The Mark of Cain
Abraham Heschel wrote a classic commentary in 1944 on the nature of war and violence. Here are excerpts for a continued discussion of wartime morality.
One sentence is particulalrly striking:
"Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience."
Exchange the word Terrorism for Fascism and we have a poingnant lesson for ourselves.
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The Mark of Cain
What Is Our Responsibility in the Face of Violence?
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Emblazoned over the gates of the world in which we live is the escutcheon of the demons. The mark of Cain in the face of man has come to overshadow the likeness of God. There have never been so much guilt and distress, agony and terror. At no time has the earth been so soaked with blood. Fellow men turned out to be evil ghosts, monstrous and weird. Ashamed and dismayed, we ask: Who is responsible?
History is a pyramid of efforts and errors; yet at times it is the Holy Mountain on which God holds judgment over the nations. Few are privileged to discern God's judgment in history. But all may be guided by the words of the Baal Shem: If a man has beheld evil, he may know that it was shown to him in order that he learn his own guilt and repent; for what is shown to him is also within him.
We have trifled with the name of God. We have taken the ideals in vain. We have called for the Lord. He came. And was ignored. We have preached but eluded Him. We have praised but defied Him. Now we reap the fruits of our failure. Through centuries His voice cried in the wilderness. How skillfully it was trapped and imprisoned in the temples! How often it was drowned or distorted! Now we behold how it gradually withdraws, abandoning one people after another, departing from their souls, despising their wisdom. The taste for the good has all but gone from the earth. Men heap spite upon cruelty, malice upon atrocity.
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Where is God? Why dost Thou not halt the trains loaded with Jews being led to slaughter? It is so hard to rear a child, to nourish and to educate. Why dost Thou make it so easy to kill? Like Moses, we hide our face; for we are afraid to look upon Elohim, upon His power of judgment. Indeed, where were we when men learned to hate in the days of starvation? When raving madmen were sowing wrath in the hearts of the unemployed?
Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience. We have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace; now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war.
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THE CONSCIENCE OF THE WORLD WAS DESTROYED BY THOSE WHO WERE WONT TO BLAME OTHERS RATHER THAN THEMSELVES. LET US REMEMBER, WE REVERED THE INSTINCTS BUT DISTRUSTED IDEALS. WE LABORED TO PERFECT ENGINES AND LET OUR INNER LIFE GO TO WRECK. WE RIDICULED SUPERSTITION UNTIL WE LOST OUR ABILITY TO BELIEVE. WE HAVE HELPED TO EXTINGUISH THE LIGHT OUR FATHERS HAD KINDLED. WE HAVE BARTERED HOLINESS FOR CONVENIENCE, LOYALTY FOR SUCCESS, LOVE FOR POWER, WISDOM FOR DIPLOMAS, PRAYER FOR SERMON, WISDOM FOR INFORMATION, TRADITION FOR FASHION.
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The greatest task of our time is to take the souls of men out of the pit. The world has experienced that God is involved. Let us forever remember that the sense for the sacred is as vital to us as the light of the sun. There can be no nature without spirit, no world without the Torah, no brotherhood without a father, no humanity without God.
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For God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all men or no man, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of man is not in his will to power but in his power of compassion. Man reflects either the image of His presence or that of a beast. Will the voices of those who in this very hour are pushing tumbrils with shriveled, bare-bone corpses of Jews to a huge grave outside the ghetto walls reach the ears of statesmen?
Soldiers in the horror of battle offer solemn testimony that life is not a hunt for pleasure but an engagement for service; that there are things more valuable than life; that the world is not a vacuum. Either we make it an altar for God or it is invaded by demons. There can be no neutrality. Either we are ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil.
Let the blasphemy of our time not become an eternal scandal. Let future generations not loathe us for having failed to preserve what prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created in thousands of years. The Fascists have shown that they are great in evil. Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness. We will survive if we are as fine and sacrificial in our homes and offices, in our Congress and clubs as our soldiers are on the fields of battle.
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The mountain of history is over our heads again. Shall we renew the covenant with God?
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[Emphasis mine, ref: Susannah Heschel’s anthology of her father’s work, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1996), under the title "The Meaning of this War."]
For Heschels's beautiful theology see the little gem of a book, THE SABBATH (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1951.)
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