Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 184

“Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent. The conscience builds its confines, is subject to fatigue, longs for comfort. Yet those who are hurt, and He who inhabits eternity, neither sleep nor slumber.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

This is the third way Rabbi Heschel speaks about how we were/are “dealing with our bad conscience”. Whether it is about Black people, Brown people, Asian people, Jews, Muslims, etc; we seem to be able to tolerate the injustice that is perpetrated upon someone else with the idea that progress is being made, why are they so impatient, etc. The same actions which if done to us would make us angry and cause revolt, we soothe our conscience by saying “why are they so angry”. Rabbi Heschel is calling us out because “our standards are modest”, “our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent;”

Living into his words above in the first sentence must cause us pain, guilt and personal recrimination, I believe. I know they do for me. How can I pray, be a person of faith, call myself human and have modest standards? The Bible and every other spiritual text demands we raise ourselves up to the standards of spiritual health, spiritual decency. They demand we “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev. 25:10), that we stand up for one another, we ransom the captive, etc. Yet, in the 61 years since the Conference on Race and Religion where these words were spoken, we seem to have gone backwards, we have retreated to more modest “standards”, the voting rights bill has been gutted, the treatment of Black and Brown people has gotten worse, the alliances of minorities in this country has fallen apart, and we get angry with one another, rather than being angry at injustice!

When “driving while Black” can still get an innocent person murdered by police, when walking down a street in a neighborhood where one doesn’t ‘seem to belong’ can get one beaten, when police are not prosecuted for their crimes, when a former President is helped by the Supreme Court and lower Courts to evade responsibility and justice, we are witnessing “our sense of injustice” being tolerable and, even, turned upside down. What makes these Justices, these keepers of our Constitution so timid? I believe it is their desire to serve their politics rather than justice, their desire to proclaim their fidelity to ‘christian justice’ rather than to the justice that Christ speaks of nor the justice that the Bible speaks about. Rather than being people who do not take bribes nor recognize one person over another nor have one law for the rich and one for the poor as the Bible instructs us; these Justices have made it their raison d’être to do the opposite. Thomas and Alito take bribes, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch follow a christianity that would be unrecognizable to Christ.

We hear much from the charlatans about their “moral indignation” that is focused on freedom for all, they are against voting rights, welcoming the stranger, feeding the poor, upholding the Constitution when it is inconvenient for them, etc. Their “moral indignation” is focused on anyone and anything that may impugn on their power grab, their wealth, their sense of injustice towards white people.

We find the “moral indignation” of some minorities to be “impermanent” as well. The protests against Israel, the calling for an immediate cease-fire make no mention of the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, no mention of the illegal taking and keeping of hostages by Hamas and the fact that they have not let the Red Cross visit any of the hostages. They forget to mention there was a cease-fire in effect on Oct. 6th, 2023 and it was broken by Hamas! They seem incapable of having any “moral indignation” towards Hamas and their allies who murdered, raped and killed so many Israelis-‘oh yeah, that’s Jewish Blood and they deserve it’ seems to be their attitude. The deaths in Gaza of innocents is horrific-no one is denying it-, Bibi and his right-wing government have done a terrible job in prosecuting this war, and rockets are still being fired into Israel, Hamas does not want a cease-fire nor were they willing/able to provide 45 living hostages and keep moving the line on a deal. When the perpetrators of evil are being celebrated as freedom fighters, when terrorists are being hailed as heroes, we witness “moral indignation” impermanence!

I am drawn to these words because I have fought against my own issues with allowing injustice to be tolerable, moral indignation to be impermanent, being timid in the face of lies and deceit. I have not been able to stand it in the world, in another(s), and, most of all, within myself. I have spent my life railing about it and, in my younger years when I felt powerless and a victim, I turned to alcohol and crime and joined the injustice. My recovery has been about yelling from the rooftops against injustice, prejudice, racism, religious intolerance. I have been at at odds with the people who donated to the organization I was Rabbi and CEO of, I have been at odds with the people we were helping, I have been at odds with colleagues because I am hypersensitive to injustice. There are times when this hypersensitivity has caused me to become volcanic and explosive, which doesn’t always make me popular nor heard. My moral compass is as exacting for myself as it is for another(s), I learned this from my father, z”l. I am sorry to the people who have felt the wrath of my volcanic explosions because of my moral indignation and have been overwhelmed by it-I am not sorry for having a heightened sense of moral outrage. My moral compass has given me the joy, the gift, and the burden of speaking out and I am grateful, even though it has gotten me into trouble at times. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark