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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 164

“The biblical answer to evil is not the good, but the holy. It is an attempt to raise man to a higher level of existence, where man is not alone when confronted with evil.” (God in Search of Man pg. 376)

Tonight begins the celebration of Passover, the exodus from Egypt, the redemption from slavery of an outside oppressor. We are also in the middle of “holy week” in the Christian tradition. Both of these celebrations are about redemption as is, I believe, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above. We are redeemed when we allow ourselves to be raised up to the “higher level of existence” of the holy, when we are not alone in our confrontation with evil. “Holy” comes from the Dutch root also meaning whole, and the Hebrew word, Kadosh, translates to elevated, set apart, and connected.

As we leave the slavery of our outside oppressors we get to realize that we are not alone in our quest for wholeness, we have the help of God, of a Higher Power, in our search for meaning, in our reaching for a life of purpose. Dedicating ourselves to seek, find and maintain the “holy” in our daily living aids our staying out of the oppression of another human being, being lifted up out of the profanity of “same shit, different day”, opening our eyes to the wonder and radical amazement of life, and knowing that we matter.

Evil is a state of being where nothing matters and there is “nothing new under the sun”, every day is the same and we are hopeless. The exodus from Egypt is the antidote to the cunning, baffling evil that lurks in the hearts of people. Not just the Israelites were redeemed at the time of the Exodus, we all learned that slavery is not a ‘normal’ state of affairs, it is not our ‘fate’ to be slaves. Tonight Jews and non-Jews will tell the story of the exodus from slavery, the exodus from self-deception and self-negation. We will proclaim Dayenu, enough! Enough with the lies we tell ourselves, enough with the lies we buy into from another(s), enough with the incarceration of the spirit and body of people for our selfish needs, for our power, for our self-aggrandizement. Enough with the betrayals of the “holy” by the charlatans who use the words of the Bible for their own ill-gotten gains. Enough with racism, anti-semitism, anti-LGBTQ, anti-muslim, anti-asian, anti-anyone who is not like me.

In our retelling of the story of the exodus from Egypt, we are recite the 10 plagues and while many people are repulsed by the plagues and the chaos, death they brought, we recite them so we can remember where evil, where slavery, where seeing another human being as our enemy, our tool for self-gratification leads us. The plagues were necessary not to show God’s strength, rather to show Pharaoh’s obstinance and what it takes to defeat evil and rise to the “holy”. As Rabbi Heschel teaches us from his address at the National Conference on Religion and Race in January of 1963: “The outcome of the that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate.” We celebrate the exodus from Egypt not just to be grateful that we are not still slaves in Egypt, also to examine and confront, have a summit meeting with all of the Pharaohs we experience today. When one party in a democracy is willing to not be governed by the rule of law, when one party in a democracy is eager to rule based on  their will, their needs, their fears, their greed, Pharaoh is here, “holy” is being defeated by evil.

Recovery is redemption from the slavery of addiction. Recovery is “holy” in action, recovery raises us up to a higher level of existence, recovery is biblical! Harriet Rossetto calls the Bible the big book of Jewish recovery from our human condition of evil. In recovery we know that we are one action away from being enslaved again, one action away from being Pharaoh again. We are so acutely aware of our need to be grateful to be free and that gratitude is an action, not a feeling. We are given a reprieve based on our spiritual condition, one day at a time.

Each day, in the Hebrew Prayerbook, I remember the exodus from Egypt. Each day, as I write this blog I remember my exodus from the slavery of my addictions and bad actions. Each day, I practice gratitude and kindness, love and compassion, mercy and justice so I can engage God’s help to raise me to “a higher level of existence”. Evil doesn’t have the hold on me that it used to and it is still necessary for me to celebrate Passover so I see the subtle slaveries that people still have on me and leave them as well. Happy Passover, God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 163

“Where does God dwell in America today? Is He at home with those who are complacent, indifferent to other people’s agony, devoid of mercy? Is He not rather at home with the poor and contrite in the slums?…Where in America do we hear a voice like the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther Kind is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America…Martin Luther King is a voice, a vision, and a way. I call upon every Jew to harken to his voice, share his vision, to follow in his way.”(Essential Writings pg. 83-84)

Today, April 4, 2023, is the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the words above are the words of Rabbi Heschel on March 25th, 1968 when he introduced Rev. King to the Rabbinical Assembly’s annual convention that year. Rabbi Heschel’s words were a call to his colleagues then and a demand to all of us now. On a day when the antithesis to everything Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel stood for, called for, everything their vision and ways showed us how to serve God and one another, is going to grab all the headlines because of his arraignment, it is more important, I believe, to gather together, study Dr. King find ways to “harken to his voice, share his vision, to follow his way.” We are being bombarded by the charlatans who say God is at home with the “complacent”, the “indifferent to other people’s agony”, to those who are “devoid of mercy” and we have to stand up against these lies. We have to, as Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel, and so many more did, stand with and for “the poor and the contrite in the slums.” If we do not do this, we fail to recognize the sickness of our own souls, the desecration of God’s Name and ways we are committing, and we add to the agony of people and God. In the Talmud it says God cries each night for God’s children who are in exile, our separation causes agony to God. Yet, we continue to allow prejudice, self-centeredness, etc get in our way.

I hear from Jews about anti-semitism which is on the rise and they do not see the correlation between the suffering of Black people, people of color, LGBTQ, etc and the rise in anti-semitism. I speak to people about serving God through Dr. King’s vision, through following his ways, Rabbi Heschel’s ways, through God’s ways and they look at me as though I have three heads. These same people will support the antithesis of Rev. King, Rabbi Heschel, because he is ‘good for Israel’, not realizing his comrade in arms, Netanyahu, also is an authoritarian, who believes he is above the law. Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel spoke to the Rabbinical Assembly, at that time a more conservative group,  about following God’s laws, living the life the prophets of Israel teach us to, to practice the principles we espouse in all of our affairs. Today, we have so many clergy who preach their principles, not God’s. We have so many people who speak about abortion as murder and engage in murdering the souls and spirits of Black people, people of color, LGBTQ, Jews, Muslims, anyone who is not white!

Dr. King gave words and deeds to God’s call for and to all of us. He marched for the dignity of every human being. He was assassinated because he was marching for worker’s rights, for a living wage and, as with JFK before him and Bobby Kennedy 2 months later, anyone who was going to cost ‘the man’ money had to be disposed of. Dr. King’s death did not end the cause, it just left it without a galvanizing voice, Rabbi Heschel and others carried on his vision, his voice and his way to this day. It is time for all of us who believe in God, who say we are religious and/or spiritual to rise up for justice. It is time for all of us who espouse the words of the Bible to lift  up for the poor. It is time for all of us who live in awe of God to heal the agony people are experiencing. It is time for all of us who speak words of gratitude and blessings to exude mercy for all. It is time for us to stand in the paths of Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel, God.

Dr. King’s message is not just about Black people, it is for all of us who have been marginalized and have marginalized another(s).“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” is for all of us to remember and help bend the arc a little closer to justice with our actions and our ways of living. Judging a person by “the content of their character” rather than “the color of their skin”, the faith they practice or don’t, their sexual orientation, their gender, is not just about Black people, it is about how to serve God! It is about not being judged because some of us are in recovery, it is about not being afraid to be seen, it is about not hiding anymore. I have believed in Rev. King’s and Rabbi Heschel’s “voice, vision, way” from childhood because they were my father’s as well. In my life in recovery, they have been the guides and while not always following them well, I have not hid, I have helped heal the agony of another. Please celebrate Dr. King rather than give air to his antithesis. 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 162

“There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God. The fear lest we hurt a poor man must be as deep as the fear of God, for He that oppresses the poor blasphemes his maker, but he who is gracious unto the needy honors Him (Proverbs 14:31).”(God in Search of Man pg.375)

Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above we have to ask ourselves how we are oppressing ourselves. As Passover is 3 nights away and we are all supposed to “see our self as if we too had been taken out of Egypt”, I believe we can apply Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom to the way we treat ourselves. How often have we berated ourselves for our errors in actions, in judgements, in our economic status? How often have we ‘bought into’ the way society sees us and feel bad because we are “not more like”__(fill in the blank). How often do we compare, compete and make ourselves feel bad for not being ‘where we think we should be’ or ‘where we thought we would be’?

None of these ways of speaking to ourselves honors God, according to the teaching of Proverbs above. Yet, we continue to do this, we continue to “blaspheme our maker”. There is a famous story in the Talmud about an ugly man who is berated by a famous Rabbi and the ugly man tells the Rabbi to complain to his Maker about the reason for his ugly exterior. The Rabbi immediately sees the errors of his way. If someone else is not to denigrate us then, all the more so, should we stop denigrating ourselves!

We live in a world of comparisons and competitions, yet we learn in the Bible that all of us are “created in the image of the divine”. We also learn in the Bible that each of us have different ‘jobs’ to do in this world as partners with God. Extrapolating these teachings we are all different, unique, needed, precious and we are all similar in these traits. We are not created to be “Stepford Wives”, we are created to be different and similar, urges for good and for evil, some to lead and others to follow, some to be clergy and some to be congregants and all to be engaged in learning, in making mistakes and doing T’Shuvah, being nonjudgmental about another person and, most importantly, non-judgmental about ourselves.

We have to leave the Egypt of self-deprecation, we have to leave the Egypt of self-deception, we have to leave the Egypt of comparisons and competitions, we have to leave the Egypt of our eye disease towards our selves. We are supposed to use this time of Passover and the 7 weeks till Shavuot, till the Pentecost, as time to cross the Red Sea of ‘beating ourselves up’, of not seeing the beauty and worth of our self, of oppressing ourselves and blaspheming God. All of these Egypts help us do the same to another human being, where leaving these Egypts  will cause us to see the same beauty, need, uniqueness in another and we will no longer fear one another, we will work together. Leaving our own inner Egypts of self-denial, self-deprecation will end the eye disease and cancer of our souls that prejudice, hatred, fear bring. We do this one step at a time, one day at a time. We make a list of all the ways we have harmed ourselves, we look at our foibles and errors as stepping stones of learning, we make the needed adjustments in our actions and our thinking. We make a list of everything we have done and continue to do well. We remember to honor God, rather than blaspheme God, we make a commitment to honor our self rather than oppress our self.

Chuck C wrote a book called “A New Pair of Glasses” and this is what recovery gives us, a new way of seeing our lives, a new way of seeing life itself. With this new way of seeing, we are able to admit our errors and imbue our self with the knowledge, strength and vision to move forward as God designed us to. Doing our daily inventory helps us stay current, let go of our errors, learn from them and move forward. Each day we are sober based on our spiritual condition and without a better view of our self, without honoring our self, without being gracious to our self, we know we will stay stuck in everlasting ignorance.

This is difficult for me to do, I have to work on being gracious to myself each day, sometimes each hour! I am better than I was and there are times where I “blaspheme my maker” by oppressing myself. It then, of course, leaks out into my actions and I oppress someone else and I am sorry for those actions as well. I see myself clearer and clearer each day through Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and I am making the necessary changes so this Passover I can leave another Egypt. 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 161

“There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God. The fear lest we hurt a poor man must be as deep as the fear of God, for He that oppresses the poor blasphemes his maker, but he who is gracious unto the needy honors Him (Proverbs 14:31).”(God in Search of Man pg.375)

Rabbi Heschel’s use of Proverbs here is so timely for us, even though these words were published in 1955! Here again, Rabbi Heschel is using the teachings, the truth of antiquity to help us learn/relearn how to live in this world being human. Here again, Rabbi Heschel is quoting Scriptures to remind us of our obligation to help one another rather than take advantage of one another.

This Tuesday will mark 55 years since the tragic despicable assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and while our former President will be in court the same day, I pray we pay more attention to Dr. King’s words, teachings, activism than to the lies, the spectacle that Trump is hoping for. Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel, both knew that quoting the Bible to sound good was vapid and empty, they both railed against the clergy who sat on the sidelines at best and preached in favor of oppressing “the poor” who “blasphemes his maker”. They both knew that we have to be gracious and helpful, honest and freeing, caring and engaging the poor in order to honor God. As Rabbi Hillel says: “what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; this is the whole Torah, all the rest is interpretation, go study”.

Yet, we are pursing the hurt of the poor, the stranger, the needy under so many guises, wrapping ourselves in ‘safety’, ‘charity begins at home’, ‘they don’t know enough to vote’, and/or antisemitism, racism, fear of being ‘displaced/losing power’, etc. We are watching the Republican Party ban books and sell guns, defend Donald Trump and spew racist, anti-semitic tweets, extol hatred towards immigrants and love towards insurrectionists. We are living in a world that is so upside down that Christ has become the avenger instead of the healer, God of the Hebrews is a vengeful God so we can be vengeful towards one another, Allah wants us to kill the infidel, etc. We have confused good and evil so much we are unable to tell the difference of truth from lies, fact from fiction, kindness from cruelty, love from hate, etc. Rather than judging a person because of the content of their character, we are judging people by the color of their skin, the religion they follow, the outside trappings they wear, the facades and masks they put up. Rather than moving forward towards the Promised Land, we are continually trying to return to Egypt because some White People want to continue to be Pharaoh!

As we enter into the celebration of Passover on Wednesday Evening and with Easter being a week from today, along with marking April 4th as a day of tragedy, it seems fitting for us to revisit Rabbi Heschel’s words from January 1963 which are found in his book The Insecurity of Freedom: “At the first summit meeting on race and religion, the participants were Moses and Pharaoh…The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate.”

These words, spoken 60+years ago are as true today as they were then, we keep forgetting the words of Proverbs, we keep forgetting the call of God, we keep rejecting the demand to “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. We keep forgetting we are called to help our enemy, to return lost objects, to “not hate your brother/sister in your heart”. We all have both Pharaoh and Moses inside of us, we have both energies and we decide which one to use for what. We, the People, are allowing gun-toting bigots to ruin our future as well as our present, just as the majority of Egyptians, after seeing the truth of Moses’ words and God’s deeds knew Egypt was heading for a fall and pleaded with Pharaoh to “let the people go” watched in dismay and horror as their husbands, fathers, sons were swallowed up in the Red Sea. Will we heed Proverbs, Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, etc or will we repeat the way of Pharaoh and Egypt believing doing the same thing over and over will bring different results?

My recovery and recovery in general begins when we admit that we have to honor the needy and see the neediness of ourselves. Once I looked in the mirror, once I was told by Rabbi Mel Silverman that he could never let me go because I was a Jew, I belonged to him, I could begin to deal with healing my neediness and reach out to honor my fellow inmates. This began my journey in recovery and led me to where I am now. In recovery, we “love you until you can love yourself” which is the groups actions of being gracious to the poor in spirit and honoring our Higher Power/God as well as honoring our self. We are gracious towards ourselves as well rather than oppress our self as we once did. 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 160

“There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God. The fear lest we hurt a poor man must be as deep as the fear of God, for He that oppresses the poor blasphemes his maker, but he who is gracious unto the needy honors Him (Proverbs 14:31).”(God in Search of Man pg.375)

“Love of man is the way to the love of God” is a sentence that has been forgotten and misunderstood for millennia. Usually, we are told, even in our prayers, that we are to love God and that will lead us to love people. Yet, here, Rabbi Heschel is teaching us the opposite. Many Priests, Rabbis, Ministers, Imams, and other spiritual leaders preach to us to love God first. Yet, without the love of one another, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us there is no pathway to loving God. An outrageous statement in some ways and a statement that has been ignored by most people.

I hear Rabbi Heschel’s words as a demand for us to stop wrapping ourselves in the cloak of loving God while we hate one another. Instead of doing good for one another, instead of living in truth, kindness, caring, compassion, love and helping one another to move towards doing good, we perpetrate evil upon one another in the name of God, in the name of success, etc. We, the People of God, have used the vulnerabilities of another to build ourselves up, we have stepped on people and deceived people in order to gain power, property, prestige and wealth while ‘saying’ we are ‘god-fearing’ people. In his wisdom above, Rabbi Heschel says nothing about fear, only about love.

What does it mean to love man? It means to see one another as partners in making the world a little better than how we found it. It means to stop seeing one another as an enemy and worrying about guarding our stuff because of fear of someone else taking it. It means to stop being willfully blind to the needs of another and to surrender our incessant need to ‘get ahead at any and all costs’. It means to see the divine image of all people and connect with this image to help and serve. It means to not take bribes which blind the eyes of the righteous. It means to care for one another as we care for ourselves. It means to risk the wrath of another by telling them when they miss the mark. It means to rise above our narcissistic traits and connect with one another as human beings. It means to “walk in God’s ways” by caring for one another. It means to raise up the soul of one another rather than try to crush it. It means to pursue “righteous judgement” as Moses teaches us in Deuteronomy. It means to accept each person as a divine reminder and a divine need and assist one another to achieve the divine need we are here to satisfy.

We are in a perilous state, as we have been before, where people are more interested in their agendas than in God’s! In California the ‘progressive’ democrats killed a bill where fentanyl dealers would be warned after their first conviction for distributing it that they could be subject to charges of murder if they sold it and someone died. In their blindness to what is happening and to fulfill their agenda on prison reform, which is an agenda I support, they killed a bipartisan effort to do something about this hideous killer drug and the people who are not loving another(s) by giving them poison, by facilitating their death. In Florida, the governor called out the DA in New York for indicting Trump and calling him a puppet of liberal Jews. In one statement, he proved his bona fides as a racist and anti-semite, and he is a candidate for President of the United States! We see people unable to speak with one another over the polarization that has happened here and in other countries across the globe, like Israel. Yet, these people who care for their agendas uber alles, speak of how they and/or their leaders are anointed by God to do these hateful acts!

In my recovery, I have found that love of human beings also involves my ability to admit my errors. It means to see the divine image in everyone and not ever put another human being out of my heart. I may have to put them out of my home/my space, I just can never dismiss them as a human being that needs my empathy, my love. “Love of man” has forced me to change my ways often in my recovery, it has given me the light to change the way I speak to an individual based on how they can hear, how they understand. It has opened me up to a broader vision of what Torah teaches, of the different pathways when “walking with God”. Recovery through Torah, through faith, through a spiritual discipline means I see the content of a persons character and engage with people to uplift my character and theirs. It means being cured of the eye disease and the cancer of prejudice and finding acceptance of my place and rejoicing for and with another as they find theirs. 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 159

“There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God. The fear lest we hurt a poor man must be as deep as the fear of God, for He that oppresses the poor blasphemes his maker, but he who is gracious unto the needy honors Him (Proverbs 14:31).”(God in Search of Man pg.375)

The word reverence comes from the Latin meaning ‘to stand in awe of’. On the first sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that all of our prayers, all of our mitzvot, all of our deeds are for naught without ‘standing in awe’ of the human being before us. Since we are all created in the Image of God, any disdain, any dismissal, any bullying, any scapegoating of another human being is an action against God as well as another person. This doesn’t mean that we don’t hold each other accountable for actions taken, it means even in our accountability we have to ‘stand in awe’ of the human being in front of us.

It also is telling me that we have to stand in awe of our self. Living this teaching of Rabbi Heschel’s means no longer engaging in self-denigration, no longer engaging in self-deprecation, no longer believing our self-deceptions and no longer believing the deceptions of another. We are being called on by Rabbi Heschel, I believe, to look in the mirror and see our own divine image, to go about our daily activities remembering everything we do needs to be done with the knowledge that we are divine reminders and divine needs, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us in his interview with Carl Stern.

Humanity has never fully lived into the truth and wisdom of the first sentence above and herein lies our difficulty with evil, herein lies our propensity to blame, shame, etc. Every human being “yearns to breathe free” as Emma Lazarus reminds us in her words on the Statue of Liberty. Every one of us in America are immigrants, except for the Native Americans. When we complain about immigrants, as we have throughout the history of America, we are not showing reverence for God, no matter how much we wrap ourselves in the particular spiritual discipline we follow. When we deny equal ‘status’ to people of color, we are not ‘standing in awe’ of God nor human beings. When we believe people need Assault weapons for ‘sport’, when we believe people need high-capacity magazines for their guns, knowing that these are specious arguments and our mass shootings occur with these weapons and magazines, we are not ‘standing in awe of God nor human beings. When we blame the perpetrators alone, not the lack of training, closer inspection of people’s mental health, when we blame the victims as people do by saying the doors should be locked, etc, we are not ‘standing in awe of God nor human beings.

When we deny the rule of law and say some people are above the law, “there is no reverence for God” nor human beings. When we punish people according to the color of their skin, the religion they follow differently than we punish white people, “there is no reverence for God.” When we replace faith with creed, “worship with discipline, love by habit,” when today’s crisis is ignored because we are having euphoric recall of the past, to paraphrase the opening chapter of God in Search of Man, “there is no reverence for God” nor for human beings. When we fail to see the uniqueness of another human being, when we make another human being ‘the other’ “there is no reverence of God” nor of human beings.

In recovery, we know we have ‘to stand in awe’ of God and another human being in order to stay in recovery. Our previous ways of being denigrated the divine image of our self and everyone else. Where we saw differences, we look for similarities, where we blamed another person for our situation, we take responsibility for our part. Where we engaged in entitlement, we are now of service. Each morning we “turn our will and our life over to the care of God” and have reverence for God and for human beings.

I realize that my reverence for another human being is easily misinterpreted by the way I may show it. The “fire in the belly” that I experience in seeking truth, speaking truth; my ability to see the divine image in another human being and break down all the walls and defenses people have put around their divine image has driven me at times to be abrasive, argumentative, loud, blunt, impolite, insensitive to people’s feelings. Today’s teaching above reminds me to be true to my own divine image and the divine need I am meant to fulfill. I also realize that not everyone wants to hear me, not everyone can hear the ways I fill God’s call to me. I have to have more reverence for people who need a different way so I can have more reverence for God. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 158

“What is a mitsvah? A prayer in the form of a deed. And to pray is to sense His presence. “In “all thy ways thou shalt know Him.” Prayer should be part of all our ways. It does not have to be always on our lips; it must always be on our minds, in our hearts.”(God in Search of Man pg. 375)

Rabbi Heschel’s merging of prayer and Mitzvah is, in some ways, revolutionary. Most people think of mitzvah as a deed and prayer as a petition. Yet, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s teaching today, I hear him reminding us that mitzvah as a “prayer should be part of all our ways”. While it is important to pray, to commune with God, with our higher selves, prayer alone, study alone will not change anything, including us. We have to take action, we have to respond to God’s call to us through our actions, not just our words.

Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to be congruent, to be alive, to be aware, to serve our self, our community, God, with all of our hearts, minds, and actions. He is demanding we stop regulating prayer to the synagogue, church, mosque; he is calling us to account for our daily actions; he is asking us to “take a leap of action” as he says often. In order for change to happen, in order for us to be a partner of God in making the world better, in order for hatred and strife, prejudice and power-grabbing, self-deception and mendacity to end, we have to “sense His presence” in all of our actions. We have to stop using prayer and mitzvah for our advantage, to build our selves up, to bastardize God’s ways and desires, as we have throughout the millennia.

“What is the next right action” is the question that we have to ask and answer for ourselves constantly. I believe this is what “must always be on our minds, in our hearts.” Yet, we continue to ask and answer a different question: “what is in my best interest” and we find ourselves in the morass of deception, selfishness, hatred, prejudice, etc. We find ourselves going against what is truly in our best interest, serving God. We find ourselves thinking about how to get over, how to get ahead, how to deceive another into going against their best interest to serve ‘the leader’, ‘the group’.

Netanyahu and his band of merry men are trying to destroy the democratic state of Israel, they say they are Ultra-Orthodox Jews serving God while in reality they are serving their selfish desires. They have deceived themselves and their followers into believing that “prayer is on our minds, in our hearts” all the while going against a foundational tenet and mitzvah of God-“do justly, love mercy, walk in the ways of God”. They are not doing justly, they want to control justice, they do not believe in nor love mercy for anyone who is not in lockstep with them and their thinking, they are do not “sense His presence” because they do not see the divine image in anyone who doesn’t go along with their ways! While they may practice Judaism in an orthodox manner, they do not follow the words of the prophets, they do not allow for any other opinion but theirs, they do not follow nor engage in a discussion and exchange of ideas and ways to find “the next right action”, they only know and want what they want when they want it. This will lead to destruction and ruin.

In America, the Republican Party has been the home of ‘the unreligious right’. As in Israel, the leaders and followers are not congruent with the teachings of their faiths. They do not “do justly”, they also use their brand justice as a weapon against their enemies and a gift for their cronies. Rather than “love mercy” they show none to the people whom they consider enemies (anyone who doesn’t agree with them and/or stands in their way of total domination). They give shelter to people who use prayer for their own selfish desires, they lead people into believing God loves them more so everyone should follow them, they shun the stranger, the poor, the needy and show them disdain rather than mercy. How are they “walking in the ways of God”?

In recovery, we learn to serve God is to serve another. Each morning, each day we begin with prayers that lead us to serve, lead us to do mitzvot. We are acutely aware of how our actions shape us, shape those around us and the world. We pray each day with the action of turning “our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand God” because without the “sense of His presence” we know how lost we can become. Each and every hour, day we carry our prayers, our actions in our hearts and in our minds so we can grow in our knowledge of “what the next right action” is and how to carry it out. We seek each day to be one grain of sand closer to fulfilling the words of the prophets, return to God, do justly, love mercy, walk with God. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 157

“What is a mitsvah? A prayer in the form of a deed. And to pray is to sense His presence. “In “all thy ways thou shalt know Him.” Prayer should be part of all our ways. It does not have to be always on our lips; it must always be on our minds, in our hearts.”(God in Search of Man pg. 375)

In Rabbi Heschel’s interview with Carl Stern that is included in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, edited by Dr. Susannah Heschel, he speaks about prayer: “The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.” Using this ‘definition’, this understanding of prayer, I am hearing Rabbi Heschel remind us that our deeds are either praising God, praising the good, singing with our whole being our joy and gratitude for being alive, the chant of our soul are reflected in our deeds or our deeds are praising evil, living for self-satisfaction, glory, narcissistic ends, denying the chant/music in our soul and bastardizing God’s name. Sensing God’s presence in the ways Rabbi Heschel teaches, preaches, and lived is much different than what we hear from the fundamentalist clergy, the prosperity clergy, the Orthodox in Israel and in America, the Evangelicals in America, Israel, throughout the world, the Fundamentalist Muslims in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, America, etc. It is different from the practitioners of Eastern Spirituality who have nothing to learn nor accept from people of another Spiritual Discipline.

We are in such a time right now where “to sense His presence” is being used as a weapon for evil rather than a tool, a guide, a motivation for good! We see this in America where so many ‘god-fearing christians and jews’ stand with the authoritarianism of Trump, DeSantis, Pence, McCarthy, Taylor-Greene, Jordan, et al. We are witnessing the promotion of people who participated in an Insurrection on Jan.6th as patriots and political prisoners. This from the same people who believed holding people indefinitely in Guantanamo was the right thing to do because these people participated in attacking our country! They are invested in hating the stranger, jailing the poor and forgetting the needy-these ‘religious’ charlatans. In Israel, the right-wing Orthodox, who feed off the state because they only want to study-not go to the army, not work, just study so they have no ‘skin in the game’ of making the country safe, want to kill the democracy, want to kill the Arabs, want to kill justice for all, so they can rule! I wonder what all their studying has done for them when they are practicing what the Rabbis of old taught was the cause of the destruction of the Temple, Sinat Hinam-senseless hatred. In both of these places, authoritarian leadership is leading the masses to their own destruction, they are leading “their flock” to ruination-especially if the authoritarians win! Remember Nazi Germany, look at Russia under communism and now-the people didn’t thrive, only the authoritarians and their cronies.

Yet, we refuse to learn from history. The ‘religious, god-fearing christians, muslims, jews’ refuse to hear the prophets. They and we are not sensing God’s presence in our deeds otherwise we would not give in to the lies we tell ourselves, the deception of another(s), the call of hatred, the anti-democratic actions that are being done in our name across the world. As we are in the period of time prior to celebrating the Exodus from Egypt and Easter, isn’t it time to look at the ways we are still enslaved to a way of living that denies God’s presence in our actions? Isn’t it time for us to allow our self to be “brought out from the Land of Egypt”? Isn’t it time for us to stop having our deeds praise evil; praise selfishness, praise harming the stranger, the poor, the needy; seek control over women’s bodies, minds and free-will? Isn’t it time for us to stop engaging in the “eye disease”, the “cancer of the soul” of prejudice in all of its forms?

In recovery we say a resounding YES-IT IS TIME TO STOP! We practice the principles of God’s will in all our affairs, we are constantly “seeking knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry it out”, we are consistently aware of when we hit the mark and when we miss the mark and we are more afraid of hiding from our evil actions and our good actions than admitting them out loud!

As Rabbi Heschel says in his speech at the Conference on Race and Religion in 1963, the first conference on race and religion had Moses and Pharaoh as it’s participants and “the outcome of that summit has not come to an end”. I worked and continue to work hard to ensure that my deeds are my prayers, that my kindness overwhelms my selfishness, my generosity of spirit overtakes my FOMO, that truth wins out over mendacity and justice for all is a reality. Seeing the divine in each person I meet prevents the senseless hatred I witness each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - Year 2 - Day 156

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 156

“We are never alone in our struggle with evil. A mitsvah, unlike the concept of duty, is not anonymous and impersonal. To do a mitsvah is to give an answer to His will, to respond to what He expects of us. This is why an act of mitsvah is preceded by a prayer: “Blessed be Thou …”(God in Search of Man pg 375)

As I understand Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, when we “give an answer to His will,” we say a prayer that begins with gratitude to God for our ability “to respond to what He expects of us.” Immersing myself in this thought, I find it counter-intuitive to human nature. Most people, upon doing something for someone else, expect the gratitude to come from the receiver rather than us thank someone for being able to do something for them. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that we are the ones to be grateful for doing a mitzvah and serving God, another human being, etc. In a world that seems to be lacking in gratitude, this is revolutionary and extremely important.

In the Bible, 3 days after walking through the Red Sea, being saved from the Egyptians, the Israelites complained and throughout the journey to the Promised Land, they complained when things were not to their liking. This is in direct conflict with the teaching above and we still haven’t learned the lessons Rabbi Heschel is teaching! We are living in the world of selfishness, of competition, of bastardization of God’s will and the teachings of the Bible. Instead of being grateful and saying a prayer when we can help someone, when we care for the stranger, the needy, the poor, we lord it over them, we remind them of how much we have done for them, we put our names on buildings, have them printed for the levels we give at, etc. We have expectations of another(s) when we help, we think they should be grateful to us, rather than us be grateful to God for being able “to respond to what He expects of us.”

Rather than being concerned with having “an answer to His will”, many people who perform mitzvot are still losing “our struggle with evil, because we are not responding “to what He expects of us”, we are doing a mitzvah by rote, for the merit, not for the sake of heaven. Watching the lies that are spoken in God’s name, listening to fundamentalists of all stripes speak of their rigidity, their ‘rightness’, is not giving “an answer to His will”. Continuing to treat the poor as criminals, the stranger as an alien, the needy with disdain, is not “to respond to what He expects of us”. Even helping people as a means to an end, as a way of raising up our own names, as a “benevolence”, goes against the teaching above.

Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to return to a way of being that rejoices in our ability “to give an answer to His will”, in a way of being that helps another person(s), grows our connection to God, and keeps us in a state of gratitude no matter our economic station in life. Many surveys have shown that poorer people give more of their income to charity than those of great wealth. We are taught in the Bible that 10% of our income should be given to charity, beginning with our own community, then the larger community we live in and then outside of us. For these donations, these tithes, we are the ones to say a blessing, we are the ones to be grateful to God for being able to participate in this mitzvah, not wait for someone to ‘kiss our tuchus, kiss our ring’ to get us “to respond to what He expects of us”!

It is time for us to realize that our treatment of one another is either furthering our response to “what He expects of us” or retarding it. When we extol the anarchists, when we call for the death of the rule of law, when we intimidate lawyers, judges, everyday people so the ‘rich and famous’ don’t have to be accountable, we are not giving “an answer to His will”, we are satisfying our selfish nature. When we manipulate the truth into a lie, when we use our intellectual skills to twist truth, love, kindness into their opposites in order to serve our selves, our bank accounts, our stature, we are not responding “to what He expects of us.”

Since my recovery began, every mitzvah I have performed, I have said a prayer of gratitude to God. This is how I live my T’Shuvah each day, in every action possible. I am grateful to God for the good I bring and for the errors I make in doing mitzvot because I repair the damage from my errors and learn from them as well as examine the good so I can enhance it. I have fought evil for a long time as well as succumbing to it at times. My gratitude to God for being able to have “an answer to His will” and “respond to what He expects of me” has made it possible for me to serve and help save many people. How can I not be grateful for this? My gratitude is to God for giving me the opportunity to use my gifts and enhance my corner of the world. Whether people are grateful is less important to me because I am grateful. 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 155

“We are never alone in our struggle with evil. A mitsvah, unlike the concept of duty, is not anonymous and impersonal. To do a mitsvah is to give an answer to His will, to respond to what He expects of us. This is why an act of mitsvah is preceded by a prayer: “Blessed be Thou …”(God in Search of Man pg 375

Doing a mitzvah is also following the 248 positive mitzvot, the 248 “thou shall” words of God, of higher consciousness. Whether one wants to deny God, be unsure of God’s presence, deeply believe in God, we all need to follow these 248 “thou shall” “positive” mitzvot. Some people call doing a mitzvah being moral, doing a good thing, etc. Yet, as Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, “to do a mitsvah is to give an answer to His will, to respond to what He expects of us”. Even for those people who want to say “God is dead” or there never was God, the world has accepted the mitzvot as the minimum standard of morality, the standard of what is right and wrong, the standard of being human. At least we say we do, yet we know that this is not historically the case, no matter what Ron DeSantis and his Republican cronies, the Dixie Democrats and their white supremacist followers, want to say.

We are going to celebrate the Exodus from Egypt on April 5, 2023 and we are witnessing a denial of the slavery that this country engaged in for over 2 centuries, a denial of the degradation of Black people even since the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. We are listening to these “good god-fearing idolators proclaim their loyalty to God, they are claiming the proper response to what God expects of us is to denigrate the stranger rather than caring for them, enslave the needy rather than helping them, sell another human being rather than redeeming them, hating Jews, people of color, Muslims, women, anyone they deem as different rather than loving their neighbors!

Reading Rabbi Heschel in the context of today’s world should be calling us to remember the Prophets of Israel and how they pleaded with us to turn back to God, to stop our idolatrous ways, to stop bastardizing life by doing empty rituals and calling them mitzvot, calling them answers to God’s will. Rabbi Heschel is issuing a call to action, as I hear him today, and every day. Today’s call is to study the positive mitzvot, engage in “just do it” rather than try and think about them. Turn away from looking for the loopholes of the mitzvot, the loopholes of answering and responding to God in the best way for our selves. Turn towards taking the leap of action that is God’s will, that is what God expects of us by engaging the 248 positive ways of impacting the world, God, one another and our own inner life. Only by doing the positive and not doing the negative mitzvot can we begin to understand God’s will and fulfill God’s expectations for us.

Each of us are going to do them in our own unique manner, there can be no lockstep routine of doing a mitzvah, I believe. We have to stop telling one another the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to do a mitzvah and be more concerned with answering God’s will and responding to God’s expectations than being the ‘mitzvah police’ or the ‘abortion police’ or the ‘literal police’ and/or any other type of extremist. When we deny women choice, opportunity, when we deny people of color voting rights, healthcare access, equal educational opportunities, when we denigrate Jews through anti-semitic tropes and actions, when we use the Taliban and/or Al Qaeda, to paint all Muslims as terrorists, we are not fulfilling God’s will nor God’s expectations. We have to stop worrying about how someone else is fulfilling God’s will and expectations and be mindful of how we are. When we have to rebuke someone it is not to lord over them, it is to connect to them and remind them that they matter, we are concerned about them and we are here to help them.

Recovery is all about this change in perception through changing our actions. Our first action is to admit our powerlessness over our addictive ways of behaving, be it a substance or a process/thinking that causes them. We were as sick and stuck in Egypt as the people described above and as unaware of it as they are. Upon our realizations of our enslavement to these addictive ways, we let go of prejudice by reaching out our hand to everyone we met in meetings and elsewhere. We make a decision to answer and respond to God’s will and expectations rather than ignoring them. We committed to fulfill the 248 positive ways of living a life compatible with being a partner of God and we do the best we can each and every day, remembering that God is perfect and we are a work in progress.

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 154

“We are never alone in our struggle with evil. A mitsvah, unlike the concept of duty, is not anonymous and impersonal. To do a mitsvah is to give an answer to His will, to respond to what He expects of us. This is why an act of mitsvah is preceded by a prayer: “Blessed be Thou …”(God in Search of Man pg 375)

“To respond to what He expects of us” is a phrase that should stop us in our tracks, it is a phrase which should inform our reading, doing, then understanding of the entire Torah, the entire Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, and all other basic texts of all spiritual disciplines. When we read and do, understand and guard the expectations of God, we make life better for ourselves and everyone around us. When we “give an answer”…to what He expects of us” we are living a life compatible with being a partner of God. Yet, often we seem to be incapable to doing this, even when we are fulfilling a mitzvah. We have witnessed throughout history the doing of a mitzvah without it changing our inner lives, we have watched as people of all faiths/spiritual disciplines follow the rules and use them to be exclusive, mean, even deceitful. We have watched in horror how often God’s name and commandments  have been weaponized and used to harm people we fear, people we see as different than us, people who, often, “respond to what He expects of us.”

When there is divisiveness in our country about helping Ukraine in their war against aggression and against their democracy, we are not responding to “what He expects of us” because we are forgetting the lessons learned 85 years ago from Hitler-one can never appease the aggressors. When some people promote the lies about the election, when they believe that there is one justice system for the masses and another for their elite politicians, we are not  responding “to what He expects of us.” In the Torah, we are taught there is one law for the citizen and stranger alike, not one law for the stranger, another law for the citizen, and a third law for the elite, rich, people in power. Yet, we are hearing this separation from some political leaders, some people who are desperate to believe the deception of others. We hear that the Russian aggression is a “territory dispute” from some people in power, we hear that LGBTQ+ and especially trans people are ruining our children, we hear that ‘woke’ people are ruining our democracy, we hear the anti-semitic and racist dog whistles to galvanize white people by white supremacists and the people who cater to them AND this is done by good ‘god-fearing’ people who claim to wrap themselves in the flag of our country and the Bible of Jesus! Bullshit! Yet many people believe in their mendacity.

In the Torah, there are 365 “thou shall not” mitzvot. While many people today think religion and mitzvahs are not necessary because we know right from wrong, these 365 mitzvahs go a long way in reminding, teaching, telling us “what He expects of us”. We were given these 365 because people were doing them  instead of not doing them and ruining the lives of people around them, ruining their lives and believing in their own self-deceptions. While we think they are superfluous now, the reality and truth of our existence and actions now show we are in need of fulfilling these 365 now as much as, if not more than, ever. We find our judicial systems under attack across the globe, politicizing justice rather than pursuing it as “He expects”. Rather than ensuring that our judicial system doesn’t favor the rich nor the poor, we find ourselves in a situation where the rich and powerful believe they are above the law, get lighter sentences for the same offenses Judges ‘throw the book’ at the rest of us for. We are on edge in this country and in Israel because people in power have been called to, are being called to account for their actions, just as the prophets called the people in power to account prior to the destruction of the Temple. One of the ‘reasons’ given for the downfall of Israel, Judea(twice) is senseless hatred and injustice, we are witnessing the same today and the people perpetrating it, the people “idly standing by the bloods of their brothers” believe they are immune to the consequences. We, the People, are being called to return to responding “to what He expects”. As Rabbi Hillel says,”If not now, when?”

I have studied Rabbi Heschel for the past 34+ years and continually am disturbed and disrupted by him. Each time I read Rabbi Heschel, each time I read the Torah, I receive new understandings of how I have violated these 365 and how I have kept them. In seeing the nuances and interpretations/misinterpretations of my actions I experience a deeper and closer relationship with God, with the people around/close to me and with the humanity. I get righteously indignant with myself and with people upon realization of how I/we are practicing mendacity and self-deception because I know that these paths exile us from God and there is senseless hatred between people. Each day is one grain of sand better in my quest “to respond to what He expects.” 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 153

“We are never alone in our struggle with evil. A mitsvah, unlike the concept of duty, is not anonymous and impersonal. To do a mitsvah is to give an answer to His will, to respond to what He expects of us. This is why an act of mitsvah is preceded by a prayer: “Blessed be Thou …”(God in Search of Man pg 375)

My friend and teacher, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, taught me early on in our studies that a Mitzvah was a claim, which comes from the Latin meaning “to call out”. Using this definition, I believe that a Mitzvah is a “call out” from God to do “His will”. Many people fail to hear to this call and many of us fail to understand the meaning of God’s call. It is a call to ‘do the next right thing’ no matter what we are doing right now. It is a call to make our corner of the world a little better than it is right now. It is a call to connection with our “better angels” and a call to connect with the Ineffable One. It is not a call to have a check list, it is not a call to weaponize His will against another. It is not a call to pride and ego for how ‘good’ we are, how many calls we answer, etc. At the heart of every mitzvah is a call to justice, mercy, love, kindness, compassion and truth. It is a call to see the divine image in every human being, it is a call to realize that every action we take has meaning, purpose and power.

It is a “call out” to be human, to be Godly, to care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy around us. It is a “call out” to us to remember that our souls need to be nourished by a mitzvah and a “call out” to continue to mature our spiritual life and to live the spiritual principles, the mitzvot in all of our affairs. As Rabbi Heschel teaches us elsewhere, the mitzvah has to change our inner life or it is a mitzvah done in vain. We live in a society where God’s “call out” to us has become a contest rather than a connector. Where some people want to tell everyone else how to respond to this “call out”, instead of realizing God calls to each of us differently, we all have a different path to responding/answering God’s call because we are created different and unique from anyone else. No one can give everyone a ‘proper’ “answer to His will”, we all have to find our unique one within our self.

We do know that any response to “His will” that causes people to feel marginalized is an incorrect answer. We do know that anytime we are oblivious to the plight of another human being, anytime we inflict harm upon someone because of the faith they practice (or don’t practice), because of their gender, because of their sexuality, because of the color of their skin, we are not doing a mitzvah. We are not living “an answer to His will”, we are actually going against God’s “call out” to us.

Many people who claim to be people of faith are, in actuality, idolators. We are living in an era where some faith leaders preach hatred, intolerance, injustice to people who don’t believe the way they do. We are engaged in a great spiritual war, a war to decide if God’s call, the mitzvah, will be used for the betterment of humanity, the betterment of the universe or the betterment of certain individuals. Doing a mitzvah, while helping the individual immensely, is not done for a grade, it is not done for our egos, it is not done for notoriety, fame, fortune, it is done because we get to answer God’s “call out”, God’s claim on us. We seem to have forgotten the wisdom, the truth, the demand of Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and wisdom in these past 68 years!

In recovery, we are constantly “praying for God’s will and the power to carry it out”. We are well aware of our propensity to selfishness and self-centeredness. We know, if we are to recover our essence, our spirits, that we have to continue to hear God’s “call out” to us, just as we heard God’s “call out” to us to be in recovery, to be in connection with God once again, to return to living in a manner which honors our being a partner with God in making our corner of the world a little better.

I live in awe and radical amazement that God cares so much for me to continue to call me out, even when I have had deaf ears to God’s earlier calls, even when I have misunderstood God’s earlier calls. It is the reason I believe in and practice the forgiveness aspect of T’Shuvah so much, whether someone asks for it or not. Immersing myself in today’s writing validates for me the truth of forgiveness and compassion for the people who harm me while not stopping me from calling out what is good and what is evil in our world. Both of these actions are mitzvot, both are my answers to God’s will as I hear and understand it. I am more deliberate, I ask for advice and assistance to ensure that I am living the mitzvah that is most needed in this moment, and I know that I have to go with what my soul is telling 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 152

“We are never alone in our struggle with evil. A mitsvah, unlike the concept of duty, is not anonymous and impersonal. To do a mitsvah is to give an answer to His will, to respond to what He expects of us. This is why an act of mitsvah is preceded by a prayer: “Blessed be Thou …”(God in Search of Man pg 375)

The first sentence above gives us relief and hope, I believe. So many people feel alone in their struggle with evil, both the evil outside of us and the evil within us. Following the lessons of the paragraph prior to this one, we can realize, utilize and appreciate the aid we are given in our struggle with evil. We first, however, have to let go of our conventional knowledge that we are in this alone, that we have to do things on our own, that we are isolated and no one cares to help unless it is in their best interest. Even when we feel abandoned and ‘on an island’, when we feel outside of the community and no one understands us, we can let go of these self-deceptions and know that there is help, that God and Mitzvah are always with us, all we have to do is turn to accept the help. Of course, there are always people to help as well, we just have to “lift up our eyes” as Hagar was told and we will see the life-giving, life-saving help we need.

This is why living in radical amazement and wonder is so crucial to living well. Without being “maladjusted to notions and cliches” we will accept the conventional ideas and thoughts society has always given us. “In our struggle with evil” we lose the individual battle when we forget there is help, there are mitzvot we can engage in and have a personal experience with God/Higher Power/Higher Consciousness that will lift us up to victory over the evil within and the evil outside of us in the moment.

We know this from Rabbi Heschel’s second sentence above. A mitzvah “is not anonymous and impersonal” because it is done with intention, with purpose, with meaning and, in the moment of engaging in a particular mitzvah, we are connected to the Ineffable One. We are infused with the spiritual sustenance needed to overcome the evil that is battering us, confusing us, disguising itself as good, causing chaos and mendacity. Engaging in a mitzvah is not a mindless exercise, it is not a rote experience. To engage in a mitzvah means we are connected to our actions physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It is the action of serving a greater good, serving another(s) human being, serving our self and our spiritual needs. Engaging in a mitzvah is coming ‘face to face’ with God, ‘face to face’ with our self, ‘face to face’ with another person(s), ‘face to face’ with nature. It is an engagement that shows us who we are, what we are, and why we are here. It is an action of fulfilling a purpose we are given, a job that is needed to be done, a celebration of our own humanity, and a statement of our being a partner with God/Universe to make our corner of the world a little better.

We cannot do this when we are engaged in selfishness, when we are more concerned with saving our face, looking good, living in deception and mendacity. We are alone “in our struggle with evil” when we refuse to live in radical amazement because we are giving in to the societal norms/teachings of ‘dog eat dog’, ‘the one with the most toys wins’, etc. We are alone “in our struggle with evil” when we succumb to “on advice of counsel” rather than “practicing these principles in all our affairs” as people in recovery know. We need to let go of our need to win, our need to rule and surrender to our authentic need for help “in our struggle with evil”. We need to stop marginalizing people because of gender, race, religion, political identification and work together to engage in the mitzvot of “do justly, love mercy and walk in the ways of God” as the prophets teach us.

In recovery, we know what evil looks like, we have lost too many struggles with the evil within us and the evil outside of us. We know that we need to surround ourselves with other people who are struggling against their inner evil inclination and a program of recovery was developed that includes mentorship, fellowship, connection, service and living our principles so we are never alone, we never fall into the abyss we have climbed out of to be in recovery. Some people say the first three steps of AA are; I can’t, we can, please help!

I found recovery, purpose, meaning when I let go of the conventional notions of society, when I made a decision to live into radical amazement. No matter what has happened to me, around me, by me in these past 34+ years, I have not felt abandoned by God because of being engaged in mitzvot, even when I have experienced people ‘failing’ me, I know God never does because of the personal connection I have through mitzvot. I have not won every struggle with evil and I have never been “ alone in” my “struggle with evil”. 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 151

“The Lord created the evil inclination in man and He created the Torah to temper it”.”The life of man was compared with “a lonely settlement which was kept in disorder by invading bands. What did the king do? He appointed a commander to protect it.” The Torah is a safeguard, the Torah is an antidote.”(God in Search of Man pg.375)

The Torah/Bible are the ‘thoughts’ of God for us to be able to live together as disparate people in a community that respects the dignity of one another. “It is a tree of life” as the prayer says when we return the Torah to the Ark, “all of its paths are peace/wholeness” the prayer continues. Isn’t it time for us to return to a way of living that honors the paths of every human being? Isn’t it time for us to hold on to this “tree of life”? Yet, we continue to see everyone who is ‘different’ from us as our enemy whom we are supposed to conquer, rather that another human being we can and must learn to live together with.

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, as always, disturbs me, and I believe this is intentional on his part. He, like the prophets before him, wants to wake us up from our sleepwalking through life as selfish, prejudicial homo sapiens and learn to “be human”. Rather than each of us have our own experience of Torah/Bible, rather than each of us have our own connection with and experience with God, as happened at both the Red Sea and Sinai, we have relegated connection and experience to the ‘religious’ leaders and to people purporting to ‘know’ the will of God. These charlatans are using Torah/Bible as a weapon, not as an antidote to their evil inclination, these charlatans are using Torah/Bible as ‘cover’ for their hatred, prejudice, power grab, rather than as a safeguard against their evil inclination. Rather than temper their worst behaviors, they have used Torah/Bible as proof of their ‘rightness’.

When Alan Dershowitz says using George Soros as a dog whistle is not anti-semitism because he is “not much of a Jew” we are witnessing a man, who purports to be an expert on law, an expert on what is Jewish, sell his soul and his fellow Jew out for the ‘friendship’ of Donald Trump and the Republican Party! When we witness this “senseless hatred” of one Jew towards another, we can be reminded of the reason for the destruction of the 2nd Temple. When we see how the Israeli government wants to be friends with Russia, with Hungary, when they want to deny the rule of law for their political gain, when we watch the Republicans in Congress use their power to go after their political enemies and then accuse everyone else of doing this, when we see the Courts be surrogates for the ‘religious’ right and uphold States who are denying the right to vote to people who would not vote Republican, when we experience the myriad of ways these ‘religious’ charlatans attack people who are trying to hold people in power to account, when we experience the denial of women to control their own bodies, all under the guise of Torah/Bible, all under the guise of the Constitution, all under the false pretenses of law, we are witnessing what people in Rome, in Greece, in Israel, in Judea must have seen prior to their destruction.

We must heed Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, we must put into practice his brilliance and his warnings, we must be disturbed by his insights, his teachings and change our ways rather than ignore him. We must relearn how to use the Torah as an “antidote” to our individual and collective “evil inclination”. We need to remember “the Lord created the evil inclination in man” and stop using it for racist, anti-semitic, anti-muslim, actions and words. We must use Torah/Bible to transform our evil inclination to serve God, to serve another human being. We must immerse ourselves in how to better “love your neighbor as you love yourself”.

Knowing my evil inclination comes from God makes it holy for me, makes me know that I am not evil from birth. Rather this knowledge has propelled me, in my recovery, to learn the nuances of my evil inclination, to learn how I always have to wait for the second thought because the first one may be my evil inclination in disguise. I have studied Rabbi Heschel and Torah/Bible for all these years, I use prayer and gratitude along with my studies so my actions reflect using Torah to temper my evil inclination, something I did not do prior to my recovery. I, as my fellow travelers in recovery, have to continue to reveal truth to myself and to another(s), I have to make sure that I do not allow evil to flourish, because of my fear of falling back into believing my own evil inclination. Each day, this writing, my studies, my actions help me to use Torah/Bible as a safeguard and antidote to my evil inclination and to help me use this gift from God to better my self, better my community, better the world. 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 150

“The Lord created the evil inclination in man and He created the Torah to temper it”.”The life of man was compared with “a lonely settlement which was kept in disorder by invading bands. What did the king do? He appointed a commander to protect it.” The Torah is a safeguard, the Torah is an antidote.”(God in Search of Man pg.375)

Immersing ourselves in the thoughts of the Bible/Torah means we have to emulate the principles and thoughts of God, we have to act Godly as Rabbi Harold Shulweis, z”l, teaches us. We, the people, have to let go of our need to be right and, instead, do right. We, the people, have to follow a path of justice, mercy, kindness, truth, compassion, and love. One thought of the Torah is that humans were created in the image of God, we have the attributes of God within us, we each are created unique and we all have a corner of God’s garden to till, grow, add to with our unique talents and spirit that are unlike anyone else’s. This makes our incessant need to compete and win against one another an inauthentic need. It means that we are to work together, with our differences and similarities, with our arguing and our agreements to make our communities, our states, our countries a little better in service of one another and in service of God. It means that we get to live authentically without fear of comparisons and without the need to conquer another person, another group. It means that any type of hatred, scapegoating, cheating, stealing, murdering, prostituting of our souls, coveting what another has, lying, etc is an affront not just to another human being, it is an affront to God. Rabbi Heschel, in his brilliance in adding this Midrash to the solution of the problem of evil, is reminding us all of the path to good, the path to wholeness, the path to oneness.

Another thought of the Torah is that we all come from Adam, who was an androgynous human being: “male and female he created them both”(Genesis 1:27). Our non-binary, trans, people are not ‘freaks of nature’, they are not less than human, they are not people to be feared, they are human beings, just like any other human being. The need to scapegoat them is an inauthentic need, it is an affront to God’s words, God’s thoughts, yet the ultra-religious keep committing this sin and wrap themselves in the false cloak of righteousness, protecting our young, etc. All for their own benefit, all for their own power, all for their own need to hate, to be prejudicial.

Another aspect of the thought we all come from Adam is that we are all related, we all share the qualities of Adam, we all suffer from the same spiritual maladies of Adam, we all have the knowledge of good and evil as Adam did, we all hide from our errors as Adam did, we all blame another for our missteps as Adam did. Immersing ourselves in the thoughts of the Bible/Torah here means we can learn from Adam instead of emulating him! Yet, it seems like everyone follows Adam’s example rather than being responsible for their part, for their goodness and their missteps, for their confusion of good and evil and for their ability to separate one from the other. We are witnessing a time where truth is under assault, where the rule of law is being attacked, where the will of a few people is being forced upon the majority. We are being blamed for the errors of another, we are being bombarded with the words attributed to Josef Goebbels:”accuse others of that which you are guilty of”, and many of us seem to be powerless in the face of this onslaught. We are not powerless, immersing ourselves in the thoughts of Torah/Bible gives us the strength, the obligation to stand up for and with truth and truth sayers. The words of the prophets have to ring louder in our ears that the words of these false prophets, charlatans and idolators.

In recovery, we immerse ourselves in the ways to carry out the principles of love, truth, kindness, compassion, mercy and justice. We shun prejudice and hatred, we stop blaming another and take responsibility for our actions good and bad, we repair the bad actions and harms we have wrought while improving on the good we have done. We are constantly seeking to fulfill God’s/Higher Power’s will for us and to be of service to one another.

I have immersed myself in these and so many other thoughts of the Torah/Bible since 1987 and, while still imperfect, am much better at carrying them out. I don’t blame anyone for my errors, I don’t blame anyone for the consequences that occurred because of my errors, I am sad that more conversations were not had, that “on advice of counsel” took the place of human interaction. I practice the principles above in all my affairs to the best of my ability and continue to grow in wisdom and nuance of how my actions affect me and another(s). 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 149

“The Lord created the evil inclination in man and He created the Torah to temper it”.”The life of man was compared with “a lonely settlement which was kept in disorder by invading bands. What did the king do? He appointed a commander to protect it.” The Torah is a safeguard, the Torah is an antidote.”(God in Search of Man pg.375)

Rabbi Heschel is quoting from the midrash, Leviticus Rabbah 35,5. We are in a state of being today, as we have always been, where this wisdom can make us worthy of being saved, I believe. Unlike some spiritual disciplines, this midrash speaks of the evil inclination as being something that God created in us humans, not an outside force, rather an inner inclination. It also teaches us that Torah/Bible is the tempering agent for our inner evil inclination. From this, we can learn that the evil inclination is not something to abandon, kill, eradicate, etc, it is, with the “safeguard” of Torah, a power we can use for the good, for the holy.

At issue, of course, is Rabbi Heschel’s belief that “we itemize the Bible and tear it to pieces instead of immersing ourselves in the thoughts of the Bible” and “there is a complete decline of the Bible in American education.”(Interview with Carl Stern). Immersing ourselves in the wisdom of the Midrash above that Rabbi Heschel is quoting causes us to reassess our actions, our study of Torah/Bible, and, more importantly, our living the thoughts and teachings of the Torah/Bible. Immersing ourselves in Torah/Bible as “a safeguard” and “an antidote” to our evil inclinations will change the ways we live with one another, it can change our drive for power at any and all costs, it will change the ways we treat one another, it can change our ideas of freedom for all, justice for all, etc.

We are experiencing a time when the evil inclination without “the Torah as a safeguard, the Torah as an antidote.” We are experiencing our way of living as “a lonely settlement” which is being “kept in disorder by invading bands”. These “invading bands” are the people who have jettisoned the thoughts, the ways, the teachings of Torah/Bible which will protect them and the rest of us. When people in power call for protests of justice, when they seek to turn justice into a political football, when they seek to use justice as a weapon against their enemies, as a weapon to save themselves from being held responsible for their own bad acts, we are experiencing the absence of Torah/Bible teachings, the absence of “a safeguard”, the absence of “an antidote” and we are in danger of the evil inclination running rampant.

“The Lord created the evil inclination in man” is not an excuse to allow ourselves to “follow the majority to do evil” as we learn in Deuteronomy, rather it is the reason to live the principles, the thoughts of the Torah/Bible. It is a reason to hear and heed the voices of the Prophets of Israel who spoke truth to power, who remind all of us what God desires, what the Torah/Bible is teaching us. Yet, we continue to bastardize the thoughts and teachings of the Torah/Bible to suit our evil inclinations rather than use Torah/Bible to temper them. We are not using Torah/Bible as “an antidote” nor as “a safeguard”, we are using them as an excuse and a defense! When the current ruling government in Israel wants to make the Justice subservient to their whims, when they want to take more territory, treat the minority as sub-humans taking away basic rights, freedoms, dignity which they are entitled to as children of God, we are witnessing the evil inclination run rampant. Doing so in the name of Judaism, doing so wearing the mantle of orthodoxy, is a flagrant sin, an ‘aveyros’. We, the people have to stand up to stop their evil inclination from invading our state of being.

In recovery, we declare:”Came to believe a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”. When we finally realized how unchecked our evil inclination was, when we finally realized how we were acting as “invading bands”, we surrendered to the truth of our situation. We realized we could not overcome our evil inclination ourselves and we needed help. We turn to “a Power greater than ourselves” for that help. However one defines this Power, we acknowledge we need it for our sanity and continue to need it for our growing into being more human each. Day.

Without the “The Torah is a safeguard, the Torah is an antidote” my life would be in more shambles than it was when I surrendered to this truth. The lives of the people around me would be in shambles also. Yet, with Torah to temper my evil inclination, I have been blessed to help many others surrender to the truth and use Torah/Bible to make their lives better. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 148

“To the Jew, Sinai is at stake in every act of man, and the supreme issue is not good and evil, but God and His commandments to love good and to hate evil; not the sinfulness of man but the commandment of God.” (God in Search of Man pg. 375)

For the good of humankind, we have to return to following “the commandment of God.” In this moment, when the “sinfulness of man” is so great, when the false ego has overtaken “the voice”, we are being called to return to “the commandment” to love good and hate evil”. Yet, we seem to continue to be deaf to this crucial need, we seem to be continuing to immerse ourselves in the mendacity of brutality being good and “doing justly” being hateful. We are in desperate need of living the words of the prophets and “return” to God, return to “the commandments to love good and to hate evil”. To do this we must first leave the mendacity we are ensconced in. We have to let go of our spiritual sickness of power, greed, deception; we have to let go of our practice of power being right, we have to let go of seeing the stranger, the needy, the poor as pawns, and we have to let go of our twisting and bastardization of “the commandment of God.”

To do this, we have to have a reawakening within us of Sinai, a cleansing of our ears, our hearts and our minds so we “the voice” reverberates within us rather than hearing only what our rationalizations, fears, false egos are telling us what is good and what is evil. We have to stop being in fierce competition with one another and see how we need one another, we have to re-experience the leaving of Egypt and the convocation at Sinai, when we helped one another leave the burdens of the Egyptians and have our own unique experience of God and God’s commandments. We have to remember how we needed one another to be able to achieve the goal of entering the Promised Land. We need to stop seeing our differences as threats and renew our commitment to one another as partners in fulfilling the “commandments of God”. Nowhere in the Bible do we learn of ‘doing it alone’, we only learn how we come together to defeat the enemies of God, the people who put themselves above God, and, with God’s help, defeat Goliath. We all have within us the determination and power of David to defeat the Goliaths of deception, greed, power, hatred, evil; we just have to live into this power rather than live into the Goliath that also dwells within us. Only through “the commandments of God” can we transform our Goliath energy to assist our David energy and ensure that good triumphs and evil loses. Yet, our David energy seems to be losing to the Goliath energy. We are seeing people as enemies who are actually either trying to help the poor, the needy, the stranger or our the stranger, the needy, the poor who are trying to join with us to serve God, to live into “the commandments of God.

I am suggesting that we declare a National Day of Repentance; a National Day of Forgiveness, a National Day of Return to “the commandments of God to love good and to hate evil”. While it will take more than a day to achieve these ways of being, these declarations will begin the process. Just as with Yom Kippur, we begin our inventory of when we loved good and loved evil during the past year 40 days before, we can begin to do the work today! Whether it is done as a country, a state, a city, a community, a family, and/or an individual; we have to begin to repent for our lack of commitment and fulfillment of “the commandment of God”. We have to begin to ask for and give forgiveness to the people we have harmed and give forgiveness to those who have harmed us, including forgiving ourselves for our spiritual sickness that led to our confusion of what is good and what is evil. We have to begin to engage in the work of returning to “God and His commandments to love good and to hate evil” by returning to fulfill the call of “the voice” that is calling to all of us from Sinai.

As we say in recovery: “What an order”! Yet, we learn from Pirke Avot, it is not our job to finish the work, yet we are not free to invalidate it. We are not free from engaging in the work whether we will finish it or not, as those of us in recovery affirm each day by our daily 10th step, our daily inventory of what we did well and where we missed the mark. We make a daily gratitude list to remember how God continues to show us what is good, what is helpful and reminds us to continue to turn our lives towards “His commandments to love good”.

I believe it is possible, for my fellow clergy people to make this declaration as an ecumenical experience. Just as Rabbi Heschel joined with so many different faith leaders to fight for Civil Rights, the end of the Vietnam War, etc; so too can we faith leaders declare these National Days of Repentance, Return and Forgiveness. I engage in this work each day and I am grateful for “the commandments”. 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 147

“To the Jew, Sinai is at stake in every act of man, and the supreme issue is not good and evil, but God and His commandments to love good and to hate evil; not the sinfulness of man but the commandment of God.” (God in Search of Man pg. 375)

Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance shines through, once again, in this sentence above. Sinai, the act of receiving the Torah, the act of experiencing God is at stake in every one of our actions is an overwhelming, humbling, trembling teaching that is fear producing as well as awe producing. Living our daily actions based on the experience of Sinai, the experience of entering into the covenant with God and with one another seems almost too much to bear! Yet, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us we can bear it, we can live into the Sinai experience with each and every act we take. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that the “supreme issue” in life is God and God’s “commandments to love good and to hate evil”. The way he speaks is so wonderful because we are so busy accusing one another of evil, extolling the good we do and we ignore God, we ignore God’s commandments to “love good and to hate evil”(bold is mine).

We are watching this finger-pointing happen in Israel, in the United States, all over the world and it is scary for many of us. We have become so ensconced in our thinking, in our self-deception, in the deception of another(s), we have forgotten what is at stake in our actions-Sinai. We have forgotten we are enrolled in a covenant that teaches us that truth and connection are paramount to living well, we have forgotten that “to love good and hate evil” is not just a bumper sticker, but the only way to live in concert with God and to honor the experience of Sinai. We are ignoring the rule of law to satisfy the rule of self; we are ignoring the plight of the poor, the needy, the stranger-all of whom we are to invite to partake of the Passover Meal in 3 weeks- for the plight of the rich and powerful; we ignore the interests of God for the interests of false ego and mendacity. We are re-experiencing the experience of the Pharaoh and Egypt while calling it serving God and our covenant. Instead of realizing our raison d’être is to serve God, to follow the commandments so our actions show our love of the good and our hatred of evil, our actions show our love of evil and hatred of good. We here this daily from our politicians, our trusted servants who have chosen to serve their interests, the interests of the rich, the powerful. They, like the Pharaoh in Egypt, have decided to “deal slyly” with ‘their people’ lest the people rise up and fight against them. They have used mendacity, deception, knowingly to incite people to act against their own interests, against God’s interests and against the Sinai experience. These charlatans, of all colors and stripes, have turned the world upside down, they suffer from a sickness of the soul, as Maimonides writes about in his book, Shemoneh Prakim, the Eight Chapters.

We, the people, have to return to our roots, the experience at Sinai. We, the people, have “to love good and hate evil” once again. We, the people, have to make “God and God’s commandments” the supreme issue in our daily living. We do this by demanding of our spiritual leaders they heal their own spiritual maladies and speak of them from the Pulpit, from their desks. We spiritual leaders have to do our own T’Shuvah instead of pointing our fingers at everyone else. We have to speak truth to power and give comfort to the powerless. We, the people, have to then seek to heal our own soul sicknesses, begin the process of re-covenanting with God, with the principles of God’s commandments, and make sure that we are living these principles “in all our affairs”.

Recovery and Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above go hand in hand. Recovery teaches “having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps…we practice these principles in all our affairs”. Being in recovery is making the Sinai experience, the experience of turning our will and our lives over to a power greater than ourselves, ie God, a daily occurrence and remembrance.

Every day, I remember the exodus from Egypt, the historical one and my own. Every day I put loving good and hating evil into action. Every day, I re-experience Sinai, re-covenant with God, focus on how to live the commandments more deeply, how to have them permeate my being more completely, and every day I know I fall short. This reminds me of my humanity and gives me more compassion for the humanity and frailty of everyone else. I do hate evil and love good, both in myself and in the world. I am sad that I have not always expressed this in ways people could hear, I am not sad that I have fought for God and for God’s commandment “to love good and hate evil”. 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 146

“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)

In the last sentence above, I hear Rabbi Heschel challenging us to surrender to “the voice”. “The wilderness of the soul” reminds me of the desert of slavery and the wilderness of Sinai. It was “the voice” that called to Moses, that broke through his fears of returning to Egypt to redeem the people. It was “the voice” that called from Sinai and let the Israelites know they were not alone, there was a solution to not being enslaved anymore. It was “the voice” that was powerful enough to give the people the confidence to not turn back to Egypt, even though they wanted to at times. It was “the voice” that gave the people the joy of knowing they were connected to something greater than themselves. It was “the voice” that inspired them to build the Tabernacle and want God “to dwell among them”.

It is this same “voice” that is calling to us today. “The voice” is shaking our souls to a state of trembling awe and infusing our souls with the courage to override our egos, override our rationalizations, override our wanton desires. It is this “voice” that calls to us each and every day to come home, to be rooted in what is good and holy, to serve our better angels. It is “the voice” that puts a mirror up to our egos, calls out to us the lies we are telling ourselves, the deceptions we are perpetrating upon humanity. It is “the voice” calling us to serve something greater than ourselves, to serve the best and highest interests of our souls, of humanity, of God. It is “the voice” that helps us navigate the wilderness of our souls and find our true north, our authentic selves.

“To strip the ego bare” is not to disintegrate the ego, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, it is to go back to our authentic ego, to use our ego to serve rather than to inflate and deceive. The power of “the voice” is in its ability to cause us to see truth, to return to what is truly our place, to take away all of the jewels, the pomp and circumstance, the hurts, the disappointments, the entitlements that we and society has layered our egos with. It is only by embracing “the voice” will we have the courage to stop using our egos as weapons against another(s) and against our self.

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is challenging us to “take the cotton out of our ears” however. While “the voice” is always speaking, we are not always hearing. While “the voice” is stripping our “ego bare”, we keep adorning it with crowns and mendacity. We, the people, have to hear, listen and understand the demand of “the voice”, we have to remember the words of the prophet Hosea: “I will heal their backsliding and take them back in love” and the prophet Jeremiah: “Return, faithless children and I will heal your faithlessness.” It is our responsibility to engage with “the voice”, to allow it to penetrate the armor we have built up around our egos and our souls, we have to make a decision to leave the slavery of false ego, to recalibrate our inner compass, to mature our souls so we can live free, overcome the desire evil has upon us, and serve “the voice” instead of our false egos. It is a hard journey, it is not a linear road, it is also a momentous journey, an educational voyage, and a joyous trip.

In recovery, we have come to believe the words of Hosea and Jeremiah, I would say we hold onto their beliefs for dear life. We come to believe our backsliding can be healed, we come to believe we can “strip the ego bare” and return to a state of truth and connection. We come to believe our souls will lead us to doing the next right thing and we will enjoy the lush greenery this new way of living brings. We come to believe that “the voice” is powerful enough to help us discern between the lies of our false ego and the truth of our souls. We come to believe we have something good and necessary to add to our corner of the world.

The last phrase, “His will flash forth like fire” is the experience that keeps on giving to me. It is the only way I can know when I ‘miss the mark’ and when I hit it. This flash of fire, like Jeremiah, I have “in my belly” and, when activated, sometimes drives me out of control and always gives me the insight to strip away all the trappings of me, another(s) and a situation. This “flash” is what has saved me for the past 35+ years and, while I don’t express it ‘properly’ at times, has helped save many people. The “flash” is a daily occurrence, I hear “the voice” daily, I am grateful when I have to strength to follow them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 145

“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)

Using the “knowledge of His will…to cope with evil” means we have to hear the voice of God, universe, power greater than ourselves, etc, as more than a soothing voice that is cool with our misdeeds, with our bastardization of this knowledge. We have to hear “the voice” as more than a suggestion, more than a way for us to validate our joining with evil, our intentional and unintentional mixing evil, mixing our own egotistical needs in with good so we are unable to distinguish one from the other. “The voice is more than a challenge”, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom today is a call to hear the demand of “the voice”, the demand of our souls, the demand of the people around us, the demand of the widow, the poor, the orphan, the needy, the stranger and respond to this demand instead of the demand of our selfish desires, of our need to be powerful, right, our need to win at any and all costs. “The voice” is also a commander for us, it is constantly speaking to us in our inner life, causing a dissonance of the soul and mind, a dissonance of our hearts and heads, a dissonance of between love and ‘where’s mine’.

We, the people, are all children of the Creator, are all given “knowledge of His will”, all hear “the voice” and it is up to us to stop blaming God, universe, luck, parents, ‘those people’ for whatever is not ‘right’ in our lives. Letting go of our rebellion against God, against ‘those people’ is necessary for those of us on the right and on the left. Immersing ourselves in our “knowledge of His will” will lead to differences of opinion on how to fulfill it, just as the Rabbis of the Talmud disagreed. It will also lead to ways of living together with our differences of opinion and how to carry out our interpretations and implementations of our “knowledge” in harmony rather than acrimony. Letting go of our need to blame God, blame ‘those people’ allows us to be more responsible for our actions, for our following the demands and commands of “the voice”. It shifts responsibility unto us, as the Haggadah tells us: “every person should see him/herself as if they had been redeemed from Egypt.”

By realizing the freedom that “knowledge of His will” gives us, we then can choose to use it to enhance our “ability to cope with evil”. Cope is defines as “the ability to deal effectively with something difficult”, it is not just to accept and cry about, coping means dealing with the evil that is present in all of us; the part of us that blames another, that part of us that stays in rebellion from “the voice”. We have the opportunity, as we approach both Passover and Easter, to redeem ourselves and one another by dealing with the evil that resides in each of us, transforming the evil to energy we can use to do good, to follow the demand of “the voice”, to rise above our pettiness, pride, envy and enmity, to serve our souls, the souls of our communities, and “the voice”. We can let go of our old hurts and resentments, we can and must see one another with divine pathos as Rabbi Heschel reminds us. Each night, when we say the Bedtime Shema, “we forgive those who trespassed against us” so we can be free of resentments, not live in the past, and we ask “forgive us our trespasses” knowing we cannot be forgiven if we do not forgive. Evil flourishes not only when good people do nothing, it also flourishes when we “harden our hearts” and do not forgive nor hear the pleas of another, like Pharaoh and we know what happened to him!

In recovery, “we sought to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry it out.” The 11th step comes after we have released our resentments, after we have asked for forgiveness from those we have harmed, after we stop blaming anyone else for our errors, for our situation. We are aware of the many layers of living, the layers of our inner life that are as thin as an onion, that we have to constantly be pealing away so we can hear “the voice” clearer and clearer each day. We also know we have to live the demands of “the voice” and carry out the “knowledge of His will” a little more each day.

This is my greatest challenge and my greatest defeat and victory. I have, over these past 76 weeks let go of all of my resentments, have pathos and forgiveness towards everyone, open to receive what the universe has in store for me and continue to seek what is next. I am grateful beyond words to God, to you all, to my family and friends, to Harriet and to Rabbi Heschel for believing in me, and helping me live better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark