Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 211

“However, an honest estimation of the moral state of our society will disclose: Some are guilty, but all are responsible.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.93)

While it is exceedingly popular to blame society for our current moral state, as has been the case forever, Rabbi Heschel’s words above, hopefully, disturb us greatly. They are meant, I believe, for us to stop the blame game and get into action, end our hand-wringing and bemoaning of the ills of society and do what is necessary to change, improve and cure our current moral and spiritual maladies. It begins with each of us in our inner life and then we can affect change in another and another, until we reach the “99th monkey”, the “tipping point” and we can heal as a society.

At issue is the lack of leadership for our moral maturity in our spiritual life; the loudest people are often the most guilty and responsible for the lack of morality and the spiritual maladies that promote racism, prejudice, anti-semitism, islamaphobia, anti-lgbtq+, etc. Our politicians who are claiming to be following the words and teaching of Jesus while doing the exact opposite of what his disciples said in his name are prime examples of how we move from a nation that believes in freedom and independence to one of authoritarianism and internment camps, as Trump and his ‘gang’ are promoting.

Jesus says, according to Mathew 23:25-26: “you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” Yet these supposed disciples of his today are the hypocrites he was speaking to! And, they walk around unaware of their guilt and their responsibility for the ills of society, for the moral injustices they perpetrate. AND, we must also take responsibility for what is happening. We, the people, have allowed the lies and the deceptions of another(s) and of self to override what is truth, what is moral, the illness of our inner life and promoted the decay of the societal norms the Bible gives us. We have to clean up our inner life, we have to end our “greed and self-indulgence” which brought about the destruction of the 2nd Temple and has been destroying society a little at a time ever since.

This talk, given at the Conference on Race and Religion some 61 years ago, is as relevant and important today as it was then, maybe more so. Rabbi Heschel was addressing racism in particular and prejudice in general. Today, the prejudices of so many are so blatant and being given cover by the Unrule of Law as the Supreme Court’s bias is so obvious. When Trump can delay his trials, when a Federal Judge can go against the spirit if not the letter of the law like Judge Cannon, when Congresspeople travel to New York to upend the rule of law instead of taking care of business is Washington DC, we are seeing the sad state of moral decay and spiritual illness that is rampant in our country and in the world.

AND, we are all responsible. We need to be speaking out more, we need to be voting more, we need to give the people who are fighting for real freedoms, for the principles the country was founded on courage and support. We need to tell the people on the extremes that living in the middle is the way of spiritual and moral health. We need to remember to judge each case on its own merits, not according to some ideology we purport to adhere to. We need to call our clergy and our lay leaders to task for not creating sanctuaries of truth, not creating houses of learning and welcoming the arguments that lead to compromises and solutions. We need to hold their feet to the fire until they admit their own guilt and responsibility for what is happening. We need to do the same ourselves.

It is amazing that people can pray with such fervor for the destruction of another human being, another group of people and claim this is what God wants using the words of the prophets, Jesus, etc as their proof-text. It is amazing that our political, our religious, our business leaders can ignore the constant call to redeem one another and care for the powerless and the voiceless that is in the Bible, that were the ways of Jesus. It is a sign of the moral decay of our society that people cheer when the Free Press is called “the enemy of the State”, when people of color are accused of not being hung, when people of different religions and ethnicities are not considered ‘equal’ to WASP’s, to Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. It is a sign of our indifference that we, the people put up with these lies, with this moral decay, all because we are still more interested

Cleaning our inner life is the key to healing the spiritual and moral maladies of our society. I know this from my own experience. Prior to my return, T’Shuvah, and my recovery of my authentic self, I hoped that my outside was good enough to fool everyone as to what was happening on my insides, this allowed me to deceive myself into believing I could do immoral acts and not have them infect my inner life. I was WRONG! Since I have been working on my inner life, my outer actions have been much healthier, even when not seen as such by society. I have lived into my authentic nature of being a disrupter, I admit my guilt and know I am co-responsible for what is happening in the world around me so I speak up, I reach out, I do what I can-knowing it is not all on me and I am not free to walk away from the situation. I work hard to let go of resentments as this keeps my inner life clean, I do not whitewash the wrongs done in my name, by me or to me by another(s). I just don’t need to hate them like I used to, I just need to rise above the pettiness and enmity to be the light I am created to be, that my Hebrew name calls me to be. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark