Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 52
“Modern man may be characterized as a being who is callous to catastrophes. A victim of enforced brutalization, his sensibility is being increasingly reduced; his sense of horror is on the wane. The distinction between right and wrong is becoming blurred. All that is left to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.”(God in Search of Man pg. 369)
The last sentence above is the as terrifying as the previous three if not more terrifying. Are we “being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror”? I think this is a very serious and open question for each and every individual and we have to ask our self how we and where we have lost our sense of horror. When I would pass the homeless Vets encampment by the VA Cemetery in Los Angeles, I was horrified at the ways we treated the people who fought for our freedoms, the people we sent off to war as innocent young people and brought them back with physical injuries, moral injuries and spiritual injuries and then left them to live on the streets? How can one not be horrified? Yet, so many people have blamed the Vets themselves as they do with all of the homeless, ‘it is their fault’, ‘get a job’, ‘stop using drugs and alcohol’, ‘take your medication’, etc. is our response ignoring our responsibility for and in making this problem. As Rabbi Heschel teaches: “in a free society, some are guilty, all are responsible.” We have shirked our responsibility by blaming someone else for whatever is ‘wrong’ in our world. We have stopped “being horrified at the loss of horror” because we blame someone else and thereby take no responsibility for the problem nor the cure! How horrifying is this?
I heard a Congressperson say the other day, “I am elected by my district to do what is in their best interest AND in the best interest of the country.” These are the words of one who realizes how callous we have become to catastrophes, how our “sense of horror is on the wane”. When I listen to people blaming the victims, as some are doing in the latest tragedies-‘what were they doing there anyway’ ‘those drag queens are groomers so if people were there they were groomers or being groomed’, and other such poppycock from people. While it is true that people shoot people, no one is horrified that we have had over 600 mass shootings in the United States this year? No one is horrified enough to take action about any real gun control. In 2018 there were more registered guns in the US than people in the Census! When we add in the illegal guns, OY! Yet, we hear from legislators, from the NRA, from Clergy that owning a gun is a good thing, shooting innocent animals on a ranch is fun, it is a right in our Bill of Rights, etc. While the founding fathers did not want the states to feel totally at the will of the federal government so we did not set up another scenario like with King George in England, they certainly did not mean for people to carry a gun in order to shoot anyone they felt like! Nor, since we have meat processing plants now, do we need to use a gun to kill animals for food. Yet, we make excuses for not stopping the proliferation of handguns because we have ceased to be horrified by what is going on in our country, we have become inured to horror, blind to the brutalization, and so callous we are not even aware of the catastrophes that happen all around us.
We no longer have to be dull and boorish, we no longer have to be callous and insensitive, we no longer need to stop being horrified by what is happening all around us. We need to wake up, we need to heed these words of Rabbi Heschel and we need to end our descent into evil. We do this by no longer using the vulnerabilities of another person against them, we no longer blame the victim, we no longer blame ourselves for caring, we no longer take advantage of another person just because we can. We stop exploiting people for our own gain, we stop deceiving them and climb out of our self-deception. We engage in living life with wholeness, kindness, goodness, and spread these principles throughout our daily activities.
As we say in recovery, living by spiritual principles, one day at a time we continue to grow and move closer to a truer way of being. We practice the principles of decency, kindness, holiness, truthfulness, honesty, open-mindedness, justice, acts of loving-kindness in all of our affairs. We follow the words of the Prophet: “Love Mercy, do Justly and walk in the ways of God”. This is our response to the negativity and evil we perpetrated on people before we came into recovery, before we discovered that we are responsible and we are capable.
I have been ill for the past couple of days so I have been inside watching TV and I am horrified by what has happened and the responses by some. I am heartened by the response of the heroes who came to the rescue, including law enforcement. I have been horrified at what is happening for a long time, I have been watching callousness, brutality and reduced sensibility be validated by godless imposters who wear the cloth of clergy, I have watched in horror the lies from leadership about why doing something about the proliferation of guns will not help, I have been totally struck silent by the lies of the dull and the boors that almost 50% of Americans believe. I keep writing, I keep speaking, I keep praying, I keep sending money and other support to places that are attacking our societal ills with loving kindness. I know everyone reading this attacks our societal ills in your own unique manner and I am grateful for this as well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark