Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 336

“Spiritual values are, of course, delicate, precious, and intangible. They can neither be measured nor firmly and exactly described. And yet spiritual attitudes can be evoked and fostered, character can be affected, generosity and reverence can be cultivated.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pg. 61)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities). We find ourselves in this conundrum once again; for some the recent elections are “the best of times” and for others it is “the worst of times”, for some, jettisoning wisdom in favor of foolishness and feelings makes perfect sense and for others it is catastrophic. While most people in the world and in this country believe in something, follow some moral code, many believe in the goodness of humanity in the face of historical proof that countermands this belief, others believe fiercely and ferociously in false gods and idolatry passing it off as ‘religion’, and those of us who believe in something greater than ourselves,God, or higher consciousness guiding our actions we are filled with incredulity over the charlatans and deceivers who are about to ‘run things in America’.

The words above come as a reminder and a hope that we, the people, will evoke and foster “spiritual attitudes” in our leaders and their followers. It is a reminder that no matter what we ‘feel’ our actions have to reflect the “spiritual attitudes” and “spiritual values” we posses and profess. In a time when “character can be affected” by both the negative and positive we, the people, have to take care to live our intentions, live our spiritual values and show our spiritual attitudes in the actions we take, in the ways we resist temptations to “go along to get along”, the ways we resist temptations to “burn it down, baby”, in the temptations to hide and run away. While it is a little “pollyannish”, to believe we can change another human being, I do believe “spiritual attitudes can be evoked and fostered” and in doing so: people change! We have proof in our lifetime of this truth-for almost 90 we have witnessed this to be true through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, for 60 years we saw this to be true through Civil Rights legislation, for over 3500 years we have read and seen this to be true through the Hebrew Bible’s stories and tenets. Let’s look at some “spiritual attitudes” that need/can be “evoked and fostered”.

1. Love-In the Bible we are told to love God, to love our neighbor and to love the stranger, with the stranger being mentioned 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible! Love does not mean the same as liking. It is a higher form of living, one that calls upon us to forgoe the ‘feelings’ we may have and rise to a way of being that sees the Divine Image, the humanity, the dignity and worth in every individual and, like God tells Moses to do with Pharaoh-“come” to that divine image, that basic goodness of being, the soul of another persona and care for it, speak to it, help its “spiritual attitudes” be “evoked and fostered”. Using the “stranger” in this way, while never saying to love parents, teaching us to have “devikut”, union with our spouses and not using the word love, one can deduce that “loving the stranger, loving our neighbor, loving oneself” is the path to truly loving God with heart, with our soul and with our everything.

2. Truth- We say “God is Truth”, the first letter in the Hebrew word for truth is the aleph, which I say represents the first letter in the 10 Sayings, Anochi. If one takes the aleph away, we are left with the Hebrew word Met, which means death. Without God, without our ability to breathe, we are dead and, I posit, without the truth, we are also dead. This death, the death of truth in our way of being, is the most painful and excruciating because when we become aware of it the pain of our actions is overwhelming and, if we never become aware of our jettisoning of truth for our ‘personal gain’, the pain of emptiness and the inner chaos and war is also excruciating. King David, while a great King and a great Sinner, did not deny truth when confronted with it, did not care where the rebuke and the truth came from, he was a strong enough human being, he was connected enough to God/spirit to be able to admit his errors and return to truth. There were no “alternative facts” in Biblical Times, only in Kellyanne Conway’s world which seems to have been adopted by many. We can and must affect our character with Truth.

3. Generosity- “even a beggar is commanded to give charity” is a statement I have heard throughout my life-I first learned it from my father and grandfather who, while they had very little, always made sure their children gave Tzedakah at Hebrew School. They always paid people on time and no one was paid less for the same job-regardless of color or gender. There is also “generosity of spirit” which teaches us to give the benefit of the doubt to people, as we learn in Pirke Avot. The nuance of this type of generosity is to also know that when a human being who is miserly and miserable, who is mean and hateful seems good, we have to be wary that it is not the Yetzer Hara disguising itself as the Yetzer Tov to get what they want. Generosity of Reciprocity is also an important concept-not expecting the person we have helped to help us, rather because of our generosity towards one, generosity of kindness, love, etc will be returned by the universe.

I live these “spiritual attitudes” each and every day-sometimes well and sometimes not so well. I believe in these and so many more. I am an example of them being “evoked and fostered” by family, friends and teachers when I was ready, able and willing to hear them. They were not foreign to me, I had been raised with them, I knew them in my soul and I had jettisoned them for a while, a long while! My recovery is based in raising up my character, becoming the ‘character’ I was created to be, and no longer apologize for who I am and for being human. My character is “affected” by my learning, my prayers, my experiences and by watching “how my teacher ties his shoes”. I write on Rabbi Heschel each day because this helps me with my reverence for the human spirit and is my generosity of spirit to give my wisdom and ways to people who desire to learn and want to argue with me. I am starting a new project: Conscious Living. It will be rolled out over the next two weeks, please stay tuned for it. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark