Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 288

National Days of Repentance and Change

“THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER on the days of Rosh Hashanah presents itself with characteristic familiarity: it reveals itself to those who want to fulfill it, and eludes those who want only to know it.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 68)

The words above are the opening of an article that Rabbi Heschel wrote in September of 1936 in Berlin, Germany, entitled: “The Meaning of Repentance”. I will be quoting from this article for the next days. Rabbi Heschel’s first words of this article present us with a way of seeing prayer and Rosh Hashanah in a new/old light-what is “THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER” we experience? How do we experience it, are we seeking to fulfill it or just know it so we can bathe in it? During this month of Elul, today is the 12th day, we get to clean up our errors; change our ways of thinking, acting and seeing; recognize our goodness; enhance what we do well and be more charitable to ourselves and to another(s). We are given the time, the space and the cosmic power to forgive, to repent, to, as Chuck Chamberlain writes, “get a new pair of glasses”. And, while all of this is available, we have to “want to fulfill it” rather than “want only to know it”.

This month, the experience of prayer on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the work of the 10 days of repentance, are experiential, there is no way to vicariously experience them. There is no way to just go to Temple, Synagogue, and remember the prayers from last year, go to sleep during the sermon again, stand up and sit down like robots and believe one has fulfilled one’s obligation. The reason most people are not moved by the “mystery of prayer on the days of Rosh Hashanah” is because most people are not engaged in prayer, they are engaged in seeing who is at services, what people are wearing, what business they can set up for the next day, how much booze the ‘kiddish club’ has and when can they steal away to have a drink. Rather than seeking to fulfill the ideas and engage in the paths of prayer on these Holy Days and, truth be told, during the rest of the year as well, most people-even the most observant-are only interested in ‘getting through the service’ so they can go home and eat, sleep, whatever. This happens because of our culture, because of our insistence on saying every prayer exactly word for word and going on to the next one as fast as we can, because of our need to appease the donors and the people who only come 3 times a year, and, mostly, because we are unwilling to do the work to prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

It is very interesting to me that we are willing to plan a party a year in advance if necessary to get the right venue, the right caterer, the right music, and we are not willing to take a month to get right with the universe, with our souls, with those we ‘love’, with the ones we have hurt, etc. We are unwilling to take this time to look inside ourselves, to play the video tape of this past year(s) and see what we have done well and where we have missed the mark. We are unwilling to fulfill the “mystery of prayer” in these days prior to Rosh Hashanah much less “fulfill it” “on the days of Rosh Hashanah”. It is TIME TO WAKE UP! Yes, I am shouting this to myself and to everyone who is reading this. No matter how aware we think we are, no matter how much we know we have grown in the past year, we have to take the time and make the effort “to fulfill” the “mystery” of this month prior to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We have to “lift up our eyes and see” as God tells Abraham a few times in Genesis, especially to see the ram in the thicket instead of killing Isaac.

What stops us? What is the cause of our lack of preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? Laziness, a need to know and understand before doing, a disbelief in the mystical and the mystery of these 40 days from the first of Elul through Yom Kippur, the disbelief that people can change! Another reason, I believe, is fear of seeing ourselves completely and facing our authentic self, warts and all, which leads to not being able to hide so well anymore and, ‘what will people think if they know the real me?’. We are, at our core, afraid to walk into the unknown with only our souls leading us, with only the voice of the Ineffable One to guide us, we are denying the experience that God provides for Abraham; “Lech L’Cha- go for/to yourself… to a land I will show you”.

This month of Elul provides us with the opportunity to have the experience of Abraham, to go forward for our self and to our true self; to go to our proper place where we can be of service to another person(s), to our self, and to the Universe. The forces of the Cosmos are in sync with this way of being, just as they were with Abraham. We, the people, have to engage in the work that this entails, we get to see how we have created souls in our midst-by helping people in need of material and spiritual sustenance, how we have destroyed souls in our midst-by ignoring the material and spiritual needs of people around us. We are able to engage in the work of repairing the damage we have wrought, we get the gift of seeing our narcissistic tendencies which lead to doing harm to another human being. We are better able to discern different ways to respond to the challenges of greed, of fear, of daily living so we do not just react in the same old ways.  Yet, without fulfilling the call of T’Shuvah, the inner pull of doing our own inventory, we have no chance to change, no path to a new freedom, no “stairway to heaven”.

I have been engaging in the gift of Elul for the past 37 years and it is the most exhilarating and frightening experience! I am so elated to see where I have missed the mark, where people tell me what I have screwed up because I know I can grow and change. I am frightened when I see where I have succeeded because I know I need to keep my ego in check and not believe that I can go on auto-pilot because I have done ___(this) right before. I am engaging my whole self in the “mystery of prayer” of these days of Elul, “the days of Rosh Hashanah” because I need to fulfill the thoughts, the ideas, the demands of the prayers. I look forward to the music, to the interpretations of the prayers and to my own new experiences of prayer and service, inventory and repairs, asking for forgiveness, being forgiven, and forgiving another. I am acutely aware of my errors, I see them everyday in the writing I do, in the prayers I say, in the inventory I take daily. I am aware of the inner fight I wrestle with in each moment and I am grateful for the people in my life who help me and stand with me even when I screw up because they know my soul, they know my goodness and they know my foibles. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark