Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 48
“Modern man may be characterized as a being who is callous to catastrophes. A victim of enforced brutalization, his sensibility is being increasingly reduced; his sense of horror is on the wane. The distinction between right and wrong is becoming blurred. All that is left to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.”(God in Search of Man pg. 369)
Rabbi Heschel is calling to us, I would say, demanding of us to recognize what has happened to us, what is happening to us and what will happen to us as long as we remain “a victim of enforced brutalization”. Victim comes from the Latin word ‘victima’ can be defined as “a person who is tricked or duped” as well as “a person harmed, injured…”. To enforce comes from the Latin meaning “in strong” and has come to mean compelling observance. Brutalization comes from the Latin “Brutus” and means ‘dull or stupid’ as well as “an absence of reasoning or intelligence”. Immersing oneself in this phrase can help us understand what is going on in our world a little better, I believe.
We have been duped and tricked into believing the mendacity of a few, we have been harmed and injured intellectually, morally and spiritually by this trickery and we have not woken up enough to realize it. This is why, I believe some of us are willing to go along with “alternative facts”, why some of us are willing to compel another(s) to follow paths that serve our self-interests rather than the interests of the whole. We have become dull and stupid intellectually, morally and spiritually because we have turned reasoning and intelligence over to ‘the leaders’ of our “enforced brutalization”.
We see this happening in all levels of life, in our homes, in our workplaces, in our government, in the war being fought in Ukraine, in the authoritarian take-over of many countries that believed in democracy. We watched/watch it happening in our own country where people who spew hatred and who’s only agenda is to cut taxes for the wealthy and cut benefits for the poor are voted into office by the very people who will suffer from this brutal agenda. Our Congress is no longer a representative of the lamp of Lady Liberty, it is, with the new Supreme Court, tricking and duping people into believing they care about them, all the while caring only for themselves and the agenda of a few(in comparison) wealthy donors. They are compelling our observance of their twisted agenda, calling it ‘christian’ while promoting the exact opposite of what Christ speaks about in the Gospels. Calling themselves ‘god’s warriors’ while trying to enslave the stranger, the poor and the needy exactly the opposite of what God calls for 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible!
We are being governed by dull and stupid people and we don’t even realize it! Rabbi Heschel, in his words above is warning us of what was happening 67 years ago (and before) and we still haven’t heeded his wisdom! We have been morally injured and we have morally injured so many, like our soldiers who we sent to Vietnam, Afghanistan, even World War II. While we may have had to go to war, this doesn’t diminish the moral effects on our soldiers, while we have to fight for what is right, what is holy, what is good, when we use the tactics of hatred, violence (physical and/or speech) we morally injure ourselves and everyone else in our path. We have become inured to this fact, we have harmed our moral compass and we no longer are able to discern what ‘true north’ is. This has happened in secular society as well as religious society, this has happened in Communist Countries, Authoritarian Countries, Democratic Countries. We are losing the battle for the morality of our countries, the morality of our neighborhoods, the morality of our selves!
In recovery, we are recovering our moral compass! We learn/relearn what is truly moral and decent. We uncover the lies we have been telling ourselves for so long that we came to believe they were truths! We peel away a layer of mendacity and self-deception each day/week/month/year. We have become hyper-aware of our tendency to buy into the mendacity of another, our tendency to excuse our own bad behaviors and our alliances/relationships are more covenantal than transactional. We search each day, in all of our affairs to do what is right, just, moral and decent. We live an “attitude of gratitude” and remember that we get to live life with joy and being of service is our path to wholeness and connection. In recovery, we let go of our need to be brutes and return to being loving, kind people that engage in being human one grain of sand more each day.
Looking at my life through this lens of Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance allows me to see when and where I have been the brute and when I have been brutalized by my moral injuries and by the moral injuries of another. I see where I have duped myself, duped another person and been duped, by the same sense of desperation for connection. I realize the ways I compelled myself to observe someone else’s (societal) norms/needs in order to get connection and how this transactional connection harmed me and everyone else. I also realize how, at times, I compelled others to go along with my inauthentic needs based on my own moral injuries, and this harmed them and me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark