Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 295
National Month of Repentance and Change
“The season of Rosh Hashanah is the “Day of Memory”, the “Day of Judgement”. Before the judgement and memory of God we stand. How can we prove ourselves? How can we persist How can we be steadfast? Through repentance.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg 69)
Remembering that we are not so much ‘standing in front” of a man in a beard with a staff, in front of some mythical figure, rather we are standing in front of ourselves, we are facing our self and our actions as well as our inactions. We are asking ourselves for proof that we are worthy, proof that we can change, proof that we can be forgiven. We are asking ourselves for proof that we can forgive ourselves, that we can end our incessant need to be self-abusive, as Noah BenShea speaks about in his documentary, “Jacob the Baker” on Amazon Prime-which I highly recommend.
We wonder, at this time of year, in this reflexive and reflective time, how can we go on, how can we continue to try and fail, how can we keep trying to keep up appearances, worry about the “optics” while our inner world is burning, while we are falling apart inside and we continue to ignore our spiritual health while maintaining the appearance of propriety, high moral standards, wonder and awe?
We question our ability to stay true to ourselves since we have betrayed ourselves so often in the past. We begin and/or continue to doubt our ability to hold fast to the Torah, to principles of morality and ethical ways when the lure and the pull of ‘get rich quick’, ‘make the money and you will be safe’, “if your rich they think you really know”, “winning at all costs and the one with the most toys wins” are so strong from both society and within us. How can we believe we have the “staying power” when we say both the long and the short confessionals on Yom Kippur?
We have shunned this questions for so long as individuals and as a society. We have shied away from these questions of Rabbi Heschel for millennia and, it is interesting to me that there is not more discussion among my colleagues about these questions and response from Rabbi Heschel. It is as if we don’t want to face the truth about our own selves as Clergy, as human beings so we continue to preach out, preach about what is good (Jews and Israel) and what is not good (antisemitism and anyone who is critical of Israel). When the Rabbis and Cantors who have supported Trump, the Republican Jewish Coalition who says they believe in “Republican Values”, don’t walk away when he speaks of “blame the Jews for my loss of the election”-we see people who are unable to be steadfast in their devotion to Biblical Values. Listening in horror to the evangelicals who proclaim Trump and Vance as ‘god’s anointed’ and they clap and say ‘amen’ to this should make all of us want to throw up! Yet, we continue to see how people are more interested in being “steadfast” in their mendacity and their self-deception. than in the principles of the Bible, of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, of Easter and Christmas.
It is time for all of us to engage in the solution Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of: Repentance. In the Talmud Yoma 86b it states: Reb Meir says: “Great is repentance because the entire world is forgiven on account of one individual who repents, as it is stated: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for My anger has turned away from him” (Hosea 14:5)”. This is, of course on its face an outlandish statement. Yet, it also speaks to the importance of each and every individual. It also reminds us of Malcolm Gladwell’s “tipping point” theory. It is defined as: “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place”. When one person repents to another, that person then is moved to do the same and on and on until the whole world is rising to repent and have “their backsliding” healed and be in a state where they and another “love them freely”. We have the path, it is in the Bible, it is, according to our mystics a way of being that was put into the world even before the world was created and, I would add, it is so often bastardized and not used.
Saying “I’m sorry” is not the same as repentance! Repeating the formula the Rabbis gave: “if I have done anything to harm you, please forgive me” is inadequate. Asking people what you have done to them is abdicating one’s responsibility to be self-reflective and self-reflexive. Yet, we allow these types of false humility and piety to be ‘good enough’ for us and can’t understand why someone would not forgive these half-assed ways of seeking forgiveness. We find it incomprehensible that someone would expect us to actually face our selves, to do the work to prove to them and to ourselves that we want to change our ways, that we are willing to make restitution for the harms we have wrought, that we are committed to finding new responses to these old triggers and experiences which will be with us throughout our lifetime. How dare anyone expect this, how dare my own soul, my inner life cause me such turmoil because it expects me to change and grow. Yet, repentance is the solution.
As a younger human being-denial was the default. If someone accused me, I denied and, for a while, I was good enough to make them question their reality. I was steadfast and persistent in my lies and my denials. I was unwilling to repent even when my errors were so apparent all I could do is say “sorry”. Never once meaning it enough to change, to grow, to face myself. It took being arrested again in Dec.1986 for me to want to change, to actually face myself, face what I had done. In realizing everything and everyone I was losing, I had to begin with the realization that I had lost myself so long ago, I had succumbed to the lies I told myself, the lies of society, even the lies of my family. I had to begin by proving to me that I was capable of living from my soul, that my inner life would have the final and deciding vote and veto power over my mind and my emotions. I had to be steadfast and strong in this decision because the power of my evil inclination to run away again, the power of society to laugh at me for being a sucker, was so strong and, to this day, still rears its ugly head at time. I have, however, been persistent, I have proved to myself and I have stayed true to the call I heard from the universe to change. All of this has happened because of my repentance, many lives have changed because of my repentance and the repentance of so many at Beit T’Shuvah, in AA, etc. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark