Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 311

“Abstaining from cultivating inner attitudes is an abdication of responsibility. It means turning over the child to other agencies of mass culture that powerfully affect attitudes and value judgments, such as television or comic books, Hollywood and Madison Avenue, the impact of which represents a major threat to the independence, sensitivity, inner balance, and freedom of the individual.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 56)

Rabbi Heschel wrote this in 1962, some 62 years ago! He was worried about “comic books, Hollywood, Madison Avenue” and while they all have contributed to our situation today, the internet has exploded as the “major threat to the independence, sensitivity, inner balance, and freedom of the individual”! And, like Nero, we sit and fiddle while democracy is burning from the inside in this country and across the globe. How sad and shortsighted, how devastating to the individual soul and spirit to be inundated with the lies and mendacity of “Madison Avenue”, “television” in the form of the bias of a network and the bending over backwards to achieve moral equivalence when there is none! Be in MSNBC’s very biased coverage of what is happening in the Middle East-it is horrific and there is blame on both sides yet they seem to only blame Israel when listening to Joy Reid and some others, or Fox News and the other right-wing news outlets who validate the lies of Trump and the Republicans knowingly and with no shame, even after losing a $700,000,000+ judgement to Dominion! CNN, in their desire to be ‘fair’ buys the lies of the ‘freedom fighters of Hamas’, JD Vance, et al and makes moral equivalency between the murder and massacre of Oct. 7, 2023 and the devastation in Gaza, between the raining down of missiles from Lebanon that drove 100,000 Israelis from the northern part of the country away from their homes and Israel’s targeted responses. We are in the throes of a “major threat to the independence, sensitivity, inner balance, and freedom of the individual.” This is not a new phenomenon, it is just being heightened each day by people like Elon Musk, the Murdocks, the 2025 project people, by Trump, et al; by AOC, by Rashida T’liab, by the movements that have disinvited Jews to the table because we are ‘whitey’, we are ‘oppressors’ and embrace the terrorists of Hamas and their supporters; and it is being heightened by the onslaught of lies and information coming over our smartphones, our tablets, our TV’s, our computers that bombard us with so many lies and misdirections, we no longer are able to discern truth and this is the greatest loss of all-our inability to discern truth which is the sum total of what happens when our “independence, sensitivity, inner balance, and freedom” are threatened and under constant attack.

Mark Twain wrote: “A lie is halfway around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on.” Truth gets lost and hidden when we no longer are able to think independently because we have to ‘go along to get along’, when we are more afraid of upsetting the boss, going against the group, being alone, being laughed at for caring for ‘those people’ (fill in the blank), when we make allies of our enemies like the christian nationalists who some orthodox Jews embrace-when they hate Jews, Blacks, immigrants, people of color, etc, like the far left who embrace the Hamas terrorists and Hezbollah knowing they hate America, hate anyone who doesn’t bow down to Allah, and isn’t willing to submit themselves to the rule of the Imam/Ayatollah! How ridiculous and how seriously devastating are these ways of being? Yet, because we did not heed Rabbi Heschel’s words along with the words of many other people like Rev King, Rabbi Prinz, Bobby Kennedy, we find ourselves in a grave situation.

The 2024 Election will not be stolen by Kamala Harris-full stop. The ones trying to steal the elections, trying to rig the elections are the Republicans who are gerrymandering their states, putting ridiculous voting rules and restrictions in so blacks and other LEGAL immigrants/citizens are afraid to vote. Some of us have watched in horror people buy into the lies of Trump, willing to vote against their best interests and ignore the truth in order to buy into the lies of ‘the leader’. They are giving up their “independence” and buying into ‘group-think’. We are witnessing the diminishing of the “sensitivity” for the well-being of another human being and seeing it replaced with blaming the immigrant, using the same terminology used by Goebbels. We are witnessing the loss of “inner balance” through the denial of the Holocaust by so many ‘friends of Trump’, spewing of hatred and seeking ways to subvert the law to the whims of ‘the leader’, through the onslaught of mendacity to the point it is hard to discern the truth unless you have a very strong spiritual corpus colosseum. All of this adds up to the loss of “freedom” of each one of us. When I have to spend time railing against the lies and deceptions, it takes away from my own learning and teaching, nurturing and growing of my soul and yours. We are becoming so polarized, those of us in the middl, those of us seeking truth, are shunned, are overwhelmed at times with the push/pull of the ends of the continuum.

We have to reclaim our “freedom”- we cannot depend on Trump and his lies to help us. We cannot expect Kamala Harris to do it on her own. We have to demand of our clergy a new way of worship and learning- one that engages us in a robust argument for the ‘sake of heaven’ as we learn to do as Jews. We have to demand that politics is left at the door and we are here to learn how to make our political decisions based on principles, not likes, how to grow and nurture our spiritual health so we are not so susceptible to the lies of another and we are more aware of the moments we fall into self-deception. We have to learn how to stand with the prophets instead of the priests, stand with the prophets instead of going along with the power and the wealthy, stand with the prophets even when we are being scorned, laughed at, ignored. This is how we will keep our “independence, sensitivity, inner balance, and freedom” as individuals and nations.

It is hard to live this way, I know. I am not perfect and have made my own errors and my own ‘slips’ into inappropriately railing against lies and mendacity. I know being ‘alone’ is better than being in a place that I know is false and full of vipers. I know that being me is more important to my soul and to my purpose than being ‘accepted in polite society’. I know my father’s legacy lives on in my siblings and myself and our children. I know speaking truth, not giving in, separates me at times and I am more okay with this than ever before. God Bless and stay safe, rabbi Mark