HOW LONG will it take you to "repent before God" in sincerity and HOW LONG will you buy the deceptions of TRUMP, BIBI, MAGA, the FAR LEFT? Year 3 Day 308

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 308

8th Day of 10 Days of Awe and Repentance

“There is no return to Judaism without repentance before God…We must recognize that repentance has yet to begin!”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg.70)

Reading and immersing ourselves in these words at this time gives us the knowing that our struggle today is an age-old struggle that humankind keeps screwing up and, like Jacob, holding on for life itself. We keep wanting to return to ‘the good old days’ (ask any white supremacist-oops I mean Trump voter) of hating people not like us, of having all the power (even though the poor people who are supporting these MAGA liars never had any and still won’t), and we fail miserably to go back and to hold the line on the forward progress we do attain. The history of humanity is truly 3 steps forward and then 1-2 back. Sometimes, like the times Rabbi Heschel’s words are being written, we go way back, as it seems we are now.

I am studying the Book of Samuel with Rabbi Hazzan Danny Maseng and we continually find the parallels to today’s situations. Yesterday we read about Abner saying to Joab: “Shall the sword devour forever? You know it will be bitterness in the end. Until when…” Of course Abner had his own reasons for saying this, he was losing the battle badly and his words must be taken seriously today, especially by the Rabbis and leaders of the far right government currently in power in Israel. While Netanyahu quoted the first words not as a question rather as a statement, his chicanery, mendacity and deceptiveness comes out in his not finishing the quote! Also, the words “until when/how long” in Hebrew are “Aad Matai”, the same words Moses uses to speak to Pharaoh in Chapter 10 Verse 3 and then again these same words are used by Pharaoh’s Courtiers in verse 7 of the same chapter. These words, when written or spoken, are a wake-up call to let us know we are on the wrong path and we need to repent and return. Yet, some Rabbis and political leaders of all faiths and in all countries see and hear “Aad Matai” as a statement directed to their ‘enemies’. For this to be true in Israel is the “unkindest cut of all” to God and to Judaism.

The last sentence above is so important, it is crucial if live is to change, if this Yom Kippur will actually save us from ourselves, our egos and our hatreds. Rather than pat ourselves on the back with how the MAGA crowd and the Trump/Vance ticket has shredded truth, love, kindness, compassion, justice (all basic tenets of all faiths and freedoms) we have to recognize that this is not the Biblical way, this is not the way of Jesus, this is not Buddhism, nor Islam! We have to come face to face with our lies and our need to repent before God and before the people we have harmed. I think about the myriad of women who can’t get the reproductive health care they need as individuals, how the Supreme Court has decided to make all women into “Stepford Wives”. I think about the people coming over the border early in Trump’s first and, Please God, only term in office where parents were separated from their children, and put into barracks/cages while the children screamed-even infants were taken from their mother’s breasts! Sounds similar to what the SS did with the Jews, doesn’t it? Yet, Bibi, Viktor, Donny, Vlad, Kim, Xi, all believe they are above the law, they are the arbiters of what God wants and the Clergy of all faiths who give them permission to do this, who support and encourage the hatred, the anti-semitism, the hatred of anyone not like them, not white christians who want christian law are the same as the Clergy of Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s! Even Rabbis and Cantors are supporting these anti-semites and Jew-haters!! How sick is this? Are they unaware of how they are retarding our return to Jewish values and freedom by not repenting before God, by not seeing their culpability and support for the charlatans and liars, by being willfully blind to their own corruption and being Pharaoh-like??

UNTIL WHEN will they not see that the spirit of the Bible is being concealed and the teachings are being bastardized? UNTIL WHEN will we refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of our errors? UNTIL WHEN will we refuse to understand our personal need to repent before God? UNTIL WHEN will we refuse to end our lies and subterfuges? UNTIL WHEN will we stay willfully blind to the destruction and death, physically and spiritually, that we are participating in? UNTIL WHEN will we refuse to take off the blinders that prevent us from seeing the whole picture, from wrestling with the not so nice parts of ourselves and another so we can rise above being either Pharaoh, his Taskmasters, or his Slaves? HOW LONG will we continue to lie to ourselves and believe we have nothing to repent for? HOW LONG will we continue to refuse to “recognize repentance has yet to begin!”

We, the people, have to STAND UP for America and for Israel against the MAGA, against the BIBI THUGS, against the Far Left who celebrate Oct.7th as a great day (Ilan Omar, Rashida Talib, et al). We, the people, have to demand our clergy repent and, unfortunately, we have to lead them and the leaders of corporations, the board members of not-for-profits, leaders of governments, to “repent before God” and to “recognize repentance has yet to begin!”. We, the people have to take hold of our freedoms and exercise our spiritual truths so everyone can live better, so that this Yom Kippur will have an impact on Nov. 5th and beyond.

I have wrestled with these questions of “HOW LONG and UNTIL WHEN” for a long time-most of my life as I look back. My family would ask me these questions about my criminal behavior and drinking, my ex-wife and my daughter, Heather, would ask me these questions about crime and Heather would ask me these questions about my commitment to really show up for her. In the past 35 years, I have answered these questions with Hineni-Here I AM. I no longer need to get even, I no longer have to celebrate the downfall of my ‘enemies’ (at least not for more than a minute or two), I no longer have to put myself down for my errors as well. I know that my repentance has begun and it is not over! I know that my return to Judaism is based on my repentance before God and has to be renewed and refreshed each day. I know I continue to repent, return and renew through my new way of seeing what I saw yesterday, yesteryear. I am grateful to live in the now, in the moment and with God because I repent before God each day, I am grateful before God each day. I return to Jewish living and loving people each day and I know repentance hasn’t ended and proud that I have begun it. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Letting go of our pretenses, our selfishness, and our cleverness - Year 3 Day 307

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 307

7th Day of 10 Days of Awe and Repentance

“It is deplorable when a spiritual movement deteriorates into bustling and pretense. It is unclean when a holy desire is misused by the selfishness of the clever.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg70)

Sitting here at my computer, reading these two sentences I am in bewilderment that we are in the same situation today, in America and in Israel-formerly two shining examples of democracy and freedom- as Rabbi Heschel is describing in Berlin, Germany in 1936! What is worse is that the “deplorable” is not limited to Jews, it has encompassed all western religions and the “clever” have taken over the pulpits and trying to take over the governments of so many countries. We are in a precarious state of affairs today and, while it is NOT the same as Nazi Germany, there are too many things happening in our world today to not take notice of the similarities and the subtleties, the differences and our defenses agains the “bustling and pretense” of our “spiritual movement” and the ways “a holy desire is misused by the selfishness of the clever.”

I am hearing the call of the Shofar-WAKE UP, SEE WHAT IS, HEAR THE WAILING OF GOD/UNIVERSE over the actions and inactions we are engaged in once again. The sound of the Shofar, these days of awe and repentance are here for us to engage in the inner work to cleanse ourselves of our fallacies, of the lies we tell ourselves, to let go of the burdens that others have put upon us with the names they call us and the pigeon holes they put us in. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel’s call to the Jewish community of Berlin and America, Germany and Israel to stop being “deplorable” to let go of the ways our “spiritual movement deteriorates into bustling and pretense.” In the next few days, many people will say to their family, friends, co-workers, etc “if I have done anything to harm you in this past year, please forgive me” and not do their own inventory, not do their own Chesbon HaNefesh, their own accounting of their soul because they can just repeat a formula and be ‘okay’, be ‘clean’ of their wrongs. BULLSHIT, I say. This is exactly the “bustling and pretense” that I hear Rabbi Heschel speaking about, he is demanding, Jewish tradition demands, the prophets demand we end these pretty “pretenses” and this phony “bustling” to make everything perfect for the meal before Kol Nidre and the Break-Fast after Neilah.

The anointing of Donald Trump by the Dominonists, by the religious right including Chabad, is another example of the deterioration of “a spiritual movement”. It shows how desperate people are to live into “pretense" rather than living into truth. In so many facets of life people are so worried about “Optics” and “cancel culture” that living a “pretense” just seems normal-it isn’t! The “woke” agenda is as deteriorating  as the white supremacist agenda, the orthodoxy of the far right politically and religiously is as “deplorable” to the “spiritual movement” of Christ, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, etc as the orthodoxy of the far left politically and religiously. We are living in a world where there is no middle ground that is safe to stand on. If one is not “with us” then they are “agin us” and seeking to live in a Non-Binary Thinking and Non-Binary Spirituality is anathema to both the far left and the far right. It is “deplorable” how much deterioration the “spiritual movement” of America and Israel have suffered at the hands of the “clever”. Their “selfishness” is so apparent in the myriad of times they have “misused” the “holy desire” of freedom, of caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan. The “holy desire” of childbearing has been corrupted by their selfish desires to control women. No where in the Bible does is say abortion is a sin, is murder-only in the minds of the “selfishness of the clever”. Isn’t it time for all of us to stand up and say NO?

Isn’t it time to remember the call of the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah, during the month of Elul and in these past 7 days? Isn’t it time for all of us to hear the wailing cries of God calling us to return so our “backsliding” can be healed and we can experience the embrace of the Ineffable One? Isn’t it time for us to let go of our pretenses and stop our need to constantly be busy and moving around and just allow the forces of compassion, truth, forgiveness and repair that are so prevalent now to overwhelm us and move us to do the work we need to so we can be more authentic and less pretentious this year? Isn’t it time for us to let go of our haughtiness that makes us believe these things don’t apply to us, we can just blame someone else for our errors because ‘they made us do this’ or, one of my favorites, ‘it is the devils handiwork’. We are the ones who have been entrusted with different spiritual movements and the one we choose to belong in needs us to care for it and grow it, not “deteriorate” it. It needs us to immerse ourselves in it so we can find the message and the question that the particular text we are reading is the answer for. It needs us to meet ourselves, one another and the entire community in authenticity rather than in pretense. We are the ones who have to say NO “when a holy desire is misused by the selfishness of the clever”. We have to be the guardians of our spiritual movements because “in every age” someone tries to co-opt the truth, tries to enslave and/or destroy us. These ‘enemies’ are often not outside of us, rather inside of us as individuals and inside of us are a spiritual movement. Remember the Temples were destroyed, according to the Rabbis, because of not caring for the poor and the stranger and senseless hatred and lying among the people as well as the corruption of the Priests, Kings, Wealthy. Sound familiar???

I have been guilt of being deplorable and unclean. In my recovery, my goal has been to not be pretentious and not be selfish. I have lived into this goal at least 80% of the past 35 years. I have railed against pretentiousness because I made amends for mine, I have railed when I see “a holy desire misused by the selfishness of the clever” because I was that person for many of the years between 17 and 37. I am a messenger of chaos to those who want to hide in their pretentiousness, to those who want to be “clever” and I do not apologize for this. I am also guilty of confusing my agenda and desires with the greater good at times in the past. I am proud of my ability to rise above the call of my mind to “get even” and accept the rejection and the pigeon holes people put me with a sense of sadness for them that they are so stuck they have to act in these ways. I am no longer accepting of the labels and the names others put upon me, rather I desire to be known by the actions I take, the souls I touch and the good I bring. My latest podcast is available now at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fyourfeelings/episodes/Im-Back-Lets-Wrestle-e2pdfqs God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you remorseful for a lost past or longing for "the good old days"? -Year 3 Day 306

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 306

6th Day of 10 Days of Awe and Repentance

“If, to be sure-as is often the case among us-instead of deliberate decision we have a coerced conversion; instead of a conscious truthfulness, a self-conscious conformity; instead of remorse over the lost past, a longing for it; then this so-called return is but a retreat, a phase.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg 69)

In the world we are living in today, these words from 88 years ago are prescient and ones we did not hear then nor are we hearing now! Listening to one of the political parties here in the US, one or more of them in Israel, of course Putin reminds us of the truth of these words and the misuse of the word “return”. The MAGA crowd, the far-right religious parties here and in Israel, Putin, et al all want to ‘return’ to the glory days of slavery here in the US, the Stalin years in Russia with the countries he usurped being returned to Putin, and to some misbelief that during the reign of King David all the land “from the river to the sea” was under his control-not true! None of these lies are true nor is it true that Palestinians enjoyed freedom under the Muftis, under the Ottoman Empire, etc and they certainly are not free under Hamas nor the corrupt Palestinian Authority under Abbas. The “return” that people speak about is not the “return” of Yom Kippur, it is not the “return” that God is asking for. It is, as he says above, “a retreat, a phase”.

We are in desperate straits, we are at another precipice in world affairs and in our country’s future. The demonstrators who are in favor of Terrorists rights to murder, terrorists right to take hostages and keep them for a year, to hold dead bodies for ransom want to ‘go forward’ to where? They are supporting a group that wants to go backwards in terms of freedom and the dignity and humanity of people. They are supporting a group whose sole reason for existence is to annihilate the Jewish People. This is what the people in Michigan who came here to be free want? This is what the demonstrators around the world want for themselves-to be singled out because of their ethnicity, their religion, their skin-color?? I think not-yet these “fine people on both sides” as Trump says, want to “return” to a past that was in their favor, where they had all the power. They want to return to a way of being that was not free, that did not “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, that “proclaimed freedom throughout the land and to” only some “of its inhabitants therein.

This “so-called return” is anathema for Jews! In his book, Gift of the Jews, Thomas Cahill says one of the greatest gifts the Jews gave the world was to change the belief that life was a circle and instead teach life is a continuum, one where we grow from each action and inaction, each hitting the mark and each missing the mark. Our return is not to some way of being in power over another human being or a country, I believe. As I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words above, I know that the return is to our core being, our soul’s knowledge, to our connection to higher consciousness, our souls.  Yet even religionists are trying to promote their lies through Scriptures so they can bastardize the words of Jesus, Moses and the thoughts of divine revelation to serve them. They are trying to return to a world that was like the world the prophets encountered and we know their reaction to the “so-called return” of the priests, royalty, wealthy- it was a “phase” not a change in their ways of being.

On this 6th day of the 10 days of Repentance, 10 days of Awe, isn’t it time for all of us to look inside and see the ways we have been engaging in a “so-called return”, in “a longing for the past” instead of “remorse over the lost past”? As Rabbi Hillel says: “If not now, When”??? We have to come face to face with the person we see in the mirror, we have to cry with our self not tears of longing for the “good old days” rather tears of remorse for being stuck in the past, tears of sadness for the errors we have made in this past year and years, for being in “a retreat, a phase” rather than in “return” and authentic repentance. We have to shed tears so we can wash away the phoniness and the bullshit we have been buying and selling. We have to shed tears of relief because we are finally engaged in the work of repentance, finally willing to experience the “miracle of repentance”.

We are in the final days before we get cleaned of the errors we committed against the universe. We need to reach out to those we have harmed and to our inner life to bring together the inner and outer, to “return” and/or turn to a state of wholeness and integrity. We do this by seeing the deceptions we have bought into both from another and from our minds. We do this by remembering Einstein’s words: “the intuitive mind is a gift, the rational mind a servant. We have forgotten the gift and worship the servant”. Returning to appreciating the gift of our intuitive mind and using our rational mind as a servant is a key component to this return. Shunning the lies of these “so-called religious people” like Ben G’vir, Wilks in Texas, the people who believe in their dominion over everyone not a white christian male, the ‘christian’ nationalists who don’t live Christ’s teachings, the Jews who are willing to vote for Trump because he is ‘good for Israel’ which he isn’t and because he goes to the grave of the Rebbe all the while hanging out with Holocaust deniers, anti-semites, loving Putin who puts Jews in jail for being the ‘wrong kind of Jew’! Knowing he is a white supremacist, these Jews must believe, like the some Jews in Germany did, that he doesn’t really mean the shit he says, who cares if he abuses the rule of law, etc.

My return has never been “a retreat”, it has been, since the beginning, a move forward. I do not want to ‘go back to the good old days’, nor do I want to go backwards in time. I miss having a community and a pulpit-I just don’t need to go back to what was, rather I am intrigued and excited about what can be, what I can do in this moment, because living in the past is not living T’Shuvah, it is not living in repentance, return and new responses. I have new responses to the situations that keep repeating in my life and in the world. I support Freedom of Choice for everyone-even if I disagree with their choice. I have remorse for my past errors, I have made my amends, it pains me that some want to hold on to their anger and self-righteousness and I accept what is. Nothing is all good nor all bad, no one is devoid of the Tzelem even if they choose to bury it so deep it seems to have left them. I shed tears of remorse, of sadness, of forgiveness of another who is so stuck they are unable/unaware of their need to forgive and their need to return. I am returning to more of the primordial me so I can serve the real you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"Conscious Truthfulness" or "Self-Conscious Conformity" when/how do you choose one over the other? - Year 3 Day 305

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 305

5th Day of 10 Days of Awe and Repentance

“If, to be sure-as is often the case among us-instead of deliberate decision we have a coerced conversion; instead of a conscious truthfulness, a self-conscious conformity; instead of remorse over the lost past, a longing for it; then this so-called return is but a retreat, a phase.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg 69)

Today is the anniversary of the murderous terroristic attack on innocent people on the border with Gaza, Oct. 7, 2023. This attack has changed everything in the Middle East, in the entire world and this was the goal of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Russia(who is a partner with Iran, North Korea, China). Thinking about this yahrzeit and the bolded words above, regrading Jews, “a self-conscious conformity” overtakes “a conscious truthfulness” all the time. In the past 9 years, Donald Trump has given this phrase more power in the United States and it dominates the Republican Party of today. When “a self-conscious conformity” overrides “a conscious truthfulness” there can be no repentance, no forgiveness, no adherence to the foundational tenets of religion I am using the ones I learned from the Dalai Lama: love, kindness, compassion, truth, and justice. We have only lies, subterfuge, deceptions and people wanting to have ‘dominion’ over another group, all groups.

Putting together the yahrtzeit of Oct. 7th, the fact there are still hostages in Gaza, Hezbollah rained rockets, Iran sent ballistic missiles, with the need for the Netanyahu Government to engage in “a self-conscious conformity” with the far-right ‘religious’ parties so he can stay in power and stay out of jail, is it any wonder so many hostages have been kept in captivity for a year? Is it any wonder so many (one is too many) have died? When “a self-conscious conformity” is the law of the land, when people hate their neighbors because of politics, when power is more important that human life, a democracy has descended into the depths of depravity that is rampant in Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, etc. They are in the depths of depravity because “a conscious truthfulness” has been replaced by “ a self-conscious conformity”.

Listening to the news, reading the papers, magazines one can wonder: “how did we get here?” We got here because “a self-conscious conformity” has been rampant in the US and in Israel as well as in the world writ large both the far right and the far left. . Since the beginning of our nation there was “a self-conscious conformity” in dealing with slavery, in dealing with Native Americans, etc. We went along to get along, to preserve our union, etc. We have a long history of exploiting Chinese and other minorities. We have been unwelcoming to the Irish, the Italians, the waves of Jews have been most problematic for many as the KKK hates Jews almost as much as they hate Blacks and since White Supremacy is on the ballot again this year in the form of Donald Trump and JD Vance, we are still dealing with this scourge. Allowing the progressives to deny the right of Jews to defend themselves and live in peace is not helping at all. Watching a political rally we are left wondering are they cheering for their ‘hero’ who tells them how to think, are they cheering for someone who wants to lead us into “a conscious truthfulness”? We have to decide, what realm do we choose to live in, which way of being are we willing to fight for? Many people have chosen, throughout history and today, to fight for a “self-conscious conformity” and they are willing to kill, to die for it. Are those of us who fight for “ a conscious truthfulness” willing to die for truth, to die for basic tenets of the Bible, truth, justice, caring for the stranger, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, proclaiming freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein, etc?

We can only make this decision if we root out the “self-conscious conformity” that is rampant in our midst and within us. It is hard to be a prophet, it is hard to be a descendant of the prophets, it is hard to go against the grain and call out lies, deceptions and mendacity. It is hard to be ostracized because we make mistakes as happens with people who encounter the criminal justice system, who are in recovery, who admit their errors and make amends. It is hard to grapple with what happens when we break out of the “self-conscious conformity” that engulfs neighbors, family, friends, country club members and we become the outcasts, our children suffer, our business could suffer, etc. This “self-conscious conformity” is so pervasive and strong, it is such an enormous part of society’s consciousness, there are consequences for breaking out of it that most people are not willing to pay. There are many spiritual leaders of all faiths who have led their congregants to recognize and become willing to pay the heavy cost of living in “a conscious truthfulness” through repentance, return and having new responses. These are the heroes to follow, not the charlatans who hate the people Jesus loved, who despise the people Joshua led into the Promised Land, who sh*t on the principles of the Bible, who are deaf to the call of the prophets, etc. We can only do this when we take the time to look inside of ourselves and see where and when we fall into “a self-conscious conformity”, we all do, and devise ways to rise above this state of being, ask for help from our spiritual guides, family, friends, to wake us up when we fall into the ether of “a self-conscious conformity” so we can return to “a conscious truthfulness”.

I have wrestled with these two ways of being for my entire life. I want to be liked, I want to be heard, I want to be respected and I want people to follow me. I also have to speak what my soul tells me, speak loudly and, at times, aggressively, I have to call out the lies and deceptions that I encounter, I have to do whatever I can to promote “a conscious truthfulness” knowing I don’t have all the answers, I am not aware of some of my blind spots at times. These two ‘wants’ have collided within me since I was a young child. The collision has gotten me into more trouble than my legal woes did because it led to them and it has led to my being considered “not right for polite society”, to me being told that  I bring “hysterical chaos” to some different situations. I am not a victim, I am not always right- FULL STOP. And, I have a fire in my belly that makes me erupt when I see the “self-conscious conformity” that leads a society to live in deception and mendacity, that allows a group/community to tear down the principles it was founded upon, when a Rabbi is afraid to use the Bible to call out inconvenient truths for fear of losing donors.I cannot “stand idly by the blood of my neighbor”. I have to bring truthfulness and I do my best to stay out of “self-conscious conformity”. It is through repentance that I continue to grow in “a conscious truthfulness”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you making a "Deliberate Decision" to repent of is your "I'm Sorry" coerced? Year 3 Day 304

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day304

4th Day of 10 Days of Awe and Repentance

“If, to be sure-as is often the case among us-instead of deliberate decision we have a coerced conversion; instead of a conscious truthfulness, a self-conscious conformity; instead of remorse over the lost past, a longing for it; then this so-called return is but a retreat, a phase.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg 69)

Shana Tova! G’Mar Tov! A good year for us all, much better than this last one as a people and as individuals. A good seal, finish to the 10 Days of Awe, 10 Days of Repentance are the sayings and responses at this time of year among Jews. Yet, how can we say this when we are not living “repentance is a decision made in truthfulness, remorse, and responsibility” as I wrote about on Wednesday of last week? How can we say these greetings, these wishes when we are not making a “deliberate decision” to engage in repentance and forgiveness? I submit that we can’t!

Rabbi Heschel’s words from 88 years ago haunt me and, hopefully, are haunting you. He calls out the Jewish community of Berlin at a time when being Jewish was an act of bravery and, he is not okay with “coerced conversion”. When we are Jewish because of the anti-semites, this is a “coerced conversion”. When we go to Temple on the High Holidays out of some superstition, we are being coerced. When we wave the Israeli Flag and say Am Yisroel Chai, the Jewish People Live as if we are one people with the same thinking and feelings because of Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, this is also a “coerced conversion”. Any display of Jewishness, any doing of ritual because ‘it is written’, because ‘they are coming to get us’, because ‘I am superstitious’, because ‘my mother would kill me if I don’t go to shul for the High Holy Days’(even though she has been dead for years), it is a “coerced conversion”.

When we say ‘I’m sorry’ without really having remorse, this is a “coerced conversion”. When we use the formula that the Rabbis provide for the days before Yom Kippur-“If I have done anything to harm you in this past year, please forgive me” without doing our own “accounting of our souls”, we are engaged in a “coerced conversion”. When we beat our chests on Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur without knowing and acknowledging in our inner life, in our minds the truthfulness of our transgressions, we are engaging in a “coerced conversion”. When we guilt people into giving to sustain the Temple community without knowing what the people need nor providing a space to learn and wrestle with the opposing viewpoints, without providing a space for people to argue with one another and within themselves to find the truth, we are leading a “coerced conversion”. When we promote a Temple for it’s being ‘the way’ we are promoting a “coerced conversion” atmosphere.

Be it MAGA, the Far Right in Israel, Bibi, Orban, Putin, Trump who all seem to get along and admire(?) one another; all of these movements and people are engaging in “coerced conversion” to a way of being that denies living into the promise of the Exodus from Egypt-Slavery will end!! All of these people and movements are coercing their followers into believing lies and deceptions, feeding their desire and hunger for self-deception because a “deliberate decision” to repent, to change, to live into the truth of one’s own life and the truth of Biblical teachings is so damn hard! It is easier to buy the lies of those who say ‘don’t worry, “I am your retribution”, who remind us that “you need me”, who soothe us with “I will take care of you”-all the time knowing they only care for the rich and powerful, are interested in their own power, and the power of their white supremacist partners who believe in a Christian Nation-which Jews have always done well under, which Blacks have flourished under, which Latinos have never been coerced into converting to Christianity under, etc. We are so afraid of a deliberate decision that we choose to a “coerced conversion” because someone else is doing the work for us, we foolishly believe we can just skate by, not realizing that every authoritarian has always made it difficult for those of us who are ‘different’ and for the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan.

Making a “deliberate decision” is hard, it means I have to look at what other people are saying, their feelings, their experiences of our interactions and find the truth for me in them. While none of us can control the outcomes, none of us can control the feelings of another, we do know what is in our hearts, what is in our souls, what is in our minds. In looking back over this past year, years, we have to opportunity to see what was in these entities at the times of our interactions. We have the gift of being able to empathize with the feelings of another and know they are their feelings and interpretations of events and, though I may have a different one, I have to make my amends for my part that caused the friction, the separation-without taking their part, without telling them how they could have interpreted the events, etc. In making a “deliberate decision” to repent “in truthfulness, remorse, and responsibility”, I have to allow that I am not the arbiter of all the facts, I am not the responsible for the entire problem-only my part and I need to own, be remorseful for my part and seek forgiveness.

I made a “deliberate decision” in February/March of 1987 and have lived into it ever since. I still screw up-full stop! I still do a daily accounting of my soul-many times as I write this blog. One of the benefits of making this “deliberate decision” is that I no longer see myself as a VICTIM! I also no longer see myself as a victimizer! I see my humanity, my fragility, my errors and my victories. I also do not need to keep apologizing over and over again for the same error. A “deliberate decision” gives me and everyone the opportunity to make our amends, ask for forgiveness, and be done-no longer hanging on to the guilt, no longer needed to experience “coerced conversion” because I have made a “deliberate decision”, I/we have turned my/our lives over to a higher consciousness and a higher way of living, a higher logic and to my/our soul’s knowing rather than living in “coerced conversion”, in mendacity and self-deception the ways I/we have been. A friend asked me if I do this work myself and I said YES, every day. I have sent emails of repentance that are “deliberate decisions” I made to clean up the barnacles that were weighing me down which just came to light, with people whom hurt me and that is unimportant because I was also wrong and I have to be responsible for my part without needing confirmation by another person. I am clean, I am misunderstood by some and I am clean within myself and I know me better because of my “deliberate decision”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

L'Shana Tova- wishing everyone a Good Year of Repentance, Return and New Responses - Year 3 Day 303

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 302

National Month of Repentance and Change

“The apostasy of the past is matched by the superficiality of today. Is this disappointment surprising? Repentance is a decision made in truthfulness, remorse and responsibility.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

L’Shana Tova- A good year! Today is the last day of the month of Elul, the last day of our National Month of Repentance and Change for this year. Tonight we begin the new year of 5785 and take the next 10 days to go over our accounting of our soul and ensure we have made our amends and plans to have new responses and commit to the changes we need to make so we live a little better in this new year. What Iran did in Israel yesterday is beyond the pale and a strong response is needed AND care not to start a major war in the Middle East is also important. I don’t know the right response, I just know that Bibi, since Oct.7th (and before) has had the wrong one most of the time.

I wrote yesterday about “the apostasy of the past” and not enough, in my opinion, on “the superficiality of today”. We are witnesses to this “superficiality” each and every day, yet we seem to have a difficult time calling it out, we seem to be unable to express both disappointment and truth. We seem to be afraid to confront the charlatans who purposely misread/misinterpret the Bible for their own power and control, we seem to be afraid to confront the false prophets who use lies, deceptions, fear-mongering to get us to heel at their feet and surrender our freedom to think, freedom to speak, freedom of spirit as well as so many other freedoms. We go along to get along and this is one of the worst of our behaviors of “superficiality”. I have been in Temples, Synagogues, Churches where business dealings are talked about more than prayers are said, where the prayers are said so quickly there is not even a hint of wanting the prayers to go through the person. I have been in these places where the Hazan, the Cantor, puts on an amazing performance and there is no soul, no conviction behind the performance. I have listened as Rabbis, Imams, Priests and Ministers have given wonderful sermons and never allow their own words to penetrate their own being, in fact they speak so well they don’t even notice how they are shaming another(s), speaking to separate rather than bringing people together, portraying themselves as holy while being “scoundrels” and using Holy Texts to live a lifestyle different than the one they preach. I am both disappointed and surprised. I am saddened and keep hoping that our politicians will have a spiritual awakening, that our clergy will have a spiritual awakening, that all of us become aware of both our “superficiality” and our “apostasy”.

We all matter and we all need to realize that no one else can do the work that is ours to do, there is no proxy we can appoint to do the work of repentance that is ours. We have to make “a decision in truthfulness, remorse and responsibility” to change, to make our amends, to restore the dignity that we trampled on to another human being. We have to look at our selves and restore the dignity we scorned that lives within us, we have to restore the connection from our soul’s knowledge to our brain. We are being given the opportunity to see ourselves in the light of our actions, in the light of forgiveness and change, in the light of disgusting “superficiality” and “apostasy” and do something different. It is as important to act on Rabbi Heschel’s words above today as it was in 1936, as important here in America and in Israel as it was in Nazi Germany and Europe. We need to remember a Rabbinic teaching that I am paraphrasing: every person should see themselves as if the world as balanced between good and not good and their next action will tip the scales one way or the other. Our actions of repentance changes the scales of the world. Our actions of repentance will give all of us a clean slate and make the world a safer place to live in for the people we have impacted negatively. Our repentance, when made in “truthfulness, remorse, and responsibility” changes the world around us and changes the world for those we have harmed. We become more human by engaging in repentance in this manner, not worrying about how we look. As we say in AA, you can’t save your face and your ass in the same moment. Repentance is the ass saver God put into the world before the world was created because God knew we would care more about how things look (OPTICS) that substance and how things really are.

I am remorseful to the people who I have impacted negatively with my brashness and loudness, with my language and my mannerisms. I am remorseful for the actions that people have been offended by that were done unwittingly by me. I am remorseful for the actions I took knowingly that were defensive and self-serving. I am remorseful for the abandonment of ways I knew to be right in order to “get mine”. I am remorseful for the actions I took that led to people being deprived of faith, of someone to help them. I am remorseful that my temper, my inability to live with the lies of another led me to explode and be inappropriate. I am remorseful for the actions that separated me from my community. I am remorseful for the ways I pushed people away with my inability to accept their foibles and felt hurt by them. I am remorseful for the missed opportunities to share laughs, thoughts, ideas and moments with people whom I have known for a long time and with people whom I never met. I am remorseful for the times I acted out of “superficiality” and “apostasy”. I am remorseful for the fallout from my wild response to the mendacity in front of me. I am remorseful for the loss of connection I have caused.

My remorse is my way of being responsible. I am deeply sorrowful for the losses I have caused, for the misunderstandings of my actions by some and for the desire to not find ways to repair the damages done by one and all. I am deeply saddened and responsible for the lies that have been believed because I did not stand up and speak my truth. I am deeply responsible for the ways I have not lived into the principles of the Bible. I hereby ask for forgiveness and I forgive everyone who I experienced as harming me. I commit to being in more “truthfulness” in this coming year. I commit to being in less “superficiality” in this coming year. I commit to not living in “apostasy” in this coming year. I commit to being more who I am in this coming year. I commit to be more loving and steadfast in this coming year. I commit to being more responsible by putting myself out there more in this coming year. I commit to staying in the solution more in this coming year and not being the cause of too many problems in this coming year. I commit to being more loving and kinder in this coming year. My repentance and my commitments are made in “truthfulness, remorse, and responsibility.” God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Buying the lies and deceptions that lead to apostasy and desertion of the soul's knowing - Year 3 Day 302

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 302

National Month of Repentance and Change

“…Enforced Jewishness still sits so uneasily in many of us that a new wave of desertions could occur at any moment. The apostasy of the past is matched by the superficiality of today. Is this disappointment surprising?” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

Remembering that these words were written in Berlin, Germany in 1936 published on the eve of Yom Kippur and as we head into a new year, 5785 in the Jewish Calendar, with antisemitism on the rise, Israel under attack from the inside and outside, America’s elections in November between an autocrat who hangs out with anti-semites, holocaust deniers, a guy who wants to follow a plan that makes us a ‘christian nation’ and rounds up immigrants, puts serial numbers on them, and, of course, proclaims the hierarchy of white people over everyone else. Oh yeah, he loves dictators and other autocrats who hate Jews, and everyone else not white and, on the other side, a woman of color married to a Jew, a woman who has made service her north star, fought for the rights of those marginalized and harmed by perpetrators of all stripes and types, who has a plan that builds up America and helps us let go of the racism America has held onto for so long. The “enforced Jewishness” that antisemitism brings has, in some cases, caused many Jews to desert our cultural heritage, the legacy of the Bible and the prophets in favor of the autocrat and his gang of thugs, in favor of Bibi who is responsible for Oct. 7th, has prosecuted a terrible war in Gaza, is doing the right thing-so far- in Lebanon, and is trying to make Israel a state without the rule of law and still convince people it is a democracy!

Leading up the destruction of both Temples “apostasy” was rampant among the priestly class, the ruling class, the wealthy class. The abandonment of “Jewishness” by abandoning basic foundational standards such as: caring for the poor, the stranger, the widow, the orphan; “love your neighbor as you love yourself”; “one law for the citizen and the stranger alike”; we are all created in the image of the divine with infinite, equal and unique dignity and worth; “choose life”; no lies, no stealing, no whoring oneself; in a place where there is no humanity, be human and so many others. Why are we repeating the same apostasy’s? What is the hubris that Jews who support an authoritarian believe they will not be rounded up? Do they believe like some Jews in Germany believed that ‘this too shall pass’, ‘he doesn’t really mean it’, that making up stories, as JD Vance has admitted to, like Hatians are eating animals in Springfield, Ohio is good for themselves, democacy, America? That following the talking points of far-right/alt-right to “get over your dictator-phobia” whom JD Vance claims to believe, listen to and quote is a good thing for being Jewish? These Jews are most responsible for the desertions of our young people-they see the hypocrisy of these ‘real Jews’ as they call themselves and want nothing to do with this bullshit! I don’t blame them. They also desert because the rest of us have not given them a compelling reason to be Jewish-not shown them how “Jewishness” gives us a life worth living and helps us navigate the ups and downs of life. We have given them superficiality and wonder why they ‘abandon’ their “Jewishness”.

We each have to look inside and see how we are living Jewishly at a superficial level. We are being called to account on Thursday (actually Wednesday evening) for the ways we have engaged in superficiality as well as the apostasies we have committed-wittingly  and unwittingly. We each have to look inside of ourselves and take note of the lies we have told ourselves, the deceptions we have bought into that has allowed us to be so devoid of meaning and purpose for something greater than ourselves. On these Holy Days we can go to God and seek forgiveness for these desertions and apostasies, we believe so many don’t even do their inventories well. Yet, nothing we have done to another is forgiven until we try to go to them, if they refuse our sincerity-then the universe forgives us. However, if we are not taking note, doing our accounting of our soul to find these apostasies and desertions we have committed, then we are submitting ourselves to the powers that be, to the authoritarians, to the leaders of deceptions, to the people who agree with, support, and encourage our lies and self-deceptions. We are at a turning point again-history has shown us that these points come to us often and we have the opportunity to do differently than the leaders, the wealthy, the priests and the people did in 586BCE, in 70AD, and throughout Jewish history when we deserted and practiced apostasy.

We do this by owning our shit, by standing up and saying: Hineni, here I am in all my guilt, clothed in errors and today I am bathing myself in repentance! We no longer hide our guilt with bluster and blame of another(s), we no longer go along with the lies and deceptions of autocrats, want to be autocrats. We not longer make alliances with people who hate another group, who scapegoat another group of people because we have been, are and will always be scapegoated by groups in power or seeking power. We end our desertions and our apostasies by turning back to our spiritual home, our soul’s calling. We return again to the place where we can breathe freely and where the wind brings the words: “Proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev.25:10) because we have been freed from our lies, from our deceptions, from our hatreds and from the fears that have distorted our vision. We will also return to these places for sure and the good news is that we will leave them so much quicker than we ever have because our repentance will propel us forward.

I am sorry for the ways I have deserted people, from deserting my father’s morals and teachings, to deserting my family, my daughter, people who trusted me, all of this prior to recovery. I am sorry to the people who have experienced me deserting them in these past 36 years, I am reaching out to the people I remember and I hope the rest can accept my amend here. I am sorry for abandoning my “Jewishness” prior to recovery and am committed to continue to speak out, loudly of course, to the crimes of apostasy that I see and experience. I know this doesn’t make me popular, as my friend Rabbi Ed Feinstein says, and I also know that not doing this is the worst desertion I can commit, the absolute height of apostasy for me. I beg of everyone to accept my amends and understand that my rejection of desertion and apostasy may make you uncomfortable and I have to live my soul’s calling. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How is "remorse for the past" helping you be more "responsible for the future"? Year 3 Day 301

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 301

National Month of Repentance and Change

“Its motivations are remorse for the past and responsibility for the future. Only in this manner is it possible and valid.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

Because Rabbi Heschel is writing for a Jewish audience in Berlin in 1936, in speaking about repentance/T’Shuvah, he doesn’t have to explain what it means, he assumes that everyone reading it knows what repentance is, especially on the Eve of Yom Kippur when this was published, and how to engage in it. And yet, the sentences above are descriptors of what it means to engage in repentance, how to engage in it, and the validity of it depends upon the individual.

While we are “forgiven as we speak” on Kol Nidre, these are only for the ways we have missed the mark with our connection, obligation to the Ineffable One, not for the ways we have harmed one another. To be “forgiven as we speak” for the harms we have brought upon another human being, we have to go to that person, if possible, and engage in repentance with them. If it is not possible, we need to write the repentance down and share it with another person, a spiritual guide, at a gravesite, etc. And none of our words matter unless our “repentance is an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness” and “its motivations are remorse for the past and responsibility for the future.”!  Rabbi Heschel is rebuking and reminding the Jews of Berlin in 1936 of the power of repentance and the enormity of it, the call for repentance and the need for it by every individual. He is calling out to us, Jews and non-Jews of today, to make this “absolute spiritual decision” so we can ensure a better today and tomorrow than yesterday was. There is no going back to ‘the good old days’ as some people are trying to make happen in repentance-only going forward and making today and tomorrow a little better than yesterday(s) were.

“Remorse for the past” means knowing that no matter how things turned out, there were errors I made, people whom I ignored, in our drive to ‘get things done’ we stepped on toes and feet, threw elbows and punches, sometimes unwittingly, unknowingly, and sometimes as motivational efforts. While we believe and can prove we did things for the greater good, while we can truthfully claim blindness to these effects, it doesn’t change the fact that we are guilty, we ignored the humanity of another, we missed the mark by failing to honor the divine in another human being. This doesn’t mean we have to buy into everyone’s victimhood, we don’t have to apologize for telling people the truth, getting them to do their part in helping to move a project forward (assuming the project is legitimate and not harmful to anyone), it means we have to look at ourselves, our motivations in the ways we acted. Ask ourselves were our actions in service, were they necessary and were they kind? We can convince ourselves of the first two usually, it is the third one where we usually miss the mark. Being remorseful for this type of missing the mark is crucial for our growth as a human being, it is necessary for our future actions and endeavors and it is a kindness we do for ourselves in becoming aware and accountable.

"Remorse for the past” also means to see where we knowingly and with malice missed the mark, where we did what we did for our own ‘benefit’ and to be self-serving and seek power, wealth, control, fame, etc. When politicians make statements like “Jews are poisoning the blood of our nations, they are vermin” etc and never repent for these horrific statements, there is no forgiveness-in fact letting them off the hook is in itself a missing the mark! When politicians and people blame and shame immigrants seeking a better life for themselves when their own ancestors did the same, we have to hold them accountable for more than ‘I’m sorry’ we have to demand their repentance and we have to demand their plan to not repeat their scapegoating in the future. We have to look inside of ourselves and see where we have engaged in behaviors that are the same and/or similar-where we have blamed and shamed another so we did not have to be ‘responsible’, where we have been ‘the victim’ and therefore ‘not my fault’. Yes we have suffered traumas, some much more severe than others AND this doesn’t give us the right nor the freedom to use these traumas as excuses for our own missing the mark. “Remorse for the past” allows us to see our part and make a valid repentance in order for the possibility of forgiveness by another human being to be in play.

All of this “remorse for the past” means nothing if it doesn’t change us, it doesn’t bring us back to the fold of being human, if we don’t have a plan on how not to repeat the same errors when we are in the same/similar situations again and we will be in them. “Responsibility for the future” is crucial in this process, it means we are committing to being more careful with our words and actions, it means we are going to consider if they are kind as well as being in truthful, in service of a goal/another human being, and if they are necessary. We are committing to be more aware and less oblivious to what is happening in front of us, behind us and around us. We are committing to be seek the truth more than the lies that can ‘serve us better’. We are committing to see our own self-deceptions and leave them, let them go as well as not buying into the deceptions of the idolators, the charlatans, the autocrats, the orange-monkey and their followers. “Responsibility for the future” means voting for democracy, for kindness, for truthfulness, with our ballots, with our feet, with our words. It means we are committed to leaving the world, country, community we live in a little better for the next generation. Only in this way can our repentance be “possible and valid”.

I was asked if I engage in this work every day of this month, every year. The answer is yes! I have reached out to people I realize I harmed that I had not reached out to before. I have reached out to people who I lost connection with to find out why, I am continuing this work and each day, I take Rabbi Heschel’s words in and they cause me to act. I have remorse for the past, for the ways I was a bull in the china shop and stepped on people’s feelings in order to ‘get something done’, even when it was a good thing. I know I serve three masters in my recovery, God, another human being, and myself. I am not a victim, no matter what people may say-I speak my truth when asked and if someone thinks I am complaining then I am either being misheard or I have used the wrong choice of words. I am not a ‘victim’ and I have been harmed. I am not a ‘victimizer’ and I have done wrong. I do have great remorse for the past and I am using this to make a better future. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What is the State of your Repentance? Is it "an absolute spiritual decision made in truthfulness"? Year 3 Day 300

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 300

National Month of Repentance and Change

“What is the state of our repentance, of our “return to Judaism”? Repentance is an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

Every day, every year, Rabbi Heschel’s question above needs to be asked and responded to by each of us as individuals, in our local Jewish Communities and world Jewry needs to respond as well. Today, as I write this, I know Israel did the right thing to ‘take out’ Nasrallah, do what it can to stop the incessant bombing of the northern border which the UN has never enforced their own resolution there. I also know that Bibi and his gang of thugs who never believe they need to be in a state of repentance, are like a broken clock-right at least twice!

In our local and world Jewish Communities when we cheer the death of innocents, we are not in a state of repentance-full stop. When we refuse to see the humanity of the people in the West Bank, in Gaza, in Lebanon, we are not in a state of repentance-full stop. When we claim to do this in the name of Jewish teachings and the Bible, we are practicing Avodah Zarah, Idol Worship just like the “Christian” nationalists who claim that the poor, the stranger, the needy should be imprisoned, put in camps, have serial numbers on them, etc are idolators! “What is our state of repentance” when we claim to love Israel while hating the Israelis who are calling for accountability of Oct. 7th and reminding the ‘religious’ people in government that ransoming the captive is an act of holiness and demanded in the Bible? “What is the state of our repentance” when Jews are supporting an autocrat in Israel (Bibi) and in the United States (Trump)? “What is the state of our repentance” when Jews are praising Orban and Putin while decrying Soros and Emhoff? “What is the state of our repentance” when we cannot discern truth from lies, or even worse, know the difference and choose to be False Witnesses?

We are in the last 13 days of what I am calling a National Month of Repentance and Change plus the 10 days of T’Shuvah/repentance. What have we been doing about the “state of our repentance” in these past 26 days? What have we done to look at ourselves and see what we have done well-like taking out Hezbollah’s rocket launching capabilities, like Joe Biden supporting Israel’s right and need to exist. What have we done to see where we have missed the mark- like refusing the deal to release the hostages and instead have 6 young people killed, while Hamas is totally guilty, Bibi and his gang are responsible, like spitting in the face of Israel’s greatest defender and supporter, Joe Biden, to curry favor with another autocrat Trump and, of course his handlers Putin and Orban-whom Bibi also likes! Imagine Jews supporting autocrats who jail their opposition and send them to Siberia!!! What are we thinking? How are we going to Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and hear the Sound of the Shofar heralding “the Day of Judgement” and not see the sorry state of repentance we are in Miriam Adelson, Republican Jewish Coalition??

We are in this sorry “state of repentance” just as the Jews Rabbi Heschel was speaking to in 1936 Berlin were, because of our lack of truthfulness within ourselves and with one another. We have not “made a decision to turn our lives over to the care of God”, rather we continue to worship the idolatry of mendacity, of taking the Bible out of context, of using the guidebook of how to live life well to instead gain power and dominion over another(s), to denigrate the stranger and the poor, to engage in false prophecy and trumpet their lies and their deceit ignoring the words of the prophets, not following the ways of King David whom they supposedly revere! We are in this sorry “state of repentance” because we are not engaged in a return to Judaism, we are engaged in a grab for power, we are engaged in denigration of women, of those who hear a different call from the Bible, of anyone who wants to build fences around our absolute authority. We are in this sorry “state of repentance” because we have allowed the worst thugs to gain power and our desire to be deceived, our addiction to self-deception is so great, we call them heroes!

We have to make “an absolute, spiritual decision” to repent, to find our ways back to the middle, find our ways back to living a life that honors the Bible, honors ethical and moral standards, grows our souls and helps another human being(s) live well also. It is a decision we make to be “truthful”, to end our addiction to self-deception and lies to another, to answer the call of the universe: “Where are you” with the response: “Hineni”, here I am. It is time for us to stop hiding behind the clean-ups of the sages about the behavior of our ancestors and see the greatness of their repentance and return. If King David can say “I am guilty”, “I have sinned” what is stopping Ben G’vir, Smotrich, Netanyahu from doing the same? What is stopping all of us from doing the same?? We are not holding our leaders accountable because we are not holding ourselves accountable. We are not holding ourselves accountable because we have not made our “repentance an absolute, spiritual decision made in truthfulness”, we have not looked in the mirror and seen the tears of our souls, the hurts we have caused ourselves by our behaviors and we are unable to look into the hearts and souls of those we love because we refuse to see the truth of our actions. We, as individuals, are suffering from a sorry “state of repentance” that we can change. We have the power to face the truth of our existence, we have the power to be accountable and the forces of the cosmos are tilted towards forgiveness, love, and healing as the prophet Hosea says and Jeremiah reminds us We do not have to stay stuck, we do not have to live another moment, another year in our sorry “state of repentance”.

Each year, I am in trembling awe of facing myself as I do each day. I am sorry to those who have stopped talking to me, I don’t know the reason in some cases and I accept their decision. I am sorry to those who are holding onto resentments, hurts, angers towards me after I have offered my T’Shuvah. I am sorry for the unknowing harms I have brought onto people, I am sorry I have not been able to speak in ways someone can hear. I am grateful to the people who rebuke me, I am grateful to the people who engage with me, I am grateful to my teachers and my friends, my family and people from my old community and those in my new who embrace me. I am sorry for my actions which put people off and I am grateful for following the call of my soul and been able to help people find their unique ways back. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Repentance as the Spiritual Equivalent of the "Butterfly Effect"- Year 3 Day 299

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 299

National Month of Repentance and Change

“God brings about this creation for the sake of humanity when a human being repents for the sake of God.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

I was at a workshop last night with Rabbi Hazzan Danny Maseng and when he was talking about writing Liturgical music, he described his process as allowing the words to dictate the music to him, not wanting to fit the words to his melody, rather finding the melody of the words of the prayer. The same is true for me when I read and interpret Rabbi Heschel’s words and wisdom. I let them tell me what the meaning is in this moment and my lower self, my need to be smart is not present when I write.

Whatever word one wants to insert for “God”, depending on ones belief or non-belief system, some power that is much greater than ourselves, a higher consciousness that comes at mysterious moments, “brings about this creation” the creation of the miracle of repentance, the miracle of our “harms and blemishes” being ”extinguished”, being “transformed into” our being saved from our negativity and others being saved from our negativity as well. This is a mysterious occurrence, one that most of us know comes about as a surprise-both for the repentant who asks for forgiveness and the one who grants their forgiveness. Human nature is such that admitting we are ‘wrong’ is a weakness and letting go of a resentment, forgiving those who have hurt us is seen as stupidity.

Yet, as Rabbi Heschel describes above, some power greater than our feelings, higher than our usual consciousness, or, as I like to say, God is the “prime mover” in this occurrence. This “creation”, forgiveness, salvation, repentance and change, is like the butterfly effect, where one small occurrence can influence a larger system. This is what happens for humanity when one person repents, when one person asks for forgiveness, when one person forgives, when both people are changed and commit to this new way of being. Humanity is saved, as Rabbi Meir says in the Talmud, some 2000 years ago: “Great is repentance, because of one person’s repentance the entire world endures/stands” (Talmud Yoma: 86b) Most of us are so enthralled with ourselves, with our power or lack thereof, we either feel like we are not in need of repenting and/or what good would it do to repent and Rabbi Heschel’s words along with those in the Talmud teach us that we all have a part in this world, we all have an effect/influence in and on this world that goes beyond our status in life, beyond our emotional state, beyond our rational thinking and beyond our infantile understandings of God, of religion. Our repentance is for the sake of something so much greater than ourselves-another human being, the world itself!

The sentence above is pointing us in the direction of what true repentance entails as well, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel speak to us this morning. Our repentance, unlike when we were kids and our parents told us to say ‘I’m sorry’ and not really mean it/understand why we were saying it, as adults is done for the sake of something greater than ourselves. When we are repenting so someone will like us, we are not transforming; when we are repenting so we can make more money and keep our jobs, we are not engaging in the “creation” Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. When we are repenting by saying ‘I’m sorry’ without any awareness of the change we need to make, the actual harms we have perpetrated upon another human being and the negativity we have put into the world, we are not participating in our own salvation.

We have 14 days until we gather for Kol Nidre, the evening Service that ushers in Yom Kippur, the day we are forgiven. We have 14 days to reach into our own higher selves, our higher consciousness and truly repent for the sake of doing the next right thing, without needing forgiveness from another, we only need to take this action of real repentance, repair and change so we can put hope, kindness, truth, love back into the world, so we can be save our better selves, transform our bitterness into kindness, fear into awe, worry into acceptance, etc. We have 14 days to open our souls up to the healing of forgiving the people who have harmed us, the ones we have sworn to never forgive nor forget because holding onto these resentments harm us, make us more bitter, less kind and more suspicious. We have 14 days to let go of these resentments with or without being asked to by the person, rather being repentant for the ways these resentments have impacted our living and our interacting with another human being. How many times have we hidden from another because we hold onto the resentment of old and project these resentments upon everyone else. This is not easy, especially when the first people to harm us were/are our family-parents, siblings, extended family. Yet, we don’t have to ‘let the bastards win’ and with the help of a power greater than ourselves, we can let go of these resentments and forgive ourselves for being powerless to stop the harms and for holding onto these harms for so long.

I am in the home stretch of my TShuvah, my repentance for this year. I have been the recipient of God’s grace and miracles for longer than I realize. I am repentant for and to the people I harmed in my youth with my stealing and hustling. I am repentant to the people I screwed over with my bad checks, frauds, scams. I am repentant to the people I disappointed and ignored throughout my life because I was focused on me and what I thought was important. I am repentant to the people for whom my way of being and speaking felt abusive and inappropriate. I am repentant to the people who worked at Beit T’Shuvah when I acted out inappropriately and did not know how to relate to me nor did they understand/know what was happening. I am repentant to the Board of Directors for putting them in a position of distress and disturbance. I am repentant to the people who feel as if I have abandoned them. I am repentant to my family for the moments when they thought I was too busy for them. I am repentant to my wife for all of my actions that distressed her and still do. I am repentant to myself for the actions that I took without thinking it through. I forgive the people who I believe have harmed me, I forgive the people I have resented who will never ask for forgiveness, I forgive myself for the errors I have made. I commit to being a better human being in 5785 and changing into being more of who I truly am. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Allowing "the forgiving hand of God" to heal you this year - Year 3 Day 298

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 298

National Month of Repentance and Change

“Through the forgiving hand of God, harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be extinguished, transformed into salvation.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

This teaching by Rabbi Heschel is a way of encapsulating the Talmud’s discussion about “great is repentance”. It brings us comfort, truth and a new way of looking at ourselves, the universe, divine energy, higher consciousness-how ever you want to perceive the power of the cosmos that is greater than us.

Rather than seeing God as “punishing”, “vengeful”, etc Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the prophets calling out to us to “return” to God, that God wants our return as we say 3 times a day except for Shabbat in our prayers. Each and every prophet calls out to us ,as they did to the people in their era and every ear since, “God wants to heal our backsliding”, God wants to take us back in love and with love. This period of repentance and change is not to be feared, rather it is to be welcomed back home, a return to the fold, a new response to the lies we have been telling ourselves. God forgives-full stop, are we ready to accept this forgiveness is the question facing us, are we willing to be in truth with ourselves so we can accept the forgiveness of the universe for the “harm and blemish we have committed against the world and against ourselves”?

This is the great challenge of the prophets, of these days of repentance and change, to be in truth with ourselves and with our spiritual guides, with the people who surround us and love us about the missing the marks we have committed, about the blemishes we have put upon them, upon the world, upon ourselves; the harms we done to our inner lives through self-deception and buying the deceptions of another(s). We get to look at our year through the refraction of God’s “forgiving hand”, through the whole story of good and not good that we have done in this past year. Being in truth with ourselves, with another human being is the greatest challenge we face and, as Rabbi Heschel, the Talmud, those of us who have engaged in this challenge will say-it works! Being in truth with those around us, with ourselves changes us, changes people. Giving someone the opportunity to hear our remorse over the harm we brought them, the blemish we put onto their dignity, is a gift that no one can adequately describe. This opportunity is a repayment, a restitution of what we stole from another person(s), and it also gives the person the opportunity to forgive, to let go of the hurt and blemish they have been carrying-whether they are aware of it or not. Whether there is a full reconciliation, whether the other person chooses to forgive us or not is immaterial to the spiritual healing we bring to them, to the world, and to ourselves. We are doing the next right thing and we have no control over the results-hence “through the forgiving hand of God” we are healed, and, hopefully, the other person has some healing whether they forgive or not. Our blemish and harm is “extinguished” from the world, from our inner life. What a gift repentance is, what a joy it is to be in truth with ourselves, do our inventory, repair, change and know that our errors are not forever!

The last phrase in the words above are the most difficult for many to apprehend, to appreciate, to take in. While the entire sentence is difficult for people who only want to “get even”, who believe repentance and the words above are “not fair” because there is no ‘punishment’, the last phrase makes no sense to most. Humanity has, forever, wanted to get even, wanted to punish, wanted their “pound of flesh”. We feel like without this we are never vindicated. While it is important and necessary for a society to have a justice system, many of the crimes we incarcerate people for today were torts in the Bible because theft is between people, not the ‘State’, etc. Yet, we want ‘the bad guys’ (whomever we believe harm us, hold us to a standard we don’t want, call upon us to do the next right thing, do bad things) to “get theirs”. We want to see a tit-for-tat and, in some cases, a death for an eye, instead of “an eye for an eye”. We have become a society that likes to be victims and/or victimizers. We blame our situation of upbringing, on societal norms, on ‘just business’, etc and those of us accusers fail in most circumstances to own our part so we can be forgiven and our seeking justice is the tempering of justice with righteousness, mercy as the Bible teaches us.

The last phrase allows us to become whole again! It is the unconditional love, the never breaking of the connection with higher consciousness, with higher power, with the Ineffable One, that allows us to be not only forgiven, not only to have the blemishes and harms we wrought healed, we get to take the energy and transform it into salvation. Our confession, spoken out loud, can help another person do their work of repentance, our confession can help another person heal from the blemishes we have caused and/or the ones caused by another. Our confession transforms our “less than” attitude about ourselves into a “can do” attitude, it allows us to see the infinite worth we carry and it transforms the shame and guilt we feel back into the dignity we were born with and have never lost. Our confessions and God’s “forgiving hand” opens our eyes, our hearts, our brains to hear, see and feel the call of our souls, it gives our spiritual life a stronger voice and we learn a little more each year how to listen for this voice, how to ‘go with our gut’ and how to use the energy we made blemishes and harms with to do good and be kind.

I have received the “forgiving hand of God” all my life and have been aware of it for the past 37 High Holiday Seasons. I am not free of blemishes and harms inside nor have I stopped causing them to another human being. I am deeply sorrowful for the people who have not been touched by “the forgiving hand of God” and I pray that those I have caused harms and blemishes to in this past year and before know that I am remorseful and I have used the energy to do more good. 37 years ago, I made a commitment to the universe, to my self that I would transform the energy that caused so much harm, with the help of God, of recovery, of living a Jewish life. I have lived into this commitment while not fulfilling it completely. Yet, I know I have been forgiven by the universe, I know I have transformed by “hustler mentality” to serving people rather than stealing from them. I know I have healed most of the “less than” lies I have told myself over the years and I know I have no power over what another thinks of me. I know that it is my responsibility to forgive another and I hereby forgive anyone and everyone who I believe has harmed me- I want no one to suffer on my account and I pray for their transformation. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"The power of repentance" causes "re-creation of the past" to happen - Year 3 Day 297

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 297

National Month of Repentance and Change

“In the dimension of time there is no going back. But the power of repentance cause time to be created backward and allows re-creation of the past to take place.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

We know we cannot “go back in time”, we know our fascination with the idea through all of the science fiction ‘time machine’ books, movies, etc. Many of us look back longingly and with regret over roads not taken and roads taken, loves not pursued, passions not followed, purposes ignored. Many of us also look at the ways we have treated people and the ways we have been treated, realizing the traumas we have caused and those that have been perpetrated upon us. When we are stuck in the past, we suffer anger, fear, feeling bad, depressed, etc and this leads us to find ways to relieve ourselves of this suffering. Some turn to work, to ‘making it’, to social media, to alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, guns, anger, while others engage in fundamentalism in numerous fashions. Others, however, accept the past for what it was and seek to use the lessons of the past to promote a healthy today and tomorrow.

We do this through “the power of repentance”. In the Talmud, the Rabbis explain how “great is repentance” in numerous ways, Reish Lakish, who’s name is derived from the fact that prior to his becoming a Rabbi he was “head of the thieves”, knows full well what he is saying when he says: “Great is repentance because intentional missing the marks are counted as unwitting transgressions.” Since he went through the fire of repentance, since he became a scholar and teacher, his life is one of the proof texts for Rabbi Heschel’s words above, for me. “The power of repentance” is so amazing that on Yom Kippur, we are told we are forgiven! It is so transformative that our purposeful transgressions(big and small) are treated as if we did them not knowing any better!

While many people will argue with the words above, they do so from ignorance. The ignorance of not experiencing someone coming to them in repentance, the ignorance of not experiencing going themselves to repent to another human being, the ignorance of not engaging in the confessionals of Yom Kippur with all of themselves, the ignorance of not believing and engaging with the words of the prophets nor believing the messages, the truth and wisdom of the Bible. When the prophet Hosea comes to the people and says: “Return (repent) Israel to God/Goodness, because you have stumbled in your transgressions. Take words and return to God saying “forgive all our transgressions and take us back in goodness and wholeness. We offer words instead of animals…(God’s response) I will heal them in their repentance, I will love them freely, my anger is turned from them.”(Hosea 14:2-3, 5). The entire Bible is filled with screwing up and suffering then repenting and returning, a vicious cycle that humanity has not been able to break and God keeps taking us back, just as people in our lives keep taking us back after we screw up and truly repent. It is time for all of us to end our ignorance and learn of “the power of repentance” and engage in it so we can use this power to both re-create the past and set a different course for now and tomorrow.

What does it mean to “”allow re-creation of the past to take place”? If I can’t go back in time, if I can’t change the events that happened, how can “re-creation of the past” happen? This seems to be illogical and nonsensical. It is not! “Re-creation of the past”, like the teaching of Reish Lakish tells us happens in the here and now and in the past. “The power of repentance” is that  by acknowledging our errors, by restoring the dignity and the worth that we have taken from another human being by demeaning, hurting, ignoring, stealing, etc from them, we return to them what we have taken. We make our restitution of their spiritual as well as physical being in this process, we return to them the truth of their experience after denying for so long. We re-create the world they felt confident living in and that we hammered away at, chopped down, with our actions towards them. We do not qualify our errors, we do not mitigate the harms done, we acknowledge them, we commit to not do them again and we seek their forgiveness. What happens with the person we come to in repentance is they are vindicated, they are restored to sanity and their dignity, their experience is validated. Now when they revisit the past, as all of us are wont to do, they can breathe easier and freer, knowing they did not imagine the hurt and allow themselves to ‘be healed’, experience “my anger is turned from them”, and, hopefully, “love them freely”. While the last is not always the case, at least the healing and letting go of the anger helps to free the person harmed from the prison of bewilderment, anger, resentment they have been trapped in.

We all need to “allow re-creation to take place”. We are so stuck in our patterns, our paths, our thinking that we can’t see the forest for the trees, we can’t see our part, we live in our binary thinking which is what idolatry is all about. Be it on the left or the right, be it “free Palestine from the river to the sea”, “immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country”, be it whitewash the terrorists by the left (Hamas and Hezbollah as well as Iran)  or the whitewash of terrorist by the right (Putin, Orban, Bibi,) both are in need of engaging in repentance. The right-wing Rabbis and left-wing Rabbis who are using the Bible to validate their positions need to repent for their bastardizations of the Word of God. The right-wing and left-wing Christian Clergy who are using Christ’s words against Christ’s principles need to repent for their bastardizations of the words of Christ. Both sides need to repent for their idolatry, for their denigration of human beings and “allow re-creation of the past to take place” so we can live together without anger, without war and in arguments for the sake of living better than we are now.

My past has been re-created because of my engaging in “the power of repentance”. I am not loved by all, I am not welcomed everywhere, and I know I have done what I could to be responsible for my actions, made my amends where possible, changed my ways of being where necessary and allow those who want to use my vulnerabilities against me to do so and be able to have sadness for their need to stay angry, to deny their part and to be so stuck that “the power of repentance” doesn’t touch them. I cannot do any more for them except pray for them. One of the divine needs I fulfill is “re-creation of the past” and each year, when I hear “I forgive you as you have said” I breathe a little freer and fuller, knowing I am being “loved freely” and my “anger is turned from them”, meaning I have no resentments towards anyone. This is “the power of repentance” and I am blessed to live in it. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Do you live in the "miracle of Repentance" or still in the darkness of hiding and shame? Year 3 Day 296

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 296

National Month of Repentance and Change

“The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. Its is not the same as rebirth, it is transformation, creation.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg 69)

We are at the halfway point between the 1st of Elul and Yom Kippur, a period of 40 days and today is the 21st day of Elul. I hope you have been doing your inventory and seeing where you have missed the mark and where you have hit the target, if not the bullseye:). As I think about the words above, I realize the truth of the first sentence is because we are not taught, as children, as teenagers, as young adults, etc that being ‘less than perfect’ is okay, natural, and human! We are not shown how to do repentance while we are taught to be repentant. We are not aware that repentance is a miracle, that it does happen when we engage in it with reckless abandon and give ourselves over to the power of repentance, the miracle of repentance and the healing of repentance.

We live in a world where Greek Philosophy of ‘perfection’ still rules. We live in a world where the societal norm is ‘being right’. Because of these two and other such idiotic norms and cliches we are unable to be in repentance, to do repentance and to be surrounded by the miraculous light of repentance, return and new responses. We are too afraid to admit our errors because we are ashamed of them. We are sure that being in repentance will lead to ridicule and shaming by another(s), by society, so we continue to hide from ourselves and hide from everyone else. Think of how often, when someone is found to be a serial killer, a sexual predator, a thief, a con, the people around him/her proclaim that they had no idea, she/he was such a nice person, a regular guy/gal.

This happens because we are so engrossed in being right, in the way things look, in getting ahead, we cover-up our flaws, we put them on another, we point the finger away from ourselves, we shrink our responsibility and we bury our truth deep within us. Yet, we are never free from our deceptions of another and/or our deceptions of ourselves. How many people think: “if they only knew who I really am, they wouldn’t have anything to do with me”? We are desperately in need of being In Repentance instead of being repentant. Being repentant in our society is to say “I’m sorry” whether we are or not, remember our parents telling us to say this to someone else without explaining why we should be nor listening to the whole story? Remember the shame we felt at being exposed without being heard? Remember our commitment to hide our “dirty laundry” because we don’t want the neighbors to think bad of us-forgetting they have their own “dirty laundry” they are hiding?

It is time to end this bullshit, this deception of another(s), this self-deception. It is time for us to end our wallowing in shame and fear of being ‘found out’ to be less than perfect, less than ideal. It is time for us to stop hating those who have it better and look better because their inner life is just as chaotic as ours. It is time to end our incessant need to ‘win at all costs’ because we always lose our truth, our ability to change and find wholeness and some peace. It is time to engage in and notice the “miracle of repentance”!

Being In Repentance is not self-flagellation, it is not denigrating ourselves. It is not poof, we are reborn. It is, as Rabbi Heschel says above, “transformation, creation”. Repentance is the process by which we transform the energy we have used to hide and deny to come out of our particular closets and admit to our imperfections. It is the process where we open our hearts to our truth, we “circumcise the foreskins of our hearts” and allow the light to flow into the darkest recesses of our inner life that we have been hiding in, we transform the energy we have used to stay silent and hidden into the energy to speak and open ourselves up to the healing of repairing the damage we have done to another human being as well as the damage we have done to ourselves. We transform the energy of negativity to do positive things in the world, beginning with restoring the dignity that every human being has and, in our hiding, blaming, lying we have taken, back to the people we have harmed and restore our own infinite dignity. We use the energy we have bastardized to ‘getting ahead at all costs’ to moving forward in ways that are congruent with our uniqueness and help us reach a state of integrity with people and within ourselves. This is a miracle that, prior to now, has gone unnoticed.

We then see a new creation of our self, a new way of living and being-we no longer hide our flaws and errors, we can own up to them. We are connected to people in the most authentic of ways because we have created a community where truth and authenticity, integrity and congruency are foundational values. We are in a way of living with people who want to rebuke us when we are going back into hiding and lying, who applaud us when we are doing the next right thing. We have created a world that mirrors the one we have dreamed of and never thought possible. This is a miracle that has also gone unnoticed!

I have been in this miracle for over 36 years. I was brought into this state by Rabbi Mel Silverman and his teaching me both Rabbi Heschel and the Rambam, the Torah and T’Shuvah. I have been a student of T’Shuvah and engaged in knowing I am not always right, knowing I have a nose for bullshit, knowing I am so impatient with mendacity and deception, knowing I am not ‘politically correct’ and knowing I am an acquired taste. It is hard to live in the miracle of repentance because the world doesn’t want to be reminded of its flaws, society doesn’t want to change, wonder is a feeling rather than an way to meet the day. Repentance has been and continues to be a miraculous state for me. I continue to repent and change, repair and find new ways to be, be rejected and embraced and, most of all, I continue to live in integrity and authenticity. I am in the miracle of transformation and creation each and every day-how wonderful it is! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How does Repentance help you prove to yourself that you can and are going to change your negative ways? Year 3 Day 295

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 295

National Month of Repentance and Change

“The season of Rosh Hashanah is the “Day of Memory”, the “Day of Judgement”. Before the judgement and memory of God we stand. How can we prove ourselves? How can we persist How can we be steadfast? Through repentance.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg 69)

Remembering that we are not so much ‘standing in front” of a man in a beard with a staff, in front of some mythical figure, rather we are standing in front of ourselves, we are facing our self and our actions as well as our inactions. We are asking ourselves for proof that we are worthy, proof that we can change, proof that we can be forgiven. We are asking ourselves for proof that we can forgive ourselves, that we can end our incessant need to be self-abusive, as Noah BenShea speaks about in his documentary, “Jacob the Baker” on Amazon Prime-which I highly recommend.

We wonder, at this time of year, in this reflexive and reflective time, how can we go on, how can we continue to try and fail, how can we keep trying to keep up appearances, worry about the “optics” while our inner world is burning, while we are falling apart inside and we continue to ignore our spiritual health while maintaining the appearance of propriety, high moral standards, wonder and awe?

We question our ability to stay true to ourselves since we have betrayed ourselves so often in the past. We begin and/or continue to doubt our ability to hold fast to the Torah, to principles of morality and ethical ways when the lure and the pull of ‘get rich quick’, ‘make the money and you will be safe’, “if your rich they think you really know”, “winning at all costs and the one with the most toys wins” are so strong from both society and within us. How can we believe we have the “staying power” when we say both the long and the short confessionals on Yom Kippur?

We have shunned this questions for so long as individuals and as a society. We have shied away from these questions of Rabbi Heschel for millennia and, it is interesting to me that there is not more discussion among my colleagues about these questions and response from Rabbi Heschel. It is as if we don’t want to face the truth about our own selves as Clergy, as human beings so we continue to preach out, preach about what is good (Jews and Israel) and what is not good (antisemitism and anyone who is critical of Israel). When the Rabbis and Cantors who have supported Trump, the Republican Jewish Coalition who says they believe in “Republican Values”, don’t walk away when he speaks of “blame the Jews for my loss of the election”-we see people who are unable to be steadfast in their devotion to Biblical Values. Listening in horror to the evangelicals who proclaim Trump and Vance as ‘god’s anointed’ and they clap and say ‘amen’ to this should make all of us want to throw up! Yet, we continue to see how people are more interested in being “steadfast” in their mendacity and their self-deception. than in the principles of the Bible, of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, of Easter and Christmas.

It is time for all of us to engage in the solution Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of: Repentance. In the Talmud Yoma 86b it states: Reb Meir says: “Great is repentance because the entire world is forgiven on account of one individual who repents, as it is stated: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for My anger has turned away from him” (Hosea 14:5)”. This is, of course on its face an outlandish statement. Yet, it also speaks to the importance of each and every individual. It also reminds us of Malcolm Gladwell’s “tipping point” theory. It is defined as: “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place”. When one person repents to another, that person then is moved to do the same and on and on until the whole world is rising to repent and have “their backsliding” healed and be in a state where they and another “love them freely”. We have the path, it is in the Bible, it is, according to our mystics a way of being that was put into the world even before the world was created and, I would add, it is so often bastardized and not used.

Saying “I’m sorry” is not the same as repentance! Repeating the formula the Rabbis gave: “if I have done anything to harm you, please forgive me” is inadequate. Asking people what you have done to them is abdicating one’s responsibility to be self-reflective and self-reflexive. Yet, we allow these types of false humility and piety to be ‘good enough’ for us and can’t understand why someone would not forgive these half-assed ways of seeking forgiveness. We find it incomprehensible that someone would expect us to actually face our selves, to do the work to prove to them and to ourselves that we want to change our ways, that we are willing to make restitution for the harms we have wrought, that we are committed to finding new responses to these old triggers and experiences which will be with us throughout our lifetime. How dare anyone expect this, how dare my own soul, my inner life cause me such turmoil because it expects me to change and grow. Yet, repentance is the solution.

As a younger human being-denial was the default. If someone accused me, I denied and, for a while, I was good enough to make them question their reality. I was steadfast and persistent in my lies and my denials. I was unwilling to repent even when my errors were so apparent all I could do is say “sorry”. Never once meaning it enough to change, to grow, to face myself. It took being arrested again in Dec.1986 for me to want to change, to actually face myself, face what I had done. In realizing everything and everyone I was losing, I had to begin with the realization that I had lost myself so long ago, I had succumbed to the lies I told myself, the lies of society, even the lies of my family. I had to begin by proving to me that I was capable of living from my soul, that my inner life would have the final and deciding vote and veto power over my mind and my emotions. I had to be steadfast and strong in this decision because the power of my evil inclination to run away again, the power of society to laugh at me for being a sucker, was so strong and, to this day, still rears its ugly head at time. I have, however, been persistent, I have proved to myself and I have stayed true to the call I heard from the universe to change. All of this has happened because of my repentance, many lives have changed because of my repentance and the repentance of so many at Beit T’Shuvah, in AA, etc. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How does "know before whom I stand" help me in this "season of Rosh Hashanah"? Year 3 Day 294

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 294

National Month of Repentance and Change

“The season of Rosh Hashanah is the “Day of Memory”, the “Day of Judgement”. Before the judgement and memory of God we stand. How can we prove ourselves? How can we persist How can we be steadfast? Through repentance.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg 69)

The first two sentences, which I have bolded, are overwhelming in the power they have to penetrate the “foreskin of our heart”, the stubbornness of our minds and the urges of our desires. This is the season of Rosh Hashanah-the month of Elul until Yom Kippur (and some say till the 8th day of Sukkot)- and today is the 19th day of Elul, we have 20 days till Yom Kippur, the half-way mark. What does it mean to us that we are in the season of “Memory”, the season of “Judgement”? Most of us pay no attention to these descriptions of the spiritual calendar because we either don’t believe in God, believe that God is absent, and/or don’t believe that God cares about us as individuals. WRONG, in my humble opinion. If one believes that God is ‘the man in the sky’, if one has made a false/craven image of the source of energy that is in the universe, I can understand these falsehoods one tells oneself. Rather, understanding the one engaging in “memory”, in “judgment is us, many of us see this time as the cosmos giving us the compassion and vision to look at the tape of our actions from the past year and fix the ones we screwed up and enhance the ones we did well.

“Know before whom you stand”(Talmud, Berakhot 28b) comes to mind for me today as I dive into the words above. This phrase is before many Holy Arks in Temples and Synagogues across the world and, Reb Eliezer says it in the context of prayer, I think it is a piece of wisdom we should use in all of our affairs. Here again, we have a call for this moment and, we should not think that this call cannot apply in our ‘everyday living’ as well. To “know before whom you stand” we have to look in the mirror and, remembering the poem “The man in the glass” by Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr., during this time of year, the “man in the glass”, ie our reflection, that stares back at us does so with compassion and consternation, forgiveness and accountability, the power to wipe the slate clean/pardon us and the power to hold us to our commitment to change.

Many fundamentalists like to say “God is watching you”, “God will punish you”, some even are calling Oct.7th “God’s wake-up call”!! They do this so they can hold onto to power over their constituents, they do not want to lose their grip. They put so much weight on Torah Study that in the Talmud, Rabbi Nehunya Ben HaKana demeans the people who work for a living-of course these are the people that support the Orthodox students in Israel. Rather than living the Torah principles and precepts, rather than “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, rather than use this season as the month of repentance and change, the fundamentalists use it to give lip service to “know before whom you stand”, they seem unable to change and repent for the errors they have made, for the hatred between Jews, the hatred of non-Jews that they have sown during the past year. It is time for the rest of us to “do for them what they could not do for themselves”, it is time for us to be God’s messengers and hold them accountable-not for punishment, rather for them to see the error of their ways, to repent and to change. It is imperative to use this “season of Rosh Hashanah” to help another who is stuck because the forces of kindness and forgiveness, vision and truth are so powerful right now.

When the “judgement and memory” we stand before is ours, when we look at the “man in the glass”, knowing that we cannot “cheated the man in the glass” and have any inner peace, we can use this season to right our wrongs, repair our traits that have been out of proper measure, we can change the course of our lives by doing the next right thing instead of the next wrong thing. When we “know before whom we stand”, we live into a life of joy and the ability to no longer hide from “the man in the glass” nor anyone else. We know we are standing in front of our family and reconnecting, we are standing with our community and finding our proper place, we are standing as a partner in the fight for righteousness and justice, caring for the strange and the poor, choosing life!

These words above are so important for us, especially right now. When a candidate for President knowingly supports someone for Governor who calls himself “a Black Nazi”, when this same candidate for President, at a gathering about antisemitism, tells everyone that if he loses it will be the Jews’ fault and Jews, Christians still support him and praise his words, we are witnessing a group that has no sense of the meaning of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching, the teachings of the Talmud, of Jewish history. When this same candidate and his running mate admit to making up a story about Hatian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio and say they will not stop spreading lies and falsehoods and people (especially men) of color, people of a faith based in everyone being created in the Image of the divine, and people who claim to be citizens of this country who evidently don’t believe that everyone “has certain unalienable rights” support these liars and deceivers-they seem unable to “know before whom they stand” and must not “go to the mirror and look at yourself and see what that man has to say.” How sad for them and how tragic for the rest of us.

While I have gone through this season all my life, it is only in the past 37 years that I have been serious about it. I always knew what “the man in the glass” had to say, which is probably the reason my “reward” was “heartache and tears” because I constantly tried  to “cheat the man in the glass”. I couldn’t live with myself and I was powerless, in my mind, to change. In prison I learned a different way and since then, I no longer cheat “the man in the glass”, I no longer cheat my neighbor or anyone else. I am not perfect, I spend this “season of Rosh Hashanah” doing my inventory, crying over my errors, rejoicing in what I do well and saddened by lost connections, whether my doing or the other persons’. I miss the people whom have left-those who have died and those who have “moved on”. I practice a loyalty to God that has be standing in memory and judgement of myself all the time and I use this loyalty to stand with the people who have helped me and whom I have helped. I use this loyalty to be open to admit my errors and/or acknowledge them when they are pointed out to me. I use this loyalty to be open to forgive anyone and everyone who asks. I use this loyalty to let go of resentments and just be sad rather than mad which was my old way. This season, each year, helps me grow so I look forward to “the man in the glass”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

How have I abandoned and forgotten the powerless and voiceless in my midst? Year 3 Day 293

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 293

National Month of Repentance and Change

“The deepest human longing is to be a thought in God’s mind, to be the object of His attention…let Him not forget me, not abandon me.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)

After “establishing God as king within us” Rabbi Heschel’s words make perfect sense. The problem for most human beings is our disbelief that our “deepest longing” coming to fruition is even possible so most of us have shuttered this “longing” away and believe the contrary; “God doesn’t give a damn”, “Where was God in the Holocaust”, “Why didn’t God protect me” and more so this “longing” is just fantasy and the stuff fairy tales are made of.

Because so many of us have locked our “deepest human longing” away within us, because we still have it and won’t admit it, we seek to be thoughts in society’s mind, to be the “object of” society’s “attention”, believing that doing what it takes to be known is all that matters, ie, winning an election (from Student Council on), beating our opponent in a game, killing everyone who is ‘our enemy’, lying and cheating to become rich, etc. Look at our fascination with Serial Killers, with Immigrants, with Cult Leaders; all we want is to either be the one doing the noticing, in charge, or being noticed by people in charge. Look at the way Mark Robinson of North Carolina wanted to be noticed by Donald Trump and the mutual admiration and love between them, providing Robinson with being ‘knighted’ by the white supremacist and Trump proving how much Black people love him. Be it the Kardashians, Paris Hilton, or any number of the “social media influencers” of today; people want to be noticed, people want to be thought of, people want to make money off of being noticed, being the “object of …attention”. And it works. This cheap substitute for the true “longing” in us is being sold as the cure for an ailment, a desire that is impossible to achieve. Too many people believe that God has forgot human beings, God has abandoned me. For those people who are still seeking to be noticed, to be remembered, they have found a salve in the false claims of the ‘anointed one’ being Trump by the false priests and prophets of the far right, they have found a salve in believing that Israel must ‘destroy Amalek’, that we have to “kill evil” as Robinson says. All of this to hide from the truth of our inner life, the truth of God’s attention and demands, God’s reaching and pulling us closer, begging us to do the next right thing.

The entire Bible is how important a thought human beings are in God’s mind! We have been “the object of His attention” forever! God speaks to us through the words in the Bible, God calls to us through our souls, by giving us “a bad conscience” as Rabbi Heschel says elsewhere. When we have anxiety, it is probably from ignoring God’s call and/or hanging up the phone when we are given directions to something we don’t want to do. We are so important to God that we are commanded to “Ransom the Captives” at any and all costs-even going so far as to sell a Sefer Torah to raise the money needed to buy back someone’s freedom! Yet, Ben G’Vir, Smotrich, Netanyahu have decided they know better than God, they are above the Holy One, the Judge of all the Earth in the middle of Elul! How ridiculous, how sad, how scary. Our tradition says God is constantly calling out to us, constantly crying out the Shema from Mount Sinai every morning and evening and we, the people who have this “deepest longing” are tone deaf to the Call.

Rather than being forgotten, rather than being abandoned, during this month of repentance and change, we have to look at ourselves and see how we have forgotten to honor our longing, forgotten to hear the call of God, the call of our Higher Consciousness, the call of the Universe, the call of the captive. We have to inventory the myriad of times we have left the captive to their own fate rather than stand up to the bullies, the cult leaders, the governments that use these captives for their own power, for they own political and financial gain. We have to engage in the difficult work of looking deeply inside of ourselves and make amends to the people we have harmed by forgetting our place, our importance, our being commanded. We have to change the ways we encounter the stranger-instead of abusing them for our gain we have to welcome them and care for them. We have to change the ways we see people-instead of being here for our gain, we have to see the needs they have, the souls they are and honor their dignity and worth, appreciate their uniqueness instead of using it against them.

We have to look back and see how we have abandoned people who cared for us, who helped us, who needed us. We have to look and see how our leaders have abandoned the hostages throughout the world, we have to hold them and ourselves accountable, change our ways of dealing with hostage takers, ensure that there is “righteous justice” being pursued, and there is equal justice rather than one Justice System for Trump and Bibi, Putin and Orban and another for the rest of us-this is an abandonment of God’s words in Deuteronomy, very ‘christian imposter, unrighteousness christian John Roberts, Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas!  We have to admit our errors and change our ways, we have to stop blaming God for abandoning us and list the ways we have abandoned God-everything that is happening is told in the Bible when we abandon and forget God, when we blame our loneliness and inner misery on God’s abandonment of us instead of changing our ways. This hour/this month calls for us to engage in Spiritual Audacity!

I am truly sorry for the people who experienced me abandoning them-I am also sorry about the people who abandoned me. The relationships that have been stretched and/or severed hurt me greatly and I accept the results and consequences of my actions. I forgive the people who have abandoned me and I ask for forgiveness from those whom I have abandoned or who feel I have. I realize in my pain and sadness over my actions and the subsequent aftermath from Feb. 2020, I have been afraid to reach out-not knowing who wants to hear from me and who doesn’t and this is my ego and fear being out of proper measure. I also know I have reached out to people and not heard back and this is painful especially because I don’t know what I did to them, how I harmed them and know I helped them when they needed. It is just sad to be abandoned and makes me more determined to not abandon people when they are in need. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What am I doing Today to "establish God as king within" me? Year 3 Day 292

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 292

National Month of Repentance and Change

“In all that happens in the world, in thought, conversation, actions, the kingdom of God is at stake…These days are dedicated to establishing God as king within us.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pgs. 68-69)

In 2 weeks we will be in Temple for Rosh Hashanah, we will be singing praises, hearing sermons, hearing the sounds of the shofar, prostrating ourselves during the additional service when praying the Aleinu prayer, standing and reciting the Avinu Malkeynu prayer, all in service of our recognition that God is king for these ten days. Not the king that is malicious and who wants us to fail, wants us to be among those “who shall die” as one of the prayers states. Rather the king who is missing his children who have left the palace, stretched the connection between parent and child so far and so taut that it seems as if it will break and this sovereign is crying to his kids to come back, to return again, to come home. Rabbi Heschel’s words above stir this thought in me, they call me back home to taking my place as a child of the sovereign, a prince who is being called upon to spread the kindness, the joy, the obligation, the pain of being so connected to the sovereign that everything I do reflects on the sovereignty of God, the understanding of God’s love, the continued life of the world we live in.

I am trembling as I write these words. Can the religious zealots really believe that Trump, Bibi are protecting and promoting the sovereignty of God? Can anyone truthfully say that they are good for Israel or the US or the world when they believe that they should be the sovereigns? Who among us can say I have established “God as king” within me and then bow down at the altar of liars, narcissists, thieves, bullies, and men hellbent on destroying the freedoms, the divine images of anyone that doesn’t bow down to them? How can the so-called ‘rabbis’ in Israel and the US proclaim the righteousness of these charlatans? How can the so-called christian clergy proclaim that Trump is the “anointed one”? In the Bible we read about King Saul being anointed and then Samuel seeing the error of his ways and anointing King David. Saul’s mental anguish, which made him suspicious of David even though he knew David was loyal and he loved him, went out to battle the Philistines and died in battle-he did not send everyone else while he sat at home, Bibi-he brought his sons into battle with him-he didn’t send him to Florida, Bibi! Both Saul and David were so much more suited for the job of King than Trump or Bibi-both have had the power and they squandered it on enriching themselves and cozying up to Vlad, Victor, Kim, etc! They are certainly not interested in taking action for the sake of the kingdom of God, for them all that is at stake in their everyday living is enriching and protecting themselves from the consequences of their actions because they believe they are entitled to be above the law! This is what these so-called rabbis and so-called christian clergy are calling servants of the king? PLEASE!!!

To establish “God as king within us” we have to surrender our belief that we are king, that we are the judge and jury of our own lives. We get to, during this month of repentance and change, let go of our false egos, leave the confines of our mind and no longer live according to ‘don’t you know who I think I am” and return to living our passion and purpose fulfilling the divine need we are created to fix. We get to engage with God as our ancestors did in the desert, as the prophets did in Israel and Judea, as the Rabbis did in Babylonia and Yavneh. We establish “God as king within us” by immersing ourselves in the moments of life instead of continuing to manage them to what we believe is our benefit. Rather than ‘get ours’, ‘get as much as we can’, we return to knowing that the kingdom of God is at stake in every action we take, every conversation we have and, that the life of our soul, our inner life is at stake as well.

During this month of repentance and change, we choose to return and allow God to “heal our backsliding”, knowing that God “takes us back in love” as the prophets remind us. We read in the Torah of how to be human even in war, how to be grateful upon arriving in our proper place, that we always have the power of choice-choosing good/life and/or wrong/death. We, each of us individually as well as all of us collectively, have to make choices in this month that, fortunately and/or unfortunately, will guide our next 6 months until we participate in our exodus from slavery at Passover time. We have the opportunity to change our glasses and regain our 20/20 vision in our souls, in our ‘third eye’. We have the opportunity to let go of our narcissistic ways that block the kingdom of God from entering into our consciousness and “circumcise the foreskins of our hearts”. There is an urgent demand as we approach these last two weeks of Elul, COME HOME TO THE PALACE where God as king resides, COME HOME TO THE PALACE where you belong and can flourish spiritually and help spread the word, heal the sick, care for the stranger, choose life! During this month of repentance and change, we come to respect, relish, admit: WE MATTER

I know what it means to not establish “God as king within us” as I did this for over 20 years and the harm I brought, the plague I spread was horrific-I have spent the past 37 years undoing the evil and creating new and good. Knowing the kingdom of God is at stake in everything I do is overwhelming and exhilarating! It is, for me, the ultimate experience of Yirah, the trembling awe of knowing that I matter! Rabbi Heschel’s words are not new ideas, I/we know them from the liturgy we recite and they are concise and piercing through the veils I have hidden behind, causing me to face the truth-I did what I thought was best in the moments of my life and, unfortunately, many times my thinking was stunted, biased, based on erroneous input, ergo; not good, not right and I sacrificed the kingdom of God for my own self-satisfaction, my own blindness both willful and unwitting. I am remorseful for these moments where ego, error, bias’ got in the way of fully serving both the “kingdom of God” and “establishing God as king within” me! To those who were harmed, I am deeply sorry, I am getting better at pausing, I am getting better at engaging my spirit before my mouth. I am also still a descendant of the prophets, I take seriously what they said and they guide me at this time and every time of the year. Each morning, I face Moses, Jeremiah and Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, as well as Amos and the rest and hear their wisdom on how to be in this day so God is within me a little more today than yesterday. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into the "kingly dignity of God" that is within all of us - Year 3 Day 291

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 291

National Month of Repentance and Change

“Does this demand - the essence of Jewish law - signify an esoteric symbol, a mystical act? It signifies a close, this-worldly and everyday act. The establishment of the kingly dignity of God occurs now and in the present, through and in us.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg.68)

The “demand” Rabbi Heschel is speaking of is “to take the yoke of the kingdom of God upon ourselves”, which I wrote about yesterday. This quote above reflects both the grandeur and audacity of the Hassidic Movement which Rabbi Heschel was brought up in, his audacity and grandeur,  and the grandeur with which Jewish law is being described. He calls upon us to see taking this “yoke” is not some “mystical act” which will transform us into a new sphere/level of spiritual life, it is not some “esoteric symbol”that we can discuss and meditate on, rather it is a way of living in the here and now, in the present and without hiding, without blaming another, without complaining, etc. He is calling upon all of us for “the establishment of the kingly dignity of God” right here, right now.

Isn’t it sad at how badly we fail to follow through on this demand, on the call of Torah, of Jewish living to establish ‘the kingly dignity of God” “now and in the present”? We are witnessing instead, led by mendacious clergy people the denigration desecration of the dignity of God by some Rabbis here in America and in Israel, the bastardization of the teachings of Jesus by the “prosperity gospel” deceivers and the so-called “christian” nationalists, the power grabbing of the Imams and Ayatollahs rather than surrendering to Allah and seeking peace. We are being led to the slaughter by the very people who are supposed to be leading us to “the Promised Land”!

As Rabbi Heschel said to President Kennedy; “We forfeit the right to worship God…Churches, synagogues have failed. They must repent.”(June 1963). We still have not repented, in fact, we have grown our failure exponentially through so-called ‘religious actions’, which are nothing more than a power grab, a way of establishing autocracy, theocracy, etc-not even attempting to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev 25:10), which I quote a lot because it is part of the essence of being a priest, a clergy person! Yet, we continue to fail, we continue to blame, explain rather than repent. We claim to “take the yoke of the kingdom of God upon ourselves” and we are really just giving the “kingly dignity of God” lip service and worshiping at the altar of Boards of Directors, Church elders, and other intermediaries that proclaim ‘I know God’s will’ while they let women die because of abortion bans which are not talked about in the Bible at all!! Yet, these ‘holy rollers, these men and women who claim to be messengers of God and are really just idolators who proclaim Trump is the anointed one of their god and they are dragging the world to a bloody battle.

The Rabbis in Israel who are calling for the death of the Palestinians, who support the terrible settlers raids and killings, who want Gaza to be part of Israel, are just as bad as the christian idolators! They read the same Bible as I do, as many of us do and they fail to see what happens when they promote senseless hatred, when they are so close to power and want so much power that they bastardize themselves and prostrate themselves at the false altar of idolatry. When they constantly and consistently denigrate the “kingly dignity of God” by their actions against fellow human beings, other people who are also created in the image of the divine, who also have infinite worth and dignity. Their hunger for power, their lying about what the Bible says, their ignoring of the words and warnings of the prophets will bring about the ruination of Israel as a democratic state if they are not stopped = of course BIbl doesn’t want to stop them for his own personal gain and neither Bibi nor these Rabbis and their followers give a damn about the Hostages.

And, of course, one is not allowed to say these truths in Synagogue or Church or the Mosque because it would “upset the donors” so Rabbis, Priests, Ministers, Imams are being controlled by their Boards instead of looking out for and promoting the “kingly dignity of God” in the here and now. Rather than screaming about the idolatry and blasphemy being done in the name God, clergy are too busy worrying about what someone is going to think of them. They are too worried about which identity group is going to be offended. Rather than lead the people out of slavery as Moses did, rather than live among the whores, the thieves, the homeless like Jesus did, many of the clergy of today are more interested in living among the rich, of staying enslaved and putting down any revolts by masses so the rich stay in power, they keep their money and give their leftover ‘change’ to the Temple, Church, Mosque. When clergy forget that God is their employer, when they forget that the “kingly dignity of God occurs now and in the present, through and in us“ they have lost their way, lost their ability to hear the call of God and the universe and the cries of the poor, the stranger, the needy, the widow and the orphan. They NEED TO REPENT! RIGHT NOW!

I am guilty of not always honoring the “kingly dignity of God” and I also have never lost sight of my obligation to do so. My failures, my ‘sins’, all begin with losing sight of the “kingly dignity of God” in every experience of daily living. I also know I will never not fail at times and this is important for all of us to recognize so we don’t just say “fuck it-I can never be perfect, I can never get it right”. I said this and used this way of thinking to validate the criminal life I lived prior to my recovery. In my study yesterday with Rabbi Danny Maseng, we looked at the last chapter of Samuel I which describes the death of King Saul, Jonathan and the his other sons.  I realized that the actions that defy “the kingly dignity of God” cause a plague not only on the person, King Saul, but on everyone around him-in this case, Israel. Because of his jealousy, David had to flee and he didn’t have his best fighter, commander to go into battle with. Because of the actions I took, my whole family was infected. Because of the fear of my fellow Clergy, our world is suffering from a plague of indifference and mendacity. I didn’t let the Board tell me what to say, I was audacious, too much so at times, and bold, sometimes offensively, and I spoke the truth that my soul, my spirit put into my mouth without fear or favor. I became a liability because of my inappropriate way of expressing my intolerance of mendacity. A true both/and-I was wrong and I was correct. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living in " a kingdom of everyday life" and accepting our responsibility to make it "one grain of sand better" each day- Year 3 Day 290

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 290

National Month of Repentance

“At issue is not an eschatological vision, a utopia at the end of time, or a kingdom in the beyond. Rather, we are talking about the present, the world that has been bequeathed to us, a kingdom of everyday life. We have to choose God as king, we have to ‘take the yoke of the kingdom of God upon ourselves.””

Continuing to immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s writing from 1936 in Berlin, Germany-the hotbed of anti-semitism, Jew hatred at the time, on the eve of Yom Kippur, we experience his deep belief that we all need to be in the here and now. Thinking about the place and the time he is writing about, I am hearing him call out to people who want to live in the future and/or the past, that we have to be right here, right now. T’Shuvah, Yom Kippur is not about anytime but the present, God has no sense of time-everything in God’s world is in the moment and we have to wake up, open our eyes to this truth.

He is also telling us to end our euphoric recall, like the Israelites in the Bible had of the flesh pots they used to sit around and eat out of in slavery-cut the crap people! We are in the world that was created a long time ago and has evolved into what it is today both because of our presence and God’s presence. Rabbi Heschel is calling upon us to be here now as Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass teaches. We are being reminded to see and deal with “a kingdom of everyday life”-what a wonderful phrase. While many of us see life as mundane, waiting for Shabbat, waiting for the Sabbath, waiting for ‘our ship to come in’, Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to see our everyday living as “a kingdom” a realm where we have rule and dominion and we get to “choose God” as sovereign, we willingly choose to “take the yoke of God upon ourselves”.

Rather than “make America great again”, rather than “destroy Hamas” or call them “Amalek”, rather than choose Putin over Zelensky/Ukraine so Russia can get the territory it conquered in another time back again, or ‘the South will rise again”-making slavery a way of life again in the United States; the teaching above reminds us going back in time is ridiculous, trying to recapture some grand false vision of the past is antithetical to living in the world we have, the world that God has given to us. Instead of thinking about ‘how can I cause the “end of days”’, we are to be considering how do we act in accordance with the best interests of the universe, humanity, the animal kingdom, and ourselves!

Each day, when we say the Shema, when we express gratitude, when we study and Holy Text, when we say a rosary, go to the Mosque, we are taking “the yoke of the kingdom of God upon ourselves”. This “yoke” is a surrender, an acknowledgement that we are not the end all/be all of the world. It is a surrender in that we say we are not always right, we don’t know everything and there is a force more powerful, more intelligent, a power greater than ourselves to whom we are responsible, to whom we have to be in service to. While for many this idea is anathema, it is the truth I hear Rabbi Heschel reminding us of. Being in the present, serving something greater than ourselves, seeing the spark of the light, the divinity in each and every person-whether they show it or not, is the call I am hearing this morning. In a place like Nazi Germany, in a place where the ‘good christian folk’ are loving their Jew-hating, Jew-blaming selves, where these ‘good christian folk’ are proclaiming their allegiance to Christ while subjugating and killing his family(he was a Jew after all), while going against all of his teachings, Rabbi Heschel is saying live here now!

What a great way to look around and see how we “take the yoke of the kingdom of God upon ourselves” today. When we want to go back, we are not doing this. When we want to live in the future, we are not doing this. When we scapegoat another group of people, another person, we are not doing this. When we blame another for our errors-ie ‘you made me do this’, we are not doing this. When we traffic in lies and deceptions, we are not taking this “yoke” on. When we pray with no awareness that prayer is to change us, when it is a rote action, we are not doing this. When we proclaim our need to study all day in Yeshiva and watch the death of our citizens for a war that the Rabid Rabbis and Right-wingers want so they can have power and control, we are not taking “the yoke of the kingdom of God upon ourselves”. When we perpetrate the lies of the internet so that schoolchildren have to be subjected to daily bomb threats and Haitian Immigrants have to fear for their safety, we are not taking this “yoke” “upon ourselves”!

We, the people, living in the present, taking “the yoke of the kingdom of God upon ourselves” have to look back upon this past year to see our responses to these same situations that have been going on for a long time and take responsibility for our part. “But we didn’t do anything” is the refrain of most people and this is the problem! Living in “a kingdom of everyday life” and choosing the “yoke of the kingdom of God” makes it imperative to DO SOMETHING to stop the lies of the people in power or seeking power who want to take us backwards, to stop the deceptions of the people who are following them like lambs to the slaughter, to stop the senseless hatred of one another and the promotion of this hatred so one person/group can have power. We, the people, have to take a close look at ourselves, at our own actions and inactions which have, wittingly and unwittingly promoted these lies, this violence, this desecration of God’s Name and of our Image.

It is hard to be present, it is also the only way to live well. There is no ‘big score’ that will save me, no house, car, vacation, job, person who will make my life ‘easy’. The only way I have been able to live well is by choosing and accepting the “yoke of the kingdom of God”, knowing that there are times when I take it off, there are times when I decide which way to turn even though the ‘driver’ of the wagon wants to go straight. Yet, I return to giving up the reins, to hearing the call of the universe and cleaning up the schmutz  I have put into my inner life. It is excruciating to see the errors I make, the subtle ways I lie to myself and how I try hard to make my wishes my reality rather than living in “a kingdom of everyday life” and responding in my unique way and adding my gifts to the solution for whatever presents itself today. This is the power of T’Shuvah-returning to adding good to the world. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Recognizing the Principles that make us Human and recommitting to living them more - Year 3 Day 289

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 289

National Repentance and Change Month

“The world has fallen away from God…Through our obstinacy we, too, are antagonists. But still, sometimes we ache when we see God betrayed and abandoned.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg.68)

These words, written almost 90 years ago in Berlin Germany to a Jewish world that was on the brink of total destruction, the Nuremberg Laws having been passed the year before, it was coming apart at its core, people were trying to leave, others believed ‘this too shall pass’, ‘what’s another pogrom-we have survived them all’. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that these ‘good christian’ Nazis have “fallen away from God.” He is reminding us that the leaders of the countries that are appeasing Hitler, allying themselves with him have “fallen away from God.” And he is calling out the Jewish people for being obstinate, for being antagonists. What have we, people living in America and beyond, learned in these almost 90 years since these words were written?

Today, we see how “the world has fallen away from God” in a myriad of ways. We listen to the hatred spewed towards the immigrants, ie stranger, the ways some Republicans describe them as “vermin”, “spoiling the blood of Americans”, etc-propaganda that was used against the Jews of Germany. While these Republicans are not Hitler, they are also using the ways of Josef Goebbels in their political rhetoric, they are cozying up to Holocaust deniers, haters of immigrants, white supremacists, chaos actors, etc. Watching clergy of all religions spew hatred and go along with the racist rhetoric supporting Jew Hatred, Stranger Hatred, Muslim Hatred, is more than disgusting, it is another proof of Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence above!

We have “fallen away from God” by not wrestling with the Holy Texts we have been given. We have “fallen away from God” by the ways we treat one another-we certainly are not following “love your neighbor as you love yourself” very often in our business, political, nor personal lives. We have “fallen away from God” by making spiritual principles optional for our children, by not growing their souls while we feed their minds and bodies with trief - unkosher thinking and actions. We have “fallen away from God” with the laws of Caveat Emptor-let the buyer beware instead of the laws of spirituality-let the seller disclose. We have “fallen away from God” by using deception, mendacity, lying as our default way of communicating and ‘winning’, abusing people with these ways so we can have power, prestige and wealth.

We, Jews and non-Jews, have all “fallen away from God” and we need to end our antagonistic attitude towards God, towards the force in the Universe, towards one another. NOW IS THE TIME! THIS IS THE MONTH! We have the luxury of being able to look back upon the past year and, unlike Jan 1, repair the harms we have wrought. We have the luxury and obligation to see where we have “fallen away from God” in the past, where we have betrayed and abandoned the spiritual principles we know to be true and right, the treatment of another we know has been self-serving. We have the opportunity to see how we have failed to respond to the call and the cries of people in need. We are able to recognize the myriad of ways we betrayed our core principles in order to ‘get ahead’, to ‘get ours’, to use people for our own gain rather than connect with them soul to soul. We have the moment to review the times we acted from our ‘roles’ rather than from our souls. We have the time to “ache when we see” how we have abandoned our friends and family, when we have let go of doing the next right thing in order to do the next expedient thing. We have an opportunity to “ache” because we have sold our soul to the highest bidder rather than dedicate our soul to serving something greater than money, property, prestige, fame, etc.

This is the month of Elul, the month of Repentance and Return, Repair and Change! It is built into the cosmos, the air is filled with compassion, forgiveness, it is charged with awareness and aching, with truth and reconciliation. The climate is changing, we are moving from summer to fall, are we willing to change our inner climate? Are we willing to do the inner work necessary to rejoice in a new year, a year in which we commit and do the work of growing in kindness, forgiveness, compassion and goodness? A year where truth uber alles is our motto, a year in which we let go of more of our selfishness and self-serving actions? Is this the year we achieve a solid 51% foundation in doing the next right thing, in growing one grain of sand better each day? We have to make this decision, we have had many false starts, we have voted our ‘pocket book’, ‘voted for Israel’ which has gotten us to where we are today-spiritually bankrupt politicians dedicating themselves to a false christianity, a Christian Nationalism which has always been terrible for the Jews and everyone else who isn’t ‘one of them’. It has gotten us Bibi allowing Hamas the money to build their tunnels, buy their weapons and plan Oct. 7th. We, Jews, from secular to Orthodox, have a lot to repent and change because of our abandonment of principles found in the Bible! King David repented, but Bibi and Ben G’vir can’t, Johnson, Trump, Vance can’t??

In December of 1986, I had my first soul awareness of how I had abandoned and betrayed God, betrayed the principles I had been brought up with. I knew these truths in my mind and I could rationalize them, blame someone else for ‘making me do it’, etc. Yet, in a Jail Cell in Van Nuys, Ca. I faced my abandonments and betrayals within myself and my soul cried out for God. “Out of the Depths I cry to You” became a reality not just a verse in Psalm 130. I have not stopped crying from the depths of my inner life. I have made the same errors more than once-I just do a little better each time, meaning the errors are not exactly the same, they are less harmful and I recognize them sooner. I am less sensitive to being hurt by people, I feel betrayed in my core by some and I realize that my way of being is the way I have to be in order to live with myself. I also have stopped expecting another to do things the same way I do, in fact I am grateful for the myriad of ways we all fulfill spiritual principles and the ways we don’t-because I can keep learning. I have not “fallen away from God” since December of 1986 as I know I am free-fall into the abyss and the 9th circle of hell if I do! I am more forgiving and more bewildered when people don’t respond-life is too short to hold onto grudges. I stay grateful and connected to the people who helped me. I am engaged in staying connected and never abandoning people as my best way to never abandon God. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark