, the mystery of all being”, these Republicans In Name Only, aka RINOs, are denigrating both the “grandeur” and the “mystery” of being, denigrating the divine image of their ‘enemies’ and themselves, all the while selling Bibles made in China which Trump denigrates, phony watches and other such grifts AND claiming to be the anointed one, claiming that Jesus sent Trump to save us all??!! We know bullshit when we see it and when we hear it, and to hear it coming from Jews, from other minorities is reminiscent of the Jews who thought Nazism would be a passing fancy. It has lasted for over 100 years and grows in the darkness and lies of it’s adherents.

We have to say NO to the fascists, to the authoritarians, to the war mongers, to the haters, to the ‘victims’ and say YES to living and developing “empathy and reverence for others”. YES to “calling attention to the grandeur, the mystery of all beings, the holy dimension of human existence by teaching how to relate the common to the spiritual”. When we say YES to relating “the common to the spiritual”, we are inhabiting the “soul” we have been given, we are developing along spiritual lines and we come to realize that the common is also spiritual, everyday actions are holy when we do them with intention to and for goodness, when we take these “common” actions for the good of another, when we say hello because we want to recognize another rather than ignore them. It is the very essence of “Namaste”, “the light in me sees the light in you”. When we say YES  to “calling attention to the grandeur, the mystery of all beings” we are living in awareness. Awareness of the vastness of the universe, the surrender of needing to know everything, leaving the mind’s need for proof and basking in the truth of beingness. When we say YES to “cultivating empathy and reverence for others”, we learn how to understand the experiences of another(s) and not need to make them wrong nor stupid, not need to tell them to ‘grow up’ and other such nonsense, not need to make them into bad guys and blame them for the evil in the world. When we say YES to inhabiting, to “standing in awe”(Latin root meaning) of another human being, we no longer need to make enemies, we can rebuke them with love, we can love them even when we don’t like them nor their actions, we can see the innate holiness just as God told Moses to “come to Pharaoh” and see the divine image in Pharaoh, speak to this image and try and bypass Pharaoh’s mind so he could see truth. The same is true for us today when we say YES to these ways of inhabiting and developing our souls.

This is a journey I have been on for a while, it is a three steps forward, one step backward process. It is not linear nor should it be. Yet, I have expected it to be and other people have demanded it be for me. I have fallen short at times in living into “empathy and reverence for others”, I have fallen short, at times, to seeing the “grandeur and mystery of being”, and each time I move a little closer to hitting the bullseye. In looking at my trajectory since I entered recovery in 1988, the times I fall short are much less and still painful when I do, I have been on the target more and more in each passing year while not hitting the bullseye, I am at least in the right ballpark. I am remorseful for my misses and grateful for my hits. The living in and developing of my soul has caused me to be more enraged at the actions of the people who want to denigrate another, who want to hold grudges, who cannot admit their part in any interaction that goes ‘wrong’, who are being authoritative because they are afraid of being wrong, who deny responsibility and scapegoat another. My inner Jeremiah gets activated as you can hear on my new podcast dropping later today on Apple and Spotify. Please hear the call of  your inner prophet and stand up and say YES with me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark