The Weakness that Practitioners have implanted in "religion"! - Year 4 Day 25

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 25

“It is an inherent weakness of religion not to take offense at the segregation of God, to forget that the true sanctuary has no walls. Religion has suffered from the tendency to become an end in itself, to secure the holy, to become parochial, self-indulgent, self-seeking;” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 8)

I would adjust Rabbi Heschel’s words above by not saying that “religion” has “an inherent weakness”, rather it is the people who purport to represent “religion” that have an inherent weakness and here is where most of us get stuck. We conflate what religious teachings are with the messenger, we believe that these imperfect human beings, these incongruent human beings represent “religion” when in actuality, most of us clergy are wrestling with our incongruence and imperfections to a greater or lessor degree. What I realize as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel in my ears is: the more one is unable to engage with one’s incongruence and imperfection, the more one is apt “to not take offense at the segregation of God”. Engaging in this “segregation”, allows us to practice our prejudices out loud, to do all the unholy things we desire and the negativity that our hearts scout out after, and come to the “religion” of our choice and hear how we are holy, make confession, seem contrite, and do it all over again the following week. This is a pattern seen over and over again and promoted, tolerated, even at times encouraged by the clergy so that clergy don’t have to look at their imperfections and incongruence and wrestle with God, themselves and another(s) human  beings, as Jacob did in Genesis. While Jacob’s wrestling and awareness’ did not last long, they were ecstatic moments that evaporated, he had them and teaches us all that the “dark night of the soul” is not to be feared, it is to be welcomed because in this experience, we ‘hear’ the words of the divine and know in our souls, that God is everywhere.

The original Tabernacle was a “Tent of Meeting” and the words of the 10 sayings were not stored there in order to segregate them, they were stored there so the Priests could teach them to us and us to our children, etc. Being a repository is not the same as walling something off, it is not the same as being “self-indulgent, self-seeking”. The “segregation of God” is not only “self-indulgent, self-seeking” it is also parochial and has led to wars, famine, the stealing of land, the desecration of God’s Name by treating another human being, made in the Image of God, as if they are not human. This is a historical fact that has been continued since the beginning of time and we are seeing the latest manifestation of this truism on steroids today in America, Hungary, Russia, China, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, to name a few places. Just as in Germany in the 1930’s all of the autocrats leading these countries and their sycophants are being aided by those ‘good religious clergy and boards of elders, directors, etc’ who segregate God so badly that they pray with these grifters, liars, autocrats and call them ‘messiahs’, pretend like they are ‘the anointed ones’ sent to save us and other bullshit, while they all go against basic tenets of each and every “religion” and spiritual discipline. When we put up “walls” to make a “sanctuary” we are defying the Will of God, the job Jews were chosen for: to spread the ways of living together in harmony and peace, respect and kindness according to the ways of higher consciousness and/or God. And, who is doing this bastardization, the clergy, the powerful, the wealthy, and those of us who know are shunted off to the corner, called crazy, impatient, not ‘team players’ because the ‘team’ we are on is God’s and not the idolators, not the charlatans, not the despots and autocrats.

As with everything throughout history, nothing will change until We, the People stand up and demand change. It is not just “be the change you want to see in the worlds” as Ghandhi says, it is to demand from our ‘religious leaders’ the change that God tells us to make in the Bible, the Koran, the New Testament, in all Spiritual Texts! As long as We, the People refuse to take a stand, as long as we wring our hands and bemoan what is happening, “religion” will remain “parochial”, it will grow in becoming “an end in itself” because this is how the clergy, the lay leaders grab and hold onto power. When people are willing to fill the Mega-Churches and Synagogues and listen to Prosperity Gospels and then be told to and go out and vote for people who denigrate the stranger, make women less than men, believe and act out their prejudices for Jews, People of Color, while praising Israel so armageddon can happen, nothing will change and “religion will (not) take offense to the segregation of God, they will promote it and enhance it, they will continue to “secure the holy” because they are unwilling to live it and the deception of their “flock’ is sacrilegious, soul-sucking, and unGodly!

Yet, We, the People, in our self-deception, in our unwillingness to ensure “that the true sanctuary has no walls” keep forgetting, willfully or unwittingly, to “practice these principles in all our affairs”. GOOD NEWS!! We, the People can CHANGE!! We can begin to ensure that the principles of “religion” can be lived in our daily lives, we can begin to look and acknowledge what we are grateful for, what errors we have made, we can begin again to see our imperfections as the beginning of, the core of our spirituality. We, the People can come to see our incongruences as God-given and our imperfections as opportunities to grow and fulfill the divine need we are created for. We, the People can demand from our clergy and the leaders of our Temples, Churches, Mosques, TRUTH, LOVE, KINDNESS, etc and we can demand they FOLLOW THE TENETS of the “religion” they purport to represent and demand they live into the values instead of bastardizing them. Without We, the People doing this nothing will change , because the people who live the change they want to see, are in the minority and it will take all of us to put pressure on one another to help people effect the changes that are in their best interests.

I have been living the example of Jacob wrestling during his “dark night of the soul” since December of 1986, I have been living the example of Judah’s T’Shuvah and standing up for his principles and the father who did not like that much, since November of 1988, both with my imperfections and incongruence on full display. Yet, I know the truth of the words above, my “religion” doesn’t have walls, God is everywhere or nowhere as I understand the Bible, it is humans who have made God a target, a reason, for the outcomes rather than knowing ‘shit happens’ and it is us who decide how we respond to what is in front of us. I have been helping people effect change in their lives since 1987, even in Prison, because I hear the call each and every day to add one grand of sand to  make my corner better. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you satisfying authentic needs or your desires and interests each day? Year 4 Day 24

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 24

“Religion is not a way of satisfying needs. It is an answer to the question: Who needs man? It is an awareness of being needed, of man being a need of God.It is a way of sanctifying the satisfaction of authentic needs.” ( Insecurity of Man pg 8)

Religion is not our salvation, it is not our salve, it is not a warm blanket. Religion, as Rabbi Heschel says, “is an answer to the question: Who needs man? This question has led so many ‘good Christians, Jews, Muslims’ to bastardize the very core of their faiths, twist the stories to fit their narrative, their particular political, power-hungry, misogynist bent. The question is too overwhelming for most people to even contemplate, what does it mean to be “needed”?

For most of us, we want our needs to be satisfied without considering the needs we are here to fill, without any reciprocity of generosity on our part. So many people are too concerned with their own well-being that the idea of caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy is unfathomable. We are watching this in real time with the Speaker of the House denying immediate and automatic FEMA aid to the victims of the fires in Los Angeles, because in California it is the fault of the Democrats, while in Florida, North Carolina, the hurricanes are a natural disaster. This man who says “look at the Bible” if you want to know my thoughts, denies help to the very people Jesus hung out with and calls himself a Christian??? The soon-to-be President and his bromance partner, Elon Musk have been speaking out against the victims, they have been promoting the Alt-right party in Germany, a self-proclaimed Neo-Nazi party, and elsewhere, they are sowing more disinformation and chaos over Panama, Canada, Greenland, etc, while selling Trump Bibles, collecting big money at the Government Trough, while wanting to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act, etc. And these are the ‘good Christian folk’ who ‘love Jesus’ and hate following his directives and despise imitating Jesus’ actions!!

The Rabbi who is going to speak at the Inaugural, Rabbi Ari Berman, is an enigma to many people. How can an Orthodox Rabbi, President of Yeshiva University in New York, speak at the Inaugural of a man who embraces Nazis? How can a man who claims to be a “Torah Jew” praise the work of a man who surrounds himself with haters of Jews, the poor, the stranger, the needy? How can a man who claims to be “a man of deep faith”, bless a man who is a racist, who has made caricatures out of fellow Jews (remember Rabbi Berman, Hitler and the Nazis never asked anyone’s level of observance), who supports autocrats, dictators, who will not even talk to someone unless they kiss his ass first or ….? Rabbi Berman, how can you pray when you are putting the deaths, spiritual and/or literal, of innocent people from deportation, support of regimes that use killing as a way of getting rid of opposition (like Putin), over your religious values in order to curry favor with power? Isn’t there something in Pirke Avot about the error of this path?? The Republican Senators who are going to vote Hegseth into Secretary of the Pentagon, are also cowards and examples of people who shirk their duties, who bastardize their “being a need of God” while proclaiming their undying faith and fealty to God, who has ‘come back to earth in the form of Donald J Trump’ according to Tommy Tuberville and his cronies. Rather than see the truth of Hegseth’s incompetency, the depth of his depravity towards women, the problem his drunkenness causes, Joni Ernst, a woman vet, is going to vote against her conscience and in favor of the political pressure. She is going to put party over Country, she is willing to endanger the millions of Military service people and Vets so she will not be primaried! This is what is passing for “being a need of God” in some Christian, Jewish, Muslim circles these days!

We, the People are being called upon to say NO to these charlatans, to stand up against the lies and mendacity of these power-hungry, wealth-seeking idolators. Yet, when people like Mark Zuckerberg, who has all the money anyone would need, and Jeff Bezos, who has tarnished the Washington Post-the newspaper who took down Richard Nixon, go and bend down so Donald Trump, et al can put it in their ass, many of us are bewildered, angry and lost. Hearing the words above ring in our ears, penetrate to our souls and going against the “need of God” to satisfy the needs of a pagan, the needs of Trump/Musk, is the most disgusting action one can take and, unfortunately, when people who have money and power bow down, kiss the rings and lower parts of Trump/ have to go beyond the cowardice of these rapists and cowering sycophants, we have to remember that every great rebellion for the sake of God’s name, every great orator that “proclaims liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, who takes the actions that teach all of us how to “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. With the examples found in the Bible which sanctifies “the satisfaction of authentic needs” and those that do the opposite, We, the People have the blueprint, the game plan, the road map to making our lives “richer and more meaningful” and doing the same for our neighbor!

I am still enraged about the destruction of everything that Democracy promised, of the dismantling of the Declaration of Independence, the bastardization of the Constitution, the disobeying of the Rule of Law by people who are assuming power next week and those in power in our Congress. I am still enraged at the myriad of ways Jews here and in Israel have bastardized the answer Rabbi Heschel speaks about above. Bibi, et al, Berman and his cronies are not concerned with “being a need of God” nor are they caring about “sanctifying the satisfaction of authentic needs”; they care only about satisfying their desires and interests. This makes me volcanic! It makes me so volcanic and enraged because I lived for over 20 years as a charlatan, as a liar, as a thief, as a drunk who terrorized so many people, who committed the same “spiritual rape” of trust that these ‘good christian, jews, muslims’ are doing and I have witnessed the results of my pillaging and robbing. This is what I turned from 37+ years ago, this is what I have fought against for all these years of recovery both in myself and in another(s). The path of faith, the path of recovery is too precious not to fight for, the path of mendacity is too powerful not to fight against both inside of me and inside of you. While I am powerless to change anyone else, I can have an impact. I know my loud, volcanic, enraged way is not ‘politically correct’, not ‘woke enough’ for many and I know it is my particular way of “being a need of God”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Being Aware of the difference between ends and needs! Year 4 Day 23

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 23

“We must beware of converting needs into ends, interests into norms. The task is precisely the opposite: it is to convert ends into needs, to convert the divine commandment into a human concern.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.8)

Some philosophers and historians say history doesn’t repeat itself, it just reflects upon future generations. In reading the words above, I would say there seems to be no repeating nor reflecting, just a continuation that hides sometimes, that lies dormant at others, and disguises itself at still other times. How else can we explain the consistency with which human beings continue “converting needs into ends, interests into norms”?

There is no greater example of this continuation of the history of humanity’s worst actions than Trump and the MAGA crowd. Not all of the people who voted for them are bad people, not all of them are “converting needs into ends, interests into norms”. Yet everyone who elected him and them to powerful positions, every Senator who will approve his ridiculous Cabinet choices like Hegseth, Gabbard, Oz, etc. are all responsible for buying the lie, ignoring what “the task is” and helping to kill democracy as we know it, substituting autocracy instead.

We are watching in real time how Musk and his billionaire friends are taking control of spending and taxes-these greedy bastards can never have enough. We are watching in real time how Zuckerberg, Bezos, et al are kissing Trump’s ass and maybe giving him a blow job as well in order to curry favor with the ‘boss’. We are witnesses to the decimation of the Justice Department, the Rule of Law, and the wiping away of the Truth by Bannon, Trump, Bondi, et al. The abandonment of the principles that Robert F. Kennedy believed in and died for by his son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is almost too much for those of us who did and still revere Bobby Kennedy to bear. Yet, here it is-all because We, the People have been asleep at the wheel while the kleptocrats, the autocrats, the billionaire class were “converting needs into ends, interests into norms” right in front of us and we were listening to their words instead of watching their actions.

It is antithetical for a Jew to not pay attention to their own actions nor to not pay attention to the actions of another(s). Yet, many Jews have ‘gone over to the dark side’ and engaged, much less not beware of, “converting needs into ends, interests into norms.” Listening to people speak of Joe Biden being anti-Israel is so ridiculous given what he has done for his entire public service career in support of Israel and especially since Oct. 7th, 2023-yet in a world where Truth, EMET, has no meaning nor bearing on what We, the People believe-Trump, MAGA, Bibi, et al can tell the lies they want to and people have been like guppies swallowing the lies and the mendacities up; hook, line and sinker. To be a Christian and ignore the words and deeds of Christ in favor of buying a Trump Bible is another example of buying the bullshit and ignoring the Truth.

What makes us do this? It is more than identity politics, I believe. The fires in Los Angeles are teaching us a lot about humanity, the immense outpouring of aid, donations to the people and institutions that need and offer help makes one’s heart swell with joy; we really do know how to help the needy, take care of the poor and the stranger. Yet, at the same time, there are people who are only interested in blaming the victims, blaming the politicians of ‘the other party’, there are those, like Mike Johnson-that good ‘christian fellow’- who are talking of withholding FEMA money for the victims, while during and since the Hurricanes that struck Republican States, there was no victim shaming nor victim harassment by the Biden Administration-yet Joe is the bad guy???

The state of our democracy right now is tilting towards autocracy and the people who support this are unaware that they have been “converting needs into ends, interests into norms” for some time, in fact it is generational. How many of us have heard, ‘that’s just the way it is, deal with it’? Yet, as Rabbi Heschel says above, “the task is precisely the opposite; to convert ends into needs, to convert the divine commandment into a human concern.” It is way past time for We, the People to heed the call of these words, the call of the Bible, New Testament, Koran, all Spiritual Texts: “in a place where there are no humans BE HUMAN!”(Pirke Avot 2:5). This is the task that has been handed down to us, and while no generation has done this perfectly, it is at least been the goal-even when men let their egos’ blind them to how to be human. It is not okay to accept “what is and deal with it”, it never has been and it never will be. It is time for We, the People to heed the call of the universe, open our eyes and our ears up to the call of the Bible, to “proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, to “love your neighbor as your love yourself”, to see the reflection of the divine in the eyes of every human being. These are the “divine commandments” that religion comes to teach and model-yet some/many of today’s Preachers and Teachers, Rabbis and Ministers, Imams and Priests either are “covering needs into ends, interests into norms” and leading their flocks to bow down to the autocrat, similar to the ways the clergy in Germany did in the 1930’s (again-not repeating, just rising up again), or they are too afraid to stand up to their Boards of Directors, their Elders, the Powers that Be in the Church/Temple, or the ones outside. When American Jews say “Trump is good for Israel” and this is the issue they care about, it is a travesty because if they are so concerned about Israel-why are they not there, fighting for the ‘homeland’?? Because they are full of shit, they have turned their back on the ethics found in Torah and the gifts of America while proclaiming they are ‘Torah Jews’-another example of words and actions not matching.

I am enraged, as you can probably tell, and I am volcanic inside. I am watching on a global stage and a micro stage the lies and the foolishness people buy into in the name of ‘community’, in the name of ‘safety’. I know one cannot be safe when one is lying and/or buying into the lies of another. I made the world unsafe for those around me when I was stealing, drinking, lying and hiding-just ask any family member-and I have spent the last 36+ years making living amends. I have bought into the last sentence above, I convert the “divine commandment into a human concern” each day, which in my case makes me volcanic, unable to buy into the ‘half-truths’ of the mendacious ones. There is no ‘half-truth’-something is either true or a lie-not discerning between the two kept my ‘life of crime’ alive long after it had stopped serving me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Awareness of our need for Spiritual and Religious Effrontery- Year 4 Day 22

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 22

“Religion is spiritual effrontery. Its root is in our bitter sense of inadequacy, in a thirst which can only be stilled by greater thirst, in the embarrassment that we really do not care for God, in the discovery that our religious need is utterly feeble, that we do not feel any need for God.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 8)

WOW! Religion comes from the Latin meaning “to bind oneself”, effrontery comes from the Latin meaning “barefaced, shameless”. Binding ourselves to something greater than ourselves can only be done barefaced and shamelessly! Thinking about this brings us back to the Cain and Abel story, Cain was embarrassed (“why is your face fallen?”) rather than barefaced by his comparing his offering to Abel’s. Because he could not live with being “uncovered”, according to the text, rather than mastering the “sin couching at his door”, he gave into it and killed his brother! How many people have ‘religious’ people killed because they were/are unable to be “barefaced and shameless” in front of another and in front of whatever ‘deity’ they worship? How many people have died because they steadfast in living their principles out loud? How many of us succumb to the ‘powers that be’ rather than stand in rebellion for what is true, what is right, for freedom itself?

These are all questions that come up for me in this first sentence. I hear Rabbi Heschel’s voice in my soul asking me when have I joined in the effrontery that is religion and when have I bastardized religion for ‘my own purposes’, because of my own fears of rejection! We all need to ask ourselves this question, no matter what “religion” and/or spiritual discipline we adhere to, even agnostic or atheistic.

Reading Rabbi Heschel’s ‘origin’ reasoning for religion is fascinating. He is throwing in our faces the “utterly” feebleness of our ‘holy than thou’ attitudes with which many people walk around, believing that their ‘religion’ is better than anyone else’s, that only they have the ‘one true way’ while they are actually deciding they know better than God, they have no interest in hearing the call and demand of God, and they only use ‘god’ when they want to validate their power grabs and their money-grubbing behaviors. We see this all the time, hence the amount of people who claim None, when asked what religious tradition they belong to, is growing in America and across the globe. We are in an era, once again, where the Church, the Synagogue, the Mosque are more concerned with currying favor and money from the people in power in government, on their boards, their donors than with “care for God”, than with “any need for God”. For those of us who are deeply committed to the inner life, who know the embarrassment of our “utterly feeble” attempts to repay our debt to God, to express gratitude to another(s), to live from our souls completely and wholly, we are aghast and dismayed by the charlatans and idolators who have taken over the Temple. It is ironic that the Money-Changers in the Temple that Jesus railed against are the very people who are raping, robbing, displacing people, disdaining the poor and the needy claim to be doing this in Jesus’ name!!! WTF???

Not to be outdone, of course, are the fundamentalists in other faiths who claim to ‘kill in the name of god, allah’ when Isaiah says the goal is peace, that “men shall not learn war anymore”. He reminds us there is and will always be different nations, different religions, different spiritual paths and we can, we must, learn to live with one another in peace, respect, etc. Look at the radical imams who claim to be speaking in the name of Islam or the fundamentalist Jews who claim to be living according to the Bible and the Torah while they are killing their neighbors, having one law for themselves and another for everyone else, who want to control the “eyes of the judges” so they can deliver injustice! All of this in God’s Name and in Allah’s name!! WTF???

Yet, until we realize our need to be “barefaced and shameless” in our “binding ourselves” to something greater than ourselves, to be “barefaced and shameless” in front of another human being, we will continue to hide and to stay disconnected, disconcerted and disregulated. This is the situation we find ourselves in right now. We, the People, are capable of hearing the message to Cain, that when we do right, we are okay-there is no shame, there is no blame, there is a moment of peace, of wholeness, of knowing all is right with our world when we do the “next right thing”. We the People, possess the ability and the tools to “bind ourselves” to our higher consciousness and live from there at least 51% of the time, we have the ability to rise above our “utterly feeble” ways of selfishness and narcissism, to “bind ourselves to something greater than ourselves-be it God, community, family, etc. What We, the People, seem to be lacking is the willingness to act on our ability and to use our tools. We, the People seem to be more willing to be conflict avoidant and ready to bow down before the leader/liar more than we want to stand for our religious principles, more than we want to stand for the people who have helped us and taught us how to be moral beings, more than we want to live authentically and wholly/holy. Now is the time for We, the People to return to the religious “effrontery” that is at the core of our spirituality, to return to the tenets upon which our inner lives demand of us and say NO to the liars and idolators that are selling us bullshit, that are bastardizing the very texts and people we revere. We, the People, are being given the gift of living our values out loud and very loudly!

As one who lives life loudly, I am acutely aware of the feeble attempts I have made/make to live totally congruent. I am getting better and I still have a way to go. What I do believe I do well and have continued to grow in is being shameless and barefaced in my ways, I have no shame for the things I have done to help people, I have regrets for my errors and I feel divine compassion for those who have been unable to accept my amends. I do not care what another thinks of me, I care what I think of me, I care whether or not I can face myself in the mirror, the people who love me with my bare face. This is what drives my actions all day, every day. I am blessed to have people who will call me out, lift me up, and pat me on the back. I believe that all religions give us the opportunity to face life with effrontery and it is time we all do! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Seeking magic/satisfaction or seeking meaning/being of service-which defines your way of living? Year 4 Day 21

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 21

“To define religion primarily as a quest for personal satisfaction, as the satisfaction of a human need is to make of it a refined sort of magic. Did the thunderous voice at Sinai proclaim the 10 words in order to satisfy a need? The people felt a need for a graven image, but that need was condemned. The people were homesick for the fleshpots of Egypt. The said:: “Give us flesh”. And the Lord gave them spirit, not only flesh.”

We seem to have it backwards these days, and maybe this has been true throughout the ages, religion/spiritual disciplines does not need humanity, humanity needs religion/spiritual disciplines! While many churches and synagogues, mosques and temples work hard to ‘sell’ themselves as having the answer, the truth is that we keep asking the wrong questions, as I wrote about earlier (see Year 4 Day 2). In today’s quotation, I hear Rabbi Heschel reminding us not only about the wrong questions, he is demanding that religious institutions not supply the wrong responses to inane questions. I hear his calling out to us to stop with our incessant pursuit of satisfying all of our ‘needs’, especially those that are desires in disguise. I hear him also reminding us that satisfaction is not a long-term solution. As it says in Deuteronomy 8:10: “Eat, be satisfied, bless”-telling us that just as we will get hungry again during a day, satisfaction is a fleeting experience and not to be pursued. What is to be pursued is responding the demand of another, responding to the demand of one’s own soul, responding the demand of the universe. Humanity needs religion, spiritual disciplines precisely because we have a propensity to lie to ourselves, engage in both self-deception and the deception of another(s). Listening to the hack politicians blame ‘the other party’ for the wildfires in Los Angeles and the responses to them is an example of people using their religion, their power to satisfy their personal need for power and meanness rather than satisfying the needs of the people who have been indelibly harmed and scarred.

Listening to these ‘good christian folk’ is what has made religion so irrelevant for so many, because they are using it to satisfy their personal need for power, certainty, and ‘rightness’. “The thunderous voice at Sinai” did not “proclaim the 10 words to satisfy a need” is true in the context of defining need as an inauthentic desire. “The voice” did not have to satisfy a need of its own, rather they “10 words” came forth to help humanity learn to live better with itself as a single entity and as a collective, with one another. “The 10 words” begin with and end with a call to seek truth, to not lie to oneself about one’s desires being needs, to realize there is more to living than satisfaction, there is service to something greater than oneself-whether one is religious, spiritual or neither! Helping one another is a basic need that resides within each of us, in our core being, and the denial of this need is what leads to the seeking of satisfaction of desires at the wreck and ruin of another soul and of the individual’s own soul. This is the tragedy that happens when we engage in “to define religion primarily as a quest for personal satisfaction”. Religion, a spiritual discipline is a quest for finding purpose and meaning in our lives and help another(s) find the same for themselves.

Yet, over and over again throughout history and in this moment, we find people who claim to be ‘religious’ making “a graven image” of God, a false image so they can have power and control, so they can gain wealth and fame, so they can rule their corner of the world rather than seek to improve it. When anyone claims that a politician is “the anointed one of Christ”, when anyone in power says if you want to know what I believe and how I live read the Bible and then does everything he can to demonize the poor, withhold aid to those in need and lock up/deport the stranger as well as deny his obligation to “proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its people therein” by denying the right to vote to so many, by practicing racism in the most subtle of forms, by leading people who proclaim “Jews will not replace us” and calling them ‘good people’, we can see how they are using “religion as the satisfaction of a human need”, which is to use as “refined sort of magic”.

And they have been successful which makes the words above all the more important to heed and to live into. We, the People are being called to hear the condemnation of our feelings that we “need a graven image”. We, the People are being called to remember our response to “the 10 words”: “We will do and then we will understand/listen”. We, the People are being given the gift of practicing the principles of our religion, of all religious life, in real time, right now. Whether one is religious, spiritual, agnostic, atheistic, doesn’t matter, what matters is our determination to live into the spirit that is within us. It is imperative to acknowledge our spiritual and intuitional wisdom that resides and calls out to us from our inner life, from our ‘guts’, from our divine image, higher consciousness. These words above are a calling to all of us to stop making a mockery of religious life, either by the ways we bastardize religion in our search for “personal satisfaction” and making religion nothing more than “ a refined sort of magic”, and by the ways we ignore the principles and demands of religion through our denial of it as a valid way of being. By responding to “the 10 words” in any way other than to wrestle with how to live into them is why we are so dissatisfied, why the rich keep needing to get richer and more powerful, why they are willing to bow down to Trump and kiss his ring-because they have no moral compass, they seek to protect themselves from facing themselves in the mirror by surrounding themselves with sycophants and by being close to power. Jews who do this betray a core teaching of the Talmud: “Be careful [in your dealings] with the ruling authorities for they do not befriend a person except for their own needs; they seem like friends when it is to their own interest, but they do not stand by a man in the hour of his distress.” Yet, these ‘Torah Jews’ keep ignoring historical proofs of these words.

In my recovery, I have sought to learn and study, teach and exchange words of the Bible, the core principles of my religion and recovery in order to be a better human being. In making this my goal, any and all success’ are the result of improving my inner life’s confusion, hearing the call of my soul and my intuition, following the path I hear and see to take. This means I have to own up to my own errors and not own up to yours, I have to be responsible and not blaming nor do I accept your shaming of me. By remembering religion is not magic, it is a pathway to a richer and more meaningful life, I get to love my life, live my life and love my neighbor as I love myself. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What are you going to a Religious and/or Spiritual institution/community for? Year 4 Day 20

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 20

“Religion has adjusted itself to the modern temper by proclaiming that it too is the satisfaction of a need. This conception, which is surely diametrically opposed to the prophetic attitude, has richly contributed to the misunderstanding and sterilization of religious thinking.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 8)

All prayers and thoughts go to the residents of Los Angeles in this time of dire uncertainty and destruction. Please pray with me for their safety.

The prescience of Rabbi Heschel (and others) is astounding to me. “Come to (my) church and you will be happy”, “the prosperity gospels”, “only strict adherence to dogma will save the Jewish People”, “Kill the Infidel and you will be rewarded” and other such bullshit slogans have permeated religious thinking and acting in order to ‘get more members and raise more money’! So many fundamentalist religious people and groups lure unsuspecting people, people who are seeking to belong, seeking to be accepted for who they are, into their ‘flock’ by promising the moon and delivering dogma. They continue to promote their ‘acceptance’ and ‘caring’ as long as the unsuspecting seeker keeps moving their observances, their donations, towards the goals of the clergy, the goals of the boards of directors, etc.

We have seen the uptick in religious institutions which claim to be speaking to a certain group. Just as we have “identity politics” , we have developed “identity religion” as well. If you are LGBTQ, come to our Church, if you are Black, come to AME, if you are an Interfaith Couple, come to our Synagogue, if you believe in being a martyr, come to this Mosque, ad nauseam. Rather than every Church, Mosque, Synagogue being a place for anyone and everyone to come, to belong, we are witnessing the growth of these “identity religious groups” and how they claim to envelope people and, many times, seek to change them. Rather than accept people for who they are and where they are at, rather than be a place for spiritual growth to take place in the seeker’s time, many of these so-called “identity-welcoming” institutions seek to change people so they “fit in” rather than belong.

This is not to say that many of the spiritual centers that ‘cater’ to one group or another don’t do amazing service-many of them do-the problem is with the many that do not! While it makes sense for people of the same mindset to worship together, it prevents the free exchange of ideas and ways to fulfill the demands of the Bible, the call of the divine presence(whatever you call it for yourself), and the responsibility of each individual human being. Dr. M Scott Peck, in the opening sentence of his book, The Road Less Traveled, says: “Life is difficult”. It is and our religious institutions are here to make life more navigable. Religion should be calling us to live into our higher consciousness, to live up to the level of being human that all of us are capable of and born with. Religious institutions are not here to perpetuate themselves, they are here to help their congregants, give safety and security to the poor and the needy, give comfort to the stranger in their midst. Religious institutions are here to welcome us with open arms and be very clear of their goals-the spiritual growth of the individual and the spiritual growth of the community. This means they are not here to satisfy the whims of an individual or even the ‘desires’ of a group. Religious institutions are here to move the ball forward, to help people move closer to their unique purpose, to fulfill the need they are uniquely able to, to grow and mature their inner life and to live from their soul’s knowing rather than from their ‘heart’s desire’ or ‘rationalizations’.

In order for this to happen, the extremes have to be more tolerant and welcoming of opposing thoughts, remember there are 70 (at least) faces to the Bible, 70 (at least) ways to understand the words, the thoughts, the walk the paths of the Bible and the subsequent literature is not prescriptive, it is just one person’s thoughts. The religious institutions ‘in the middle’ have to be less afraid of ‘what if they are right’ because no one knows! We have become so misunderstanding of the Bible, of the spiritual path, we are lost and don’t even know it. We have sterilized the beauty of the debate, the power of the dissent, the importance of knowing one’s soul and living from it and we are suffering because of it. There is no way that any religious institution would go along with any authoritarian, much less promote authoritarianism in the name of Jesus Christ. There is no way any religious institution would go along with and promote the total destruction of a people who are your neighbors and, possibly, relatives and call it ‘god’s will’. In each and every faith, every spiritual discipline, there are those who want to promote “satisfaction” as a means of drawing people in and catering to their desires rather than their souls. In all faiths and spiritual disciplines there are those who want to sterilize and sanitize the messiness of faith and walking the path so they can control people for their own sake, not for the sake of heaven.

We, the People have to say NO to this way of being. We, the People have to return to the core of religious thinking-figuring out how best to serve. Each morning we wake up, remember to be grateful to be alive. Each morning we ask ourselves: “what am I going to learn today” rather than ‘who can I screw over to get ahead today’. Each afternoon we check in with ourselves and ask how we are doing with living gratitude, learning and being of service. Each evening, we ask ourselves how we did, what we need to repair and what we need to enhance tomorrow. We, the People need to demand of our religious leadership and institutions that they do the same! It is time for We, the People to call out the bullshit and the mendacity of religious institutions so they can return to their core purpose-helping all people live into the prophetic attitude: “Turn your swords into plowshares, your spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not life up sword unto nation, neither shall men learn war anymore”(Isaiah 2:4). Since our religious institutions are more interested in the dogma of their own making, it is up to We, the People to change our religious institutions so none of us “Learn war anymore”.

I have fought this fight to return to the “prophetic attitude” for myself and for the people I serve. While many of the seekers bought in, what I found out, in a rudely shocking way, is that the board did not! I became a liability rather than an asset and, truth be told, in the “identity politics”, “identity religion”, “political correctness” atmosphere: I am. I understand the need to jettison me, I gave ample reason and I am still in the “prophetic attitude. Which one are you in? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

What is the call your "religious tradition" demands of you? Are your religious leaders true to this call or bastardizing it? Year 4 Day 19

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 19

“This, indeed, is the purpose of our religious traditions: to keep alive the higher Yes as well as the power of man to say, “Here I am”; to teach our minds to understand the true demand and to teach our conscience to be present.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7)

My thoughts, prayers and wishes for safety and the control of the fires in and around Los Angeles are foremost in my mind. I am praying and asking for everyone to pray for the victims of these horrific fires and not make this about politics, no matter what Drumpf says or his mindless minions do. The response from the President-elect and his ‘good christian nationalists’ have nothing to do with compassion, with spirit, with wholeness, only the ugliness that has become de rigueur for Republican politicians and elected officials. They show every day how their non-religious leaders have bastardized the “purpose of our religious traditions”!

While I know that Rabbi Heschel’s words will not change the minds of the mindless, nor give people who are indifferent to evil a sense of purpose and energy to fight with their own evil inclination, I believe that for the majority of the people who are actually “on the fence” of believing they can effect change within themselves, they do want to stand up to evil, they are desperate to make a difference in their world, these words and the thoughts can help these people move forward. To do this, of course, we need true practitioners of “our religious traditions” to step up, to push the idolators and charlatans out of their comfy lies, out of their joyful hatreds, like the prophets of the Bible begged us to back in the day and call out to us even today to “throw the bums out”!!

Until this happens, which it never has throughout the history of humankind, We, the People, have to stand up for the truth and “purpose of our religious traditions”. We, the People, have to delve into our foundational spiritual texts to find the myriad of ways they give us to “keep alive a higher Yes”. We, the People, are being called to stand up to the mendacious idolators and take back our Temples, Churches, Mosques and return them to being the places of worship for all people, ‘saints and sinners’ alike. We, the People get to cleanse the altars that the liars sacrificed the truth upon, we get to do our own T’Shuvah for allowing these bastards in our holy places in the first place, we, get to clean our ears of the wax that has prevented us from hearing our souls’ desire “to say, Here I am”. We may not be heard in the halls of power, we rarely have been, and we may get spit upon by the ‘faithful’ and ‘useful idiots’ of the politicians and leaders who thrive on lies, the so-called religious leaders who thrive on bastardizing scriptures, and, like Don Quixote, we have to “dream the impossible dream”, “right the unrightable wrong”, “run where the brave do not go”. “This is (our) quest” because only by engaging in the things we feel are not winnable, only by staying loyal, faithful and true to our own particular “religious tradition”, will we be able to change the world, like Rabbi Heschel, Rev. King, the Berrigan brothers did in the 60’s. It is true that the “higher Yes” is always under attack, the Trumps et al of the world will always lay siege to it, it is the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Tibetan book of the Dead, etc that have survived longer than any of the Imperialists that tried to keep their hateful dynasties going.

We, the People, have “the power…to say, “Here I am” in response to the call: “Ayecha, where are you?” This is one of the calls that continues to reverberate throughout history and, for people of any and all faiths, is the call that nags at us, bothers us, gives us a bad conscience. When the poor come calling, the “higher Yes” is to respond in any way we can, the highest being helping them become self-sufficient so they can help the next person. We don’t have to make the poor into criminals, we don’t have to look down upon them and say, ‘God doesn’t love you and that is why you are poor, so just shut up and serve me’, which seems to be the way some people have turned the Gospels into ‘prosperity gospel’ and these ‘preachers’ are flying around in private jets, etc.-this is not the idea we get from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount or his feeding people, nor the way he hung out with the very people these ‘prosperity gospel’ people reject! The Bible teaches us to forgive the debts of another every 7 years, it teaches us to care for the poor and the needy, welcome the stranger and RANSOM THE CAPTIVE, no matter what it costs. Do you hear this Bibi, Ben-G’Vir, Smotrich, et al? Here in the United States, the world is asking us if we are still dedicated, after all these 248.5 years since the American revolution, to the principles of our founding document, The Declaration of Independence. We, the People, are being asked to respond, “Here I am” to the call to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” and, each night we have to look in the mirror and, as the poem says, “the fellow whose verdict counts most in life, is the man staring back from the glass.” What is your “man in the glass” saying to you this morning, last evening?

“To understand the true demand”, we have to “teach our conscience to be present”, and it is so hard to do. It has been and is the greatest challenge of my daily living. I wake up each morning ready to “take care of business” knowing that it is God’s business I have to be engaged in only to get sidetracked by false ego, by fear of financial insecurity, by inauthentic desires and for over 20 years, I never even fought with what was sidetracking me, my own evil inclination. The people, ways of being that I rail about used to be my modus operandi, believing that the conning you, stealing from the banks, etc was righteous because you were ‘my enemy’ and I believed that ‘with money you are something and without it you are nothing’. While many people still live this way, I no longer choose to. It is a choice that each human being makes, whether to hear and “understand (Shema) the true demand” as we committed to do at Mount Sinai or not. It is a choice to feed the poor, ransom the captive, “rebuke your neighbor and not bear guilt” because you “stood idly by the blood of your neighbor”. These are the choices I make each and every day, whether I fulfill them each day is a different story. For the past 36+ years, I have been able to face the “man in the glass” and abide by his verdict, change what I need to, repair damages I have wrought, and enhance the good I do. I have returned to the boy my father, z”l, raised- the one who fights at windmills because truth and “a higher Yes” are more important than praise and false friendships. I know the scorn of Don Quixote, just as every one who does the next right thing does and I am joyful that my “conscience is present” even when I act in ways others deem inappropriate because I am standing up for and firm in what my “religious tradition” teaches us all what is mandatory: justice, mercy, truth, kindness, love. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you aware of "the demand", the call? Year 4 Day 18

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 18

“Too often we misunderstand the demand; too often the call goes forth, and history records our conscience as absent.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7-8)

Reading this over and over again, looking at the world we have created, the question we have to ask ourselves: is our misunderstanding of the “the demand” willful or unwitting, is our conscience absent on purpose or because it has not been developed.?

I know that what is written above is truthful and wise, yet, it seems as if the people ‘running’ our “religious traditions” have forgotten “the purpose”! Be it clergy who preach it is okay to hate the gay, trans, bi-sexual person, or the clergy who preach it is okay to hate the Jew, the Black because they are the ‘anti-christ’ or they ‘killed christ’ in regards to the Jew, or the clergy preach it is okay to hate the Arab because ‘god wants the jews to have all the land’, it is okay to cheat people other than jews because they persecuted us, or the clergy who proclaim ‘whitey is our enemy’, our ‘religious’ leadership has lost their way and are abusing their positions, taking the name of God in vain (desecrating the 2nd Commandment), being shepherds for the rich, famous, ruling class. This is the greatest betrayal we can experience.

We have witnessed the inability of “religious” institutions to live up to the values and principles of their own “religious traditions”, watching as ‘White Churches’ decry the black people, hearing the ‘new’ preachers proclaim that if one has money it is because ‘god’ loves them, speaking the lies of ‘love Israel’ while truly wanting Armageddon to happen which is the only reason for supporting the right-wing crazies there. Closer to home, we have watched how pastors, ministers, Rabbis have been eaten up by their congregations and boards of directors-with the flock believing they should be able to tell their Spiritual leader how to be, rather than having the “religious tradition” dictate the values and mores of the congregation.

While it is right and important to see what our “religious institutions” are doing, it is more important for each of us as individuals to see what we are doing. No Board of Directors, No clergy, can get away with their purposeful misunderstanding of “the demand” unless we, the congregation, allow it. No one can change the principles that a congregation is founded on unless, we, the congregation, goes along with the changes. There is no such thing as a separation of ‘white and black’ churches in the Christian “religious tradition” as I have read it and heard about it from learned scholars of Christianity. There is no separation of Judaism according to someone’s belief that ‘this is the only way’ or ‘only we are Torah Jews’, because the Bible has 70 faces, 70 ways to be understood, so while “the demand” is always the same-truth, justice, mercy, kindness, love, care and compassion for the stranger, the poor, the needy-there are a myriad of ways to fulfill the demand and each of us has our own unique way to fulfill the demand in this moment.

We, the People have to take responsibility for “too often we misunderstand the demand”. It is important for us to end our blame and shame game of another(s) so we can hide and cover up our own greed, our own desire to change the demand from the one God gives us, the one our “religious institutions” are built on, to the demand of our desires and inauthentic needs. Our constant “misunderstand the demand” is a cover-up for the need of some people to have power over another(s), much like Pharaoh in the first chapter of Exodus, “Let us deal slyly/wisely with them…so they set taskmasters over them to afflict them…” The Israelites were considered more numerous and mightier than the Egyptians and they allowed themselves to become slaves. This is an example of “misunderstand the demand” on the part of Pharaoh and the Israelites and this “misunderstand the demand” is alive and well today, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, in Russia, in Hungary, in Israel, in the United States, etc. While it is easy to blame ‘those people’ it is more important and truer to look at ourselves, see how we also “misunderstand the demand” and what we need to do to “get a new pair of glasses” and see what really we are being demanded to do and be, not the lies we have told ourselves and that we have bought from whatever Pharaoh we want to follow today, ie Trump, Musk, Putin, Bibi, etc.

We, the People have to re-engage our “conscience” as well. We have allowed them to be silenced by our greed, our fears, our need to be right, etc. How many times have any of us shut the fuck up because we didn’t want to be ridiculed for standing up for what is right and good? How many times have we allowed our “conscience” to be cowed and we be cowered by our fear of ‘not fitting in’? How often have we watched the people running companies we work for, religious institutions we are members of, families we belong to do the next wrong thing and shut up for fear of retribution and/or, even worse, because of our own “indifference to evil”. Thinking about Rabbi Heschel’s words above, I would say that the only way “history records our conscience as silent” is because we have become “indifferent to evil”! We have been so beat down by our fears, shame, being blamed, our lack of belief in our purpose, our goodness because of the myriad of ways we “misunderstand the demand” and because of the ways “the demand” has been bastardized by those we thought we could trust; family, friends, clergy, religious institutions. It is time for We, the People to take back our power to understand and recover our “conscience” so we can respond.

As one who misunderstood “the demand” willfully for over 20 years, reading the words above cause me regret, give me the opportunity to go back and learn/relearn the lessons of ruin and destruction that purposely misunderstanding the demand brings. Knowing that my “conscience is absent” when I was constantly shut down as an adolescent, when I spoke up and was shut down, only makes me more determined to never allow this to happen again. I hear the demand daily in all of what I read, hear, see: take a stand for what is right, speak truth and call out the lies and mendacities of another(s), stop the willful blindness and indifference to evil that is prevalent in our country, our Temples, Churches, Mosques, to the best of my ability. Reach out and continue to “carry the message” of recovery from indifference, from a silent “conscience” and “misunderstand the demand”. This is the call I hear everyday and, with the words above, even more so today. I can’t do it alone and I can’t change anyone, I can only keep doing my best, being available to those who want what I have and standing up to those ‘leaders’ who continue to denigrate “the demand”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Are you aware of when you are engaging in Spiritual Fallacies, False Ideals, Inattentiveness? Year 4 Day 17

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 17

“To be an iconoclast of idolized needs, to defy our own immoral interests, though they seem to be vital and have long been cherished, we must be able to say No to ourselves in the name of a higher Yes. Yet, our minds are late, slow, and erratic. What can give us the power to curb the deference to wrong needs, to detect spiritual fallacies, to ward off false ideals, and to wrestle with inattentiveness to the unseemly and holy?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7)

Continuing on from yesterday, the words in bold describe our situation, what we need from within ourselves and from our spiritual disciplines and clergy, and our need to be aware of both “the unseemly and holy”. The first sentence in bold above is so descriptive and obvious that too many of us do not pay attention to the truth of it and become enamored with “our minds”. Some people believe they are “stable genius’”, others believe they are the smartest people in the room because they are so rich,  still many others sit idly by not caring about and holding dear to their “idolized needs” and “immoral interests”. By the time these idlers finally recognize the scope of ruin and destruction of their freedoms that the “stable genius” and ‘smartest guy in the room’ have wrought, it is too late and they become even more locked up in their own prisons because they are more erratic, they are slower because they can’t fathom the betrayal by their ‘savior’, by ‘the anointed one’, their clergy, by their misplaced faith in the grifter and con artist. This is true in politics, it is true in financial matters, (think Bernie Madoff), it is true in our family units when parents betray their children by trying to make them into their image and children betray parents by trying to make them into the images they want rather than the ones they are.

Writing in 1958, the questions Rabbi Heschel ask give rise to the question how good were the “good old days”? What are we trying to go back to with the MAGA movement? Do we really want quotas on Jews entering colleges and grad schools again, do we really want different bathrooms and drinking fountains for people of color? Do we really want to promote hatred and support dictators? Do we really want to continue to defer to the “wrong needs” just because someone else does? Do we really want to believe the lies of the ‘christian nationalists’? Do we really want to bow down to the authoritarian/populist in front of us? Do we really want to go along with what our parents say ‘just because I said so’? Do we really want to be denied the right to read the books we need to and want to? Do we really want to ignore the injustices in front of us and the ones that have perpetrated before, in our name? Do we really want to bow down to the Pharaohs and keep making bricks for their Towers, for their Spaceships, for their Electric cars? Do we really want to just give up and be overwhelmed by “the unseemly” and be inattentive to what is truly “holy”? These questions asked some 67 years ago are in need of our responses right here, right now. The issue is whether we are aware of these questions, whether we are willing to respond to them and what are our responses. Looking at what is happening, it seems people are, once again, giving the ‘right’ responses to the ‘wrong’ questions!

There is only one source that “can give us the power to curb…detect,,,ward off… and wrestle… This source is us, it is within each and every one of us. The source is our soul, our higher consciousness, whatever one calls the part of us that sees through our ‘third eye’, that knows in our guts, through our gut instinct, what is true and real and what is false and phony. The source is always with us, the issue is whether we are going to stay lazy and be “late, slow and erratic” in our use of our “knowing” what is right and what is wrong.  The issues in front of us call for “moral grandeur and spiritual audacity” as Rabbi Heschel wrote in his famous telegram to President John F. Kennedy in 1963. This call is been reverberating throughout the universe since the first human was created/evolved and continues to echo to this day. Yet, too many people ignore the call, refuse to hear or understand the echo, believe it is too difficult to go against the grain of societal norms, believe the spiritual fallacies their ‘idolators/clergy’ tell them (as happened before and during the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem), and come to worship “the unseemly” and ignore the “holy”. Rabbi Heschel is describing the spiritually ill human being that we have become, just as Maimonidies did in his treatise: The Eight Chapters where he describes a spiritually ill person and the spiritual healing needed for that individual.

At issue for We, the People, is our inability to experience our spiritual maladies, our inability to see the three fingers pointing back at us when we point out someone else’s ‘errors’ which often are just someone speaking truth when we don’t want to hear it. We, the People, are in desperate need of spiritual healing so we can let go our “false ideals”, stand up to Pharaoh and his/her “wrong needs” like Moses and Aaron did, reject the “spiritual fallacies” of our priests, rabbis, imams, ministers like the Prophets did in the Bible, and, like Jacob, wrestle with our evil inclinations so we can see that “God is in this place and I, I did not know it”. We, the People, can do this, it will take work, hard work because we will have to reject the societal norms, we will be standing out on a limb and, not have a lot of allies and fewer friends because people hate being told the truth, they would rather hear ‘white lies’, ‘half-truths’(whatever these are), actual bullshit that makes them feel good. Rather that “not stand idly by the blood of your brother/sister/neighbor”, most people are content and happy to be lied to-as Rabbi Heschel says which he learned from the Kotzker Rebbe, self-deception is a major disease! We can recover our hearing so we can respond to the echo of Ayecha-where are you, we can engage in spiritual healing by visiting a TRUE physician of the soul, not the charlatans that are advertising bullshit and promising roses. The question is are you willing?

I have been accused of being a bully, an “iconoclast”, an asshole, not politically correct, etc. I am relentless in the search for truth-no ‘half-truths’ for me. I am a breaker of old ideas and societal norms when they are built on lies and subterfuge. I am an asshole because I don’t let people “off the hook” when their spiritual health is at stake, I do not follow the ‘proper rules of decorum’ in the way I am. All of this has left me more on the outside and it is okay because what it would take to be part of the “country club” crowd(besides a lot more money than I have) is not worth it. What it takes to be part of any group that is more concerned with how it looks than what are they doing, is not my jam nor my crowd. I am not willing to pay the price of admission to be ‘like the Ben-G’Virs’. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you saying "Yes" to the lies of society and "No" to the truth or "No to the lies and "Yes" to the truth? Year 4 Day 16

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 16

“To be an iconoclast of idolized needs, to defy our own immoral interests, though they seem to be vital and have long been cherished, we must be able to say No to ourselves in the name of a higher Yes. Yet, our minds are late, slow, and erratic. What can give us the power to curb the deference to wrong needs, to detect spiritual fallacies, to ward off false ideals, and to wrestle with inattentiveness to the unseemly and holy?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7)

“Iconoclast” comes from the Greek meaning “likeness to break” and its usual definition is “a person who attacks cherished ideas”, some synonyms are: heretic, nonconformist, dissident, critic, etc.  Using this definition, the first sentence describes the difficulty in being “an iconoclast” because you can be shunned, excommunicated, exiled, put in Herem in the Jewish Tradition, need an exorcist in the Catholic tradition, be called a demon, etc when one defies the “idolized needs” that society has adopted and decreed are important. We can be put in prison in some countries for being “an iconoclast” like Alexi Navalny, we can be fired from our job because we don’t go along with the “idolized needs” of our employers, our bosses. We can be subjected to all sorts of degradation for standing up for what is right, for defying not only our own immoral interests but the immoral interests of society, of employers, etc, like Lilly Ledbetter suffered in her ‘crusade’ to gain equal pay for women who do the same job as a man, which even with legislation passed in her name, still hasn’t happened!

“To defy our own immoral interests” seems to be a herculean task throughout history. We have seen over and over again, the destruction of empires, countries, peoples because of our inability “to defy our own immoral interests”, our inability to say No to these seemingly “vital” interests, to let go of these “long cherished” beliefs. We have seen the destruction of the Greek and Roman empires, the destruction and exile of Jewish self-rule for almost 1900 years, the decline of the Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, China, etc all because their “immoral interests” and “idolized needs” overwhelmed the leadership and the people.

Whether one  says “history repeats itself” or that “history reflects the present”, the fact is that we have seen the same disasters happen time and time again. While they are not always the exact same, as we have found faster, more lethal ways to create “idolized needs” and become experts at self-deception and the deception of another(s) so our “immoral interests” look holy, the end result is the same: a loss of freedom, an enslavement of the people who are ‘out of favor’, not part of the “kleptocracy", not an “oligarch”. It is too simplistic to blame the grifters and the liars, the deceivers and the wealthy, the power-mad and power-hungry; it is time for all of us to look inside ourselves and ask ourselves if we are “an iconoclast” or an witting and unwitting pawn. Are we aware of our own need to satisfy our “immoral interests” rather than to defy them? Are we aware and admitting to these “idolized needs” and “immoral interests” being vital to our egos, that they are “long cherished”? If not, one is truly lost, and so is the country, religion, group one belongs to because we have become deaf, dumb and blind.

As Rabbi Heschel says earlier in this essay, “suppression of a desire is a sacrilege that must inevitably avenge itself in the form of some mental disorder.” To “say No” to this cherished and vital “idolized need” of society seems impossible. When our children ask for the latest fashion to wear to school so they are not picked upon, when they have to have cell phones in elementary school so they will be like the other kids, when we have to have the latest and best in technology, homes, furnishings, or we will be embarrassed and feel shame, we all feel compelled to say “Yes” to these lower false needs. When we listen to and nod our heads in support of; the “big lie” about elections, about political rivals, when we decry the welcoming of strangers by threatening to deport them, when we blame the countries who are manufacturing goods at cheaper prices than the US can because they pay ‘slave wages’ and we don’t want to pay for the goods made in the USA and we threaten to impose tariffs which drive up the cost of these goods, we are saying “Yes” to falseness and turning a blind eye to truth, all in the name of getting ahead, keeping what we have and screw the rest of the people. When we are surprised that the party in power cuts social services to the people, when the people who need Social Security to survive, vaccines to prevent shingles, polio, measles, etc are denied because the oligarchs want to keep more money for themselves, this is another example of how we participate in the destruction of democracy, in the destruction of freedom, in the defiance of the Biblical call to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, and take no responsibility for our own demise!

We, the People, can and must say “No” to these “idolized needs”, to our “immoral interests”. We do this by remembering who we are-partners with the creator in making the world a better place to live in. We do this by remembering the people who either tried to destroy our ancestors (and/or us) or saved them/us by hiding us, by welcoming us, by ransoming us when we were captives, by freeing us from our slaveries. We, the People are needed to WAKE UP, to SEE what is rather than look at the world and our situation through the false glasses of society, through the “idolized needs” of the powerful, through the “immoral interests” of the kleptocracy. It is way past time for us, all of us, be it in the USA, Israel, Russia, Hungary, etc to stand up and say “Yes” to a higher standard of living. It is time for us to say “No” to “scouting after our heart and eyes because we whore ourselves after them” as we pray twice a day! We, the People must stand up for what is right and true, we must follow the path of justice, mercy, kindness, love, compassion that we have received! We, the People have to call out the bullshit of these Kleptocrats who decry government spending unless we are giving it to them, like Elon Musk who would have bankrupted Tesla without the government’s bailouts, who could never have made SpaceX viable without governmental money and he is the guy in charge of cutting social security, medicare, school lunches, food stamps!

Letting go of one’s “idolized needs” and “immoral interests” is a long and arduous journey, I have found. Because they are so ingrained and accepted, we have to keep “peeling the layers of the onion” that is the “foreskin of hearts” which need to be circumcised. It is a life-long job for me and, until 1987, I wasn’t even willing to take the task on. An examined life is painful, Malcom X said and this is the pain that brings me joy through my exodus from “idolized needs”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Freedom or Prison, which way of being do your actions say you choose? Year 4 Day 15

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 15

“We feel jailed in the confinement of personal needs. The more we indulge in satisfactions, the deeper is our feeling of oppressiveness.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 7)

Putting ourselves into this teaching of Rabbi Heschel causes us to ask ourselves; are we jailed in the confinement of our “personal needs”? I am not sure how many of us realize or even think this way. It feels so natural and societally acceptable to seek, obtain, maintain, and grow our “personal needs” that most of us are not aware of the prisons we build, walk into through our seeking “personal needs”. Beyond the basics, which everyone needs, the rest of the ‘things’ we believe we need in order to “be happy” are actually the walls of a prison of our own making. We build these prisons for ourselves, we walk in and lock the doors behind us, then we complain about the feeling of the “walls closing in on us”, we are overwhelmed by the mountains of debt one acquires in order to satisfy one’s “personal needs”. This mountain of debt is more than money owed, money borrowed or charged. All of us owe, as I have written before, as Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Steinsaltz, St. Francis write about, this debt is for our life, being able to wake up in the morning and do something that adds to the world. The feeling of being “jailed in the confinement of personal needs” is the debt we owe to another(s), the selling of our own soul, our morality, our sense of what is true and false, our knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. In order to become “jailed in the confinement of personal needs”, we have to surrender these basic parts of our humanness, we have to block our hearing of the call of our souls and our inner life, we have to ignore the call of the stranger, the poor, the needy, we have to become willfully blind to the moral pandemic happening all around us, we have to adopt an “indifference to evil”! It seems impossible for human beings who are created in the image of the divine, who share the same basic goodness of being that Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, St. Frances, Maimonidies, Heschel, et al have, can become so imprisoned, so blind, so deaf, so indifferent-yet we have been, we are, and, unfortunately, we will be.

This is not a sentence that is decreed from above, however. This is not the way it is ‘supposed to be’. We are given great teachings, imbued with great wisdom, provided with great teachers of the spirit, so we can tear down the prison walls we have built for ourselves. We learn of the exodus from Egypt so we know we can leave the feeling of being “jailed in the confinement of personal needs”. The journey through the desert, that could have taken a week or two and lasted forty years so the people who could not let go of their inner slavery would die and not taint the new land with their ‘poison’, teaches us that we have to continually be on guard that we are not rebuilding the walls of the jails we are leaving. As we do Tashlich, we cast our bread upon the waters to separate ourselves from our negativity on Rosh Hashanah, I always suggest to people that it is imperative for them to not jump into the water to retrieve their negativities. We are given a road map for life, a way of being that combines our spiritual nature with our intellectual nature and each of us brings a unique set of talents and perspectives to the task of making the world a little better and not screwing it up anymore.

We fail when we build the jails of “personal needs” and believe we have to “indulge in satisfactions” which only leads to becoming “deeper (in) our feelings of oppressiveness.” This is so apparent in the way people treat one another vis a vis the way they treat their “things”. While someone will spend 1000’s of dollars on a tie, or a suit, they will not give $18.00/month to a charity that saves lives. The number 18 represents life in Jewish tradition, hence the choice of this number. Yet, it is not selfishness nor indifference a lot of the time that causes a person to choose their “personal needs”, it is the societal pull, the need to ‘stand out’, the walling off of one’s soul, the beating down of one’s moral compass because of ‘what will the neighbors think’, that drives most people to this depth of oppressiveness. It is what is at the root of many people’s addiction to drugs, to alcohol, to gambling, to escapes of any and all kinds as well as what sends so many people to therapists. “I have the American Dream and I am empty” is a common refrain, especially among the rich and famous, whether out loud to friends, therapists, or silently to themselves. We build the jails, we lock ourselves in the prisons and then are miserable because we know we are oppressed by our “personal needs” and feel unable to get out. This is the great trap we are suffering through and the people who claim to be the ones who will ‘save us’ are really the ones who want to be the “New Pharaoh” that arose and “did not know Joseph”, in our case, how forget the constitution and the declaration of independence, who use the system to abuse and get the rest of us to build the walls of our jails and prisons, taller, wider and stronger.

We, the People, can recover from our addiction to “personal needs”. We, the People, can recover our basic goodness of being by realizing that we are all in the world together. Acknowledging the truth of the St. Francis prayer, committing to us “console, understand, love, pardon”, bring “light hope, joy,” etc. When we are committing ourselves to the Holiness Code of Leviticus 19:1-18, we seek to honor, pay people on time, share our bounty, no matter how big or small, give people who are in need help and dignity, we don’t stand by and allow someone to do things that will harm them or another(s) physically and/or spiritually, we let go of hatred in our hearts, we will love ourselves and our neighbors. Living into these principles and so many others, allows us to realize our imperfections, make amends, change our ways and recover our authentic selves. In doing this, we unlock the doors of the prisons we have constructed, we tear down the walls and use the bricks to build homes of love and joy for ourselves and for another(s), our homes become meeting place for wisdom and we impart our spiritual knowings to our children, family, friends so they too can leave the prisons that their “personal needs” have constructed. We, the People, not only rise from the depths of “our feelings of oppressiveness”, we raise the people around us from their “oppressiveness”, we set a new course and we repay the debt of gratitude for being alive, for being part of something greater than ourselves, and for adding to our corner of the universe.

I have experienced both the prison of “personal needs” and the freedom of being liberated from a Egypt of my own making. Freedom is better, though harder. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What is your definition of Freedom and how do you live it? Year 4 Day 14

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 14

“He who sets out to employ the realities of life as means for satisfying his own desires will soon forfeit his freedom and be degraded to a mere tool. Acquiring things, he becomes enslaved to them; in subduing others, he loses his own soul.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 7)

I am stunned at these words above, as I am with most of what has been written and said by Rabbi Heschel, other brilliant minds and spirits, the Bible, etc-not just because of the truth, wisdom and prophecy of their words, rather because these truths as “self-evident” and we, human beings, ignore them, are oblivious to them, and/or believe they don’t apply to us(arrogance).

Human beings continue to “forfeit his freedom” for the sake of self-satisfaction, for the sake of ‘pursuing their hearts desires’, for the sake of power and prestige, etc. We have not learned from the Pharaoh, the history of the kingdom of Israel and Judea, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire and all of the forms of government that when leaders, governments “employ the realities of life as a means for satisfying his own desires” things go haywire, dictators take over at least for a while, people are shocked to find our their ‘savior’ was/is a liar and a grifter, and are bewildered by their loss of freedom. Of course, the dictators find out they are not free, no matter what they portray on the outside, they are beholden to the people who prop them up, the people who continue to support them and hold the military, the people in check. Whether it is Putin or Orban, Trump or Bibi, the people they are beholden to will always come for their payments, they will always “owe their soul to the company store”! What is so amazing is that no matter how many times people have “soon forfeit their freedom” people still believe they can “empty the realities of life as a means for satisfying their own desires” and not be scarred nor scathed by this way of being. No matter how many times one reads Julius Caesar, Oedipus, the Bible, the narcissists still believe in their overwhelming power to stay free and not just be a tool for some other narcissist to abuse, as they have abused the people they lead, the people they screw over.

While it is easy to see this truth in leaders of countries, it is crucial to see how this is true in our own lives. How many people are less free because they have to keep working to “keep up with the Jones”, because they have to keep up with the false image they have portrayed to the world, to their own families. When we keep believing we can “be anything we want to be”, we can “go after our heart’s desires”, with no regard to what is true and right for our souls, with no thought about what “divine need” am I here to fulfill, we “forfeit his freedom” and become a money-making (maybe), miserable tool who smiles on the outside and cries on the inside. As Smokey Robinson says: “now if there is a smile on my face, it’s only there trying to fool the public”. This one of the lies we tell ourselves and that society has sold us: go after your dreams, whatever they are, and you will be free and happy-bullshit! Most of us don’t know what our dreams are really telling us, psychics tell us what they deduce we want to hear, and people seek different outlets, booze, gambling, sex, etc to hide from facing their “forfeit his freedom” situation.

One of the ways we hide from our lack of freedom is by “acquiring things”. We are a society that has become obsessed with acquiring the best and the newest, we work hard to afford the latest mobile phone, tablet, computer, car, home, etc. We are so caught up in our “things” or lack thereof, we have come to value our inner life, our self-worth by our net worth-a losing bet all the time! We are so enslaved to our “acquiring things” that we forget to notice that very often we don’t even like them nor need them, but we have to have them in order to ‘keep up appearances’. This is a sign of our enslavement as well as our forfeiting our freedom. We have lost the very freedoms our ancestors came to America for, the hope and dreams the Jews returning to the land of Canaan at the turn of the 20th Century had, because we have become obsessed with “having the most toys” so we can say “we win”. How sad and ridiculous we human beings are. Rather than enjoy the wisdom of our ancient and current texts and teachers of all faiths and spiritual traditions, we would rather buy into the lies of society and hold on to our self-deceptions of what “freedom” is-having stuff and caring only for our desires and inauthentic needs.

The last phrase above is so obvious that most of us are oblivious to it! In his introduction to his epic book: Path of the Just,  Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, states: “However, it is precisely those concepts which are most evident that tend to be overlooked and, ironically, it is common for people to be oblivious to those ideas whose truth is unchallenged.”(Lights along the Way, Twerski). “In subduing others he loses his own soul” is one of “those concepts which are most evident that tend to be overlooked”. We see this in families where parents dictate to their children how to be and use fear and bribery to get their kids to be just like them, or just the way they want them to be rather than raising them according to the call of the child’s soul, forgetting that we are created in the Image of the Divine, not the image our parents want us to be. We see this in business and in work environments where the ‘boss’ wants to make everyone subservient and dependent upon them like Henry Ford who treated his workers terribly and fought the unionization of Ford Motor Company with force. We see this with leaders like Trump, et al, and their supporters/followers/handlers; they have lost the light in their eyes, the basic compassion for another human being that is part of the human soul is lost on people who engage “in subduing others” and we still try to hide this fact from ourselves; it is time for We, the People, to take off our blindfolds, let go of the lies we tell ourselves and live into the truth of who we are, partners with the Creator in making our corner of the world a little better!

As one who forfeited his freedom, tried hard to subdue others, I can testify that it just doesn’t work for long-term for anyone who is not a sociopath. Helping people find their inner truth, pursue their calling, their purpose, helping people find meaning and joy in everyday activities is the best way to be. I grow in both freedom and spirit each day because I follow the calling of my soul rather than be deceived by the desires of my heart-certainly not perfectly and a majority of the time-I do still like some toys:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you aware of the "tragic confusion of interests" that encompasses you and every human being? Year 4 Day 13

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 13

“In the tragic confusion of interests, in which every one of us is caught, no distinction seems to be as indispensable as the distinction between right and wrong interests. Yet, the concept of right and wrong, to be standards in our dealing with interests, cannot themselves be interests. Determined as they are by temperament, bias, background and environment of every individual and group, needs are our problems rather than our norms.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7)

Wishing everyone a year of learning, growing our inner lives, and more wholeness in 2025, which started out pretty good for me as an Ohio State University fan!

I am struck by the entire paragraph and I want to begin with the last sentence. “Needs are our problems rather than our norms” is telling us to, of course, beware of the “needs” and “interests” that are pulling at us, know that the authentic “needs” and “interests” of another(s) are our problem as well as theirs! In Man is Not Alone, Rabbi Heschel reminds us the interests of another has to be our concern: “what is of importance to them becomes vital to him”, and “the child becomes human…by becoming sensitive to the interests of other selves.” The problems of needs are both internal and external, they represent challenges on two fronts, personal and interpersonal, individually and communally. We are witnessing this phenomenon every day, we are constantly faced with the “tragic confusion of interests” and we are always weighing what is good for us and what is the right thing to do. When we are incapable or unwilling to distinguish “between right and wrong interests”, there can be no community, there can be no growing of our inner life, maturing of our soul, there can be no acknowledgement of any errors in our actions, there is only ‘might makes right’. On this 8th day of Hanukkah, even though the Maccabees defeated the Greeks they later succumbed to the ways of the Greeks going so far as to adopt Greek names, the story o of the oil tells us that ‘might does not make right’, the Bible tells us there is a higher authority than our own “temperament, bias,” and we are constantly called to SHEMA, hear, listen and understand, the desires and interests of our hearts and our eyes will lead us to whore after them.

Freedom is not following our hearts, not fulfilling our hearts desire! Rather it is limiting ourselves to fulfill what is right, just, merciful, kind, loving, and true. Our making “right and wrong” “standards” rather than whims, seeing and living into the universality of the principles of the Bible, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc is more important than societal ‘norms’, than the “interests”, “needs” that society has deemed important. In today’s world, the “need” that society deems most important is: winning, at any and all costs, be it through intelligence, strength, grift, lies, is of no consequence. We are experiencing and will experience even more the “problems” of winning as the number one “need”, “interest”. When this is the yardstick, the goal, “the concept of right and wrong” is no longer a standard, it is a nuisance that is to be manipulated. Convincing people to go against their own authentic “interests” and “needs” to serve the ‘greater good of the rich and powerful, is what happens when there we reject “no distinction seems to as indispensable as the distinction between right and wrong”.

Freedom is when We, the People, realize that “needs are our problems”. Internally, the problem is to determine which “needs” are authentic and which ones are not. We have to measure our “needs” against the yardstick of what is “right and wrong” according to our spiritual texts and listen to what our inner voice, our souls are telling us. We, the People, have to reject our own self-deceptions, the deceptions of another(s), the lies of societal “norms”, and find the truth within each of us and share this truth, through our actions, with the world. This is a “problem” that is solvable if we are willing to do the work and discover our authentic self, stand up against the onslaught of people and society telling us to ‘go along to get along’, telling us ‘it is written that you have to follow the leaders of the _______(fill in the blank of the group you are a member of), etc. We have to stand up for our soul’s truth, our inner wisdom, and our understanding of the ways to live them out loud.

Freedom is when We, the People, live into the teaching of Rabbi Heschel, that the “needs”, “Interests” of another have to be our concern. Throughout the Bible we are told how to respond to the “needs” of the captive-we have to ransom the Captive back from captivity, something Bibi, Smotrich, Ben-G’Vir seem to have forgotten in all of their Biblical quotes. We have to “treat the stranger well because we were strangers in the land of Egypt”- something America, the ‘good christian nationalists, the land of immigrants and refuge seekers since the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, seem to have forgotten in electing Trump to deport millions of legal and illegal immigrants, deny immigrants the ability to come into the US are wanted by Musk and his cronies! It is time for We the People to STAND UP for FREEDOM, Stand up for what are the “right interests”, Stand up against the “wrong interests” of the charlatans, idolators, authoritarians, and haters.

I have been engaged in “needs are our problems” all my life. Prior to my recovery, I was very split-I believed in and followed through on many of the “right” “interests” and helped people, giving charity, etc. Yet, at the same time, I indulged my “wrong” “needs” by stealing, hustling, lying and cheating. Finally, since I was unable to fully commit to the “wrong”, I wound up in another jail cell and faced with a spiritual dilemma, not of my choosing. In fact, the solution was not one I chose-it was thrust upon me by my soul. Since then, “needs are our problems” have become a place of choice and reflection, a way of being in the world where I can add to the distress of those choosing the “wrong” “interests”, “needs” and aiding and comforting those choosing the “right” “interests”, “needs”. I am told that I create chaos and, seeing my way of being through the lens of the wisdom above, I concur. Chaos brings about creation, chaos tells us something isn’t “right”, chaos causes us to look within our selves and do our T’Shuvah. Making the interests of another(s) my concern has led me to a place of harmony within, a way of being that brings me joy and comfort and allows me to live with purpose and meaning each and every day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Do your "need" overwhelm you and rule the way you live? Year 4 Day 12

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 12

“Short is the way from need to greed. Evil conditions make us seethe with evil needs, mad dreams. Can we afford to pursue all our innate needs, even our will for power?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7)

The simplicity, truthfulness of the first sentence stops one in one’s tracks, at least it does me. When we are filled with our “need”, we see nothing else but them, we become blind to the “need” of another, the “need” of the universe, the “need” of God, the “need” of humanity. We are so blinded by fulfilling our own “need” we validate whatever we do in the pursuit of fulfilling our “need” even when, and maybe especially when, what we are doing is the next wrong thing! “Need” comes from the German “Not” which means “danger”, what we have come to worship, our own “needs”, what we have come to pursue at any and all costs, according to the original definition is “danger”! Isn’t this what this first sentence is telling us?

“Greed” which comes from the Latin “avarus” meaning “long for, crave” is a short journey from our incessant, obsessive focus on “need”. Truly what does one need-food, clothing, shelter, companionship, purpose and meaning, learning, and maturing of the soul and, of course, health. No one “needs” $400 Billion dollar net worth! No one “needs” to be a sycophant in order to have or be near power. No one “needs” to lie in order to ‘get ahead’, to ‘win’. No one “needs” to reject the outstretched hand of one they have harmed. We learn this in the Bible, of course, when we immerse ourselves in the story of Jacob and Esau. While the Rabbis of old, and new, keep making Esau a ‘bad guy’, the text doesn’t tell us this, it is the “need” of the Rabbis to validate the wrongdoings of Jacob, to make him into a ‘perfect spiritual giant’ maybe because of their own “need” to have ‘perfect heroes’. While Esau, the guy who stayed home and cared for his parents, even after they both screwed him out of the blessings, the guy who comes to meet Jacob and embraces him, the guy who tells his brother, I don’t need your gifts but if you “need” to give them to me, I will accept them for your sake, he is the “bad guy”?? King Saul rejected David’s pleading to return and not be killed, he rejected the pleadings of his son Jonathan to restore David to his rightful place at Saul’s right hand, why-because Saul’s “need” for power, his “need” for recognition, his “need” to crush his opponents, real and imaginary, was greater than the “need” for truth. It is truly a “short way from need to greed”.

What are the “evil conditions (that) make us seethe with evil needs”? They are the same conditions, I believe, that makes “short is the way from need to greed”. “Evil conditions” are always around us, as Cain is told in Chapter 4 of Genesis: “sin couches at your door, it desires you much, and you can master it”. Negativity is a short step away, we can, in our addiction to “need”, in our obsession to fulfill every “need” we have, in our entitlement to having our “needs” met always and forever, no matter what else is happening, no matter who “needs” real help, true justice, compassion, comfort, mercy, love. All of these “conditions” and more are in our air, they fill our airwaves, they are the foundation of so many podcasts, movies, dramas, books, and politics. What is the necessity of defaming Jimmy Carter upon his death by many people? He built homes for the poor, he reached out to the downtrodden, stood up for his truly Christian values, he was the person who began peace for Israel with its neighbors with the Camp David Accords, he may have said things that we disagree with, and he was an amazingly active ex-President. He also let his “needs” be second to the needs of another(s). He fought against his own “evil conditions” and worked hard to never “seethe with evil needs”.

We, the People, have to put an end to our endless pursuit of “all our innate needs”. We, the People, need to stop our reliance on someone else coming to our rescue. On this last night of Hanukkah for 5785, We, the People, “need” to take a page from the Maccabees’ gather together and call out to everyone else: all who are for human dignity and value, all who honor the “unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all people, all who welcome the opportunity to fulfill the “need” each of us was created for, all who believe it is imperative to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all it’s inhabitants therein” JOIN US! We, the People are in dire straits, “our will for power” has overtaken all of our senses, it has overridden all of our better angels in our institutions-not completely- and the people who “seethe with evil needs” are in the majority in our Congress, in many states, and they are loud, proud and promote the lies they are telling themselves and the deceptions they are buying into from their ‘fearless leader’. It is up to “We, the People to stand up for the truth, to fight against the evil that is being spewed and practiced in our name, in our country, in Israel, across the globe. There is no ‘sitting on the sidelines’, we can no longer ‘wait for someone else to do it’, We, the People have to face the “evil conditions” within us, we have to deal with our inner “will for power” and then confront those charlatans in the Churches and Mosques, Synagogues and Temples who promote these inauthentic “needs”. We have to stand up to and vote out the mendacious ones who want to deny the words on the Statue Of Liberty, who want to deny people the same opportunities they and/or their ancestors were given. We, the People have to say NO to the “short way from need to greed”, we have to say YES to fulfilling the “need” of another and ourselves to honor the faith the universe has in us to do the next right thing, saying YES to our higher angels.

Saying yes to my higher angel was difficult for me for about 20 years, from 16-36. I took the “short way from need to greed” and lived in “evil conditions (that) made me seethe with evil needs”. I know these words of Rabbi Heschel so well because I lived them! When I went to do my T’Shuvah at my father’s grave in 1990, I made my amends to the man who taught me how to be a moral human being, in the face of evil, for my turning away from his path, for “running to do evil”. It was one of my hardest amends, I wept at his grave for the wrongs I had done which sullied the family name. I know, however that all of us can recover from our “evil conditions”, all of us can stop pursuing “all our innate needs” and our “will for power”. I have done this by being of service and not kidding myself about my altruism. I serve because I know whom I serve, God. I know that the people I serve are God’s creations and their responses have no bearing on my service. Neither praise nor vilification matters, being of service, which blocks the “short way from need to greed”, is the goal. I am able to get there every day, at least for a minute:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How are you allowing your "personal interests" to separate you from the values you 'hold dear'? Year 4 Day 11

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 11

“Interest is a subjective dividing principle. It is the excitement of feeling, accompanying special attention paid to some object. But do we pay sufficient attention to the demands of universal justice? In fact, the interest in universal welfare is usually blocked by the interest in personal welfare, particularly when it is to be achieved at the price o renouncing one’s vested interests. It is just because the power of interests is tyrannizing our lives, determining our views and actions, that we lose sight of the values that count most.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 6-7)

The above paragraph is a lot to digest all at once and I didn’t know how to break it up into two sections:) As we prepare to enter 2025, as we prepare for the next Trump Administration, as we prepare for the changes in climate, in energy, in politics, in our everyday living, the words above are strong warnings and path forward pointing. The question is, as always, will we heed the words, will we take the next right path, will we ignore and continue to use our “interest” as “subjective dividing principle”?

We have proven over and over again, throughout the millennia, that “universal welfare is usually blocked by the interest in personal welfare”. We have continued to ignore the second third of Rabbi Hillel’s wisdom: “If I am not for my self, who will be for me? If I am only for my self, what am I? If not now, when?” Because of our deep commitment to our “feelings” and our “interests”, we have come to ignore both “universal justice” and “universal welfare”. We are in the midst of a period of time where caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy is seen as stupid, as Trump says, “beat the hell out of journalists” who call him out on his lies, who report the truth instead of his party line. Donating to charities is done by middle-class and poor people at a greater rate than by the uber wealthy, because we have a commitment to something greater than ourselves. Rather than responding to Rabbi Hillel’s question/guidance, most people think that one’s “personal interest” should always come first, that any sacrifice of one’s “needs”, “interests” for the sake of anyone else is insane and only a fool would do that. Trump calls people who go into Military Service and lose their lives, become injured, “losers”, he has no clue as to why someone would put themselves at risk to fight for an ideal, for their country; the idea of being of service to something greater than oneself is anathema to Trump, Bannon, Musk, Miller, Project 2025, Vance, et al.

God has been co-opted by the self-interests of some clergy of all faiths. “I know what God wants and that is Donald Trump to be President” was heard in Houses of Worship throughout the United States, “Donald Trump is anointed by God” was another mantra, “God sent Trump to save us and bring about the coming/2nd coming of the Messiah” was another one. None of these sayings nor the clergy spouting these blasphemous statements believed this bullshit, they just said it because they were currying favor with the rich, with the powerful, with the Trump campaign, because they believed it was in their best interest, not God’s to do this. Clergy have been willing to ignore “universal justice”, “universal welfare” forever in order to keep in the good graces of the rich and powerful-just read the prophets, read the destruction of both Temples and how the priests allowed their self-interest to override the interests of God and the needs of the people. Isaiah tells the priests that “God doesn’t want your sacrifices”, God wants our hearts, our actions, yet even the Clergy, those supposedly answering a call from God, are unable to go above their “personal interests” to serve something greater than themselves.

“The power of interests is tyrannizing” and we have never thrown off the yoke of this tyranny, of this tyrant. We have come to be so enslaved to “the power of interests” that we can’t even hear the voices of the redeemers, the people who keep shouting to us, calling to us, cooing to us to come back to service, return to the fold of the Bible, re-engage in being of service, of caring for the sick and the needy, welcoming the stranger and the poor, finding our inherent commonality in the principles we hold dear. Ending our willful blindness to these very principles and values because we are so beholden to “the power of interests” inside of us, the “power of interests’ that society has dictated take precedence over everything else, “the power of interests” that we believe will give us the power to control our own destiny is crucial if we are to return to a way of being that is “compatible with being a partner of God” as Rabbi Heschel describes what being human means. We are living under the tyranny of “interests”, most of which are not authentic needs. We see this in our politics, in our religious institutions, in our schools, in our families, across the globe, which in turn leads us to become servants of mendacity, worshipers of the lies we tell ourselves and the deceptions of another(s) that we buy into. Does anyone believe that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos really care about the poor and the widow? Does anyone believe that these ‘good christian folk’ who chant “Jews will not replace us” care about the welfare of the stranger or the needy? Does anyone believe that the Congress will “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic” at the risk of being opposed in their next primary?

We, the People have to take back our country! We, the People, have to take back our religious institutions! We, the People have to stand up for “universal justice”, we have to end the racial disparity that permeates the Criminal Justice System and the power of the wealthy to delay, delay, delay justice being served in both Criminal and Civil cases. We, the People, have to stand for “universal welfare”, caring for the people who, for whatever reason, can’t care for themselves, giving them the tools to live well, unlocking the spiritual power they have within them so they can live well. We, the People, have to stand the fuck up and say NO to the lies and YES to the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel above. NOW is the time!

I have stood for the principles and values that are found in our faith traditions, found in our constitution for the past 36 years, it ain’t easy, I make mistakes and I learn from them. I refuse to be silent, I refuse to be ‘political’, I refuse to not live “an examined life” and I know, as my Rabbi and friend, Ed Feinstein says, this makes me dangerous. I am not always welcomed in ‘polite society’, I leave chaos in my wake because I believe being for me and for you, living the principles and values in real time rather than spout them is possible and necessary, I take the blows and do it “my way”. To a better 2025, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How are your "needs" getting in the way of living your values? Year 4 Day 10

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 10

“Having absorbed an enormous amount of needs and having been taught to cherish the high values, such as justice, liberty, faith, as private or national interests, we are beginning to wonder whether needs and interests should be relied upon. While it is true that there are interests which all men have in common, most of our private and national interests, as asserted in daily living, divide and antagonize rather than unite us.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 6)

Reading and re-reading the first sentence, I am struck by the meaning in-between the words, the chords it strikes within a person and the indictment of our societal education system. Using the word “enormous” signifies the overproduction of “needs” society has produced both as a whole and within the individual human being. Do we really “need” to be billionaires? Do we really “need” to “keep up with the Jones”? Do we really “need” to be lied to and deceived so we can ‘feel good’? Do we really need to ‘drink the juice’ that following “the party line” or “believe the cult leader” demand? Do we really “need” to go to war and take over the land and culture of another group of human beings rather than find ways to co-exist, acknowledging everyone’s right and “need” to belong to their own tribe and be part of the whole world as well? Do we really “need” to be xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Catholic, antisemitic, racist, in order for ‘our kind’ to survive? Do we really “need” to have the latest and greatest ______ to feel okay?

All of these “needs” we have “absorbed” have not brought us to a place of wholeness nor a place of inner growth. They have not helped us to “cherish the high values, such as justice, liberty, faith” as universal values, as values that everyone is entitled to, as the Declaration Of Independence asserts, it says “all men are created equal” not just those living in the 13 colonies, not just those who’s skin is white and they could not live up to these “high values”even as they knew them to be right and true. Instead, even the men writing this holy document, took these “high values as private or national interests” not as universal ones. These values did not extend to the Black men and women they brought from Africa to be slave labor, they did not extend to the Indigenous People who were here before them and, following the words of the Bible, cared for the land and the creatures on it much more than the ‘white man’ ever did. Do we really believe that our “enormous amount of needs” should be the guiding light upon which we base our actions, upon which we allow ourselves to indulge in actions that go against the “high values” we have been “taught to cherish”, which we use “private or national interests” as excuses for acting against these “high values” when choosing our self-interest uber alles?

We have witnessed throughout the millennia how “our private and national interests as asserted in daily living divide and antagonize rather than unite us”. We are in such a dramatic period right now. The death of President Jimmy Carter points out how being a person of faith, of decency, living the “high values” mentioned above, can make a difference in the world. I did not agree with President Carter vis a vis his words and actions towards Israel, I did not think he was a particularly strong President, and I know he was a decent man, a man who did not shy away from admitting his own errors, a man who lived his principles in all of his affairs. Agree or disagree, I respect his congruence and his passion, he did push Habitat for Humanity to the forefront of our consciousness. Now, we have Trump and his hate-filled rhetoric, his angry and hate-filled sycophants who are willing to do his bidding and their own to show how their interests are the only ones that matter, that the “high values, such as justice, liberty, faith” only apply to their personal interests, only are viable for them and their cronies and the rest of the people have to become their slaves, their lackeys! Their “private and national interests, as asserted in (their) daily living, (are meant) to divide and antagonize us”. This is their hope, this is their goal and this is the challenge for all of us.

We, the People have to take a stand for the “high values” that we have “been taught to cherish” as universal values, not just private nor national ones. No where in the Bible does it say these values are only for the Israelite people, they are for all people! “Justice, justice you shall pursue, righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue”, are not for one people, they are for all people. “One law for the citizen and stranger alike” is universal, not private nor nationalistic, “love your neighbor” is not only for people of the same skin color or faith. “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” is not for the invaders alone, it is for all people in every land. We, the People, have to say NO to the “enormous amount of needs” that society has put upon us which are not truly necessary, we have to say NO to the ridiculous notion that our values are private and/or national interests. We have to END our silence, END our acquiescence to the ‘strong leader’ who is actually a weak suck. We have to say NO to the lies we have told ourselves and the whoring after our ‘heart’s desires’ and what our eyes settle upon. We the People, have to say YES to practicing the principles and values we cherish, that are universal in all of our affairs. We, the People, have to say YES to using our values to unite us, to help us see our commonality and cherish our uniqueness as helping us all reach the goals of “justice, liberty, faith” and kindness, truth, love, caring for the stranger, the needy, the poor, giving voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. We, the People, are being gifted with the opportunity to move humankind forward and set us upon the right path for growing our society into “a more perfect union”.

Harriet and I were talking about “needs” and “interests” the other day and then again yesterday, on her Birthday. Our needs are minimal and we have them covered, our interests are vast and we engage in them as we can each day. We are interested in people, in change, in growing our personal spiritual paths and in growing our relationship ever more. We realize that we can say no to our wants and not make them into needs. We do not “need” to do the perfunctory nor the ‘looking good’ things to impress anyone else. We do “need” to be of service and share our thoughts, our ways, our learnings and teachings with people. We do “need” to be part of the world and contribute through our writing, speaking, engaging where asked and when needed. We are not using our “high values” to divide and antagonize anyone, we are using them to unite us with people who also want to rise above their self-interest to respond to the call of the universe/God that reverberates in all of us. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Year 4 Day 9- How do you deal with the pull of 'societal norms', advertisements, and self-deceptions in your everyday life?

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 9

“We cannot make our judgements, decisions, and directions for action dependent upon our needs. The fact is that man who found out so much about so many things knows neither his own heart nor his own voice. Many of the interests and needs we cherish are imposed on us by the conventions of society; they are not indigenous to our essence. While some of them are necessities, others, as I pointed out before, are fictitious, and adopted as a result of convention, advertisement, or sheer envy.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 6)

These words, this belief of Rabbi Heschel, go directly to the heart of what it is to be human, I believe. At the heart of all humane actions, at the core of living life with and on purpose are the choices we make and what goes into “our judgements, decisions, and directions for action”. For some, it is what the Bible says and how the people who lived 2000 years ago say we are supposed to carry out their “directions for action”. For others, it is what the Bible says as they understand it today from their own readings and experiences, helping them make “judgements and decisions” using the stories and ways of the Bible as their anchors-again as they understand the Bible. For others, it is what the spiritual leader says the Bible says, it is their clergy who tell them what the proper “judgements, decisions, and directions for action” are. For still others, it is what their “heart” tells them to do, resulting in their ability to ignore anything but their own “heart” and “voice” tell them while, as stated above, the know “neither his own heart nor his own voice” because we are so easily manipulated and deceived, we are so excited to engage in our own self-deception.

We have come through an election season(s) where the loudest and most negative voices seemed to be the most persuasive. We are told that many people voted their “heart” and listened to their “own voice” because of who they felt would best satisfy their “needs” without any regard to the truth of the speakers, the truth of their own “heart and own voice”, without any regard as to whether their “needs” are “indigenous to our essence” or not. This is not just true during election season, however, this seems to be true today with more force and more power than it was in 1958, at least to me. We see companies rise and fall based on these “fictitious” needs, we see people hired and fired based on a “result of convention”, because it is ‘politically correct or politically incorrect’. We continue to make “judgements, decisions, directions for action” based on erroneous information, with systems that are false and never search out the ulterior motives of our “heart and our own voice”, much less the ulterior motives of the advertisers, the societal promoters, etc.

We are a bundle of needs and interests, this is part of being human. The challenge, always, is to discern which ones are “indigenous to our essence” and which ones are not. Without doing this, we are always going to be susceptible to the whims and deceptions of another(s) and we will never find the truth of our “own heart and own voice”. This is the situation Rabbi Heschel found us in some 66 years ago and, unfortunately, we are deeper in this hole, sinking more and more into this quicksand as the years pass. This is the question that we all face: who will we choose to be? Will we choose to stay blinded by our own “interests and needs”, by our own need to be part of the ‘in’ crowd of society? Will we choose to be ruled by the lies we tell ourselves, by our envious nature, by societal norms and conventions? If so, how do we spout the words of the Bible, knowing we are bastardizing truth and holiness, knowing we are only marching lock-step with the mendacious aspects of society, of those in power, of the authoritarians, etc? Listening to the ‘religious’ people spout validations for their lies and power grabs is as disheartening and sickening as listening to the progressives, the non-religious point their fingers at the deceptions of another(s) while ignoring their own lying ways. Yet, here we are, still, again and worse!

There is a solution, there is a way back, out, forward and we just have to be willing to take it. It is time for We, the People to take back our religious texts from the charlatans, from those whose agendas are personal rather than for humanity. It is time for us live into the prayer found in Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love Adonai with all your heart, all your soul, all your everything. These words/things which I command you shall be on your heart. You shall teach them to your children, speak of them when sit in your house, walk on the way, lie down, rise up. Bind them for a sign on your hand, for frontlets between your eyes, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

This prayer, this piece of wisdom is the pathway on which we will make “judgements, decisions, directions for action” from a place of truth, spirit, and that are “indigenous to our essence”. We have to commit to love life, love truth, love humanity with everything we have-this is not the same as liking everything, agreeing with everything, it is about having love in our entire being knowing those who are stuck need compassion and we have to check ourselves to make sure we are not engaging in self-deception. All of the teachings of the Bible are to “be on your heart”, not yet in our hearts, but on them so they work their way in, so our hearts become more mature, wiser, and understanding of what is truth and what is deception, what is kindness and what is mendacity, what is love and what is subservience. We are then told to learn and keep learning, discuss and keep discussing-never believe that we are masters, that we know this stuff cold. Always be teachable and watch what we grab for and what we stare at. Staring at what another(s) have and being envious of it will lead us to believe we can take it from them or another, that we are entitled to things and we will “whore after them” as it says in Numbers. Finally, we are asked, as my Rabbi and teacher, Ed Feinstein says: “if your gates and doorposts could talk, what would they say about what goes on in this house, what is the essence of the people inside-congruent or incongruent, willing to do T’Shuvah or believing they are always right?

I know this to be a powerful pathway to making choices that are congruent with our essence because I have followed it for these past 36+ years, using it to know when I am in error and when I am being faithful. It is hard, I want to help another by yelling and shaking them to wake up and, knowing how many people tried to do the same to me and it fell on deaf ears, I let go of this inauthentic need. Instead, I continue to live one day at a time growing in truth, growing in love, growing in learning, growing in congruency, growing in compassion. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Ending the weaponization of technology that undermines the social advancement of civilization- Year 4 Day 8

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 8

“To stem the expansion of man’s needs, which in turn is brought about by technological and social advancement, would mean to halt the stream on which civilization is riding. Yet, the stream unchecked may sweep away civilization itself, since the pressure of needs turned into aggressive interests is the constant cause of wars, and increased in direct proportion to technological progress.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pg. 6)

Rabbi Heschel, in the words above, captures the ongoing human dilemma, how to live in the both/and of progress and restraint. Hence, the Bible was given to us to help us navigate the “stream on which civilization is riding” and to ensure that we don’t have “the stream unchecked” because it truly “may sweep away civilization itself”. Religion, which has gotten such a bad name, rightfully so because of the charlatans that have wrapped themselves in their false interpretations of what the Bible is actually saying, actually is a gift that helps us use technology to promote social advancement, it helps us navigate the “stream on which civilization is riding” without being swept away by the man-made rapids of “aggressive interests”.

We are witnessing, once again, a moment in time where some men, and now women have joined the fray, have become so needy to keep power, to take power, to abuse power and to be ‘king of the hill’ that across the globe there is a constant drum beat of war-external and internal. Here in America, we are engaged in another “great civil war” between the white folk who are desperate to hold onto power and are using the Bible and religion to validate their “aggressive interests” and jettisoning of the rule of law, of being held accountable and those who say NO, those who are going around the country and declaring what the Bible says in Lev. 25:10 “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. There are those who want to fight the white folk trying to hold onto power by saying only certain minorities belong to their group, throwing Jews out of their coalition as the women’s movement, the Black Lives Matter movement have and those who say we need to all have a seat at the table, even those with whom we disagree. Our news media is overwhelmed with liars and grifters either at the head of the various media outlets or by giving the grifters, liars, war mongers (like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Kash Patel, AOC, anti-semites like Ilan Omar, et al) air time and validity.

Technology has advanced so much and what is an amazing tool for education, edification, etc has been turned into a weapon of mass destruction by people who have turned their “needs” are actually “”personal desires in disguise”. We see this in the way lies are promoted by people like Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin, Bibi Netanyahu and his family, Trump and his merry band of liars and cheats, etc. We are watching the prescience of Rabbi Heschel’s words come to life. Technology is being used to launch drones and missiles that are crippling the electrical grid of Ukraine and the liars and grifters, the idolators and charlatans say nothing-because they have more in common with the authoritarian regime in Russia than they do with the freedom fighters in Ukraine! And this is whom will be in power in all three branches of government come January 20, 2025. While AI is an important tool for advancing society, it is also a dangerous one in the ‘wrong hands’ and the ‘wrong hands’ are in power and winning the battle of this civil war right now, here and in Israel.

All is not lost, we do not have to sink into despair! We, the People, have the power to overcome what is happening right now, we have the power to stand up for the advancement of society, the advancement of civilization, we just have to exercise it and use it wisely. We, the People, have to learn, grow, re-learn (whatever the case) how to live in the “Both/And” of life. We, the People, have the opportunity to re-read the Bible and see how we have faced this dilemma before and overcome it, to re-read history and see how we have been at the brink of civilization and, instead of it falling into the abyss, it grew into something more and better, if only for a moment. We are celebrating Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah - all capturing moments in time when tyrants were waging war against the spirit and the teachings of the Bible, the spirit and teachings of how to live together in peace, the spirit and teachings of how to advance civilization and do so in proper measure and in measured steps. The Maccabees were waging a war against the Jews who were becoming hellenized more so than against the Greeks themselves. They were afraid of losing the essence of Judaism, rather than seeing how some aspects of hellenism could enhance Jewish ideas and ideals. Judah Maccabee was a HERO, and his descendants fell into the abyss because of their need to hold onto power and it corrupted them to the point of them becoming more hellenized than the Jews killed in the Hanukkah wars and then sold out to the Romans, who ushered in the 1900 year exile from the Land of Israel, the Land of Canaan. Christ came along at this time and preached the words of the prophets, he, too, believed: “Not by might, not by power, but by My spirit alone says the Lord” as the path to promoting civilization while not letting it go unchecked. He believed in a civil war that began in the soul of every person, a way of being that allowed our basic goodness of being to triumph, as the Bible shows us in a myriad of ways. Yet, his followers became rabid anti-semites, blaming the Jews for everything bad and scapegoating them up to and including with Adolf Hitler!

In this time of celebration, lets remember that Hanukkah translates as “dedication”, it reminds of Sukkot, when we rejoice at all that is the earth’s bounty that we can enjoy and we are all equally worthy and dignified, we all can survive the elements with our combined efforts and without cooperation, we will become extinct. None of us will survive forever, the “personal desires in disguise” as needs are bullshit and We, the People, like our ancestors, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Judah Maccabee, before us have to stand up and say YES to the advancement of civilization and technology being controlled by the social advancement of “one law for the stranger and citizen alike”, “love the stranger because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt”, “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. This is the basis for our new adventure: Spiritus. This is an online community of people discussing how to live our spiritual and moral values in everyday life and in all of our affairs. If you are interested, please email me at rabbimark@rabbimark.com. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Whims or Aspirations, Authentic or Artificial needs- how do you know the difference? Year 4 Day 7

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 7

“Unlike animals, man is the playground for the unpredictable emergence and multiplication of needs and interests, some of which are indigenous to his nature, while others are induced by advertisement, fashion, envy, or come about as miscarriages of authentic needs. We usually fail to discern between authentic and artificial needs, and misjudging a whim for an aspiration, we are thrown into ugly tension. Most obsessions are the perpetuations of such misjudgments.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 5-6)

Reading and re-reading these words, we are able to come away with a “duh” response, of course what Rabbi Heschel’s words convey, the spirit as well as the prose are truth and perception, which makes the reading and re-reading of them all the more necessary. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, an 18th Century Jewish Mystic, said about his book, Path of the Just, that if one was going to read it only once, don’t bother because the words in it, the ideas in it were truths that are universally accepted and because they are so universally accepted, they are easy to ignore and overlook. The same is true with all the great philosophers, mystics, prophets, holy texts. Yet, we, modern human beings, keep believing in ‘one and done’. In medical schools they would show some procedures, like drawing blood, once, then have the students perform it, then have them teach it. Our belief in our own excellence is a dangerous belief, our need to be certain and our need to be ‘master race’ is a recipe for disaster, war and slavery.

All of this is my prelude to Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. Human beings are a conglomeration of needs, both “authentic and artificial”, some “indigenous”, like food, clothing shelter, the need to be loved, the need to love, the need to “not be alone”, the need for people to help us where we are weak, uninformed, unable to perform a certain task because it is not in our skill set, etc. Some are “induced” by outside forces, like we decide we “need” a Mercedes-Benz rather than a Honda because what will the neighbors think? We “need” a bigger house in a better neighborhood, development, whether we can afford it or not because it will signal we have “arrived” and other such societal pressures that people feel. Lets face it, having last year’s or, God forbid, 2 years’ ago smart phone is so gauche, so ‘pedestrian’, so ‘not cool’ that we keep upgrading until we are either so stuck in our dissatisfaction with what we have or we are trapped by our spending into constantly trying just to keep up with our payments.

The worst actions we take against ourselves and one another though, I believe, come about because of “miscarriages of authentic needs”. Inevitably, when “we usually fail to discern between authentic and artificial needs” we will sabotage ourselves, those around us and we will commit actions that, upon reflection, we will abhor and certainly would hate for these actions to be committed against us by another. Yet, in our “miscarriages of authentic needs” we commit grave crimes against ourselves. Instead of loving ourselves so we can love our neighbors, we do hateful actions to ourselves and aer unable to see neighbors and instead we see competitors, enemies, people we have to be better than. These “miscarriages” result in our becoming farther and farther away from our own authentic self. They result in our believing the lies of a grifter, autocrat, and eventually falling into the trap of slavery; we repeat the storyline of the Children of Israel who were lulled into slavery by the wiles and slight of hand of “a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph”. When people claim not to “know” the people who have helped them, when they forget the debt we owe to the people who first gained our freedom, helped us in times of trouble, stood with us against an onslaught of lies and subterfuge, we know they want to manipulate the rest of us into forgetting so we lose our moral compass, we buy into the “artificial needs” that they are promoting and we “suspect our neighbor” instead of loving them.

We, the People have to recognize we are in such a time right now. We have to wake up to what is, not wring our hands and engage in self-flagellation, we have to look at our own errors of “misjudging a whim for an aspiration”, we have to look within ourselves and see the “obsessions that are perpetuations of such misjudgments”. We, the People have to return to a time when our focus is on making these United States a “more perfect Union”, making ourselves a better human being today than we were yesterday, constantly seeking to root out our “artificial needs”. We, the People are being called to account and the next 2-4 years will determine our loyalty to the principles the U.S was founded on, to the principles that religious traditions are founded upon, or it will show us our loyalty to falseness, to authoritarianism, to hatred of another which in turn shows us our own self-hatred. We, the People, are being tested, not by God, by our own understanding of freedom for all, we are being tested by grifters and liars to see how far they can push us. We, the People, are being tested by our own angels and demons to see if we are willing to become enslaved to ideas that have been proved invalid throughout the millennia, to see how long it will take for us to once again revolt against the greeks and our fellow Jews as the Maccabees did and their eventual downfall because of senseless hatred, the fall of every great world power because of their “perpetuations of such misjudgments” as they became more and more enamored with themselves and stopped looking within truthfully. The ruin and destruction that happens before these realizations, however, is devastating-revisit the 2nd World War and what it did to Europe, Japan, America, how many people died because the rest of us didn’t care enough to get out of our selfish and “artificial needs” to see truth, to stand up for our neighbor and, instead, be “America First” no matter what country one wants to substitute for America. We, the People are being called today to say NO to falseness and to our own “artificial needs” our own “misjudgments”, our own “obsessions” and say YES to truth, to kindness, to repair, to wrestling with our angels and demons  and to  living more authentically each day.

I have read this passage over and over again and it keeps showing me new ways of seeing myself and the worlds around me. I do not choose the texts I write on as much as they choose me. I have been wrestling with “aspirations and whims” forever and I choose “aspirations” much more than “whims” these days. I am constantly on the lookout for “misjudgments” by myself and another. I see how the lies of another(s) set fire to my fear of buying into their lies which leads me to buy into my own lies which leads me down a path I travelled in my youth and it was too destructive to repeat. I keep pushing myself to grow along spiritual lines. I believe I am one grain of sand better each day and I will wrestle like this forever. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What "needs" have you made into "gods" ? Year 4 Day 6

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 6

“Needs are looked upon today as if they were holy, as if they contained the totality of existence. Needs are our gods, and we toil and spare no effort to gratify them. Suppression of a desire is considered a sacrilege that must inevitably avenge itself in the form of some mental disorder. We worship not one but a whole pantheon of needs and have come to look upon moral and spiritual norms as nothing but personal interests in disguise.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 5)

Rabbi Heschel tells us in the next paragraph that the “needs” he is speaking of are those that are “synonymous with interest”. The truth is, the fulfillment of some “needs” is holy, when these “needs” are congruent with the spiritual, moral, physical welfare of a person and persons around them. This is not the same as the “needs” most people seek to fulfill today, nor what he saw in 1958 America!

The “needs” being spoken about here are merely “personal interests in disguise”, reminding us of the verse from the Book of Numbers 15:39 “Do not scout out/seek after your heart and your eyes because you will whore yourselves after them.” Rather than seek to fulfill the “needs” of the universe, the “needs” of another, the “needs” we uniquely created to fulfill, we scout after what ‘our hearts desire’, ‘be whatever we want to be’, and other such bullshit. In fact, when denied one of our “needs”, many people will lash out against the person in power who denies us, the person who doesn’t have power to deny us and suggests that it might not be the right thing to “scout out” and “seek after” these “personal interests in disguise”.

Therapists and Psychiatrists make millions and millions of dollars helping people ‘fulfill themselves’ without any concern as to what is an authentic need and what is a “personal interest in disguise”. Parents have come to worry that denying their child will mean they will be mentally, emotionally scared for life and will not be able to function in society. Society, rather than taking this wisdom above to heart, rather than living into the Holy Texts of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the teachings of the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, etc, has indeed made “needs our gods”. Society has written a script that “keeping up with the Jones’” is the only way to be, after all, how can you deny your 7year-old a smart phone when all of the other kids have one? A car as transportation is no longer enough, we have to have one with all the bells and whistles. At 16, we have to give our kids their own car so they don’t drive ‘an old man’s car’. How can we live without the latest iPhone, Smart TV, computer, etc? REALLY!

As a Rabbi in an Addiction Recovery Center, using Judaism/Spirituality as part of the treatment modality, the number of people who believed we were giving them “cruel and unusual punishment” because we took their cell phones for 30 days, we restricted their movements for at least 30 days, we made the different parts of their treatment plan mandatory, was huge. Parents would call us and be frantic because they could not talk to their ‘kids’ (some as young as 18 and as old as 50) whenever they wanted to. I reminded them that left to their own devices, their kids would have wound up in jail, institutionalized or dead an they would not have been able to call at will then either. The residents were resistant to the denial of their “desires” and would rail on and on about the ‘unfairness’ of it. I would show them the door and remind them they were not in jail or prison, they had a choice when they asked for admittance, I would show them their intake form and the reasons they gave for wanting to be in recovery and tell them I would support their choices whether I agreed or not-they just couldn’t “gratify” them because they were really “personal interests in disguise”. Most would laugh and say:”Well Rabbi, I had to try, it has worked at other places” and we would laugh together.

Another learning from witnessing the phenomenon described in Rabbi Heschel’s words above is how people who are wealthy, especially ones who either inherited their wealth or made a big score in their careers, believed that their “personal interests” were synonymous with their “needs”. Their children learned their ways of being entitled from their parents. Some of these wealthy parents would call the headmasters at the private schools to have their kids grades changed so they could get into ‘the right’ schools, some had paid high-priced attorneys to get their kids off with a slap on the wrist while people without their wealth would face real-world consequences: jail, prison, felonies on their record, loss of insurance, drivers license, etc;  for the same actions! They truly believed denying their children their desires, denying them what ‘everyone else had, was doing’ would lead to a mental health crisis and the kids played along with this idea and controlled their parents. Because the parents “worship not one but a whole pantheon of needs” letting their kids control them and manipulate them was second nature and, in some cases, deadly.

We, the People have made too many bad decisions based on these false “needs”. We, the People have created the monsters who are coming after us in this time and who have tried to devour us in the past. The “rhyme” of the past with 100 years ago is that another group has made their “personal interests” into “needs” and sold these “needs” to an unaware populace who are going to be crushed when they realize, hopefully not too late, the puppets they are/were and the lies they bought into precisely because both wealthy and poor, middle class and working class did not look out for authentic needs, for one another and worshiped idols and practiced idolatry rather than seek truth and practice true moral and spiritual norms.

Today is Christmas, it is also the 1st day of Hanukkah, both of these holidays along with Kwanza celebrate the spiritual nature of humanity, the resilience of the human spirit, the dedication/rededication of human beings to living authentic spiritual and moral principles and values. As my friend and Teacher, Rabbi/Hazan Danny Maseng teaches: Jews are chosen for a job, not because we are “so holy”, rather because the job of bringing the Bible to the world through nourishment actions. The same could be said for every spiritual tradition and the people who worship nothing. We all have a job to fulfill, both as individuals and as groups, I have continued to turn towards and run towards the “needs” that I am uniquely qualified to fulfill, I continue to be rebuffed more lately than ever before, and I continue to seek truth and love, wholeness and kindness, keeping my own entitlement in check, forgiving more and resenting less. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark