Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 213

“In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 93)

This sentence above sits with us as a condemnation, a reminder and a call to action. Rabbi Heschel has a quote, “A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of faith. He is asked to do more than he understands in order to understand more than he does.” In the words I have put in bold letters above, Rabbi Heschel is asking/demanding us to take the action of being “uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood” rather than accept these ways of being as ‘normal’, as ‘societal norms that have been with us throughout the millennia’ and other such poppycock!

We are witnessing, some 90 years after the rise of Nazism, a resurgence of patience with cruelty and falsehood, in fact, it seems to be the very point of some politicians, some clergy, some people in the street to be more cruel, more mendacious than any of our ancestors and despots. When taking away a woman’s right to choose is more important than ensuring women have good reproductive health care, when denying InVitro to women who find themselves unable to get pregnant is celebrated, we are witnessing, and for some of us, participating in severe cruelty. This is not about being “pro-life” as these liars claim; it is about control of women, fear of being less than a woman, a need to exert power over someone one when we one feels powerless. Rather than being “uncompromisingly impatient” there are many people who have been patiently awaiting these days of cruelty and falsehood being the path to their power. Putin, Trump (they are good friends according to DJT), Orban, Netanyahu, Sinwar and the rest of the autocrats and despots all believe and practice the principle: the more cruel I can be, the more lies I can tell and get away with, the stronger I am, the more powerful I am and the greater my shadow is. This is an age-old way of gaining and holding onto power, it was perfected by Nazi Germany and today’s practitioners are improving on what Germany did in the 1930’s and 1940’s! And, many of us are fiddling while the world burns, literally and figuratively.

It all begins with the individual however. While blaming Trump, Hitler, Putin, Sinwar, Netanyahu is easy and feels good, it is we, the people, who have not made ourselves and our communities “uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood.” It is we, the people, who have refused to ‘take the cure’ for our spiritual maladies of jealousy, of being power-hungry, of self-deception, of believing the lies of another, of needing a scapegoat, of blaming and shaming another so we can shirk our responsibility. It is time for all of us to own up to our part in promoting, allowing, going along to get along with the cruelties and falsehoods that make us ‘feel good’. It is we, the people, who have given oxygen to the lies of the religious right, the falsehoods of the MAGA crowd, the mendacity of the authoritarians in our midst, the celebrations of cruelty towards anyone not like the White Male Christian Nationalists that are making so much noise and even the women who join them believe the men are in charge. It is we, the people, as individuals who are giving up our own dignity and infinite worth to serve and bow down before another Pharaoh, another false prophet, another Shabbatai Tzvi-false messiah.

We, the people as individuals and communities have to seek out our individual physicians of the soul. Each one of us is in desperate need of a spiritual renaissance, a spiritual uplift so we can once again be guided by our souls, not our desires, our egos, our self-deceptions. Each of us is being called to take the actions of kindness, compassion, love, decency, healing, building, etc before we are able to understand the ‘why’s and the wherefore’s’. Rabbi Heschel’s words are meant to disrupt our sleep, to wake us up to the truth rather than the “falsehoods” we have been sold and the ones we are peddling. He is disturbing our consciences, if we allow him to, just as the Bible does, just as the New Testament does, just as the Koran does when we immerse ourselves in them for the truth they speak rather than using them to justify our “cruelty and falsehoods”.

Once we are on our individual journeys of healing the spiritual maladies that are causing our acts of “cruelty and falsehoods”, we can then work together to heal the same maladies of our community. Then we can work together to heal the maladies that our countries and our world face as well. Taking the action will  give us the understanding and the vision to make “our communities…uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood.”

This is the journey I have been on for over 36 years. I am not 100% and I am more than 51% “uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood.” I have been loud, obnoxious, even mean-sounding in my condemnation of “cruelty and falsehood”, I have been accused of being cruel myself when I refuse to buy into the lies and deceptions of another. I know I still have my own self-deceptions, I also know they are fewer than before and I am hold onto them for less time than I ever have. I continue to take actions I don’t understand so I can understand more than my actions, I continue to increase my impatience with “cruelty and falsehood”, I continue to speak the truth I am given, I continue to stand for what is right and good, to understand the nuances of life rather than living in the ‘one way’ attitude. I have found myself less patient with the people who continue to live in the mendacity of blame and shame, with people who don’t want to ‘rock the boat’. I am not popular for this way of being, the phone isn’t ringing, I am not noticed much anymore and I am good with it because I know I am being true to me, my uncompromising impatience “with cruelty and falsehood” allows me to live a little better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark