Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 110

“Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common. (Essential Writings pg. 62)

Sitting with these words of wisdom and rebuke for an hour, a day, a week could and must change the ways we see ourselves, we see one another and we see our society. That every individual “is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society” goes without saying and has been proved over and over again. Be it the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Assyrians, the Persians, the English, the Germans, the French, the Americans, the Japanese, the Palestinians, the Saudis, the Chinese, the Russians, etc there is a spirit of each society that “conditions” of affects each individual within it, as well as individuals and countries throughout the globe. Each invention, each discovery, every painting, musical composition, etc impacts the nature of the individuals and the societies they live in.

If we look at the crimes being committed today, what does it say about our societies, here and abroad? Robberies, burglaries, petty thefts show the belief of a society that “if I can take it from you, then it was meant to be mine”. It is showing us a society that believes in “getting mine” without regard to the impact and effect “getting mine” has on anyone else. A society that has a lot of these types of crimes along with identity theft crimes gives us a picture of a society that no longer views another person as having dignity, rights, value except in relationship to it. We are such a society, we have moved from the colonial spirit of “liberty and justice for all” to a spirit of mistrust and mendacity. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln carried on the colonial spirit of the leaders of the Revolutionary War by freeing slaves, by making slavery no longer legal. Yet, even the people of his own party betrayed this bold and evolutionary move by instituting Jim Crow Laws, by allowing the KKK to flourish, etc. Our society that has so much crime-yes it may be less one year- that attacks the very fabric of personal safety like those mentioned above, shows us how little the society cares for the individual and how much it caters to the rich, powerful, people at the ‘head’ of it. We are living in a society that is more concerned with its “adjustment to conventional notions and mental cliches” than with the dignity and worth of the 90% how don’t have as much as the top 10%!

The more I sit with Rabbi Heschel’s demand and wisdom, his brilliance and his clear-eyed vision of what was, what is, the more I realize how far we have to climb as a society. We are a corrupt society, we are see this in the lies people believe from the mouth of Donals Trump, from the mouth of Bibi Netanyahu, from the mouth of Vladimir Putin, from the mouths of the Republicans in office and from the mouths of the Squad, of Democrats who fail to see the both/and of a situation and call for changes that care only for the current group that is there ‘identity group’. We are a society that has come to worship the liar and shun the truth sayer! We are a society that will hail and bow down to terrorists societies like Hamas and Iran who mistreat their people so badly that in almost 20 years the people of Gaza were in poverty still while the heads of Hamas live well in Qatar, in Gaza and across the globe. We are a society that will believe the lies of ‘the poor Palestinians’ who did nothing to stop the horror of Oct. 7th, who have allowed Hamas to brutalize them, to kill LGBTQ+ people in their midst, to make women 2nd class citizens. Yet the progressive wing of the Democratic Party salutes them as freedom fighters!!

Believing that Joe Biden is a crook and Donald Trump is sent by Jesus, believing that Bibi and his right-wing, so-called ‘religious’ right care about anything but their own power and their own ability to be dictators, believing that what happens in Ukraine doesn’t matter to us, believing that Putin, Kim Jung Un, Xi, Orban are good men, etc, says everything about the society that we are in and the one we have allowed to be created. I am old enough to remember “the Great Society” and “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, the Peace Corps, the energy of the ’60’s for peace, for civil rights and civil discourse. I also remember the murders of Medger Evers, JFK, Martin and Bobby, Malcolm X, and a society that never really cared to be responsible for the climate and the attitude of hatred that was so prevalent at those times. WE, the PEOPLE have to stand up and change this pervasive attitude of being able to lie about people to make ourselves wealthy, to make ourselves electable, to make ourselves feel good about ourselves. I watch in horror at the people who ‘jump on the bandwagon’ of the latest ways to ‘get theirs’ through frivolous “draft lawsuits” that are actually extorting money from people, business’ and even non-profit social service institutions, knowing the publicity is worse than paying. We are a sick society and we need to heal!

Healing can be found in the recovery movement, through the AA model, through the model the Bible gives us, through the humanistic model, through the model of Eastern Philosophies. All of these paths give us principles to live into and live by, ways of being human and decent. More on this tomorrow. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark