“What we need is restlessness, a constant awareness of the monstrosity of injustice.”
Rabbi A.J. Heschel
In 1963, at the opening address at the National Conference on Religion and Race. Rabbi A.J. Heschel told the audience that racism is “an eye disease, a cancer of the soul.”
Rabbi A.J. Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom in his essay, “Religion and Race.” Religion and race. How can the two be uttered together? To act in the spirit of religion is to unite what lies apart, to remember that humanity as a whole is God’s beloved child. To act in the spirit of race is to sunder, to slash, to dismember the flesh of living humanity. Is this the way to honor a child: to torture his child? How can we hear the word “race” and feel no self-reproach?