When I wash myself with water I shudder, thinking:
“This is the sweat of millions of laborers.”
Street-walkers are my bastard sisters,
and sinister criminals – souls perhaps transmigrated from me.
Concerning those murdered, I think
that I encouraged the assassin.
Perhaps I insulted
the disgraced people in my town.
Something in me confesses
“I’m guilty a thousand times for your distress.”
I want to throw my head at your doorsteps –
Prisons, hospitals – and beg forgiveness.
–Abraham Joshua Heschel
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Ineffable Name of God: Man. Continuum, New York: 2005, p. 177.
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