Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 268
“The prophets’ greatest contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53)
I believe that one of “the prophets’ greatest contribution to humanity” is to name and call out “the evil of indifference”, without fear nor favor. The prophets were not professionals at their craft, there was/is no training for the ‘job’, precisely because being a prophet is not a job, it is not something one learns in school, it is a calling that comes from the depths of our being, ie, our souls, and is, as Jeremiah reports, a fire in the belly that cannot be put out. The story of Jonah and ‘the big fish’ shows how impossible it is to ignore, run away from, and not heed the call that may or may not emanate from outside of us and certainly gnaws at our insides until we answer and act on this calling. We the People are descendants of the prophets, We the People get the same gnawing inside of us, We the People find ourselves face to face with injustice, with a lack of mercy, with mendacity, just as the prophets did. The difference being; We the People have settled into, accepted, and are willingly participating in “the evil of indifference”! How sad and tragic, how devastating and despicable, how We the People have twisted ourselves into pretzels and become caricatures of what a human being is so we can ‘go along to get along’.
I hold our clergy, our politicians, our wealthy most responsible while still calling out the co-signing and lying We the People are doing. We have had 2000 years to refine our prophetic voices, 2000 years to make the changes the prophets called for in how we treat one another, 2000 years to improve our “conscious contact with God” and 2000 years to imbue the call from Mount Sinai and We the People have failed miserably! It is inconceivable to me, on one hand, that we have fallen so far back as to be in the same situation as the one the prophets saw 2000-2300 years ago AND, it is totally understandable to me that We the People have refused to act upon the call of the Bible to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God” because it may not ‘get us to the top of the heap’! We the People have become more and more engaged with our egos, with how things look than with the call of our inner life. We the People are indifferent to the suffering of another(s) because it means there is more for us. We the People are so willfully blind, we cannot see that the people in charge; the clergy, the wealthy, the politicians are lying to us, do not care a lick about us and will screw us the first chance they get because power is all they are after. With power, they have wealth, with wealth and power they can refine their mendacious skills and ways for their own benefit, and as we see from the times of the prophets, the lies they tell themselves leads to their destruction and to ours! Yet, We the People continue to engage in the evil of indifference and applaud the indifference these ‘good religious folks’ lead us to.
“How is this possible” many people ask and I know engagement with the evil of indifference” begins at home, at the kitchen, dinner tables, at our mother’s tits and our father’s hands. Because We the People have bought the lies of society, the bullshit of the ‘preacher man’ and the belief stated in Fiddler on the Roof-“when you’re rich they think you really know”. The fear of failure, the fear of looking stupid, the fear of not being perfect and beaten up because of our mistakes, the fear of … has led parents and children to ignore the teachings of the prophets, to ignore the words of the Bible-no matter how much they “quote the Good Book”! We the People are being called to come home to our essence, being called to return to our core so our backsliding can be healed, being called to remember we are loved, we are worthy, we have infinite dignity and we are unique! This is the call that is emanating from Sinai, this is the teachings of the prophets, this is the way home!
We the People need to immerse ourselves in the words of the prophets rather than just skim them or even study them-immersion in their words is the process of taking in the moment they are in, seeing the moment we are in and using their wisdom, their call, their demands, their actions in our daily living, adapting and adopting their wisdom to the moment we are in. Yet, most families, if they talk at all at the dinner table ask about school, work, blah, blah, blah. Is it any wonder the words and deeds of the prophets are lost? Is it any wonder that the Clergy, the Wealthy, the Politicians belief so fiercely and completely that they only have to show their decency and piousness for We the People to allow, not notice, ignore, be indifferent to their sinisterness and their sinfulness?? It is time to take off our blinders, to end the evil of indifference from flourishing and to HEAR, LISTEN AND UNDERSTAND that the CALL from Sinai is as loud as it was 3500 years ago, the wisdom of the prophets as meaningful and needed to day as it was 2300 years ago and We the People have to answer these calls.
Knowing the power of “the evil of indifference” didn’t stop me, from age 15-37 from engaging with it, capitalizing on it as people are today and this is the sin I continue to make living amends for today. I know the call of my soul, I feel the fire in my belly and I am unable to not be loud, annoying, some would say obnoxious, and unwavering in my calling out to you, to me, to the communities I am in and to the larger community what I see, what my soul is telling me and how to live into the words and ways of the prophets, of the Bible, learning from the errors of our ancestors and improving on their ‘success’. This is the way I immerse myself, this is the way I become one grain of sand better each day, this is the way I walk my talk. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark