Might it be possible that these pietistic practices acted as a shield, numbing their participants through mantra-like, religious routine practices so that they would not have to confront the injustice and oppression around them, conditions they were actually creating by their inattention and shallow understandings of what it meant to be “right with God”? Heschel certainly implies that the “noises of hymns,” “increased offerings,” and religious practices themselves substituted for righteousness and