Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 274

“Our premise is the certainty of being able to educate the inner man; to form as well as to inform the personality; to develop not only memory but also the capacity for insight; not only information but also appreciation; not only proficiency but also reverence; not only learning but also faith; not only skills but also inner attitudes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.56)

We are going on vacation beginning Wednesday of this week, so today and tomorrow will be the last two days until Wednesday, September 4th. Also, tonight begins the Holy Day, the Fast Day of Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av which, according to our lore is the day when the Temples were destroyed and we have put all the other destructions that we experienced and suffered because of our idolatry, because of our senseless hatred, because of our failure to care for the poor, the need, the widow and the orphan, because of our resistance to treating the stranger well and having one law for the stranger and the citizen alike, because of the inability of judges to resist the various bribes they were offered and, ultimately, accepted.

Looking at the bolded phrases above are prime examples of how Rabbis and Clergy as well as Boards and congregants fool themselves as Jews have for the millennia. Rather than being like King David, rather than being able to hear the lone voice of men and women calling us back to truth, decency, being fair and just, merciful and kind, loving and compassionate, our Rabbis and Boards lead us into the same ways that have destroyed us as a community, as a people, as a nation. Rather than learning from our history, we seem to revel in repeating it!

Whether it is the hatred of Ben-G’Vir and Smotrich and their allies, the hatred of Netanyahu towards anyone holding him accountable, the disdain of the left for the religious people who follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law, whenever it is the dismissal of the spiritual principles the Rabbis teach in their Congregations and Jewish Schools by parents and lay leaders, we have come to disregard the lessons of Tisha B’Av, we ignore the ashes we are sitting in and have come to believe that we have risen from these ashes because Jerusalem is restored to Jewish governance, Israel is once again a State and, if the crazies have their way, there will be a Third Temple. We are still living in fantasy land, we are still ignoring the call of the prophets and the lessons of kingship and how wrong it went for the Jewish People. We are forgetting what happens when we “scout out after our heart and our eyes and we whore ourselves after them”(Numbers 15:39) which is part of the second prayer after the Shema/V’Ahavta. Instead of not whoring ourselves, whoring ourselves is an art form for the lay leaders, for the business leaders, for the Rabbis themselves in order to ‘keep the congregation going”.

We have failed to have “appreciation” for the information imparted in our Holy Texts, we have failed to appreciate the errors, the miscues of our ancestors and repair them externally as well as in the inner lives of each individual, our Rabbis and teachers are not leading us to appreciate what we have been through and take the information of our errors and misdeeds to heart, cause/help us to do T’Shuvah to repair the damages in the spiritual as well as physical, intellectual and emotional realms and have appreciation for the difficulty of living well, of not whoring ourselves and appreciation for the miraculous paths of the Bible. As we say in our prayers regarding the Torah, “It is a tree of life…all of its paths are peace”, yet our Rabbis are not helping us to fulfill this promise, they are not willing to stand for what is right and true in the face of losing their income, their ability to get ‘another job’ and, most of all, failing to follow the call of the spirit within them and within the people who need to hear the message most. When “information” is used and manipulated without “appreciation” for truth, for what it imparts, for how it affects the inner life, it is like a useless prayer, it is a sin.

While it is important to have “proficiency” when praying and reading Torah, just being able to rush through the service, the Torah readings, mean NOTHING! There used to be a game show called “Name that Tune” where people would try and guess the name of a song with as few notes as possible, well there are many Jews who believe finishing their prayers as quickly as possible is a badge of honor and shows how good they are. There are a myriad of Jews who, during the Torah Reading and the Haftorah reading, go out to the “Kiddish Club” and get drunk on Shabbat morning, because they already know what it says and they are experts in carrying out the Mitzvot-just ask them. We have lost our capacity for reverence-full stop. Look at the ways we treat older people-rather than learning from them, we dismiss them, rather than honoring them, we consider them burdens and drains on resources. Where are the Rabbis featuring the wisdom of our elders in our congregations, oh yeah, the ‘older’ Rabbis get put out to pasture as well.

We have lost our reverence for the miracle of waking up each morning, of the sun setting each evening, we have lost our reverence for the miracles that abound around us all day long and for the angels that keep going up and coming down on Jacob’s ladder which is still here. We have lost our ability to revere anything because of the mendacity and lies, conspiracy theories and mistrust that has been sown in our political arenas, in our families with the lies parents tell children and in our Temples when the Rabbis don’t stand up for the principles they spout off about and live into the principles of Torah, of decency, of engaging like the Prophets.

The more I learn, the more I appreciate! The more proficient I become the more reverence I have. I was so far down the rabbit hole, I had fallen so far into the Abyss, my recovery and being saved like the Israelites were from Pharaoh and Egypt rekindled my desire to learn and become more proficient in studying and, most of all, in living well. This experience also rekindled the appreciation I had as a kid for my father, for my grandparents, for my aunts and uncles, it makes me remember how blessed I am to grow up in my family, have the cousins, siblings, parents, nieces and nephews, friends that I have. I still forget to appreciate it all at times and this is reminding me. My continuing to recover my passion and practice my purpose also gives me reverence and awe for life, for the Grace I experience when I fail forward, when I miss the mark. I no longer need the validation of people who withhold it as a sign of power and control. I don’t have to “prove I am right” as well because I have can “stand in awe” of the truth without needing anyone to validate me-it is an inside job that comes when I appreciate what I know and become proficient in living with reverence. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark