Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 61

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself, it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.” (Essential Writings pg. 86)

As I immerse myself in the last sentence above, the words of Elie Weisel come to me: ““We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Along with these words of truth and wisdom comes the quote attributed to Edmund Burke: “Evil flourishes when good men do nothing”. These two teachings are the proof of what Rabbi Heschel is saying above: “Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself, it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.”

Yet, we continue to witness the engagement in this “indifference”, we continue to witness and, for some, participate in it. “Indifference has become the norm, it is used as a cover for both the far left and the far right to engage in vilifying the victim, proclaiming their ‘rightness’ in their engagement in both “indifference” and in “evil”. In the Ukraine, there are people in the United States and across the world who have grown tired of supporting the freedom of the Ukrainians, they are tired of the war and feel like it is not their business to help people across the globe and/or are afraid of war with Russia. This “indifference to evil” has allowed and encouraged dictators for the millennia, this “neutrality” tried to keep us out of World War II, it is a cancer that spreads through the body of a nation and through the souls of humankind. It kills the spirit of freedom, the word of God, the lesson of the prophets.

In the Middle East, “indifference to evil” allows people to condemn Israel and proclaim Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’! It is a contagious disease that is spreading throughout the world, the murder and rape of women and children, the ambush and murder of over 1200 Israelis, the crossing of boundaries of a sovereign nation are of no real consequence because of people’s “indifference to evil”. The evil of Anti-Semitism is contagious, ignored and, in some cases, celebrated. Not caring about, not differentiating between good and evil, not seeing the nuances and the lies of this situation and any situation is a form of “indifference” to me. Whitewashing Israel and/or Hamas is a subtle form of “indifference to evil”.

We, as a people, have lost our way in the pursuit of personal gain, personal pleasures. We have grown our ability to “not easily be moved by the wrongs done unto other people” by making them into non-human, less than us, etc. The global crisis’ are of a personal making, as I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning. Because of our own lack of action, our own neutrality because it isn’t happening to us, we watch in silent complicity as people are denied their right to vote, their right to representation because of gerrymandering, their right to determine what happens within their own bodies, their right to die, their right to be free. We, the People, have to end our “indifference to evil”, we have to end our tacit support of the liars and charlatans who tell us God wants us to hate another human being for their sexual orientation, their belief in helping the poor, the needy, the hungry, their fight for freedom and safety, their belief in the promises of being taken out of the ‘Egypts’ they find themselves in, for demanding the release of the captives, etc. We, the People, have to turn inward and root out the “indifference” that stops us from “doing nothing” while evil is flourishing. We, the People, have to end our desire to not get involved, to believing ‘it doeskin’ concern us’, and end our support of the oppressor with our neutrality, our silence.

We can only do this by following the wisdom of Socrates: “An unexamined life is not worth living” and acknowledging the truth of Malcom X: the examined life is painful”. We are told in the Bible, in the Talmud, to continue to examine our lives, examine our actions, learn and grow, repair and change, not to be perfect and to be involved in living a whole life, an examined life, a life of standing up for truth, a life of standing up for justice, a life of seeing the nuances of each and every situation we find ourselves in. We are called to, as the Kotzker Rebbe reminds us, take each of the 10 sayings/commandments, personally: don’t murder our own souls, don’t prostitute ourselves, don’t steal from ourselves, don’t lie about and to ourselves, etc. This is how we end our “indifference to evil”, this is how we not “stand idly by the blood of our brother/neighbor, this is how we “Never Again” stay neutral in the face of evil, in the face of mendacity, in the face of hatred.

This is another of the foundations of the recovery revolution, examining our daily living as well as our previous living. We take “a fearless and thorough moral inventory and as we progress, we “humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings”. We seek each day to grow in awareness, to grow in living the principles of spirituality, to grow in living more decently, kindly, more aware.

This way of being which I have wrapped myself in since 1987 is hard. It is painful for me to see the myriad of ways I went along to get along. It is painful for me to see the times I was unable to contain myself and became bombastic, difficult, and combative in the face of “indifference to evil”, in my estimation and experience. I cannot save my face and my ass at the same time, so many times I have come off as arrogant, angry, immoveable, in the face of both “indifference” and what I saw as evil-mainly the mendacity that people spread. I have not been neutral, I have not been patient, I have not been easily mollified, and this has caused pain for me and those around me. While I am sorry for the pain, I do not apologize for my inability to stay silent in the face of “indifference to evil”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark