Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 157
“The experience of the easy and endless opportunities for evil and the awareness of the dreadful danger, threatens to outweigh all delight of living…This essential predicament of man has assumed a peculiar urgency in our time, living as we do in a civilization where factories were established in order to exterminate millions of men, women, and children; where soap was made of human flesh. What have we done to make such crimes possible? What are we doing to make such crimes impossible? (God in Search of Man pg. 369)
These words, published in 1955 haunt me, and hopefully us, in this moment. Be it in Iran, Israel, Russia, China, the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, etc “the easy and endless opportunities for evil” abound. We are witnessing this phenomenon again and again. What seems to be missing in many of We the People who are supporting the heads of evil, ‘Satin’s missionaries’, is “the awareness of the dreadful danger, threatens to outweigh all delight of living”. Because of their unawareness or willful blindness to the “dreadful danger” of “evil”, because of their love of their “evil” ways and see them as “very good”, those We the People who voted, go along with, profit from the “evil” being perpetrated by the leaders of the countries above, the leaders of industry who practice “evil”, unethical, immoral ways of ‘it’s just business’, the leaders of communal institutions, all the way to the parenting and educating of our children, experience a “delight of living”! How upside down is our world??
When the resistance comes from the rest of We the People, who have not drank the kool-aid of Trumpism, of evil, of prosperity gospel, of mendacity and indifference, it will be successful. We have learned that politicians are ineffectual against “evil”, mendacity, indifference, etc because they are practitioners of all 3! In the 1930’s politicians were cooperating with the German Government to spread disinformation and who can forget “America First” which supported Germany and Hitler while pretending to be for America by staying out of the war. The politicians hunted and tortured people who they believed were communists in the Hollywood community and others while themselves taking bribes and money from lobbyists for ‘pet projects’. The opportunity to speak truth, to be kind and merciful towards Ethel Rosenberg was ignored and the ensuing evil of putting to death a known innocent woman and mother speaks to the “evil” of Roy Cohn, the DOJ, the Judge, and the President! And all of these people ‘slept like babies’ when the physical deaths of innocent people, the spiritual torture of people who had different political views, the career ending spectacle of people they disagreed with were on their conscience!
Yet, today we are doing worse! In the name of ‘Jesus’, lies are being told, graft is happening, our democracy is being threatened by a bully, a liar, an idolator and PAGAN named Russell Vought, J D Vance, et al, dictators are being revered, democracies are being abandoned, our allies for over 80 years are being called our enemies and Vlad, MBS, Bibi, Viktor, Kim, are being loved by the Republicans under Trump! WTF??? As Joseph Welch asked Joe McCarthy, we have to ask ourselves and these PAGANS: “Have you no decency?” While the people leading the parade of “evil” and indifference, who are masters of mendacity and deception, will say NO, the hope of this asking this question is for all of us to take a breathe, to stop for a moment and consider our spiritual condition, to give ourselves the opportunity to have a spiritual awakening and respect our power and inclination to “run after the majority to do evil”as we learn in Exodus 23:2. Yet, these ‘good bible loving folks’ purporting to be christian and jewish, continue to violate this command and, instead, do everything they can to go against the second teaching in this verse: don’t join with the many to pervert justice through false testimony. Really, these ‘good christian folk, these ‘ultra religious jews’ who are worshipping idols are going to be the role-models for our children, We the People are going to let them spew their bullshit, practice their Avodah Zarah, their idol-worship and follow them to hell? WTF, I ask again!
In responding to the first question above posed by Rabbi Heschel: “what have we done to make such crimes possible” We the People have to look at our selves, we cannot point the finger to ‘those people’ because we have installed, allowed, elected, gone along with ‘those people’ in order for them to have the power to lead us to “such crimes”. We the People are being called to account for our actions and inactions, once again. If it seems like doing our own accounting is a theme of Rabbi Heschel’s, at least as I hear him calling out to us, it is. In the Jewish tradition, taking a daily accounting is built in to our faith, to our way of being. Just as we have to celebrate our victories, we have to look at the ways we have “missed the mark”. Both are crucial to our continuing spiritual growing and uplifting our ethical standards and practices. Joseph Welch’s question to Joe McCarthy is relevant today just as it was then and it is for We the People to respond to. We the People can not hide behind the veil of ‘I didn’t realize’, ‘I didn’t know he would do this’, and other such bullshit when Vought in Project 2025 and Trump on the Campaign Trail promised to be “evil”, promised to bastardize the religious tenets and foundation of ethics, morals, freedom, etc. and We the People allowed them to get into power. “What have we done to make such crimes possible?” We the People have abdicated our obligation to hear and speak truth to power, We the People have allowed ourselves to be enslaved by our fears, our self-deceptions and the lies we tell ourselves so we can believe the lies and deceptions of another! We the People have to do our accounting of our souls, repair the damages to our inner life and then repair the harms the we have brought to our world and to our descendants’ lives!
As one who committed crimes against humanity in a much smaller way and scale, I am no less responsible than anyone today-with one exception: I continue to do T’Shuvah, I continue to take an accounting, I continue to celebrate my victories and repair the damages when my negative inclination wins the moment. I have dedicated my recovery and my living to being an example for my daughter, my grandson, my nieces and nephews, and the people I encountered when I was the Rabbi at Beit TShuvah. I believe in the truth of Torah, I believe that We the People will hear the words of the prophets, follow the actions of Jesus, and not only speak truth to power, we will, like Moses, redeem the people who are enslaved, help people save themselves from their inner slavery. People do it for me every day, I do it for another(s) every day and I know you do and will continue to also. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark