Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 119
“Justice has always appeared as obligatory, but for a long time it was an obligation like other obligations. It met, like the others, a social need;…This being so, an injustice was neither more nor less shocking than any other breach of the rules.There was no justice for slaves, save perhaps a relative, almost an optional, justice” (God in Search of Man pg. 373)
While we say “justice is blind”, we know this to be false given the history of inequality between the ‘justice’ for the “haves” and the ‘justice for the “have-nots” that has plagued us since humanity began. Judges are supposed to deliver “righteous justice”, justice that is tempered with mercy, appropriate sentences and, if there is doubt, not guilty verdicts. Instead, we see some people punished without mercy for crimes that another person is given a pass on. Yet, we are still not shocked by this injustice, we are not outraged at the horror of these actions, we just accept it as “sad, but true”. How disgusting a way of being. How much more inhumane can we be towards our fellow human beings?
Alan Turing was prosecuted, found guilty of being a homosexual-as if sexual orientation is a crime! God created Alan Turing to fulfill a need, he was a genius and he led a team that cracked the German Code, saving lives and helping to ensure victory in World War II. Yet the British government thought his ‘crime’ of being and acting in the way that God made him was so horrendous they dogged him into killing himself and the world missed out on his genius. We are locking people up for minor drug offenses rather than give them the help they need to recovery and call this justice. “Driving while Black” is still a capital offense according to some Police people and our Federal Government refuses to stop this, calling it a ‘state’s rights issue’. This is in direct conflict with “unalienable rights” as described in the Declaration of Independence, and our shock, outrage, marching does nothing to actually change our culture because these injustices and so many more are “neither more or less shocking than any other breach of the rules”. Without justice, the rest of the rules mean nothing and we are perpetuating and promoting a meaningless society by our inability to be shocked at injustice in a manner that produces change!
I am outraged at our not being shocked at injustice, I am also appreciating the courage of Dr. King, Gandhi, Rabbi Heschel, Rev Barber, and so many other clergy, regular people who have and are fighting for justice in every area of living. It sounds fine to have “equal justice under the law” and we are not living this truth, this command from God that there should be one law for the citizen and stranger alike and I applaud, commend the true “God-Awing” people who follow this demand, this call from God. I also am calling out the Idolators who claim Jesus, Adonai, Allah as their god and really worshiping their own resentments, their own power, their False Images of themselves and God.
“Justice, Justice, you shall pursue” Moses tells us in Deuteronomy and yet, we continue to pursue injustice instead! Justice is not in the eyes of the beholder, in the eyes of the powerful. It is in the “eyes” of God! We, the People, have to hear and respond to this command, we have to stop shrugging our shoulders at the injustices around us and we have to stand up for justice. We have to stop seeking to pervert justice for our own gain. We have to stop saying to ourselves and to another(s) “that’s just how the world works” and we have to march, vote, demand “Justice for all” and stop bastardizing our slogans, stop taking God’s name in vain by being indifferent to injustice. We keep ourselves exiled from our purpose, we keep ourselves in exile from God, we keep ourselves from our covenant with God by being indifferent to injustice. As our Prophets teach us, injustice towards one, is injustice towards all. God cares about the widow, the orphan,the stranger, the needy, the poor, the Black, the Brown, the Jew, the Asian, the Muslim, as much as God cares for the White, the wealthy, the powerful. Each of us is equal in the “eyes” of God and so should we be in our own eyes. When we accept these “truths to be self-evident”, when we stand for justice, our world, our individual lives will flourish!
In recovery, we are acutely aware of injustice precisely because we practiced injustice prior to our recovery. We “grow upon spiritual principles” because we know without our spiritual life being rich, without spiritual progress, we will fall back into our old ways and bring about the same destruction to another(s) and to our self.
I have always been sensitive to injustice because my father, my grandfathers were so keenly aware of and against injustice. What to many people was “just the way life is”, to my ancestors was a calamity. This is why my earlier path of injustice, crime and alcoholism was so antithetical to everything I learned as a youth. This is the living amends I make to them: to practice justice in my affairs, to be a person who stands for justice and not prejudice. I have made it a priority to be shocked at my own injustice, no matter how ‘small’ it may seem to another(s) and to my mind. My soul cries out to me at the injustice in the world, in my community, in my country and in my self. It is a loud cry that comes out of me as anger and is actually anguish. I pray we all hear this cry of our souls! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark