Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 268
“The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discover of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53)
The “evil of indifference”, in my opinion, can be traced back to Cain’s statement/question: “Am I my brother’s keeper”. It was the prophets who called it out, who named it, yet throughout the Bible we are taught about the consequences from committing “the evil of indifference” and they are never good! In the time of the prophets it led to the disappearance of the Kingdom of Israel and “the lost tribes”, while in Judea it led to the destruction of the 1st and 2nd Temples and exile of which the 2nd exile lasted almost 1900 years. “The evil of indifference” is a powerful force and one that seems to defy logic, defy learning from, defy the myriad of attempts by Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, and the spiritually religious leaders who followed them to be aware of this evil and to combat it! No matter how hard people like Buber, Einstein, Merton, Rohr, Rabbi Heschel, Reverend King have tried, We the People seem to find our way back to this most terrible of evils.
Listening to the “religious” zealots on both ends of the continuum because their voices are so loud, their tactic is to drown out any other voice, to cause chaos and proclaim their ‘allegiance’ to their god, which is the ‘real god’, is the pathway to “indifference”. It is too hard to decipher what they mean because they never mean what they say. It is too confusing to be bombarded with “what the Bible says” by people who are not quoting the spiritual message of the Bible, of the New Testament, of the Koran, rather they are spouting verses out of context to support their agenda. The ‘religious’ leaders in the government in Israel like Smotrich and Ben G’Vir are perfect examples of “pious and sinful” because rather than call out “the evil of indifference” , they revel in it, they promote it, they rally their followers to do ‘what is written’ as long as one doesn’t read verses like “love the stranger”, “love your neighbor”, “one law for the citizen and stranger alike”, etc. Their piety is real, what they are pious about is not Godly, it is their grab and grasp of human power which they want so they can become like the Taskmasters in Egypt. This is the power and the evil that the indifference of We the People can lead to!
Here in America, listening to some of the Clergy who preach hatred of ‘the other’, who extol the cruelty of ICE, who applaud the injustice being perpetrated upon Trump’s enemies, who dance every time there is a Supreme Court decision limiting the freedoms of ‘this group or that group’, I am appalled and enraged. Who the hell are these charlatans, these idolators who claim to be talking about ‘the good book’ while preaching from the dictators, the authoritarians play book? More importantly, how have We the People fallen for their lies, what is overriding our soul’s call, how has the Voice from Sinai been shouted down by these liars and by our own fears, false needs?
I believe because We the People have accepted and lived into an inauthentic lifestyle for far too long! The Exodus story, whether it can be proved or not, is the story of leaving the narrowness of our indifference for the wide open spaces of holiness, of Godliness, of spiritual health and of letting go of our inauthenticity, our mendacity, and our blurred eyesight. When we are living according to societal norms, democracy can only last 250 years before it disintegrates, yet living according to “love the stranger, love your neighbor, redeem the captive, redeem your neighbor”, than the proclamation of “freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” lasts forever, in word and in deed. When we live into the “radical amazement”, which Rabbi Heschel calls the only path to an authentic awareness of what is, We the People no longer can be indifferent, We can no longer keep the blinders on, We can no longer repeat the words nor the sentiment of Cain. We the People will be leading rather than following, we will end our rationalizations of “but I am a good person”, “everyone else does it”, “I don’t want to be a chump”, and so many other ones that lead us to rolling around in and immersed in “the evil of indifference”! The need that so many of We the People have to enslave another, to do whatever it takes to gain and hold power, to lie, cheat and steal to have wealth, to screw over the very people who have helped us and, in the case of our elected officials, whom we have trusted to have our best interests at heart is the essence of the issue: What makes We the People live and support another(s) who is “decent and sinister, pious and sinful”?
The response I can give is, based on my personal experience, FOMO, fear of missing out, fear of being laughed at, fear of being under the control of an asshole so I became the asshole instead, I became the President of my youth group and a thief, I went to shul and hustled hot merchandise, I tried to live in two worlds and the split kept getting wider and wider and, while I was aware of my indifference to the evil I saw and was perpetrating, I was incapable of change-until I wasn’t, until I heard the Voice from Sinai, in a jail cell, until I began studying and immersing myself in the Bible, in Rabbi Heschel, in the practice of T’Shuvah, etc. Since that fateful day, almost 39 years ago, I do not engage in “the evil of indifference”, I call it out, I rail against it, I am unable “to stand idly by the blood of my neighbor” even when my neighbor doesn’t want me around. I am accused of bringing chaos to situations and I wear this accusation as a badge of honor because the chaos I bring is in the spirit of the prophets, it is calling out the decent who are sinister, the pious who are sinful and I refuse to stop. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark