Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 216
“What is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of inequality.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 93)
Equal comes from the Latin meaning “level, even”, monstrosity is defined as “something that is outrageously and offensively wrong”. Using these two definitions, we can hear Rabbi Heschel speaking about any and all discrimination as wrong and our ability to ignore this “outrageous”, “uneven” way of being is scary and dangerous. It has led to so many wars, so much hatred and destruction and we continue on “lacking” “a sense of the monstrosity of inequality”. How is this possible, one might ask and the answer may well be that we are so engaged in participating in and accepting this “monstrosity of inequality” that we are unable to recognize it.
Rabbi Heschel is not saying that everyone should have equal pay for different jobs, he is not saying, I believe, that socialism is the path. Rather, I hear him calling for a “level” playing field, that equal opportunity should be afforded to everyone, not just the rich and famous, not just white people, not just ‘good christian nationalists’, etc. 70 years ago the Supreme Court decided the case “Brown v Board of Education” and called for an end to the lies of “separate but equal” because there was no equal education for Black children and adolescents, there was only Jim Crow laws and ways in the South then, as there seems to be an upsurge in the same attitudes now. The people of the South had/have very little “sense of the monstrosity of inequality” by the way they perpetuate it. The “Red States” seem to have little “sense of the monstrosity of inequality” by the ways they continue to punish women who need/want good reproductive health care and they continue to deny it to them-forcing them to be near death and/or die in order to satisfy the people in power’s “monstrosity of inequality” quotient.
Throughout history ‘we’ have witnessed this lack of care and concern over “inequality” and taken no action as long as it is not ‘we’ who are suffering from it. ‘We’ have seen how the ones who have been treated so badly by this “monstrosity”, once we get power do the same to another group. We are so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we seem to be unable to rise above our baser selves, our “outrageous and offensively wrong” paradigm to a higher standard. This is what made “Brown v Board of Education” so powerful-the Supreme Court said we have undo the “,monstrosity of inequality” that we had endorsed so many years ago! Remember the reason the Puritans and the Pilgrims came to the New World-to escape the religious persecution they were experiencing back home in England. Yet today, we have their descendants and many others who came to America because of the Freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights, exerting both religious and racist persecutions and policies so they can have a “christian nation”, so they can have their “project 2025” and decimate the democratic norms and ways that have kept us a free nation. Rather than have “a sense of the monstrosity of inequality”, these ‘fine christian folks’ engage in “inequality” with vigor and glee. The supporters of Trump, the attackers of our Justice System all are joyful about Trump’s lies, they believe he has the right to defile the good names of people who say NO to him, they attack the very systems that allowed their ancestors to immigrate, that allows them the freedom to say their lies and spread their deceptions. Some of these people are elected officials who have sworn to “uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic” and they themselves are the enemies of our Constitution-talk about letting the fox in the hen house!
Jews, Muslims, Italians, Irish, have experienced this “monstrosity of inequality” so often in this country and in the world, just for being who we are. The practice of this “outrageous and offensively wrong” behavior has been validated by the ‘white christian/catholic’ power structure for millennia. We have been in the throes of a spiritual and moral malady by the very people who claim to have been saved by Jesus Christ and follow nothing that he spoke about! Rather than hang with the lepers, embrace Jesus’ people, the Jews, rather than care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the women, the orphans, these ‘good white christian/catholic’ power brokers do the opposite and pretend to do it in Jesus’ name! How ridiculous, how monstrous! We, people who are healing from any “monstrosity of inequality” have to stand up and say NO at the ballot box, in the media, we have to defund the hate mongers on the left and the right, we have to say NO to the anti-semites, the anti-black, the anti-freedom of choice people who are demonizing us, demonizing freedom, and perpetuating this “lacking a sense of the monstrosity of inequality” in our schools, in our homes, in our houses of worship.
I have been blessed by a strong “sense of the monstrosity of inequality” from my families engagement in workers rights by my grandfathers to my father to my siblings and myself. I believe we have passed this sense down to our descendants as well as evidenced by the work they all engage in. I am thinking about how important this “sense” is to apply to all our affairs. Even though I marched for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War in the 1960’s-70’s because of the “sense of the monstrosity of inequality”, I perpetrated this same monstrosity onto others with my stealing, my alcoholism, my abandonment of so many principles that I learned from my father. I watched and validated my behavior with “everyone does this” excuse and the words above remind me that my job to fight against this “monstrosity” is always present no matter what and there are no excuses to validate participating in it. More tomorrow. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark