Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 108
“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)
Both religion and every spiritual discipline demand ways of being from us and, while many want to rebel against these demands, these demands are actually the pathways to answers to the questions that haunt us all: “why am I here”, “who am I”, “how do I feed my desperate need for connection”, “what is God saying to me” are some of the most common questions we wrestle with. I believe the holiness code has within it so many of these demands that help us find our unique answers to these questions and so many more. Continuing with the demands of the Bible and my explanations of them:
9) You will not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor, you shall rebuke him/her and not put missing the mark upon him. While these two phrases do not follow one another in The Bible, I am putting them together for our purpose. In their own ways, they speak to the demands of living in communal spaces, a response to our selfishness and self-seeking. We are witnessing the exact opposite of the first phrase in our world today. The Police killings of Black men simply because they are black with no real change in policing techniques, with still not holding most of the offenders responsible and shielding them from lawsuits is “standing idly by the blood of your neighbor”. Applauding the hate speech and the anti-Semitic tropes on the different social media platforms and at rallies is “standing idly by the blood of your neighbor”. Remember the phrase ends with neighbor which means anyone who lives in the same neighborhood, city, county, state, c country is considered, in Biblical terms, one’s neighbor. We are witnesses and, for some, participants in watching the demise of someone else with apathy, with joy, with schadenfreude. We want to take down the powerful, we want to take down our ‘enemies’ and we see so many others as more powerful than we, we see enemies behind every door and through every window. We are standing idly when we do not vote in our elections, we are standing idly by when we make ‘good guys and bad guys’, when we allow the cancer and eye disease of prejudice to blind us to the humanity of those ‘bad guys’. We watched, hopefully in horror, as people seeking refuge were treated like animals, their children separated from them only to cause pain and suffering, and we did not hold the perpetrators responsible, instead many of them got re-elected. The Republicans who mocked Nancy Pelosi and her husband after a man broke into her house and almost killed Paul Pelosi with a hammer stood idly by the blood of their neighbor! We see this all the time, we see people who witness crimes who don’t want to get involved. We must recall Martin Neimoller, a Lutheran Minister who wrote a poem that captures this demand so well: First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. We have witnessed this over and over again and we still do not speak out, we still do not stand up, stand with our neighbors who are being treated explicitly or implicitly with bias, with prejudice, with hatred.
We have to stand up, we have to stand by, we have to risk the wrath of those in power for the sake of our neighbor and for the sake of our soul. This demand is not just about helping those in need, it is about helping our self be more human. It is to remind us of our dignity, our value, our internal need to connect and care for another human being. It is a demand that makes us more whole internally, spiritually and emotionally. Not standing idly by the blood of our neighbor is not about vengeance, it is about giving voice and power to overcome our own fears of persecution, our own fears of being harmed and to rise above our fears and worries to answer the demand of religion/spirituality, the demand of God, and the demand of our souls. We are not just being ‘do-gooders’, we are satisfying a deep need inside of us that most of us have tried to starve out of existence and never do.
In recovery, we say the only requirement is a desire to stop__. We welcome the drunk, the sinner, the ne’er do well, etc. We will not let anything come in the way of our helping another alcoholic, addict, in any and all forms. We are dedicated to carrying a message to alcoholics who still suffer so they can find and follow the demands of their spirit, the demands of their higher power.
I remember being turned away from the Temple I was Bar Mitzvah and who’s clergy had officiated at my father’s funeral and my brother’s wedding on Yom Kippur because I didn’t have a ticket. I responded to the institution that stood idly by the blood of their neighbor by making sure that no one was denied entry to Beit T’Shuvah for a lack of funds. Because we responded to God’s Voice, we were able to help people who had no where else to turn. We never stood idly by the blood of our neighbor. I know there were times when I did stand idly by and I am sorry for those errors. I also know I did not stand idly by for most of these past 35 years. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark