Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 224

“It is not by the rare act of greatness that character is determined, but by everyday actions, by a constant effort to rend our callousness. It is constancy that sanctifies. Judaism is an attempt to place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance, to relate all scattered actions to the One. Through the constant rhythm of prayers, disciplines, reminders, joys, man is taught not to forfeit his grandeur.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

In our pursuit of “the next big thing”, the “next great score”, the “next high”, we have ignored the wisdom and the call of Rabbi Heschel’s words above. We are a society that is obsessed with greatness, addicted to bigger and better, all the while believing if we achieve greatness, if we make some huge accomplishment, we will be okay, we will be happy, we will be noticed. While there is some truth in this belief, Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that these ‘rewards’ don’t last long. In fact, like an addict, we keep chasing the ‘high’ we get from a great act precisely because we have to keep feeding the dopamine rush that we got from the first great act!

Callousness, from the Latin, is “hard-skinned” and in English means “a cruel disregard for others” and “insensitive”. The Hebrew word means “tough” and is related to the word used in the Bible to describe Pharaoh’s heart being “hardened”. Rend, in the archaic definition, is “to wrench something violently” and the Hebrew word used also means “to tear”. Rend in a literary sense is defined as “to cause someone great emotional pain”. These definitions cause us to realize how hard we hold onto our callousness, how difficult Rabbi Heschel’s call to action in the first sentence above truly is! We witness and participate in callous behaviors everyday; in our politics, in our business world, in our family life, in our discourse, etc. Yet we seem to oblivious to the harm to we cause to another(s), the harm we cause to ourselves, the emotional and spiritual sickness we are engaging in towards self and another(s). This is how insidious callousness has become and, I believe, Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word rend. We are a people who have become “hard-skinned” to the plight of another(s) and, in doing so have become “insensitive” and display “a cruel disregard for others”.

How often have we heard and uttered, “they deserve it”, “let them help themselves, I did it on my own”, “they are trying to take our jobs away”, “they are trying to take our power away”, and other such statements to defend our callousness, to defend our hard-skinned, hard-hearted attitudes and actions? As a country, we are witnessing these attitudes in our Congress on a daily basis, we are watching, hopefully in horror, as the Republicans in the House of Representatives work hard to destroy the gains, the freedoms, the compromising bipartisan nature of making our country work for everyone. We are watching, some in delight, as they continue to push laws and pass laws in some states which impede peoples’ ability to vote, which target people they don’t like, people they are afraid of, they are banning books, is burning crosses far behind?

Rabbi Heschel’s words were published in 1955, some 68 years ago, when everyone was celebrating the end of WWII, the prosperity of the Ike years, watching Donna Reed, Father Knows Best, etc. In a time that is looked back upon as “the good old days”, Rabbi Heschel saw the rot that was still within us, the callousness that was still at our core as individuals and as a country. Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy, the killing of the Ethel Rosenberg whom the Government knew to be innocent, Jim Crow laws, anti-semitism and racism were rampant and, at times, subtle, etc were happening in these ‘good old days’. We speak today about “making a killing” in business, “slaughtering” the competition, etc. We denigrate a group for our benefit, we seek power to be corrupt, not to help. We have retarded the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel above, we have sought to and succeeded in being more callous, in seeking more “rare act of greatness” and become more willfully blind to our callousness and more stubborn than Pharaoh in our refusal to change!

Recovery begins with our acknowledgement of our callousness, of our “hard-skinned, cruel disregard for others”. While many people equate sobriety and recovery, they are different in my opinion and experience. I can be sober and a dry drunk-continuing to act in callous and perverse ways; in recovery, I have to let go of these paths, I have to “violently wrench away” my inner callousness, my unhealthy fears and my erroneous beliefs of isolation, loneliness, non-acceptance. I can’t do this without first coming face to face with my own callousness, cease my blaming of another(s) as a reason for my own callousness and begin the difficult work, the joyful daily actions to rend my own callousness. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 223

“Religion is not made for extraordinary occasions, such as birth, marriage, and death. Religion is trying to teach us that no act is trite, every moment is an extraordinary occasion.”(God in Search of Man pg.384)

Taking Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above to heart, we find ourselves in a conundrum, we have to make a choice each day, each moment, how are we going to meet life. We decide if we are going to “live life on life’s terms”, as we say in recovery, or are we going to keep trying to bend life to our making/desires. This is an internal question that we answer with our actions. It is a choice, question that most people are not even aware they have to answer. “Life on life’s terms” to many people means bending life to our way of reasoning, our desires, our belief in what is ‘right’. It is a narcissistic path and it seems normal to most of society. Radical amazement, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, is the maladjustment to conventional notions and cliches and is a “prerequisite for an authentic understanding of what is”. Yet, so many people resist this way of being, so many of us want what we want when we want it, so many of us are willing to be deceived, deceive another(s), and engage in self-deception in order to be willfully blind to the truth, the necessity of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above.

With the arraignment of Donald Trump today, we have an opportunity to live into the teaching above; the Bible teaches us that there is one law for the stranger and the citizen alike, it teaches us to not show favor to the rich nor the poor in justice, it tells us our judges have to be people of good character and not susceptible to serving the rich, the famous. It tells us that righteous judgement is true justice. No matter what our political leanings are, no matter what our desires are, in judging this case, we have to wait for the facts to come out in court and we have to make our decisions based on the facts, not on our prejudices, not on our political leanings. Yet, we are hearing of the weaponization of government from the very people who are weaponizing it, Ron DeSantis. We should be watching in horror the ways Pence, DeSantis, Scott, et al are using their false faith, their power to harm the poor, the needy, the stranger, women, people not like them, and blaming everyone else-never taking responsibility and seeing each moment as an “extraordinary occasion” for themselves to have more power. Rather than being in radical amazement, they stay in their reasoning, they continue to try to bend life to their will rather than live in God’s will.

Today, as is every day, is an opportunity to end our triteness, end our compartmentalization of religion, spirituality, faith. It is an opportunity to have pathos for Trump, for the judge, for the country. It is an opportunity to celebrate our justice system and re-imagine it as it was meant to be according to the Bible; a search for truth. This is the goal for each of us; search for the truth of our existence, search for the truth of how we can better serve, how we can, as the Psalmist says, “repay the Lord for all His bounties to me?”. We are being called to live in the wonder and the joy, the pain and the angst that life is and respond to everything with the faith, the teachings that religion gifts us with. When we see each day as a gift and we get to use the gift to the best of our ability, when we are present in this moment, in every moment, and dedicate ourselves to making our corner of the world a little better each day, we become infused with each and every “extraordinary occasion”, we use each of these extraordinary experiences to fuel our next right action, we use these “extraordinary occasions” to strengthen our inner resolve to rise above pettiness and pride, falseness and willful blindness, prejudice and our need for power over another(s). We engage in a truthful look at our actions, repairing the ones that “miss the mark” and enhancing the ones that “hit the mark”. Religion calls us to this task, it is not a salve for our conscience, it is not to make us feel good, it is here to teach us to savor the moment, seize the moment, enhance the moment, to use the moment to engage in wonder, in spiritual growth.

It is difficult to see each moment as an “extraordinary occasion”! Yet, knowing death of a parent at a young age, I work hard to do so. As I write this, I am seeing all of the times during the day when I don’t treat moments as “extraordinary occasions” and I am remorseful for this. While I know that perfection is way out of reach for me, for anyone, I also realize how I indulge in the trite, how I indulge in ignoring some moments just because I want to ‘veg out’. I do this with everyone at times and today’s writing makes me recommit to the wisdom, the call, the demand of Rabbi Heschel’s words above. It is a subtle reminder of how gratitude leads to recognizing these “extraordinary occasions” and how easy it is to miss them, and I commit to living in and being in to gratitude at least one grain of sand more today and every day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 222

“Religion is not made for extraordinary occasions, such as birth, marriage, and death. Religion is trying to teach us that no act is trite, every moment is an extraordinary occasion.”(God in Search of Man pg.384)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above comes to remind us to stop relegating religion to certain acts, rites, rituals. Since time immemorial, we have compartmentalized our religious practices, our spiritual disciplines to certain times, to “birth, marriage, death” and to once a week practices, or even daily worship services. In fact, I hear Rabbi Heschel reminding us of another reason religion became defeated, eclipsed; a statement he begins this entire book with. This compartmentalization is one of the “problem with the neutral” which is the title of the chapter I have been writing on. When we are neutral, we “render ineffective; deprive of vigor”, according to the dictionary definition of the Latin root of the word. We are “not either”, we are, as we say in Yiddish, “nishta hin, nishta hare, neither this nor that. We go through the rituals, we say the words of prayers, we are amazed at the birth of a child, we pledge certain vows at the marriage ceremony, we cry at a death, yet we forget that religion is for so much more than these rituals. We forget that religion is to prepare us for these events, to help us “enoble the common” of everyday events, as Rabbi Heschel teaches elsewhere. We forget that religion gives us the path, the vision, the power to see that and experience “every moment is an extraordinary occasion.”

We are hearing much about “the weaponization of the Justice Department/Government” from our Republican friends and foes. We are hearing these ‘good christian’, ‘believing Jews’ upstanding ‘moral’ men and women defend their rape of the trust and bastardization of the freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution and its Amendments. We are witnesses to their phony explanations of ‘law and order’ is for everyone else and doesn’t apply to them, to Donald Trump. We are watching a man accused of high crimes and misdemeanors, twice while in office and now as a private citizen, be extolled and lead the race for the Republican Party nomination to be President again! We hear and see people who have said it is wrong what he did say they will vote for him if he is nominated by the Republican Party! These same people will wrap themselves in some bible, some religious words, proclaim him to once again be Christ’s agent; using religion to bastardize this moment, using religion to make the moment trite rather than extraordinary!

Rabbi Heschel is calling us all to task, calling us all to wake up! Upon arising in the morning, Jewish people say a prayer of thanksgiving and commitment; thanking God for returning our souls to us with compassion and extolling God’s faithfulness in us. This is a prayer to start our day with gratitude for being alive, understanding that being alive is a gift, it is an act of compassion and we commit to respond to today with compassion, faithfulness, awareness, connection, kindness, justice, mercy, love, truth. For our prayers to have meaning, we have to take action on them during our daily routines, we have to live into the prayers we say at every opportunity, we have to stop praying to God and then lying to one another, we have to stop saying are grateful for the ability to distinguish night from day and then cheat our fellow human being. We have to stop being grateful for the capacity to think, to know what God is calling us to do and then denigrate the poor, demean the stranger, and criminalize the needy. The teaching above should be shaking us to our core, it hopefully will be the bucket of cold water we need to wake up to what our souls need, our fellow human beings need, our world needs in order to move closer to God, closer to the messianic era.

In recovery, we know the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s words above because we had become experts in the trite, we had become experts at hiding and lying, at compartmentalizing our living. In our separation from Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, we had come to see everything as trite, seeing no real purpose in life other than to ‘get mine’, and death was seen as a relief from our spiritual suffering. Now, in our recovery, we open our eyes each day and are grateful for this day, we seek ways to serve something greater than ourselves, we turn towards helping rather than hurting, serving rather than being served, loving rather than being loved; we engage in the actions of the St. Francis Prayer, the tenets of Judaism, etc.

Since I first began immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and wisdom, I have not said: “same shit different day”. I know that each day is a gift and I do my best to honor this gift of life, I do the best I can to use religion to see this moment as extraordinary and respond with awe, action and gratitude. I fall short, I miss the mark and I keep getting up and ‘failing forward’. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 221

“What is decisive is not the climax we reach in rare moments, but how the achievements of rare moments affect the climate of the entire life. The goal of Jewish law is to be the grammar of living, dealing with all relations and functions of living. Its main theme is the person rather than an institution.”(God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Immersing ourselves in the words above, we can find the solution to the ills that we face on both our  personal and communal situations. We are constantly bombarded with the lies and the bastardizations of our faith traditions, of our spiritual traditions, of our history and without taking these teachings of Rabbi Heschel and implementing them into our daily living, without integrating “the achievements of rare moments” into our daily actions, we continue to suffer the consequences; misery, discontent, anger, being a slave to emotions, needing to blame, self-deception, etc.

Making the main theme of our faith traditions, of our spiritual traditions, of our constitution “the person rather than an institution” we change the course of our lives, we change the course of our country’s trajectory. Our constitution is a document that is all about the individual, all about people, all about enshrining freedom, even though our “founding fathers” could not implement the ideals they put into the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. They knew what was right and they tell us of their own shortcomings in making what is right, what is spiritual while reminding us of the goal of democracy: “the person”, not the institution. The Bible tells us the stories of “the person”, the people, not the institution of a religion. Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Confucius, Buddha taught us how to live as people, not as cogs in institutions. They knew and imparted the wisdom of one person helping another in order for all to live well. Our faith traditions were not/are not about the power of “an institution”, they were and are about the power of “the person” to connect with the ineffable, to go beyond reason, experience the mystery and make space for all who wish to join in the journey to wholeness.

We are witnesses to the glory of democracy, the honoring of “the person” as well as to the rise, again, of authoritarianism, the debasing of ‘those’ people, the bastardization of spiritual truths and the glory of the institutions that empower some to have control over the many. We have forgotten both recent history and the historical lessons of what happens when institutions demand people serve them, rather than institutions serving people. We are continuing to deceive ourselves, deceive another(s), and profane what is holy. The responses by some people to the indictment of Donald J Trump with vitriol, with anger, with mendacity about this being a ‘witch hunt’, ‘ a ‘political tactic’, etc is ridiculous. Rather than practice the Biblical dictum “one law for the stranger and the citizen alike” rather than follow the actions of the prophets in speaking truth to power, these charlatans, some of whom are trying to be the next President, want to deceive, pander, uphold some ‘institutional norm’. They seem to care nothing for the danger to “the person” that Trump’s actions caused. They seem to care nothing for the harm that putting some people above the law while keeping groups of people from exercising their freedom to vote, to speak, to their bodies!

Living Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above and all of his wisdom and teachings is difficult. None of us will do it perfectly, none of us will do it completely-we are human, after all. Yet, we can “take a leap of action” to improve our ways of using “Jewish Law”, Spiritual principles, Christian faith, etc as “the grammar of living” and put together lives that enrich each of us as people, that give us the syntax and structure to “be human” rather that wall ourselves off from the suffering we cause when we stop caring about the person. We have the blueprint, we have the path, we have the wisdom, do we have the will?

In recovery, the will to rise above the pull of the lies we tell ourselves, the deception of societal norms, the desire to have euphoric recall of “rare moments” is met with our surrender to needing assistance. We accept and acknowledge that we can’t be in recovery alone, we need the help of another(s) person, we need the help of a structure that helps us achieve rising above our reasoning and meeting the mystery, we need the help of “a power greater than ourselves”. We become willing to let go of our old ideas/deceptions and merge with the truth of our souls, our spirit and the age-old wisdom of our spiritual traditions. While we acknowledge our need for unity, we also know recovery takes a myriad of forms and we are always about “the person”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 220

“What is decisive is not the climax we reach in rare moments, but how the achievements of rare moments affect the climate of the entire life. The goal of Jewish law is to be the grammar of living, dealing with all relations and functions of living. Its main theme is the person rather than an institution.”(God in Search of Man pg. 384)

The 12th step of Alcoholics Anonymous reminds us to “practice these principles in all our affairs” and Rabbi Heschel’s words above remind me of this most important aspect of our living. We have, as he teaches often, regulated our ‘religion’, our ‘spirituality’ to “the climax we reach in rare moments” and not live them in “all relations and functions of living.” This is a societal problem that has been with us since the beginning of humankind. We continually seek these ‘enlightened’ moments and do nothing with them after they have passed. We see this in our Churches, our Temples, our Synagogues, our Mosques, our recovery circles, our work life, our home life, our business’ and our institutions. We are witnesses to the siloing, the compartmentalizing of our ‘spiritual life/religious life’ and ‘the real world’. It is what is killing our humanity and makes our souls wither.

The main theme of the Torah, the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Eastern Philosophies, etc is the human being, not the institutions. Yet, we see more and more the perpetuation of institutions rather than staying true to the foundational mission and principles these institutions were founded on/for. We are watching, in the for-profit and not-for profit worlds, boards of directors more concerned with the face of our institutions and business’, more concerned with the bottom line of our business’ and institutions than they are with the human beings being served, the human beings buying their products. As a society, we allow corporations to pay fines rather than hold them criminally responsible as in the case of the Sackler family and many other corporations who pay fines and don’t admit guilt. We allow politicians to take money from special interest groups and serve their mega donors rather than do the job they were elected for: care for their constituents, care for our country. We allow ourselves to practice expediency and mendacity so we can ‘succeed’!

All the while we are patting ourselves on the back for our ‘deep religious convictions’; calling ourselves ‘people of faith’ while we denigrate anyone who disagrees with us; we criminalize the poor, the needy, the stranger rather than welcoming them and caring for them; we wrap ourselves in our prayer shawls, our Bibles while we cheat, lie, deceive another(s) so we can have power, prestige and serve our selves and our ‘friends’ as we have seen with Clarence Thomas, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, et al. We are perpetuating a political party over our country’s foundation, some of us believe we care about the Constitution forgetting that upon it’s passing we passed the Bill of Rights because not everything could be foreseen and we have the amendment process so it stays a dynamic document. Some of us call ourselves people of faith and forget that the Torah, the Bible, et al are dynamic documents, we have to keep turning and returning to them to find new insights, new ways of immersing ourselves in them so we can be better human beings, they are not static, they are not clear, they are spiritual documents meant to help us live better, they deal “with all relations and functions of living” so we cannot interpret them literally once and for all. In Genesis Rabbah, we are taught that God makes new laws every day in the Heavenly Court, so how can we stay stuck and claim to care about our self and our fellow human beings?

Donald J Trump was indicted yesterday and his guilt will be decided by a jury of his peers. This is not a political issue, it is a legal issue and laws are here to serve people, here to help us tame our “evil inclinations”, and breaking them causes us to be responsible for the consequences of same. This isn’t a witch hunt, this isn’t a zealous prosecution, this is the law working to serve humanity, it its the law reminding us no one is above it nor below it, it tells us that we all have to be responsible for our actions, good and not so good.

In “practicing these principles in all our affairs” we lessen the negative effects of our actions, we are more careful to stay within the bounds of “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”. We are more likely to care for our neighbor and engage in mendacity less, we are more likely to use our spiritual/religious principles to care for our souls and the souls of those around us. We are more likely to seek solutions together than to hate one another and win at all costs.  This is what recovery is all about, the individual, not the institution, living one grain of sand better each day! We can’t do this unless “these principles” are in our mouths, in our hearts, in our souls and in our actions. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 219

“What is decisive is not the climax we reach in rare moments, but how the achievements of rare moments affect the climate of the entire life. The goal of Jewish law is to be the grammar of living, dealing with all relations and functions of living. Its main theme is the person rather than an institution.”(God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Immersing ourselves in the words and thoughts of Rabbi Heschel brings us to a new meaning of how to live a “life compatible with being a partner of God”. One of the definitions of grammar is: “the basic elements of an area of knowledge or skill”. Using this definition, the second sentence above can give us a new understanding of Jewish law, a new way to experience “all relations and functions of living.” Jewish law alone, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, is not sufficient, we have to add the aggada, the stories that elucidate the morals and ideals of what Jewish law seeks to accomplish for us, for the world and for God.

The more we immerse ourselves in this sentence, the more we understand that to live well, we need structure, we need “the basic elements of” how to live well, how to live with one another, how to fulfill the divine need we are. This is what is missing from our teaching and learning of Jewish law, of morality, of how to be free, I believe. We are so concerned with our success, we are so concerned with ‘getting ours’, we are so concerned with the minutia, we have lost the big picture, we have lost our way in life. The goal of living, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, is not to ‘win’, but to serve; not to ‘get over’, but to be engaged in making our corner of the world better; not to take advantage of loopholes and/or another(s) person, but to serve as divine reminders and “to do justly, love mercy and walk in the ways of God”. Too many people are too concerned with the minutia, with fulfilling the law and not understanding that the law is here to serve as guideposts, as “the basic elements” not the entirety.

When we see the foibles of Biblical heroes like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, Moses, Aaron, Miriam, King David, etc, we are get a picture of how the law alone, the strict adherence to it, can cause grave danger, much harm to another and to our way of living well. All of these people/stories (aggada) come to remind us that we have to use these “basic elements of…knowledge” and build upon them. We have to hear the words of the prophets and see their commitment to what is right and good, not just the fulfillment of the law. As they screamed out to the Priests, the Kings, the wealthy and powerful-“God doesn’t want your sacrifices, God wants your heart”.

We are so focused on “how things look” that we trample the essence and the true function of law. We see this in Judaism, we see this in Christianity, we see this in our country. People use the law to validate their prejudices, their inhumanity towards anyone not like them, they use the law to justify their own lawlessness and immoral behaviors. We hear Christ’s name, God’s name invoked to validate disdain for the stranger, hatred of the poor and the criminality of the needy. We witness laws being passed to stop the “woke” culture without “woke” ever being defined. We hear about “American Values” being used to deny people’s ability to vote if you are not ‘our kind of American’. We are onlookers as anti-semitic acts are on the rise, people are killed because of the color of their skin, white people are exonerated for killing black people because they of “stand your ground” laws. We don’t have the decency to hang our heads while lawmakers make criminals of LGBTQ+ people and condemn them for all of our problems today. We bastardize the law, Religious and Secular, to feel good about our actions of prejudice. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is to use “the basic elements of” Jewish law and build on them, to ensure that fulfilling any and all of these basic elements change our inner life, “affect the climate of our entire life” and not make us enslavers, rather make us freedom riders, freedom fighters.

This teaching is not very popular today; I have experienced people being more concerned with how things look, with the letter of the law than the spirit of the law. I have watched people go along with ways of being that they know are not right because they don’t want to be ostracized from ’the group’. I see how I have gotten too much in the weeds as well and I am remorseful beyond words for the harms I brought by staying in the smallness of ‘the law’. I also am joyous over the myriad of times I used “the basic elements” as a foundation to ‘make new law’. We are taught that God makes new laws everyday in the Heavenly Court, and to “walk in God’s ways” means we have to as well. There is pain and rejection in this way of living and, after all is said and done, I rather have this pain than the pain of being small, petty, prejudiced, and unkind. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 218

“What is decisive is not the climax we reach in rare moments, but how the achievements of rare moments affect the climate of the entire life. The goal of Jewish law is to be the grammar of living, dealing with all relations and functions of living. Its main theme is the person rather than an institution.”(God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above says it all, to me. We are a society that is constantly seeking a new ‘high’, fulfilling a new desire, recapturing an old ecstatic experience. We are constantly trying to reach a climax, we are constantly trying to ‘win’, we are constantly moving to the next shiny thing, the next rung up on the ladder, the next ‘big score’, the next, the next, etc. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling to us to let go of this folly, to stop our incessant search for our next climax, our next success.

My Rabbi and friend, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, teaches that the day after Yom Kippur is the most important day. Rabbi Heschel teaches that “prayer will not save us, it may make us worthy of being saved.” Both of these teachings reiterate the teaching above in the first sentence. How does “the climax we reach in rare moments… affect the climate of the entire life of a person”? How has the climax of the Revolutionary War impacted the way we treat freedom? How does the rare moment of our experience at Mount Sinai affect our way of living? How does winning World War II impact our ways of being more human and more humane? How do all of our ‘top of the mountain’ experiences change our ways of living?

In the Bible, after the giving of the 10 Commandments/10 Sayings, we learn about how to treat indentured servants, we learn how to deal with one another in difficult times, how to honor the humanity of one another no matter what ‘station’ in life we are at. After the greatest spiritual experience in the Bible (Old Testament to some), we are given paths to living well with one another, we are told of the nature of human beings and how to overcome our nature to treat another poorly, how to get over our self-deceptions and our narcissism! We are taught throughout the Bible how to use our daily experiences to better our internal life, to mature our spiritual life, how to live well with one another in peace, in compassion, in truth, in justice, in mercy and in love. Yet, we continue to seek the next ‘high’, not paying attention to the lessons of this experience, not allowing the climax of a good job, a new insight, to grow our inner life, to “affect the climate of the entire life”! We are too busy amassing more and more, eventually finding out the truth of life; there is never enough stuff, high, even accomplishments to hide from our selves, to ignore the ways we achieved wherever we have gotten to, our own inner doubts, missing the marks, callousness.

We are witnesses to the dangers and pitfalls of chasing the next big thing, the next climax and not allowing the experience of our climactic experience to change us, to impact our sense of how to live well. We can look throughout our history and see how we have treated ‘those people’, how we have tried to use ‘them’ as enemies and gotten myriads of people to agree, be it Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc. We have and still do feel great when we ‘win’ and can dominate the minority, when we can win and get the minority to rule as we have seen in Germany with the Nazis, in Russia with Putin, in America with Trump, et al. It seems as if people are only learning how to make bigger and bigger ‘bets’ on how to satisfy their narcissistic desires, their inauthentic need for more authoritarian control. I am not talking about just the ‘leaders’, I am speaking of the people supporting them as well. Both the far right and the far left are spewing anti-semitic tropes and ‘blaming the Jews’ for some troubles, both the far right and the far left are trying to push their agendas as ‘the only right way’ to live. When we are living in the extremes, we find ourselves unable to have a success, a “rare moment of climax” impact “the climate of the entire life” because we are so consumed with keeping our authority, staying in power, we are unable to learn from either success nor failure.

In recovery, we know we cannot afford to live in the extreme anymore, we know from the destruction we have caused and experienced the danger of ‘chasing the next high’. We take “One day at a time”, we go end our day with a look back so we can learn from our actions, the actions of another(s), we can repair our errors, make our amends, learn from our “rare moments of climax”. In recovery, we know that our recovery depends on the nature of our spiritual condition and we have to live our spiritual principles in all of our affairs, they are not etherial, they are our lifeline. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 217

“Worship and living are not two separate realms. Unless living is a form of worship, our worship has no life. Religion is not a reservation, a tract of time reserved for solemn celebrations on festive days. The spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

We have been watching “A Small Light” about Meip Gies’ actions to help the Frank family in Amsterdam during the Shoah. It is based in truth with dramatic license and it is a prime example of what Rabbi Heschel is teaching us. While the actions of Meip and her husband Jan are not the only examples of “living is a form of worship” and religion is not spoken about directly, the series is a story of bravery, of caring, of putting into action the principles of worship, the principles of decency, the principle of “love your neighbor as you love yourself” and “don’t stand idly by the blood of your fellow human being”. I am thinking about the vitriol and the inhumanity of Nazis and Nazi Germany while proclaiming to be ‘good christians’!

Of course, it begs the question, “what would I have done” in their situation and I believe it the real question is “what am I doing today to emulate their heroism?” Herein lies the true question Rabbi Heschel’s words ask us. What are we doing today to prevent the little/small atrocities from becoming part of our fabric of living? We are witnesses to so many subtle hatreds, subtle actions of ‘that is the way life is’, we have become so used to the rantings and ravings, the scapegoating of another(s) so people can take advantage of another(s), the mendacity and deceptions that occur daily in order to stop someone from seeing what we are really doing to fleece them, to overpower them, to ‘win’ and to rule. These small atrocities which we have come to accept as ‘the way of doing business’ are exactly, I believe, what Rabbi Heschel is demanding we end, demanding we integrate our worship and our living.

None of us have clean hands in this realm, which is why Rabbi Heschel’s words are so disturbing and cut so deeply into our souls. We have relegated worship in such a way that the Berrigan brothers, Rev. King, etc were put in jail because people thought clergy should keep to their pulpits and not get involved in politics. We have separated our worship, our Biblical teachings from how we live so well there are people who spout the words of Christ, the words of Moses, wrap themselves in conservative values, in progressive values, all the while bastardizing these eternal truths, treating their neighbors with disdain, when having power over them treating them like lepers, taking advantage of their positions, their wealth, their power to flex their muscles and ‘show them who’s boss’.

Each of us has to have a “dark night of the soul” as Jacob did in the Bible, as St. John of the Cross describes. Most of us run away from this experience so we don’t have to change, so we can keep separating our living and our worship. Meip and Jan and the many people who helped them as well as the many “righteous Christians” who at the risk of their own lives saved Jews, hid Jews are the examples of rising above our fears, rising above our selfishness, risking everything to do the next right thing, to integrate our morals and our actions, to integrate our worship and our living, to integrate our spiritual principles with our being and doing. We are all guilty of separating worship and living, we are all imperfect in this realm, this is not the point of the teaching above to me, the point is to be more aware of our lack of integration in areas of our living, make our T’Shuvah for this, repair the damage, change our ways, bring our worship and living together a little more each and every day. Doing this is hard, it is ‘unnatural’, it is antithetical to societal norms, it is also refreshing, it is exhilarating, it is a spiritual awakening and it is joyous and it is true freedom.

In recovery, we have prayers, we have actions that match our prayers. We have principles and actions that strengthen our principles, we are always seeking to be welcoming, fearless and thorough in our daily, yearly inventories, compassionate and contrite in our amends. We are constantly seeking thru prayer and meditation “to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God” and we continue to reach out to people without being judgmental, without being ‘holier than thou’. We seek each day to integrate our worship and our living “one grain of sand” more.

I am aware of when I have separated worship and living and when I have integrated them. I am aware of when I have weaponized worship and when it has been weaponized against me. I am remorseful for my separation and weaponization and the pain this caused. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 216

“Worship and living are not two separate realms. Unless living is a form of worship, our worship has no life. Religion is not a reservation, a tract of time reserved for solemn celebrations on festive days. The spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching, “living is a form of worship” is a very profound one. Immersing oneself in his wisdom, we can see what entity is being worshipped by us and by another(s). Rather than spouting great religious phrases or quoting the Bible, either in words or by citations, we have to look at our actions and the actions of those around us to determine what our “worship” truly is. Far too many of us say one thing on the Sabbath and “festive days” and do another during the rest of the week, month, year. To say one is a follower of the Bible, of a religion because one performs mitzvot, the ‘proper’ deeds while being exclusive, cruel, denying the dignity of all human beings, comparing and competing with their friends and enemies to see who can have the most power is a complete bastardization of religion, a denial of God’s will and self-deception.

As Rabbi Heschel teaches throughout this book, his other books, and how he lived his life, if one is not moved inside, if the deeds and the actions don’t change the inner life to one of compassion, love, kindness, truth, justice, mercy, then they are empty actions. Unfortunately, many people take actions that are antithetical to the core religious beliefs they espouse and are change their inner lives to be harder, more entrenched in their ‘rightness’, less open to dialogue, unable to see the many faces and facets of the Bible, weaponize their religious beliefs to harm another, practice senseless hatred of their fellow citizens and strangers, etc. All of these ways are the ways the prophets pointed out to the powers that were prior to the destruction of the Temples, all of these ways are the ways Jesus railed against in his time, yet we continue to see people extol these evil paths as virtuous, as God’s will! What we are witnessing is actually idolatry, what we are witnessing is evil disguised as ‘good’, what we are witnessing is deception and mendacity in the name of power.

We are witnesses to some people taking part in religious celebrations, espousing false morality, attempting to make their will God’s will instead of making God’s will their will, selling a way of being that is in direct conflict with the Biblical values and actions they supposedly ‘worship’. When we see people vote to not pay the bills they and their predecessors billed yet complain about the people who are truly unable to pay their rent, pay for food and call them criminals, call them people who are unloved by God, we are witnesses to power plays, to mendacity and to inhumanity. If we are to judge people on the “content of their character”, as Rev Martin Luther King Jr, a dear friend of Rabbi Heschel’s, teaches, then these false prophets, these false ‘religious’ people need to be called out and judged by their actions; as our actions are the true testaments of our character, not our words.

When we live in ways that go against our “worship” we have to be real about it, we have to acknowledge our imperfections, we have to repair our thinking, understanding, we have to make our amends and we have to take actions that will bring us into more congruence with “worship”, we have to take actions that will change our inner life, improve our character, put our traits to use in “proper measure” as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz teaches. We are witnesses to “the spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation”, we are witnesses to the crimes committed in the name of the spirit, in the name of God, in the name of religion and it is time for us to stand up and shout from the roof tops: Mendacity, Mendacity. It is time for us to fight against the deceptions of these charlatans, it is time for us to hold our selves, one another, our institutions-religious and secular- to the higher standards of morality and being more human!

We have been watching “A small light” on Hulu, the story of Geip Mies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family. I am aghast and amazed once again how ‘good’ people could transform into inhuman people from fear, from blame, from self-deception and from buying into the deceptions of another(s). I also realize the importance of the teaching above because this transformation happens in stages, it happens because we don’t practice what we preach, we don’t heal ourselves, we live a ‘do as I say not as I do’ life. I am guilty of this, as is everyone. The difference my recovery has made is I am aware of these ‘missing the marks’, I make the necessary repairs quicker, my inner life grows and matures, I am in denial and self-deception for shorter periods of time and I do my amends. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 215

“Worship and living are not two separate realms. Unless living is a form of worship, our worship has no life. Religion is not a reservation, a tract of rime reserved for solemn celebrations on festive days. The spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above was relevant in 1955 when this book was published, it is a restatement of the call of the prophets, it is critical for us now. We live in a world of bifurcation, an either/or world, a time of great extremes. We are witnessing a bastardization of what worship is, we are participating in facade of ‘living religiously’. When people proclaim, “my way is the way of God”, “this is the only way”, “God wants us to exclude people”, “God doesn’t love the poor, the stranger as much as God loves the rich and the citizen”, they are separating their living from their worship. Even worse, they have turned worship into a self-serving act that has nothing to do with God’s will, God’s call. Hence, I understand the title of this book to humble us to allow ourselves to be found by God instead of telling God and another(s) that we know God!

It is impossible for people to call their “living is a form of worship” when their living is based on, promotes hatred of anyone not like them. It is impossible for people to call their “living is a form of worship” when they take the words of God and twist/spin them to satisfy their need for power, when they spin them for their own political gain. It is wrong for people of faith to badger, belittle, abhor the stranger and the widow, the poor and the orphan, and call this God’s will. It is told that there are 70 ways to understand and live the Torah/Bible so there cannot be just one way. Kindness, love, welcoming the stranger, caring for the needy and the poor are mentioned so often in the Bible, whether Hebrew Bible or New Testament, it is insane for people to separate their politics, their actions from their study and their worship.

I believe one of the reasons so many more people respond “none” when asked about their faith is they are aware of the mendacity that ‘people of faith’ are engaged in. They are tired of hearing the same old worn out phrases and the same either/or, my way is the only way, interpretations of the Bible by clergy. They are exhausted by the lack of congruence in our religious institutions. Jesus hung out with the very people today’s religious ‘authorities’ denigrate. The prophets stood up for and called out the deception of the Priests and the ruling families by telling them God doesn’t want their sacrifices, God wants their hearts, their actions. We are witnessing the culmination of these empty rituals today as people leave Synagogues, Churches, Temples in droves.

We have empty services even for the people who attend. Our worship is to enhance our living, Rabbi Heschel is teaching us and we are still practicing ‘one day a week’ religiosity, we are still engaging in ‘twice a year Jews’, we are still staying impervious to the call of our worship, we sit with wondrous decorum in our services committed to not having any of the prayers, none of the experience permeate our inner lives. We see the ways our religious institutions do not practice the principles our religions are founded on. God in Search of Man is not a good book title, it is Rabbi Heschel’s understanding of God’s call to us, it is Rabbi Heschel’s expression of love and faith in humankind that we can change and return to a better, more congruent way of living.

In recovery, “we practice these principles in all our affairs” is a key component of our new way of living. We were perpetrators and victims of keeping everything separate, we could ‘love’ someone while isolating from them; we could ‘have a high moral standard’ while stealing; we could ‘seek’ God through artificial means and not live into the insights we gained. Living life congruently with our principles, with our program of recovery is the goal and we achieve it each day; if only for a moment. We are constantly working to bring our disparate parts together and live as a whole human being.

In the past 35+ years, my worship and my living are much closer together each day. I work to be congruent, I struggle with my disparate parts and I practice principles in my daily actions. I grow from these writings, from study, from prayer; I know that each day, my prayers move me closer to God, they help me live more congruently. I also know that I have flaws, I make mistakes and I do T’Shuvah for them. Of course, I have to accept when people are not willing to accept my T’Shuvah, I have to accept the ways institutions do not live their principles and  I am sad when this happens. In making my worship and living come together and inform one another, I experience meaning and joy. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 214

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

Immersing ourselves in the words and deeds of the prophets, taking seriously what they did and said causes us to never be neutral. Many people want to stand on the sidelines while one side fights with another and this is what leads us to the situations we are currently in. In Germany, people stood by while the Nazis rose to power and began their purge of Jews and other “undesirables”. In Hungary, people stood by while the Hungarians and the Germans, after the war was already lost, sent Jews to the death camps, killed Jews at the waterfront and kept their shoes. In every age, in every country, people have stood by, being neutral and great crimes against the poor, the needy, the stranger, the voiceless and the powerless are committed in the name of god, in the name of progress, in the name of nationalism, etc.

We are witnesses to these same issues today. People stand by, staying neutral while the Governor of Florida bans books, rewrites history, discriminates against people of color, LGBTQ+ human beings and wraps himself in the cloak of Jesus! Jesus, of course, hung out with the very people DeSantis and the Republican Party are hating on! We are witnesses to the Progressive Democrats who claim to be standing up for the marginalized and will vote against a bill that raises the debt ceiling, will oppose anything that doesn’t give them everything they want, will call out compromises as evil and people are staying neutral about these antics.

It is time for us to heed the words of the prophets and follow the path of the Rabbis of old. The Rabbis took the words of the prophets to heart and they compromised where necessary. They had an opinion on all facets of living and sought to find ways to compromise and harmonize the myriad of interpretations of God’s words and the prophets actions. We are taught to “not stand idly by the blood of our neighbors”, I interpret this command to mean we cannot stay neutral on issues affecting the welfare of any and all people. Yes, we must compromise at times, yes we will not always get our way in a democracy, this doesn’t give us the right to ‘take our marbles and go home’. This doesn’t give us the permission to not be in the solution to whatever ails our society, our community, our selves. We are commanded to “choose life”; this is a command that reminds us all to be engaged in whatever is going on around us, it is a call/demand from God to continue to move forward in fulfilling the obligation to be human!

We are facing grave dangers today, as we have in every era. Just as the prophets railed against the powers that be in their time, we also have to take a stand to help the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan. We have to get off of our butts and be engaged in voting, in marching, in supporting people and ways of being that help us move towards the messianic era. In Jewish lore, Elijah the prophet, the harbinger of the Messiah, lives among the poor and the needy. The poet, Danny Siegel writes: “If you always assume the man sitting next to you is the Messiah Waiting for some simple human kindness–You will soon come to weigh your words and watch your hands. And if he so chooses not to reveal himself in your time–It will not matter.” We have to be engaged in life, we have to be engaged in doing the next right thing, we have to be engaged in the solution and stop being part of the problem through being neutral.


There is nothing neutral about recovery! We are always seeking to do the next right thing, to hear Good Orderly Direction, to be involved and immersed completely in our living, our deeds, our words matter. We come to believe that we matter, that we have the power to change the trajectory of our lives and return to being human again. In recovery, we know we have to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

I have not lived neutral; neither in recovery nor before. My actions have not always been right, even when they have been I have been scorned, rejected, yet I have never stopped being involved, I have never given into the call to quit. I can’t stand by, I can’t be neutral. I have to be who I am and, while loud and abrasive are not considered good manners in ‘polite society’, they have served me and countless people to heal and be in the solution, to never be neutral. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 213

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

In the last sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, teaching us what is at the root of evil, I believe: “how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call to us to deal with both the neutral and our needs in order to not commit the evil, not commit “the silent atrocities, the secret scandals” that he taught us of earlier. When we refuse to take a stand, when we refuse to have an opinion, when we don’t discern/judge what is the next right action, we are in danger of falling into the abyss of evil, we are in danger of falling into ‘the neutral acts”. There really is no neutral action if we are to be serious about our covenant with God, our role as human beings. Each and every action leads us to the next, each and every action we take has consequence and meaning, each and every action grows or retards our inner life maturity and our outer life. The fallacy many people live under is being neutral is being benign, this is self-deception at its highest and a cover for the evil that is perpetrated in the name of the neutral.

Our needs cause us great consternation and great joy. When they are authentic needs, when they are needs that help us serve one another, serve our inner life, fulfilling them brings joy, betterment to those around us, beauty, and spiritual growth. When they are inauthentic, our needs cause us to have puffed up egos, do harm to another(s), be oblivious to the demands of decency and goodness, seek power and prestige for their own sakes rather than for the sake of moving ourselves and our community closer to goodness and farther from evil. We have been sold a lie by society that fulfilling the “American Dream” will bring us joy, happiness, etc. As we have witnessed, the amount of depression, addiction, isolation, low-grade misery has increased as we have ‘done better’. It is sad that people still believe having power over another human being will bring them joy, having a core of people to serve their needs without regard to the needs of these people will protect them, having inauthentic needs fulfilled with satiate them. All of these ‘promises’ by society have proven false, they have been debunked over and over, yet we continue to mishandle our needs, we continue to deal with our needs inappropriately and move forward our ability to commit evil, to engage in the “silent atrocities” and “secret scandals” without care or concern for one another and for our own souls.

We are witnesses to what seeking to fulfill inauthentic needs brings; war in Ukraine, non-governance in our House of Representatives, protection of the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes, protecting the tax cheats by lessening the enforcement branch of the IRS, putting more of a burden on the poor by insinuating they are lazy and don’t want to work, making voting harder, attempting control of women, racism, anti-semitism, and other prejudicial behaviors. We are witnesses to the upending of constitutional and moral norms by the judicial system, justices deciding medical issues with no medical knowledge, the polarization of our society reminiscent of the pre-Civil War era and the authoritarianism reminiscent of the 1930’s-1940’s when some in Congress and the Media extolled Hitler and Nazism. These are all happening because we have not put into practice the lessons we have learned, through pain and suffering, of “how to deal with needs”.

In recovery, we know our false needs got us into grave danger; the dangers of loss of life, harming another, no longer being healthy, spiritual bankruptcy, depression, anxiety, isolation, unhealthy fears, obliviousness, selfishness, etc. We are acutely aware of our ability to engage in fulfilling our inauthentic needs so we are constantly stay vigilant, constantly on guard to be aware of when these false needs creep into our mind and let them go as soon as possible, so we don’t bring harm to ourselves and to anyone else. We do this through self-examination each day and by asking for help and guidance from another.

I am dedicated to hearing the call and demand of my soul/spirit. I am aware of the call of my desires and how they lead me to foolish behaviors and empty ‘victories’. I choose each day to live authentically, to fulfill the authentic needs, to serve and to love fiercely, completely and the best I can. Forgive and let go are authentic needs I fulfill. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 212

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

We are witnessing the wisdom and truth of the third sentence above, “our possessions” are, possibly, more of a problem than our passions, we have become more passionate about our possessions than we have about how to live in ways that are compatible with being God’s partner! When Harlan Crow responds to a question about his ‘friendship’ with Justice Clarence Thomas with the statement that if Thomas wasn’t a Justice, they probably would not be friends, we see the passion Crow has for his possessions and his power; he will make friends with a Black man while extolling dictators and loving Hitler, while believing in consolidating power.

We are witnesses to the tax cuts for rich and corporations that Republicans passed in 2017 which promised wealth for everyone in order for the ‘base’ to buy into it-and once again the Republicans were liars. We are witnesses to the lies they keep telling their constituents and voters and blame everything on ‘the democrats’ all the while looking to consolidate and safeguard their power and their possessions. We are witnesses to the rulings of the Supreme Court to favor rich, to favor dark money in politics from Corporations, to favor injustice when they will not stay an execution of an innocent man because “due process” was followed. We are witnesses to the myriad of draconian laws being passed in some States to make it harder for ‘those’ people to vote. We are witnesses to the denial of bodily freedom to women. We are witnesses to cruel and unusual actions towards young Black men by police. We are witnesses to mass shootings  being the norm in our country and “you will not take my AR-15 away from me” being the rallying cry from politicians who are beholden to the gun lobby! The Republicans are passionate about their possessions all right, just not passionate about their fellow human beings, even their own constituents! The constituents are passionate about having power over their women, power to carry their guns and meekly go along with the lies and deceptions of their elected officials while wallowing in poverty, poor health conditions and options-this is how dangerous self-deception and mendacity is; it gets us to extol and support the very policies and actions that enshrine those in power and make our own lives worse. These childish, boorish, power-hungry despots have no concern for what is best for our country nor the majority-they are playing to their rich constituents and backers.

We are witnesses to the Democrats who are planning to vote against the debt-ceiling bill, calling it hostage taking, calling in ‘giving in to terrorists’. They are correct, this crisis has been caused by terrorists, it is a hostage negotiation, so what? When their is hostage taking, police, FBI and other agencies have hostage negotiators, should they not negotiate to free the hostages? In Iran we negotiated a hostage release, we have done the same with the Soviet Union-remember Gary Powers, we have done the same with Russia! These Democrats are playing for their crowd, they are not interested in what is best for our country-they are able to preen like spoiled children because there are enough votes to pass the legislation-rather than act like statesmen/women, rather than act like adults, they are excited to go in front of the cameras and display their loyalty to ‘progressive ideology’. They are being as childish and disloyal as their Republican counter-parts!

In recovery, we are aware that each possession comes with great responsibility. The more we amass, the more responsible. Rather than bemoan what is, we seek to improve our lives and the lives of those less fortunate- “there are no dues or fees for membership”, we welcome people and let them know we will love them until they can love themselves. We follow the teachings of the Bible, “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, “care for the stranger, the needy, the poor” with passion and fervor, we know that we have to change the narrative of life, ours and society’s to these passions, to these principles, to get out of the neutral, to stop with the lies and deceptions of self and another(s). We, in recovery, are forging a new path, one that on which we “trudge the road to happy destiny”, and one that is a beacon to those who want to deal with “the problem of living.” God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 211

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

“Evil flourishes when good people do nothing” is attributed to Edmund Burke and Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above goes even further, I believe. Good people, at times, engage in the neutral, engage in pride at their goodness, give their needs free rein. Today is the day after we remembered the sacrifice of life men and women have given so we can “breathe free”. While there were speeches and tweets extolling the virtue of these men and women; today, most people will retreat to the neutral, forget the words we heard and spoke and go back to life as usual. Herein lies the challenge of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom. Authentic needs have to be met. Rabbi Heschel, I believe, is speaking about the inauthentic ones, ones society has manufactured in order to control us. Needs we are being told through advertising, technology, political rhetoric that are false.

One of the most neutral acts most people take is to ‘look away’ when something is happening and they don’t want to get involved! We have, as a society, convinced ourselves that it is too dangerous to get involved, it is too scary, it is ‘not my fight’, etc. We are afraid of losing position, power, money, possessions, social status if we get involved. Look what happened when women reported rape accusations in the past (and probably still now) they were not believed by police, subjected to humiliation by defense attorneys and the courts, cast out by the communities they belonged to, etc; so many rapes and sexual assaults went unreported. We have had to enact “whistleblower laws” to protect those coming forward to report unlawful, unethical actions by people and companies, we have had to enact laws about workplace abuse, etc; all because people did not want to get involved and support the people who were telling the truth. We still witness companies and people paying large fines without admitting guilt, without taking responsibility. These are examples of the neutral to me.

When people are afraid of taking a stand, when “on advice of counsel” replaces conversations, reconciliations, when we ‘go along to get along’, we are living in the neutral. We are more worried about our possessions, our status, than we are about truth and the way we live with our self, the way we live with God. When we “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor”, when we are more worried about saving our faces than saving our souls, when we are more concerned with the loopholes than the truth, we are engaging with the neutral in ways that lead to our ruin as human beings. We are forgetting that our greatest challenges are to “live a life compatible with being a partner of God” and “to be human” as Rabbi Heschel teaches elsewhere.

Possessions, power, prestige, have taken an outsized place in society, they are the definers of who we are for most people-the haves and the have-nots. We are measuring ourselves by a yardstick that is false, that is neutral, that allows us to do the wrong thing and make it okay because we won, because we can. Jewish tradition, with it’s Mitzvot, is a statement of: just because we can doesn’t mean we should, as I understand our way of being. Just as “perfect is the enemy of the good”(Voltaire), so too is the neutral the enemy of goodness, of the moral and ethical as well as the spiritual. There is no neutral in the Spiritual realm, there is no neutral in our souls, yet, we allow our rational minds and our emotional states to overrule our souls rather than having our souls be the arbiter of our actions.

In recovery, we know we cannot be neutral about anything. Being neutral pushes us backwards, allows our old “stinking thinking” to prevail and leads us back into self-inflicted pain and suffering. We use our path of recovery to keep moving forward; we are acutely aware that there is no neutral, there is no standing still.

I have been wrong in my passions at times, I have let them get the best of me. I also know that my bombast in most cases comes from my fear of the neutral, from my fear of letting the loss of possessions, mine or another’s, rule me/us. I stand for my beliefs, I stand against lies, deception, hiding, and this is not done in ‘polite society’. I will not change, I am responsible for when I let passions override what is the next right thing to do and I am responsible for my actions which stand in the face of mendacity and politeness. I am different today from honoring the fallen and I pray everyone else is also. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 209

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. Immersing myself in the first two sentences above and thinking about the men and women who have given their lives so that all of us can enjoy freedom causes me to pause. These men and women were not neutral, they were not passive, they were not indifferent, they were not filled with “envy, greed, and pride”. They along with all of their comrades in arms, the men and women who went to war so there is an America for the rest of us did not engage in neutrality, they did not engage in mendacity. They served their families, their communities, their country; as do all of the current people in our armed services. We owe them our gratitude in our deeds as well as our words.

We often believe and preach about the neutral acts, actions which are neither good nor bad, we see our needs as paramount to our survival. However, every actions either moves us closer to God, to redemption, to the messianic period or retards us from these. Every action either improves our inner life or numbs us to our own inner and authentic needs. We have come, as Rabbi Heschel writes about in his book Insecurity of Freedom, to believe our needs are always authentic and the non-fulfillment of them results in mental and emotional upheaval. This is a lie, this is self-deception, this is diametrically opposed to the actions of the men and women who have given “the last full measure” to ensure our freedom, to save our democracy.

Neutral comes from the Latin meaning “neuter gender” which is defined as neither masculine nor feminine in speaking about words and other inanimate objects. People are not inanimate objects, authoritarianism is not an inanimate object, democracy is not an inanimate object. Today we will hear speeches by politicians who believe their need for power, their need for friendship with dictators, their need for control are authentic needs and in having this they are serving the greater good, they are protecting the democracy and freedom our brave men and women fought for and some died for! This is the height of mendacity to me. These same men and women who extol our fallen soldiers, our heroes, are willing to go to the brink of financial collapse rather than pass the debt ceiling bill. They are willing to deny the freedoms that our men and women fought for to ‘those people’ of whom they know don’t want to follow them blindly. Yet, they will lie with reckless abandon to their constituents, they will smile the false smiles of the charlatans.

We are witness’ to “what is first at stake”: the democracy that was founded and passed on to us, the inheritors of the American Revolution. We are witness’s to “what is at first at stake”: the continuation of the freedoms that the Union fought against the Confederacy for. We are witness’ to “what is at first at stake”: the cruelties and atrocities that Hitler and Nazi Germany committed and our response to defeat the Nazi’s and say NO to their cruel ways. Today, on this Memorial Day, we have to be witness’ to “what is first at stake”: justice and freedom for all; the rights enshrined in our Constitution and our Bill of Rights; the rights enshrined in all of the Amendments since; the dignity and value of every individual given to us by God; the call to fight against the mendacity and lies of the neutral, the call to fight against “moral equivalence”!

In recovery, we know that we are only one act away from losing our way, from retarding our progress and falling back into old ways. This is not to say we seek perfection, it is an acknowledgment of our awareness that no action is neutral, every deed has meaning and power, leads us towards ruin or sanctuary, as Rabbi Heschel teaches. We are engaged in a way of living that is responsible and progressive, we are engaged in a way of living that recognizes our foibles, our errors, makes amends, changes our ways. We are living a life of being open to forgiveness from another, forgiveness of another and forgiveness of self.

I learn anew each day of the neutral, I know I am responsible for all of my actions. I am fighting for “what is first at stake” and taking actions and do deeds that help the progression towards redemption. This is how I honor the sacrifice of those who have died so I can live freely. This is how I honor and celebrate Memorial Day each day! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 209

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, reminding us of the root of our what is “wrong and corrupt”: “the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride.” This is a problem that has plagued humanity since our original existence and continues to plague us. Yet, we constantly seek to point our finger at another(s) rather than look at our self. Because we succumb to our own “envy, greed, and pride” and are unwilling to actually deal with the internal issues that bring them into play in our lives, we seek to blame another(s), deny another(s) their rights, their needs, and make ourselves feel good by denigrating another(s).

We can look at our history, we can look at our present day and see how the way we currently “deal with envy, greed, and pride” is leading us to the brink of war, civil and world, to the brink of moral bankruptcy and spiritual disaster. The polarization in America is a direct result of “envy, greed, and pride” not being dealt with well. In fact, it is a direct result of people exploiting these traits in themselves and another(s) to gain power, to keep power, to make anyone ‘not like us’ the enemy. These people have exploited the “envy, greed, and pride” of people so well, they have convinced these people that “those people” are out to get them, that “those people” have to be annihilated, “those people” are stealing your jobs, “those people” are … They have done such a good job that the people following them are willing to go along with ideas, with actions that go against their own self interest in order to engage in their “envy, greed, and pride.”

The party that is currently not in the White House is envious of the power of the Presidency, they are envious of the power of the majority in the Senate, so they will do anything to win these seats of power. When they had control of the Senate and the White House, they installed Justices to the Supreme Court who would be ‘proud christians’ and rule according to their religious beliefs. They appointed people who would do the bidding of the greediest of their flock. Hence basic rights have been lost to women, to minorities, to our democratic way of voting, and, possibly, they may decide that courts rather than scientists/FDA know what is medically best for people! Some states have gone on to redistrict their voting maps so the party in power stays in power. They are using our democratic system to their advantage and to keep authoritarians in power, to keep freedoms and liberty for themselves and not even for the people who vote for them. The denials of governmental aid for medicaid, the denial of immigrants to live in their cities by sending them to ‘blue’ states, the cruelty with which they treat LGBTQ+, people of color, non-Christian people is atrocious, yet they wrap themselves in the flag and claim to be the ‘true Americans’.

We are facing, as humanity always has, a crisis of faith, a crisis of conscience, a crisis of “the neutral”. “Envy, greed, and pride” are issues that we all face, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that we have to deal with these issues, not ignore them. We have to ask ourselves and look at our actions to see if these issues are the ones that are guiding us, if these traits have overpowered us to the point of us being blind and indifferent to them and to the pain, sorrow, cruelty they cause another(s). In the first sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is calling us to account for how we are dealing with “envy, greed, and pride” and I hear him asking if we are aware of how they impact our daily living, how they impact our living well-spiritually and morally.

In recovery, these three are part of the seven deadly sins. We are so aware of the cost of giving into our “envy, greed, and pride” that we do a 10th step/review of our actions each day. We know the insidiousness of these traits, we know how easily we can rationalize giving into them and we know where it leads us and those around us: cruelty, fear, relapse, etc.

“Envy, greed, and pride” plagued me for years, I didn’t know how to deal with them well. Through my recovery, through my mentors, through Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, I deal with them much better, I don’t take them out on another, I find myself being real with me, listening more to my soul and knowing my place and my worth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Year 2 Day 208

The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)

On this day of Shavuot, on this day of revelation, it is important for us to open our hearts, our eyes, our spirits to the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. It is not only truth, it is also the call we have to pay attention to as well. We are being called to “make the world worthy of redemption” and we have the ability to do this, we have the paths to do this as laid out in our respective faiths, and we have the inner resources to do this-we just have to have the willingness to get beyond our selves, get over our need for control and certainty, let go of our individualism and fill one of our basic needs; to love and be loved, to be part of and to belong to another(s). 

We can do this, we can use the works of our hands, our minds, our mouths, to serve the greater good while still taking care of ourselves. We can “choose life” as Moses exhorts us to in Deuteronomy by feeding our souls as well as our bodies and minds, by using our “rational mind” to serve our “intuitive mind”. We all do many things that “are preparations for ultimate redemption” without being aware of the. When we welcome the stranger as Abraham did, when we care for the needy and poor as we are told 36 times in the Torah to do, when we seek to be part of rather than apart from, when we join together to serve something greater, we are doing “preparations for ultimate redemption.” 

When we are separating one another by racial, gender, sexual orientation we are not making “the world worthy of redemption”, when we seek to gain and hold power for our self-aggrandizement, we are not making “the world worthy of redemption.” When we have one law for the citizen and another for the stranger, when we exploit one another, take advantage of the vulnerabilities of another, we are not making “the world worthy of redemption.” 

Today and every day, we can experience revelation and do our part to bring about redemption. Every day we get to look back on the day before, do our repairs for our ‘missing the marks’ and enhance the myriad of good we created. Each day is a new beginning, we don’t rest on yesterdays achievements nor do we engage in negative self-talk because of yesterday’s errors. We get a ‘do-over’ every day that we have breath within us. We get to grow one grain of sand more each day and we do not have to judge ourselves by our worst behaviors, our worst mistakes. 

Accepting Torah, entering/re-entering a Covenant with God, as we do today, is a statement of hope as well as faith and commitment to action. Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance above calls to us, as the prophets call to us, to take off the blinders we have been wearing, to take the cotton out of our ears, to stop being in fear of being seen, to truly hear God, to see the whole picture that is being revealed and to get into the action of redemptive acts. Today, we take off the masks and facades we have been wearing and hiding behind, today we engage ourselves in the work in front of us, the work only we can do. Today, we start anew to “make the world worthy of redemption” by redeeming another human being with kindness, love, truth, justice and mercy. 

Recovery is a path of redemption that everyone can take! We are recovering our true selves, we are letting go of the lie: “if we live a false self long enough doesn’t it become our true self?” We let go of our need to look good and feel good for the higher need to do good, to do right, to “practice these principles in all our affairs”. In recovery we are taking one day at a time and building a life that is worthy of being redeemed and taking actions that “make the world worthy of redemption.” We know our assent is not linear, it is an ebb and a flow existence, we are aware of our foibles and our strengths, we know we are both animal and angel, we also know we can keep our new commitment and our new vision ‘a day at a time’! 

Since today is Shavuot, I am not writing this today, I am working on being worthy of redemption and helping bring redemption about sooner rather than later. I know i do my part to both retard and move redemption forward. My commitment is to do more of the latter than the former a little more this year. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 207

“The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)

Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, I ask myself what happened to our commitment to “do and then understand”? I am thinking about Einstein’s quote: “the intuitive mind is a gift, the rational mind a servant. We have come to forget the gift and worship the servant.” While people will pay millions for a piece of art from a famous artist, we will pay $1000’s for seats to our favorite musician, we will also vote for people who want to take music, art, etc from our school curriculums! While we will be in awe of the genius’ like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, et al, we will ignore the genius in ourselves and in so many others. We all have an intuitive mind, call it our inner voice, conscience, spirit, higher consciousness, in us; we will either not hear it, ignore it, and/or override our intuitive mind in favor of the rational mind.. Isn’t it time to celebrate and use the gift of our intuitive mind? Isn’t it time to recommit to our response at Mount Sinai to “do and then understand”?

Our intuitive mind, which I call our ‘knowing’ like our rational mind, needs to be fed, needs to be nurtured, needs to mature and needs to be heard. How often have we said: “I should have known better” or “I knew the right answer and I talked myself out of it”? This is where our rational mind has overridden what we truly know, what our intuitive mind is telling us. Unfortunately, there are not many places where intuitive thinking is taught, where intuitive mind is nurtured, where intuitive mind is listened to even when we speak it. Not only have we forgotten the gift, as Einstein says, we have become afraid of the gift because we will be ridiculed, we will be shunned, we will be ignored by the loud bullies who want to use their rational minds and ours to control us and have power over us. When we engage our intuitive minds, we are no longer subject to the mendacities of another(s) and we no longer engage in self-deception. Our intuitive thinking and acting on it give us a greater understanding and vision of what is and how to “make the world worthy of redemption”.

While we may teach religious education, how to perform rituals, what to celebrate on Holy Days, we are not teaching and nurturing our spiritual essence enough, I believe. When we deny our young people the opportunity to engage in learning in their own way, when we deny the insights and intuitions of our children, we are teaching them to “forget the gift and worship the servant”. When we ignore the wisdom and truth of our spiritual texts and instead see them as rules and have only one way to do them and understand them, we are aiding our own “worship the servant” ways. We need to engage in the wisdom of the Sages; there are 70 ways/faces to the Torah, the Bible. We need to immerse ourselves each year in the study, the essence of the Bible so we can continue to grow our intuitive mind, so we can increase our intuitive learning, our ‘knowing’. We have seen throughout our history and certainly in our time, knowing right from wrong can easily be distorted, the hatred of the Jews throughout history does not come from an intuitive mind, slavery and prejudice against black people did not come from a deep ‘knowing’ what God wants, using the fears and desire to be deceived to make wrong right and right wrong is not the work of our intuitive minds, it is not the actions of people who commit to doing God’s will as we did at Mount Sinai. We are in desperate need of heeding Einstein’s words, we are in desperate need of living into Rabbi Heschel’s teaching. We are in desperate need of integrating our rational mind to serve our intuitive mind, integrating our ‘math brain’ to serve our spiritual ‘knowing’.

This is the goal of recovery, we let go of our need for rationalizing and denying. We ‘join the winning side’ of following a way of living our spiritual principles and grow our ability to hear our intuitive mind, our ‘knowing’ and follow through on them rather than ignore and/or rationalize what we want over what is true and the next right thing to do.

I have always heard my intuitive mind and for a while I ignored it, rationalized it, etc. In my recovery, I have honored it. I am guilty of miscommunication what I ‘know’, I am guilty of being too loud and too brash, too blunt and too abrasive. I know my delivery has been used against me and against truth. I know that I could not rationalize the “usual way”, I could not stand by the injustice, the destruction of goodness that was taking place. I pray that eventually my warnings will be heeded and my ‘knowing’ used to improve our world. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 206

“The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)

As the Jewish world prepares to celebrate the Holy Days of Shavuot, the day on which God ‘appeared’ at Mount Sinai and spoke to every one of the people who left Egypt, these words, hopefully, resonate and reverberate. Tomorrow night, Jews around the world will gather to study, to repair ourselves, to get ready to receive the 10 Sayings/commandments once again. Each year we receive Torah, each year we recommit to God’s call to us, each year we say: “Na-aseh V’Nishma”, we will do and then we will understand. Unfortunately, each year we quickly forget all of this and, after we are done celebrating, we go back to our old ways.

Shavuot is not just a holiday, it is a Holy Day, a day of recognition, a day of commitment, a moment of choice. We are called to do more than hear the words of the 10 Sayings/commandments, we are called to act on them. We are called to  acknowledge that God is God and we are not! We are called to remember we were “brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” God’s “mighty hand and outstretched arm” was not a one and done experience, God is always reaching for us, always calling to us, always waiting for our reconnection. Yet, we seem to be unable to follow through on what we heard at Mount Sinai and continue to hear each day. The Talmud says that God cries out each night for   us because we have put ourselves in exile from God. While many people wonder where is God, in any situation, God’s question is: “Where are you?”

Our technology, our hubris, our inability to live with uncertainty, our rational minds, our search for power and prestige, wealth and security have led us to where we are today; separate from God, deaf to God’s call, and unable/unwilling to “make the world worthy of redemption.” Whether it is the election of leaders who care only about weaponizing Government, who only care about tearing down our democratic process’ for their own power and gain, whether it is people who blindly and willingly follow their baser instincts and drives, whether it is our seemingly incessant need for self-deception and being deceived by another(s), we continue to mouth the words of faith, we continue to preach the ‘word of God’ and, like our ancestors, continue to fail in the doing and understanding of God’s call to us at Mount Sinai, throughout the Bible, God’s call to us today, and we keep hiding from “God’s Search for Man”!

Isn’t it time for us to let go of our old ways? Isn’t it time for us to actually follow through on both God’s call and our response? Isn’t it time to surrender to God’s will rather than try and make our will God’s will? Isn’t it time for all of us to actualize “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”? Does Jim Jordan really want the hatred and lies he spreads, the venom he puts out done to him? Does Mitch McConnell want the Supreme Court politically packed against him? Yet, we find ourselves unable to live into the words of Jesus and the words of Rabbi Hillel who said: “what is hateful to you, do not do unto another”. We seem to be unable to “Na-Aseh V’Nishma”, do and then understand these truths, these ways of being that we hold up as dear and holy. We seem to speak the words of God and act in direct opposition to them. And while people wonder why the Redeemer hasn’t shown up, where is God; I suggest that in our present state we would not recognize the Messiah, the Redeemer and maybe she/he has been here and we ignored the message and the opportunity to be redeemed!

In recovery, redemption is a foundational goal and action. All of the steps, all of our actions point towards our making ourselves “worthy of redemption”. We “Came to believe a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity”. Sanity, in this context for me, is the awareness and knowledge of God’s call and our actualizing taking the actions that we are directed and then understanding and experiencing the redemption God’s grace gives us.

I have erred in making “the world worthy of redemption” at times and I have heard the call of God and taken the actions that have made no sense to me only to understand the depths of knowledge and joy that come with them. I continue to immerse myself in life, I continue to ask: “what is the question this experience is the answer to”, “what is the action I am being called to” and “what have I learned today”. I live into the challenges of my life, the challenges of being alive, the challenges of making “the world worthy of redemption” a little more each day and I pray we all do as well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 205

“The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)

OY! Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is so appropriate for the times we find ourselves in right now. While I believe redemption is an act of grace, it is not “an act of sheer grace”, as Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above reminds us, we have “to make the world worthy of redemption.” It would be great if someone, ie Elijah the Prophet, the Messiah, could/would come and make everything wonderful, cause a world-wide redemption, according to Jewish wisdom and experience, this is not going to happen on it’s own.

It is a radical statement to many; “man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption”, yet whether Christian or Jew, we realize that Jesus, Moses, Torah, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, all speak of the ways we humans have to act. In the Hassidic tradition, Reb Moshe Sassov of Leib says: “If you treat the person next to you as the Messiah, you will come to watch your words and your hands. If he/she chooses not to reveal her/himself, it will not matter.” Maimonides, the famous Medieval philosopher, wrote about a messianic era, where we change our ways so the Messiah can come and be heard, so we are worthy of redemption.

We do not seem to be doing so well in this regard right now. We are still suffering from our moral infection and we seem to have turned it into a moral pandemic, as I wrote earlier. We have made the world more unworthy of redemption, believing we can do whatever we choose and be exempt from the consequences of our actions. Our Climate Crisis is an example, climate change is undeniable, yet many people want to deny it, want to carry causing the problem to get greater because of their comfort, their denial, their pandering to the baser instincts of themselves and another(s).

“Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall men learn war anymore”(Isaiah 2:4) is not just a nice saying, it is not just a wonderful tune in the Hebrew, it is God’s dream, God’s demand, God’s call to all of us to lay down our weapons, to stop the seemingly endless and cruel ways of war. We are witnesses and participants to not just the war in Ukraine, Russia’s attempt at an unadulterated land grab, we are witnesses to politics being a battlefield for power, not for the people. We are witnesses and participants  to the rich using a myriad of weapons to keep their money and not pay their fair share of taxes and help redeem their brethren, their neighbors, their fellow citizens and the strangers they don’t know. We are witnesses and participants to the hatred and vitriol brought about because of mendacity and permission to oppress anyone ‘not like me’. We are witnesses and participants to the opposite of what Isaiah says in the same verse above, we are turning plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears. We are witnesses and participants in making the world less safe, more ruthless and being held hostage to the lunacy and indecency of a few.

The Republicans in Congress who are holding our credit hostage are so full of it, it is inconceivable to me that more people are not calling their hypocrisy out. They say we have to be responsible financially, yet they approved the spending that we causes the debt, they are now saying not to pay for what we already spent while berating people who are in default over their enormous student loans! This is taking personal responsibility? This is the way these ‘good christian folk’ believe Jesus would act and this is what they believe will bring about the ‘second coming of Christ’? As Pete Seeger asked in 1955, “when will they ever learn?”

In recovery, we have laid down our weapons of mass destruction, we have put down our swords and our spears, we work each and every day to turn them into the tools we need to live well, to live decently, to live responsibly, to live according to the will of God and not the will of our demons, our negativity. The only requirement for membership in recovery is a desire to lay down our guns, our knives, our lies, our deceptions, and rebuild our lives according to the principles that will make us worthy to be redeemed. Just as prayer will not redeem us, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, it will only make us worthy of redemption, in recovery, we know our actions are towards the goal of “trudging the road to happy destiny”, it is a slog and we are committed to slog it out together. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment