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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 202

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 201

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 200

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 199

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 198

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 197

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 196

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 195

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

Rabbi Heschel demands we take a stand and declare ourselves in the passage above. I hear him nicely asking the question-what type of person are you choosing to be. It is a choice to be prudent, to mind one’s own business, to wait to be asked and/or “authorized to step in”. It is not a ‘wrong’ choice according to societal norms nor according to many traditions which tell us “to stay in your own lane”. Not putting our nose in another person’s business is a well-known and well-worn phrase. “Prudent” comes from the Latin meaning “foreseeing/attending to”. Choosing to see the future and attending to one’s current needs doesn’t seem like a ‘bad’ choice at all, especially if one is not asked to intervene!

Yet, I hear the contrast and the discernment of Rabbi Heschel. I hear the call to choose whether we are going to be “prudent” or take our proper place as descendants of the prophets. “Widows and orphans” are accustomed to people not hearing them, they have accepted their plight and, through experience, know that people are not wont to “plead their cause.” The choices put before us by the above writing is clear, what is not clear is our acknowledgement that we have to make a positive choice rather than allow our default choice to rule us.

We are living in a time, once again, where the “widows and orphans”, the poor and the stranger are crying out to God and to us. They are exhausted from the discrimination based on color, religion, ethnicity, and, most of all, political mendacity. We hear politicians continue to lie and harangue us about ‘those people’-the stranger, the poor, making them criminals along with Jews and Israelis being usurpers in their own land and throughout the world! We are living in a time where the spiritual sickness of the “prudent” person is being lauded and applauded. Where the spiritual malady of mendacity is being called truth, where annihilation is being praised and authoritarianism is seen as a good solution. Herein lies our dilemma, the souls of our youth and their parents are diseased because they have been left to atrophy, we have not raised the souls of people while raising their minds, bodies, emotions. We have left the most important element in being human, our souls, to the wind; no wonder our youth and the ‘progressives’ believe Jews are bad, no wonder they believe terrorists are good, raping of women and mutilation of babies is appropriate when they are Jews. No wonder the far right and left have found agreement in their anti-semitism and no wonder Jews are unable to respond except with emotional and physical responses. We have a spiritual malady in our society that is running rampant-one of it’s names is ‘being prudent’. Another name is ‘optics’, another name is ‘moral equivalence’, still another is ‘political correctness’.

The prophet doesn’t wait for an invitation from those who are being oppressed, those who are being discriminated against because the prophet is compelled by the “fire in the belly” they experience at the sight of injustice and deception. We all can see the injustice and prejudice, the cancer of the soul and the spiritual ailments that people are suffering right now. Yet, too many of us are being complacent with our ‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy’ for the ‘underdog’. Too many of us are so tired of the ‘political correctness’ that we start to go along with the authoritarian who promises us ‘real freedom’, who promises us that ‘men will be in charge again’, etc.

This is why the choice I hear Rabbi Heschel put before us to be so crucial now as it always has been. Prudence will allow us to survive, we have Germany as an example-people didn’t get involved when they came for the Jews and, as Martin Neimoller said: “when they came for me, there was no one to care”. We are descendants of the prophets, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc-all of us have the wisdom and actions of prophets in our history and in our holy texts. We, the people, have to make a choice to use the examples of the prophets to heal our spiritual maladies and the spiritual sickness of our world. We, the people have to “make a decision” to serve our higher self, to serve a higher calling than our own ‘safety’. We can do this, there are physicians of the soul to help us, we can demand a better spiritual upbringing by our Houses of Worship and we can implement the call of the prophets into our daily living.

I have failed when confronted with this choice in earlier years. I was “prudent” and cared only about “mine”. I wasn’t brought up this way and it was only after I allowed my soul to atrophy that I spent the years from 17-35 in spiritual sickness. Upon being arrested and knowing I was going back to prison it hit me that there was some greater purpose for me and I had to sit in prison until I could figure it out. With the help of many physicians of the soul I found my way back to being a descendant of the prophets, to allowing the “fire in my belly” to take charge and speak up for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, the outcast and the criminal, the one in need of spiritual healing and the ones who have been harmed. My way of butting in has not always been appreciated and, truth be told, not always appropriate nor have I always spoken in ways people can hear. Yet, I have not let injustice reign, I have not been “prudent”, I have paid the price for this way of being and I have healed much of my spiritual sickness because I haven’t been “prudent”! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 194

“Indeed, the major activity of the prophet was interference, remonstrating about wrongs on other people, meddling in affairs which were seemingly neither their concern nor their responsibility.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 92)

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of who “will plead the case of the helpless” in days gone by. I also hear him remonstrate us as well. The word “interfere” comes from the Latin meaning “to strike between”, in the English it means “to prevent”. “The major activity of the prophet was” to strike between/to prevent “wrongs on other people”. What a concept, what courage, what a calling, what a way of living into the principles of holiness, of Godliness, of seeing every human being as having equal dignity and worth.

While the time of the prophets has gone, according to some, their words and their deeds are very much alive in the souls of everyone! We, people of faith,  are all descendants of the prophets, thereby having the same calling to run “interference” for those who are wronged, regardless of faith, creed, ethnicity, color. We are being called to continue the work of the prophets instead of retarding their work. We are being called by the universe to stand up for what is right and true, to leave behind the false claims of the authoritarians and the deceivers, go past our fears “to prevent” the further erosion of the rights of another, to “strike back” against the wrongs being perpetrated in the name of authority and perverted ‘justice’. We are in the midst of the same affairs as the prophets were and it is now our privilege to respond in their name, in our own way.

When protestors in this country are chanting the same slogans as terrorists in the Middle East, we are in trouble. When people in government repeat the same propaganda as Vladimir Putin, we are in danger. When the Supreme Court parrots and decides cases based on power and ‘christian nationalists values’ our democracy is in danger. When Jews are blamed for the ills of the world, when minorities seeking a better life are blamed for the crime in the United States, we are hearing the breaking of glass as happened on Kristalnacht. The warnings are here, we can see them as clear as day when we study history, when we immerse ourselves in the stories of the prophets. The question Rabbi Heschel is posing, as I hear him today: will we respond to today’s crisis’ as the prophets did ‘back in the day’?

“Remonstrate” means “to plead in protest” which is what the prophets did and what we are in dire need of. When we put together “interference, remonstrating” we find a path for our energy, a way to express what we know to be true and right, what is just and righteous. We have to “meddle in affairs which were (are) seemingly neither their (our) concern nor their (our) responsibility.” It is time for us to wake up and realize the cause of everyone who is wronged is everyone’s cause. The need to stand in the breach between the powerful and the powerless is everyone’s need. The call to respect the dignity and value of every person no matter their status nor wealth is everyone’s call. It is beyond time for us to take seriously the lives of the prophets, the teachings they have left behind, the words of divinity they preached and the actions they took.

Their protest was a protest against tyranny, against mendacity, against deception, against bearing false witness and the practice of “Avodah Zarah”, idolatry. They pleaded in opposition to the authoritarians and the liars and, while they did not carry the day, their words are still with us. Their way of being and acting are a clarion call to us to take action, to stand in between the powerful, the despots, and the people who are being taken advantage of, the people who are being wronged mercilessly.  “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country” is a phrase in typewriting class and it is a phrase the prophets could have spoken. As Rabbi Hillel says, “if not now, when?”

We, the people, have to get over our fears and take the next right action. Getting over our fears doesn’t mean getting rid of them, it means climbing over our fears, acknowledging them and making a decision to serve a purpose greater than our fears. We, the people, have to end our need to be right, our hunger for power at any and all costs. We, the people, have to rise above our desire to be deceived and our wish to deceive, so we can see what really is happening. We, the people, have to remove the blinders, stop putting lipstick on a pig and stand up for and stand with those who are wronged. We have to “meddle” in the affairs people tell us to stay out of, we have to be responsible to right the injustices people in power are promoting and we have to say NO to those charlatans in our own time.

I have heard this call of Rabbi Heschel for years. I have done my best to run “interference” for people who have been wronged by the system, by life’s happenings. I have stood up in protest and meddled in “affairs that were neither my concern nor responsibility” according to some. I love the ideas above because it reminds me we are all “our brother’s keeper”. We all call God “Our Father” so we are cousins, brothers, sisters, etc-we are all “kin under the skin”. Which means I/we have to stand up for and stand with our brothers and sisters when they are attacked, I/we have to stand up for and with one another when anti-semitism, hatred, authoritarianism first rears their ugly heads. I/We have to rebuke our kinfolk when they fall under the spell of the deceivers. It hasn’t made me popular and I can live with myself and the universe. Now is the time for action and you are the actors needed. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Teachings- A Daily Spiritual Journey

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 193

“Those who neither exploit nor are exploited are ready to fight when their own interests are harmed; they will not be involved when not personally affected. Who shall plead for the helpless? Who shall prevent the epidemic of injustice that no court of justice is capable of stopping?”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

The last two sentences above are the questions that have haunted humanity for time immemorial. 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible we are told to care for the stranger, help the poor, give voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. Most of the stories in the Bible re-iterate this theme, either showing how to fulfill this mitzvah or how people don’t fulfill it. From Cain’s question: “am I my brother’s keeper” to God’s response: “the bloods of your brother cry out to me”, we have hear the call to “plead for the helpless”. As Rabbi Heschel says in his interview with Carl Stern; “God is waiting”, waiting for us to answer the call, I believe.

People of all faiths want the Messiah, either to return or come for the first time, and yet, we do everything we can to keep the Messianic Era away. God demands justice, Abraham demands justice from God, the prophets call us to return to being a just society, God calls us back constantly and consistently and we continue to further “the epidemic of injustice” rather than “prevent” it. So, we wonder why God has abandoned us when it is us who has abandoned God! We are waiting to be saved rather than saving one another with justice, mercy, righteousness. Rather than pursue righteousness as we are told to do, we have perverted justice by bribing the judges with loyalty to a political bias which blinds their eyes to truth. “No court of justice is capable of stopping” its own prejudice and, once it accepts the bribes of gifts, money, ‘friendship’, power, etc, is unable to stop the “epidemic of injustice” it brings upon itself and the people it is supposedly serving.

There are a myriad of stories about Elijah the prophet, who will herald the coming of the Messiah, and all of them have him living as a poor person, on the street, a beggar, a leper, etc. Since we have all these stories why hasn’t the Messiah shown up, you might wonder. Well maybe it is because Elijah is never treated with any respect, any care, there is no one to plead for his helplessness, there is no one to stop the injustice of raiding the homeless encampment so the ugliness of our actions that create homelessness, the injustice of locking people up for no serious reason, etc doesn’t permeate our senses and we change our ways.

Of course the answer to Rabbi Heschel’s questions above are the same as the answer to God’s questions in the Bible. Who among us will be like Judah, who among us will be like King David? Both of these leaders were able to admit their errors and do T’Shuvah. They are the examples of excess and doing what they want to just because they can and then having their errant ways showed to them and they repent-“She is more righteous than I” is Judah’s response to Tamar showing him his error. “I have sinned” is King David’s response to Nathan’s accusations. They both had the power to deny, deny , deny-yet they had the spiritual maturity and depth to admit their errors and not do the same thing again.

The only people who can “plead for the helpless” is us! The only people who can “prevent the epidemic of injustice” is us. We, the people, have to answer this call, we, the people, have to take the next right action and end the cries of the helpless, we have to cure the epidemic of injustice that has overtaken the world. And, as with everything else, it begins with our inner life.

We have to end our incessant need and obsession with ‘optics’! The Rabbis were overly concerned with “Maris Ayin”, how things look. People in power and those not in power are concerned with how things look, individuals are worried about how they look in the eyes of the people in the country clubs, beauty parlors, etc. We are obsessed with wearing the “right” face for the moment rather than being real and engaging in the truth of what is. Rather than hear the actual cries of the helpless, many people plead the case they want and call it pleading for the helpless. Rather than “prevent the epidemic of injustice” that the courts are both incapable of stopping and they are promoting, people obsessed with “optics” will defend their choices and their injustices as good and holy! “God told me that you are an abomination because _____ and it says so in the Bible” is a popular refrain of people who obsessed with optics, with power, with promoting injustices and creating a greater “helpless” population.

