Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 195

“A prudent man is he who minds his own business… particularly when not authorized to step in-and the prophets were given no mandate by the widows and orphans to plead their cause. The prophet is a person who is not tolerant of wrongs done to others, who resents other people’s injuries.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.92)

Rabbi Heschel demands we take a stand and declare ourselves in the passage above. I hear him nicely asking the question-what type of person are you choosing to be. It is a choice to be prudent, to mind one’s own business, to wait to be asked and/or “authorized to step in”. It is not a ‘wrong’ choice according to societal norms nor according to many traditions which tell us “to stay in your own lane”. Not putting our nose in another person’s business is a well-known and well-worn phrase. “Prudent” comes from the Latin meaning “foreseeing/attending to”. Choosing to see the future and attending to one’s current needs doesn’t seem like a ‘bad’ choice at all, especially if one is not asked to intervene!

Yet, I hear the contrast and the discernment of Rabbi Heschel. I hear the call to choose whether we are going to be “prudent” or take our proper place as descendants of the prophets. “Widows and orphans” are accustomed to people not hearing them, they have accepted their plight and, through experience, know that people are not wont to “plead their cause.” The choices put before us by the above writing is clear, what is not clear is our acknowledgement that we have to make a positive choice rather than allow our default choice to rule us.

We are living in a time, once again, where the “widows and orphans”, the poor and the stranger are crying out to God and to us. They are exhausted from the discrimination based on color, religion, ethnicity, and, most of all, political mendacity. We hear politicians continue to lie and harangue us about ‘those people’-the stranger, the poor, making them criminals along with Jews and Israelis being usurpers in their own land and throughout the world! We are living in a time where the spiritual sickness of the “prudent” person is being lauded and applauded. Where the spiritual malady of mendacity is being called truth, where annihilation is being praised and authoritarianism is seen as a good solution. Herein lies our dilemma, the souls of our youth and their parents are diseased because they have been left to atrophy, we have not raised the souls of people while raising their minds, bodies, emotions. We have left the most important element in being human, our souls, to the wind; no wonder our youth and the ‘progressives’ believe Jews are bad, no wonder they believe terrorists are good, raping of women and mutilation of babies is appropriate when they are Jews. No wonder the far right and left have found agreement in their anti-semitism and no wonder Jews are unable to respond except with emotional and physical responses. We have a spiritual malady in our society that is running rampant-one of it’s names is ‘being prudent’. Another name is ‘optics’, another name is ‘moral equivalence’, still another is ‘political correctness’.

The prophet doesn’t wait for an invitation from those who are being oppressed, those who are being discriminated against because the prophet is compelled by the “fire in the belly” they experience at the sight of injustice and deception. We all can see the injustice and prejudice, the cancer of the soul and the spiritual ailments that people are suffering right now. Yet, too many of us are being complacent with our ‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy’ for the ‘underdog’. Too many of us are so tired of the ‘political correctness’ that we start to go along with the authoritarian who promises us ‘real freedom’, who promises us that ‘men will be in charge again’, etc.

This is why the choice I hear Rabbi Heschel put before us to be so crucial now as it always has been. Prudence will allow us to survive, we have Germany as an example-people didn’t get involved when they came for the Jews and, as Martin Neimoller said: “when they came for me, there was no one to care”. We are descendants of the prophets, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc-all of us have the wisdom and actions of prophets in our history and in our holy texts. We, the people, have to make a choice to use the examples of the prophets to heal our spiritual maladies and the spiritual sickness of our world. We, the people have to “make a decision” to serve our higher self, to serve a higher calling than our own ‘safety’. We can do this, there are physicians of the soul to help us, we can demand a better spiritual upbringing by our Houses of Worship and we can implement the call of the prophets into our daily living.

I have failed when confronted with this choice in earlier years. I was “prudent” and cared only about “mine”. I wasn’t brought up this way and it was only after I allowed my soul to atrophy that I spent the years from 17-35 in spiritual sickness. Upon being arrested and knowing I was going back to prison it hit me that there was some greater purpose for me and I had to sit in prison until I could figure it out. With the help of many physicians of the soul I found my way back to being a descendant of the prophets, to allowing the “fire in my belly” to take charge and speak up for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, the outcast and the criminal, the one in need of spiritual healing and the ones who have been harmed. My way of butting in has not always been appreciated and, truth be told, not always appropriate nor have I always spoken in ways people can hear. Yet, I have not let injustice reign, I have not been “prudent”, I have paid the price for this way of being and I have healed much of my spiritual sickness because I haven’t been “prudent”! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark