Ending Boundless Guilt and Endless Accusations - Year 4 Day 56

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 56

“We are not taught to feel accused, to bear a sense of boundless guilt. We are asked to feel elated, bred to meet the tasks that never end. Every child is a prince; every man is obliged to feel that the world was created for his sake. Man is not the measure of all things, but the means by which to accomplish all tasks.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

The first sentence flies in the face of societal conventional notions! People have used accusations and put guilt upon one another forever, especially in many religious communities! How often have we heard of Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt, etc? How often have we been told by our clergy that we are wrong, our opinions are stupid(maybe not in those words), our questions are blasphemy? How many people, after suffering in prison for crimes they did not commit, have been freed because someone took a stand to not just accept the accusations of ‘the law’ and listen to the cry of the souls of the innocent? Hell, we have a President who calls himself King because he falsely accused others of what he was doing! We have a regime in the highest office in the land who believes and is following the playbook of Josef Goebbels to a T-accuse others of that which you are guilty of, they are following the examples of the great ‘freedom fighter’ Roy Cohn, et al. The problem is that we are being “taught to feel accused”, we are being asked, burdened with “a sense of boundless guilt”!

As a white male, I am considered guilty by some of the progressives just for being white. As a Jew, I am considered guilty by both progressives and regressives for being a ‘Christ Killer’, a terrorist, a Zionist, and any other ‘ist’ you want to label a Jew as. I am not alone, everyone who has a stake in their lives, everyone who stands for something that “mainstream society” doesn’t like gets accused. “Mainstream society” has been accused also. In the “Me too” movement, women were given a voice to speak out about things that were wrong and how they were wrong. AND that went too far also because then everyone and anyone could be and was accused of wrongdoing. While there is no doubt women were treated wrongly, they were treated as objects instead of as human beings-“boundless guilt” towards all males is not the answer either.

Just as some not all non-Jews are antisemitic, not all anti-Israel is antisemitic, not all males are anti-women. Just as not all Republicans are cruel bastards, not all of the accusers have clean hands themselves. We have lost the ability to distinguish what is a real accusation and what is a convenient one to “get the heat off of me”. How often when speaking to someone about their behavior do they deflect by accusing you “what about what you have done”? Jews have been made to feel “boundless guilt” for the millennia re: Christ’s crucifixion. It was in the Catechism of the Catholic Church until Vatican 2 when Rabbi Heschel helped to convince Cardinal Bea and the Pope to take out “Jews Killed Christ” and “Mission to the Jews” from the catechism! Talk about “feel accused” and “boundless guilt”-  this was a prime example of both!

Trump, Musk, Vance, Vought, Patel et al are capitalizing on the upbringing of so many people re: feeling “accused” and accepting the accusations of “those in power”, especially Clergy-so when the Pastor, Rabbi, Imam, Priest preaches the same words as Musk, Trump, et al- the congregants are catapulted back to their earliest days of religious school and family life-where daily accusations were commonplace. I am suggesting that We, the People once and for all say FUCK YOUR FALSE ACCUSATIONS! FUCK YOUR PUTTING “BOUNDLESS GUILT” ON ME!

It is time for We, the People to take back our inheritance from the prophets, from Abraham, Isaac, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and remember we are being “asked to feel elated”! We are partners with the Ineffable One in creating a better world, we are called to live with purpose and passion, we are be loved by an unending love, we are blessed to be able to connect with one another and a force that we can never adequately describe. We are given tasks that will never end and which we move forward in for the next generation as an inheritance, as a gift of remembering it is not about the end result, it is about our ability to rejoice in the doing of life’s tasks, in the radical amazement of connection and love. It is time for our Clergy to preach these truths and it is time we demand that Clergy and Congregants alike follow the dictates of Deuteronomy 16:20 “Tzedek, Tzedek, Tirdoaf” “”Justice Justice you shall pursue” is the usual translation. The ‘real’ translation is: “Righteousness, Righteousness you shall run after”. This verse comes after we are told to “not pervert judgement”, for Judges to “not be familiar with a person who is in front of them”, and to “not take bribes because bribes blind the eyes of the just”-hence Lady Justice with her blindfold. Where are our religious institutions in decrying the current state of affairs? Why are there ‘good christian folk’, ‘torah jews’, and so many other ‘true believers’ supporting the perversion of Justice, the rape of righteousness, the false accusations that are being amplified from the megaphones of UnTruthful Trump and Malicious Musk? These two grifters who would be broke if not for the government and the bankruptcy laws, these two BUST OUTS who would be nothing if not for the belief in the basic goodness of people. Yet, too many people are going along with these RAPISTS out of fear, out of PTSD of being accused and told they were guilty by the very religious and family systems that are supposed to uplift us and protect us. It is time to call these religious and family systems to account. It is time to hold them accountable and change the ways of society once and for all. Otherwise, freedom will not be proclaimed throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein-it will be available to the “select few” who bow down and bend over far enough for ‘the king dumptrump’.

I know the this feeling, I was raised by a Jewish mother:)! I know the “boundless guilt” that some women, people of color, etc have put upon me. I know the truth of “One oh shit wipes out 100+ atta boys”! Yet, I work each day to leave the accusations and guilt in the past. While I am certainly guilty of many things, I make my amends, I improve my ways and I work really hard to leave the past in the past. I also reject and feel sad for those who want to keep the past alive in the present. I have found I do not need them to forgive me, I do not accept their accusations and relieving myself of the “boundless guilt” of another is true freedom. I pursue “righteousness” each day and I reject the lies of the deceivers and grifters. I am standing up against mendacity and false accusations and for EMET (truth), Tzedek, and Justice. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

What is the source of your living- Freedom or necessity? Year 4 Day 55

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 55

“The most commanding idea that Judaism dares to thinks is that freedom, not necessity, is the source of all being. The universe was not caused, it was created…The inevitable is not eternal. All compulsions are a matter of choice. A tinge of that exemption from necessities is hiding in the folds of the human spirit.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

These words and ideas can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, which is one of the facets of Rabbi Herschel that I love so much. While these words reflect Rabbi Heschel’s deep faith in God and the Bible, they don’t exclude the agnostics, people of any other faith.

What a radical idea to ponder on and live into: “freedom, not necessity, is the source of all being”! Rabbi Heschel is positing that all of the mitzvot, all of the imperfections of human beings, all of the stories in the Bible point us to finding the greatest gift God could have given to human beings; Free-Will. He is telling us, as I hear him today, that we Free-Will is the source of our being, Free-Will gives us choices, it forces us to be non-robotic, to engage in thinking, feeling, emoting, loving, hating, isolating, being part of a community, etc. All of life is about choice, not just compulsions, and Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that without choice, without Free-Will, we would be no different than the animals-run by our needs, by our instincts, and as we have seen throughout history, this usually leads humans to run amok. Rabbi Abraham Twerski, z”l, had a talk on “Animals and Angels”, if you can find it, please listen to it-it is wonderful. In this talk he said that what sets human beings apart from animals is our ability to “make free-will moral choices”. Neither animals nor angels have this capacity, he went on to say and spoke about what the cause of our addictions are; lack of spirituality. He went on to say just as someone who has scurvy needs vitamin C, because nothing else will cure scurvy, so too someone who is deep in their compulsions needs spirituality to cure them.

Bending the knee at the foot of the ‘leader’, going along to get along, staying silent for fear of retribution, being primaried, not being part of the “in crowd”, all are choices. Addiction, meanness, cruelty, needing to be right/smartest person in the room, are choices. Love, sobriety, faith, listening to the call of our spirits, our souls are also choices. This is the dilemma that we human beings face: which choices are we going to make? Do we continue to make the choices that we feel are “necessities”, do we take a closer look at these “necessities” to see if they are real or just filling a false ego need?  Do we choose to be part of a community of people seeking to do the next right thing or a community of people seeking to ‘get ahead’ at any and all costs to another and to their souls? Do we choose a life of recovery or a life mired in the myriad of addictive behaviors and substances readily available to us? Do we choose to be part of a cult or to be part of faith community dedicated to freedom for all?

The words above stir up these questions within me. Harriet Rossetto, my wife and founder of Beit T’Shuvah, says the Torah, the Bible is the “Big Book of Jewish Recovery from the Brokenness of the human being”. This is not too far from the idea that “the most commanding ideal that Judaism dares to think is that freedom, not necessity, is the source of all being.” Delving into the Bible, all of the mitzvot come to us as repairs for the errors of our heroes, not because they got it all right! The imperfections of everyone in the Bible teach us about Free-Will and the frightening things that happen when we use it unwisely, when we use it for our own selfish needs, desires. They also teach us what happens when we use our Free-Will wisely, in line with the divine, using it to promote the welfare of everyone, adding to our corner of the world, helping the person next to us, the person across the globe from us. Esau is an example of using Free-Will wisely; he is denied his blessing by trickery, his mother plots against him, and he stays home, takes care of his father and mother while the ‘good son’, Jacob, is in Haran, learning how to be a better conman from his Uncle Laban. While the Rabbis make Esau a bad guy, the truth is he comes to welcome his brother home with honor and love and is rejected because of Jacob’s guilt. Moses is another example of Free-Will when he doesn’t turn away from the burning bush-we have no idea how many other people saw the bush burning and turned away from it. While reluctant to do God’s bidding, he eventually chooses to and the rest is history.

We all have Free-Will and what we do with it depends on how well we have matured our spiritual nature. We all have “a tinge of that exemption from necessities hiding in the folds of the human spirit” and the challenge Rabbi Heschel, the challenge the Bible, the challenge that Judaism and all faith traditions present to us: will we seek this “exemption”? Will we engage in the “necessity” of spiritual growth that we have shunned up until now or continue to grow if we have been engaged in it? Will we use the wisdom stories of our faith traditions to grow our knowledge of what is the next right thing to do to help us rise above the compulsions that we miss-believe we have no choice to overcome? Will We, the People stand up for what is right and kind? Will We, the People leave the lies and self-deceptions that have fueled our acquiescence to grifters, ‘kings’, cult leaders, etc? Will We, the People find the spiritual counselors, the spiritual teachers that speak to our souls and grow into being free? Will We, the People immerse ourselves in the Bible and learn from the imperfect heroes what to do and not to do when we are faced with the same/similar situations? Will We, the People live in concert with the Covenant God makes with each of us and all of us?

These questions are not being asked rhetorically. I ask myself these questions daily. I am subject to compulsions, to erroneous choices, to feeling trapped, and the only way out of these boxes for me is spirit. This is the reason I have had a spiritual guide since Prison in 1987, it is why I continue to be an advocate for the soul of people to this day, it is why I continue to study with people and to learn more about them and myself no matter what side of the table I am on. I know the lure of addictions, I know the feeling as if it is not a choice to use or not use-yet it is a choice because there are so many people who have chosen to put down the drink, the drug, etc. The choice to put down our need for power, for greed, for cruelty is also difficult and not impossible. The power I wielded was in service of a higher principle, even when I didn’t get there, even when I allowed my necessities to get in the way-the intention was always serving something greater than myself. I use my Free-Will to the best of my ability each day and, all in all, I can report that over 50% of the time it is for the good. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Redeemer or Enslaver- which are you, which do you support? Year 4 Day 54

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 54

“When the Voice of God spoke at Sinai, it did not begin by saying, “I am the Lord your God Who created heaven and earth.” It began by saying, “I am the Lord your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Judaism is not only deliverance from external slavery, but also freedom from false fears and false glories, from fashion, from intellectual will-o’-the-wisps.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

Of course we have all heard the first commandment over and over again and, Rabbi Heschel is pointing out an important aspect of God. God is introducing Godself as a Redeemer, an entity that cares about the human being, that, as said earlier has “a stake in the life of every person”. I am hearing God’s humility in this first commandment unlike I have heard it before. Rather than puffing our God’s ‘chest’, God is telling us we are so important, there is so much love in God for human beings-collectively and individually, God cares about our redemption, God is invested in our being free from all the things that bind us, that imprison us-external and internal. This theme is carried on throughout the Torah and the Bible climaxing with the prophets and the ‘angry God’ bullshit is proven false because God is our redeemer, God wants to heal our backsliding, God takes us back in love, etc as the prophets tell us-it is human beings who are recalcitrant, who have fallen in love with the myriad of slaveries that other human beings convince them are really freedoms that is the problem-not God. Rabbi Heschel is pointing out to us what we already know and stay oblivious to: God wants to redeem us, God cries when we are in exile, God needs us and we need God, redemption and freedom.

We are engaged in a time when “false fears and false glories” are rampant and considered to be true. We are in a moment when “external slavery” is being called ‘safety’, ridding our country of “vermin”, getting rid of those who are “poisoning the blood of our people”. We are in a moment where science is no longer important-even though God gave our scientists the spirit, knowing, passion to physically heal people and prevent illness’. We are in a moment where privacy is not important nor are the agreements that have made America a leader of democracy. We are hearing about the “false glories” of Trump, Musk, et al while they are nothing if they don’t have the Federal Government funding their projects, if they are not cheating the ‘little guy’, etc. Tesla and Space X could not have survived without Government Funding and he is tearing down the same Government that made him because he thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. Trump knows nothing about loyalty-except he demands it of people to him. Yet, being loyal to the Constitution, which he swore to uphold means nothing, loyalty to the people who have worked for him is stupid in his warped mind, upholding the covenant we made with one another in this country at the time of the Civil War, World War II, the Civil Rights movement means nothing to this liar.

The Republican party’s going along with the false fears that Trump/Musk/Vance/Vought are spreading is atrocious. It is cowardly and it is enslaving. They have become willing slaves to the ‘great leader’ who is “making America great again” only in the eyes of his true believers. These charlatans and their co-conspirators in the Religious Communities are making a mockery out of the first Commandment! They do not care about God as Redeemer, they do not care about God’s Will, they do not care about having an intimate relationship with God because Trump/Musk think they are GOD!! They are spreading lies and Clergy, Religious zealots are repeating them, giving them credence and exhorting anyone who says differently. Why should any of us care about people seeking refuge from terror, rape, slavery in their country of origin, after all, our ancestors were not seeking refuge when they came here on the Mayflower, when they landed in Jamestown, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue with a lot of Jews leaving Spain. We have a short memory span, like when the St. Louis came here in May of 1939 and was refused entry and we told Cuba not to take them as well so they could die in the Camps of Nazi Germany! This is what the “Self-Righteous” Christian Nationalists, Jews, et al support and the agenda they push and, they say it is in God’s name? What bullshit when the first commandment is about Redemption, about leaving slavery.

The issue, of course, is our inability to leave the inner slavery of “false fears and false glories”. We have become such weaklings that we have to build ourselves up with the lies and deceptions that we are “strong”, that we are “in control”, that “we are the greatest”, that “those people” are the problem, etc. We have needed someone to blame since the Garden of Eden and isn’t it sad that We, the People refuse to learn the lessons of blaming and shaming? When we refuse to be in truth, when we refuse to be responsible for our actions, good and not good, we resort to blaming someone else, we resort to feeding our inner shame demon who is always hungry. It is time for us to relate to the Ineffable One, to the Force of the Universe, to Higher Consciousness as a Redeeming energy that helps lift us up out of the external and internal slaveries we find ourselves in, be it our choice to willingly walk into the imprisonment like the Israelites in Ancient Egypt or have it imposed upon us like Putin, Orban, et al have done in their countries and DUMPTRUMP/MUSK are attempting to do here. We, the People are being called in this moment to hold our religious institutions accountable-call out our Rabbis, Priests, Ministers, Imams for their acquiescence to power instead of upholding the Prophetic Tradition of speaking Truth to Power-Abraham and Moses both spoke Truth to God and we are afraid to do the same with mere mortals? WTF!!!

I am calling out the Clergy who are silent and/or going along with the powers that be. It is disgraceful, it is a violation of the vows we take when we are ordained to go along with such rampant enslavements, such denigrations of human beings, such unwelcoming, uncaring, deceitful, whoring, coveting, stealing, and bearing false witness. Yet, I see it happening, I am powerless over what others do, I know this and I am not powerless to call it out. I am standing on my soapbox, I am calling out to We, the People: STOP BELIEVING THE LIES. Turn back to being human, to being a partner with God in redeeming our corner of the world. Return to living the Covenant made at Sinai and preserved till now. Return to wrestling with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Amendments keeping the Rule of Law sacrosanct for all. Return to a way of being that honors your soul and the souls of everyone else, to a way of being that “proclaims freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. This is my call, this is my prayer. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"God has a stake in the life" of human beings, of every human being. Year 4 Day 53

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 53

“This is the most important thought: God has a stake in the life of man, of every man. But this idea cannot be imposed from without; it must be discovered by every man; it cannot be preached, it must be experienced.” (Insecurity of Freedom pgs.12-13)

This “most important thought” is found throughout Judaism and, I believe, all faiths in one way or another. Yet, too many people find this “thought” to be ridiculous either because they don’t believe in God or Higher Consciousness and/or if they do-why would God who is so exalted, so mighty, etc care about one person? This is the great conundrum for many of us, especially Clergy who want to be real and have to admit there is no “factual proof” of either God’s existence nor that God cares about every human being. What we have is the recording of the Biblical experience through the prophets of God’s immense concern with human beings, God’s sadness over our frailties and failures to be kind, loving, just and merciful with one another. For some of us, this is proof and it matches our experiences of the numerous random acts of kindness that ‘miraculously’ occur at the most needed of times. For others, it is bullshit, superstition, and “opiate for the masses”. Both view have some merit given the ways that religious people/leaders have, throughout the millennia, used religion as a club rather than a warm blanket, as a dogma rather than a path for each of us to explore and live into in our own unique way.

What passes for religion today, according to orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, Christian nationalists, ‘orthodox’ Muslims, and pre-Vatican II Catholics is not the same as what Rabbi Heschel is teaching us. Their views are different between them in some ways and they all agree that their way is the Only way, God wants obedience and if one is not obedient, one is cut off from God, maybe forever, maybe not. This insane dogmatic view and way of worship is the farthest thing from what the Bible says, what Jesus says, etc. Both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels tell the stories of people not hearing, listening to nor understanding when Moses tells us that we will whore ourselves and it will be bad because we will be so drunk with our own egotistical powers we will continue down a path of ruination until we are so low, ,we call out like our ancestors in Egypt called out and God will remember, God will deliver us because “God has a stake in the life of man, every man”.

The issue for all of us is that Rabbi Heschel is correct: “this ideal cannot be imposed from without; it must be discovered by every man; it cannot be preached, it must be experienced.” This is the rub for all of us, we have to discover God’s stake in our life and in the life of our world. I am not speaking of having one religion, nor am I speaking about following a dogma that will lead one to Nirvana. Rather, as we have been discussing, this discovery is a way station on the path to living from the inside out, it is a benefit we derive from soul to soul living and connections rather than the transactional life most people lead. Even love has become, in many cases, a transactional experience; look at the divorce rates, look at the myriad of corporate and institutional battles for control from the ‘founder syndrome’ bullshit. Gratitude lasts only as long as we are sated and then we forget it as it says in the Bible, Eat, be satisfied, bless. We humans forget to say a blessing when someone helps us, so it is easy to ignore our debt. We ignore our debt to God when we act in ways that are antithetical to the paths of the Bible, when we say in our hearts “we can do what we want, pay lip service to this bullshit, find the loopholes and drive a Mac truck through them”, which is a more common thought than most of us would like to admit to.

How do we discover and experience the truth above? We listen to the preachers who are telling us we can’t do it their way, there is no vicarious means of this precious discovery, there is no experience one can replicate to have their own experience. We can and must study the Bible, the teachers of wisdom, etc and immerse ourselves in the message, in the paths- knowing that each of us is unique and therefore we all have our own unique path of discovery and experiences. We take a journey to ‘the wild side’ the place inside each of us that we have walled off because we don’t want to hear the “still small voice” telling us what the next right action is and what wrong actions we have already engaged in. This journey to ‘the wild side’ is a spiritual cleansing exercise which allows us to clear the arteries and veins of our spiritual life in order to have real experiences of soul to soul relationships, to resign the covenant that our ancestors made and which we, upon being born, named, joined without consent and with community. This  is going to take a physician of the soul, an advocate of the soul and sometimes clergy fill this job and sometimes they don’t.

Our seminaries have to do a better job of teaching spiritual counseling and helping the future ordainees learn how to deal with the questions and needs of people seeking the meaning to their lives and not “refer them out” to a shrink! People know about therapists, they come to clergy not for their mental issues, not for their psychological issues, rather for their spiritual issues. They are seeking a path of discovery for the truth stated above: “God has a stake in the life of man, of every man.” The people we refer out have their misbelief that God doesn’t care reenforced by clergy telling them they need secular help because God can’t help them! This, of course, is the exact opposite of the prophetic literature, of the prophetic experience-but the clergy of today are so much smarter than those ‘primitives’! Is it any wonder why Musk and his MuskRats are so pro alt-right, so happy with the Nazi slogans, salutes, racism? They are spiritually bankrupt in a system that functioned for 248 years on a spiritual contract with one another, democracy is a spiritual contract, hence the need for freedom of religion, speech, the press, and all the other amendments we have made.

I have been an advocate for the soul of people for these past 34+ years. I have been an outspoken, rude, impatient advocate for another human being because I know that “God has a stake in the life of man, of every man” and when we are throwing our lives away, when we are being immoral, unethical, mendacious it drives me nuts and I act out against the lies and bullshit. I cannot stand for people engaged in transactional living calling it covenantal living and when people are believing these BIG LIES, it drives to action-not always appropriate in ‘polite society’ as my friend Rabbi Ed Feinstein says, and in keeping with my inheritance as a descendant of the prophets. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you aware of your Spiritual 'temperature', your intuitive mind each day? - Year 4 Day 52

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 52

“Perhaps this is the most urgent task: to save the inner man from oblivion, to remind ourselves that we are a duality of mysterious grandeur and pompous dust. Our future depends upon our appreciation of the reality of the inner life, of the splendor of thought, of the dignity of wonder and reverence.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)

Delving into the words in bold above, one can be and, frankly, should be struck on how the first phrase has been so under appreciated! Rather than deal with the issues of the inner life which, ultimately, lead to the issues of our outer lives, our religious institutions have been dealing with their own survival, their own power, their need to keep themselves in jobs, in power, etc. “Human beings are going to therapists for what they should be going to Clergy for” said my Rabbi and teacher, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man back in 1990. While there are many good reasons to see a therapist (my wife is a therapist), for the problems, the issues, “the reality of the inner life”, our clergy should be our main source of guidance and help-yet they are not! Saying more prayers, lighting more candles, doing more mitzvot will not make us appreciate “the reality of the inner life” more, in fact all of this may well cause more disturbance and distress in our inner lives and lead us farther from “appreciation” into depreciation and more into our rational minds-fulfilling Einstein’s quote about the intuitive mind and the rational mind-with the rational mind being the servant who has become our master and forgetting about the intuitive mind. This is the issue we have been facing for a long time and our current situation in this country and in the world is the result of our under “appreciation of the reality of the inner life”.

We got Trouble right here in America with a capital T and that stands for Trump-as the song goes. Yet, Trump is just the face of our troubles, they begin with our under “appreciation of the reality of the inner life” and then we become mired in the false belief that “I think, therefore I am” believing that my thoughts prove I exist rather than understanding that I exist ergo I can think. Yet, we have become so enamored with our ability to think, our ability to rationalize the worst behaviors, our ability to deny and defend, we have become drunk on serving the servant, denying truth, selling and believing bullshit and promoting conspiracy theories, lies and doing this and more under the guise of ‘religion’, under the facade of ‘christian nationalism’, ‘jewish law’, ‘shariah law’, etc. Why the religious communities are not standing up and shouting from the rooftops that these people are LIARS, they are twisting of Holy Books, foundational teachings from Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha. We should be hearing of the Rape of America, the Rape of Israel, the Rape of Hungary, the proposed Rape of Germany, etc by Vance, Musk, the “alt-right” haters and killers. Yet, our religious institutions listen to Netanyahu, to Trump and clap like trained seals-as do the Republican Party and some Israelis rather than shout and act like we have learned from history, we do believe the Biblical dictates to be human in every situation, even in war! Our rational minds allow us to make everything okay and, because the liars make so much sense, we find ourselves nodding our heads and going along to get along, not taking the time to engage in “the splendor of thought” nor the “dignity of wonder and reverence.”

Engaging in these three ways of living does not allow us to be cruel-full stop. Engaging our “inner life” so our thoughts are in line with the foundational ethics and ways that the Bible teaches us promotes physical, moral and spiritual health is crucial to a good life. We, the People are being called to account. What is the “reality of our inner life”? How are we dealing with the push/pull of our “mysterious grandeur and pompous dust”? Is our rational mind subservient to our intuitive mind? Do we live in the “dignity of wonder and reverence”? These questions and more come to us when delving into the words above and the crime against humanity is that we have not heard them before, we have not dealt with these issues in our youth, we have not had the spiritual education and counseling to wrestle with all of these ways of being! It is a religious tragedy and we keep perpetuating it. Some people think they have the answer, force Religion in the schools- have school prayers that coincide with the ‘christian nationalist’ mendacious falsification of Jesus’ words; that coincide with the Hillul HaShem (desecration of God’s Name) that the far-right Orthodoxy in Israel and the US engage in; that embolden the bastardization of Mohammed’s teachings by the ‘true believers’.

The only solution is for We, the People to find the spiritual teachers and paths that will help us deal with “the reality of the inner life”, finding ways for our intuitive mind to overcome the power of our rational one, strengthening our soul’s knowing so we can withstand the onslaught of lies and rationalizations from within us and from another(s). This is our work as human beings. We, the People have to take back our lives from the abyss of rationalizations, we have to rescue our lives from the pit of snake-oil we have been forced to drink as well as the snake-oil we have begged to drink, we have to “rebuke your neighbor and don’t put guilt upon him/her”. We, the People are being called to face our fears and, like David in the Bible- GO UP AGAINST GOLIATH. We, the People have to wrestle with our own inner life, we have to demand of our clergy their assistance and guidance of what is in our best interests, help us decode what our souls are calling out for us to do, and not allow the liars, the idolators, the ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ to prevail because they sound good.

This is going to take a new way of understanding, teaching, and learning the Bible and other Holy Texts. It means we, the Clergy, are going to get off our asses, deal with the Truth of the Bible, immerse ourselves in the texts and find the meaning and teaching for the particular individual we are with in the moment and how it applies to living in today’s world. The fallacy that the Bible is about the ‘law’ has to be buried and we stand in the texts seeking truth, justice, kindness and love in our own life. I have had the experience of people with a lot more money and fame than I ask me how I am and I say “great” and they go ballistic because they can’t understand, with all of my own tzuris(problems) how I can be great. Because I have “appreciation of the reality of the inner life”, I have learned how to tame and tamper my emotions and thoughts so I don’t allow them to control me-too often. Because my spiritual knowing leads me, most of the time, I can erupt like the prophets with just ‘knowing in my bones’ and this has led people to call me volatile and “a liability”. I accept this truth and I know that because God took me back, is healing my backsliding, today is great day. Having dignity for wonder and revering life gives me joy and makes me accountable. I pray everyone finds this way of being. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Dealing with our Human Duality - Year 4 Day 51

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 51

“Perhaps this is the most urgent task: to save the inner man from oblivion, to remind ourselves that we are a duality of mysterious grandeur and pompous dust. Our future depends upon our appreciation of the reality of the inner life, of the splendor of thought, of the dignity of wonder and reverence.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)

The second phrase in the first sentence makes one, or should make one, tremble with trembling awe. It is one of the best descriptions of the inner life and experience of human beings that I have read in a long time. Our inner life is filled with contradictions, etc because of our humanity and not dealing with the “duality of mysterious grandeur and pompous dust”. In fact, we are witnesses to human beings believing their “pompous dust” is their “grandeur”!! This “pompous dust” wins elections, makes compromises and collaborative processes almost impossible because the “pompous dust” of one person clashes with the wisdom of another and the egomaniac who believes she/he is the smartest person in the room usually wins. The issue with our “pompous dust” is that it deceives us into believing we are ‘the greatest’ and we can “MAGA” or anything else one wants to substitute for the first A. Our pompous dust is so insidious it can, will and does make us believe the words of a clergy person rather than their actions or the actions of Christ, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. Our “pompous dust” is so deceptive we allow ourselves and another(s) to twist the words of the Bible, to misuse the warnings and deeds of the prophets so we, the liars, can be cruel, be powerful, and be seen as Moses’ when we/they are really Pharaohs.

Our “pompous dust” disguises itself as “mysterious grandeur” at times and, with a human being’s mendacious power, convinces ourselves and another(s) that wrong is right, theft is giving, lies are truth, facts are irrelevant, injustice is justice and cruelty is merciful! This is how sick we have been, behaved throughout the millennia and we seem to be reaching new lows/heights in this type of living right now. When the VP of the United States, a lying, asshole punk, tries to lecture Europeans about embracing far-right parties who embrace Nazi slogans and tells them how wrong they are, we see an example of “pompous dust” on full display. When Trump and Musk, as Co-Presidents, they laugh and dance at the cruelty their chaos is causing and the people they are hurting as much as anyone else, if not more, are the very people who voted them into office, “pompous dust” easily becomes the law of the land, breaking down the very imperfect democracy that the United States has been fro 248 years! When the Senators know they are endangering the country, when they know they are violating their oath and go along with the Chief “Pompous Dust”er we see the wide-ranging affects of not dealing with our inner duality. We are witnesses to the history of living under a “Pompous Dust”er, from the days of Nimrod, Pharaoh, Hammurabi, Solomon, the Greek Emperors, the Roman Caesars, through old King George and up to today in some of the Royal Kingdoms in the Middle East. Yet, we continue to elect, follow and participate in the cruelty, injustice, mendacity, theft, etc, and these people continue to violate all of the second 5 of the 10 Commandments!

All of us ‘god-fearing’ faithful who go along with these “pompous dust”ers, are also full of shit and as guilty as the ones promoting and living diametrically opposed to the principles and values our religious life is based on, the principles and values upon which our secular life is based on, the principles and values our Constitution is based on! Yet, we are celebrating the murdering of souls that figuratively and literally that is happening right now. We embrace the whores who are cutting benefits for the needy and putting the money in their pockets, ensuring that Tesla, Space X, etc never suffer any cuts. We are watching Vought steal from the other departments money, power, while putting people out of work, thereby stealing their wages from them. The bearing of false witness that is happening in the Media-FOX BULLSHIT(not NEWS), in the White House, in the Congress, etc is beyond anything we have ever seen before-if Jesus was upset about how the poor were treated ‘back in the day’, can you imagine how distressed he would be now? The prophets thought it was bad 2500+ years ago-can you, the ‘faithful’ hear them now??

It is time for all of us to begin to deal with our “duality of mysterious grandeur and pompous dust” in earnest. We will never become perfect, we will never defeat our urge to lean into our “pompous dust” thinking and acting, AND we can, must, allow our “mysterious grandeur” to run the show, we can, must engage with and lean into the joys, wisdom, truth of the “mysterious grandeur” of being human, of living as a partner of the Ineffable One, of being given a mission to make our corner of the world a little better than when we found it. This is what it means to be a person of faith! We, the People are being given a clear explanation of what makes us tick-both parts of our duality. We, the People have been show the path of using our “pompous dust” to support the wisdom, dreams, visions of our “mysterious grandeur” through our religious traditions, through our spiritual disciplines, and we keep falling short which is why both Jeremiah and Hosea tell us that “God takes us back in love and heals our backsliding”. It is not that we will be perfect, it is to stop engaging in our worst imperfect ways of being. Make an end to our bullshit excuses and engage in the deeds which build up our strength to do “the next right thing” more often. This is the goal, the mission of religion, not the bullshit and pap we are being fed by Pharaoh’s courtiers! Now is the time for us to stand up and respond to the question: Who is for being human and who is for being Trump’s lackey?

Reading these words today makes me tremble because I know what it is to live as “pompous dust”, I have been a subject to it and I have lived it in different times throughout my life. My recovery and faith does not protect me nor you from my forays into this part of my duality-what they do is help me realize it quicker, make my amends, learn from it and move forward. I find it sad that people who have known me hold onto the moments of “pompous dust” so fiercely while forgetting the hours, days, of “mysterious grandeur”. I pray for them and I pray for all of us to wake up and see our “mysterious grandeur”, run after it more than our “pompous dust” each day. As Rabbi Heschel says: “we need more trembling awe” in our living. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What is the Balance in your Spiritual and Moral Bank Accounts? Year 4 Day 50

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 50

“Perhaps this is the most urgent task: to save the inner man from oblivion, to remind ourselves that we are a duality of mysterious grandeur and pompous dust.Our future depends upon our appreciation of the reality of the inner life, of the splendor of thought, of the dignity of wonder and reverence.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)

Like the prophets, like the Baal Shem Tov, like Maimonidies, etc, Rabbi Heschel is a disturbing presence for me, for all of us. Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha were all disturbing presences and they have all left a legacy of “good trouble” as John Lewis says. The question that is before us: are we going to squander this legacy, are we noticing that our moral, spiritual, inner life bank accounts are either at zero or overdrawn? I check my bank accounts each day to detect fraud/theft as many people do, what prevents us from checking our moral, spiritual back accounts each day?

It is impossible to “save the inner man from oblivion” without an awareness of what is in our spiritual, moral bank accounts. We inherited a lot of merit and goodness, moral and spiritual uplift from our ancestors since Biblical days-we have had some major withdrawals by them as well. As Dr. Stephen Marmer said in 1990, “we have spent the moral capital of our ancestors and not put anything back” at a conference about hiding the scourge of addiction in the Jewish Community. We keep believing if we go to Church, Temple, Mosque and pray hard, if we support the ‘right’ causes (on either side of the political spectrum), if we do the mitzvot, we will be okay, we are adding to our spiritual back accounts. The problem with this theory is that it is a fallacy. When a mitzvah doesn’t change our inner life, when we keep doing things by rote, when we are too busy defending our next wrong action, when we are unable to admit our errors, when we refuse to see our part in every situation, we are living as a human doing, not a human being. We are running our spiritual, moral bank accounts dry and, like the emperor, we can’t see how bankrupt we are. Hence we keep committing more and more  moral atrocities, more and more spiritual rape and calling it ‘the greatest thing to happen to you’, ‘this is going to be better than the French Riviera’, ‘on day 1 your cost of groceries is going to go down’, etc.

Our religious institutions, in many cases and situations, have given up on this “most urgent task” by promoting the lies of ‘christian nationalism’, by engaging in senseless hatred and treating the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan as outcasts, as enemies instead of welcoming them and caring for them. Of course every house of worship should be a sanctuary-not for criminals rather for people seeking a better life who are desperate to “breathe free”. Emma Lazarus’ poem is more than what is found on the Statue of Liberty and reflects, I believe, what we should be teaching and living in order to add to our spiritual and moral bank accounts:

“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

This is the responsibility of every religion, every spiritual discipline to help its members, adherents to stand like “a mighty woman with a torch” to “lift my lamp beside the golden door” and not just welcome “your tired, your poor, you huddled masses yearning to breath free” we have to engage with our brothers and sisters who are seeking the life that our ancestors sought when they came to America-there are no indigenous Americans except the Native Americans and we put them on reservations, in ‘detention camps’. Is it any wonder that those ‘good christian nationalists’ want to put everyone not like them either in work camps, detention camps or exile? They believe the words on the Statue Of Liberty are antithetical to what it means for White Supremacy and they are correct. Some of our religious institutions are fighting back by filing suits, by going to court as friends of those filing suits, and we need them to do more. We need our religious institutions to be preaching the words and actions of the “New Colossus” every week, we need our clergy to let go of their fears of kissing the ring of the Anti-Christs-Trump and Musk-, bowing down to these Nazi-lovers and backers of mendacious conspiracies, and STAND UP for the spiritual and moral deeds and actions of the foundational Holy Texts of their particular faith. Clergy stop being afraid, you have taken on the mantle of the prophets, you have volunteered to be spiritual leaders and keepers of the faith- STOP STEALING FUNDS FROM THE SPIRITUAL BANK ACCOUNTS AND START DEPOSITING THE ONES YOU HAVE STOLEN AND THE NEW ONES YOU ARE CREATING.

This is how America decided to remind ourselves of the need to add to our spiritual bank accounts even as we were excluding Chinese, even as the Klan was being resurrected, even as racism, anti-semitism, and other bigotries were on the rise. Just as America and every country has to deal with its duality, so too do we humans have to deal with ours. In beginning typing classes we had to type: “now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country”. While it was an exercise in typing, it is also a message to all of us. All good people have to come to the aid of our country as we “save the inner life” of our country from oblivion, as we “save the inner life” of friends and foe from oblivion, and as we “save the inner life” of our own from oblivion. It is up to us, our kids, grandkids, are depending on us-will you answer this clarion call?

I have been graced with the good fortune to “save the inner life of man from oblivion” for many people and I have been graced with the blessing of having my own “inner life” saved by so many. I believe in the words of Emma Lazarus, I work hard to live them each day, I don’t see enemies and allies, I see human beings who are lost and seeking to be found and those who don’t want to be found. For the latter, I have great empathy and pathos and for the former, I reach out my hand as the Lady Liberty lifts her lamp. I know what it is like to “yearn to breathe free” and because someone resuscitated me. Gratitude, joy, and love are the gifts of growing my inner life and it don’t get better than this. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are your needs more important than your Soul's Demands? Year 4 Day 49

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 49

“By religion is meant what is done publicly rather than that which comes about in privacy. The chief virtue is social affiliation rather than conviction. Inwardness is ignored. The spirit has become a myth. Man treats himself as if he were created in the likeness of a machine rather than in the likeness of God. The body is his god, and its needs are his prophets. Having lost his awareness of his sacred image, he became deaf to the meaning: to live in a way which is compatible with his image.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 12)

WOW!! Reading the words above, watching what Trump and his Putin Puppets are doing to the United States of America, witnessing the absolute acquiescence of religions to political hacks, seeing the ways people are ignoring what is in their best interest, ie science, climate change, decent pay, etc; could drive someone to drink! I prefer not to go there as my history with alcoholism is tragic for all concerned:) “Inwardness is ignored. The spirit has become a myth” defines today at least as much as it defined 1958 and I keep asking myself over and over again-why did no one listen to Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, the Berrigan Brothers and other clergy across the Nation, across the globe when they were telling us this?

We are so obsessed with working out, what our body looks like, how many reps can we do, do we have 6-pack abs, is her ass shapely, etc. We look at one another as if we were assessing a car, a horse, an inanimate object, we are not looking at one another with the awe and reverence, with the radical amazement and wonder of seeing God face to face! We have lost our ability to do this because our “inwardness is ignored”, our “spirit has become a myth”. When many people talk about ‘their souls’, and ‘the spirit that moves them’ they are not speaking about the soul that “God placed in me”, they are speaking in ways they can con the people they are speaking to. Mike Johnson should be called out by his religious fellowship for lying when he says “read the Bible to know what I think” as he sells America to Putin and Xi, into slavery, into conquest, into an authoritarian state. God, calls out this kind of bullshit throughout the Bible; Jesus rails about the money-changers in the Temple-meaning the people who are bastardizing what God is demanding of us; the prophets called us WHORES because the people, the priests, the palace, the wealthy were all acting like Mike Johnson is now!

Are we really this obtuse? Have you never read the Bible, our history books? Do we really believe that our “needs are the prophets” for the image we are trying to create for ourselves? How do we go to our religious institutions, say the prayers of the prayerbook/hymnal, read the Bible portions, and then act in the ways Rabbi Heschel describes above and the ways we are acting in right now?? Where is our outrage against the idolators, the charlatans, the Pharaohs, the Hitlers, the Authoritarians, the Racists, the Anti-Semites, the Anti-Religionists running our country right now? IT IS NOT HERE because our “inwardness is ignored”, our “spirit has become a myth”! We worship our bodies, our money, our career or those of the image that is ‘in charge’, forgetting that God, our Higher Consciousness is in charge, unaware that we are refusing to reach for our higher consciousness, for God, into our inner life, to hear our spirit’s message.

Because we seem constitutionally incapable of seeing our own sacred image nor the sacred image of another human being, we are deaf to the cries of human beings to the torture they are undergoing, we are blind to the cruelties that are perpetrated in our names, we are numb to the attack on our freedoms and our way of being because ‘herr trump’, ‘herr musk’ have spoken and they are ‘giving it to the libs’. The same ‘libs’ that ensured multi-generations with money for their retirement years-social security; affordable healthcare in our “golden years”-medicare; help when we are down and out-welfare; assistance for the working poor-school lunches, snap programs. These are not a panacea, they are not a utopia, they are not even run that efficiently- they are, however, following the demands of God in Leviticus: Love your neighbor as you love yourself; Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein; when you are doing well-bring a wholeness offering and share it with the people around you. That the assholes in Washington like Trump, Musk, Johnson are looking to get paid on the backs of the poor, the needy, the stranger is disgusting, disastrous, and setting us up to be enslaved, just like the Kingdom of Israel was, the Kingdom of Judea was, just like so many kingdoms, countries have been throughout history.

STAND UP, DO SOMETHING before it is too late, it is late enough already and there is hope. We, the People are being called upon to put on a new pair of glasses and see our “sacred image” that we are created in once again. We, the People are being called to show up and stop shutting up! We, the People need to reclaim our birthright of freedom, our call to “learn war no more”, the cry of our spirit to be heard and heeded, our eyesight to see what truly is and how we can make it better. We, the People have been called to stand up for our “sacred image”, to end the lies about the spiritual nature of humanity and the spiritual energy in our world, to rejoice and celebrate the “inwardness” of each human being raising the voices of truth that they speak to the surface, heeding the wisdom of the ages they give out and celebrating the wonder, awe, love, justice and joy living our “sacred image” brings to us and to everyone around us.

I have wrestled with these issues all my life, I have seen the horrors that come from treating ourselves and one another as machines, as human doings instead of as human beings. I have been lost because my inwardness was ignored by people and then by me, I have lost the war of “the emperor has no clothes” as a youth and surrendered to ‘the dark side’ consciously and with forethought. I still recoil at these memories! I did hear the call 37 years ago, I hear it a little better now, I did have my eyes open and they are open even more now, I circumcised the foreskin of my heart back in 1986/87 and this aids me in bringing more light into me, it helps me hear the call of the Ineffable One more, it causes me great distress by making the words of the prophets ring louder and louder in my ears, it moves me to volcanic eruptions at the cruelty and stupidity that is all around us and it moves me to action when the freedoms of anyone are threatened and injustice is being handed out by the people who are the guardians of freedom and justice. I am a loudmouth who will not silence himself, I will not surrender my voice again. I pray you won’t either. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How has "social affiliation" supplanted truth and spirit in your religious/spiritual life? Year 4 Day 48

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 48

“By religion is meant what is done publicly rather than that which comes about in privacy. The chief virtue is social affiliation rather than conviction. Inwardness is ignored. The spirit has become a myth. Man treats himself as if he were created in the likeness of a machine rather than in the likeness of God. The body is his god, and its needs are his prophets. Having lost his awareness of his sacred image, he became deaf to the meaning: to live in a way which is compatible with his image.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 12)

Listening and watching what is happening in the world because of the myriad of False Prophets all around us in this moment, whom so many people are willing to follow like human beings have followed them to their ruin over and over again throughout history, is excruciating more painful when seeing today through the lens of reflection of 1958 and Rabbi Heschel’s accurate description of what was and our knowing it still is! We are being led to the slaughter by charlatans and idolators posing as pious and religious. They go so far as to swear under oath to tell the truth and then lie through their teeth! Some go even farther by wearing the clothes of clergy, many by identifying themselves as ‘religious’ in dress, custom and ‘prayer’, while being hateful towards their fellow human beings, power-hungry, abusers of God’s Will and God’s Word!

These people pray “Holy, Holy, Holy is God” loudly and proudly in a prayer service, they will give “Praise the Lord” shouts throughout the sermons and hymns because they are so committed to their lies and their subterfuge, they need to “show off” their piety in public-because after all isn’t that all that matters? If I can convince you of my piety, you will believe in me, follow me, allow me to pick your pockets, put you into servitude, and gain more power, wealth, stature; which is all I am really after anyway-right?

Joel Osteen would not open his Church up in a disaster to the needy; Rick Warren gave 95% of the proceeds of his book to his Church to help others less fortunate-see the difference? Osteen preaches so well-he is so adored and his public persona is so refined and honed; yet privately he is selfish, he was uncaring in this instance, and would not live the public principles in his private/public life. How sad and devastating for ‘the faithful’. Rick Warren stands for and on the principles of his faith-he believes in equality, diversity, inclusion because he knows in his soul, he preaches in public that all of us are created in the Image of God, ergo his private actions match his public ones-this is a true person of faith! Donald Trump sells Bibles, his daughter is an Orthodox Jew, J.D. Vance is a Catholic, they are surrounded by “christians” and none of them follow the laws, principles, values of their respective religions-they sure enough spout the words of the ‘Pious’, they sing about ‘that old time religion’ and their actions are ones of meanness, misogyny, power-hungry, money grubbing ways, and cruelty. In fact, for these ‘good christians’, ‘devout catholics’, and ‘pious jews’ all that is important is their disguise in public while they flaunt their power, their wealth, and, most of all, outdo one another as to how cruel, mean, deceitful they can be! This is what is passing as ‘religious and god-fearing’ people like Russell Vought, Mike Johnson, etc.

“The chief virtue is a social affiliation rather than conviction” is true in our current state mostly. These idolators, these God-Hating individuals have a “conviction” it is just not a “conviction” of true faith, not a “conviction” of Biblical paths/ways. We are also aware that the “social affiliation” is based on shared greed, shared power-hunger, shared short-term goals and, as history reflects, those shared “goals” will not be strong enough for these narcissists to stay together, they will not be enough for their egos not to battle, they will find themselves at odds and then the real ‘big daddy’ (aka Putin, Orban, etc) will show up and all of us will be screwed! We have seen over and over again that “social affiliation” is not the same as nor as adhesive as conviction. This is not to say it isn’t powerful and alluring, it is to say it frays easier, comes unwound quicker than true conviction. Case in point: the Hebrew Bible is still read today,Jews/non-Jews refer to it, seek its wisdom and spirituality and adhere to the covenant that God made with humanity at the time of Noah, at Mount Sinai. We don’t follow it completely, we don’t live into it perfectly and we have never completely told God to fuck off-until now maybe.

“Social affiliation” is fickle, finite, and transactional. “Conviction” is ethical, moral, infinite and relational. “Religion” is the later not the former, no matter how often the former seems to win out in our religious institutions. We have witnessed the rich hanging together even when they know what they are doing is immoral, wrong, because they are more interested in holding onto their wealth, not being uncomfortable when seeing one another at the country club, the spa, the French Rivera, etc. God forbid the wealthy are made uncomfortable! What a ‘sin’ to make the powerful accountable! These are some of the ‘rules’ of “social affiliation” and they suck! We the People are being called upon and the demand is being put upon us to say NO to these liars. For the sake of our living well we have to “Throw the BUMS OUT” of the stadiums of power because they are violating the sacred trust we put in them, they are shredding the holy documents of our Constitution and our Bible, they are seeking to set up another “1000 year Reich” and believe White Supremacy is the only way for the country to survive! This is one of the qualifications to be hired in the government today, this is the belief of Elon Musk when he seeks only Afrikaners to allowed into the country! Stand Up, Stand Tall, Live Your Convictions!

The way of faith for me, the spiritual truth and life as I understand it and live it is to live with integrity. Maimonidies teaches: “what is on your heart should be on your lips”, there is a prayer at the end of the Amidah prayer which says: God, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile”, every time one of the characters of the Bible experiences heartache and hardship it is because of their incongruity, because of their lack of integrity-look at the ways of Jacob. I am a flawed human being, I wrestle each day to live one grain of sand better than the day before, I am not interested in “social affiliation”, nor in the public persona of people- I am concerned, invested in, and engaged with the “convictions” I have and living them in my daily affairs. I am excited to wake up each day because it means I can be of service a little more, I can love a little more, I can be me a little more this day. STANDING UP to the lies of religious institutions, STANDING TALL against the immoral actions by the “social affiliations” is my jam. I do LIVE MY CONVICTIONS each day. I pray you do too. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you succumbing to "activities" rather than commitment? Year 4 Day 47

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 47

“The central commandment is in relation to the person. But religion today has lost sight of the person. Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment. It has fallen victim to the belief that the real is only that which is capable of being registered by fact-finding surveys.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)

I do not know which “fact-finding surveys” were being done in the late 1950’s or how many/how often. I do know they have become fast and furious in our times and everyone seems to believe whichever “survey” suits their needs. Religious institutions use negative “fact-finding surveys” to raise money and alarm bells that dogma is more important to “bring people back into the fold”, they use them to enshrine the “institutional loyalty” of the ‘faithful’. They use them to see what “activities” people want to engage in so they keep paying their dues, keep tithing, etc. They are being used as proof that being stricter in our observances, screaming about the “liberal attitude” of caring for the poor, the stranger, etc, preserving freedom for all the inhabitants is not what is in the Bible, is not what Jesus said and did! In other words, just as politicians use polls for their benefit and “spin” them as they want, so too do religious institutions!

When someone becomes a member of their particular faith, joining the covenant with others and with God, it puts an obligation upon us, not an entitlement. Yet, so many religious institutions strut around like peacocks, proclaiming that “God loves me most”, “I have turned my life over to Jesus”, “It says it in the Bible so I do it”, and other such bullshit. These same religious institutions promote lies and deceptions, they care little for their congregants, their parishioners, they only care about staying afloat and having power, being close to power and they have lost the sense of the person, they have become shells of what their founding principles are, bastardizing their inheritance from the messengers sent by the Ineffable One, and believing they will escape any consequences. I see a parallel with King David, once he had Uriah killed, he changed and his life became harder, more complicated and he lost the connection with God that had propelled him to greatness. The same seems to be true of our religious institutions- what propelled them to a higher spiritual level has been shit-canned and replaced with ‘how do I stay in favor with the powers that be’. So sad, terrifying, and disgusting.

“Religion” is a deeply personal affair, the commandments are given mostly in the singular, the stories are about people (real, perceived) just like us. None of the heroes of the Hebrew Bible were the top of the heap (Moses was thrown out of the palace and fled for his life, remember). God “speaks” to and through individuals, sometimes to the masses like at Mt. Sinai, so we can have a “personal relationship” with God, Higher Consciousness, whatever the power greater than yourself is. When speaking of “institutional loyalty”, the Bible’s only request for loyalty is to the Covenant-“if you listen to my voice and guard my covenant”(Exodus 19:5) not to an institution nor a person, just the covenant. In Judaism a boy is ushered into the covenant with circumcision, a girl with a naming ceremony. The rest of our lives we are to stay loyal to the covenant, stay loyal to the principles-whether we carry them out or not. Loyalty doesn’t mean perfect adherence, it means we never stray from the goals of: Proclaim liberty…, Love your neighbor…, welcoming the stranger, caring for the needy, etc. Loyalty is not to a person or a place, not to a country or religion, it is to the Covenant God made with us when we were in need and lost; like after the flood, after our exodus from Egypt-that narrow place of slavery-, for some of us it is when we have a spiritual awakening and realize the emptiness inside that “institutional loyalty” never filled. At these moments, we know that only through a personal attachment, a personal commitment to the covenant we make with God, through a return to hearing the call, listening for the still, small voice, and understanding our importance, our worth, our being a divine need will we be able to go to sleep each night knowing we did our best and our best is always good enough!

The only “fact-finding survey” that is important, I believe as I hear Rabbi Heschel’s words roll around in my head and pierce my soul’s the one We, the People initiate and fill out which asks us how we are fulfilling our covenant with truth, our covenant with justice, our covenant with mercy, our covenant with being obligated to do the next right thing, our covenant to “do T’Shuvah one day before we die, since we don’t know the day of our death, do T’Shuvah each day”(Talmud, Shabbat 153a), our covenant to be loyal to our inheritance from Abraham and Sarah, from the Prophets, etc. The issue is most of us do not fill out this survey! We are too lazy, we don’t see the point in “religion”, we may go out of an obligation a few times a year and we are not ‘into it’. This is the result of “religious institutions” being stale, being “impersonal”, not allowing for the “stillness of commitment”, instead trying to entice people to join and participate in “activities” that belie the foundational principles of the Covenant they proclaim to be attached to. This is true for fundamentalists and progressives, they still do what they want to, they wrap themselves in the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran in ways that are anathema to the words, the deeds, the lessons of these Holy Texts. Their bastardization of the texts has led us to where we are in Israel, in America, in Arab countries that say Sharia Law is the law of the land, into a quagmire, into quicksand where God, freedom, justice, truth are slowly and maybe not so slowly are sinking into the quicksand and mendacity, deception, worship of a person is taking the place of these “religions” that say-worship no man-only God. We, the People have to stop with our “fact-finding surveys” and listen to the still, small voice of commitment and take action to once again be loyal to the principles, not the person.

I am enraged and devastated, sad and mad, crying for what is being lost, wailing for the Desecration of God’s Name that our “religious institutions” are perpetrating upon all of us. I am calling us all to join with God, to read and study the Bible with another(s) so we can discuss the myriad of meanings and actions we can take so the paths of justice, peace, mercy, truth, love, kindness prevail over the bullshit being promoted by so many clergy, “religious institutions”. Even the ones who are not promoting the lies and are not Screaming at the Top of their Lungs, are doing what Martin Niemoller did when the Nazis came to power. I hear Rabbi Heschel in my soul, I am bombarded by the prophets, by the Bible each hour of every day and I can’t “stand idly by” so I get into trouble with people, and I believe it is “good trouble, necessary trouble” so I take the blows and do it the “prophets way”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

How have you "lost sight" of the person you are meant to be, want to be? Year 4 Day 46

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 46

“The central commandment is in relation to the person. But religion today has lost sight of the person. Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment. It has fallen victim to the belief that the real is only that which is capable of being registered by fact-finding surveys.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)

WOW, what an indictment of religion in 1958 to a group of fellow clergy people and non-clergy people. Imagine the commitment, the power of passion and truth that drives a person to stand for what she/he believes in to the point of being more afraid of staying silent, more afraid of doing nothing than the fear of reprisals? This is the commitment of the prophets, of the myriad of descendants of the prophets (in all faiths) throughout history, and what we have today. This is our dilemma and our challenge: Hear the words of the prophets and their descendants throughout history from the Bible, from their writings, from the mouths of their descendants today and ACT UPON THEM!!

Of course, if one is waiting for a guy(the prophets of old were all men) or a gal to show up in long flowing robe with a beard or flowers in her hair like a halo-we will wait for a long time. If one is waiting for a sign to act upon the words, the deeds, the leadership of the prophets and their descendants-it is here already and has always been. “The central commandment is in relation to the person” is a clarion call to all of us to “love your neighbor as yourself”. This is, according to Rabbi Akiba, the most important principle of the Bible and everything else flows from this foundational idea/commandment. One way of understanding this is that we have to love our self, love our divine image, love the person we know we can be and strive to live into our uniqueness and the divine need we are. This is necessary because without self-love(not narcissistic love), we can’t love another human being-hence divorces, family estrangements, break-up of friendships, wars, not feeding the hungry, not caring for the needy, unwelcoming the stranger, etc.

Another way of understanding this foundational idea is to see in our neighbor the reflection of our soul, to see the infinite worth and dignity of our self and their self, to welcome their diversity, their equal worth, their uniqueness and, when making decisions, include their opinions, thoughts, needs, into our equations, into our responses to the challenges of life.

The human being is one of the two central entities in the Bible, the other being God. The entire Bible is about the evolving relationship between God and humanity, with both growing in knowledge of the will and need of the other. This evolution, at times, seems harsh both when God seems to be ‘punishing the human’ and when the human commits adultery against God. Yet, through it all, the relationship of God and human continues, the human being is important to God, God is important to the human and there are bumps in the road of this loving, covenantal relationship. “Religion has lost sight of the person” is probably the worst indictment against religion possible. The fact that Rabbi Heschel saw this some 67 years ago and we have only gotten worse is criminal. While many Rabbis and Priests, Ministers and Imams speak to people, counsel them at times, teach classes with morals and different viewpoints of what the Bible, New Testament, Koran is saying- the number of clergy that have “lost sight of the person” is evident in the ways they tell their congregants whom to vote for, in the ways they support cruel and inhumane actions against ‘those’ people(anyone not like us), in the ways they bastardize the words of our ancient texts, Moses, Mohamed, Jesus, etc. Other times we see the evidence of this truth in the ways our clergy kiss up and shit down-the wealthy donors are catered to and the poor are treated as a vehicle to ‘get to heaven’, ‘to check off a mitzvah on the list’ rather than to see both are in need of spiritual counseling, spiritual growth and are, like the messiah, just waiting for a word and deed of kindness and caring so they can blossom and emerge. In Jewish tradition, Elijah, the prophet, is always amongst the poor and the leper, the sick and the homeless never living in a castle or palatial home-so why are we so enamored with listening to the rich and famous rather than the ‘prophets in the streets’?

We, the People are being challenged by these words above to change our ways, to demand more from our religious leaders, to call them out on their bullshit and to castigate them for cozying up to power and ‘anointing’ Trump, Bibi, Orban, Putin as “messengers from Christ, from God in Bibi’s case”. We, the People have to stop buying the bullshit and lies of the “religious zealots” who have bastardized, trampled upon and desecrated the Name of God, a Hillul HaShem in Hebrew, with their mendacity, their twisting of Truth, Justice, Mercy, of their walking in their own path rather than God’s and creating an army of liars, deceivers, bastardizers ready to stone, kill, imprison those descendants of the prophets who rail on and on about Truth, Justice, Mercy. We, the People are being called upon in this hour, in this time to STAND FOR freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein. This verse doesn’t say a different law for strangers, it doesn’t say those who were not born in the land don’t deserve freedom nor should they get it, it doesn’t say a freed slave isn’t entitled to the same laws, respect, opportunities as a ‘citizen’. No matter what the “religious establishment” says, We the People have to reject these conventional notions and live in “wonder, radical amazement” that we get to stand with and for “the person”. We are needed today, so LETS GET GOING!!

I find these words to be so true, when I was young my shul was a place of coldness and warmth. The senior Rabbi was kind and patient, the Cantor was a perfectionist who let me be part of the Cantor’s Club even though I could not sing, the second Rabbi was colder to me. When my father died, the shul responded, the old men of the minyan took me in, I felt home. And, I did feel like I had to live a double life, not being able to speak to anyone about what was going on inside of me because I wasn’t sure they would understand nor care. My bad, their bad, probably both-yet the person was not as stressed as the rules which is still true today-be it the rules of the Bible, the rules of the institution, the rules of the Rabbi. We have not truly returned to teaching the “central commandment is in relation to the person” because we have not returned to loving ourselves and seeing our neighbor’s soul reflected in us and ours in them. This is what I have done for these past 37 years and what I continue to do today-keep the individual central to my actions, to my teachings, to my counseling. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What "neutral acts, needs" do you seek to fulfill each day? Year 4 Day 45

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 45

“What is at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. Our task, therefore, is not how to deal with the evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.12)

This paper was given at a seminar sponsored by the Fund for the Republic, part of the Ford Foundation. It was an ecumenical seminar and it seems the purpose was to find ways for “all of us to get along”, with a shared sense of faith and secularism, not trying to make the Government over into a specific ‘religious’ image, rather helping the secularism of government live up to the foundational freedoms, morals, truth, justice, mercy of all faiths.

Given this setting, given our current circumstances, we can experience the rumbling in our guts, the despair/anger rising up from our bellies, the pain and sorrow of our souls upon reflecting that 67 years ago Rabbi Heschel and others spoke to us of the dangers of neglecting “the neutral acts, the needs”. Neglecting meaning not paying attention to them, not keeping them in their proper places and controlling our appetites, rather than ‘I feel like I can’t live without___, get it for me/I will get it at any cost’ neglecting of needs. I do not believe he is also not speaking of authentic needs, as we covered earlier, I believe when discussing “the neutral acts, the needs” he is speaking of our coveting things we don’t truly “need”, taking actions that we convince ourselves (deceive ourselves/lie to ourselves) are “neutral”, they don’t hurt or help anyone. In all my reading, studying of Rabbi Heschel, of Jewish Texts, I have yet to find a “neutral act”! Everything we do has a consequence, good and not good, whether it is affecting another human being, the environment, God, the spiritual realm, our own bodies, souls. There is never an act that is “neutral”, just like there is no action that is ‘amoral’; people can be ‘amoral’-meaning “unprincipled, unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something”, however, I do not believe that our actions can be “neutral” nor amoral.

“What is at stake in the life of man” meaning: what is the risk, what is to be won or lost, in the way we live, in what meaning our lives have, what we do with our lives is all about the “neutral acts, the needs” precisely because as we learn in Numbers and throughout the Bible, humans put their “needs” before God, before what is right and good, before anything else and their “needs” come from scouting out after our hearts and eyes and we will whore after them, it is so important to realize this that we say this 3 times a day when we recite the Shema! It is so important for us to realize the error of seeking after our “needs” uber alles, that the Bible is ripe with the stories of the ‘good guys/gals’ who rise above their instincts to serve their own “needs” often and still succumb to the power of “needs” and, in their minds and the minds of the Rabbis of old, decide they are not ‘bad’, rather they are “neutral”-which is just a bunch of hogwash to overcome the guilt of doing the next wrong thing in service of “needs” instead of doing the next right thing in service of self, another, and the Universal Spirit.

I am still in awe that the Fund for the Republic put this seminar on at a time when everything was supposed to be ‘so good’. Ike was in the White House, baby boomers were doing well after WWII, religious institutions were seemingly flourishing, etc and Rabbi Heschel comes along, looks at the underbelly of what is happening in our country, in the world and uses his powers of insight, his experience of Nazi Germany and Poland, his inheritance as a descendant of the prophets to remind us “we got trouble” right here in America and it begins with a Capital N for “neutral acts, needs”.

“We Got Trouble” alright-not the kind from the Music Man about pool halls, “We Got Trouble” with our democracy precisely because we have spent these past 67 years worrying about inauthentic “needs”, we have spent these years not paying attention to “the neutral” and extolling the extremes on either end of the continuum. The result is Donald Trump, Project 2025, Elon Musk and “big balls” and his friends! We are witnessing the demolition of both religion and a free society while the ASSHOLE SENATORS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY just are BOBBLEHEADS for lawlessness, mendacity, anti-religious actions, and fulfilling the “Needs” of the Donald.

We, the People have to call a halt to labels like progressive, conservative, liberal, libertarian, etc. None of those labels mean what they used to, they are being bastardized and used to separate us rather than identify our leanings so we could have a discussion with those with whom we disagree and/or agree. Also, they were labels that belied the sense of freedom and faith where we could be liberal about one thing and conservative about another. We, the People have to say NO to the fulfilling of the selfish inauthentic needs of Trump, Musk, ‘Christian’ Nationalists, and the rest of the religious zealots, the rest of the power-hungry anarchists like Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, etc. We, the People are being called to account and being asked what are we staking our life on? What are we doing about the “neutral”, to “our passions” is what will determine our democracy surviving this current onslaught or losing to autocracy. We, the People are being called on today, as we were 67 years ago, 3500 years ago, 2000 years ago, to take a stand for what is good and right rather than standing for what we  have and don’t have. We, the People can no longer hide behind ‘I didn’t realize’ bullshit because the problem of “what is at stake in the life of man” has been written about and spoken about for over 3500 years when the Bible was begun and even before that when God spoke to Cain in the Garden of Eden! Isn’t it time for us to heed the words to Cain: “Sin couches at your door, it desires you much AND you can master it”?

I have been wrestling with “needs” forever. I do not believe there are “neutral acts”, I know that everything I do impacts someone, even if that someone is ‘only me’. I know that the ‘only me’ line is bullshit because whatever I do to myself leaks out and impacts another-be it good or not good. When I take care of me, I care for another better, when I am alert to what is going on in my inner life, I am more aware of the inner life of another, especially those around me. My trajectory was from learning about and taking moral actions to becoming immoral to regaining my morality, my ethics, my authentic self. I know what is important, I know what I do for my “needs” (like buy lottery tickets so I can win and donate more-for the good of people and my own ego). This awareness helps me stay away from “the neutral”, the false “needs” more often and not completely. I am a work in progress and I love to learn. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you still living a lie, living in silence, in secrecy re: your foibles, imperfections? -Year 4 Day 44

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 44

“The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent are the true seat of moral infection. The problem of living begins, in fact, in relation to our own selves, in the handling of our emotional functions, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)

Looking at the world today, especially the United States, we are experiencing the effects of “moral infection”. These words could have been written yesterday and the issue facing us all is that we didn’t heed these words 67 years ago! The moral rot we are being subjected to now is the result of “the silent atrocities, the secret scandals” of the people in power now. Trump, Musk, Vance, Vought, Kennedy Jr., Hegseth, et al all have skeletons in their closets that have shaped their view of power and service to self above all. Because of Trump’s unmasking since 2015, he has been singularly focused on re-writing the story to fit his sick, twisted, mendacious narrative. He is, along with Pam Bondi, going to go after the people who were standing up for the Capital Police, the DC Police, our Democratic ways, our Constitution, by going after the prosecutors, the FBI agents who found and prosecuted the criminals! Vought et al want to empower Trump with autocratic powers, declare him a Dictator and, these ‘fine christian folk’ want to trample on the poor, kick out the stranger, and imprison the needy-all the values Christ preached?!!!?

Yet, the “moral infection” is ours as well. We, the People have hidden our own “silent atrocities, secret scandals” for so long from the fear of ‘being found out and judged’ and the ‘shame’ we feel for breaking the ‘law’ of our faith, our spirit. Rather than live life out loud and in the light of the sun, we keep hiding in the shadows what seems ‘unseemly’, we keep denying the wrongs we do, much like an alcoholic who is “in their disease” cannot seem to speak truth when confronted. We, the People are the same as an addict in the throes of their disease, like the addict, we hide our ‘dirty laundry’, we deny our foibles, we engage in secrecy and silence about ourselves and are willing to hold the secrets of someone else either for our gain-one day we might need to use the secret to get them to do something- and/or for our validation that ‘everyone does it’. It is time for We, the People to stop hiding, to engage in the spiritual path of T’Shuvah: repentance, repair and return; the path of daily inventory in order to catch ourselves from continuing down the rabbit holes of secrecy, of scandalizing behaviors and actions, of silence in the face of evil and of believing our “atrocities” are good things.

The reason society is so twisted and sick right now is not because of Musk, Trump, Kushner, et al, it is because of the Greenblatts, the Bezos’, the Zuckerberg’s et al. It is because of the people who are ignoring the “problem of living” as described above, they are not being responsible for ‘the handling of our emotional functions, in the way we deal with envy, greed, pride”, they only want to blame someone else, they only want their ‘hero’ to save them from “those people”. The ones who provided jobs the past 4 years, the ones who, when they were wrong admitted it, the ones who flew to Ukraine and Israel to stand with our allies in their time of crisis, the ones who screwed up the 2024 election and left us with the bully/baby. It is the people who have stood silently by, it is a Jonathan Greenblatt who honors Jared Kushner for fucking the country, supporting and helping an authoritarian government like the ones his grandparents experienced in Europe and gives Elon Musk’s Nazi salute a pass. It is people like Bezos and Zuckerberg who have all the money they ever need and kiss the ass of Trump, Musk, et al. It is the people like “Big Balls” who proclaim their Nazi tendencies on social media and then given free reign to fuck up the governmental agencies!

Most of all, it is the responsibility of each one of us. We have dealt with our emotional functioning piss poorly-in my humble opinion. Rather than follow the ways of the Bible, we hide our imperfections, our errors of judgement, of “envy, greed, pride” behind so many facades. As Rabbi Heschel writes in his book Man is Not Alone, we have so much mental make-up on, we are sacrificing our faces! We watch the pain of those who have felt over the years they had to hide their sexuality and the “scandals and “atrocities” that have occurred because of the need to hide; families being broken up, women being betrayed and devastated, kids not understanding, the person being shunned from ‘proper society’, the stain on the entire family by a sick society, etc. We watch the pain of families and friends of the people who take advantage of the people around them through coercion, through manipulation, through deception and the helpless, powerless feelings that these friends and families go through-unable to believe and unable to say no, they are being terrorized. We can see the pain of those of us who’s families were displaced because of being Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, and the pain of losing one’s home even if it was shitty in the “old country”, it was still what they knew and being forced to go to a new land, without knowing the language well, they are heroes and their pain of leaving their loved ones behind, finding out they were massacred in the Shoah, is almost too much to bear. “Envy, greed, pride” figure into our decisions to become involved and to not become involved in the authentic needs of another. When we are envious, we cheer on the brutes, bullies, autocrats who are ‘sticking it to them’, not realizing we are next. When we are so greedy we can’t wait for ‘those people’ to be deported so we can ‘take what is rightfully mine even though someone else earned it’. When we are prideful to the max-‘we have to stand up for the white race’ becomes the mantra and the lens we see everything through. Isn’t it time for all of us to become spiritually fit so we can deal with our emotions in better ways, so we can be more like the Bible which portrays the greatness and the foibles of the characters??

I am guilty! I am in recovery from hiding, from feeling shame, from ‘not enough’ from “envy, greed, pride”, all of which drove my choices in my earlier years. My recovery is based on living out loud (yes, very loudly) without fear or favor. It gets me into trouble, I am not that welcome in polite society, I cannot contain myself when I get a whiff of mendacity, of bullshit, of a Trump, et al, of a progressive who says all the right things and is on the right side of an issue while being sneaky, backhanded, mendacious-all for a ‘good cause’ of course and unable to admit their errors or part in any situation. I am unable to sit idly by when there is possible blood being or could be spilled-literally or metaphorically. I am not perfect, I still find myself feeling envy, pride, and greed-now it is a passing thought or an admiration of the creativity of another human being. I wish I could be that good at creating my pottery:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Focusing on the true challenges of being human - Year 4 Day 43

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 43

“The prophets tried to overcome the isolationism of religion. It is the prophets who teach us that the problem of living does not arise with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes.The problem of living begins with the realization of how we all blunder in dealing with our fellow men.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11-12)

Seeing the world through the eyes of the prophets, as Rabbi Heschel did, is a very disruptive way of being or as Rabbi Heschel says: “They give me a bad conscience”. The first sentence above describes the issue with ‘religion’ as practiced by many clergy and congregations throughout history: “isolationism of religion”. Religion cannot be relegated to Houses of Worship, to our own homes, it has to be lived in all of our affairs. In Judaism there are over 100 laws about “kosher money”, how to do business ethically and morally! Imagine what Trump would think of having to do business in a “kosher” way, imagine what Jared Kushner (as he gets ready to build luxury apartments in Gaza) would have to do differently if he, the “gantze Jew” would actually follow the tenets of our faith! However, as long as religion is isolated from our living, people can wrap themselves in the Torah and, as Nachmanidies, a 13th Century Rabbi in Spain, writes in his commentary; “one can be a scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah”! This is the great challenge the prophets brought to us, this is the mirror they hold up to us, even today, which is why so few people want to embrace their inheritance of being descendants of the prophets, for Jews to live as the prophets call for us to live, for all of us, to “return to God and allow God “to heal our backsliding and take us back in love”(Hosea 14:5).

The issue, as the wisdom above reminds us, is not about how to take care of the scoundrels, not how to prevent “delinquency or hideous crimes”. This issue “begins with the realization of how we all blunder in dealing with our fellow men”. Wow, Rabbi Heschel is demanding we not get sidetracked from our primary purpose-realizing “how we all blunder” in our day to day dealings with another human being. We have been so willfully blind to this truth, we have all the defenses and denials in our back pocket so we can pull them out every time someone speaks to us about our blunders. We are so engaged in our ‘perfection myth’, we are so engaged in our “religious isolation”, we cannot see the truth of our behaviors nor can we understand the imperfections of another. We are, once again, witnessing a time in our religious traditions where religion is standing with the power and the corrupt to bastardize the words of Christ, the words of the Bible and the Koran in order to gain favor with the liars who have gained power through their subterfuge aided and abetted by some (maybe a lot) of Clergy who violate the separation of Church and State by advocating for ‘their guy’ to win within their congregation. This is true of all faiths, unfortunately there are more ‘bad apples’ in the clergy than we want to admit, more clergy who lead their congregants into hatred, racism, antisemitism, finding an enemy, denigrating those they disagree with, etc. These clergy, like the priests of old, are isolating “religion” by telling people “God loves those who are rich” , “You have to hate these ‘sinners’ who follow Christ’s words and are kind to ‘those people’-the poor, the stranger, etc. from some evangelical preachers;  “You are self-loathing Jews for not wanting all of Gaza and the West Bank to be parts of Israel for Jews only-what do you mean Palestinians are human beings” from the right-wing ultra-orthodox Jews; you get the idea.

We, the People are being called upon in this moment, just as the prophets were called upon in their moment, to stand up to the status quo, to rebel against the meanness, cruelty, mendacity that has taken hold in America, Israel, and across the Globe. We, the People have to clean out our ears, put on a new pair of glasses, and do angioplasty in our spiritual arteries so we can hear, see, and know what the next right action is. We have to take these actions so we can once again engage in our inheritance, spending the interest the prophets earned and growing the principal for our children and grandchildren. We, the People have to say NO to the idolators running our religious institutions who are afraid to speak truth to power, who are hiding behind their need to earn a living, who are conflict avoidant, who parrot the societal conventional notions of the moment. We, the People have to demand that our religious principles, aka the foundations of our morality, are to be lived in the marketplace, in the bedroom, in the houses of worship and in the street. Cheating someone who is not of our tribe is not holy, specifically prohibited in the Bible. Taking unfair advantage, “caveat emptor” is the opposite of what religious living calls for: the seller has to disclose the flaws of what he/she is selling-full disclosure! Declaring by word or deed, ie accusing people of crimes and/or arresting them for the smallest reason, because they are homeless, poor, needy,  strangers, etc goes against the demand “to care for the stranger because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt” which is said 36 times in the Torah! We, the People are being beckoned to open our eyes and see our own “blunders”, we are being called to return to the truth about ourselves, we are imperfect and make errors, repair them and grow from them. Only by seeing our own “blunders”, only be embracing our own imperfections and step by step growth can we really see another human being. Only by realizing our own “failing forward” can we help another person do the same, only by having compassion for ourselves can we have true compassion for another. Only by realizing we are all in this together can we end the “isolationism of religion” and learn to “all get along”. This is the challenge Rabbi Heschel, Torah, the world is putting before us today-will you respond?

I have been railing about the “isolationism of religion” for a long time. We refuse a donation from someone who was a notorious for his pushing the limits both legally and, more importantly ethically and spiritually. I have wrestled with the “realization of how I blunder in dealing with my fellow” human beings and each time I have these realizations, I am sad, I am moved to repair, I am moved to change. While this way of being is not always reciprocated, that is not my business. I have experienced people who use my T’Shuvah against me, I have experienced people who have embraced me tighter because of my T’Shuvah to them. I am imperfect, I am prone to errors, I am growing each day, even at my age:). I am blessed with people around me who ‘get’ me, who believe in me and who love me. They help me open my eyes, stay in truth, have compassion and live the principles in all my affairs. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living as a whole person - no more "neutral" stances on life's issues - Year 4 Day 42

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 42

“The supreme problem is all of life, not good and evil. We cannot deal with morality unless we deal with all of man, the nature of existence, of doing, of meaning. The prophets tried to overcome the isolationism of religion. It is the prophets who teach us that the problem of living does not arise with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

While Rabbi Heschel’s prose is, at times, also poetry and the lens through which he sees life, religion, decency, serving God is unique and, to me, powerful. He is also repeating, saying anew, what everyone knows is true and throughout history has known is true-yet we keep ignoring this and so many other Truths because we take them for granted, because we forget them, because they are inconvenient at times, and because we relegate them to only certain issues, only certain experiences, only certain times.

Society’s need to deal with morality as a separate issue from human beings and what we do, who we are, and add in the “morally neutral” issues is at the heart of our problems today! There is no “morality unless we deal with all of man” and we see what happens when people take their isolationism to the extreme, when they buy into the “morally neutral” concept, the evil becomes good and the good becomes evil. The law is broken because it was never ‘truly understood’, the systems are upended because they are not serving the rich and the powerful enough, responsibility is ignored if you are rich enough, crafty enough and rewarding the scoundrels, the law breakers for their loyalty becomes the “way things are”.

The “nature of existence” of humanity is to do good, this is our basic nature and, as I have said before, our hearts/minds learn/devise evil from our youth. Evil actions are learned, the evil drive is given. The issue that society, that religion has not dealt with or at least not dealt with well, is how to harness the “evil inclination” early on in the life of a child. Lets not berate our children for their bad acts, lets not call out “God will punish you” for their errors, lets begin to give them the power to say NO to their inclination to do wrong, to “learn evil”, and lets stop giving them mixed messages with our own bad acts, with our defending our evil actions and calling them moral, telling them ‘you just don’t understand’, ‘wait till you are older’, etc. Morality is inextricably tied up in our existence, there is no neutrality when speaking about morality nor when we take an action-all of it is linked to our morality or lack therein. We, the People are in desperate need of shoring up our moral cores, we are on the precipice of losing our freedoms because too many people either stayed home or bought the bullshit of Trump last November. Today, we are watching the richest man in the world overtake our institutions, fire the loyal civil servants and look for ways to screw over those who have less than him-the 99.9% of us Americans! We, the People listened to Trump speak of cruelty, promise to be a dictator, remind us that “only I can fix it”, and his idea of “Make America Great Again” is to unilaterally take over the Gaza Strip and build, baby, build-probably giving the contract to the Trump Company or the Kushner Company to develop. We, the People watched him get elected, have witnessed people bowing down to him, some of us get trolled for speaking up for morality and against the dictator. We, the People have to STAND UP against not only his tyranny, not only against Musk, et al, we have to STAND FIRM in our morality, we have to RISE UP and say NO to the immorality of our current affairs, we have to say NO to the immorality of our own ways, we have to be the GUARDIANS of our spiritual heritage, of the lessons of the Bible, of the call of God.

We, the People have to deal with both our actions and the meaning of them and of our existence. Like the times of the prophets, many messengers come to us with the reports of our immorality and “morally neutral” actions. Rather than ignoring them because it makes us uneasy to admit our errors, to take their rebukes as love and faith in us, we the People get to accept their observations, we get to do our T’Shuvah, make new plans on how to deal with these situations because they will come up again, and we get to belong to a group of people who truly have one another’s back-helping one another do the next right thing. There are no “morally neutral” acts, in my understanding of the prophets, of Rabbi Heschel, of spirituality. Paying our bills on time is a moral action, paying a living wage is a moral action, not being responsible for our errors is an immoral action. The issue is whether or not we are willing to admit our own agendas and bias’ in our dealings. When we are told to “not stand idly by the blood of our neighbor”, there can be no “neutral” issues in our existence. As I am writing this, I realize we deny meaning and purpose when we use the excuse “morally neutral” or turning immoral into moral. “Life and death I put before you, blessing and curse, choose life that you and your seed may live”(Deuteronomy 30:19). CHOOSE LIFE is impossible when one isolates oneself from what is moral and right, when one decides to sell a lie as the truth, when one blames others for what they do, when we allow an autocrat, a “new pharaoh” to arise and we stand idly by.

As a recovering person, as a Jew who lost his way and found it again/for the first time, I can attest to the truth that morality is involved in everything we do and the “supreme problem is all of life”! How do I determine what the next right action is? How do I know that my actions are moral and just? Which parts of me are in control when, ie. Rational mind, intuitive mind, emotional mind? These questions still baffle me at times and I have a path of finding the right answers to the RIGHT questions instead of how I was before-finding the right answers to the wrong questions. When I ask myself: what is the next right action; I have to bring into the equation, what is the morality of my response, I have to ensure that truth, kindness, morality are leading my response. I do this by asking mentors and friends, studying with people, learning from our shared history, hearing Rabbi Heschel, my father in my head constantly, and listening with my soul, connecting with the spiritual forces of the universe and my own soul to get my marching orders. Doing this each day is my way of CHOOSE LIFE, it is my way of STANDING UP, RISING UP and saying NO to the liars, the grifters, the autocrats, the idolators, the charlatans that are so prevalent in our world. As Rabbi Tarfon says: it isn’t up to us to finish the work and we cannot ignore it either! The prophets knew it was a ‘fools errand’ to do what they did and I have to follow their example and do what I can without worrying about the results. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What causes do you "feel fiercely" and cause you to take the next right action? Year 4 Day 41

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 41

“Their intense sensitivity to right and wrong is due to their intense sensitivity to God’s concern for right and wrong. They feel fiercely because they hear deeply.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

Continuing to speak about the prophets, I hear Rabbi Heschel once again reminding us of our need to study the prophets, to claim our inheritance from the prophets and act in the same manner as the prophets. I am not saying everyone should go around in white robes claiming to KNOW the word of God as we see on some street corners, rather I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call out to us to take the actions the prophets were begging the people of Israel, the people of Judah to take to save themselves. I hear the call to learn from their mistakes and heed the words, take the actions, save our own souls and the souls of the people around us.

The words above are so crucial for us in this moment as they have been in every era. The “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” is always needed, for us to live in a free society, to be able to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” we have to commemorate Juneteenth so we remember how long we dilly-dallied until all slaves were freed! We have to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day so we remember what happens to a free society when an autocrat takes over with designs on killing the Free Press, destroying the Rule of Law, rewriting the Constitution of the country she/he is overtaking, causing so much chaos that the important things go unnoticed. We have to observe Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur so we remember our own fallibility and end our ridiculous need to “always be right”, “achieve perfection” and deny any wrongdoing, defend all of our actions and act ‘holier than thou’. We celebrate the Sabbath each week, in each of the 3 western religions, to remember to take a breath, to connect with family, friends, to pray aka look inside of ourselves, to reinvigorate our souls with music, food, and introspection as well as connecting to something greater than ourselves which I call God, Higher Consciousness. Throughout the Bibles, Hebrew and Christian, throughout the Koran, as in every other foundational spiritual text, “God’s concern for right and wrong” shouts from every chapter, every page. There is no worship of God, there is no Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc without “intense sensitivity to right and wrong”. While the faiths/disciplines may differ in how to determine “right and wrong”, saving a life is paramount in all of them, as I understand them.

I hear Rabbi Heschel’s call to We, the People asking us what spiritual ailment allows us to be insensitive to “right and wrong”. What is the spiritual sickness we are suffering that is causing us to turn our moral compass’ upside down where what is wrong and mean, cruel becomes good and right and kind according to ‘the masses, the MAGA’s’ and the rest of us just go along?? What is the spiritual “hole in our souls” that gives us permission to take what is good and right in the ‘eyes’ of God, to take what the prophets have told us to do and make those things evil and bad, wrong and destructive according to the “oligarchs in charge”? We, the People, inheritors of the “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” that the prophets have are being called upon to engage this “sensitivity” instead of ignoring it because we are afraid of being sued, being arrested, being charged with the crime of standing up for “God’s concern for right and wrong”! We, the People are being called upon right now by the idolators and charlatans who praise EVIL as good, who praise AUTOCRACY as freedom, who defile God’s Name and Ways just as the Priests, Royalty and Wealthy did ‘back in the day’. The prophets are NOT DEAD, they live on through their words and through our deeds and the it is high time We, the People stand with them and claim our rightful place in the world God has entrusted to us.

We, the People need to take the cotton out of our ears and, once again, “hear deeply” the cries of the stranger and the needy, the poor and the widow, the people who have served us, our nation, with pride, with their whole hearts and with honor. We, the People are being called by the echos of the Prophets, by the words of our Holy Books, to “hear deeply” the call of our inner life, the call of our souls to STAND THE FUCK UP and preserve and protect the dignity of all people, recognize the infinite worth of every soul, the equality of everyone in God’s “eyes”, and revel in the uniqueness of everyone else because we are not in need of sameness, that is not the design of the world-our uniqueness brings about creativity, problem-solving and a cacophony of sounds, deeds and wonders which elevates the awe we can experience each day. We, the People can do all this only when we “hear deeply” the call of higher consciousness and commit to following this call because not doing so costs us our souls, our dignity, our worth, our uniqueness!

We, the People are being called out by the quote above to feel the pain of those who are being bullied by Trump, Musk, et al. We, the People are being asked to “feel fiercely” the attack on our freedoms, guaranteed by the Constitution which the Republican majorities, Trump, Vance, the Cabinet Secretaries all swore on a BIBLE to “protect and defend”! We, the People are being haunted by our ancestors the prophets to “feel fiercely” the pain, the destruction, the utter chaos they experienced with the destruction of the Temple, the fall of Jerusalem, the exile into Babylonia and then the Roman’s devastation of Judea once again and the wandering of the Jews ever since. When We, the People “feel fiercely” “God’s concern for right and wrong” and we will stand up to the liars in the Churches, Temples, Mosques and stand for truth and freedom, may that day come soon!

As one who “feels fiercely” and has “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” I understand the quote above in my kishkas, in my guts. I do not always do what is right, I am, however, sensitive to it. My errors, my lapses cause me great spiritual pain and I do my T’Shuvah as soon as I realize the “error of my ways” which is sometimes slower than others realize them. I am scared for our future as more and more people leave religious traditions because they are tired of the lies and bullshit. I am sad that institutions are still enabling wrong-doing for ‘the right reasons’. I believe we need a revolution of spirit, a rebellion led by faith and I am trying to be a good soldier with these blogs. Please join the army of “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” today. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Callous to your Callousness, unaware of your insensitivity? OY VEY!! Year 4 Day 40

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 40

“Tranquility is unknown  to the soul of a prophet. The miseries of the world give him no rest. While others are callous, and even callous to their callousness and unaware of their insensitivity, the prophets remain examples of super impatience with evil, distracted by neither might nor applause, by neither success nor beauty.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

Continuing to delve into the sentences above, Rabbi Heschel’s assertions of both “callous and even callous to their callousness” as well as being “unaware of their insensitivity” describes the way human beings act now as well as in the ‘time’ of the prophets. While we try to contextualize and put things in ‘order’, one of the errors of philosophers, Rabbis, historians, etc is, I believe, to relegate the prophets to a ‘time’. The time of the prophets is NOW, both in our time and in every generation, as we said before, it is for us, the descendants of the prophets, of the Buddha, (Christianity and Islam both believe in the prophets), to live their words and deeds, to follow the paths laid out by them and to reconnect with the source of life, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the creative energy that fuels the physical world and our spiritual lives.

What is it that allows us to begin to be “callous”, to be “unaware of our sensitivity”? I believe the source is our upbringing, it is a lack of learning about the prophets, it is an education system that teaches dogma and loyalty to the particular dogma, tribal loyalty, and as the Bible says: “the inclination of the heart(mind) of human is evil from its youth”(Gen. 8:21). We learn how to be “callous, and even callous to our callousness” as we see from the examples of Musk, Trump, Miller, et al. We learn how to ignore and be “unaware of their insensitivity” from the examples of the autocrats, the life of Korach, the ways of the 10 spies and their causing calamity amongst the people Israel, the way of the Roman Emperors, ad nauseam. We also are watching a new generation learn/re-learn how to be oblivious and “unaware” from the MAGA crowd who applaud the dictator, who relish the ‘beat the libs’ bullshit being spread. I watch in horror as Jews rejoice at every mean, indecent, and ugly action being taken. Is our memory so short or so damaged that we fail to realize that NO ONE fares well in an autocracy, in a dictatorship, except the ‘chosen few’?? It has never been “good for the Jews” to live under one, even when it was a Jewish one! We know this because we have the record of the prophets, we have the stories of King Saul and King David and their self-destructive ways once they decided they were King and answered to no One. David’s fall from grace happened when he stopped consulting God and listened to his own mind and desires. We all know how that turned out for Uriah-death!

We, the People have the opportunity to change, to return to an awareness of the awe that the world is filled with. A return to a way of being that puts decency, kindness, truth, justice, mercy, etc at the forefront of our living. We, the People are being reminded that we have examples to follow that help us live into our humanity more and more each day. We have an inheritance that tells us that the slightest evil is more than enough to get us into action to combat it, to stop it, to change what we are doing.

Herein lies the problem, though, people are afraid to do the “next right thing” because it might put them in harm’s way. A few days ago there was an OP-ED in the NY Times by Jessica Grose titled: “Loss of trust in the Church” which describes what we already know-Religious Institutions don’t solve problematic clergy, they just move them around. We have become a risk adverse and a litigious society which results in even Religious Institutions CYAing, rather than stand for truth, justice, mercy. We are witnessing exactly what the prophets witnessed, because human nature is so stubborn that “give it an inch and it takes a mile”. Trump, Musk, Putin, Bibi, et al are not anomalies- they are products of historical abusers, they are what happens when we are squander the inheritance of the prophets, when we are disloyal to the spiritual principles we are created with, when we grow the evil that we learn in our youth and become “callous, even callous to our callousness” which describes our current state of affairs brilliantly!

We, the People are being called to RISE UP, to no longer tolerate even the slightest evil, to no longer say “this is the way of the world”, and other such poppycock! While many see people like Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, Rev Martin Luther King as ‘rabble-rousers’ they were exorcising us to live into our prophetic heritage. They and many before and since led/lead us to “The Promised Land” (not into it) by taking the actions and living the principles the Bible, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha have set out for us. We, the People have to re-orient ourselves to fighting evil rather than succumbing to it, standing up to the bullies rather than giving in to them, demanding more from our elected officials rather than letting the special interest groups turn our democracy into an autocracy-be it an autocracy for right-wingers or left-wingers. We have seen the hatred and the strict dogma of the far left as well as the far right and both deny the words and deeds of the prophets. Both ends of the spectrums, religiously and politically, perpetrate evil upon the people they disagree with-“political correctness” hurt many people and denied a wrestling for compromises and common sense, especially on the left. “Party loyalty” has led to the destruction of the Republican Party as we have known it since the time of Lincoln and certainly the Party of Reagan is NO MORE because of ‘populism’ which is authoritarianism by another name. We, the People have to resist these horrors and not “be distracted by might or applause, not be concerned about “success or beauty”. We, the People have to stop caring about “How things look”/Optics and stand for Truth, stand with the prophets and be “super” impatient with evil!

I have been this way all my life and when I succumbed to the joining the “winning side” as I saw the evil around me-I went against everything my father, grandfathers, taught me and the ways they lived. My life in recovery has been to stand up and speak the truth, be the kid who says “the emperor has no clothes” and, regardless of being heard and heeded or scorned and thrown out, I have continued to live this way. I know the rage and “super impatience with evil” of the prophets because I have the same experience daily. I am concerned for our country and I am concerned for communities who’s Rabbi, Priest, etc are endangering the faithful with their addictions, with their lies and with the spiritual rape they are committing or are bound to commit. I speak out and without ‘proof’ the status quo holds and with ‘proof’, it is called “fake news”. I am enraged and I pray more of us are and we stand the fuck up for what is right, for the way of the prophets, right now! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you seeking "tranquility" while contributing to the "miseries of the world"? - Year 4 Day 39

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 39

“Tranquility is unknown  to the soul of a prophet. The miseries of the world give him no rest. While others are callous, and even callous to their callousness and unaware of their insensitivity, the prophets remain examples of super impatience with evil, distracted by neither might nor applause, by neither success nor beauty.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

“Tranquil” is defined “calm, placid, free of disturbance” and comes from the Latin “tranquillus” meaning the same. Once again, I am hearing Rabbi Heschel’s call to action, his reminding us that, as descendants of the prophets, how can we seek ‘nirvana’, the state of ‘ohm’ when the world around us is so miserable and callous? How misunderstand the word “serenity” as “peaceful” when it comes from the Latin meaning clarity? How can we, as descendants of the people whose souls knew no rest, no “tranquility” be witnesses to what passes as ‘good’ in the world and seek to “stay above the fray”, refrain from the marches, the letter writing, the calling of elected officials, etc while the autocrat in the White House and the one in Israel are defiling everything the Bible stands for, the Declaration Of Independence of both America and Israel stand for, and the tenets of Christianity, Islam, all spiritual traditions are based on? Yet, we do. This blog is not for the people who have drank the Kool-Aid, who are willing to follow the latest incarnation of Jim Jones and Jonestown to their ruin and death. This blog is for people who want to learn, who’s souls do not know “tranquility” no matter how hard they try to meditate, pray, study, absent themselves from the world, no matter how insensitive they try to be towards the people suffering directly. If you know people like this, please share my blog with them.

These first two sentences above give us great insight into what it means to be human, what it means to be people of faith, what it means to surrender to God’s Will. The houses of worship which promise ‘inner peace’, the spiritual disciplines that guarantee ‘serenity’, are full of it. To be spiritually connected and have ‘inner peace’ or ‘serenity’ while the world is burning, while the miseries of the world are on full display is impossible! Yes, one can have strength and clear vision of what is happening and how one can contribute to fostering change, much as Rabbi Heschel did. One can find “comfort” in knowing that we are following the call and demand of God, however the idea that ‘be cool man’, ‘what’s the big deal’ etc should ever be spoken from the lips of a human being while the “miseries of the world” are on full display is the ultimate in blasphemy. Yet, it is being preached from the pulpits, from the political podiums, from the White House and from the Knesset and tens of millions of people are buying this bullshit, calling the wannabe (or maybe not so wannabe) dictators “the messiah”, “the anointed one”, “our savior” etc. How can one be tranquil when one is being bombarded by the lies, the deceptions, the poison of these miseries, how can one’s soul be “calm, free of disturbance” when the world is vibrating from the callousness and insensitivity of humankind?

While I find it easy to point out the unspiritual political mess and the unspiritual immorality of the autocrats and their adherents, I believe We, the People have to look inside of ourselves and see how we are also part of the miseries of the world. Seeing the ways we try to act like our ‘shit don’t stink’, that we are ‘on the right side’ of an issue, that ‘we give to charities, we serve on boards while we are being treacherous in our business dealings because it is ‘just business’. We, the People are being called by the words above to give up our need to be tranquil, our search for “tranquility” because we are ‘doing the right thing’ in the wrong ways and for the wrong reasons. We, the People are being confronted with a mirror to see what “miseries” we are causing, how we are adding to the woes of the world, how our ‘doing good’ is to make up for our ‘doing bad’ in other areas as if life is a balance sheet.

One good deed doesn’t cancel out one bad deed, life is not a transactional experience-it is a covenantal experience, which makes ignoring the “miseries” that We, the People cause in our daily living tragic and indefensible. No wonder we seek respite in our seeking of “tranquility”, no wonder we misunderstand Shabbat as “a day of rest” from the everyday activities and we seek ways to deflect ourselves from the ‘work’ of Shabbat-reviewing our week, being connected to God, to people with whom we have pledged covenantal love, transparency, truth, mercy, gratitude, and acceptance. Rather than live into Shabbat ‘work’ we find new ways to make ourselves feel good by ignoring the need to do T’Shuvah prior to Shabbat so we can clean up our messes prior to the ‘holy work’ of Shabbat, new ways to defend our actions to ourselves so we don’t experience the pain of adding to the “miseries of the world” and experience what we mistakenly call the ‘shame’ of our guilt. The “tranquility” we seek is always elusive precisely because of our inability to live a covenantal life-to live a life that is guided by the principles of morality and decency laid out in the Bible, to live into and up to our potential for goodness and for redeeming the captive, welcoming the stranger, caring for the poor and the needy in material matters as well as spiritual matters. We, the People are given stories of our ancestors who wrestled with these principles and values, who often fell short of fulfilling them, no matter what the Rabbis, the Priests, etc claim. All the heroes in the Bible are heroes not because they achieved ‘nirvana’ or “tranquility”, but because they kept moving forward after they screwed up, they were held accountable and accepted the consequences of their actions, sometimes begrudgingly. Their stories are our stories and We, the People are being reminded that our search for “tranquility”, for ‘peace and calm’ is a lame excuse for not doing our own inner work and outer work to lessen the “miseries of the world” and not keep adding to them as if they are an interest bearing account.

I am not a “tranquil soul”, I am not at ‘peace’ nor rest, Shabbat is a day for me to see what is, renew my commitment to God’s Will, leave a little bit of my bullshit in the past week, and look ahead to this week. I am enraged at what is happening here in America and in Israel, I am aghast at how many people accept the additional miseries these leaders have put upon us and people around the globe. I know  my hands are not clean either. I have added to the “miseries” of the world in a myriad of ways and I have helped heal the “miseries” of individuals as well. I keep moving it forward and I pray you do also. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Responding to the Demands and Challenges of the Prophets - Year 4 Day 38

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 38

“The prophets had disdain for those to whom God was comfort and security; to them God was a challenge, an incessant demand. He is compassion, but not a compromise; justice, but not inclemency. Tranquility is unknown to the soul of a prophet.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

Can you hear the thundering, the volcanic eruptions that must be taking place right now? Can you hear the rebukes that are resounding throughout the universe, throughout the spiritual world? Can you feel the tectonic shift in the ground from the disdain of the prophets because of the ways the ‘people of the cloth, the people of the book’ are saying “god’s will” to any and all things that are happening, that ‘people of the cloth, people of the book’ are telling the afflicted to find comfort in knowing that “god will make it right in the next world”? If not - you must be part of the people causing the earthquakes in the spiritual universe, you must be going along with the liars and idolators and take “comfort” in God, believe that God is your “security” blanket. Ignoring the call of God, the true Will of God, the ways of God so you can vilify people like Bishop Budde for quoting Christ and Scripture, people like Rabbi Heschel for living Torah and living a life of prophecy, people like Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy Sr. who were willing to die for their adherence to God’s will and to make people uncomfortable, challenge their “security”.

The experience of today, where people in their Churches and Temples, Mosques and Synagogues use God to comfort them in their blasphemy is outrageous and it is happening every day, every service, with every political, business, personal decision made by these ‘god-fearing folk’ like Mike Johnson, Ben-G’Vir, Donald Trump, etc. What is worse, the ‘people of faith’ in our Congress and in governments across the globe are going along with these idolators, with these blasphemers so they are ‘safe’-the exact opposite of the ways of the prophets, the exact same as the people who were destroyed in Ancient Israel, exactly the same behaviors as when both Temples were destroyed! Yet these ‘fine men and women of faith, these christian nationalists, these jewish experts’ believe they are exempt and that God will comfort them and keep them safe-sounds like those ‘good christians’ in Germany in the 1930’s-40’s.

God is a constant “challenge” to and for us. There is a constant demand that rings loud and clear in the spiritual world, in our souls, that incessantly asks us to be one grain of sand better today than yesterday. This “challenge” is to not compromise our values and have compassion for ourselves and for another(s) when we fall shore. Not compromising our values means we do not sell our souls to the highest bidder, we do not vote against what we know is right because of fear of retribution. It means that being ‘politically correct’ is not an excuse for “standing idly by the blood of our brothers and sisters”. The challenges all boil down to the same question, I believe: what is the next right thing for me to do in this situation. Knowing that the right thing in this moment will change in the next, that my best in this moment is different than my best in any given moment yesterday. Having compassion for our foibles is not the same as compromising our values and ethics because we are unable to fully live them. It is not the same as compromising what we know to be true to belong to the power club who believe in “alternative facts”! We are witnessing the rich and powerful compromise values and ethics, seek comfort in the pews of all faiths for their willful ignorance of God’s will and substituting the ‘leader’s’ will and calling it ‘god’s’! Rather than have compassion for their fears and seek to do the next right thing even though we are in fear, these ‘titans of tech and industry’ have groveled their way into HELL ON EARTH because they ignore the “challenge”, the “incessant demand” of God.

Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word “inclemency” is very interesting to me; this a word usually associated with the weather and he is using it in conjunction with justice?? Clemency is about forgiveness, reducing the sentence of a convicted person, so one could understand the use of “inclemency” as the opposite of this way of being. It also means “harshness, merciless” which speaks volumes of how the prophets experience God. God’s Justice is tempered with mercy and righteousness, never harsh or merciless, never without the possibly of being pardoned and forgiven-hence the reason T’Shuvah was put into the world before the world was created. Since we are supposed to do T’Shuvah one day before we die and we don’t know the day of our death, we do it every day-not as confession, although this is a part of it; not as being forgiven, although this is usually given; rather as a tool for repairing our brokenness, seeing how much we matter, how powerful we are because we have the power to help and to harm, to lift up and to push down another human being.

We, the People are being called today and every day to experience and respond to the “challenges” of God, to meet the “incessant demands” that are put upon us daily. We, the People have to stop seeking comfort from the thundering of the prophets, we have to respond by seeing how we are living in the ways they tell us to and how we are not-repairing the damage we have done through our compromises and injustice we commit in the name of ‘god’, to shield ourselves from the bullies. We, the People are in desperate need of discerning the truth from the onslaught of lies and deceptions the autocrats, the ‘christian nationalists’, the project 2025 people are slinging like cow shit!  We, the People are being called to STAND UP for what is right and good, to STAND AGAINST the societal norms and mental clichés that are mendacious. We, the People are capable to do this because we are created in “the Image of God” and are God’s representatives, messengers, reminders.

God was never comfort for me, God has always been an experience of trembling awe-usually because I was afraid of not measuring up to who I truly am. As I kid, a young adult, even today-I approach God as guide, as the demander, and I keep seeing that I fall short of who I can fully be, by design! God doesn’t challenge me to be perfect-just a little better each day, God doesn’t demand that I am just all the time, just that I don’t use my connection to God as an excuse or a bastardization to make what is wrong, right. The prophets stay with me and their arms  are raised in a gesture that says: NU, what good have you done today? I am grateful that each day I am in the plus column of more good than not good. I hear the thundering, I feel the shift of the tectonic plates and I respond in the best way I can in this moment. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Learning the Prophet as a "form of living" to intersect at "a crossing point of God and man. Year 4 Day 37

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 37

“Prophecy is the voice God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophets’ words.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

Why are we not more informed about the prophets? Why does Jewish education stress either the Halacha (law) or “Tikkun Olam”(repair of the world), what has happened that so many Jews have left the Synagogue and sought out Yoga, Buddhism, etc? I believe because when Halacha alone is stressed, when ‘repairing the world’ is pushed, most people are confused about themselves and their own inner life. The words of the prophets speak to the wrestling in our inner lives between our desire to ‘get ahead’, to not be “the plundered poor”, and to climb out of our own “silent agony”. Rather than be stuck in the middle, rather than ignore the problems of the inner life which then influence and create more problems in our outer living, the words of the prophets give us a path forward, they give us “a crossing point of God” and us. This gift of the prophets is little used because of the terrible education we receive. We, the People have to demand of our Rabbis and Ministers, our Educators and Nuns to be taught the words of the prophets and delve into their meaning in the world writ large and in the inner world of each one of us!

What is “the silent agony” Rabbi Heschel is speaking of? I believe it is the recognition of the cruelty and callousness of the world, of societal norms, it is the sudden awareness of our participation in same and, to us, our inability to stop it. “The silent agony” is our powerlessness over evil and our refusal to deal with the evils within us and the ones we see happening before our eyes. “The silent agony” is also, I believe, the realization of betrayal by the very people who promised to ‘clean the swamp’ and are, instead, putting more crocodiles and alligators in it for their own benefit. “The silent agony” is seeing what the prophets saw in the Temple and the marketplace, in the Royal Palace and in the homes of the people-prostitution! The prophets were enraged, they were aghast, they were crazed that people could bastardize The Word, that people could whore themselves for money and prestige, and they were out of control over the people’s putting up with this bullshit and even joining in! Yet, we see the same thing being reflected over and over again throughout history and we do nothing until it gets so bad that war breaks out or civil rebellion happens. How sad is this? Again, what is the reason the prophets are not studied, emulated and followed more in our Jewish Education?

The reason, maybe, is the Rabbis are afraid of being seen as not living in the prophetic tradition. Yet, the voice of the prophets is “the voice God has lent” to them so the Rabbis, the Priests, the Kings and Queens, the Rich and Powerful, the people themselves could hear “the silent agony” of God over what has happened to God’s people! The Rabbis, educators, Ministers, Priests have forgotten that “prophecy” “is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man”, and because they don’t accept this “form of living”, teaching it may be too scary, too painful a mirror for them to see their own silent acquiescence of the evils, the idolatry, the whoring being done by those in power and by themselves. The time has come for us to regain the passion of the prophets, to shout their words and ours-all given to us by higher consciousness/God-, and to stand firm in our condemnation of the dehumanizing of those in power. Be it DJT, BN, VP, JDV, et al -no one has the right to deny our humanity, no one has the right to “plunder the poor”, no one has the right to “profaned riches”, no one has the right to deny freedom to their neighbor, no one has the right to “stand idly by the blood of one’s neighbor”… We know this because the Bible tells us so, because we do not want to have any of these horrors happen to us, and because we know “God is raging in the prophets’ words” and we have to respond differently than we have before.

We, the People have to make a decision to turn our living around, to begin living in the ways the prophets tell us to, to end our: incessant forays into idolatry; into whoring ourselves (as Hosea points out); our perversion of Justice and mercy; our callousness and cruelty towards one another; our bowing down at the altars of the rich and famous; our refusal to immerse ourselves in prophetic living in order to end these vicious cycles of hate, evil, perversion of holy texts, profaning Moses’, Christ’s, Mohammed’s, Buddha’s teachings and thoughts. We, the People are being called upon, very loudly in today’s world, to STAND UP for God, for decency. We are being given the power to rage in God’s name, being God’s voice as the prophets were in their time. We, the People are being called to remind people that “prophecy” did not end-no matter what the Rabbis say- because there have been prophets throughout the millennia in all faiths, in our times Rev. King spoke in the way, name, rage, passion of the prophets, as did Rabbi Heschel, as did many other Rabbis, Ministers and Priests. Yet, because We, the People did not ensure that everyone learned how to hear the prophets’ words and ways correctly, because We, the People did not ensure that the color of one’s skin, the faith one follows is not important and the character of human beings is what we are measured by. When we ensure that “Justice rolls down like water and Righteousness a mighty stream”(Amos 5:24), when we make happen the words of Isaiah(2:4): “men shall learn war no more”; then we will be able to live with a more peaceful inner life, then we will be able to come “face to face” with God and have no fear, just trembling awe. We, the People are being called once again and We, the People have the power to say Hineni-Here I am; will you?

There is no way to ignore the truth of the words of Rabbi Heschel and I am bewildered when people are turned off by the ways and words of the prophets, when they want to deny people their prophetic voices and deride people who do believe “it is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man” and act accordingly in ‘polite society’. This is the problem I have encountered for my entire life-when we should get outraged, when the Bible tells us to be uncompromising in our pursuit of justice and righteousness, mercy and kindness, people laughed at me, told me I was idealistic, told me I didn’t know how the world worked so ‘I showed them’ I chose alcoholism and criminality as my ‘get back’. Now I choose the way of the prophets, I am still not accepted, I am still not welcomed so much in ‘polite society’ and I am welcomed in my home, in my soul, and I live with God, with imperfections, with passion, with purpose and with love. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark