Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 154
“There are slums, disease, and starvation all over the world and we are building more luxurious hotels in Las Vegas. Social dynamics is no substitute for moral responsibility.” (Who is Man pg.114)
With the backdrop of bombs falling in civilian neighborhoods in the Ukraine, the devastation being caused by a madman intent on being a bully and his Chinese allies, these words have even more power for all of us. We have watched our Veterans become homeless/unhoused and live in tents on the street for years before inviting them in to our VA grounds in Los Angeles, and I am sure, elsewhere. Human beings who went to fight for our country, for the freedom of people across the globe and we are building gated communities, hotels that are more luxurious than the ones Rabbi Heschel was speaking about in 1963-65, and we are spreading disease because 1/2 of the US doesn’t believe in Covid-19 vaccines as they listen to the lies of the far right and left leaders who, by the way, have gotten their vaccines while convincing others to shun these same vaccines!
We are witness, mostly silent, to the starvation of people in the United States, China, Russia, etc-not just ‘third-world’ or poor countries. We stand idly by the blood of our neighbor and are angry at Rev. William Barber who, like Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel, remind us of the human beings who are suffering from being poor and having to choose between inflated rents and food, inflated rents and medical care, and they suffer from the demonization that comes at them from the radical right and the false prophets of the ‘prosperity gospel’ who claim that God loves the rich better and the poor must have done something that God doesn’t like-what BS and we who know better, must call out these charlatans and these liars.
Social dynamics is a sociology term that is defined as: a branch of social physics that deals with the laws, forces, and phenomena of change in society. I got this definition from the internet and it has nothing to do with morality and/or our responsibility to be moral in our actions towards another human being and toward ourselves. Dealing “with laws, forces and phenomena of change in society” does not a moral person make. In fact, I would suggest that social dynamics has contributed to the immorality that we find ourselves and our world mired in. We have witnessed the changing of laws to fit the desires and the whims of the rich and powerful, elected officials no longer have the greater good of freedom at heart and in their every action, they have the greater good of greed, of the few at heart and in their every action because they have been co-opted and bought. “Starvation, disease, slums- they brought this upon themselves and if it is too unseemly to look at, lock those people up so we don’t have to see the degradation and the humiliation of a human being and restore our cities and streets to the pristine nature they once were and to their appropriate ‘whiteness’” seems to be the rationale of these enslavers, these idol worshipers. It is time for all good people to come to the aid of their fellow human being as well as their country. Neighborhoods, cities, states, countries are made up of human beings and as long as we ignore the humanity of another person, ignore our own humanity, bombs in Kyiv, unhoused in our streets, a pandemic that has killed almost 1 million Americans and over 6 million human beings worldwide, people dying from hunger and malnutrition will continue to devastate our ability to be human. We are engaged in a war for the soul of the individual, the community, the congregation, the country, the world and the only path to victory is to make being human, being moral, being responsible one Jew for another, one Christian for another, one Muslim for another, one Buddhist for another, and all of us for one another-we have to stop separating ourselves from one another because the way to God is multi-faceted, even including agnostics and atheists, because our sense of what is a human being and what it means to be human comes from God and we get to find our own unique path to living humanely and joyously.
In recovery, we are aware of our need to feed our soul so we can repair the inhumane actions we took prior to our journey into recovering our integrity, our humanity and our soul. We are aware of the false self we promoted and lived for a while and are determined to find the cure for the scurvy of our soul through actions of service to people who are ill, people who are hungry, people who need shelter. We are committed to regaining/gaining a moral compass that keeps us on the path to our true north. In recovery, we are grateful for our second chance to live well.
I have sent money to organizations helping the Ukraine and Harriet and I have, for the last 30 years, given 10%+ to Tzedakah. We support the different causes we have connections to and we support the general community funds. We have worked together for 33+ years to help people regain their moral compass, we have fought against the scourge of addiction, criminality, spiritual bankruptcy and we are both grateful for and to God for sustaining us in our life’s work. While we have retired from Beit T’Shuvah, we continue to respond to people who call us for help, continue to help people find their moral voice and continue to speak truth to power and don’t waste our time with people who cannot/will not stay loyal to God’s principles and justify their actions with “on advice of counsel”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark