What, or as he preferred to say, who was a human being? How
shall we understand ourselves? Heschel
was profoundly shocked in pre-Nazi Germany when he found biology textbooks that
defined a human being as a collection of iron and phosphorous and other chemicals
that were worth so and so many dollars on the market. He felt that the road to Nazism began in
those books, that one could draw a straight line between teachings like that
and what the Nazis ended up doing to human beings. People were dehumanized first in theory and
then in fact, first in the classroom and then on the streets. If man is only this, why revere him, why not
use him, why not abuse him? -Rabbi Jack Reimer
The moment anyone
becomes “little less than Divine” in our world any atrocity is possible.
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