Living Rabbi heschel’s wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 110

“The power to make distinctions is a primary operation of intelligence. We distinguish between white and black, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, gain and loss, good and evil, right and wrong. The fate of mankind depends upon the realization that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, is superior to all other distinctions. As long as such realization is lacking, pleasantness in alliance with evil will be preferred to unpleasantness in alliance with good. To teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message.”(God in Search of Man pg.372)

We have come to worship our intellects, I believe, precisely because of this “primary operation”, yet we seem to be like surgeons without training, spiritual leaders without a sense of a power greater than themselves/higher consciousness, CPA’s who can’t read a balance sheet, musicians who don’t know how to play their instruments, etc. We worship intellect and we do not always make the distinctions Rabbi Heschel is talking about. We may do the prayers of Havdalah, the ending of the Sabbath in the Jewish Tradition, with the prayer of gratitude for distinctions, yet we ourselves seem incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction, lawful from lawless, what we are called to do and what we want to do. We seem to be a society, that knows how to make distinctions and yet, we only make the ones we want to serve our self, and we will engage in mendacity, self-deception to defend our inappropriate choices.

This is, as Rabbi Heschel suggests with the last sentence above, an age-old problem. We are witnesses to what Rabbi Heschel is warning us against. He wrote in the backdrop of the Shoah, of WWII, what we believed then as “man’s greatest inhumanity towards man”. We get to immerse ourselves in his wisdom today in the backdrop of anti-semitism rising again, Hitler being praised, racism, police brutality that goes beyond color lines, Russia invading Ukraine, Middle East unrest, ‘alternative facts’, etc. We have watched our country fade from being a shining city on the hill to a mere facade and empty shell of democracy with politics being about combat nor governing. We have watched one group of people, both lawmakers and the citizens who elect them,  say they are for law and order and they will not support the Capital Police, they will not hold the leaders of Jan. 6th responsible. They extol people who support White Supremacists, Anti-Semites, Killers of innocent Journalists, business people who only care about the bottom line while cheating the people that work for them. More tax cuts and more safety net cuts Kevin McCarthy brags about, while the people of his district will suffer from a government shut-down, from a loss in Social Security and Medicare.

We seem to be incapable of staying the course of making the distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong, when it serves our selfish needs. We seem to be able to distinguish between Jew and non-Jew, hence anti-semitism is on the rise, we seem to be able to distinguish between black and white, hence bi-racial couples and children are vilified and driving/walking while black is a crime punishable by death by cops! We seem to be losing the capacity to distinguish between pleasant and unpleasant because we have upended their definitions, we are in a time of spiritual crisis, a crisis of the soul which Maimonides, the famous Middle Ages philosopher and Rabbi speaks about in his book, The Eight Chapters.

The main issue for us today is that we are too blind, too scared, too selfish, too boorish to realize our blindness, our incapacity to make the proper distinctions. We are being aided in our blindness and incapacity by the very Clergy who are supposed to represent, teach and live “the Biblical message”! People are leaving the Churches and the Synagogues because their souls are not being fed with truth, rather with pap, with hearing what they want to hear and it being delivered tepidly. Or the messages of what is right is being so bastardized by the people in the Pulpits that the only people who go are those ‘true believers’ who want to hear validation of them making the wrong distinctions, validation of their “eye disease” of prejudice, etc.

In recovery, we learn to make the proper distinctions from the moment we enter this life-saving process. We begin with the first step: we begin to distinguish what we are powerless over and what we can control. We learn that controlling another person is not within our purview and being able to control our choices is. We learn that while we could have one drink, one bite, one snort, one bet, one quickie, we will not be able to NOT have the second, third, etc. We distinguish between what is our selfish will, our messages of lies and deceptions that emanate in our minds and from the minds of another, of society and what is truth from within and from our Higher Power/Higher Consciousness.

One of the great distinctions I have been aware of in my recovery is to see the Divine Image in every person, whether they show it to me, whether they live it, even when the hide it, I see it and try to speak to it, try to embrace every person’s divinity and I fall short. I am grateful for this sight, I also do not hide my Divine Image from anyone so that I am never alone, I am never lonely. Living through my Divine Image makes me closer to being One with God each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel’s Wisdom - A daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 109

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

This is the last day I will spend on this teaching of Rabbi Heschel’s. It has profoundly changed my being and my way of living. While I knew much of what Rabbi Heschel is saying, I didn’t really know it. This is the wonder of Rabbi Heschel for me, he gives us a doorway, a window, an insight into how religion can help us live better, how hearing God’s call, while challenging, is not impossible. Yet, he also calls religious people out for the ways they have cheapened, bastardized, diluted and distorted the wonder, beauty, awe, live giving and enhancing necessities religion/spirituality give us.

10) Don’t hate your brother in your heart, take no vengeance against the children of your people. What a strange statement at first blush and it tells us much about sibling rivalry. Since Cain and Abel brothers have hated one another in their hearts which I understand as a basic hatred that my brother/sister are going to get more than me, be better liked than me, etc. This competition and comparison that has been going on forever is destructive to family life, it is destructive to communal life and it is destructive for our inner life. Our need to be #1, our need to be ‘the best’, causes a rivalry that the Bible calls hatred! We are told not to hate our brothers in our heart precisely because we were, we do, we will if/when we think we are not getting ‘our fair share’ of attention, love, money, etc from our parents, from our extended family. “My son, the Doctor” is something that Jewish Comedians made/make jokes about, yet it comes from a very real pain of anything less didn’t measure up. “Why can’t you be more like your brother” was/is a popular refrain as well. This commandment calls us to see one another for who we are, accept each other for our strengths and weaknesses, and work together to make family, community and one another one grain of sand better each day.

The second phrase reminds me of when this started, back with Noah. When he cursed Canaan for his getting drunk and Ham’s uncovering/making fun of him, this began the vengeance against the children of your people. It continued with Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, on to Esau’s rage against Jacob. It has continued to this day; the Arabs and Jews are cousins, we share the same father, Abraham and his sons are the different branches of his family-Jews and Arabs. Isn’t it time for us to put down our swords, stop being vengeful and stop hating our brothers/cousins in our hearts. I believe once we see each other as kin under the skin, acknowledge our shared lineage and accept one another as worthy human beings, we will find a solution to the current conflict-that was stoked by the British to keep control of Palestine for themselves!

The last commandment is: “You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself, I am God”. The addition of “I am God” gives us an idea of how important a demand this is. While this is used in other verses of the Holiness Code, I mention it here to emphasize how important love between one another is to God. We are not told to love our siblings, to love our parents, only to love God and our neighbor! I believe the call here is to remember that each and every neighbor is a representative of God, reminds us of God’s presence, is a partner with us in our endeavors as we are in theirs, etc. We are also being told to love ourselves, that living these earlier demands, living the 10 Sayings, will bring us to love ourselves as we love our neighbors, love our selves as God loves us, and then we will create space for love, kindness, rebuke, charity, kindness, justice, mercy, truth. This is the goal of these demands, not to serve some power hungry human being, not to serve some false idol, but to create a world that honors and relishes God as our neighbor, that honors and loves the Divine Image of one another so we can each be better at being human.

In recovery, as in my living these past 35+ years, this is what we strive to fulfill; a world of love, justice, mercy, kindness, truth. It is a world that honors the divine image of another and see’s our own reflected in the eyes of one another. We welcome the stranger in recovery, we learn from one another, we truly practice love for our neighbor-one of the phrases we use in recovery: “Let us love you until you can love yourself” is our way of fulfilling the ultimate demand of the holiness code. It is our way to acknowledge the importance of every human being and the spiritual awakening that results from opening our hearts, our arms, our minds to care for “the alcoholic who still suffers”.

I have more love for my neighbors than I might show, I have no vengeance for my people, which is God’s people, I have no hatred for my siblings only love. I have seen how much I have fulfilled these demands of God, I have witnessed how many people fulfill these demands all the time, every day. I am aware of when I have fallen short and am deeply remorseful and apologize to the people I have harmed by not loving them, I also know that not loving another human being is a sign that I am not loving my self also. I commit to loving you and me more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel’s Wisdom - A Daily Path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 108

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

Both religion and every spiritual discipline demand ways of being from us and, while many want to rebel against these demands, these demands are actually the pathways to answers to the questions that haunt us all: “why am I here”, “who am I”, “how do I feed my desperate need for connection”, “what is God saying to me” are some of the most common questions we wrestle with. I believe the holiness code has within it so many of these demands that help us find our unique answers to these questions and so many more. Continuing with the demands of the Bible and my explanations of them:

9) You will not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor, you shall rebuke him/her and not put missing the mark upon him. While these two phrases do not follow one another in The Bible, I am putting them together for our purpose. In their own ways, they speak to the demands of living in communal spaces, a response to our selfishness and self-seeking. We are witnessing the exact opposite of the first phrase in our world today. The Police killings of Black men simply because they are black with no real change in policing techniques, with still not holding most of the offenders responsible and shielding them from lawsuits is “standing idly by the blood of your neighbor”. Applauding the hate speech and the anti-Semitic tropes on the different social media platforms and at rallies is “standing idly by the blood of your neighbor”. Remember the phrase ends with neighbor which means anyone who lives in the same neighborhood, city, county, state, c country is considered, in Biblical terms, one’s neighbor. We are witnesses and, for some, participants in watching the demise of someone else with apathy, with joy, with schadenfreude. We want to take down the powerful, we want to take down our ‘enemies’ and we see so many others as more powerful than we, we see enemies behind every door and through every window. We are standing idly when we do not vote in our elections, we are standing idly by when we make ‘good guys and bad guys’, when we allow the cancer and eye disease of prejudice to blind us to the humanity of those ‘bad guys’. We watched, hopefully in horror, as people seeking refuge were treated like animals, their children separated from them only to cause pain and suffering, and we did not hold the perpetrators responsible, instead many of them got re-elected. The Republicans who mocked Nancy Pelosi and her husband after a man broke into her house and almost killed Paul Pelosi with a hammer stood idly by the blood of their neighbor! We see this all the time, we see people who witness crimes who don’t want to get involved. We must recall Martin Neimoller, a Lutheran Minister who wrote a poem that captures this demand so well: First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. We have witnessed this over and over again and we still do not speak out, we still do not stand up, stand with our neighbors who are being treated explicitly or implicitly with bias, with prejudice, with hatred.

We have to stand up, we have to stand by, we have to risk the wrath of those in power for the sake of our neighbor and for the sake of our soul. This demand is not just about helping those in need, it is about helping our self be more human. It is to remind us of our dignity, our value, our internal need to connect and care for another human being. It is a demand that makes us more whole internally, spiritually and emotionally. Not standing idly by the blood of our neighbor is not about vengeance, it is about giving voice and power to overcome our own fears of persecution, our own fears of being harmed and to rise above our fears and worries to answer the demand of religion/spirituality, the demand of God, and the demand of our souls. We are not just being ‘do-gooders’, we are satisfying a deep need inside of us that most of us have tried to starve out of existence and never do.

In recovery, we say the only requirement is a desire to stop__. We welcome the drunk, the sinner, the ne’er do well, etc. We will not let anything come in the way of our helping another alcoholic, addict, in any and all forms. We are dedicated to carrying a message to alcoholics who still suffer so they can find and follow the demands of their spirit, the demands of their higher power.

I remember being turned away from the Temple I was Bar Mitzvah and who’s clergy had officiated at my father’s funeral and my brother’s wedding on Yom Kippur because I didn’t have a ticket. I responded to the institution that stood idly by the blood of their neighbor by making sure that no one was denied entry to Beit T’Shuvah for a lack of funds. Because we responded to God’s Voice,  we were able to help people who had no where else to turn. We never stood idly by the blood of our neighbor. I know there were times when I did stand idly by and I am sorry for those errors. I also know I did not stand idly by for most of these past 35 years. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 107

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

God calls to us, according to Jewish Wisdom, each and every day. God cries that we are in exile. God wants a relationship with each of us, our souls cry as well to be heard, to be followed, yet we continue to run the other way. We say we are confused, we believe we are following God’s Will when we are distorting and diluting God’s call and the call of our souls. Here are more ways to hear, listen, understand; to live the Shema Yisrael, daily.

7) Do not curse the deaf, do not put a stumbling block before the blind. We go against this command all the time. Society, for the millennia, has taken advantage of people, has used our vulnerabilities against us. We use double speak and false flags, alternative facts and spin to confuse one another. We speak in ways that are so easy to misunderstand in order to ‘win’. We refuse to hear the call of our souls, we refuse to discern truth from fiction, we are proper and polite rather than real and messy. We believe Caveat Emptor is the way to go rather than disclosing everything to someone else. We hide the real us so we can get along, so we can overpower, so we can be ‘king/queen of the hill’. We live in a world where leaders and us play 3-card monte with the truth. God and our souls are calling for us to live authentically, to be messy and to return to our basic goodness of being.

8) Practice righteous judgement, do not slander. Rather than judge according to our bias’ we have to discern what is true, what is righteous, what is charitable. We have to stop allowing our feelings, our political bias’ from blinding us to truthful and correct. We are so caught up in running with the majority to be liked and be with the ‘in-crowd’, we go along with distortion, with dilution and with evil! We have to stop slandering one another as well as ourselves. We have to heed God’s call to judge ourselves and one another with righteousness, we have to stop slandering ourselves with negative speech and we have to engage with one another in truth. We cannot return to our purpose and/or our authentic self without living these commandments.

These four ways of heeding “the eternal voice of God” that religion provides for us as solutions to the problem of evil, the problem of living well are essential for us to recover and to live. We are in the depths of despair, we are in the throes of a pandemic which are isolating us more and more from one another and from our self, our soul. We are living in an epidemic of addiction and it touches each and every one of us. This epidemic is not just about drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc, it encompasses the lies we are telling our selves, the lies we tell one another, the anger and hatred that is being spewed in the halls of justice, in the halls of government, in the halls of our schools, in the restaurants we go to, the business’ we enter, in the halls of our workplace and within the walls of our houses of worship and within the walls of our homes. We are willing to throw people who have helped us away when they can no longer do something for us, we are willing to throw people away when they speak truth we do not want to hear, we are willing to throw people away for being themselves, messing up and not giving them a path of repentance, repair and new responses. Yet, we never want to be thrown away by God nor by another! We are engaged in violence in our speech, in our actions towards another and towards ourselves. This is why the Holiness Code is so important to our well-being!

In recovery, we put down our swords and our shields, we turn them into pruning hooks and plowshares. We stop making war with another and within our self. We engage in these actions that God calls us to do. We “practice these principles in all our affairs” because we have woken up to truth, we have woken up to what is authentic inside of us and outside of us. We let go of needing to be right and we engage in learning how to leave the past in the past, see today as a gift, and be of service as a way of paying God back for the bounty we enjoy in our new way of living.

I know how difficult living these principles are, I am aware of the times I have fallen short in achieving them and I know that over these past 35 years, I have made spiritual progress. Rabbi Heschel speaks of “taking a leap of action” and these principles give me the opportunity to do this. I slander less, I am more righteous in my judgements, I work hard to uncover my eyes, let go of my prejudices so I do not curse the deaf nor put stumbling blocks before the blind, beginning with myself. The more I take these actions towards me, the more I act in these ways towards everyone else. I repent, I repair and I have new responses to old ideas, old ways. This allows me to be present, relish this day and hear God clearer and improve my spiritual connection with God, with you and with my soul. God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 106

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

Answering “the eternal voice of God”, which is one of the two most important “cravings of the spirit”, is a hidden craving as well. Most of us are not able to put words to this craving and Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above not only puts words to this internal craving, he gives us a path to responding: “the demands of religion”. I am continuing from my blog from yesterday to use the “Holiness” code to show both the “eternal voice of God” and how we can answer by following “the demands of religion”/spirituality.

5) “Do not steal, deal falsely, not lie to one another”. While we are told in the 10 Sayings not to steal, it is repeated here again along with dealing falsely and lying. When we stop looking “for an angle/edge”, when we end our belief of caveat emptor, when we end out incessant need to be false, lie to another, we are able to stop stealing. Dealing falsely and lying to one another are the same as stealing; we are stealing the dignity, the trust, and seeing another as less than we in value and worth. Living in truth is the demand of religion/spirituality and the call of “the eternal voice of God”.

6) “You shall not defraud your neighbor, nor rob him, the wages of your workers shall not remain with you overnight”. Here again, we are being called to be honest in all of our affairs, we are being demanded to be a neighbor, not an adversary. This is another form of stealing that we are being told not to do-cheating our neighbor, being deceptive with the people around us, anyone we come into contact with. When we are stingy, when we refuse to given another person something that they need in order to survive (without putting ourselves in the same position) we are robbing them. When move the boundaries of our land markers, we are robbing our neighbor. When we refuse to help those who are helping people, we are robbing people.

The last phrase, regarding people who work for/with us is (or is supposed to be) the foundation of all labor laws. It is part of this demand, I believe, because to hold the wages of people who work for us is to cheat them, rob from them, treat them as our adversaries rather than as part of our team. Do we really need to hold their wages so we can get another day of interest, see the numbers of our bank accounts go up? Do we really need to hold their money so we can ‘show them who’s boss’? Do we really need to not pay our credit cards and bills when due? When we do this, we are running away from the demands  religion (and spirituality) are the answer!

It is incumbent upon us to reach across the land boundaries to engage with our neighbor, to meet and greet them with smiles and recognize their worth, remember we live in the same neighborhood and we need one another to make our homes, our neighborhoods, more welcoming, more friendly. God dwells not only in our Houses of Worship, God dwells in our homes and neighborhoods. Being a good neighbor, a helpful neighbor is responding to “the eternal voice of God”. When we pay people a living wage, when we make sure our pay periods work for the people we hire, when we treat them as teammates, making sure we honor their work/service, their skills, we are responding to God’s voice, we are living a little more holy with each action.

In recovery, we are constantly seeking to improve our character traits and bring them back into proper measure. We stop being stingy and we don’t become spendthrifts. We let go of resentments and we don’t become doormats. We don’t steal nor deal falsely with anyone and we learn how to discern when someone is attempting to cheat us. We let go of our self-centeredness and experience the freedom that comes from being of service. We continue to clear out the schmutz that blocks our hearing “the eternal voice of God”. We are work hard to respect the dignity, the value, the worth of every individual and we no longer take people for granted, we no longer believe that anyone, even those who work for us, ‘owe us’ and we no longer treat our neighbors nor our workers with disdain. In recovery, we are recovering our holiness, we are recovering our hearing, we are heeding the demands that spirituality/religion are putting on us and experiencing these demands as gifts rather than burdens.

Stealing, defrauding, dealing falsely, not paying bills on time, lying were all part of my actions prior to my recovery, my T’Shuvah, my return to religion/spiritual principles. While I have not been perfect, I have made it a point to give more than I receive, not knowingly steal, defraud, hold someone’s payment, lie to another nor to myself. People may believe I have done these actions, I just did not do them willingly and/or with malice as I did prior to my return. In this writing, I realize my need to believe brought me pain and loss when the people I trusted lied to me, abandoned our friendship/agreement, defrauded me and robbed me of my dignity. The hurt is still here, and it does not prevent me from trusting, it doesn’t make me wary, it makes me aware and is my hearing aid so I know when truth is being spoken and when it isn’t. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 105

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

As I wrote yesterday, the top 2 “cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God” that we are to recall and respond to with “the demands of religion” are: 1) being free and being human; 2) Answering God’s call to do justly, love mercy, walk in God’s Ways. I wrote about the first using the 10 Sayings/Commandments and today I want to delve into the second. What does religion demand of us to do, why does the word demand bring up rebelliousness immediately? When something is demanded, we know the truth of the demand when it is from a power greater than ourselves and we are afraid we won’t get it done right, we want to do what we want, we do not want to open the door to hear the cravings of our souls, hence Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word “rare”. Yet, as we see from all of Rabbi Heschel’s writings, the eternal voice of God calls us to use religion/spirituality to fulfill the demands of God and, in turn, be more human and freer.

What does religion demand of us (no matter how people practice or preach, we are speaking of the original texts)? I find it throughout the Bible and especially in Leviticus, Chapter 19, verses 1-18

1. We are holy! The 2nd verse teaches us, the word “shall” as in “you shall be holy” is in the future/imperfect tense which denotes an action that is begun, just not completed. We are born holy, we never lose our innate holiness, we never kill the divine Image we are created in. By fulfilling the “cravings of our souls” we grow in our holiness and we grow in our humanness.

2. Do not worship idols, don’t make idols for yourselves. Stop finding ways, things, facades, masks, intellects, rationalizations, etc to hide behind and hide from people and God. Become more open and authentic about your strengths, your weaknesses, your fears and your facades. Stop engaging in faux connections and be in true connection with self, with another(s), with God.

3. “When you bring a wholeness offering, do it from your own free will”. This could be one of the most overlooked demands and freedoms. We are called upon to donate when things are good as a sign of gratitude, wholeness, etc. Yet, too many of us have to be asked, cajoled, courted, and need to get our needs met, put strings on our giving, which is in direct violation of the demand to give freely and from one’s soul. We misuse the demand of religion/spirituality/God to make people dance to our  tune rather than give freely and enjoy the bounty God has provided us with and the bounty we are passing on to another(s).

4. “Leave the corners of your field, don’t gather the gleanings of your harvest, don’t glean your vineyard nor gather every grape of your vineyard, your shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am God.” God, through our religious and spiritual disciplines is demanding that we not be pigs! The demand is we give each person their inherent dignity and honor their intrinsic worth. That we stop thinking we are the cause of our successes, that “only I can save you”, “I made it on my own”. We are being called on to remember that everything belongs to God and everything we have we have to tithe as Jacob promised back in Genesis. We have to stop our greediness ,we have to stop our protectiveness of our things. Religion is demanding we realize that our success doesn’t set us apart, it gives us the opportunity to fulfill a need of the stranger and the poor-food, shelter, health, jobs, etc. It also frees us from the “bondage of self” that so many of us fall into and become enslaved by.

I will write more on this tomorrow.

Recovery is a spiritual discipline that is totally in concert with spirituality, with religion, especially when we consider these four demands: Be Holy- we recognize the divine image in each member and we help one another polish our souls and get the tarnish and junk off of our souls, we pry off the barnacles of negativity that surround our spirits and our minds; Don’t worship Idols- acknowledging  our powerlessness over ___, we are surrendering our idol worship to God, we are returning to our source and the source of all/everything; Free-will offering-we pass the basket and people put their money into it without anyone knowing who gives and how much they give, there is no names on the doors, buildings for our free-will donations; leave the corners of the field- we tell people to take from the basket if they need to, we help one another with housing, with jobs, with places to get help, we respect and honor the worth and dignity of every human being without fear nor favor.

I am a witness to the power of these demands, I can testify to their constant challenge, the consistent way they raise my humanness, lift up my spirits, help me answer the demand and call of God. I can also testify to the power of connectedness I experience with family, friends, strangers, etc. as a result of responding to these demands. I can testify to the power of living into these demands and living into the repair when I fall short of the demands. I am seeing the Holiness Code and the 10 Sayings completely new because of Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 103

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

What are the “rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer”? I believe the top 2 are our spirit’s craving to be free, to be human, and to respond to the God’s call/demand to “do justly, love mercy and walk in the ways of God”. Freedom is not to be confused with liberty, doing what we want when we feel like it; freedom is our ability to make free-will moral choices, as I understand the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Twerski, z”l, Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, etc. It is the fundamental craving and cry of our spirits as we hear from the Israelites, the slaves who were in Egypt. When the Israelites groan upon a new Pharaoh making their slave labors even harsher, this is the cry of their spirits yearning to be free. They are unable to make free-will moral choices because they were so burdened by their tasks, beaten so often by their taskmasters, their spirits were so broken they became hopeless. This was the point where they almost gave in totally to their despair and the moment God sent Moses to redeem them. Religion/spirituality give us pathways to being and staying free. Religion lays out the blueprint for freedom in the 10 Sayings/commandments, which’s the Kotzker Rebbe teaches we have to make and take personally. Here is my way of making them personal and satisfying the cravings of my soul. 1)accepting that God is God and we are not; 2) not making false images of God and/or my self, living my authentic life; 3) not taking my name nor God’s name in vain; 4) taking time to connect with my soul each day; 5) honoring the wisdom of my ancestors and my inner wisdom; 6) not murdering my soul nor any other soul; 7) not prostituting my self, not whoring after ‘other gods’, not taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of another human being; 8) not stealing from my self, not stealing from another; 9) not lying about my self, not lying to my self, not lying about another self, accepting me and you for who we truly are; 10) Wanting the life I have, the life I am created to live, adding to my corner of the world in my own unique way, no longer comparing my self to another self, being “happy with my portion”.

These paths come from religion and spiritual disciplines that we get to live each and every day-if we so choose. These paths will always satisfy the “cravings of the spirit” and respond to “the eternal voice of God” that we wrestle with each and every day. None of us will be perfect in them, our heroes in the Bible were less than perfect as we see from the stories. Yet each of them, in their own way, did their best to satisfy the “cravings of the spirit” more often than the cravings of their ego, the call of their lower/negative/selfish self. Again, these pathways will not eliminate the cravings of our selfish, egotistical selves, they will give us the strength, the discipline, the habit of rising above them. These pathways lead us to the freedom of knowing our deepest truths, speaking of them when we are alone and with another human being(s), and living them a little more each day.

Without religion/spirituality being lived out according to our texts rather than through the lies and mendacity of some clergy and practitioners, we will always fall back into the negativity/evil that disguises itself as good. We will buy into the false stories of “those people are out to get us”, “they are trying to take our wives, children, money, etc”, “they are heathens, they don’t have the same rights as we have”, and other such bs that is spread of some ‘god-fearing’ people. Doing justly is a demand of God that is universal, not just for ‘our people’, it is a demand that “there is one law for the stranger and citizen alike” as the Bible teaches us. Doing justly means each case has to be decided on its own merits and, as we learn in Deuteronomy, we are called to mete out charitable justice, righteous justice, not strict letter of the law justice, rather justice that satisfies the combination of the letter and the spirit of the law.

In recovery, we use the 12-Steps to find “freedom from the bondage of self” and to “act our way into right thinking”. We seek freedom from the first moment we surrender to the truth that we need to recover, we continue to seek more freedom as we “peel the layers of the onion” that has been starving our spirits. We recognize that we are not the end-all/be-all and there is a “power greater than ourselves” which “we came to believe could restore us to sanity”. In recovery, we readily admit that we acted in insane ways prior to being awakened by God and/or God’s angels that are always around us.

I am not perfect in the living the 10 Sayings as I outlined them above. I get better each day, I make amends for the errors I make, I continue to lean into these pathways so I can respond to “the eternal voice of God” and satisfy “the cravings of the spirit”. I work hard each day to take one more step into a deeper freedom than I have experienced already and I know if I am not moving deeper into freedom than I am closer to being enslaved again by my own negative/evil impulses. My journey into freedom has taught me how to transform the negative/evil impulse energy to enhance my desire to do good. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 103

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

The more often I immerse myself Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, the more I turn it over and over as we are taught to do, the more my eyes get opened, the more my soul gets infused with spirit and strength. Rabbi Heschel not only is calling on us to “Choose Life, as Moses exhorts us in Deuteronomy, he is teaching us that the cravings of our spirit, however rare we may be aware of them are part of being human! He is demanding we listen to and for “ the eternal voice of God” and use religion and/or some spiritual discipline to respond to these cravings and to the Voice.

There are many stories about the transcendent nature of God and Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the very immanent experience of God. This is the experience the Israelites spoke about after they crossed the Red Sea, at Mount Sinai, the experience people had of Jesus preaching to and caring for the needy, the stranger, the poor, the outcasts, that Muslims had listening to Mohammed prophecies. It is the experience of the Buddha, of being in the presence of the Dalai Lama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Rabbi Heschel and so many others. God’s voice has never left this world, God calls to us each and every day and evening, our Higher Consciousness is always attempting to pierce the veil of our egotistical will. Our task through our spiritual disciplines, our religions is to reacquaint our ears with the decibel level of God’s voice, God’s call, God’s demands.

We all have cravings of the spirit more often than we want to realize, I believe Rabbi Heschel is calling upon us to be more aware of these cravings and not replace them with cravings of our egos, of our vanity, of our thirst for power, prestige, etc. The Bible tells us stories of experiences of this battle between the cravings of our spirits and the cravings of our egos: King David who fights the battles God tells him to, who brings together a fractured country, who writes the Psalms as an ode to God and to the human condition; is a sex-addict who goes so far as to kill the husband of a woman he covets! Moses brings us out of the land of Egypt and communicates with God, yet is petty and defensive in the Korah affair and is ego driven at the second rock story in Numbers.  The Maccabees who free us from the Seleucids and then went on to adopt Greek names, took over Judea and served themselves more than they served God and people.

We see this in our world today, many revolutionaries have these great slogans and speak of “the people” as their sole concern, yet really the concern becomes power. It has happened in Cuba, Russia, Hungary, China, Venezuela, the Arab dynasties, Iran, and we see it happening in the United States and in Israel. This inner war between the cravings of our spirit, the eternal voice of God and our egos and our thirst for power is the inner war that needs religion’s/spiritual discipline’s intervention so we can defeat the false ego in us, so use the cravings of our soul, the caring for another(s), responding to God’s demands as water for our thirst, that power no longer is for our sake, it returns to it’s original purpose, we use our power for the sake of Heaven, for the sake of people who are in distress, for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, the needy. This transformation cannot take place without the intervention of spirituality and/or religion. God knew that “we are evil from our youth”, that our evil inclination can and does overwhelm us at times as was discussed in earlier blogs so God gave us a myriad of religions and spiritual disciplines for us to find one where we belong, where we can learn how to hear, respond, and take seriously this “matter of life and death” that we are all engaged in.

Recovery is based on exactly this idea. We are recovering from being overwhelmed with our negativity, our self-loathing, our giving into the cravings of evil, the cravings of ego, the cravings of power, the experience of not being understood nor accepted for who we are and the experience of an immature inner life. We have a spiritual path that leads us back to our inner essence, to the strengths and guidance of our souls, to being able to hear the voice of God/Higher Power and follow through on being of service to another(s) and becoming more selfless. We no longer deny what is, we accept it and we work hard to use what is and turn it into something good, beautiful and holy.

This war within is never over, it doesn’t stop when one retires, it doesn’t stop even when one is “happy with their place” because the more I learn, the more I understand Torah,  the more I hear Rabbi Heschel and so many other people in my life, the more I have to incorporate into my being, the more I have to heal within me. Overall, I have a winning record of hearing and answering God’s eternal voice. Yet, this teaching is a lesson in humility, in truth and in forgiveness of self, of another and acceptance of what is. I do regret the people harmed, especially Heather and my family, from my early in life losses. I am grateful that I could repair the damage and reconnect with them and connect with and be of service to so many. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 102

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

There are so many urgencies and perpetual emergencies that are not only too numerous to elucidate, they are overwhelming for most of us when we begin to think about them. We have, however many times, confused ego-centric urges for urgencies, personal desired as emergencies; doing this causes the real urgencies and perpetual emergencies to go unnoticed by most people. In unpacking this phrase, we can begin to discern the differences. In today’s society, as in all prior societies, we have confused the urgency and perpetual emergency of freedom with personal liberty. As I was taught by Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man, prior to receiving the 10 Sayings at Mount Sinai, we were slaves in Egypt, upon our redemption from slavery in Egypt, we spent 50 days in liberty-doing what we wanted to- and upon receiving the 10 Sayings, we became free. Freedom, as defined by Rabbi Omer-man, is when we surrender to God’s Will rather than follow our self-will. Even prior to our enslavement in Egypt, we were in the narrow straits of doing what we thought best, disregarding even the Noahide Laws given after the flood. We were seeking power and control in order to have certainty and feel good about our self without dealing with our inner life and our imperfections.

Unfortunately, we have not truly embraced the free-will choice to follow the 10 Sayings and the rest of the Torah, etc to “nullify our will before God’s Will so God’s Will becomes our will” as we learn in Ethics of our Ancestors Chapter 2:4. We have not “turned our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand God” as we learn in the third step of Alcoholics Anonymous. Instead, we are still confusing our personal desires, our ego-centered feel good urgencies with authentic needs for our souls, our bodies, our minds. We are still hiding from our imperfections, we are still hiding from a power greater than ourselves, we are still hiding from our Higher Consciousness, we are still hiding from our selves. While it is easier to substitute our personal desires for the “urgencies, the perpetual emergencies” Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of, it is an error that causes us much more pain, suffering, angst, anger, retaliation, violence, self-deception and deception of another(s) than most of us realize. We are in desperate need of unraveling the confusion we have created out of the fear of truly facing our self, having our authentic and true self face the world and risk being laughed at, being scorned, being ridiculed, etc. Only when we let go of the masks we wear, when we drop the pretenses upon which we have built our egos and our life will we be able to respond to the authentic urgencies and perpetual emergencies that are present each and every day.

Letting go of our inauthentic needs, facing our true self, presenting our authenticity to the world is freedom. Freedom is one of the most basic urgency and perpetual emergency we face each and every day. We are tormented by our inner slaveries each and every day. We are tormented by the outer enslavers each and every day. We seem to be powerless to meet these challenges and challengers, we seem to ‘give in’ to these false ideas and our own self-deceptions. Yet, we can go through these embedded ways of being, we can surrender our will to the Will of a power greater than ourselves. We can stop worrying about how exacting we are in the performance of God’s Will and immerse our self in the spirit of the God’s Will so that our will becomes like God’s will! It is a hard road, it begins with the action of surrender as Pirke Avot has taught us for the past 2000+ years, and as every spiritual discipline teaches as the first step to finding our true and authentic self. It is also the way to healing our shame and stopping our blame, it is the path to responding to the urgent pleas of everyone around us to be free. It is the path to knowing we belong, we are loveable and loving, we are forgivable and forgiving.

This surrender is what the first three steps of Recovery are all about. Each day we remind our self that we are powerless over ___ and we “came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”, leading us to “turn our will and our lives over to…”. Using these three steps every day brings us closer to our Higher Power/God, brings us closer to our own inner dialogues, brings us closer to discerning the stumbling blocks that caused us to fall into the abyss of self-centered fear and self-loathing. Each and every day for those of us in recovery know we have to surrender and look at our actions, our thoughts, so we can discern truth from fiction, desire from authentic needs, God’s Will from our ego-centric will.

I longed for freedom long before I realized it. I also misunderstood and mis-defined what freedom is/was for a long time. My life, these past 35+ years is based on God’s definition of freedom, based on understanding the layers of shit I have to let go of, wash away so I can continue to grow into more “freedom from the bondage of self”. I can say, without shame, that I made errors and hurt people because of my misunderstanding of the layers of freedom and thought I was there. I will never be completely free and I am truly freer than I have ever been because of my surrender, the love I receive and give and knowing the embrace of God. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 101

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

Humanity is in desperate need of immersing itself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, brilliance and teaching; not just quoting it, not just reading them, not just studying them rather to immerse ourselves in the wisdom above, the cautionary calling and the spiritual demand to be human. This means we have to be changed by these words, we have to be in dialogue with these ideas inside of us. To immerse ourselves in the wisdom above is to become more acquainted with, in dialogue with and adhere more to the call of our souls,  meeting and engaging with our unique Divine Image so we can bring this to the world instead of the distortion of religion and spirituality “by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition” that seems to be employed and amplified by the charlatans, the idolators, the deceivers.

What are “the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence” facing us today? They are no different, I believe, than they were from the time of Adam and Eve: how to live into, lean into our humanity a little more each day; how to stop the blame game; the need to be right; the search for and taking of power for our sake instead of using our power for the sake of heaven; taking care of our fellow human beings rather than using their vulnerabilities against them; continuing the Exodus from Egypt for all people, all races, colors, creeds, religions; continuing to bring ourselves our of our internal slavery and the self-deceptions we live in like a warm blanket covering us because we are shivering we will be found to be imperfect; etc.  There are more urgencies, I know, in fact each of us has our own personal urgencies and emergencies that we are afraid to speak of, afraid to face for fear we will be seen as weak and useless in the eyes of another(s) and in our own eyes as well. This is how much distortion and dilution has happened in our time and before, we are afraid to go to our clergy to seek spiritual guidance, spiritual progress, spiritual counseling, because we don’t want to “look bad”. We are afraid to ask our community for help for fear of being seen as ‘one of those people’ who are incapable, maybe lazy, ‘tsk, tsk, you poor unfortunate’, etc. We are so far away from the truth of religion and spirituality that we make it a crime to be poor, to ask for help, asylum, equality, etc!

We have to stop this way of being, it is imperative to recall the urgencies of the Bible, New Testament, Koran, every other text that is the foundation of the numerous spiritual disciplines. They are there not just as stories, not just as ‘history’, they are in our Holy texts to warn us, to educate us and to urge us to become aware of and respond to the “urgencies and perpetual emergencies” that life will always bring to us. We are told it is a command to do whatever it takes to “Ransom the Captive”, even sell our Holy Torah Scroll. Yet, we have come to worship the law and forget the spirit of our Torah, we have come to bow down to our Torah instead of imbuing the spirit and words of it. We have seen how ‘good christians’ are using the New Testament as a weapon against the very people Jesus called “his people”! We are witnesses to the bastardization of the Koran to make terrorism and killing innocent people an act of god! It is time for this to stop, it is time for us to engage in these urgencies as responders rather than exploiters.

We begin and do not end with our self. Until we open our minds and emotions up to hearing the words, the wisdom, the call and demand of our soul and of God, nothing will change. 70 years from now we will still be in awe of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and still stuck in the morass of our deceptions and the deceptions of another(s), of society. We have to come out of hiding from God, from one another, from our own self. As our souls become the voice we listen to and heed more often, we begin to find new and healthy responses to our “urgencies and perpetual emergencies of human existence”. We begin even to solve some of these urgencies and emergencies so they don’t have to re-occur. We are in desperate need of finding teachers and friends, study partners and intimate partners who are willing to fight us and we them to find truth and solution rather than mendacity and self-serving bandaids to our urgencies and emergencies. In fact, being in truth, living with one another as equals and being “my brother’s keeper” could be one of the urgencies and emergencies we face now as we did at the time of Cain and Abel!

I have learned, through recovery and my return to living an imperfect Jewish way of life, that I have to embrace the emergencies and urgencies I had run away from most of my prior life. I embrace the emergencies and urgencies of another, pretty well, I am responsive and responsible when it comes to helping another human being for the most part. I am, however, not always aware of the urgencies and emergencies of my own soul, I do sublimate these urgencies and emergencies at times to those of another and this always proves to be disastrous either sooner or later. I have learned also that some people dislike being responded to because it makes them feel inferior and/or they are in debt. I repay the debt I owe to my teachers, friends, family etc each day by giving away what I have rather than using it for my sake. More tomorrow, God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 100

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

The more one immerses oneself in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, the more one allows this brilliance to go through them, the better we will adhere to his call to us, I believe. This is the issue, for me, with the “pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition” paths of non-engagement with religion and/or spirituality. All of those ways of being are really pathways to self-centeredness, egotistical pontification, external beauty, etc and none of these ways of non-engagement change one’s inner life. There is no change because all of the ways mentioned above are ways to sound and look good while shielding one’s inner life, one’s soul with teflon so nothing can stick, nothing can get inside of one. These paths are used precisely not to “recall the urgencies…of human existence”.

We see this in our everyday life, when one says hello to a person walking on the street or in a store, the response is either shock or wariness most of the time. We have lost the urgency to recognize another Image of God, another spirit in a physical body, to be seen and recognized as a divine aid, divine partner, divine need, as Rabbi Heschel describes human beings elsewhere. When we see politics as combat rather than how do we serve, we put on great drama and comedy and do not regard the welfare of the poor, needy and stranger as urgent or important. When we are so intent on being right and have our tribe be in power, we see all those who are different as evil, as enemies, etc. Yet, we put on a great show of pomp, circumstance, externalizing and degrading human beings for being poor, needy and a stranger from another land seeking refuge and freedom! We hear the pedantic speeches of people extolling why it is right to infringe on the Civil Rights of people, to decide what a woman can do with her body, give aid and comfort to enemies of the Constitution, the four freedoms FDR articulated, freedom from fear and want, freedom of speech and worship, to the white supremacists who claim George Soros and Jews are enemies, who claim Black people should not have the right to vote(some believe both of these groups should not sit in the same restaurant as they), they are willing to bring down the ceiling, burn the House down so they can retain power, keep another enslaved, practice their hatred all the while wrapping themselves in the American Flag and the New Testament! This bastardization has caused more people to leave religions than anything else, these lies have caused people to sigh “God Help Me” and we know what happened to Pharaoh, yet, these deceivers have deceived themselves into believing they will not drown in the red sea of their own making, how sad, how terrifying!

We have a response, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us above. To “recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence” is the way to overcome and defeat these charlatans, these bastardizers of the holy and the good. We, the People, have to stop denying the perpetual emergencies of human existence: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness as our Declaration of Independence states in the second paragraph of this God-inspired document. We, the people, have to lead the revolution against tribalism, against mendacity, against our spiritual, religious, and democratic principles that are under assault by the pedantic, superstitious, externalizing ceremonialists! We have to stand up and speak out of the urgency of our spiritual life, the emergency we are once again in, “whether this nation can long endure” as Abraham Lincoln said. We have to not “let the light go out” as Peter Yarrow teaches us. We have the power to stand up for those who are experiencing these urgencies and emergencies physically and we need to exercise our spiritual power to meet the urgencies and emergencies of the souls of all of us.

These urgencies and emergencies are usually what brings people to recovery. Most people do not seek recovery when we believe everything is good and we can get away with our “little white lies”, our “secrets”, it is only when our ways of living/coping come crashing down on us that we seek to recover our souls, our decency, our dignity and find the life we are meant to live rather than the one of superstition, externalization, following the ceremonies and using pedantry to prove we are right. In recovery, we realize “the urgencies and emergencies of human existence”, of our own existence and begin to dedicate our living to engage in these urgencies, heal these emergencies by healing our spiritual crisis and then, helping another to heal their spiritual emergency.

I know both sides of this paradox, I am aware of the pull of mendacity and how to use all of the paths away from God, away from authenticity and still look like I am moving towards God and being authentic. I used to be frustrated ‘the good people’ who do this also and only point their finger at me, however, like Dr. Susannah Heschel taught me, now I have great compassion, great pathos for people who are so stuck in these self-deceptions. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 99

“Important as they may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem. Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

Religion is one of the main reasons we are where we are, both holy and unholy, good and evil, I believe. When we are engaged with religion in a pedantic manner-worrying about the minutia, so intent on showing how smart we are by expounding on issues that are so obscure no one cares about, we are pushing people away from the wonder, awe and beauty of religion, from the life saving and soul enhancing teachings and actions of religion. Caring about the outer actions of religion as well as making religion about the ceremonies and rituals is another way of hiding from the life-saving force that religion is and, along with superstitions, is a bastardization of a way of being that is meant to enhance our being human.

I am struck by Rabbi Heschel’s words above particularly because we haven’t heeded them, we haven’t used them to move out of the morass of “pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition.” Actually, we have leaned into these soul crushing and bastardizing ways even more since he wrote these words some 58 years ago! Humans love the pomp and circumstance of the religious holidays, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Christmas, Easter, state weddings and funerals, etc. Yet, instead of hearing what the words are, instead of taking in the meaning of these events, we are wowed by the external beauty, etc of the event, we go to some of them ‘to hedge our bet’ in case there is God and our parents, grandparents were right-we go out of superstitious duty. For others, they use their pedantry to take control of the religion they ‘practice’. We hear all the time about the ‘real Jews’, usually meaning the ultra-orthodox, the real Christians, usually referring to the evangelicals, many of whom spend their time showing off how much they know, accosting people on the street for them to wrap Tefillin(phylacteries) and/or “Come to Jesus”, they bastardize the spirit of religion even when following the law of religion. For the rest of us, rather than standing up for the spirit, most of us now believe Rabbi Heschel’s words about religion becoming dull, insipid, oppressive, etc. from the beginning chapter of his book above.

We are missing and forgetting how religion saved us in prior times and does everyday. The most amazing fact about the Bible, aka Old Testament, is that it was written by the losers! It was written by the Jews who lost their country, who put it together after the destruction of the 2nd Temple, while under Roman occupation and it still is the moral compass that guides us all. It is the manual of connection to God and to our humanness, it is a prophecy of what will and does happen when we stray from the wisdom, truth and love of its teachings. It is the story of how humanity operates and how we can change, how we can ruin, how we can return to the holy and good and what happens when we go further into the unholy and evil. It is not a guidebook for the faint-hearted. It is a life-saver to those of us who have lost our way, who have strayed from the path of living, who are on the doorstep of spiritual death. The same is true, I believe, with all spiritual disciplines, all religions at their core-CHOOSE LIFE!

This is the situation we face now, whether the truth and life-saving, life-affirming principles of religion will guide us or the power hungry, self-seeking, bastards of religious principles will overpower God’s will and our freedom. This is a situation that we have faced many times before, whether religion’s life-affirming principles will endure or they will fall prey to the mendacity, the deceptions, the bastardizations of the charlatans who we see on Fox, OAN, Newsmax, like Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, etc. We are in, as we always have been, a struggle for life-affirming, life-saving, life-giving principles and pathways and the pathway of hatred, dominance, racism, anti-semitism, life-taking, etc. For all the worry about the the debt-ceiling, these charlatans are the cause of 1/4 of the debt because the wealthy are more deserving of tax cuts than the poorest are of living wages!

In recovery, we have participated in and promoted pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism and played on as well as to superstitions of another(s) as well as our own prior to being in recovery. Now we see religion, spiritual disciplines as lifelines that we hold onto dearly and loosely. We know that without hearing and responding to the demands of faith, decency, Good Orderly Direction, we will fall back into the abyss of ruin, hatred, life taking and soul crushing behaviors we used to engage in.

Religion/spirituality saved my life! It gives me a life worth living, it brought me to recovery and AA, it helped me find my calling and purpose, my partner, gives me a way of living that allows my daughter to have reverence for me, it gives me Rabbi Heschel and a community where I belong. I am blessed beyond words, beyond my deserving because I live in a State of Grace through spirituality/religion. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 98

“Important as they may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem. Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

We hear often from people that they are not religious and they are spiritual. Another line we hear is: “Religion are for those who are afraid of going to hell, spirituality are for those who have been to hell”. Both these and many other sayings like them miss the point of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. As I learned from Rabbi Jonathon Omer-man over 30 years ago: “ Religiosity enhances Spirituality which enhances Religiosity”, they are not separate from one another, rather, as I understand Rabbi Omer-man’s teaching, there cannot be one without the other. Spiritual disciplines need structure and consistency, as do Religious disciplines, Religious disciplines need letting go of old ideas, of our rational minds which harm our connections as do Spiritual disciplines. We have to stop pitting one against the other and use both to further Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above; “religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death.”

The word religion comes from the Latin meaning “to bind, obligation, reverence, bond”, in Hebrew the words for religion, according to the Oxford Languages dictionary, are Daat, and Emunah; the first meaning “knowing” and the second meaning “faith”. Spiritual, from the Latin means “breath”. We have to begin anew to breath ourselves into the obligation to bond our souls, our life with the life and soul of God, of a power greater than ourselves so we can truly ‘know’ how to connect with one another rather than need to have power over one another. We are in desperate need of letting go of diluting and distorting the call of religion through our pedantry, through our need to twist the demands of God, of our souls, of higher consciousness, of spiritual yearnings to selfish desires and grabs for power. We have to stop using our minds to control what is uncontrollable, God. We have to stop using our words to prove that we our desires are God’s desires. We have to stop being so concerned with the minor issues and the minor rules, our showing off of our ‘academic brilliance’. We have made religion and spirituality into business’ for profit, for power, for abuses, for self-centered needs and this is the tragedy of not adhering and living into Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom. This is the tragedy of not responding to the demands of God’s call through religious teachings.

Our world, our country are in desperate straits because of our inability to actualize the visions of spirituality and religion. We are suffering mental health crisis’, homeless’ crisis’, health crisis’, economic crisis’ for most of the people, and they all lead back to the root cause, in my opinion, willful blindness to the visions of religion, obliviousness to the call of our souls, the call of God, the call of our neighbors. We have treated religion and spirituality as tools rather than as pathways. We have decided to use them for our own benefit and not allow them to go through us. When religion goes through us, we change, when spirituality goes through us, we change. The change is that we live differently, we let go of our concern to control and to wield power, we let go of our bastardizing principles to soothe our false egos, we live a more authentic life, we seek and do justly, we see and respond to life with more mercy, more gratitude, more grace, more love, and we seek out truth. When religion goes through us, rather than our going through it, we become servants, we worship God and we use our intuitive mind, our soul to experience and get through the trials and tribulations, we embrace the joy and the sorrow, knowing we are safe and secure in our beingness, in our connection to God and to the people around us.

In my recovery, I remember the day this shift happened. Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, and I were studying Rabbi Heschel’s Interview with Carl Stern and Rabbi Heschel said we have to immerse ourselves in the Bible, not just pick it apart. Rabbi Mel and I spoke about this idea of immersing myself in my living rather than just playing at life. Years later, when studying Numbers 15:37-41 with Rabbi Ed Feinstein, he taught me not to be a tourist in my life. I am painfully aware of when I slip into using pedantry to prove a point for my sake rather than for the sake of another person. I am painfully aware when I have used my knowing for power and control, as a buffer against my fears and I am also joyfully aware of how much more often I have surrendered to Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance of “Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions is not a luxury, but a matter of life and death”. It has, is and will continue to be a matter of life and death for me, as it is for every recovering person, whether it is religion, spirituality, to surrender to these “demands and visions” because surrendering to our own has brought us to the point of destruction and annihilation. I have immersed myself in Torah, in tradition, in Rabbi Heschel, the 12-Steps of AA, and they have gone through me and changed me in so many ways-not completely, not perfectly, yet a helluva lot better! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 97

“Important as they may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem. Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

Rabbi Heschel is reminding that, while technology, efficiency, and social engineering are important, “they do not reach the heart of the problem.” We, humans, have substituted our minds, our inventiveness for our need for solutions to the problem of evil, to the confusion of good and evil, to be able to discern one from the other and to tell the difference between the holy and the good. We have substituted and come to worship our intellects, our inventiveness, even using our intuition to serve technology, efficiency, and social engineering. Darwin’s survival of the fittest came to mean strength and power, we have dismissed the spiritual power that keeps human beings alive. We forget about the survival of the Jewish People against all odds, against all the hatred that continues to this day. We forget that how Black people survived slavery and all the hatred spewed against them to this day. The spiritual power within these two ‘groups’ of people, within many other people like the Russians who overthrew Communism, doesn’t seem to matter to these mendacious quoters and followers of Darwin.

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions is not a luxury, but a matter of life and death” is as true today as it was then. The basic demands of religion are: “Choose Life”, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”, “Do not make false images of God”, “Don’t murder, steal, commit adultery, bear false witness, don’t covet”. These and many other demands of religion, like T’Shuvah, making atonement for the holy and the evil, learning to live together and care for the needy, the poor, the stranger, having one law for both the citizen and the stranger, etc, are what will save humanity. This vision of a world where God is sovereign, where we live from our souls, where we connect with one another on a higher level than I/it or I/object cannot be accomplished through our intellects, through technology, through efficiency, through social engineering. All of these methods have gotten us to the place we are at now: unprecedented hatred, fear, disdain of anyone ‘not like us’; a move from religion which grows our spirit to intellectual superiority and rational mind being worshiped. We are proving Einstein’s quotation: “the intuitive mind is a gift and the rational mind a servant; we have come to forget the gift and worship the servant.” It is not about satisfying demands, it is about what demands are we going to satisfy; the demands of rational/intellectual thinking or the demands of spiritual knowing?

Religion has not only become a luxury, something we do for show, out of obligation to our past; it has become a weapon for some people against anyone they do not agree with. God’s name is used in vain all the time, by Clergy, by Anti-abortionists (they are not pro-life because they care nothing about the fetus upon birth, they support the death penalty, etc), by politicians who want to invoke Christian Law, Shariah Law, Jewish Law for their own power and not for the sake of the visions of Christianity, Islam or Judaism. Would these charlatans only adhere to the demands of religion and faith, would they only “turn their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” as God demands through Isaiah 2:4. The proselytizing actions do not reflect anything but the proselytizers need to have power, to make everyone the same, to create a society that is some human image, not in God’s Image, not recognizing we are all unique and equal by God’s design and any human attempt to disregard this truth leads to war, death, and ruin. Yet, people of all religions and faiths continue to regard their stature and place in the peking order as a luxury, an entitlement and an opportunity to wield power for themselves, while claiming they are serving God. In reality, they are serving their evil needs to be right, to enslave another(s), to deny rights to all, to worship their rational minds and forget about their intuitive minds, their spiritual knowledge and God’s call.

In recovery, we are acutely aware of our need to surrender to a power greater than ourselves. We have experienced the wreckage we have caused by believing in our rational minds and intellects, we have experienced the trauma we have caused and has been visited upon us because of the bastardization of God’s name. We have experienced the rejection of faith leaders and communities because of our addictive thinking and acting. We have not been welcomed in as human beings who sin, who need help, who are needy, we have been banished by the very people who claim to be servants of God! Our surrender to a power greater than ourselves is our path to serving the demands and visions of God, of our soul, of our intuitive minds which we let lie fallow and starved prior to our recovery.

Hearing the demand of God, the demand of religion, the demand of AA, the demand of my soul each and every day through prayer, meditation, Torah, and Rabbi Heschel, has caused me much angst and reflection. I am grateful for these demands, which are actually one in the same. More tomorrow. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 96

“Let us not labor under no illusions. There are no easy solutions for problems that are at the same time intensely personal and universal, urgent and eternal. Technological progress creates more problems that it solves.. Efficiency experts or social engineering will not redeem humanity.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372).

Today, being the official celebration of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s words above are obvious. Here we are, not even 55 years since his assassination, not even 60 years since the Civil Rights Bill and the Voting Rights Bill passed Congress and powerful people have been and continue to whittle away at both of these bills, they continue to deny Black people their dignity and rights as citizens of this country and they use technology to ‘prove’ themselves correct. Like Hitler in the 30’s and 40’s, we still hear from these White Supremacists that Blacks are inferior because of their ‘scientific studies’, much like the Jews being subhuman in Nazi Germany and beyond. Technology and science, like religion are being used to deny truths, rather than promote them. Opinions become facts by these deceivers, these haters using both technology and science and too many people buy into it, subliminally and outwardly.

These White Power people, who are in power in the House of Representatives now, in power in business, like Leonard Leo, Charles Koch, etc, they use social engineering to prove they aren’t prejudiced, they just are following the ‘facts’ from social engineering that will give us the best outcome. They just believe in the “survival of the fittest” theory of Darwin. Yet these White Power people, being led in the House of Representatives by Kevin McCarthy and his aide de camp, Jim Jordan, are not the fittest because they would have never survived the enslavement and disempowerment that Black people have in this Country. They voted to kill the John Lewis Civil Rights Bill that is necessary because the Republicans, including Moscow Mitch gutted it when it came up for renewal and Jordan was one of the loudest voices saying we didn’t need it anymore, Mark Meadows using Elijah Cummings as his proof he wasn’t a racist and then has proven his true colors through his actions. 55 years since Rev. Kings assassination and these gutless deceivers, these scared little white boys who have never served We, the People, are trying to kill Social Security, kill Medicare, kill the necessary fundamentals so the powerless and the voiceless can live and some American people, ie other White Power/White Supremacists, think this is efficiency  and will redeem our country and all of the people in it!

In a recent poll, it was revealed that 85% of Americans believe, speak or repeat some AntiSemitic Trope. As Rev. Al Sharpton said even Black people and Black Preachers are spouting this vile trope. 85%, that could be more than are racist in this country! Now everyone knows that Jews should have been social engineered out of existence. We should have gone the way of all the civilizations from Antiquity went-extinction. Yet, here we are, we may be the fittest because we have survived 2000 years of hate, war, being tossed here and there, the Spanish Inquisition Nazi Germany and now the anti-semitic doings of Orban, Jordan, et al. These “good christian people trying to annihilate Jews, Blacks are doing the exact opposite of God’s Will and Christ’s teachings.

Rev. King, Rabbi Heschel came together from their souls knowing one another, from their deep faith and believe in Biblical teachings, from being immersed in the Bible, from being color-blind and judging one another “on the content of their character” and because they both knew the effects of hate, of racism, of anti-semitism, etc. No amount of lies and deceptions could shake their connection, they were more than friends, they were brothers, they are warriors in the fight against evil, they are lights to illumine the path out of our confusion of good and evil, they are our teachers, our leaders, and we are their heirs. Will we grow our inheritance as the White Supremacists grow theirs or will we wilt and give up, be overtaken by technology’s lies and succumb to the efficiency of going along to get along?

In recovery, we surrender to gain/regain control of our living. We have been the haters, we have had our prejudices and we, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, drop these false selves, these false personas we had adopted because we were afraid to be hurt, to be laughed at, to be ‘caught’ in our lies and deceptions. We work hard to not bastardize the Grace God has granted us to be alive, to be healthy, to be in recovery and be part of a group that is multi-racial, multi-cultural, welcoming people of all faiths and of no faith.

I have learned being color-blind is not enough, as I ponder Rev. King’s words, Rabbi Heschel’s words, we have to see the differences in color, religion, thoughts and welcome them, embrace them, discuss them and learn from everyone. I have to notice that Black people are more easily singled out for prejudice than Jews like me. I have to notice that some Jews are still afraid to speak up, less the christians come for them again. I have to engage with people who still have antiquated ideas about Jews, Blacks, etc, so I can open their thoughts up and/or know who to be wary of. There are no easy solutions, true solutions take a lot of hard work and dedicated souls. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 95

“Let us not labor under no illusions. There are no easy solutions for problems that are at the same time intensely personal and universal, urgent and eternal. Technological progress creates more problems that it solves.. Efficiency experts or social engineering will not redeem humanity.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372).

Rabbi Heschel published God in Search of Man in 1955, imagine what our world could be had we all heeded his teaching, wisdom and insight above! People are still looking for “easy solutions” and failing to see what the real problems are. We are still laboring under illusions of grandeur and superiority over evil, we are still believing in our mind’s capacity to think and solve these “intensely personal and universal” problems. We are as stuck in our own “stinking thinking” as we were some 58 years ago, maybe even more stuck than when Rabbi Heschel wrote these prophetic words.

We are continuing to live in a world where atoning for our sins is difficult and rare. To atone, I believe, means to become ‘at one’ with truth, with self, with humanity, and with God. We are still using our mind to show how smart we are, rather than using our spirit to learn how connected and in need of “a power greater than ourselves” to help us with these “urgent and eternal” problems that can and do harm our humanity. “To atone for the holy” doesn’t even enter the realm of necessity for most people so we continue to mix up evil and good, unholy and holy in willful blindness and in our obliviousness. At issue, as we immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, is do we even realize that we are suffering in such delusion that we don’t even recognize the “intensely personal and universal, urgent and eternal” problems we are facing? It seems as if there are enough people who do not see this suffering, who when they do want to blame anyone and everyone else for it and believe there are easy solutions! We hear this from religious leaders, we hear this from political leaders, we hear this from teachers, parents, etc, “just follow me, just listen to me, just do what I tell you, don’t believe your soul, don’t believe your eyes and/or ears, I have the answer, etc”. This mendacity that we hear from these ‘smart people’ is killing us, wounding our souls and keeping us stuck in our own self-deceptions.

Technology is important and good, as well as being a weapon to harm and used for evil purposes. We are witnesses to ‘bots’ targeting susceptible people with lies and hatred so the puppet masters who are sending them can cause chaos, stop truth, turn elections and sow more hatred and suspicion in our country, our world, our homes, our inner lives. We have fallen for the lie that technology will solve our problems, it will be the solution for the problem of evil, it will save us from the mendacity we are bombarded with daily through ‘the media’. Instead, technology is used very often to create more problems, it is used to confuse and deflect us from what is really happening, it has become a tool in our political wars to engage in lies so they can win elections. Technology is being used to kill free and fair elections, as we have seen over the last four election cycles. Technology has made it easier to get information out quicker which in cases of emergencies is a great gift and tool. It has also, by design, gotten so many people addicted to their devices and interested in how many likes, how many clicks, how many shares we get, the content is no longer important, only how famous we can become through technology matters.

We labor under the illusion that ____ will solve our problems, there is an easy answer if we only seek it and/or listen to people who proclaim they know the answers. Those of us in recovery are well aware that solutions are never easy and there are simple solutions to the intensely personal problems we face daily. Simple does not mean easy, it does not mean these solutions are not complex, it means that we stop complicating our solution seeking with the lies, deceptions and blinders we seem to approach all issues. These complications begin with seeking an answer-the one right way out of our personal predicaments and these is none. An answer implies that we will have a result and people in recovery know, just as there are many layers to peeling an onion, there are many layers to each and every solution. Our experience is when we are in the solution, there are many doorways to go through and we become less intent on finding the answer, less in need of a certain result and more engaged in what we are learning, how this impacts our past actions and what it means for today and tomorrow.

I have relied too often on people seeing and knowing me, I have relied too often on ____ to ensure that people hear and understand me. I have bought my own press at times as well. I have never, in the past 36 years since my last incarceration, believed in easy solutions, I have, though, labored under the illusion of being in partnership with people seeking solutions forever, not realizing that at different points our agendas become different, our visions become different and I haven’t seen this, I haven’t heard this and the loss of connection I have experienced has wounded me deeply. These experiences bring up my deficiencies, my sins, my self-deceptions and have taught me to take off my rose-colored glasses, stop deceiving myself and not depend on technology to get my messages out clearly, to take off the blinders when I am dealing with my inner life and with another human being. These experiences continue to remind me that serving God, living a life of reciprocity is part of the solution and it is difficult at times while being extremely simple. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 94

“On the most sacred day of the year the supreme task was to atone for the holy. It proceeded the sacrifice, the purpose of which was to atone for the sins.” (God in Search of Man pg. 371-2)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is like a fastball coming at us at 100+ miles per hour, we don’t really see it until it is right on us, we are not sure which way to turn to hit it and/or not be hit by it. We Jews have gotten it all wrong for centuries, I believe. We have not spent the time and the effort to atone for the holy either because we erroneously believed/believe that our holy is pure and clean and/or because we were/are too oblivious to see the need to atone for the holy. I believe each and every Synagogue and Temple, each JCC and Federation Buildings, each home needs to atone for the holy by searching their holy spaces and doing T’Shuvah for the transgressions in our holy spaces and the sins we commit wittingly and unwittingly in all of our affairs. We have to no longer depend on clergy to do this, as they did in the Temple of Jerusalem and the Tent of Meeting, we have to all pitch in “to atone for the holy.” We are being called by Rabbi Heschel to remember that prior to our atonement for our sins, we have to first atone for and make clean the holy. I believe his teaching above is for our physical spaces and our inner lives.

Once again, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom encompasses all human beings and is eternally timeless. We are engaged in a great spiritual war with the forces of holiness who don’t believe they have anything to atone for! We are living in a world where humility before God, before one another is seen as weakness because we already KNOW what God wants and we are ‘the chosen’ who can, must, and will carry out God’s Word. Yet, these same people are unable to, oblivious to the teaching above, they conveniently forget the verse in Leviticus that teaches us “to atone for the holy”. Instead, they engage in such self-deception that it is impossible to reason, to negotiate, to compromise with them until we succumb to their demands. While their demands are totally selfish and self-serving, their self-deception has given them the persuasive powers to deceive millions upon millions of people around the globe and in every country. Our unwitting and/or willful ignoring the teaching above by our clergy contributes legitimacy to these charlatans because our clergy support their lies, their mendacity though a complete misreading of Scripture. Whenever Scripture is read for the sake of power over the people, whenever religion is practiced as oppressive, insipid, irrelevant and tone deaf to the spiritual progression of people and the world, whenever religion is used to support tyranny, slavery, class and caste systems, it is not religion as God intended. This extremism points out the need “to atone for the holy” that Rabbi Heschel is teaching us.

We have become so engaged in pointing out the sins and transgressions of another(s) that we have forgotten to and/or have become willfully blind to our own. Rather than being responsible and aware of the holy in our living, the holy opportunities that are constantly put in front of us, we are oblivious to them and this could be our greatest transgression that points out our need “to atone for the holy”. I call out the churches, mosques, the Jewish Federations and Jewish Institutions as well as Temples and Synagogues to clean their houses and “atone for the holy” in their midst. I call on my colleagues in the Clergy to stop trying to keep their jobs and remember who our employer is: God and our employer is demanding we DO our jobs rather than engaging in the mendacity and self-deception we practice in order to keep them. I call on all of us to search our innermost selves in these next 76 days prior to Passover and “atone for the holy” that we have neglected to do. I am calling on all of us to send the charlatans -anyone and everyone who is not taking care of the stranger, the poor, the needy; everyone who is not “doing justly, loving mercy and walking in the ways of God”-packing from our governments, from our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples so we, the remnants, the people who have left Egypt, can clean our holy spaces, clean our holy souls up and “atone for the holy”.

This is the essence of recovery for so many of us. We have let go of our false egos as the driving force in our lives. We have come to believe we can’t save our face and our ass at the same time. We know how insidious our imperfections are and how powerful the lies we tell ourselves are. We “atone for the holy” each and every day by searching what we do well and how we are of service to make these actions and deeds as clean as we possibly can knowing we will always have some self-interest involved. We are engaged in reciprocity, we give away what we have so we can keep it, we donate, we show up for service and we reach out to one another and those who are not in recovery yet with an open heart and willing spirit. We cleanse our inner lives daily so our outer lives are cleaner, more open and transparent and relevant, free and peaceful.

I have made mistakes, I have done well, I am human. I have engaged in atoning for the sins and transgressions a lot over these years. I have cleaned the sanctuary of my soul for years and the physical plant of where I worked as Rabbi for 20+ years, and I realize when I allowed the shmutz to build up, when I allowed ego to triumph over truth, I was making my inner and outer sanctuary unclean. I am deeply remorseful for these times and I continue to make living amends. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 93

“While the purpose of the goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord was to atone for the holy, “to make atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, even all their sins; and so shall he do for the tent of meeting, that dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanness.”(Leviticus 16:6f Sifra) (God in Search of Man pg. 371)

Continuing from yesterday’s quote, Rabbi Heschel is, once again, reminding us to never be so sure of our purity, our holiness. Even the Tent of Meeting and later the Temple had to be atoned for, even our holy places had to be cleansed because of our transgressions, our sins, that we bring into our holy places both as congregants, adherents, even as priests. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to account for the ways we miss the mark when praying, when entering into God’s space, and in all of our actions of holiness. We are never so pure that we do not have “to atone for the holy”!

Yet, here we are as we have been throughout history, believing the lies and deceptions of people who wrap themselves in the Torah, the New Testament, the Koran, etc and proclaim their holiness without ever believing they too have “to atone for the holy”. We are so caught up in our self-deceptions that we forget to take these actions, we are so caught up in ourselves that clergy people are afraid “to atone for the holy” lest we lose our flock. True believers need perfection and purity from their clergy so they can feel cleansed by being blessed and forgiven by clergy, they need to see their clergy as living at a higher spiritual level so they can be imperfect, true believers even go so far as believing their faith will make them pure and not need “to atone for the holy”.

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is a polemic against this mendacity and our self-deception. I am thinking about the years of opportunity every clergy, including me,  had “to atone for the holy” in my sanctuary and we blew by this important distinction. Rabbi Heschel’s close reading of the text in Leviticus, his immersion in the works, the meaning, the spirit of the text should give all clergy, all congregants, all scholars, all laypeople, everyone pause. We are so wrapped up in the lie of perfection, we are so engaged in thinking we are right, we are unable to acknowledge our own uncleanness and we continue to build up transgressions and sins that make our holy spaces impure, make our holy spaces caked with lifetimes of uncleanness and we are oblivious to this situation, we are deceiving ourselves into believing the lies of clergy, elders, and our selves that our holy spaces, our holy places stay cleansed forever. Rabbi Heschel is debunking this myth and demanding we begin “to atone for the holy place” we frequent.

Since God is everywhere, and the Mezuzah, in my understanding, represents the reminder of who’s space we are entering, ie God’s, when we go into our homes, our offices, buildings, etc and when we leave-all space is God’s, isn’t it time for us “to atone for the holy” that is everywhere? As I understand Rabbi Heschel, we have to begin our atonement with ourselves, we have to search our inner life for the uncleanness we have taken for granted, we have to clean up the lies we tell ourselves, we have to let go of the negative self-talk we have engaged in for so long, we have to see ourselves anew and clear out the self-deception and the mendacity of society that we have bought into for so long in order “to atone for the holy place” within us. Just as God is everywhere, so too is God inside of us for we are created “in the Image of God”. I believe this is Rabbi Eliezer’s teaching in the Talmud that we should do T’Shuvah every day, when we do this, we are preventing the schmutz we create from becoming like barnacles on our souls, in our holy places, in the entire world. While many bitch and moan about the EPA, I see their regulations as an attempt “to atone for the holy” of our environment and it has worked, not perfectly and better than no attempt at all.

In recovery, we are aware of the state of our uncleanness, we are aware of our need “to atone for the holy” as we dirtied up our relationships, our holy places, our inner lives to such an extent we could not discern the difference between the holy and Azazel, between what was real and what was phony, what was love and what was expediency. We do our large inventory, our deep dive into the gross uncleanness we have perpetrated and then we “continue to take inventory” so we can do daily maintenance and “keep our own house in order”.

I am trembling as I look back on the ways I didn’t “atone for the holy” and I am heartened by our attempts to have people do their large inventories and look at themselves. I am sad that I could not lead more people to do this and even sadder about my own deficiencies in this regard. I realize that my daily T’Shuvah practice has shown me nuances of my living both negative and positive, I strive to “keep my side of the street clean” and am constantly uncovering and prying off barnacles that have been on my soul, in my inner life for years. It is an exhausting endeavor that infuses me with exhilaration, energy, and exaltation. Rabbi Heschel’s uncovering the truth above is humbling and hopeful, an aha moment and a duh moment. He has, once again, illuminated a truth that I knew and was oblivious to, he has enriched my life with this teaching and I pray yours also. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 92

“At the ritual of the Day of Atonement the High Priest would cast lots upon two goats: one lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel The purpose of the ritual of the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel was to atone for the evil. The High Priest would lay both his hands upon the head of the goat “and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions, all their sins”” (God in Search of Man pg 371)

On this day, the 50th Yarzeit of Rabbi Heschel’s death, I am in absolute wonder and awe of how, for so many people of different faiths and of no faith, Rabbi Heschel was, is and always will be the Priest who helps so many of us to atone for the evil that we have committed, wittingly and unwittingly. While he probably did not get a goat to confess our sins on its head, he has drawn so many of us to T’Shuvah, to atonement, to spirituality and to God, higher power, higher consciousness with his teachings, his poetry, his prose and the spirit of love, calling, demanding and belief in our ability to change.

Our world is in desperate need to atone for the evil, instead of using scapegoats, instead of blaming another, instead of hijacking speech and using words and phrases that sound wonderful while using them for evil, we have to send the hijackers packing. We need to have a national day of atonement, a day where our entire country participates in the ritual initiated by the High Priest, we all need to lay our hands on the heads of one another “and confess over him/her all the iniquities” we have committed. From the mendacity of ‘stop the steal’ to the deception of ‘select committee to investigate the weaponization of Government’ by the very people who voted to overturn the free and fair election of 2020, to the self-deception that we all participate in of ‘being right and righteous’. The greatest iniquities we commit are those that are in the name of God, in the name of country, etc. Yet, we continue to watch in horror as the politicians, another name for liars, set out to destroy democracy so they can be authoritarians or we participate in this sham, this coup, this taking away our basic freedoms in favor of enslaving and controlling ‘those people’-anyone who doesn’t agree with us and/or subjugate themselves to our will.

On this 50th Yarzeit, I believe we must stand up against the tyranny of liars, the debasement caused by mendacious speech, the slavery caused by our own self-deception. Not just today, we have to be diligent in our daily living and each day, confess “all the iniquities” we have engaged in, all of our unwitting errors of judgement, of speech, of dismissal of another human being. We have to see each person’s divine image and respect the infinite dignity of another human being, especially the people we disagree with. We need to engage our souls and seek our spiritual guides who help us to see our authentic self as Rabbi Heschel does for so many of us.

This weekend is Martin Luther King Jr weekend and Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King were ‘kin under the skin’, as my friend Pastor Mark Whitlock likes to say. They joined together not just as members of a movement, they joined together because their reverence for God, for humanity, for individuals was so great and powerful, they knew together they could “declare liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” as the Bible teaches and is inscribed on our Liberty Bell. They knew how to reach out and touch the souls, not just the minds, of all people without regard to race, color, creed, sexual orientation. They are the leaders we all need, they are the Priests who have confessed our iniquities and given us a pathway to being whole again, a pathway to understanding the road to freedom that the Bible, the Constitution, etc give to us. am calling for a Day of Atonement for our Country, our communities, our families to both confess our iniquities and find solutions to live the principles of the Bible, the Constitution. I am calling for this in the names of Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel-what better way to honor their lives than this?

In recovery, we put aside any and all differences to help one another maintain recovery. Color, religion, politics, sexual orientation, etc are left at the door so we can learn, mentor, guide and be guided by one another in our quest for redemption. We are engaging in a practice “to atone for the evil” we have committed and to “forgive those who have trespassed against us”. The more we are able to not focus on our differences and embrace our similarities for our recovery, the more we are able to live our recovery and practice these principles “in all our affairs”!

On Yom Kippur, I make it a practice to ask for forgiveness for my sins and for the sins of all clergy throughout history. I have learned from Rabbi Heschel of the dangers of being separate from community, to whitewash the actions of myself and all clergy, make scapegoats of another rather than confessing “all our iniquities”. I learn from Rabbi Heschel that this Day of Atonement can be a Day of At-One-Ment, we come together as a whole human being and a partner as well as servant of God and one another when we truly confess our iniquities, our transgressions and our sins. This “unnoticed miracle” of T’Shuvah as Rabbi Heschel describes it is one of the pillars of my living along with Radical Amazement and not giving in to despair. Distinguishing the good from the not good, the holy from the unholy only comes with the deep introspection that T’Shuvah brings and I need to continue to refine my ability to distinguish. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 90

“At the ritual of the Day of Atonement the High Priest would cast lots upon two goats: one lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel The purpose of the ritual of the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel was to atone for the evil. The High Priest would lay both his hands upon the head of the goat “and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, all their transgressions, all their sins”” (God in Search of Man pg 371)

Tonight is the 50th Yarzeit of Rabbi Heschel’s death and I encourage everyone to participate in one of the webinars/zooms honoring him and his teachings. Rabbi Heschel saves my life and helps me live a life of meaning, purpose, and joy each day and has saved 1000’s of people lives through his wisdom, brilliance, kindness and empathy.

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that the ritual of the Day of Atonement included was two-fold, “one lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel. I hear him calling us to remember what the rituals were for, to stop bastardizing the ritual of the goat for Azazel. We have to end our need to use people and things as ‘scapegoats’, we have to stop blaming and shaming another rather than confessing our sins, instead of taking responsibility for our “iniquities, transgressions, sins”.

Yet, we seem to have forgotten this, we seem to have made this ritual into a ‘ritual’, a performance art rather than a solemn act. Religious comes from the Latin meaning “reverence/obligation” and obligation comes from the word oblige which means “to bind”. Rabbi Heschel’s words are telling us to bind ourselves to these solemn actions that uplift our spirits, that help us discern “evil’s intrusion into the sphere of the good and holy”. When we participate in the ritual of the Day of Atonement without binding ourselves to the meaning, to the solemn actions of the day; when we go and recite a formulaic confession, when we ask people to forgive us through the ritualistic emptiness of “please forgive me for anything I may have done to harm you…” we are not bound by the ritual, we are not taking responsibility for our transgressions, iniquities, sins, we are filling a deeply meaningful ritual with performance art, with mendacity, with self-deception. This is how religion has become “irrelevant, dull, oppressive and insipid” as Rabbi Heschel reminds us on page 3 of God in Search of Man.

We, the people, are the perpetrators of the irrelevance, dullness, oppressiveness and insipidness that has come to characterize religious life today! We have forgotten how to discern “evil’s intrusion into the sphere of the good and the holy” because we are the people who are infusing evil into these spheres! We have infused our rituals with blandness rather than obligation, we have turned our Houses of Worship into shrines to history, we have bound ourselves to irrelevance rather than binding ourselves to the rituals that give life meaning, purpose, passion, truth and service. We have forgotten to look at our sins, our transgressions, our iniquities and make atonement for ourselves, we erroneously believe the ritual of confession will be enough, the majority of people go to Temple on the Day of Atonement out of superstition, because this is what Jews do, to be seen, etc. Sitting in the pews is not for our entertainment, it is not to complain about the Rabbi’s sermon being too long or boring, it is to make atonement for the wrongs we have perpetrated on those closest to us, those farthest from us, everyone in-between, and God. It is “to bind” us to living differently in the coming year, it is to engage in an inner transformation from blame, shame, irresponsibility to a reverence, truthfulness, kindness and being responsible for our actions, both good and evil. It is to mature our inner life more each day so we can more easily discern “evil’s intrusion into the sphere of the good and the holy.”

This is the power of T’Shuvah, which in the life of a person in recovery, would be steps 4-10. In T’Shuvah, as in recovery, we search the darkest corners of our inner life, we search out the lies we have been telling ourselves and we confess them-not on the head of a goat anymore, rather to another person, aka Spiritual Guide/Sponsor, and make a plan to repair the damage we have wrought. We are engaging in a ritual that dates back to Biblical times, we are then obligated to go to those we have harmed, make restitution (financially and/or spiritually), seek the forgiveness of those we have harmed through confession and having a plan to not do the same actions again. While we and they know we will “miss the mark” again, it will not be malicious and purposeful. Then we can ask God for forgiveness and complete the ritual of T’Shuvah by binding ourselves to what is good, what is right and what is our unique service to God. We accomplish this by first forgiving our selves completely and being responsible for our daily living through a 10th step in the program of AA and by doing T’Shuvah each and every day. Then, on the Day of Atonement, we are engaged in the ritual and know we are clean and have been forgiven by God and people.

I have been practicing T’Shuvah for the last 36 years and each year I find more from my past that I need to make T’Shuvah for, things that did not occur to me before. I know my inner life is maturing because I am able to see things that I have never seen before from my past and my present. Tonight, I will say a prayer of gratitude for Rabbi Heschel, his life has made mine so much better, so much worthwhile and so much more connected. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark