Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 18
“Too often we misunderstand the demand; too often the call goes forth, and history records our conscience as absent.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7-8)
Reading this over and over again, looking at the world we have created, the question we have to ask ourselves: is our misunderstanding of the “the demand” willful or unwitting, is our conscience absent on purpose or because it has not been developed.?
I know that what is written above is truthful and wise, yet, it seems as if the people ‘running’ our “religious traditions” have forgotten “the purpose”! Be it clergy who preach it is okay to hate the gay, trans, bi-sexual person, or the clergy who preach it is okay to hate the Jew, the Black because they are the ‘anti-christ’ or they ‘killed christ’ in regards to the Jew, or the clergy preach it is okay to hate the Arab because ‘god wants the jews to have all the land’, it is okay to cheat people other than jews because they persecuted us, or the clergy who proclaim ‘whitey is our enemy’, our ‘religious’ leadership has lost their way and are abusing their positions, taking the name of God in vain (desecrating the 2nd Commandment), being shepherds for the rich, famous, ruling class. This is the greatest betrayal we can experience.
We have witnessed the inability of “religious” institutions to live up to the values and principles of their own “religious traditions”, watching as ‘White Churches’ decry the black people, hearing the ‘new’ preachers proclaim that if one has money it is because ‘god’ loves them, speaking the lies of ‘love Israel’ while truly wanting Armageddon to happen which is the only reason for supporting the right-wing crazies there. Closer to home, we have watched how pastors, ministers, Rabbis have been eaten up by their congregations and boards of directors-with the flock believing they should be able to tell their Spiritual leader how to be, rather than having the “religious tradition” dictate the values and mores of the congregation.
While it is right and important to see what our “religious institutions” are doing, it is more important for each of us as individuals to see what we are doing. No Board of Directors, No clergy, can get away with their purposeful misunderstanding of “the demand” unless we, the congregation, allow it. No one can change the principles that a congregation is founded on unless, we, the congregation, goes along with the changes. There is no such thing as a separation of ‘white and black’ churches in the Christian “religious tradition” as I have read it and heard about it from learned scholars of Christianity. There is no separation of Judaism according to someone’s belief that ‘this is the only way’ or ‘only we are Torah Jews’, because the Bible has 70 faces, 70 ways to be understood, so while “the demand” is always the same-truth, justice, mercy, kindness, love, care and compassion for the stranger, the poor, the needy-there are a myriad of ways to fulfill the demand and each of us has our own unique way to fulfill the demand in this moment.
We, the People have to take responsibility for “too often we misunderstand the demand”. It is important for us to end our blame and shame game of another(s) so we can hide and cover up our own greed, our own desire to change the demand from the one God gives us, the one our “religious institutions” are built on, to the demand of our desires and inauthentic needs. Our constant “misunderstand the demand” is a cover-up for the need of some people to have power over another(s), much like Pharaoh in the first chapter of Exodus, “Let us deal slyly/wisely with them…so they set taskmasters over them to afflict them…” The Israelites were considered more numerous and mightier than the Egyptians and they allowed themselves to become slaves. This is an example of “misunderstand the demand” on the part of Pharaoh and the Israelites and this “misunderstand the demand” is alive and well today, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, in Russia, in Hungary, in Israel, in the United States, etc. While it is easy to blame ‘those people’ it is more important and truer to look at ourselves, see how we also “misunderstand the demand” and what we need to do to “get a new pair of glasses” and see what really we are being demanded to do and be, not the lies we have told ourselves and that we have bought from whatever Pharaoh we want to follow today, ie Trump, Musk, Putin, Bibi, etc.
We, the People have to re-engage our “conscience” as well. We have allowed them to be silenced by our greed, our fears, our need to be right, etc. How many times have any of us shut the fuck up because we didn’t want to be ridiculed for standing up for what is right and good? How many times have we allowed our “conscience” to be cowed and we be cowered by our fear of ‘not fitting in’? How often have we watched the people running companies we work for, religious institutions we are members of, families we belong to do the next wrong thing and shut up for fear of retribution and/or, even worse, because of our own “indifference to evil”. Thinking about Rabbi Heschel’s words above, I would say that the only way “history records our conscience as silent” is because we have become “indifferent to evil”! We have been so beat down by our fears, shame, being blamed, our lack of belief in our purpose, our goodness because of the myriad of ways we “misunderstand the demand” and because of the ways “the demand” has been bastardized by those we thought we could trust; family, friends, clergy, religious institutions. It is time for We, the People to take back our power to understand and recover our “conscience” so we can respond.
As one who misunderstood “the demand” willfully for over 20 years, reading the words above cause me regret, give me the opportunity to go back and learn/relearn the lessons of ruin and destruction that purposely misunderstanding the demand brings. Knowing that my “conscience is absent” when I was constantly shut down as an adolescent, when I spoke up and was shut down, only makes me more determined to never allow this to happen again. I hear the demand daily in all of what I read, hear, see: take a stand for what is right, speak truth and call out the lies and mendacities of another(s), stop the willful blindness and indifference to evil that is prevalent in our country, our Temples, Churches, Mosques, to the best of my ability. Reach out and continue to “carry the message” of recovery from indifference, from a silent “conscience” and “misunderstand the demand”. This is the call I hear everyday and, with the words above, even more so today. I can’t do it alone and I can’t change anyone, I can only keep doing my best, being available to those who want what I have and standing up to those ‘leaders’ who continue to denigrate “the demand”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.