Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 168
“The source of insight is an awareness of being called upon to answer. Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness, oppression.” (Who is Man pg. 107)
Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom in the second sentence above is so overlooked today, as in every era. We have made personal problems an objective challenge with the identity politics that is happening throughout our living. Whether in Congress, on the campaign trail, in schools and in workplaces, every identity wants to stake out a place and platform for themselves, which can be good and connecting and the problem is that most of these identity groups want to exclude any other group from joining. We hear about the terrible ‘older white men’ and, being an older white man, I hear the call of women and people of color to be added to the table, where they certainly have always had a place-the problem is to exclude all ‘older white men’ is to do to another what is hateful to you. I don’t believe this is the point of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. It is to be inclusive and to aid and serve.
It is time for all of us to rise above our personal problems, resentments, angers and find ways to work together-across gender lines, across color lines, across political lines, etc to honor the call and challenge “to overcome inequity and injustice”. This challenge began with the killing of Abel by Cain in the Bible; “the voice of your brother’s bloods cries to me” God says to Cain after Cain asks: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In the 4th Chapter of the Bible, we are taught to overcome our jealousies and pride so we do not commit murder, physically, emotionally and/or spiritually. When we crush the spirit of people, as white men and women have, we are not heeding one of the earliest principles and teachings of the Bible. Yet, there are many ‘god-fearing’ men and women who continue to worship the idol of self, of personal problems and worries, at the altar of prejudice and entitlement, I am sad to say. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that the challenge, the call to overcome inequity and injustice is a call from the Ineffable One. I know this because humanity has shown, over and over again, our incapability of holding these challenges in the forefront of our being. When the one group gains power, they are unjust and practice inequity towards all the other groups as history has proven over and over again.
The Holiday of Passover which we will begin to celebrate on Friday, April 15, 2022, is a reminder for all of us each year that slavery can, will and must end. Slavery is the highest form of injustice and inequity, I believe. We are told “ each person is to see him/her self as if she/he had been redeemed from Egypt” according to our Haggadah. I would add we all have to see how we have acted more like Pharaoh than Moses in some areas, some actions, some traits we have. If we are to answer the “objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice,” we have to first find and face the inequity and injustice we still engage in. I know people who are in the forefront of the fight for justice and democracy who practice inequity and injustice in their daily lives without even being aware of these practices! In fact, when confronted they deny and defend-all the while being part of a country club that excludes people because of personal whims/disputes, forgetting the low wages of the people who serve them, etc.
We all have within us our own experiences of inequity and injustice that has been perpetrated upon us, as well as the epigenetic experience of inequity and injustice perpetrated upon our ancestors. To live Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, we have to let go of those experiences-we have to dig deep in some cases to find their roots-not forget them, not deny them, let go of them because they have consciously and unconsciously been influencing our behaviors for years and causing us to do to another what is hateful to us which, according to Rabbi Hillel, is what the Torah teaches us not to do. We have to answer the challenge inside of us before we can truly respond to and, hopefully one day, end the ways of inequity and injustice that we see each and every day.
In recovery, we do a “searching and fearless moral inventory” to seek out and bring to our consciousness the inequities and injustices we have done to another so we can find the place inside of us that had given us permission to perpetrate these evils onto another human being. In recovery, we know we have to get to the root of our feelings of inequity and injustice so we can stop treating another(s) as we were treated!
I have been responding to the challenge Rabbi Heschel speaks about all my life. Sometimes my responses have been totally inappropriate and wrong-I was coming from a hurt and wounded place so I wanted to hurt and wound the person in front of me whether they had hurt me or not-I used them as surrogates for the ones who had. I remember the experience of how unjust and inequitable life was when my father died at age 42 and I was 14. My dad answered the challenge of inequity and injustice when he raised the pay of Black men to the same as White men for doing the same work-something that just wasn’t done in 1959 Cleveland, Ohio. We were all ridiculed for this and, he died far too young. I lived this experience of injustice and inequity for over 20 years and, even in my recovery, I have carried it with me. I know that this experience also has caused me to respond to these challenges with help and aid to those in need of recovery and love. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark