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What "neutral acts, needs" do you seek to fulfill each day? Year 4 Day 45

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 45

“What is at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. Our task, therefore, is not how to deal with the evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.12)

This paper was given at a seminar sponsored by the Fund for the Republic, part of the Ford Foundation. It was an ecumenical seminar and it seems the purpose was to find ways for “all of us to get along”, with a shared sense of faith and secularism, not trying to make the Government over into a specific ‘religious’ image, rather helping the secularism of government live up to the foundational freedoms, morals, truth, justice, mercy of all faiths.

Given this setting, given our current circumstances, we can experience the rumbling in our guts, the despair/anger rising up from our bellies, the pain and sorrow of our souls upon reflecting that 67 years ago Rabbi Heschel and others spoke to us of the dangers of neglecting “the neutral acts, the needs”. Neglecting meaning not paying attention to them, not keeping them in their proper places and controlling our appetites, rather than ‘I feel like I can’t live without___, get it for me/I will get it at any cost’ neglecting of needs. I do not believe he is also not speaking of authentic needs, as we covered earlier, I believe when discussing “the neutral acts, the needs” he is speaking of our coveting things we don’t truly “need”, taking actions that we convince ourselves (deceive ourselves/lie to ourselves) are “neutral”, they don’t hurt or help anyone. In all my reading, studying of Rabbi Heschel, of Jewish Texts, I have yet to find a “neutral act”! Everything we do has a consequence, good and not good, whether it is affecting another human being, the environment, God, the spiritual realm, our own bodies, souls. There is never an act that is “neutral”, just like there is no action that is ‘amoral’; people can be ‘amoral’-meaning “unprincipled, unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something”, however, I do not believe that our actions can be “neutral” nor amoral.

“What is at stake in the life of man” meaning: what is the risk, what is to be won or lost, in the way we live, in what meaning our lives have, what we do with our lives is all about the “neutral acts, the needs” precisely because as we learn in Numbers and throughout the Bible, humans put their “needs” before God, before what is right and good, before anything else and their “needs” come from scouting out after our hearts and eyes and we will whore after them, it is so important to realize this that we say this 3 times a day when we recite the Shema! It is so important for us to realize the error of seeking after our “needs” uber alles, that the Bible is ripe with the stories of the ‘good guys/gals’ who rise above their instincts to serve their own “needs” often and still succumb to the power of “needs” and, in their minds and the minds of the Rabbis of old, decide they are not ‘bad’, rather they are “neutral”-which is just a bunch of hogwash to overcome the guilt of doing the next wrong thing in service of “needs” instead of doing the next right thing in service of self, another, and the Universal Spirit.

I am still in awe that the Fund for the Republic put this seminar on at a time when everything was supposed to be ‘so good’. Ike was in the White House, baby boomers were doing well after WWII, religious institutions were seemingly flourishing, etc and Rabbi Heschel comes along, looks at the underbelly of what is happening in our country, in the world and uses his powers of insight, his experience of Nazi Germany and Poland, his inheritance as a descendant of the prophets to remind us “we got trouble” right here in America and it begins with a Capital N for “neutral acts, needs”.

“We Got Trouble” alright-not the kind from the Music Man about pool halls, “We Got Trouble” with our democracy precisely because we have spent these past 67 years worrying about inauthentic “needs”, we have spent these years not paying attention to “the neutral” and extolling the extremes on either end of the continuum. The result is Donald Trump, Project 2025, Elon Musk and “big balls” and his friends! We are witnessing the demolition of both religion and a free society while the ASSHOLE SENATORS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY just are BOBBLEHEADS for lawlessness, mendacity, anti-religious actions, and fulfilling the “Needs” of the Donald.

We, the People have to call a halt to labels like progressive, conservative, liberal, libertarian, etc. None of those labels mean what they used to, they are being bastardized and used to separate us rather than identify our leanings so we could have a discussion with those with whom we disagree and/or agree. Also, they were labels that belied the sense of freedom and faith where we could be liberal about one thing and conservative about another. We, the People have to say NO to the fulfilling of the selfish inauthentic needs of Trump, Musk, ‘Christian’ Nationalists, and the rest of the religious zealots, the rest of the power-hungry anarchists like Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, etc. We, the People are being called to account and being asked what are we staking our life on? What are we doing about the “neutral”, to “our passions” is what will determine our democracy surviving this current onslaught or losing to autocracy. We, the People are being called on today, as we were 67 years ago, 3500 years ago, 2000 years ago, to take a stand for what is good and right rather than standing for what we  have and don’t have. We, the People can no longer hide behind ‘I didn’t realize’ bullshit because the problem of “what is at stake in the life of man” has been written about and spoken about for over 3500 years when the Bible was begun and even before that when God spoke to Cain in the Garden of Eden! Isn’t it time for us to heed the words to Cain: “Sin couches at your door, it desires you much AND you can master it”?

I have been wrestling with “needs” forever. I do not believe there are “neutral acts”, I know that everything I do impacts someone, even if that someone is ‘only me’. I know that the ‘only me’ line is bullshit because whatever I do to myself leaks out and impacts another-be it good or not good. When I take care of me, I care for another better, when I am alert to what is going on in my inner life, I am more aware of the inner life of another, especially those around me. My trajectory was from learning about and taking moral actions to becoming immoral to regaining my morality, my ethics, my authentic self. I know what is important, I know what I do for my “needs” (like buy lottery tickets so I can win and donate more-for the good of people and my own ego). This awareness helps me stay away from “the neutral”, the false “needs” more often and not completely. I am a work in progress and I love to learn. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Are you still living a lie, living in silence, in secrecy re: your foibles, imperfections? -Year 4 Day 44

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 44

“The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent are the true seat of moral infection. The problem of living begins, in fact, in relation to our own selves, in the handling of our emotional functions, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 12)

Looking at the world today, especially the United States, we are experiencing the effects of “moral infection”. These words could have been written yesterday and the issue facing us all is that we didn’t heed these words 67 years ago! The moral rot we are being subjected to now is the result of “the silent atrocities, the secret scandals” of the people in power now. Trump, Musk, Vance, Vought, Kennedy Jr., Hegseth, et al all have skeletons in their closets that have shaped their view of power and service to self above all. Because of Trump’s unmasking since 2015, he has been singularly focused on re-writing the story to fit his sick, twisted, mendacious narrative. He is, along with Pam Bondi, going to go after the people who were standing up for the Capital Police, the DC Police, our Democratic ways, our Constitution, by going after the prosecutors, the FBI agents who found and prosecuted the criminals! Vought et al want to empower Trump with autocratic powers, declare him a Dictator and, these ‘fine christian folk’ want to trample on the poor, kick out the stranger, and imprison the needy-all the values Christ preached?!!!?

Yet, the “moral infection” is ours as well. We, the People have hidden our own “silent atrocities, secret scandals” for so long from the fear of ‘being found out and judged’ and the ‘shame’ we feel for breaking the ‘law’ of our faith, our spirit. Rather than live life out loud and in the light of the sun, we keep hiding in the shadows what seems ‘unseemly’, we keep denying the wrongs we do, much like an alcoholic who is “in their disease” cannot seem to speak truth when confronted. We, the People are the same as an addict in the throes of their disease, like the addict, we hide our ‘dirty laundry’, we deny our foibles, we engage in secrecy and silence about ourselves and are willing to hold the secrets of someone else either for our gain-one day we might need to use the secret to get them to do something- and/or for our validation that ‘everyone does it’. It is time for We, the People to stop hiding, to engage in the spiritual path of T’Shuvah: repentance, repair and return; the path of daily inventory in order to catch ourselves from continuing down the rabbit holes of secrecy, of scandalizing behaviors and actions, of silence in the face of evil and of believing our “atrocities” are good things.

The reason society is so twisted and sick right now is not because of Musk, Trump, Kushner, et al, it is because of the Greenblatts, the Bezos’, the Zuckerberg’s et al. It is because of the people who are ignoring the “problem of living” as described above, they are not being responsible for ‘the handling of our emotional functions, in the way we deal with envy, greed, pride”, they only want to blame someone else, they only want their ‘hero’ to save them from “those people”. The ones who provided jobs the past 4 years, the ones who, when they were wrong admitted it, the ones who flew to Ukraine and Israel to stand with our allies in their time of crisis, the ones who screwed up the 2024 election and left us with the bully/baby. It is the people who have stood silently by, it is a Jonathan Greenblatt who honors Jared Kushner for fucking the country, supporting and helping an authoritarian government like the ones his grandparents experienced in Europe and gives Elon Musk’s Nazi salute a pass. It is people like Bezos and Zuckerberg who have all the money they ever need and kiss the ass of Trump, Musk, et al. It is the people like “Big Balls” who proclaim their Nazi tendencies on social media and then given free reign to fuck up the governmental agencies!

Most of all, it is the responsibility of each one of us. We have dealt with our emotional functioning piss poorly-in my humble opinion. Rather than follow the ways of the Bible, we hide our imperfections, our errors of judgement, of “envy, greed, pride” behind so many facades. As Rabbi Heschel writes in his book Man is Not Alone, we have so much mental make-up on, we are sacrificing our faces! We watch the pain of those who have felt over the years they had to hide their sexuality and the “scandals and “atrocities” that have occurred because of the need to hide; families being broken up, women being betrayed and devastated, kids not understanding, the person being shunned from ‘proper society’, the stain on the entire family by a sick society, etc. We watch the pain of families and friends of the people who take advantage of the people around them through coercion, through manipulation, through deception and the helpless, powerless feelings that these friends and families go through-unable to believe and unable to say no, they are being terrorized. We can see the pain of those of us who’s families were displaced because of being Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, and the pain of losing one’s home even if it was shitty in the “old country”, it was still what they knew and being forced to go to a new land, without knowing the language well, they are heroes and their pain of leaving their loved ones behind, finding out they were massacred in the Shoah, is almost too much to bear. “Envy, greed, pride” figure into our decisions to become involved and to not become involved in the authentic needs of another. When we are envious, we cheer on the brutes, bullies, autocrats who are ‘sticking it to them’, not realizing we are next. When we are so greedy we can’t wait for ‘those people’ to be deported so we can ‘take what is rightfully mine even though someone else earned it’. When we are prideful to the max-‘we have to stand up for the white race’ becomes the mantra and the lens we see everything through. Isn’t it time for all of us to become spiritually fit so we can deal with our emotions in better ways, so we can be more like the Bible which portrays the greatness and the foibles of the characters??

I am guilty! I am in recovery from hiding, from feeling shame, from ‘not enough’ from “envy, greed, pride”, all of which drove my choices in my earlier years. My recovery is based on living out loud (yes, very loudly) without fear or favor. It gets me into trouble, I am not that welcome in polite society, I cannot contain myself when I get a whiff of mendacity, of bullshit, of a Trump, et al, of a progressive who says all the right things and is on the right side of an issue while being sneaky, backhanded, mendacious-all for a ‘good cause’ of course and unable to admit their errors or part in any situation. I am unable to sit idly by when there is possible blood being or could be spilled-literally or metaphorically. I am not perfect, I still find myself feeling envy, pride, and greed-now it is a passing thought or an admiration of the creativity of another human being. I wish I could be that good at creating my pottery:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Focusing on the true challenges of being human - Year 4 Day 43

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 43

“The prophets tried to overcome the isolationism of religion. It is the prophets who teach us that the problem of living does not arise with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes.The problem of living begins with the realization of how we all blunder in dealing with our fellow men.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11-12)

Seeing the world through the eyes of the prophets, as Rabbi Heschel did, is a very disruptive way of being or as Rabbi Heschel says: “They give me a bad conscience”. The first sentence above describes the issue with ‘religion’ as practiced by many clergy and congregations throughout history: “isolationism of religion”. Religion cannot be relegated to Houses of Worship, to our own homes, it has to be lived in all of our affairs. In Judaism there are over 100 laws about “kosher money”, how to do business ethically and morally! Imagine what Trump would think of having to do business in a “kosher” way, imagine what Jared Kushner (as he gets ready to build luxury apartments in Gaza) would have to do differently if he, the “gantze Jew” would actually follow the tenets of our faith! However, as long as religion is isolated from our living, people can wrap themselves in the Torah and, as Nachmanidies, a 13th Century Rabbi in Spain, writes in his commentary; “one can be a scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah”! This is the great challenge the prophets brought to us, this is the mirror they hold up to us, even today, which is why so few people want to embrace their inheritance of being descendants of the prophets, for Jews to live as the prophets call for us to live, for all of us, to “return to God and allow God “to heal our backsliding and take us back in love”(Hosea 14:5).

The issue, as the wisdom above reminds us, is not about how to take care of the scoundrels, not how to prevent “delinquency or hideous crimes”. This issue “begins with the realization of how we all blunder in dealing with our fellow men”. Wow, Rabbi Heschel is demanding we not get sidetracked from our primary purpose-realizing “how we all blunder” in our day to day dealings with another human being. We have been so willfully blind to this truth, we have all the defenses and denials in our back pocket so we can pull them out every time someone speaks to us about our blunders. We are so engaged in our ‘perfection myth’, we are so engaged in our “religious isolation”, we cannot see the truth of our behaviors nor can we understand the imperfections of another. We are, once again, witnessing a time in our religious traditions where religion is standing with the power and the corrupt to bastardize the words of Christ, the words of the Bible and the Koran in order to gain favor with the liars who have gained power through their subterfuge aided and abetted by some (maybe a lot) of Clergy who violate the separation of Church and State by advocating for ‘their guy’ to win within their congregation. This is true of all faiths, unfortunately there are more ‘bad apples’ in the clergy than we want to admit, more clergy who lead their congregants into hatred, racism, antisemitism, finding an enemy, denigrating those they disagree with, etc. These clergy, like the priests of old, are isolating “religion” by telling people “God loves those who are rich” , “You have to hate these ‘sinners’ who follow Christ’s words and are kind to ‘those people’-the poor, the stranger, etc. from some evangelical preachers;  “You are self-loathing Jews for not wanting all of Gaza and the West Bank to be parts of Israel for Jews only-what do you mean Palestinians are human beings” from the right-wing ultra-orthodox Jews; you get the idea.

We, the People are being called upon in this moment, just as the prophets were called upon in their moment, to stand up to the status quo, to rebel against the meanness, cruelty, mendacity that has taken hold in America, Israel, and across the Globe. We, the People have to clean out our ears, put on a new pair of glasses, and do angioplasty in our spiritual arteries so we can hear, see, and know what the next right action is. We have to take these actions so we can once again engage in our inheritance, spending the interest the prophets earned and growing the principal for our children and grandchildren. We, the People have to say NO to the idolators running our religious institutions who are afraid to speak truth to power, who are hiding behind their need to earn a living, who are conflict avoidant, who parrot the societal conventional notions of the moment. We, the People have to demand that our religious principles, aka the foundations of our morality, are to be lived in the marketplace, in the bedroom, in the houses of worship and in the street. Cheating someone who is not of our tribe is not holy, specifically prohibited in the Bible. Taking unfair advantage, “caveat emptor” is the opposite of what religious living calls for: the seller has to disclose the flaws of what he/she is selling-full disclosure! Declaring by word or deed, ie accusing people of crimes and/or arresting them for the smallest reason, because they are homeless, poor, needy,  strangers, etc goes against the demand “to care for the stranger because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt” which is said 36 times in the Torah! We, the People are being beckoned to open our eyes and see our own “blunders”, we are being called to return to the truth about ourselves, we are imperfect and make errors, repair them and grow from them. Only by seeing our own “blunders”, only be embracing our own imperfections and step by step growth can we really see another human being. Only by realizing our own “failing forward” can we help another person do the same, only by having compassion for ourselves can we have true compassion for another. Only by realizing we are all in this together can we end the “isolationism of religion” and learn to “all get along”. This is the challenge Rabbi Heschel, Torah, the world is putting before us today-will you respond?

I have been railing about the “isolationism of religion” for a long time. We refuse a donation from someone who was a notorious for his pushing the limits both legally and, more importantly ethically and spiritually. I have wrestled with the “realization of how I blunder in dealing with my fellow” human beings and each time I have these realizations, I am sad, I am moved to repair, I am moved to change. While this way of being is not always reciprocated, that is not my business. I have experienced people who use my T’Shuvah against me, I have experienced people who have embraced me tighter because of my T’Shuvah to them. I am imperfect, I am prone to errors, I am growing each day, even at my age:). I am blessed with people around me who ‘get’ me, who believe in me and who love me. They help me open my eyes, stay in truth, have compassion and live the principles in all my affairs. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Living as a whole person - no more "neutral" stances on life's issues - Year 4 Day 42

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 42

“The supreme problem is all of life, not good and evil. We cannot deal with morality unless we deal with all of man, the nature of existence, of doing, of meaning. The prophets tried to overcome the isolationism of religion. It is the prophets who teach us that the problem of living does not arise with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

While Rabbi Heschel’s prose is, at times, also poetry and the lens through which he sees life, religion, decency, serving God is unique and, to me, powerful. He is also repeating, saying anew, what everyone knows is true and throughout history has known is true-yet we keep ignoring this and so many other Truths because we take them for granted, because we forget them, because they are inconvenient at times, and because we relegate them to only certain issues, only certain experiences, only certain times.

Society’s need to deal with morality as a separate issue from human beings and what we do, who we are, and add in the “morally neutral” issues is at the heart of our problems today! There is no “morality unless we deal with all of man” and we see what happens when people take their isolationism to the extreme, when they buy into the “morally neutral” concept, the evil becomes good and the good becomes evil. The law is broken because it was never ‘truly understood’, the systems are upended because they are not serving the rich and the powerful enough, responsibility is ignored if you are rich enough, crafty enough and rewarding the scoundrels, the law breakers for their loyalty becomes the “way things are”.

The “nature of existence” of humanity is to do good, this is our basic nature and, as I have said before, our hearts/minds learn/devise evil from our youth. Evil actions are learned, the evil drive is given. The issue that society, that religion has not dealt with or at least not dealt with well, is how to harness the “evil inclination” early on in the life of a child. Lets not berate our children for their bad acts, lets not call out “God will punish you” for their errors, lets begin to give them the power to say NO to their inclination to do wrong, to “learn evil”, and lets stop giving them mixed messages with our own bad acts, with our defending our evil actions and calling them moral, telling them ‘you just don’t understand’, ‘wait till you are older’, etc. Morality is inextricably tied up in our existence, there is no neutrality when speaking about morality nor when we take an action-all of it is linked to our morality or lack therein. We, the People are in desperate need of shoring up our moral cores, we are on the precipice of losing our freedoms because too many people either stayed home or bought the bullshit of Trump last November. Today, we are watching the richest man in the world overtake our institutions, fire the loyal civil servants and look for ways to screw over those who have less than him-the 99.9% of us Americans! We, the People listened to Trump speak of cruelty, promise to be a dictator, remind us that “only I can fix it”, and his idea of “Make America Great Again” is to unilaterally take over the Gaza Strip and build, baby, build-probably giving the contract to the Trump Company or the Kushner Company to develop. We, the People watched him get elected, have witnessed people bowing down to him, some of us get trolled for speaking up for morality and against the dictator. We, the People have to STAND UP against not only his tyranny, not only against Musk, et al, we have to STAND FIRM in our morality, we have to RISE UP and say NO to the immorality of our current affairs, we have to say NO to the immorality of our own ways, we have to be the GUARDIANS of our spiritual heritage, of the lessons of the Bible, of the call of God.

We, the People have to deal with both our actions and the meaning of them and of our existence. Like the times of the prophets, many messengers come to us with the reports of our immorality and “morally neutral” actions. Rather than ignoring them because it makes us uneasy to admit our errors, to take their rebukes as love and faith in us, we the People get to accept their observations, we get to do our T’Shuvah, make new plans on how to deal with these situations because they will come up again, and we get to belong to a group of people who truly have one another’s back-helping one another do the next right thing. There are no “morally neutral” acts, in my understanding of the prophets, of Rabbi Heschel, of spirituality. Paying our bills on time is a moral action, paying a living wage is a moral action, not being responsible for our errors is an immoral action. The issue is whether or not we are willing to admit our own agendas and bias’ in our dealings. When we are told to “not stand idly by the blood of our neighbor”, there can be no “neutral” issues in our existence. As I am writing this, I realize we deny meaning and purpose when we use the excuse “morally neutral” or turning immoral into moral. “Life and death I put before you, blessing and curse, choose life that you and your seed may live”(Deuteronomy 30:19). CHOOSE LIFE is impossible when one isolates oneself from what is moral and right, when one decides to sell a lie as the truth, when one blames others for what they do, when we allow an autocrat, a “new pharaoh” to arise and we stand idly by.

As a recovering person, as a Jew who lost his way and found it again/for the first time, I can attest to the truth that morality is involved in everything we do and the “supreme problem is all of life”! How do I determine what the next right action is? How do I know that my actions are moral and just? Which parts of me are in control when, ie. Rational mind, intuitive mind, emotional mind? These questions still baffle me at times and I have a path of finding the right answers to the RIGHT questions instead of how I was before-finding the right answers to the wrong questions. When I ask myself: what is the next right action; I have to bring into the equation, what is the morality of my response, I have to ensure that truth, kindness, morality are leading my response. I do this by asking mentors and friends, studying with people, learning from our shared history, hearing Rabbi Heschel, my father in my head constantly, and listening with my soul, connecting with the spiritual forces of the universe and my own soul to get my marching orders. Doing this each day is my way of CHOOSE LIFE, it is my way of STANDING UP, RISING UP and saying NO to the liars, the grifters, the autocrats, the idolators, the charlatans that are so prevalent in our world. As Rabbi Tarfon says: it isn’t up to us to finish the work and we cannot ignore it either! The prophets knew it was a ‘fools errand’ to do what they did and I have to follow their example and do what I can without worrying about the results. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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What causes do you "feel fiercely" and cause you to take the next right action? Year 4 Day 41

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 41

“Their intense sensitivity to right and wrong is due to their intense sensitivity to God’s concern for right and wrong. They feel fiercely because they hear deeply.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

Continuing to speak about the prophets, I hear Rabbi Heschel once again reminding us of our need to study the prophets, to claim our inheritance from the prophets and act in the same manner as the prophets. I am not saying everyone should go around in white robes claiming to KNOW the word of God as we see on some street corners, rather I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call out to us to take the actions the prophets were begging the people of Israel, the people of Judah to take to save themselves. I hear the call to learn from their mistakes and heed the words, take the actions, save our own souls and the souls of the people around us.

The words above are so crucial for us in this moment as they have been in every era. The “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” is always needed, for us to live in a free society, to be able to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” we have to commemorate Juneteenth so we remember how long we dilly-dallied until all slaves were freed! We have to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day so we remember what happens to a free society when an autocrat takes over with designs on killing the Free Press, destroying the Rule of Law, rewriting the Constitution of the country she/he is overtaking, causing so much chaos that the important things go unnoticed. We have to observe Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur so we remember our own fallibility and end our ridiculous need to “always be right”, “achieve perfection” and deny any wrongdoing, defend all of our actions and act ‘holier than thou’. We celebrate the Sabbath each week, in each of the 3 western religions, to remember to take a breath, to connect with family, friends, to pray aka look inside of ourselves, to reinvigorate our souls with music, food, and introspection as well as connecting to something greater than ourselves which I call God, Higher Consciousness. Throughout the Bibles, Hebrew and Christian, throughout the Koran, as in every other foundational spiritual text, “God’s concern for right and wrong” shouts from every chapter, every page. There is no worship of God, there is no Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc without “intense sensitivity to right and wrong”. While the faiths/disciplines may differ in how to determine “right and wrong”, saving a life is paramount in all of them, as I understand them.

I hear Rabbi Heschel’s call to We, the People asking us what spiritual ailment allows us to be insensitive to “right and wrong”. What is the spiritual sickness we are suffering that is causing us to turn our moral compass’ upside down where what is wrong and mean, cruel becomes good and right and kind according to ‘the masses, the MAGA’s’ and the rest of us just go along?? What is the spiritual “hole in our souls” that gives us permission to take what is good and right in the ‘eyes’ of God, to take what the prophets have told us to do and make those things evil and bad, wrong and destructive according to the “oligarchs in charge”? We, the People, inheritors of the “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” that the prophets have are being called upon to engage this “sensitivity” instead of ignoring it because we are afraid of being sued, being arrested, being charged with the crime of standing up for “God’s concern for right and wrong”! We, the People are being called upon right now by the idolators and charlatans who praise EVIL as good, who praise AUTOCRACY as freedom, who defile God’s Name and Ways just as the Priests, Royalty and Wealthy did ‘back in the day’. The prophets are NOT DEAD, they live on through their words and through our deeds and the it is high time We, the People stand with them and claim our rightful place in the world God has entrusted to us.

We, the People need to take the cotton out of our ears and, once again, “hear deeply” the cries of the stranger and the needy, the poor and the widow, the people who have served us, our nation, with pride, with their whole hearts and with honor. We, the People are being called by the echos of the Prophets, by the words of our Holy Books, to “hear deeply” the call of our inner life, the call of our souls to STAND THE FUCK UP and preserve and protect the dignity of all people, recognize the infinite worth of every soul, the equality of everyone in God’s “eyes”, and revel in the uniqueness of everyone else because we are not in need of sameness, that is not the design of the world-our uniqueness brings about creativity, problem-solving and a cacophony of sounds, deeds and wonders which elevates the awe we can experience each day. We, the People can do all this only when we “hear deeply” the call of higher consciousness and commit to following this call because not doing so costs us our souls, our dignity, our worth, our uniqueness!

We, the People are being called out by the quote above to feel the pain of those who are being bullied by Trump, Musk, et al. We, the People are being asked to “feel fiercely” the attack on our freedoms, guaranteed by the Constitution which the Republican majorities, Trump, Vance, the Cabinet Secretaries all swore on a BIBLE to “protect and defend”! We, the People are being haunted by our ancestors the prophets to “feel fiercely” the pain, the destruction, the utter chaos they experienced with the destruction of the Temple, the fall of Jerusalem, the exile into Babylonia and then the Roman’s devastation of Judea once again and the wandering of the Jews ever since. When We, the People “feel fiercely” “God’s concern for right and wrong” and we will stand up to the liars in the Churches, Temples, Mosques and stand for truth and freedom, may that day come soon!

As one who “feels fiercely” and has “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” I understand the quote above in my kishkas, in my guts. I do not always do what is right, I am, however, sensitive to it. My errors, my lapses cause me great spiritual pain and I do my T’Shuvah as soon as I realize the “error of my ways” which is sometimes slower than others realize them. I am scared for our future as more and more people leave religious traditions because they are tired of the lies and bullshit. I am sad that institutions are still enabling wrong-doing for ‘the right reasons’. I believe we need a revolution of spirit, a rebellion led by faith and I am trying to be a good soldier with these blogs. Please join the army of “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” today. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Callous to your Callousness, unaware of your insensitivity? OY VEY!! Year 4 Day 40

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 40

“Tranquility is unknown  to the soul of a prophet. The miseries of the world give him no rest. While others are callous, and even callous to their callousness and unaware of their insensitivity, the prophets remain examples of super impatience with evil, distracted by neither might nor applause, by neither success nor beauty.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

Continuing to delve into the sentences above, Rabbi Heschel’s assertions of both “callous and even callous to their callousness” as well as being “unaware of their insensitivity” describes the way human beings act now as well as in the ‘time’ of the prophets. While we try to contextualize and put things in ‘order’, one of the errors of philosophers, Rabbis, historians, etc is, I believe, to relegate the prophets to a ‘time’. The time of the prophets is NOW, both in our time and in every generation, as we said before, it is for us, the descendants of the prophets, of the Buddha, (Christianity and Islam both believe in the prophets), to live their words and deeds, to follow the paths laid out by them and to reconnect with the source of life, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the creative energy that fuels the physical world and our spiritual lives.

What is it that allows us to begin to be “callous”, to be “unaware of our sensitivity”? I believe the source is our upbringing, it is a lack of learning about the prophets, it is an education system that teaches dogma and loyalty to the particular dogma, tribal loyalty, and as the Bible says: “the inclination of the heart(mind) of human is evil from its youth”(Gen. 8:21). We learn how to be “callous, and even callous to our callousness” as we see from the examples of Musk, Trump, Miller, et al. We learn how to ignore and be “unaware of their insensitivity” from the examples of the autocrats, the life of Korach, the ways of the 10 spies and their causing calamity amongst the people Israel, the way of the Roman Emperors, ad nauseam. We also are watching a new generation learn/re-learn how to be oblivious and “unaware” from the MAGA crowd who applaud the dictator, who relish the ‘beat the libs’ bullshit being spread. I watch in horror as Jews rejoice at every mean, indecent, and ugly action being taken. Is our memory so short or so damaged that we fail to realize that NO ONE fares well in an autocracy, in a dictatorship, except the ‘chosen few’?? It has never been “good for the Jews” to live under one, even when it was a Jewish one! We know this because we have the record of the prophets, we have the stories of King Saul and King David and their self-destructive ways once they decided they were King and answered to no One. David’s fall from grace happened when he stopped consulting God and listened to his own mind and desires. We all know how that turned out for Uriah-death!

We, the People have the opportunity to change, to return to an awareness of the awe that the world is filled with. A return to a way of being that puts decency, kindness, truth, justice, mercy, etc at the forefront of our living. We, the People are being reminded that we have examples to follow that help us live into our humanity more and more each day. We have an inheritance that tells us that the slightest evil is more than enough to get us into action to combat it, to stop it, to change what we are doing.

Herein lies the problem, though, people are afraid to do the “next right thing” because it might put them in harm’s way. A few days ago there was an OP-ED in the NY Times by Jessica Grose titled: “Loss of trust in the Church” which describes what we already know-Religious Institutions don’t solve problematic clergy, they just move them around. We have become a risk adverse and a litigious society which results in even Religious Institutions CYAing, rather than stand for truth, justice, mercy. We are witnessing exactly what the prophets witnessed, because human nature is so stubborn that “give it an inch and it takes a mile”. Trump, Musk, Putin, Bibi, et al are not anomalies- they are products of historical abusers, they are what happens when we are squander the inheritance of the prophets, when we are disloyal to the spiritual principles we are created with, when we grow the evil that we learn in our youth and become “callous, even callous to our callousness” which describes our current state of affairs brilliantly!

We, the People are being called to RISE UP, to no longer tolerate even the slightest evil, to no longer say “this is the way of the world”, and other such poppycock! While many see people like Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, Rev Martin Luther King as ‘rabble-rousers’ they were exorcising us to live into our prophetic heritage. They and many before and since led/lead us to “The Promised Land” (not into it) by taking the actions and living the principles the Bible, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha have set out for us. We, the People have to re-orient ourselves to fighting evil rather than succumbing to it, standing up to the bullies rather than giving in to them, demanding more from our elected officials rather than letting the special interest groups turn our democracy into an autocracy-be it an autocracy for right-wingers or left-wingers. We have seen the hatred and the strict dogma of the far left as well as the far right and both deny the words and deeds of the prophets. Both ends of the spectrums, religiously and politically, perpetrate evil upon the people they disagree with-“political correctness” hurt many people and denied a wrestling for compromises and common sense, especially on the left. “Party loyalty” has led to the destruction of the Republican Party as we have known it since the time of Lincoln and certainly the Party of Reagan is NO MORE because of ‘populism’ which is authoritarianism by another name. We, the People have to resist these horrors and not “be distracted by might or applause, not be concerned about “success or beauty”. We, the People have to stop caring about “How things look”/Optics and stand for Truth, stand with the prophets and be “super” impatient with evil!

I have been this way all my life and when I succumbed to the joining the “winning side” as I saw the evil around me-I went against everything my father, grandfathers, taught me and the ways they lived. My life in recovery has been to stand up and speak the truth, be the kid who says “the emperor has no clothes” and, regardless of being heard and heeded or scorned and thrown out, I have continued to live this way. I know the rage and “super impatience with evil” of the prophets because I have the same experience daily. I am concerned for our country and I am concerned for communities who’s Rabbi, Priest, etc are endangering the faithful with their addictions, with their lies and with the spiritual rape they are committing or are bound to commit. I speak out and without ‘proof’ the status quo holds and with ‘proof’, it is called “fake news”. I am enraged and I pray more of us are and we stand the fuck up for what is right, for the way of the prophets, right now! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Are you seeking "tranquility" while contributing to the "miseries of the world"? - Year 4 Day 39

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 39

“Tranquility is unknown  to the soul of a prophet. The miseries of the world give him no rest. While others are callous, and even callous to their callousness and unaware of their insensitivity, the prophets remain examples of super impatience with evil, distracted by neither might nor applause, by neither success nor beauty.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

“Tranquil” is defined “calm, placid, free of disturbance” and comes from the Latin “tranquillus” meaning the same. Once again, I am hearing Rabbi Heschel’s call to action, his reminding us that, as descendants of the prophets, how can we seek ‘nirvana’, the state of ‘ohm’ when the world around us is so miserable and callous? How misunderstand the word “serenity” as “peaceful” when it comes from the Latin meaning clarity? How can we, as descendants of the people whose souls knew no rest, no “tranquility” be witnesses to what passes as ‘good’ in the world and seek to “stay above the fray”, refrain from the marches, the letter writing, the calling of elected officials, etc while the autocrat in the White House and the one in Israel are defiling everything the Bible stands for, the Declaration Of Independence of both America and Israel stand for, and the tenets of Christianity, Islam, all spiritual traditions are based on? Yet, we do. This blog is not for the people who have drank the Kool-Aid, who are willing to follow the latest incarnation of Jim Jones and Jonestown to their ruin and death. This blog is for people who want to learn, who’s souls do not know “tranquility” no matter how hard they try to meditate, pray, study, absent themselves from the world, no matter how insensitive they try to be towards the people suffering directly. If you know people like this, please share my blog with them.

These first two sentences above give us great insight into what it means to be human, what it means to be people of faith, what it means to surrender to God’s Will. The houses of worship which promise ‘inner peace’, the spiritual disciplines that guarantee ‘serenity’, are full of it. To be spiritually connected and have ‘inner peace’ or ‘serenity’ while the world is burning, while the miseries of the world are on full display is impossible! Yes, one can have strength and clear vision of what is happening and how one can contribute to fostering change, much as Rabbi Heschel did. One can find “comfort” in knowing that we are following the call and demand of God, however the idea that ‘be cool man’, ‘what’s the big deal’ etc should ever be spoken from the lips of a human being while the “miseries of the world” are on full display is the ultimate in blasphemy. Yet, it is being preached from the pulpits, from the political podiums, from the White House and from the Knesset and tens of millions of people are buying this bullshit, calling the wannabe (or maybe not so wannabe) dictators “the messiah”, “the anointed one”, “our savior” etc. How can one be tranquil when one is being bombarded by the lies, the deceptions, the poison of these miseries, how can one’s soul be “calm, free of disturbance” when the world is vibrating from the callousness and insensitivity of humankind?

While I find it easy to point out the unspiritual political mess and the unspiritual immorality of the autocrats and their adherents, I believe We, the People have to look inside of ourselves and see how we are also part of the miseries of the world. Seeing the ways we try to act like our ‘shit don’t stink’, that we are ‘on the right side’ of an issue, that ‘we give to charities, we serve on boards while we are being treacherous in our business dealings because it is ‘just business’. We, the People are being called by the words above to give up our need to be tranquil, our search for “tranquility” because we are ‘doing the right thing’ in the wrong ways and for the wrong reasons. We, the People are being confronted with a mirror to see what “miseries” we are causing, how we are adding to the woes of the world, how our ‘doing good’ is to make up for our ‘doing bad’ in other areas as if life is a balance sheet.

One good deed doesn’t cancel out one bad deed, life is not a transactional experience-it is a covenantal experience, which makes ignoring the “miseries” that We, the People cause in our daily living tragic and indefensible. No wonder we seek respite in our seeking of “tranquility”, no wonder we misunderstand Shabbat as “a day of rest” from the everyday activities and we seek ways to deflect ourselves from the ‘work’ of Shabbat-reviewing our week, being connected to God, to people with whom we have pledged covenantal love, transparency, truth, mercy, gratitude, and acceptance. Rather than live into Shabbat ‘work’ we find new ways to make ourselves feel good by ignoring the need to do T’Shuvah prior to Shabbat so we can clean up our messes prior to the ‘holy work’ of Shabbat, new ways to defend our actions to ourselves so we don’t experience the pain of adding to the “miseries of the world” and experience what we mistakenly call the ‘shame’ of our guilt. The “tranquility” we seek is always elusive precisely because of our inability to live a covenantal life-to live a life that is guided by the principles of morality and decency laid out in the Bible, to live into and up to our potential for goodness and for redeeming the captive, welcoming the stranger, caring for the poor and the needy in material matters as well as spiritual matters. We, the People are given stories of our ancestors who wrestled with these principles and values, who often fell short of fulfilling them, no matter what the Rabbis, the Priests, etc claim. All the heroes in the Bible are heroes not because they achieved ‘nirvana’ or “tranquility”, but because they kept moving forward after they screwed up, they were held accountable and accepted the consequences of their actions, sometimes begrudgingly. Their stories are our stories and We, the People are being reminded that our search for “tranquility”, for ‘peace and calm’ is a lame excuse for not doing our own inner work and outer work to lessen the “miseries of the world” and not keep adding to them as if they are an interest bearing account.

I am not a “tranquil soul”, I am not at ‘peace’ nor rest, Shabbat is a day for me to see what is, renew my commitment to God’s Will, leave a little bit of my bullshit in the past week, and look ahead to this week. I am enraged at what is happening here in America and in Israel, I am aghast at how many people accept the additional miseries these leaders have put upon us and people around the globe. I know  my hands are not clean either. I have added to the “miseries” of the world in a myriad of ways and I have helped heal the “miseries” of individuals as well. I keep moving it forward and I pray you do also. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Responding to the Demands and Challenges of the Prophets - Year 4 Day 38

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 38

“The prophets had disdain for those to whom God was comfort and security; to them God was a challenge, an incessant demand. He is compassion, but not a compromise; justice, but not inclemency. Tranquility is unknown to the soul of a prophet.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

Can you hear the thundering, the volcanic eruptions that must be taking place right now? Can you hear the rebukes that are resounding throughout the universe, throughout the spiritual world? Can you feel the tectonic shift in the ground from the disdain of the prophets because of the ways the ‘people of the cloth, the people of the book’ are saying “god’s will” to any and all things that are happening, that ‘people of the cloth, people of the book’ are telling the afflicted to find comfort in knowing that “god will make it right in the next world”? If not - you must be part of the people causing the earthquakes in the spiritual universe, you must be going along with the liars and idolators and take “comfort” in God, believe that God is your “security” blanket. Ignoring the call of God, the true Will of God, the ways of God so you can vilify people like Bishop Budde for quoting Christ and Scripture, people like Rabbi Heschel for living Torah and living a life of prophecy, people like Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy Sr. who were willing to die for their adherence to God’s will and to make people uncomfortable, challenge their “security”.

The experience of today, where people in their Churches and Temples, Mosques and Synagogues use God to comfort them in their blasphemy is outrageous and it is happening every day, every service, with every political, business, personal decision made by these ‘god-fearing folk’ like Mike Johnson, Ben-G’Vir, Donald Trump, etc. What is worse, the ‘people of faith’ in our Congress and in governments across the globe are going along with these idolators, with these blasphemers so they are ‘safe’-the exact opposite of the ways of the prophets, the exact same as the people who were destroyed in Ancient Israel, exactly the same behaviors as when both Temples were destroyed! Yet these ‘fine men and women of faith, these christian nationalists, these jewish experts’ believe they are exempt and that God will comfort them and keep them safe-sounds like those ‘good christians’ in Germany in the 1930’s-40’s.

God is a constant “challenge” to and for us. There is a constant demand that rings loud and clear in the spiritual world, in our souls, that incessantly asks us to be one grain of sand better today than yesterday. This “challenge” is to not compromise our values and have compassion for ourselves and for another(s) when we fall shore. Not compromising our values means we do not sell our souls to the highest bidder, we do not vote against what we know is right because of fear of retribution. It means that being ‘politically correct’ is not an excuse for “standing idly by the blood of our brothers and sisters”. The challenges all boil down to the same question, I believe: what is the next right thing for me to do in this situation. Knowing that the right thing in this moment will change in the next, that my best in this moment is different than my best in any given moment yesterday. Having compassion for our foibles is not the same as compromising our values and ethics because we are unable to fully live them. It is not the same as compromising what we know to be true to belong to the power club who believe in “alternative facts”! We are witnessing the rich and powerful compromise values and ethics, seek comfort in the pews of all faiths for their willful ignorance of God’s will and substituting the ‘leader’s’ will and calling it ‘god’s’! Rather than have compassion for their fears and seek to do the next right thing even though we are in fear, these ‘titans of tech and industry’ have groveled their way into HELL ON EARTH because they ignore the “challenge”, the “incessant demand” of God.

Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word “inclemency” is very interesting to me; this a word usually associated with the weather and he is using it in conjunction with justice?? Clemency is about forgiveness, reducing the sentence of a convicted person, so one could understand the use of “inclemency” as the opposite of this way of being. It also means “harshness, merciless” which speaks volumes of how the prophets experience God. God’s Justice is tempered with mercy and righteousness, never harsh or merciless, never without the possibly of being pardoned and forgiven-hence the reason T’Shuvah was put into the world before the world was created. Since we are supposed to do T’Shuvah one day before we die and we don’t know the day of our death, we do it every day-not as confession, although this is a part of it; not as being forgiven, although this is usually given; rather as a tool for repairing our brokenness, seeing how much we matter, how powerful we are because we have the power to help and to harm, to lift up and to push down another human being.

We, the People are being called today and every day to experience and respond to the “challenges” of God, to meet the “incessant demands” that are put upon us daily. We, the People have to stop seeking comfort from the thundering of the prophets, we have to respond by seeing how we are living in the ways they tell us to and how we are not-repairing the damage we have done through our compromises and injustice we commit in the name of ‘god’, to shield ourselves from the bullies. We, the People are in desperate need of discerning the truth from the onslaught of lies and deceptions the autocrats, the ‘christian nationalists’, the project 2025 people are slinging like cow shit!  We, the People are being called to STAND UP for what is right and good, to STAND AGAINST the societal norms and mental clichés that are mendacious. We, the People are capable to do this because we are created in “the Image of God” and are God’s representatives, messengers, reminders.

God was never comfort for me, God has always been an experience of trembling awe-usually because I was afraid of not measuring up to who I truly am. As I kid, a young adult, even today-I approach God as guide, as the demander, and I keep seeing that I fall short of who I can fully be, by design! God doesn’t challenge me to be perfect-just a little better each day, God doesn’t demand that I am just all the time, just that I don’t use my connection to God as an excuse or a bastardization to make what is wrong, right. The prophets stay with me and their arms  are raised in a gesture that says: NU, what good have you done today? I am grateful that each day I am in the plus column of more good than not good. I hear the thundering, I feel the shift of the tectonic plates and I respond in the best way I can in this moment. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Learning the Prophet as a "form of living" to intersect at "a crossing point of God and man. Year 4 Day 37

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 37

“Prophecy is the voice God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophets’ words.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 11)

Why are we not more informed about the prophets? Why does Jewish education stress either the Halacha (law) or “Tikkun Olam”(repair of the world), what has happened that so many Jews have left the Synagogue and sought out Yoga, Buddhism, etc? I believe because when Halacha alone is stressed, when ‘repairing the world’ is pushed, most people are confused about themselves and their own inner life. The words of the prophets speak to the wrestling in our inner lives between our desire to ‘get ahead’, to not be “the plundered poor”, and to climb out of our own “silent agony”. Rather than be stuck in the middle, rather than ignore the problems of the inner life which then influence and create more problems in our outer living, the words of the prophets give us a path forward, they give us “a crossing point of God” and us. This gift of the prophets is little used because of the terrible education we receive. We, the People have to demand of our Rabbis and Ministers, our Educators and Nuns to be taught the words of the prophets and delve into their meaning in the world writ large and in the inner world of each one of us!

What is “the silent agony” Rabbi Heschel is speaking of? I believe it is the recognition of the cruelty and callousness of the world, of societal norms, it is the sudden awareness of our participation in same and, to us, our inability to stop it. “The silent agony” is our powerlessness over evil and our refusal to deal with the evils within us and the ones we see happening before our eyes. “The silent agony” is also, I believe, the realization of betrayal by the very people who promised to ‘clean the swamp’ and are, instead, putting more crocodiles and alligators in it for their own benefit. “The silent agony” is seeing what the prophets saw in the Temple and the marketplace, in the Royal Palace and in the homes of the people-prostitution! The prophets were enraged, they were aghast, they were crazed that people could bastardize The Word, that people could whore themselves for money and prestige, and they were out of control over the people’s putting up with this bullshit and even joining in! Yet, we see the same thing being reflected over and over again throughout history and we do nothing until it gets so bad that war breaks out or civil rebellion happens. How sad is this? Again, what is the reason the prophets are not studied, emulated and followed more in our Jewish Education?

The reason, maybe, is the Rabbis are afraid of being seen as not living in the prophetic tradition. Yet, the voice of the prophets is “the voice God has lent” to them so the Rabbis, the Priests, the Kings and Queens, the Rich and Powerful, the people themselves could hear “the silent agony” of God over what has happened to God’s people! The Rabbis, educators, Ministers, Priests have forgotten that “prophecy” “is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man”, and because they don’t accept this “form of living”, teaching it may be too scary, too painful a mirror for them to see their own silent acquiescence of the evils, the idolatry, the whoring being done by those in power and by themselves. The time has come for us to regain the passion of the prophets, to shout their words and ours-all given to us by higher consciousness/God-, and to stand firm in our condemnation of the dehumanizing of those in power. Be it DJT, BN, VP, JDV, et al -no one has the right to deny our humanity, no one has the right to “plunder the poor”, no one has the right to “profaned riches”, no one has the right to deny freedom to their neighbor, no one has the right to “stand idly by the blood of one’s neighbor”… We know this because the Bible tells us so, because we do not want to have any of these horrors happen to us, and because we know “God is raging in the prophets’ words” and we have to respond differently than we have before.

We, the People have to make a decision to turn our living around, to begin living in the ways the prophets tell us to, to end our: incessant forays into idolatry; into whoring ourselves (as Hosea points out); our perversion of Justice and mercy; our callousness and cruelty towards one another; our bowing down at the altars of the rich and famous; our refusal to immerse ourselves in prophetic living in order to end these vicious cycles of hate, evil, perversion of holy texts, profaning Moses’, Christ’s, Mohammed’s, Buddha’s teachings and thoughts. We, the People are being called upon, very loudly in today’s world, to STAND UP for God, for decency. We are being given the power to rage in God’s name, being God’s voice as the prophets were in their time. We, the People are being called to remind people that “prophecy” did not end-no matter what the Rabbis say- because there have been prophets throughout the millennia in all faiths, in our times Rev. King spoke in the way, name, rage, passion of the prophets, as did Rabbi Heschel, as did many other Rabbis, Ministers and Priests. Yet, because We, the People did not ensure that everyone learned how to hear the prophets’ words and ways correctly, because We, the People did not ensure that the color of one’s skin, the faith one follows is not important and the character of human beings is what we are measured by. When we ensure that “Justice rolls down like water and Righteousness a mighty stream”(Amos 5:24), when we make happen the words of Isaiah(2:4): “men shall learn war no more”; then we will be able to live with a more peaceful inner life, then we will be able to come “face to face” with God and have no fear, just trembling awe. We, the People are being called once again and We, the People have the power to say Hineni-Here I am; will you?

There is no way to ignore the truth of the words of Rabbi Heschel and I am bewildered when people are turned off by the ways and words of the prophets, when they want to deny people their prophetic voices and deride people who do believe “it is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man” and act accordingly in ‘polite society’. This is the problem I have encountered for my entire life-when we should get outraged, when the Bible tells us to be uncompromising in our pursuit of justice and righteousness, mercy and kindness, people laughed at me, told me I was idealistic, told me I didn’t know how the world worked so ‘I showed them’ I chose alcoholism and criminality as my ‘get back’. Now I choose the way of the prophets, I am still not accepted, I am still not welcomed so much in ‘polite society’ and I am welcomed in my home, in my soul, and I live with God, with imperfections, with passion, with purpose and with love. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Are you aware of the "burden upon your soul"? Year 4 Day 36

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 36

“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its terror.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 10/11)

While the Rabbis claimed that the time of the prophets was over and prophecy no longer came to humans, I believe they were mistaken and biased. These sentences describe the prophet’s state of being very well; “a man who feels fiercely” tells us that there is no ‘political correctness’ in the prophet’s world. There is no ‘go along to get along’ way of being for the prophet, he cannot “sit idly by the blood of his brother/sister”, he has to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. He has no choice but to care for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the needy and the poor. He cannot abide with discrimination in any form. For the prophet love is the goal of life; love of God, love of one another, love of self;  living from one’s spiritual life not living to ‘get ahead’.  Because of this way of being, the prophet cannot keep his mouth shut when wrongdoing is in his face. When the people Israel were whoring themselves in the Sanctuaries, in the Palaces, in the Marketplace-the prophets spoke out and spoke loudly. “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” says Amos the prophet and all prophets were outraged, overwhelmed with incredulity because of the lack of justice and righteousness in the Temple, in the Palace, in the Marketplace while the people were mis-attuned to God’s call, to the ways we were taught in the Midbar/desert on the journey to the Promised Land. Feeling the betrayal of the people to God was just too much for the prophet to stay silent.

In the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s, there were many who followed the example of Dr. King and spoke out mightily and constantly about the evil of racism, Rabbi Heschel being one of them. The great Rabbis of the past 100 years, the Priests and Ministers who have stood out over this time all had this gift of prophecy thrust upon them and they all felt the pain of the human being “fiercely” and spoke out against the power structure that was so cruel, that put taskmasters over the people to keep them down, marched for freedom without being bowed by the danger, rather being “bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed”. It is true that there is an ebb and flow to existence both within the human being and in the world itself. We have been through periods of autocrats before and what is happening right now is nothing new-the challenge for us, of course, is to not go to sleep, saying “This too shall pass” because there will be heartache, cruelty, and devastation of the human spirit and death of human lives. We are facing an autocrat who wants to install an oligarchy, a dictator that one of the influencers of JD Vance says we have to “get over our dictator phobia” and install one in America. We are facing people who will do and say anything knowing they have their own agenda, the Constitution they swore an oath to means nothing, their oaths are non-binding, and cruelty, chaos is the first goal with amassing all the wealth and power the ultimate goal.

We, the People need the words of the prophets to be ringing in our ears, day and night. We, the People need to wake the fuck up and “feel fiercely” the disconnection from our own decency, our own knowing what is right and what is wrong. We, the People need to stand up and say NO to autocracy, NO to a dictator, NO to oligarchs, NO to the lies of people in power, NO to our elected officials who are going along and/or being the architects of this cruelty. We, the People have to say NO to the idolators who say this cruelty is being done in the name of Jesus Christ our lord. We, the People have to reclaim our own prophetic voice. We, the People have to re-read the words and deeds of the prophets so we can improve our spiritual hearing to discern lies from truth, to hear the words spoken to us by these charlatans, these wannabe dictators and oligarchs, and realize if they ping like crystal(truth) or thud like lead(Lies). We, the People are being called upon to stop the cruelty, to stop the rape of the land and the people because of the greed of the wealthy, the ‘ruling class’.

The only way for We, the People to be able to respond is by staying aware, not giving into the fatigue of the lies and the onslaught of all the different actions being taken. Each of us has to focus on our corner, hearing what we can hear, seeing what is in front of us and take action; otherwise, our Constitution will fall as the Temple in Jerusalem fell. We, the People have to engage with spiritual guides so we can get our “spiritual house in order”, so we recover our basic goodness of being and stop being deceived by our selves and by another(s). People who buy into the MAGA bullshit are so far under the ether they no longer trust what their eyes see, they have followed Trump’s dictate to listen to what he says, not what he does, not what anyone else says, points out-just buy his bullshit and their lives will be GREAT AGAIN. While it is easy for us to be mad and sad for these people who “drank the juice” just like the Jonestown people, it is more important to not engage in endless arguments with ‘true believers’ and focus our energies on doing what is right and good-fighting the “fierce greed” of some with the love and strength of God, with the words of prophecy of the prophets, with the deeds the Bible tells us to do so we can understand the danger and the perils of buying the lies. God has sent the “waters” and the “mighty stream”, “righteousness and justice” are part of our DNA as humans and part of the DNA of the world: it takes We, the People to make the “waters” come down and the “mighty stream” to roll, it is our responsibility to live in “justice and righteousness” in all of our affairs, to live these principles especially when it is hard and makes us a spiritual nomad, a thorn in the side of power.

Know the fierceness of greed because I lived in it for 20 years. There was never enough, I guarded it with your life, I thought I could always get more and it did not matter that I was stealing, conning, lying to get the money-if I had money I was something, if I didn’t have any, I was nothing. Self-Worth=Net Worth when Greed is king in one’s life. Thank God I was arrested and heard the call of my inner prophet, exhorting me for the life of greed I was living, asking me the hard questions of where was justice, righteousness in my daily affairs. Who did I think I was to diss God, who did I think I was to dam up the “waters of justice” and the “mighty stream of righteousness”? I had no answer and I was bowed and stunned at how far from the moral compass I was born with and was nurtured by my father I was. Since that day, the prophets, Rabbi Heschel and my father speak to me, along with the Bible, family and friends, they are my daily companions and advisors-they make me a little crazy, force me to do the next right thing and we are in a covenantal relationship. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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What is the state of your "moral comprehension"? How do you elude your moral failures? Year 4 Day 35

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 35

“The niggardliness of our moral comprehension, the incapacity to sense the depth of misery caused by our failures, is fact that no subterfuge can elude. Our eyes are witness to the callousness and cruelty of man but our heart tries to obliterate the memories, to calm the nerves, to silence our conscience.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 10)

“Niggardliness” can be understood to mean “small” which makes the opening sentence mean the smallness “of our moral comprehension” which speaks to the times we are in, the times we seem to always come back to. After each and every great era of morality, equality, freedom the pendulum seems to be swung back to this stinginess of moral comprehension, it seems that the people who want power because of who they think they are, in modernity because of the ‘whiteness’ of their skin, they wait for a lull in the progress towards freedom and pull the pendulum back to hatred, back to a niggardly “moral comprehension”. We have seen this throughout history-the people who built the golden calf, the Israelites who complained about Moses as he was on his mission of redemption, in the desert the Israelites who made a 2 week trip into a forty year journey, the fall of the Roman Empire, the myriad of nations who have ‘fallen’ from grace and never regained their stature again, the Nazis, Russia, and now the MAGA crowd.

While I get trolled some for my views, I refuse to buy into the “subterfuge” that allows my trolls to elude the truth of “the depth of misery caused by our failures” and to ignore “the niggardliness of our moral comprehension”. We are in a time of deep moral failures, of being co-responsible for the misery caused by them, and claiming to not see this truth, claiming that it is good for people to suffer with high prices, for billionaires to get more tax breaks, for corporations to continue to be treated like people for tax purposes and not held accountable for their “moral failures” is ridiculous and dangerous. We are watching the destruction of accountability in our country and across the globe. While the ICC is wrong to charge war crimes, the Israeli people have to hold Bibi and his gang accountable for their actions on Oct. 7th and before, for their not getting the hostages back immediately and for their complicity in funding Hamas! Trump has to be held accountable by the Senate and the House of Representatives to have good, honest, and capable people serving in the Cabinet Posts instead of drunks, liars, ass-kissers who are firing the people who have served our nation proudly, in truth, and without regard to the political system.

How did we get to this place at this time in history? The last sentence above speaks to the dilemma we face and the epidemic we are in; our eyes are witness to the callousness and cruelty of man but our heart tries to obliterate the memories, to calm the nerves, to silence our conscience.” We are in a time where people will believe the lies someone tells rather than what they witness with their own eyes! “Watch what they do, not what they say”. Trump et al have done nothing to help the price of eggs go down-there is no bird flu, the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America, Greenland should be part of the US, Pardon the January 6 Armed Rioters at our Nation’s Capitol, are more important than helping the average person and no one in government is holding him accountable-SHAME ON YOU SENATORS, CONGRESSPEOPLE. Rather than see what is, people who are ‘loyal to the DONald’ “calm the nerves and silence our conscience” by repeating the lies he keeps speaking. Project 2025 is the plan and the playbook and “callousness and cruelty” is the point-all in the ‘name of Jesus’ and they are aghast when someone like Bishop Budde quotes Jesus’ words and deeds back to them from Scriptures instead of some sham bible they claim to be holy. The people who will suffer the most are the people who are kissing his ass the most, the people who show up at his rallies and cheer Stewart Rhodes as he celebrates his not being held accountable along with the DONald who is not being help responsible nor accountable for his wrongdoings.

It is past time for all of us to look inside of our souls, to take an inventory of our inner life and our outer actions. Each person is to do T’Shuvah one day before we die and since none of us know the day of our death, do T’Shuvah every day, according to Rabbi Eliezer in the Talmud (Shabbat 153a). All of us are accountable and no amount of “subterfuge”, no amount of lying to oneself nor another human being can change this fact. We, the People have to take back our moral compass and learn to live by it. We, the People have to stop hiding behind lies and blinders denying our “failures”. We, the People have to see the cruelty and callousness that is in front of our eyes and put an end to the misery we cause by our willful blindness. We, the People are being given an opportunity to say NO to the hatred and cruelty being perpetrated upon all of us, We, the People need to hear the call of the prophets, the call of our inner life, the call of the poor, needy, stranger, and respond with HINENI, rather than, “not my problem”. We, the People have to be accountable for the misery and evil, cruelty and callousness perpetrated in our name by our leaders. We, the People are being called to duty in service of holy principles, in service of moral principles, in service of one another and in service of love, kindness, justice, mercy, truth-will you stand up and answer this call today and every day?

“What an order, I can’t go through with it” is a phrase in the Big Book of AA and it reminds us that we are not expected to be perfect and progress is always attainable. This is my story for the past 36+ years. I am acutely aware of my moral failures and my callousness, both of which I have done less and less since my recovery began long ago in a prison cell. Yet, I know I am still guilty and I make my T’Shuvah for my errors. I hold myself accountable and I depend on a few people to help me-the vast majority of people like to point fingers as ‘victims’ when finger-pointing is actually a “subterfuge” for them because if I can blame you-you will not see what I have done, am doing-like our current government, like Bibi and his government. Remembering my own foibles gives me compassionate pity for people and doesn’t absolve them, just as I am not absolved until I make my T’Shuvah. After doing this, I am clean and the person denying forgiveness and rapprochement is the guilty party. I refuse to be cruel and callous knowingly and on purpose, I also refuse to just go along, admit to something that isn’t true, silence my voice because another person doesn’t like it and ‘feels’ bad because I am loud, proud, and joyous about “Freedom for All” and I refuse to apologize for who I am. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Indifferent to Evil when it doesn't 'affect' you or sensitive to evil anywhere, anytime-Which are you? Year 4 Day 34

Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 34

“They speak and act as if the sky were about to collapse because Israel had become unfaithful to God…The prophet’s words are outbursts of violent emotions. His rebuke is harsh and relentless. But if such deep sensitivity to evil is to be called hysterical, what name should be given to the deep callousness to evil which the prophet bewails? “They drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils; but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph”(Amos 6:6) (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 10)

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day and these words from Rabbi Heschel, the time we are in, are so cautionary for us and I know most people can’t/won’t hear the pleas of the prophets, Rabbi Heschel, and continue in “deep callousness to evil” that has been a hallmark of human beings since the beginning of humanity! One could ask oneself where have the prophets been in our life? Why are they not studied more, what is the problem they pose for the Rabbis who quote them, often out of context, yet don’t stand on the street corners, don’t raise their voices in the Temples and Synagogues to remind us how the words of the prophets, the “outbursts of violent emotions” are relevant and necessary for us right here, right now?

Holocaust Remembrance Day was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, citing the day of liberation of Aushwitz as the marker of this solemn occasion. The same United Nations that allowed hostages to be hidden/held in their buildings by Hamas and other Terrorist groups in Gaza, the same United Nations whose UNWRA employees participated in the Oct. 7th massacres! Talk about “deep callousness to evil which the prophet bewails”! Yet, governments, organizations, religious institutions, political parties, and individuals seem to be willfully blind to their incongruous behaviors, to their inability to face themselves, grow their spiritual maturity to a place of connection to the prophets, identification with the prophets and action along the lines  of the prophets’ words and deeds. Instead, we feel ‘judged’ by the “rebuke” which we ‘feel is “harsh and relentless” so we just ignore it, defend it, deny it, as the UN has done, as the world has done with regard to the latent, virulent anti-semitism that is once again rampant in the world. Today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, white supremacists roam the US, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, praises the far-right party in Germany, putting his nose in the politics of another nation, using the Nazi Salute at a rally in America, being defended by Bibi Netanyahu, Donald Trump installing him in the White House, and we are shocked, dismayed, not understanding why the “prophet’s words are outbursts of violent emotions”?

What else can our words be in such a time as then, as now? How do we defend the “deep callousness to evil” which is being showcased in the White House of Donald Trump, the work of Elon Musk, the drunkenness of Pete Hegseth, the cowardice of the Republican Senators in Congress, the hateful idolatry of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, etc? What is it in the human psyche that is so enthralled with “evil” that we have become callous to it when we see it, when we perpetrate it, and are so aghast when it is perpetrated upon us? How have we failed to realize the words in Genesis:”Sin couches at your door, it desires you much and you can rule it”(Gen. 4:7) What is the problem with human beings following the Holiness Code as an antidote to our “deep callousness to evil” and participation in it? We have failed to immerse ourselves in the study of the prophet’s words and ways. We have failed to be cultivate a “deep sensitivity to evil” and the world is suffering because of it. There is poverty, gluttony, terrorism and displacement, treating the stranger as an enemy and hate your neighbor rather than cultivating the ‘laws’ of the holiness code on display today and we are all poorer because of it. Bibi, the UN, Trump, et al will all mark today with some wonderful words and continue the despicable actions we have come to accept.

We are being judged, we are being given strong rebukes by the words of the prophets and we need them! We the People have fallen asleep, fallen off the path of decency, loving our neighbor as ourselves, of building a space for God to dwell among us, within us, and it is time to WAKE UP! The prophets are not as hysterical as the people who were gassed in the Holocaust. The prophets were not as hysterical as the Rwandans massacred because of senseless hatred promoted by the Belgians, the prophets were not as hysterical as people in the United States are when women die because of insane reproductive constraints, the prophets were not as hysterical as the Israelis who suffered the terrorist attack of October 7th, nor the victims/survivors/first responders of 9/11, etc. We all have been hysterical in the face of sin/evil and we continue to turn a blind eye a blind eye to it when we are ‘not involved’ and/or ‘it isn’t being done to us’ forgetting that what someone will do to another, they will do to you. We, the People are given a new opportunity each and every day to hear the prophets words and take action on them. We are given the space to repent for our indifference to evil and repair the damage we have wrought because of it. We are graced with the kindness to see anew our actions and have more clarity as to what is the next right action to take. We, the People are being called today and every day to NEVER FORGET what “sin” does, NEVER FORGET what “callousness to evil” brings about, TAKE CONTRARY ACTION to what has become acceptable evil by society and stay “maladjusted to the conventional notions and mental cliches” of our time and our mendacious leaders of countries, institutions, and religious sects.

I am sitting here writing with such anger and rage over what is happening in my country and around the world. People who claim to be ‘christians, jews, muslims’ bastardizing the words of our holy texts make me volcanic. People like: Jonathan Greenblatt who, under pressure it seems, finally condemned Elon Musk for his Nazi Salute; Bibi Netanyahu who has kept the hostages from coming home sooner because of his arrogance, making excuses for Musk’s actions, Donald Trump who wants to displace the Palestinians from Gaza and disrupt the government’s of Egypt, Jordan-not Saudi Arabia nor Qatar who both do ‘business’ with his son-in-law Jerad Kushner. How can I not have “violent outbursts”, not be “hysterical” when such evil is being perpetrated and celebrated? I am not always right about my reactions, they are misconstrued often and written off as a personal agenda. I suffer the most frustration when this happens because my “outbursts”, my “hysterical” response is because of my “deep sensitivity to evil” because I was guilty of promoting it prior to my recovery. I may be harsh and I am loving, I am relentless and I am loyal. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Are you standing up to or being a whore to the people who are grabbing power and our freedoms? Year 4 Day 33

Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 33

“They speak and act as if the sky were about to collapse because Israel had become unfaithful to God…The prophet’s words are outbursts of violent emotions. His rebuke is harsh and relentless. But if such deep sensitivity to evil is to be called hysterical, what name should be given to the deep callousness to evil which the prophet bewails? “They drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils; but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph”(Amos 6:6) (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 10)

Rabbi Heschel is speaking about the prophets in the first sentence above, of course. He is also speaking to us, the descendants of both the prophets and the people who “had become unfaithful to God”. Immersing myself in this sentence, I find it very interesting to see how many more people claim and reflect/repeat/find new ways to emulate, copy, deepen, their paths to “become unfaithful to God”! And, as the progenitors of this way of being showed us, the most ‘holy’, the loudest prayers, the ‘best’ students, and those who proclaim to ‘know the word of god’ are the biggest whores! They are the ones for which Numbers 15:39 is speaking to-“Don’t scout out after your heart and your eyes  because you will whore after them!” Yet, Mike Johnson, Donald Trump, JD Vance, Tommy Tuberville, and so many of these ‘righteous christian nationalists declaimed the spiritual message of Bishop Budde, called her out, sent their minions to send threats and prayers for her demise, demanding apologies for the message of Jesus, the message of both the Bible and the New Testament give out often! How much more unfaithful can we be? Earlier in Numbers 15:15-16, we learn “there shall be one law for you and the stranger amongst you, one Torah, one judgement”. Twice in two verses we are told to not pervert justice for ‘our people’, we are not to have one law for democrats and another for republicans, Mr. Trump, North Carolina Legisture, Tennessee Legislature,- you boastful god/idol-fearing people!

How can we not think, feel, believe “the sky is about to collapse because Israel (we) had become unfaithful to God”? Because so many were not afraid of this happening, because so many people gave in to the machinations and lies of Trump, Musk, et al, because the Congress is full of isolators, liars, descendants of the people in power in ancient Israel, because so many people were uninformed, ill-informed, buying the lies and believing they would be ‘saved’ by their ‘messiah’, we are in the situation we find ourselves in: a drunk is the Secretary of Defense, Equal rights for LGBTQ have been suspended, strangers are subject to different rules and laws, strangers are unwelcome, the poor deserve to be poor and ‘tough luck sucker’ attitude seems to be in vogue, the rights of the people of California to FEMA money is being made conditional, possibly, and so many other perversions of justice, so many other desecrations of God’s name by Trump, Vance, Musk, Johnson, Ernst, et al-all ‘god/idol-fearing people’! Isn’t it time for us to face up to the truth of our ancestry, isn’t it time for us to face up to the “sins of our fathers” so we can not repeat them? Isn’t it time for all of us to stand up and be “Face to Face” with God as our ancestors were and re-affirm the words, “We will do and we will understand”, the emphasis being on doing to understand rather than lying to make you understand the ways ‘they’ want to cheat, lie, steal, have power over you?

Is it any wonder that the prophets “speak and act as if the sky were about to collapse”? The wonder, to many, is why more people are not engaged with, studying the words of the prophets, beginning with the prophet Nathan in the 2nd book of Samuel? Nathan stood up to King David and told him a story to find out if he had lost his sense of moral outrage or was the death of Uriah a lapse of morality- had he lost his way for a moment or forever was Nathan’s question to himself and God’s question to Nathan. King David was outraged on behalf of the poor and when Nathan said he was the sinner: King David admitted it, said “I have sinned”, asked for forgiveness. This is not what is happening in our time, just as this was not the example the kings and priests of Ancient Israel followed! We speak every day of the Exodus from Egypt in our prayers, yet we continue to enslave another and ourselves to the lie of “the good old days”, of “make America, Israel, Russia, Hungary, etc great again”. We were never “great”, we are never “there”, we are always on the journey and the prophets, seeing the whoring of the people, watching the Pimps in the Castles, Halls of Justice, Government, Houses of Worship, etc; were outraged on behalf of God, on behalf of the innocents, the strangers, the poor, the needy.

We, the People have to hear the prophets of today calling to us. We, the People have to re-read, re-learn the lessons of the prophets of Ancient Israel. We, the People have to stand up for our souls, for the souls of the people we care about and the souls of our enemies as well! It is up to We, the People to send clear, unequivocal messages to those in power who are trying to Pimp the rest of us out that we are NOT WHORES.  We, the People are NOT JOHNS who will sell our souls for their fake bullshit! We, the People have to stand up and tell Mike Johnson and those other idolaters in the Congress that we know the Scripture and we know the message of God through Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, because we are living it in our daily life. Caring for the marginalized, ransoming the captive, redeeming our brothers and sisters, rebuking our neighbors when they are doing wrong,  not standing idly by the blood of our neighbors, loving our neighbors as ourselves is our modus operandi-not the willful blindness, the bullshit buying crap they are trying to sell us. We, the People have to tell Johnson, Trump, Thune, Vance et al that we are servants of the Holy One, we answer to our the Higher Consciousness of the universe-not be lackeys, whores, johns for them!

I got stuck on the first sentence above as I am so enamored, engaged with and feel kinship with the prophets. I understand their fears, I understand their passion and their need to call bullshit on the lies and subterfuges of the ‘people in power’. I get why they are considered angry, cantankerous men because they went against the societal norms of the day, of today. When the Orthodox Jews bastardize the text, fail to heed the warnings of the Bible, believe they know God’s will better than what the Bible says, we are in trouble!! When the ADL gives cover to Musk using the Nazi signal, when Jews praise Trump letting white supremacists out of prison to be his ‘private militia’ we are in trouble!! I know the “fire in the belly” of the prophet because I have it, I know the outrage because I experience it, I know the need to speak it loudly because I do it. I know the trouble it can get one into because I experience it. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Injustices, falsehoods, hypocrisies, miseries Oh, MY! Year 4 Day 32

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 32

“Their breathless impatience with injustice may strike us as hysteria. We ourselves witness continually acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage, misery, but we rarely get indignant or overly excited. To the prophets a minor, commonplace sort of injustice assumes almost cosmic proportions.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.10)

The truth of the words above is meant to have all of us take a breath, pause our usual way of being and look at the ways in which we betray our self, betray our moral compass, betray our spiritual health through our unwillingness to “get indignant or overly excited” over what the prophets had “breathless impatience”! What is it in our make-up that makes human beings either buy into or accept “acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage, misery” when it is perpetrated by them, their ‘side’, and upon another human being they want to have power over, are afraid of, or because of their racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, anti-Muslim attitudes? Yet, when they think the same thing is happening to them, they cry and scream bloody murder! We humans are an interesting lot, aren't we?

Of course the prophets were hysterical about the idolatry, the mendacity, the injustices happening around them. They were people of faith, they heard the words of the universe/God in their souls and they were unable to constrain themselves. They did “not belong in polite society” because they are raucous, loud, unbending and in your face. Hence the hatred of them and their words both by the people in power and some of the populace as well. Sort of like someone purporting to be Jewish and hating the stranger, spitting on the poor and needy, forgetting to redeem the captive, enjoying the enslavement of another human being like Pharaoh did in Egypt. This way of being an anti-prophet is like calling yourself a Christian and having contempt for the downtrodden instead of mercy, lording one’s power over the populace and putting the ‘leper’ into camps along with the Jew, the Black, the Hispanic and letting them out only to serve the people in charge. Being silent instead of being outraged would be like calling oneself an American and denying freedom to all, changing the Constitution at the whim of the President, smashing the rule of law, calling domestic terrorists “good people”, calling Anti-Semites, “good people”, hanging with self-proclaimed Nazis and saying how much you love everyone.

The question posed by Rabbi Heschel’s writing above is: Why are we NOT outraged at these actions? What is our excuse for the denial of “unalienable rights” to “those people”? How do we reconcile a two-tiered justice system, one for the ultra-rich and one for the rest of us? How do we make it okay for our own hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of “our side” and falsely scream Hypocrite to people who are not “our people” when they do the next right thing? What is the mechanism by which we are in acceptance and promotion of the misery people feel today and throughout history-as long as it isn’t us feeling it? What stops us from realizing “a minor, commonplace sort of injustice assumes almost cosmic proportions” because of the ripple effect it has and how it reverberates throughout the land?

There is only one thing that stops us from realizing all these things, there is only one thing that prevents us from seeing our own hypocrisy, mendacity, willful blindness, indifference to evil; our spiritual immaturity! We have spent so much time and effort on the raising of our minds, bodies, reasoning and we have forgotten to raise up our spiritual health-this is true today and has been true throughout human history. Each time the Rabbis of old made the people of the Bible out to be right and perfect, ie King David, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc they denied us the gift of seeing ourselves and growing our spirits- how can one compete with perfection? How can one strive to be perfect when one knows how imperfect one is? Hence the need for the Spirituality of Imperfection which is what the Hebrew Bible truly is. Yet, most human beings are woefully unaware and willfully blind to their need for spiritual growth, spiritual maturity. We watch people pray with fervor, speak in tongues, praise Jesus, study the Talmud, go to services, listen to the Preacher/Rabbi/Imam etc and not be moved to “hysteria” by our own perpetrating of “injustice”, “hypocrisy”, mendacity, etc. Our willful blindness, our indifference to the evil we perpetrate is the reason we find ourselves in the situation we are in: an Episcopal Bishop, praying for mercy, kindness, love in Jesus’ name is vilified, hated on, sent death threats/wishes, called “nasty” by the President of the United States, and at least one Congressman wants an American Citizen deported for repeating the requests, the teachings of Jesus! It would be like a Jew saying there should be one law for the citizen and stranger alike being called anti-American!

We, the People are being called upon to STAND THE FUCK UP! We have to become hysterical at the desecration of our Constitution, the bastardization of the Bibles of both Christianity and Judaism, the complete undermining of our spiritual traditions and our own spiritual health. “Righteousness, Righteousness you shall pursue” is a commandment found in Deuteronomy 16:20, we are not expected to obtain it, to ‘catch it’ rather we have to be on the path of righteousness. We are not expected to be perfect-this is a Greek/Roman/Christian/Rabbinic construct, not one of God’s commandments. We, the People have to learn to say NO to our lower angels that give us the ‘right’ to ignore the suffering, the hypocrisy, the injustices done to another by ‘our side’, by us. We can only do this through maturing our spirit, growing our inner life and being responsible for the inheritance that the prophets have given to us, be responsible to the words and deeds of our ancestors from Abraham to Moses, from Judah to King David, from the prophets to Jesus, from the Baal Shem Tov to Reverend King and everyone in-between. This is the call of today’s words, this is the call of the Ineffable One, this is the call of our inner life, our souls. Will you answer it today?

I have heard this call forever. My father taught me to hear it and I ran from it like Jonah and I fell into the ‘big fish’s belly’, also called prison/addiction. Responding to the call, being hysterical over injustices, not accepting ‘they were not ready’ as an excuse for someone’s overdose, very loudly calling out bullshit on myself and another, is the result of my own spiritual growth. It is a hard life, it is a lonely life, at times, and it is the only one worth living for me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Which Inner Wolf are you feeding? Year 4 Day 31

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 31

“Their breathless impatience with injustice may strike us as hysteria. We ourselves witness continually acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage, misery, but we rarely get indignant or overly excited. To the prophets a minor, commonplace sort of injustice assumes almost cosmic proportions.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.10)

We are all inheritors and descendants of the prophets, yet we continue to make hard right turns to our ancestors the Romans, Greeks, Israel that was lost to Assyria, Judea that was destroyed twice because of injustice and other acts which no one got “indignant” or had “impatience” with. It is fascinating to watch our consistent turning to the fascist tendencies that reside in all of us, the need for certainty, power, control, eternal life, etc that cause us to see another human being as either an object for our rise to power or an enemy, obstacle to our drive for wealth and power! At the same time, we are stunned when someone else sees us as their “enemy” or treats us as an “object” to get what they want. While it is easy to blame “those people”, it is more important to look inside of ourselves and see how we do this as well. Before we have the right to complain, to correct someone else, we have to do our own Chesbon HaNefesh, our own accounting of our soul and repair both the damages we have caused by our inner fascist tendency and have a plan to use the energy from this tendency for good and for freedom. This is true for the autocrat and the progressive, the Christian and the Jew, the Muslim and the Buddhist, it is true for all of us and very few of us are engaging in this work.

Bishop Mariann Budde is in the news for being a preacher! She is being skewered by people whose fascist tendencies are on full display just because she acted as a steward of Christ’s teachings, she acted in accordance with being a descendant and student of the prophets. Bishop Budde is the real deal, she stood up to the bully with love and kindness, with a plea for mercy and a call to their better angels and she has received death wishes, calls to be deported (although she is an American), and called “nasty, not smart” by the very man, DJT, whom she asked to display mercy!! She, like the prophets before her, like MLK, like Rabbi Heschel, like Rabbi Prinz, like the people who spoke out for justice in re: civil rights and Vietnam, is the “radical” according to the “fascist” within the individuals in the MAGA movement. While Bishop Budde does not see what she did as courageous because she was just being the steward of Christ’s words and deeds, teaching the Biblical commandments and tenets of her faith; yet in today’s world, once again, doing this is an act of heroism and act of treason to those who indulge their inner fascist.

As I said above, the far right and the far left, all people who live in the extremes, are indulging their ‘inner fascist’, their bully, their need to be right and to exclude which in itself is an injustice of major proportions! The ridiculousness of identity politics on both the right and the left is both extremes say they are “speaking for the people” and “in line with the democratic values of the United States” which is the farthest thing from the truth. They have to do this, however, because to see the reality of their words and deeds, to see how they are as exclusive as any Country Club, would shatter their ‘rightness’, crumble their ‘victimhood stance’, dissolve their ‘patriotism’ into what it all is; bullshit! The ego strength of both sides cannot withstand their being wrong, hence grudges, talking at or past one another, coming together only when they hate and blame  the same people/group. This is what happens when we, the inheritors of the prophets, the descendants of the prophets pay more attention to our “inner fascist” which we also inherited.

We, the People have a stark choice in front of us, one that Bishop Budde’s homily, prayer has brought us face to face with. Which wolf are we going to feed? Do we continue to give fuel to our ‘inner fascist’? Do we continue to associate with people who spew hatred, retribution, lies, racism, and be influenced by them or worse be silenced by our fear of them? Do we act like the Republicans in Congress seem to be acting-acquiescence because of fear of being pushed out of office, denying the oath they swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States, to be loyal to their constituents needs, the needs of Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein? Or do we do something different? Do we feed the wolf that says: ‘I am a descendant and inheritor of the prophets of Israel, I am an inheritor of the law of Moses, the Teachings of Jesus, the brilliance of Mohammed, the higher consciousness of the Buddha. My inheritance has given me the strength and pathway to do what is right and good, not for any personal gain, rather because my soul is compelling me to’? Do we feed the wolf that embraces our ‘inner fascist’ and helps transform its energy to do more good, to feed more people, to welcome more strangers, to help more needy people, to be more just, to show more mercy, to walk more in the footsteps of our faith/moral principles? We, the People have to make these decisions each day, they are a daily commitment and we need to stay in the present so we don’t fall back into our old ‘bad habits’. We, the People are being given the light and the sign, the leadership and the path to stand with the divine in each individual, follow the call of our inner conscience/soul, and, as Rabbi Hillel says: “In a place where there are no humans, be human.” This is the example that Bishop Budde put in front of us and we all need to follow her-full stop!

I wrestle with my ‘inner fascist’ each day, for the past 37+ years, it hasn’t won the day-thank God, thank all of you! I believe we are descendants and inheritors of the prophets and it causes me great anxiety and pain when I act differently than they would/did. I feel the call and the pull of standing up for what is right and good, just and holy so strongly that I am dismissed as a ‘niche Rabbi’, a ‘lunatic who can only minister to addicts’, a ‘sideshow not to be taken seriously or called upon in polite society’. I fought against these labels for a long time and now I embrace them. I don’t want to be in ‘polite society’ where the ‘inner fascist’ of the ‘right people’ is ignored and/or celebrated-as Jonathan Greenblatt has done for Elon Musk. I am a ‘niche Rabbi’ because I don’t believe in ‘half-truths’, I hear the call of the Torah in my own way and am unafraid to say it. I don’t have a lot of friends nor am I in great demand; which is okay because I am my friend, I am in demand for my people and I want to be me. “God is my Shepherd and I lack nothing” (23rd Psalm). This is my truth-God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Cultivating the Prophetic Voice of our Inner Life- Year 4 Day 30

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 30

“The prophets make so much ado about paltry things, employing the most excessive language in speaking about flimsy subjects. So what if somewhere in ancient Palestine poor people have not been treated properly by the rich?… Why such immoderate excitement? Why such intense indignation?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 9-10)

A portion of the section of the Hebrew Bible, called “N’Veim”, meaning prophets that covers from the time of Joshua till through the Prophets, is read each week in Temples and Synagogues. Most people don’t care what the stories are attempting to teach us and of those who do follow along, don’t care about the lessons nor the unending “ado about paltry things”. Rather, we have inured ourselves to the calls of the prophets, to the political machinations of Saul, David, Solomon, and his heirs. We have come to ignore the evil around us as “normal”, to be upset with those who stand ready to call our bullshit, bullshit. We are aghast at the temerity of those who dare question us on our motives, on our actions-‘don’t you understand that “trickle down economics” has been what “makes America Great” since the days of the Robber Barons? What is wrong with you that you expect me to pay my fair share of taxes-I am above the rest of you and am not governed by the same rules’ and other such erroneous beliefs. Of course most people would think the prophets were just crazy people ranting and raving about “paltry things, employing the most excessive language in speaking about flimsy subjects”! In fact, throughout the millennium since their words have been codified, most people have ignored them, have written them off as raving lunatics, have doubted the veracity of their warnings, their pleadings, their messages. All of this ignoring to the detriment of our spiritual life, to putting us on a collision course with evil and no tools to defend goodness, truth, love, kindness, and compassion.

Rabbi Heschel’s words above are dripping with sarcasm and I hear them betray an intense passion for the prophets, an intense passion for putting a mirror up in front of all of us to see how far we have wandered off the path of faith, how far we have taken the detour from the road of spiritual growth so we can be on the road of financial and emotional success. Of course it matters “if somewhere in ancient Palestine poor people have not been treated properly by the rich”! Of course we should be indignant about these ‘minor’ issues! Of course we have to exhibit “such immoderate excitement” at the indifference to evil that we are witnessing in the world! As Rabbi Hillel says:”If not now, when?” How do we know that the Messiah is not in our midst, wasn’t in Nazi Germany, Putin’s Russia, in the United States, just waiting for acts of loving-kindness towards the “poor people” in our midst and witness them being “not treated properly by the rich” instead? How often is Elijah, the prophet, who Jews ask to come to at the end of each Sabbath, portrayed as living among the beggars in the city gates waiting for some random act of kindness so he can reveal himself and it hasn’t happened yet!

The arrogance and hubris of humanity to believe that we can do the same things over and over again expecting different results because we are so much better, smarter, devious than those ‘primitive’ people who lived during the times of the prophets is tremendous and knows no bounds. That Trump can claim that “God saved me so I can make America great again” is so outlandish as he pardons rioters, people who attacked police, people he sent to destroy the constitution and the peaceful transfer of power, is cause for “immoderate excitement”! The fact that the Defense Department may be run by an incompetent sexual abuser, wife-beating drunk because the Republican Senators care more about kissing the ass of the rich and Trump is cause for “intense indignation”! Yet, there are people in the Democratic Party who want to “work with the other side”-just as people wanted to “work with” Putin, Hitler, Stalin, Orban, Bibi, et al and we see where that got us and the world-into the mess we are in now. Over and above the arrogance and the hubris, however, is the abject fear people have in standing up for what they really believe in.

We are so used to cowering in the face of the rich and famous, bowing down before the king, queen, leader because not to do so could result in death. The problem is-we are already spiritually dead, we are already only existing when we bend down to kiss the ring, when we bend over and allow the rich to ‘stick it to us’, when we “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor” and decide we don’t want to suffer the same fate. The paradox is, of course, that doing nothing in the face of evil only kills our spirits, only makes us accomplices in the evil done in our name. It is time for all of us, especially people of faith, to STAND UP and follow the examples and the teachings of the prophets. To call out the bullshit and lies of Trump, et al and STAND UP as guardians of the Torah, the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc. These Holy Texts are to be lived not just read, the people who say they should be exempted from service because they are studying the “holy books”, are liars and charlatans because we are supposed to live the principles in the real world not lock ourselves up and stay away from the temptations. We, the People are being called today, as we are everyday, to “Choose Life” and grow our spiritual health, raise up our care and concern for the evil being perpetrated against the most vulnerable in our society. Listening to our inner voices we hear the demand to stand up to evil, to walk with God, to love mercy and to do justly. We, the People are being given the opportunity to repair the damage done by our ancestors, to return our corner of the world to its rightful place of being kind, loving, truthful and compassionate. Will you make the most of this moment or let it pass as you/we have so many others.


I live in “immoderate excitement” and “intense indignation” and find myself in ‘trouble’ often. Prior to my recovery, these two ways of being pushed me to be indifferent to the evil around me and the evil I was promoting! Since my recovery, these ways of being have helped many and hurt some, gotten me to be written off and feared, opened me up to being manipulated and scorned. Some people are in awe of my ‘passion’ while others need to prove they are better because they are richer, smarter, etc. I don’t claim any of these attributes, I only know that the “fire in my belly” burns hot and I have to speak out loud and loudly otherwise I will be consumed from the inside out. I know I am not always right, I know my ways of expression are not ‘politically correct’ and I know I am not bowing down to kiss the ring or the ass of anyone who thinks they are better than I or in a position of power, no matter the cost because living my principles is more important than the number of 0’s in any bank account or any ‘position’ in ‘polite society’. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Are you listening to great orators who are full of shit or to the Spiritual truths of the Prophets? Year 4 Day 29

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 29

“Turning from the discourses of the great metaphysicians to the orations of the prophets, one may feel as if he were going down from the realm of the sublime to an area of trivialities. Instead of dealing with the timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, one is thrown into orations about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the market place. The prophets make so much ado about paltry things, employing the most excessive language in speaking about flimsy subjects.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 9)

Digesting and immersing myself in the wisdom above today, the day after so many norms have been broken, so much of the chaos sowed by Project 2025 is being reaped, people convicted of sedition are being released so the autocrat can have his “private militia”, many people are in spiritual turmoil over what is happening, and today is the 59th anniversary of my father’s death, according to the Jewish Calendar; I am overwhelmed, volcanic, awed, and determined.

Remembering that these words were delivered and written in 1958, which supposedly were “the good old days” and Rabbi Heschel is speaking at a conference on “Religion in a Free Society”, dealing with the problems of the moment like the execution of the Rosenbergs because they were Jewish, not because they were spies(we know Ethel was innocent and the government which fried her also knew). He had witnessed the House Un-American Activities Committee’s fascist ways, seeing the McCarthy Hearings and, I imagine, watching with horror the persecution of people with no real proof, just innuendo and made up stories by people who did not want to suffer the same fate, like Elia Kazan. At the same time as these horrific actions were happening, slums were being maintained as slums, people of color did not earn the same as white people, and the “great metaphysicians” were dealing with “timeless issues”, especially the white clergy in this country. By and large, Jews had become assimilated and, just having been relieved of the quotas put on them at universities but not for immigration nor medical schools, they were reluctant to “rock the boat”.

I hear Rabbi Heschel reminding us of our heritage, of our obligation to fulfill what we are “chosen” for-to promote the message of the prophets, to rail against the mistreatment of the widow and the orphan, to abhor and throw out the corrupt judges, to regulate and create a level playing field in the “affairs of the market place”. This is what we Jews are chosen for-not some bullshit that makes us any more special than anyone else, than any other group, it is for the promotion of the words and deeds of the prophets, it is to spread a way of living that honors the dignity of each and every human being without regard to race, color, religion, ethnicity. Our “chosenness” is to “make so much ado about paltry things” and to stop trying to curry favor with the Klan, the white supremacists, the power brokers. Our “chosenness” is to have a seat at the table, like the prophets did in order to call the government, the powerful, the wealthy, the clergy to task for their lying, mendacious ways. I hear Rabbi Heschel’s words about having reverence for life from his interview with Carl Stern and how that is at the core of his writing above. While the “metaphysicians” are important and their discussions are interesting, if they don’t lead to action-they are a waste of time and energy. The prophets did not engage in these types of pontifications because they were/are concerned about what is happening here and now, what person is being mistreated because doing this makes the abuser feel good? This is true with abuses of power, abuses of equality, sexual abuses, financial abuses, etc, this is the fear of being ruled by an autocrat and his/her oligarch friends-we will all get screwed over, especially the people who voted her/him into office.

In thinking of my father, z”l today, I think of the abuse he suffered because he was Jewish, both in the marketplace and in the Army. I think of the dignity that he showed to Black Men when he took over a business, where the white Jewish owner conveniently forgot to mention that he had taken a $20,000.00 loan out against it, he raised the pay of Black men to what white men were making for the same job-every white man quit and no white man would go to work for him because he was a N lover! I think of how he taught his sons, my sister wasn’t old enough to understand, to treat all people with respect and dignity, be it our aunts and uncles, cousins and neighbors, or a stranger on the street-all people had value and were important. He believed that you have to do 1.5 day’s work each day as a show of gratitude for having a job, for making a living. He taught us the importance of knowing our inner life, he knew mine and my brothers. He was a salesman, he had a smile for everyone, he was welcomed in the places where he did business and hardly anyone had a bad word to say about him. In his own way, while we did not have money, he taught us the importance of giving and standing up for principles and values-we gave Tzedakah every week and we helped anyone who needed it. My father has always been a giant figure for me, he had flaws, he was far from perfect and he knew how to and lived being human.

This brings me to today, Rabbi Heschel’s Yahrzeit was last Saturday, MLK day was yesterday and today is my father’s Yahrzeit-all observances of people who cared, who took action on their principles and values, even if it went against their own self-interests. Yesterday, the wanna-be autocrat decided he could change the Constitution he had just sworn to uphold, he proclaimed his love of ‘law and order’ and ‘police’ while pardoning and commuting the sentences of 1500+ people who attacked the Capital Police on Jan.6, 2020! He is doing everything he can to test the will of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, and us. We the People must not falter, must not fail in our opposition to oligarchy, to kleptocracy, to autocracy. It is time for all of us, Jew and Christian, Muslim and Buddhist, to stand together to “care for the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy” “to welcome the stranger because we were strangers in Egypt” and in America-Donald Trump-your grandfather was an immigrant, asshole. We, the People have to stand together to fulfill the words on the Liberty Bell, to make the intentions of our founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence come alive-“all people are created equal” and all of us have “certain unalienable rights…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I pledge allegiance to the constitution, to the Bible, to the words of the prophets and am asking you to as well. My father did, MLK did, Rabbi Heschel did- will you? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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What immorality and injustices do you accept as "normal"? Year 4 Day 28

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 28

“The sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as a typical ingredient of social dynamics. A single act of injustice-to us it is slight, to the prophet it is a disaster.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.9)

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in America, celebrating his birth, and today is the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President-talk about cognitive dissonance! Rabbi Heschel’s words above describe the power of Dr. King because he preached and believed that the “ark of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice”. Yet, we are impatient, we are easily distracted, we are easily deceived and we engage in self-deception on a daily basis! Hence we are willing to “regard as normal” “crimes” and “delinquency” to the utter ruin of our spiritual health, our mental health, and eventually our physical health.

Because of this “normalcy”, our young people are jaded, bored, uninvolved and easily distracted by their devices, older people are as well. This last election with the turn to the right, to the hardcore message of blame and hatred of someone different than you shows how our young people, especially, don’t tune in to find out what candidates stand for really, they listen to rhetoric and find the message that makes them feel good. This is true for older adults as well, I am focussing on the young because they are our future, they are the people we are handing over our mistakes, our victories, our examples of living well and living poorly to.

As I said yesterday, all of us have the prophetic voice within us, we may call it conscience, gut instinct, intuition, higher consciousness, and the issue for all of us is to access it and not silence it. This is where religion is failing us, rather than teach us the heroic measures the ‘people’ in the Bible went to in order to rise above the normalcy of crime and hatred, stealing and lying, we are told of the heroism of Moses, Miriam and Aaron, of Joshua and Caleb, of Judah and Joseph, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, of the Judges, the prophets, Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, etc. We are also taught of their moral failures. Yet, leaders of religious sects/groups today, and yesterday, have wanted to ignore both the rising above our baser instincts, our apathy, and the failure to do so, instead painting the heroes as perfect and the “other” as enemy. This way of thinking, teaching the Bible, teaching ethics, etc in many parts of the country, in many religious sects, has become the gold standard for gaining favor with ‘the powers that be’, for getting donations from the different special interest groups, for being “in”. This is the bane of our existence, as I am understanding and hearing Rabbi Heschel today.

What has come to be ‘the way’ is to ignore “a single act of injustice”, not just regard it as “slight”! We are inaugurating a man who is a convicted felon and who violated the Constitution of the United States and is committed to doing it again and people are cheering him on, the Senate and House of Representatives, each of whom have a Republican majority, are committed to upholding the destruction, the tearing up of the Constitution along with him and claim that their ‘religion’ is telling them to! Is it any wonder why young people are disillusioned? Is it any wonder that they stay away from religion in droves? Is it any wonder that they believe everyone is corrupt or at least corruptible? Again, it is not just young people, they learn this apathy, this indifference to evil from us, the “older generations”. When we tell them to “not rock the boat”, to “go along to get along”, to “do what it takes to be successful” we are not caring about their spiritual and moral health nor do we care about ours, until it is too late! Ask the righteous Germans and the Jews who thought ‘it will all blow over’! This attitude is what destroys civilizations, destroys freedom for all, destroys democracy and, once autocracy is the way of the land, causes us to be bewildered as to ‘how did we get here”.

We, the People are being called to account by the sentences above. We, the People are being called to respond to this day of celebrating not just Rev. King, rather an entire paradigm shift that happened in those years that has been receding ever since! From Nixon to Reagan, from George W. Bush to Trump, we have seen a concerted effort to repeal and replace the gains of moral accountability that became the “law of the land” during the 1960’s. From Clinton to Obama to Biden, we have witnessed the timidness to push further on moral choices, be too afraid to ‘go to far’, settle for “that which we regard as normal”! This has to end, We, the People have to reclaim the prophetic vision, we have to reclaim EMET/TRUTH and practice it in all our affairs. It is time for all of us to feel the pain of the lowest person on the totem pole, of the slave and indentured servant, of the one who has lost everything and do what we can to come to their aid. It is time for We, the People to hear the words of the prophets anew and heed them with renewed vigor and adherence. It is time for We, the People to demand of our religious leaders better examples of how to wrestle with our opposing inclinations, the one that wants to do the right thing and the one who wants to celebrate and join in doing the wrong thing in order to “get ahead”. We, the People are being called today to grab “the ark of the moral universe” and, using our inner strength of goodness and holiness, “bend it towards justice” and compassion, love, kindness and truth.

Prior to my spiritual awakening in 1986, I was able to ignore the criminal acts I was committing and the people around me were committing as “getting ours”. Once I began studying Rabbi Heschel, the Bible, learning with Rabbi Mel Silverman, it became impossible for me to ignore my actions and the criminal actions of those around me. It became impossible for me not to feel the pain I inflicted upon others with my immorality, with my ignorance of their experiences and the harms they were subjected to by me and by anyone. The past 38 years have been a honing of this sensitivity for me. I react in volcanic ways because I am afraid of the harm caused by the “indifference to evil” that people engage in by not being in “dismay” over the “typical ingredient of social dynamics”. I am volcanic because I believe immorality, injustice of any kind is a disaster. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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How are you silencing your own prophetic voice so you can curry favor and wealth from people who hold power over you? Year 4 Day 27

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 27

“Yet the task of religion is to be a challenge to the stabilization of values…The mind of the prophets was not religion-centered. They dwelt more with the affairs of the royal palace, on the ways and views of the courts of justice than on the problems of the priestly rituals at the temple of Jerusalem.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pg. 9)

Religion is being used by the grifters and charlatans to be a cover for their irreligious actions. Some of us watch in horror the ways clergy of all faiths hail the idolators, the liars as ‘the anointed one’ and do whatever it takes to find and stay in the autocrats ‘good graces’. Whether it is Mark Zuckerberg, Rabbi Ari Berman, the myriad of Jews, Muslims, Christians, Catholics, who bend the knee and kiss the ring (and ass) of people like Putin, Orban, Trump, Bannon, Musk, Bibi, we are all “missing the mark” of our religious heritage! When our values become enshrined in stone, when the words of the Bible, the Declaration of Independence of the U.S., of Israel, the Constitution, become so accepted as true that people ignore the words and the spirit, we are no longer living up to “the task of religion”. This is the challenge and the tragedy of modernity. We have come to use and abuse religious life to be a salve for our wrong-doings, for our greed, our self-centeredness, our abuse of people and our grab for ultimate power. Instead of acknowledging our powerlessness, instead of embracing our imperfections, we see too many ‘religious’ people doing exactly what the Bible tells us not to; whore ourselves, murder our souls and the souls of another(s), steal from anyone and everyone we can, lie with reckless abandon, covet everything our neighbor has that is good, valuable and then take it from them. While this is not a new phenomenon in the history of the world, it seems to be on steroids in this century and, to people who know better, to people who have sight, we ask in the words of Pete Seeger: “When will they(we) ever learn?”

It is exactly this “task of religion” that the prophets were responding to-not the “priestly rituals”, not “religion-centered”, rather they railed agains the “stabilization of values” that was taking place both in the “royal palace” and the ‘cover’ the priests were giving to the rich and powerful. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel remind us there is no “religion” without the principles being lived out in all of our affairs, by all the people. King David was held responsible for the death of Uriah by God and Nathan, the prophet in his court; to his credit he did not deny it, he did not use his power to jail Nathan, he admitted his sin and was remorseful. The same is true when Judah admits that Tamar is “more righteous than I”. Yet, today, we find the same conditions as the time of the prophets Elijah, Jeremiah, Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel, et al and the people dealing with “the affairs of the royal palace, on the ways and views of the courts of justice” are being fed excuses and encouragement by the ‘religious’ establishments, by the ‘religious leaders/clergy’ of all faiths. This is allowed to happen because We, the People have gone along with ‘those people’ taking care of the ‘religious’ tasks and not bothering us with the morality of our actions, not railing against our imprisoning of the poor, the needy, the stranger. We, the People have turned a blind eye to the values and principles of our faith traditions in favor of seeking wealth and power. We, the People have gone along with the people in power scapegoating the Jews, the Muslims, the Blacks, the Hispanics, the Asians, etc rather than be responsible for our actions, our perversion of the “courts of justice”. We have turned a blind eye to the “affairs of the royal palace” by electing and being ruled by the mendacious people who call themselves ‘christian nationalists’ and purport to follow the Bible while doing everything that Christ railed against, everything that Christ stood in opposition to!

Where are the prophets when we need them, some people ask. This, of course, is the wrong question. Where is the prophetic voice within each of us? We are descendants of the prophets, we are the ones being called “to be a challenge to the stabilization of values”. We are the people who have to focus on the perversion of justice, we are the people who have to stand up and say NO to the lies that we have been buying, we are the people who have to clean out the schmutz that is clogging our spiritual arteries and perverting the morality, the justice, the truth upon which every religion and spiritual discipline are founded upon. We the People have to engage in our own “dark night of the soul” so we can engage in T’Shuvah/amends and repair the damage both to our own souls, to our own minds and the souls, minds, etc of the people around us whom we have harmed. We, the People have to deal with the affairs that impact the voiceless and the powerless just as the Bible, New Testament, etc teach us. All these spiritual texts, which have within them eternal truth and wisdom and the most horrendous ‘sin’ that has been done throughout the millennium is the power-brokers use of the very spiritual texts that deny and denounce the actions they take in ‘god’s’ name. Is it any wonder young people want nothing to do with religion? Is it any wonder they are willing to go along with the autocrat because at least they know and the autocrat knows he is lying and will say and do anything for power, is shameless about it and the young people have exempted themselves from the mendacity of religion so the fact that someone is shameless in lying, knows they are lying becomes refreshing! HOW SICK IS THIS!!

This soul-sickness is something I suffered from the age of  15 till 35. It is the same soul-sickness that all addicted people suffer from, not just people addicted to drugs, gambling, sex, etc; also those of us addicted to the “big lie”, the “adjustment to societal norms and mental cliches”, those of us who are addicted to our apathy and have become “indifference to evil”. Those of us who are providing cover for the “royal palace” and “the courts of justice” are also suffering a soul-sickness. It was only after immersing myself in the words of the Bible have I been able to recover my authentic self, to find my voice and way so I am worthy of being “a descendant of the prophets”. Through the wrestling with the text, through the battle between my rationalizations and my “knowing in my bones”, I have been able to scream from the rooftops about the doings of the “royal palace” in my own home, in my own work, in my country and in other countries. I am at the most peace and serenity when I am living the words, the deeds, the actions of the prophetic message, when I am willing to be Nathan and not Rabbi Ari Berman. It is not pretty, I am a bull in the china shop, at times ‘politically incorrect’, and I stand for and with truth no matter who is in front of me nor the political and social cost. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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How do Power, Prejudice, Need for Control influence your daily behaviors? Year 4 Day 26

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 26

“As if the task (of religion) were not to ennoble human nature but to enhance the power and beauty of its institutions or to enlarge body of doctrines. It has often done more to canonize prejudices than to wrestle for truth; to petrify the sacred than to sanctify the secular. Yet the task of religion is to be a challenge to the stabilization of values.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pls. 8,9) (I added (of religion) to the quote because I am continuing yesterday’s paragraph and did not want to write the entire paragraph again.)

THANK GOD THERE IS A DEAL FOR THE RETURN OF THE HOSTAGES!!!

This is an indictment of the dark path that many ‘religious’ leaders have taken their religious institutions. The Catholic Church in their desire to ‘save the heathen’; has killed so many people, they have taken so much land, they have amassed so much wealth, they have taken so many of Christ’s values and bastardized them, all for the ‘glory of the Church’, not for the good of their congregations. In Orthodox Judaism the ‘spiritual’ leaders are interested in control, their actions “to enlarge the body of doctrines” is not for the good of the people they are supposed to be serving, rather it is for their hold onto power-they do things because they can, because their people invest them with so much power because they supposedly ‘know’ what ‘god’ wants. In the more liberal branches of Judaism, the Rabbis have to answer to their boards of directors and the board sets the parameters for what the Rabbi can do and not do, they are interested in enhancing their power as board members, in most cases, rather than to “enoble human nature”. They are on the ‘right’ side of issues (according to them) and they denigrate “human nature” by their insistence on ‘being right’, their inability to admit their own errors, their demands that the Rabbi, Cantor be ‘perfect’, rather than “enoble human nature” by embracing their imperfections and those of everyone else.

Leaders of the Catholic Church, of the Christian Church have made anti-semitism a prime tenet of their faith! I know how many ‘good christians’ profess their love of Israel and at the same time, hate Jews. Yes, the far right is rallying to the side of the Jews being targeted on College Campuses and they also have dinner, joke with, pal around with self-proclaimed Neo-Nazi’s! They have a vested interest in Israel being a nation/state so they can cause Armageddon to happen, the Rapture to take place and they will be ‘saved’-while all the Jews and Muslims will not be! This is so loving isn't it???

The Jews and Muslims are not any better. Rather than taking to heart what the Bible says: “One law for the stranger and the citizen alike”, many Jews have decided it is okay to “cheat the goyim(non-Jew)”, it is okay to have different laws for some Jews(Orthodox not serving in the Military, Bibi can take bribes and is above the law) because they are so ‘holy’! They have gone so far as to bastardize the raison d’être of Judaism, “to be a light to the nations”(Isaiah 42:6) by acting in dark ways. Today, there are many Rabbis calling the Palestinians “not human”, there are many right-wing Jews calling those in the middle or on the left: traitors, uncaring Jews, self-loathing Jews, etc. The Muslim Imams calling for Intifadas, calling for the destruction of Israel, the United States, etc are radicalizing young men and women to take their own lives as well as so many innocents listening to concerts, shopping for food, etc.

The amount of hatred and prejudice spewed from the pulpits of our ‘religious’ institutions is reaching new heights, even as we speak! Rather than “wrestle with the truth” clergy of every stripe would rather “canonize prejudice” because this will ‘keep the people coming back’ because our “indifference to evil” is as prevalent as ever, if not more so. Our need to feel “better than”, our need to have ‘someone to blame for our situation’, our immense desire to, as Lyndon Johnson said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” This is what ‘religious’ institutions have been doing for a long time and it keeps working!

We, the People, have to take back our religious institutions! We, the People have to demand that we return to learning how to “enoble human nature” rather than help it sink lower and lower, “enoble human nature” rather than codify evil as good. We, the People have to return to our Holy Texts for guidance and pathways to “enoble human nature”! We, the People have to say NO to the ‘religious’ establishment’s enlarging of doctrines which petrify truth and Protest for Truth! We, the People have to end the spreading of hatred, lies, grifts, mendacity, cruelty that is so prevalent in our society today. We, the People have to stand up for the poor, the stranger, the needy, the widow, the orphan, we have to welcome the stranger, not stand idly by while someone hurts themselves or another(s), rebuke someone when they are going down the path of hating, blaming, shaming, Love thy neighbor rather than suspect them. This is the calling of the words above today, this is the demand that has been upon humanity for all time and we have ignored it for too long. To the ‘haters’, to the charlatans leading ‘religious’ institutions, to the lying politicians and their grifting minions, WE, THE PEOPLE have to stand in opposition to them so we can STAND WITH TRUTH!  This is the job, this is our mission, this is what we “get” to do with our lives-please God, let’s do the work and be successful in stemming the tide of hatred and prejudice that some ‘religious’ folk have been pushing.

I have been engaged in the path “to enoble human nature” in my own particular way-never nice and usually kind, never mealy-mouthed and always passionately. I am spending my second career doing this as my first was the exact opposite-I played on the prejudices and the desire to get ‘something for nothing’ of most people and was a liar and cheat, a con and a thief. I believe in TRUTH and I know it is something that I have to keep seeking and growing because, as we say, God is truth and God is everything/the whole picture and I only have a small view of the whole. I work daily to let go of my bias’ and prejudices, I am more interested in helping you than in enriching myself beyond what I need. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Rabbi Heschel’s death in 1972, and Tuesday is the anniversary of my father’s death in 1966, according to the Jewish Calendar. Both of these men have been guiding lights in my recovery and my world since my spiritual awakening in 1986 and I am forever grateful to them for my life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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