Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 6

“Needs are looked upon today as if they were holy, as if they contained the totality of existence. Needs are our gods, and we toil and spare no effort to gratify them. Suppression of a desire is considered a sacrilege that must inevitably avenge itself in the form of some mental disorder. We worship not one but a whole pantheon of needs and have come to look upon moral and spiritual norms as nothing but personal interests in disguise.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 5)

Rabbi Heschel tells us in the next paragraph that the “needs” he is speaking of are those that are “synonymous with interest”. The truth is, the fulfillment of some “needs” is holy, when these “needs” are congruent with the spiritual, moral, physical welfare of a person and persons around them. This is not the same as the “needs” most people seek to fulfill today, nor what he saw in 1958 America!

The “needs” being spoken about here are merely “personal interests in disguise”, reminding us of the verse from the Book of Numbers 15:39 “Do not scout out/seek after your heart and your eyes because you will whore yourselves after them.” Rather than seek to fulfill the “needs” of the universe, the “needs” of another, the “needs” we uniquely created to fulfill, we scout after what ‘our hearts desire’, ‘be whatever we want to be’, and other such bullshit. In fact, when denied one of our “needs”, many people will lash out against the person in power who denies us, the person who doesn’t have power to deny us and suggests that it might not be the right thing to “scout out” and “seek after” these “personal interests in disguise”.

Therapists and Psychiatrists make millions and millions of dollars helping people ‘fulfill themselves’ without any concern as to what is an authentic need and what is a “personal interest in disguise”. Parents have come to worry that denying their child will mean they will be mentally, emotionally scared for life and will not be able to function in society. Society, rather than taking this wisdom above to heart, rather than living into the Holy Texts of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the teachings of the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, etc, has indeed made “needs our gods”. Society has written a script that “keeping up with the Jones’” is the only way to be, after all, how can you deny your 7year-old a smart phone when all of the other kids have one? A car as transportation is no longer enough, we have to have one with all the bells and whistles. At 16, we have to give our kids their own car so they don’t drive ‘an old man’s car’. How can we live without the latest iPhone, Smart TV, computer, etc? REALLY!

As a Rabbi in an Addiction Recovery Center, using Judaism/Spirituality as part of the treatment modality, the number of people who believed we were giving them “cruel and unusual punishment” because we took their cell phones for 30 days, we restricted their movements for at least 30 days, we made the different parts of their treatment plan mandatory, was huge. Parents would call us and be frantic because they could not talk to their ‘kids’ (some as young as 18 and as old as 50) whenever they wanted to. I reminded them that left to their own devices, their kids would have wound up in jail, institutionalized or dead an they would not have been able to call at will then either. The residents were resistant to the denial of their “desires” and would rail on and on about the ‘unfairness’ of it. I would show them the door and remind them they were not in jail or prison, they had a choice when they asked for admittance, I would show them their intake form and the reasons they gave for wanting to be in recovery and tell them I would support their choices whether I agreed or not-they just couldn’t “gratify” them because they were really “personal interests in disguise”. Most would laugh and say:”Well Rabbi, I had to try, it has worked at other places” and we would laugh together.

Another learning from witnessing the phenomenon described in Rabbi Heschel’s words above is how people who are wealthy, especially ones who either inherited their wealth or made a big score in their careers, believed that their “personal interests” were synonymous with their “needs”. Their children learned their ways of being entitled from their parents. Some of these wealthy parents would call the headmasters at the private schools to have their kids grades changed so they could get into ‘the right’ schools, some had paid high-priced attorneys to get their kids off with a slap on the wrist while people without their wealth would face real-world consequences: jail, prison, felonies on their record, loss of insurance, drivers license, etc;  for the same actions! They truly believed denying their children their desires, denying them what ‘everyone else had, was doing’ would lead to a mental health crisis and the kids played along with this idea and controlled their parents. Because the parents “worship not one but a whole pantheon of needs” letting their kids control them and manipulate them was second nature and, in some cases, deadly.

We, the People have made too many bad decisions based on these false “needs”. We, the People have created the monsters who are coming after us in this time and who have tried to devour us in the past. The “rhyme” of the past with 100 years ago is that another group has made their “personal interests” into “needs” and sold these “needs” to an unaware populace who are going to be crushed when they realize, hopefully not too late, the puppets they are/were and the lies they bought into precisely because both wealthy and poor, middle class and working class did not look out for authentic needs, for one another and worshiped idols and practiced idolatry rather than seek truth and practice true moral and spiritual norms.

Today is Christmas, it is also the 1st day of Hanukkah, both of these holidays along with Kwanza celebrate the spiritual nature of humanity, the resilience of the human spirit, the dedication/rededication of human beings to living authentic spiritual and moral principles and values. As my friend and Teacher, Rabbi/Hazan Danny Maseng teaches: Jews are chosen for a job, not because we are “so holy”, rather because the job of bringing the Bible to the world through nourishment actions. The same could be said for every spiritual tradition and the people who worship nothing. We all have a job to fulfill, both as individuals and as groups, I have continued to turn towards and run towards the “needs” that I am uniquely qualified to fulfill, I continue to be rebuffed more lately than ever before, and I continue to seek truth and love, wholeness and kindness, keeping my own entitlement in check, forgiving more and resenting less. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark