Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 239

“What a person lives by is not only a sense of belonging but also a sense of indebtedness. The need to be needed corresponds to a fact: something is asked of many, of every man.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.78)

The teaching above seems to have been abandoned in the modern world and many humans ask: “what’s in it for me”. Also, so many of us have been taught to “fit in” rather than belong we are having to relearn the truth that we all belong, as Brene Brown teaches. We are living in an age of entitlement rather than “indebtedness”, an age of deception and deceit rather than belonging and being authentic. We are desperately in need of relearning Rabbi Heschel’s and all spiritual disciplines’ teaching as stated above.

Our first challenge is to accept that we belong! We belong not because of our wealth, not because of our wit, our brain power, our superiority, our socio-economic status. No, we belong because we are human beings who struggle to be human and tame the desire for revenge, for our more animalistic inclinations. We belong just because we are right here, right now; and we all have something to contribute to making our corner of the world a little better than when we found it. We all need to accept not only that we belong, we have to embrace the truth that everyone belongs, there is no application for admittance to belonging to humanity, there is no one who can blackball anyone else from belonging to the human race, even though there are people who think they can separate ‘those people’ from us ‘good people’ and ‘those jews and muslims’ from ‘us good christian folk’. There are even people in our government, as there always has been, who want to disqualify people in need from entering-remember the ship the St. Louis and our current border issues- and people running for office who are proclaiming how they will not defend the constitution and/or the country “from enemies foreign and domestic” because they are the domestic terrorists-even on our Supreme Court! Until we, as a society, accept that everyone belongs to the human race, that all people have infinite and unique dignity and worth, the rest of the actions described above will never come to fruition.

“A sense of indebtedness” is anathema to our current culture. When one of the candidates for President goes around telling everyone how he is entitled to a different system of justice-one in which he is never guilty, when the same person keeps grifting money from his supporters who he constantly lies to, when the same human being continues to exclude decency and truth, loyalty and kindness from his ‘platform’, we are in danger of losing our “sense of indebtedness”. Public servants like Dr. Fauci are viscerated in our Congress for telling the truth, when some elected officials are only interested in serving their ‘supreme leader’ like the current Speaker of the House, Gaetz, Greene, Vance, Rubio, Cruz, and the rest of the Lindsey Graham types in Congress, we see that entitlement rather than “indebtedness” is the order of the day. We see this in business, in countries across the globe, in our families and in our history. The only “sense of indebtedness” that is talked about is the “indebtedness” owed to the ‘supreme leader’, to the authoritarian presence that is controlling the lives of her/his followers and has convinced people that if they want to belong, they have to be in debt to him/her. Rather than owing the world, owing the Creator, some of humanity has been fooled, conned into believing they only owe the authoritarian. How sad and dangerous!!

We can, however, reawaken our “sense of indebtedness” to something greater than ourselves-be it God, higher consciousness, community, etc. We do this by going back to basics-remembering who we are, recovering our passion for living well and discovering the unique purpose we are created to fulfill. We have to engage in mediation, study, practice, and deeds. We need to “act our way into right thinking” as the Big Book of AA reminds us. We have to make a commitment to following a path of living that honors our dignity and the dignity of everyone. We have to have “one law for the citizen and stranger alike” so there is only righteous justice practiced in our land. We need to return to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” which means we have to truly see our beauty and our goodness and have a practice of self-love that is not narcissistic, that recognizes our own value and dignity so we don’t tarnish ourselves by following the deception of another(s) nor our own self-deceptions. We need to see what we add to the world around us, see everyone as equal in value and how we need them to live their unique lives so we can live ours. Competition and comparisons that are personal fall away and we see how we can use them to grow our own spirit and our dignity. As a friend of mine, Glenn Goss, z”l, and I agreed: we are alive, we have been given another opportunity at life, we owe!

My “sense of indebtedness” has grown over these past 35+ years. In fact, the more I learn, the more I owe. I keep paying back and there are days when I am sure that the most I achieve is to pay the interest on the note and there are other days where I am hopeful that I have paid back some of the principle. However, this debt is not crushing me anymore, it did when I was adding to the debt, adding to the misery of the people around me, now, it just reminds me I still have more to give, more to offer, more to do. This is an exhilarating experience, it gives me hope and purpose, joy and a path. I am not entitled to anything other than to enjoy my achievements for what they were/are and use them to keep going, to keep forgiving myself for my errors, keep asking for forgiveness from another(s) and keep letting go of resentments and understanding how stuck those who have hurt me and are unable to do T’Shuvah are. I am so indebted that I can’t even hate them nor be angry with them. I too have been and still get that stuck. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark