Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 44
“The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent are the true seat of moral infection. The problem of living begins, in fact, in relation to our own selves, in the handling of our emotional functions, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)
Looking at the world today, especially the United States, we are experiencing the effects of “moral infection”. These words could have been written yesterday and the issue facing us all is that we didn’t heed these words 67 years ago! The moral rot we are being subjected to now is the result of “the silent atrocities, the secret scandals” of the people in power now. Trump, Musk, Vance, Vought, Kennedy Jr., Hegseth, et al all have skeletons in their closets that have shaped their view of power and service to self above all. Because of Trump’s unmasking since 2015, he has been singularly focused on re-writing the story to fit his sick, twisted, mendacious narrative. He is, along with Pam Bondi, going to go after the people who were standing up for the Capital Police, the DC Police, our Democratic ways, our Constitution, by going after the prosecutors, the FBI agents who found and prosecuted the criminals! Vought et al want to empower Trump with autocratic powers, declare him a Dictator and, these ‘fine christian folk’ want to trample on the poor, kick out the stranger, and imprison the needy-all the values Christ preached?!!!?
Yet, the “moral infection” is ours as well. We, the People have hidden our own “silent atrocities, secret scandals” for so long from the fear of ‘being found out and judged’ and the ‘shame’ we feel for breaking the ‘law’ of our faith, our spirit. Rather than live life out loud and in the light of the sun, we keep hiding in the shadows what seems ‘unseemly’, we keep denying the wrongs we do, much like an alcoholic who is “in their disease” cannot seem to speak truth when confronted. We, the People are the same as an addict in the throes of their disease, like the addict, we hide our ‘dirty laundry’, we deny our foibles, we engage in secrecy and silence about ourselves and are willing to hold the secrets of someone else either for our gain-one day we might need to use the secret to get them to do something- and/or for our validation that ‘everyone does it’. It is time for We, the People to stop hiding, to engage in the spiritual path of T’Shuvah: repentance, repair and return; the path of daily inventory in order to catch ourselves from continuing down the rabbit holes of secrecy, of scandalizing behaviors and actions, of silence in the face of evil and of believing our “atrocities” are good things.
The reason society is so twisted and sick right now is not because of Musk, Trump, Kushner, et al, it is because of the Greenblatts, the Bezos’, the Zuckerberg’s et al. It is because of the people who are ignoring the “problem of living” as described above, they are not being responsible for ‘the handling of our emotional functions, in the way we deal with envy, greed, pride”, they only want to blame someone else, they only want their ‘hero’ to save them from “those people”. The ones who provided jobs the past 4 years, the ones who, when they were wrong admitted it, the ones who flew to Ukraine and Israel to stand with our allies in their time of crisis, the ones who screwed up the 2024 election and left us with the bully/baby. It is the people who have stood silently by, it is a Jonathan Greenblatt who honors Jared Kushner for fucking the country, supporting and helping an authoritarian government like the ones his grandparents experienced in Europe and gives Elon Musk’s Nazi salute a pass. It is people like Bezos and Zuckerberg who have all the money they ever need and kiss the ass of Trump, Musk, et al. It is the people like “Big Balls” who proclaim their Nazi tendencies on social media and then given free reign to fuck up the governmental agencies!
Most of all, it is the responsibility of each one of us. We have dealt with our emotional functioning piss poorly-in my humble opinion. Rather than follow the ways of the Bible, we hide our imperfections, our errors of judgement, of “envy, greed, pride” behind so many facades. As Rabbi Heschel writes in his book Man is Not Alone, we have so much mental make-up on, we are sacrificing our faces! We watch the pain of those who have felt over the years they had to hide their sexuality and the “scandals and “atrocities” that have occurred because of the need to hide; families being broken up, women being betrayed and devastated, kids not understanding, the person being shunned from ‘proper society’, the stain on the entire family by a sick society, etc. We watch the pain of families and friends of the people who take advantage of the people around them through coercion, through manipulation, through deception and the helpless, powerless feelings that these friends and families go through-unable to believe and unable to say no, they are being terrorized. We can see the pain of those of us who’s families were displaced because of being Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, and the pain of losing one’s home even if it was shitty in the “old country”, it was still what they knew and being forced to go to a new land, without knowing the language well, they are heroes and their pain of leaving their loved ones behind, finding out they were massacred in the Shoah, is almost too much to bear. “Envy, greed, pride” figure into our decisions to become involved and to not become involved in the authentic needs of another. When we are envious, we cheer on the brutes, bullies, autocrats who are ‘sticking it to them’, not realizing we are next. When we are so greedy we can’t wait for ‘those people’ to be deported so we can ‘take what is rightfully mine even though someone else earned it’. When we are prideful to the max-‘we have to stand up for the white race’ becomes the mantra and the lens we see everything through. Isn’t it time for all of us to become spiritually fit so we can deal with our emotions in better ways, so we can be more like the Bible which portrays the greatness and the foibles of the characters??
I am guilty! I am in recovery from hiding, from feeling shame, from ‘not enough’ from “envy, greed, pride”, all of which drove my choices in my earlier years. My recovery is based on living out loud (yes, very loudly) without fear or favor. It gets me into trouble, I am not that welcome in polite society, I cannot contain myself when I get a whiff of mendacity, of bullshit, of a Trump, et al, of a progressive who says all the right things and is on the right side of an issue while being sneaky, backhanded, mendacious-all for a ‘good cause’ of course and unable to admit their errors or part in any situation. I am unable to sit idly by when there is possible blood being or could be spilled-literally or metaphorically. I am not perfect, I still find myself feeling envy, pride, and greed-now it is a passing thought or an admiration of the creativity of another human being. I wish I could be that good at creating my pottery:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark