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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 172

“The Bible does not say, God created the plant or the animal; it says God created different kinds of plants,… In striking contrast it does not say, God created different kinds of man, men of different colors and races, it proclaims, God created one single man. From one single man all men are descended.” (Essential Writings pg. 66)

Ramadan is over, Easter has passed, and Passover is upcoming. All three Western Religious and Spiritual disciplines have, at this time of spring and rejuvenation, ceremonies, rites, holy days which embody liberation of the soul, spiritual renewal, and the journey to freedom. Yet, how can we engage in any of these with our bigotries and hatreds, our competitions and separations of human beings by highlighting our differences of color, of race, of religion? I believe it is impossible.

As Rabbi Heschel reminds us, we are all descended, according to the Bible, from the first man, Adam-“male and female He created them both” (Genesis 1:27). It also states that Adam was created “in the Image of God”(ibid). Given this, it is impossible for people of faith, people who claim to worship God, to separate themselves according to race, color, religion. Yet, we do!! How sad, how destructive, how ignorant.

While learning of the different species of plants and animals is necessary so we can ensure we are growing the ‘right’ plants in the right climate, we can make sure that we keep animals in climates and habitats that are in accordance with their needs, it is a desecration of God’s name, it goes against our higher consciousness to separate humans according to their races, their colors, their religions. It is an insidious form of slavery, it is an Egypt that we have not been able to leave and the perpetrators of this way of being are the Pharaoh’s of modernity.

We are 10 days from celebrating Passover, extolling the miracle of leaving Egypt, leaving the harsh labor of slavery, the burdens of our inner slavery. And we are far from free, hence this is called the ‘time of our liberation’. The promise that slavery will end is one that has yet to be realized, not because it is not ordained, not because the opportunities have not presented themselves, rather because humanity has not availed itself of these opportunities. Humanity has chosen to stay stuck in the burdens of our inner slaveries and continue to separate ‘according to our own kind’.

Rather than immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s repetition of the words of Genesis, much of humanity has bastardized these words and used them as weapons against people of color, people of different races, people of different religions, different sexual orientations, different genders! Instead of discerning the difference between different plants, different animals, and being descended from a single human being, some of the so-called ‘religious’ people have equated not mixing the races, not mixing religions, not mixing colors as ‘godly and holy’ with plants and animals. These same people, of course, will gleefully mix seeds to create new fruits, veggies, etc and not see their incongruent ways.

It is way past time for humanity to catch up with ancient wisdom, we are on the brink of losing our humanity, our sense of what it means to be human. Bi-racial, interfaith, LGBTQ+, women’s rights are all ways of celebrating the differences of each human being, ways to acknowledge that we are all descendants of Adam, we are all struggling to come out of hiding, we are more similar than different and we all belong. Islam, Christianity, Judaism all celebrate the human being, all confer upon humanness the ability to act Godlike, to live from our higher consciousness, to, in the words of Rodney King, “all just get along”.

The separations of human beings is man-made, the enslavement of women, of people of color, of Jews, Muslims, Christians, is man-made, hence we can change these ways of being, we can undo what we is man-made and use our higher consciousness and the spirit of the universe to make the promises of Easter, Ramadan, Passover into realities. Not as a parochial hierarchy, not as a ‘holier than thou’, not as ‘my religion, race, color is the best one and I should rule over you’; rather as ways of inviting “all who are hungry come and eat” and “all who are need partake in the Passover”. Remember, more than just Israelites left Egypt once the gates were opened by Pharaoh, and more than just Jews can leave at least one of our inner slaveries this Passover. It will take a concerted effort to come together to leave our current day Egypts, our current narrow places of mean-spiritedness, our current desires and acting like Pharaoh, because we erroneously believe ‘god talks to me alone’.

I grew up knowing people of different colors, races, religions were no better nor worse than me. I know this and have practiced this way of being in my recovery more and more each day. I also have a problem when people who are addicts/alcoholics believe they are different from ‘normies’, that only another addict can understand them. Every human being suffers from some form of spiritual, emotional pain and we all are in need of liberation of our souls, liberation from the harshness with which we treat ourselves and/or another human being. We are all in need of crossing the Red Sea that is the boundary line between liberation and slavery. Each Passover, I get to leave some inner bondage and walk through the desert, knowing I will not reach the “promised land” and I will be less prone to focus on differences and more attune to our similarities. 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 171

“Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: satanism, blasphemy.” (Essential Writings pg. 66)

Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s thought above causes us to become aware, to recognize, of our “racial or religious bigotry”. Yesterday’s writing was about “religious bigotry” and today’s is about “racial bigotry”. What brings us to such fear, loathing, hatred of a person whose skin color is different than ours, whose ancestry is different than ours? It is an irrational fear, despicable hatred, which Rabbi Heschel defines as “satanism, blasphemy”. Both of his words describe ways of being that are profane, that are obscene and negate the dignity and worth of another human being based on our own prejudices. This denial of the dignity of another human being based on the person having a different culture, a different skin tone, in fact any difference we can see. While people of color are the easiest to spot as ‘different’, Italians, Irish, Asian, Jews have all be subjected to “racial bigotry” in the United States.

Our denial of the dignity of another person based on culture, on skin color is another power grab by the group promoting and engaging in this behavior. “Blasphemy” is defined as profane which is defined as “treating a person with disrespect/obscene. The Hebrew words for profane are “desecration of holiness”. Denying the dignity of another person because of their ancestry, their cultural heritage, their skin color desecrates the human spirit, our higher consciousness, and is a decision that says ‘he/she is not a member of the human race’! We have engaged in these behaviors for so long, society has become blind to our bigotry, we fail to recognize the bigotry of another, of ourselves, of our laws, and customs.

Two weeks from now, we will be celebrating the Exodus from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea. Pharaoh was unable to see the Jews and the other slaves as people, as having dignity and worth and he convinced the slave class that they were unworthy. It took a leader to remind the Israelites and other slaves that they had value, they have dignity and no person should deny this truth nor subjugate another person to their whims and their “harsh labor”. Yet, according to one Midrash, only 20% of the slaves left Egypt! This is how devastating “racial bigotry” is, it sucks the dignity out of another person and we fail to recognize our own intrinsic value.

The same techniques have been used for the millennia, be it against Blacks, Hispanics, Native American Indians, Jews, Muslims. As Hitler and Henry Ford proved, repeating a lie long enough and loud enough will make otherwise good people into bigots and they will join in acts of bigotry, of profanation towards “those people”. We see it happening today as it has throughout the history of the United States, there are those of us who thought the gains of the Civil Rights Movement were carved in stone, only to find out the backlash was so great that even the Supreme Court of the United States has imbued bigotry with the power of the Federal Government!

Lyndon Johnson said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”  How unbelievably true, how devastatingly sad and how destructive this truth is to the fabric of society and the inner life of the individual. What does it take to “recognize” our bigotry, our prejudices? It takes an honest look in the mirror, it takes an “fearless and thorough inventory” of our willful blindness and our hiding from ourselves. It takes a true connection to our Higher Consciousness, God, our souls that will not allow us to engage in self-deception and calls upon us to end our indifference to our own bigotry. We have to end our incessant need to believe the deceptions of another who is just “picking our pockets”, we have to let go of our worshiping at the altar of ‘satan’, of prejudice and stop needing “someone to look down on”. We have to recognize the inherent value of the person next to us, the dignity of the people who are against us, the right to freedom and free will choices of the people we have relegated to being beneath us, to being our ‘slaves’. We are able to rise above our worst natures, our strongest fears of being ‘less than’. We do this by our connection to our inner life and our connection to the universal energy that is all around us. We do this by seeing how similar we are to one another in our hopes, dreams, fears. We do this by not “judging a book by its cover” anymore and having a cup of coffee, sharing our stories and their stories with another human being.

I have fought against my own inner bigotry for as long as I can remember. I have been subjected to bigotry because of being a Jew. I have experienced bigotry because I am a recovering alcoholic. I have experienced bigotry because, as my father and grandfathers taught me, I see each person as a human being and don’t judge based on color, creed, ancestry, etc. I was shunned by ‘white people’ because I had friends who were people of color, I was mistrusted in prison because I would hang out with and help people of color, I have been pigeoned holed as a “niche Rabbi” because of my work at Beit T’Shuvah, I have been ignored because “who else would have ever hired him”. I understand bigotry viscerally AND my experiences give me the power to have compassion without believing my experiences match those of people of color-I don’t know how they feel, I don’t get pulled over because I am “driving while black”. I do know ridding myself of bigotry is a daily task, it is insidious and we all need to recognize it quickly and overcome this learned tendency and return to our natural desire to connect. 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 170

“Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: satanism, blasphemy.” (Essential Writings pg. 66)

We are and, seemingly, always been confronted with the issue of “racial or religious bigotry”. It is an issue that plagues humanity and continues to live in the inner core of most people’s lives. “Bigotry” is defined as “stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own.” Since our need to be right, our need for certainty seems all-consuming, we become intolerant of anyone and anything that does not fit into our view of the world, of how life should be, etc.

Our fear of not being right, our fear of uncertainty causes us to be afraid of people who ‘are not like us’, who are not ‘our tribe’. Our need to “have rule and dominion” has exceeded the call in Genesis Chapter 1 which tells us to have both over the earth and the other animals. We have extended this call to humankind who are ‘not like us’. Our “stubborn and complete intolerance” of feeling ‘less than’, of ‘not being in charge’ has birthed our “racial” and “religious” bigotry and, as we can see from history, these bigotries have not made our lives any better, in fact, I would posit they make our lives much worse.

Our drive to bigotry has led to, and continues to lead to, the dumbing down of humankind. We lost many works of art and many artists because of the Church’s need to dominate, because of the Rabbis fear of ‘being like those christians’, because of discrimination against women and their artistry. We lost untold numbers of symphonies, of music that was defiant and called for change during the middle ages because of the domination of the church and their doctrines. Remember Galileo was imprisoned because he went against Church doctrine saying the Earth revolved around the Sun and this was considered heresy! Jews were put into ghettos, relegated to being ‘money-changers’ because the Church was afraid of and practiced religious bigotry against Jesus’ own people! They were afraid of and hated Muslims, remember the Crusades. The Roman Catholic Church did not admit its responsibility in spreading anti-semitism until 1965 and did not make amends till Pope John Paul II in 2000!

Muslims were such a majority that they had their own countries and, for a long period, welcomed Jews and gave religious freedom to Jews. Maimonidies was physician to the Grand Vizor of Egypt. Yet, this too came to an end when the British promoted anti-semitism within the Arab population of what was then called Palestine. We see the expansion of religious bigotry in both the ultra-religious Jews and radical Islamic Arabs in the region and how ugly, how destructive our “stubborn and complete intolerance” is!

We have within us a drive to get along, a drive to connect as well. Yet, this learned bigotry seems to have become epigenetic, baked into our DNA handed down by parents to children, at least since at least the 4th Century until now. Rather than appreciating the different paths to the same ‘end’-wholeness and community, spirit and connection- we have become so parochial, so insular that we demean another religion, despise the people who practice differently than us even within the same religious tradition, and then wonder why so many people are leaving ‘organized’ religion. Unfortunately, religion seems to be organized around “religious bigotry” rather than covenantal love-not because of the foundational values of religion, but because people have promoted “intolerance of any belief that differs from their own”. History has taught us of the violence, the senseless hatred, the murders done in the name of “religious bigotry” and we are witnessing the same right this moment.

There is a solution, however. There is a path of change. Tolerance, learning from one another, seeing our similarities and loving our differences. Letting go of our stubbornness and our need to be intolerant of anyone who is not like us and embracing the wisdom and wonder of the religious tenets of all faiths. Recognizing, as the Dalai Lama taught me, “all faiths, all spiritual traditions have at their core: love, kindness, truth, compassion, grace.” Understanding and appreciating the different languages and paths to achieve these core ways of being is crucial because humanity is not a “one-size fits all”. We are not the same, we are not “Stepford Wives”, we are not able to understand the same words in the same ways. In Proverbs it says we “should teach each child according to their understanding”. It doesn’t say teach everyone to be the same, it doesn’t say to teach in the ways we want to. This ancient wisdom foresaw the issue of “religious bigotry” before it became so big as to encompass the world and had an antidote. We can and must follow it!

I have been attacked verbally and physically because I am a Jew. I am watching the world attack Israel because of the propaganda of Hamas and the “religious bigotry” that still is alive and well today. “Jews will not replace us” rings in my ears as I listen to Trump and the Republican Party hustle “God Bless America Bibles” and bastardize the teachings of Jesus. The Cease-fire that was in place on Oct. 6, 2024 was not broken by Israel and people seem to conveniently forget this, the ultra-religious settlers and their supporters in the Government of Israel promote “intolerance” against the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank. All of this is wrong, all of this is caused by senseless hatred and ends up in the killing of innocents. We, the people, can only end this war in the Middle East, the rise of authoritarianism by ending our own intolerance and stubborn need to be right. 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 169

““Race prejudice, a universal human ailment, is the most recalcitrant aspect of the evil in man” (Reinhold Niebuhr), a treacherous denial of the existence of God.” (Essential Writings pg. 66)

“Prejudice” comes from the Latin meaning “in advance judgement”. Reverend Niebuhr’s choice of this word speaks to our inability to be in the present, our inability to see what is in front of us. He is calling us out for our “advance judgement” of someone based on the color of their skin, the religion they practice, and/or the country they are from. He is also acknowledging how “universal” this “human ailment” is! Reverend Niebuhr’s description of “race prejudice” as “the most recalcitrant aspect of evil” should give us all pause, shake us to our core. “Recalcitrant” comes from the Latin meaning “kicking out with the heels” and is defined in English as “having an obstinately uncooperative attitude”. Both of these definitions perfectly describe the power of race prejudice and the seemingly endless ways people of faith see nothing wrong with it!

This “obstinately uncooperative attitude” is on full display across the world, it is happening every day here in America and across the globe. Unfortunately, more often than not, it is being stoked and energized by people ‘of faith’. It is, unfortunately, not limited to skin color; it has been enlarged to include people of different faiths-Jews, Muslims, Indians, Arabs, etc are now ‘races’ so we are subjected to the same prejudicial attitudes as Blacks and Hispanics. We even see the practice of racial prejudice between the groups that people of white European descent are prejudice against. The ‘minorities’ cannot see the value of joining together, they cannot see how they are doing to another what they hate being done to themselves! This is how “recalcitrant” “race prejudice” is. This describes in action what Reverend Niebuhr says above, it “is the most recalcitrant aspect of evil in man”.

We are witnesses to how “race prejudice” is poisoning our young, how it prevents us from celebrating people who accomplish or could accomplish life-saving miracles. We see how “race prejudice” has been used as a tool for authoritarians to gain power in countries across the globe for the millennia and how they have, eventually, destroyed these countries. We are in such a time right now. Be it Putin, who many right-wing ‘religious’ zealots and conservatives praise for protecting the ‘white race’, be it Orban who used Jews and immigrants to gain power and has taken control of government, business, etc, be it Trump and the MAGA crowd who call Blacks and Hispanics animals, who treat the stranger with suspicion rather than welcoming, who cry out “Jews will not replace us”, who placed a “Muslim Ban” in effect. All of these ‘good white people’ who follow and support these authoritarians, all of these  ‘good christian folk’ who worship at the feet of these liars and power-hungry “evil” men are also “recalcitrant” and obstinately defiant of facts, truth, kindness and the Bible they profess to follow.

Jews and Arabs at one another’s throat, is another example of “race prejudice” and, as we have seen, “a recalcitrant aspect of the evil in man.” Both groups have been taught of the wrongness, the evil, the fear, the need to throw them out of our country, from their youth. Yet, we are cousins, we are descendants of Abraham, we each have similar rituals and ways of living according to our different holy texts. Yet, because of ‘leaders’, because of the need for an outside enemy, both Jewish and Arab leaders have taught “race prejudice” to their people, both Jewish and Arab leaders have used “race prejudice” to keep the ‘war’ going since 1948! Hence we are where we are today-Gaza is decimated, the hostages are still in captivity, the leaders of both sides are more interested in their survival and ‘winning’ than in finding solutions. AND, all of this “evil” is supported by the religious zealots on both sides, all of this evil is promoted by these ‘holy people’!

In America, in Israel, it is the “religious”, the “zealots” on both ends of the spectrum that are promoting this “recalcitrant aspect of evil in man” for their own ends, for their own power. They are ‘relationship arsonists, they light a fire between people based on race, religion, gender and stand back in glee as the fire gets out of control. It is time for the rest of us to stand up and say NO! It is time for the majority of us to call a halt to “race prejudice”, to heal our own “recalcitrant aspect of evil”. It is time for the rest of us to follow the leaders who promote the truth of the Bible, the Koran, the New Testament, the Eastern Philosophies, and root out our own inner evil and heal our prejudices by seeing one another as all one race- the human race. It is time for us to end our incessant need to be in power, it is time for us to end our timeless tool of pitting one race/group against another for our power and control.

It is hard to remove our obstinate uncooperative attitudes. We are almost immune to them, living them without even realizing it. I was guilty of this when I would distinguish someone as a ‘goy’ or a ‘yid’, when I foolishly believed that ‘my people’ would never turn against me nor would I turn against them! I learned from my father and grandfathers to let go of these attitudes and they still rear their ugliness at times. When these thoughts come into my mind, I have to return to Reverend Niebuhr’s words and, because I have chipped away at the boulder that was on my shoulder, my mind, my heart, return to seeing everyone as a member of my race-the human race and act humanely towards them, letting go of the resentments that arise quickly and no longer drink the poison of “race prejudice”, hoping the other person will die! It is hard, I do this imperfectly, I still get angry in the face of “race prejudice”, in the aura of recalcitrance, and I do a little 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 168

“Few of us realize that racism is man’s gravest threat to man, the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason, the maximum of cruelty for a minimum of thinking.” (Essential Writings pg. 66)

Society is working overtime to fulfill these words above. Expanding “racism” to more than just Black Slaves, the next generation of our founding fathers expanded their “maximum of hatred” to Chinese, to Mexicans, to Jews, to Catholics, to Irish, to Italians, to Asians,  to anyone who was “not like them”. And, these “God-Fearing Men and Women” do so in the name of God who, they claim created all people, who they read, has put the “image of God” in every human being! They, of course, do not see the irony of their words and actions-going against the very precepts that Jesus taught and lived, going against a value, principle mentioned 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible, caring for the stranger, the poor, the widow, the orphan.

What is so enraging about our current, and forever, experience with racism is the poison it has spread through the veins of society, the veins of communities, the veins of individuals and their families. Some lying politicians claim loudly that “those people animals”, they are “poisoning the blood of America”, which is what Hitler, Goebbels, and the rest of the Nazis in Germany and in America claimed about the Jews. We had on the books laws against interracial marriages, which was not overturned until 1967 in the “Loving Case”. Racism is used to stoke fear and gain power, people using it ‘for their advantage’ claim to be the only ones who can hold off ‘the hoards’, stop ‘those people’ from taking power. 6+ million Jews died in the 2nd World War, millions of Black people have died in slavery and countless more while they were free-please listen to Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Strange Fruit”.

There is no reason to hate and discriminate against anyone because of the color of their skin, the religion they practice, the ethnicity they belong to-FULL STOP. Yet, so many people who call themselves ‘the faithful’, ‘god-fearing men and women’ engage in this senseless and reasonless activity. Be it the need for Black Lives Matter, the need for the NAACP, the ADL, the ACLU, point to the terrible injustice and unreasoned approach to living and governing that, unfortunately, so many people have adopted, been fed at their mother’s breast, taught by their daddy, joined the ‘in crowd’ who believe in racism. The only ‘reason’ for this “maximum of hatred” is a person’s need to feel better about themself because they can put another person down. They can feel superior to another because of their ‘birthright’, their ‘white privilege’. While they claim their adherence to ‘god’s laws’, they forget to “not hate your neighbor in your heart”, they forget that “what is hateful to you, don’t do to another person”, they seem incapable of grasping “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”. And these are the people running the governments in this country and across the world! OY

What makes “racism is man’s gravest threat to man”? Think of the inhumanity towards humans was experienced in the Shoah, the Holocaust. Think of the inhumanity towards humans that men and women experienced in the South prior to the Emancipation Proclamation and that men and women have suffered since! Think of the ways some have denied the right to vote to citizens of this country, people who helped build this country from the ground up, Jews, Catholics, Blacks, Asians, Italians Irish, who are in the fabric of our country and have contributed so much to the welfare of all the people, and how so many are still being discriminated against today.

It is such a “serious” “intention to inflict pain” because even the people who have suffered from the racism of another are willing to be racist against another group! We are watching in horror how some of the ‘religious zealots’ in Israel are “inflicting pain” on people in the West Bank simply because they are Palestinian, we watch in horror what Hamas did on Oct. 7 to innocent Israelis and other nationalities simply because they were Jews or thought they were. We watch in horror at the police brutality towards people of color-driving while black is/has become a dangerous activity in some cities and towns. A group of fanatics flew two planes into the World Trade Towers on 9/11 because of their racist ideas and thoughts. We have stopped seeing the Tzelem, the divine image, the soul of another person when we stop our decision about them at the color of their skin or the religion they practice, the ethnicity they claim. This is the “man’s gravest threat to man”.

I am so animated by these words because everything I marched for as a teenager/young adult, the beliefs and values of my father and grandfathers held so dear and taught us, the fights and arguments that I foolishly believed were put to bed years ago, have all reared their ugly heads again-louder than in the 60’s because of the internet and the ability to spread false stories and misinformation. Imagine that elected officials are more willing to believe the lies of Putin, Hamas, MBS, Xi, Trump, than the words and testimony of eye witnesses, that the proof placed before them. Yet, this is where we are at. As a Jew, I am bewildered that the ‘poor Hamas terrorists’ have been given such validity, their numbers are believed, whatever they put out is believed even when proved false! I am afraid for my bi-racial grandson and the horrible world he is growing up in, I am afraid for my neighbors and friends, I am afraid for the people I have yet to meet, because racism impacts everyone-and the hatred it brings, the poison it inflicts is very hard to cure-most people are unwilling to take the antidote once they have felt the ‘warmth’ of the poison of racism. Racism, rather than immigrants, have “poisoned the blood of America” and Israel and every other country and society.

Growing up in the “north” and seeing the racism of the 50’s and 60’s was astonishing. My father and grandfathers taught my brothers and me that it was wrong, it was disgusting and it was evil. My father paid people the same amount of salary no matter the color of their skin and white people walked off the job! We marched with the Civil Rights groups and were called “N lovers”. We went to “Warsaw Ghetto Remembrance Day” and were called “dirty kikes” and then these same people would be sitting next to us in class, asking for help with school work because ‘those kikes cheat and know the answers”. Having friends and acquaintances of all faiths and races made me suspect by Jews, Whites, Blacks, etc. I was a nomad because not being racist was and is so anathema to  most people. This is “the maximum cruelty for a minimum of thinking”. 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 167

“To act in the spirit of race is to sunder, to slash, to dismember the flesh of living humanity. Is this the way to honor a father: to torture his child?” (Essential Writings pg. 65)

Following Friday’s quote that “the spirit of religion is to unite what lies apart” and reading today’s quote is like whiplash. We have reduced religion, spirituality, and connection to something greater than our selves to “race”? Hitler used the word “race” to claim superiority, white supremacists use “race” to distinguish between ‘us and ‘them’, Muslims use the word as do Jews, Christians and Catholics as well - all in order to separate rather than distinguish, all use it to demonize rather than embrace. As Rabbi Heschel says above, “to sunder, to slash, to dismember the flesh of living humanity”.

Each of these descriptors cause chills to run up my spine, especially the last one, “dismember”, which comes from the Latin meaning “limb apart”. When we reduce our conversations, our way of thinking and living to “not being with those people” we are tearing apart our humanity  and our society, limb by limb. Yet, the thoughts being bantered about and propagated are: ‘we are saving our race, we are keeping our kind pure, etc’. When people say “immigrants are poisoning the blood of our people” and other such bullshit, when ‘religious leaders’ are supporting people who spout these lies, we are a witness “to dismember the flesh of living humanity”. We are engaging in tearing apart of human connectedness, of human decency, of the intrinsic worth and dignity of every human being.

We have been watching this phenomena “to act in the spirit of race” forever, throughout the history of humankind we can see how race was used to split us apart, to slash our ability to “welcome the stranger”, to deny ourselves the joy of “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. We are students who have failed to learn the horror of the death and destruction that “slashing, sundering, and dismembering” have caused to our ancestors as well as the ancestors of everyone else. We have failed to agree to end this horror, to stop our reliance on race as a reason to rape, rob, pillage, plunder those we call “the other”. I believe our reliance on “race” to separate us is the cause of unhappiness and anger, resentment and jealousy, fear and holding onto our prejudices so tightly.

The most ignominious aspect, the most shameful portrayal of this way of being is how the so-called ‘pious’, ‘religious’ people are the most ardent supporters and perpetrators of using race to separate, to “dismember” to “slash” and to “sunder”! The very people who claim to have a direct connection to ‘god’, who claim to know ‘god’s’ will, who set themselves above the rest of us, are the people who have, throughout history, promoted racism through their separating “those” people from their ‘flock of good Christian folk’, from their ‘congregation of orthodox jews’, from their ‘muslims who kill for allah’, etc. We see the Christian religious establishment supporting and/or not condemning Hitler in the 1930’s and beyond, we see Father Coughlin promoting anti-semitism and racism in America, we have seen white clergy refuse to support Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement in the 50’s and 60’s, we have watched in horror as they did and still support the KKK and their current descendants burn crosses, vilify Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and all immigrants who come through our Southern Border-ignoring the Northern Border because Canada isn’t a Hispanic Country!

This is, I believe, what Rabbi Heschel means in the last sentence above: Good “god-fearing people” who torture God’s children-as we are all created in the Image of God, believing they are the ‘chosen ones’, they are ‘living Christ’s words’, they are the last line of defense before the world falls into paganism and idolatry! They are so twisted, these ‘good god-fearing people’ they actually believe that killing innocent Palestinians is God’s will, that raping and sneak attacks on women, children, men, and villages that helped Palestinians traverse the border crossings to get health care their own leaders would not provide. That  separating people who are seeking asylum because they are being tortured, battered, by their husbands, by their government for standing up for freedom,etc is ‘holy work’ and putting people in concentration camps is upholding ‘Christian values’ which our country needs to get back to as wanna be Dictator Donald Trump spouts surrounded by the ‘faithful Christian’s who believe Jesus sent him’. Where are the Christian Clergy who know better, why are they not joining together in a chorus that denounces the “torture his child” way of being that seems so popular today, as it always has been.

I am thinking about the divisiveness and the dismembering of my childhood over race, I am witnessing this same divisiveness about Israel, Jews today because we are not ‘people of color’ as well as the backlash against the “Black Lives Matter” movement. I read with horror the words of Clergy who demand a cease-fire without any hostage release, who fail to realize and acknowledge the cease-fire that was in effect on Oct. 6, 2024, that Hamas has decimated the Palestinians who live in Gaza, etc. Better to blame the Jews, because we are part of the ‘white power structure’, etc. I am thinking about and weeping about how far we have fallen since the days of Heschel, King, Prinz, the Berrigan Brothers. I am weeping over the “dismember” of humanity with these jealousies and divisions of race, religion, nationality, etc.

These two days speak to me because I have been guilty of dismembering and slashing the humanity of another human being-when I was in my addictive living, not caring for anyone and I live my recovery to repair that damage and build new bridges. I value the lives of everyone-I don’t separate someone nor refer to them by racial or religious derogatories. I see people’s uniqueness and honor their ancestral roots, I am interested in learning more about the inner life and the wonder of people who are not like me, rather than fear them and try to separate, incarcerate them. I seek to unite us in recovering our humanity, in seeing the similarities in another and welcoming the differences as gifts to us to help with the deficiencies we have. Using religion to unite us, to honor the father and mother of each human being, as the 10 sayings suggest we do, has been my mission for the past 35+ years. I am committed to living Rabbi Heschel’s words more each day- I am moved to “honor all mothers and fathers” by embracing all their children. 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 166

“Religion and race. How can the two be uttered together? To act in the spirit of religion is to unite what lies apart…” (Essential Writings pg.65)

These words are from Rabbi Heschel’s address at a conference of “Religion and Race” in 1963. Yet, humanity has succeeded in using both words to separate us, we hear all the time about the differences in religion, we hear the call of one religion or another to ‘come to us, we have the answer’, we see religions proselytize on television, in the marketplace, etc. We hear about ‘christian values’ from some people as opposed to the values of any other religion, we hear the call of Islam from some ‘adherents’ that anyone not associated with us is an infidel, we hear some Jews speak poorly about non-Jews as if they are less than, all to promote separation rather than to “unite what lies apart”. Race, of course, does the same thing-we ‘stick with our own kind’, we have White Supremacists, Black Power, Mexican Mafia, etc, we have ‘christian nationalists’, ‘jewish zealots’, ‘islamic terrorists’, etc. Humanity has sought to separate us, pigeon-hole us, keep us at odds with one another using religion as the separator rather than as a uniter. We are experiencing another cycle where this need to separate, to define us as “better than”, in order to hold onto power is reaching a breaking point, a zenith.

As I hear Rabbi Heschel speaking in my head, I hear the anguish and the anger, the passion and the purpose of his words. I hear his demand and his call to all of us to end our silliness, stop our separating, and cease our senseless hatred. I also hear him calling out the leaders of religions, the people who are running religious institutions and those who proclaim to be foundations that promote religious values to seek paths of uniting one another instead of separating one another.

These words are infuriating me, because I know how often religion has been used to separate, we are witnessing one political party wrap themselves in a Christianity that has no relationship to Christ’s words, to the values he spoke about, to help the people he loved. We are experiencing the Religious Right in Israel demeaning the humanity of Palestinians and their fellow Israelis who they oppose! We see what happens to Muslims who go against the ‘orthodoxy’ of the Iranian dictator, MBS, etc-they are stoned, hung, dismembered. Yet all of these ‘religious’ people use God, Christ, Allah to validate their hatred, their killing. No wonder people are not so keen on hearing God’s name! When Donald Trump, when treating the stranger like a felon, when calling people not like us “vermin”, becomes acceptable, we have bastardized religion totally.

When we judge people based on the color of their skin, on the religion they belong to and practice, we are forgetting that we are all created in the Image of God, that we all have a higher consciousness that belies this type of judging. Race and religion are descriptors that we can use to bridge the gap, not make the chasm wider. We can see people of different skin colors and inquire about their culture and their stories. We can ask questions of people who belong to a different religion to learn the tenets of their faith and their values. Doing this will bring us to the realization that we are all “kin under the skin” as a friend of mine says. We do not have to keep people at the margins of society, rather we can “erase the margins” and bring everyone into our tent of being human.

Imagine, this conference was held some 61 years ago, during the Civil Rights movement, and we are still dealing with this problem-using race and religion to separate us rather than unite us. We are, once again, at a boiling point in our country and across the world with one group of people, in our case white ‘christians’, decimating the rule of law so they can dominate every other group of people. Instead of using the power of their religion to unite, they use it to separate and dominate. Instead of using their race and religion the power it has afforded them, they use it to deny dignity and value to any other race and religion. Isn’t it time for us to stand up and say NO?

Growing up Jewish in the 1950’s and 1960’s in Cleveland, Ohio, I witnessed the separation race and religion brought about and the destruction of the human spirit it caused. In our household, my father would not give in to this way of being, he sent us to religious school to learn how to be more compassionate and more open to all. His actions were to greet everyone with respect and courtesy, he believed in paying people the same wages for the same job which brought us into conflict with many-we were called “N” lovers by fellow Jews, non-Jews, etc. When my grandfather was in the Jewish Home in Cleveland, our housekeeper would visit him and one time she was asked why she called my grandfather “uncle”, she said “I am his niece”, my grandfather agreed with her. When I was asked ‘what’s the story’ I said the same thing-the people running this Jewish organization were flummoxed to say the least.

In prison, the Jewish Chapel was open to all, I helped people of all races and religions in any way I could. Beit T’Shuvah was created as a Jewish Halfway House and it is a faith-based recovery center that takes all people regardless of race, religion, ethnicity. A Muslim man’s mother prays for us each week! We are all one race, the human race and living this way has opened me up to so many unique experiences and joys. I am grateful for my upbringing, I am hopeful we can return to a way of unification through religion, rather than separation. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 day 165

“We do not think Him, we are stirred by Him.” (God in Search of Man pg 160)

There has been an ongoing debate whether man created God or God created man. I know there is an entity that is greater than me that pumps energy into the world, emits creativity and higher consciousness, strengthens us to rise above our baser instincts and desires. Whether one calls this God, Higher Consciousness, etc is of no concern to me. Ergo, I do not want to weigh in on this ongoing debate.

What I hear and experience from Rabbi Heschel’s words above is being “stirred by” something more than myself. I cannot define love, I can only be “stirred by” love. I cannot find the organ that produces love, I can only be “stirred by” the connection love evokes within me. I can be “stirred by” and disturbed by the myriad of sensations and experiences of both mind and spirit. What the entity that is greater than me, what the energy of creativity and higher consciousness stirs in me is a choice between goodness and not goodness, between selfishness and generosity, between higher and lower consciousness. Herein lies the essence of how I am imbuing Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above.

We hear a lot from the ‘religious’ people about Christ, about Moses, about ‘god’ and, for many of us, their words and actions stir anger, disgust in many of us. Using God to call for the election of a grifter and liar, worshiping at the altar of falsehoods and power, taking bribes and giving into fear of losing are not “stirred by Him”, they are stirred by our lower consciousness. They are stirred by our fear of missing out, of not being accepted. They are stirred by  a desperate need to feel important, to be part of the ‘in crowd’. What is passing as ‘religious’ right now is actually idolatry. In Ohio there is a group that takes kids from public school during class periods and teaches them ‘christianity’! They claim to be “stirred by Him” and they teach values of theirs, not necessarily Christs. There is a whole group of people in our Congress that study the Bible on a regular basis with one another and their treatment of the poor, the stranger do not coincide with the words and actions of the Bible.

We have a problem with how to use the creativity and energy that is pumped into the world each day, that continues to ensure the Earth keeps rotating. This problem is man-made, not energy made, this problem stems from our immaturity, our need for certainty, and our drive to control. Humanity has, throughout the millennia, misused the energy and creativity of the universe, the teachings of the Bible, Koran, Buddha and created a false narrative and false notions of which many people have bought into. Hence, people worship at the “Church of Trump”, people worship at the “Temple of Ben-G’vir”, people worship at the mosque of “Hamas”. We are not being “stirred by Him”, we are being “stirred by” our rationalizations, our fears and our uncertainties.

Being “stirred by Him”, being stirred by the higher consciousness of the universe and our own, entails a sacrifice. We have to bring something precious, valuable to ourselves and let it go, give it to another who is need of our gift. The main offering those of us who are “stirred by Him” each day is our “adjustment to conventional notions and mental cliches”. Being “stirred by” something greater than ourselves opens our hearts, our souls, our minds as well as our eyes and our ears to hear the calls and the cries of another human being. We hear these calls as opportunities to serve rather than being served. We see these cries and tears as similar to the cries and tears that well up inside of us.

Our hearts, minds and souls are set free from the narrow places, small ideas we have imprisoned them in. We no longer are afraid of societal backlash, we are afraid of ignoring the call of our hearts to be open to the energy that stirs us to goodness. We are afraid of blocking the call of our higher logic and consciousness that resides in our minds. We are afraid of being deaf to the call of our souls which emit inner wisdom to us. Being “stirred by” … is the experience of a sunrise or sunset and experiencing the awe of the universe. Being “stirred by”… is the uncertainty of being open and vulnerable with people so they can know your soul and being okay whether you are accepted or rejected. Being “stirred by”… evokes a call to action, a call to make our corners of the world a little better each day. Being “stirred by”… is the awakening to the infinite dignity and worth of every human being and the reaching out to help them live into theirs. Being “stirred by”… is the unwrapping of the blinders of prejudice, the healing of the cancers of the soul caused by senseless hatred and jealousy. Being “stirred by”… is the primary way of being connected to the universe and being embraced by the energy for good, rather than using it for our own selfish greed.

I was “stirred by”… at various times in my youth, especially when I said Kaddish(the prayer said by mourners for 11months) for my father. Unfortunately I did not have a daily regimen of practice and discipline to re-enforce being “stirred by”… after I stopped going to daily services. The ensuing 22 years were not my best-I was “stirred by” the same things that are stirring people today to believe the lies of powerful people and, even though I was arrested numerous times, I never allowed myself to be “stirred by Him” and never had a practice. These past 36 years have been dedicated to sacrifice of selfishness and greed, they have been dedicated to be “stirred by” what is happening in the world, good and evil, to take action, to “love my neighbor”, let go of resentments, making a choice for goodness a little more often each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 163

“Consciousness of God is a response and God is a challenge rather than a notion.”(God in Search of Man pg. 160)

A “challenge” is a “call to take part in” and a “notion” is “a conception or belief in” according to the dictionary. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above calls out to me, to us to “take part in” the world, to “take part in” in making our corner of the world better. It is a call to action rather than believing, as I hear him today.

God, higher consciousness as “a conception or belief in” doesn’t necessarily mean we have a call to action, it allows us to contemplate ideas and have discussions as to what is the next right thing to do. As a “challenge”, the universe is calling upon each of us to act in ways that are in accordance with our Holy Texts, with our innate “knowing”. As a “challenge” the creative force in the universe is attempting to move us to be human, care for one another, live with our opposing inner forces, solve our outer conflicts with one another. As a “notion”, we can decide what God wants rather than responding to the challenge that the “prime mover” is calling us to.

The “challenge” has never changed, it began with Adam and Eve and it continues till today-“ayecha, where are you”. It is the “challenge” of the “Footprints” poem, it is the “challenge” of Francis of Assisi, it is the “challenge” of kindness, compassion, truth, love, in our everyday actions and living. It is the “challenge” of caring for the poor and the stranger. It is a call to get out of our narrow places and be a part of the world, a part of the healing our world needs. We are constantly being called to, we hear this call in the rustle of the trees, in the cry of the beggar in our midst. We are being called to “take part in” the joy of life as well as in the sorrows we see and face. We are being called to “take part” in the search for and the revolution needed to make all people free.

Each year we celebrate the same holidays, be they religious and/or secular. Each holy day is a “call to take part in” an aspect of the freedom, inner and outer, the day commemorates and celebrates. Easter has just passed,Passover is approaching, and Spring has begun, all points of rejuvenation, resurrection, liberation. While many of us want to sit back and enjoy the beauty of spring, the hope of Easter and Passover, we are being called to “take part in” the spiritual meanings of these moments, these holy days. The challenge of Easter is to resurrect our humanity, to hang out with the people Jesus hung out with-the poor, the leper, the hooker, etc. It is to resurrect his teachings and live into them rather than change them, put words in his mouth to suit our need for control over women, our control over ‘those people’. It is to resurrect our spiritual life and not believe the charlatans, the ‘money-changers’ who are hocking religion and Bibles for their own purpose. It is to resurrect and engage in the actions of Jesus rather than continue to put oneself first, last, always. While many Christians celebrate Easter in a myriad of ways, the “challenge” of Christ, the “challenge” of Christianity seems to get lost and overtaken by the “notion” of both.

The challenge of Passover is to ask ourselves the hard question: “what are you a slave to”, this year. What is the Egypt, the narrow place, one needs to leave this year? What are the emotional, spiritual, physical bondages one is still subject to? Passover is a time for us to welcome “all who are hungry” and “all who are in need” to our tables, to our celebrations, to our journeys. While many of us Jews celebrate the Seder, most are unable to engage in the “challenge” of leaving Egypt. There is a midrash/explanation that says only 20% of the Israelites left Egypt because they could not respond to the “challenge” of liberation, the “challenge” of freedom. We also know that more than just Israelites left Egypt, the Jews were accompanied by other slaves who took advantage of the opening to leave and responded to the “challenge” of liberation.

Both Easter and Passover “call us to take part in” something greater than ourselves, a movement that serves more than our particular needs. Both can be considered “notions” because they represent “conceptions and beliefs” and they are, at their core, “challenges”: “Proclaim Freedom throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Leviticus 25:10). This “challenge” has been a notion for so long, it has been a slogan and jargon, a saying and is on the Liberty Bell which is a museum piece rather than a call to action. This “challenge” is a logical outgrowth of the words of St. Francis, the actions of Rev. King, the call to Adam and Eve. This “challenge” is calling us all to “take part in” the liberation of  Passover, that is calling us to “take part in” resurrecting the goodness, kindness of Christ, that is calling us to “take part” in the “detaching with love” of the Buddha. While many people write and speak of these challenges as abstracts, as notions/conceptions to aspire to, Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is reminding us that we are able to meet our “challenges”, we are able to “take part in” the liberation of the captives (ourselves and another(s)) and to spread the goodness and love that is within us to all those around us.

I remember Passover 1987 in prison. Rabbi Mel Silverman “challenged” all of us to experience the freedom of liberation. I understood, at that moment, how enslaved I had been, the burdens I had been living under and with. I have lived into that “challenge” ever since. I am constantly searching for the narrow places I fall into and ask for help to get out of them. I have proclaimed freedom throughout the land I live in and helped many of its inhabitants get free from their narrow places. Each day I resurrect my spirit and the spirits of another so we can live the goodness and love that consumes our inner life. 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 163

“Consciousness of God is a response and God is a challenge rather than a notion.”(God in Search of Man pg. 160)

“Consciousness comes from the Latin meaning “be privy to, knowing in oneself”, response comes from the Latin meaning “offering something in return”. When we are conscious of God, we are affirming something we know within our selves, something we are privy to in our souls, in our gut intuition. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us when we are “privy to” and/or have a “knowing in ourself” we are compelled to “offer something in return”.

Whether one believes in God, higher consciousness, humanism, is not the issue here, Rabbi Heschel’s use of God is not to exclude anyone, it is the language he knows to point to “the ineffable”, some power that is too much for any of us to define. At issue today, as at all times, is: are we willing to acknowledge what we are “privy to”, what we “know in our inner life”? In times where the self is so important, where ‘self care’ is a buzz word, when people are looking for ‘their piece of the pie’ many of us forget that mindfulness, meditation, prayer, study, etc are pathways to acknowledging what we are “privy to” and what we “know in our inner life”.

We are living in a time where “consciousness” is being used as a weapon by some, rather than as a gift and a path. Using the Latin definition, conspiracy theorists, want to be authoritarians, ‘true believers’ are holding themselves up as ‘the ones who really know’, they want to ‘let all of us into what is really going on’, rather than having a “consciousness of God” of a power greater than themselves, they use and prey upon the doubts of people, the need most people have for certainty and manipulate the consciousness of another person to bend to their will-not the will of the universe, not the will of goodness, not the will of justice. We are in a state of being where unsuspecting people are “offering something in return”, their loyalty and belief, to people who are substituting facades for what is, who are ‘letting them in on’ lies rather than truth, who know they need ‘the people’ in order to gain power and prestige, wealth and celebrity.

“Consciousness of God”, of the power of the universe, is given to us as a gift and we have to continually nurture and grow this gift, otherwise it wilts, it atrophies and we become extremely susceptible to ‘the con’. As a con man and grifter, I used my ability to ‘get people a deal that was too good to be true’ because I appealed to their inner greed and their FOMO, their fear of missing out. I was a criminal both according to the laws of the state and to the laws of the universe. And, what I did was a pittance compared to the “cons” being run by big business, by politicians, even by some clergy! “There is nothing new under the sun” Kohelet teaches us and while the ways of grifters and cons have, in some cases, become more sophisticated, more hidden, their paths are the same as always; find an idol that appeals to people, find a key that appeals to peoples fear of uncertainty, and use it for the power to rule, to control, to gain for yourself.

In Hebrew, the word for response is T’Shuvah, so what we are “offering in return” for our “consciousness” of the power and energy of the universe is: admitting our foibles; is a commitment to help one another; is appreciation of the grace we are shown by having one more day of life and being one grain of sand better today, more knowing today than we were yesterday. Our response is one of joy at being “privy to” the wonder and awe of the world that we did not make, at being “privy to” the miracle of life, at being “privy to” the “knowing of ourselves” a little more each day and growing the spark of energy that is within us, using the part of us that is not body, that is pure energy to propel us forward in our never-ending march to matter, to live with and on purpose, to use our gifts to help one another rather than hoard them and use them for our own power.

Each and every day we face the choice of “offering something in return” and/or ignoring the call of the universe, of God, of our higher consciousness, of our “inner knowing”. Most of us are unaware of needing to make a conscious choice to respond, most of us are willfully blind to the call of our inner life, most of us are too caught up in ‘getting mine’, in ‘making it through the day’ to realize we even have choices. So, we need the reminders of yoga, exercise, noticing the moon and miracles that we have come to regard as ‘just another day’ to wake us up, to bring us to the “knowing in ourselves” that we are worthy, that we are more than what we make, more than how much money we have, etc.

It took me until age 35 to unlock and admit what I was “privy to”, it took me until age 35 to “offer something in return” for the gift of life, the gift of the ‘law catching up with me’. These words of Rabbi Heschel resonate within me because I ignored them and the experiences they convey for so long, because I lived like the criminals and grifters of the past and present. I lived like there was no tomorrow and all that mattered was what I could get from today, rather than what I could offer in return. I was the scum that are taking up so much oxygen it is difficult for the rest of us to breathe! Once again, Rabbi Heschel’s teaching calls me to delve deeper into my inner life and see more of what I am “privy to” and have a new response, a new “offering in return” for the grace, the gift of life I get to experience today. I use the skills of the ‘con’, to help someone one find their own “consciousness”, their own experience of the power of the universe, their own inner gift and talents and how to express them in ways that honor them and grows their corner of the world. 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 162

“The sense for the realness of God will not be found in insipid concepts; in opinions that are astute, arid, timid; in love that is scant, erratic. Sensitivity to God is given to a broken heart, to a mind that rises above its own wisdom.” (God in Search of Man pg 159)

The last phrase above is the conundrum we all face! I hear Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to use our minds appropriately rather than the ways we use it out of proper measure. Without “sensitivity to God” we are left to our own devices and this is where our minds become the arbiter of everything we do. We have seen throughout history what happens when we “forget the gift” as Einstein says and we “worship the servant”, our mind being the servant to our “intuitive mind”, the “mind”/soul that has “sensitivity to God”.

We are in awe of brilliance, be it Oppenheimer, Jobs, etc, and fail to be awe of our spiritual giants like Rev. King, Rev. Barber, Rabbi Heschel, Pope Francis, etc. We have come to believe that our minds will and can get us to the “top of the mountain”, much like the people of Babel thought! We have not heeded Einstein, St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Merton, Martin Buber, the Baal Shem Tov, and instead come to believe in the words of Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”.

Our reliance on our minds has brought about: atomic energy that morphs into nuclear weapons; democracies that have morphed into authoritarianism; free will that has been usurped by deception and mendacity; “sensitivity to God” that has morphed into idolatry and bastardization of God’s Name and God’s teachings. The later has been promoted widely by the very Priests, Rabbis, Imams, Clergy who are supposed to be helping us be more sensitive to God!

We have come to believe everything as a reason and reason can solve everything. We ignore the call of our souls, we disbelieve our intuition and our intuitive mind, we give short shrift to God’s constant call to connect, to live up to the covenant, to Shema-hear, listen and understand- that we are all part of the Oneness. We have ignored the teachings of Maimonidies in his “Eight Chapters” that speaks to our soul sickness and how to heal it. We use our minds to try and heal our spiritual maladies by patholgizing them and calling them ‘mental illness’!

We are so much better than our minds tell us, we are so much more in need of having “sensitivity to God” than our minds allow us, we are more in need of spiritual healing than our minds can comprehend. Yet, we push forward and use our minds to manipulate ourselves and another(s), we use our minds to lie to ourselves and deceive another(s), we use our minds to go along with ways of being that harm ourselves, make prejudices and unkindness holy, support the dictator, hate and suspect our neighbors instead of loving them.

It is time and we are in desperate need for us to engage life in ways where we heed and live into Rabbi Heschel’s teaching: “to a mind that rises above its own wisdom.” We have seen the destruction that we have wrought since the time of Noah, we have watched in horror the breaking down of our free will, the taking apart of our freedoms, the objectification of human beings so we can focus on a false enemy while the ‘leader’ picks our pockets and makes us into puppets for his/her pleasure. We can and must “rise above its own wisdom” so we can imbue the wisdom and knowledge that “sensitivity to God” brings us, so we can heal the despair and sadness that some of us call home and the “low-grade misery” that most people live in.

We do this not by ignoring our rational minds, we do this by subjugating our minds to what our souls, what our “intuitive minds” know to be right and good, even when it ‘doesn’t make any sense’. What the brilliant minds of science, of technology, of medicine, of quantum physics all know/knew is that what seems inconceivable, impossible, could be our rational minds denial of something greater than our selves. What they know/knew is that we are more than our rational minds, we can rise above the reason and rationality we have come to worship and adore to meet the mystery that is at the very foundation of our universe, go beyond the mystery to meet the Ineffable One and tap into the energy that continues to supply us with the ability to dream, to see more than what is in front of us, to know how to live as a member of the human race instead of living selfishly, and to create a world where everyone lives better, we embrace the commandment to “love our neighbor as we love ourself”, we “choose life” and we live with our hearts broken so we can always “let the light in”.

We are facing an election in the US that could well determine our fate for generations, we are facing a force that claims to be a “christian nation”, to “love Jesus” and has a plan concocted by the Heritage Foundation for the Republican Party, not just the current nominee for President. These idolators, these mendacious people, these power-hungry people want to subjugate everyone to their way of thinking, to make themselves the “power forever” and go back to the days prior to 1776-all the while claiming to be ‘conservatives’. They make sense to a lot of people, just not to God and people who have “sensitivity to God”. And this way of being is happening in Board rooms, non-profits, small business’, and at family tables. We have to stand up for what is right and what is humane, what is freeing and what is true. To do this our mind has “to rise above its own wisdom”. 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 161

“The sense for the realness of God will not be found in insipid concepts; in opinions that are astute, arid, timid; in love that is scant, erratic. Sensitivity to God is given to a broken heart, to a mind that rises above its own wisdom.” (God in Search of Man pg 159)

In Psalms 34:19 we learn “God is near to/approaches the broken-hearted” and Rabbi Heschel’s words above make me remember and think about this verse. Leonard Cohen wrote and sang: “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”, which also points to the validity of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. Yet, we also learn from God’s interaction with Pharaoh that God doesn’t want us to surrender only when we are weak, rather, I believe, God strengthens Pharaoh’s heart so Pharaoh’s (and our) connection is everlasting. In Deuteronomy we are told to “circumcise the foreskin of our heart”, and I believe this is the broken heart Rabbi Heschel is speaking of.

Living in the world with the anger, hate, mendacity, idolatry, reverence for wealth and power makes anyone who is aware of “the realness of God” broken-hearted! The Psalmist cries out often to God for help, the Psalmist recognizes the truth of his situation and knows he must open himself up to God, must ask God for help and allow the wisdom, the light, the love of God to enter his heart and heal him, strengthen him so he can live in concert with God, meet his ‘enemies’ and prevail rather than join in the negativity that pervades the world. The world has not changed that much since the time of the Psalmist, as I read Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above and look at where humanity is right now.

Yet, most of us are afraid of “a broken heart”, most of us are afraid to truly have “sensitivity to God” because it means giving up our desire for power and our ‘need’ to make everyone adhere to our way, the ‘only right way’ to worship, to live, to serve! So many people speak the words of the Psalmist, sing the lyrics of Leonard Cohen, quote the teachings of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, etc and live the exact opposite because of their fear of having a “broken heart”. This, I believe, is one of the reasons our spiritual leaders, our elected officials, the wealthy, the powerful, claim to be acting in the interests of God, doing what “God tells me to do” and, are actually using the words of the Bible to close their hearts, to deceive themselves and the rest of us.

Rather than fear our “broken heart”, Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to embrace it. I hear him calling out to us as the prophets call out to us; stop our deceptions, end our mendacities, let go of our idolatrous practices, have a practice of T’Shuvah and return to God, make our amends to those we have harmed and plan a new way of being that is in concert with being a partner of God rather than continue to believe we can make God into our image, we can use God to validate our closed hearts, our selfish desires, our false need for power and dominion over everyone else.

Having a “broken heart” is not a sign of weakness, it is not a copout, it is not a path of misery, it is not a way of staying stuck in sadness, God forbid! As we immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance, we realize that having a “broken heart” opens us to have clear eyesight, it gives us the opportunity to share the vision of living that God gives us in the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, from the Buddha’s teachings, etc. A “broken heart” gives us the opportunity to be in truth with ourselves and with humanity, it allows us to end the lies we have been telling ourselves about “keep a stiff upper lip”, “don’t let them see you cry”, “be a man and men don’t cry”, and other such bullshit. Having a “broken heart” is the only path to letting God in, to being sensitive to God’s call to us, to be able to respond to one of the ultimate questions God asks: “Where are you?”

To have a “broken heart” we have to surrender our false beliefs that God only wants perfection, that we have to be perfect. To have a “broken heart” we have to end our indifference to the suffering within ourselves and the suffering of another human being, another group. To have a “broken heart” we have to desire freedom for all, we have to recognize the intrinsic worth of our self-no longer engaging in/allowing the negative self-talk to overwhelm us, and the intrinsic worth of all human beings. To have a “broken heart” we have to have joy for the success of another(s) and sorrow when someone falls down. To have a “broken heart” we have to “help our enemy when his ass falls down” and we need to see people as people, not good guys/gals and bad gals/guys. Having a “broken heart” gives us divine pathos, great compassion for our self and for another(s).

This is the revolution that Judaism began, that Jesus and Mohammed continued, that the Buddha expounded on-living with a “broken heart” so we can have “sensitivity to God”. Without this “sensitivity”, without a “broken heart”, we fall into the world we are living in right now-where idolators and charlatans of all faiths and ways proclaim the ‘word of god’ while actually seeking their own power and control. A world where the rich and powerful few decide the fate and freedom of the many, a world where decency, morality, kindness are laughed at and seen as weakness rather than Godly. We need to return to the words of the Psalmist, the wisdom of Leonard Cohen, the brilliance of Rabbi Heschel so we can make the world ready for the coming of the Messiah-whether one believes it is the 1st time or the 2nd time is of no consequence. Elijah lives among the poor and the strangers, just as Jesus calls ‘the outcasts’ his people, it is imperative for us to allow our hearts to be broken so we can follow Moses and Joshua to our Promised Land. Happy Easter, 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 160

“The sense for the realness of God will not be found in insipid concepts; in opinions that are astute, arid, timid; in love that is scant, erratic. Sensitivity to God is given to a broken heart, to a mind that rises above its own wisdom.” (God in Search of Man pg 159)

Rabbi Heschel’s choice of words amazes me always and especially in the bold phrase above. He covers many different ways we form opinions and ‘fall in love’, and, in my opinion, is calling us to reflect and account for the ways we form “opinions” and is asking us what constitutes our “love”.

In “the sense for the realness of God”, too many of us make judgements and have beliefs from being “shrewd”, thinking we are the smartest person in the room, and falling in love with our reasoning and intellect. People who form their “opinions” about God in this manner usually use their shrewdness in all their affairs, leading to a false belief that only their “opinions” are correct and they go through life feeling superior to everyone else, even to God-one of the traits of an authoritarian. For many of us, we form our “opinions” about God, about how to live, from a “dry, parched” base, not willing to nurture our spirits nor our minds with truth, nor with our experiential knowing or seeking to learn more. We are lazy and we are ripe to follow the lead of the “astute” “opinions” of another. For some of us, we are too “shy”, “lacking the courage” to form our own judgments for fear of offending someone else, from co-dependency, from our own laziness. These people, also, are ripe to follow the leader who is so certain and sure of their ‘rightness’ of “opinion”.

Be it making sure the trains run on time, re-building the Germany, taking control of Eastern Europe again, finding the lies and “opinions” that will cause people to follow, too many people are willing to relinquish their “opinions” to another, too many people lack the courage to “sense the realness of God” and respond to life accordingly. Rather than follow the precepts of the Bible, too many people are willing to follow the leader who is so “astute”, because our inner life is “parched”! This is the path of the authoritarian, who, while bears great responsibility for their bastardizing “the sense of the realness of God” would be nothing without their “arid, timid” followers! It is not the authoritarian, not the “astute” one, it is we, the people, who are most responsible for the loss of freedom, the loss of decency, the propagating of lies and deceptions. Rabbi Heschel is throwing cold water on us, he is shaking us awake so we can end our false “sense of the realness of God!

When he describes “love”, he uses words that mean “not enough” and “no regularity, not fixed”. What a terrible method in which to “sense the realness of God.” What a horrendous way to go through life, always ‘getting by’ with the least, never having a regular consistent way of being, blowing with the wind in our opinions and actions, ‘falling’ in and out of love with God, with another human being, with our own self! Yet, this is the way many people not only “sense the realness of God”, it is the way they go through the world, flitting from one fad to another, championing the ‘latest’ lost cause, not having a moral compass and loyalty to truth, finding the newest “Boogyman” and hating them.

Both our “opinions” and our “love” as well as our “concepts” have to be rooted in something other than the words and ways Rabbi Heschel describes above. We have to end our “insipid” ways, we have to let go our “astute, arid, timid” reasoning and decision making ways, we have to stop feeling “not enough” is good enough, stand up when we are called rather than shying away,  and let go of our insane way of bouncing all over the place, depending on how we feel that day or the way the wind is blowing.

Letting go of our need to be the “smartest person in the room”, watering our soul’s knowledge, having the courage to live what our spiritual life tells us is the next right thing, is the path to truly “sense the realness of God”, it is the path to experience a true “love” of God, of self, of one another. We love and form opinions that give us more freedom, rather than allow for another, an authoritarian, society to tell us what to do, how to do it, relinquishing our free will choices to another. We are in desperate need to grow our inner lives so we can exercise more of our free will and we are in desperate need to truly “sense the realness of God” so we can merge our will with God’s will. Doing this we come under the authority of our spirits, we use our minds and our emotions to serve something greater than ourselves, we no longer engage in mindless selfish actions, rather we treat each and every person as a partner of ours and a partner of God. Living from our spiritual knowledge uses our experiences and our learning in combination with our understanding to heal our inner soul sickness and spread this healing to anyone and everyone who is suffering, even the authoritarians, even their followers, even the “timid, arid, astute,” ones, even the “erratic and scant” ones!

I have lived the ways Rabbi Heschel describes above and I am living the ways of healing and truly have a “sense of the realness of God”, which causes me to have compassion, even when I want to ‘get even’, sadness when I want to be mad, the ability and thirst to learn from my teachers, a love that is steadfast and loyal, an ability to see the “both/and” of life and to choose to take actions that honor my role as a partner with God. It is not easy, I am not perfect, while at times I may seem to another as erratic, I know I am consistent and committed to God and I get to “sense the realness of God” in my daily living. 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 159

“The sense for the realness of God will not be found in insipid concepts; in opinions that are astute, arid, timid; in love that is scant, erratic. Sensitivity to God is given to a broken heart, to a mind that rises above its own wisdom.” (God in Search of Man pg 159)

The word “insipid” comes from the Latin meaning “not savory” and in Late Latin it means “not prudent/not wise”. The English definition means “lacking flavor” and “lacking vigor”. The Hebrew word means “pointless”. The first phrase above can be understood as “the sense for the realness of God will not be found in pointless, unwise abstract ideas. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to discern the difference between knowing that God is the Infinite One and not making God some abstract idea, that “the realness of God” cannot be approached, comprehended, apprehended in pointless arguments nor in passive agreements. He is also teaching us that by engaging in “insipid concepts”, we are actually denying the realness of God! Rabbi Heschel is, once again, telling us that the fallacious arguments we use to ‘prove’ “the realness of God” or to disprove “the realness of God” are pointless and meaningless, they will always lack vigor and be unwise. Yet, we persist in approaching God with these “insipid concepts.” How sad and how destructive.

Society has, in its folly, continued to ‘make God real’ through vapid arguments, through dogmatic terms and ideas, through a strictness and fundamentalism that God neither asks for nor, as I read the Bible, wants. At the Red Sea every person who crossed had their own experience of God and they said “This is my God and I will exalt God”. Every person at Mount Sinai had their own experience of God giving us the 10 Sayings. The Bible is to be experienced rather than picked apart, it is to be immersed in, rather than studied from a distance. Yet, so many ‘religious people’ continue to use the Bible as a weapon, as a way of controlling ‘the masses’, rather than as the source of wisdom and truth that it is. Because of the ways of these ‘religious people’ the Bible has lost its hold on most of us and “the realness of God” has become an argument lost “in insipid concepts.”

Looking at the mendacity that rules the world, seeing the deceptions that are wrought upon all of us, hiding from the truth and wisdom of the Bible, hiding from “the realness of God” and God’s call to us through self-deception has brought all of us to our knees and we are so blind we cannot even see this truth. When Putin is extolled and celebrated by so-called conservatives, when Ukraine is left to be conquered in order to elect Donald Trump, when Israel is condemned for it’s war in Gaza while Hamas is celebrated for its terrorism and hostage-taking, when authoritarianism is thought to be better than democracy, when freedom for all is replaced by white people’s freedom alone, when we believe that “it won’t happen here”, “I won’t be affected”, “I am protected”, while we have historical proof that all of us are subjected to the whims of the ‘leader’, when religion speaks in “insipid concepts” when “the realness of God” is supplanted by false idols that give the ‘religious people’ and their proxies power, we are in deep trouble, we are lost, we are denying “the realness of God”.

In Jewish history, trying to use “insipid concepts” to ‘prove’ “the realness of God” has always resulted in disaster. This way of being is what brought us the prophets, they were sent by God to, once again, bring the people Israel out of bondage. This bondage was not the bondage of Egypt, it was/is the bondage of self, the bondage of fundamentalism, the bondage of mendacity and self-deception. In world history the same is also true, every great country has suffered defeat and destruction when they gave in to “insipid concepts” rather than experience “the realness of God” and follow the direction and ways of the Bible. Yet, we refuse to learn from history so today, Israel is once again hated, Anti-Semitism is on the rise, democracy is threatened from within and from external forces and people are “fiddling while Rome burns”. We have traded truth for lies, God for idols, wisdom for folly, meaningful ideas and ways of being for “insipid concepts”.

We can, however, turn back to “the realness of God”, we can let go of our pointless paths of deception and mendacity, we can once again “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. We can end our self-deceptions and come back to truth and wisdom, purpose and passion. We have to end our ‘rush to the top’, our ‘winner takes all’, our ‘the one with the most toys wins’, our erroneous belief that ‘enough money, the right connections, etc will save me’ ways of being. We have to learn from history and end our “it won’t happen here” arrogant beliefs. We have to, once again, “sense the realness of God” in ways that have weight and depth, meaning and purpose, joy and sadness, faithfulness and truth, kindness and compassion. We have to live into the prayers we say-prayers that won’t save us, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, prayers that will make us worthy of being saved because they will open our souls, silence our minds enough to hear the calls of our souls. We have to begin again to connect with one another, with “the realness of God” instead of connecting to the masks most of us wear, the false images of God we have created. We need to, like Abraham in the midrash, smash the idols we have created! We have the strength within us, we have the spiritual pathways to do this, we can surrender to the truth of “the realness of God” and be stronger, happier, more able to deal with “life on life’s terms” when we let go of our “insipid concepts” and engage with "the realness of God”. 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 158

“Our task is to open our souls to Him, to let Him again enter our deeds. We have been taught the grammar of contact with God; we have been taught by the Baal Shem that His remoteness is an illusion capable of being dispelled by our faith. There are many doors through which we have to pass to enter the palace, and none of them are locked.” (Essential Writings pg. 92)

Rabbi Heschel is dispelling the myth of God’s remoteness as well as the truth of our ability to ‘reach’ God if and when we want to. The Baal Shem taught us the power of joy, he taught us the ability we all have to connect with God, whether through ‘traditional’ prayer, through our work, through playing a flute on Yom Kippur in Synagogue, he made it clear and ‘easy’ to see the “many doors through which we have to pass to enter the palace” and taught us no one is barred from entering.

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, following the examples of the Baal Shem, contradicts the “conventional notions and mental cliches” that society, especially religious society, have promoted. It is not just the ‘holy ones’, the priests, the ‘pious’, the dogmatic, fundamentalists that enter the palace, it is all of us who are able to. In fact, immersing myself in this teaching, I would posit the problem we face is the societal norm of ‘only the righteous’ may enter. God’s palace is so open, so accessible and God wants our return, our connection as the prophets teach, that all of us have a place there, the welcome mat is laying at the doorstep of each door and the call of God is for us to enter.

It is we, the people, who have locked the doors to the palace, not God. It is we, the people, who have made God remote, it is we, the people, who have concealed the truths that God imparts to us, both through the Bible, the Holy Texts of every religion, and through God’s call to us each day. In Genesis Rabbah, an ancient commentary on the book of Genesis, we are told “every day God makes new Halacha (new paths) in the Heavenly Court”. In Proverbs we are taught to teach each child/person according to their understanding. Both of these pearls of wisdom are proof texts of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above and open our eyes, open our hearts, and open our minds of our need to break down the walls, the barriers that society has constructed around “the palace”.

Religious hierarchy; be it Priests, Rabbis, Ministers, Imams, Levites, Elders, Deacons, Boards of Directors, have elevated themselves to be the guardians of “the palace” and put up the barriers that tells us who is ‘worthy’ to enter. They have made decorum more important than passion, they have made how we look, dress, the color of our skin, how and where we sit, how we comport ourselves, etc what is important in our being able to “enter the palace” rather than our yearning for connection to God, rather than our dedication to God’s will, rather than our desire to comfort the mourner, welcome the stranger, help the needy and raise up the poor.

These ‘guardians’ of “the palace” have locked the doors that God wants open, they have used deception and mendacity to puff themselves up, to set themselves up to be the ‘only true believers’, they have supported the charlatans and false prophets throughout the ages while banning and barring the people they judge as too pedestrian to “enter the palace”. We have watched these liars promote people and elevate people like Trump as ‘true believers’, going so far as to say Jesus sent us Donald Trump and supporting his grift by buying his “Make America Pray again” pitch to buy these ‘special’ Bibles, while he gets a royalty! These ‘guardians’ have locked the doors so tightly, made themselves the gatekeepers in order to have power, prestige, control- not to make it simple and easy “to enter the palace”.

It is time, it is well past time, for We, The People, to stand up to the religious hierarchy, to stand up the Boards, to the Clergy, to the Elders and Deacons, to follow the wisdom of the Sages who remind us of God’s constantly making new ways for us to walk the earth, each of us learns according to our understanding, the Torah is a Tree of Life, not control, not death, which means it is constantly growing and we must seek to understand “all of its ways” which have many “paths of peace” as we recite in our prayers when we return the Torah to the Ark. We, the People have to revolt against the ‘guardians’ of the “many doors through which we have to pass to enter the palace”. We, the People, have to remove the locks on the doors that these ‘guardians’, the religious hierarchy, have placed on “the palace”. We, the People, have to take a stand for ourselves, for God, for truth, for kindness. We, the people, have to make “the palace” once again a place where God dwells among us, not a remote castle that we are barred from. Moses, the prophets, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, the Baal Shem, Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, Father Greg Boyle, and all the other great spirits have given us wisdom and paths to “the palace” and we need to follow these paths and not let the liars, the deceivers, the religious hierarchy keep the doors locked anymore.

I have broken the locks, found ways for all to enter, and, as a Rabbi, I have to keep doing this. Instead of having a pulpit, a community now, I do this through this blog. I pray you will pound on the doors of “the palace” and throw out the charlatans that stand in our way, this is the revolution of the Baal Shem, Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, the Berrigan Brothers, Father Greg, Rabbi Shulweis, the founders of the state of Israel, etc. We must take back “the palace” and return it to God’s design, not the design of the ‘religious hierarchy. 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 157

“Our task is to open our souls to Him, to let Him again enter our deeds. We have been taught the grammar of contact with God; we have been taught by the Baal Shem that His remoteness is an illusion capable of being dispelled by our faith. There are many doors through we have to pass to enter the palace, and none of them are locked.” (Essential Writings pg. 92)

I am beginning a new format today, the phrase/sentence I write about will be bolded so everyone is aware of the topic.

Illusion comes from the Latin meaning “to mock” and faith comes from the Latin meaning “trust, loyalty”. The Baal Shem, who is the originator of Hasidism, is teaching us that “His remoteness” is actually a mockery of God, a mockery of what it means to be human, what it means to be a partner of God in moving creation forward. Immersing ourselves in this thought, this teaching, gives a moment to consider who we are, how we have been, where we are and where we are going.

Rabbi Heschel is gently, or not so gently, rebuking us for the myriad of ways we have mocked God, which is idolatry at it’s height, I believe. In our search for certainty, in our drive to be right, in our need to not be responsible to the truth of God’s will and precepts, some of us have made a mockery of the Bible in our deceptive ways of interpreting it for our needs, to make our cruelty justified, to make our hatred ‘holy’, to discriminate by wrapping ourselves in the misuse, misinterpretations of Biblical verses. We are so stuck in our self-image, we are not even aware of how blind we are, how distorted our vision is, how adjusted our thinking has become to societal norms, how imprisoned our souls, our seat of truth are. How sad for those who are suffering from their illusions and how sad and infuriating it is for those of us who suffer these idolators, who have to deal with the fallout of their mockery.

We have come to believe that God is remote because we are afraid to answer the call of the Ineffable One, we are too selfish to give of what we have to ensure that no one goes without, too xenophobic to allow ‘another’, ‘those people’ to enter, to gain citizenship, to vote, etc for fear we will lose control. We continue to mock God, to mock the Bible all the while proclaiming our fidelity to it, we use our faith as bona fides, we use our ‘loyalty’ to be disloyal to the principle: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”, we use our ability to deceive people into believing we are trustworthy so we can lead them down ‘the primrose path’ to serve our needs, rather than what is the best interest of God and humanity. When someone calls us out for our idolatry, for our making a mockery of what is holy and true, what is Godly and good, we continue to make a mockery of Godliness by using bastardized versions, false interpretations, false testimony to vilify the truth sayer,  making a joke of the prophet who is speaking truth to power, even going so far as to ex-communicate the Navi, the prophet, from our midst or, at the very least, find ways to marginalize him/her/them.

How remote can God be when God hears the cries of the poor, the stranger, when God hears the cries of those who are discriminated against by the rich and powerful, when God sends Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the prophets, the Baal Shem, Reb Nachman, Thomas Merton, the Desert Fathers, Rev. King, Rabbi Heschel, and those of us today who are calling out the powerful and the wealthy, the ‘holier than thou’ idolatrous ways of fundamentalism. God is not remote when we exhibit and live loyally to the words and deeds of our ancestors, when we accept the truth of the Bible, the wisdom of the prophets from Moses to today, when our bona fide is our adherence to the Covenant made at Mount Sinai.

It is so crucial in all times, and especially in these times, to remain loyal and trust our souls to direct us to be closer to God rather than our hearts, eyes, rationalizations that make us more remote from God. Remoteness and closeness are not God’s doing, it is ours. We blame God for being remote with “God, where are You” questions when God’s question has not changed and is ever resounding to humanity from the time of Adam and Eve, “Ayecha” “Where are you”. Because we don’t want to answer this question we turn it around on God. Because staying loyal to principles means we have to let go of our own selfishness and self-aggrandizement, we shame and blame the prophets in our midst, the truth tellers in our society.

We need to recover our loyalty to God, we need to recover our trust in Godliness and God’s principles, we need to end our adherence to the mockery that ‘the good people’, those on ‘the right side’ of any issue, the ‘progressives’ who are discriminatory as well as the ‘conservatives’ who spread the same lies and hatred as their far left counterparts! We have to encounter the Bible new each time we read/study it, using it as a guide and a record of the missing the marks and the hitting the marks of our ancestors. We have to end our mockery of God’s will and stop blaming everyone but ourselves for our current situation. We have to call out the people who want to tear down our freedoms, our democratic institutions, who want to end the questioning and discussions of the Talmud, who want to be authorities instead of learners. We have to return to the loyalty of the Israelites when they crossed the Red Sea and proclaim “This is my God” knowing our experience of God is different, our purpose and passion is different and being unique is by God’s design so we all can live together in a beautiful mosaic called community. 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 Day156

“Our task is to open our souls to Him, to let Him again enter our deeds. We have been taught the grammar of contact with God; we have been taught by the Baal Shem that His remoteness is an illusion capable of being dispelled by our faith. There are many doors through we have to pass to enter the palace, and none of them are locked.” (Essential Writings pg. 92)

“Grammar comes from the Greek meaning “(art) of letters”, contact comes from the Latin meaning “to touch together with”. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, cajoling us, to regain our “contact” with God through the letters that are in our hearts, in our souls, as I hear him this morning. He is also pointing out what Moses teaches in Deuteronomy, what is good, what is Godly is not far away from us, it is not hidden from us somewhere in the universe, we have the letters, we have the words, we have the ability “to touch” and to be “together with” God, Godliness, one another, our inner wisdom and our inner strength to carry this wisdom out.

Yet, we seem to relish in our beliefs that God is remote, hidden, the wisdom and ways of God too mysterious. We seem to substitute our intellectual mendacity, our need to control the narrative, our inability to be responsible to accept our errors and regain our “contact with God”. I believe, once again, Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to end our indifference to God, our indifference to the evil we perpetrate by exiling God, our indifference to the suffering of people around us, people we do not know and the suffering of our own inner life that is at the root of our indifference to everything else we don’t want to see, our indifference to our lack “of contact with God”.

We seem to be too afraid of ‘losing control’ to use the “grammar” “we have been taught”. We seem to be more concerned with power, with our own authority than with our inability, unwillingness to use “the grammar” “we have been taught” to have “contact with God”. The more we immerse ourselves in this phrase, the more we can realize how our intellect, our emotions, our traits are so out of proper measure that we use “the grammar of contact with God” to abuse people and to deceive people into believing our idolatrous ways are actually holy. We use the same words, the same syntax, to foist lies and deceptions on the masses, and in our masses, prayers, etc, so they follow us instead of God, so they do our bidding instead of God’s will and we call this ‘religion’, we call this deception ‘from Moses on Sinai’, we call this mendacity ‘holy’. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel’s rebuke of these deceptions, these lies, these misuse of “the grammar of contact with God” very strongly this morning, given the state of the world, the state of the Middle East, the attack on democracy we are experiencing in America today.

Many people believe the central prayer of Judaism is the Shema. The first word is to “Hear, Listen, Understand” and the last word is One, Oneness. The last letter of the word Shema and the last letter of the word Echad, form the word for witness, for testifying. We have a problem today, as we have throughout history, of people giving false testimony, knowingly or unknowingly, and using the “grammar of contact with God” in their testimony. In Jewish Law, a false witness is fined and not allowed to give testimony again, in today’s America, in today’s Israel; politicians, pundits, business leaders, ex-presidents, ‘eye-witnesses’, give false testimony all the time and don’t seem to suffer any consequences, in some cases, they are exalted by their cult followers for their false testimony! Religious leaders of all sects and denominations validate their lies and deceptions by mis-quoting Scripture, by ignoring the “call of the Bible”, by quoting Jesus, Mohammed, the prophets yet twisting their words and the meaning of their words and the lessons of their experiences to fit the mendacity these ‘religious’ leaders want to spread.

We have to take back “the grammar of contact with God”, we, the people, have to return to the wisdom and charge of Moses who set before us blessing and curse, life and death, Choose Life! We choose life, we accept the mantle of being a blessing each morning when we are grateful to be alive, when we are aware of the Grace we experience just by waking up. We choose life and accept the mantle of being obligated to honor the gift of life we have been given by using “the grammar of contact with God” to live a little more from our inner life, from our soul. We honor the gift of being alive through uncovering our eyes a little more to see what truly is, rather than accept the self-deceptions and delusions we have been living under. We honor the gift of life by using the “grammar of contact with God” to seek the wisdom that we have within us and to ask for help from those who also are seeking to honor the fit of being alive through service, “to let Him again enter our deeds”, through enhancing our inner lives and no longer hiding from God nor exiling God from our consciousness or life.

Re-learning and using “the grammar of contact with God” without guile nor deception has been my mission since I began my journey back to wholeness. I use words, teachings, connections, and writing, prayer and song, study and spiritual guidance to continue my journey out of self-deception and into more connection and “contact with God”. I am painfully aware of when I fall back into self-deception and believe the mendacity of another, yet, I know I leave these two states of being much quicker today-progress not perfection. 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 Day155

“Our task is to open our souls to Him, to let Him again enter our deeds. We have been taught the grammar of contact with God; we have been taught by the Baal Shem that His remoteness is an illusion capable of being dispelled by our faith. There are many doors through we have to pass to enter the palace, and none of them are locked.” (Essential Writings pg. 92)

The first sentence above brings to mind:“What an order, I can’t go through with it” is a ‘cry’ from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in Chapter 5 after the reading of the 12 Steps! The “task” Rabbi Heschel is giving us seems so daunting to so many who are not even aware of the call of their souls, who are so enamored with their intellect, so deep in their self-deception and mendacity that they are unaware of how closed off their souls are. No wonder we have made the false premise that God is hiding because God doesn’t care, it is our defense against God entering our souls, it is the path to blocking God from entering our deeds.

Yet, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is the only path for solving the distress, the anguish, the anxiety that we all face each day. We are being called to open our souls, our selves to God, to allow the lies and the deceptions to fall away and re-enter our covenantal relationship with God, with one another. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that we are capable, we are worthy, we are necessary to and for God, for Godly actions, for connection to something greater than ourselves. This teaching is calling out to us to go beyond our reason, to enter into the mystery that is holiness, to let go of the absurdity we live in each day. It calls out to us to transform the absurdity into meaning, to live into mystery so we can find ourselves, our authentic selves not the false ones we have become so adept at showing to the world and to ourselves.

Immersing ourselves in this “task” can be frightful because, like Abraham, we “go to ourself, for ourself” to a place that only God can show us, an unknown and unknowable place. There is no GPS that we can use, there is no “you have arrived” outer voice to validate when and where we stop. Even more scary is the truth that we lose our false egos, we lose our facades, we lose the cataracts that have given us false images of ourself. We lose the foreskin we have placed over our hearts and we lose the rationalizations of our intellect. “To open our souls to Him” means we have to suffer losses that our reasoning tells us are essential to our well-being, it means we have to end our reliance on the lies we have been telling ourselves and that society expects us to live. “What an order”!

Yet, without letting “Him again enter our deeds”, we continue to be on the hamster wheel of ecstasy and despair, tremendous highs and the lowest of lows, comparisons where we are either better than or less than, competitions that give us the ‘right’ to ‘kill the competition’, and living in fear of everything being taken away, losing our place, our wealth, our health, our masks/facades. Without  opening “our souls to Him”, we stand at the precipice of the abyss and our footing gets shakier and shakier, with one good blast of wind pushes us into the abyss forever. Without opening “our souls to Him” by not letting “Him again enter our deeds”, we are blind to the realities of our current situation and we continue to blame and shame everyone else, we continue to make war with one another and use false gods to validate our mendacity, our treachery, our abandonment of our souls and of God.

Rabbi Heschel gives us the path to rectifying the errors of our ways, he is giving us the response to living in fear, the solution for leaving the despair, depression, hatred and false needs we live in daily. “Open our souls to Him” is to relearn how to live in the world with one another in, at least, somewhat peaceful co-existence. It means to regain our eyesight and see the divine image that each of us is created in, it means to see and live into the intrinsic worth and value every one of us possess naturally, that calls to us that we belong in the world just because we are born, we have value for who we are and the divine need we can fill, the broken chip in the world that only we can repair. “Open our souls to Him” calls for us to return to a way of being that the Bible describes; building a Mishkan, a sanctuary within each of us,  a place where God dwells among/in/with us. This “task” takes work, it takes each of us finding the spiritual path that speaks to us, it takes each of us finding a spiritual guide to help us along the way, it takes each of us to let go of the particular lies we have told ourselves that have atrophied our souls, our spiritual growth.

It takes “to let Him again enter our deeds” by no longer trying to prove our worth, no longer engaging in life’s activities for the sake of our false selves, no longer believing we have to be ‘the best’. It takes the realization that what we do here will be remembered and matters. It takes a dedication to doing the next right thing no matter how I think nor how I feel. “To let Him again enter our deeds” reminds us that we have done this before, we have responded to God’s call for us and to us before so we are actually returning to a way of being that is familiar and that we can once again call “home”, once again experience the oneness that seek every time we recite the Shema. “God is One” and we are part of God when we “let Him again enter our deeds”, so we achieve the goal we all truly seek.

I open my soul each day, to the best of my ability. I invite God into my deeds and seek guidance from God, from spiritual guides and all of my success, all of my good works are due to the guidance of God and spiritual teachers, family and friends. 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 154

“The direct effect of His hiding is the hardening of the conscience: man hears but does not understand, sees but does not perceive-his heart fat, his ears heavy (Isaiah 6).” (Essential Writings pg 92)

Rabbi Heschel is calling out to all of us to end our ignorance and our stubbornness. He is demanding we end our incessant need and way of purposely misunderstanding and misperceiving God’s call, the call of our neighbors, the call of our souls.

It is not our inability to hear nor see that Rabbi Heschel is addressing, it is our unwillingness to understand and to perceive. Perceive comes from the Latin root meaning “entirely take” and in English both words are synonyms of each other. Rabbi Heschel is also making a correlation between our hearing and our seeing, our understanding and our perceiving that is, all too often, misused in the ways we live our daily lives.

When our conscience is hardened, when our morality is distorted, when we live amorally, we become incapable of really understanding what we hear. Humanity has, for the millennia, put up barriers between understanding what we hear with our soul’s ‘ears’ as opposed to our mind’s/ego’s propensity to twist everything to what we believe is in our best interest. While humanity has progressed in philosophy, mathematics, sciences, medicine, etc, we seem incapable of understanding the call of God, the ways to improve the quality of life for ourselves and for one another because we have hardened our conscience so much that we deny the true understanding of what we hear.

When we hear the cry of the enslaved and forget/ignore that when anyone is enslaved we are all enslaved, we do “not understand”. When we denigrate the call of the poor for help, we do “not understand”. When we hear the call of the stranger and we put up barriers to help them, we do “not understand”. When we hear the call of ‘one who is not like me’, ie women, people of color, people of different faiths, and believe we should control them, we should deny them freedom of choice, deny their free will, we do “not understand”.

When we see injustice happening around us and do not care because “I was not” them, as Martin Niemoller writes, we do “not perceive”. When we see the lies of people who engage in anti-semitism and believe the lies of the far left/far right, we do “not perceive”. When we see the hatred and strife between people, between nations and we do nothing to make peace, we do “not perceive”. When we see the ravages of history and continue in the same path, we do “not perceive”. When we see the building up of authoritarians and believe we will benefit from their ‘goodness’, we do “not perceive”.

How is this possible? “His heart fat, his ears heavy” seems to say it all. Be it Moses, the prophets, the Psalmist, spiritual teachers throughout our history, all warn us of this curse; all rail against this basic human drive which many people believe is a sanctuary against the onslaught of God’s calls to us, a hiding place for us to be able to ignore God’s demands and the cries of another human being for help. Even though, time and time again, we have to answer for our hiding, for our hiding of God’s will, God’s teachings, we have seen the destruction of societies, the destruction of countries, the destruction of people’s lives, be it in Ancient Rome, Europe, the Middle East, Japan, etc and we continue to plug our ears with fat and put weights on our eyes. We are witnessing the destruction of truth and facts throughout the world, in America, in Israel, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Russia, in Turkey, in Hungary, etc. Yet, rather than clean out the fat in our ears, we put more in by giving oxygen and life to the lies of the despots, the authoritarians, the deceivers. Rather than take the weights off of our eyes, we seem to be adding to them by giving credence to the ‘men of god’ who proclaim they are fighting a ‘holy war’ for God’s principles, be it when life is viable, be it ‘this is all our land’, ‘might makes right’, ‘if I want to take it, I am entitled to it’, etc.

We have to end our fear of truly understanding what we hear, of really taking the fat/wax out of our ears and understand that we are engaged in an internal battle between our desires and God’s will, between our inauthentic needs and the call of our soul, between the lies we tell ourselves and are spread into the world and the truth we know in our hearts, in our inner life and we need to put out into the world. We need to stop being fearful of seeing what is truly in front of us and behind us, we have to re-imagine what life will be like when we live in truth, when we follow the ways of God, when we engage our soul’s perception and vision and end our false need on egotistical and false visions.

We can only do this if and when we surrender our need to be right, let go of our need to look good, look strong, look holy. When we take the fat out of our ears and the heaviness off of our eyes, we can see that we are already holy, as Leviticus 19 teaches us. We will understand our strengths and perceive how to use them for the benefit of God, of another(s) and of ourselves. We will hear and understand how to be a little more good each day. We will see how we can sharpen our understanding and our perception a little more each day through prayer, study, acts of kindness, acts of T’Shuvah, etc. We will understand our ability to grow along spiritual lines makes us better human beings, we will perceive paths to wholeness and peace, seeing everyone as divine reminders and not need to denigrate one another to ‘feel good’ about ourselves. 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 153

“The direct effect of His hiding is the hardening of the conscience: man hears but does not understand, sees but does not perceive-his heart fat, his ears heavy (Isaiah 6). (Essential Writings pg 92)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above gives us the challenge and the dilemma of being human and our concealment, obscuring of God to ourselves. We are living in a period where “the hardening of the conscience” of humanity seems to be getting stronger and stronger. We make moral equivalence where there is none, we blame the people we victimize, we extol the authoritarians and the despots, we denigrate people ‘not like us’ and we wield power for our sake not for the sake of heaven nor the sake of our neighbor.

In 1972, in his interview with Carl Stern, Rabbi Heschel spoke to “the hardening of the conscience” when he said we no longer “love thy neighbor as thyself”, rather we “suspect our neighbor” instead. Our need to exile God, as Rabbi Heschel says earlier in this passage, has caused us to not even recognize “the hardening of the conscience” that takes place. Much like the hardening of the arteries that go undetected until there is a crisis, “the hardening of the conscience” goes undetected until it is almost too late; we had a Civil War because the conscience of the Southern States almost congealed in their desire to have dominion and rule over people of color, we went to war in 1941 because the conscience of Japan and Germany almost congealed in their desire for power, for rule and dominion over other Asians, over Europe and Germany’s desire to exterminate the Jewish people.

Rather than learn permanent lessons and change our ways from these drastic upheavals in our history, we can trace the subtle and not so subtle ways humanity has continued its trek to “the hardening of the conscience”, its blasphemous ways of exiling God, of concealing the truth of God’s will, of obscuring the actual calls and demands of God for the sake of our power, our ego, our need for certainty. We push God into hiding because we cannot be certain that what we are doing is truly God’s will, that we are being ‘perfect’ in performing the deeds God calls us to do. In order to deal with our anxiety, we seek certainty, we seek surety, and in seeking the unattainable, we have hardened our conscience and live in self-deception, deception of another(s) and mendacity.

“Now we are engaged in a great Civil War” are words written and spoken by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 as part of his Gettysburg Address and, because of “the hardening of the conscience” of humanity, we think these words no longer apply, yet they do! We are in a civil war in our country, we are in a civil war in Israel, in Gaza, across the globe there are civl wars happening. The war is whether “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal… can long endure.” In nation-states all over the world there is an internal war going on between people who’s conscience is not totally hardened, who are awakening to the reality of what “the hardening of the conscience” has done to their countries, to their way of life, to themselves and are fighting to do angioplasty on the arteries of their conscience. Be it the Anti-Trump, Anti-Bibi, crowd, be it the Anti-Right Wing Religious Zealots, Anti-Putin, Anti-Fascism crowd, there is a ground swell to be more like Alexi Navalny than like Ben-G’vir, to be more like Rev William Barber than like Stephen Miller, to be more like Bill Gates than Jared Kushner. Every one of us needs to have angioplasty done on the arteries of our conscience. Every one of us needs to recognize the diagnosis that Rabbi Heschel gave to us some 70+ years ago was correct then and is devastatingly correct now.

We have the cure, however! The cure is in recovering our Spiritual path, in tearing down the walls, the paths, the dams we have built to keep God in hiding. The cure is to let go of our need for certainty, for surety, for needing to be right. The cure is to look in the mirror and see what God sees, see what is reflected in our soul’s truth, not the ways our minds/intellects lie to us. The cure is to end our need to have rule and dominion over people who are not like us, to stop trying to make people, even our own children, over in our image. We have to end our erroneous belief that we are God, that we know all and we see all. We have to begin to reflect on our errors rather than blame another person for them. We have to see how we have put so much plaque in the arteries leading to our conscience that we now believe we can wrap ourselves in the flag, in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the Koran, etc and defy the very words these symbols, these texts speak. We are in desperate need to end our mendacity, our sublimation of holy ideas and ways to our selfish, egotistical needs. We are in desperate need for true Spiritual Leaders, people who will be physicians of the soul so we can do the necessary surgery to remove the plaque from the arteries leading to our conscience and heal the maladies of our souls that we suffer from.

From the time I was 16-36 I was proud to build up the plaque that impeded my ability to listen to my conscience. These past 36 years have been spent removing the plaque, hearing and responding to the call of my conscience and my soul. I have not always done this well and I have been engaged in healing my spiritual maladies and I no longer care about the judgement of those who seek to blame me, I no longer am concerned with what those who want to exploit my errors and my vulnerability do, I am only concerned with “the hardening of the conscience” that I am avoiding and, I pray, helping another(s) avoid. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark