Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 332

“To maintain that everything we know we are able to understand, that everything we sense we are able to say, is an invention of idiots. Intellectual embarrassment, awareness of our inability to say what we sense, is a prerequisite of intelligence.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 61)

Today in America and across the world is the day after the day after. Many people are rejoicing in the results of Tuesday’s elections both here and in Moscow, Teheran, Beijing, Jerusalem, etc. There are many of us who are in sadness, despair, abject fear and worry about what is next and were in mourning yesterday. I think of Rev. King’s statement: “The moral arc of the Universe is long but it bends towards justice” reminding us that change of moral behaviors takes a long time to get to a just, merciful and humble walk with God, with humanity. Today is the day we pick ourselves up and continue to bend the “moral arc of the universe” in America, in Israel, across the world. “Oh deep in my heart, I know that I do believe, We shall overcome someday”.

Rabbi Heschel’s words above are what help me to “know that I do believe”. The hubris of the commentators and pundits, the winners and the losers “to maintain that everything (they) know (they) are able to understand” shows that they are the “idiots” Rabbi Heschel is speaking about. Yet, all of us fall into this category at one time or another and the challenge is to recognize we are falling prey to our idiocy, to our hubris, to our false pride. We, have to remember that we have a soul, we have an inner life, a gut intuition-whatever one wants to call it-and this “knowing” without understanding, “knowing” without being able to express it, is the “prerequisite of intelligence” that keeps us human and humble.

Too many people throughout the millennia have promoted the idea that we can know everything, everything can be explained, and if one can’t explain it then one is just stupid or their “knowing” can be brushed aside. It is time for us to once again go back to the basics of being human, to realize that there is no “proof” for the miracle at Sinai, there is no “proof” that the Jews left Egypt, that they wandered for “forty years in the desert”. Yet, many of us know the truth of being imprisoned by our self-deceptions. Many of us know the truth of a spiritual awakening. Many of us know the truth of wandering and feeling lost until we find our place, until we know we belong in the community, the friends, the partner, the job, we are in. Many of us know the truth of ‘knowing something in our bones’ and not being able to explain it and being shunned, dismissed by another only to see the destruction we warned about happen. Many of know the shaming feeling of being laughed at and/or excluded because, like the prophets of old, we are telling people what we see and, because we can’t articulate it and we don’t fully understand the meaning of it, our words go unheeded. Many of us know the frustration of dealing with the “invention(s) of idiots”!

As the Democrats go through their soul searching, as they see what went wrong and point fingers at the strategists, at President Biden, at Vice-President Kamala Harris, it is more important, as we think about the words above, to listen to our inner life, to listen to the messages from our gut, from our soul, from our higher consciousness before we speak and blame, before we throw the baby out with the bathwater. One of the things that we know is that “self-deception is a major disease” and people want to be like the “white guy in charge” who never is held accountable, who can get away with murder, with taking the money of the government for their companies, for themselves and then complain about spending it on the poor and the needy, who are descendants of immigrants and don’t want ‘those’ people here and be allowed to “hate our neighbors in our hearts” with impunity. These truths are what caused the ‘red wave’, a bloodbath in our elections two days ago.

Do we really want to become like this? In our “awareness of our inability to say what we sense” is the intelligence to “know” truth and not have to convince someone else. We move from a need to be right and understood to a “knowing” we know what we know and see what we see, being a leader into light and awareness without needing to be exacting. When we surrender to our own “intelligence”, we aer heard better, we are seen clearer, and we walk stronger into the light of truth and justice. When we surrender to our “intelligence” we are bending “the moral arc of the universe towards justice” a little more and a little sooner. When we realize that the lies and subterfuge of our opponents can’t be used by us because it is not who we are, we can find different ways to combat the lies and deceptions they spew. When we are using our “intelligence” we connect with another human being in ways that transcend party, politics, etc and we connect in spirit, in freedom, in truth. When we use our “intelligence” to find responses to the problems we face, we no longer have to “win”, we only have to be in the solution and help self and another find the light they need and they path we are meant to be on so we can live justly, mercifully, and walk in the ways of spiritual values and truths. This is not an easy way to live, it is a counter-intuitive path, it is a path of counter-culture and it means we leave “identity” politics, we leave “our tribe”, and join the entire human race, we find the similarities we share with every human being, the fears and the joys, the love and the disdains, while learning to respect our differences without needing to get them on “our side”. Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris showed us how.

My “inability to say what (I) sense” causes me great angst at times. Growing up I was brushed off by adults and my peers because I could not express what I saw, I didn’t understand what I knew, and I felt a half-step off. Only my father could understand and finish my sentences for me and his death cut me off from the world and I got frustrated and angry-hence my life of lying and crime, hurt and anguish. When I had my first spiritual awakening as an adult, in a jail cell, I couldn’t explain it fully nor did I understand it-the difference being I had the time to just live into it and I have ever since. I “know in bones” certain things that I can’t explain and this used to cause strife at work and at home until people understood that I wasn’t being coy, I was unable “to say what I sense”. I have continued to “know in my bones” and I realize that there have been times in the past 4 years when I have failed to surrender to my own “intelligence”, failed to go with “what I know”. Today’s “life lessons from Rabbi Heschel” are making me recommit to “know what I know” and live into it more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark