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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 229

“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)

Immersing ourselves in the last sentence above is, in my opinion, crucial to our being able to “rend our callousness”. Rhythm comes from the Greek meaning “to flow”, constant comes from the Latin meaning “stand with, standing firm”. Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to “stand firm” in the flow “of prayers, disciplines, reminders, joys” that will teach us how “not to forfeit” our greatness. While this is a simple solution to what ails humanity, it ain’t easy to do.

Standing firm within the flow of prayers, as I am experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom today, means we have to be involved in our prayers, not just say them. It means we have to engage with prayer so we can change our inner lives, we can strengthen our spirits in order to overcome the rationalizations and desires of our minds. While reason is essential to our being human, I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to mature our reasoning powers with the truth and wisdom of our souls/spirits. As we are witnessing today as we have in every generation, reason can be corrupted, it can be used to gain power, make enslaving people a ‘good thing’, bastardize the principles of the Bible, cause us to make good bad, and bad good. Reason without the guidance of the spirit corrupts us. In the third paragraph of the Shema, a centerpiece of daily prayer in Judaism, we are reminded to not “scout out after our heart and our eyes, lest we whore ourselves after them.” This prayer comes from the Bible, it is a description of the challenge of humanity, the experience of our ancestors in the desert, in Egypt, in Canaan, which we are warned against repeating. Yet, we seem unable to learn and implement this and so many other lessons of the Bible, of prayer.

Rabbi Heschel teaches us: “Prayer may not save us, it will make us worthy of being saved.” This teaching, along with the last sentence above, demands of us fidelity with our prayers, it demands of us to immerse ourselves in prayer so we can change our hearts’ desires, so we can truly Shema, listen, hear, and understand the call of God, the call of our souls, the call of truth, the call of justice, the call of love, the call of kindness, the call of mercy, the call of compassion, the call of God. Standing firm in our prayers, being in the flow of what our prayers are calling us to do, taking a “leap of action” based on the prayers we are saying, as Rabbi Heschel says, no longer reciting prayers and immersing ourselves in them, is what I believe Rabbi Heschel is teaching us.

Being in the flow and standing firm/standing with may seem to be contradictory to some, yet they are both necessary in order to truly have prayer change us. Prayer is not about petition, it is about introspection, it is not about fulfilling a commandment, it is about opening ourselves up to understand the call of the commandment, the call of God, the call of our neighbors, the call of truth, etc. Yet, we continue to use prayer for our self-aggrandizement, for power, for domination instead of surrender. Standing firm in the flow of prayer means we are not moving from and allowing ourselves to be carried forward to being more human each day, it means we are surrendering our will and our lives to a power greater than ourselves, it means we are changing our vision of living and bringing  into focus the next right action that moves us forward in our journey to wholeness and holiness.

In recovery, prayer and meditation are crucial. Many of us begin each day with prayer and meditation, be it formal prayer, like a rosary or a minyan, or private prayer, speaking the words on our hearts, without listening, hearing and understanding the response from our souls, our inner life, God, these are only half-measures. We, in recovery, know that “half-measures availed us nothing”, so we continue to immerse ourselves in prayer and meditation in order to live better each day, live with gratitude, be of service, do the next right thing.

This blog, for me, is part of my prayer and meditation routine which I never do routinely! I stand firm in the flow of my prayers and I see how far I am away from the shore of disbelief, how far I am from the horror I was prior to my beginning this journey of T’Shuvah. I am also aware of how much farther I have to travel and am unafraid of my errors, as the saying goes, judge me not for where I am but the distance I have travelled. Through standing firm in the flow of my prayers, I have come a long way, baby!:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 228

“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)

“To relate all scattered actions to the One” is the goal of all spiritual traditions. The issue for all of us is to acknowledge our “attempt to place all of life” and know that we have to keep checking in with our self, with another(s) to ensure that our attempts are truthful, they are not self-serving, they are not power grabs and they truly represent the call and demand of the Ineffable One. The realization and truth Rabbi Heschel is passing on to us is hard to digest for many of us; our actions are scattered, our lives are patchwork quilts of actions, reactions, truths and mendacities, deceptions and self-deceptions, radical amazement and rationalizations, wonder and taking things for granted. Judaism and all spiritual disciplines/traditions give us pathways to lesson the reactions, mendacities, deceptions, rationalizations and taking things for granted as well as paths to enhance and increase our actions for good, our truth seeking and living, our awe, wonder and radical amazement.

We are witnessing today what the prophets railed against at the time of the destruction of the first Temple and the decimation of the 10 tribes, which we say have been lost. We are experiencing the lies of people who proclaim to speak in the name of God, in the name of Jesus while actually speaking in their own name, in the name of power, greed, control. Many religious leaders are using their faith as clubs, as weapons of self-aggrandizement, power, control and fear. In Hebrew the word for fear also means awe! Fear is not about punishment, it is the precursor to awe, it is what can propel us to witness the awesomeness of life, it is also what can stop us from experiencing same. We have to choose to bring our “scattered actions to the One”, rather than trying to hide the ones we don’t like, rather than trying to hide/rationalize the ones we use for our greed, power, need to be right. This statement also points out our need to continue to take self-inventory, to continue to look at our actions daily, weekly, etc and see how they are serving our authentic self, our soul, the souls and authenticity of another(s), and the One. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to account to ourselves, to look at our attempts to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God” in all of our affairs.

To relate, from the Latin means “brought back” and in the Hebrew the word is the same word as to tell a story, to regard. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us we need a spiritual discipline (and there are many one can use) to bring ourselves back “to place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance” and to regard all of our “scattered actions” as impacting the One as well as ourselves and another(s). What a fearful thought, what an awesome idea, what a wondrous gift! We can and must use our spiritual traditions to be brought back to serving the One, to serving another(s), to serving our true selves, we must begin to relate and regard our actions as part of the patchwork that is our life. Rabbi Heschel teaches us that our lives are works of art, which I take to mean that we can repaint the canvas at any time, whenever we see our actions are not reflecting “the glory of ultimate significance”, whenever they are not regarding the guidance of the One, we can change, we can redo, we can be forgiven for our errors and forgive another(s) for theirs and forgive ourselves. This is in direct conflict with the ‘normal’ way of people including religious leaders and followers who insist they are doing the will of Christ, Adonai, Allah, etc when they are lying, cheating, enslaving, abusing truth, people, and the One.

I am guilty of trying to use self-will as God’s will. I am guilty of rationalizing behaviors of myself and another(s) because I did not want to face the errors of my actions. I have, however, in the past 35 years, been aware and make T’Shuvah for these actions, I have stopped denying the errors of my ways when I have realized them and/or they have been brought to my attention. While this way of being has been used against me, seen as a vulnerability, I have found it to be a strength that gives me the courage to face the fear of living and see the awe of it more and more often. I know my imperfections, I acknowledge them daily, especially as Rabbi Heschel provides a constant reflective mirror to me. I also know my actions are overwhelmingly geared to the “glory of ultimate significance” and they come together in my relating them “to the One.” This life is hard, it is not pretty all the time, it is a life of vulnerability and hurt, yet, it is joyous, glorious, satisfying, loving, fulfilling, full of wonder, awe and radical amazement. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 227

“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)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above about Judaism as “an attempt to place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance, to relate all scattered actions to the One” is a call to all of us, Jew and non-Jew, to stop worrying about our status, our power, our false egos and pride. I hear him demanding us to return to the Ineffable One and surrender all of our egocentric actions so we can experience glory, experience connection, live on a continuum of moving towards “rend our callousness” and use our character traits “in proper measure” as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz teaches.

Watching the documentary, “Shiny happy people” yesterday and learning about IBLP was scary, sad and an example of people using God to increase their callousness not “rend” it. The people of IBLP truly believe they are ‘doing God’s work’ while enslaving women and children to serve themselves, not God. They are, as we have heard before and from many people, seeking to make the United States “a Christian Nation” which is NOT what the founding fathers sought! Enshrined at the same time as the Constitution was the Bill of Rights, the first of which speaks to freedom of religion. The separation of government and religion, was not to say religious tenets have no place in governing, rather, I believe it is so no one religion can enslave everyone else to their way of being.

When we “attempt to place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance” we are surrounding to the truth of “You Matter”, we all matter and every action we take is important, meaningful and either retards or progresses our goal of experiencing the “glory of ultimate significance”. We get to make this choice every day, every hour, and Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to wake up, to stop ignoring the essence of what Judaism is, what all religious and spiritual disciplines are. He uses the word “attempt” which reminds us of our fallibility, our imperfections, our folly of perfection. The use of “attempt” also leaves open the door to other paths which “place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance” because there is no “one size fits all” in how we live, how we serve, how we be free and how we encourage another(s) to be free in their own ways. Bringing “all of life under the glory of ultimate significance” does not give us the power to determine what “ultimate significance” is for everyone, it doesn’t give us the right to dictate how every person is supposed to do this. As the Jewish tradition teaches us, each of us is unique and has our own path, our own corner of the world to repair, our own garden to till, nurture and grow, so we all have to “place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance” in our own way.

Rabbi Heschel is again teaching us the importance of surrendering our ego, surrendering our need for power, for omnipotence, for ‘knowing the only way’ to “place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance”. Glory can be defined as praise, in Hebrew it is the same word for beauty, in the Kabbalah, it is the blending of kindness and restrictive power. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel calling to us to look at our actions before and after we take them through the lens of: Is this action praiseworthy, is this action an actual praise of God, is this action a blending of strength/proper use of our individual and collective power and kindness? Doing this, asking these questions before and/or after our actions will help us learn and further our march towards fulfilling the words of acceptance we spoke at Mount Sinai, the words of gratitude and praise we cried out at on the other side of the Red Sea. This action will further “Man’s Search for Meaning” as Viktor Frankl teaches us.

In recovery, steps 4-10 remind us and teach us about the significance of our actions. They give us the perspective and the lessons to help us determine not only how we did not “place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance” they help us see where we did and how we can moving forward. My experience with prayer and meditation, with inventory and T’Shuvah, with this daily writing continues to help me move forward in the quest Rabbi Heschel is teaching us about. I continue to learn and grow, I continue to be remorseful for my missed opportunities, I continue to ask the questions above and surrender falseness, mendacity, and self-deception so I can bring my disparate actions together in service of God. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 226

“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)

Rabbi Heschel gives the problem and the solution in all of his writings and especially in his teaching above. To “rend our callousness”, we must act in ways that sanctify life and we must be consistent with these actions. We have become addicted and adjusted to the callousness that we call ‘religious’, ‘god’s will’ (small g to denote this deity is actually idol worship), ‘good for our country’, ‘stop those people from taking our jobs’, ‘stop those people from grooming our children’, ‘stop those people from controlling the media, the banks, etc’. We have become so addicted to and adjusted to callousness that the Southern Baptists Church has thrown Saddleback Church out of its conference for having women pastors! “An ultraconservative faction with a loud online presence is going further, pressing for ideological purity and arguing that female pastors are a precursor to acceptance of homosexuality and sexual immorality.”(New York Times, 6/13) Isn’t this a little ridiculous? Yet, because of our addiction and adjustment to callousness, this type of thinking, rhetoric, mendacity is permeating our sanctuaries, our offices, our business’, our government, and seems to be a prime example of “self-will run riot”, which is what we in recovery call any actions that go against God’s call to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God”.

The only solution, as Rabbi Heschel so simply tells us, is a “constancy that sanctifies”. Sanctify means to “set apart, to make morally right” and in Hebrew the word used is “Kadosh” which is translated as holy and means “to elevate, to set apart, to connect”. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel is calling us to make a constant practice of acting in ways that are morally correct, that elevate us and those around us, that set us apart from the animals who have no free will to choose, and to connect to one another in love, mercy, justice, kindness, compassion, concern. We have to improve our actions of sanctifying our self, our souls, our inner lives so we can improve our relations with one another. We have to remember that EVERY human being is created in the Image of the Ineffable One, EVERY human being includes women, LGBTQ+, People of Color, Jews, Muslims, those of no religion. We have to improve our actions and raise them up to honor the inherent dignity that every human being possess’, to recognize every human being as a reminder of the divine, as a fulfiller of a divine need. We have to take the next right action to never think of our selves as ‘better than’ or ‘less than’ anyone else because God created us and “God don’t make no junk” as a bumper sticker says.

It is time, way past time actually, for us to detox from the joys our callousness gives us, it is time to recognize the sanctity of women, who are ‘good enough’ to bear and raise the children of the Southern Baptists’ but not good enough to pastor to them in their times of need, in their times of joy? We have to change our ways, we have to begin a program of recovery from the callousness that oozes from our pores, yes, even the ‘good people’ have callousness within them. We all need to surrender our grip on the callousness we have become adjusted to, we have to admit our powerlessness over our acting out in callous ways all the while trying to disguise them, deny them, etc. We need to believe that God, not the false idols that many religious and non-religious people have made and call God, can and will restore us to sanity. This sanity comes from our souls, it is a meeting of our souls with our minds, our emotions where these latter two entities have votes, they can no longer veto what we know deep in our hearts, our guts, our ‘bones’. Then and only then can we truly be consistent in acts that uplift instead of put down, actions that raise up our beings and serve God as well as the people around us, people we know and those we don’t.

I am suggesting that we begin to engage in a path of recovery for how we live. I have surrendered my callousness as it rears its ugly head and it has made me more vulnerable and more open to the love and the disdain of another(s) persons. I keep choosing to focus on the love rather than the disdain,  choosing to elevate my actions one grain of sand a day, choosing to live in God’s ways instead of society’s. I choosing to “practice these principles in all my affairs” as the 12th Step declares, I choosing to live in justice, love, kindness, compassion, mercy, and truth. I make the choice to keep learning and rooting our my callousness each day so I can live in freedom and joy. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 225

“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)

We are witnesses and participants in a march towards more callousness and anger, more hatred and less compassion, more blaming of another and less taking of personal responsibility. We are extolling callousness, anger, blame, mendacity as a “rare act of greatness” these days, much to the horror of some/many and in direct opposition to the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel. Our “everyday actions” are not rending our callousness, it seems as if they are hardening the callousness on both extremes. Anytime one takes an extreme position, one becomes hardened to hear anyone else’s opinion, take any other facts and/or ways of seeing what is into account. The extremes belie radical amazement, they become callous to wonder, to awe, to the plight of people not like them. We see this in our political world today, as we have since Newt Gingrich and company, we see this in fundamentalist religious sects, we see this in business dealings, we see this in our Supreme Court which  is working hard to undo the hard-fought freedoms some of us marched for in the 1960’s, some died for in those years and in subsequent years, be it racist attacks, LGBTQ+ attacks, or mass shootings at schools, synagogues, churches, nightclubs, dance halls, business’, etc. We have become so callous, there are people who believe carrying a gun in the open, without a permit, without training, is part of the 2nd Amendment and there should be no background checks, no regulation-when asked if what he would give up to make life better, a ‘person’ answered: ‘my wife, yes; my kids, maybe; my gun,NEVER!’

And, as always, we have to look inside of ourselves to see our own callousness, our own mendacity, our own extreme positions that harden our hearts. We all have a Pharaoh inside of us, the Biblical stories teach us about the archetypes that live within us, and we have the choice to decide how to respond to these inner archetypes. As the Native American story goes about a grandfather teaching his grandson about the two wolves who are at war within him, the one we feed is the one who wins. We have had a steady diet of callousness, hatred, blame, mendacity throughout humankind’s history. We have to ask ourselves which “everyday actions” are feeding our Pharaoh, which “everyday actions” are feeding the Moses within us. Which “everyday actions” feed greed and envy, competition and comparison, which “everyday actions” feed our sense of oneness with all people, seeing the similarities in all of us and welcoming the differences as God-given?

We have the power to decide and to choose whether to be Pharaoh or Moses for ourselves and, by extension, for another(s). We have, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel’s demand and call to us, the obligation to choose to feed our Moses, to “Choose Life” as the Bible commands us. We make the choice of how to use our power to be grateful and open to people and/or how to decimate people we have used and abused and are no longer needed by us every hour. We are practicing our callousness in the ways we treat the people who helped us achieve some status on the way up, with reverence or disdain, we are practicing our callousness in the ways we relate to the world around us, ‘let me get mine’. We practice our goodness in the ways we greet people, the ways we leave the door open for reunification as God does for each of us, the ways we welcome, feed and care for people who are in need, who are poor, who are strangers as Abraham taught us. We are making the choices to “rend our callousness” and to expand our callousness with each action we take.

AA is 88 years old, Judaism is 3000+ years old, Christianity is 2000+ years old, some Eastern disciplines go back 4000+ years, and all deal with the problem of our callousness, how to mitigate the Pharaoh inside of us. I have wrestled with this issue forever, even before I was aware of the war within me. My recovery has been and is dependent on how I fight for the Moses within me, how I let go of the callousness and the anger, the greed and envy, the sadness and the blame heaped upon me by another. I have to be responsible for my part, I just don’t have to be callous towards myself by accepting everyone else’s part, everyone else’s blame. I am sad and dismayed at the callousness I have experienced and the callousness I have perpetrated. I do it less each day, I have more compassion each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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