Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 169
“The power to make distinctions is a primary operation of intelligence. We distinguish between white and black, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, gain and loss, good and evil, right and wrong. The fate of mankind depends upon the realization that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong is superior to all other distinctions. As long as such realization is lacking, pleasantness in alliance with evil will be preferred to unpleasantness in alliance with good. To teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)
Happy July 4th!? Was July 4, 2024 the last truly Independence Day we will celebrate in the United States? It could be unless, as Rabbi Heschel says above, “to teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message”. All of these LYING PAGANS like Mike Johnson who has made Donald Trump into a god, an idol that he worships, who has made wealth and power his other gods, would like you to believe that there is no distinction between right and wrong, good and evil except their version of what is right and good and what is bad and evil. The former being anything they do no matter how cruel, unjust, unloving of the stranger, poor, needy and the later being anything that says NO to their idol worship, NO to their indecency, NO to their deliberate deceptions and mendacity!
Elon Musk says what is wrong with the United States is too much empathy and Hannah Arendt says the end of empathy is the beginning of Fascism. Can both be true, maybe but doubtful. Having empathy means to be “in feeling” with another, it doesn’t mean condoning the evil, wrong actions of another, it means that one can relate to the experiences that drive people to do the next wrong thing, like feeling separate, feeling desperate, seeking a land/place where “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” as the Bible and the Liberty Bell proclaim. As I understand/experience empathy, it means that all of us can relate to feelings of uncertainty and insecurity, experiences of trauma and inadequacy, being in situations where we feel completely lost, out of our depth. It doesn’t mean that one condones, one excuses bad behaviors, it just means that We the People can use our empathy to mitigate our anger and desire to punish another who has done evil, done wrong while still stopping them from continuing. Without this way of being, fascism makes sense and cruelty reigns, which is what we are witnessing, experiencing, facing in our country today. When we are more concerned with building up ICE than with caring for our citizens, when we are more focused on finding a common enemy that being the “melting pot” we have been, when we are more concerned with masked men beating up on unsuspecting people here legally and illegally, with no criminal record at all, we have lost our empathy as a nation. The fact that at least 1/3rd of We the People cheer these thugs on, that the Republicans in Congress, both the House and the Senate, passed a bill that they admitted did not pass the smell test, that they acknowledged will hurt the ‘little guy’, and they are cheering this bill and intimating that god gave them their right to do this, we have lost our empathy!
We the People, the other 2/3rds, have to set out to re-teach or teach for the first time the other 1/3rd about empathy. We have to have divine pathos for them, being able to say a hard NO to their cruelty and, at the same time, know that they are pathetic, they are so stuck in their lies and deceptions that they have been unable to see truth and hear God, to immerse themselves in what the Bible actually says, not what they are being lied to by their ‘good christian nationalist, money-grubbing, clergy’ or their ‘good jewish ultra-orthodox anti-loving the stranger or our neighbor clergy’, or their ‘good muslim terrorist-provoking, hate mongering clergy’! Unfortunately, the reason that the distinction between good and evil, between right and wrong is not being taught, is not seen as the demarcation line between freedom and tyranny, is because the people who are supposed to be delivering the messages of the Bible, the people who are the ‘learned’ ones are the very PAGANS in charge!! OY, OY!
I have been thinking about this for a while, since my recovery began: what happened to me that a boy who was raised to be moral, a boy who went to shul and loved praying/davening, could lose enough empathy to do criminal actions. It is too much to fully explain here and I am still learning more about the deceptions, lies, blurring of distinctions that led to my behaviors and I am fully and totally responsible for all of my actions-FULL STOP. What I do know is that I always felt different, I wet the bed, I had different ideas, I became a clown, I was ignored when my father was gone, I was blamed for many things, being the youngest of three boys:), but most of all, I knew I was different from my brothers, from the people around me and I tried to “fit in” because I never belonged anywhere except with my father and his death destroyed my moorings and I was adrift. People tried to talk to me and I could not/would not hear. I saw the lies and deceptions of the world in a new light-rather than being wrong and evil, they were the ones getting ahead so why not join them cause as a 14-15 year-old, I certainly wasn’t going to beat them.
These past 38+ years have been spent fighting them, knowing I belong and both living into and delivering the “primacy of that distinction is of the essence of the Biblical message”. It is essential to not just the message, it is essential to our living well, to our being human. This is the call of July 4th this year, this is the call of the United States, this is the Call from Sinai. This is what being a Jew, Christian, Muslim means. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark