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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 143

“The fact that we were given knowledge of His will is a sign of some ability to cope with evil. The voice is more than a challenge. It is powerful enough to shake the wilderness of the soul, to strip the ego bare, to flash forth His will like fire.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374-375)

How sad is it that we continue to misread the sign that Rabbi Heschel is teaching us about throughout his writings, his way of living. The Bible is the GPS for how to live well, how to cope with evil, and how to transform the evil that resides inside of us to enhance goodness. Yet, we continue to follow ‘our own path’ rather than immerse ourselves in the Bible and find the myriad of pathways to coping with evil that living God’s will gives us. According to Jewish tradition, there are 70 ways to understand God’s will, understand the Bible, find the pathway that we are called to follow in each moment, each phase of our lives in order to cope with the evil inside of us and around us. Yet, we continue to misread the signs and give into the subtle and not-so-subtle evil inside of us. We continue to misread the God’s will and substitute our will for God’s will instead of, as we learn in Pirke Avot 2:4 “Nullify your will before God’s will so God’s will becomes your will.” We are have seen this phenomena throughout the millennia and watched as our civilization continues to bring itself to the brink of destruction-not by God but by our own devisings. Rather than using the “knowledge of His will” to the greatest advantage and enhance our “ability to cope with evil”, we are using our “knowledge of His will” to deceive ourselves and as many people as possible to attain our goals of power, prestige and wealth.

We, the People, who have been given “knowledge of His will” can stop the evil that is perpetrated in the name of God, the evil that is enhanced by our idolatry. There are no superheroes to follow, we have to follow the superhero inside of us, the soul and knowledge that is implanted within us at birth. Our religious institutions, our families, our communities need to return to growing our souls from a young age, helping us mature our inner lives, hear the call of our souls and how to use “knowledge of His will” to “cope with the evil” that is inside and outside of us. We, the adults who are still operating from a place of immaturity of our souls, who have allowed our spiritual life to atrophy, have to immerse ourselves in communities that speak about how to live our “knowledge of His will” in today’s world. We have to engage the texts, the wisdom, the commandments and the mitzvot with honesty, open-mindedness, willingness; the HOW of living well, the HOW of living into and growing our “knowledge of His will”.

We do this by letting go of our prejudices/anger against God, forgiving ourselves for all the times we substituted our selfish will for God’s will, forgiving all the people who have done the same to us. This letting go is a deep dive into our adolescent rebellion that is mad because we didn’t get what we wanted, God did not give us ‘our due’, God did not save us from harm, etc. Realizing that God has given us the strength to “cope with the evil” that has been perpetrated upon us is the beginning of letting go of our anger towards God and realizing the truth of the Footsteps poem. More on this tomorrow.

In recovery, HOW is the foundational principle of our program. We begin with honesty when we first admit our powerlessness in the face of the evil that has brought destruction and ruin to all of our relationships, the evil that has brought us to the lowest point in our life in one or more of these areas:   physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, etc. Once we begin to get honest with our self, we become so desperate that we open our minds to new solutions as the old ones ‘stopped working’. We listen and learn with a new attitude, taking the wax and the cotton out of our ears, putting on “a new pair of glasses” as Chuck C teaches us, and we begin to understand how to use “knowledge of His will” to help our self and another human being live better than we have.

I still misread the signs of God at times even today, I will never get them all right nor do I degrade myself for ‘missing these marks’. Each day I grow in HOW, each day I am amazed to find solutions and ways to use this day’s “knowledge of His will” to better myself, to help another(s) better themselves, to make our corner of the world a little better. I look back on the past 34+ years of recovery and I am amazed at how the  “knowledge of His will” that has shown me pathways I never saw before, given me to power to cope with and transform my own inner evil to do good, guided me to speak in ways people could understand, even when they did not like it, to help them increase their acting on the “knowledge of His will” for them. The long and winding road of life for me is manageable and enjoyable when I immerse myself in God’s will and live it more. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Year 2 Day 143

“The fact that we were given knowledge of His will is a sign of some ability to cope with evil. The voice is more than a challenge. It is powerful enough to shake the wilderness of the soul, to strip the ego bare, to flash forth His will like fire.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374-375)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in the first sentence above is, in my experience, the foundation of our redemption. As we are moving forward toward’s Passover and Easter-both redemptive events-we need to engage in “the fact” that Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of. There are facts upon which we can all agree upon and we need to return to “the fact that we were given knowledge of His will”. At issue today is the ‘alternative fact’ that God’s will is punitive, exclusive, only for a select few, etc. God’s will, as Rabbi Heschel is teaching us is for all of us, for all people-believers and non-believers alike.

The prophets railed against the idea that God’s will could be carried out to favor the rich and powerful, that only the priests could interpret it for their benefit, that it could be bastardized to condone evil, and sacrifices/tshuvah/amends could be offered from our self-interest instead of from our souls. Yet, while their words are available, their pleas are still being heard through the Bible, we seem to still be incapable of overcoming the evil in our minds and hearts to actuate them. Rather than discriminate, rather than use the Bible, the teachings of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, etc to validate our evil devising, Rabbi Heschel is exhorting us to use them to cope with this evil with the help, the adherence, the action of using knowledge of God’s will to overcome/cope with the evil inside of us.

While evil is confused with good since creation, since Adam, fulfilling God’s will in our daily living is the antidote to succumbing to it, the pathway of separation, the way we live into the commandment: “Thou shall be holy” from Leviticus 19. Being holy is not relegated to Priests, Rabbis, Imams, Pastors, Ministers, Gurus, etc-it is a demand of God for all of us. The prophet Micah reminds us of the knowledge of God’s will: “Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”(Micah 6:8). This is not spoken just to the people in power, it is a message for all of us. We all know this challenge that Micah gives us is the true challenge of God, of living well, of serving something greater than our own self-interest.

We are living, once again, in a time where fascism is being confused with populism, where “the poor white man” is being discriminated against, where authoritarianism is looked up and supported as good, where the elite are convincing their ‘people’ to go against their own self-interests. We seem to forget how well that has worked for the average Russian, for the German people of the 30’s and 40’s. People are engaging in confusing God’s will to “do justly” with follow the leader who says they are for us while having no real relationship with us. The leaders of this ‘populist’ movement went to Harvard, Yale, and other top ranked colleges and law schools, they took advantage of scholarships, affirmative action, used their connections, family and others, to get where they are; yet they call everyone else ‘the elites’. Elitism has become synonymous with freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of ideas in their language. Showing mercy, according to these ‘populists’ is a sign of weakness, admitting their errors and being responsible for their crimes and misdemeanors against God and God’s creations is met with derision. Yet, they promote their surge for power, their takeover of the psyche of people a la Viktor Orban, who these ‘conservatives’ love, as God’s will!

In recovery, we commit to “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him (Big Book of AA, 4th edition). We know the dangers of our will uber alles. We are suffering the aftershocks of the earthquakes we caused in our lives and the lives of those around us. We are face to face with the destruction we wrought and now, through our “knowledge of His will” we use it to change our ways, to cope with evil and no longer be defeated by evil and no longer defeat another with our own evil. We seek each day to be more just, more merciful and walk in God’s ways a little more, a little farther.

Only through “knowledge of His will” have I been able to serve God, serve people, serve the calling and craving of my own soul. Walking humbly with God allows me to cope with the evil thoughts, designs I had previously acted out. Loving mercy is the way I repay the debt of gratitude to God for being merciful with me. 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 142

“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.”(God in Search of Man pg 374)

Many people are wringing their hands and “woe is me/us” today, repeating the same lines as our ancestors have done. Many people are hopeless and despondent, beaten down by their own “nature” and the “nature of man” in general. Despair is a daily occurrence and, at times, giving up seems to make sense. Yet, in the face of the greatest horror, the largest inhumanity towards humanity, up to now, Rabbi Heschel, himself a victim of the holocaust, losing a majority of his family, teaches us the solution!

Wrestling with our self so that Sinai can be “superimposed on the failure of Adam” and on our own failures is exhilarating! The solution for all of our issues today; personal, professional, political is to allow Sinai to be “superimposed on the failure of Adam”! Each and every day, when we rise up in the morning and thank God/Higher Power for having our soul returned to us with compassion and faithfulness-we begin our day knowing we have already received “the aid of God” just in being alive. We greet the day with a cup of coffee, tea, whatever and make a gratitude list and a list of ways we are going to repay “the aid of God” in our actions this day. We realize that we get to be of service to self, God, another human being, humanity itself and we rejoice at our opportunities to overcome our natures and do T’Shuvah for “the failure of Adam” and the failures of our self.

Superimposing Sinai on our failures, on our living allows us to grow and mature our inner lives and sharpen both our eyesight and hearing to see and hear the myriad of ways to honor the faithfulness and show the compassion that God has so freely given to us. Throughout our days, we seek to use “the aid of God, the commandment, the mitzvah” that is in front of us to do. Not the ones we cannot do, just the ones we can and are most needed in the moment we are in. Throughout the day, we stay present and alert for opportunities to connect with another human being and see the divine image they bring to our life. We do not dwell in the past, only using the past to enhance our present, ‘failing forward’ so we don’t repeat past errors and we use “the failure of Adam” to make this moment so much better.

Superimposing Sinai on the failures of humanity also gives us the gift of cleaning up our foibles and past errors, just as the Israelites were told to bathe and put on clean clothes prior to hearing the “word of God”, so too by remembering our own experience at Sinai-the glow, the surety, the connection, the determination, the commitment and the covenant with God and one another. We are not our worst mistake, in fact we are not a mistake at all! When we follow Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and leadership, we realize that our rightful place is at the foot of the mountain, listening to and connecting with the Higher Power, Higher Consciousness, God that is within us and outside of us. We realize that each person has a different experience at Sinai and, rather than fighting for supremacy, we embrace their experience so we can better be ONE with our self, with human beings and with God. We let go of the past and defensiveness, we let go of our fears and need to be right and control everything, we become a true partner with one another and God/Higher Power to enhance the world and “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all it’s inhabitants”.

In recovery, this is the goal, the path and the connection-without using the same language. We superimpose our spiritual awakening, our powerlessness, our awareness of a power greater than ourselves and turning our lives and will over to the care of a power greater than ourselves on our daily living. There is no situation that cannot be handled, we believe, if we superimpose these principles onto the experience we are having. This way has helped millions upon millions of people be in recovery and live well.

“Sinai was superimposed on the failures” of Mark Borovitz in 1986/87 through being arrested, going to prison, having a spiritual awakening and studying with Rabbi Mel Silverman. This new blueprint for living has stayed with me, is imprinted on my soul and guides my daily actions. While I don’t always follow the blueprint-sometimes I make changes that are not so good-most of the time I deviate, it is because “the word of God” moves me to be “out of the box” to help another human being. I am grateful and humble for and to God’s saving grace, the Sinai experiences I continue to have and for waking up this morning and connecting with you. 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 141

“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.”(God in Search of Man pg 374)

Our experience of Sinai happens every day, according to Jewish tradition. God is calling to us, God is reminding us to “Shema Yisrael”, Hear Israel. Remembering that Jacob’s name change means to “wrestle with God, with another(s) human, and to wrestle with oneself tells us we have to wrestle with “the nature of man” within ourselves and with one another. “The failure of Adam” also happens every day with our blaming of another(s) for our own errors in judgements and actions, with our own finger-pointing and shirking personal responsibility.

Immersing ourselves in this ‘wrestling match’ each and every day can be exhausting. When we hide, like Adam did, it is exhausting. Continuing to wear masks that hide our face from another human being, from God, from our self, we find ourselves lost, alone, fearful, and tired. We are never sure of our place, we are always afraid that someone will find us out and we sit in a prison of our own making that is isolated, cold, damp and confining. We are judgmental of everyone else, we find flaws in another(s) and we exploit those flaws so the attention is on someone else and no one sees the deceptions we are engaged in. We come to believe our own press and we use our nature to gain power, money, prestige. We use our hiding to blame another for our plight and stay stuck in ignorance, hatred, blame, shame, and perpetrate evil upon another and the world. We continue to embellish “the failure of Adam” and find ourselves further and further away from God, mired deeper in Egypt and exile. Every human being engages in “the failure of Adam”, none of us are exempt from this situation, this experience. Putin’s war in Ukraine is an example of using the “nature of man” and “the failure of Adam” to cause ruin and destruction. Orban in Hungary is another example of the blaming  of another for the problems he has caused. White supremacists, like Ron DeSantis, use women, people of color, Jews, ‘liberals’, LGBTQ+ as excuses for their power grabs, for the necessity of controlling the vote counting, the books that can be read, etc. all the while proclaiming their love of God! Idolators always do this, the make false gods of themselves and the ‘leader’ and worship them, proclaim them to be the True God and forget the call of God at Sinai, the words of God at Sinai, replacing them with their own. This is how lost we can, have and currently are!

Humans have worn masks for so long, throughout our history as evidenced by Adam, it is hard to discern what is real and what is a mask. We have so many rationalizations for our masks, for believing that our false selves become our real selves if we live them long enough and hard enough. We are so fearful of facing truth, facing our self, facing another without our masks that we engage in subtler ways to hide while trying to pass ourselves off as authentic! We have perfected the art of hiding in plain sight. We have perfected the bastardization of the Sinai experience to make our engaging in “the failure of Adam” and giving in to “the nature of man” seem like God’s Will, even going so far as to proclaim engagement in these ways what God wants for us! There is a solution and I will write about it tomorrow.

The joy of recovery is that we take off our masks and find acceptance, love, fellowship and camaraderie. When we go to a meeting, when we have a coffee with another person in recovery, we are greeted with a hug, with a smile, with a warmth that is genuine and safe. We are told “let us love you until you can love yourself”, we learn how to live a life of principles rather than personalities. We learn/relearn how to overcome our “nature of man” and use the “aid of God” to improve our lives and the  lives of everyone around us. In recovery, we find that we no longer need to put a cover over our souls, we no longer have to put make-up on our faces, we no longer need be in shame for who we are.

I know when I am in “the failure of Adam” internally and externally because I am exhausted mentally, physically and spiritually. I wrestle each day with my own inner critic that tells me “you are wrong”, “you are not enough”, “you are a loser”, “who do you think you are kidding”, etc. It has become much subtler over the years and it is still within me. I realize how much of my outer bluster came from hearing these same criticisms or believing I heard them from another(s). I would yell at, deny and fight these outer critics. Maybe they weren’t critics at all, maybe my inner critic twisted my hearing and I lashed out in error. I am sure both are true. I am better today than I have ever been and more aware of the subtleties of this “failure of Adam” inside of me. 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 140

“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.”(God in Search of Man pg 374)

Immersing ourselves in the last sentence above causes us to hold a mirror up to ourselves and see how we live into the failure of Adam and how we live into the Sinai experience. We have to delve into the failures of Adam, hiding, blaming, lying, and disconnection as well as  seeing  how we are still engaging in these mendacious ways and how we follow through on the Sinai event of transparency, truth, openness, willingness and connection.

Adam’s failure was not in disobeying God by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, I believe. Adam had a choice and he chose to disobey, he chose to be curious, he chose to engage in learning the difference between good and evil. His failure was to use his newfound knowledge to hide his body and himself from Eve, from God. He then chose to lie about what he had done by blaming Eve and not taking responsibility for his errors. We engage in the same failures on a daily basis and call it good, call it smart, call it business, etc. When we are ‘caught’ in our lies, when our errors are uncovered, we quickly blame circumstances, another(s) person, even God for our missing the mark. When we are caught in our misdeeds, many of us continue to deny and obfuscate the truth; calling our visions “alternative facts”. We are all spin masters in these ways.

We see over and over again throughout history how people chose “the failure of Adam” over the Sinai experience, all the while wrapping themselves in the cloak of religiosity, of rationalizations, and we have witnessed the destruction that ensues from this choice. Yet, we are, today, still unwilling to allow the experience at Sinai, the experience of being unmasked and accepted for who we are with our foibles, the experience of hearing the word of God, the connection and transparency, the aid of God to overcome “the nature of man” to penetrate us. Many of us would rather listen to and adore Tucker Carlson who denies that the Insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 happened. Many of us would rather listen to the lies of Kevin McCarthy who now endorses alternative facts as to that day in the face of what happened to the Capital Police who suffered greatly to protect him from the mob! We have the Freedom Caucus who wrap themselves in ‘christian values’ and lie about everything they can, who are unwelcoming to the stranger, who criminalize the poor, and who trample on the needy. We have Rupert Murdock and his minions who care only about the green and the greed rather than truth, transparency, connection. Kudos to Mitch McConnell and the other senators for standing with the truth and defying McCarthy, Carlson, et al.

Yet, rather than just blame any of these entities and more, rather than repeating “the failure of Adam”, we have to look inside our self, search our inner life to find the source of our own self-deception, the source of our believing either the lies of another and/or the lies we tell ourselves. We have to let go of our rationalizations and our mendacity so we can, once again, experience the spiritual experience of Sinai and let go of our own dishonesty, our own blaming and be responsible for our errors and our hitting the marks. We, the people, are the only ones who can stop repeating “the failure of Adam” and to do this takes the hard work of stopping our continued efforts to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

This is a tall order for most of us, this is what we all need to be in recovery from: “the failure of Adam”. This is what the spiritual experience of Sinai rescues us from when we immerse ourselves in it. My experience with “the failure of Adam” is long and extensive and, in reality, never ends. It is a constant inner war, a daily struggle to not give into these failures, they seem so natural, so easy. Since I am not perfect, I will engage in these paths of failure and only the Sinai experience of connection and transparency can help me return to God, to my loved ones, to my community. Only through being serious about my commitment to the covenant with God can I stay 51% in the Sinai experience, only by listening each day to and for the word of God can I retain the imprint of Sinai that is on my soul, only through truth and transparency with myself and hearing the truth and transparency of another(s) can I lesson the severity and the amount of times I engage in “the failure of Adam”. Acceptance and connection are the solutions to my problems today, they are the path to retaining the experience at Sinai, to honoring the covenant with God and living a joyous life. 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 139

“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.”(God in Search of Man pg 374)

In light of the rise of authoritarianism around the world and in our own country, Rabbi Heschel’s call, which I hear as a demand, to live our obligation to the covenant at Sinai, to follow the “word of God”, is all the more urgent. Florida, Georgia, Israel all are trying to usurp the rule of law, to bastardize the “word of God” and make one political party the arbiter of what is good. Rather than using the “aid of God” to overcome our nature, some people in power are attempting to replace God’s Will with their own, become the Commander instead of the commanded, decide what is right in their eyes instead of following what is right in God’s ‘eyes’. Rather than honor the covenant we made at Sinai, some people are practicing idolatry by making “the nature of man” overpower the “nature of man”.

The experience at Sinai was not the same for each person as the Rabbis’ teach us, each person there had their own experience of God’s presence, just as each person after crossing the Red Sea had their own experience. Yet everyone agreed that God’s presence was there in both places, everyone agreed on what God said, everyone agreed to “do and then understand” God’s Will and take action on the mitzvot, the commandments, the “word of God”, of this there was no disagreement. Today, some people have decided to change the “word of God” to fit their own nature, they are using the Sinai experience to become the ‘retribution’, the judge of judges, the ‘only one that can save us’ from “those people”! We, the People, have to stop these deceivers, we, the people, have to stand up for the covenant that we inherited from our ancestors at Sinai, we, the people, have to proclaim the “word of God” as our ancestors experienced it at Sinai, as the prophets proclaimed it, as we have wrestled with it throughout the millennia. We are well aware of the destruction caused when we have given in to “the nature of man” and not used the “aid of God” to live well, to grow our inner lives, and to make our corner of the world a little better.

Yet, we find ourselves as our ancestors found themselves, in a war of epic proportions. We are in a war against mendacity, we are in a war against the modern-day Pharaohs, we are in a war for the dignity of the human spirit, we are in a war for living “the word of God”. We are in a war to honor the covenant, we are in a war to follow through on our commitment at Sinai, we are in a war to “care for the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy and the stranger”. We are in a war for the soul of our country, our neighbor and our selves. It is time for us to “gird our loins” and take up the shield with the star of David on it and fight for God’s Will instead of fighting to continue and grow “the nature of man”. It is a battle of the ages, it is a battle for now.

Today is the 58th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the voting rights bill passed that year has been gutted by Congress and the Courts-the same people in Congress and the same Justices, ideologically, who today want to usurp the rule of law, who want to deny the right to vote to people who do not agree with them. DeSantis’ authoritarian laws in Florida, Kemp’s authoritarian laws in Georgia, the “red” states that Marjorie Taylor Greene want to divorce/secede from the rest of the union, all are waving the banner of idolatry and proclaiming these are the “word of God”. They set themselves up as Pharaoh and want the rest of us to be slaves to their idolatry and their inhumane ways of living. While this is not new in the history of humankind, it is reaching a crescendo in our time for all of us alive right now. We have to stop this deception, we have to end this incarnation of idolatry, we have to reclaim the “word of God”, we have to reclaim the experience of Sinai, we have to renew the authentic, true covenant we made with God there! It is truly up to us, we each have to be foot-soldiers for “the word of God”!

In recovery, we live the principles of our Higher Power, as we understand our Higher Power to emulate the experience of Sinai, of the Red Sea. We all have our own experience with God, of God and we all commit to the principles of truth, service, willingness, surrendering our will to fulfill God’s will, etc. We are a protest movement in and of ourselves, we work hard each day to fulfill the “word of God” by beginning with our morning prayers, meditations, rosaries, etc. We make a gratitude list reminding ourselves of how blessed by God we are, we make a plan to live into, lean into serving people in need rather than taking advantage of them and we recognize the divine spark in all humans. 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 138

“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.”(God in Search of Man pg 374)

I agree with Rabbi Heschel’s prescription for the healing/uplifting of “the nature of man”; the problem of course, as we are witnessing today and have throughout the millennia is using the “aid of God, the commandment, the mitzvah” wisely, as God would have us do and according to the guiding principles of the prophets, the Torah, the Bible, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. We continue to hear, follow and prostitute these aids in uplifting our nature, the paths to growing our spirit and inner life, these essential ingredients for living a “life that is compatible with being a partner of God” as Rabbi Heschel reminds us over and over again.

One of the ways to test if we are using the aids Rabbi Heschel is teaching to use is to ask ourselves if what we are saying, what we are doing and/or about to do, is just, merciful, truthful, necessary, of service to another(s) and in service of caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy. Some ‘religious’ people believe only in fulfilling commandment, embellishing on how much one fulfills the commandment, yet not allowing the claim of the mitsvah, the power of the commandment to fill them/us up, to change us, to go through us. We have witnessed this phenomena throughout history. The crusades, the numerous wars fought “in the name of God”, Bob Dylan’s song “God on our Side”, our ‘religious’ right wingers who want to deny free will to people, who want to make Christian Law the norm, the Orthodox Jews who want to make their brand of Orthodoxy the law in their communities here and in all of Israel, all of this “in God’s Name” is actually a Hillul HaShem-a desecration of God’s Name. I believe these ‘religious’ people believe their words and I know they have been led astray by their leaders, they have been deceived for so long they do not know commandment from sin, they are unable to entertain any other thoughts except the strict adherence to the laws as the men/women deceivers have defined them for them. The ultimate in desecration-using God’s name to have another(s) sin for you! For these aids, that Rabbi Heschel is teaching us about, to work; we have to receive them, we have to be like Moses, like Jesus, like Mohammed, and receive these aids of God, the commandments and the mitzvot, into our souls, into our spiritual arteries and allow them to flow through us. In this way, our actions will always have a hint of holiness, our nature will be tempered by these aids and, just maybe, we will not embrace self-deception, power, deception of another(s), and mendacity with such joyous ferocity as we do now and have always done.

Receiving them means to read the prophets and hear their call to return to God and Godliness, rather than continue to follow the false prophets of greed, power, unwelcoming the stranger, not helping the poor, ignoring the needy. The Republican Party, the party of the ‘religious right’, the ‘orthodox Jews’, want to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, they want to tax the middle class more so the rich can enjoy less taxes, they want to end free and fair elections, they are seeking to rule a woman’s body, embrace the authoritarianism of Orban, Putin, and want to install their own unique brand here. All the while deceiving themselves that they are following in the footsteps of the founding fathers, Lincoln, etc-all the while convincing their followers that lying is good, we should have entered WWII on the side of Germany-as Ford, Lindbergh, the America First believed. And, most of the 70 million who voted from Deceptive Donald do not realize how they have “drank the Kool-Aid” and this is the saddest thing of all.

In my recovery and in recovery in general, we are hyper-sensitive to our “nature” and the harm we have brought and the harm we can bring to self, family, community, world. I/we have a program of recovery which keeps us on the path to use the aids Rabbi Heschel reminds us of above. I use the “aid of God” throughout every day, sometimes I forget to live a commandment/mitzvah when it is most needed though. I am constantly seeking out the subtle lies I tell myself to make something that is not right okay to do-I have seen the errors I have committed in the past and I am deeply sorry. I also am aware of the errors that we all get accused of which are just deceptions another(s) person uses to make themselves feel okay. It is these deceptions which I perpetrated prior to my recovery that I am very aware of today and I guard my tongue to ensure that I do not fall back on my old playbook which Goebbels defined so well: “Accuse others of that which you are guilt of”. I am watching in horror as the “religious/good people” are doing this with no regret and no accountability. I no longer am willing participate in this type of destruction! 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 137

“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.”(God in Search of Man pg 374)

One “nature of man” we seem to mired in is our desire to win at any and all costs and our propensity for mendacity and self-deception. ‘Dishing the dirt’ is a major pastime for many of us and we seem ready, willing, and able to believe the ‘dirt’ more often than the good. We forget the commandment to ‘not go about as a tale bearer among people’. In fact, we have raised this tale bearing to new heights/lows. LaShon Hara, evil/negative speech is considered a ‘delicious pleasure’ as one of my rabbis’, Jonathon Omer-man, once described it. Many people engage in this gossip and slander for their own gain, to make themselves feel better, to win an election, to beat the competition, etc. This “nature of man”, left unchecked, left unchallenged destroys families, communities, countries, civilizations, and we seem to be unable to engage in it.

Listening to the political discourse of some very loud politicians should make us tremble and yet it doesn’t. When Fox ‘news’ puts forth lies knowingly and their hosts like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram knowingly rile up their viewers so they can get better ratings and make more money, we are approaching the precipice of destroying democracy and making a mockery of free speech. When Marjorie Taylor Greene brags about killing her enemies, when she talks of divorcing ‘blue states’ from ‘red states’ she is speaking treason. When Ron DeSantis engages in hate speech against everyone who isn’t for him, everyone who isn’t on board with his authoritarianism, he is fomenting anger, he is promoting violence against ‘our enemies’ as he puts it. These people, along with so many others, are dangerous and what is more dangerous is all the people who stay silent. All of us who listen to this negative rhetoric, these mendacious statements, theories, hate speech, and do nothing are even more dangerous than those who speak them. By doing nothing, we are giving silent acquiescence to these lies, we are allowing this negativity to overwhelm us and, quite possibly, become our reality. Of the 70 million people who voted for Deceptive Donald Trump, there are many who know the truth, who know he and his cronies were lying and they voted for him anyway because they voted ‘their pocketbook’, his ‘love for Israel’, his ‘standing up for White Russia’, etc. They bought into the deception, they imbibed it enough to deceive themselves that ‘he wasn’t that bad and better than the other guy’. We have come to accept authoritarian liars as good people because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”!

Our country is still a laboratory for democracy and freedom. We are still struggling to put into practice the words of our Declaration of Independence, we are still wrestling with “welcoming the stranger” as Abraham in the Bible was known for, we are still battling our split soul of Jacob/Israel. It is not a war that we will win once and for all, it is not a practice that is one and done, it is not something that can be legislated. This struggle to see “all men are created equal” never ends because we are constantly bombarded with deceptions from outside of us and our inner self-deceptions. “Welcoming the stranger” means we have to share our good fortune, we have to remember our roots and our ancestors who were strangers to this land, we have to remember they were recipients of the sacrifices of the people who came here before them and owed the strangers coming after them a welcome atmosphere rather than a suspicious one.

In recovery, we are constantly battling our split soul, our Jacob/Israel. We know the dangers of giving into the Jacob part of our soul completely because then we con, lie, steal and cheat the people around us and go back into the prisons of our minds, we punish anyone and everyone around us with our need to be right, our need to be in control, our need to win. In recovery, we learn how to sublimate our Jacob energy to serve Israel, the energy and way of being that is in concert with the divine, using the aid of God to make life better for our self and for all other selves.

OY! Looking at the myriad of subtle ways my own ‘nature’ has crept into my actions makes me ill, sad and remorseful. Self-deception is so powerful and cunning that I have fallen prey to it more often than I realized, in fact, only in hindsight am I able to be accountable for the subtle ways I have given into my “nature”. More on this tomorrow because I am running out of room:) 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 136

“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.”(God in Search of Man pg 374)

Throughout history we have witnessed the “nature of man” without “the aid of God” and we have witnessed the horrific murders, injustices, destructions our nature has brought about. Science and religion, personal gains and virtue, have been divorced from one another in many of us and even in many of us for whom this divorce has not happened, we get stuck in conventional notions and mental cliches. Our inner and outer lives are often incongruent, kindness, mercy, truth have become situational, good intentions are overridden by bad actions. We know how to be good, we know how to be virtuous, yet, as it says in Matthew 26:41, “the spirit is indeed willing but the flesh is weak”. The angst that is like a cloud upon our hearts, our way of life is because the nature of some people is overriding the virtue, the good, the holy. It is becoming so loud and all-encompassing that the good, the just, the merciful, the kind, the truth is getting obscured and ignored by many. We seem to be stuck in this cloud, much like the Israelites were stuck in the cloud of  harsh labors and slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt.

“I look to the mountains, where will my help come from? It will come from God, creator of heaven and earth”(Psalm 121:1-2) is what comes to mind from Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. We know our nature is “evil from our youth” as God says in Genesis, we know our inclinations are selfish and egotistical as history and the Bible teach us, yet some of us keep believing we can think ourselves out of our negative ways, some of us keep believing our negative ways are the ways of God, some of us are paralyzed by the overwhelming cloud of angst and keep wringing our hands and crying “woe is me, woe is us”. What we need to do is to “look to the mountains” and engage with “the aid of God” that is all around us. We keep forgetting Jacob’s ladder, the angels are going up the ladder, they are here, all around us, we have to engage in them! We have to accept the help of God, we have to engage in the commandments and do the mitzvot, we have to be part of the solution instead of continuing to be part of the problem. We are more than our worst actions, we are more than our negative thoughts, we are more than our money, property, prestige, power, we are more than our egotism. We are human beings, created in the Image of God, we are partners with God in completing creation.

We have to make a decision to stop allowing “the nature of man” to be all we use in our daily living. We have to make a decision to not allow the negativity of our nature, the selfishness of our egos, the insecurities of inner lives rule our actions any more. We have to stop allowing the loudest voice in the room, the cloud of mental, physical, educational, spiritual slavery to darken our doorstep and drown out the voice of God, to bastardize the teachings of the commandments and the practice of the mitzvot. It is a yeoman’s task at times, and it is the only action that will prevent us from falling into the abyss of “the nature of man”, it is the only action that will light up the dim outlook that our natures, left unchecked, bring about. It is time for the “aid of God” to overtake the charlatans that are preaching idolatry, it is time for the “aid of God” to silence the false prophets who claim exclusive knowledge of God’s will and claim that it is God who sends them to us. We have to “look to the mountains” and we have to look deep inside of us to partner with the Spirit of God that is within and without of us to overcome our natures and the natures of the egotistical, the power-hungry, the idolators, etc. We have to remarry science and religion, virtue and personal gain, we have to let go of our conventional notions and live in radical amazement as Rabbi Heschel teaches us.

I lived a life of misery for myself and for all those I touched when I lived without “the aid of God”. Since I have accepted and engaged God’s aid, I am no longer a danger to myself and to others. I make mistakes, I disappoint people, and I make my amends, I learn from my errors and I disappoint people and myself less and less each day. The “aid of God” has helped me show up for people, be of service to and for another human being, let go of resentments and bewilderments, hurts and wounds, etc. The “aid of God” has brought me out from under the cloud of fear, angst, selfishness and into the bright blue sky of possibilities, excitement, curiosity, care for my ‘enemies’ and joy for and with the people who love me. Without the “aid of God” joy would be unreachable and I am blessed to live in joy. Thank you God for my whole life! 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 135

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the thrill and excitement most people get when they are engaged in “sketchy” activities. “Getting over” is one of the most enjoyable activities for many people. We see this around Income Tax time when everyone wants to fudge at least a little on their taxes so they don’t have to pay as much and/or get a refund. We see this in the way business’ pay lobbyists so they can maximize profits while minimizing regulations and taxes. We see this in the way the tax code works against the poor and the middle class in favor of the wealthy, as the Tax Bill of Paul Ryan passed.

We see this in the way people like George Santos lie to get elected and, when found out, just smile and say ‘oh well’. We are watching this with the so-called ‘freedom caucus’ who want to divorce blue states and red states, who still claim the 2020 election was stolen, the Insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021 was actually people who just wanted to visit the Capital Building, etc. Some of us are witnesses to the joy of people who continue to lie, cheat, steal with impunity and wring our hands in distress as to what is happening to our country. Some of us are adherents to those same people and cheer them on. We are all witnesses to the assault on truth and facts, yet too many of us fail to have the courage of to stand up for truth, to stand up for facts. We can disagree on our interpretations of facts, yet changing them to “alternative facts” gives so many people a thrill and they get so animated and excited that truth means nothing to them!

We get a thrill from so many ‘sins’ and ego boosting activities that we have become unaware of the difference between sin and virtue, I am afraid. We are living in a world that thrives on alternate realities and too many of us are willing to say, “well that is their truth” knowing that people are basing “their truth” on falsehoods, on clean-ups for their bad behaviors, on lies they have told themselves and deceptions they have bought into. Kevin McCarthy’s defense of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s lies and deceptions, his assault on the truth of what happened on Jan.6th, 2021, his willingness to get into bed with racists, antisemites, religious charlatans, gives him joy. He is animated and excited when he is doing this, Jim Jordan loves to hear himself talk and his mendacious behaviors give bring him and his buddies great joy. We see McCarthy, et al call people liars who tell the truth and deny the very words they have spoken. While this is not a new phenomena, it is at a fever pitch right now.

Caring for the poor, the stranger, the needy which is embedded in Scriptures has no meaning for many people, especially the so-called religious right. “Love thy neighbor as you love yourself” is meaningless to people who are calling for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, which McCarthy et al have done, are doing, and will do. Calling them entitlements is ridiculous since we have all paid into these programs, yet they seem to have a spiritual experience denying care for the needy and poor, they believe they are acting as Jesus did when they debase the stranger. While it is important to point out these actions, it is equally important to point out our own subtle and not-so subtle ways of being excited at our own sins. When we look down upon another person, when we feel good because someone else lost, when we ignore the divine image in every person, when we celebrate ‘jewing someone down’, when we fail to support and defend freedom, when we ‘go along to get along’ and so many more everyday actions that we don’t think of as sins.

My past is replete with experiences of excitement and thrill at ‘getting over’, committing sins and I have engaged in T’Shuvah for those actions. I have also, with the help of Rabbi Heschel, Rabbis Feinstein, Silverman, Omer-man, my sponsors, my recovery program, the myriad of people I have met during my career, my family, my daughter, my wife, emptied my heart of the need to get even, the need to sin at any and all costs, the need to deny, the need to resent, etc. I still sin and, while it may bring a momentary thrill, it brings remorse and a commitment to repair, change and have a new response. Recovery through Torah and 12-Steps helps me find the excitement and thrill in virtue much more than in sin, it has changed me from being oblivious to my sins to aware of how I can help and be of service in this moment instead. God Bless an stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 134

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Surrender and acceptance are necessary in order to practice self-restraint and self-denial. To live a life of goodness and virtue means we have to surrender our false ego, our inauthentic needs to a power greater than ourselves and accept our proper place as a being compatible with being a partner with the Ineffable One. Being human, as our religious and spiritual disciplines teach us, means we have to not only follow the 365 ‘thou shall nots’ of the Bible, we have to engage in the 248 ‘thou shall’ demands. We are faced each day with choices of how we are going to engage with the world and when guided by these ‘thou shall’s’ we find ourselves enriched and able to live with our self and one another in dignity, respect and concern.

Virtue is not easy to achieve because self-restraint and self-denial in service of something greater than ourselves is a difficult task. We are taught from an early age it’s a ‘dog eat dog’ world, we learn conspiracy theories and we listen to the bias of media that enriches them and impoverishes us. We are watching in real time the ways that Fox News and their hosts knew they were spreading disinformation and did not care what it did to the nation. We are witnesses to the deceiving marketing of products that will ‘make us young, fix our ailments, make us look like new’, etc. We are watching, hopefully in horror, as our Congress is more concerned with theater than with governing. We are seeing the upsurge of anti-semitism, racism, criminalizing the poor and the stranger precisely because some of the people in power, owners of media, everyday people are fearful of losing power, money and status. Lyndon Johnson once said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” This is what Fox News, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, et al are doing and their mendacity and deceptions are unrestrained and they are denying themselves nothing in their quest for power, for status, for wealth. They have, ingeniously, put together a coalition of “lowest white” men and women along with the “religious right” and added in the wealthy who want to hold onto their wealth at all costs to the country and to their fellow human beings. This coalition is not surrendering to nor accepting the laws of the Universe as written in the Holy Books of Religions and Spiritual Disciplines-no matter how much they wrap themselves in the Bible. Jesus would not recognize their interpretations nor would Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Confucius, etc.

We, the People, are Divine Reminders and fulfill a unique Divine Need according to Rabbi Heschel. We cannot fulfill these massive undertaking without self-restraint and self-denial. We are faced many times each day with the choice to live a life of virtue or live a life of selfishness, without a deep knowing of ourselves, without a strong commitment to self-denial and self-restraint, virtue will not prevail. Yet, even in our commitment and knowing we have to be aware of the ways we deceive ourselves into believing we are acting for the greater good and not for the greater good of self. Too often we are faced with a choice of looking good and self-aggrandizing while believing it is for the greater good for all. This is an area of great concern to our ancestors and their solution is T’Shuvah, their solution is the Bill of Rights, their solution is care for the stranger, the poor, the needy in our midst and see the parts of our self that feel like the stranger, that are needy, and that are poor in dignity and value. Then we will be able to relate and join with another(s) to raise all of us up, then we will deny our selfishness and greed, then we will restrain our power and rejoice in virtue.

I have wrestled with these concepts my entire life. In recovering my self and my purpose, I have learned how to practice both of these principles and know when I am not. I am attuned to my self-deceptions more and more each day. I work diligently to engage in more virtuous activities each day, I am remorseful for the times I do not. I fight against the mendacity and the deceptions that people use and I surrender to God’s Will more often than not. I have acted my way into right thinking by accepting that God is in charge and I am not, accepting that I am blessed to be a servant and my service is my reward, my virtue and my joy. I am enriched by each ‘next right action’ I take and that is a reward in itself. 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 133

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Virtue’s demands are illustrated in every spiritual tradition, in fact, religious and spiritual disciplines are gifts to us in order to learn and practice both self-restraint and self-denial. Of the 613 commandments in the Torah, there are 365 “thou shall not” demands/commandments in the Hebrew Bible with many illustrations as to the consequences of not following them as well as the consequences of following them. As I have often said, we have these “thou shall not” because we would do them if we were not told/commanded not to! We are living in times where people are jettisoning religious living and religions in general because they don’t want to be restrained, because the people ‘in charge’, clergy, lay leaders, etc are using religious living and religious teachings as clubs, as power tools rather than as models for self-restraint and self-denial. Rather than using our holy documents and teachings to elevate our connection to one another, they are being used to elevate a ‘select few’ so this ‘select few’ can enslave everyone else, so they can restrain anyone else from taking their place, so they can deny another their God-given dignity, value, place in the world! Our religious and political leaders need to take a refresher course in self-restraint and self-denial instead of demanding it from the rest of us.

Self-restraint and self-denial are two of the first lessons we learn in the Bible from the Garden of Eden story. Adam and Eve’s lack of both give them the permission disobey God’s command and then hide from their errors. Lack of self-restraint is, as we learn there and throughout the Bible, a human characteristic and we have an opportunity to do T’Shuvah/make amends and learn from our missing the marks so we can change our patterns. We learn the consequences of not changing our ways in the story of the Flood, God is dismayed not just because “man is evil from his youth”, God is also dismayed because our lack of self-restraint and self-denial when it comes to people who are not as fortunate, not in positions of power, and who are in need of our kindness, compassion, truthfulness, justice, mercy, etc. Unfortunately, we have not learned much through these teachings and experiences of our Biblical ancestors!

We are witnesses to the same actions and activities as described in the Bible, as experienced throughout history, so many people are willing to say “we have been through this before, it will run it’s course” and stand on the sidelines. This is another example of a lack of self-restraint-subtle as it may be. Edmund Burke is said to have said: “Evil flourishes when good people do nothing”. By standing on the sidelines and waiting for things to “run their course” we are showing a lack of self-restraint for doing the next right thing, a lack of self-restraining our fears of ‘going against the man’, a lack of self-restraint in wanting to run and hide. We are Adam and Eve, we are the Israelites that allowed Pharaoh to enslave them, we are Jonah, we are going against the demands/commandments that make us free, we are participating in murdering our own spirits, in whoring ourselves so we can ‘stay above the fray’, in lying about and to ourselves, in making false images of self, God, another(s), etc. Self-restraint is about not doing something because it is the next wrong thing, so anytime we “stand idly by the blood of our brothers and sisters”, we are not practicing self-restraint.

In recovery, we know we have to rise above our fears and our anxieties so we can restrain ourselves from engaging in behaviors that will “take us out again”. We know we have to restrain our impulses to stop following God’s Will and just do what we want to do. We have to restrain our impulses to live in our own bubbles and not reach out to help another human being. We have to meet the demand to “carry this message to other alcoholics and practice these principles in all our affairs.”

I am guilty of not practicing self-restraint when I perceive injustice, when I watch as someone takes actions that will harm themselves and another(s). I am also loud, abrasive, and, at times, out of control when I get near people who are hiding and lying. My lack of self-restraint has caused me and people around me great angst at times and it has saved me and many people around me at times. I am not always right in my lack of self-restraint. It is a difficult dance and I will never get the steps right all the time. I do refuse to stand by silently in the face of injustice, when someone is harming themselves, another, an institution. 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 132

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

The second phrase of the second sentence is/should be humbling for us all! Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the essence of religion and spirituality in this phrase, as I am understanding him today. While many people balk at the restraints and denials that religious life and spirituality put upon us, both are demanding and teaching us that true connection to higher consciousness, higher power, God, the Ineffable One, only comes from these self-restraining and self-denying actions. Religious and Spiritual living means, for our purposes, living in ways that are compatible with decency, truth, kindness, compassion, mercy, justice, etc. The problem for most people is that we no longer see the rewards from this path, we only see what we are losing by living with self-restraints and self-denials.

This inner war, this constant battle between our ‘good angels’ and ‘bad angels’ has been a part of humanity since the beginning, remember Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden where not only did they not practice self-restraint, they loved eating the fruit, they loved the knowledge they acquired and they used it to hide from their ‘boss’, God. There are so many examples of this war/battle throughout history they are too numerous to name. We are witnesses to our own inner war, our battle between our rationalizing bad behaviors and knowing, speaking truth. We are engaging in our desire to hide our crimes and misdemeanors, to turn them into virtues through our self-deception and our mendacity.

We are willing participants in denying and hiding from living spiritually and religiously. It has become usual and, in many cases, goes unnoticed for a person to lie, cheat, steal; for a company to engage in dishonest business practices; for a politician to proclaim ‘stolen election’ when they lose; for individuals to shame another(s), promote lies, puff themselves up on social media with joy and no repercussions. We are so against self-restraint and self-denial that we are willing to enslave another for our needs, we are willing to villify another for our aggrandizement, we are willing to keep people out of our group because they are not ‘woke’ enough, they are not discriminated against enough, they are of a different ethnicity, a different culture, an immigrant, an Arab, a Jew, a Hispanic, a Black, an Asian, a White person. People in power are not willing to practice self-restraint in ‘need’ to hold onto power, in their kissing up to the wealthy and the powerful, in their insatiable appetite to rule forever and become authoritarians. We are watching this in Russia with Putin unable to see he has lost his war in Ukraine, we are watching this in America with DeSantis, Trump, Pence, McCarthy, Greene, etc working with White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, to attempt to deny free and fair elections in a democracy. We are witnesses to the far-right in Israel unable, unwilling to practice self-restraint, self-denial in their dealings with the West Bank, Gaza, Israeli Arabs, Israelis who are on the other side of the political spectrum, religious spectrum than they. We are witnesses to the Monarchies in the Arab world who are so desperate to hold onto power, they gleefully hold oil hostage, imprison and kill dissidents, yet frolic at all of the world’s playgrounds and are welcome because of the money they spend. Self-restraint and self-denial have become like ‘four-letter’ words in our culture, as they have been throughout the millennia.

Recovery is based on these two actions. We deny ourselves our ‘drug of choice’ be it power, gambling, excessive eating, alcohol, drugs, abusive behaviors, etc. We restrain ourselves from saying what we are thinking until we can evaluate our thoughts and decide if they are in line with our newfound religious and spiritual path of life. We join a community of people who are wrestling with how to be a better person, how to feed our better angels instead of feeding our self-serving angels as we had in the past. It is a constant and daily struggle, yet each day we are one grain of sand better by engaging in our own inner war.

I am testifying to my struggle in this area, my defeats in this area, and my deep remorse for the times I needed to practice self-restraint and self-denial and did not. I am saddened at the times I harmed people by my lack of self-restraint and self-denial, I am sorry for this pain I caused. I am also not ashamed of my errors, I use them to ‘fail forward’ and grow both in my T’Shuvah and in my living better each day. More tomorrow, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 131

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

We are living in an era of identity politics, identity victimhood, and this has made us forget what it means to be free and live in “the land of liberty” rather than in “the home of the brave”. The second sentence above gives us an “eye chart” with which to see our behaviors, our actions as well as the actions and behaviors of another(s). In our misguided definition of freedom: doing anything we want to, spinning laws to our advantage, finding friendly courts to go along with mendacity, saying anything we want to whether true or not, winning at any and all costs, let the buyer beware, not taking responsibility for our actions if we have the power to hide, cover-up, and deny, etc. When the people in power, when White Power/White Supremacists claim they are being discriminated against because they are being called to account and being held responsible; when Black people forget that Jews have been oppressed, hated, discriminated against, and engage in anti-semitism; when Jews forget they were slaves in Egypt and we are commanded 36 times to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy not take advantage of another person, when we forget “the seller must disclose any flaws”, when we support any oppressive, authoritarian ways of being, we forget our experience throughout the millennia and especially in 1930’s Germany; when Muslims forget they were some of the most educated people in the world and they had a practice of welcoming, working with and engaging with people from different religions and cultures, when they forget that Islam means peace; when Christians bastardize the teachings of Christ, when they seek to oppress anyone and everyone who doesn’t follow their mendacious interpretation of Christ’s words, when they use their New Testament as a weapon rather than an outstretched hand; “crime, vice, sin” are being rewarded. Doing this under the guise of the Bill of Rights is UnAmerican, more like Joe McCarthy than Abraham Lincoln, more like Vladimir Putin than Vladimir Zelensky, more like the Confederacy than the Union Lincoln sought to preserve.

We, the People, have to look in the mirror, we have to look at the “eye chart”, as I call the second sentence above and, really, all of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and teachings, and clear up our vision of what the “land of the free and home of the brave” truly means. It doesn’t mean any of the actions and/or behaviors listed above and so many other deceptions we perpetrate onto another(s) and it is trying to address our myriad of self-deceptions. Living in America is a responsibility, being Jewish is a responsibility, as is being a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, Hindu, etc. Being blessed to live in “the land of the free and the home of the brave” is not to be taken for granted, not to be bastardized to the point of discrimination, not to be denied to other immigrants seeking refuge as all of our ancestors were, except for the Native Americans whom we have shunted off to reservations and treated so poorly. We, the people, have to stand with the poor, the needy, the stranger, and raise them up as we/our ancestors were lifted up. None of us ‘made it on our own’, no matter what lies we continue to propagate, no matter how much we want to rewrite history!

We, the people, have to return to the spirit of our founding even though our founders could not completely act in the spirit they knew was needed. This is not a license to enslave people, to treat people badly, our history is one of knowing what is right and good, committing “crime, vice, sin” and still believing in virtue and goodness-just not able to fulfill it in all of our affairs. This is not a knock on our founding fathers, it is an acknowledgment of their humanness, their imperfections. We, the people, have to see the imperfections of our ancestors and improve upon them, we have to acknowledge our own inadequacies and ask for forgiveness and help, we have to stop using the worst acts of another(s) as the totality of them and stop using the worst acts of our ancestors as a cover for our own bad acts.

As an angry teen-ager who hated the world because of my father’s early death and being left adrift, I know how “crime, vice, sin” was soothing and rewarding. I know how enslaving they are for the person committing them and the people on the receiving end. I am a witness to both sides of this coin, I am not a victim of either and I am a giver and receiver of “crime, vice, sin”. My recovery is based on not promoting them anymore and having compassion for those who need to. I am not perfect and a whole lot better than I was-progress not perfection is my goal and one grain of sand better 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 130

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Society has confused rewards and punishments throughout history. As Rabbi Heschel is teaching us above, we have come to confuse reward and punishment, we believe “crime, vice, sin offer us rewards” because this is our experience! We have watched another(s) and enjoyed ourselves the “rewards” of our sins, the getting away with crimes, misdemeanors, the enriching ourselves at the cost of another(s), the power of enslaving groups of people, the inner joy and camaraderie of hating together, the “delicious pleasure of LaShon Hara, evil speech” as Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man once taught me. We have come to accept immorality as ‘just the way the world works’ and pay little attention to the plight of those who are our victims and the victims of another(s).

From Pharaoh in Egypt to White Supremacists today, from Amalek to the Neo-Nazis’ of today, we see the joy, the rewards that authoritarians receive, Putin has a nation of people who, like the Egyptians, will follow him into a modern Red Sea, Orban has the Hungarian people believing Jews are the cause of their problems. The insurrectionists and other far-right political/religious groups believe blacks, browns, some Jews, democrats, are the destroyers of “the American Way”. All of these people, groups believe these ways of being give them power, prestige and money and they are not willing to give their positions up, they are not willing to see the destruction they bring, they are not willing to change, they are not willing to hear the call/demand of God. Some may give lip service to the Bible, to God’s word, and they are constantly deceiving, bastardizing the Bible, God, goodness.

In the face of these crimes against humanity, goodness does tend to turn impotent, people who stand for democracy, freedom, caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy, people who stand up and say Dayenu-Enough are laughed at, ridiculed and ignored by the populace because we have been deceived for so long, we have bought into the self-deception that crime pays and goodness is for shleppers! We are seeing this in our Churches, Temples, Mosques, in our government, in our election cycles, in our schools, in our homes. Banning of books, not teaching the truth of slavery in our country’s history and present, silently going along with denying the legitimacy of the faith of that is different than ours, using the Bible to beat people down rather than lift ourselves and all people up are all subtle ways of exercising the power that sin, crime, vice give us.

When Jews clap for Orban, when Christians applaud deplorable conditions at our borders, when Muslims cheer a suicide bomber, when business’ make unseemly profits through deception, when media giants knowingly deceive their viewers and destroy the reputation of good people, business we are witnessing how corrupt our society has become, how “goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations”. While this is not a new problem, it is a problem that has reached new heights, new ways of spreading and is a cancer on the soul of humanity! As Rabbi Heschel describes prejudice as “an eye disease”, a “cancer of the soul”, so too is our embracing of the rewards of injustice, power-grabbing, mendacity and self-deception. We can and must turn away from these delights, these delicious pleasures, these rewards that kill our spirit, our society, our communities, our families. We must acknowledge the truth, the validity of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above(and all of his wisdom) and return to the Big Book of Being Human-The Torah, the Bible, the Koran, the New Testament, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, etc.

My recovery and the recovery of all the people I know begins with letting go of the rewards of mendacity, crime, sin, etc. As the Yiddish saying goes, “you can’t dance at two weddings with one tuchus”, my recovery began when I stopped living a double life, stopped wearing the mask needed to ‘get ahead’ in the moment, stopped hiding behind a facade. When life crashed down on me enough for me to see this truth, to finally hear the words and love that people had been giving me for years, finally accepting the demand of God, I could let go of the bullshit and self-deception I had been living in. Letting go of ‘winning at all costs’, net worth=self worth, “crime pays”, and other such poppycock, taking the hands of the people who reached and reach out to me, not needing to seek out the people who didn’t reach out, began my recovery and have continued to deepen my sense of self, my embracing of people as human beings and my being who I am no matter where I am. 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 129

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom in the first sentence above makes me shudder. How often have we seen, experienced and participated in goodness being “impotent in the face of temptations”? We begin to act in this way before our brains are developed enough to process what goodness is; we steal the cookies from the cookie jar at a very young age, we look innocent when asked while we are in our 2’s and 3’s, we deny our wrong doings early on in life because temptation turns goodness and the next right action impotent and seemingly silly to do.

We are, of course, witnessing this in our politics. How often have we seen the temptation for winning, the temptation for power turn good, decent people into purveyors of tactics that go against their inner goodness, their inner truth. Rabbi Heschel, in his Interview with Carl Stern in 1972, reminds us that politicians, in their tactics, have become people who suspect everyone else, have become people who are suspected of inherently lying and who, in their words and deeds have led so many people to believe their lies, their deceptions, all in the name of getting elected, getting power, getting rich! Telling the truth takes a back seat to lying and mendacity when the truth will hinder our winning, our getting ahead, not getting caught, etc. We blame, accuse another(s) of what we are doing, we deny and we make insincere apologies when we are caught. Even in the face of facts, of proof, we continue to claim that there are ‘alternate facts’. This is, of course, true in our politics and it is true in our daily living.

We see this in business all the time. Drug Companies employ 1700 lobbyists to ensure their freedom to price-gouge us, to ensure they are not held liable for the crisis’ they create in order to solve, to boost their profits for their shareholders. Business’ in general make profits and making their large shareholders happy no matter what how they may harm and/or deceive the public. Business’ want to claim the same rights as human beings and then, in the face of making more money, getting a larger market share, goodness loses to these temptations. We have watched business pay fines while not admitting guilt, they fight the rules and regulations that keep all of us safe, give everyone an opportunity, curb their ways of excluding people because of religion, skin color, education, etc. All of this they claim doing this in the name of the greater good and, unfortunately many people support this way of being, these lies because of our desire to be deceived.

This desire to be deceived, I believe, comes from our own self-deceptions. These self-deceptions begin early in our upbringing. We see it in our schools, we see it in our religious organizations, we see it in the ways parents are always defending their children and blaming someone else for their shortcomings, for their actions. Parents call their children’s teachers to get better grades, they complain to headmasters and principals about the poor grades their children get. They put more emphasis on their children’s extra-curricular activities than on their spiritual growth and maturity. Parents themselves are, in many cases, spiritual immature and don’t see the need to raise their children’s souls. We learn that serving our self is more important than being good. We give awards for ‘goodness’ in schools now just for showing up, not because our kids are truly learning what goodness is. We are not teaching our children how to resist temptation, we are teaching them how to not get caught, we are teaching them not to be responsible, we are teaching them giving into temptations is good!

In recovery, we admit how our temptations led us to ruin our own life, ruin the lives of the people around us, create chaos all around us. We gave in to our temptations to escape, to be fortified in our pursuit of the next wrong thing. In recovery, we begin to change our attitude and our actions regarding temptations and goodness. We see the good for what it is, we recognize the temptations that knock us off our foundation of goodness and we ask for help to overcome these temptations.

My history of helping goodness turn impotent is replete and my change this path is the core of my recovery. I battle my temptations constantly and daily. Rabbi Heschel helps me in my battle as does the teachings of my ancestors, the teachings of Torah and my deep commitment to “love my neighbor as I love 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 129

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptations? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? Are there many mystery stories that describe virtue? Are there many best-selling novels that portray adventures in goodness?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom in the first sentence above makes me shudder. How often have we seen, experienced and participated in goodness being “impotent in the face of temptations”? We begin to act in this way before our brains are developed enough to process what goodness is; we steal the cookies from the cookie jar at a very young age, we look innocent when asked while we are in our 2’s and 3’s, we deny our wrong doings early on in life because temptation turns goodness and the next right action impotent and seemingly silly to do.

We are, of course, witnessing this in our politics. How often have we seen the temptation for winning, the temptation for power turn good, decent people into purveyors of tactics that go against their inner goodness, their inner truth. Rabbi Heschel, in his Interview with Carl Stern in 1972, reminds us that politicians, in their tactics, have become people who suspect everyone else, have become people who are suspected of inherently lying and who, in their words and deeds have led so many people to believe their lies, their deceptions, all in the name of getting elected, getting power, getting rich! Telling the truth takes a back seat to lying and mendacity when the truth will hinder our winning, our getting ahead, not getting caught, etc. We blame, accuse another(s) of what we are doing, we deny and we make insincere apologies when we are caught. Even in the face of facts, of proof, we continue to claim that there are ‘alternate facts’. This is, of course, true in our politics and it is true in our daily living.

We see this in business all the time. Drug Companies employ 1700 lobbyists to ensure their freedom to price-gouge us, to ensure they are not held liable for the crisis’ they create in order to solve, to boost their profits for their shareholders. Business’ in general make profits and making their large shareholders happy no matter what how they may harm and/or deceive the public. Business’ want to claim the same rights as human beings and then, in the face of making more money, getting a larger market share, goodness loses to these temptations. We have watched business pay fines while not admitting guilt, they fight the rules and regulations that keep all of us safe, give everyone an opportunity, curb their ways of excluding people because of religion, skin color, education, etc. All of this they claim doing this in the name of the greater good and, unfortunately many people support this way of being, these lies because of our desire to be deceived.

This desire to be deceived, I believe, comes from our own self-deceptions. These self-deceptions begin early in our upbringing. We see it in our schools, we see it in our religious organizations, we see it in the ways parents are always defending their children and blaming someone else for their shortcomings, for their actions. Parents call their children’s teachers to get better grades, they complain to headmasters and principals about the poor grades their children get. They put more emphasis on their children’s extra-curricular activities than on their spiritual growth and maturity. Parents themselves are, in many cases, spiritual immature and don’t see the need to raise their children’s souls. We learn that serving our self is more important than being good. We give awards for ‘goodness’ in schools now just for showing up, not because our kids are truly learning what goodness is. We are not teaching our children how to resist temptation, we are teaching them how to not get caught, we are teaching them not to be responsible, we are teaching them giving into temptations is good!

In recovery, we admit how our temptations led us to ruin our own life, ruin the lives of the people around us, create chaos all around us. We gave in to our temptations to escape, to be fortified in our pursuit of the next wrong thing. In recovery, we begin to change our attitude and our actions regarding temptations and goodness. We see the good for what it is, we recognize the temptations that knock us off our foundation of goodness and we ask for help to overcome these temptations.

My history of helping goodness turn impotent is replete and my change this path is the core of my recovery. I battle my temptations constantly and daily. Rabbi Heschel helps me in my battle as does the teachings of my ancestors, the teachings of Torah and my deep commitment to “love my neighbor as I love myself”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 128

“The ego is a powerful rival of the good. When coupled with gain, when virtue pays, the good has a chance to prevail. When the good is to be realized at a loss, with no reward, it is easily defeated.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Gain and loss have become the barometers by which we measure everything, it seems. We are so obsessed with not losing our positions, our money, our jobs, our things, that we go to extraordinary lengths to both hold on to what we have and to keep amassing/gaining more. Because these two concepts are so embedded in our psyches, because society measures us by what we have, what our jobs, our skin color, our abilities, we have lost our sense of good and evil, we have lost our ability to hear the call of our souls, we have come to define good as gain and evil as loss.

Our egos, like the earthly inclination we are all born with, when left unchecked become the rivals of the good and we are witnesses to this phenomena throughout history. This rivalry is inherent in our struggle to be more human each and every day. Our egos, when unchecked, turn us into good people who do bad things and this is true for all people. We have become so obsessed with gain and loss that we become slaves to our egos, we give control to our egos and believe it is a holy action! It makes us live a very narrow life and gives us permission to do whatever it takes to win.

We calculate our living through the lens of gain and loss and Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is reminding us of the danger of this way of being. From the time we are little, winning becomes an obsession, a ‘family value’, and losing is shame producing, labelling, and soul crushing. Good people will cheat to get their children into ‘a good college’ as we see from the recent College Entrance Scandal, good people will be ‘ruthless’ in business in order to ‘provide for my family’, good people will cross the street when they see an unhoused person or a person of a different race out of fear rather than greet each person as a fellow traveler. Good people will befriend some people in order to climb the social ladder, get into the ‘right’ country club, etc not because they are joining with people to do good, rather they join with people to ‘get ahead’ and be seen as good and worthy. Good people, because of ego, because of fear of loss and need of gaining, will “run after the majority to do evil” which we are cautioned against in the Bible. Good people, in order to gain prestige, power, etc, will step on anyone and everyone in the name of gain no matter who gets injured.

Living in society that is dominated with gain and loss brings about so much ruin, heartache and pain. Putin’s ego and his need to gain stature, power, etc led him to invade Ukraine, put a puppet government in Belarus, not seek a way out of the destruction and murder that he is committing. Hitler’s ego could not allow him to see how Germany was losing the war and his Generals were too afraid to tell them for fear of losing their lives. Pharaoh was too enamored with his ego and needed to not lose the Israelite slave labor so he too ruined his nation, his people and himself. These are historical truths, these people are just like the rest of us. We too, whether on a grand scale in government, politics, big business, in our families, in our schools, in our daily living need to see how we have confused gain with good and loss with evil. We have to stop blaming another for our loss, believing we have achieved our gains solely by our own hands, feeling shame when we lose and hating those who gain. We have to stop measuring our self-worth by what we have and don’t have. We have to see that good is the true measure of life, doing the next right thing is how gain, how we live better and how we serve God/the universe.

In recovery, we have a new awareness and appreciation for letting go of our need to ‘win at all costs’. We know now that doing what is good and right is the gain we need to engage in and celebrate. We have a saying that Easing God Out is a killer of our spirit, a detriment to the world and the wrong way to live.

I am aware of the years I spent in gain and loss, in Easing God Out, in ruining my own living and harming the living of so many other people and this knowledge keeps me from going back to that way of living. I am not perfect and I know that my life has been about being responsible for my part in every interaction and not taking credit for what someone else does-keeping my ego in proper measure. I also know that someone else’s loss is never my gain, that my self-worth is measured by what I have contributed, not what I have. I am also acutely aware of my need to serve what is good according to the standards of Spirit, not society or my own mind. I work hard each day to do good for the sake of good and for the sake of my soul. 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 127

“The ego is a powerful rival of the good. When coupled with gain, when virtue pays, the good has a chance to prevail. When the good is to be realized at a loss, with no reward, it is easily defeated.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and words from some 68 years ago have been true forever and are true today. I sit here and write with a heavy heart precisely because we are seeing, in real time, in our time, how true and scary this teaching is. Rabbi Heschel is putting a mirror up to all of us, to humankind, and asking us what do we see, what are the self-deceptions we are engaging in so we can confuse good with evil, what are the ways we are using our egos to defeat the good?

We have two examples of this from Presidents’ Day 2023. Joe Biden took an arduous train ride to visit Kyiv, Ukraine and President Zelensky on the eve of the 1 year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He stood with the Ukrainian people, saw firsthand the devastation and the determination of the Ukrainian people to save their country, to save their democracy from an authoritarian dictator. He went there to show solidarity and support, to let the Ukrainian people know they are not alone in their fight for self-determination, to honor their struggle, their heroism and the lives that have been lost due to Putin’s Crimes against Humanity. President Biden, not as a democrat nor republican, not as a publicity stunt nor as a poke in the eye to Putin, did what he thought to be good, overcame his own self-interests to give aid and comfort to an ally, to a people who, like we did in 1812, are fighting for their sovereignty against a foreign aggressor. It was courageous, kind, and the right thing to do. We don’t know how many of his inner circle were against this trip for very valid reasons, we do know Joe Biden said Hineni, here I am, to the Ukrainian people, he said the US has your back. This is good, this is virtue, this is doing the right thing, no matter the cost.

A second example is, actually two examples: Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizing President Biden for supporting an ally, finding something wrong with a heroic show of compassion, comfort and support. For Marjorie Taylor Greene, goodness is a by-product of gain, maybe. If there is no gain for her, she will not do the next right thing. If there is no ego feeding camera around her, if there is no ego satisfying destruction she can bring, then doing good is unnecessary and stupid to her. She also is, like the Confederacy that she and her other unpatriotic allies believe in, calling for the US to be ripped apart, that there should be “a divorce between red and blue states”. A sure sign that she does not serve the Union and the Constitution as she swore an oath to, rather she serves her own underdeveloped and oversized ego, which is a rival to any and all good that there is to be done. 


Kevin McCarthy releasing the Jan. 6th tapes to Tucker Carlson who, by his own texts, we know lies and obfuscates truth for his own ratings, for his stock options, to do with what he wants with them, including giving enemies of the government of the US, a blueprint of the Capital building’s secure areas. Had they had them on Jan. 6th, the insurrectionists could have found VP Pence, the leaders of Congress, including McCarthy and killed them, held them hostage, etc. Yet, McCarthy, to serve his ego to be Speaker of the House, made a deal with the Greenes’ the Gaetz’, the Gosars’, the rest of the ‘freedom caucus’ that wants to restrict freedoms and did not even give it to all medial outlets, just to Carlson and Fox. Since Fox is in a lawsuit for over 1 billion dollars, it seems their veracity may be in serious question and McCarthy, to serve his own ego, his own gain, is giving aid and comfort to people who support the overthrow of our way of governing and living. Again, McCarthy goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of his oath of office because it doesn’t serve him.

We are all in need of recovery, as Harriet Rossetto says often “You don’t have to be an addict to be in recovery” and “You are either in recovery or in denial”. In recovery, we let go of our false ego, we stop serving only our gains, our false needs and desires, and we engage in a way of being that serves the good, that serves another person, another creation of God. In recovery, we learn that “sacrifice”, as in the Bible, means to come near. In our service, in sacrificing gain for doing what is right and good, we are coming nearer to our authentic self as we were created to be, we are coming nearer to people around us, we are seeing the differences and similarities of self and another(s) and celebrating both rather than trying to crush another human being to satisfy our egos, ala Putin, Greene, etc. We put down the sword and reach out a hand to help. 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 126

“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)

Today is Presidents’ Day in America. It is a celebration of our Democracy and a celebration of our ability to move forward in making this a “more perfect union”. I remember when we celebrated George Washington’s Birthday and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday as two separate occasions in the month of February. It was a time to reflect on two people who led us through very dark times-one with the approval and support of all the people and one with a populace that was severely divided. As I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words and look at our country and our world today, I am dismayed by the deep truth of his question and what seems to be a constant response of Yes, our “sense of beauty and ugliness, of gain and loss” is “more acute than our sense of good and evil”!

What is it in our human make-up that gives such power to our “drive for cruel deeds” as Rabbi Heschel speaks of in his interview with Carl Stern? What is it that pushes us further and further away from our sense of good and evil and towards ugliness, beauty, gain and loss? It is, as Rabbi Heschel continues in the same interview, “You need some greater help. And that greater help, I believe, is a little fear and trembling and love of God”. Yet, the some of the most ‘god-fearing’ people, some of the ‘holier-than-thou’ people are pushing the sense of beauty, ugliness, gain and loss and trying to disguise it as a war between good and evil! These charlatans have bamboozled a myriad of people, they are the authoritarians who disguise themselves as revolutionary leaders, they are the clergy who are promoting a white christian agenda, they are the religious and spiritual leaders who are promoting their own power, their own ego, their own agenda for their own self-gratification. They are the elected officials who want to make a circus of deceiving the public with their ‘investigations’ into the supposed wrong-doing of their adversaries, ie the opposing party, rather than seek truth and do what is good and right for our country. Yet, these people will lead parades and make speeches about Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Reagan, Kennedy, etc, all the while living in opposition to the peaceful transfer of power, in opposition for a search for truth, in opposition to “shining city on a hill”, in opposition to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. These liars and deceivers claim to believe and be following God, yet they have no “little fear and trembling and love of God” and we know this by their actions of loving to spread ugliness and loss onto anyone who stands up to them and demands truth and they love the beauty and gain of their mendacity and power.

While it is easy to point the finger at the charlatans who are so blatant about their mendacity and deception, Rabbi Heschel’s words are spoken to all of us. What is our path to the “fear and trembling and love of God” that we are following? Is it a path that leads to truth or is a path that allows us to engage in self-deception? Is it a path that leads to caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy or a path that aggrandizes our self and our power? Is it a path that leads us to connection with another human being seeing their divine image and honoring their infinite worth or is a path that seeks to enslave everyone else to our way? We, as individuals, have to ask ourselves what is driving us to cruelty more than to goodness, we have to ask ourselves what to do about our “sense of beauty and ugliness, of gain and loss” being “more acute than our sense of good and evil”. We, the individuals that make up this country, that are celebrating Presidents’ Day, have to recommit to living with “fear and trembling and love of God” a little more each day-not through our words, rather through our actions. Care for the stranger, the poor, the voiceless and the powerless, give comfort to the needy and the bereaved, take the “leap of action” that Rabbi Heschel calls us to do each day, in a place where there is no humanity, strive to be human-to paraphrase Rabbi Hillel in Ethics of the Ancestors 2:5.

We in recovery know the pull of darkness, of evil very well as we succumbed to it and practiced it with a mastery that, in our recovery, disgusts us. Not to the point of self-flagellation, just to the point of knowing the power of evil and our need to rely on God’s help to overcome our drive to and inability on our own to not fall into it. Paraphrasing the first 3 steps of AA-1)We Can’t 2) God Can 3) We surrender to God’s Will. Doing this each and every day allows us to ward off our drive for evil and engage in the actions that God wants us to, helping another(s), living with and learning from our imperfections, no longer blaming another and having compassion for the people who need to continue in their cruel ways while letting them know we see them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark