Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 214
“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)
Immersing ourselves in the words and deeds of the prophets, taking seriously what they did and said causes us to never be neutral. Many people want to stand on the sidelines while one side fights with another and this is what leads us to the situations we are currently in. In Germany, people stood by while the Nazis rose to power and began their purge of Jews and other “undesirables”. In Hungary, people stood by while the Hungarians and the Germans, after the war was already lost, sent Jews to the death camps, killed Jews at the waterfront and kept their shoes. In every age, in every country, people have stood by, being neutral and great crimes against the poor, the needy, the stranger, the voiceless and the powerless are committed in the name of god, in the name of progress, in the name of nationalism, etc.
We are witnesses to these same issues today. People stand by, staying neutral while the Governor of Florida bans books, rewrites history, discriminates against people of color, LGBTQ+ human beings and wraps himself in the cloak of Jesus! Jesus, of course, hung out with the very people DeSantis and the Republican Party are hating on! We are witnesses to the Progressive Democrats who claim to be standing up for the marginalized and will vote against a bill that raises the debt ceiling, will oppose anything that doesn’t give them everything they want, will call out compromises as evil and people are staying neutral about these antics.
It is time for us to heed the words of the prophets and follow the path of the Rabbis of old. The Rabbis took the words of the prophets to heart and they compromised where necessary. They had an opinion on all facets of living and sought to find ways to compromise and harmonize the myriad of interpretations of God’s words and the prophets actions. We are taught to “not stand idly by the blood of our neighbors”, I interpret this command to mean we cannot stay neutral on issues affecting the welfare of any and all people. Yes, we must compromise at times, yes we will not always get our way in a democracy, this doesn’t give us the right to ‘take our marbles and go home’. This doesn’t give us the permission to not be in the solution to whatever ails our society, our community, our selves. We are commanded to “choose life”; this is a command that reminds us all to be engaged in whatever is going on around us, it is a call/demand from God to continue to move forward in fulfilling the obligation to be human!
We are facing grave dangers today, as we have in every era. Just as the prophets railed against the powers that be in their time, we also have to take a stand to help the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan. We have to get off of our butts and be engaged in voting, in marching, in supporting people and ways of being that help us move towards the messianic era. In Jewish lore, Elijah the prophet, the harbinger of the Messiah, lives among the poor and the needy. The poet, Danny Siegel writes: “If you always assume the man sitting next to you is the Messiah Waiting for some simple human kindness–You will soon come to weigh your words and watch your hands. And if he so chooses not to reveal himself in your time–It will not matter.” We have to be engaged in life, we have to be engaged in doing the next right thing, we have to be engaged in the solution and stop being part of the problem through being neutral.
There is nothing neutral about recovery! We are always seeking to do the next right thing, to hear Good Orderly Direction, to be involved and immersed completely in our living, our deeds, our words matter. We come to believe that we matter, that we have the power to change the trajectory of our lives and return to being human again. In recovery, we know we have to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
I have not lived neutral; neither in recovery nor before. My actions have not always been right, even when they have been I have been scorned, rejected, yet I have never stopped being involved, I have never given into the call to quit. I can’t stand by, I can’t be neutral. I have to be who I am and, while loud and abrasive are not considered good manners in ‘polite society’, they have served me and countless people to heal and be in the solution, to never be neutral. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark