Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 222

“Equality is an interpersonal relationship, involving both a claim and a recognition. My claim to equality has its logical basis in the recognition of my fellow men’s identical claim. Do I not forfeit my own rights by denying to my fellow men the rights I claim for myself?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 94)

The logic of the highlighted sentences above seems beyond reproach. Both of these sentences have validity and truth attached to them. So, why is it so hard for most of us to adopt, adapt and live into them? What are the different falsehoods and subterfuges we use to deny “my fellow men’s identical claim” to equality, to dignity, to worth, to freedom??  What prevents us from understanding when we go along with the deceivers’/ authoritarians’ denial of rights for ‘those people’, we are forfeiting our own rights, that the authoritarians and deceivers will take these same rights from us?What prevents people from acknowledging and living into the wisdom of the Talmud that says we all have equal and infinite value and each of us is unique? FEAR and MENDACITY are what society promotes so we can keep denying another what we claim as an “unalienable right”. This fear and mendacity is embedded into the Constitution and Declaration of Independence which knows we all have “identical claims” to and for “equality”. Yet, the founding fathers were unable to take action on what they knew was right because of pressure, because of fear of losing the country before it began to coalesce. They could not ‘pull the trigger’ on “equality” for all because they bought into the lies that Blacks were inferior, that Jews killed Christ, that Chinese were the devil, etc. Unfortunately, there are too many of their descendants who have re-emerged in our time and follow the lies of the political party that wants to destroy democracy, that wants to give aid and comfort to Putin, that calls dictators and authoritarians ‘good people’ that extols haters of Jews as ‘very fine people’, that want to destroy “justice for all” and replace it with ‘punishing those against us’. All of these are the natural outgrowth when FEAR and MENDACITY are promoted for those who seek ill-gotten gains and when we, the people, are stupid enough, broken enough, spiritually sick enough to fall for these autocrats’ bullshit.

The moment we separate out one person as not being worthy of “equality”, not ‘up to our standards’, we are separating out everyone ‘not like me’ and we are denying the “identical claim” that we have and, now we are playing ‘god’ and deciding who is ‘good enough’ to be treated with humanity and who is not. Once we decide that a Black, Brown, Asian, Italian, Irish, Jew, Muslim person doesn’t have the same claim to and for “equality”, we “forfeit my own rights” according to Rabbi Heschel’s teaching. While most of us don’t readily see this truth, because we are so oblivious to what is in front of our faces and our self-deceptive nature is stronger than the call to “lift up our eyes and see”, our inability doesn’t negate the truth and validity of this teaching.

We watch daily how some people are so hellbent on denying the “rights I claim for myself” to another human being. We are witnesses and, sometimes, participants in the denial of decency, kindness, love, connection, loyalty, justice, to those who have been deemed by ‘someone’, by ‘society’ as less worthy. The most vociferous amongst us in these denials are ‘the good christian people of the conservative right, the ‘religious’ and the ‘pious’ of all religious and, in some cases, spiritual disciplines. Being against LGBTQ+ is a denial of their equal value, the control of women is a denial of their claim to equality direct conflict with the Bible that says: male and female God created them both”. Anti-Semitism is a denial of the rights of Jews to exist-to live in peace, to live freely and to contribute mightily. Yet, against all these factors, LGBTQ+ are thriving, women are succeeding and Jews continue to contribute.

It is all the more necessary for those of us who belong to the groups who have been denied to stand together and against the people who are denying our right to equal justice, denying our right to marry who we wish, denying our right to reproductive health care of our own choosing, denying the right for Jews to exist and protect themselves against terrorists, denying the right for Palestinians to have their own land, denying the right of people who don’t want to be politically correct and who care about truth, denying g the right of prophecy and truth to those who speak these. It is crucial for us all to end our need to ‘one-up’ the victimhood we feel and deny that the harms we have suffered are equally suffered by any one and every one who experiences the denial of their claim to the same rights someone else wants to claim.

What is most important about the teaching above is how I also do these same things. While it is much easier to look outside and see how we are falling down as a country, community, society-it is crucial that we look inside. I ache when I realize how I have, at times, denied someone else the same rights that I claim for myself. I am sorry for the times I have done this. I cry at the thought of how many times I misread a situation and people who I believed agreed with me and wanted to grant everyone the same equal status and worth as they wanted for themselves only to find out I was mistaken and these mistakes led me to erupt which only validated the people who didn’t want me nor anyone ‘like me’ to have the same rights they have a claim to. I know that ego gets in my way at times and I work each day to keep my ego in proper measure and speaking out when I should and, finally, shutting up when is necessary. I am sorry for my errors, both my misjudgments and my own denials. I work hard each day to repair the damage and to not repeat my missing the mark. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark