Is your self-expression narcissistic or for the greater good? Year 3, Day 348

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 348

“There was never a time in which the need for self-expression was so much stressed. Yet, there was never a time in which self-expression was so rarely achieved. If self-expression is the only goal, it can never be achieved. The self gains when losing itself in the contemplation of the nonself, in the contemplation of the world, for example. Self-expression depends upon self-attachment to what is greater than the self.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 64)

Reading these words some 62 years after they were delivered at a conference of Rabbis takes one’s breath away or it should. In today’s world where identity politics, people’s belief they can do what they want to because they are ‘free’, where the next president of the United States brags about being above the law, who says he can grab women in their private parts because he wants to, where victimhood is a flag so many wrap themselves in because of ‘political correctness’, these words need to be embedded in our educational system for both children, teens, college students and adults! We have forgotten the Civics lessons from our Junior High and Senior High school days, we have forgotten that “self-expression” is not for the self, it is to enhance the greater good.

The self-expression that is being foisted upon us is not real, as I read the words above. It is for political, economic, and personal gain rather than for “the nonself”. What passes for “self-expression” is nothing more than narcissistic chatter, hate speech, power grabbing and money grubbing bullshit that uninformed people and those seeking to be ‘above the law’ eat up like dogs lapping at their food. As described, it is “red meat” for the followers of the people at the top of the food chain seeking more and more power-be it on the right or the left. This is true in business as well as politics, in education as well as at the dinner table. “Children should be seen and not heard” is a famous line that denies true self-expression and leads to rebellion that passes as “self-expression” to the one who is rebelling because they are unaware of what true self-expression is, never seeing it at home where ‘the parent is always right’, ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ ‘this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you’ and other such stupid sayings. When the leaders cannot be questioned, when their ‘enemies’ (aka anyone who wants to hold them to account) can be jailed and prosecuted for not going along with the ‘fearful’ leader (because she/he is afraid of a large scale rebellion led by these people) the self-expression of a nation is suppressed and authoritarian rule, crimes against humanity are easily committed and freedom is lost.

Rather than continue down this path, Rabbi Heschel was suggesting, telling the spiritual leaders of Conservative Judaism to wake up! In the 60’s, in the middle of the Civil Rights movement, in the beginning of the escalation of the Vietnam War, when the people who served in WWII were still dealing with the horrors they witnessed and the traumatic moral injury they suffered because they had to kill people or be killed, Rabbi Heschel is telling his colleagues that religious institutions have to help people with their self-expression, that Rabbis have to counsel people on how to be “in contemplation of the nonself, in the contemplation of the world, for example”. Having suffered the loss of so much family in the Shoah, having witnessed the world standing idly by the blood of Jews, trade unionists, Gypsies, political enemies at the hands of the Nazis and the anti-semites of Poland, France, Holland, Russia, etc, Rabbi Heschel’s demand to and calling out of the lack of religious education that benefits the human soul is heroic! Yet,  sadly, it is still not heard in every corner of Judaism nor Christianity nor Islam even today.

Since the clergy are still not heeding Rabbi Heschel’s words, it is incumbent upon We, the People to demand this way of being to be taught to our children and, more importantly, to us. In the first prayer of the Shema, the V’ahavta, we say: “and these words/ways I command you this day shall be on your heart, you shall teach them to your children, speak of them when you walk on the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, they are to be frontlets between your eyes, you are to write them on your doorposts of your house and on your gates.”(Deuteronomy 6:6-9) The ultimate “self-expression” is when we live this prayer, this command, to the best of our ability. To do this, we have to bring our unique talents, gifts and ways of seeing what the next right thing is and doing it according to the call of our intuition/our soul. When we live into this prayer, then we are exercising the “self-expression” of our soul, we are connected with the universe, we are fulfilling the need that is in front of us and we are the most alive and most free that we can be. It is only by knowing and living as part of the whole while bringing our uniqueness to the table, can we really achieve “self-expression”.

“Self-expression” as described above is the goal set out in the beginning chapter of Genesis, it is the basis of all religious values and teachings: Care for the world I am giving you and have dominion(not domination) over the plants, vegetation, animals( not humans. Yet we have bastardized this foundational goal of “self-expression” by engaging in wars and starvation, spreading of diseases and toxic chemicals to control and enslave people, we have engaged in hatred of Jews and then others so we can have power over the people rather than be “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people”. We, the People have to demand of our clergy the teachings that return us to a primordial state of “self-expression” so we can “teach our children” and leave a better world for them to have care and dominion over.

This is the quest I have been on for a long time. I mistakenly thought my rebellion, my criminal behavior, my drinking was self-expression and I did not want to be judged. I have come to learn what “self-expression” truly is because of my teachers, family, friends, community. I am more prophetic than rabbinic, I am more bombastic than soft-spoken, I am more easily riled up than “slow to anger” and I can’t stand mendacity in another nor myself. I cannot “stand idly by the blood of my neighbor” so I say something when someone is doing the next wrong thing(IMO). I refuse to be silent when it is time to speak Truth to Power, I am ‘politically incorrect’ and I do not give into the current fad of unself-expression that is in vogue right now or before. I am a fighter for the soul of another and in doing so, I strengthen my own spiritual health. I am grateful that all of you have helped me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Is your life "imprisoned" by the "one-sidedness of your ego"? Year 3 Day 347

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 347

“All needs are one-sided. When hungry we are in need of food, yet food is not in need of being consumed…It is in such one-sidedness that most of life is imprisoned. Examine an average mind, and you will find it dominated by an effort to cut reality to the measure of the ego, as if the world existed for the sake of pleasing one’s ego.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 63)

While I am not sure I agree with the “all” because human beings have a reciprocal need to be loved and to love, as it says in Chapter 2 of Genesis: “It is not good for a human to be alone”, I do agree with the rest of the words above. Let us not get caught up on the word “all” as a way of ignoring what is being said here.

Throughout history, “an average mind” has made “an effort to cut reality to the measure of the ego”, ensuring everything they see and experience is filtered through the lens of how it affects one’s ego. If it enhances it the experience is deemed correct and good, it if detracts from it, if the experience points out any shortcomings, the experience is deemed wrong and bad. Despots, authoritarians, monarchies take advantage of the “average mind” and we have seen the results. It is not that a person with an “average mind” is a bad person, it is just that they see only a small slice of “reality”, they are not trained nor interested in growing their vision, they adhere to the adage: “it was good enough for my parents so it has to be good enough for me”. People who are stuck in the “reality” that promotes the idea that “the world existed for the sake of pleasing (my) ego” cannot see the forest for the trees, cannot discern truth from fiction, self-deception from reality.

Another issue I find in the words above is that in the state of “one-sidedness that most o life is imprisoned in”, distinctions are not used to learn, to edify, a subject; they are used to compare one person to another. The distinction of race, religion, creed, nationality, etc can be used to make America the melting pot once envisioned and, instead, it is being used to compare black and brown and white skinned people to one another with the white man believing in their own superiority. The distinction of religious groups are being used to promote a ‘christianity’ that is unknown to the truly faithful people who follow Christ’s words and deeds, who hang out with the lepers, the strangers, the gays, the criminals, the slaves, the women, the hookers like Christ did!

We have been through a political debacle that has ignored the good that President Biden has done, the loyalty to the constitution, the loyalty to our allies, the loyalty to the people who are in need with the different legislative victories he secured. The lies of Trump and the RINO’s he commands-the Republican Party of today does not have the moral, spiritual, ethical nor intellectual underpinnings that made Lincoln free the slaves and Ronald Reagan proclaim the “shiny city on the hill”, have made the good that has happened seem irrelevant, they have demonized the illegal immigrants, people seeking a better life than the rape, torture, violence they experienced in their own country and people bought it because they needed a “bad guy” to blame their troubles on. This is reflective of Germany in the 1930’s, Russia when Putin was angling to take over, Hungary as Orban switched from freedom fighter to authoritarian and many others. We have to stay vigilant and make the distinctions that edify and illuminate the truth, moving past the smallness of our egos and out of the small cell that “most of life is imprisoned” in.

We, the people have to rise above satisfying our self-serving needs and realized that our small mindedness is actually not in our best interests. That serving Elon Musk and Donald Trump will not result in prosperity for the average person. Tariffs will make our lives exponentially harder and cause us to, once again, be seen as not having the courage of our convictions nor the desire to follow the covenants we have made and instead are just a transactional country, group, individual with no loyalty to anything other than our ego’s small needs, like ‘getting even’ with those who have spoken truth to power-reflective of the prophetic eras. We, the people are capable of so much more, we can listen to the words of President John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, people who serve in our military are not “losers” as the soon to be Commander in Chief believes, they are patriots who embody President Kennedy’s words. His brother, Robert F. Kennedy SR. said: “Some men see things as they are and ask, “why?” “I dream things that never were and ask “Why not?”. This is the calling that the generation coming of age in the 1960’s were responding to and both of these heroes were senselessly assassinated along with Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Malcom X because they promoted a way of being that was threatening to the small minds and to the autocrats who felt threatened, to the white man who wanted to keep the “black man where he belonged-boy” not see everyone as human beings possessing infinite dignity and value. It is way past time for We, the People to stand up for the Constitution of the United States, to take back the promise of America, to tell the Supreme Court that justice cannot be pursued through a political agenda, that justice is not conservative nor liberal, it is meted out with righteousness and judges that take ‘bribes’ are blinded and cannot serve the truth nor be deliberate in their judgments. We, the People have to say NO to the dismantling of education and the promotion of one religion’s interpretation of the Bible, we have to say NO to any alliance with Putin and the other autocrats, we have to say NO to the lies of the far-right and far-left in our country and around the world. We, the People have to say YES to being redeemers of those whose “one-sidedness” has their “life imprisoned”, YES to being of service and caring for the stranger, the poor, etc. We the People have to say YES to helping the “average mind” expand it’s horizons and see the beauty of helping another person live well.

This has been my quest over the past 36+ years-both in my last prison term and since leaving prison. I have been saying YES to being of service, to helping another person expand their horizons. There have been times when I used distinctions to compare and feel superior and this was wrong and led to devastating consequences. I am sorry for this error! I have, overall, used distinctions to learn more, to increase my heart’s capacity for change and love, kindness and understanding. When I do this, I know I am doing my best, when I compare, I am a bull in a china shop as opposed to an advocate for the soul. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"Ultimate ends" or selfish, narcissistic needs-which are your serving today? Year 3 Day 346

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 346

“Satisfying a need is part of the continuum of the psyche, serving an end, doing a mitzvah is a breakthrough…Ultimate ends, as seen by our tradition, are not timeless values, metaphysical entities, frozen absolutes. Ultimate ends are mitzvoth, demands.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 63)

As I wrote about before, Rabbi Heschel and Judaism do not vilify physical urges nor needs of the psyche. What he is speaking about here is going beyond serving just our psyche, just our bodies, and ensuring that there is an end that is more than just about us. There are many mitzvot about taking care of one’s body, one’s money, one’s home, one’s family, etc. These “demands” encompass our own needs so we can serve something greater than just ourselves, so we can rise above our self-centered, narcissistic ways of being that impede our living well and impede the forward motion of the world around us.

Rabbi Heschel’s statement: “doing a mitzvah is a breakthrough” is so radical that it could, should stop us in our tracks. What are we breaking through when we do a “mitzvah”? As I experience these words this morning, I know that  the “breakthrough” is our ability to finally “circumcise the foreskin of our hearts” as Moses instructs us in Deuteronomy. My experience of these “breakthroughs” is one of awe and trembling, never fear. It is the awe of realizing the goodness that lies within each of us, the goodness that so many have been afraid to show. It is the awe of wonder and, maybe for the first time, seeing another human being as someone to care for as Leviticus teaches us “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. It is the awe of wonder, again for one of the first times, of seeing our authentic self and realizing that to serve something greater than ourselves is one of the highest callings we have, one that goes beyond the societal norms and our rational minds.

These “ultimate ends” in no way deny the need of serving the psyche, they do not negate our need for physical, emotional satisfaction. I would posit that satisfying our physical and emotional needs is a precursor to serving “ultimate ends”, otherwise we deny a part of us which then negates the “demand” of the “mitzvah” to bring all of ourselves to the table, to “walk humbly with God”, to live into and up to our higher consciousness.

The experience of serving “ultimate ends” by “doing a “mitzvah” breaks through our hardened shell of fear and self-loathing. It cracks open our false belief that we have to ‘do everything on our own’ to be a ‘rugged individual’ that ‘the one with the most toys wins’, that ‘winning is the only thing’ making it okay to win at any and all costs. This way of being is how we lose our spiritual health, how our needs overtake our psyche and prevent us from having a “breakthrough”. Remember, society doesn’t want us to have these “breakthroughs” because it would help us all throw off the yoke of these asinine societal cliches and norms. Serving “ultimate ends” creates within each individual a sense of freedom and joy, service, infusing our lives with an exhilarating feeling of indescribable spirit.

Hence, the reason that the autocrat wants us to serve them, not “ultimate ends”. Hence the reason that so many leaders, clergy, practitioners of different religions what us to serve dogma rather than “ultimate ends”. We have become so proficient at subterfuge and mendacity that many people have turned the Bible into their manifesto to enslave another person whereas the Exodus from Egypt, the five promises God makes to Moses and the Israelite people deny that slavery is forever. The experience at Mount Sinai, whether one believes the story of God holding the mountain over the heads of the tribes to get them to accept or not, is one of the importance of freedom by accepting an authority greater than ourselves. Even if one believes the midrash of God coercing the Israelite people to accept the Torah, the truth is we die inside every time we go against serving an “ultimate end”, we create more cognitive dissonance every time we ‘go along to get along’. We enhance the split between our rational mind and our intuitive mind every time we deny the “breakthrough” that occurs when we are “doing a mitzvah”. This is one of the ways society, people get us to go against our own best interests to serve the ‘man’ rather than serve an “ultimate end”. These elected officials who see mandates and want to destroy the democratic norms established in 1789 and improved upon ever since constantly fill our heads and minds with the lies that serve them-not us, serve them-not our country, serve them-so they can have ‘ultimate rule’ so that their selfish desires become our ‘ultimate ends’.

“We, the people” have to say NO to the bully, NO to the autocrat, NO to the idolator leading a religious community. We have to say YES to serving the “ultimate ends” of humanity, YES to “doing a mitzvah” as a “breakthrough”. Now is the time for all of us to take the next right action and break out of the doldrums and rote behaviors of either  rage or acquiescence. We have to break out of the societal norms and mental cliches that have prevented us from serving the best interests of our self, serving the needs of our psyche to go beyond our physical and emotional needs to serve more than just ourselves. Making love, a wonderful and beautiful action is more that just reaching an orgasm for both partners, it is the culmination of and the physical manifestation of the spiritual connection between 2 people. Righteousness is something we have to constantly and continually pursue and temper all justice with it. Rebuking our neighbor is to help them see the error of their ways and to not bear guilt upon ourselves for “standing idly by the blood of our neighbor”. We have the road map and the playbook for how to serve “ultimate ends” and we have the inner strength to “breakthrough” our narcissism to accomplish them.

I have been serving “ultimate ends” for over 36 years and in doing so, also have served my own needs. In fact, serving “ultimate ends” is what has led to the “breakthrough” I experience each day. I write this blog, do my podcast, and beginning a new group called “conscious living” in person and on zoom to serve “ultimate ends” to live my gifts out loud and to serve my need to serve. I also know that I am not ‘owed’ anything from anyone for serving “ultimate ends” even though they may have benefited from my actions. Doing the mitzvah is its own reward. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Finding the proper diet for our inclinations: Year 3 Day 345

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 345

“The error or idolatry is to idolize needs, to convert needs into ends. As I have said elsewhere, the goal is to convert ends into needs. To develop a need for that which we may not feel the need of, to desire what is commanded. (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 63)

I am repeating the last line from yesterday’s quote so the next sentence is understood in  proper context. In 1962, Rabbi Heschel gave us great advice and insight to the issues that have faced human beings since the beginning: Are we created, evolved to just satisfy our personal needs, are we created, evolved to hear and respond to a higher calling, is it both?

I believe, as some of Judaism teaches, that there are two Adams and Eves inside of us. Adam1/Eve1, found in the 1st chapter of Genesis, who is techno-man/woman-who wants to have rule and dominion over their environment, who work together for utilitarian purposes, who are much more self-contained, see personal needs as the highest achievement, and live a transactional life. This part of us will commit “the error or idolatry to idolize needs, to convert needs into ends.”

There is also Eve2/Adam2 within each of us. These are the people who find one another in Chapter 2 of Genesis, people for whom connection, covenant, ‘devekut’, union is of the utmost importance. Learning how to serve the needs of one another, leaving their parents home to begin a new way of being that is free, connected and elevated is the end they are serving. This part of us will, unlike the other part of us, commit “to convert ends into needs”.

The inner war that so many of us experience, that so many of us have surrendered to, involves these two parts of us. This always reminds me of the parable of Two Wolves from Native American culture. In searching for the exact words I came across a version of it I have never read. Rather than ending with “the one you feed”, this version, found on the Cherokee Copper Website, goes on to say: “But if you feed them right, they both win and so do you. You see both have good qualities. The black wolf has many qualities that we need, tenacity, courage, strong willed and great strategic thinking. These are the things the white wolf lacks.” WOW, the synchronicity of these last sentences with the Jewish wisdom that says “the good inclination is good and the ‘evil’ inclination is very good” is, to me, proof that wisdom is not the purview of one people, one person, rather we all have the ability and opportunity to rise above our personal needs to connect to our higher consciousness, to a higher power, to God. Every spiritual tradition has this type of story/parable in it so we know that we do not have to surrender to only one wolf, one inclination and that doing so-even if it is the white wolf, even if it is the good inclination-will result in more discontent and feelings of failure. As I write this, I realize that trying to live without the black wolf or the white wolf is another way “to idolize needs”.

Throughout history people have tried to show only one side of themselves in public, we call it our public persona, our ‘company manners’, our way of doing business, etc. We are so sick and tired of these facades both in another and ourselves that when someone comes along and tells you all the negative things you have been thinking and gives one ‘permission’ to not only have these thoughts but acting on them is ‘good for the soul’, people flock to the liar, the charlatan, the idolator, the autocrat, the cult leader, etc. This is a flaw in our educational system, beginning at home, continuing in both religious and secular schools. We are not learning/teaching how to feed both inclinations, how to help them work together “to convert ends into needs”. As a result of the failures of our educational system, we find ourselves in a world where ethics are situational, there can be alternative facts, liars and sexual harassers, sexual assaulters are considered ‘authentic’ people!

The solution “says simple and does hard” as the saying goes. We have to re-orient ourselves, re-educate ourselves and our children so they can educate their children correctly. We have to immerse ourselves in our spiritual paths, the teachings of which will lead us to find our own unique way to “develop a need for that which we may not feel the need for, to desire what is commanded.” We have to once again ask ourselves the how to questions rather than the why questions such as :

How do we rise above our selfish needs, how do we end our fascination with idolatry? We do this by dealing with our outsized Yetzer Hara, our overfed Black Wolf, so they no longer need to be dominant, they instead learn how to have “devekut”, union, with the Yetzer HaTov, the White wolf. We do this by also feeding the other parts of us, the good inclination, the white wolf the proper ‘vitamins’ so they can grow and meet the arguments of the Black wolf, the ‘evil’ inclination. Feeding them the proper diet of spirituality, of gratitude, of the joy of being commanded will strengthen them and help the ‘negative’ parts of us join with the ‘positive’ parts of us to form “a more perfect union” a more whole human being that is of service to more than just themselves. It is a hard job, it entails seeing the nuances of the demands upon us like “do justly” because we are also told that all justice has to be righteous, there has to be mercy within our decisions or they are not just and there has to be justice within our mercy or they are not merciful. We have to continually strive to find the “proper measure” of many traits and demands in order to fulfill one demand. It will take a lot of trial and error, being unafraid to admit our errors, clean them up, learn from them, and move forward. It ain’t easy and it is so gratifying and soothing to engage in this ‘war’.

I have been progressing in my service of ends rather than the needs my idolizing self comes up with. I hear the demands in my ears, in my heart, in my soul each day and I respond to the best of my ability. I have always fed both wolves, it is only in my dedication to a spiritual, religious practice that I have been able to feed them both according to their needs rather than according to my desires. I have stopped needing my desires to be met and respond to the demand of my higher self, my better angel instead-not always as successful as I would like and one grain of sand better each day. The how to questions fill my days and I am grateful each evening for the demands them! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Fulfilling "authentic needs" while not idolizing them - Year 3 Day 344

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 344

“Our tradition insists that we must neither defy desire nor vilify it. Far from defying legitimate needs, it regards authentic needs as spiritual opportunities. It tries to teach us not only to satisfy needs but to surpass them. The error or idolatry is to idolize needs, to convert them into ends.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 63)

Immersing ourselves in the words above, one can experience the radical revolution Judaism is! One can understand the desire of the followers of Moses to “spread the word”, be “a light unto the nations” because this way of being is inherent in our tradition and our nature. That followers of Jesus and Mohammed went in other directions using the Bible as their starting point is only further proof of the revolutionary nature of religion and spirituality.

When we “neither defy desire nor vilify it”, we have the possibility and opportunity to live in proper measure with our desires and to ascertain which desires are “authentic needs” and which ones are not. We have the choice to use our “authentic needs as spiritual opportunities” rather than have them define us or rule us. When our needs define and/or rule us we are either in or close to living in an addictive manner. When our needs overrule taking the next right action, when we make fulfilling them more important than anything else-we are in the throes of addictive behaviors, of possible narcissism, of being entitled, etc and herein lies the big problem. We are seeing more and more people fall into these addictive, hypnotic states and not realizing it because their ‘needs’ are for more money, more power, more recognition, more of the things society rewards us for and seems to value most. Hence we fall into the abyss of inauthentic needs, we “idolize needs, convert them into ends” and disregard the authentic needs we have and the ones people around us have.

Both the far left and the far right, the fundamentalist Christians, Jews, Muslims, the ‘christian nationalists’ and, I would add, even the humanists all dance on the edge of the abyss I mentioned above. All people who idolize needs, all people who convert their needs into ends are either about to or already have fallen into the abyss of idolatry and/or error. Rather than surpass their needs, to help another human being, rather than understand that each person has authentic needs that they need to fulfill, these groups of people and their leaders are only concerned with their need for power and control, their need to resist rather than co-exist, their need to have rule over everyone else and insist that everyone “bend the knee” and grovel in front of them. We see this with autocrats, with elected officials, we see this in America, in Israel, in Russia, in Hungary, in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea.

This is not a polemic against fulfilling needs-on the contrary as Rabbi Heschel states above, this is a call to action to discern what are our “authentic needs” and what are the inauthentic needs that we spend so much time seeking. The need of one party to claim a mandate to ‘rule’ over the country when the country is so almost evenly split is an example of an inauthentic need. Why does this happen? It is a “tell” that the party claiming the ‘mandate’ wants to use their power to enhance themselves, to feed their inauthentic needs of more money, lower taxes, bastardize the rule of law, spread more lies about our allies and extol our enemies, imprison people who are doing today what our ancestors did in the last century, come to America with no visa, some even snuck into the country because they were escaping persecution in Russia, in Poland, in Germany. Rather than seeing the “authentic needs” of women, the “authentic need” to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, people who come to “idolize needs, to convert them into ends” are blind to what is good for the country, what is good for another person, another group/tribe-they are only interested in making their “needs into ends”.

This is the challenge that spirituality and faith come to respond to. When we are living consciously, when we are living faithfully to our ethical and decent principles and values, when we are in tune with our higher consciousness, we can respond to the desire to “idolize needs, to convert them into ends” with a HELL NO! Through the practice of our faith, our spiritual discipline, we exercise our higher consciousness, we are better able to articulate to ourselves our “authentic needs” and discern the inauthentic ones. We gain the insight to express our spirituality through the fulfillment of our “authentic needs”. Instead of being either in or on the edge of the abyss mentioned above, we find ourselves enjoying the sunlight of spirit, the ease with which we encounter life, the strength of mind to challenge the lies of societal norms, the joy of living in radical amazement at how great life can be and is. We stay maladjusted to societal norms and cliches and continue to enlarge our vision, our hearing, our connection to another human being, another group, tribe; seeing them as partners rather than competitors, making them allies in promoting a world where love, joy, justice, mercy, compassion, truth reign supreme.

This way of being takes discipline, it takes practice. We have to adopt or adapt a spiritual practice that exercises our higher consciousness, our soul’s voice, and gives us free and constant access to our inner life. Rather than ignore our inner life, when we fulfill our “authentic needs” and regard them as “spiritual opportunities”, we welcome the diverse ‘voices’ in our inner life not as put downs or elevators, we welcome them as helping us see the whole picture and give us the information we need to make informed and good choices. Rather than need to have dominion over another human being, we seek collaboration, we seek engagement to find the next right action to take and we reject the idolatry practiced by so many. We light the candle of hope and we become a “light unto the nations”, “a nation of priests” in our group/tribe and as an example of “reaching across the aisle” and bringing humanity together to better serve one another and live our spiritual nature out loud.

I continue to discern “authentic needs” from the false ones, it is a hard job! I also have stopped worshipping the idols of my past and I seek to collaborate and cooperate, I always say-I’m like Tom Sawyer, I want everyone to help me paint the fence. I know I have mixed up the real and the false, I know I have and continue to fulfill needs that another may look down upon and I know that I can no longer give into the whims of society, the rule of societal norms because fulfilling the “authentic needs” of mine and God’s is what makes me a better human being. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Are you living a life of intellectual effort or notorious cliches? Year 3 Day 343

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 343

“Intellectually, we know the universe is not here for our sake; it is not here to please our ego. Practically, however, we act as if the purpose of the universe were to satisfy our interests and needs. However, a life without demands on the mind, heart, body and soul, a life without constant intellectual effort, spells the doom of culture. We must not remain the errand-boys of yesteryears fashions; we must not embalm notorious cliches.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.62)

What does it mean to have “demands” put upon us? Do we listen to them, do we get angry about them? In today’s culture, we fight with one another when ‘one side’ puts “demands” on ‘another side’; like the current bathroom wars, the wars going on regarding who is in control of a woman’s body- her and her doctor or the government/‘religious christians’, etc. We don’t like it when the boss “demands” we work overtime when we are on salary and don’t get paid for it, we don’t like it when our spouse or children put “demands” on us when we just want to ‘relax’, etc. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is telling us, just as the Bible tells us that “a life without demands…spells the doom of culture and, I would add, the doom of the human being!

We are living in a time which is reflective of other times in history when the autocrat, the King, the dictator, et al, wants to tell people they don’t have to listen to the demands of the Bible like: “love your neighbor as yourself”, “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, “care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy”, “choose life”, “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”, “one law for the citizen and the stranger alike”, etc. Trump, Putin, Orban, and their cronies do not want people to experience and respond to the “demands on the mind, hear, body and soul”. Responding to these “demands” enables us to make choices, to think for ourselves instead of ‘following the leader’, in essence these “demands” give us choice, they make us able to be free, they replicate the experience at Mount Sinai when the slaves redeemed from Egypt, the people who left the grasp of the dictator of the time, Pharaoh, said “we will do and then we will understand”. The acceptance of the “demands” as the pathway to wholeness, to growing intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, physically is mystical experience that can never be adequately described and cannot be replicated in a lab or by a drug.

The dumbing down of America, the dumbing down of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, are CRIMES! This is how great teachings and wisdom get bastardized and used against people instead of for people’s well being. It is not that autocrats don’t make demands, they just say they won’t, they just promise to ‘get even’, ‘be your retribution’, and then they demand you bend the knee, kiss the ring, line their coffers, and become subservient to their needs and “demands”! We are watching, some of us in horror and others with glee, as Putin’s useful idiots are being nominated to run essential departments in our government, a woman who praises Putin and Assad, a man who is a pervert, possibly had sex with an underage girl, a man who wants to bring back the crusades, people who worship Hitler, want their generals to be like “Hitler’s generals”, etc. Rather than teach our history in all its glory and gore, in all of the amazing things our democracy has accomplished along with the terrible actions we took under our flag, people want to deny truth today precisely because they want to live “a life without constant intellectual effort”. MAGA is the epitome of being “the errand-boys of yesteryears fashions” as well as the actions which “embalm notorious cliches”!!

We, the People have to stand up against this way of being-we have to end the “dumbing down” of Americans by both the far right and the far left. Our colleges and universities have to return to making “demands” upon our children to learn the whole story, let go of their need to present only one side, be it the ‘conservative side’ or the ‘progressive side’ because, in truth, both are regressive, both deny the truth of the ‘other side’ thereby lying to the people who are listening to them, stunting the “intellectual effort” that really living “demands” denying the “demands” of the soul, the mind, etc. We, the People have to stand up for our self, our authentic humanity and say NO to the autocrats on both ‘sides”, on both extremes of the continuum. We have to voice the “demands” of freedom for all, the “demands” of the poor, the needy, the stranger to be seen as human beings in need of kindness, the “demands” of one law for the king and the pauper, the citizen and the stranger, the “demands” of “righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue”, the “demands” of rebuking our neighbors to help them get back on a path of mercy, kindness, love, and truth, etc.

We, the People, do this by resisting the temptation to see the people who are sucked into the vortex of the extremists as our enemies. We have to see them as “pathetic” meaning we show them divine pathos, compassion that rises to the level of our best self, our “better angels” and reach out to find common ground and ‘argue’ out our differences so we can learn from one another, we can find compromises that respect the dignity of both people and open the eyes of those who are blind and help those who are deaf hear truth. We, the People do this by never giving up, not leaving our cities, our towns, our country. We stand with those who are in this fight and we demand our allies adhere to “freedom for all”, that we do not permit the backbiting and infighting that has split the coalitions of minorities that made the Civil Rights Act of 1964 happen. We, the People have to end the exclusiveness of ‘victimhood’ that has taken hold in the BLM, Women’s, and other movements, especially in the anti-semitism that is so rampant in the ‘progressive’ as well as the ‘conservative’ movements. We, the People, have to say NO to any type of prejudice against any group even those we are opposing, even those wanna-be Pharaohs.

It is not easy to “love your enemy”! I have had difficulty with this forever and I have learned that when I don’t, I become “my enemy”. I also know that I have fought for freedom for all and restraints on what people do to one another under the guise of ‘freedom’. I respond to the “demands” of my “mind, heart, body and soul” each day and I live in “constant intellectual effort” so I can keep sharpening my hearing of the “demands” that are being presented to me today. I am learning to be silent and take in the call before responding to what I think is the call. I am committed to never be the “errand-boy of yesteryears fashions” nor to “embalm notorious cliches”. I live in wonder and awe. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Dealing with Cognitive Dissonance- Year 3 Day 342

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 342

“Intellectually, we know the universe is not here for our sake; it is not here to please our ego. Practically, however, we act as if the purpose of the universe were to satisfy our interests and needs. However, a life without demands on the mind, heart, body and soul, a life without constant intellectual effort, spells the doom of culture. We must not remain the errand-boys of yesteryears fashions; we must not embalm notorious cliches.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.62)

The first two sentences, written and delivered in 1962, are more true today than when Rabbi Heschel first spoke/wrote them! Herein lies the cognitive dissonance of humanity, the realization that our beliefs and our actions do not match, are not congruent and we seem unable to bring them back together. When our “knowing” and our actions are in conflict with one another, something has to give and it is, unfortunately, our “knowing”, our values.

What was happening and continues to grow in more nuanced and overt ways is that “to satisfy our interests and needs” we will change our beliefs, discard our values, twist ourselves into pretzels to validate our incongruent actions really do serve our highest values, they actually are following the words of Moses, of Jesus, of Mohammed, of Buddha, of …! We have a society that believes in ‘christian values’ as long as we can treat the stranger poorly, take advantage of the poor, shut the door on the needy and make everyone subservient to the ‘ruling class’ of rich people. Because of our cognitive dissonance, people believed the richest man in the world was their friend and Putin’s stooge(s) want the best for the poor and the needy! A liar and convict was/is seen as truthful and authentically christian and the ‘anointed one’!

We know that we have screwed up the climate, we are aware that “drill baby drill” will only continue to retard the climate and hasten more and more climate changes. We know that putting people in “detention camps” and using the military on American soil goes against the goals of American democracy. We are fully aware that putting people’s health at risk and women not being able to receive the care they need because religious zealots and liars claim that it is against ‘christian values’ is bullshit. Yet, people buy into these lies and these harmful ways making themselves believe that it is for ‘the greater good of America’!! We find all sorts of reasons to buy into the cognitive dissonance of our practice being in direct opposition to our intellect. How sad that we were warned and have so many experiences throughout history of how bad this is for individuals, for countries, for a people and we fail to believe it.

The reflection of ourselves in the water, in the mirror has come to be a source of lies and subterfuge for us. Our narcissistic way of being tells us that we are the end all, be all and we can do whatever we want to with reckless abandon and no personal responsibility-this is one of the “interests and desires” we humans have. We see this in our choices of elected officials, we see this in the way we sit in the pews and nod our heads like good sheep, the way we sit in classrooms in colleges and schools around the country nodding our heads and going along to get the grade we need to secure the job we don’t want and make the money that we believe will bring us joy and/or a seat at the table of power. We have so convinced ourselves of the “goodness of power”, the “need to be rich” that we have done things that go against our very values, that we would be ashamed to admit to our children, in order to ‘succeed’, to ‘get ours’. This is cognitive dissonance at its height.

I asked my father, z”l, what he did in World War II when he served and he never wanted to talk about it. He told us a little, he was one of the radio operators for the atomic bomb run on Japan and he never could talk about the horrors he saw in Europe and in the Pacific. When my oldest brother went to “boot camp” for the National Guard, even though my father knew he wasn’t going overseas, my father cried because he knew what boot camp was like and he didn’t want his sons to have to go through the degradation and, God forbid, go to war and experience the horrors that he had. His war and his service were necessary for the good of the world, to stop Nazism from flourishing was a higher goal and what he had to do, what his friends and fellow soldiers had to do in order to achieve this holy goal was not so holy, what they saw was so degrading, so cognitively dissonant, he had to not talk about it, not think about it and it affected him for the rest of his short life. He was more intense about doing the next right thing, he was more intense about treating every person well-regardless of race, creed, religion.

We all need to find the ways to live into our cognitive dissonance rather than run away from it. We have to look in the mirror and, instead of seeing our narcissistic solution to the dissonance, see our cognitive dissonance for what it is and change our actions instead of changing our perceptions and values! We need to realize that “to satisfy our interests and needs” is not the ultimate goal of being human, it is not the reason we evolved and/or were created. We are told in the Bible to “care for the earth”, as we can see, the world is a garden and each of us has a plot to tend, grow, care for and we have to do the best we can each and every day to make it one grain of sand more fruitful and seek to multiply the yield of our bounty so we can share it with those around us. The cognitive dissonance of being human will never leave us, in fact it is a good thing like guilt if used for our benefit and the benefit of another. Both cognitive dissonance and guilt lead us to examine our selves, hopefully, and change our behaviors to be more in line with our values and principles, more in line with care and concern for the universe and our fellow human beings. This is the way to “teach our children” and the way to re-educate ourselves, to re-calibrate our ‘true north’ and re-dedicate our efforts to making the world a better place because we were/are here.

My father left the world a better place by his presence, his children live lives of kindness and righteousness to the best of our ability, his grandchildren keep making significant differences in the world by caring for people in need, and all of us fight our cognitive dissonance and use it to make our corner of the world a little better thanks to his example and love. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How do you rise above your "interests and desires" to do the next right thing? Year 3 Day 341

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 341

“The prevailing philosophy of education operates upon the assumption that man and his destiny must be conceived in terms of interests and needs.I maintain that if we continue to entertain such a view, education will be doomed to failure. Such a view is part of a way of thinking which tends to flatten things. We deal with human beings as if they had no depth, as if the world had only two dimensions.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 62)

The prescience of Rabbi Heschel always astounds me and especially today. We have seen the failure of the philosophy he describes in italics above. When our mind is focussed on only our “interests and needs” is it any wonder why we are in the state we are in?

Identity politics, claiming of victimhood, wearing our ‘poor me’ on our sleeves has landed us in a state where people have put a convicted felon, a man found guilty of sexual assault, a bankrupt businessman, a liar and cheat in the White House. Whether one voted for him or not, the main motivator in the voting was not saving democracy from a man who told us he wants to be “a dictator on day 1”, the main motivator was what people perceived to be their “interests and needs”. In our daily living, we demonize ‘those people’-whomever disagrees with us- rather than seeking to find common ground and see how much in common we actually have and even where we disagree it is more about the how than the what. Yet, being a ‘victim’ of the white man, a victim of the Biden administration which did more than the Trump administration to help the working person, hating the over correction of the far left in their victimhood and shaming, cancel culture, etc. led us to believe that we could be like Trump and get away with all the bad impulses we have and he will champion our resurrection to being equal once again. While this may work for white men, anyone else-not so much probably and he sold this lie, he told us who he is, how he is going to get ‘retribution for all of us’ while seeking to get his revenge and still trap the working class and the poor in their misery.

When we fail to see life in three-dimensional terms, we will always live in either/or, zero-sum ways. These ways have led to the myriad of wars throughout history, they have led to the exiling of people, the enslaving of people, the mistreatment of people, the demonizing of groups of people just because it was convenient and expedient to do so. This has been true throughout our history, it was true in Egypt for the Israelite People, it was true in the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, it was true for early Christianity-hence the anti-semitism that exists to this day. It was true during the Crusades against Muslims mainly and today, the pick for Secretary of Defense is a man who has a Jerusalem Cross tattoo, signifying his belief in the righteousness of the Crusades, his anti-Muslim stance, and his belief that the U.S should be ruled by Biblical Law, as he and his fellow christian nationalists define it. The flattening out of human beings is as prevalent on the left as on the right. The left does it by demonizing those who hold different opinions than theirs, those who belong to a group they have determined are “colonizers, oppressors, etc.”, case in point-the far left is as anti-semitic as the far right and deny civil rights to the Jews in America and Israel while we were among the first to join with Rev. King and the Civil Rights movement in the 50’s and 60’s!

The failure of “interests and desires” , the flattening out of humanity, the lack of “depth” and living in “two dimensions” only has led us to our current state of affairs. In America, 1/2 the voters in our last election voted for their “desires” to not be responsible for their mistakes, for their crimes like their ‘fearless leader’ and they voted for what they were sold are their “interests” even though in reality they are the “interests” of the rich. On the other side, the demonizing of ‘those people’ and the lack of three dimensional conversations about policies, the lack of meeting people where they are, not speaking in ways that people could hear convinced people that the liars were telling the truth, that they were so much better off with the person who bungled the Pandemic and told us to ingest bleach to save ourselves!

We are in desperate need of a deep dive into our inner life. We are in desperate need of a return to our core values, the values of every spiritual path: justice, kindness, mercy, compassion, love, rebuke, amends, etc. We cannot do this when we only are concerned with our “interests and desires” and not with what is true and right. When we live two-dimensional lives we choke our inner life, we strangle our souls and this leads us to more misery and despair, it leads us to seek out ‘bad guys’ in order to make ourselves look good, we live in being a ‘victim’ and blaming ‘them’.

“Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country” goes the beginning typing test and it is true in this moment as it is in every moment. “Evil flourishes when good people do nothing”, a quote attributed to Edmund Burke and not validated, is as true today as when he said/intimated it in the middle of the 18th Century. We are the people being called upon, each and every person here in America, in Israel, in Ukraine, in the free world. We are the people who have to safeguard our freedoms and democracies so we can help others around the globe. We have the lessons from history when we have allowed a tyrant to take lands from a free country, we have the lessons of what happens when we demonize one group and coalesce around the hating of that group, so we know how to prevent these tragedies from happening again! It is an inside job. We have to live into the spiritual values we claim to love and hold dear-no more just spouting them. We have to “care for the stranger”, we have to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves”, we have to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, and so many more like “do justly, love mercy, don’t bear false witness, walk humbly in the ways of God”. To do this, we have to repair our inner life, we have to see our three-dimensional natures and live into them all.

The ways I do this type of living is to constantly review my days, quickly and slowly, to see what I have done well and where I have missed the mark-make my plan for amends and correction as well as a plan to enhance the good. I do my writing and studying each day and I engage in meaningful conversations. I do the best I can to engage in “Conscious Living” and I hope to spread this way of being beginning the week of Dec. 2 in small groups online and in person here in the Desert. I believe in the goodness of people and our similarities. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Is your heart and soul open to the wisdom we inherit from our ancestors? Year 3 Day 340

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 340

“Extremely important in Jewish tradition is the spiritual centrality of the word. It is…in the word where the insights and the spiritual power of more than thirty centuries is contained. These repositories will remain locked, the thoughts they contain will remain out of range, unless we approach them with heart and soul, with intelligence and imagination.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 62)

I have been trying to not have the same paragraph for more than 2 days, yet here I am using this one for 3 days because the ideas, the paths to freedom and “centrality” of the spirit are so wide that I could not write it all in just 2 days.

The “repositories will remain locked, the thoughts they contain will remain out of range” reminds us of how easy it is to be oblivious to the “word” and the “spiritual power” that are contained within each and every “word” of the Bible. We have been given a gift that goes beyond the comprehension of our rational minds, a way of being that responds to and helps to grow our inner life, our higher consciousness and appeals to a higher logic that can only be understood, lived, maintained and grown through “heart and soul, with intelligence and imagination”.

We are in an era where people who have or could have the keys to “these repositories” have either lost them, used the “word” to further their self-interests, not the interests of spirit nor of another human being nor of God. They are using the words in “these repositories” to bastardize the teachings of Moses, of Christ, of Mohammed, of Buddha, as well as using our Biblical characters and stories to lie about what was, what is and what should be-their being in control. Many of the people who have the keys to the “repositories” are more interested in lining their own pockets, in electing their own puppets-even if these puppets owe or pledge allegiance to Putin and his gangs-, and in selling their lies and deceptions to enslave the masses.

We have lost faith in our faith leaders because we have found them to be self-serving and mendacious. We have found them to not truly care about the poor, the stranger, the needy, etc. They are not interested in tithing themselves, they want everyone else to pay for their needs and the livelihood they have come to expect. The rich backers of these idolators are seeking to use them to make the masses more pliable as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer so the masses don’t revolt. Instead they teach the ‘prosperity gospel’ which tells the masses that they are not rich cause God doesn’t love them as much as God loves the rich! I call BULLSHIT on these liars and courtiers of Pharaoh, of Trump, of Putin, Orban, Netanyahu, etc. These ‘faith’ leaders have earned our disrespect, they have earned their low stature in the eyes of people who really have and live their faith.

The “repositories” are the scrolls that have been left to us by great spiritual leaders and thinkers. They are the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the words of Buddha, the Big Book of AA,  and other great teachers, they are the commentaries on all of these holy texts. I use the word “holy” to indicate words and deeds that elevate the human being, separate us from the animal kingdom, and connect us to one another. This is the main goal, I believe, of these “repositories” and, only when “we approach them with heart and soul, with intelligence and imagination” can we truly unlock their wisdom, their firm guidance, and the path to inner and outer freedom they gift to us. They are a gift that has been left to us, the inheritors of great spiritual elders, the inheritors of great inventors, the inheritors of the good people who, against all odds, have kept humanity from killing itself throughout the millennia. It is up to us to open these “repositories” and allow them to uplift and grow our inner lives, allow them to rip away the “foreskin of our hearts”, to use our mind and soul in cooperation and collaboration with one another to uncover the hidden gems of wisdom found in them. It is way past time for us to immerse ourselves in the “imagination” of these “repositories” by spreading the words: CHOOSE LIFE!

To live into the wisdom above takes the ego strength to live our lives in “proper measure”, which is what the Hebrew word “midot” means. A “midah” is a measure and “midot” is the plural-the word has come to mean “traits”, so each trait we have we are being called to use in proper measure rather than any way we want to. Each time we want to exert power just because we can, we are reminded by the “repositories”, by the spiritual will of our ancestors, to use our power to uplift and help, to continue and grow the individual and collective freedom for all. Each time we want believe our money, our station, our lack of money, our ‘victim identity’ gives us the right to ‘get what we want’, to ‘get even’, to ‘bend the law to our will’; our “repositories” illumine a path of “proper measure” for us to follow instead. We have to unlock “these repositories” for our sake, for the sake of our descendants, for the sake of human beings everywhere. The global world is not a new phenomenon, even though we speak of it as if it is. There were traders going from place to place sharing not just goods and services, they were sharing the wisdom and treachery of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Greek mythology, Roman Mythology, the Psalms of David, the Torah, the words of the prophets, the teachings of Jesus throughout the world that they knew and beyond as the Polynesian religion included “Cities of Refuge” in it-the only other religion besides Judaism to have it as part of their code! We have the examples of people who “approach them with heart and soul” like Thomas Merton, St. Francis, The Baal Shem Tov, Rev. King, etc that we can follow their lead if we are willing to summon the courage ‘go against the grain’ which is the foundation of the books and examples of living that these “repositories” hold.

These “repositories” were opened for me some 37 years ago and I keep having my mind, heart and soul opened and grown by my continuing to engage with them. They show me the “error of my ways” and are the guide book to living well. They help me forgive and not hate, rebuke and not wallow in guilt, accept life on life’s terms and continue to do T’Shuvah each and every day. They give me a bad conscience at times when I hear the them demand me to be holy when I just want to wallow in the mud, they pat me on the back when I do the next right thing and they are my punishment when I make an error-they force me to make amends and to emend my ways- and my reward when I do the next right thing-they force me to reflect my divine image back to me as a gift and an impetus to continue to live well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How do you live into the "word" that is in your soul rather than the desire in your heart and mind? Year 3 Day 339

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 339

“Extremely important in Jewish tradition is the spiritual centrality of the word. It is…in the word where the insights and the spiritual power of more than thirty centuries is contained. These repositories will remain locked, the thoughts they contain will remain out of range, unless we approach them with heart and soul, with intelligence and imagination.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 62)

Rabbi Heschel is making a distinction between the “word” and words. The “word” is, I believe, referring to the word(s) found in the Bible, in the holy texts of Judaism. Words are what we speak and use to convey our interpretations, our ways of living, or not living, the word(s) found in our holy texts-be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc.

What seems to be missing in many Jews is “the spiritual centrality of the word”, judging by the ways we treat one another in Israel and across the globe with one denomination needing to denigrate another, with one group of Jews proclaiming “we are the TRUE INHERITORS of the Bible and ONLY WE KNOW the ONE WAY to live Jewishly! What bullshit, what hubris, what a denial of our history, the words of the Sages they say they revere so much. “The word” is for all of us to immerse ourselves in, for everyone to contribute the “face of Torah” they experience this year, to come together and learn from one another-not to tell people they are wrong for their insights, not to tell people to “toe the line”, not to put people in the uncomfortable situation of either being true to “the word” as they experience it or deny their insights, deny the call of their soul so they can be ‘part of the community’ that doesn’t want them unless they ‘go along to get along’. When “the word” becomes the “spiritual centrality” of our lives, of the ways in which we live, then we no longer have to engage in the senseless hatred that destroyed the 2nd Temple and left us wandering for almost 1900 years without a homeland. When “the word” is the spiritual center of our way of being in the world, we run to care for the stranger, help the poor, give voice to the voiceless and find ways to ransom people who are captives physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. When “the word” is the spiritual center our driving life force, we no longer give in to the mendacity of another(s) and our own self-deceptions.

In our “repositories” we have 3000+ years of people’s “insights and spiritual power” of “the word” and the experiences that lead us to our own. We have so many stories which depict the humanness, the cruelty, the kindness and generosity of,  the fallibility of, the fragility of human beings. It is hard to be human and, as the Yiddish saying goes: “it is hard to be a Jew” because most people hate us and have hated us for millennia, we hold ourselves to the standard of “the word”, and we can never “rest on our laurels”, we always have to be doing a Chesbon HaNefesh, an accounting of our souls, make our amends, emend our ways, and continue to grow and change. We can never be satisfied for long, it is a daily, hourly experience and our satisfaction is based on how we be human in the moment we are in. At issue is, of course, who has the key to these “repositories”, who is ‘right’ about their interpretations of what is in these “repositories”, hence the in-fighting between denominations and within denominations.

Truth: We, the people, have the keys to these “repositories”, we, the people, have the right to interpret and understand according to our spiritual condition what is in these “repositories”! In the Torah, in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 “the word” says:”It is not hidden from you, it is not far away…because “the word” is very near to you, in your mouth, in your heart that for you to do”. This was Moses speaking to the entire Israelite people “from the heads of the tribes to the water carrier”, men, women, children and, of course, to us today. This is, I believe, the main reason for Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above-without “the word”, we would be lost, we would still be wandering in the desert, in the wilderness and not have a clue how to “come home”, how to “return to Me and I will heal your backsliding”.

Herein lies the challenge of our lives in this time and for all times: will we live into the “insights and spiritual power” of “the word” or continue to bastardize it, continue to deceive another by manipulating them and the words of our holy texts for our own selfish needs and desires. Will we continue to allow those charlatans who want to deny us our freedom to learn, freedom and obligation to fulfill the calling of our souls, to honor the infinite dignity and value of our self and every other self, etc to rule over us as the Pharaoh did, as the Priests, royalty, the wealthy did at the time of the destruction of the Temples and the Northern Kingdom of Israel? Even the fact that we call our homeland Israel hints to the rebellious nature of people, the hint that our country will be short-lived because of infighting, senseless hatred, and false priests just like the Northern Kingdom of Israel became dispersed in Assyria and, according to our lore, never heard from again.

We, the people, have to stand up and say YES to living “the word” in all our affairs, we have to recover our eyesight and our hearing, we have to be sober and serious in our play and our living, we have to engage in our own interpretations of “the word” so we can use the insights of our ancestors, add our own and make life so much better than it was yesterday and not as good as it and we will be tomorrow. We have the path, we have the “insights”, we have the “spiritual power” and we have the ‘permission’ from our Torah, from our Bible, from the prophets to use all three. The question we face, in this time of chaos and turmoil across the globe, especially in Israel and in America: Will we, the people choose to say YES to “the word” and NO to the liars, the charlatans, the idolators, the mendacious ones who are trying to deny us Freedom, deny us the spiritual heritage and “power” that is our birthright?

I get into trouble each time I speak like this, each time I call our bullshit someone gets angry with me and when it is the people ‘in power’ who are angry it usually doesn’t go so well for Truth. I see what is, what can be and say, like Robert Kennedy Sr., why not? I am an optimist, I am a believer, I know that Truth will win out and, even if not in my lifetime, the enemies of “the word”, who are running shit right now will surrender. Be it in business, politics, goodness will win the day and I will continue to fight for truth within myself and the world. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Congruently is a challenge we all face - Year 3 Day 338

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 338

“The language of Judaism is that of deeds. What cannot be uttered in words we try to utter in deeds. Extremely important in Jewish tradition is the spiritual centrality of the word… in the word where the insights and the spiritual power of more than thirty centuries is contained. These repositories will remain locked, the thoughts they contain will remain out of range, unless we approach them with heart and sou, with intelligence and imagination.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 62)

These words are essential for an understanding of both Judaism and humanity. While many people believe it is about our intentions, “the spirit  is willing and the flesh is weak” is an excuse often used, “she/he means well” is another one we hear a lot. Yet, in Judaism, what is in our hearts are not as important as what we do. At Mount Sinai, the people said in “one voice”, “Na’aseh V’Nishmah”-“we will do and then we will understand”. Since there has been a Jewish people, deeds have been more important than feelings.

There are 365 “don’t do” deeds in the Torah, corresponding to the days in a Gregorian year. Why would we need to be told “don’t do” if these were so logical? Why, in the 10 sayings are we told: “Don’t murder, Don’t whore yourself, Don’t steal, Don’t bear false witness-aka lie, Don’t covet” if these are so logical? Why are we told: “Do not boil a mother in its kids milk, Do not worship idols, do not follow after your heart and your eyes because you will whore after them, etc”? Because we would, because at the time people were! We have 248 “do” deeds in the Torah as well, corresponding to the number of limbs in the body. Each “do” deed we engage in helps to heal and strengthen our spiritual limbs, according to Jewish lore. Why would we need to be told to “honor your father and mother”, “love your neighbor”, “leave the corners of your field for the poor and needy”, “care for the stranger”, “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God” if these are so obvious? Our deeds speak more about us than our words and yet, most people will believe someone’s words, relish in the “retribution tour” of our ‘savior’, anoint the exact opposite of Christ, of King David to be the ‘messiah’, see the reflection of history in the words of someone else and, ignoring the lessons from history, support and pray that our ‘messiah’ will kill our ‘enemies’, care for us, etc- all the while this false ‘messiah’, along with her/his false prophets will care for themselves, their cronies and lead the rest of us to ruin and enslavement. “MAGA” stands for taking us back to the ‘good old days’ of hating the immigrant-legal and illegal, putting down anyone who is not a ‘good old white boy/women who follows their man’, and raping the treasury, the treasures of our country. We are witnessing throughout the world “what cannot be uttered in words we try to utter in deeds” we see it here in the U.S., in Israel, in Hungary, in Russia, in Turkey, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. The leaders have done in deeds what was unspoken at the time of their ascension to power, it is only in their deeds that we see who they really are.

Only in our deeds do we see who we really are, according to the Jewish tradition. When we “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor”, we are showing ourselves to be cowards, to be ‘okay’ with the discrimination, the hatred, the abuse of another human being. When we cheer to demise of ‘our enemies’ we are going against the way of God when the Egyptians were drowning who, according to Jewish lore says:”My children are dying, My children are dying”. Cheering the degradation of ‘those people’, believing they ‘deserve it’ is another way of demeaning God’s creation since all of us are “created in the Image of God”. When we pervert the justice system for our own ends, when we jettison mercy, when we walk as if we are God, we are telling everyone that they are unimportant, they are only “useful idiots” in our march for superiority, in our drive to have “rule and dominion” over all of humanity. How much hubris can we stand in ourselves? How much self-deception can we build up in ourselves before we see the truth of whom we have become? As Moses asks Pharaoh: “Until when/How long” will you continue to defy God, be willfully blind to the truth? Our inner Moses has to ask our inner Pharaoh this question each and every day.

What passes for religious today is a sham in many cases; people making these spiritual infusion exercises into a ‘checklist’, bastardizing the words of Christ, the “laws of Moses”, to use them to have control and power over ‘the masses’. These charlatans who preach fire and brimstone, who separate themselves and their ‘true believers’ from the rest of those ‘sinners’ who are part of the same religious group, are the false prophets the Bible warns us of. The leaders they ‘pick’ are the same as the royal houses in Ancient Judea and Ancient Israel-corrupt, false, and antithetical to what our Holy Texts teach us.

We, the people, are called a “holy nation” and a “nation of priests” in order to let us know it isn’t good enough to confess to wrong doing without asking for forgiveness, without changing our ways, it is not okay to say “they deserved it”, “don’t get mad, get even” is not the way of the spiritual path, of the ethical and moral path. We, the people have to rise up once again, as we did in 1776, as the prophets did before, during and after the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem, as the country did in the 1960’s to stand against an unjust war and for Civil Rights for all people. We, the people have to constantly look inside of ourselves and see what do our deeds say about the people we are? How does taking the next right action change our inner dialogue? Are we watching the deeds of another and are we okay with their dismantling of everything that we have held dear, everything that makes us all free? Have we stopped proclaiming “freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”? Have we let go of the command to “welcome the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt”?

Each day, I see what my deeds say about me and I am painfully aware of the times when inaction says I am not going to get involved, I am okay with what is. I feel inner disdain for these moments and they have become less and less as I grow older. I look back on my deeds and know I have made my share of mistakes AND I have done good as well. I am proud of the the ways I have served human beings, I am proud of the ways I have been a father, brother, husband, friend, Rabbi to people and I have regrets about the ways I fell short and my deeds spoke differently than my words. Most of all, I know I grow in congruency, my words and deeds match more often than not. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Leaning into our Artistic Selves - Year. 3 Day 337

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 337

“Reality we seek to express in terms of mathematical figures and conceptual generalizations. The artist knows that a human face, for example, represents an image, the complexity and uniqueness of which cannot be captured int the language of science. What the artist conveys in the language of color, shape, light, form or sound remains beyond the grasp of generalization and conceptualization.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.61-62)

The words above, hopefully, give us pause as to how we define “reality”. While many people want to ‘keep it simple’ and make science and math our guiding lights and the only ‘true’ expression of reality, there is another group that sees the generalizations and conceptualizations as the limited and necessary tools that they are. We have been teaching the “three R’s” for a long time and two of the three are Reading and Writing-both expressions which go beyond the boundaries of mathematics and generalizations. Our emphasis on technology, on science, on math is good and not the End All Be All! Yet, we seem to be in a war between the scientists and the fundamentalists, with the artist, the reader being pushed out of the way by those on the extremes.

We need to know the math to make decisions and sometimes the math says 1+1=3! We need to have a general concept of the roundness of the earth, even if we don’t ‘feel’ it rotating or feel like we are going around and around when on a world cruise ship. We need to be able to have a general concept of anatomy, of astronomy, of biology, of geometry, et in order to function well in the world and find a language that can speak to another human being. This is true and important.

We need to know history and derive lessons and ways to be from it so we can change course when we are going down a path that reflects the worst of human behavior. We need to know the Bible, New Testament, Koran, Tibetan Book of the Living and Dead, other spiritual texts so we can have a language of and for our soul and be able to speak to and with another soul. We need to acknowledge the creative power within us so we can appreciate the creative power of another artist, so we can be in awe of the “complexity and uniqueness” that each artist brings to the world, that each of us human beings bring to our world, our community, our family. We need to be able to see the dignity and infinite worth in ourselves and in all human beings. This is true and important.

We do not need to listen to the fundamentalists of science nor of religion. Neither one speaks for the core, the essence of their ‘chosen field’. “Let my people go” is not just a cry, a plea, a demand of Moses some 3500 years ago, it is a cry, demand, plea that reverberates today. The Big Bang theory is not in opposition to the stories of creation, it is just another way to express the unknowable, to express our powerlessness to understand everything. Just as saying that it was 7 24-hour days in which the world was created is a bastardization of the teaching that says there are 70 faces to the Bible, 70 ways to understand the words, the stories, the commands, the demands, the pleas. What we know, when reading the Bible, when creating a work of art is that there are no two pieces that are exactly the same, unless we use the same mold, the same printer, etc. What we know, when studying the myriad of spiritual texts, is that each human being is different and unique so engaging in comparisons and competitions is a fool’s errand. Saying that my way is the only way, be it in medicine, science, logic, philosophy, religion belies the beauty and breath of all of these ways to be in the world. It is a denial of the wisdom that each of us human beings have within us and it is a lie.

The generalizations and conceptualizations that are ‘in vogue’ now are how people seeking to live free in the U.S. are bad and wrong, “enemies of the state”. The people being charged with ‘reducing waste in government’ are the very people who want to deregulate businesses while regulating what medical procedures women, men can have. While the Insurance Companies, including Medicare, play the actuarial tables, play the odds, people suffer and these regulations are considered good by the very people who want their hands untied to dump waste in our water supply, put toxins into the air so the O-Zone deteriorates further, and want their taxes lowered while the poor and the middle class bear the burden. They want to add tariffs onto imported goods and not build up manufacturing in the U.S. They want to keep wages low so they can make more profits and raise prices on their goods and services. And they are supported by and members of “christian nationalism churches” and consider themselves “good christians” while going against Christ’s teachings and ways of living!

We, the people, need to rebel against these generalizations and conceptualizations. We need to “Come to Pharaoh” within ourselves and speak to the divine soul that is within us so we can rise above our mathematical figures and see the artistry that is our world. We have to “come to Pharaoh” and speak to the artist within the people in our orbit and  band together to make our corner of the world into a beautiful, imperfect, flawed, unique piece of art. We need to band together with the other ‘misfits’ who seek to explain everything in simplistic terms, in complex mathematical terms and help them see the beauty and the art that go beyond these ways of being. We need to band together and compromise with one another, not on values or principles which are similar in all spiritual disciplines, rather in ways to carry them out, no longer needing to “be right” no longer denigrating the poor, the needy, and blaming the “stranger” because we are all immigrants, we are all needy and poor, we are all estranged at one time or another from God, from our authenticity.

I ‘see’ things differently than many people and I have found frustration in trying to convey my insights. I am an artist, however, in clay, in writing, in interpreting, and in living. I endeavor to live my life as a work of art each day and I have a “math brain”. Blending the two together, integrating them helps me reach wholeness a little more each day. I do not jettison “conceptualizations and generalizations” and I don’t make them the only way to understand how to live well. I am not a fundamentalist except when it comes to searching for truth, which makes me open to another’s point of view. It is hard to live with uncertainty in a world of people who believe in their own “certainty” and this is when we need to “come to Pharaoh” the most. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into our Spiritual Attitudes - Year 3 Day 336

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 336

“Spiritual values are, of course, delicate, precious, and intangible. They can neither be measured nor firmly and exactly described. And yet spiritual attitudes can be evoked and fostered, character can be affected, generosity and reverence can be cultivated.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pg. 61)

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities). We find ourselves in this conundrum once again; for some the recent elections are “the best of times” and for others it is “the worst of times”, for some, jettisoning wisdom in favor of foolishness and feelings makes perfect sense and for others it is catastrophic. While most people in the world and in this country believe in something, follow some moral code, many believe in the goodness of humanity in the face of historical proof that countermands this belief, others believe fiercely and ferociously in false gods and idolatry passing it off as ‘religion’, and those of us who believe in something greater than ourselves,God, or higher consciousness guiding our actions we are filled with incredulity over the charlatans and deceivers who are about to ‘run things in America’.

The words above come as a reminder and a hope that we, the people, will evoke and foster “spiritual attitudes” in our leaders and their followers. It is a reminder that no matter what we ‘feel’ our actions have to reflect the “spiritual attitudes” and “spiritual values” we posses and profess. In a time when “character can be affected” by both the negative and positive we, the people, have to take care to live our intentions, live our spiritual values and show our spiritual attitudes in the actions we take, in the ways we resist temptations to “go along to get along”, the ways we resist temptations to “burn it down, baby”, in the temptations to hide and run away. While it is a little “pollyannish”, to believe we can change another human being, I do believe “spiritual attitudes can be evoked and fostered” and in doing so: people change! We have proof in our lifetime of this truth-for almost 90 we have witnessed this to be true through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, for 60 years we saw this to be true through Civil Rights legislation, for over 3500 years we have read and seen this to be true through the Hebrew Bible’s stories and tenets. Let’s look at some “spiritual attitudes” that need/can be “evoked and fostered”.

1. Love-In the Bible we are told to love God, to love our neighbor and to love the stranger, with the stranger being mentioned 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible! Love does not mean the same as liking. It is a higher form of living, one that calls upon us to forgoe the ‘feelings’ we may have and rise to a way of being that sees the Divine Image, the humanity, the dignity and worth in every individual and, like God tells Moses to do with Pharaoh-“come” to that divine image, that basic goodness of being, the soul of another persona and care for it, speak to it, help its “spiritual attitudes” be “evoked and fostered”. Using the “stranger” in this way, while never saying to love parents, teaching us to have “devikut”, union with our spouses and not using the word love, one can deduce that “loving the stranger, loving our neighbor, loving oneself” is the path to truly loving God with heart, with our soul and with our everything.

2. Truth- We say “God is Truth”, the first letter in the Hebrew word for truth is the aleph, which I say represents the first letter in the 10 Sayings, Anochi. If one takes the aleph away, we are left with the Hebrew word Met, which means death. Without God, without our ability to breathe, we are dead and, I posit, without the truth, we are also dead. This death, the death of truth in our way of being, is the most painful and excruciating because when we become aware of it the pain of our actions is overwhelming and, if we never become aware of our jettisoning of truth for our ‘personal gain’, the pain of emptiness and the inner chaos and war is also excruciating. King David, while a great King and a great Sinner, did not deny truth when confronted with it, did not care where the rebuke and the truth came from, he was a strong enough human being, he was connected enough to God/spirit to be able to admit his errors and return to truth. There were no “alternative facts” in Biblical Times, only in Kellyanne Conway’s world which seems to have been adopted by many. We can and must affect our character with Truth.

3. Generosity- “even a beggar is commanded to give charity” is a statement I have heard throughout my life-I first learned it from my father and grandfather who, while they had very little, always made sure their children gave Tzedakah at Hebrew School. They always paid people on time and no one was paid less for the same job-regardless of color or gender. There is also “generosity of spirit” which teaches us to give the benefit of the doubt to people, as we learn in Pirke Avot. The nuance of this type of generosity is to also know that when a human being who is miserly and miserable, who is mean and hateful seems good, we have to be wary that it is not the Yetzer Hara disguising itself as the Yetzer Tov to get what they want. Generosity of Reciprocity is also an important concept-not expecting the person we have helped to help us, rather because of our generosity towards one, generosity of kindness, love, etc will be returned by the universe.

I live these “spiritual attitudes” each and every day-sometimes well and sometimes not so well. I believe in these and so many more. I am an example of them being “evoked and fostered” by family, friends and teachers when I was ready, able and willing to hear them. They were not foreign to me, I had been raised with them, I knew them in my soul and I had jettisoned them for a while, a long while! My recovery is based in raising up my character, becoming the ‘character’ I was created to be, and no longer apologize for who I am and for being human. My character is “affected” by my learning, my prayers, my experiences and by watching “how my teacher ties his shoes”. I write on Rabbi Heschel each day because this helps me with my reverence for the human spirit and is my generosity of spirit to give my wisdom and ways to people who desire to learn and want to argue with me. I am starting a new project: Conscious Living. It will be rolled out over the next two weeks, please stay tuned for it. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Treating our Spiritual Values as "delicate, precious, and intangible" - Year 3 Day 335

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 335

“Spiritual values are, of course, delicate, precious, and intangible. They can neither be measured nor firmly and exactly described. And yet spiritual attitudes can be evoked and fostered, character can be affected, generosity and reverence can be cultivated.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pg. 61)

Today is Veterans Day in the United States and I am thinking of all who have served to ensure that we became a democracy, protected our democracy, fought in the World wars, in all of our wars whether or not they were ‘necessary’ and those who serve today. Each of these people and their families stood for and are standing for the very “intangible, delicate, and precious” “spiritual value” called democracy, freedom, equal rights for every person as our Declaration Of Independence states. When I asked my family members who fought in WWII, what they fought for, I remember my father saying he fought for people to not live in cages, not be uprooted from their homes and the horrors he experienced in the war were too much to speak of. Because they fought and so many “gave their lives that that nation might live”, we, their descendants and the recipients of their “generosity” must honor and cherish freedom for all, must continue to work to ensure the words of our Declaration of Independence are lived into, that we become a “more perfect union” one grain of sand each day.

Precisely because “spiritual values are, of course, delicate, precious, and intangible”, we have to guard them and ourselves a little more each day. What happens to most people is what Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato says in his book Path of the Just, to paraphrase, what he writes in it is not new, rather it is truth that everyone takes for granted and precisely because we take it for granted we become oblivious to the truth. The same is true of our “spiritual values”. We have come to accept them as true and necessary so we forget them and twist them to ‘our advantage’ rather than living into them so we can live better. We have become so used to saying “Christian values”, “Jewish values”, etc that these words are empty because we twist the words of Scripture, we abuse the words of the Koran, we make the words of Buddhism into serving us instead of us serving the wisdom and spirit of these Holy Texts! We take the “delicate” and “intangible” and commit adultery, we whore these principles because we want to do what we want to do, not be held responsible, and f**k everyone else. It is what corporations do when they say what they are doing to poison the earth is in the “best interests of their shareholders”, what clergy are doing when they go along with the powerful instead of speaking truth to them, it is what politicians do when they say they want to represent the people of their districts, states and instead represent the special interest groups that give them money, the party they are affiliated with, and/or their ‘christian/jewish/islamic/etc values’.

While we know these values in our inner life and we get a ‘pit in the stomach’ when we are going against them, we seem to be ignoring the preciousness of our “spiritual values”. They are “precious” because they are “delicate”, because they are “intangible”, because without them we relive the days of the Pharaoh in Egypt, we become slaves to the taskmasters, the worst traits of human beings are on display and everyone suffers. The perpetrators of the lies, of the harshness, of the hatred suffer from a deep sense of insecurity, a constant looking behind them and around them to see who is going to be their Cassius and their Brutus. The people who are being forced into camps and harsh labor-physically, mentally, and spiritually-suffer from the loss of dignity and freedoms. These “spiritual values” are what our democracy was founded on, what George Washington spoke about in his farewell address, what Lincoln labored to preserve, what  JFK meant when he said “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”. We have to return our goal of seeing everyone as “created equal” not just some people, we have to return to our goal of ensuring everyone’s “unalienable rights; Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”

We have to return to our “spiritual values”, we have to learn and relearn them. We have to recommit to them and make them our “North Star”. While “they can be neither measured nor firmly and exactly described”, we know them when we experience them and we know them when they are not being practiced by ourselves and by another person, an entity, a government. It is time for us to stop needing ‘polls’ to tell us what is right, it is time for us to end our extremism on both ends of the continuum, it is time for us to stop lying to ourselves and it is time for us to return to being a people who believe and follow thru with our covenants, our commitments to God/higher consciousness. It is time for us to stop trying to prove these “intangible” “spiritual values” and live into them in our ‘everyday living’. We don’t need the Sabbath to live holy each day, we don’t need to be told what to do by some power-hungry autocrat or wanna be guru! We have within us, in our souls, in our guts, in our inner life the “spiritual values” that create worlds, that give life to the dead in spirit, strength to the weary and hope to the hopeless. Stop fighting against Donald Trump and MAGA, stop fighting against “the Woke”, stop fight ing against ‘your enemies’  and start fighting for our shared “spiritual values”, our shared infinite dignity as human beings, our shared desire for freedom, our shared goals of making the US “a more perfect union”, our shared heritage of caring for the voiceless and the powerless as Moses and Christ taught us, our shared heritage of admitting our errors, making our amends, and changing our ways as King David showed us. We have the power to do this, it is not in heaven, it does not have to be sought for in heaven or in Christ- it is within us, it is implanted in our inner life, in our spiritual DNA-we just have to practice our spiritual values out loud and, as the prophets showed us, Very Loudly!

I have been tongue-tied so often because I am unable to describe and explain what I know in my bones to another person and been rejected, called selfish, intractable, chaos producing, etc. Even when my predictions prove out, the people who are unable to connect to our shared “spiritual values” can’t admit their errors. What I am realizing is our ‘intangible”, “delicate” and “precious” spiritual values are not the same as morality. Our “spiritual values” are paths for us to follow in order to be moral, in order to not bastardize our moral goals and live an ethical, spiritual life. I keep growing into these “spiritual values” and my biggest error is not seeing that just because something is clear to me, doesn't mean everyone else will see clearly and I have to be more patient and clearer in describing the indescribable! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How do you experience your Spiritual Values? Year 3 Day 334

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 334

“Spiritual values can be experienced in acts of love and compassion, in acts of ritual, in search for truth, in moments of sensing the mystery of living.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.61)

I have read and re-read this sentence over and over again and I believe the inner meaning of it is the difference between living authentically and living as a phony! Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word “can” causes me to dig deeper into this sentence. “Acts of love and compassion…” are all spiritual values in action-as I have understood Rabbi Heschel over the years and it is precisely when love is devoid of spirit, when it is transactional rather than covenantal that it is no longer “love”.

We have come to bastardize “spiritual values” over the millennia and, once again, the train of our indiscretions, the bullet train of our lies and mendacities is heading straight at us. Once again, the shrine built over 248 years is in danger of being breached, the “shining city on the hill” is in danger of being put to siege not by an outside enemy, rather by us. When we willingly vote against compassion, when we willingly vote for mendacity and falsehoods, when we discard “sensing the mystery of living” for the ‘joy’(?) of making someone else the ‘bad guy’, I believe we have lost our “spiritual values”, we have jettisoned them in favor of ‘feeling good’. When “love” is expressed by hating the same group, when “compassion” is expressed only for ourselves, when the “search for truth” is abandoned for reveling in the lie, we are reliving the times of the destruction of the Temple, we are reliving the break-up of the people Israel into two kingdoms, we are reliving the destruction and dispersion of the Northern Kingdom (the lost tribes) and then the destruction of the Temple and the exile of some Jews to Babylonia.

We are not in a unique position, we saw this in ancient times with Rome, Athens, Sparta, Cairo, Babylon, etc. We saw this with Germany, England, Russia, China, Japan, France, Spain and other countries in Europe. All of these countries/empires were dominant at one time or another in their history and believed they could do what they wanted to with impunity, they believed that “might makes right” and all were defeated and decimated. Yet, Jews, who hadn’t had a land to call their own, for over 1900 years, have survived-much to the chagrin of the rest of the world. It is precisely because, with all of our arguments within the different factions of Judaism, we held onto the “spiritual values” of our holy texts. We have held onto “care for the stranger, the poor, the needy” as a mantra and points us always to compassion for another human being, another group of human beings. We have suffered much death and hardship, thrown out of many countries just because we are Jews and so we know how important the “spiritual value” of “compassion” is. As a Jew we cannot vote for fascism, we cannot vote for mass deportations, we cannot vote for taking health care away from women, we cannot vote for favoring the rich and denigrating the poor-it is not in our Bible, it is not in our Covenant with God, it does not go along with the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel who said: “what is hateful to you, do not do to another person” - full stop. I would suggest that Christ would be appalled if a Christian acted in these wrongful ways, if a Christian denigrated the very people Christ hung out with!

The Bible is a “search for truth”, the “acts of ritual” are not to make us into robots because there are various interpretations of how to fulfill them, it is a road map to being able to “sense the mystery of living” and it is a book of love and loving of oneself, of God/of higher consciousness, of loving our neighbor as ourselves. We have the guidance to experience the “spiritual values” listed above, we have the inner desire to achieve them as well, we just have to allow our rational mind to be the servant Einstein reminds us it is instead of the great decider that we have made it.

We have to recover our authentic self, we have to return to a way of being that exudes and experiences “love and compassion”, that immerses us “in the moments of sensing the mystery of living” and to always engage in the “search for truth”. Without doing this, our lives are vapid and empty, without living in this way, we live transactionally and it is easy to forget the people who help us live well, it is easier to hate those people who remind us of whom we should be, who we can be. Without our “spiritual values” life is a zero-sum game and we need to win at all costs. This way of living is not sustainable, it is not Biblical, it is not Christian, it is not Islamic, it is not Eastern, it is not Jewish.

The American Election, the continued reign of Netanyahu are examples of our rational minds, of our “spiritual values” being hijacked by lies and we have become believers and followers of the irrational, of the deceptions of self and another, and we have jettisoned what we know in our inner life, in our souls for what ‘feels good’. Both the left and the right have made ‘feelings’ uber alles-not realizing that the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc teach us to F U our Feelings (the name of my podcast) and take the next right action. In recovery, we may feel like taking a drink, a drug, making a bet, etc and we make a decision to forgoe that feeling knowing another one is coming up quickly. We know that our feelings will pass whether we indulge them or not. We have to make a decision to “turn our lives and our hearts over to the care of God as we understand God” as the 3rd step of AA teaches us. This is true whether one is an addict or not! We need to RETURN AGAIN to tenets of the 10 Sayings, surrender to something greater than ourselves, live authentically, not make false images of ourselves, take time to visit our inner life, honor the wisdom and experiences of our elders/ancestors and use it to make life better, no longer murder the soul of another(s) and/or ourselves. Stop whoring ourselves for money, fame, etc, no longer steal from another, from ourselves to ‘look successful’, stop lying about another person and want what we have rather than needing to take what another human being has.

It is hard to live up to and into the “spiritual values” of the Bible, of our souls and I have made it my business to keep trying. The only failure is to give up my “spiritual values”, to let go of the lifeline that has been and is being provided by faith, by community, by family. I am blessed to be able to “sense the mystery of living” and to stand up against unkindness, mendacity and senseless hatred within myself and when another takes these actions. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you engaging in the complexities of living or just dumbing everything down? Year 3 Day 333

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 333

“To foster depth of awareness, sheer openness of both mind and senses to what is given, is as vital to us as the training in the art of explanation and expression.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.61)

These words go right to the core of our very being. Either we “foster depth of awareness” or we live vapid, meaningless lives. Acknowledging that we will not always be able to have “sheer openness of both mind and senses to what is given” and that doesn’t mean we don’t strive to! The level of vapidity that many people live at is sad, distressing and dangerous. It is this very vapidity that has led people and nations to become overtaken by authoritarians disguising themselves as populists, puppets of other autocrats, people drunk on power who will hold it at the very ruin of their own country. America, in my opinion, is in this dangerous and precarious state-will Project 2025 make us a ‘christian nation’ without elections-as Lara Trump is saying-or will our democracy and constitution hold. This remains to be seen and We, the People need to “foster depth of awareness” and be awake, alert and ready to take action.

“Foster” means “encourage or promote the development of”, “depth” means “complexity  of thought”,  “awareness” means “knowledge or perception of a situation..” The first sentence above now can be read as: “To encourage and promote the development of complexity of thought for the knowledge and perception of this moment, of every moment… OY! What an order!! Yet it is also what makes us human that we can, I would add must, engage in developing our complexity of thinking, not complicating, not dumbing it down, not jumbling it all up. Complexity of thought is being able to hold two opposing opinions in our minds, in our souls at the same time, it is being able to discern the real from the fake, being able to think for ourselves rather than believe what people tell us to think, like the right-wing and left-wing media do. We don’t need to MAGA nor do we need to BLAME THE BILLIONAIRES for our current situation, we need to be able to hear the lies and the hatred, the ‘poor persecuted rich white guy’ and know they are lies and that spewing hatred is never the way to growing our democracy, our spirits. AND we have to also hear the cries of those who have been convinced of the lies, we have to talk to them, show them and have compassion for them-even though they may take our country down the path of ruin and autocracy. It is incumbent upon a person who wants to “foster depth” to develop these traits and practice them in all our affairs. We have to help another(s) “promote the development of complex thoughts” in order to grow their souls and their “knowledge and perception of their situation”. We are in a moment where we have to be sherpas to people who are unaware and who are in self-deception.

“Sheer openness of both mind and senses to what is given” its another conundrum for many people. We have already formed our opinions, we are unable, unwilling to engage in “depth of awareness” and we don’t truly see “what is given” because we are blind and deaf to anything other than the ‘radio station’, the ‘news station’ we have playing in our heads. Because we are blind to “what is given” we find ourselves ‘down the rabbit hole’ and unable to hold cogent and informed conversations with another person who has a different opinion, a different experience , a different vision, a different “depth of awareness” of “what is given”. We have become so tightly tied to ‘our corner’, ‘our side’, that we have stopped being able to have free and fair discussions, collaborative solutions, instead, it has to be ‘my way or the highway’. In Israel, Netanyahu has not taken responsibility for his lack of awareness on Oct. 7, 2023 and before-instead taking advantage of Joe Biden’s care and concern for the Jewish people. Bibi is willing to have the whole world hate him, roll the dice that Trump will not listen to Putin when Iran puts the pressure on Putin to make Trump abandon Israel-because autocrats have always been good to Jews and ‘Christian nations’ have always treated us so well! When one is unable to see “what is given” clearly and complexly, through the lens of personal as well as global history, when we decide to throw our lot in with the ‘strongman’, we set ourselves up for ruin.

There is a solution!! We have to “foster depth of awareness…of what is given” by maturing our spiritual nature. When we realize that “acceptance is the answer to all our problems today”(Dr. Paul in AA Big Book), that acceptance doesn’t mean approval, that we are Holy Human Beings, that we have “eyes to see, ears to hear” ever since we stood at Sinai and accepted the Covenant with God, one another, and with ourselves. The solution is to “grow along spiritual lines” and continue to “return to” our basic goodness of being, to allow the universe and one another to “heal our backsliding” and be welcomed back in love. We can change our minds based on what this situation is right here, right now. We can and must not allow our prejudices and biases to cloud our vision, to stop us from engaging “depth of awareness”, to go along to get along, to be overtaken by the liars and charlatans that are always at our door. In the Bible, Cain is told: “Negativity couches at your door, it desires you much AND you can master it”! We can master and transform the “negativity that couches” in our lives, soon to be in the White House, and within ourselves through the spiritual work of discernment and discovery, "openness of mind and senses”, and belief in something greater than ourselves, belief that there is more to living than our selfishness-we are called to go beyond our self to make life better for those around us.

I know the pull of negativity, I succumbed to it in my youth. I promoted it in my late teens through my late 30’s. Since 1987, I “foster depth of awareness” in myself and help those around me do the same. I find simplicity in the “complexity of thought” and continue to increase my knowledge so my perception of what is becomes more in line with what truly is rather than what I have seen before. There is no “same shit different day” in my world anymore, today is new, bright, pregnant with possibilities and I am excited each day when I awake to study, pray and write so I can be open for “what is given” to me today. Rather than bemoan everything, which I do also, I know that being in spiritual growing, taking action on reality rather than acting on the falseness my biases and prejudices bring is the only way to truly live into the Rabbi Heschel’s teaching today. I work hard each day to have compassion for people who are stuck and not get stuck with them. I am committed to “foster depth awareness” in myself and in another(s). God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living with an "awareness of our inability to say what we sense" - Year 3 Day 332

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 332

“To maintain that everything we know we are able to understand, that everything we sense we are able to say, is an invention of idiots. Intellectual embarrassment, awareness of our inability to say what we sense, is a prerequisite of intelligence.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 61)

Today in America and across the world is the day after the day after. Many people are rejoicing in the results of Tuesday’s elections both here and in Moscow, Teheran, Beijing, Jerusalem, etc. There are many of us who are in sadness, despair, abject fear and worry about what is next and were in mourning yesterday. I think of Rev. King’s statement: “The moral arc of the Universe is long but it bends towards justice” reminding us that change of moral behaviors takes a long time to get to a just, merciful and humble walk with God, with humanity. Today is the day we pick ourselves up and continue to bend the “moral arc of the universe” in America, in Israel, across the world. “Oh deep in my heart, I know that I do believe, We shall overcome someday”.

Rabbi Heschel’s words above are what help me to “know that I do believe”. The hubris of the commentators and pundits, the winners and the losers “to maintain that everything (they) know (they) are able to understand” shows that they are the “idiots” Rabbi Heschel is speaking about. Yet, all of us fall into this category at one time or another and the challenge is to recognize we are falling prey to our idiocy, to our hubris, to our false pride. We, have to remember that we have a soul, we have an inner life, a gut intuition-whatever one wants to call it-and this “knowing” without understanding, “knowing” without being able to express it, is the “prerequisite of intelligence” that keeps us human and humble.

Too many people throughout the millennia have promoted the idea that we can know everything, everything can be explained, and if one can’t explain it then one is just stupid or their “knowing” can be brushed aside. It is time for us to once again go back to the basics of being human, to realize that there is no “proof” for the miracle at Sinai, there is no “proof” that the Jews left Egypt, that they wandered for “forty years in the desert”. Yet, many of us know the truth of being imprisoned by our self-deceptions. Many of us know the truth of a spiritual awakening. Many of us know the truth of wandering and feeling lost until we find our place, until we know we belong in the community, the friends, the partner, the job, we are in. Many of us know the truth of ‘knowing something in our bones’ and not being able to explain it and being shunned, dismissed by another only to see the destruction we warned about happen. Many of know the shaming feeling of being laughed at and/or excluded because, like the prophets of old, we are telling people what we see and, because we can’t articulate it and we don’t fully understand the meaning of it, our words go unheeded. Many of us know the frustration of dealing with the “invention(s) of idiots”!

As the Democrats go through their soul searching, as they see what went wrong and point fingers at the strategists, at President Biden, at Vice-President Kamala Harris, it is more important, as we think about the words above, to listen to our inner life, to listen to the messages from our gut, from our soul, from our higher consciousness before we speak and blame, before we throw the baby out with the bathwater. One of the things that we know is that “self-deception is a major disease” and people want to be like the “white guy in charge” who never is held accountable, who can get away with murder, with taking the money of the government for their companies, for themselves and then complain about spending it on the poor and the needy, who are descendants of immigrants and don’t want ‘those’ people here and be allowed to “hate our neighbors in our hearts” with impunity. These truths are what caused the ‘red wave’, a bloodbath in our elections two days ago.

Do we really want to become like this? In our “awareness of our inability to say what we sense” is the intelligence to “know” truth and not have to convince someone else. We move from a need to be right and understood to a “knowing” we know what we know and see what we see, being a leader into light and awareness without needing to be exacting. When we surrender to our own “intelligence”, we aer heard better, we are seen clearer, and we walk stronger into the light of truth and justice. When we surrender to our “intelligence” we are bending “the moral arc of the universe towards justice” a little more and a little sooner. When we realize that the lies and subterfuge of our opponents can’t be used by us because it is not who we are, we can find different ways to combat the lies and deceptions they spew. When we are using our “intelligence” we connect with another human being in ways that transcend party, politics, etc and we connect in spirit, in freedom, in truth. When we use our “intelligence” to find responses to the problems we face, we no longer have to “win”, we only have to be in the solution and help self and another find the light they need and they path we are meant to be on so we can live justly, mercifully, and walk in the ways of spiritual values and truths. This is not an easy way to live, it is a counter-intuitive path, it is a path of counter-culture and it means we leave “identity” politics, we leave “our tribe”, and join the entire human race, we find the similarities we share with every human being, the fears and the joys, the love and the disdains, while learning to respect our differences without needing to get them on “our side”. Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris showed us how.

My “inability to say what (I) sense” causes me great angst at times. Growing up I was brushed off by adults and my peers because I could not express what I saw, I didn’t understand what I knew, and I felt a half-step off. Only my father could understand and finish my sentences for me and his death cut me off from the world and I got frustrated and angry-hence my life of lying and crime, hurt and anguish. When I had my first spiritual awakening as an adult, in a jail cell, I couldn’t explain it fully nor did I understand it-the difference being I had the time to just live into it and I have ever since. I “know in bones” certain things that I can’t explain and this used to cause strife at work and at home until people understood that I wasn’t being coy, I was unable “to say what I sense”. I have continued to “know in my bones” and I realize that there have been times in the past 4 years when I have failed to surrender to my own “intelligence”, failed to go with “what I know”. Today’s “life lessons from Rabbi Heschel” are making me recommit to “know what I know” and live into it more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Say a Prayer for the Lost Souls who have changed the U.S. - Year 3 Day 331

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 331

“Immortality of the soul ought to be our central concern. By this, I mean the immortality of the soul while the body is still alive. Some human beings die long before their bodies do. The first task of religion is to serve as a reminder that man has a soul, that community has a soul. Did we not witness how entire nations lost their souls? The surest way to forfeit the soul is to ignore the spirit.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 61)

I have written this entire paragraph today because I have no idea how to separate these sentences from each other. The soul never dies, it is energy and I hear Rabbi Heschel saying to us that we ignore our souls at our own peril, at the peril of our community’s health and well-being. The “central concern”, as I experience Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is to keep the soul alive and in communication with the body, to stop our desire to kill our souls, to snuff out our spiritual nature so we can indulge in greed, lust, gluttony, etc.

“Some human beings die long before their bodies do” is another truth that is ignored because everyone knows this happens so we ignore the facts when it is happening to us, when it is happening to ‘our people’, when we want to indulge in self-centered narcissistic behaviors that our souls, our spirits want to stop us from doing. We kill off our humanity whenever we vote for our self-interest and/or for people who do not have the slightest interest in helping their fellow human being, we kill off our humanity when we believe we will be exempt from the behaviors someone does to somebody else because ‘we’re tight with the power people’ and other such lies we tell ourselves. We die before our bodies when we sell off pieces of our soul, of our humanity bit by bit in order ‘to get ahead’. We die before our bodies do every time we ignore the call of our soul, the power of the spirit, and run away from doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

We are in constant need of being reminded that we have a soul and this is what makes us human, what gives us life, that soul and breath are the same words in most languages. We are in constant need of adding to the goodness of the communal soul, not adding to the negativity of the communal soul. We are care-takers of the members of our community just as they are care-takers of us. We have an obligation to care for the poor and the voiceless, to not take advantage of one another, to not lie in order to ‘win’. This obligation stems from being responsible and concerned about the “immortality of the soul”. This obligation is at the heart of being human, at the core of not dying before our bodies do!

We have read and witnessed “how entire nations lost their souls” and we are seeing this phenomena happed today! Here in America, the country elected a liar, a fascist, a narcissist, a traitor to be President once again. People could not take him at his word and, because their souls were already dead, they have abandoned most of the traits that make them human, they have been told by many of their clergy that they have to vote against their best interests, against upholding the Constitution, against the nourishment of their souls. It is too depressing and to sad to see where we have come, how far we have fallen from the ideals of Washington, Lincoln, and the rest of the Presidents who have served with humanly and distinction. Rather than “serve as a reminder that man has a soul”, some of the religions, some of the ‘religious’ have done the opposite. They have stood with a man who is dead already inside, who’s soul is as sour and as dry as Pharaoh’s or Hitlers, a man who believes hanging with dictators is the best way to be, who wants to end health care for people, who wants to jettison the regulations that have saved so many. A man who may very well make the U.S. a ‘christian nation’ that never follows the dictates of Christ!

Yesterday’s election is a preview of how the U.S. is in real danger of losing its soul, if it hasn’t already. What is happening in Israel is a preview of how it is in danger of losing its soul. Both nations are on the precipice of this fall from grace because of the leaders they have chosen, both nations are on the precipice because the populace still has the power to protest, still makes its voice heard. WE, THE PEOPLE, more than ever, have to march and shout, have to protest and do everything we can to block the darker instincts of these megalomaniacs. We have to have the courage of Navalny, we have to have the courage of the prophets, the fire in the belly of Christ, the strength of Moses, the spiritual awakening of the Children of Israel at Mount Sinai. Like the descendants of Jacob, after Joseph and his brothers died, we have allowed a “new Pharaoh to” arise and he will “deal slyly with us” and, if we don’t stay alert, if we don’t have our voices heard, if we don’t stay in opposition to his fascist ways, he will set taskmasters over us and they have names, Musk, Kennedy Jr., Bannon, Stone, Flynn, etc. We have to end our addiction to hatred, our fascination with lies, our self-deception that we need someone to protect us, that we are so pathetic we need an authoritarian in the White House, that the rule of law means nothing, that if you are rich, you can do anything.

I write this today with a heavy heart. Kamala Harris did the best she could, she gave it her all and the people who Trump has vilified loved him more for this vilification than they did before. Not enough young voters, women voters, ‘religious’ voters, latino voters, did not hear him nor hear her in their souls. I worry that their souls have died even though their bodies are still working. I worry for my grandson, a bi-racial child, I worry for my nieces who will be told by governments what healthcare they can have, I worry for my daughter who will be told to shut up because she opposes hatred and cruelty. I worry for my neighbors who will rejoice at the cruelty yet to come, I worry for the people who will be devastated when they find out their ‘hero’, their ‘savior’ is delivering them into the hands of taskmasters who care nothing for them, who only want power and control. I worry for my fellow Jews, especially those who voted for Trump, when they find out what it means to live under ‘christian nationalism’, because Jews have always flourished in Christian Countries, like Spain, England, France, Germany, Italy, etc. I worry for God, how devastating this is to see God’s Creations purposely vote, passionately march to their own destruction. I worry for all of us that we have fallen so far, that we have forgotten the wisdom of Socrates: “an unexamined life is not worth living” and we “forfeit” our “souls” by ignoring “the spirit.” God Bless and pray for the survival of freedom and democracy in the U.S. and in Israel, Rabbi Mark

How do you treat your life as "infinitely precious... pregnant with beauty"? -Year 3 Day 330

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 330

“Life must be seen not piecemeal but as a whole. To every individual his own life is unprecedented, incomparable, infinitely precious. Every life is pregnant with beauty, and in need of a form in which to be expressed.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 61)

This is the greatest challenge for all human beings! In speaking with Harriet Rossetto, my wife, we were discussing the difficulties human beings have had throughout the millennia with holding onto the “unprecedented, incomparable” experience each person’s life is and, instead, denigrating someone else’s life because they are ‘not like them’, ‘not a member of their tribe’, etc. We have seen hatred and strife, wars-both civil and between countries-throughout our history and, rather than learning from them, we seem to be growing in embracing these negative attitudes and enjoying the vitriols people spew, it even gets them elected to lead governments, like Netanyahu, Orban, etc.

While I have never been a Republican, I had respect for people who were because they were serious, they believed in the words above: “life must not be seen piecemeal but as a whole.” They were willing to argue the points upon which we differed and find common ground. They did not dismiss me out of hand because we believed in democracy, freedom, the preciousness of human life, etc. This is no longer the case and we all pray we can return to this arguing for the sake of what is best for the majority while taking care of the poor, the needy, and the stranger. Unfortunately, in America we have been subjected to an onslaught of hatred, a distorted picture of what is because of a “piecemeal” approach and description by Trump and the Republican Party. Just as we have been subjected to a distorted picture of what is happening in the Middle East by both Netanyahu, his cronies who love to steal along with him, Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, etc. We have been subjected to the hatred and vitriol as well as the lies and deceptions of Putin and his cronies as well-all because we opened the flood gates of denigration in 2016, because Hillary ran a terrible campaign, because the American people wanted a change and wanted a white man in the White House.

Rather than see that “every life is pregnant with beauty, in need of a form in which to be expressed”, it seems as if many people believe only their life is “pregnant with beauty”and if you are not part of their crowd, if one doesn’t subject themselves to the ‘group think’ of hatred and against ____(fill in the blank) then your life isn’t “pregnant with beauty”! We can see this on both the far right and the far left, we see how they can even agree to hate the same group-Jews- with equal fervor. This is the problem that faces every individual in every age. This is the problem that religion/spirituality is the response/answer to. We all come from the first human being-whether you believe in the Bible or evolution or both- and since we are all descended from the first, we all have equal infinite value, hence “life is unprecedented, incomparable, infinitely precious” to the individual and to all of us. We are in need of one another, “it is not good for human to be alone” we learn in the 2nd Chapter of Genesis, so each of us, with our unique “beauty… in need of a form in which to be expressed” needs human beings to help us develop, fill in and assist in life’s challenges that our “life is pregnant with beauty”, doesn’t know, can’t do, isn’t our job to do.

The reason we can’t seem to get beyond our selves, to live into this teaching, the other teachings of Rabbi Heschel, the Bible, Rev. King, St. Francis, the New Testament, Mohammed, the Koran, Buddha, the Dalai Lama, is because we don’t truly see our lives as “pregnant with beauty”, we don’t see the whole picture of our living, we don’t experience the “unprecedented, incomparable, infinitely preciousness” of our life nor of any other life. We give into the rational mind, our reptilian brain, our unawakened mind so we can ‘win at all costs”, not realizing the greatest cost is to our selves, to our being, to our essence. This is why all of these victories we notch on our belts seem so shallow, so vapid, so fleeting-they are actually losses and we are too much in the ether to realize it. This is why negativity feeds our minds, this is why we buy into evil logic, because it doesn’t tax us too much, it is easy to digest, and we can puff out our chests and declare victory over our ‘enemies’. How sad, how tragic, and, as I write this I realize, this is the very definition of slavery. This is the reason we were promised that we the inner slaveries would leave us and they do, when we do our part of the work.

This is the work of religion, the work of living a spiritual life. It is not ‘woo woo’ shit, it is the daily grind of being grateful to be alive and recognizing that life is a gift and we are responsible to use this gift, our life, wisely, kindly, compassionately. Because it is a gift, we have to continue to root our the lies and self-deceptions we tell ourselves, we have to be vigilant to not become oblivious to what is for the sake of seeing only what we want to see. We have to look inside, illumine the inner chaos, transforming our negative inclination to serve our next right action inclination, and find the “form in which (we) need to be expressed”. We do this by remembering that justice, mercy, truth, compassion, faithfulness, Tshuvah are bedrocks of our foundation for living well. We do this with a commitment to see everyone as precious, to know that every life is “unprecedented, incomparable” and we all need one another to help us see life “as a whole”. We can do this, it has happened before in history, it has happened before in Israel, in America, across the globe-we just have to relearn the lessons, live into the lessons and live our values and faith in real time and in all our affairs.

I wrestle with the preciousness of my life all the time. Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words and my writing today has forced me to realize that I haven’t been engaged in seeing my life as “infinitely precious” for a bit now, I have retreated from the world in some ways and I can’t do this anymore. I know I have something to give, another act if you will, and I have been reticent to take my place on stage. I have been fearful of my past errors being brought up to shame me, to ‘put me in my place’ and I am guilty of seeing life as “piecemeal”. No one has said any of this to me, it is just where my rational mind, my negative inclination took me and I thought I was past it and today’s writing brought up the nuanced way I have been imprisoned by both of these inclinations. NOT NO MORE! I commit to see the preciousness of your life and mine, I commit to help you and me find “life is pregnant with beauty, and in need of a form in which to be expressed.” I am committed to serve and treat your life and mine as infinitely precious. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

P.S. My latest Blog is out: Check out the episode here:
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What do you truly "think of yourself, of society, of humanity"? Year 3 Day 329

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 329

“What man thinks of himself, of society, of humanity, determines his way of making a decision. Without an intimate awareness of the grandeur of living, the transcendent glory of justice and compassion, the earnestness and ultimate significance of freedom and responsibility, we will fail.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.60)

What do we think of ourselves? What have we thought of ourselves in each generation and era? How has society impacted our inner thoughts and self-judgements? What does it take to buck the trend, abandon the status quo thinking, leave ‘group-think’, put up with ridicule and derision for our ‘different’ way of being?

We have witnessed throughout history how little “man thinks of himself, of society, of humanity” and suffered through great wars, discrimination, destructions for this way of being. Whether it is the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the Jews, the Persians, the Babylonians, the English, the French, the Spanish, all of these peoples made a decision to think so little of themselves and of their fellow countrymen, their fellow human beings and were so full of themselves that they laid the foundation for their eventual destruction and descent into oblivion and ruin. While the Jews, the Persians, the English, the French and the Spanish are still around, I wonder if they learned anything from their history-it doesn’t seem that way in this moment. Herein is the challenge: given our knowledge of history, given our experiences of societal discrimination, societal senseless hatred, societal neglect of the very people the Bible and Jesus tell us to care for, will we change our way of being from the hatred and vitriol, the fear of not being all-powerful and the rulers to one of “an intimate awareness of the grandeur of living, the transcendent glory of justice and compassion, the earnestness and ultimate significance of freedom and responsibility”?

Looking at the world over the past 65 years, I am 73 and didn’t really become aware until around 8 years old, I am tearfully aware of the myriad of times we have risen to this challenge and the myriad of times the backlash against this way of living has taken over and crushed freedom, justice, compassion, etc of anyone who is not in the white power structure. There is nothing wrong with being white, there is nothing wrong with being Black, Asian, Hispanic, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc, it is only when being part of any of these groups separates us from our humanity, stops us from seeing that we are all created equal and “have certain unalienable rights”, that we are “to proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” that is the problem! It is when we put on blinders and follow the words of the despots who want to feel better about themselves by putting someone else down, it is when lying, cheating, being ‘above the law’ becomes good that is the problem!

We are in such a time. We are in a moment that is reminiscent of so many moments in history. It is not about good and bad, right and wrong that we are facing-it is about who are we as human beings. Do we think so little of ourselves that we are willing to vote for and live with a ‘wanna-be’ dictator, a friend of Putin, Orban, Kim Jung Un? Do we see ourselves as so threatened by modernity that we are willing to go backwards and deny women their humanity, deny minorities their humanity, deny any faith but ‘christian nationalism’ their humanity? Do we think so little of ourselves that we are willing to give up our freedom and agency as the Children of Israel did in Egypt some 4000 years ago? Are we so arrogant as to believe that we won’t be affected by the authoritarian in our midst who promises to be a dictator, who has shown affection for our enemies rather than for the hostages in Gaza like Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump who is telling Zelensky and Ukraine to give up land to Russia? How sad and how ignorant of history we seem to be.

Tomorrow, we go to the polls in America, today Bibi Netanyahu is the favored candidate for Prime Minister in Israel and Donald Trump is in a dead heat for the Presidential race in America. How is this possible? Is it because we are answering the questions I posed in the beginning of this blog with a resounding yes, a whimpering yes, a weakling yes? Both of these men have caused death and chaos, both believe they are above the law and both are supported by ‘good god-fearing men, women, clergy’ and their supporters think so little of themselves that they are willing to empower people who don’t have their interests at heart only their own. We are in desperate need of a solution.

The solution is to: A) cultivate our “intimate awareness of the grandeur of living” by remembering the world has been entrusted to us to grow and make a little better by our presence and our hard work. B) living in ways that “climb over”, go beyond the norm and reach the joy, light, “glory of justice and compassion”. Knowing that without compassion there can be no justice and without justice there can be no compassion. C) opening up our eyes and lifting them up to truly SEE that slavery, cunning, mendacity are not the way, nor are they permanent conditions unless we make them so with our surrender to dictators. Opening up our eyes and circumcising the foreskins of our hearts to allow the power of freedom to rise from our souls and see the truth that Sinai was not a one and done, that freedom has to be nurtured, fought for, cherished, honored, grown every day in society, in family, and within ourselves. D) we are responsible for one another, we are our brothers’ keeper, we do have to redeem the captive, care for the stranger, the poor, the needy because we have been in all of these situations either personally or it is in our ancestral history.

Having thought so little of myself as to puff myself up with bravado and bullshit for around 20 years  and to see who I truly am in the past 37, I have lived the teaching of Rabbi Heschel fully. Today I see humanity with hope, I believe and know that change is possible and will happen, just not always in my time:)! I have seen the light of hope and freedom in another person’s eyes when they realize that justice and compassion are part of their solution to living well. I have watched in awe when another person realizes the “grandeur of living” for the first time and makes the commitment to grow their own grandeur, to cultivate an attitude of gratitude, to see the glass as half-full. I know the joy of freedom from the lies, the deceptions that I tell myself and the ones that I am told and I know that my purpose is to speak truth, to acknowledge our human failings and push myself and another(s) forward rather than sit in our shit. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark