Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 187

“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)

The people who are impacted by the “human violence” of another, according to Rabbi Heschel, “neither sleep nor slumber”. The impact of prejudice, violence that is physical, mental, spiritual, does not leave its victims, it always weighs on us. This is true for children who are abused as well as adults. This is true for women who are ‘under the thumb’ of their fathers, husbands, etc. This is true for ethnicities that have been scapegoated like Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims. This is true, also, for the people who care about their neighbors, who abhor injustice whether they are powerless to end this “human violence” or they have the power to stop the perpetuation of it.

The spiritual harm is so great and, as science teaches us, has such far-reaching effects, that it is passed down through the generations. Jews have felt the effects of anti-semitism since Antiquity and the perpetrators have engaged in it throughout the ages-be it the Greeks, Romans, the Church, etc. This epigenetic inheritance has extenuated the personal responsibility of the anti-semites, it makes thin their responsibility for their actions and has become a societal norm! For the Jew, it has made us very sensitive to the least hint of anti-semitism and our reactions range from hiding to fighting, from seeing it everywhere and ignoring it until it is too late. When we stand against it, we are called overly sensitive, aggressive, oppressors, etc. by those who want to eliminate us and/or keep us in our place.

Blacks in America have the same reactions, they are sensitive to the slightest hint of racism, they are acutely aware of being accused of crimes they have not committed, being given longer prison sentences than whites, receiving education that doesn’t always meet the education of whites, etc. They have become accustomed to white people crossing the street when they are walking towards them, they are used to being passed over for jobs and positions, they are susceptible to the gang violence that has come to be ‘normal’ in some neighborhoods and fight for their dignity each and every day. The same is true for Hispanics who are labeled by some as criminals, rapists, etc. in our current political climate.

Each of these ethnic groups along with everyone else who experiences the “human violence” of ‘the man’ are very aware of their need to be hyper alert. Blacks have the experience of the deep South and slavery, Jim Crow and the KKK, and now the MAGA movement. Jews have the experience of slavery in Egypt, being wanderers for almost 1900 years and in our wandering being expelled from every country in the world except for the United States where the Protocols of Zion and Father Coughlin perpetrated anti-semitism, where there were quotas on college enrollment, where people march screaming Jews will not replace us. Just as Blacks re-experience the old wounds of slavery and discrimination every time they are denied their proper due and there is a killing like George Floyd, Jews re-experience the trauma of anti-semitism, the concentration camps, ghettos, and exile of the past whenever there are demonization of Israel, of Jews, when there is a celebration of Hamas and people who want our extermination.

The issue spiritually for everyone, of course, is none of us should be able to “sleep nor slumber” when there is human violence being perpetrated anywhere against anyone. One can argue that Israel’s response is too much and to forget the rape, torture, murder that initiated this response is also an act of “human violence”. To hold the Israeli government totally responsible is to encourage Hamas to continue to terrorize, to give aid and comfort to Iran in their quest to kill the Jews, yet, the people who claim to be victims of “human violence” have no issue with the “human violence” they perpetrate. The demonstrations that are taking place and some of the media coverage conveniently forget how many Cease-Fire proposals Hamas has rejected, how long they have kept hostages which is against International Law, how their crimes against humanity are being whitewashed. Just as when Black people are arrested, abused, even killed for “driving while Black” and the perpetrators ignore it, so too with the Jews when we are threatened with extermination, the perpetrators are celebrated!

For each of us, the issue is deeply personal or should be. We have to stop sleeping well while “human violence” in any form is being perpetrated anywhere. I think of my own crimes and misdemeanors in this realm and, while I have done my T’Shuvah, made my amends, I also know the negativity never leaves the world. I hope and pray my amends and T’Shuvah keep the negativity where it belongs, in the past. I have been the recipient of amends by another(s) and whatever the unresolved feelings were prior, upon being asked for forgiveness, they were lifted from my soul and my inner life. This is the power of T’Shuvah, the call of the amends process-to allow for the past to be relegated to its proper place rather than continually be part of the psyche of the one that is/has been harmed. I have done many amends and I do so again-for those who have been harmed by my actions, knowingly and unknowingly, of spiritual/emotional violence, I am truly sorry. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark