Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 136

“We live in an age when most of us have ceased to be shocked by the increasing breakdown in moral inhibitions. The decay of conscience fills the air with a pungent smell. God and evil, which were once as distinguishable as day and night, have become a blurred mist. But that mist is man-made. God is not silent. He has been silenced.” (Essential Writings pg. 90)

Rabbi Heschel writes these words in the 1950’s and rather than heeding his call, rather than hearing his prophetic vision and words, we have sunk deeper and deeper into “the increasing breakdown in moral inhibitions”. Against the backdrop of the victory of World War II, during the “baby boomer” generation, the people who Tom Brokaw calls “the greatest generation” believed they were above the evil and the immorality of Nazi Germany. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is seeing behind the curtain of the facade people put up, he is seeing the racism, the anti-semitism, the self-deception of people and calling it out.

What will it take for us “to be shocked by the increasing breakdown in moral inhibitions”? We are so far down the rabbit hole that we hear conservatives blame music, the arts, the way women dress, ‘the libs’ for this “breakdown”, all the while remaining oblivious and/or willfully blind to their cruelty towards anyone not like them, engaging in denying the right to vote to ‘those people’, legislating against good health care, criminalizing poverty, unwelcoming the stranger, all in the name of ‘religion’. We are witnesses to this “breakdown” as well as participants! Yet, we seem incapable of responding to the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel above, we seem unwilling to take a stand for what is right and what is moral, blaming God, society, another group, anyone but ourselves.

The “sexual revolution” is blamed for “the increasing breakdown”, rock and roll music and Elvis Presley were blamed for it, rap music, the civil rights movement, the ending of quotas on Jews, and so many more advances in society are being blamed for this “breakdown in moral inhibitions” when the truth is that greed and power are at the core it. Authoritarianism, dictatorship, legislative power, the power of the purse are the rot that has allowed this “breakdown in moral inhibitions”. The idea: “the one with the gold rules” can be traced to antiquity and, instead of heeding the words of the Bible, instead of acting like Jesus, people throughout the millennia have abused these words and deeds for their own gain, for their own power, to enrich themselves and blamed everyone else for the ills of society. We are seeing this happen again, only on steroids by the “good christian, religious Jews, devout muslims’!

Blame the victim is the battle cry of our generation, it is the drug addicts fault that he/she dies of an overdose of Fentanyl, it is the poor person’s fault that he steals a loaf of bread, it is the person’s fault they get cancer from asbestos, it is …. We are incapable of being shocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and, some in our country believe Ukraine should just surrender and become a satellite of Russia again-forgoing their freedom, welcoming the people who have raped and pillaged their country, killed their citizens, kidnapped their children. There are those who believe Hamas cares about freedom for the Gazans, who think what they did on October 7 was just and right, they are freedom fighters who gave Israel what it deserved! There are demonstrations across the world and especially in our country that are hailed by ‘the progressives’ as good, making Jews unsafe in their dorm rooms, in their homes, their houses of worship is a good thing for these ‘progressives’ who ask for money for Jews to fund their drive for education, for health care, to fight against the oppression of women, people of color, etc. These ‘progressives’ have decided that they are the paragons of morality, they are the last defense before the total “breakdown of all moral inhibitions” all the while being morally corrupt, supporting these ‘freedom fighters of Hamas’ who kill their own people, who discriminate against LGBTQ+, who have stolen all the money given to build Gaza up so they can attack Israel, annihilate the Jews, and, of course, built lavish places for their leaders to live in both in Gaza and Qatar.

Our inability “to be shocked at the increasing breakdown of moral inhibitions” is bringing us dangerously close to totalitarianism, to believing ‘only I can save you’. Our inability has caused a large portion of our country to deny truth, to follow a madman who only wants power and who’s drive is deny freedom to the masses and share power with other authoritarians and dictators. Our ability to have true friendships where we speak truth to one another, to be able to rebuke one another when we are screwing up, when we are adding to the moral decay, our taking of our own inventory and making amends dwindles more each and every day. We get angry with the people who point out truth to us, we adopt a ‘who do you think you are’ attitude when called out on our bullshit and lies, we seek to crush anyone and everyone who tries to make us look in the mirror and see truth.

I am hearing Rabbi Heschel calling us to the task of ending our “breakdown of moral inhibitions”, I hear him calling us to “recover the questions” which is the first subchapter of his book God in Search of Man. I hear Rabbi Heschel demanding we live into recovering our humanity, our sobriety of living, recovering our connection with God, with the Ineffable One, and recovering a sense of community and purpose that the Bible teaches us to have. I hear him echoing the words of the Torah, “care for the poor, the needy, orphan, and the widow; welcome the stranger, you shall have one law for the citizen and the stranger alike, etc.” We can recover our humanity, our morality, our decency-the question before is are we willing? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark