Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 267
“There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.52)
In 1999 Elie Wiesel spoke to then President Clinton et al about “indifference”. He defined it as “no difference”, calling it “a strange and unnatural state”. Mr Wiesel was a friend of Rabbi Heschel’s, they would walk together on Shabbat after services he related to me when I had the opportunity to meet him. In his White House speech, he railed agains the “indifference” he saw in the moment and throughout the history of the 20th Century, in his own unique manner and, yet, his words, like Rabbi Heschel’s words above, are not being heeded in this moment! When we have law firms, Supreme Court Justices, Members of Congress all shirking their oaths to justice, to the Constitution, to the Bill of Rights, because they are afraid of the bully in the White House and his cruel minions, we are seeing “indifference” in full color and the crumbling of our freedoms right before our eyes. When We the People keep allowing boats to be “shot out of the water” on suspicion rather than fact, on propaganda rather than truth, and do nothing, we are guilty of “indifference”.
When “we remain neutral, impartial, not easily moved by the wrongs” being done to Hispanics right now-you notice there are no white people who are here illegally:Bullshit-are under attack and many of We the People justify and rationalize the cruel and unusual punishment by ICE and this administration as it is against ‘those people’. When the President of the United States avers he “hates my enemies”, and no one says anything, when this language is cheered, we aer witnessing the the “more contagious, more dangerous” aspect of “indifference”. When We the People are unable to say hello to a person in the street, when we are unable to acknowledge the cashier in the store, when we cut people off the road because we are ‘in a hurry’ without noticing their need to get where they are going, we are practicing and living into our own “indifference”. When We the People stay silent in the face of prejudice and bigotry, when we turn our eyes away from the suffering of people who are not us, when we proclaim that only ‘our god is the king’, or ‘I follow the Bible(the one that no one has ever seen because the actions of the people who say this are not the actions of Christ), and point our fingers at “those people”, “the vermin poisoning the blood of our children” as Trump et al like to say, we are in the throes of “indifference” and the slippery slope has gotten more slippery.
“Indifference to evil” seems to have reached a high point in our time. Donald Trump is the prime example of how New York society allowed him to create a persona out of lies, how NBC TV pushed his cruelty and were “indifferent” to how he treated people, especially women of color, on The Apprentice and even used the cruelty as a selling point. They improved on the false self that Trump created in New York, they were “indifferent” to the lies and cruelty of Trump’s real business dealings, and We the People just lapped it up! When he falsely accused President Obama of not being a US citizen, people were indifferent to the bullshit and lies of an attention seeker. When he spoke about “rapists, criminals, etc, calling them vermin, saying, in essence, he was the ‘great white hope’, We the People were indifferent to his way of being, we allowed him to steal an election and then, knowing full well his promises to “get retribution”, to “help the wealthy”, We the People elected him again-this is a prime example of “makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted”.
This is our conundrum, how to ‘put the genie back in the bottle’. What will it take for We the People to leave our state of “indifference”? First of all, We have to recognize that we are in it. We are being called by the moment to end our rationalizations, end our hiding our heads in the sand, end our fear of being singled out and caught up in the morass that people like Jim Comey, Leticia James, etc are in, and say NO to these liars and idolators, NO to these haters and evil doers, NO to the wrecking ball that is coming at all of our freedoms, NO to the battering ram that is tearing down the Constitution of the United States, NO to the arsonists attempting to burn the Declaration of Independence, NO to the renewed Klu Klux Klan that is spreading disinformation re: Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims while recruiting members of these minorities to do their bidding! This is how insidious our “indifference” has become-the cruel taskmasters get their targets to perpetrate evil onto their own ‘tribe’, people. WTF??!! We the People have to wake up, We have to read Elie Wiesel’s speech again, We have to remember the Pharaoh in Egypt who “did not know Joseph” and We have to stop giving in to the evil of “indifference”.
I know this place, I know how terrible it is to engage in “indifference” and, more so, how devastating it is to be on the receiving end of “indifference”. As a former criminal, the discriminations I faced were pretty harsh, both the outward ones and, even more so, the subtle quiet ones-like “indifference” to my ability to turn my life around and make a living, not hold my actions against my family, and not turn away from me in disgust. Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, turned towards me and this became my role model, Harriet Rossetto turned towards all inmates and this became the model for Beit T’Shuvah, which has saved 1000’s of lives and families. “Indifference” is a place I haven’t visited since I left prison in 1988 and I refuse to go back there. I pray you wake up to your own and leave this “insidious” and “contagious” way of being. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark