Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 63
“A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepting. The knowledge of evil is something which the first man acquired; it was not something that the prophets had to discover. Their great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. I am my brother’s keeper.”(Essential Writings pg.86)
Rabbi Heschel’s teaching about the knowledge of evil is so important to remember and immerse ourselves in. Evil is what Adam and Eve learned about when they ate of the fruit of good and evil, they also learned what is good and the nuance between them, the ways to discern one from the other. This knowledge has been passed down to us throughout the generations. What we seem to miss, however, is the call and demand of the prophets to open up our eyes and see the evil in front of us, the evil within us and the “evil of indifference.” We have shut our eyes to this evil, we have become drunk with our own power of willful blindness, our increasingly dangerous skill at hiding in the shadows and calling it sunlight. We have ‘grown up’ to a new and blinding reality-mendacity in the form of the holy!
So many ‘religious’ people are indifferent to the evil that their idolatry causes in the world, in their communities, in their families. We are witnessing a renaissance of the hell of bygone eras where ‘religious’ people spouted verses from the Bible, from many holy texts, to validate their evil and their indifference. The prophets did not just talk to the people of Israel and Judea, they spoke directly to the Priests and the Powerful. They did not point out the obvious, they pointed out the lies of the Priests and the powerful, the hiding they were doing in plain sight, the unholy actions they were taking under the guise of doing the service of the Temple and of God. The “evil of indifference” was so great to the prophets, they risked everything, life, liberty, etc to get the Priests and the powerful, the people and the children to return to God and Godliness. Yet, then as now, their pleas fell on deaf ears.
We know evil when we see it, we just choose to ignore it for our own personal gain, because of our fear of standing against the norm, out of a lack of courage and being trained in the ‘art’ of indifference. Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, a celebration of the victory over the Greeks in 167BCE or there about, yet it is also a ‘victory’ supposedly over Hellenism for Judaism. It is also a Civil War between the ‘religious’ and the secular Jews in Judea at the time-sound familiar? In their zealotry, the Maccabees were blind to the “evil to indifference” they practiced, they overpowered their ‘enemies’ in the Jewish world because they believed in their ‘righteousness’ and, as history has shown, became as corrupt as the people they replaced, as Hellenized as the people they fought against. Today, also, we see these ‘religious’ people trying to take over the country in Israel and in the United States so they can impose their ‘kingdom of god’ which is nothing more than idolatry, bastardization of the holy teachings and in direct opposition to the teachings of the prophets. Yet, these ‘religious’ people are so blinded by their inner evil they are masters at what the prophets discovered: “the evil of indifference”.
Just as Deborah, Tamar, and other women saved us in Biblical days, just as Joan of Ark, Isabella of Spain taught us what it means to stand for truth and discovery, it seems women like Liz Cheney, Cassidy Hutchinson, Nancy Pelosi are doing the same here in the United States. Women in Israel are calling Bibi and his gang of idolators to task about their “indifference to evil” in dealing with Hamas prior to Oct.7th, their indifference to the suffering of the hostages still in Hamas’ grasp, their indifference to the plight of the people in the West Bank as the settlers go after them with the full cooperation of some of the IDF! We need to heed these women, we need to follow their examples and cross political, ideological lines to end our dependence upon and our relishing in “the evil of indifference”!
We do this by joining what I call the Recovery Revolution. What better time than now to make a decision to truly turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God, remove the blindfolds we have put over our souls, to end our passionate love affair with “the evil of indifference”! We are in a time of great spiritual courage, the forces of the Cosmos are pulling us to freedom, be it Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, all of these celebrations of the Winter Solstice are also invitations to end our love affair with “the evil of indifference”, to stop engaging in the lies we tell ourselves about how ‘right’ we are in our indifference to the plight of another. The Recovery Revolution calls for us, as the prophets call for us, to help the needy and the poor, the sufferer and the stranger; to care for one another and to live into the commandment: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. In recovery, we learn to love ourselves for who we truly are, to engage in life on life’s terms, to stop being engaged in “the evil of indifference”.
I am not indifferent, I ended my love affair with the “evil of indifference” years ago. I am bereft at how this evil has grown over the years I have fought against it in myself and in the communities I have been part of. I realize that the call of the prophets is very strong within me and I am not always ‘nice’ in my desire to smash this “evil of indifference”. While I know I can’t eradicate it, I keep believing if I smash it into enough small pieces, the people I am trying to help will be able to see it, manage it and end their affair with it. I am going to keep trying and, it is at times a very lonely place, a misunderstood place, and a place of hope, strength and connection to God and to people. God Bless, Happy Hanukkah, and stay safe, Rabbi Mark