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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 308

“The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation. In the dimension of time there is no going back. But the power of repentance causes time to be created backward and allows re-creation of the past to take place. Through the forgiving hand of God, harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be extinguished, transformed into salvation.”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

Rabbi Heschel is not saying the “harm and blemish” doesn’t exist, as I understand his wisdom, rather that “harm and blemish” can be “extinguished, transformed into salvation”.   Salvation comes from the Latin meaning “to save”, in Hebrew it denotes being saved and connotes redemption, which comes from the Latin meaning “to buy back” and extinguish comes from the Latin meaning “to quench”. Using these definitions, this part of the sentence can be understood as “harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be” quenched, changed into saving, buying back our dignity, our essence. This “miracle” occurs because of our willingness to engage in T’Shuvah, our returning to Authenticity, Responsibility, Truth, aka ART. Living our lives as works of ART is a path to “love God with all our heart, all our soul, with everything that is in us” even our negative inclinations.

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching and brilliance is calling for us to let go of our old ideas, to be “maladjusted” to the societal norms of ‘a leopard doesn’t change its spots’, to recognize and suspend our “inner suspicions”. He is demanding that we face “life on life’s terms” and come to grips with the beauty and the ugly within us, to wrestle with the “Jacob and Esau” within us, to “buy back” the ‘sin’ of Adam-hiding from God. To do this, we have to be in truth with ourselves, we need to see our flaws and our greatness and repair the former while enhancing the latter. It is not an easy engagement, it is, however, a simple one. Facing “the person in the mirror” takes courage, it takes serenity, aka clarity, it means taking off the masks we wear, removing the “mental make-up” that has covered up our inner life, our soul’s calling, and our connection to one another and to God. Seeing our senseless hatred of one another, acknowledging our need to blame another for our errors, how we are unwelcoming to the stranger, hard-hearted towards the poor and the needy, engaging in  ‘low self-esteem’ while being a partner of God, will allow us to repair these self-deceptions we have perpetrated upon ourselves. These insights, once we have admitted them to ourselves, will allow us to repair the “harms and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves”.

Once we have the clarity that taking off the myriad of masks we wear, we will be better able to testify to the good we have done, we will see the light of our soul and how it has guided us to ‘do the next right thing’. We will be able to fill the greatness column on our inventory sheet with all of the decent, kind, responsible ways we have connected with “the world” and with “ourselves”. This part of our inventory, our T’Shuvah, engages us in seeing the whole picture of our year, of our life, and put into proper perspective our goodness and our desire to love, connect and be a partner with God, with our family, our community, our world in making life “one grain of sand” better for everyone. This way of doing T’Shuvah gives us freedom to choose with clarity how we want to live and how we are going to live in this next year(s). It also guides us to “the unnoticed of all miracles, the miracle of repentance”.

I have experienced this “unnoticed miracle” often in my recovery! In fact, this “unnoticed miracle” has defined my recovery and my entire way of living these past 34+ years. It has not been a ‘one and done’, in fact I have put my own “mental make-up” at various times even though I had removed it before. Yet, engaging in T’Shuvah, being aware of the masks, living in truth and being responsible for the negativity and the goodness I have wrought, being authentic in my remorse and in my accomplishments, helps me throw away more and more of the “mental make-up” I have used in the past. My anger, bombastic ways of being were authentic in the moment and they were inappropriate some of the times as well. When my anger was personal from a place of hurt, my actions were wrong and inappropriate, when my anger was for the treatment of another, when it was the anger of the prophets, my actions were in service of something greater than myself-another human being and God. I continue to grow my ART of living, I continue to let go of the masks, the self-deceptions, and hold onto the goodness and the love I give and receive from “the forgiving hand of God” and bear witness to the “transformed into salvation” my life is becoming. 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 307

“The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation. In the dimension of time there is no going back. But the power of repentance causes time to be created backward and allows re-creation of the past to take place. Through the forgiving hand of God, harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be extinguished, transformed into salvation.”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

The last sentence above is one that is debated, argued, and which many people disagree with. It is also one that I believe is misunderstood.God’s always seeking to forgive, God is always seeking for us to return, in the Talmud we learn that God cries because “My children are in Exile”, at the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea while the Angels were cheering, our sages teach that God says: “My children are dying”. Rather than accepting the “punishing God of the Old Testament”, God redeems the Israelites from Egypt, God continually accepts the T’Shuvah of the Israelites in the desert, God sends the Prophets to the kingdoms of Israel and Judea to call the people back to being the souls they were created to be. Jeremiah calls to us: “Return, you backsliding children, I will heal your backsliding”(Jeremiah 3:22), Hosea reminds us to “return Israel to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity”(Hosea 14:2). Our tradition reminds us that the Gates of T’Shuvah, the gates of return/forgiveness are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year! Yet, we continue to use God as punisher, as authoritarian because we are afraid to believe Rabbi Heschel’s words above and the words of the Bible. I think our fear is rooted in our lack of forgiving ourselves and another, our fear is rooted in our inability to accept our imperfections, our fear is rooted in the responsibility forgiveness/T’Shuvah brings to us.

In Numbers 14:20 God says: “I forgive as you have spoken” in response to Moses’ pleading for the people when they disbelieved God again in regards to entering the Promised Land early on in their journey from Egypt to Canaan. Each Erev Yom Kippur, aka Kol Nidre, after the Kol Nidre prayer, we recite these words to remind us of “the forgiving hand of God”, to remind us we are worthy of forgiveness, to call on us to forgive as easily as God does even though God knows we will need forgiveness again and again. Each time we screw up, we do it a little differently and we learn from our mistakes, each time we screw up we go to God and we are forgiven, we experience, as Hosea 14:5 teaches: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely.” These are not the words of a punishing God, these are the words and actions of a loving God. God has kept the Jews alive and Judaism has stayed dynamic throughout antiquity up until now because of God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s healing. Rather than stay stuck in the past, rather than live under a strictness, a perfection seeking path that is impossible to hold to, God calls for us to return, God sends us forgiveness, God is willing to begin anew, wiping away the memories of our iniquities, cleaning the slate of our errors and missteps.

Yet, the problem, as always, is with us. Many of us are not willing to accept God’s forgiveness for what it is, a responsibility, a clean slate, a new beginning, a re-covenanting. Rather, we find ways to bastardize the teachings of the Bible, the wisdom and brilliance of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above(and all of his others) so we can ‘get over’ on God, on another human being, on ourselves. We seem to be afraid to accept God’s forgiveness, we seem to be reluctant to allow our “backsliding” to be healed, we seem to disbelieve that we “I will love them freely” is the way of God. The problem, as always, begins and ends with us! We stay in our own denial and self-deception, we continue to be adjusted to the societal norms and cliches that once a ‘bad boy’, always a ‘bad boy’. We are shamed and blame from an early age and we shame and blame everyone else from an early age and this pattern disallows our belief in God’s “forgiving hand” and instead gives aid and comfort to the lie of “punishing God”, something invented by pagans and other faiths as a marketing tool for converts because Judaism had and has, at its core: “welcoming the stranger, caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, redeeming the captive and the one who had to sell themselves into slavery” and the responsibilities and inner work it takes to fulfill.

I have experienced the “forgiving hand of God” numerous times in my life, as I look back on my past. In recovery, I have been aware of these times and I am so grateful for “the forgiving hand of God”. I know I could not have achieved the spiritual clarity/serenity, the acceptance of “the things I cannot change” and “the courage to change the things I should” without “the forgiving hand of God”. The Serenity Prayer quoted here and T’Shuvah remind me daily of God’s love and forgiveness. 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 306

“The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation. In the dimension of time there is no going back. But the power of repentance causes time to be created backward and allows re-creation of the past to take place. Through the forgiving hand of God, harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be extinguished, transformed into salvation.”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

One of the amazing aspects of T’Shuvah/amends is its ability to cause “time to be created backward”. While in the material world “there is no going back”, the spiritual world “allows re-creation of the past to take place.” This happens because T’Shuvah/amends allows us to undo the lies of the past, restore the dignity we have taken from a person by our harms, blemishes, lies, bad acts. This is the process where we take responsibility for our actions, we make restitution for the harms we caused, we affirm the truth of their experience, we repair the damage we have wrought, and we reconnect to their spirit and re-sew the fabric of our relationship with them and with God.

While not everyone we have harmed will want to reconnect, not everyone will want to trust us again, T’Shuvah/amends makes a lie of humanity’s belief that what one was is what they will always be. It makes mincemeat of the saying “a leopard doesn’t change its spots”. T’Shuvah/amends “allows the re-creation of the past to take place” by our being responsible for our actions without blame nor shame, by allowing another human being to see/experience the sincerity of our change, of our almost complete change of beingness, and our identity with the pain we caused them. We freely admit how we treated another person as an object of our need/desire, an object to be used and abused, our chameleon-like way of being at the time and our abject sorrow for our actions and the harms we did. This doesn’t change the action, what it does is put it into a different context, we affirm and re-affirm their goodness of being and our taking advantage of it, we thank them for trying to help us and regret the myriad of ways we hid from them, like Adam hid from God. Our T’Shuvah is also for the distrust we may have implanted in the people we have harmed and how that distrust might have changed them/prevented them from helping another human being who was sincere and needed their assistance. In this way, we don’t erase the harms of the past, we do put them in a context that allows another to know their actions were the correct ones and we took advantage of their kindness and love, it also allows them to leave the hurt in the past and not carry it as an anchor on their necks.

In recovery as in Judaism, amends/T’Shuvah are the responsibility actions of one who has changed because to do them we have to be Authentic, Responsible, and Transparent. We demonstrate our desire and ability to life our lives as works of ART, as Rabbi Heschel says in his interview with Carl Stern: “And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art. You’re not a machine…Start working on this great work of art called your own existence.” As many artists will attest to, when one doesn’t like what one has painted, when one sees a blemish, a ‘mistake’ in the painting, they repaint the canvas in white and begin again. This is the power of T’Shuvah/amends, we ‘get’ to begin anew, begin again with a new canvas, we get to recreate/create anew “this great work of ART called” our life.

I know the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and wisdom as I experience the wonder, awe, re-connection with my family, with friends, with people I have encountered in my life in recovery and before. My brothers, my sister, my mother all accepted my T’Shuvah/amends and we reconnected in ways we did not even realize we needed to, we ‘wrote’ a new covenant and way of being so we would not hide from one another and we have a relationship today that is stronger, tighter, more loving each and every day. My daughter, Heather, and I work hard to not hide from one another, we exchange advice, thoughts, ways of being and she seeks my wisdom and experience as I seek hers. We know our love, our connection is strong, is based in respect and truth and love. My wife, Harriet, and I have had ups and downs in our relationship, duh!! Yet, because of T’Shuvah/amends, we have been able to come through each of the downs stronger, more committed and more willing to be seen by one another. Over the years, I have done T’Shuvah often, this year being no different, and this year I have also been able to see where my anger comes from and repair the damage the original betrayal caused me without needing to make the betrayer a “bad guy”, in fact I have compassion for the person. This has led me to change my reactions, to accept the people who don’t accept my amends and re-paint the canvas of my life with more ART. 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 305

“The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation. In the dimension of time there is no going back. But the power of repentance causes time to be created backward and allows re-creation of the past to take place. Through the forgiving hand of God, harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be extinguished, transformed into salvation.”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

On this, the second day of the 10 days of Repentance, the brilliance of Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to end our fascination with perfection, decline to live in shame of our errors, and stop our needing to blame another(s) for the “missing the marks” we commit. T’Shuvah/repentance is, as Reb Meir states in the Talmud (Yoma 86b): “Great is repentance, because the entire world is forgiven on account of (one) individual who repents.” We all, according to Reb Meir, have the opportunity and responsibility to impact our world, individually, communally, and globally. All we have to do is be serious about our repentance, not use some formula to ‘get off the hook’ rather we need to own up to our errors, we are called upon by our tradition to end the blame and shame experience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and by our Biblical figures, and by all of our ancestors.

It is “the most unnoticed of all miracles” because we save ourselves from being stuck in the mud and mire of denial, we extricate ourselves from the mendacity of self-deception, we come face to face with our authentic self and learn from our errors and the errors of our ancestors, our parents, our siblings, our historical figures, etc. Coming face to face with our authentic self is the pathway to a new creation of our living. Coming face to face with our learning is the pathway to transforming our errors into merits, changing the course of our life and the lives of those around us and people we have never even met. It is an “unnoticed miracle” by virtue of the change that happens both within us and to the people we make our amends to. It is an “unnoticed miracle” because we suddenly find ourselves living in a deeper, more committed relationship with our self, with another(s) and with God. We no longer need to hide from anyone else, we no longer have to live in willful blindness of our impact on another(s) and on our corner of the world.

The transformation that occurs is “a miracle”! We find ourselves able to suspend our “alien thoughts” of hiding, let go of our “alien intentions” of denying our errors, make the “I”, that is our ego, stand in concert with God and humanity to improve the world and one another. This transformation leads us to living in harmony with God, with our self, rather than hiding, rather than living in mendacity and self-deception. It allows us to be free of shame and not need to blame, it gives us the gift of living in truth and being able to say: “Oops, I made a mistake”, the 5 hardest words for most people to put together in one sentence. Because of our willingness to be in truth about ourselves, because of our tenacity in doing our own inventory, because of our going to people we have harmed and asking for forgiveness, our lives and the life of the entire world is created anew, transformed. The proof text of this is found in the words of the prophet Hosea: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for My anger has turned away him”(Hosea 14:5).

In recovery the 8th and 9th steps are the culmination of the freedom we began to experience when we worked the 4th and 5th steps. Becoming “willing to make amends” and then “to make direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others” is what Judaism has called us to do forever, what the Bible has taught us since the Garden of Eden, what Jacob failed to do with his brother Esau and what Judah did do with his brother Joseph. Even King David could admit his errors, once they were pointed out to him, and rather than deny them, he repented for them.  The transformation, creation that Rabbi Heschel is talking about is delineated in the 9th Step promise: “we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us” and others.

Each year, since I began my personal journey of T’Shuvah, I have shed layers of self-deception and mendacity. I have been blessed to be able to see clearer and transform my ‘sins’ into merits. God has healed my backsliding and continues to do so, I experience God’s love through the myriad of people in my life who love me, care for me, rebuke me and strengthen me. The miracle of r

Livng rabbi heschel’s wisdom - A daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 304

“Moses’ saying to Israel, “I stand between God and you”(Deuteronomy 5:5), was allegorically interpreted by Rabbi Michael of Zlotshov to mean: The “I” stands between God and man.”(Quoted by Rabbi Kalonymus Salma Epstein, Maor Vashamesh, Lemberg, 1859 p.29b) (God in Search of Man pg. 394)

Tonight is the beginning of the year 5784 in the Hebrew Calendar. Whether the calculations are correct or not is immaterial, whether every incident in the Bible actually happened is immaterial, what is material are the myriad of ways Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc give us to celebrate new beginnings, to engage in the repair of our old beginnings that we had a part in causing to fail, to see ourselves in our proper image-neither too small nor too large, to live in proper measure for the moment we are in.

Tonight and every night, we are called to stand in front of our true self, our authentic being and commit to be a little more authentic, a little more in truth, a little better, l little kinder, a little more of a community member, tomorrow than we were today. Rosh HaShana, the head of the year, comes 6 months(approx.) after our exodus from Egypt, which is no coincidence to me. We are given this Holy Season to see how large the “I” has become since we left slavery, we are being called to account to and for ourselves-not to some ‘guy in the sky’- but rather to ourselves, to one another, to the Ineffable One, for the times we kept our “I” in check/proper measure and when we did not! While we are not really supposed to make New Year’s Resolutions, we are supposed to repair the damages done to our selves, to another self, to the world writ large and these repairs, aka T’Shuvah, include our plan not to do the same thing again. It is, our plan to stop the insanity of our ways of being, as defined by Einstein. It is, our deep desire to repair relationships, to expand relationships, to let go of the ones that are toxic and stop adding one’s own toxicity to new and old relationships.

Competition for a job, for an invention, for a way of doing something is understandable and good as long as the “I” doesn’t make us into ‘killers’, doesn’t prod us to ‘win at all costs’, doesn’t guide us to let go of our humanity while deceiving ourselves into thinking we are saving our humanity and honoring it. We all have witnessed people who have put their “I” between them and another human being, who have put their “I” between them and community (unless they are running the community), who have extolled God while worshiping the idolatry of the overgrown, outsized “I”! Yet, this time of year, in fact all year long, we are being called to witness how we are doing the same things with our “I”! 6 months ago we left Egypt, now we have to see how we have moved forward towards freedom and how we have turned back to serve our self-serving Pharaoh called the “I”!

Recovery is all about being “right-sized”, it is all about keeping our ego’s in check-not extinguishing them as they are God-given, and using our egos in proper measure to the moment we are in. Which, is the conundrum of the “I” for most of us. Each moment is different, there will never be this moment again, which means we have to face each moment and respond to each moment differently, hence the inability to follow some chart or game plan that is made up prior to this moment. Rather, we have to train our “I” to respond to the present appropriately so we don’t separate ourselves from the community, we don’t practice the idolatry of “know-it-all”, and don’t allow anything to come between our selves, our souls and the spirit of God that is always hovering above us and waiting for us to reach for and be open to receive.

I have put my “I” between me and God, between me and another person more times than I want to remember and, as painful as it is, I must. I have made amends and gotten better and I have continued to do this. In the past 34+ years, when I have done this it has been from a place of self-deception and blindness that is not/was not willful. Hindsight is 20/20 and I was reading a T’Shuvah I made to my community at the time in 2014. Many of the topics I have mentioned this Elul are in there and I know that I will never be perfect. I also know, as I prepare for Rosh HaShanah, that I have grown, I am a better human being, I can withstand the onslaught of hate, vitriol that some people need to spew, and I can look myself in the mirror, I can look anyone in the eyes, and I can connect and be in a covenantal relationship with God. Not as a perfect being, but as Mark Borovitz, fallible human being who continues to grow along spiritual lines and who doesn’t need to be right all the time and is willing to admit his own errors and flaws as well as what he does well. This is how my “I” stays right-sized and of service. Shana Tova, 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 303

“Moses’ saying to Israel, “I stand between God and you”(Deuteronomy 5:5), was allegorically interpreted by Rabbi Michael of Zlotshov to mean: The “I” stands between God and man.”(Quoted by Rabbi Kalonymus Salma Epstein, Maor Vashamesh, Lemberg, 1859 p.29b) (God in Search of Man pg. 394)

As we prepare to begin the year 5784 in the Hebrew Calendar tomorrow evening, this teaching by Rabbi Heschel is crucial to our understanding what the Jewish High Holy Days, the month of Elul, the entirety of the Bible and living Jewishly is about. Our mission, if we choose to take it on, is to keep our uniqueness and diminish the “I” that stands between us and God. Rabbi Michael of Zlotshov, a Hasidic master, is reminding us of our need to serve something greater than our “I” and that something greater is God/the Ineffable One/Power greater than ourselves/etc. All spiritual disciplines have the same goal: to keep our uniqueness, to live into our purpose and keep the “I” in its proper place, keep it right-sized. Our work of T’shuvah, our inventory of what we do well and where we miss the mark, is a path to making this goal a reality. We seem to naturally keep the “I” larger than life itself, we seem to go to the “I” like a moth to a flame, and this teaching by Rabbi Heschel is a great antidote to our natural/evil inclination to put the “I” before God, before another human being, even before our best interests.

This is the lure of authoritarianism, this is the lure of the bully, this is the lure of the deceiver, this is the lure of our own self-deception. By putting the “I” before everything and anything, we get a false sense of self, a false sense of our power, a false sense of faith and spirituality. Clergy fall into this trap when they pontificate and don’t admit their fallibility, when they don’t acknowledge their own “defects of character”, or their own actions that are out of proper measure. When clergy speak in the voice of authority, when they speak in the voice of surety, when they speak in the voice of “there is only one way”, when they speak in the voice of hatred, of unwelcoming the stranger. When they do not take this time to speak in the voice of contrition, of T’Shuvah, of asking for and granting forgiveness, they are speaking from the voice of the “I” and not God, they are standing between humankind and God, in other words, they are the idols that Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the prophets, et al railed against.

Many of our elected officials, our politicians, speak in the voice of the “I” and want us to believe they are speaking in the voice of Godliness, in the voice of caring and compassion. When we cannot reach across the aisle for the good of the country, when we cannot find compromises that will uplift everyone, we are witnessing the power of the “I” and we are suffering the consequences of this way of being. The “I” is the driving force of “winning at all costs”, it’s the force that did not allow Pharaoh to realize that “Egypt is already lost” and unable to hear his advisors say to him: “Until when will you let Moses be a snare for you?” It is the force that brings the chaos we have been through for the last 12 years, the chaos of the Tea Party, the chaos of Trumpism, the chaos of McCarthy selling his soul for a piece of coal. Yet, at least 30% of our country wants this chaos, at least 50% of our country supports the “I” uber alles!

We are in the home stretch of our Elul work, we are 11 days from Kol Nidre when we ask God to forgive our sins, let us out of the vows we made last Yom Kippur that have gone unfulfilled. While we have the Kol Nidre prayer as the first prayer of the evening/day of Yom Kippur, we have to look inside of ourselves and see which vows we made under duress, ie to please someone else, which ones we made half-heartedly, which ones we made to look good, which ones we made from the “I”, and which ones we made from our souls, which ones we made in true desire to be a better human being. We are asking for all the vows we did not fulfill to be annulled and this is meaningful only when we can see the why’s of not fulfilling them, when we can be in truth with ourselves about where we made these vows from as I have written above.

I don’t have a lot of vows that I need annulled this year because I am in the process of T’Shuvah during Elul and throughout the year. I have kept the most important vow, to me, and that is to lessen the times I put the “I” between me and God, lessening the times I put the “I” between me and you/anyone, lessening the times I put the “I” between me and truth. While some people are unable to see me because of their “I” being so strong and refuse to accept a T’Shuvah from me, I feel sorry that they are so stuck in their “I”. I am grateful for everyone who has forgiven me, over the years, and look forward to 5784 with hope, passion, and purpose. Shana Tova and 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 302

“We do not know with what we must serve until we arrive there (Exodus 10:26). “All our service, all the good deeds we are doing in this world, we do not know whether they are of any value, whether they are really pure, honest or done for the sake of heaven, - until we arrive there-in the world to come, only there shall we learn what our service was here”(Rabbi Isaac Meir of Ger). (God in Search of Man pg. 394)

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above reminds us to, as my friend and first sponsor Steve Abrams taught me early in my recovery, leave our minds open enough to have them changed. The human need for certainty is so strong that we believe we must always “have the right answer”, ‘know exactly what to do’ and defend our decisions, our actions to the death rather than admit we do not know. Our world is one in which ‘not knowing’ leaves one susceptible to being ridiculed, laughed at, scorned; so we continue to be afraid to say “we do not know”.

Living in uncertainty takes a strong spirit, it takes great ego strength, it takes a willingness to “not know” and to forge ahead anyway. While the commandments, the different faith traditions, the myriad of spiritual disciplines available to us all give us paths to travel, we cannot say with certainty: this is the path, this is the correct one way to understand. Yet, human beings have engaged in seeking ‘the one right way’ and the teaching above comes to remind us not to be so certain of the rightness of our choices, the correctness of our actions, the surety of our service.

We are taught that there are 70 ways to understand the Torah/Bible, there are a myriad of opinions in the Talmud as to how to fulfill a mitzvah, how to serve God, how to serve our neighbors, which leads to the uncertainty of the above verse from Exodus. Most human beings live in fear of being wrong, of not getting an “A” in life, so we impose our will, our need for certainty, our defending ourselves and our actions to the death, all of which go against the principle of T’Shuvah, go against the value of asking for and granting forgiveness to one another, and which cause us confer “cruel and unusual punishment” on people we can control and upon ourselves. In our “need to be right”, we ignore the teaching and wisdom of both Exodus and Rabbi Isaac Meir of Ger, the Gerer Rebbe. Not knowing causes such consternation that we have made up “alternative facts” to prove our point, we have followed ‘false messiahs” to our ruin, we have succumbed to authoritarian governments and been authoritarian bosses, parents, etc. We make up stories that we are being this way “for their own good” so we can fulfill the need inside of us to be certain, to put on the armor of power in order to not face our own fallibility, our own fear of uncertainty, our hiding.

Living in this moment, not being imprisoned by our past, learning from our past and from history, knowing we are doing the best we can right now are hallmarks of our recovery. Being in recovery is, to me, what all spiritual disciplines, all faiths come to help us with, mandate us to engage in. Religion and spirituality go hand in hand, as I understand Rabbi Heschel, the Gerer Rebbe, the different codified texts of both Eastern philosophies and Western Faith traditions. They all are written with eternal truths and wisdom, with terse language that is open to interpretation, and a myriad of stories that lend themselves to engaging our souls to be present, to live in the uncertainty of this moment and to learn/relearn how to live into “we do not know”. Every person needs to engage in T’Shuvah, inventory, amends, learning from our past, learning the lessons our personal and human history give us. This month of Elul and this Shabbat we celebrate the Jewish New Year are the Jewish tradition’s of acknowledging the “we do not know with what we must serve”, leading us to Yom Kippur where we will renew our relationship with God, we will ask for forgiveness for our “missing the mark” with God, with ourselves.

I have given the impression of ‘knowing what I am doing’ while acknowledging my uncertainty. The way I have answered people when they asked me: “what if this doesn’t work” is to say it all works because we will learn what we need to do to tweak our responses, tweak our ways of doing things. Yet, I did not always follow my own wisdom, I did not always acknowledge my own “we do not know”. In reflection, I recognize the way my being ‘a bull in a china shop’ harmed people, harmed my mission, harmed me. For this, I am deeply remorseful. I also know that this way of being in the work, being aware of where and when I missed the mark and hit the mark, allowed me and those around me to pivot when needed, to refine how to serve, when to serve, where to serve, whom to serve. “We do not know” keeps me humble and open to learning! 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 301

“We do not know with what we must serve until we arrive there (Exodus 10:26). “All our service, all the good deeds we are doing in this world, we do not know whether they are of any value, whether they are really pure, honest or done for the sake of heaven, - until we arrive there-in the world to come, only there shall we learn what our service was here”(Rabbi Isaac Meir of Ger). (God in Search of Man pg. 394)

The quote from Exodus is part of the discourse/argument between Moses and Pharaoh and it is as true today as it was then. In our need for certainty, in our search for surety, in our misguided belief we can know everything, we are continually making proclamations about what is true, the ‘one right way’ to live is when, as the quote from Exodus above is teaching us that we are never sure, we are never 100% right. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling to us to be in this moment, to understand and realize what is needed to serve something greater than ourselves in this moment can’t truly be planned beforehand. We can prepare for the next moment, we can prepare for Rosh Hashanah, for Yom Kippur, and “we do not know with what we must serve until we arrive there”.

We spend so much time planning and trying to make today, tomorrow, the next moment into what we want it to be rather than accepting and living into the wisdom of Exodus, the teaching of Torah and Moses. We continue to give more power to the call of the Pharaoh inside of us instead of the Moses inside of us, we continue to listen to the Roman Emperor inside of us instead of the Jesus inside of us, we continue to understand the idol worshiper inside of us rather than the Divinity inside of us. As human beings we have all of these different voices inside of us-which pair depends on the particular spiritual discipline we follow- and we do not always take the time to discern which voice we are listening to, we get too caught up in seeking power, fame, wealth, ‘rightness’, and are unable/unwilling to ask ourselves the necessary questions to determine whether or not we are serving with the appropriate skills, tools, intentions, thoughts for this moment. Humanity’s history is one of looking forward and missing what is in front of us, seeking ‘the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow’ and not seeing what is needed to serve in this moment, serving God, serving one another, serving oneself.

Because of this way of being, we have been susceptible to the call of the Pharaoh’s, the Romans, the idolators outside of us. We have come to believe that someone will save us, that all we have to do is follow lockstep in the words and orders of whomever we have decided to serve, whomever calls the loudest, whomever appeals to the desires of our hearts and eyes the best. In every era, in every civilization, this path has led to ruin, to destruction, to being enslaved by “a new Pharaoh”. We see this happening in America right now; Trump, DeSantis, the 2025 project, the Heritage foundation, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the White Supremacist movement, the Christian Nationalism movement, etc, all are appealing to a segment of our population that wants to throw out the Constitution, that wants to have power over anyone who is not a White Christian male, a segment of people afraid to be in this moment and seek what we need to serve God, to move the words of the Declaration of Independence forward: “All men (people) are created equal”, to embody the words of the Talmud: “whomever saves one soul it is as if they have saved an entire world”.

It is time for us to do our inner inventories, it is time for us to recover the essence of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Eastern Philosophies, the Big Book of AA. Our future depends on our ability to live into this moment, to discern “with what we must serve” in this moment we have arrived at. We have the tools, we have the teachings, we have to use them in service of something greater than ourselves and stop lying to ourselves, we have to stop making excuses, we have to redeem the shame and blame of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I have erred in looking too far ahead at times, I have erred in believing my vision was the only one and being unaware of how I was screwing up the moment I was in because I was looking at where I wanted to be rather than where I was. I am sorry to those I harmed, while my intentions were ‘good’, I was oblivious at times to how my actions in the moment actually set us all on a path of destruction, a path of harm, a path away from what God wanted. I also am aware of how often I was in the moment, how often I was aware of what was needed to serve in the moment and, even though people thought I was crazy and wrong, I was able to serve and help people save their own souls. I am grateful to God and to the people who saw me and heard me for this ability to discern. 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 300

“The mind is never immune to “alien thoughts,” and there is no easy way of weeding them out. A hasidic rabbi, asked by his disciples in the last hours of his life whom they should choose as their master after his passing away, said:”If someone should give you advice on how to eradicate alien intentions, know he is not your master.””(God in Search of Man pg. 393/4)

Today is 9/11, 22 years after the Twin Towers went down, the Pentagon was attacked, and a plane of heroes died in Pennsylvania. Our country was challenged, attacked and we responded with unity of purpose, defending our democratic way of life. We didn’t do everything right, we discriminated against Muslims and lumped them all as terrorists, we went into Iraq with bad intelligence, we stayed too long in both places AND we brought together a coalition of nations to fight against the threat of “religious law”, we came together as a country to fight the “alien intentions” of false prophets of a Holy Tradition, we weeded out the “alien thoughts” of blame and shame to respond as a nation, as a world against terrorism. There is a generation growing up who doesn’t remember just being able to board a plane, doesn’t remember being certain of our safety, doesn’t remember not ‘being afraid of the stranger’, etc. It is sad that we have lost the ability to feel free and it is important for us to understand that certainty, safety were never real. Surety, power, safety, have always been a conventional notion and a mental cliche which has hindered growing in knowledge as Rabbi Heschel teaches. These are “alien thoughts” as the only safety is in our inner knowing, in our spiritual growth and this safety is the surety that whatever comes our way, we will be able to deal with, even if dealing with it is exile, as the Jews have done for over 2000 years.

Yet, we see over and over again how we fall back into willful blindness, into taking things for granted, into blaming someone else for our situations, rather than be responsible for our actions, be accepting of whatever comes our way, and having responses that come from our soul rather than the reactions of “alien thoughts”. Coco Gauff, the 19 year-old tennis sensation who just won the U.S. Open, is an example of one who finds a “way of weeding them out”. She talked herself out of the “alien thoughts” of negativity during her matches to reach the finals and then again in the finals. She focused her thoughts, her mind and spirit on the goal of winning, of doing the best she could and knowing that her best is good enough. In an interview I heard, this 19 year old sage expressed the spiritual truth that win or lose; life goes on, the people who love her are not leaving and all she can do is the best she can in the moment. We can all learn/relearn this lesson from her.

We also have to be aware of the “alien intentions” of the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11. We have to wake up and stop turning a blind eye to the “alien intentions” of those around us as well. The “alien intentions” of people, in power and who feel powerless, to make the majority subjugated to “christian nationalism”, to less freedom, to being indoctrinated into some form of being that resembles The Holy Roman Empire, a government that is authoritarian rather than democratic, a path of bastardizing the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc, is growing because too many good people are remaining silent, being afraid to stand up and be counted, and we are allowing evil to flourish. This is true on a global level, in our own country, in our states, in our community and in our personal lives. The month of Elul is the opportunity, given to us by God, to examine our intentions, examine our thoughts, examine our actions and weed out the “alien intentions” and the “alien thoughts”.

This is the challenge I have accepted for the past 36 years, beginning in prison. I have not been totally successful, I have acted on my “alien thoughts” at times, less and less each year. I have not, however, allowed “alien intentions” to rule me, I have listened to guides and sponsors, loved ones and even those who haven’t loved me so much, in order to weed out “alien intentions”. I have studied Torah, I have prayed, I have immersed myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and brilliance to bring me back to proper intentions-aka serving God and another human being. I have not always been sweet and nice, I have tried and succeeded most of the time to be kind. I have been weeding out my “alien thoughts” that come about as of being hurt by people I have tried to help. I have never wanted to admit that I am hurt and this is an “alien thought” that has hurt me and many others. Being hurt is part of being human, just as being disappointed and disappointing another is, yet I didn’t want to show weakness because of the “alien thought” that showing hurt, weakness leaves me too vulnerable. I no longer believe this and I am sorry to the people I hurt by not being more vulnerable. 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 299

“The mind is never immune to “alien thoughts,” and there is no easy way of weeding them out. A hasidic rabbi, asked by his disciples in the last hours of his life whom they should choose as their master after his passing away, said:”If someone should give you advice on how to eradicate alien intentions, know he is not your master.””(God in Search of Man pg. 393/4)

The challenge facing us today, as it has in every generation, is whether we are going to follow some “new Pharaoh” and become slaves to them because of our “alien thoughts” like our fears of not ‘fitting in’, our fear of being left out, our fears of being exiled, killed. History has shown us that our “alien thoughts” which bring about the response to ‘go along to get along’ do not protect us, remember the Pharaoh in Egypt, Herod being King of Judea, the Marrano’s in Spain, all of the ways we tried to please the kings and governments in Europe by doing the ‘work’ they didn’t want to and being blamed by the poor and the wealthy, oh yeah, and there was Hitler Germany where we believed because we fought for ‘our country’ the anti-semitism would ‘blow over’! Yet, we continue to engage in this way of being, in Israel, in America. We are continuing to allow the “new Pharaoh” to reinforce our “alien thoughts” with their own mendacities so we follow them to our ruin and the ruination of people around us and those we don’t even know.

When Donald Trump, who is a proven liar and assaulter of women, both in court and by his own words, remember the tape, can be leading the Republican Party race for the Presidential nomination, when he can be neck and neck in the polls for the general election against Joe Biden who is the exact opposite, our “alien thoughts” have invaded our being so badly that we seem to be unable to discern the lies we tell ourselves and the lies of another(s) that we buy into! When we continue to believe the fears and hatred of women that are being spewed by the right-wing zealots, when we go along with the reasoning that women should just ‘be pregnant and barefoot’, when we aver that women should be controlled by men, etc, we are allowing our “alien thoughts” to override what our soul is telling us, we are hearing the word of God through a filter of mendacity and lies. When we believe the power-hungry ideas of Netanyahu and his right-wing Orthodox cronies, when we lean into the autocratic words of Kevin McCarthy, the Heritage Foundation and so many other ‘conservative’ groups who want to take over the Government with their “2025 project”, we have lost our ability to see and hear truth, we have allowed our “alien thoughts” to overpower our spiritual truths, to override God’s call for the “strange god in thee” telling us to follow the deceptions of another and our own self-deceptions. We are watching people go against the wisdom of the Hasidic Master, we are suffering the consequences of these ‘leaders’ who’s “alien intentions” are alive and well, on full display and we refuse to see them and hold them accountable, instead we go along with them because they accuse everyone else of following “alien thoughts” and “alien intentions”, following the playbook of Josef Goebbels: “accuse someone else of that which you are guilty of”.

We are in the last 15 days prior to Yom Kippur, last night there were Sleichot Services across the Jewish World, the beginning of the “High Holy Day Season”, where speak of forgiving, where we continue, or begin, our personal accounting of the soul, and…my concern, my fear, is that most people’s “alien thoughts” are so strong, they cannot admit to themselves “the exact nature of their wrongs” as AA says, much less admit their errors to the people they have harmed. Many of our errors, our “missing the mark” actions are the result of these “alien thoughts” and T’Shuvah is the Jewish response to “weed them out”. While not easy, it is effective, while not pretty, it is the solution to finding the beauty within. We all need to be engaged in a program of recovery rather than mendacity, we all need to “become willing to make amends” and make “direct amends to such people wherever possible”. This is the command of this season, this is the reason for Yom Kippur, for T’Shuvah, to give us all a way back, to give us all the opportunity to “clean the slate”, to give us the opportunity to reconnect with people we have harmed, to be transparent and authentic with the people around us, to let go of the lies we tell ourselves, to weed out “alien thoughts” and redirect our “alien intentions” to intentions of service, kindness, truth and love.

In the past, as I have said, these “alien thoughts” got the better of me and I am sorry to those I could not hear and tried to help me, speak to me and I rejected/got angry at. I also have witnessed the speed with which these “alien thoughts” get weeded out now, I am elated at how study, truth, prayer, guidance, deepening a practice of spiritual growth, helps me recognize them even when they are coming at me by another who I trust and love! 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 298

“The mind is never immune to “alien thoughts,” and there is no easy way of weeding them out. A hasidic rabbi, asked by his disciples in the last hours of his life whom they should choose as their master after his passing away, said:”If someone should give you advice on how to eradicate alien intentions, know he is not your master.””(God in Search of Man pg. 393/4)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is so crucial to our well-being and so important to our freedom. Accepting the truth of the first sentence above is the beginning of our journey towards freedom from being ruled by our minds, being ruled by our emotions. Yet, too many of us believe we can think our way into and out of all situations, as Einstein says: “we have come to worship the servant”. It is a daily task to recognize the “alien thoughts” and not succumb to them out of force of habit and our own self-deception.

Living in today’s world, as in every era, we are confronted with “alien thoughts” by people who have “alien intentions” and they are intentional about their mendacity, they deceive both on and with purpose. This is their way and while condemning them is good, rebuking them is holy, we have to stop just pointing the finger at everyone/anyone else and look inside of ourselves. We have to delve into our own “alien thoughts”, we have to ask for help to release ourselves from the prison of self-deception and the prison of needing to be deceived so we can once again be free. This is the freedom we experienced at the Red Sea, this is the freedom we experienced at Sinai, this is the freedom that caused us to have a spontaneous declaration of “we will do and then we will understand/hear” (Exodus 24:7) when we were called upon to accept the Torah. And as the Bible teaches us, human beings immediately and continually broke this promise, forgot this covenant with God, with one another and with themselves.

We need to re-covenant with God, not a new covenant, not a new testament, rather reviving the original dynamic covenant, remembering we are to interpret it anew each year, in each generation. Just as nature is constantly changing and growing/contracting, so too do we humans change, grow, contract. Staying stuck in an old interpretation, staying stuck in old understanding of eternal ‘laws’, is a by-product of “alien thoughts” just as bastardizing the meaning, the purpose of eternal ‘laws’ is a product of our “alien intentions.”

We are in the month of Elul, we are in the time of the year when it is suggested/told that we should do a deep dive into our actions, our intentions, our thoughts and see which were actually “alien” and how we deceived ourselves into believing they were actually holy. Judging someone else’s “alien thoughts” and “alien intentions” is the path most of us take while wrapping ourselves in the cloak of righteousness, and this could be the most dangerous of our “alien thoughts”! While someone else is ‘fair game’ and an ‘easy target’, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above speaks to us, individually, and is calling to us to give up our own “big lie” of righteousness, our own “big lie” of how we have taken “the easy way of weeding them out”. I hear a demand to remove the mental make-up and the various masks we have been wearing, take off the outer clothes that protect us/shield us/fool everyone else and look truth in the face, see ourselves without the self-deceptions and lies we have used to feel okay and see the truth of our soul, admire and be guided by the light of our soul. September is “recovery month” and September usually coincides with the Jewish High Holy Days. I don’t think it is a coincidence, I believe the recovery movement along with the Jewish tradition knows this is the month the spiritual forces of compassion, mercy, kindness, justice, truth are at their zenith, and God knows we need all the help we can get to begin to recognize and weed out our “alien thoughts”!

I have not always done a good job of weeding out my “alien thoughts”. I have given in to them at times and each time, some damage has been caused either by me or the person/situation that these “alien thoughts” brought up/were caused by. I am sorry for not recognizing them earlier in the process, I am sorry for the damage I have caused to people for engaging in them. I am sorry for being deceived by my “alien thoughts”, by another’s “alien thoughts” and not weeding them out sooner. Each year, as I look back, I know that I was better and, I also know that I made many errors over the years because of these “alien thoughts”. The one that stands out to me is the “alien thought”; ‘these are my friends and they will have my back’ and deciding what “having my back” meant. What I learned is some of the people were/are my friends and others not so much. I also learned that “having my back” comes in many different forms and sometimes God and another(s) know better than I! 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 297

“Disguised polytheism is also the religion of him who combines with the worship of God the devotion to his own gain, as it is said There shall be no strange god in thee(Psalms 81:10), on which our teachers remarked that it meant the strange god in the very self of man(Bahya Duties of the Heart Chapter 10)(God in Search of Man pg.392)

How is it possible, after history has shown us the fallacy of believing in and worshiping “the strange god in the very self of man”, we continue to believe in and follow the “strange god” in ourselves and/or the “strange god” in another(s)? Reading ‘the polls’ and seeing how a proven liar, a grifter, a man who tried to destroy our democracy is leading the pack in the Republican Party presidential nomination race, how he is neck and neck with the current President, how he is indicted in 4 separate jurisdictions, it is amazing to many people that we are so unwilling to acknowledge the “strange god” within us so we fail to see and reject the “strange god” in another.

I have been pondering this phenomenon of “strange god in thee” and realize the Psalmist was cautioning us to not follow our rationalizations, to let go of our need for certainty, to seek truth rather than falsehood, to wrestle with God, with humans and with our own inner chaos in order to serve God and not “the strange god in thee”. It is a difficult journey, it entails our need to know what is unknowable, it means we have to worship God and not need the results to be ‘our way’, it calls to us to engage in being in the solution and understanding the results are out of our control, it means being human. Yet, time immemorial, we reject our humanness and try to be god, hence the “strange god in the very self of man”.

Our inability to admit our powerlessness, our lack of control of people, places and things, our fear of being uncertain, of not knowing all the answers, etc gives rise to our false fears, our feelings of shame, and these lead us to seek “strange god” in another and/or ourselves. This is how, smart people, people of faith, can be ‘led to the slaughter’ of their goodness, their humanness by the charlatans who preach hate and call it love, preach separation and call it Godly, preach separation and call it community, who call themselves ‘servants of God’ while truly seeking to serve themselves.

We are in the month of Elul with only 17 days left till Kol Nidre, isn’t it time to get busy with our own inventories, with seeing how and when we missed the mark and how and when we hit the mark, rather than continuing to blame anyone else, rather than continuing to look outside of ourselves for “bad guys” who are the source of our troubles? This month in the Jewish Calendar is for all of us to use the forces of compassion, mercy, truth that are so prevalent at this time of year and look inside of ourselves, find the “strange god” within us, repair the inner damages that lead us to follow this “strange god” and regain God’s vision for us, attach ourselves to our authentic self more, immerse ourselves in a spiritual discipline that includes prayer, T’Shuvah, pursuing justice and right actions, caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy instead of hating them and jailing them, releasing ourselves from our self-deceptions and following the deceptions of another(s).

Last night our film, “The Jewish Jail Lady and the Holy Thief” was shown at Congregation Beth-El of Montgomery County where my daughter, Heather, is the executive director. Watching it again brought the painful reality of the wreckage my combining my worship with my own gains, it brought the power of the “strange god in” me and how I used it to harm so many people who loved/love me. I have done T’Shuvah with Heather, with family and friends, and I still am haunted by myriad of ways this “strange god in” me can rear it’s ugliness and destruction. I am aware that even while serving people, even while being part of the holy work of Beit T’Shuvah, I still gave into the “strange god in” me and the “strange god in” another(s). I am so remorseful for those times, I see how those actions led to harming people and harming me. I have made my amends where and when I could, I have accepted the rejection of these amends by the few who have rejected them, I also have forgiven everyone who followed the “strange god in” themselves and harmed me, themselves and everyone else around them. It is not my job to be judgmental, it is not my place to be “holier than thou”, it is my place to understand, to have compassion and to repair myself and the errors I have made. I can only be a help/guide for the people who have sought me out in past years, who seek me out today. 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 296

“Disguised polytheism is also the religion of him who combines with the worship of God the devotion to his own gain, as it is said There shall be no strange god in thee(Psalms 81:10), on which our teachers remarked that it meant the strange god in the very self of man(Bahya Duties of the Heart Chapter 10)(God in Search of Man pg.392)

“In the beginning…the earth was empty and chaotic, darkness was over the deep and the spirit of God hovered over the waters. God said: “Let there be light and there was light”(Genesis: 1:1-3). These opening words of the Bible do not just describe the earth at it’s inception, they describe the human condition as well. Many of us have felt empty and chaotic inside, we have been overwhelmed with darkness in our minds and our inner lives, and God is always hovering within us and around us. God is calling to us to see the light, God is calling to us to connect to the source of the universe, the source of life and many of us are unable to hear the call. We stay stuck in the darkness, we continue to feel empty and chaotic and we project all three onto the people in our lives.

Emptiness, chaos, darkness are part of our internal make-up, we have a divine inclination and an earthly inclination. They are not something to ‘get rid of’, not something to ignore nor despise, these parts of our being are for us to transform to serve God, to serve one another, and in doing so, we grow in our humanity, we grow in our purpose, we tend our own particular corner of the world. When we engage in “disguised polytheism”, we are negating the call of God to the light, the call of God to connect, the agreement to be in a covenantal relationship with God and with human beings. Herein lies the great dilemma for us, how do we let go of our rational logic of ‘what’s best for me’ and lean into ‘how do I serve God and human beings in my unique way’. One of the ways we engage in “disguised polytheism”, I believe, is our insistence on following a dogma rather than worshiping God. Dogma, while it gives us certainty, leads us to staying stuck in either/or thinking, my way is the best/only true way, change is my enemy, mendacity is truth, up is down, and allows us to live in ‘blissful’ self-deception.

Immersing myself in the teaching above, the “strange god in thee” is our attachment to our rational thinking/our dogmas in the face of our spiritual logic and God’s call to us. We have become so rooted in our self-deceptions, in our “strange god in thee” as to be deaf to the call of one another, to be blind to what God is showing us, to use our deeds to serve ourselves while worshiping not God, but the idols we have created to be our god. Rather than being in competition with one another, rather than continuing to see the world as we always have, rather than pining for ‘the good old days’, I hear Rabbi Heschel, the Psalmist, Bahya, disturbing our blissful self-deceptions, our engagements in mendacity, our practice of worshiping “the strange god in thee”, by reminding us of the destruction these practices bring. We are destroying our democracy, we are destroying the spirit of our exodus from Egypt by continuing to engage in our “disguised polytheism”.

It is ironic that we speak about our exodus from Egypt twice each day in our prayers and we remind ourselves to not “scout out after our hearts and eyes because we will whore/prostitute ourselves after them” and then go into the world and do exactly that. Rather than continue the journey from slavery to freedom, we keep turning back to the inner slaveries of mendacity, self-deception, deception of another(s), believing “the strange god in thee” is what we need to worship and seeking our own gain rather than serving God in truth, rather than caring for one another as we are taught in the Bible. We are told there are 70 faces of Torah, 70 ways to understand each verse, chapter and yet, we stay stuck in our old interpretations because they suit our idol worship. We stay stuck in the judgmental beliefs of earlier selves, we fail to recognize that the Bible, that faith, that worship has to be dynamic, it is ever-changing within us if we are to be people of faith, if we are to worship God and not “the strange god in thee”.

I am guilty of worshiping “the strange god in thee” at times even in my recovery. I have turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to my own rationalizations and called them Godly when they were actually godly. I have erred on the side of my ‘rightness’ and not heard nor seen truth when it was calling to me and in my face. I apologize to those who have been frustrated by calling to me in those moments and my ignoring their call, which I know was also God’s call. I have learned to hear the people around me more, I have learned to discern those who are calling to me from their God-Image and those who call from their own. I hear better, I see better and I am better each day, at least one grain of sand. 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 295

“Disguised polytheism is also the religion of him who combines with the worship of God the devotion to his own gain, as it is said There shall be no strange god in thee(Psalms 81:10), on which our teachers remarked that it meant the strange god in the very self of man(Bahya Duties of the Heart Chapter 10)(God in Search of Man pg.392)

Rabbi Heschel’s use of the phrase “disguised polytheism” gives us the opportunity to look inside of ourselves and see what we are hiding both in our worship as well as in our religious/spiritual/secular lives. We change our clothes often, we hide our fat, our thinness, we hide the blemishes on our skin, we hide our motives, we hide our intentions, we hide our thoughts, we hide our souls’ purpose, we hide our false gods, we hide, we hide, we hide! Yet, no matter how many years we live the month of Elul, no matter how many days we live with the opportunity/demand to do T’Shuvah, to do a Chesbon HaNefesh, we seem incapable of escaping the myriad of hiding places we have come to call home.

As I read the words above, I am in awe of the brilliance of the Psalmist, the prophets, Bahya, Rabbi Heschel, et al, who know the human condition so well they can point out to us where the exit from our hiding is, they are the light that shows us the tunnel, they illuminate the exit doors that will save our souls, save our integrity, save our lives. And, we have been consistently deaf to them, we have consistently been blind to the paths out of hiding they provide to us, we have continued to ignore, deride, quote without any meaning/context their words to hide in plain sight our evils, our errors, our unwillingness to change.

We are so eager to follow “him who combines with the worship of God the devotion to his own gain” in our politics, in our business, even in our personal relationships, we don’t even notice our incongruences, our deceptions, our self-deceptions, our mendacities. This way of being is a “conventional norm” in our society, it is an accepted way of being, so we are oblivious to the truth of our ways of living and defend these disguises to our death. In our political life, people are following a man who only worships his own gain, who only worships God in order to gain for himself. We are witnessing an entire political party go down the rabbit hole of disguise, sink to the depths of mendacity by denying truth that they acknowledged before. Instead of “Morning in America” as Ronald Reagan said, these people of Reagan’s party are promoting Mourning in America! In our business world, companies and individuals agree to pay fines without ever taking responsibility, insurance companies turn down requests by Doctors for medication, procedures that will save lives, help people with serious illness, routinely by people who have no medical expertise-their only job is to say NO, and to make more money for the company. Workers are demanding living wages, they are demanding to be treated as worthwhile and contributing partners to the company executives, board members, and shareholders that are profiting so much from their labor and the ‘powers that be’ cry poor, cry wolf and hide their money so they don’t have to provide workers, actors, writers,their fair share.

We can only change the status quo, the broken political system, the rigged business system one person at a time. While regulations, laws, enforcements will and have gotten the ball rolling, the gains of the 60’s and what happened to them are important lessons. We allowed the gains made in Civil Rights, in Voting Rights to wither away, we took for granted that we won the war and we could move on; yet the people who engage in and practice “disguised polytheism”, that “combines with the worship of God the devotion to his own gain” never stop seeking ways to overturn any societal gains that call for them to come out of hiding, that demand they put down their disguises. Hence, our political, economic/labor and personal situations that we face seem so daunting.

Immersing myself in these words today remind me the difference between role to role relationships and soul to soul relationships. I have never hidden my soul’s purpose and passion, while I have, at times, bought my own press, I have always allowed, welcomed (eventually) people reminding me of who I am and to cut the crap. I am a loud, abrasive fighter for the soul of another, I am an advocate for the souls of human beings. I realize how ingrained “disguised polytheism” is in all of us and my Chesbon HaNefesh is designed to uncover the disguises I have been unaware of. I have been one who has “devotion to his own gain” and when it has been only about my gain at times in my recovery, I have suffered as have those around me. For this, I am very sorry and remorseful. I also know these times have been few and farther between the more I have grown and continue to grow in my spiritual life, in my recovery and in my coming out of hiding! 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 294

“Such a person is worse than an idol-worshiper … . The latter, paying homage to the stars, worships an object that does not rebel against God, whereas the former worships beings some of whom rebel against God. The former only worships one object, but there is no limit to the number of human beings whom the perverse in religion may worship. Finally the inner attitude of the idolator is apparent to everybody; people can guard themselves from him—his denial of God is public knowledge. The hypocrite’s denial, however, is unnoticed … . This makes him the worst of the universal evils(Bahya, Duties of the Heart, Chapter 4). (God in Search of Man pg. 392)

Our insatiable desire to fool ourselves and everyone else, our incessant need to be ‘perfect’, has caused us to become the very people Bahya is speaking about. We are so accustomed to hiding, to wearing masks that we have put on so much mental make-up that we have almost forfeited our faces. We hide our hypocrisies, our incongruences from everyone and tell ourselves a story so we can live with our self-deceptions and our mendacities towards everyone else.

This is the greatest spiritual, mental crisis we are facing today, as it has been throughout history: being authentic, being transparent, being real, living into our imperfections instead of hiding them, denying them and blaming others for them. We see this in politics all the time, Kevin McCarthy wants to move attention from Trump’s crimes and misdemeanors by impeaching Joe Biden for nothing other than he can and his power is dependent upon worshiping “beings some of whom rebel against God.” We hear of Hunter Biden’s crimes, which are serious and not “that” serious while Jared Kushner parlayed his father-in-law’s presidency into a cozy $2 Billion dollar gift from the Saudis and Kevin is mum on this! We watch as the ‘religious right’ do everything they can to demean, disgrace and disregard anyone that is “not with them” and doesn’t think like them, etc. Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, both Supreme Court Justices, believe they are beyond reproach, beyond questioning, behaving as Richard Nixon did, believing that if they do something, it must be ethical, it must be just, etc. The hubris of our politicians is enormous and deadly for us and our democracy because of the worship of humans instead of worshiping God.

In our living rooms, families hide from one another, we teach our children to “not air our dirty laundry”, “what would the neighbors think”, and other such lessons teaching our children to hide and to lie, to worship human beings out of fear of them finding out who ‘we really are’ and rejecting us and/or worshiping them so we can reap some benefits. These ways of being are learned in our home while also saying the ‘right’ things about “Love God with all of your heart, your soul, your everything”. We learn hypocrisy from an early age and it is so ingrained into our society, most people are totally unaware of their incongruences and point their fingers at everyone without looking inside themselves. This is the tragedy of our time, of all times.

Yet, the prophet Jeremiah reminds us: “Return you backsliding children, I will heal your backsliding(Jeremiah 3:22), the prophet Hosea calls out to us to:”Take with you words and return to God, Accept that which is good”. We can be true to ourselves and accepted back by God, we can be true to ourselves and accept our whole selves for maybe the first time since infancy. We need to live into Elul and the compassionate, considerate, loving forces that are so prevalent in the Cosmos at this time of year. God cries for us, our children cry out for us, our parents cry out for us, all of them echoing  the first call to the first couple: “Ayecha, where are you?”

This call rings in my ears, in my mind, in my soul each day for the entirety of my life up till now. For many years, I hid from it, for the past 36, I have been responding with Hineni, no matter where I have been-even in hiding, even in denial, even in obliviousness. I am guilty of falling into the different traps that I mentioned above. I have falsely thought I was serving God when actually serving another human being out of fear/gain. I hid from people my insecurities, my fears that they would leave me if I didn’t do what they wanted rather than what God wanted at moments even in my recovery. I also was true to God and to myself during these times, a nuanced both/and. My fear of being abandoned, not ‘in the club’ drove these false moments, were the gasoline that fueled my incongruences, my hypocritical actions. I apologize to everyone harmed by these false moments and I apologize to God for my betrayal. These have lessened over the years and the fear of abandonment no longer drives me, as it has happened in some cases and I am sad, just not devastated. 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 293

“Such a person is worse than an idol-worshiper … . The latter, paying homage to the stars, worships an object that does not rebel against God, whereas the former worships beings some of whom rebel against God. The former only worships one object, but there is no limit to the number of human beings whom the perverse in religion may worship. Finally the inner attitude of the idolator is apparent to everybody; people can guard themselves from him—his denial of God is public knowledge. The hypocrite’s denial, however, is unnoticed … . This makes him the worst of the universal evils(Bahya, Duties of the Heart, Chapter 4). (God in Search of Man pg. 392)

Immersing ourselves in Bahya’s writing above, I hear Rabbi Heschel’s demanding us to look inside of ourselves and come to terms with our own incongruences, our own actions that serve ourselves paths of hypocrisy. The last two sentences above cut right to the heart of the issues facing us today as they have from time immemorial. The issue is not our incongruences as much as it is our denial of them, of our refusal to be embarrassed by them, of our inability to acknowledge and change them. Rather than follow a path of T’Shuvah, we instead practice our denials, our hiding from ourselves and everyone else, our wearing of masks of piety, of righteousness, and this leads people to believe in us to their ruin, to the ruin of decency, the ruin of truth, the ruin of freedom. Coming to grips with the truth that all of us are incongruent at times, all of us say one thing and do another at times is crucial for our growth, imperative to our ending the practice of evil that we perpetrate upon one another by our incongruent behaviors. Yet, we continue to run away from facing ourselves, from calling out the hypocrite, from even discerning the perverseness of the people Rabbi Heschel and Bahya are speaking about.

These are the people the prophets railed against, the priests who would offer sacrifices while engaging in ways that served the rich and the powerful. Their words and warnings fell on deaf ears, just as the words of people who speak truth to power today and have throughout the millennia fall on deaf ears. As I ponder the words above, I realize more and more that we, the people, buy into the words of these ‘false prophets’ because they say what we want to hear, we ignore their actions and buy into the lies they tell us because we are afraid to see the truth of ourselves, we are afraid to admit our own hypocritical ways, we are unwilling to look at the times when we don’t ‘walk our talk’. So, we go along with the ‘strongmen’, the authoritarians, the populists believing they will save us from having to look at ourselves, make our amends and change our ways; which leads to our loss of freedom, to what makes us human as Rabbi Abraham Twerski teaches: our ability to make “free-will moral choices”.

There is a solution, we are not stuck in the evil that the false pietists spread, and that is engaging in a path of recovery, one of the paths of Torah, of the Bible. We are in the middle of Elul, we are 22 days from Yom Kippur and, as we learn in the Talmud (Tractate Yoma 86b), “Reb Meir would say: Great is repentance because the entire world is forgiven on account of one individual who repents as it is stated: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from him”(Hosea 14:5). Since we do not know which “him” the prophet is speaking of, we all need to repent! We all need to see the difference between living as a hypocrite and actions of hypocrisy that we are all susceptible to and engage in from time to time. This is the basis of the recovery movement, this is the basis of Torah, our imperfections, our incongruences, and our return. We have to let go of our need to hide, our need to ‘save our face’ and, instead, save our beingness, save our tuchus’, save our humanity and the humanity of everyone else.

The first time I was taught the words of Reb Meir, I was overwhelmed with anxiety, fear and relief. I had to make a decision, would I trust our ancient wisdom, would I truly ‘turn my will and my life over to the care of God…” and engage in the ways of living as a Baal T’Shuvah, a repentant? It was at this moment I realized what living Hineni, here I am, meant. I made a decision 36+ years ago to continue to ‘come clean’ upon realizing my own hypocritical actions, my own incongruent ways of being. I missed the mark over these past 36 years by giving into my fears, my seeking personal benefits, and going along to get along. I also missed the mark through living into the caricature of me that I painted and others put on me. I am so remorseful for these harms, for these ‘evil’ ways and I improve upon them each time I realize the myriad of disguises they take. I have not always walked my talk and I know I will never be perfect in doing this. I do, however, also know I get a little better at it 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 292

“Such a person is worse than an idol-worshiper … . The latter, paying homage to the stars, worships an object that does not rebel against God, whereas the former worships beings some of whom rebel against God. The former only worships one object, but there is no limit to the number of human beings whom the perverse in religion may worship. Finally the inner attitude of the idolator is apparent to everybody; people can guard themselves from him—his denial of God is public knowledge. The hypocrite’s denial, however, is unnoticed … . This makes him the worst of the universal evils(Bahya, Duties of the Heart, Chapter 4). (God in Search of Man pg. 392)

Continuing Rabbi Heschel’s writing on “disguised polytheism”, this quote from Bahya Ben Joseph Ibn Pekudah, a 10th Century Spanish Jewish scholar and mystic, illuminates the issues we face daily, are our ‘religious’ acts that are out of fear of another human being, that are to benefit from another human being or are they truly religious acts that are serving God. Bahya’s differentiation between an idolator and a person who does things to serve another out of fear and/or to benefit themselves is crucial for us to look inside of ourselves during this month of Elul and see the damage we bring to ourselves and to another(s) when we practice “disguised polytheism”. While we rail against the “idol-worshiper” and, in many circumstances, call anyone who doesn’t worship the way we do an idolator, a pagan, Rabbi Heschel’s use of Bahya’s words here demand we look at ourselves, demand we see the ways we have acted in hypocritical ways and the evils we have perpetrated this evil upon another(s) and upon the world. It is very difficult for most of us to admit the hypocritical acts we have committed, the ways in which we have “sold out” our friends in order to ‘go up the ladder’, the ways we have ‘gone along to get along’, the actions we have taken ‘because it was just business’, ‘everyone does it’, all the while extolling ourselves for our charity and, as I read the quote above, false piety. Bahya’s words describe how we ‘hide in plain sight’. It is a universal challenge for us to look at ourselves, see how we do this in daily activities, do our T’Shuvah, and change our ways.

We are quick to point out the ways another(s) act in hypocritical ways and seem to be unwilling to see the 3 fingers pointing back at ourselves. We are all guilty of being hypocritical, none of us are perfect, and we are being called out for these actions by the words above. We worship the ‘leader’, we seek to ‘be on the right side’ of things/life, we speak out against injustices in the public square and engage in injustice in our private affairs. Business’ have decided providing more money to their shareholders is more important than taking care of customers, they have hidden facts, provided false narratives/reports, engaged in misleading advertising, etc, knowing full well that what they are doing is just for the sake of their jobs, their longevity, ie from fear of losing something and to benefit themselves and another who holds some power over them. We see this in our political realm, how Jim Jordan, et al, are weaponizing Government while accusing the Democrats of doing this ala Josef Goebbels’ “accuse another of that which you are guilty of” and how many people are deceived by these tactics. We also see this in our personal lives, people trying to hide their hypocritical acts by defending them, by accusing another of the same action, by forcing their will upon their children, their parents, their neighbors, their schools, religious institutions, their local social-service institutions and lying to ourselves that this is ‘in the best interests of all concerned’.

Recovering people no longer hide, we still act in hypocritical ways at times and we do our daily, yearly inventory to uncover these blind spots, make our amends and change our ways. We also learn how to spot the path of our own hypocrisy quicker and get back on the path of truth rather than continue on the path of  “disguised polytheism”. My own inventories over the days and years have shown me that I still engage in hypocrisy and I don’t live there anymore. I have, in the past, said I welcome everyone and, at the same time, been judgmental. I have spoken of living an examined life and, at times, been willfully blind to my own shortcomings. I have said I love all while not liking some and my bluster, my aggressive ways have pushed people away. I have spoken truth to power and, at times, lied to myself. The difference between being in recovery and being in denial is my hypocrisies are actions, not the way I am living. I live out loud, so it is easy for another to spot my hypocrisies and help me get back on the path, rather than hiding in plain sight as so many people do. I also know I am not a hypocrite nor an idolator, I am human and T’Shuvah, Step 10 in AA, gives me the ability to see my hypocrisy sooner, hear people when they call me out, and change. 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 291

“One may observe all the laws and still be practicing a disguised polytheism. For if in performing a religious act one’s intention is to please a human being who he fears or from whom he hopes to receive benefits, then it is not God whom he worships but a human being.”(God in Search of Man pg. 392)

Looking at the “blue moon” of last night/this morning reminds us that we are in the middle of the month of Elul, we are beginning the ‘home stretch’ to Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above gives us the opportunity to look at our intentions, our motives, our actions and ask ourselves: whom are we serving? The challenge Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is giving us is to review our actions truthfully and determine if they were actually “religious” or self-serving, were they serving God or another human being for our gain, safety, etc.

Throughout the millennia we can see how we have come to “bow down or bend over” in accordance of the original meaning of worship. In Hebrew, the root of the word is “to serve” and “thanksgiving”. Using these definitions, we can begin to see when and where we have confused worshiping God with worshiping people, when and where we bow down and serve human beings from a place of fear and benefit, reward and punishment. It is crucial for us to discern the difference between giving thanks to God for everything in our lives, letting go of our erroneous rewarding and punishing God images, and review our actions this past year(s) through the lens of how we “bow down” to God in reverence and joy, how we “bend over” to fulfill God’s will instead of our own, how we seek “to serve” something greater than ourselves, and how we participate in “thanksgiving” offerings, no matter the results of our efforts/actions.

Rabbi Heschel’s call to us is to end our confusion between serving God and serving human beings for our gain. Religious acts bring us closer to our authentic selves when we take them in the name of God, not in the names of fear and/or personal benefit. We are taught by Antigonos of Socho: “Be not like servants who wait upon their master in the expectation of receiving a reward, but be like servants who wait upon their master in no expectation of reward”(Pirke Avot 1:5). Our serving human beings and/or God “with the expectation of a reward”, relieving our fears and/or receiving a benefit is the same as the first half of this teaching. These, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel today, are not religious acts and we have come to call them such, unfortunately. As we approach the last half of Elul, as we make a “searching and fearless inventory” of the past year(s), it is crucial for us to discern the actions we have taken and will take that are actually done “in the expectation of receiving a reward”. These actions are not in service, they are not taken to bow down, bend over, nor be thankful to God, they are actions in service of ourselves, bowing down to our fears, being thankful for some personal gain, bending over to be rewarded by another human being.

It is time for us to be truthful with ourselves, with another human being and with God, as the 5th Step of Alcoholics Anonymous guides us to be. It is time for us to see how our self-interest has gotten in the way of serving God, of doing the next right thing, of living into God’s will, the teachings of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc. It is time for us to discern the ways we have betrayed our souls, betrayed our family, our friends, our democracy, by being a person who serves God and/or human beings “in expectation of receiving a reward”. It is imperative, if we are to save democracy, if we are to save religion, if we are to save community, if we are to save ourselves for us to engage in this inventory, to make our amends to ourselves for acting out of fear, whether it is fear of being punished or fear of missing out (FOMO). It is imperative to make our amends to human beings for giving them the false idea that we worship them, for feeding their egos to the point they believe their own BS, for betraying them by staying silent when they needed a spokesperson, an aide, a word.

I have been guilty of these behaviors in the past and I realize this more and more as I write these daily blogs. While I told myself that I stayed in truth, I see where, at times, my actions were in furtherance of my personal gain-keeping a job, making a living, etc., both before and in my recovery. I am deeply remorseful for these times and I see where they harmed me and another human being as my not serving them out of fear/benefit led to separations and anger. I also know my anger at times was not ‘passion’ as I tried to pass it off as, it wasn’t “righteous anger”, it was personal and I am sorry for the anger and the denial. I betrayed God, self and everyone else when I was acting from fear/benefit and I deeply regret these moments and I know I am not living from fear/benefit today. 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 290

“One may observe all the laws and still be practicing a disguised polytheism. For if in performing a religious act one’s intention is to please a human being who he fears or from whom he hopes to receive benefits, then it is not God whom he worships but a human being.”(God in Search of Man pg. 392)

Re-reading this teaching of Rabbi Heschel makes me weep. Because “the heart is deceitful above all things, it is exceedingly weak, who can know it”(Jeremiah 17:9), I hear Rabbi Heschel reminding us to not be so sure of our motives, not be so sure we are serving God, remember how difficult it is to be wholehearted in our worship. This level of uncertainty and questioning of ourselves is what most people run from, what most of us are unwilling to examine and do T’Shuvah for. Yet, we continue to lie to ourselves, we continue to ‘wear’ the mask of piety, we continue to falsify our motives in order to wrap ourselves in the cloak of religiosity/spirituality!

As I re-read these words, I hear Rabbi Heschel calling all of us to task to examine our lives, to go through the pain of an examined life, to make our amends to God for trying to “please a human being” who we either “fear or from whom” we hope “to receive benefits.” Humankind has fallen into this trap over and over, we have served Kings out of fear, in order to be granted some kindness/benevolence, we have served bosses/employers in order to ‘get ahead’, to get a paycheck. We have served ‘our people’ in order to ‘be in the group’, we have served people out of fear of them leaving us. We have heard and been told that doing this will bring us a reward in the world to come, we have heard that ‘going along to get along’ will keep us safe, we have been told that “only I/he can save us” and return us to ‘the good old days’. Our desire to be deceived and the disease of self-deception are so powerful, we believe the lies that our weak heart tells us and we forfeit our souls, our strength, our connection to God, just as Samson did.

Our political crises’ here, in Israel, across the globe are proof of the teaching of Rabbi Heschel above. When the religious parties in Israel proclaim they are above the Arab population and ‘better than’ ‘those’ people, we are witnessing proof of Rabbi Heschel’s warning and teaching. When the religious people in America extol Donald Trump because he put enough judges on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, when they call him the ‘anointed one’ of Jesus, we are witnessing “a disguised polytheism” as Rabbi Heschel is calling this idolatrous way of being. When business do things to please their shareholders at the expense and harm to everyone else and claiming it is their ‘god-given’ right, we see Rabbi Heschel’s warning being ignored. When we are members of a club so we don’t say or do anything that would go against another member of our club, we are ignoring Rabbi Heschel’s words. When we worry more about “advice of counsel” than human decency, human connection, we are perpetuating the polytheism Rabbi Heschel is decrying. When we are willing to go to any lengths to not ‘rock the boat’ we are surrendering our spiritual values for our rationalizations, to our fears, we are guilty as charged by Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. When we are admonished for speaking truth about Israel’s current government and policies, when we are called traitors for calling out that “the emperor has no clothes” in regards to the Republican Party of today, we experience how strong the “disguised polytheism” of our world is. And, it all begins and ends with us, the individuals who make up governments, who are the electors, who are the people going along with the deceptions, the mendacities being perpetrated by the few. It is up to us, the individual, who are afraid to stand up to the ‘strongmen’ like Putin, Orban, MBS, Netanyahu, Trump, Jordan, et al. We ‘liberals’ deceive ourselves by being ‘on the right side’ of causes, by declaring our love of God, our adherence to ‘all the laws”, etc. all the while being unwilling to look at our own deceitful hearts, our own subtle ways of seeking benefits from our observances of whatever particular ‘code’ our ‘side’ calls for.

I am weeping because of my blindness, willful and unintentional, to the ways I have done ‘good’ actions out of both fear and wanting to reap benefits. In my recovery I have been more aware and I cannot claim anywhere near perfection. In looking back, I also see that every time I acted from fear and/or benefit, things never worked out so well, sometimes in the short term, sometimes in the long term. I am sorry to the people I harmed by serving people out of fear and/or benefit. I am sorry for the example I set when I did this. I am grateful that these times were fewer and farther in-between and I am grateful I have taken off my own blinders and don’t let fear nor benefit blur my vision nor feed my self-deception. 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 289

“The prophet complained, “They never put their heart into their prayers, but howl away for corn and wine beside their altars” (Hosea 7:14). According to the Book of Proverbs (11:20), “they that are perverse in the heart are an abomination to the Lord.” Yet the prophet seems to have realized how hard it is not to be perverse, not to be an abomination.The heart is deceitful above all things, It is exceedingly weak—who can know it?”(Jeremiah 17:9) (God in Search of Man pg 391)

Last week I heard John Kasich say that what we need in our country is a “spiritual revolution”. He was speaking about our current political climate, our current climate of violence, hatred, racism, anti-semitism, and the fact that the Republican Party’s first debate was about hatred, violence, etc. Yesterday I heard Clarence Jones, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s attorney and the person that helped write the “I have a Dream” speech say: “I am telling you that there's a level of violence, and there's a deep level of antisemitism in this country. I'm not trying to cry wolf. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just telling you what I see.” We are experiencing what the prophets saw and called out-the deceitful heart of human beings being acted out in real time, in our time, in all times.

The spiritual revolution that Mr. Kasich and Mr. Jones are speaking about is being ignored, is being co-opted by the “religious right”. We, the people, no matter what faith or non-faith we are a part of, need to stop being “they that are perverse in the heart”. Rabbi Joachim Prinz, who spoke just prior to Dr. King at the March on Washington, said: “When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not '.the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.” Silence, unfortunately, is what is happening today as it did in the 1960’s, as it did at the times of the destructions of both Temples in Jerusalem, as it is in Israel. Not that people are not speaking out, not that legislation is not being proposed, it is the silence of some of the people in power, it is the silence that allows us to “go along to get along”, it is the silence of ‘thank God the anger isn’t directed towards me. This is how deep the deceitfulness and perverseness of our hearts runs. Where are the spiritual leaders, where are our elected officials who can deliver on “the promissory note” of the spirit of our Declaration of Independence, who can deliver on the “promissory note” of the spirit of our Constitution? They seem to be in short supply and this is the tragedy of our time as it has been the tragedy of all the times in history when men decided to stay silent while witnessing the destruction of freedom, witnessing and participating with the charlatans claiming to speak in God’s name. Is it any wonder people are leaving our Houses of Worship when they “speak in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion”, as Rabbi Heschel begins God in Search of Man with?

It is time for all of us to rise up, to speak up, to listen to the call of our souls, to listen to the calls of our neighbors crying out for justice, for freedom, for truth. The way to cure our diseases of perverseness, of deceitfulness, of heartlessness, is to speak truth to ourselves, listen to the truth of our souls, allow truth to defeat our petty and dangerous rationalizations. The way to cure our “exceedingly weak” heart is to surround ourselves with truth seekers, with “spiritual friends” who will help us “circumcise the foreskin of our heart”(Deut.10:16). The cure has to come from within, it has to begin with a willingness to seek out people of truth rather than surround ourselves with “People of the Lie” as M.Scott Peck speaks about in his book of the same name. Each time we give in to the perverseness and deceitfulness of our hearts and of the hearts of those around us, we become “people of the lie”! Judaism and recovery have a solution: T’Shuvah and Inventory. In both spiritual paths we are told to take inventory/do T’Shuvah each day, seeing where we are hitting the mark and where we are missing the mark. Our obligation is to enhance the good, repair the not so good, learn from both and “grow along spiritual lines”.

In this month of Elul, I realize my own surrender to the deceitfulness of my heart  at times. In my recovery, these times were much less and yet, they were more covert as well and no less harmful. I allowed myself to be deceived out of financial fears, aka keeping my job. I allowed my deceitful heart to be in charge because of a deep desire to be accepted and loved. Each time, I and many people suffered the consequences of my choices. I wasn’t aware of my deceitful heart until after the consequences fell. I also know thy myriad of times I did not give into the deception of my heart, I stood up for truth as I still do today. I am not silent, I will not be silenced. I will not stand by the anti-semitism, violence, racism, hatred being spewed by ‘good people’, by ‘spiritual leaders’, etc. Rabbi Heschel, Judaism, recovery will not let me buy into deception any more nor will they allow me to be silent. I pray they do the same for you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark