Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 115

“The prophet disdains those for whom God’s presence is comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand. God is compassion, not compromise; justice, though not inclemency. The prophet’s predictions can always be proved wrong by a change in man’s conduct, but never the certainty that God is full of compassion.” (Essential Writings pg. 63)

In the second sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is describing not only God’s attributes, he is teaching us how to be human, how to be in order to “live a life that is compatible with being a partner of God’s.” Compassion comes from the Latin meaning “to suffer with” and Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that God “suffers with” human beings. While many of us feel alone in our suffering, Rabbi Heschel and the prophets call out to us that we are not alone, that God is with us in our suffering as well as with us in our joy. Living a life with God as our partner doesn’t mean we will not have suffering as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, it means we never suffer alone. God also doesn’t compromise which is a jarring statement at first blush. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to never “accept standards that are less than desirable”, as one definition of compromise states. Having “compassion” and no “compromise” gives human beings a great challenge. How can we “suffer with” one another and not “accept standards that are less than desirable”?

The pathway to living in this ‘both/and’ is difficult, it means we have to look inside of ourselves and see how, when, and where we compromise our morality, our spiritual values, where we give up ourselves and put on the masks and facades that society wants. Once we do this inventory, once we determine the self-deceptions and obliviousness we have engaged in, we are able to engage our emotions and intellect to “suffer with” our soul’s angst. Turning away from our false compromises, turning to God, we join together to know we are not alone in our suffering, we do not have to turn to despair. We are able to rise above our current state of affairs through the forgiving hand of God, through the knowledge we are not alone, and we always have a way out of our suffering and back to being compassionate and kind, holding ourselves to the standard of being human, with our imperfections and our uniqueness.

We witness our own compromises and the compromises of society daily. Yet, rather than live into God’s call for “compassion, not compromise”, people are compassionate for the compromises they make and the groups they belong to make. Accepting Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’ is one example of people living in “compromise” not “compassion”. While many talk of compassion for the Palestinian people, few are able to have the same compassion for Israelis! While many people want Israel to accept “standards that are less than desirable”, they do not believe the Palestinians should. While there is not any doubt of the horror that Hamas perpetrated upon innocents in Israel, people compromise their own humanity when extolling Hamas’ efforts. Another example of compromise not compassion is the way the House Republicans are treating Ukraine, Israel, our border issues as a political wedge rather than as a humanitarian issue. Rather than “suffer with” the Ukrainians, the Israelis, the border states and the people seeking a better life, the Republican Party seems to favor cruelty and harshness towards their fellow human beings all the while extolling their ‘christian values’! Rather than live into Christ’s words and ways, these ‘good christians’ “accept standards that are less than desirable” for their political and power-seeking selfishness, not to uphold Christ’s teachings, not to be more Godly, more holy!

We, the people, have to call an end to this way of being. We, the people, have to engage in the battle for our own souls and for the soul of our society. For far too long, we have allowed the liars and deceivers to tell us what God wants, what it is to be human. Rabbi Heschel and the prophets are demanding we return to a way of being that the Bible calls for, that the New Testament, the Koran, the Eastern Philosophies demand of us instead of the “compromise” we have allowed ourselves to become mired in. We, the people, are called each day to “Hear” the voice of God that is within us and all around us and is calling on us to end our ‘rugged individual’, our aloneness attitudes, our self-seeking way of being and allow God’s compassion to overwhelm us, to join us in our suffering and help us rise above the “compromise” we have made. Receiving “compassion” from God is a gift and we have to use this gift to raise our own standards back to the standards of God, we have to raise our awareness of how capable we are to meet God’s standards and we have to let go of our false sufferings, our mendacity and our selfishness. We do this by joining with one another and recognizing our common “suffering” and we “suffer with” one another so we all rise above our “less than desirable standards” and be human a little more each day.

“God is compassion, not compromise” is a constant theme of recovery. We “turn our lives over” to a power greater than ourselves; so that we can once again, or for the first time, engage in living decently, living with love for one another, love for oneself. We greet one another with a ‘knowing’ of their “suffering” and we “suffer with” one another in life’s hardships. We reach out and help one another through our sufferings not as experts but as fellow travelers on the path of being human. In recovery, we accept the standards that God has given us, we know we will never be perfect and we learn how to live with “compassion” for self and another(s) while never “compromising” the standards of kindness, truth, love, caring, decency. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing ourselves in rabbi heschel’s wisdom - a daily path for living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 114

“The prophet disdains those for whom God’s presence is comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand. God is compassion, not compromise; justice, though not inclemency. The prophet’s predictions can always be proved wrong by a change in man’s conduct, but never the certainty that God is full of compassion.” (Essential Writings pg. 63)

The first sentence above is a theme found throughout Rabbi Heschel’s writings. It is not just a historical observance by him, though, this sentence encases the theme of his life, the way he lived-always responding to “a challenge, an incessant demand” he experiences from God, from living as “a descendant of the prophets”. We hear a lot of people proclaim; “follow ____(fill in the bland) and you will find inner peace” yet Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that ‘inner peace’ is not necessarily the goal of being human. Hearing Rabbi Heschel in my mind and in my soul this morning, I know my attempts at ‘inner peace’ are selfish and self-serving; how can I be at peace when innocent people are dying all over the world, when racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Gender bias, and a myriad of other discriminatory paths are so prevalent in our society? How can anyone believe that God is happy when God’s children are at war over land, property, prestige? How can anyone believe God is comforted by the ‘false’ prayers, tithes, bastardizations that so many ‘religious’ people perpetuate?

We have been given the gift of the books of the prophets for a reason. What is the question this gift is the answer for? I believe the question is: How are we truly living into God’s will, how are we letting go of the facades, falsehoods, mendacities and deceptions we have employed to make ourselves feel good, important, in charge, are but two of many. Yet, most people don’t ask themselves the right questions, we succumb to the conventional notions of society and go along to get along. We spend billions on “self-help” books that preach spirituality and give up before the miracle happens, just like our New Year’s resolutions, our latest diet attempt/fad, etc. We give up, I believe, because we are unwilling to immerse ourselves in the teachings, the guidance of the prophets, of spiritual guides and masters like Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, Thomas Merton, Parker Palmer, the Baal Shem Tov, etc. We are a society that, as Moses predicted, “grew fat and kicked” God out of our lives, relegated God to a Temple, Mosque, Church and believed the people who are Clergy and Spiritual ‘Gurus’ are the true emissaries while they preach hatred and separation, forgetting to care for the poor and the needy in material as well as spiritual ways, succumbing to allure of the money the rich can donate and giving them ‘special dispensation’ because of their wealth and power. Just as many clergy hid themselves when the Civil Rights movement was beginning with Dr. King, they are hiding from the truth, from the demand, from the challenge that God through the prophets give to all of us.

God’s comfort comes when we respond to God’s challenge, God’s “incessant demand”. It is only when we are engaged in the work the prophets proposed to us can we find comfort and ‘inner peace’, ‘inner peace’ I am defining as the relief one experiences when one knows they are doing the next right thing. It is a fleeting experience because the demands are ongoing, there is no “one and done” when we respond to the answers the prophets provide us with. There is only a respite knowing we are on the path God has called us to, on a path of wholeness and fulfillment of meaning and purpose, living passionately for the sake of heaven instead of for our own selfish desires. We become a people that recognizes our authentic needs and seeks to fulfill them rather than constantly deflecting from authenticity to chase the newest and best ‘shiny object’. Our lives are spent seeking truth and giving no quarter to falseness, no longer supporting the lies and liars like Trump, Bibi, Orban, Putin, the MAGA and religious zealots who preach war, hatred, fascism, etc.

We are in desperate need of our clergy, our elected officials, our business leaders, our parents and children learning the way of the prophets. We need to rededicate ourselves to the truths they speak, the ways they teach and the comfort they offer. We need to turn back to God not for comfort but for truth and guidance, for our ‘marching orders’ on how to be human and how to fulfill the divine need we are created for. It is time for our spiritual leaders to call out the lawlessness of ‘law-abiding’ citizens who still seek to engage in prejudice, who continue to act as if the Golden Rule is: ‘the one with the gold rules’. We are in desperate need of a renaissance of prophetic teaching, of learning how to live Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, Rev. King’s wisdom, the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, etc. We have the teachers like Rabbi Ed Feinstein, Rev William Barber, John Pavlovitz, etc -it is we, the people, who seem to be too fat to seek them out and learn from them!

Recovery is based in the wisdom of the prophets, we surrender our “self-will run riot” by “turning our lives over to the care of God as we understand God”. We are constantly seeking to find ways to serve rather than be served, we seek serenity/clarity as to what we can change and what we can’t, we know we need to be able to discern the truth and let go of the false self, the deceptions of another and be connected with a community of seekers.

This has been and continues to be my quest. I am not perfect and I see the progress in how I live into the words and ways of the prophets and Rabbi Heschel. I am grateful for his wisdom that is a guiding light for living well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

immersing ourselves in rabbi heschel’s wisdom - A daily spiritual path for living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 113

“The prophet hates the approximate; he shuns the middle of the road. Man must live on the summit to avoid the abyss. There is nothing to hold to except God. Carried away by the challenge, the demand to straighten out man’s ways, the prophet is strange, one-sided, an unbearable extremist.” (Essential Writings pg.62/63)

These words of Rabbi Heschel inspire me, many people. His love of the prophets, his being “disturbed” by the prophets, have changed many lives and was so important in his activism. This description of the prophet is the reason Rabbis have always been afraid of them. While Rabbinic Judaism seeks the middle often, except where some have decided the extreme is the ‘right’ way, they are afraid of the power of the prophets to lead people to an overthrow of their authority, I believe. The prophets railed against the priests and those in power, both royalty and wealthy. The prophets have the job of getting humanity to return to God’s ways, to seek forgiveness and change the paths we are following. The prophets are challenged over and over again by their sense of calling and knowing they have to answer to a power greater than themselves; God.

While people believe in ‘trying’, the prophets believe in doing-as I read them and Rabbi Heschel’s teachings on the prophets. While people look for ‘things to hold onto’, the prophets make a mockery of the power, prestige, material things that give people solace and they use for comfort. The misbelief that one can settle for status quo, ‘this is the way we have always done it’, etc is belied by the prophets’ words and actions. They are not willing to settle nor are they willing to let the people settle for anything other than doing the best they can to repent, to return, to have new responses to old issues and problems. For the prophets’, in my understanding of them and Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, if one is not willing to attach oneself to God, one is attaching oneself to evil, there is no middle ground, there is no ‘trying’ there is a surrender to God’s will and doing God’s will or there is nothing.

The prophets are speaking to us today, right now. They are in the words and teachings of Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, Thomas Merton, Parker Palmer, Rabbi Schulweis, and so many others. We, the people, have to stand up to the charlatans that speak the words of the Priests of old, hear and pay heed to the desires of the powerful  and the wealthy, while abandoning God, God’s will and the people they are supposed to serve. The prophets call to speak truth to power is needed desperately right now, as it always is. It seems a little more necessary now with ‘alternative facts’, media lies, the fact that 68% of Republicans and up to 48% of Independents still believe the ‘stolen election’ lies of Trump world is a sign that the prophets are needed at least as much if not more than in Ancient Israel.

Yet, even those that quote the prophets do so for their own gain, they bastardize the prophets’ words just as the “prosperity gospel” bastardizes Jesus’ words and radical Islamists bastardize the teachings of Mohammed. This is why the prophets and their authentic descendants seem to strange to people, this is why Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and words were so unsettling to people, this is why the quotations of the prophets, the quotations of Rabbi Heschel go unheeded and used as subterfuge. Without marching  and doing everything one can for the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the voiceless and the powerless, we are just giving lip service not only to the prophets, but to God’s calls and God’s will. The worst actions taken by ‘people of faith’ are to abuse the trust of the people they are supposed to serve by committing the same acts as the priests of Ancient Israel at the time of the prophets.

When one is called by God, when one has a spiritual awakening, spiritual encounters one is changed forever. Even for the people who dismiss these experiences, they are changed. In recovery, we all have these experiences, be they ecstatic or “the educational variety”. This makes us, like the prophets, strange to people, we seem one-sided in our refusal to relapse into old behaviors of unkindness, of selfishness, of mendacity, of meanness, of needing to be right, etc. We seem like an “unbearable extremist” with our commitment to God and God’s ways, we are called a cult because we refuse to be seduced by power, prestige, fame to the ruin of our  spiritual connections. In recovery, we are hearing the prophets call as a Shofar that calls us back to Sinai, back to our covenant with God, and gives us the pathway to “a richer and more meaningful life.”

I am “strange, one-sided, an unbearable extremist” to many people. I am unable to tolerate hiding, by me and/or by you, by anyone. I cannot “go along to get along”, I am loud, abrasive, open to learning and doing life differently, being part of a team, and demanding 100% of whatever someone has to add to our effort to live well, to be in recovery from the lies and shading of the truth, the hiding and the bullshit of living a facade. I am strange in my ways, I believe if I see you standing on a cliff, yelling to get you to turn away is a sign of love and caring. I believe holding you and me to the loyalty we pledge upon entering into a relationship which entails helping and speaking truth is holy. I believe erasing someone from one’s life, especially those that have helped us, is insane and wrong. I believe forgiving someone who has harmed you and letting it as well as them go is holy. I believe in searching for God and Godliness, we have to open our eyes, our hearts and our souls to the words of the prophets and take actions on their teachings, on God’s will. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing ourselves in rabbi heschel’s wisdom - A daily spiritual path for living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 112

“Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common. (Essential Writings pg. 62)

The more I sit with these words and this wisdom, the more I realize how society has failed the people it is supposed to serve. Rather than society serving its members, we have made its members serve it. Who gets to set what society is about? In our time celebrities, Religious Charlatans, Mendacious Elected Officials, Authoritarians, and the rest of that ilk. We, the people, we, the faithful, we, the true humanists, are shut out from any way of influencing “the spirit of society”, we are not included because then the voices of the prophets, of the wise people of faith and philosophy, of the arts, etc would have power and influence. Rather, “the spirit of society” has been ruled by the powerful, the power-hungry, the idolators and the deceivers almost non-stop since humankind came into being.

People of faith believe that God brought the human into being, Evolutionists believe humanity evolved from Apes and both have created a society that is corrupt and evil at times. Our society has become one of indifference to poverty, indifference to suffering, punishing the poor for their crimes while extolling the rich for theirs! We worship at the brilliance of the Robber Barons who, like the people who were building the Tower of Babel, cared nothing for the workers who died laying the tracks for the trains, died while working in the mines, the steel mills, the sweatshops, etc. We are in awe of the talent of celebrities and follow their lead to addiction, to anti-semitism, to hatred of ‘the man’, all the while not noticing that they too are ‘the man’ and acting in the same ways! Clergy are not exempt either, think of the myriad of clergy who preached hatred of the Jews in the last century and in this one, the myriad of clergy who did not join Rev. King in his quest for the rights of Black people to be the same as for white people. Listen to the Clergy that blame LGBtQ+ for the ills of our society all the while they spread hatred and calumny throughout the land instead of liberty for all as the Bible teaches us.

The solution is for all of us, or at least reach the tipping point of people who are “continually concerned for God and every man” so we can change our society into what it is meant to be; a safe haven for those in need, a charged atmosphere of learning and creating, a world where each person is recognized, welcomed, embraced for their unique talents, where they are valued as much as every other human being and everyone earns at least a living wage, while there will be rich and there will be disparities, there won’t be the ones we have now, we will not have people living in their cars across the street from opulent mansions because the people cannot earn a living wage.

This disparity, the amount of people imprisoned in the United States speaks so badly about our “liberty and justice for all” slogans, about our “give me your tired, your poor…”, about our being ‘ a christian nation’. The disparity in our society, the crimes we see, the people in prison point to the moral decay of our country, this decay has been brought about by Democrats and Republicans, Christians and Jews, Conservatives and Progressives, by all of us. Look at the history of fascism in our country, Lindbergh, Ford, Father Coughlin, the KKK, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the McCarthy Hearings and Blacklists, the torturing of Alan Turing, the anti-semitism and racism that has always been present and we see how this rot has undermined the promises and the dreams of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We can see how both here and across the globe religion has been used to separate rather than have be “continually concerned for God and every man”.

This society has to be toppled! The path to do this is through faith and spirit. Recovery is the revolution that can topple society’s hatred and uplift its spirit. In recovery we learn how to enjoy what is, to help one another, to be concerned with God’s will and turn our will over to something greater than us. We are constantly seeking to “grow along spiritual lines” and to listen to the call of our spirits rather than the falseness of our egos. Some of us are rich and some of us are not, yet we all have equal says in what goes on in our meetings and in AA. We don’t live from a hierarchy, rather we see one another as equals in spirit and in love, in kindness and in wisdom, and we work with one another to fill in the gaps we have and we fill in the gaps another has.

I helped to build an institution where every one had a say, just not necessarily a deciding say. The first time I put up to the community if someone should remain in the recovery facility we were running, the staff was aghast and the community was shocked. We spent two hours talking through the consequences of either decision and at the end, we had agreement as to what the next right thing to do was. What was most important is that we lived the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel above, we were more “concerned with God and every man” than we were with doing what society dictated. We continually engaged the community and we cared for each and every person as an individual. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

IMMERSING OURSELVES IN RABBI HESCHEL'S WISDOM - A DAILY PATH FOR LIVING WELL

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 111

“Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common. (Essential Writings pg. 62)

Rabbi Heschel’s voice is the voice of the prophet, he is not only relaying the prophetic message, he is speaking about what has happened throughout history, what was happening some 62 years ago when his book The Prophets was published and he prophesied what would happen in our time; unless we changed our ways. In the last sentence above, Rabbi Heschel gives us the path to change, he is calling out to us, as the prophets did in their time, how to live into his words in the first sentence: “few are guilty but all are responsible”.

We are living in a society that is “indifferent to suffering”, that is not “impatient with cruelty and falsehood” and is not “concerned for God and man”. While we hear from people who claim to be religious, who claim God is their guide, the actions of many of these people belie their words. We are living in a time where suffering is accepted as ‘the norm’ for ‘those people’. Suffering is the result of the actions of the sufferers according to some, the victim is being blamed for their plight in many cases and we have seen the phenomenon of the victim becoming the victimizer as well. All of these stems from a spiritual malady.

Our indifference to suffering goes hand in hand with our acceptance of cruelty and falsehood. In our political arena politicians make grand promises and they keep very few, unless the promise is to cause more suffering. When our Congress will not find nor even seek compassionate solutions to immigration, legal and illegal, because they can ‘run’ on the issue we are witnessing cruelty and experiencing falsehood. Yet, we, the people, seem to accept this cruelty as ‘just the way things are’. When our prisons are overcrowded and used for punishment only, when guards treat prisoners as less than human, we witness cruelty. When we watch in silence as the Congress continues to seek to hold spectacles of lying and deception so they can puff out their chests and show how ‘tough’ they are, we are witnesses to cruelty. When we watch as people suffer because they cannot earn a living wage and the minimum wage is so low people have to work two jobs to eke out enough to pay rent and for basic necessities, we are part of the cruelty. When we “stand idly by the bloods of our brothers” we belie the ‘faith’, the ‘religiosity’, the ‘humanism’ the ‘morality’ we proclaim we have. We, the people, cannot blame the politicians, the government, the prison system, the big corporations, etc in order to shirk our responsibility. We, the people, are responsible irrespective of whether we are the perpetrators.

Breaking our indifference is the solution. We have to wake up and stand up, we have to take God, truth, kindness, caring out of the hands of the idolators and deceivers, out of the mouths of the liars and the mendacity of the ‘powerful’. We have to listen to the words of the prophets, we have to act on their words as they, Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, and so many others guide us to. We have to say NO to the ‘religious liars’, we have to say NO to the politicians that seek to divide us into red and blue, we have to say NO to the progressives who only care about the ‘underdog of the month’ and not everyone who suffers. We have to stop blaming everyone but ourselves for our current state of affairs. We have to work together to heal our society, to care for the poor, the needy, welcome the stranger, act Godly whether we believe in God or not.

We can only do this when, as we say in AA, “our own house is in order”. We have to regain our spiritual health, we have to seek out physicians of the soul to heal our inner lives, our inner wounds. We need help to hear the call of our intuition, our spirit and the power to carry out this call within us. We need to engage in a societal change from dogma to spiritual consciousness; be it God-consciousness, Higher consciousness, however one wants to call a raising of oneself above their base needs. We, the people, have to return to using our intuitive minds as a gift and using our rational minds to serve our gift as Einstein says rather than give into what our rational, narcissistic minds tell us and forgetting to hear and heed the call of our intuitive minds, our spirits. This is the way of the Bible, this is the message of the prophets: return to God, to Godliness, to higher consciousness, to your intuitive mind, however you want to understand what makes us human. We can do this, we can live into the prophetic voices, we can live into the Biblical teachings, when we appreciate our ability to understand anew the directions and stories, when we end our need to be right and instead seek to do right.

This way of being is central to recovery. We are recovering our integrity, our essence, our path back to something greater than ourselves. I seek out a new way of understanding and applying the wisdom of the prophets and the Bible each and every day. I make errors, I am imperfect and I have to make my amends and move on-whether someone wants to forgive me or not is up to them-my job is to do T’Shuvah. Each day I begin with prayer, meditation, and this writing so I begin my day with a plan and a path. I pray you all do the same and then at night we see how well we have done and what harms we have brought so we can make amends the next day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

IMMERSING OURSELVES IN RABBI HESCHEL'S WISDOM - A DAILY SPIRITUAL PATH FOR LIVING BETTER

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 110

“Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common. (Essential Writings pg. 62)

Sitting with these words of wisdom and rebuke for an hour, a day, a week could and must change the ways we see ourselves, we see one another and we see our society. That every individual “is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society” goes without saying and has been proved over and over again. Be it the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the Assyrians, the Persians, the English, the Germans, the French, the Americans, the Japanese, the Palestinians, the Saudis, the Chinese, the Russians, etc there is a spirit of each society that “conditions” of affects each individual within it, as well as individuals and countries throughout the globe. Each invention, each discovery, every painting, musical composition, etc impacts the nature of the individuals and the societies they live in.

If we look at the crimes being committed today, what does it say about our societies, here and abroad? Robberies, burglaries, petty thefts show the belief of a society that “if I can take it from you, then it was meant to be mine”. It is showing us a society that believes in “getting mine” without regard to the impact and effect “getting mine” has on anyone else. A society that has a lot of these types of crimes along with identity theft crimes gives us a picture of a society that no longer views another person as having dignity, rights, value except in relationship to it. We are such a society, we have moved from the colonial spirit of “liberty and justice for all” to a spirit of mistrust and mendacity. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln carried on the colonial spirit of the leaders of the Revolutionary War by freeing slaves, by making slavery no longer legal. Yet, even the people of his own party betrayed this bold and evolutionary move by instituting Jim Crow Laws, by allowing the KKK to flourish, etc. Our society that has so much crime-yes it may be less one year- that attacks the very fabric of personal safety like those mentioned above, shows us how little the society cares for the individual and how much it caters to the rich, powerful, people at the ‘head’ of it. We are living in a society that is more concerned with its “adjustment to conventional notions and mental cliches” than with the dignity and worth of the 90% how don’t have as much as the top 10%!

The more I sit with Rabbi Heschel’s demand and wisdom, his brilliance and his clear-eyed vision of what was, what is, the more I realize how far we have to climb as a society. We are a corrupt society, we are see this in the lies people believe from the mouth of Donals Trump, from the mouth of Bibi Netanyahu, from the mouth of Vladimir Putin, from the mouths of the Republicans in office and from the mouths of the Squad, of Democrats who fail to see the both/and of a situation and call for changes that care only for the current group that is there ‘identity group’. We are a society that has come to worship the liar and shun the truth sayer! We are a society that will hail and bow down to terrorists societies like Hamas and Iran who mistreat their people so badly that in almost 20 years the people of Gaza were in poverty still while the heads of Hamas live well in Qatar, in Gaza and across the globe. We are a society that will believe the lies of ‘the poor Palestinians’ who did nothing to stop the horror of Oct. 7th, who have allowed Hamas to brutalize them, to kill LGBTQ+ people in their midst, to make women 2nd class citizens. Yet the progressive wing of the Democratic Party salutes them as freedom fighters!!

Believing that Joe Biden is a crook and Donald Trump is sent by Jesus, believing that Bibi and his right-wing, so-called ‘religious’ right care about anything but their own power and their own ability to be dictators, believing that what happens in Ukraine doesn’t matter to us, believing that Putin, Kim Jung Un, Xi, Orban are good men, etc, says everything about the society that we are in and the one we have allowed to be created. I am old enough to remember “the Great Society” and “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, the Peace Corps, the energy of the ’60’s for peace, for civil rights and civil discourse. I also remember the murders of Medger Evers, JFK, Martin and Bobby, Malcolm X, and a society that never really cared to be responsible for the climate and the attitude of hatred that was so prevalent at those times. WE, the PEOPLE have to stand up and change this pervasive attitude of being able to lie about people to make ourselves wealthy, to make ourselves electable, to make ourselves feel good about ourselves. I watch in horror at the people who ‘jump on the bandwagon’ of the latest ways to ‘get theirs’ through frivolous “draft lawsuits” that are actually extorting money from people, business’ and even non-profit social service institutions, knowing the publicity is worse than paying. We are a sick society and we need to heal!

Healing can be found in the recovery movement, through the AA model, through the model the Bible gives us, through the humanistic model, through the model of Eastern Philosophies. All of these paths give us principles to live into and live by, ways of being human and decent. More on this tomorrow. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

IMMERSING OURSELVES IN RABBI HESCHEL'S WISDOM- A DAILY SPIRITUAL PATH FOR LIVING WELL

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 109

“Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the spirit of society, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common. (Essential Writings pg. 62)

The eternal gift of the prophets is the mirror they hold up to us, their words, their actions look at us with questions, comments, rebuke and hope. Rabbi Heschel’s words above come to remind us of their teachings and he is imparting to us a call to action. What is the moral state of our country, of our world, of our communities, of our families, of our selves? The call of the prophets is to return, to turn away from our selfishness, from our mendacity, from our deception of another(s) and deception of ourselves. They call to us to remember the demands and call to connect with God, with our higher selves, to practice the principles of decency, love, compassion, truth. Yet, for time immemorial, we turn a deaf ear to their call, to the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel, to God’s call from Mount Sinai to Shema-Hear.

Reflecting on “the moral state of a people” in the United States, it is apparent that we are, like Jonah, running away from the call of God, from the words of the prophets and, like the people of Ancient Israel and Judea, we believe we are impervious to the dangers our running away bring. Listening to the lies of politicians and the mendacity of Mike Johnson and his crew of deceivers who use Jesus as their source of meanness, blaming the democrats for the ills of our nation, we can discover the rot, the subterfuge, the twisting of what is good and right into a grab for power and domination. Rather than seek to help the poor, care for the needy, welcome the stranger, some ‘leaders’ of our American society seek to criminalize poverty, need and those seeking refuge. Rather than living up to the words on the Statue of Liberty, a large portion of our population have forgotten their ancestors came here with little, came to America seeking refuge from their native lands and needed help to “breath free”. The progressives also show the rot of our “moral state” when there is no discernment between ‘the poor underdog’ and their acts of terrorism-giving aid and comfort to enemies of freedom, enemies of LGBTQ+, abandoning their allies for the sake of ‘the cause’.

“Few are guilty but all are responsible” is ringing in our ears, is being called out from Mount Sinai each and every day. This phrase conveys to us what it means to be human, what it means to live life as the prophets have laid out for us, what it means to be a person of faith, a humanist, to live a life compatible with being a partner of God. Yet, we continually ignore Rabbi Heschel’s words and the teachings of the prophets for our own selfish desires. We are all responsible for what goes on in our families, in our communities, in our faith, in our countries. We  are being called upon to stand up and say NO to the injustices of our leaders, our laws, our courts, our policies and our selves. We are being called to stop blaming “the other” and take responsibility and action to ensure justice and liberty for all. We are all responsible for ensuring our actions and laws are in concert with: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. While the “founding fathers” were not able to actualize these words completely, they wrote them into our Declaration of Independence as a guide for future generations. All of us are created equal, all of us are endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, justice, love, truth, kindness, care and concern. Ergo; we are all responsible to ensure the same for every human being in our society and, I would add, the world.

We are all separate souls, we are all individuals with our own unique gifts, talents and purposes, and we are all responsible for the society within which we live. We are all responsible for the actions of the government, we are all responsible for the hatred and violence perpetrated in our cities and communities. We are all responsible for “equal justice under the law”, we are all responsible to integrate the immigrants coming into our land so they can become part of the fabric of our society and we share customs, laws, ways of being human with one another. We are all responsible to stand up to bullies and authoritarians, stand up to meanness and hatred, blaming and shaming of another human being/group of human beings. We are all responsible to seek peace and to end the humiliation of those we disagree with, we are all responsible to find compromises that fulfill the words of the prophets, that are in concert with the spiritual values and principles our society is founded on. We are all responsible for the deaths of innocents, for the imprisonment of innocent people, for the crimes against the soul of our nation and the souls of individuals that is rampant in our country today.

The mirror the prophets hold up to us is what we in recovery use to live into our daily inventory, our yearly look back at our ‘past life’. We seek to find our part in the problem, we take responsibility for our part in every interaction, positive or negative. We do not blame someone else for what we have wrought nor do we take on the weight of a situation that is not ours to carry. We use each interaction to improve our moral state, to rise above the selfishness of our emotions, the ‘dog eat dog’ mentality we see practiced in our world, we know we have to continue to “grow along spiritual lines” and “practice these principles in all our affairs”. We are also aware of our imperfections and we use them to grow, to be unique and to live one grain of sand better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

IMMERSING OURSELVES IN RABBI HESCHEL'S WISDOM - A DAILY SPIRITUAL PATH FOR LIVING WELL

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 108

“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden on his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man, no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profound riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words…” (Essential Writings pg. 62)

The last two sentences above say it all. We, the People, make a decision each day to hear God “raging in the prophet’s words” or not. We get to choose a “form of living” each day. We are at a crossroad, a fork in the road each day-do we choose to live in God’s words, in the ways the prophets teach us or not. This is our daily conundrum and, as we can see from current events, we often fail to heed the way of the prophets, we ignore the “terror” of “the silent agony”, we abuse “the plundered poor” and we bow down to “the profound riches” that the powerful have.

We have ignored the terrorism of Iran and its proxies for far too long. We have ignored the terrorism of the extremists in Israel, in America, in Russia, throughout the world, foolishly thinking they would go away, it seems. People of ‘faith’ have ignored and misused the words of the Bible, the teachings of the prophets, the “raging” of God for our own brand of terrorism-winning at any and all costs. There is no moral equivalent between Hamas and the war in Gaza-full stop! The loss of any life is tragic-full stop! The war in Gaza is not of Israel’s making, however-it is a response to the terrorism of Oct. 7th 2023! I do not know of anyone who would gleefully live next door to a group of people who want to annihilate them, yet many people in America think that this is a good idea! We are witnessing a grand failure of humanity to hear and follow the words and deeds of the prophets, we are witnessing a grand failure to act in accordance with God’s “form of living”. Yet, we continually deceive ourselves into proclaiming we are living, speaking, and acting in God’s name, in the name of Allah, in the name of Jesus, etc. These self-deceptions, this buying into the deceptions of another increases “the silent agony” of “the plundered poor”, it adds power to the misguided responses to the terror and it gives strength to the “fierce greed” of humankind.

There is a better way for humanity to live, a nobler way for society to attain; live into the “crossing point of God and man.” This is not as difficult as it seems at first blush. It begins with a deep reading of the prophets’ words and actions. We get to relive the ways the people in power abused their power. We, like the prophets, can be “stunned at man’s/our fierce greed” and make a decision to change. Instead of terrorizing one another more with our lies, with our false accusations, we have the wherewithal to turn to truth, we have a pathway to repentance and redemption. We are capable of meeting God “face to face” in our prayers, in our studies, in our actions when we no longer seek excuses for our bad behaviors through using God, using false interpretations of the Bible, by blaming the victims, etc.

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and teaching above sends shivers up and down my spine, they pierce the armor that covers one’s soul and come as a welcome reminder of who we are as human beings. We can live in “a crossing point of God and man”, we are capable of hearing the rage in the prophets words as a rebuke, as a call to return to God and Godly ways. We can end the terrorism that we participate in and we can find refuge from the terrorism that is being perpetrated upon us. We can give voice to “the silent agony” and deal it rather than hide from it. We can be “stunned” into leaving our “fierce greed” and rejoice in what we have-God’s love, God’s belief in us, the care and concern of the prophets and our humanity, our dignity. The prophet came to us and “God is raging in the prophet’s words” not to terrorize us, rather to call us back. The prophets’ continually remind us that God wants our return, God accepts us back with love, God is willing to “heal our backsliding”, God knows our imperfections well and accepts us with them. The issue is our willingness to acknowledge our imperfections, our letting go of our “fierce greed”, our helping “the plundered poor”, no longer using “the profound riches of the world” for our selfish desires. Unfortunately, the way of the prophets, the “crossing point of God and man” is a “road less travelled” and we need to use the guidance of the prophets, of Rabbi Heschel, of Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, Rev. King, Martin Buber, the Baal Shem Tov, the Bible itself to find it, of Rev. Barber, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, John Pavlovitz, Rev Cecil Murray, and all of their disciples to walk it and to be supported on this journey. The questions before us each and every day-which fork in the road are we going to take, what choices will we make at this “crossing point”?

Just as Jacob had a “dark night of the soul” as coined by St. John of the Cross, so too do each of us have at least one during our lifetime. It is a moment of surrender to the divine voice and a new awareness of purpose and passion. I had this for the first time in 1986 and have had many of these “nights” since then. Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom helps me navigate these blissful moments that allow me to live into the trembling awe of being human. I have failed to use the words of the prophets at times in these past 37+years and I have heeded them more often than not. I am unafraid to show my imperfections, I am willing to ‘be wrong’, I make my amends and I hear the prophets words pulsating within me. I have been accused of raging at times and some of these accusations are correct; what was unnoticed is that I did not rage for myself, rather I raged for people who were unable to hear the call of God, unwilling to face their own “dark night of the soul” and too terrified to let go of their acts of terrorism. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 107

“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden on his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man, no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profound riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man.” (Essential Writings pg. 62)

Rabbi Heschel published The Prophets in 1962 and the words above are as relevant today as they were 62 years ago, maybe even more relevant. “The voice of God” is calling out to all of us today regarding “the silent agony” we all experience. “The plundered poor” strain to hear “a voice” and the prophets’ words are ringing out throughout the world and we still fail to heed their words, hear “the voice” and ignore the call of God to us. It is infuriating, it is sad, it is criminal and it is devastating. Our inability to hear, heed, and act on “prophecy” our unwillingness to live into Rabbi Heschel’s teachings calling to us to change, to sharpen our hearing, to take different actions is a sign of our decay as a society.

We, human beings, seem to be incapable of realizing that each time we engage in plundering the poor, stealing from them their dignity, their work efforts, turning them into property rather than seeing their humanity, their worth, their divine image, we put ourselves deeper into “silent agony”, we demean our selves, tarnish our souls and imprison our humanity over and over again. Watching the movie, “Zone of Interest” about the Nazi commander of Aushwitz and his life outside the camp, the ‘normalcy’ his family experienced while smoke came out of the ovens, bullets were being fired, people were crying out just over the wall of their ‘home’ brings home to me the lunacy of hiding from and ignoring the words of the prophets, “the voice God has lent to the silent agony” of the human soul. It is infuriating and one can only imagine the experience of Rabbi Heschel, the prophets, Rev. King, Jesus, Moses, and all of the other prophetic voices throughout the millennia knowing and speaking the words of the prophets, teaching us all how to live these words, attempting to heal “the silent agony”, caring for “the plundered poor” and trying to minister to those who held/hold “the profound riches of the world”.

Throughout time immemorial there have been people, seemingly ‘good’ people, seemingly ‘religious’ people who have added to “the silent agony” rather than alleviated it through their bastardization of the prophetic tradition. While a Mike Johnson and his ilk may quote Isaiah to prove that Jesus was the messiah, they all fail to aid “the plundered poor”, in fact, they increase “the silent agony” of the “plundered poor” by continuing to ravage them, continuing to violently (physically and spiritually) abuse them, seek to ignore their humanity and turn them into chattel for their own use. Every time we think of, call, treat another human being as “vermin”, every time we engage in actions which will “purify the blood of our country”, separate ourselves from another group, see anyone who is different from us as “the other”, we are failing to heed “the voice God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor”. Yet, so many of the “spiritual leaders” of our time and throughout time have led the charge against God, against the words and meanings of prophecy. We are in desperate need of a renewal of studying, hearing, and acting on the words of the prophets, the call of God, and introspection into ourselves.

We have fallen into the same ways of being as Ancient Israel and Ancient Judea did. We are so enamored with “the profound riches of the world” and seek to “get our share” that we deny these riches to another(s) because of the color of their skin, the faith and/or non-faith they practice, because they ‘are not like us’. When Davos is hailed, when human rights is called for one people and ignored towards another, when terrorism is hailed as freedom fighting, when “from the river to the sea” calls for extermination of a group of people based on there religion, ethnicity, when Elon Musk is celebrated because he is rich and he spews hatred that people take as gospel truth, when women are denied the right to choose what happens to their bodies, when they are left to die rather than receive life-saving abortions, when the fetus is more important than the mother, when the borders are so porous as there is no control over who enters and so rigid as to deny any one of a ‘certain’ color entry, we are increasing “the silent agony” of another(s) and re-enforcing the agony of our own souls. We have the opportunity to “share the wealth”, to end our plundering of the poor, stop stealing the intellectual property of another(s), get a “new pair of glasses” so we can see the divinity in each and every person, live into the words of the prophets so we can heal our souls, help another human being to live better and repair the world.

In recovery, we hear “the silent agony” of another human being and we give voice to our own agony. We take action to help “the plundered poor” and we ned our need to ‘have it all’. We are students of spiritual growth and health, we are active participants in being of service, we pray: “My creator, I am now willing you should have all of me, good and bad which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows…”

I grew up in a family that helped “the plundered poor”, even in my alcoholism I found ways to help at times. In my recovery, I have railed against selfishness, pettiness, etc. I have given voice to “the silent agony” people in recovery experience and, to the best of my ability in the moment, I have lived into Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and the ways of the prophets. I continue to give voice to my “silent agony” and I use the richness of life to help another live well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 106

“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden on his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man, no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profound riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man.” (Essential Writings pg. 62)

In the third sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is using three words, “frightful”, “agony” and “terror” to convey the state of fear he witness’ human beings live in. It is also what most people run away from through a myriad of ways. We humans have developed a tremendous fear of facing the agony of being human, the terror of death, of life, and our fear is palpable, yet we continue to mire ourselves in thoughts and actions that belie this truth. Delving into Rabbi Heschel’s teaching can help us face what is and find the respites we need and the ways to deal with our situation through spiritual values and actions, rather than hide from them through seeking money, power, prestige, mendacity and self-deception.

One of the ways some people deal with Rabbi Heschel’s statements of truth is to cause fear, agony and terror to another human being, another group of human beings so they can feel superior and protected. We see this in our politics where what is good for the country, what is right for our allies, have no particular sway when our elected officials are more interested in their ‘special interest’ groups and in their own re-election. Public service is seen as foolish when you can make so much more in the private sector and you will be ‘insulated’ against the “agony” and the “terror” of living as a human being. Rather than secure our borders, rather than help our allies, rather than seek a solution to the terrorism of Iran and Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, rather than stand up to Putin and Erdogan, these political animals go along with the strongman Trump, cater to and celebrate Hamas’ terrorism, feed the anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, and racism that has been a part of this country since the beginning! These power grabs, these seemingly altruistic ends belie the fear and the terror that people of the lie experience.

The prophets railed against these behaviors not just because of the injustice of them, I realize from immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom. I believe they also were calling to the people to stop going along with the politics of the day, face their own fears and engage with the spiritual energy of the Universe, the gift of connection with God, the Ineffable One, a power greater than oneself. Donald Trump and the rest of the authoritarians are not the issue of our time, the issue is our unwillingness to deal with “frightful is the agony of man, no human voice can convey its full terror”. The prophets, the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Eastern philosophies give us paths to dealing with our fears, using them to motivate us to see a path through our fears, yet like addicts and alcoholics, most people just want to escape from the agony and the terror of being human.

I believe the greatest terror and what causes most people the most agony is, at least, two-fold: uncertainty and death. Judaism gives us God as abstract, God is everywhere or nowhere, God is everything or nothing, there is nowhere where God doesn’t dwell. We are told to make ourselves holy so God can dwell among us, we are created in the image of God, etc. This leads many to question God’s existence, to blame God for the ills of the world. Rather than face our responsibility to make our corner of the world a little better than we found it, we seek to hide from the call to do this, we shirk our responsibilities in the name of faith, in the name of ‘conservative’, in the name of ‘progressive’ in the name of anything we can deceive ourselves into believing. It is time for us to face some of the truths of being human: we will all die, there is no certainty except that we will all die, what we do with our lives can be driven by the fear and terror at our backs to propel us to goodness or in our faces which serves to make hiding and deception the best choice. It is time for us, as a friend of mine once told me, to put the fear, the agony, the terror of our uncertainty and eventual death at our backs and use the energy to find solutions for what ails us as individuals, families, communities and the world. It is time for us to heed the words of the prophets and Rabbi Heschel to experience all human beings as divine reminders, not as punching bags or doormats.

Recovery is a pathway to facing our fears and reconnecting with our spiritual values and spiritual lives. We are constantly seeking to “grow along spiritual lines” and no longer hide in the bottle, the drug, the casino, the food, the power, the job, the sex, etc. We come face to face with our fears and, in doing so, we come face to face with the divine, we come face to face with our own goodness of being and engage in living the content of our character out loud and are constantly refining it each day. We know we will die, we live with the uncertainty of life with faith that whatever is happening, good or bad; “this too shall pass”.

I am aware of the “frightful” “agony” and “terror” that my voice cannot fully convey. I am also aware of using my voice to help hear my terror and acknowledge the agony and fear of people who have sought my assistance in dealing with their own uncertainty and fear of death. I loudly proclaim the terror and a myriad of solutions for dealing with this “frightful” “agony”. It is through spirit, through connection, through living in the both/and of faith and fear, surety of spirit and uncertainty of life, the joy of living well and the uncertainty of when I will die that gives me hope, motivation to continue and wonder at what is. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 105

“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden on his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man, no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profound riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man.” (Essential Writings pg. 62)

Juxtaposing Rabbi Heschel’s words above with the mendacity of ‘religious’ people today, all of whom claim to be ‘speaking in God’s name’ and spreading hatred and lies about those they consider “the other”, is maddening! As I think about Rabbi Heschel’s words in the first two sentences above, I am in more awe of his courage and strength to stand up to the falseness of hatred and bigotry, the jockeying of ‘religious’ people to prove their way is the only way, and the greed of people to steal from one another their identities, their thoughts, their money, their dignity. Rabbi Heschel gives us a legacy of action and ways of being to meet the lies and deceptions we face today.

While there are very few prophets today, unfortunately, we have the blessings of being able to learn from the prophets of Israel, from people like Rabbi Heschel, Rev King, Einstein, the Baal Shem Tov, Thomas Merton, St. Francis of Assisi, etc. We can hear in their words ways to overcome our own “fierce greed”, we can learn from their ways of being how to accept and deal with the “burden on his soul” that God and the prophets have “thrust” upon us. I hear the call of Rabbi Heschel to all of us to stand up for what is true and right, to let go of “fierce greed” that we believe will protect us, to “feel fiercely” the plight of every human being, rich and poor, exalted and bowed, free and not free. Yet, for all of the talk of humanism, of religious zeal, many of us watch in horror at the bastardization of the words and deeds of the prophets, of the Bible, wringing our hands instead of taking action.

When people call the horrific actions of Oct. 7, 2023, anything but terrorism and an act of war, when people decry Israel’s right and need to defend itself against the desires for its extermination, when the world, once again, believes Jews deserve to die, all in the name of Islam and freedom-we are witnessing “man’s fierce greed”! When Hamas is exalted for taking innocent hostages, when Hamas is pitied for the response they wanted, when Hamas is extolled for turning down Cease-Fire proposals, many of us watch in horror at the inhumane reactions to the plight of the hostages, the plight of the Israelis who were brutally murdered, at the mendacity and deception of Iran, Hamas, the Arab world and the progressive-far right coalition of anti-semitism. How can these people not hear the voice and call of the prophets?

Not everything Israel does is perfect or right! Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words, I can safely say that Bibi and his ‘religious right’ coalition are not being “bowed and stunned” at their own “fierce greed”! They have much to be accountable for in this situation, they will have to answer to the people of Israel and to Jews around the globe. They too have been so involved in their ‘rightness’ they have not hear the call of the prophets, they have refused to accept the “burden” God has “thrust” upon them and upon all of us.

While Rabbi Heschel is speaking of the prophets in the teaching above, I also hear him reminding us that we have the benefit and responsibility of learning from their words, their actions and doing things differently than both the kingdoms of Israel and Judea did 2500+ years ago. We, the descendants of the prophets, have to also be “bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed”, acknowledging and repenting that we participate, initiate and luxuriate in our own greediness. We, the descendants of the prophets, have to end our need for a ‘savior’ like people who are bestowing that claim upon Donald Trump, Bibi Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, etc. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is reminding us that we have to save ourselves, it is upon us to let go of our “fierce greed”, of our need to be ‘saved’ by authoritarians, by idolatrous people trying to deceive us into believing they are religious and people of God. We, the descendants of the prophets, have to respond to being “bowed and stunned” with action, with the ferocity that the prophets displayed at the injustices perpetrated by those who were so greedy as to forget the call of God, the words of the Bible, their vision so blurred they could not see the divine image in every human being they faced. We, the descendants of the prophets, have to stand up for the poor, the stranger, the needy, the powerless, the voiceless, women and children, all people who are not in the ‘ruling class’ with the strength and conviction the prophets taught us to.

It is called Alcoholics Anonymous because people had to hide from the stigma and the shame of being known as an alcoholic. We met in private places so as to not call attention to ourselves and to hide from the outside world. While the prophets called for the people to repent out loud and publicly, we alcoholics did this in private for fear of the repercussions of ‘those people’ who would use our alcoholism against us. Rather than support our recovery, we knew our recovery could and would be used against us. While there is still some stigma attached to recovery, it is more accepted and applauded, people in recovery are no longer held back by their past and, in some cases, elevated because of their psychic change because of their recovery.

I am grateful that I have been able to hear the call of the prophets, the call of Rabbi Heschel et al over these years of recovery. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 104

“The Bible does not deal with divinity but with humanity. Addressing human beings about human affairs, whose language who’d be employed if not man’s? And yet, it is as if God took these Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power and the words became a live wire charged with His spirit. To this very day they are hyphens between heaven and earth.”(God in Search of Man pg. 244)

The last sentence above is one of the best descriptions of how the words of the Bible can affect humanity as well as the effect of the words of the Bible on all of us. “Hyphens” comes from the Latin meaning “under one”and is used in grammar “to join words that have a combined meaning or that they are linked”. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that the Bible links humanity to God and God to humanity.

When we engage in and immerse ourselves in the words and thoughts of the Bible, we are linking ourselves to something greater than ourselves as well as linking ourselves to all human beings. This, I believe, is the goal, the power, the beauty and the call of the words of the Bible. We, human beings, are in desperate need of re-connecting ourselves to the “hyphens” so we can maintain, repair the connection “between heaven and earth.”

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in the entire piece above calls us to account as well as gives us a path to filling the “hole in the soul” that human beings suffer from. We are all seeking connection, seeking an response to the uncertainty that is inherent in being human and Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above helps us address these needs. Every human being, I believe, at one time or another is aware of their impermanence and seeks to be seen, known, and feel important. When we experience the words of the Bible as God’s concern, love, and care for us, as God’s desire to help us be more human, to experience a connection “between heaven and earth”, we come to realize the esteem we are held in by a power greater than ourselves and the need God has for us, each of us. The four sentences above come to teach us, remind us, declare to us the power of the Bible to heal our spiritual maladies, to fill the void so many of us try to fill with power, mendacity, deceptions, self-deceptions, food, sex, alcohol, wealth, etc. The Bible helps us refine our character, let go of our image-seeking, know our true value, respect our own dignity and that of another(s).

The experience of the people who left Egypt, Israelites and other slaves, at the Red Sea was one of each person having their own experience of God, the experience at Sinai, where we received the Torah, was an individual experience as well. These two experiences along with Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above empower each of us to have our own connection with the words of the Bible and we each experience our own “live wire charged with His spirit” that we get to live into and share with humanity. The Bible is not to be used for power, for control, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, rather it is for us to connect to our higher self, to harmonize our opposing inclinations, to recognize and mature the unique gift and need that we are created for and with. We engage in the Bible not for validation of what we want to do, we engage with the Bible to grow our purpose and passion, our connection and our love for one another, for our self and for God.

The Bible is the marriage document, the spiritual covenant between humanity and God as well as the spiritual document that links one human being to another. When two people marry in the Jewish tradition, there is the marriage license issued by the State they live in and the Ketubah, the Jewish marriage document. What is created is a new entity, each partner is joined together with God so the marriage is actually a threesome; you, your partner, and God. Just as the words of the Bible are the “hyphens between heaven and earth” so too God is the “hyphens between heaven and earth” of a marriage ceremony. Isn’t it time for humanity to end its incessant need to bastardize the Bible and use it for its purpose of bringing us together individually, collectively, and with God? Isn’t it time for our spiritual leaders to actually attend to our spiritual well-being rather than try to get us to worship dogma? Isn’t it time for our Rabbis, Priests, Cantors, Imams, infuse worship with meaning and spirit, with passion and purpose, with truth and humility? Isn’t it time for all of us to re-connect to the “live wire charged with His spirit” that the Bible gives to us? Our world is falling apart, we have come to worship leaders who are authoritarians, religious leaders give cover to these idolators by saying “Jesus sent them”, “they are the ‘real’ Jews”, etc. giving cover to these people who only want to care for themselves and their gang of thugs, who want to disconnect the “live wire charged with His spirit” so we all follow along. WE, THE PEOPLE, have to shout NO from every town square, from every House of Worship, from every Pulpit, from every street corner and within every home. We, the People, have to end their bastardization of the Bible, we have to reconnect to the “live wire”, we have to reconnect to the “hyphens between heaven and earth” so we can save our souls and the soul of humanity.

This is the call of recovery. Just as the Bible helps us recover our connections to a power greater than ourselves, our connections to all human beings, so too does the recovery movement. In recovery, we see the similarities of every human being one to another, we seek to respect one another, to work together to re-sew the fabric of our character, to recognize the goodness of being within us and within everyone else. In recovery, I found my faith, my life, I found love and became able to receive love, I found my humanity and the humanity of all people. I, like so many others in recovery, am part of the “hyphens between heaven and earth” when I live the words of the Bible as God shows me to do. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 103

“The Bible does not deal with divinity but with humanity. Addressing human beings about human affairs, whose language who’d be employed if not man’s? And yet, it is as if God took these Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power and the words became a live wire charged with His spirit. To this very day they are hyphens between heaven and earth.”(God in Search of Man pg. 244)

Rabbi Heschel is teaching and reminding us of the Bible’s power to speak in our language and infuse us and the words of the Bible with “His power”. Just as God breathes the “spirit of life” into humans at birth, so too does the Bible breathe the “spirit of God” into the words of the Bible, setting them apart from our everyday language and giving to us the opportunity to raise up our discourse and our actions, as I experience Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom this morning. Since the Bible is dealing with humanity, speaking to us”about human affairs”, Rabbi Heschel’s third sentence above reminds us of God’s concern, God’s care, God’s love for humanity, breathing into the words of the Bible the force, spirit, power of God so we can raise our standard of living to the level of truly being human.

A “live wire” in physics is “the wire that is active for carrying current in the circuit”. Rabbi Heschel is calling upon us to be connected to this “live wire”, to allow the current of “His spirit” to run through the words of the Bible into us. We are the circuits of the world, we are the energy that controls and conducts the affairs of the world and of humanity, therefore needing a source of current and, as I hear Rabbi Heschel today, the source is the Bible that is infused with “His power” and “His spirit”. While much is made of the question: “who wrote the Bible”, Rabbi Heschel is telling us this question may be interesting yet what is more important is to connect to the current of God’s power and spirit that runs throughout the Bible.

This teaching also demands that we seek the truth of the Bible, that we end our incessant need to twist the Bible into a pretzel to validate our selfishness, our callousness, our violence, our prejudice, our need for power over another(s), our need to be right, etc. It also calls out to me to remember that all of us are created in the image of God and we are all unique so hearing the different ways the Bible speaks to each of us when we are infused with the “current in the circuit” that is God’s spirit and power is also necessary so we can get a more informed picture of the Bible’s teachings, of God’s calling, of the job only we can fulfill to make the ‘dream’ of the Bible a reality-“nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall men learn war anymore”.

At issue is whether we are going to turn the switch that allows the “live wire” to reach us or whether we are going to leave it in the off position. While we hear often of ‘what the Bible says’, many of these ‘experts’ are keeping the switch that allows the “live wire charged with His spirit” in the off position and are really speaking from their desire to have power, to rule over us, to be god themselves! Every fundamentalist, in my opinion, has the switch turned off, they are unable to open themselves up to the humanity of another who is different then they, they are unwilling to entertain any interpretation that is different from theirs, and they are so enamored with their ‘rightness’ and their deceptive belief that they alone know they become the very Pharaohs, the Amaleks, that the Bible cautions us against. The Bible calls for all of us to read and hear the words of the Torah, even the Kings have to have the Bible close at hand. The prophets were not killed, according to the Bible, even though they spoke truth to power, they called out the Priests, the wealthy, the royalty-even before Jesus did.

Rabbi Heschel’s writings and teachings are a consistent example of keep the switch in the on position. His words are filled with the “His spirit” and he is telling all of us of our ability to do the same. We can, and we need to, allow the current of “His power” and His spirit” to infuse not just our reading of the Bible, the teachings of the Bible, but also allow “His power” and “His spirit” to infuse our daily actions. Experiencing the Bible as the container of the current of God’s spirit, experiencing the Bible as being the arbiter of human affairs, living into the humanity of the Bible through God’s spirit raises our standard of living to the level of truly being human, of being worthy to be God’s partner, of living together in harmony, respect and non-judgmentally. God returns our soul to us each morning with compassion and faithfulness, according to the prayer Jews are to recite prior to getting out of bed, and keeping the switch that controls the “live wire” current in the on position is our best response to God’s compassion and faithfulness.

Having the ability to turn the switch back to the on position is what recovery does for us. We recover the power, the vision, the ability to find that we were in despair of never finding again, then relearn how to turn it on and how to keep it on. This happens as soon as we surrender our selfishness, our despair, our grandiosity, our belief that ‘we can do it differently’, and we become teachable again, we turn the switch back to the on position so we can be, once again, infused with the spirit of God, the power of God and be human once again.

I am blessed through the studies and actions that have shaped my recovery and to have teachers and guides like Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Feinstein, Rabbi Silverman as well as mentors like my brothers, sister, wife, daughter and parents and grandparents who, like their grandchildren and great-grandchildren keep the switch in the on position and have the “live wire” direct their actions and the kindness, their compassion and their faithfulness. This is the ‘secret sauce’ of my recovery. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 102

“The Bible does not deal with divinity but with humanity. Addressing human beings about human affairs, whose language who’d be employed if not man’s? And yet, it is as if God took thees Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power and the words became a life wire charged with His spirit. To this very day they are hypes between heaven and earth.”(God in Search of Man pg. 244)

Rabbi Heschel’s question in the second sentence above seems rhetorical, yet it is crucial to our being able to appreciate, apprehend and comprehend the power and the gift that the Bible is for all of humanity. Proverbs 22:6 tells us to “teach each child according to their understanding” so it is inconceivable that God would not speak to humans in ways and words we can understand. The truth that the Bible speaks in the language of humans is, I believe, further proof of its show of love for humans by God. Rather than speak above or down to us, the Bible speaks to us in ways we can understand and in the language we know.

“Addressing human beings about human affairs”, while the foundational principle of the Bible, seems to get lost in many commentaries, in many sermons, in the reading and studying of the Bible by many people. The Bible is a dynamic document, it is a roadmap to better living and a guide for all of us to live together will our similarities and differences. Most of all, it is God’s dream and will for us to appreciate, care for one another and work together to improve our world, leaving it a better place for the next generation than we inherited. It is not a weapon to be used to control, to bludgeon another person into submission of our will, it is not for one people to lord it over another, it is not about conversion. The Bible is for us to address our humanity, constantly seeking to be human in all of our affairs. It gives us principles, values, ‘laws’, to live by. It also gives us choice.

A friend of ours, Miss Kim, said to us the other day: “I don’t read the Bible, I live the Bible”. This is the essence of what God is seeking, I believe. The Bible is for us to live into rather than take apart with our critical thinking, with our desire to know ‘who wrote it’. It is here to help us address family issues, ways of legislating that gives dignity and worth to every human soul. It gives us the opportunity and ability to ‘get over ourselves’ and seek to serve something greater than our egotistical needs. The Bible addresses us in a language we can understand so we can live better and more in line with the divine energy that is inside of each of us, all of us. The Bible tells us how to fulfill Rodney King’s question: “Can’t we all just get along?” It reminds us that police officers and judges are here to improve our living, not take out their prejudices on the people they don’t like. The Bible implores us to adjudicate equal justice, no matter whether someone is rich or poor, whether we recognize them or not, it tells us to pursue justice with all of our being and energy.

The Bible tells us what happens when we corrupt our society, bastardize the principles and values it gives us; authoritarians come to power! Many people believe God is pernicious and vengeful in some passages in the Bible not realizing the Bible is merely speaking to us about our propensity to “scout after our heart and our eyes to whore ourselves after them”(Numbers 15:39). The Bible is addressing us for our own benefit, giving us prophecy, a glimpse into what happens when we run, drift away from the paths it gives us to address our humanity, to grow our humanity. It is not vengeful, it is not violent, it is not mean; it is a gift to us to show us our choices and what each choice brings.

The Bible uses stories, life experiences to address us in the ways we can understand-whether these experiences happened to the people mentioned is for our archeological experts to determine. For the rest of us, these stories depict real life situations we constantly find ourselves in: family issues, wage and hour issues, boundary issues, slavery, hatred of someone different from us, rape, murder, unchecked power, idolatry, etc. The Bible is giving us a look inside of ourselves, our egos, our brains, our emotions and our souls. It is a roadmap back to our spiritual selves each time we stray and “whore ourselves” for glory, riches, fame, power, etc. It is our responsibility to add to the Bible our experiences and our paths of straying and following it in our time. As I said before, it is a dynamic document and we have to be interpreting it anew each day, we have to be using it in our interactions with another(s), in our interactions with our selves. It is to be our handbook for all our affairs, it is not so much a ‘religious’ text it is the path to living a “richer and more meaningful life”.

In recovery, we are constantly seeking to “practice these principles in all our affairs”. We know from the stories in the Big Book of AA that we cannot be in recovery in a vacuum, our recovery has to be lived in every facet of our being. We pray each morning for the power to carry out God’s will, to live a little more decent each and every day.

My grandfather, Abe Borovitz, was not a wealthy man, he was not a learned man, yet he lived the Bible’s way in all of his affairs. He didn’t cheat anyone, his word was his bond, he would not let gossip about another person be spoken in his presence, he treated each person, regardless of the color of their skin or their bank account, with respect and dignity. When we closed his dry cleaning/tailoring store up-he insisted we return the clothes he had in the store that belonged to other people whether they could pay or not! He said, I won’t take what isn’t mine nor will I ever commit thievery. It took me many years to follow his example and I am blessed to have witnessed his living the Bible. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day101

“The Bible does not deal with divinity but with humanity. Addressing human beings about human affairs, whose language who’d be employed if not man’s? And yet, it is as if God took thees Hebrew words and breathed into them of His power and the words became a life wire charged with His spirit. To this very day they are hypes between heaven and earth.”(God in Search of Man pg. 244)

Rabbi Heschel’s words and teaching are to be experienced, I believe. The experience of the first sentence above is one of humility and grace, trembling awe and joy, revelation and T’Shuvah. Many people read the Bible, or parts of it and reject the claims it makes upon us as religious folly. Experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence is what has made the Bible the foundation for our morality and our ways of living. Even those who claim God doesn’t exist, that the Bible is a book of folly and control, upon experiencing the words of Rabbi Heschel’s are hard-pressed to deny their wisdom and truth.

There are ‘religious’ people who claim because it is written in the Bible, we have to do all the commandments and, I believe they are missing the brilliance of Rabbi Heschel’s words. That the Bible deals “with humanity” gives all of us a doorway to a “richer and more meaningful life” because we are able to see our lives through the stories and wisdom of our ancestors/archetypes of the Bible. All of us can understand the error of hiding from our mistakes and being found out causing us to experience shame and then blame someone else, as Adam did. We all are aware of sibling rivalry and denial as the story of Cain delineates. It is not about Godly, angelic thinking or acting that Genesis is about, it is about how to get along as a family. It is about how to be a better father, mother, son, daughter, brother and sister. It is about our need to be accepted and respected for who we are and not attempt to deceive or hid in order to be loved. It is about how we deal with our jealousies and our feelings of being left out. It is how we deal with our loved ones and being in truth, telling the whole story of family life without needing to ‘hide our dirty laundry’. Throughout the Bible we are made aware of our ‘dirty laundry’ and how it impacts us and everyone around us! While God ‘speaks’ to us throughout the Torah, God is speaking to us for our benefit, giving us ways to better connect with our own soul, with the souls of another(s), and with the spiritual energy of the universe; not how to be angelic. Rather we are given pathways to being holy; separating ourselves from our negative desires in the moment, and recognizing that our mundane actions have sparks of holiness, elevation in them, if we are willing to perform them for more than our selfish desires.

Being immersed in the experience of the first sentence above helps us find our path to our humanity; find our pathway to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”; reach out to welcome the stranger, lift up the needy and feed the poor; to search within ourselves what we do well and where we miss the mark each day, week, month, and year. We find ourselves on the road to wholeness as well as holiness. We understand the flaws of the people of the Bible, we marvel at their goodness, we are in trembling awe of how the same errors are committed over and over throughout the Bible and then face ourselves in the mirror and ask the questions: “where do I make these errors” and “when I am living my own goodness out loud”. Using the Bible as the measuring stick of our humanity gives us the opportunity to experience the humility of being right-sized, of living our unique gift and promise out loud and in the world. We can let go of our envies and jealousies, we can end our incessant need for ‘how we look’ , we can stop worrying about how many ‘likes’ we have on social media, and we no longer have to compromise our morals, our values, our truth to ‘make it’ because living into the Bible’s teachings of how to be human is what ‘making it’ is all about.

In recovery, this is our goal, to be human, to live up to the best of our ability and be seen rather than sink to our lowest common denominator and hide. The Big Book of AA is an offshoot, a commentary on the Bible, AA is an outgrowth of the Oxford Group, the steps of AA are filled with calls to live into God’s will, the words of the Bible and how to be human and deal with our addictions and our erroneous belief we are supposed to be perfect. In recovery, we are recovering our dignity, our integrity, our humanity and we use a myriad of spiritual texts to achieve this, be it the Big Book, the myriad of Daily Meditations, the Bible, Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, the Talmud, the writings of the Buddha, the teachings of the Dalai Lama, etc. “We are not saints”, “we seek spiritual progress not spiritual perfections” are key phrases we live into in our recovery and they are paths for us to be a little more human each day.

Since my last incarceration from1986-1989, I have used the Bible as my guidebook, roadmap to being more human each day. The Bible gives me the path to my imperfection, to my changing, growing, nurturing my own spirit. It has given me the Good Orderly Direction for living well and I never take it for granted, nor do I use it as an excuse for my inappropriate actions. Studying the Bible with people ensures that I don’t bastardize the teachings, the roadways to being human that it gives me. I study Rabbi Heschel daily along with others, I pray each morning and day so I can continue to improve my goal of being human and being a little better , a little stronger, a little more loving human being each day. I have learned and continue to learn from the wisdom of the Bible and the archetypes of the Bible to continue to evaluate my actions in light of the today’s growth, sometimes this means I have to make T’Shuvah for past actions that I hadn’t realized were harmful! It always means I can give myself a break for what I did not know and what I could not see, respiring the damage and not shaming myself! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 100

“How is it conceivable that the divine should be contained in such brittle vessels as consonants and vowels? This question betrays the sin of our age: to treat lightly the ether which carries the light-waves of the spirit. What else is the capable of bringing man and man together over the distances in space and in time? Of all things on earth, words alone never die. They have so little matter and so much meaning.” (God in Search of Man pg. 244)

“Words alone never die” is proven by the fact that the Bible is still studied, argued about, used as a path, a guide and a source of accountability. We still recite, learn from and engage in the words of Cicero, Greek and Roman Mythology, Confucius, Sun-Tzu, as well as the words of Jesus, Mohammed, and Moses. The words of the prophets still disturb many of us and we seek to understand and live into the meaning and wisdom of their words. Words are direct and vague in the same moment. While we used to have a shared understanding of what words meant, what meaning they conveyed, even then we were taught the study of the Bible meant understanding anew each year the words being read because their meanings would deepen the more we grew spiritually. The same is true today regarding the Bible and, unfortunately, there are many people who read the Bible to validate unholy actions, to hide their ‘crimes and misdemeanors’ by quoting Scriptures. Many people have surrendered to these ‘religious’ people who are actually the most irreligious people around!

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in the last two sentences above call to us to account for the ways we use the words of the Bible, the ways we use the words of the US Constitution, the ways we use the words of the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, the ways we use the words of the Koran, as well as the New Testament. I hear Rabbi Heschel reminding us that these words that are written be they from 3000 years ago or today, have tremendous meaning and we can never kill them! We may take them back, we may apologize for them, we may exalt them and we may promote them AND, they will never die, we can and must be judged by the words we say and believe, the meanings we put to our words and the use, abuse, misuse, etc we create with our words, the words of another and the words of history.

Banning books, teaching that slaves learned skills from their enslavement which helped them later in life, calling Jews vermin, perpetrators of genocide, extolling Hamas and the slaughter they committed on Oct. 7th, mistreating the stranger, the poor, the needy, women, non-white people and using the words of the Bible to validate these lies, these horrors will not be forgotten. Just as Lincoln was wrong about his words at Gettysburg, so too will these “brittle vessels” be remembered for time immemorial. We have to hold ourselves accountable for our words, we have to hold ourselves accountable for the actions our words produce both by us and by another(s). Words have power as well as meaning. The words of the Bible and every spiritual discipline are to help us lean into their ways of “bringing man and man together over distances in space and in time”. By engaging in the words of the Bible, the Koran, the New Testament, the Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Cicero, the Big Book of AA, etc we are able to effect time travel and hurl ourselves through space to their times and use their wisdom and experiences to enhance our ways of living today. We are able to use the words of the prophets as measuring sticks of our own being human. Yet, we have to engage in their words, the words of our spiritual disciplines truthfully, without seeking for their words to validate what we want to do, what we are doing, rather it is for us to learn from the words of our ancestors and from our Spiritual Disciplines what actions we are to take, what ways of being we are to adopt and live into. Danny Siegel wrote: A Rebbi’s Proverb (From the Yiddish) “If you always assume the person sitting next to you is the Messiah waiting for some simple human kindness —You will soon come to weigh your words and watch your hands. And if the person chooses Not to be revealed In your time —It will not matter.” This is crucial for us and is, I believe, an affirmation of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, “to weigh your words” so our actions are in line with the divine call of the Bible and of every spiritual discipline.

In recovery, we are still reading and understanding the words of the Big Book of AA. We study it over and over again, seeking new meanings and new ways of being, engaging with the text to glean the wisdom and the eternal from it. We are constantly seeking the wisdom and guidance of the words of the people who began AA as well as from the stories of people who have been impacted by being in recovery. We come to practice “restraint of pen and tongue” and, as Harriet Rossetto(my wife and founder of Beit T’Shuvah) says: “a good relationship is measured by how many bite marks one has on their tongue”!

I am guilty of misusing words at times. I have allowed my passion to get the better of me and it has turned into what seems like anger. While it is really frustration, fear, it has come out as anger and I pray these are not the only words of mine that are remembered. I am deeply remorseful for the negative impact my words of anger have had on anyone and everyone. I pray the words of wisdom, the words of Torah that I have taught, spoken and live are remembered and used, and from Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom today-I know they will never die and this brings me comfort and respite. The words of Rabbi Heschel, that I am keeping alive and well within me, and hopefully, for you are words of hope and belief in the goodness of humanity, the power of the human spirit and our ability to grow and change. I am grateful for Rabbi Heschel’s faith in us, for God’s faith in us, for the people who uplift me and support me because their words of direction give me a path of return and a path of freedom. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 99

“How is it conceivable that the divine should be contained in such brittle vessels as consonants and vowels? This question betrays the sin of our age: to treat lightly the ether which carries the light-waves of the spirit. What else is the capable of bringing man and man together over the distances in space and in time? Of all things on earth, words alone never die. They have so little matter and so much meaning.” (God in Search of Man pg. 244)

Dwelling in Rabbi Heschel’s words above disturbs me greatly!! His description of “brittle vessels of consonants and vowels” is so in our faces, in our consciousness, through social media, the Cable News, Podcasts, etc as well as in the speeches and writings of people. The Bible is the foundation for democracy as well as theocracy, it is the home of peace and war, kindness and cruelty, justice, mercy and injustice.  All of the disparate and the myriad of emotions, rationalizations and wonder/awe/radical amazement that human beings encounter, discover, and experience are found in the Bible. Ergo: all of them have the ability to enhance our spirit, mature our souls and retrain our brains. Almost every experience we are able to put “consonants and vowels” to and learn from each experience and the ones that overwhelm us, that have no other words for than OMG, we also learn and grow from. The challenge that I hear from Rabbi Heschel this morning is to honor the “brittle vessels” rather than crack them open by misusing the “consonants and vowels” to promote a personal agenda rather than a holy agenda. Hence, my being disturbed by Rabbi Heschel’s teaching: Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Joy Reid, Fox News(?), Mike Johnson, Rashida Tliab, AOC, DJT, Clarence Thomas, Ginny Thomas, the rest of the ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’, Bibi and his gang of ‘religious’ thugs et al all are using “consonants and vowels” to lie, cheat, deceive, steal, and “treat lightly the ether which carries the light-waves of the spirit.”

We are being bombarded with mendacity and deception by people using the “consonants and vowels” of the Bible for their own sake. We are in a war for the soul of the Bible as well as the soul of democracy, we are in a war for the soul of humanity as well as the soul of freedom. While we all have the free-will to buy into the lies of another and the lies we tell ourselves, we also have the free-will to be in truth with ourselves and one another. We have, as I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning, the free-will obligation to recapture the the “ether which carries the light-waves of the spirit”. Rabbi Abraham Twerski teaches us that what makes us human is our ability to make “free-will moral choices” and we find what is moral and what is immoral in the Bible; ergo: when these “brittle vessels” are violated, cracked, broken, it is easy for the liars and deceivers, charlatans and idolators, to convince people that what is immoral is moral, and what is moral is immoral-this is the soul sickness that Maimonidies speaks about in his writings called “Eight Chapters”.

Ether is not just a knock-out drug used in surgeries, it is also “the upper regions of air above the clouds” and “to be the medium whose vibrations constituted light”. Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to end our incessant need to ‘see’ everything, our outlandish denial of the world of the spirit and the world we are unable to see with our narrow vision. Just as narrow-minded and narrow-visioned people once believed the earth was flat, just as people believed everything revolved around the earth, the idea that their is no medium for “light-waves of the spirit” is ridiculous also. I am thinking of love for which is transmitted through these same “light-waves” because love is a spiritual experience even though many people fake love for their own purpose. Authoritarians/Populists do this all the time, men have done this just to take a woman to bed to satisfy their selfish desires, women have done this faking so they can be protected, taken care of, etc as well. We have ‘religious’ people who claim God wants us to suffer so we can be pure, which is another bastardization of God’s love and God’s desires according the “brittle vessels” which contain the “consonants and vowels” of the Bible. When we “treat the ether which carries the light-waves of the spirit” with the respect and awe it calls for, when we allow these “light-waves of the spirit” to penetrate us, to change us, to redeem us, life changes and we become less self-deceptive and believe the lies and deceptions of another much less as well.

In recovery, we become aware of the “brittle vessels” that words are, we chose our words wiser than we had before our recovery. We are able to understand that our “illness” of the mind, body, spirit is not one that medicine can fix, cure and/or even alleviate completely. We know as Father Martin says that we suffer from a Soul-Sickness and only through engaging with and allowing in the “light-waves of the spirit”, only by connecting with the “ether which carries” these light waves can we find a reprieve, and it is only a daily one. The work of the spirit never ends, the careful caring for the “brittle vessels” of “consonants and vowels” that are contained in the Bible, in our spiritual texts of all spiritual disciplines need our heeding them as well as guarding against bastardizing them, against breaking the spirit and call of the divine they contain.

As always, I hear Rabbi Heschel reproving me and uplifting me. I have, at times, misused the “brittle vessels” with an individual and a group and I am sorry for this. I also am uplifted by the numerous times I have helped another human being let go of the lies they told themselves and felt/feel a little freer each day. I have experienced and continue to experience the “light-waves of the spirit” and become more and more connected to more people and to God, to justice and to mercy, to truth and to love, to kindness and compassion. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 98

“We all live in them, feel in them, think in them, but, failing to uphold their independent dignity, to respect their power and weight, they turn waif, elusive-a mouthful of dust(God’s Quest for Man pg.25). When placed before the Bible, the words of which are like dwellings made of rock, we do not know how to find the door.”(God in Search of Man pg. 244)

Continuing to learn from Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom about “holiness in words” that is the Bible, we get to look inside of ourselves and at our outer actions in order to judge ourselves, our world. The first sentence above is like a knife “circumcising the foreskin of our hearts” as Moses tells us in Deuteronomy. Rabbi Heschel is calling us all out, demanding we be accountable for our use of the words of the Bible. He is, like the prophets of Israel, railing against our misuse of Biblical words, beseeching us to end our abuse of the words of the Bible, offering us a path of return of using them to live by rather than living by the abhorrent ways we are want to bastardize them.

Rabbi Heschel is acknowledging our ability to use the words of the Bible to live, feel and think AND he is putting a mirror up to us all so we can see how we have failed to “uphold their independent dignity”. The words of the Bible are holy and they give us the path to living life at a higher level than our lowest common denominator. Rabbi Heschel is giving us the opportunity to re-tune our hearing, to get the correct pitch and melody of the words of the Bible so we can, once again, sing and live in harmony, in creativity for the sake of heaven and one another, and “make our lives a blessing”.

By failing “to respect their power and weight” we have live in selfish, self-centered ways; our ‘good acts’ are for our sake, not the sake of heaven, not for the sake of another. Our clergy who preach so wonderfully and eloquently are also guilty, rather than speak the words of the Bible with a fervor and passion for truth, for decency, for caring about tone another, we hear the political views, the lack of “independent dignity” and “respect for their power” as messages from God. We are being inundated with the words of the Bible spoken through false lips, we are being preached at by false witness’ and they have become so compelling, we hear these words used to validate authoritarianism and autocrats! These words written in 1955 are so prescient with how our world is bastardizing the words of the Bible today-we seem to have taken Rabbi Heschel’s warning and turned it into a way to power rather than a way to compassion, to holiness.

One could wonder and ponder how and why this has happened, one could debate the ‘rightness’ of today’s misuse, abuse, bastardization of the words of the Bible, and I choose not to. Suffice it to say, this has happened today as it has happened in every era-people looking for power, seeking to deceive and to be deceived. I am more interested in how we stop our efforts to “turn them waif, elusive-a mouthful of dust.”  This can only happen when we end our neglect of the Bible, when we stop making the words, the thoughts, the ideas, the ideals, the paths of the Bible orphans. When we end our incessant need to neglect, when we stop willfully making them difficult to achieve, we can regain the power, dignity, weight, and respect the words of the Bible deserve and, in the process, begin to repair our selves, repair our neighborhoods, repair our countries and our world.

We can change our trajectory, we can turn towards the “holiness in words” that the Bible both is and gives us, we can unclog our ears, “circumcise our the foreskins of our hearts”, allow our spirits to veto the ways in which we seek our desires over what is the next right action to take. We have the power to do this and it begins by being accountable to ourselves, to one another and to no longer seek to defend our bad actions by using the Bible to validate our flawed behaviors. We have to begin by demanding of our clergy to preach truth, to learn with their flock and let go of their dogmas, their political leanings-on both sides of the continuum- and learn anew each day, each year from the words of the Bible. We need to demand of clergy and layperson alike that the prayers we utter matter! No longer are we going to allow ourselves, our neighbors, our enemies, our clergy to pray by rote, be insincere in our communicating with God, with ourselves. We are going to demand rigorous honesty and introspection. We are going to work together, clergy, layperson, friend and foe to “uphold their independent dignity, to respect their power and weight”  through study, action and love. This is what is needed by all of us; we, the people, have to demand this of our clergy as well as of ourselves if we are to avoid turning the words of the Bible into “a mouthful of dust”!

This is one of the principles of recovery-recovering “the independent dignity” of the words of the Bible, the words we use in our everyday discourse, respecting truth, seeing the dignity of every soul, and of our selves. Recovery is based in words that come from the Bible, as Rabbi Heschel points out above, we “turn our will and our lives over to the care of God…” each day as a sign of our respect for the “power and weight” of the words of the Bible. We are engaged in a daily struggle to enhance our living, raise up the lives of another, keep our side of the street a little cleaner and be a little kinder today than we were yesterday.

I ma guilty of what Rabbi Heschel is calling out above and I spend my waking hours infusing the “holiness in words” of the Bible into my life a little more each day. I am humbled to have been able to help many people achieve “recovery through Torah” and I apologize to those for whom my Torah was not accessible. God Bless and stay safe, pray for the return of the hostages, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons From Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 97

“The Bible is holiness in words. To the man of our age nothing is as familiar and trite as words. Of all things they are the cheapest, most abused and least esteemed. They are the objects of perpetual defilement.”(God in Search of Man pg. 244)

We, the people, are being called upon by Rabbi Heschel to end our “perpetual defilement” of the words of the Bible! We, as a society, are in desperate need of using the words of the Bible as a call to action rather than using them as “trite”. We are witnessing and participating in the “perpetual defilement” when we use the words of the Bible as weapons of hatred, of serving our selfish desires, and to enslave people.

In Exodus, Moses asks Pharaoh: “Thus said the Lord, God of the Hebrews: How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me.” The same question is being asked of all of us; how long will we refuse to humble ourselves before the “holiness in words” of the Bible? What is blocking us from ending our abuse of the words of the Bible? What is helping us follow the false prophets who are preaching hate using the words of the Bible to validate their ignorance, their power grab, their prejudices? How have we fallen so far down the rabbit hole that we adore the evil speech and bastardization of the words of the Bible?

In prayer we ask God to “guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking evil” three times a day; the acknowledgment that we are susceptible to making the words of the Bible a “perpetual defilement” and an awareness that this is not the path to take. Later in this prayer we pray “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing before you, my Rock and my Redeemer.” Here we are reminding ourselves that “the Bible is holiness in words” and we have to raise ourselves up to the task of not treating it/them as “trite”, to end our abuse of the Bible, raise up the esteem of these words, and stop cheapening them for our own gains.

This is the challenge of God, this is the demand of the prophets, this is the call of Rabbi Heschel and this is the work of our inner life. Being human means to struggle with our urges, ask for help to overcome the evil within us, do the next right thing no matter how we feel and we are given the tools to do this when we engage in the “holiness in words of the Bible. We are given a path when we allow the words of the prayer above to be our aid in our inner battle. We take advantage of the power of God when we heed Moses’ call to “humble” ourselves before God.

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is a reminder as well as a demand that we have within us the power to defile and exalt, to abuse and to aid, to cheapen and to raise up, to make trite and to keep fresh the words of the Bible. Living into his reminder and demand means we have to reject the lies and the misuse of the words of the Bible being perpetrated by some ‘religious leaders’. We have to call out the charlatans who are using the Bible to spew hatred, to exalt the liars and the idolators. We have to say NO to the ‘religious right’ and call them out for who and what they are: deceivers who spread mendacity. We have to take the “holiness in words” of the Bible and use them to spread truth, kindness, love, compassion, welcoming, concern, care, etc. We have to stop allowing these self-centered zealots from determining what is religious, what is holy and return to the words of the Bible for holiness and truth. We have to take our proper places as people of faith, as holy souls, and not be pushed aside anymore by the idolators and deceivers. We have to end our own self-deception and lies that we are not worthy, that these ‘priests’ have more knowledge and they speak with authority.

We all are worthy and have the authority of our souls to live and speak the “holiness in words” of the Bible. We all have within us the ability to discern truth and to end our “perpetual defilement” of the Bible. We all are capable of and necessary for God’s will to be lived in the world more and to be the divine needs we are created to be so we can end the reign of “perpetual defilement” that has taken over our religious institutions and our world. We, the people, are facing the same situation that Ancient Israel and Judea faced; the priests, the wealthy, and the royalty gave lip-service to the words of the Bible rather than living them truthfully. They abused the words, they cheapened the words, they defiled the words of God and made the people they were supposedly serving into 2nd class citizens and into pawns for their evil designs. The prophets came to get us to change our ways and they are speaking to us loudly today-be they the prophets of the Bible, Rev. King, Rabbi Heschel, Rev. Barber, and the myriad of spiritual giants who’s writings are easily accessible. We have to choose to hear and heed them.

In recovery, we “made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God…”. This is the decision that Rabbi Heschel is calling us to make. In recovery, we read the Bible, the Big Book, every spiritual text with the goal of changing our inner life so we can make our outer actions holiness in deeds. We “continue to improve our conscious contact with God” so we can better understand God’s will and align our will with God’s instead of trying to make God’s words and will align with ours. We are recovering our basic goodness of being, we are recovering our holy souls, we are helping another and being of service to God and to humans. This is our goal, this is our path and this is our success. I live this way to a greater and lessor degree-yet always at least one grain of sand more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons From Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 96

“The Bible is holiness in words. To the man of our age nothing is as familiar and trite as words. Of all things they are the cheapest, most abused and least esteemed. They are the objects of perpetual defilement.”(God in Search of Man pg. 244)

Today is Martin Luther King Day and we celebrate this good friend of Rabbi Heschel’s spirit, deeds and words. Rev. King’s belief in the dignity of all people is essential for us to adopt/re-adopt as it is perfect harmony with Rabbi Heschel’s beliefs and actions, I believe. While his words and actions are being used by both sides in the war in the Middle East, it is important to heed the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel above: let us no longer make the words we use, “trite”, we need to stop making the words of the Bible  “the cheapest, most abused, and least esteemed.”

Both Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel marched for, worked for and lived the words of the Bible to have true meaning, to envelop us all in acts of holiness, in ways of peace, in actions of kindness and dignity. While the world rails against Israel and Jews for defending itself from Hamas’ attacks and hostage taking, while some in Israel call for destroying Gaza and pushing the people of Gaza out of their land, while some on both sides call for the destruction of Jews and Arabs living side by side, the words above and the actions of Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel demand we, the people, do the opposite.

It is high time for the leadership of America in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, for the leadership in Israel, in Russia, in the Arab world and in Ukraine to heed Rabbi Heschel’s words and the words of Rev. King. It is time for all of us to stop using words for our own agendas and use the worlds of the Bible for their original intent: to raise us all up to live into the the holiness in words that the Bible provides for us. Be it Bibi or Mike Johnson, MBS or Putin, Tliab or Haley, all of us have to end our “eye disease” of prejudice to the ‘rightness’ of our opinions. We have to end our ‘need to be right’ and our denigration of anyone who disagrees with us. Our world, our freedom, our souls are in desperate need of hearing and acting on Rev. King’s “dream speech” and Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and wisdom.

Advertising executives, spin doctors in the political world, salespeople and common folk like us have taken the Bible and turned the “holiness in words” into ways of idolatry. Rabbi Heschel, in his introduction of Rev. King to the Rabbinical Assembly in March of 1968, reminds us “Where does God dwell in America today?….Is He not rather with the poor and the contrite in the slums?…Where in America do we hear a voice like the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America.”(Essential Writings, pg.84). Yet, we still fail to heed Dr. King’s words; both sides in any conflict misuse and abuse his words, his spirit to ‘prover’ their claims, to ‘validate’ their lies, to make “trite” the words of another and their own. Rather than raise our words and actions to the level of Biblical thought and direction, as Dr. King did and encouraged all of us to do, today people use his words and dreams, his aspirations and his prophecy to denigrate one another, to defile the dignity of one another, to bastardize the “holiness in words” that the Bible is.

Be it in the halls of Congress, on the campaign trail, in our cities and streets, in the Ukraine, in the Gaza Strip, in Jerusalem, in Riyadh, in Qatar, in Tehran, in Moscow, wherever, it is time for all of us to demand a return to living into the “holiness in words” of the Bible. It is time to end our “perpetual defilement” of the Bible’s words and teachings. It is time to hearken to the voice, the words, the calls of Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King to see every human being as a divine image, to respect the dignity and worth of every human soul, to end our need to enslave another for our sense of worth, to let go of our unholy desires to abuse another human being for our ‘betterment’. It is time for us to end our incessant need to conquer another group of people so they can ‘serve’ us, it is high time for us to stop using “The Bible is holiness in words” for our selfish desires, and use the Bible to serve God, to serve “the poor and the contrite in the slums”. It is time for us to, paraphrasing President Kennedy; ask not what God can do for you, ask not what the Bible can do for you, ask what can you do for God, what can you do to live the “holiness in words” the Bible gives us.

Living into the words of the Bible, no longer making them “trite” no longer making them “the cheapest, most abused and least esteemed” of all things is the goal and the path of recovery. Whether one lives the words of the Big Book of AA, the Biggest Book called the Bible, the words, wisdom, ways of Buddhism, etc all of us in recovery are letting go of our need to bastardize words, concepts, old ideas and cheapen our ways of living any more. We believe not only in the holiness in words”, we know we have to take these words, make them our own and live them in all of our affairs. We no longer blame another, we take responsibility for our part, we no longer reject people on sight, we welcome all who have “a desire to stop” being indecent, unapproachable, disdaining, hating, stereotyping, prejudice. Everyone needs to be in recovery, everyone needs to heed the calls and demands of Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob.

I have been a fan of Dr. King’s since 1955 when my father introduced me to prejudice and how to combat it-through kindness and recognizing the value and dignity of all people, of looking at the soul, the heart of another not their skin color. Dr. King’s dream is still unrealized here and all over the world. Yet, I work to bring it to reality one grain of sand more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark