Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 233
“In spite of the fact that our ideologies and institutions continue to imply that the worth of a person is equivalent to his usefulness to society, every one of us entertains the keen expectation that other people will not regard him merely because of what he is worth to them…but will regard his as a significant and valuable in himself.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 75)
This is the challenge of our time as, evidently, it has been the challenge in all times and throughout time. We are in a war with society’s conventional norms and cliches, values and principles that puts these norms and cliches, values and principles against what each human being knows in their guts, we are all valuable because we are born, each of us is enjoined upon by the universe to contribute from our inner talents and gifts, each of us is worthy of being human and each of us deserves the air we breathe because we are alive.
Society has, throughout history, made a person’s worth based on wealth, on status, on skin color, on religion, on success, etc, while at the same time, extolling the Biblical verses they can pervert for their use, to keep power and to enslave whole groups of people! People have, throughout history, given into these lies and deceptions as far back as the Israelites when Pharaoh “dealt slyly” with them in Egypt-after the death of Joseph. None of us are not susceptible to the ‘norms’ of society, none of us are not susceptible to the war of values and principles that exists between what we know to be true and what society wants us to believe.
We keep hearing the extremists work to convince us that what we see isn’t real, what we know is false, what we hear is ‘fake news’, what is getting destroyed is actually being built up, they are the true Messiahs and helpers, etc. We, the people, have to take back the reins of leadership, we have to remind ourselves to “Let Freedom Ring”,“throughout the land and to all it’s inhabitants therein”. It is incumbent upon us to stop buying into the “ideologies and institutions” that “continue to imply that the worth of a person is equivalent to his usefulness to society” It is essential that we proclaim the infinite worth and dignity of all people, even our enemies and honor their dignity even when they don’t!
This is true for everyone and for all of us. We honor the inherent dignity and worth of people, when we rebuke them because we know they are better than their worst actions. We honor the inherent worth and dignity of people when we argue with them for the sake of finding truth and opening our eyes more. We honor the dignity and worth of people when we continue to seek their counsel, stay connected long after their “usefulness” to us ends. We honor the dignity and worth of ourselves when we stop seeing everyone as a means to an end. We lift up creation itself when we end our incessant need to make everything transactional and we realize that covenantal relationships are the goal of life. While the words above apply to all of us, seeing “older adults” in these words is also critical. We are a society that values young and hip as opposed to old and wise; we are constantly seeking the ‘next new thing’ - to either create it or invest in it or use it. The iPhone, an amazing invention, has revolutionized our lives and it has enslaved us, the false claims of the Fascists and Authoritarians has enslaved large swaths of people and helped the few ‘trusted servants’/partners in the various ‘coups’ that happened by ‘democratic’ means.
For all of these to flourish in the ways they have, it takes the buy-in of human beings, we are willingly giving up the joy of celebrating the wisdom of our elders, we are willingly disrespecting the lessons that ‘older adults’ have to give us because we are drunk on the ideas such as ‘there is something new under the sun’, that “what the mind can conceive, man can achieve”, “I think, therefore I am”. For those of us who are older, wiser and more experienced because we thought the exact same ways, we know “I am therefore I can think/be”, everything the mind can conceive is not worthy of being achievable, and there are no new games, only variations-without mathematics we would not have the inventions we have now, without science, we would not have come out of the Pandemic so quickly, etc. We continue to rely on the wisdom of history, on the wisdom of previous generations to build upon their foundations and rise higher and higher, until we realize that building our inner life, finding a teacher and a friend to learn with and engage in a covenantal relationship with human beings and the world, nature and life is the greatest achievement we can obtain-hence the necessity to not be the “smartest person in the room” but rather be the excited learner in the room, continuing to learn with teachers and mentors, friends and even enemies so we come to see the worth of everyone just because they are alive.
I am guilty of not always doing this, I know and I am saddened by this type of missing the mark. I have always sought out mentors, just haven’t always followed the ones who truly cared for my soul, hence my previous life of crime and alcoholism! I have, however, always kept the lessons of my father, my relatives in mind, I have, in my recovery, sought people of wisdom-no matter what age they are- to learn with and from, to wrestle with life’s ups and downs, and I have found people who are older and more experienced than I usually give me the best advice and see things clearer because their agenda is to help me, not compete with me. I do the same with everyone who seeks me out and will continue to put their agenda ahead of mine-to the best of my ability in the moment. Watching everyone around me age, I have seen the light and the power of spirit in the communities I belong to and realize that, as my friend says, every room is better because you and I are in it-no matter our age:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark