Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 191
“As a rule, those who know how to exploit are endowed with the skill to justify their acts, while those who are easily exploited possess no skill in pleading their own cause.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)
This sentence describes a situation that has happened throughout the history of humankind. It is a deeply disturbing truth and realization for most people so we tend to ignore it and, eventually, be brought down by it.
“Exploit comes from the Latin meaning “unfold”, “skill” comes from the Old Norse meaning “discernment” and “justify” comes from the Latin meaning “do justice to”. Rabbi Heschel’s use of these words in the sentence above gives us a glimpse into the disruption of the Biblical commands to “do justly”, “love mercy”, “care for the stranger, the poor,…” by “those who know how to exploit”. I believe these Biblical teachings, which are reiterated throughout the Bible in story after story, are the acknowledgement of the ability of some who are capable of “unfolding” the story and able to see the loopholes of a situation, and then telling us not to! Yet, here again, another teaching from the Bible gets swept under the rug by many who claim to be ‘god-fearing people’, while their actions prove them to be God-denying people!
Watching the myriad of ways some people defend the ‘skill’ of Donald Trump to skate the ‘long arm of the law’ for so long, to defend his illegal actions since running for the Presidency in 2016, saluting and cheering for him to be “dictator for a day”, etc is watching people trying to “do justice to” what is illegal, immoral, and deeply unreligious and not spiritual. Yet, there are millions of people who are doing this right now, there are many top Republicans who know Trump is dangerous and his winning will probably end democracy as we know it, yet Bill Barr, Mitch McConnell, et al say they will vote for him. They will use their “skill” to “justify” what they know is wrong, just as they have done throughout their political careers, even though they swore oaths to defend and protect the Constitution against all adversaries, foreign and domestic. These people are engaging in a high-wire act “to justify their acts” and all they seem to care about is themselves not their duty to the oaths they have taken, not their duty to engage in the Biblical commands above, not to follow Jesus’ examples-only their self-interest.
This issue, described some 60+ years ago by Rabbi Heschel is the same one we are facing today. It is a little subtler because of social media, it gets more blurred and the exploiters can hide their exploitation a little better, as it is said, “a lie travels the earth while truth is getting its boots on”. The people who know better, like Barr, McConnell, et al, “justify” their actions with ‘party loyalty’ and other such bullshit when they are being loyal to themselves only-they are only afraid of what Trump will do to them if he wins-so rather than ensuring his defeat, they hedge their bets and use their “discernment”, their ability to manipulate the truth, to “justify” going against the teachings of the Bible they claim to revere! This is how devious and destructive our ability to “exploit” the truth is, our “skill” to manipulate facts and our creative ways to “justify” unholy and illegal behaviors, like keeping the Black person down, denying voting rights to citizens, having one law for citizens and another for strangers, proclaiming liberty only to ‘our people’ and denying to ‘those people’, etc.
This is where we are today, as we were in the 1960’s. The protests on College Campus’ are not the same as those of the late 60s and early 70’s. We were against the war in Vietnam, we were not supporting the communists, we were not cheering on the terrorism of the Communists, unlike the protestors today. We were not calling for the extermination of the United States, we were not calling for the end of a people nor a state-we were calling for each country to determine for themselves what type of government they wanted. Today’s protests are funded in a large part by Qatar, Saudi Arabia through the ‘chairs’ they endowed and they are calling for the end of Israel as a state, for Jews to be pushed into the ‘river and the sea’, they are supporting the horrific torture, murder, kidnapping and cease-fire breaking of Hamas and calling they ‘freedom fighters’ while they use their own people as human shields, deny them good living so they can build tunnels and use the Billions of Dollars they receive to live in luxury in Qatar, Gaza and wherever else in the world they want to. And these ‘protestors’ use their “skill” to “justify” these murderers and convince the innocents on campus to join them and these “easily exploited” don’t even know they have a different cause to plead!
This sentence is so impactful for me precisely because I have been the exploiter and the exploited. I have used my “skills”, my discernment, to “justify” my actions as a thief and a con man. I would say “you can’t cheat an honest person so the people I conned had larceny in their veins”, and other such bullshit. I am still remorseful for those justifications and those actions. I have paid back the people I know I stole from and I have given an extra 3-5% in charity these past 35+ years as restitution to the Banks, insurance companies, etc that I stole from. I also have not tried to “exploit” another human being for my benefit in my recovery. I have “exploited” a weakness in another person in order to help them see truth, the light, a decent path forward, just not for my benefit, my greed. I have been on the receiving end of another’s exploitation of my vulnerabilities, of my way of being and, I am responsible for my own actions, of using their skills to justify ‘taking me down a peg’ or two. I hold no resentments, only sadness for those who have exploited my nature, my kindness, my vulnerabilities and ask for forgiveness to the universe for the myriad of times, prior to Nov 1988 I exploited another. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark