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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 125

“They imparted to justice the violent imperative character which it as kept, which it has since stamped on a substance grown infinitely more extensive. Could it have been brought about by mere philosophy? There is nothing more instructive than to see how the philosophers have skirted around it, touched it, and yet missed it.”(Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 1927) But how is such a supremacy possible? Is not our sense of beauty and ugliness, of gain and loss, more acute than our sense of good and evil?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Henri Bergson’s words are very powerful for our understanding of the origin of the words of the Prophets, God, rather than these words of justice be the work of philosophers/a human mind. They also point out to us a philosopher’s understanding of the limits of philosophy, the inadequacy of philosophy to see more than the abstract, more than the literal and how easy it is to miss/ignore the imperative of justice, the horror of injustice, the cancer of prejudice, etc that brings about slavery, racism, denials of 6 million Jews being killed by Nazis, the eye disease that allows us to devalue the infinite worth of “those people”, etc.

Rabbi Heschel’s question at the end of this subchapter is haunting and/or should be haunting to all of us. How can justice obtain supremacy over our desires, our ‘need’ for money, property, prestige, celebrity? How can justice obtain supremacy over “alternative facts”, mendacity, fear, desire? As Rabbi Heschel asks us about beauty and ugliness, gain and loss being more acute “than our sense of good and evil”, each and every person is being called upon to answer this haunting question and look at the horror we witness, condone, perpetrate when beauty and gain, ugliness and loss are more important, more valued that what is good and what is evil is ignored.

We are living in a time, as he did and has happened throughout history, where people are willfully blind to what is good and what is evil. We are living in a time where people justify the evil that is practiced through unjust ways and call it justice. We are witnesses to and recipients of a court system that has turned a blind eye to the proportion that “all men are created equal” as it has since the forming of the United States. Yet, “in order to make a more perfect union” we need our legislators, our courts to lead the way and end the injustices towards the minority groups, identity and color, religious and secular, that has been a hallmark of our democracy. We, the people, have to stop honing our sense of beauty and ugly, of profit and loss, and hone “our sense of good and evil”. This is our greatest challenge as it has been throughout the ages. Yet, we seem to be unable to respond to the call of the Prophets for justice, the call of God for justice, the call of the people who suffer from our unjust ways! We are willfully blind to the horrors we are committing with our unjust ways and willfully deaf to the cries and the pleas of the people we are hurting, hence creating a world where evil is good and good is evil, a world where we are the arbiters of what is right, not God, not our ‘founding fathers’ as the deceptive minority yells about.

Injustice begins with a minority of people believing and selling, deceiving and promoting their egotistical belief that they are entitled to rule and doing anything and everything to gain and keep power is fair game and good! Injustice is promoted by people who are afraid to stand on their own, to compete in free and fair elections, compete freely and fairly in the market place, people who need to ‘put their fingers on the scale’ because they need the extra money, the extra help, to win. Injustice is promulgated by those of us who are afraid of the power of another(s) and project onto them our own beliefs and ways. Like Jacob in Genesis, when he was going to meet Esau, he immediately believed his brother was still holding a grudge from 20+ years earlier, we too believe that another person, group will be as unjust to us as we have been to them so we do everything we can to stay in power. It is time for us to end our unjust ways, societally, communally, within our races, religions, ‘gangs’ and in our families.

In recovery, we know that our individual recovery depends on our group unity. We are all the same, rich and poor, people of color and whites, religious, non-religious, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. We are all seeking to recover our humanity, our integrity and our connection to our soul, to another(s) human being and to a power greater than ourselves. We know that we have to practice and live a just life, a life that goes beyond our individual needs and desires, a life that is compatible with being a partner with the Divine.

I am embarrassed of the times when beauty, gain, ugly and loss took precedence over good which caused me to perpetrate evil. I am proud of my commitment to good and evil over everything else, even when it got me into trouble, when I was shunned for it, ostracized for it. Usually trouble, shunning and ostracizing came about because of my manner of expressing my intolerance of evil, my violent imperative for justice was loud, uncompromising and not polite nor nice. I accept that I did not speak in the ways people could hear and I also know they were willfully deaf to hear and willfully blind to what was going on. I see it today in the streets, in our Congress, in our World. Save Ukraine, Stand Up for Justice are not slogans, they are calls to action and I pray people hear them. 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 124

“They imparted to justice the violent imperative character which it as kept, which it has since stamped on a substance grown infinitely more extensive. Could it have been brought about by mere philosophy? There is nothing more instructive than to see how the philosophers have skirted around it, touched it, and yet missed it. But how is such a supremacy possible? Is not our sense of beauty and ugliness, of gain and loss, more acute than our sense of good and evil?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

The word violent comes from the Latin meaning “having a marked or powerful effect and the word imperative comes from the Latin meaning “to commend, specially ordered”. Rabbi Heschel’s quoting Henri Bergson above is reminding us that the Prophets’ mission was to make known to us, to communicate to us, the supreme importance of justice. While in theory justice has kept this character, in practice not so much and herein lies our challenge. Rabbi Heschel, by using this quote, is, I believe, also demanding, challenging us to realize how extensive justice is in all of our affairs, in our daily living, in our inner lives. “Justice, Justice you shall pursue” we are told by Moses in Deuteronomy. Since he is speaking in the imperfect tense, Moses is reminding us that we are on the road to justice, we have begun the long arduous journey of justice-leaving Egypt was our first leg of this long journey-and we cannot stop moving forward, we cannot stop pursuing justice in all of its forms, in all of paths.

Immersing ourselves in this first sentence above is awesome and terrifying. This is the trembling awe that is spoken about in all spiritual disciplines. While we use violent to connote evil, bad, etc for the most part, Rabbi Heschel is using the word to move us forward towards fulfilling the Prophets’ call, to move us forward in serving God, in serving one another, in serving the deepest call of our soul/spirit. We are hardwired to hear this call, we are created to pursue justice, to make our corner of the world a little better, to fulfill the divine need each of us is uniquely qualified to fill and we have to learn how to close our ears to the words of the prophets, we have to learn how to stop hearing the “still small voice” that is within each one of us.

Throughout history, some of us have watched in horror the bastardization of the words and thoughts of the prophets’. We have watched in dismay how justice has lost it’s powerful effect on our world and people in it, we have been witness’ to the false claims of the deceivers who believe they can define justice to meet and serve their own needs. Some of us have been gleeful that we can so easily get away with injustice and falseness because people are willing to be deceived and want to learn how to “get ahead” through our ill-gotten gains. Rather than having a powerful effect on this group of people, justice has become something to ‘spin’, something to twist and pervert. This group of people is the group the Prophets’ were railing against, warning of the destruction these behaviors would cause and they fell on deaf ears because the people engaging in injustice believed they could get away with anything and there would never be a day of reckoning. They were wrong in Israel, they were wrong in Judea, they were wrong in Assyria, they were wrong in Babylonia, they were wrong in Greece, they were wrong in Rome, they were wrong in Spain, they were wrong in England, they were wrong in Germany, we are wrong here in the United States. Yet, we continue to violently oppose justice in our halls of justice for religious, political and philosophical reasons, we continue to violently oppose justice in our halls of government for religious, political, philosophical, power-hungry reasons, we continue to oppose justice in our treatment of one another in daily living for philosophical, political and religious reasons. Our hubris is that we will not suffer the same fate as the societies that came before us and opposed justice-how arrogant, how ridiculous, how scary!

We are witness’ to the rolling back of justice, of human rights, of voting rights, of freedoms for the majority because of a vocal and violent minority. Rather than see the individual worth of every human being, rather than embrace people who are different than us and learn their wisdom and spiritual truths, we seek to crush ‘those people’ and call them ‘the other’ rather than seeing them as fellow travelers and the divine needs and divine reminders that each of us is. We are witnessing people in power, people with bully pulpits and microphones purposely lie to increase their vote tallies, to increase their viewership, to increase their personal power and personal bank accounts. We are watching people like Lindsey Graham bastardize his friendship and fellowship with John McCain for the sake of Donald Trump?? We are cheering the people who instigated the Jan. 6th insurrection and vilifying the people who seek to uncover the truth. We are witness’ to Mike Pence denying the separate and equal call of one of the three branches of Government and then speaking about the constitution that he, his cronies, his boss, stepped on and continue to trash!?! All of this in the name of ‘justice’, all this in the name of Jesus?

In recovery, we hold ourselves to the “violent imperative character” the prophets teach us about and call us to. We know if we don’t we are lost and we relish the joy and growth that living a just life brings to us. We are constantly pursuing justice knowing we will not attain it wholly or completely and we can move forward as we “trudge the road to happy destiny”. 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 123

“Let us recall the tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel. It is their voice we hear when a great injustice has been done and condoned. From the depths of the centuries they raise their protest.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Rabbi Heschel teaches us that any injustice is a grave injustice to the Prophets of Israel and should be to us as well, yet we seem to be hardened to the daily injustices that happen all around us and the ones we commit. We are so used to “that’s the way of the world” and “this is how it has always been” that we are deaf to the “tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel” and herein is the heart of our current situation.

When a former Vice-President fights a legitimate subpoena because of politics, when he hides behind some false image of himself, his former office, he is committing an injustice and everyone is affected. The injustice that stands out most, to me, is his unwillingness to engage in truth, to speak truth and to end the mendacity that he was a part of for the past 6 years. While he paints himself as a ‘good christian’, he is not a patriot nor a good American due to his desire to lie and deceive under the guise of standing for something noble. He has shown that he stands for himself, for what he can gain, and will use mendacity and self-deception in the furtherance of these gains.

When we see an unhoused person on the street and we ignore their plight, their request for change, for a cigarette, to be recognized as a human being, we are committing an injustice. When we kiss up and sh^&t down, we are committing an injustice. When we ignore the poor and the stranger, when we criminalize being needy, when we imprison all of the Jean Valjeans’ of our communities and world, we are committing an injustice. When we go along to get along, when we care only about “getting mine”, we are committing an injustice.

When we fail to see the whole situation and put our spin on a part of the whole, when we take things out of context in order to be right and vindicate our unjust behaviors, we are guilty of injustice. When we do things in the “name of God” and they are unjust, we are not only unjust, we are taking God’s Name in vain, we are creating False Images of God, we are creating false images of our self, and we murdering the souls/spirits of another(s). When we are more concerned with status than justice, what is right, we are committing an injustice.

Unfortunately, these few examples don’t take in the breathe of injustices, there is Putin invading Ukraine, there is Netanyahu trying to take control of the courts, there is the US Supreme Court who are more interested in a political agenda than the rule of law. We have a House of Representative majority who are more interested in chaos and ‘gotcha’ than in legislating and helping our citizens. We have White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis all over the world who want to seize power and ‘kill the Jews’ and everyone else who are a threat to their power, their dominance. We have everyday people who ignore one another because of fear, of self-absorption, of self-centeredness, of wanting to make a name for themselves.

We are as deaf to the “tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel” as we have ever been and it is leading to the degradation of our humanity. The prophets voices, no matter how loud they call to us “from the depths of centuries” are being ignored and bastardized. When an injustice is perpetrated God cries, God protests, God cares about the widow and the orphan, the poor and the stranger, the needy in material and spiritual matters and we, who ignore all of this, we who commit these ‘little’ injustices claim to be God-fearing? Actually, we are god-fearing because we have created idols, we worship at the feet of power, prestige and wealth rather than acting in concert with our status as a partner of God.

In recovery, we hear the call of the prophets all the time. In fact, we change our old ways and begin our recovery because we finally hear/heard the call to justice, the call to change from someplace other than our own ‘stinking thinking’. We “practice these principles in all our affairs” in order to be more mindful and aware of the injustices we commit and the one that are committed in around us. We know that our minds, our lower consciousness will lie to us and from there it is all downhill!

I am plagued by “the tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel” and I hear their protest “from the depths of centuries” through my own sense of justice and because Rabbi Heschel, like the prophets are disturbing my inner peace. I am acutely aware of injustice and I am, at times, very reactive and loud. I am not politically correct in these moments because I am so afraid of buying into the deception of another and my own self-deception. I must continually speak up because Jeremiah, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea, etc are within me and Rabbi Heschel’s words and teaching torture me when I am unjust and when I witness injustice and say/do nothing. It is not a life that’s fun and it is a life of meaning and purpose. I believe the words of the Prophets of Israel were given to us so we can stay a little disturbed and not be too sure of ourselves and our actions. 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 122

“Let us recall the tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel. It is their voice we hear when a great injustice has been done and condoned. From the depths of the centuries they raise their protest.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Given the injustices we see each and every day, the mass shootings, the practice of privilege for and by the rich and powerful, the ignoring of the plight of human beings, the indifference to the suffering of people, the ‘dog eat dog’ way of business, the practice of “caveat emptor”, the wariness and fear of people who are different/not of our tribe, etc; we are turning a deaf ear to “the tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel” and this is, I believe, the root cause of our indifference to injustice.

We, the People, like the people of Ancient Israel and Ancient Judea, are willing, able and run to condone and revel in the injustices of today, we are proud of our “getting over” on the system, on another human being, while shutting off the call of another(s) and the call of our souls and, the call of the Prophets of Israel. It is too painful, it is too nagging, it is too much of a loss for most of us to “recall the tones and accents of the Prophets of Israel”. To hear them, to recall them would force us to change our ways, force us to see the dignity of another(s), to right the injustices that make up our daily living and to surrender to truth, justice, mercy, love, compassion, empathy, to Godliness as actions rather than emotions and we are still fighting these ways that are basic to and what make us human.

We, the people, become objects of our images instead of being and living as Images of the divine. We are driven to cruelty without knowing it, without realizing it, and we believe we are doing good, we are practicing justice, mercy, etc. We know that the Nazis loved their children, classical music, and could come home after a day of destroying human lives, of attempting to destroy the humanity of another(s) and laugh, love, extol their actions as good. While it is easy to point the fingers at ‘those people’, we are missing how we practice injustice and we are turning a deaf ear to “the tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel”. When we do not stand up and with anyone who is treated poorly, we are practicing injustice. When we are silent and go along with the lies and bullying of the poor, the needy, the stranger, we are practicing injustice. When we make one law for ourselves and ‘our people’ and another law for ‘those people’ who we deem lower than ourselves, we are practicing injustice and being deaf to the call of the prophets. When we have one law for the rich and another for the poor we are practicing injustice, when we favor the poor over the rich, we are not hearing the call of the prophets nor the call of the Torah. When we forget to do T’Shuvah and not repair the damage we have caused through our practice of injustice, we are deaf to the prophets.

We are engaged in a war for the soul of America, a war for the soul of ourselves. We keep forgetting, it seems, that there is no soul of America unless and until we raise up our individual souls. Until we are willing to realize, accept, and surrender to the truth that any injustice is a great injustice, one injustice leads to another ad nauseam, we will not be able to be free. Until we are willing to look at our self, look at the injustices we wrought and repair them, respond to them and have a new way of being, we will suffer the same fate as the people of Ancient Israel and Ancient Judea: destruction of our country, destruction of our freedom, wounding our souls to their very core. It is up to us to do our own individual inventory on the injustices we have perpetrated and repair the ones we have not yet repaired and make a plan on how we are going to avoid doing the same things over and over again-believing we are being just. We have to make restitution to the people we have harmed and commit to not be indifferent to their call nor the “tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel” any longer.

In recovery, one of the aspects of our humanity we are recovering is our sense of justice. Whether we hear the call of the prophets, the call of our higher power, the call of the person who still suffers that is sitting next to us, we hear the call to serve, we hear the call to be just, we hear the call to repair, restore and respond to the injustices we have committed and the ones committed in our name by society. Our principle of anonymity was to shield people from society’s inhuman and unjust way of ostracizing drunks from their midst and from employment and now, for me, it is a way of leveling the playing field, of not caring who someone is/was only caring for how I can be of service and how I can restore some justice back into their lives and into my own.

Since 1987 when Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, introduced me to Rabbi Heschel, I have heard the “tone and accents of the Prophets of Israel” each and every day. I have, at times, turned a deaf ear to them as I am not perfect in anything. Yet, the majority of time and energy that I have expended since my first encounter with Rabbi Heschel has been/is in being just, hear the call of the prophets, hearing the call of my father, Jerry, z”l, my grandfathers, David, z”l, and Abe, z”l who fought for the underdog even though they were underdogs themselves, who fought for what was right no matter the personal cost and who are role models for me, for my family and I work hard to live up to their examples and their teachings. They never saw color and/or religion as a barrier, rather they saw differences as opportunities to learn and to serve, they heard and heeded the call of the prophets throughout their lives.  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 121

“Public safety was not merely the supreme law, as indeed it has remained, it was furthermore proclaimed as such; whereas today we should not dare to lay down the principle that it justifies injustice, even if we accept any particular consequence of that principle.” (God in Search of Man pg.373)

Immersing myself in these thoughts above has brought me to question what public safety truly is. I know the societal definition, anything that keeps order and the status quo, yet I have come to believe that public safety is totally dependent on how we treat one another. After the 10 sayings in Exodus, we are confronted with how to treat one another, the social ordinances that will create, nurture, grow and enhance our individual spirits and living as well as our communal spirit and living. Using this definition of public safety, I believe we can change the status quo to a way of being that is more compatible with being partners of the Divine, more compatible with our higher consciousness.

Leaning into radical amazement, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, is a “prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is”. To do this, we have to stop reverting to, falling back on our old ideas of “public safety”. We have to, as we learn in the Bible, respect the dignity of every human being, even those who are indentured servants. Today we have to respect employees by paying them living wages, making sure their working conditions are conducive to growth and health. We have to respect the people who are serving us in stores, offices, our outdoors, maintenance, etc. We have to end looking down our noses at people we are considering less than us, people we say are unskilled laborers. Have any of us tried to pick the fruit and vegetables from the fields in which they grow? Meeting and speaking with people from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and being a witness to their ground breaking agreement with Jon Esformes and Pacific Tomato Growers, I saw the difficulty, the skill, the care with which our fruits and vegetables are harvested and I know this is truly skilled labor. Yet, until Jon and Pacific signed their agreement, the other farmers in South Florida treated their laborers as less than human! Acknowledging their humanity, their dignity, ensuring good working conditions has contributed greatly to “public safety” in South Florida and for all of us who eat fruits and vegetables.

The entire Bible is about how to live as free people and live with one another no matter our differences. “Public safety” has to encompass these principles, not be used to validate cruelty, racism, “Jim Crow”. “Public safety” has to stop being used to validate mass incarceration, denial of Civil Rights, the killing of Emmett Till, the hanging of Black people for some trumped up charge. “Public safety” does not give license to people in power to gerrymander voting districts, make decisions about women’s reproductive choices, stop or it make incredibly difficult for people of color, poor people, people of a different party to vote. Yet, this catchall phrase is used to do so many of these horrifically demeaning and dehumanizing actions.

When we are in radical amazement, we are constantly aware of how much we have to learn, we are in awe of the surprise of living and we take nothing for granted. When we reach out our hands to help another person be freer, to help another person see their own infinite worth and dignity, when we let everyone around us know how much they matter, then differences of opinion are welcome and solutions are arrived at through conversations, through give and take, through a coming together of spirits to do what is the next right thing for this current situation. Living in radical amazement, letting go of our need to hide behind “public safety” as an excuse for injustice, brings us closer to taking our proper place as a co-creator with the divine to make our corner of the world a little better each day.

In recovery, we learn to hear the call of our higher power, our higher self, the call of another human being who is in need and those who want to reach out to us in joy. We let go of our suspicious tendencies to rejoice in the coming together of a group and/or another human being to raise our spirits, our hopes and help us achieve the dreams that God has in store for us.

I know that I have been a part of the status quo at times and I deeply regret it. I know I have fought against the status quo and I am grateful for the spirit and light, teachings and leadership of people who show me this path. I know that I have lost many of the battles against the status quo and I am grateful that I have not lost the “fire in the belly” to continue this fight against injustice in the name of “public safety” and continue to move the battle forward inch by inch. I believe we all can be freer each day and I know that radical amazement, gratitude, t’shuvah are the paths for me to achieve this goal. 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 120

“Public safety was not merely the supreme law, as indeed it has remained, it was furthermore proclaimed as such; whereas today we should not dare to lay down the principle that it justifies injustice, even if we accept any particular consequence of that principle.” (God in Search of Man pg.373)

Rabbi Heschel, in 1955, was decrying the claim of people who made “public safety” the supreme law. He is reminding us of the blanket immunity it gave and gives to leaders, police, citizens who practice injustice in its name. It was/is a danger to people who go against the people who do injustice in the name of “public safety”. As we look at our situation today, we need to be horrified at what we have created, perpetrated and continue to do in the name of “public safety”.

Hitler and so many others throughout the ages used this claim against the Jewish People to validate their anti-Semitic laws, to validate dispossessing them from their homes and countries of origin. The Spanish Inquisition is another example of using “public safety” as a cover to practice hatred, violence, expulsion, etc against a group of people who are, seemingly, a threat to the establishment. The anti-Semitic actions today in America and across the globe are ‘warnings’ by ‘good Christian people’ against the danger, control, otherness of the Jew in the name of keeping their children, their image of their country safe from these interlopers who will enslave them if they get power. The life of anti-Semitic literature and actions is so long that many people are unaware of their bias against Jews. A recent survey showed 85% of Americans believed, repeated some anti-Semitic statement about Jews. The leaders, like Henry Ford, believed and promoted the idea that Jews go against the safety of the public!

Since the Emancipation Proclamation, while people have tried and succeeded in incarcerating Black people and Latino People as for the good of public safety. Whether they actually committed crimes or not, they were/are convicted and put in prisons for inordinate prison terms. It has gotten so ridiculous and scary that “driving while black” gets some people killed. Every Black parent, every Latino parent has to have the “conversation” with their children about how to act when they are stopped by police whether they have done something wrong or not. These actions are done by police in the name of “public safety”.

We have used “public safety” to enslave, “keep in their place” those people who we fear will take our place, whether Jew, Black, Latino, Asian. When this behavior is called out, when it is proven, there is an outcry and NOTHING gets done. We have never stopped these prejudices, we have never stopped using “public safety” as justifications because we are afraid. While it is easy to blame the police-who are guilty-and then paint all police with the same brush, it is easy to blame the legislators who have not changed laws, who have not stood up for justice, it is easy to blame the prosecutors who have, knowingly and unknowingly, promoted prison terms for these ‘threats’ to public safety; it is more important to look within and see our own prejudices and fears that go along with these injustices, go along with these excuses that give power to our inner fears. We, the People, are the root cause of these injustices and so many others because we are unwilling, unable to face our fears, incapable it seems to be happy with our portion and allow everyone else their portion.

Spiritually this is, I believe, one of the greatest crimes. Using our selfish desires and fears to practice injustice on another and assuaging our guilt by saying it is for “public safety” goes against every spiritual principle I know. Yet, a lot of people, unaware of their hidden bias’, believe they practice and live a spiritual life while also going along with and/or employing these injustices on another. A spiritual life is based on living one’s purpose, living from one’s soul, one’s higher consciousness, and rejoicing and wanting what one has. Along with one’s rejoicing, we celebrate what another has without envy, without jealousy, without wishing them bad is a foundational block of spiritual growth. Yet, we hear so-called Spiritual Leaders speak ill of a group not like them, make it okay to steal from anyone outside the group, lessen the value and dignity of human beings created by God, if they don’t conform to and belong to their group. How sad, how ridiculous, how disgusting!

In recovery, we are more interested in the inner life of our self and our people in recovery with us. We don’t use “public safety” to exclude anyone, even those who are inebriated at the meeting, just a desire to stop drinking is enough for us. We know what it is to be left out, to be excluded and have our foibles, our vulnerabilities used against us. We are well acquainted with being public pariahs by our own doing and how different would life be if society in general could welcome people who want to belong with open arms as people in recovery do.

In our years at Beit T’Shuvah, we never used “public safety” to unjustly exclude anyone. We welcomed so many people from prison, instead of prison whom others thought not worthy of help, incapable of rehabilitation. 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 119

“Justice has always appeared as obligatory, but for a long time it was an obligation like other obligations. It met, like the others, a social need;…This being so, an injustice was neither more nor less shocking than any other breach of the rules.There was no justice for slaves, save perhaps a relative, almost an optional, justice” (God in Search of Man pg. 373)

While we say “justice is blind”, we know this to be false given the history of inequality between the ‘justice’ for the “haves” and the ‘justice for the “have-nots” that has plagued us since humanity began. Judges are supposed to deliver “righteous justice”, justice that is tempered with mercy, appropriate sentences and, if there is doubt, not guilty verdicts. Instead, we see some people punished without mercy for crimes that another person is given a pass on. Yet, we are still not shocked by this injustice, we are not outraged at the horror of these actions, we just accept it as “sad, but true”. How disgusting a way of being. How much more inhumane can we be towards our fellow human beings?

Alan Turing was prosecuted, found guilty of being a homosexual-as if sexual orientation is a crime! God created Alan Turing to fulfill a need, he was a genius and he led a team that cracked the German Code, saving lives and helping to ensure victory in World War II. Yet the British government thought his ‘crime’ of being and acting in the way that God made him was so horrendous they dogged him into killing himself and the world missed out on his genius. We are locking people up for minor drug offenses rather than give them the help they need to recovery and call this justice. “Driving while Black” is still a capital offense according to some Police people and our Federal Government refuses to stop this, calling it a ‘state’s rights issue’. This is in direct conflict with “unalienable rights” as described in the Declaration of Independence, and our shock, outrage, marching does nothing to actually change our culture because these injustices and so many more are “neither more or less shocking than any other breach of the rules”. Without justice, the rest of the rules mean nothing and we are perpetuating and promoting a meaningless society by our inability to be shocked at injustice in a manner that produces change!

I am outraged at our not being shocked at injustice, I am also appreciating the courage of Dr. King, Gandhi, Rabbi Heschel, Rev Barber, and so many other clergy, regular people who have and are fighting for justice in every area of living. It sounds fine to have “equal justice under the law” and we are not living this truth, this command from God that there should be one law for the citizen and stranger alike and I applaud, commend the true “God-Awing” people who follow this demand, this call from God. I also am calling out the Idolators who claim Jesus, Adonai, Allah as their god and really worshiping their own resentments, their own power, their False Images of themselves and God.

“Justice, Justice, you shall pursue” Moses tells us in Deuteronomy and yet, we continue to pursue injustice instead! Justice is not in the eyes of the beholder, in the eyes of the powerful. It is in the “eyes” of God! We, the People, have to hear and respond to this command, we have to stop shrugging our shoulders at the injustices around us and we have to stand up for justice. We have to stop seeking to pervert justice for our own gain. We have to stop saying to ourselves and to another(s) “that’s just how the world works” and we have to march, vote, demand “Justice for all” and stop bastardizing our slogans, stop taking God’s name in vain by being indifferent to injustice. We keep ourselves exiled from our purpose, we keep ourselves in exile from God, we keep ourselves from our covenant with God by being indifferent to injustice. As our Prophets teach us, injustice towards one, is injustice towards all. God cares about the widow, the orphan,the stranger, the needy, the poor, the Black, the Brown, the Jew, the Asian, the Muslim, as much as God cares for the White, the wealthy, the powerful. Each of us is equal in the “eyes” of God and so should we be in our own eyes. When we accept these “truths to be self-evident”, when we stand for justice, our world, our individual lives will flourish!

In recovery, we are acutely aware of injustice precisely because we practiced injustice prior to our recovery. We “grow upon spiritual principles” because we know without our spiritual life being rich, without spiritual progress, we will fall back into our old ways and bring about the same destruction to another(s) and to our self.

I have always been sensitive to injustice because my father, my grandfathers were so keenly aware of and against injustice. What to many people was “just the way life is”, to my ancestors was a calamity. This is why my earlier path of injustice, crime and alcoholism was so antithetical to everything I learned as a youth. This is the living amends I make to them: to practice justice in my affairs, to be a person who stands for justice and not prejudice. I have made it a priority to be shocked at my own injustice, no matter how ‘small’ it may seem to another(s) and to my mind. My soul cries out to me at the injustice in the world, in my community, in my country and in my self. It is a loud cry that comes out of me as anger and is actually anguish. I pray we all hear this cry of our 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 118

“Justice has always appeared as obligatory, but for a long time it was an obligation like other obligations. It met, like the others, a social need;…This being so, an injustice was neither more nor less shocking than any other breach of the rules.There was no justice for slaves, save perhaps a relative, almost an optional, justice” (God in Search of Man pg. 373)

On March 31, 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a friend of Rabbi Heschel’s, said: “The moral arc of the universe is long and it bends toward justice”. This was 5 days before he was assassinated 50 years ago. He was, at the time of his death, fighting for the economic rights and dignity of laborers, of working class people of all races. He saw, I believe, how enslaved workers were/are and their need for dignity, a living wage were essential to their being free. Civil rights is not just about black/white, Jew/Gentile, Latino/white, etc, is the teaching I take from Dr. King’s and Rabbi Heschel’s work together and separately. Civil rights happens when all people are recognized as equally worthy and valued, when “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”(Declaration of Independence)

Yet, as Moses warned the Israelites in Desert, “But Jeshurun became fat and kicked…then he forsook God who made him and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation”(Deuteronomy 32:15-16), many people have done the same with the words of the Declaration of Independence, with our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, the words, wisdom, brilliance, and teachings of Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King. Both of these men are prophets carrying the word of God to us, leaning into the Divinely Inspired knowing of our founding fathers, leading us to make our country “a more perfect union” than it was when they found it.

We find ourselves today in an economic crisis of our own making, a crisis of faith in our young people, in our working/blue collar people, that hard work, good education/training will allow them a slice of the “American Dream”. While many people equate this dream with home ownership, etc, I believe the true “dream” is for each of us to live “these truths to be self-evident” rather than continue to enslave people because of their lack of formal education, because they are laborers, because they are not part of the 1%, because of the color of their skin, because of their lack of guile, because of their religion, etc.

This crisis is being promoted by people who say: “Jews will not replace us”, who believe that “Jesus was the Lion”, who want to “sunset Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid”,  who believe that blacks/latinos are ‘second class citizens’, who want to investigate bogus claims while giving aid and comfort to Putin, Orban, and other autocrats. This crisis is being promoted by the mendacity and deception of people who have such disdain for their own constituents they are willing to enslave them for the sake of the ultra wealthy and their own power. This crisis is being waged by modern day Pharaohs ‘who do not know our founding principles’. This crisis is being supported by the very people who are being harmed because of their own prejudices, their own self-deceptions, and their belief in the deceptions of another(s).

We are being called by our founding fathers and by God to engage in living justly, to not take bribes because they blind the eyes of the righteous as Moses reminds us in Deuteronomy, to honor the infinite worth and dignity of every human being, to cease and desist in our need to enslave another. We are being called by Rabbi Heschel’s words and actions to stand up for the poor, the needy, the stranger; to no longer tolerate the rationalizations we are told/we use that enslaves another to a life of poverty, a life of injustice. There is no such thing as “relative, optional” justice in God’s world, Jesus did not say only some of the people should be fed, the declaration doesn’t exclude any human being from “all men”. We have to take off the blinders that causes us to value another(s) as less worthy than ourselves, we have to uncover the divine image/spark that is inside of us and inside of all people. We have to live lives that honor the dignity of another and ensure that “justice for all” is not a slogan rather it becomes an everyday practice. “There is one law for the citizen and stranger alike” we are taught in the Bible, and we have to make the necessary changes so we end tragedies like Tyre Nichols, mass shootings like Colorado Springs, Half Moon Bay, etc.

In recovery, we are colorblind. Our purpose is to “stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety”. I believe this to be my purpose as well and I live it to the best of my ability each day. I also know, from the examples of my father, my grandfathers, aunts and uncles, that I have to join with all people who are bending the moral arc of the universe towards justice in all my affairs. I am grateful to people like Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre who create opportunities for so many to be free as examples. I have and continue to do this as part of my living T’Shuvah, my living amends. I am heartened by my nieces and nephews who are engaged in this work, by the young and old people whom I have touched and touch me who are engaged in freeing themselves and helping another be free. 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 117

“Justice has always appeared as obligatory, but for a long time it was an obligation like other obligations. It met, like the others, a social need;…This being so, an injustice was neither more nor less shocking than any other breach of the rules.There was no justice for slaves, save perhaps a relative, almost an optional, justice” (God in Search of Man pg. 373)

I disagree with one word of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, his use of the word “was”! We are witnessing a resurgence of the obligatory nature of justice, we are witnessing the indifference to injustice that Rabbi Heschel marched against, wrote condemnations of, and spoke out about. Even more so, we are witnessing ‘justice’ being bastardized to promote political agendas, so-called religious agendas, by supposedly ‘God-fearing’ people who are, in fact, idolators.

Our inability to elevate justice to a level that is higher than our other obligations is a root cause of hatred, racism, slavery, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, torture, etc. Because we have relegated justice to one of a myriad of obligations we find ourselves and society doing what is expedient for our ‘good’ and for the ‘good’ of society. We are so blinded by seeking what is ‘good’ for self, what is ‘good’ for society, we have become deaf to the cries of people seeking true justice, we have become blind to our acts of injustice and indifferent to the injustices that are perpetrated by society on people who are voiceless and powerless. This has to end, we have to restore justice to it’s proper place, we have to live the words of the prophets and the Bible; “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”. Society and individuals in power have decided they are the arbiters of justice and justice has to suit their needs, their desires and support their power structure. In the Bible, justice is to be rendered by “able men, men with awe of God, men of truth, hating unjust gain”(Exodus 19:21), yet we continue to appoint people who become blind to injustice when justice doesn’t serve their political/religious agenda!

Using justice to meet “a social need” is not justice at all! We have a ringside seat to the circus that is happening in our country, in our Capital where people, when they are called out on their injustices’, accuse the truth-teller of lying. We are witnessing first-hand the same conditions that have fostered, promoted and maintained authoritarianism throughout the ages, following Goebbels’ play book: “Accuse someone else of what you yourself are doing”. We saw this with Roy Cohn, we saw this with the people who were against the Civil Rights movement in the 50’s/60’s till today, we saw this with the promoters and defenders of the Vietnam war, we see this today with the people who are unwilling/unable to accept free and fair elections, with people who want to make it harder for ‘those’ people to vote, with people who want to spread anti-semitic literature and blame the Jews, with people who want to ensure that “the south will rise again” and slavery, mendacity, is the ‘law of the land’, with people who want to hold on to their grip on power because of the color of their skin-white supremacists.

Dark money contributions to political campaigns, politicians, political parties, abusive referendums, is not just-yet our Supreme Court decided it was okay to hide, to keep secrets from people and to not let us decide on candidates to represent us nor on ideas/laws that govern us with all the facts. A corporation is not the same as a human being, it is created to shield human beings from personal liability so the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are the same as individual human beings in campaign funding, in creating PACs, is as ridiculous as it is unjust. Overturning Roe v Wade is another example of political agendas and so-called religious ideas overtaking justice. When justice is seen as a social need, those in power are the arbiters of these social needs and their political leanings, their unreligious ways of not doing justly, not loving mercy, not walking humbly with God, their setting themselves up as gods, as all-knowing, overtake God’s sense of justice, God’s call to care for the voiceless, the powerless, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, the needy. This is where we find ourselves today as Rabbi Heschel witnessed some 58 years ago!

In recovery, justice is mandatory-not obligatory. Being just with ourselves, with everyone else is paramount to our recovery because we have spent so much of our non-recovery life being unjust, living in mendacity and following Goebbels’ path of accusing another(s) rather than being responsible ourselves. In recovery, we know that when we point our finger towards another, three more are pointing back at us. We know we cannot serve, we cannot be loving towards another(s) and ourselves if we are not living justly, loving mercy.

I am overwhelmed with trembling awe as I see, once again, the wreckage of my past in my rap sheet, as I experience the sadness of loss that I wrought, the pain that I caused. I am also overwhelmed with the injustices around me, personal and global. I have a fire in my belly still, the kind that the prophet Jeremiah describes, and the injustices that I witness to the people around me, to the non-ruling class people by the ‘progressives’ as well as the ‘conservatives’ ‘good people’ make me want to scream and shout. I can’t because I won’t be heard, so I have to find a new way-hopefully this blog is it:) 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 115

“Good and evil are not values among other values. Good is life, and evil is death. “See I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil…choose life”(Deuteronomy 30:15-19) (God in Search of Man pg 373)

As Rabbi Heschel stresses throughout this chapter in God in Search of Man and throughout all of his writings, speeches, demonstrations and teachings; good and evil have been taken for granted, thrown around like footballs and become irrelevant to so many people. Our inability to discern one from the other is causing destruction, devastation, death and decline, yet we seem to be intent on continuing this descent into self-destruction! I hear Rabbi Heschel’s words: “"Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society”, demanding from everyone a new way of being, an end to our indifference, a new beginning of choosing life.

Watching the State of the Union address last evening reminded me of how indifferent to evil we have become. When people were calling the current President of the United States a liar for repeating their words back to them, when they extol the immediate former President for his lies, remember taking bleach to prevent Covid-19, we are witnesses to this indifference. When we consider a corporation to have human rights, we are engaging in indifference. When we go along to get along, we are being indifferent. We have to end our own indifference, not just complain about another human being, another law, another unmet desire. It is time for all of us to heed Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above and beyond in order to save our own souls, to save our own lives and, of course the lives of everyone else and the life of democracy and freedom.

We seem to have forgotten the responsibility freedom puts upon us, we seem to have become indifferent to the fire for freedom that is in every human being. We seem to have become indifferent to the suffering of another human being and blame them instead of care for them. We seem to have become indifferent to our need to “choose life”! We do not have to see one another as adversaries, this is another step on our path to total indifference. When we set up ‘good guys and bad guys’, we can ignore the plight of people we disagree with, we can look past anyone and everyone who is not ‘with us’, we can look through the needs of another and forget they are our neighbors and we are commanded to “love our neighbor as our self”. I believe this is the key to our indifference. We have stopped loving ourselves enough to “choose life” so there is no chance for us to fulfill this demand, request, prayer of God! Our indifference to the primacy of the values of good and evil, our indifference to our actions towards our self, our negative self-talk, our indifference to our neighbor’s plight because we live in scarcity and miserly, take us to choosing death instead of life.

We need to heed Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance, we need to heed the wonder and radical amazement of Dr. King, we need to live into the words of Jesus, of Moses, of Mohammed, of the Dalai Lama, of the Buddha, etc instead of bastardizing the foundational spiritual principles of faith and of living well. We need to demand of our clergy: kindness, truth, love, justice, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, caring, etc instead of putting up with the outlandish lies, the confusion of good and evil that comes from too many pulpits. We need to stop seeing anyone else as “the other” and remember everyone else is created in the Image of God. We need to “walk in God’s ways” instead of trying to convince ourselves and everyone else that God is walking with us in our race to do evil. We have to stop being indifferent to God’s call which is heard in every cry from another human being for aid and comfort, for freedom and opportunity, for fresh air to breath and healthy water to drink.

In recovery, we are choosing life each and every day. We know our lives depend on the state of our spiritual condition each and every day. We know we no longer have the luxury of being indifferent to anything. We know we must be engaged, involved and active in our daily living and in being of service to everyone who crosses our path. We seek to remove the blinders from our eyes so we can see and discern what “choose life” means today and how to accomplish it. In recovery, we are dedicated to living well.

I just received my past criminal record in the mail for a license I am applying for and looking at it has given me great pain. Not that I was unaware of what is in it, the pain is from my indifference to the evil I wrought with my prior actions, the pain is that I am seeing the wreckage of my past in 6 pages of charges and convictions. The joy is that this is in the past, I have a certificate of rehabilitation from the courts and, most of all, I have a certificate of rehabilitation from God, from my years of service and from the people who love me. I am loud and abrasive when I sense evil, when I sense indifference to evil because I am so sensitive to the slippery slope of indifference which leads to destruction. I am not pretty when I sense it, I am not ‘nice’ when I see it, I get a lot of dirty looks and comments because I have no filter when indifference and/or evil surround me. I am too afraid of both to keep silent. 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 115

“Good and evil are not values among other values. Good is life, and evil is death. “See I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil…choose life”(Deuteronomy 30:15-19) (God in Search of Man pg 373)

Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence above seems obvious, yet he has to state it. In fact, he states it again later in this paragraph. I wondered why at first and then, DUH, he has to state it because we had/have become guilty of confusing good and evil as just another value like honesty/dishonesty, being overcome with a desire/controlling our desires, etc. In the shadow of the Shoah, in the shadow of the Concentration Camps, in the shadow of people’s inhumanity towards people, in the real time of nuclear bombs build-up, in the shadow of the McCarthy Hearings/witch hunt, in the shadow of the killing of Ethel Rosenberg even though the government knew she was innocent, Rabbi Heschel saw truth, saw the way good and evil were tossed around.

I imagine he was abhorred at the idea that the words, good and evil, were just thrown around to justify inhumane actions, to justify life-taking, freedom-denying actions that ‘the people in power’ were taking. Dropping the Atomic Bomb on Japan, while it saved so many lives as opposed to invading Japan, it was not good, it was not life-giving nor life-saving to those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki! McCarthy and his ‘commie witch hunt’ was not to save our country, it was not to unearth actual treason, it was to make a name for himself and to punish people who’s politics he did not like. Killing Ethel, and for that matter Julius, Rosenberg did not serve any purpose except to show the anti-semitism that was still abounding in the US at that time (and now). Knowingly putting an innocent woman to death for not telling something she did not know, knowingly suborning perjury from her brother to save his life is not a good thing.

Yet, we continue to confuse good and evil as just another utilitarian value. How do I use them to my advantage people think, then and now-possibly it has been this way forever. When the Congress is going to call Illhan Omar an Anti-Semite because of her comments of years ago and extol Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor-Greene who participated in rallies with White Supremacists who spewed out hatred of Jews and they seem unable to pass a bill that ensures equal and fair access to the process of voting while claiming stolen elections and the Republicans call this good, call this living good American values; Rabbi Heschel’s concern and need to re-iterate this seemingly obvious statement that “good and evil are not values among other values” is warranted and necessary.

We must stop using ‘spin’, ‘half-truths’, cover-ups, ‘alternative facts’, etc to define what is good and what is evil! This has gone on too long and look where we are at. We have almost 50% of our country who believes the 2020 election was stolen, that the Jan. 6 insurrection and storming of the Capital was a peaceful demonstration by people who wanted truth restored by overturning a free and fair election. We have elected representatives who supported the insurrection in words and deeds before and after it happened while cowering while it was happening for fear of their lives! We listen to Tucker Carlson, et al spew out so many lies, so much evil that Russia hails him as a hero! We have people who believe it is okay for Putin to invade Ukraine because he is ‘the savior of the white race’! We are watching, finally in some horror, as Police beat Black men to death just because they are black and make up lies to validate their behaviors and call them good. We are watching, some of us in horror, as these same evil Police (not all Police are evil) get away with these actions as they have forever. There is no personal accountability and, in the overwhelming amount of cases that are brought against them, they are acquitted.  We use the words good and evil without truly ascribing the the life and death values they embody. We have come to make them like most values-in the eye of the beholder and to be used for personal validation rather than to save life, to serve another and to serve God.

In recovery, most of us realize we were both at death’s door many times and we were the bringer of almost death, certainly spiritual death, certainly emotional suffering to the people closest to us, to the people who loved us and to the stranger. Instead of caring for people, we used them; instead of bringing good, we perpetrated evil. Our recovery is based on making our amends not just for past actions, it is based on living amends by “practicing these principles in all our affairs”. We know, firsthand, that evil is death, because we were close to spiritual death. We are learning that good is life.

I know how much death evil brings. I saw it in the eyes of the people closest to me, I saw it in people who came for help. I see it in people on the street who are suffering because of the evil that is being perpetrated. It is not okay for me to just not do evil anymore, that was okay for a while. Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom reminds me that I have to seek to do good, I have to find good to bring to each and every day-otherwise evil wins! 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 114

“After the Lord had created the universe, He took a look at His creation. What was the word that conveyed His impression? If an artist were to find a word describing how the universe looked to God at the dawn of its existence, the word would be sublime or beautiful. But the word that the Bible has is good. Indeed, when looking through a telescope into the stellar space, the word that comes to our mind is grandeur, mystery, splendor. But the God of Israel is not impressed with splendor; He is impressed with goodness.”(God In Search of Man pg.372-373)

God’s repeating of the word “good” in the first Chapter of Genesis points to the validity and wisdom of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. In the first chapter we are told that light and good comes from God’s declaration of the need for light that emanates from the darkness over the deep and the chaos and void that precedes the light. Only upon seeing what is needed to make the world better and fill that need can God declare “good”. Immersing ourselves in the text of this first chapter and in the wisdom above, gives greater definition to what it means to be human, I believe.

Humanity became obsessed with creating splendor and beauty, grandeur and solving the mysteries of the Universe while ignoring the teachings of God in the first chapter, deceiving itself that it was caring for the earth, that self-satisfaction, self-importance, self-empowerment was ‘good’. We made up laws and rules that served the strong, the mighty, the rich, the ruling class in order to control another(s) and to make oneself into an object of worship. Bowing down to kings, queens, etc became more important than worshiping God, from taking a “leap of action”, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, to fulfill the need that only we can fulfill. We became and continue to be a society that is obsessed with power, glory, beauty, splendor, grandeur, solving mysteries; a society that is obsessed with our mental acuity at the cost of our spiritual health, at the cost of “goodness”, at the cost of being human and humane.

We have forgotten that light/good comes from the darkness, the void, the chaos that life is. Nowhere in the Bible are we told that these three basic elements of creation are eradicated, nowhere are we told that they disappear and/or they have no effect on us. Because each and every day is new, each and every day is pregnant with possibilities of creations, the three foundational elements are with us each and every day. Yet, we keep trying to ignore them, go around them, explain them, overpower them with our intellects as Descartes said: “I think therefore I am”. Rather, as I understand Rabbi Heschel today, We are therefore we act, think, etc. We have to see ourselves and all humanity as beings that are created in the Image of God, we have to accept that everyone is needed in order to fulfill the need only they can fulfill. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that we need to return to our basic goodness of being that is implanted in us by God. We are being called to imitate God’s goodness, to “do justly”, to “walk in God’s ways”, to return to God each and every day.

We are in a state of being, as has been the case to a lessor and greater degree forever, of crowing and reveling in our power. We are engaged in a war with false ego, false pride, power for the sake of enslaving another(s), worshiping our minds and fawning over beauty, splendor, mystery, etc. We see this in our government, we see this in our institutions, we see this in our obsession with social media, we see this in the ways we hide from self and one another, we see this in our religious institutions, we see this in our families. Yet, we have come to normalize these behaviors and are bewildered that someone would call us out on it. We have all the excuses and reasons as to why and how we are ‘good people’ and ‘doing God’s will’ while we are blind to our indifference to the “goodness” God desires, the “goodness” our souls cry out to do. We engage in the ‘goodness’ our intellects direct us to and it is almost always tinged with self-aggrandizement, self-centeredness.

In recovery, we “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God…” and we have a prayer that asks to be relieved of the “bondage of self”. We know we are in need of help from a source greater than ourselves because we have failed in our attempts to think our way out of the darkness, chaos, emptiness of life. We know we have a strong ego that wants to, and has in the past, overpower our soul, drown out the “still small voice of God” within us. So we ask to be relieved of the “bondage of self” and in this way we can see/hear how to live in the “goodness” God is calling for, how to act ourselves into the “goodness” God is demanding of us. This is, again, a foundation of our recovery and needs to grow at least one grain of sand each day.

I am loud and abrasive, impractical and demanding, and constantly seeking ways to live in the “goodness” Rabbi Heschel is teaching me about and that God is demanding. I fall short as does every human being; this is not the core of this teaching, the core of God’s Demand. The core is to keep “failing forward” as I learned from a businessman many years ago. The challenge is to never give up, never get stuck in the chaos, the void, the darkness. The challenge is to continue to reach up to the spirit of God that hovers over our world and reach down within us to our soul’s knowledge, strength, power so we continue to be 51% decent, 51% kind, just, loving,caring, truthful; thereby living 51% in goodness 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 112

“After the Lord had created the universe, He took a look at His creation. What was the word that conveyed His impression? If an artist were to find a word describing how the universe looked to God at the dawn of its existence, the word would be sublime or beautiful. But the word that the Bible has is good. Indeed, when looking through a telescope into the stellar space, the word that comes to our mind is grandeur, mystery, splendor. But the God of Israel is not impressed with splendor; He is impressed with goodness.”(God In Search of Man pg.372-373)

“To teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message”, Rabbi Heschel is using the Bible as his proof text. God is not concerned with splendor, with grandeur, with mystery as Rabbi Heschel teaches us, God is impressed and, I would add, concerned with goodness. We keep seeking to uncover the sublime, the beautiful, we worship splendor and grandeur, we continue to follow ‘the beautiful people’, we make idols out of celebrities and our need for dopamine has reached such a level that we are constantly seeking greater and greater acts in order to feel alive, in order to experience grandeur, etc. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, chiding us, imploring us, as I hear his words ringing in my head and heart, to get back to goodness, return to distinguishing good from evil. Otherwise, I believe he is teaching us, we lose our humanity and we stop being human and become a human being that exists and is empty.

We seem to be so caught up in looking good, feeling good, that we miss the opportunities to do good and to be good. This is a trait that has been passed down through the generations beginning with Adam and Eve, Cain/Abel, Jacob/Esau, Joseph/his brothers, etc. We are trying to impress one another, we try to impress God with the grandeur and beauty of our sacrifices, our rites and rituals, and it doesn’t work according to the wisdom above. We are left empty and God is the opposite of impressed, God is disgusted according to the Prophets! They railed against our beautiful sacrifices and rituals that did not change our attitudes nor our actions towards the stranger, the poor, the needy. They told the people stop with these sacrifices and engage in “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. Yet, the people could not hear them, just as we have not been able to hear Rabbi Heschel and other modern-day prophets such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Father Gregory Boyle, Pastor William Barber, John Pavlovitz, Pastor Mark Whitlock, Rabbi Harold Shulweis, John Lewis, Martin Buber, Pastor Ed Treat, Reinhold Niebuhr, etc. Instead we listen to and follow the false prophets like John Hagee, Jerry Falwell Sr and Jr, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, the Fellowship Foundation and their false rhetoric of what God wants, their false actions in pursuit of power for themselves and for their cronies, the lies and deceptions they are selling to people in the name of God that is actually in the name of IDOLATRY!

Goodness is what impresses God as Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, yet, we continue to put more stock in grandeur, beauty, the sublime, the mystery. We are seeking to know God and to find God rather than to “walk in God’s ways”, rather than “do justly and love mercy”. We are not supposed to know God nor find God’s Abode because the “whole world declares God’s Glory” so God is everywhere, within everyone, every creature. We are being called on to practice goodness, to make distinctions between good and evil and we continue to be impressed with grandeur, we continue to believe that our minds will save us and the distinctions can be made by our lower/rational mind rather than our higher consciousness, our spirits, our intuitive mind. Rabbi Heschel is demanding we return to our basic goodness of being and our seeking beauty, grandeur, the sublime, etc will be found within our being good and distinguishing good from evil.

In recovery we “made a decision to turn our lives and will over to the care of God as we understand God”. This step encourages us to find our own understanding of God as we learn in Chapter 15 of Exodus after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. This step is the only way we can continue to grow in our recovery because it is a return to our basic goodness of being, it is a return to relearning how to distinguish between good and evil, between deception and truth, between mendacity and authenticity. We return to a primordial state of openness, of knowledge, and of action. Our hearing improves so we can tell when deception abounds and when we are in truth as well as when others are in truth. We return to a state where service to God, to another human being, to tending our corner of God’s Garden becomes a daily opportunity and a daily joy.

Writing this today, I am in deep remorse for the times when my hearing, my seeing, my actions were for the sake of self and I believed/disguised them as being for the sake of God, of another. I am, in hindsight and with the help of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, able to discern the subtleties that easily disguise good and evil. I see how my own self-deception and fears led me to not say things I should have and say things that I should not have. They led to make bad decisions and take wrong actions that I regret and caused pain to another(s). I am sorry for these errors, From these ‘missing the marks’ I continue to grow in sight, grow in goodness, grow in being responsible and grow in service. The key is to serve people, to serve God and in so doing my soul is served and my life just keeps getting better and 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 112

“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)

Rabbi Heschel’s observation regarding the “pleasantness in alliance with evil” and the “unpleasantness in alliance with good” is counterintuitive to what most people think they believe. Most of us equate good/right with pleasantness in our self-deceptive thinking. The truth, as Rabbi Heschel illuminates for us above, is that we are more comfortable and joyous in our alliance with evil than with good.

It is unpleasant to do the right thing, to take the next right action, to admit our flaws and errors, to stand up to the majority who are running to do evil, to act in ways that are Holy, to live the 10 Sayings, etc. It is unpleasant because we will not always be popular, it is unpleasant because we reveal what is underneath the facades we wear and humanity wears. It is unpleasant because we have to face the truth of our actions, we have to no longer blame anyone else, we have to accept our self for who we are, we have to make the commitment to change and grow in goodness and in being one grain of sand better each day. It is unpleasant because we have to stand with the poor, the stranger, the needy not just to help them, we have to see how we ourselves them. We have to feed our souls so we are not a stranger to our self, we have to enrich our learning  and our actions in order to not stay poor and we have to fill the needs of our soul for connection with authentic connection, with covenantal connections not just the transactional ones we have been engaging in.

It is unpleasant to do a daily T’Shuvah, a weekly T’Shuvah inventory. It means we have to take a truthful look at our self, we have to acknowledge our errors, our missing the marks, we have to see our imperfections and not hide, blame, reason, explain, deny them! This is not a pleasant activity. We have to take our part in our interactions that go south, most of us are not all innocent in any interaction, in any experience- exceptions being made for the assaulters on us, on our freedoms, ie, Ukraine, driving while black, being a Jew, a Muslim, an Irish, an Italian. It is not fun to say, “I made a mistake”; we know this because so many people are unable to say it, to mean it, to correct their mistakes. We see this in the ways we continue to do incarcerate people for drug offenses and other crimes caused by addictions rather than treat them, help them. It’s far better to validate our “tough on crime” stance than look at our failures in this area, it is very unpleasant to look at our own ‘criminal’ behaviors in the ways we treat another(s) person, the ways we deny the dignity of groups of human beings because they are not like us.

It is much more pleasant to deceive ourselves that we are denying freedoms to groups of people ‘for their own good’, ‘because they would not know what to do with it’, and other such lies we have told ourselves, our children, our neighbors. It is far more pleasant for Jim Jordan and his cronies to berate and investigate the Justice Department regarding Hunter Biden than investigate themselves for their part in the Jan.6th insurrection. Kevin McCarthy will investigate so he can retain power, so Republicans can serve Tucker Carlson-a Russian favorite talk host-, serve the rich donors and corporations rather than care about the poor, the needy, the stranger. They can say all they want about Ilhan Omer and her inappropriate anti-Semitic comments from years ago without confronting their own White Supremacist agendas, remember Marjorie Taylor Greene’s quote about Jewish Space Lasers and she is rewarded?! It is more pleasant to quote the Bible and live in opposition to the principles of the Bible, of God, of Jesus that it is to confront their idolatry, their taskmaster mentality, their insatiable thirst for power to hurt another, to deny the dignity of human beings.

In recovery, we are engaged in turning away from the pleasantness of evil because we were so engaged in it prior to our recovery. Recovery itself is about dealing with the “unpleasantness in alliance with good”. We are constantly engaging with our better natures in battle against our more negative natures. We know we have to be aware of the cunning and baffling nature of evil with it’s pleasantness and ability to disguise itself as good. This is a daily challenge and we do a 10th step to keep ourselves accountable.

T’Shuvah is the response that has made my life what it is. It is my solution for every day living-I am not always aware of the missing the mark I did each day, yet eventually I realize them. I engage in the unpleasantness with good with excitement and humility. I am also aware of the traps of the pleasantness with evil and am constantly checking myself when I am feeling too good about my actions. Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom reminds me to stay in touch with my inner life and not allow my emotions to tell me what is right, what is good because I can easily deceive myself! 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 111

“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 never been great at the realization of the second sentence above. Human Beings continue to seek out ways to destroy their ‘enemies’ while thriving themselves and it always results in tragedy. This is true since the beginning: Cain did not thrive after killing his brother, the Israelites became slaves, free people, then lost their land, we do not hear of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, Romans, Greeks of antiquity except in history. What has saved humankind, I believe, is that the messages of the Prophets, the messages of God through Moses has survived and, at times, thrived. No matter how close we come to annihilating ourselves, we have managed so far to be saved by their messages of return, of hope and realizing the “distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, is superior to all other distinctions”. We faced this 90 years ago with the election of Adolf Hitler in Germany and it took us 6-9 years to stand up to him and his Nazi collaborators, ensuring the buildup of the German Army and Concentration Camps and 12 years to defeat the Axis Powers and save the remnant of Jews, Gypsies, LGBTQ, and resisters from their death camps.

We can see how “pleasantness in alliance with evil” is being preferred today as it was then. In the USA, we hear about Christian Nation, America First, we hear about the ‘dreaded immigrants at our Southern border’, we don’t hear about the horror and consequences for the murder of Jamil Koshoggi, the consequences of the Saudi’s who attacked our country on 9/11, we hear words of praise and defense for the leaders of the Confederate Army and anger as well as disdain when these traitors’ statues are removed. We hear about bans on teaching the true history of slavery in this country, we hear anger and protests against Jews such as “Jews will not replace us” and we hear about using Congressional hearings to attack and weaponize government against the enemies of the Freedom Caucus, the enemies of the MAGA crowd and the silent acquiescence of other Republicans to these attacks, to these protests, to these bans. The people at the extremes have absolutely let go of any and all capacity to not only distinguish between good and evil, they have completely prefer  the alliance of “unpleasantness with evil”. They can no longer distinguish one from the other-this is true no matter which extreme one is on, their pleasantness with evil is a prerequisite for their extreme positions because this position doesn’t allow for any doubts or questioning. The people who, I believe, Rabbi Heschel is speaking to us is everyone else. And, I am sad to say, we seem to be failing in our duty, our need, for humanity to remain humane, for power and greed to not rule us, to stop buying the lie of powerless and voiceless. The fact that the Bible has survived these 2500+ years, the fact that it is still the foundational basis of western morality, the foundational basis of freedom, is proof that we are not powerless nor voiceless in this war against being human that has always been waged by the rich, the powerful, the ruling classes against the rest of us.

We, the People, in order to form a “more perfect union” have to live into this realization that the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil is the primary distinction we have to make, each and every day, in each and every action we take. History, personal and global, has taught us that we have to make this distinction before taking an action, before deciding to go along to get along, before running after the majority to do evil, before deciding our fears are going to override the courage and knowledge of our souls/higher Consciousness. While we may not all be Mensa people, most of us, I believe and others disagree with me, learn to make the distinctions between good and evil, between right and wrong; most of us can hear the call of our souls and allow this call to lead us to do the next right thing. We can only do this when we are ready to fight for what is right, fight against evil, end our indifference to evil, stop taking our freedoms and way of living for granted. We have to tune our ears to God’s frequency instead of tuning into the “I will save you” frequency, instead of the “they are out to get us frequency”, etc.

This is one of the major changes we make in recovery. We stop following the “k-fuck” radio station that has been playing forever in our heads and we tune into hearing the call of our inner lives, the call of a trusted friend, a sponsor, a spiritual guide to help us distinguish between right and wrong actions, between what is good and what is evil both in the moment and for the long term. We use another person because we are humble enough to know that no matter how long we have in recovery, the ability to lie to ourselves, the ability to become willfully blind, never leaves us. After having not made the right decision for so long, this change becomes part of our foundation and living principles in our recovery. While difficult, this distinction is what our survival as human beings able to make free-will moral choices depends on. 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 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.