Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 28
“The sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as a typical ingredient of social dynamics. A single act of injustice-to us it is slight, to the prophet it is a disaster.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.9)
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in America, celebrating his birth, and today is the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President-talk about cognitive dissonance! Rabbi Heschel’s words above describe the power of Dr. King because he preached and believed that the “ark of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice”. Yet, we are impatient, we are easily distracted, we are easily deceived and we engage in self-deception on a daily basis! Hence we are willing to “regard as normal” “crimes” and “delinquency” to the utter ruin of our spiritual health, our mental health, and eventually our physical health.
Because of this “normalcy”, our young people are jaded, bored, uninvolved and easily distracted by their devices, older people are as well. This last election with the turn to the right, to the hardcore message of blame and hatred of someone different than you shows how our young people, especially, don’t tune in to find out what candidates stand for really, they listen to rhetoric and find the message that makes them feel good. This is true for older adults as well, I am focussing on the young because they are our future, they are the people we are handing over our mistakes, our victories, our examples of living well and living poorly to.
As I said yesterday, all of us have the prophetic voice within us, we may call it conscience, gut instinct, intuition, higher consciousness, and the issue for all of us is to access it and not silence it. This is where religion is failing us, rather than teach us the heroic measures the ‘people’ in the Bible went to in order to rise above the normalcy of crime and hatred, stealing and lying, we are told of the heroism of Moses, Miriam and Aaron, of Joshua and Caleb, of Judah and Joseph, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, of the Judges, the prophets, Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, etc. We are also taught of their moral failures. Yet, leaders of religious sects/groups today, and yesterday, have wanted to ignore both the rising above our baser instincts, our apathy, and the failure to do so, instead painting the heroes as perfect and the “other” as enemy. This way of thinking, teaching the Bible, teaching ethics, etc in many parts of the country, in many religious sects, has become the gold standard for gaining favor with ‘the powers that be’, for getting donations from the different special interest groups, for being “in”. This is the bane of our existence, as I am understanding and hearing Rabbi Heschel today.
What has come to be ‘the way’ is to ignore “a single act of injustice”, not just regard it as “slight”! We are inaugurating a man who is a convicted felon and who violated the Constitution of the United States and is committed to doing it again and people are cheering him on, the Senate and House of Representatives, each of whom have a Republican majority, are committed to upholding the destruction, the tearing up of the Constitution along with him and claim that their ‘religion’ is telling them to! Is it any wonder why young people are disillusioned? Is it any wonder that they stay away from religion in droves? Is it any wonder that they believe everyone is corrupt or at least corruptible? Again, it is not just young people, they learn this apathy, this indifference to evil from us, the “older generations”. When we tell them to “not rock the boat”, to “go along to get along”, to “do what it takes to be successful” we are not caring about their spiritual and moral health nor do we care about ours, until it is too late! Ask the righteous Germans and the Jews who thought ‘it will all blow over’! This attitude is what destroys civilizations, destroys freedom for all, destroys democracy and, once autocracy is the way of the land, causes us to be bewildered as to ‘how did we get here”.
We, the People are being called to account by the sentences above. We, the People are being called to respond to this day of celebrating not just Rev. King, rather an entire paradigm shift that happened in those years that has been receding ever since! From Nixon to Reagan, from George W. Bush to Trump, we have seen a concerted effort to repeal and replace the gains of moral accountability that became the “law of the land” during the 1960’s. From Clinton to Obama to Biden, we have witnessed the timidness to push further on moral choices, be too afraid to ‘go to far’, settle for “that which we regard as normal”! This has to end, We, the People have to reclaim the prophetic vision, we have to reclaim EMET/TRUTH and practice it in all our affairs. It is time for all of us to feel the pain of the lowest person on the totem pole, of the slave and indentured servant, of the one who has lost everything and do what we can to come to their aid. It is time for We, the People to hear the words of the prophets anew and heed them with renewed vigor and adherence. It is time for We, the People to demand of our religious leaders better examples of how to wrestle with our opposing inclinations, the one that wants to do the right thing and the one who wants to celebrate and join in doing the wrong thing in order to “get ahead”. We, the People are being called today to grab “the ark of the moral universe” and, using our inner strength of goodness and holiness, “bend it towards justice” and compassion, love, kindness and truth.
Prior to my spiritual awakening in 1986, I was able to ignore the criminal acts I was committing and the people around me were committing as “getting ours”. Once I began studying Rabbi Heschel, the Bible, learning with Rabbi Mel Silverman, it became impossible for me to ignore my actions and the criminal actions of those around me. It became impossible for me not to feel the pain I inflicted upon others with my immorality, with my ignorance of their experiences and the harms they were subjected to by me and by anyone. The past 38 years have been a honing of this sensitivity for me. I react in volcanic ways because I am afraid of the harm caused by the “indifference to evil” that people engage in by not being in “dismay” over the “typical ingredient of social dynamics”. I am volcanic because I believe immorality, injustice of any kind is a disaster. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark