Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 275
“In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 54)
Continuing yesterday’s theme regarding the responsibility of the community vis a vis the crimes of an individual, the sentence above and those of yesterday encapsulate our situation today and our history in America and the world as well. Be it the Jew, the Gypsy, the Black, the Hispanic, the Asian, the LGBTQ+, individual, the white society has always had a ‘bad guy’ for the poor and the downtrodden to blame for their fate and to look down upon no matter how ‘low’ they felt. Lyndon Johnson said it so well: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”!! Yet, We the People continue to ignore the truth that LBJ spoke, the truth that history teaches us about “racial discrimination” and the truth of the words above. Adolf Hitler was able to convince an erudite population, a cosmopolitan country, an bastion of truth seeking, intelligence, into a country of Jew-Hatred, Gay-Hatred, Gypsy-Hatred, etc. So too has Donald Trump turned “give me your tired, your poor, your yearning to breathe free…” into a country where some people cheer when a person of color is beaten senseless, locked up without due process, cheer to ‘lock her up’, believe the lies of ‘Der Fuhrer’ and his minions. WTF??
One could ask: How could this happen in the USA? And the answer would be simple. We the People did not, in sufficient numbers, demand, create, maintain “a community not indifferent to suffering”. This is part of the responsibility all of We the People bear. While it is convenient and gratifying to blame ‘those people’, the rest of We the People have to acknowledge our responsibility in not maintaining a community “not indifferent to suffering”. Like it or not, when the ‘progressives’ were in charge, when the intellectual elite thought they knew what was best, when ‘political correctness’ was the rage, etc-they were “indifferent to the suffering” of the people who were bewildered by new technology, by this ‘new’ way of having to be, by people who disagreed with them, felt them going too far, people not concerned with optics, people who were concerned with providing food, clothing, shelter, and time for their families.
Rabbi Heschel is speaking about the “racial discrimination” of the 50’s/60’s as well as before and We the People have to look at the “racial discrimination” and all other forms of discrimination that We the People have either promoted or been indifferent to! This is at the core of the Chesbon HaNefesh, the accounting of the soul for the community we belong to, the community we live in. Whether it is in Israel or America, We the People have not had sufficient numbers of protests and attendees to change the course of our nations, to make the current administrations change their evil ways, to make Trump, Bibi and their fellow experts in cruelty stop. WAKE UP We the People! It is time for us to acknowledge, repair and change our ways of being “indifferent to the suffering” to confess the myriad of ways we have not been “uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood”, the ways we have promoted the “suffering” of ‘those people’, the methods of falsehoods and cruelty we have engaged in against ‘those people’ and made it to seem like We the People were “fighting the good fight”. This is the challenge: will We the People continue to grow our “No Kings” protests days? Will We the People acknowledge both our guilt and responsibility for allowing the USA, allowing Israel to fall into such disrepair and become countries antithetical to our founding principles? Will We the People open up our eyes and see? Will We the People immerse ourselves in Numbers 15:39, “don’t go out after your heart and your eyes because you will whore yourself after them”?
We the People are being called by our souls, by the Voice from Sinai, by the people who are being harmed the most - the poor, the needy, the stranger- and whom the Bible tells us 36 times to CARE FOR!! Will We the People truly answer the call, will We the People rise up and demand that our communities become “not indifferent to the suffering” of anyone? Will We the People demand of ourselves and our fellow community members an end to being patient “with cruelty and falsehood”? WE CAN DO THIS, it is what a spiritual life is all about. Living life in concert with the tenets of any spiritual discipline requires: Justice, Mercy, Kindness, Truth, Love. None of these can be present when cruelty, falsehood, suffering seize power and are the currency of the community. It is way past time for We the People to return to lessons and teachings of the Bible in how to be kind, loving, truthful, merciful and just!
I know the experience from both sides, I have been the perpetrator of cruelty, falsehood and suffering of my family and the stranger whom I used when I was a criminal and a drunk. I have been the victim of same when I was a teen and in my recovery. The difference today and for the past 38 years is I DON’T BACK AWAY from calling out indifference, I don’t SILENCE MYSELF FOR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS when cruelty, falsehood and suffering are present-no matter who is perpetrating these evil ways. It gets me into trouble, and as John Lewis says, it is GOOOOOD TROUBLE! I can’t do any different, my soul won’t let me anymore, I have learned from my teachers, maturing my soul, and today there is no going back to the ‘other guy’. The pain of rejection is the price I pay for the joy of living truth, of living into the Biblical teachings, of living a life of meaning and purpose. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark