Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 175
“We do not wage war with evil in the name of an abstract concept of duty. We do the good not because it is a value or because of expediency, but because we owe it to God.”(God in Search of Man pg 376)
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, officially. Yet for the survivors of the Shoah, the soldiers who fought in this most ugly war, their dependents and family members, every day is Remembrance Day and we are trying so hard to forget what happened in Europe from 1933-1945 that we are seeing history repeat itself. I thought I was going to move on to a different teaching of Rabbi Heschel’s, yet remembering the Holocaust has to happen every day, otherwise we lose the battle and stop our effort to “wage war with evil”. We forget that we owe God our good actions, our good deeds, our good thinking and our good heart.
We are seeing the outcome of people refusing to “wage war with evil” that resides within each of us. We are born with the evil inclination and the good inclination, both come from God. In infancy, these two seemingly opposing forces cause the Tohu V’Vohu described in the 2nd verse of the Genesis; emptiness/void and chaos. The suggestion/commandment is to integrate these seemingly opposing forces so that our evil inclination works for and with the good inclination to make great things happen for ourselves, for human beings, for God.
Yet, Clarence Thomas, Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, and so many others who claim to be ‘god-fearing people’, feed the evil inside of them, wage war with the good rather than “wage war with evil”. When we look at Varian Fry and Hiram Bingham IV, when we see what Mary Jayne Gold did to help them and the Emergency Rescue Committee, we see what God-loving Christians are. We see the humanitarian efforts to save people for being people, not excluding them because they are Jewish. We can draw the contrast between these Righteous Christians and the Unrighteous Ones parading around today. We see that evil has won their inner war, that mendacity, deception, power and Fascism are more important to them than repaying the debt owed God for being alive. We are watching the ‘maga’ crowd crowd out Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, God, Allah, Ineffable One, and call evil their power greater than themselves.
It is true, evil is a power greater than we. This is why we have to “wage war with evil” and seek God’s help in our inner battle so we can connect with other divine images, ie people, to join together to “wage war with evil” that Jordan, Trump, Thomas, McCarthy, Greene, Gaetz, et al represent and promote. “Wage war with evil” is, at its core, an inside job. Each of us has to look inside, do an inventory and see where and when we are indifferent/oblivious to the evil around us and the evil we are causing.
Engaging in TShuvah through this lens gives us all a new appreciation of the insidiousness of evil, the power of evil, the disguises evil uses, and the way evil has penetrated our thoughts and society to make us spiritually unwell. Maimonidies wrote a book: The Eight Chapters, about our spiritual ailments and how to heal our soul sickness’. He recommends a physician of the soul and, unfortunately, our clergy are either not equipped to be this spiritual physician, are abdicating the responsibility to therapists, or have lost their own war with evil and are adding to the spiritual ailments individuals and society are suffering from. One marker for knowing this is how many clergy, ‘god-fearing people’ support, clap for, agree with Putin, Orban, Netanyahu, MBS, etc. Anyone who attended the gathering where Orban spoke to CPAC, to the Republican Party core, is someone who supports fascism, supports exactly the opposite of what Holocaust Remembrance Day is about.
Harriet Rossetto, my wife, says “you don’t have to be an addict to be in recovery” and “you are either in recovery or denial.” We are living in a time where the principles of recovery have to be incorporated into every persons daily actions. It is a time where the teachings of Torah, the path of Jesus’ loving every person, Mohammed’s call to serving Allah have to actions we take all the time, not just words we spout. We all need to get back to the task to “wage war with evil” for our benefit, for the society’s benefit and to pay back what we owe God. I have been looking inside of me, I realize that my delivery at times is not understandable by some people and I also know that, at times, I lose my war with evil. I am able, however, to admit it, repair it and repair me. I also know that I live my principles no matter what, that without principles I would never be in recovery and I am deathly afraid to look the other way when evil is around me, when it is more expedient to stay silent. The prophets are the example for me and for you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark