Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 273

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)

Rabbi Heschel’s first statement above is, in a sense, outrageous! He believes that the foundation, the proposition which is sent out from our tradition is “reliably true” that we are “able to educate the inner man”! He is not taking into account the failure of our attempts at doing this, he is not taking into account the history of our inhumanity towards one another, it seems, or is he? Is the statement above so rooted in truth for Rabbi Heschel that he takes it upon himself and all of the other teachers throughout the millennia the “failure” to “educate the inner man” so the inhumanity towards one another can end? The Shoah, the Nazi takeover of Germany, the death of so much of his family made it impossible for Rabbi Heschel to not know the inhumanity we do to one another, yet, he believed fervently in his soul, with his entire being that the foundational proposition of Judaism is that it is “reliably true” we can “educate the inner” person. Now, he is charging all of us to do just this. Let go of the need to churn out Bar and Bat Mitzvah idiots, let go of the desire to give pap to the ‘powers that be’ in the Synagogue, engage in our tradition so that our students, our congregants can be “a light unto the Nations”, that each of us becomes a true inheritor of the charge to Abraham: “Lech L’Cha”, go to yourself/go for yourself” and “be a blessing”.

Our religious education is woefully lacking in regard to the first “premise” above. We have failed to help our young grow their inner life, we have allowed, sent them to therapists for what are truly spiritual issues: “why am I here”, “what’s the point”, “how do I deal with the opposing forces within me”, etc. These are not psychological issues, these are issues of our inner life, these are the issues that force us to deal with our inner life, with our spiritual beingness, or to run away and hide in a myriad of ways: alcohol, drugs, work, money, fame, power, depression, reckless behaviors, “stinking thinking”, food, gambling… We are in desperate need of the Rabbi to take his/her proper place, to use her/his own experience of growing their inner life as an example for all of us. Rather than hide the struggles of their inner lives, we need the Rabbis to show each of us how our tradition helped them “educate their inner life” to meet the challenges we all face. Rather than give us some ridiculous notion of ‘perfect heroes’ show us the flaws of our ancestors and how they found ways to rise above their flaws to do something good and holy. Rather than whitewash their errors, engage us in discussions of how we make the same errors for the same reasons even though we hide them from ourselves, even though we deny them and we wrap ourselves in the Talit of righteousness  whether from a ‘progressive’ lens or a ‘conservative’ lens, we all need to look at ourselves once again, each day and see how we drift away from our need to “educate the inner” self. It is time for all Rabbis, all educators, all parents, to take their proper place in their own education and the education of our young people’s inner self!

We are in a desperate struggle for the soul of democracy, for the soul of freedom precisely because, in my opinion, we, Rabbis, have failed to “educate the inner man”. We are still living in the Dark Ages of hiding from ourselves, hiding from the universe/Ineffable One, hiding from one another-just as Cain tried to hide from God after killing his brother, some say a part of himself, Abel. Just as Judah could say that Tamar “was more righteous than me” and King David could listen to and hear the voice of Abigail to not kill Naval, so too can we hear the call of our teachers to “educate our inner life”, to raise our  spirits to meet the challenges to our freedoms, to defeat the myriad of Pharaohs that abound in our daily lives-both the inner and the outer ones. We need to remind our congregants, our young, ourselves that it is “reliably true”, there is a “certainty” that we can “educate the inner man” and we can “educate the inner woman” and make our world a little better than when we were born.

We Rabbis can, and I would add, must stop being puppets on the string, end our careers as marionettes being played by the ‘bosses’, the ones signing our paychecks. We have to remember who we truly work for: A Higher Calling. We have to remember and engage in the call of our souls, the results of our educating our inner self, our souls. We have to promote and call out the “certainty” of our times, of all times; without “being able to educate the inner self” of everyone, we will once again participate in the destruction of freedom, the destruction of our values, the destruction of what the Torah, the Bible stand for and teach us. This is a call out to the fearful Rabbis who don’t want to confront the mendacity of the ‘people in charge’ or the Orthodoxy of Hate and Lies that Ben G’Vir, Smotrich, and the other lying Rabbis who call for us to “do what is hateful to us to another” in the West Bank and Gaza, who are too timid to call out the lies of Trump and his Republican ass-kissers in spiritual terms. This is a call out to those arrogant asshole Rabbis who believe ‘only I know what is right’, ‘only I can fix the issues’;  pontificating while never seeing the individual in front of them nor the reflection of their spiritual malady that faces them each day in the mirror.

Being someone who was so lost, so ‘out there’, so trapped in an Egypt of my own making, I know with “certainty” that our tradition is “able to educate the inner life” because it has mine over these past 35+ years. I study with people not to learn the stories, but to learn the lessons for living well. I engage in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings not for my mind, rather to “educate” my inner life. I know Judaism has made my inner life so much better, stronger, more educated and closer to the wholeness we all seek because I was so lost, so disparate, and now, I am better. I still err, I still know the weak spots, the ways I can be shaken in my inner life and because of the “certainty of being able to educate the inner life of man” I recover, I do T’Shuvah and I work to build my life as a work of art, I stand up to the lies, I stand for truth in all it’s facets and I practice love in all my affairs. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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