Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 133

“At no time has the earth been so soaked with blood. Fellowmen have turned out to be evil spirits, monstrous and weird. Does not history look like a stage for the dance of might and evil-with man’s wits too feeble to separate the two and God either directing the play or indifferent to it?” (Essential Writings pg. 89)

These words, published in 1951, and speaking after the Second World War, are as prevalent today as they were then. Rabbi Heschel is calling us to look at ourselves, at our world, at our faith. Given the wars being fought externally-between nations, between nations and terrorists, we also have to look at the wars being fought internally-within a human being and within countries. Our earth is as soaked with blood today as it has ever been and, unfortunately, we hear the call of ‘religious’ people saying it is God’s will, it is God’s “wake-up call” to the faithful.

Rather than seek healing, rather than finding a just solution to the ills of humanity, we hear the people at the extremes screaming that their way is God’s will and their way is the only way. Armed with this belief, these ‘faithful’ people “have turned out to be evil spirits, monstrous and weird”. Yet, too many people sit idly by, either wringing their hands or watching to see who ‘wins’. What is it that drives human beings to be such evil spirits when we are created in the Image of God? Have we become so immune to the suffering of another that we justify the taking of life as God’s will? Have we become so deaf as to not hear the cries of the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan? Have we become so blind that we are unable to see how our actions and inactions, our directing and our indifference gives aid and comfort to the oppressor-both externally and the Pharaoh inside of us?

Rabbi Heschel’s words above disturb me greatly, they depict a way of being that has persisted through out history-indifference, blame, mendacity. We do not have “to be evil spirits”, we do not have dance the “dance of might and evil”, our “wits” are not “too feeble to separate the two”. It is that we have “become fat and kicked”, we “have become thick”, “covered with fatness” and we “have forsook God”, making true Moses’ prophecy in Deut. 32:15. Just as in the 1950’s when everyone thought we were so advanced and Rabbi Heschel reminded us then we were still living in an “earth..so stoked with blood”, so too today in 2024, we are living in an “earth…so soaked with blood” and have come to regard this as normal. How sad, how scary, how mendacious!

We do not have to continue in this vein, we have the power within us to rise above the evil in our hearts, we have the power to override the rumblings of our mind and heart with the truth in our souls. We have the power for our Yetzer Tov to tame and use our Yetzer Hara for service rather than power and greed, for caring rather than callousness and bloodshed. We have the choice each and every day: do we use feeble wits and go along with the lies of the ‘religious’ that this is God directing this “play” and our response is to kill another in the name of God? Do we continue to believe the lies of the progressives that God is indifferent and it is up to us to punish ‘those people’ and win the day?

This paragraph is the opening to a large discussion about “the Hiding God” and, as I originally quoted it, I did not realize the full impact it is having on me. We are witnesses to the lies of the Republican Party as it is constituted today with so many decent and true Republicans who stand for, or used to stand for, the principles that George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln espoused, being silent, being indifferent to the crassness, the attack on democracy that abounds today in their Party. Listening to the ‘religious right’ which is a false characterization of the people associated with this ‘wing of the party’, one could believe that the actions taken today by their leader and the people who support him are messianic actions, that they are sanctioned by God to make people less free, to make authoritarianism a right of some people so they can enslave and abuse most people! Listening to the progressive faction, which seeks progress for the underdog of the moment rather than progress towards God’s vision, the prophet’s vision of what the world can be, one could believe that there is no God, that God is silent and hiding and indifferent to what happens to humanity. Both of these idolatrous are lies, are deceptions for the sake of power-not for the sake of humankind.

We are in our current turmoil because we did not listen and heed Rabbi Heschel’s words in the 1950’s up till now. Israel’s government is a horror show, Hamas and their supporters in the Middle East, in Europe, in America are propagandists and terrorists who wrap themselves in the flag of victimhood, hence the embrace of the progressives who say nothing about Oct. 7th, who say nothing about the Hostages that go against the Geneva Convention-yet Hamas, the UN workers who helped and supported the terrorist attack are not held accountable by these progressives. We are in our current turmoil, our current “earth.. so soaked with blood” because we have allowed fundamentalists of all kinds to spout the evil and hatred that is in their hearts and too many people joined in the evil and far too many people remained indifferent.

We need to look inside of ourselves as individuals and as communities and recover our basic goodness of being. We have to recover the spirit that overwhelmed us at Sinai, at the Red Sea, we have to recover the words of the prophets that live in our hearts, our mouths, our souls. We have to, as Moses exhorts us to, CHOOSE LIFE! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark