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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 215

“That equality is a good thing, a fine goal, may be generally accepted. What is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of inequality. (Insecurity of Freedom pr. 93)

Rabbi Heschel, in 1963, recognized the truth that “equality…may(bold is mine for emphasis) be generally accepted. We are still in this state of may some 61+ years later, as we have been since humankind was created. We have the call for equality in the Bible when we are told “there should be one law for the citizen and stranger alike”, yet even in Israel, the home of the Bible, this “fine goal” is one that “may be generally accepted.” It certainly is here in America, the “land of the free and home of the brave”. We are so free that we are willing to be ruled by despots, by people who are willing to tear down the rule of law, shred our constitution, etc. We are so brave that we have to bow down before a liar and a grifter, we watch in horror, some of us, while the people elected to do the “people’s business” instead do the ‘business’ of their party elite, the rich, etc.

What will it take for all people to adopt the belief and take the actions necessary to make the words of the Talmud alive and well in our everyday living? These words from Tractate Sanhedrin, page 37a tell us that every soul has infinite worth and dignity, every soul has equal worth and dignity and every soul has unique worth and dignity. Equality is not the same as socialism or communism as some have equated it with. I hear Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word above is that everyone has equal opportunities to learn, to grow, to live their talents in the world, to speak their truth and to be judged in a court of law, a court of public opinion based on the facts, the truth, etc without fear or favor. Equality, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel this morning, is a level playing field where race, religion, creed have no sway in being hired, in being heard, in being voted for, in being judged, that what matters is “the content of character” and the veracity and validity of what a person is saying. Equality doesn’t mean giving equal weight to the lies and deceptions that one should be giving to truth, it does not mean nepotism, it is not interested in legacy enrollments, it is about the merits (and demerits) of each individual and policy, each educational system and religious beliefs, respecting each soul as precious and a reflection of part of the image of the divine. Equality is not sameness!

I am stuck on this paper that Rabbi Heschel delivered at the White House Conference on Race and Religion because it is relevant to our lives in this moment. There is a proliferation of movies about survivors of the Shoah, we have watched the Tattooist of Aushwitz and We Were the Lucky Ones and both show the resilience of people yearning to be free. The power of family in the latter and the power of love in both. The yearning to be free is no less in the majority of the Palestinian people than in the majority of Israeli people. The yearning to live equally in the world is as strong in the Jewish people as it is in Christian people. The yearning to be free of Russia is as equal in the Ukrainian people as the yearning to be free of China by the Tibetan people. In our world today we see the power of love, the power of resilience in Israelis, in Ukrainians, in Tibetans and in Palestinians who could come together and solve the issues if their leaders would see the truth. There is certainly equal suffering-no matter what anyone says, suffering the loss of loved ones, the terrorizing of Oct 7th, the fear of reprisals and being used as puppets and shields - no one suffering more than another, all sides are equal in their suffering and their loss of humanity.

With equality, comes, I believe, freedom- freedom to be a slave if one wants, freedom to be deceived if one chooses. It also is the freedom to mature one’s spiritual beingness, the freedom to expand one’s mind and one’s emotions. The freedom to see oneself in the face and the world of another human being. The freedom and ability to serve something greater than one’s selfish needs and desires. Equality brings us to recognize our need for one another; we need the people to haul our garbage just as much as we are needed to do our work. No one is exempt from the Covenant with God, we are all equal as it says in Deuteronomy 29:9-11: “You are all standing here…tribal heads… your wives, your children, the stranger within your camp from woodchopper to water drawer to enter the covenant with your God..” There is no one who is more or less in the ‘eyes’ of God, in the words of the Bible. We are not all tribal leaders, we are not all kings and queens, priests and prophets and we are all equal in that who we are and our unique talents are equally valued and needed to make our world draw near to the vision the Bible has for us.

I am realizing that my actions have caused some people to feel that I did not treat them with equality. I know that I attempted to and I was not always good at explaining myself. What is good for one person is not necessarily good for another and, because we live in a comparative world, we think we should all be treated the same or at least if there is any deviation, it should only be for me. I have done the best I can in each experience to see the worth and dignity of another person, I have a manner that may be too loud and boisterous for some and my way should not be used as an indictment against me or a denigration of my gifts as it has been by some throughout my lifetime. I realize that my deficiency has been my sensitivity to what another thinks and my frustration at not being heard and not being understood. In a world that values “equality”, I pray that you hear the call of my soul as I hear the call of yours. It doesn’t happen 100% of the time and, I believe, I practice this at least 80% of the time:). God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 214

“In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 93)

While we usually equate “racial discrimination” with the color of people’s skin, “racial” is defined as “groupings which humankind is divided on the basis of physical characteristics or shared ancestry”. The last phrase above is asking us and challenging us to end our “discrimination”, our “unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people.” Isn’t it ridiculous to separate people into different categories? We are all people, we are all created equal, we are all created in the image of the divine, we all bleed red, we are all kin under the skin. Given these truths, how can we categorize one another as less than or better than or in any other ways that could cause “unjust or prejudicial treatment”?

We are in the throes of a similar fear as took hold of the U.S. after the Civil War: equality for all, living up to and into the words of the Declaration of Independence, understanding and living with the nuances of the Bill of Rights, truly “proclaim Liberty throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein” as Lev. 25:10 calls on us to do. This fear is, once again, being led by white supremacists and white people who are afraid if people of color gain power they will do to them what the white people did to people of color! This fear is being used as a rallying point and with such deception that even people of color, even Jews and Muslims are going along with the goals of these white power people! It is completely baffling that the very people who suffer from the “cruelty and falsehood” of those who either are in power or are seeking power once again are supporting their oppressors!

In order to rise to a way of being where “racial discrimination” is “infrequent rather than common”, people have to rise up and live into their higher consciousness, their higher self, the true call of their souls. This is not to point fingers, this is to state a fact that we all need to do this, we all need to search our inner lives and root out the prejudices we still have, we have to end our seemingly endless need to blame someone else, to not take responsibility,. We have to live into Rabbi Heschel’s teaching “some are guilty and all are responsible”. We can do this, we have the power, we have the technology, we have the weaponry, do we have the will? The recovery movement is an example of the bolded phrase above, we don’t discriminate because we know and some of us have experienced the discriminatory practices because of our addictions, our crimes, etc. We welcome everyone who has “a desire to stop drinking” and we embrace all, one of our slogans is “let us love you until you can love yourself”.

One of the errors of the Rabbis was to make it hard for people to convert to Judaism, while the Bible teaches just a declaration of “your people will be my people” was enough for the ancestor of King David. Christianity, which welcomes converts and even forcibly converted people, still discriminates as does Islam. There are Jews, Muslims, Christians who have practiced “racial discrimination” against one another, against people within their own faith because of skin color, and been leaders of the myriad of groups seeking to discriminate. The current rise of antisemitism on the right and the left is an example of “racial discrimination”, there is a certain irony in the discrimination of the left towards Jewish women being raped and murdered, Hamas’ unprovoked attack on Oct. 7th, and their call for Black Lives Matter while saying Jewish Lives DON’T matter.

We are in a volatile state in the world and in this country and, as Lincoln says, “now we are engaged in a great civil war…that the dead shall not have died in vain”. We have a lot of people who died in our wars to provide the rest of us a place where “let freedom ring” is more than an empty call, it is the goal. We witnessed the conviction of an ex-President on May 30, 2024 and now we have to follow it up with ensuring that a convicted felon doesn’t become President again. We have to follow the courageous lead of the 12 person jury and the Judge and Court Officials and make sure that the lies and deceptions of Trump and his Republican ‘yes people’ as well as Alito and his allies on the Supreme Court do not pollute the Freedom that so many have died for, that we, the people, do not allow them to continue their “racial discrimination” and we take the necessary steps legally and spiritually to make “racial discrimination infrequent”.

We do this, as I have said, by looking inside of ourselves. We do this by cleaning our side of the street before pointing fingers. It is necessary for me to clean my inner life and clean up the chaos I have caused before rebuking another and it is important to point out to people when they are going astray, when they are taking actions that enhance discrimination of any kind, even discriminating against their best interests. I have learned the difference between discrimination and distinguishing, the former is about putting people ‘in their place’ and the latter is seeing each person for who they are and helping them be the best person they can be. I have spent years helping another person realize their dreams, discern the call of their souls and watch in awe as people soar. I don’t compare and I am happy for the success of everyone I know and suffer with those who fall, those who are the victims of discriminatory practices, those who are falsely accused, etc. I believe we can use our gifts to enhance the lives of those around us and not diminish our own, I believe we can live in the ‘both/and’ without needing to prove how ‘right’ we are. I believe we can created the community Rabbi Heschel is speaking about. I pray you will join me and so many others who are engaged in this work. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 213

“In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 93)

This sentence above sits with us as a condemnation, a reminder and a call to action. Rabbi Heschel has a quote, “A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of faith. He is asked to do more than he understands in order to understand more than he does.” In the words I have put in bold letters above, Rabbi Heschel is asking/demanding us to take the action of being “uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood” rather than accept these ways of being as ‘normal’, as ‘societal norms that have been with us throughout the millennia’ and other such poppycock!

We are witnessing, some 90 years after the rise of Nazism, a resurgence of patience with cruelty and falsehood, in fact, it seems to be the very point of some politicians, some clergy, some people in the street to be more cruel, more mendacious than any of our ancestors and despots. When taking away a woman’s right to choose is more important than ensuring women have good reproductive health care, when denying InVitro to women who find themselves unable to get pregnant is celebrated, we are witnessing, and for some of us, participating in severe cruelty. This is not about being “pro-life” as these liars claim; it is about control of women, fear of being less than a woman, a need to exert power over someone one when we one feels powerless. Rather than being “uncompromisingly impatient” there are many people who have been patiently awaiting these days of cruelty and falsehood being the path to their power. Putin, Trump (they are good friends according to DJT), Orban, Netanyahu, Sinwar and the rest of the autocrats and despots all believe and practice the principle: the more cruel I can be, the more lies I can tell and get away with, the stronger I am, the more powerful I am and the greater my shadow is. This is an age-old way of gaining and holding onto power, it was perfected by Nazi Germany and today’s practitioners are improving on what Germany did in the 1930’s and 1940’s! And, many of us are fiddling while the world burns, literally and figuratively.

It all begins with the individual however. While blaming Trump, Hitler, Putin, Sinwar, Netanyahu is easy and feels good, it is we, the people, who have not made ourselves and our communities “uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood.” It is we, the people, who have refused to ‘take the cure’ for our spiritual maladies of jealousy, of being power-hungry, of self-deception, of believing the lies of another, of needing a scapegoat, of blaming and shaming another so we can shirk our responsibility. It is time for all of us to own up to our part in promoting, allowing, going along to get along with the cruelties and falsehoods that make us ‘feel good’. It is we, the people, who have given oxygen to the lies of the religious right, the falsehoods of the MAGA crowd, the mendacity of the authoritarians in our midst, the celebrations of cruelty towards anyone not like the White Male Christian Nationalists that are making so much noise and even the women who join them believe the men are in charge. It is we, the people, as individuals who are giving up our own dignity and infinite worth to serve and bow down before another Pharaoh, another false prophet, another Shabbatai Tzvi-false messiah.

We, the people as individuals and communities have to seek out our individual physicians of the soul. Each one of us is in desperate need of a spiritual renaissance, a spiritual uplift so we can once again be guided by our souls, not our desires, our egos, our self-deceptions. Each of us is being called to take the actions of kindness, compassion, love, decency, healing, building, etc before we are able to understand the ‘why’s and the wherefore’s’. Rabbi Heschel’s words are meant to disrupt our sleep, to wake us up to the truth rather than the “falsehoods” we have been sold and the ones we are peddling. He is disturbing our consciences, if we allow him to, just as the Bible does, just as the New Testament does, just as the Koran does when we immerse ourselves in them for the truth they speak rather than using them to justify our “cruelty and falsehoods”.

Once we are on our individual journeys of healing the spiritual maladies that are causing our acts of “cruelty and falsehoods”, we can then work together to heal the same maladies of our community. Then we can work together to heal the maladies that our countries and our world face as well. Taking the action will  give us the understanding and the vision to make “our communities…uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood.”

This is the journey I have been on for over 36 years. I am not 100% and I am more than 51% “uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood.” I have been loud, obnoxious, even mean-sounding in my condemnation of “cruelty and falsehood”, I have been accused of being cruel myself when I refuse to buy into the lies and deceptions of another. I know I still have my own self-deceptions, I also know they are fewer than before and I am hold onto them for less time than I ever have. I continue to take actions I don’t understand so I can understand more than my actions, I continue to increase my impatience with “cruelty and falsehood”, I continue to speak the truth I am given, I continue to stand for what is right and good, to understand the nuances of life rather than living in the ‘one way’ attitude. I have found myself less patient with the people who continue to live in the mendacity of blame and shame, with people who don’t want to ‘rock the boat’. I am not popular for this way of being, the phone isn’t ringing, I am not noticed much anymore and I am good with it because I know I am being true to me, my uncompromising impatience “with cruelty and falsehood” allows me to live a little better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 212

“In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 93)

Unfortunately the community Rabbi Heschel is describing has not yet come into maturity in the history of humankind. I use the word maturity because this type of community has sprouted up here and there throughout history, in homes and towns, villages and cities where people believe in the dignity and worth of human beings without regard to color, religion, etc. We saw this in Nazi Germany and throughout Europe during the 2nd World War when people, at the risk of their own deaths, would hide Jews, Gypsy, etc from the horror of the camps and extermination. We see this in the Sanctuary Cities in America for people running from certain death, rape, etc in their home countries.

Rabbi Heschel’s words should be nagging at us, disturbing us and pushing us to put our souls together and find a way to create this community in our own homes and towns, in our states and country, in our global community. We can add all/any in the last phrase where “racial discrimination” is used. Any type of discrimination will be infrequent, any type of scapegoating and blaming, any type of finger pointing and shaming will be infrequent once we commit to being “not indifferent to suffering”. While this may seem a lofty goal, it is right at our fingertips, it is, as the Bible tells us, in our mouths and in our hearts. Letting go of blaming and scapegoating, shaming and finger pointing means being responsible for our own actions. It means making the statement, “I am my brother’s keeper” instead of doing as Cain did and making it a question. It is acknowledging the nearness of negativity and how much it desires us and our ability to rise above it. It is about mending our imperfections, repairing the damage we do to ourselves and another, it is about maturing our spiritual life and seeking the proper “physician of the soul” as Maimonidies teaches.

We all experience suffering at one time or another. Be it to “tolerate” the pain of loss, the pain of unrealized dreams, be it to “suffer doing the next right thing”, be it the recognition that we can bear these pains and disappointments because of the depth of our soul and our connection to family, friends, community, the universe. The call here is to not be “indifferent”, to stop our lies to ourselves that ‘we are men and should be able to handle this’, ‘we are women and we can bear the pain of childbirth so you should be able to go through this’, etc. Indifferent to suffering begins within ourselves, it is a deceptive technique to deflect our pain, and to, at the first opportunity, take our pain out on someone else, someone we consider beneath us-be it because of race, color, creed, religion, ethnicity. Hence Lyndon Johnson’s quote: “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.” Nowadays it is not just color, it is anyone who isn’t ‘white like me’ anyone who doesn’t want the US to be “a Christian Nation” are beneath the MAGA crowd, It is evident that the indifference to suffering that is the hallmark of Trump and his gang of thieves has filtered down to his supporters and the Republican Party, who promoted “compassionate conservatism” under George W. Bush, has rejected their old ways and signed on to being “indifferent to suffering”.

If we are to make the words of the Bible, the path of the Buddha, the way of Rumi, the philosophy of Gibran come alive, we have to reject these charlatans, we have to make good on the promise of America, the promise of the Exodus from Egypt. We have to follow through on the promises God delivers to us each day: slavery will end, we can leave our inner slaveries, we are redeemable, and we each have a unique place in this world and only we can bring our unique talents to relieve some of the suffering we encounter. We are the healers, we are the redeemers, we are the engines that drive us to freedom and out of slavery, to healing and out of suffering. We do this by seeking ways to heal our inner suffering, not by projecting it outward, rather by going through the pains we are experiencing and growing from them, gaining compassion from them for another human being who is going through their own pain. This is the path of the 12-step program; one alcoholic helping another. This is the path of all religious healing-one person helping another, each person being embraced by their community, not shamed or blamed. We can do this, we can create these types of communities across the globe. We can live into the promise of America, the reason the Puritans and the Pilgrims came to “the new world”. Are we courageous enough to fulfill their dream?

I come from a family who were “not indifferent to suffering” and, though I have cause suffering, especially when I was not in recovery, not living a spiritual life, I return to their examples time and time again. I am not quiet about it, I am not soft in my seeking consensus in alleviating suffering, I am not subtle in my raising the alarm about being “indifferent to suffering”. I am loud, obnoxious to some, disruptive to many and, some say, I cause chaos in my wake. All of these descriptions are true at one time or another. I am also deeply committed to being “not indifferent to suffering” of another human being. I am a passionate believer in the possibility that each and every person can do T’Shuvah, make amends, change their ‘spots’ and live well. I am a physician of the soul and I do not go along to get along, I have failed at times to get people to look at themselves and I have failed to look at me at times-this is the reason T’Shuvah is so important a practice. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 211

“However, an honest estimation of the moral state of our society will disclose: Some are guilty, but all are responsible.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.93)

While it is exceedingly popular to blame society for our current moral state, as has been the case forever, Rabbi Heschel’s words above, hopefully, disturb us greatly. They are meant, I believe, for us to stop the blame game and get into action, end our hand-wringing and bemoaning of the ills of society and do what is necessary to change, improve and cure our current moral and spiritual maladies. It begins with each of us in our inner life and then we can affect change in another and another, until we reach the “99th monkey”, the “tipping point” and we can heal as a society.

At issue is the lack of leadership for our moral maturity in our spiritual life; the loudest people are often the most guilty and responsible for the lack of morality and the spiritual maladies that promote racism, prejudice, anti-semitism, islamaphobia, anti-lgbtq+, etc. Our politicians who are claiming to be following the words and teaching of Jesus while doing the exact opposite of what his disciples said in his name are prime examples of how we move from a nation that believes in freedom and independence to one of authoritarianism and internment camps, as Trump and his ‘gang’ are promoting.

Jesus says, according to Mathew 23:25-26: “you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” Yet these supposed disciples of his today are the hypocrites he was speaking to! And, they walk around unaware of their guilt and their responsibility for the ills of society, for the moral injustices they perpetrate. AND, we must also take responsibility for what is happening. We, the people, have allowed the lies and the deceptions of another(s) and of self to override what is truth, what is moral, the illness of our inner life and promoted the decay of the societal norms the Bible gives us. We have to clean up our inner life, we have to end our “greed and self-indulgence” which brought about the destruction of the 2nd Temple and has been destroying society a little at a time ever since.

This talk, given at the Conference on Race and Religion some 61 years ago, is as relevant and important today as it was then, maybe more so. Rabbi Heschel was addressing racism in particular and prejudice in general. Today, the prejudices of so many are so blatant and being given cover by the Unrule of Law as the Supreme Court’s bias is so obvious. When Trump can delay his trials, when a Federal Judge can go against the spirit if not the letter of the law like Judge Cannon, when Congresspeople travel to New York to upend the rule of law instead of taking care of business is Washington DC, we are seeing the sad state of moral decay and spiritual illness that is rampant in our country and in the world.

AND, we are all responsible. We need to be speaking out more, we need to be voting more, we need to give the people who are fighting for real freedoms, for the principles the country was founded on courage and support. We need to tell the people on the extremes that living in the middle is the way of spiritual and moral health. We need to remember to judge each case on its own merits, not according to some ideology we purport to adhere to. We need to call our clergy and our lay leaders to task for not creating sanctuaries of truth, not creating houses of learning and welcoming the arguments that lead to compromises and solutions. We need to hold their feet to the fire until they admit their own guilt and responsibility for what is happening. We need to do the same ourselves.

It is amazing that people can pray with such fervor for the destruction of another human being, another group of people and claim this is what God wants using the words of the prophets, Jesus, etc as their proof-text. It is amazing that our political, our religious, our business leaders can ignore the constant call to redeem one another and care for the powerless and the voiceless that is in the Bible, that were the ways of Jesus. It is a sign of the moral decay of our society that people cheer when the Free Press is called “the enemy of the State”, when people of color are accused of not being hung, when people of different religions and ethnicities are not considered ‘equal’ to WASP’s, to Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. It is a sign of our indifference that we, the people put up with these lies, with this moral decay, all because we are still more interested

Cleaning our inner life is the key to healing the spiritual and moral maladies of our society. I know this from my own experience. Prior to my return, T’Shuvah, and my recovery of my authentic self, I hoped that my outside was good enough to fool everyone as to what was happening on my insides, this allowed me to deceive myself into believing I could do immoral acts and not have them infect my inner life. I was WRONG! Since I have been working on my inner life, my outer actions have been much healthier, even when not seen as such by society. I have lived into my authentic nature of being a disrupter, I admit my guilt and know I am co-responsible for what is happening in the world around me so I speak up, I reach out, I do what I can-knowing it is not all on me and I am not free to walk away from the situation. I work hard to let go of resentments as this keeps my inner life clean, I do not whitewash the wrongs done in my name, by me or to me by another(s). I just don’t need to hate them like I used to, I just need to rise above the pettiness and enmity to be the light I am created to be, that my Hebrew name calls me to be. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 210

“If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the public climate of opinion, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.93)

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, we remember all of those who have died in service of our country. We also remember every service member, man and woman, who has put their life on the line so freedom was secure for their generation and the next one. Looking at the sentence above gives one pause as to how incongruent we have become as a nation because of we, as individuals, have become so “conditioned and affected by the public climate of opinion” that seems to be mendacity, deception, and authoritarianism. The young men and women who served, who died and those who came back from every war changed morally and spiritually as well as emotionally are being degraded, disrespected and their “last measure of courage” is being seen as stupidity according to the grand poobah, Donald Trump! And, unfortunately, at least 1/3-1/2 of Americans go along with him, support his antics and praise him as the second coming of Jesus Christ-how ridiculous and how much more corrupt can we be, as individuals and as a society?

Rabbi Heschel spoke these words some 61+ years ago and we haven’t learned them, we haven’t taken them into our minds, our hearts, our souls and it is costing us our freedom, our country’s ideals, the principles of the Puritans and the other people who settled in this land/ They all came here seeking religious freedom, seeking to be taken out of the slavery of the King they were having to serve, seeking to have the inner burdens of slavery lifted from their souls. Yet, we continue to go backwards in our thinking, in our actions. When the public climate of opinion is to ‘put women in their place-barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen’, of 1/3-1/2 of the country and this becomes palatable to the individual, “society’s corruption” is being disclosed. When people are celebrated for their violence under the color of authority as in the numerous police brutality cases that either don’t get prosecuted and/or where the offenders get acquitted, “society’s corruption” is being disclosed. When a man who has been indicted in 4 different jurisdictions is allowed by the Supreme Court to delay, delay, delay rather than being held accountable while poor people, people who are not so favored are treated totally differently, “society’s corruption” is being disclosed.

Alito, Thomas, Bannon, Miller, et al are the co-conspirators and criminals along with Trump. While they will ‘fly the flag’ (probably upside down) and extol our veterans, their actions and their rhetoric decry the very freedoms our fallen heroes died for. Laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is political theater for these people, they have and continue to spit on the graves of our soldiers, our founding fathers, and spit in the faces of those of us who believe in freedom, who believe in the promise of America. Their “make America great again” bullshit is just another slogan-they do not care about the crimes committed by their followers, they encourage them to kill, harm, harass ‘the enemy’. ‘The enemy’ of course is anyone who disagrees with them, who calls them out on their lies and deceptions, who seeks to make a free society governed by the rule of law without fear or favor a healthy organism.

We see the “individual’s crimes” as a ‘crime wave’ when perpetrated by people of color and condemn a whole race for them, we see the “individual’s crimes” as a ‘way they are’ when perpetrated by Jews and their ‘money-grabbing’ ways. We see the “individual’s crimes” as the totality of their being and we define people as criminals forever, constantly using their foibles, their errors against them. We use the vulnerabilities of people and groups against them in order to have power, control and to continue to infect society with the deadly disease of prejudice, of indifference, of hatred. This way of living, this current grab for power by the ‘maga bullshit’ crowd is the very example of M. Scott Peck’s definition of evil! Yet, we, the rest of society, are allowing them to scream these lies, continue to defeat freedom rather than taking to the streets as we did in the ’60’s and ’70’s. Rather than have our faith communities take up the charge and the challenge to save our young people from death and moral as well as spiritual destruction in Vietnam as they did in those years, some of the faith communities are leading the charge and, at least, giving cover for the liars and the deceivers to spread their mendacity in the name of some ‘god’, some idol they call ‘Jesus’-this is how widespread “society’s corruption” is today.

I am responsible for all my crimes and misdemeanors-full stop! And, I see how I was influenced by the times as I was growing up. Money was everything in my youth and it is more so now-I saw people cheating another all the time and said, “why not get mine”. There were many people I knew and loved who did not do this and, I caught the “public climate of opinion” that people with money could get away with anything and very few people cared how they got their money-only that they had it. While people I loved tried to talk me out of it, I could not hear them because I had given into the self-deception and lies I told myself. This is part of what makes me so bombastic, so uncontrollable when I see lies and deceptions-by myself and by another(s). I have been accused of creating chaos and dissension by my mere presence because I speak my truth and, therefore, can’t really be in ‘polite society’. I am proud of this label-I am proud to be able to disrupt the status quo and give people qualms about their indifference and their self-deceptions. I pray I continue this, I am committed to healing my crimes and impacting society to heal it’s crimes so we can live the ideas of the Bible, the ideas of America, the ideas of freedom for all a little better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s Teachings - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 209

“That God may be more intimately present in the slums than in mansions, with those who are smarting under the abuse of the callous.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 93)

There are many tales about Elijah, the prophet who was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, being the one who comes before the Messiah in Jewish lore. Yet, each time we meet Elijah in our stories, he is sitting with the poor, he has scabs on him from being on the streets, he is welcoming the stranger to the city, the area and is ignored. Some say that the Messiah will not come until we welcome Elijah and his friends into our mansions, into our Temples, Churches, Mosques as people who have equal worth and honor their dignity and the image of the divine he and they are created in.

We have created a system of “beautifying the mitzvah”, adorning the Torah, being stricter and stricter as to how people are ‘supposed’ to live in Judaism, in Christianity, in Islam falsely believing that the more we elevate our Houses of Worship, the more we adorn them, the more God wants to be with us. WRONG! The teaching above is telling us the exact opposite. God’s presence, while always with us, is known by those “in the slums” more intimately than by those “in mansions”. The people “in the slums” pray with more sincerity and more kavanah, they are acutely aware of their need for grace and compassion, they pray for an opportunity to serve the world in the best way they can and what they get from those “in mansions” is more put downs, more hurdles, more inequality. When one person, one vote is denied because of gerrymandering and the Supreme Court goes along with it, this is a hurdle. When there is one law for the stranger and another law for the ‘citizen’, this is inequality. When the religious right call for a Christian Nation, this is a put down of all other religions and a put down of God-who they claim to serve!

In the Bible and in the Midrash/Homilies we are told how God hears the cries of the poor and the stranger, the widow and the orphan-ie the powerless and voiceless. We are told that abuse of these people engenders God’s ‘wraith’. Yet, the pious ones who live “in mansions”, these prosperity gospel lying bastards, continue to remain “callous” and, as one can see in the eyes of the authoritarians and their advisors, they enjoy the “abuse” they give out, they relish in the “smarting of the abused” they engage in. We, the people, have to call an end to this way of being. We have to expose the lies of the religious zealots who bastardize the tenets of their religious orders, we have to say NO to those “in mansions” who either rejoice in the “smarting of the abused” they are giving out and/or are oblivious and indifferent to it.

The teaching above is crucial for us, it reminds me of Moses’ words at the end of Deuteronomy, where he tells the people that after they get into the land, after they enjoy the fruits of their labor and the land, they well “get fat” and forget their history, forget their obligation to serve something greater than themselves and they will fall into a state of entitlement and this will lead to their downfall. Yet, the people “in mansions” in every era have believed they are different and this will not happen to them-be it in Ancient Rome or Germany of the 1930’s/40’s. Be it Czarist Russia or Russia in the 1980’s we have seen this movie play out over and over again.

Netanyahu, Ben-G’Vir, and their band of thugs who live “in mansions” along with Sinwar and the leadership of Hamas who also live “in mansions” believe that “God is on their side” while they enjoy the “smarting of the abused” they and their cronies give out. As both Moses and the Egyptian advisors to Pharaoh said to him: “Until when will you refuse to surrender to a power greater than yourself”, what will it take for you to see how you have ruined Egypt, Gaza, Israel? I would say the same things to the Far Right and Far Left zealots in America as well. Most of all, I would ask the people who are center right, center left, center, why they are afraid to stand up and speak out while Rome, Gaza, America, so many places around the globe are on fire?

We, the people in the middle, the ones who live at least 20% away from each pole, have to get out of our mansions, our ornate Churches, Mosques, Temples and bring in those who have been abused and heal them. We have to go out and clean up the slums side by side with the people who are living in them. We have to bring spiritual truths and healing into our mansions, we have to have respect for the rule of law and remind ourselves of our obligations to redeem the captive, to love one another, to see the divine image we are all created in, to respect the dignity and worth of every one and to stop our erroneous belief that the gates to our mansions will save us. We have to fight against the arrogance of zealotry, the stupidity of ignorance, the pull of indifference and lethargy.

I have lived in the slums, I have been poor and I have been one of those who have abused the trust and love of people close to me and upon realizing where I was, I called out and the universe, the Ineffable One, responded to me. I have stayed true to that experience and since I began my journey of T’Shuvah, my return to decency and morality, obligation and joy, I have taken great care to lift another(s) out of the slums of addiction, to help people heal their spiritual maladies, to find the “middle ground” as Rambam says. It is a message that I have taken to people “in mansions” and, in many cases, found a welcoming ear to this message and a helpful hand in our mission. I am humbled and grateful for this experience. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 208

“That God may be more intimately present in the slums than in mansions, with those who are smarting under the abuse of the callous.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 93)

Hearing these words in my ears and in my head makes me realize that authoritarianism’s draw for people has been fostered by ‘religious zealots’ and so-called ‘spiritual leaders’ for millennia! Clergy has used God as a weapon and, as the prophets so beautifully stated, catered to the people “in mansions” and joined forces with “the callous”! The push/pull of authoritarianism and democracy, of abuse and freedom have been the crucible of humanity forever-we have sought to quiet the inner war for freedom, the inner need for connection to something greater than ourselves with authoritarianism from a leader, from a clergyman, by being ‘master of the house-making our wife and children do what we say. We have started wars in the name of God when it is really for our own drive to live “in mansions”. We are afraid to go to the slums, we are unwilling to meet the prophet Elijah, who is said to live in the slums, with the abused, and yet, we speak of ‘religious values’.

Some people “in mansions” have been involved in cleaning up the slums earnestly, they have donated, volunteered, and they go home behind their gates each night. Father Greg Boyle, founder of HomeBoy Ind. and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, teaches us that we have to “erase the margins” and practice “radical kinship”. Both of these ways of being are paths that the Bible gives us, they are the examples Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha teach us, so why does it seem so difficult for us to follow in these footprints? Because we believe that power, prestige, wealth will ensure certainty for us, that we can ‘beat the odds’ and ‘be protected’ by God because, as the prosperity gospel lies to those who follow it, God loves the rich and if you are poor, it is because God doesn’t love you so much. What rubbish, what bullshit and what a way to promote God being “intimately present…in mansions” rather than live into the words of Rabbi Heschel above.

Contrary to populist belief, God is not white! God doesn’t favor the rich, the white person, etc-God is the creative force in the Universe that many of us refer to as “the Ineffable One” this force being too much to even describe. We, the people, have the obligation to use this creative force to build bridges, cure diseases, “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. We have majored in and gotten Doctorates in how to use this creative force to wreak havoc on those we declare our enemies, we use this creative force to create chaos, promote lies and engage in both deception of another(s) and self-deception. Populism is a euphemism for authoritarianism, the populist leader is another way of describing Pharaoh, and the promoters are the courtesans and bootlickers we have seen surround these tyrants always.

The worst activity is the participation of the clergy! They have gone along with the forceful enslavement “of the heathens” who have their own faith, their own religious traditions and, the ‘good white christian man’ decides to ‘save them’, when they don’t need saving! “God may be more intimately present in the slums” comes from the Biblical tradition that 36 times says “take care of the stranger, the poor, etc”, it comes from the Haggadah which tells us to invite the hungry and the needy into our homes, it comes from being relegated to slums and ghettos for 2000 years and hated for longer. The Black Ministers who are calling for a Cease-Fire and blaming Israel have forgotten that it was not Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran who walked with Rev King. They have forgotten that Hamas is a terrorist group of thugs who murdered, raped, kidnapped Jews and non-Jews on Oct. 7th and do not want to Cease-Fire, they want Israel to surrender to their terror! Instead of seeing how the leadership of Hamas live “in mansions” while their people are relegated to slums, these spiritual leaders decry the Israelis, the Jews. The deaths in Gaza are horrendous-full stop. We have to find a solution that no one wants, that everyone gripes about because then, we will be able to recognize Elijah who lives in the slums, proclaim freedom for all, and make the world a kinder place for all of us.

As a child, my father and my grandfather had business “in the slums” of Cleveland, Ohio. The people who had business around them, the people who worked for my father, the people who did business with my grandfather and father, were always welcomed. I remember my grandfather giving people their clothes that he had tailored, dry cleaned, etc when they needed it even though they couldn’t pay for them. I remember going into stores around my grandfather’s store and people smiling at me because I was Abe’s grandson. The people who worked for my father, who lived in the slums, came to our home every month to check and see what needed to be done for years after my father died. Both of these men knew God is “more intimately present in the slums” and they honored the divine image of the people around them-in the slums and in mansions. They erased the margins everyday of their lives.

I am acutely aware of the times I have had to go to people “in mansions” for donations so we could continue the work of Beit T’Shuvah. I also realize my bombastic attitude towards people “in mansions” who like to ‘look good while doing bad’ and how I have tripped myself up because I have no filter when I see this happening. I have catered to those “in mansions” and, in a few instances, denigrated my spirit by deceiving myself into believing “God was here”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 207

’We worry more about the purity of dogma than the integrity of love.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 93)

The more I have been sitting with this sentence, the more I have come to accept that love is either “unconditional” or it is not love. For us to not worry about “the integrity of love” more than “the purity of dogma” is, I have come to realize, at the root of all our problems today, yesterday and, without spiritual healing, tomorrow.

The call to “love your neighbor” has no conditions on it, the call to “honor your parents” has no conditions on it, the call to “love Adonai” includes every fiber of our being, so love, as defined in the Bible is unconditional and it should be in our lives also. As Ram Dass said at a lecture one time: “I can put someone out of my home, just not out of my heart”. We have confused desire with love, we have confused sexuality with love, yet, for love to be “intact”, to “love” with a wholeness of being, we have to accept that love and like are different, that acting loving no matter how one feels is the manifestation of the call of our souls to connect to and live into the command “to love your neighbor”.

Yet, we seem to subjugate our “integrity of love” for the “purity of dogma” that we have come to adhere to. The ‘good christian folk’ who tried to overthrow the 2020 election and their groupies that have signed on since then, aka the Republican Party, are more concerned with “dogma” than “love” even though Christ preached love and tolerance, cared for the stranger and the poor, the leper and the outcast. The ‘good jews of ultra orthodoxy’ while purporting to be ‘torah jews’, actually do the opposite of what is called for in the Bible, hating their neighbors, even Jewish ones if they don’t adhere to the “dogma” they have set down. The Ayatollah, MBS, et al are not interested in the “love” of the Holy Koran, they are interested in the power they can derive from it, the control over people they can use it for.

We are witnesses and participants in the triumph of “dogma” over love in our court system, in our halls of government, in our Temples, Mosques, Churches, in our homes and in our schools. Yet, we refuse to stand up for “the integrity of love”! This truth infuriates me today as I assume it did Rabbi Heschel some 61+ years ago. History is, it cannot be taught with a prejudicial viewpoint and truly be history, the Holocaust happened-period, full-stop. Yet, to keep “the purity of dogma” for some people/groups, we have Holocaust deniers! Slavery was rampant in America from before we became a nation until well into the 20th Century in a myriad of ways that continue up to today-no amount of denial by Desantis, Abbott, et al can change this fact-yet the “purity of dogma” for them crushes “the integrity of love” that their faith tradition teaches. Alito, Thomas et al being more worried about the donors who treat them to a great life-style than the law is another example of “dogma” over “love”.

The heart of this tragedy, I believe, is in the family. We are in danger of losing what makes humanity strong and great, the family, because we have put “dogma” over “love” even there. Herein is the place to practice unconditional love. No matter how often my family disagreed with one another, love prevailed. No matter how disparate we are in our political, religious views, love prevails. No matter how much we disagreed with another group, my father taught us to respect and treat those with whom we disagree with respect and love.

For love to prevail, we have to never shut off the possibility of connection returning between one another. For “the integrity of love” to be front and center for all of us, we have to know that our disagreements are for the sake of learning, they are to teach us to be open to new ideas. In their concern for “the purity of dogma”, even the great Rabbis of old caused hatred strife like Rabban Gamliel who excommunicated Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yochanan who’s exiling of Reish LaKish sent him to an early grave and he was miserable the rest of his life. All this suffering, all of this loss of ideas, ways to live well, sacrificed for the sake of “the purity of dogma”. Interestingly, both of these sets of Rabbis were brothers-in-law, they were family-yet “dogma” overwhelmed “the integrity of love” they had for both their sisters and their in-laws. How often have families been torn apart by some argument that could have ended in “let’s agree to disagree” instead of walking out on one another? How often have families, communities, friends, countries been torn apart because of our inability to admit that “the integrity of love” is more important than “the purity of dogma” that we think is life or death.

In my recovery, I work tirelessly to not “put someone out of my heart”, even if I can’t associate with them anymore. I work very hard to wish my enemies well and pray for them as the Big Book of AA suggests. I know that I have to be open to the ideas and ways of another so I can learn. I know that I have to call out the immorality around me, the lies people tell to another(s) and to themselves, I have to search my self daily to root out my lies and self-deceptions. I am dedicated to raising up “the integrity of love” in all my affairs, to have “dogma” take a back seat because I am not sure that any particular “dogma” is correct and I know “the integrity of love” is always right and good. I uphold the wholeness of love by being whole inside, by living with integrity, wholeness, living a life that is line with the divine, not hiding from my inner demons and healing their need to defeat me and overtake me. I live into “the integrity of love” by giving people the benefit of the doubt, by being sad when another is so stuck they can’t see the harms, the betrayals they are committing and pray for their return. I have welcomed back many and been welcomed back by many over the years and this is how we live into “the integrity of love”! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 206

’We worry more about the purity of dogma than the integrity of love.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 93)

After spending two days on the first half of this sentence and even though there is so much more to be said about it and how it is ruining our lives and our seeking to destroy our humanity, I want to turn to the last phrase above “the integrity of love”.

Rabbi Heschel’s use of italics points to the importance this idea has for him, and I would add, should have for all of us. “Integrity” comes from the Latin meaning “intact”, it is is defined in English as having “strong moral principles” and “unified” as well as “internal consistency”. In Hebrew the word used is “Shlemut”, which translates to “wholeness”. The “integrity of love” is first found in the Torah in Leviticus 19:18 “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself”. This is, as I hear Rabbi Heschel today, the epitome of “the integrity of love”.

And, we are not as worried about loving our neighbor as we are about the “purity of dogma”, we are not as worried about the wholeness of our love for our spouses, children, friends as we are about our devotion to “the conventional notions of society”, the “dogma” of our particular cult/way of being. Whether it is a religious dogma, a social dogma, even the progressive dogma that claims to be for everyone. This is the great issue that has faced humanity since we came into being-how to be “internally consistent” in our love for another human being, how to “be whole” in our commitment and loving actions towards another and ourselves. We have struggled to see “love” as a strong moral principle that must be practiced in all of our affairs-even in war!

We live in a transactional society, love is a commodity not a principle. We give and withhold it based on our ‘feelings’ at the moment. We give and withhold it based on what we want from another human being, this is the draw of the authoritarian movement. There is no “integrity of love” in our society today for most people because of the transactional nature of love in our world. We see this in the way the ‘good people’ have embraced the terrorists of Hamas. We see this in the way the ‘religious’ people use the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc as weapons of destruction and proof they are right rather than ways of living into “the integrity of love”. We see the transactional nature of love in the ways institutions are willing to abandon their principles to conform to some ‘standard’ set by people who sit on their boards with no real knowledge of the day to day needs of the people they are serving-either their customers or workers, be it for profit or not-for-profit.  We are witnessing the tearing down of so many moral principles found in our Holy Texts, that while never followed perfectly gave us grounding for a way to be better human beings each and every day.

Our need to call another person, another group “vermin”, “not human”, “blood poisoners” etc are indicators of how far away from ‘the integrity of love” we are. This need also reflects back on us how self-loathing we are as individuals and as a society. Our inability to “love our neighbor” calls into question our ability to “love ourself”. Think about this: we have to be commanded to love both our neighbor who we know we need and to love ourself! How radical is this? We have evolved so much that we have bypassed much of what makes us human, our  need for authentic connections, our need to be authentic, our need to be needed and our need to be aided by another.

We use love as a weapon, treating our ‘loved’ ones as investments, as reflections of ourselves so if they embarrass us, if they defy us, if they make us uncomfortable, we withhold love from them. We proclaim it while we act in the most unloving ways. We have seen children who have forgotten to honor their parents-not necessarily love them-in the ‘divorce my parents because they are toxic’ movement that is happening today. We have seen the ‘progressives’ abandon the Jews who have been allies with them forever because the Jews are the same as ‘whitey’, the same as ‘the man’. We see the takeover of someone’s creative endeavor by ‘the suits’. We see the fidelity proclaimed by the authoritarian leader to the people with his/her fingers crossed behind his back. We are in the throes of losing our freedom to be who we are because we lack “the integrity of love”.

I have been thinking about this for a long time. I had issues with my mother and I would never abandon her. We had an agreement- we didn’t always agree with one another, we didn’t always like one another and we would never stop loving one another. We saw each other as wounded human beings doing the best we could with what we had experienced and where we were in the moment. I have had the same experience with people who have harmed me, who have berated me, who have supported me and helped me grow. “The integrity of love” that I have for humanity is more in line with the Biblical command today than ever before, it keeps growing within me and allows me to live without resentments and with compassion. My relationship with my wife, Harriet, is one of “integrity”. Our love is whole, it is internally consistent, it is based on the morality of love and we are a unified couple with our individual ideas, needs, thoughts, etc. My relationship with my siblings is the same as is my relationship with my daughter, Heather, and my grandson Miles. We practice radical love whether we agree or not, whether we have hurt one another inadvertently or not. Practicing this principle in all my affairs leads me to more empathy, more compassion, more “love my neighbor” so I can “love myself” as God loves all of us. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 205

’We worry more about the purity of dogma than the integrity of love.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 93)

Continuing with the them in the first part of the sentence above, in Hebrew, the word “Dugma”, translates as “example, pattern, prototype, model-not absolute and not perfect. Only in English have we bastardized the word to mean what we want it to for our power needs/grabs. By making “the purity of dogma” a prerequisite for any position of power by whatever group one belongs to we have eliminated our search for truth, for validity, for connection.

We have substituted adherence to ‘the purity of dogma” for true authentic connection. We are so afraid of saying the wrong thing to ‘the leader’ or to the other ‘followers’, we deny our own truth, we deny our opinions and our desires, we deny our authenticity and our own connection to something greater than ourselves. We have replaced God, spirit, universe, nature with “the purity of dogma” being our higher power.

I, like all of us, have witnessed this in our politics, in our religious institutions, in clergy, in work, in our country clubs, in our streets, on our college campus’ and in the halls of governments across the globe. “Purity of dogma” can get authoritarians elected, look at Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. The most educated and open country in Europe with all types of scholars and thinkers, was susceptible to the “purity of dogma” of Hitler and his thugs. In Israel, another forward thinking and innovative country, the people are fighting against “the purity of dogma” of Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben’G’vir, et al. In America, the jury is still out-we are waiting along with the rest of the world to see if “the purity of dogma” that Trump, the Heritage Foundation, the Republican Party are pushing will take a greater hold than it already has.

Our religious institutions also are promoting a “purity of dogma”, be it on the right or the left. One has to adhere to, or at least give lip service to, the dogma presented at the church, temple, mosque, one is going to or be ostracized and shamed. In the fundamentalist religious institutions, no matter progressive or conservative, not being into “the purity of dogma” will result in expulsion and, if one has children, a spouse, they will either be shunned by the community or the one who has doubts about the dogma will be banished from the community and not allowed contact with their children and spouse! “The purity of dogma” is so concerning that allowing ‘those people’ into our neighborhood is dangerous. It is so concerning to some that “those people”, ie anyone not like us, are an existential threat to our safety, our way of life, etc. And there are clergy who promote this, once a women told a group of women that she, a member of the Conservative Jewish movement, that she doesn’t let her children have play dates at the homes of members of the Reform Jewish movement because they could be fed cheeseburgers, because her Rabbi had told her so!

The protestors on college campus are so caught up in “the purity of dogma” most of them are unable to articulate what their slogans mean, what the truth of the current situation in the Middle East is, that Hamas, who they are celebrating,  murdered and raped women and children and this is cool with these “progressives” because it is in the name of ‘freedom’. Following this logic, I am curious as to why they are so against white supremacists who believe their killing black people is in the name of freedom and “purity of dogma”? I imagine that Asians and Latinos go along with the people who hate them and want to kill them because they are doing this in the name of freedom and “purity of dogma”?

Of course my statements are ridiculous, yet, they are logical conclusions of the actions of the protestors, they are the logical conclusions of the actions of the clergy, of the politicians who declare “dogma” above truth, above kindness, above compassion, above communication, above learning from one another. This is how far done the road to hell we have travelled as a result of “the purity of dogma”: Putin kills Navalny, MBS kills Jamal Khashoggi, Hamas murders and rapes Israelis and other nationalities breaking a cease-fire, Putin invades Ukraine, Assad gases his own people, nothing happens-Israel responds to an attack on their people proportionally greater than 9/11 and Jews are condemned, the UN gives aid and comfort to terrorists, and the deaths of civilians is promoted by Hamas, the deaths of these civilians is tragic, and Israel is blamed because Hamas won’t accept a Cease-fire and Qatar keeps giving them money and safe harbor- all in the name of “the purity of dogma”.

I am searching my self to see where I have been too dogmatic to accept the truth and validity of another way of being, another path that suits someone else better than the one I am on. I am, and believe, always have been, open to these other paths. I also know my dogmatic stance involves freedom, involves openness to something new each day, to not being stuck in yesterday or tomorrow. I know I have been an example of how to be in recovery and do one’s own thing. I know I have been denigrated because I have not and do not agree with everything in the Big Book, the Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament, etc. I am an nomad who belongs in every situation I find myself in, I know that the ones that are unhealthy for me, I leave because I no longer want to be around “the purity of dogma” that someone is spewing. I believe the “purity of dogma” comes from fear and ignorance, from a need for power and control. To the people who continue to protect “the purity of dogma” that they and their friends spew, I have compassion and sorrow for you along with my prayers that you will wake up one day and repent. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 204

‘We worry more about the purity of dogma than the integrity of love.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 93)

Rather than hear and possibly heed Rabbi Heschel’s words above in 1963 up till now, his words are even more true and widespread now than they were when he wrote them! No matter what spiritual discipline one follows or studies, there are members within all of them who are more concerned and worried about the “purity of dogma” than anything else. They are the ones who have “segregated God”, seek to make the sacred, their dogma, Uber Alles for everyone in everyday life.

“The literal meaning of dogma in ancient Greek was "something that seems true." These days, in English, dogma is more absolute”(vocabulary.com).  How far have we fallen into the abyss of self-deception that we twist a word that demands we explore more, “something that seems true” into an “absolute”! Rather than return to the original meaning and wrestle with the truth, we have taken the lazy person’s path and just made it absolutely true, because of our need to be certain, because of our fear of mining the depths of inquiry and, of course, our desire to be deceived and lulled into knowing The answer. We are witnessing the fruits of “we worry more about the purity of dogma” in the move to authoritarianism on both the left and the right, the ‘covering one’s ass and the ass of the boss’ at all costs, the filing of lawsuits for our own errors against anyone and everyone who has deep pockets, the need for scapegoats to blame for our sins as opposed to admitting our sins and putting them on the head of a goat that we send to the wilderness in order to separate ourselves from them.

Be it Putin or Tliab, the Ayatollah or Bibi, Trump or Xi, the 2025 project people or the Alito/Thomas coalition, all of these people have a “purity of dogma” that they are protecting at any and all costs. This is for their very survival emotionally, egotistically, and spiritually. They are not the people Rabbi Heschel nor I are speaking to; we are speaking to the followers, to the people who are, in essence, their victims and the  victims of their own self-deceptions, the victim of some misguided belief that certainty is possible and good. Herein is the issue for me today-will we let go of our need for certainty and purity so we can engage in the wrestling with our inner lives with the desires of our earthly inclinations and our higher inclinations, and one another as Rabbi Harold Kushner, z”l, calls our inner war?

It is crucial for all of us to remember any “purity of dogma” is man-made and a disguise for control. The Rabbis of the Talmud could not agree on one way, hence the myriad of opinions and ‘arguments’ in the Talmud and since then. The High Priest was to offer  his own sacrifices for his sins and missing the marks each year at Yom Kippur because he made errors and needed to admit them. The Orthodox who claim to be ‘following God’s will”, those who study day and night in Yeshivas and only seek to be more ‘pure and dogmatic’ are denying the truth of the words above. The far left Jews who call band together with the protestors calling for the demise of Israel and Jews because Hamas is so wonderful, deny the truth of the words above.

There is more ways we “worry more about the purity of dogma” in our daily living. The Republicans who go to New York to support Trump rather than actually do the “people’s business” in the “people’s house” are more interested in “the purity of dogma” of Fox News, Trump, Heritage Foundation, etc than in what is best for the country. The myriad of people who run companies and institutions who cover up their misdeeds because the “purity of dogma” is more important than truth, they are worried about the ‘optics’ more than the truth, more than love. These good people, who do much good in the world and bring great inventions and discoveries to light, who help the needy and spread good works are also able to lie to themselves that the “ends justify the means”.

We have seen the coverup of the sexual transgressions by Priests, Rabbis, Imams, for years and years and it still happens today. We have heard of the cover-up of the Santa Susana Nuclear Accident in 1959 and even since it’s revelation has been downplayed. The city of Simi Valley and especially the neighborhoods surrounding the lab have been found to have high levels of radiation in the groundwater and when things like the Woolsey Fire of 2018 occur radiation spreads. Yet, the people who run Brandeis Bardin camp, which is a great camp, say nothing to the people who have been there, do no studies to see if their campers were impacted with higher levels of cancers, etc because they were swimming, eating the fruits and vegetables grown on the land there. The dogma of keeping secrets, not ‘airing our dirty laundry in public’, not being shamed and not being sued overrides “integrity” for these powerful people. “Purity of dogma” is the “crime of the millennia”.

I have always been a dogma breaker, as dogma is used today. I have always sought to investigate that which “seems to be true” to test the validity and then use this way of being to enhance my life and the lives of another(s). I believe deeply in finding the middle ground. I do have my passionate way, the voice I inherited from the prophets and when I use it people think that I am too radical, too difficult, and too dangerous. I have ignored this in pursuit of truth, not always being right, just pursuing it and losing my place and some people. Yet, I have to be true to me, follow my higher inclination and live with integrity rather than dogma. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Herschel's Teachings - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 203

“Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and the sacred.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.93)

I am writing about this for a second day because it has haunted me over Shabbat. Bifurcate comes from the Latin meaning “two-pronged” and segregate comes from the Latin meaning “apart from the flock”. What is happening today is an amazing phenomena, God has been segregated from the words of the Bible, from Jesus’ teachings, from the call of the prophets and set apart from God’s flock by using God to validate the very actions, policies, treatment of another human being that is called evil/wrong in our Holy Texts. The use of God to hate women and make them subservient to the whims of men, be it reproductive health care or working, goes against the ways of the Bible when God said the daughters of Zelophehad could inherit. The use of God to say that white people are favored by God is a bastardization of Moses’ race, Jesus’ race, the race of the people who left Egypt, etc.- since they were in the Middle East, we can safely assume they were not ‘white’ people. Calling immigrants, legal and/or illegal, vermin, blood poisoners while trying to sell “God Bless America Bibles” is one of the greatest examples of the ‘new christian ethos’-doing the exact opposite of what the Book you are selling is telling you to do.

We are seeing “the segregation of God” in this new way when Mike Johnson says “the Bible is my worldview” and then goes to New York to support Trump and castigate the rule of law, the Judge’s daughter, etc, this is an example of segregating God for his own purposes, not for God’s purpose. When he is described as “being comfortable with authoritarian social control and doing away with democratic values”, we are witnessing God being torn apart from God’s flock for the sake of ‘christian nationalism’. We are also witnessing the ‘progressives’ who segregate God away from the Jews, away from people of wealth, away from ‘those’ people, the ones who disagree with them. This phenomena of “the segregation of God” is happening on both ends of the political spectrum and in both right-wing and left-wing Churches, Temples, Mosques. What happened to understanding and living the principles of the Bible in all our affairs? This too has been segregated because we have taken God out of our everyday living, we have segregated God to validate what we want to be holy, our power grab and to validate our authoritarian desires and actions.

The prophets did not see, hear, nor understand a “two-pronged” approach to living. For them, what was done in the Temple was merely the physical manifestation for public consumption and learning of what human beings do in their everyday life. The fusing of the secular and the sacred is the foundational reason for the Mitzvot, for our moral codes. Caring for the stranger, the widow, the poor, the orphan; not standing idly by the blood of your brother/sister/neighbor; not taking bribes as judges; honoring parents; redeeming the captives; loving your neighbors; are not only for Temple worship, not only for how we act in Church, they are the epitome of fusing secular and sacred, they are the calls to end our “bifurcation” and “practice these principles in all our affairs”. Moses exhorts us to “Choose Life”, to not follow the majority to do evil, to not run after the false prophets, etc because the Bible knows how seductive “segregation” and “bifurcation” are, how easy it is to be deceived by the sowers of these ways of being and, when they use God and the Bible to validate themselves, how difficult it is to reject their claims-hence good people believing Trump’s authoritarianism will be good for them and the end of democracy as we know it will be good for the country!

We are in another deep spiritual decline-for all the talk of God by the charlatans and the deceivers, for all the religious cloaks Hamas and the ultra-orthodox Jews wrap themselves in, for all the pages of the Bible the Republicans are selling, for all the flags people are wrapping themselves in, for all the taking over of buildings the far left protesters are doing. From the time of Pharaoh and Moses, through the Judges, the Kings, the prophets, till today, people have tried to separate the secular and the sacred, they have practiced the “segregation of God” even in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim nations of antiquity, with the exception of King David. While David is an imperfect hero, he also wrote the psalms, he could admit his own wrongdoings, he could and did ask for forgiveness. While he was a tremendous warrior, the case can be made that his fighting was for the sake of heaven as well as for himself and his country. We are being called by this teaching to stand up and say NO to “the segregation of God”, NO to the “bifurcation of the secular and the sacred”. We are being asked to once again put them together, to merge secular and sacred, to bring Godliness into all our affairs and live the principles of Godliness, of decency, of compassion, truth, love.

My recovery is based in healing the split in my inner nature, the thief and the prophet, the drunk and the visionary. Bringing God into all my affairs, all my decisions has allowed me to have freedom of choice-I do not always choose the Godly way, I make mistakes- and without bringing Godliness into my way of thinking and being, I would still be stuck in some addictive way of being. I have engaged the secular and the sacred in every moment I can, whenever I am present in this moment, I am not bifurcating them. When I am able to see the Divine Image in another human being, I am not segregating God, when I am able to have pathos and compassion for the suffering of the people who hate me, I am not segregating God. When I choose to do the “next right thing” I am merging secular and sacred. I am grateful for my teachers, family, friends, fellow learners and even those who argue, exile, etc me for helping me heal my inner split. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 202

“Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and the sacred.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.93)

Rabbi Heschel’s words above come after he reminds us of a “white preacher” who said in condemnation of any clergy being involved in the Civil Rights Movement with the words: “the job of the minister is to lead the souls of men to God, not to bring about confusion by getting tangled up in transitory social problems.” This is indicative of the “tragedy” he is speaking about. While this was true in the ’60”s, it is even truer today.

We hear many preachers condemn the social problems we have today and using God to validate the error of those who want voting rights for all, the words on the Statue of Liberty to once again be true, the spirit of the Declaration of Independence to finally take precedence, the Constitution to be upheld and understood in today’s world as a dynamic document rather than a static one for only one era. Many clergy today are supporting the ‘status quo’ as they did in the past, many clergy are actively engaged with the “segregation of God” that we know and hear in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the Koran.

God, as the prophets tell us, is very involved in the world. God is not segregated from us, there is no “bifurcation of the secular and the sacred”. In the Bible, God sends the flood because humanity had become so corrupt that “men of renown”  were taking any of the daughters (we do not know how young they were) they wanted. These “men of renown” had polluted the earth so badly the entire world had to be cleansed. God speaks about the widows, the orphans, the strangers, and the poor, 36 times in the 1st 5 Books of the Bible, more than anything else. God comes to the prophets and sends them, often against their own will, to tell the people to return to Godliness, to leave the “bifurcation” they have cultivated so well.

The prophets railed against the Priests the most. Isaiah tells them their sacrifices as not needed and, basically, bullshit because of the ways they act towards the people in need. They are castigated by the prophets for their “segregation of God” . These people throughout the ages, the clergy, the priests, who should know better than anyone how involved God is in our world, how much God cares about the doings of the human being, how much God wants us to be human, have constantly tried to separate the sacred and the secular, have believed their power, which they want greatly, comes from segregating God to the Church and being the arbiters of what God wants ‘the people” to do. This behavior is exactly what the prophets railed against then, Rev King and his fellow clergy railed against in the ’60’s, and we hear from a few brave souls today.

It takes all of us to call out the clergy who continue to segregate God from the every day actions of people. It is a lie that someone can be ‘pious’ because they go to Church, Temple, Mosque, daily/weekly, they pray and study daily and they cheat people in business, they believe ‘those people’ are poisoning the blood of the ‘good folk’, they agree with detention of people who are trying to find a better life here in America, they rail against the ‘godlessness’ of people who practice compassion, pathos, love towards all-“hating the sin and loving the sinner”. We, the people, have to call out these charlatans standing on the Altars and those in the pews who have the power to make these lies become our reality. We, the people, have to end the “segregation of God” whether we believe in God or not! We, the people, have to rebel against these deceivers in the Clergy, in the Government, in the Courts, in the Colleges, in the streets. We, the people, have to engage in the call that has been resounding throughout the spiritual world and the physical world: “Let my people Go”!

In Judaism, as I understand and practice it, the commandments are the paths to combining the “secular and the sacred” rather than bifurcating them. Every time we do an action, we can say a prayer, a gratitude, experience joy for doing the next right thing. We bring God into our lives when we wake up and throughout the day we are able to remind ourselves of the myriad of opportunities that present themselves where we can help another human being. Kindness, truth, love, obligation, return, repentance, forgiveness, concern, caring, are the choices we are taught in the Bible to take. We are given the consequences of our actions when we choose selfishness, when we choose to relegate God to the Temple and not the everyday. None of them are good! Yet, we have to read the Bible anew each year so we do not forget our responsibilities and our connection.

In my recovery, I have not segregated God from my living nor have I bifurcated the “secular and the sacred’. I have made mistakes, I have used my inaccurate understanding at times of what God is calling for, I have mistaken, at times what is sacred and what is secular, I just haven’t separated them nor believed that God is not present in all my affairs. I know “that no human power can save me…and God could and would if God were sought” as it says in the Big Book of AA. I also know that living with Godliness involved in my actions, not separating secular and sacred is an unpopular way of being. It causes people to be suspicious, to seek the chinks in my armor, to denigrate me when I make my errors and even more when I call them to account. It is a hard life to not engage in “the segregation of God”, to not bifurcate the “secular and the sacred”. Enobling the common is the goal, according to Rabbi Heschel. I am grateful that I do this more often than not. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 201

“The prophet is a person who suffers the harms done to others… All prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil!…He is a God of Pathos.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 92)

We are all created in the Image of God, according to Genesis Chapter 1, we are also all descendants of the prophets, students of the prophets, no matter which faith we adhere to. Yet, we seem to have lost our ability to suffer “the harms done to others”, we have spent millennia being “indifferent to evil”, in our Churches, Mosques, Temples, in the street, in the halls of power and the halls of justice. We have lost our way so badly that we actually use God to justify our indifference, to justify our actions which do “harms” to another! We are so lost that the rule of law only applies to ‘those people’ (anyone not like us), the purpose of power is to enrich oneself and take advantage of everyone else, our religious institutions have become havens for ‘prosperity gospels’, right-wing fanaticism, left-wing radicalism, with truth and God being left out of the altar, out of the homily, out of the sermon, dismissed in the Holy Texts and Prayerbooks we use.

Being created in the Image of God is a statement of our relationship with God and with one another. We cannot say we are people of faith and treat anyone else as “less than” us, whether they are the same faith, a different faith, a different skin color, not as educated, etc. We are all “kin under the skin” and we all are called upon to “erase the margins” as Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries teaches. Since we are all kinfolk, isn’t it time for us to welcome and embrace one another as long lost relatives rather than as enemies? Isn’t it time for us to stand with one another in healing the harms that have been perpetrated upon any of us? Isn’t it time for us to be the shield for those who cannot protect themselves, the voice for those who cannot speak?

God cries when the Egyptians are downing, according to a midrash/homily saying “My children are dying”. While God know and made their deaths happen, it was not done for us to cheer, it was done because the evil was too great, just as in Sodom and Gomorrah. When destruction has to occur this is not a victory for God, it is the acknowledgement that we have, once again, gone down the wrong path; we have, once again, been indifferent to evil and not suffered “the harms done to others”. Rabbi Heschel’s last sentence above reminds us that God suffers with us, God suffers when we are in exile, God suffers when any of us are lost, any of us are evil, any of us indifferent.

When the Speaker of the House of Representatives claims to live by the Bible and goes to New York City to undermine the rule of law, we are watching “indifferent to evil” in action and in full regalia! When authoritarianism is extolled as freedom, when “dictator for a day” is celebrated, we are seeing the demise of the call of the Bible to fight against evil, to end our fascination with power for the sake of power. When our colleges and universities are more interested in promoting a political agenda than in educating our young people to the myriad of possibilities available to them, we are on the precipice of ignoring the “harms done to others”, when ‘standing up’ for the terrorists takes precedence over standing up against rape, torture, murder, we are participating in and watching evil flourish.

We have the solution, it is right in front of us. Pathos-suffering, pity; the recognition of our own suffering because of our silence, because we have bought into being “indifferent to evil”. The recognition of the suffering of another because we have been “indifferent to” the evil we and society perpetrates upon them. Be it anti-semitism, racism, islamaphobia, anti-LGBTQ+, all of it is evil! What is amazing is how the ‘powers that be’ have turned those of us in these minorities against one another. When LGBTQ+ can celebrate Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’ and want the Intifada  to be worldwide when Hamas kills LGBTQ+ people in Gaza is beyond me, it points to the harms of being “indifferent to evil”. We had a coalition in the 1960’s that worked because it was based in Divine Pathos, in our Faith traditions. Today, because the leaders of our faith traditions have watered them down so much, the young people don’t care to adhere to them unless they validate their prejudices and their viewpoints.

We are in desperate need of hearing, reading, studying, living the words of the prophets, the words of the Bible. We have to return to being a people of Pathos, a people who refuse to be “indifferent to evil” anymore. We have to return to being the people who were willing to wander in the wilderness for 40 years so we could learn how to be decent, how to be connected to authenticity, how to Choose Life! It is not a hard turn, the difficulty is in making the decision to make this turn back to our authentic self, turn back to our divine image, turn back to the divine image in another human being. This is the call of pathos, this is the path of pathos, this is the way of faith, of kindness, of truth.

I have been fighting evil for a long time, before I engaged in it and since I have stopped engaging in it. I am and have never been indifferent to evil. Even when I was perpetrating it, I knew it and chose to be evil. I am remorseful for those times. And, I have spent the past 35.5 years standing against it, I have gotten myself into trouble because I have called out evil, wrong, because I refuse to be quiet in the face of evil. I am not right for ‘polite society’ and have no skills except to live into my prophetic inheritance and stand for what is right, good. Standing for pathos and kindness is the only solution to the bullies and the authoritarians who want to control everything and everyone, I have found. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 200

“One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 92)

Continuing the theme of “indifference to evil”, Rabbi Heschel reminds us of the dual nature of human beings, a divine inclination and an earthly one. We are never ‘one way’. This sentence comes to remind us to not fall into the trap of self-deception, the thinking that because I am a “decent” guy I don’t have to question myself, I don’t have to do T’Shuvah, inventory of my actions, I can ‘cruise’ through life because I’m a decent person. This type of thinking is the root of so much evil being perpetrated and ignored throughout history and especially in today’s world.

In the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 19, we are told “You shall be holy, because I your God am holy”. In the myriad of commentaries on this verse, one stands out for me, that of the Ramban. Moses ben Naimon was a 13th Century scholar and leader in Spain, his commentary on this verse in Leviticus speaks to the need for this commandment; we had already been called a nation of priests, we were told we are a holy nation, we had been given so many ways to be holy-why were these words necessary? The Ramban answered: “because it is possible to be a scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah”. His ability to see the truth of the “pious” at times, to know that people could use the laws and ways of Judaism to pervert the very goals and service they are meant to express lights the way for all of us.

We are being called to account in the words above, in the Biblical stories, in the study of our history as human beings, and we seem to do everything we can to evade our own accounting. Being “sinister”, aka evil, while also being “decent” happens with and without intention. There are many people who try and come across as decent human beings, on the ‘right’ side of causes and do so for their own good, for their own gain and, once they have gained the wealth, the power, the reputation, they go about their lives serving their needs rather than the needs of another, they betray the very principles they swore to uphold in the beginning of their search. They knew their intentions from the beginning and just did what they had to in order to get their hooks in and exert their power. These are the people who go to Congress to serve their own need for power and control, these are the people who go on Boards in order to gain power and control, these are the people who take over companies and institutions to make them over in their own image. Some people do this because they buy into the deceptions of another(s) that this is the only way that will ensure long-term success, so they are “decent and sinister” unintentionally.

Those who are “pious and sinful”, however, have a special place in hell, I believe. These charlatans pound the Bible, pound the New Testament, pound the Koran, etc and when their pounding is challenged, they pound their challengers and they pound the table. Piety and sin are not strangers to one another, while being pious is supposed to help us overcome our sinful natures, we have found the “pious” are fundamentalists in disguise, people who want to use their piety for control, for power, to destroy their ‘enemies’ whom they label as enemies of God, of Spirit, because, after all, only the “pious” know what God wants. These people have committed more evil in the name of God, started more wars in the name of God, than their secular counterparts. While they know better, while they are aware of the teaching of the Ramban, they continue to be scoundrels in the bounds of the Torah. They continue to bastardize the texts to fit their personal pushes for power and control, wealth and prestige. There is no text that shows Donald J Trump is sent by Jesus. There is no text that says abortion is a sin. The text used against abortion actually is a polemic against pedophilia. Yet, these “pious and sinful” people continue to spread their lies, hold onto their power and lead people away from spiritual health, away from a real connection with God, a real connection with their fellow human beings!

We are told to do T’Shuvah one day before we die and since we don’t know the day of our death, we should do it everyday. The Church suggests confession at least once a week, the recovery movement  says we should “continue to take personal inventory”. We are in need of doing this type of self-reflection and self-inspection often because we know the depths of our self-deceptions, Rabbi Heschel has taught us that “self-deception is a major disease”. The Bible knew this and every spiritual discipline has some path to returning after making mistakes. The problem with the “decent and sinister” and “the pious and sinful” is their willful blindness to their own self-deceptions, their inability to admit their errors and repair the damage from them. We have become a society; 1) that values deceptions rather than truth, 2) that is intolerant of errors and those who make them, 3) refuses to admit their spiritual maladies and seek spiritual healing for them. Hence we will continue to be plagued by the “decent and sinister” and the “pious and sinful” like Mike Johnson, the rest of the Republicans seeking to tear down the rule of law and our democracy.

I work hard each day to be “pious” in that I am devoted to nurturing my own spiritual growth and that of another. I live a life of decency and I take my own inventory daily. I am well aware of my own self-deceptions and my need to be on top of the signs that point to my being “sinister and sinful” because they are subtle and deadly. I let go of resentments as quickly as possible and keep allowing them to flow through and out of me as they arise. I am grateful each day for life and for all that I have, good things and troubling things. These are some ways I keep self-deception at bay. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 199

“Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception to become the rule and being in turn accepted.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.92)

Since Biblical days, we have been warned about “indifference”, we have been told to take an active part in our lives, to not be tourists in our own journey of living. The mitzvot are obligations that are, in many cases, attributed to God; yet, upon closer examination, in light of the teaching above, I believe we can see the mitzvot as obligations attributed to our welfare, to our not being indifferent, not being overwhelmed by “a silent justification”.

Hearing Rabbi Heschel’s words and allowing them to penetrate my mind, body and soul, forces me to look at all of the “silent justifications” that society uses to promote the evil that is constantly being perpetrated upon the earth, upon another human being, upon ‘those people’, etc. Given the context of Rabbi Heschel’s words, the “silent justification” for racism, for anti-semitism, for Islamaphobia, for anti-Asian, anti-LGBTQ+, etc has made “possible an evil erupting” and we seem to be unable to stem the flow of hatred and violence from this eruption. In fact, as is said above, the “silent justifications” we use in business, tax evasion by the wealthy, hatred of and by spiritual disciplines/religions, as well as those mentioned already, have “become the rule”, terrorists being called ‘freedom fighters, rape of Jewish women thought to be okay by these ‘freedom fighters’ praise by the silence about it by such luminaries as Joy-Ann Reid and other ‘our women’s rights’ leaders,  prove how these evil eruptions are “being in turn accepted”!

The prophets were hated in their time because they would not stay silent. The Bible is full of people and stories of people who would not stay silent in the face of evil. Moses was so aware of the evil possible by human beings, he was so concerned about humanity’s leaning towards “indifference to evil” that he extolled us to CHOOSE LIFE. Yet, as we see throughout history, these words fall on deaf ears, Jesus’ exhortations do the same as do Mohammed’s, Buddha’s, etc. We are so spiritually bankrupt that we are unable to too broke to pay attention to the evil around us, we are in acceptance of evil being the ‘way of the world’, just ‘the way we do business’. This is both sad and infuriating, it points out the shortcomings of our religious and spiritual educations, the lack of spiritual maturity and an UnGodlike acceptance of what is. “Indifference to evil” is not the normal state of affairs in God’s world, “silent justification” is not how we are instructed to be in the Bible, in the universe. We, the people, have to take a stand, we have to end our indifference, we have to end our silence and we have to speak and act in the spirit of the prophets. We are never to lost to return, we are never to far away that we cannot call out for help. We are never to immune to the wonder and awe of living, of the universe that we cannot be touched. We, the people, have to make a commitment, a decision, to “lift up our eyes and see’. See what is true and right, see how the mitzvot, the teachings of our spiritual texts lead us out of our “silent justifications” and our ways of making “an evil eruption…to become the rule and being in turn accepted”.

Over 3400 years ago, we were told: “Don’t stand idly by the blood of your neighbor”, “don’t run after the majority to do evil”. Around 200 years ago we were taught: “what is hateful to you, do not do to another human being” and “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you”. None of these teachings have any quarter for “silent justification”. None of them allow for “an evil erupting as an exception to become the rule”. The only reason this has happened is because we have stunted our spiritual and moral growth. We have become so utilitarian that we have shaped our spiritual teachings and our morality to what we need to do for ourselves right now. We hear and participate all the time in finger pointing-accusing others of that which we are guilty of-as Goebbels taught and authoritarians of today, the Republican Party since Gingrich, have raised to an art form. We also hear from many ‘progressives’ and Democrats their prejudices against ‘whitey’, against ‘those Jews’, against people who have made it because of their own hard work and are no longer considered ‘underdogs’. In other words, for our own political and social gain-the middle is being clobbered and the poles are fighting together against those of us who are against “silent justification”, against “evil…becoming the rule”, against the acceptance of “indifference to evil” as the norm.

Living into the words and teachings of the Bible, of Rabbi Heschel, of our history, has allowed me to leave the world of “indifference to evil”. I have no more “silent justifications” that work to assuage my guilt, my conscience when I perpetrate harm and negativity onto another. I am deeply remorseful for the harms I have perpetrated, I am not here to clean up my messes by denying them, by trying to make them not messes. I cannot stay silent while another(s) engages in their own “indifference to evil” nor their inability to see their “evil…becoming the rule” in the ways they live their lives. After 20 years of being the evil Rabbi Heschel is talking about, I have dedicated the last 35.5 years to being the opposite. I have inherited a tradition that causes me to speak out, I have inherited the DNA of my father to speak out loudly. Each and every day of my recovery has been spent in seeking out my own indifference and rising above it, and reaching out to help another human being rise above their own indifference and see the evil that we all have come to accept as the rule. Optics, Money, everyone else is doing it, are no longer excuses for our “silent justification”. We are descendants of the prophets, lets speak and act as they did. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 198

“Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception to become the rule and being in turn accepted.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.92)

“Indifference”, as I have said before, comes from the Latin meaning “not differing, not deferring”. The English definition is: “lack of concern, sympathy, interest” it also adds “unimportant”. Seeing evil as unimportant is a very dangerous way of living, it brings us to an unawareness of the preciousness of life, the utilitarian nature of life and the ease with which we can blame, shame, destroy another human being, another group of people with our words, our deeds, our evil ways. Remember, the first brother killed the second brother just because he was mad that ‘God liked you better than me’. And, we have been killing one another ever since to show how strong we are, how evil has infected us with its contagiousness and how society has, throughout the ages, accepted this as a way of being.

“Insidious” comes from the Latin meaning “ambush” and the English definition “spreading and working in a hidden and injurious way” and when combined with the definition of “indifference”, I hear Rabbi Heschel warning us, informing us that we are being, we have been “ambushed” in a secretive manner and we have become unable to defer to truth, we have become unable to differentiate between good and evil. This warning has gone unheeded since the time of the prophets, since Biblical times and seems to have been ignored and refuted even more in our times. In fact, given the ‘alternative facts’ bullshit, the denial of people who have been helped by the laws of the Great Society and their need to overturn them so no one else can benefit from them, the denial of “one law for the stranger and the citizen alike”, the bastardization of the Golden Rule, etc the “insidiousness” of our “indifference to evil” could be reaching new heights.

What is it that prevents us from hearing and heeding this call of Rabbi Heschel, of the prophets, of Rev King, of the Israeli Hostages, of the Ukrainians being held in Russia, the cries of women in Iran, in Afghanistan, in America? It is, I believe, our inability to cure ourselves from the “universal” and “dangerous” disease of “not deferring” to what is, to not differentiating between truth and fiction, between freedom and slavery, between holy and profane. While this is an age-old problem, it is a crucial one to deal with right now-with the proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the rise of terrorism, the fear of the demagogues, the willingness of some to be infected with “indifference to evil” and then spread their disease to as many as they can. We have been “ambushed” by a disease that is “spreading and working” in secret and is so subtle that most people are totally unaware of their journey to ‘the dark side’. It is so bad that dialogue, debate, facts are of no avail when seeking to make rapprochement with someone who is suffering from the “contagious” nature of “indifference to evil’.

We see this in Campus Protests today, there is merit to the suffering on both sides of the war in Gaza, no one who is rational, who is not suffering from a spiritual malady wants innocents to be killed, starved, tortured, raped, babies killed, etc. The protests are not, however, saying anything about the cause of this war, Hamas, except to extol terrorism, to cheer the rape of women and men, the killing of babies in their cribs, the taking of hostages against international rules. The protests are calling for the goals of Hamas and Iran to be fulfilled, they are giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States as well as our ally Israel. While there is plenty to argue with Israel about, it is Hamas who has turned down every cease-fire negotiation by Qatar and Egypt. It is Hamas, like the PLO did,  who turns down every opportunity to end the conflict, to stop the terrorism, to find ways to live in co-existence. This is who the protests are defending! This is how “insidious” the “indifference to evil” has become, that our ‘best and brightest’ on our college campus’ have become unable to differentiate between good and evil, between truth and propaganda. They have been “ambushed” by the “hidden injurious way” of mendacity, deception and self-deception.

These college students and their outside agitators, sponsors, are the symptoms we see today, this spiritual malady is prevalent in the Justice System that favors rich people who can delay justice for themselves while pushing a rush to judgement for their ‘enemies’. This spiritual malady is present in the economic disparity, the ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ agendas. It is so “insidious” that even good people who heed these warnings, who are dealing with their own spiritual malady are incapable to reaching another and changing the course of our world, it seems.

As one who used to spread this “indifference” through lies, through subterfuge, I know the power of this “insidious” disease. I have fought against it in my recovery and, I know, my fight has been so loud and so over the top at times that people dismissed me. I also know that I have been dismissed because the people I was railing to, the people I was calling to, did not want to heal their spiritual malady because the spread of “indifference” was good for their ‘bottom line”, be it financial, political, personal. I am not immune to this spiritual malady, so I write every day, I pray, I watch my actions and I work with people who know me and can help me stay on the “right path for me”. I pray you have people to help you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 197

“There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 92)

Leaders in every religion, in every country have been wary of the prophets, for each group that was ‘in power’ were concerned that the people would rise up and follow through on the words and deeds of the prophets. This would, in their opinion, lead to the demise of the Judaism they believed in and practiced. While the prophets could not condone being “neutral, impartial” to wrongs done to someone else, people in power seek consensus, ‘peace’, and to keep the status quo in place. The second and third generation of those who led revolutions do not want the study of the prophets, they do not want the “indifference to evil” to end.

Living in today’s world where so many people protest and riot, stand for their values, principles, it is easy to think that “indifference to evil” doesn’t exist. Yet, it is alive and well especially in these groups of people who have claimed their identity as their politics, claim their ‘religious’ beliefs to be the only true ones, believe their right to power is absolute. When we look around the world and see the poverty, hunger, oppression, wars, mistreatment of the stranger and the poor and do nothing, just shrug our shoulders and say “what can I do, I am only one person”, we are condoning and being guilty of “an evil”. We cannot vote this out, we cannot legislate this evil out of existence, we have to root it out from inside of us.

We are guilty of  this “indifference to evil” in our country when we “stand idly by the blood of our brothers”, when we fail to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves”. When we ‘go along to get along’ with actions and ways we know in our hearts and our guts that are wrong. When we “follow the majority” to do evil, we are guilty, when we believe we are ‘helping’ another by punishing them for their beliefs and using our power to deny them freedoms and rights, we are guilty. When we worship at the altar of power and dominion and are deaf to the cries of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor, we are guilty. When we ignore the wrongs done in our name by our leaders, by our ‘group’, we are guilty. When we have one law for ‘our kind’ and another for ‘those people’ we are guilty.

When we make excuses for ‘our people’ when they invade the privacy of another person/group we are condoning the “indifference to evil”. When we turn our backs on the pleadings of the beggar on the street, when we make homelessness a crime, when we are more worried about tourism than the plight of the poor, we are condoning. When we listen to the denigration of a group, participate in the ‘jokes’ about Jews, Muslims, people of color, etc, we are condoning. When we we watch the decimation caused by war, by terrorism, by prejudice and blame the victims, we are condoning “indifference to evil”. When we make excuses for rape and murder, terrorism and hatred we are condoning. When we remain neutral in the face of any and all evils we are condoning “indifference to evil”.

The condoning and participating in this evil begins within each individual. It is a sign of a terrible spiritual malady that has reached epidemic proportions. All of us have a ‘knowing’ of the next right thing to do, all of us have within us ‘a moral compass that points true north’, and to go against these drives is a choice. Be it because of ‘societal norms’, an immature soul, an uneducated spirit, fear, desire of power, etc is immaterial. As the Talmud teaches, what we didn’t learn as children, even if we were not circumcised, we have to learn ourselves and even circumcise ourselves as adults. There is no ‘clean up’ for our guilt or condoning of our “indifference to evil”.

Rabbi Heschel’s words in 1963 ring true today as they did when the same ideas and calls for action rang true then and in the times of the prophets. The Bible gives us the same prescriptions for dong good, standing up for what is right and moral, and calling us to task for our “indifference to evil”. It is time for all of us to check ourselves for how we remain “neutral, impartial” to evil, to the wrongs done to another(s). It is time for us to raise up our souls, our spiritual maturity and seek the help of physicians of the soul. It is time for our clergy to end their prejudices, stop promoting hatred and evil towards those ‘not like us’. It is time for all of us to understand that every one has infinite dignity, each of us in needed and our greatest inner need is to love and be loved, to need and be needed, to find ways to live together instead of finding ways to dominate and decimate one another. We need to ‘grow up’ and take our proper places as human beings and be human.

I was a practitioner of evil and I was indifferent to the evil I perpetrated. I did not hear the call of my soul nor the souls of another until 43 years ago, when my daughter was born and even then, it took me another 8 years to act upon the calls I was hearing. Since then, I have refused to be indifferent to evil! I have done wrongs to others, without a doubt, I just haven’t been indifferent nor justifying (at least not for long) of my misdeeds. I have engaged in spiritual maturity and have had a spiritual guide since 1987-I am aware of my ability to lie to myself and to hide from myself so I continue to work with a sponsor and a spiritual guide to stay right-sized and follow my own moral compass. I am never done with spiritual growing. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s Teachings - A Daily Spiritual Path for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 196

“A prudent man is he who minds his own business… particularly when not authorized to step in-and the prophets were given no mandate by the widows and orphans to plead their cause. The prophet is a person who is not tolerant of wrongs done to others, who resents other people’s injuries.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.92)

The last sentence above sends shock waves through the “prudent” person! It is disturbing to the status quo of both the days of the prophets as described in the Bible and to the status quo we are living in this moment. When so many wrongs are being committed in the name of ‘we, the people’, when the values upon which the United States was formed are being so maligned and misused, the actions and descriptions of the prophets can be our salvation. The challenge for ‘we, the people’ is to be disturbed enough and disrupted enough to take different actions.

We are in a time, again, where the “wrongs done to others” is commonplace. We see them and commit them daily. When we ignore people because we are ‘too busy’, we are so into our own thoughts and feelings, we can’t even say hello to people we walk by, we are ignoring the divine image of another human being. When we are so sure we are ‘right’ and ‘they’ are ‘wrong’ we can’t even carry on a conversation, we are so intolerant of another point of view, we are wronging both the other person and ourselves. We are guilty of the ‘sin’ of ignorance.

When people are discriminated against because of the color of their skin we are perpetuating “wrongs done to others” since before the founding of our country. We, the people, have the duty to grow beyond our prejudices and our narcissistic tendencies to live up to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence-“all men are created equal”. We have been “tolerant of the wrongs done to others” for far too long. This was the focal point of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. It needs to be the focal point of changing the ways we live today. When voting rights, civil rights, “love your neighbor as you love yourself” are trampled on for some, they are ruined for all. Yet, we seem to be incapable of grasping this truth, we seem to revert to being Pharaoh and his Egyptian followers towards anyone we think we can dominate. In our seeking of power and rule, we tolerate “wrongs done to others” as a right instead of a crime.

When we proclaim our nation should be a ‘Christian Nation’, we decimate one of the founding principles of our Bill of Rights-freedom of religion. When we make the press “the enemy of the people” we do the same with freedom of the press. When we spread lies about people because they are Jews, Muslims, etc we are denying our heritage and our lineage. Christianity and Islam are offshoots of Judaism, different and holy. To deny the need and the right of Jews, Muslims, Christians to believe and practice their spiritual paths is to deny history and to deny Godliness. In this denial, many have become “tolerant of the wrongs done to others” and revel in their intolerance!

The protests of today, unlike those in the 60’s are not in support of freedoms, they are in support of terrorists. There are many issues in the current conflict in the Middle East that have merit on both sides. One issue that has no merit is the rewriting of what happened to initiate the current conflict-Hamas’ terrorism, Hamas’ murdering of Jews in their beds, raping women, killing babies and taking hostages both alive and dead. The protestors against supporting Israel and proclaiming terrorists as ‘freedom fighters’, calling for the extermination of Jews and the end of the State of Israel are not engaging in the principles that were at the forefront of the Anti-Vietnam War nor the Civil Rights movements of the 1960’s. Our need to make moral equivalence is another way we “tolerate the wrongs done to others” and it needs to stop or else we will cause the collapse of freedom here and around the globe.

The problem is we have retarded rather than advanced the teachings and the spiritual principles of the Bible and the prophets. We have become adjusted to the conventional norms and mental cliches of society, of the strongman, of authoritarianism. We use ‘reasoning’ against ourselves and against people ‘not like us’. We have lost our ability to live in wonder and awe. We have become ignorant and revel in our ignorance. Rather than being “maladjusted to” the norms of society, rather than seeking to increase our individual and communal knowledge and wisdom, we are retarding them in the name of ‘country’, ‘religion’, etc. We are in desperate need of regaining our moral compass’, we are being called to live up to the best of Biblical wisdom and teachings, not bastardize them for our own benefit. Be it the far right in Israel, the terrorists and/or the far left progressives, all are seeking to use the Jews as scapegoats for their push for power, both use lies and deceit in their drive to have rule and dominion over human beings, and both are seeking to annihilate the dictate to “proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein.”

I am guilty of being “tolerant of wrongs done to others” and committing wrongs myself. I have made my amends and do a little better each day. I have also railed against the wrongs and found myself hated and loved, depending on the wrong I rail against and the people who hear me. I do not apologize for speaking out about these wrongs. I do have the sensitivity of the prophets and, as I grow along spiritual lines, I find myself more like the prophets in that I do “not tolerate wrongs done to others” by myself nor by another. It is not a popular way of being and I accept my loneliness as a good price to pay for being able to live with my self, with God, and with you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark