| April 2025
Friends, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Nowadays when I think about the destiny of America I am very sad. Having lived in Poland and later in Germany, I know what America really means. For generations America was the great promise, the great joy, the last hope of humanity. Ten years ago if I had said to students that America is a great blessing and an example to the world, they would have laughed at me. Why speak such banalities? Today one of the saddest experiences of my life is to observe what is happening to America morally. The world once had a great hope, a great model: America. What is going to happen to America?” Rabbi Heschel wrote this essay in 1971. The article was entitled, In Search of Exaltation. You can find it in a compilation of his writings edited by his daughter, Dr. Sussanah Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity. The particular curse Rabbi Heschel addresses in the short article is drug addiction. He posited that many young people who fell victim to addiction were misguidedly seeking exaltation. They looked around the world and saw all of its evils and hypocrisies. Their seeking high moments were a misguided and tragic response to a yearning for the noble and spiritual. He said, “I interpret the young people’s escape to drugs as coming from their desire to experience moments of exaltation.” He came to this idea through his experience of exaltation as a young person growing up in a Chassidic family in Poland. “In my youth…there was one thing we did not have to look for and that was exaltation. Every moment is great, we were taught, every moment is unique. Every moment can do such great things.” He looked at the world in 1971 and saw exaltation missing. Rabbi Heschel was a brilliant Jewish thinker. I doubt he thought that lack of a source or setting for exaltation was the only cause of drug addiction. Based on his other writings, I am also sure that it was not the only curse he saw plaguing America. I do think he would be surprised at the place where we have arrived in 2025, a country where people feel more lonely and isolated, where the center of every issue has been purposely eroded, leaving a polarized society, where antisemitism is rising at an alarming rate, and where norms of civility and decency are disregarded and not even the weather is a safe topic for discussion. What has happened to America? Heschel posited that our challenge lay in examining the curse to find the blessing. He saw the void in which drug addiction grows as the empty hole left behind by the abandonment of exaltation. For him, the model of exaltation was the Jewish home, synagogue, and community, which centered on the possibility of exaltation at every moment. Living exaltation is not a relic of the past – we do not have to make the Shtetl great again. We do have to be willing to lean into the world with a sense of awe. Regardless of how my body feels, it is a miracle that I opened my eyes this morning. Irrespective of the weather, every day is a beautiful and glorious day. Every morsel of food I put in my mouth says the world can sustain me. My everyday interactions in the community show that we can work together to do good things. Challenges, pain, hate, and enemies abound, but so do blessings, love, friends, and family. With this sense of exaltation and awe, the latter can overcome the former. With the state of our country and the world, having this mindset is extremely hard, but we can make it easier. Show up in the places where exaltation and awe are front and center. Show up on Friday nights, Sunday mornings, and programs and classes. At Kabbalat Shabbat, we sing joyfully and greet each other with love. Our liturgy is filled with the wisdom of our people. Friendships take root and grow in person. Are you lonely or lamenting the brotherhood doesn’t hang out on Sunday mornings? Then come hang out with us on Sunday morning. The kids are fun and joyful, and the teachers are engaging and loving. Say hello to someone you don’t know. I’ve met most of you – you are all nice people! Join the sisterhood and come to their programs. Come to our adult education classes. God dwells in the space between us. Showing up can be the first step in regaining your sense of exaltation. Then, if we can carry it with us back home and out into the world, we will be surprised at what we can accomplish together. L’shalom, |