As one who felt helpless and unheard much of my life, these questions go right to the heart of my existence. My father was my champion, his death left me without anyone to plead to me and for me. The injustices I saw and the ones I conjured up turned me sour and I became a weaver of pictures and lies to get what I wanted, to take advantage of another and, though I told myself they had more than me, they were helpless in their own ways and I took advantage of their vulnerabilities. My bombastic style is probably a result of not being heard, of feeling helpless and a result of knowing how to speak to people in ways they can hear, knowing that I am responding to the fire in my belly and knowing I am trying to reach another person-the helpless one and the one promoting injustice. I am grateful for the ability to plead for the helpless before God, before the courts, before the rich and powerful. I am saddened for the ones I lost and the ones I did not see. I am remorseful for any injustices I promoted and/or did not try to stop and I am grateful for the lives I have helped to save and the souls I have helped to return. Let’s all “plead for the helpless” and stop the “epidemic of injustice” a little more today. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 192

“Those who neither exploit nor are exploited are ready to fight when their own interests are harmed; they will not be involved when not personally affected. Who shall plead for the helpless? Who shall prevent the epidemic of injustice that no court of justice is capable of stopping?”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

Immersing ourselves in the questions and statements above, hopefully, wakes us up to who we are and who we can/will become. Between yesterday’s quote and today’s, Rabbi Heschel is giving us four ways of being in the world: exploiter, exploited, one who only gets involved when personally affected, and, the unmentioned one, one who stands for what is right and just independent of courts, public opinion, etc., ie, the prophetic voice that will not be silenced.

I am seeing this as four parts of every person, just as we describe 4 children in the Haggadah, and we liken them to four aspects of ourselves, so too do we all have within us an exploiter, an exploited, an self-interest only, and a prophetic action part. Rabbi Heschel is asking us to see who we are in this moment, how to use our prophetic voice to help another, how to use our Moses to control our inner Pharaoh, how to stand for ourselves and not only for ourselves. As Rabbi Hillel said some 2000+ years ago: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”

The events of the Civil Rights movement called upon us all to declare what ‘camp’ we were in-selfish, racist, victim, caring human being. We did this with our actions because we knew just words were not enough, words have been used to confuse, obfuscate, deceive for so long, they had to be put into action-much like prayer is not about the words we say, it is about the actions we are moved to take because of our prayers. Just as the events of the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s were a continuation of the confrontation between Pharaoh and Moses back in Egypt, so too are today’s events a continuation of this confrontation. In every age, democracy and freedom are in peril, and exploitation and selfishness are in play as is the call to rise above our narcissistic tendencies and live into being descendants of the prophets.

We are engaged in this confrontation across the globe. There are no perfect heroes, there are some people who are very engaged in being as despicable and as enslaving as Pharaoh, however. Putin, Ayatollah, Orban, Sinwar, all are reaching out to take the crown of “hardest heart” away from Pharaoh and put in on their heads. Trump, the Republican Party, the christian nationalists, Netanyahu and his band of right-wing thugs all are vying to take the crown of control and personally enriching on the backs of everyone else from King George. All of these people are engaging in the ways of the exploiter, the controller, the authoritarian, the despot, and the ones standing up against them are being called all sorts of names and are having every weapon at the disposal of these exploiters used against them. They are cunning: they have engaged a whole lot of young people to do their bidding by chanting slogans to annihilate the Jews, wipe Israel off the face of the earth, deny the right to vote to the people who will vote against them, deny the control of their bodies to women so they can be ‘barefoot and pregnant’, deny the right of immigration to people who are in the same straits and have the same hopes and dreams that their ancestors had when they emigrated to the US!

Today is Yom HaShoah, the day of remembrance of the 6 million lives lost in the Holocaust, it falls in the middle of the dates of Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Many people are unaware of how many mini-uprisings there were, how many people had their own standing up for those who were being exploited, how many righteous gentiles there were. Today is a day of remembering what can happen, how cruel the exploiter can be to ‘their own people’ as well as to those they have chosen to exploit. Every KKK’er has infected their children and their neighbors with hatred and lies which continues to be passed on. Every Freedom Rider has infused their children and their neighbors with hope and commitment which continues to be passed on. Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King infused and continue to infuse many of us with the knowing of what can be when people work together for the common good, when we gather together in truth, with a desire to make the world better, to cure the cancer of the soul of prejudice, to clear up our eye disease of bigotry.

This is the inner work that I am many of us in recovery engage in every day. I have to look at my self and do my own inventory, my own daily T’Shvuah because I am aware of how my own inner exploiter creeps in, how my need to be relevant makes me ripe for being exploited, how I am sometimes afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals. Most of all, I need to be sure that my loud, at times obnoxious, prophetic voice guides me in all my affairs. I have to ensure that I am speaking for the exploited and “the helpless”. I have to stop believing that Justice for All is a value that our courts really believe in much less all of the people in this country or across the globe. I have to stand up for the spiritual truths, the values that ensure we will continue to “be human” as Rabbi Heschel demands. I have to join with the myriad of people all over the globe who want the Palestinians to live in peace and prosperity, who respect and understand that Israel cannot live with Hamas being next door to them, who see a person of a different color and embrace them as an image of the divine. I have to do my part and not let the other ‘parts’ of me interfere with doing the next right thing. I need to live into being a descendant of the prophets. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Teachings so We Can Live a Little Better Each Day

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 191

“As a rule, those who know how to exploit are endowed with the skill to justify their acts, while those who are easily exploited possess no skill in pleading their own cause.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

This sentence describes a situation that has happened throughout the history of humankind. It is a deeply disturbing truth and realization for most people so we tend to ignore it and, eventually, be brought down by it.

“Exploit comes from the Latin meaning “unfold”, “skill” comes from the Old Norse meaning “discernment” and “justify” comes from the Latin meaning “do justice to”.  Rabbi Heschel’s use of these words in the sentence above gives us a glimpse into the disruption of the Biblical commands to “do justly”, “love mercy”, “care for the stranger, the poor,…” by “those who know how to exploit”. I believe these Biblical teachings, which are reiterated throughout the Bible in story after story, are the acknowledgement of the ability of some who are capable of “unfolding” the story and able to see the loopholes of a situation, and then telling us not to! Yet, here again, another teaching from the Bible gets swept under the rug by many who claim to be ‘god-fearing people’, while their actions prove them to be God-denying people!

Watching the myriad of ways some people defend the ‘skill’ of Donald Trump to skate the ‘long arm of the law’ for so long, to defend his illegal actions since running for the Presidency in 2016, saluting and cheering for him to be “dictator for a day”, etc is watching people trying to “do justice to” what is illegal, immoral, and deeply unreligious and not spiritual. Yet, there are millions of people who are doing this right now, there are many top Republicans who know Trump is dangerous and his winning will probably end democracy as we know it, yet Bill Barr, Mitch McConnell, et al say they will vote for him. They will use their “skill” to “justify” what they know is wrong, just as they have done throughout their political careers, even though they swore oaths to defend and protect the Constitution against all adversaries, foreign and domestic. These people are engaging in a high-wire act “to justify their acts” and all they seem to care about is themselves not their duty to the oaths they have taken, not their duty to engage in the Biblical commands above, not to follow Jesus’ examples-only their self-interest.

This issue, described some 60+ years ago by Rabbi Heschel is the same one we are facing today. It is a little subtler because of social media, it gets more blurred and the exploiters can hide their exploitation a little better, as it is said, “a lie travels the earth while truth is getting its boots on”. The people who know better, like Barr, McConnell, et al, “justify” their actions with ‘party loyalty’ and other such bullshit when they are being loyal to themselves only-they are only afraid of what Trump will do to them if he wins-so rather than ensuring his defeat, they hedge their bets and use their “discernment”, their ability to manipulate the truth, to “justify” going against the teachings of the Bible they claim to revere! This is how devious and destructive our ability to “exploit” the truth is, our “skill” to manipulate facts and our creative ways to “justify” unholy and illegal behaviors, like keeping the Black person down, denying voting rights to citizens, having one law for citizens and another for strangers, proclaiming liberty only to ‘our people’ and denying to ‘those people’, etc.

This is where we are today, as we were in the 1960’s. The protests on College Campus’ are not the same as those of the late 60s and early 70’s. We were against the war in Vietnam, we were not supporting the communists, we were not cheering on the terrorism of the Communists, unlike the protestors today. We were not calling for the extermination of the United States, we were not calling for the end of a people nor a state-we were calling for each country to determine for themselves what type of government they wanted. Today’s protests are funded in a large part by Qatar, Saudi Arabia through the ‘chairs’ they endowed and they are calling for the end of Israel as a state, for Jews to be pushed into the ‘river and the sea’, they are supporting the horrific torture, murder, kidnapping and cease-fire breaking of Hamas and calling they ‘freedom fighters’ while they use their own people as human shields, deny them good living so they can build tunnels and use the Billions of Dollars they receive to live in luxury in Qatar, Gaza and wherever else in the world they want to. And these ‘protestors’ use their “skill” to “justify” these murderers and convince the innocents on campus to join them and these “easily exploited” don’t even know they have a different cause to plead!

This sentence is so impactful for me precisely because I have been the exploiter and the exploited. I have used my “skills”, my discernment, to “justify” my actions as a thief and a con man. I would say “you can’t cheat an honest person so the people I conned had larceny in their veins”, and other such bullshit. I am still remorseful for those justifications and those actions. I have paid back the people I know I stole from and I have given an extra 3-5% in charity these past 35+ years as restitution to the Banks, insurance companies, etc that I stole from. I also have not tried to “exploit” another human being for my benefit in my recovery. I have “exploited” a weakness in another person in order to help them see truth, the light, a decent path forward, just not for my benefit, my greed. I have been on the receiving end of another’s exploitation of my vulnerabilities, of my way of being and, I am responsible for my own actions, of using their skills to justify ‘taking me down a peg’ or two. I hold no resentments, only sadness for those who have exploited my nature, my kindness, my vulnerabilities and ask for forgiveness to the universe for the myriad of times, prior to Nov 1988 I exploited another. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 190

“Righteousness must dwell not only in the places where justice is judicially administered. There are many ways of evading the law and escaping the arm of justice.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

Thinking about these two sentences almost makes wish for a time when the first one was true! Even “in the places where justice is judicially administered”, righteousness does not necessarily prevail. We have lost our ability to “not accept bribes”, to not allow politics on either extreme of the spectrum not influence the righteousness that true justice calls for. We are living in times where it increasingly difficult to find righteousness in our daily affairs, in our judicial proceedings, in our political life and in our economic dealings.

The colleges who are negotiating with students to end investment in Israel are not acting from righteousness, they are acting from fear; fear of confronting the truth of the ways they have been educating students. They are willing to support a terrorist organization, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, to placate a minority of students and faculty. While we can debate the policies of Israel all day long, we cannot deny the fact that Hamas, the PLO, the PA have rejected every cease-fire, every offer of a two-state solution that has been presented to them. By doing this, the progressives have made them into ‘poor victims’ who rape, torture and murder innocent Israelis in the their beds, women, children, babies, men, young and old or at a music festival celebrating peace! This is whom the colleges are saying are the ‘righteous ones’ by their acquiescence to the ridiculous demands of so-called students and their outside agitators. Where is the justice for the people who were murdered, where is the justice for the women who were raped, where is the justice for those still held captive-against International Law and Hamas has never been brought up on charges, while Israel continues to be denigrated. A little double-standard maybe-oh no-we Jews are always the problem, we are always the scapegoats-for the far right and far left. Where is the justice here? Where is the righteousness in the world courts, in world opinion, on our college campus’??

On a more personal plane, the justice system has always been easy to manipulate if you are a person of wealth and, if you are a victim of a terrible childhood at times. Just as in Ancient Greece and Rome and in every country since antiquity, justice is about what can be proved and what can be evaded. In Ancient Israel, the purpose of justice was to find the truth without fear nor favor, without regard to the status of the people in front of the court. Today, we witness the specialization of lawyers in denying responsibility, in evading the letter and/or the spirit of the law, and their absolute conviction that people who have enough money to afford them are entitled to a different justice than people who can’t! The courts go along with this theory as well and righteousness is no longer the goal of justice, truth is no longer the goal of justice, only winning is the goal! Innocent people are wrongly convicted and guilty people are let free, Antonio Scalia in defending a decision to allow a patently innocent man be executed said: “due process had been followed-guilt or innocence is of no concern to me”. This Supreme Court Justice, some 20 years ago in a talk I attended, confirmed that righteousness and truth have no place in our judicial system anymore. Donald Trump’s constant assault on the rule of law, the Supreme Court’s enabling him to delay, delay, delay all show how far we have fallen since Biblical Days when Truth and Righteousness were the goals of every case before a court.

On an even more personal plane, many of us have relinquished doing what is righteous in favor of ‘getting ahead’. I have heard people brag often, and I have done the same, of how they ‘got over’ on someone. As a con-man, I celebrated every ‘score’ I made and never once considered the damage to righteousness and truth I was making. We are raising generations of people to believe they can be and do anything-rather than raise them with the obligation of “do justly”, the call of the Bible to “pursue righteousness”, knowing we will not achieve it totally and, as Rabbi Tarfon says: “we don’t have to finish the work and we are not free to invalidate it!” Each person is needed to do the inner inventory and see how each of us has evaded being righteous, evaded the law and escaped justice/accountability.

Earlier in this section of this book, Rabbi Heschel spoke of “extenuate personal responsibility”. I am disturbed because this is another subtle example and way we ‘thin out’ our personal responsibility. I have made things okay because I can find a validation in the law and, even in the Torah or Talmud. I have evaded being righteous through making excuses about ‘the greater good’ rather than the truth and what is just and righteous. While these have decreased to a minimal over the years of my recovery and my immersion into the Bible, I cannot deny them otherwise I will repeat them. I have looked at my evading justice and righteousness each year through my daily and yearly inventory, doing the necessary T’Shuvah/Amends and not worrying about what another has done to me. If they are unable to step up to their part, I feel sad for them-not resentful. This is one of the ways I continue to grow in “do justly” and pursuing righteousness. It isn’t always easy and it is always simple. I believe it is time for all of us to stop “extenuating personal responsibility” and take our proper place in our world. It is time for all of us to end our need for approval through manipulation, our incessant drive to ‘get over’ and ‘be #1”, to buy the deceptions of another so we can be accepted. It is time for us to leave the mendacity of the terrorists, the lies of their allies, the hatred of one another, the denigration of any and all people. This is America, This is Biblical life to me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 189

“Most of us are content to delegate the problem to the courts, as if justice were a matter for professionals or specialists. But to do justice is what God demands of every man; it is the supreme commandment, and one that cannot be fulfilled vicariously.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

The last phrase above disturbs me greatly. Justice is “the supreme commandment” does not only mean what is legal, what is for the courts to decide. Justice has to permeate every action we take, between one person and another, between one community and another, between the people and the governments. Yet, all to often, we delegate the administration of justice to the courts, to another person, etc. Society continues to act as if “justice” can be “fulfilled vicariously.”

We have become indifferent to “justice” in our societal norms by relegating it to a legal construct. Throughout history there has been two tiers of justice, at least. One for the common person and one for the powerful and wealthy. One for the white person and one for people of color, one for the Christian and one for the Jew/Muslim/Buddhist, etc. Our indifference comes from our acceptance of these two tiers of justice, be it legal, business, personal.

We are witnesses to the degradation of this “supreme commandment”. Moses and Micah, when describing what “God wants” put justice first. “Do justly” does not only apply to a legal construct, it applies to caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor. It applies to our tithes, it applies to the ways we acknowledge the worth, dignity and presence of every human being we encounter. Saying hello to people on the street is doing justly. Yet, we ignore so many people around us. Speaking truth rather than giving into our self-deceptions and the deceptions of another does justice to our Divine Image. Being involved in making our corner of the world a little brighter and better is a path of justice. None of these paths can be delegated to someone else, we are being reminded that “someone else will do this” is a response that retards justice.

None of us are exempt from doing justice and almost all of us fail to live justly in our daily affairs. In the 12th Step of Alcoholics Anonymous, we commit to “practice these principles in all our affairs”. We do not leave it up to someone else to live these principles, we have to be engaged in them, from setting up chairs to reaching out to another human being who is suffering, whether someone has 1 day or 30+ years. The same is true in our everyday living, the ‘pious’ among us are not exempt from “doing justly”, they are more responsible because of their proclaiming their piety. Prayer, study, engagement in religious life doesn’t give someone the right to dictate to another, rather it gives one the responsibility to be personally and totally engaged in justice. Blocking aid from getting into Gaza is not justice, believing it is okay to kill people because they are ‘not us’ is unjust, believing one can impose their narrow and fundamentalist interpretations of the law, the Bible onto the masses is unjust. Terrorist attacks on innocents on religious Holy Days is unjust. Because these acts are done by ‘our people’ it is imperative that we call these injustices out and find ways to stop ‘our people’ from perpetrating them, otherwise we are being indifferent to the suffering of another human being, another group, and this is the greatest injustice of all.

In the Bible, there are times when Moses, Abraham, Job, the prophets call out to God to “do justly”, to show mercy rather than wrath, to be open to the return of the wayward and those who commit grave errors. This too is a form of justice. Never writing someone out of our books, as I learned early on in my recovery-not sure of the source, we can put someone out of our homes and never put them out of our hearts. When we chant “Lock them Up”, when we believe one group, be it Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Asians, Jews, are all bad because they don’t believe in Jesus, when the people in power want ‘a christian nation’ with laws that are anything but Christ-like, we are committed to being unjust, when we stereotype, when we fail to see each case on its own merits and the differences between people, we are being unjust. When we come under the spell of the Charismatic Leader, the authoritarian, we are heading down the road of injustice because we are allowing someone else to do our thinking for us, to decide what is just and what isn’t based on their whims and personal desires.

This last phrase disturbs me for the above reasons and, more so, because I have fallen prey to allowing justice to “be fulfilled vicariously”. I have gone along to get along. I have bought my own kool-aid at times and been unjust in my actions. I have made amends for these actions to everyone I believe has been affected by my acts of injustice, my allowing someone else to fulfill justice instead of me, and I am acutely aware of the negativity I left in my wake. For this, I am remorseful. I also know I have caused much distress because I have not waited for someone else to speak up, to “do justly” and railed, been bombastic, unbending in my ways of being just, of recognizing the dignity of everyone. I have confronted people loudly and aggressively for their indifference to their own unjust actions and ways. I have spoken, sometimes very loudly, truth to power, I have confronted deceptive people in the wrong moments, I have not always been correct in my assessments as well. I, have not, however, allowed myself to wallow in self-pity nor stay in my fallen state of allowing justice to “be fulfilled vicariously” very long, nor stand idly by the injustices towards another(s). I am disturbed by the abdication of doing justly in all our affairs by myself and so many others, I am disturbed at the violent assaults on our humanity when this happens. God Bless and stay safe Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 188

“Most of us are content to delegate the problem to the courts, as if justice were a matter for professionals or specialists. But to do justice is what God demands of every man; it is the supreme commandment, and one that cannot be fulfilled vicariously.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

These words of Rabbi Heschel’s are speaking to the issue of Civil Rights and they are as true and pertinent today as they were some 61 years ago. We have seen a proliferation of court cases where people seeking to be unjust are using the ‘cover’ of the law, the political bent of the Supreme Court Justices to undo the Civil Rights and Voting Rights laws of the 1960’s. We are witnesses to these “professionals and specialists” using the courts to fulfill their own unreligious and unjust desires, their desire for power and control. It is a great tragedy that our courts have taken away rights from the powerless and the voiceless, from women and LGBTQ+, from the stranger and the poor. Yet, this is the situation we find ourselves in today. Delegating “the problem to the courts” has led America to be unjust, according to “what God demands of every man.”

The courts have become a place where the alliances of minorities have been shattered, Blacks and Jews are no longer aligned to “do justice”. Between the courts and the urgings of people in both minorities, Jews and Blacks find themselves as opponents instead of allies. This is a great tragedy! Black Ministers are calling on President Biden and Israel for a Cease-Fire. Why are they and the protestors not calling on Hamas for a Cease-Fire? We are being assured this is not anti-semitism, yet, just as racism can be sniffed out by the victims of it, so too can anti-semitism be sniffed out by Jews.

We are told in Deuteronomy16:18 to engage in Mishpat Tzedek, righteous justice. This teaching by Moses calls our attention to the two aspects of justice: a law and what is morally right. In fact, according to the Oxford dictionary, both words, righteous and justice, mean doing what is morally right and fair. What was happening at the time Rabbi Heschel spoke these words was anything but what was morally right and fair, hence his railing about the injustice practiced by both the courts and people. What is happening right now is anything but what is morally fair and right, hence our need to stop delegating to the “professionals or specialists” the administration of righteous justice.  I learned from one of my teachers, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man, to take this personally: be morally right in my words and my deeds, seek a spiritual guide to help me discern what is the righteous and just action to take in this moment, knowing the next moment will be different. Rather than delegate the responsibility of doing justice to the courts, to the “professionals or specialists”, it is to each of us that this ‘command’ is addressed. Every human being is responsible for the administering of justice, as Rev King said: “ Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” These words of Rev King were prophetic then and we are witnesses to the fulfillment of this prophecy in our own time.

While one can debate the situation in Gaza, everyone should be horrified by the devastation. At the same time, which seems to elude the protestors on campus’ around our country, the devastation is the direct result of the attack on Oct. 7th when Hamas broke the Cease-Fire and tortured, raped, murdered and took hostages. The devastation is the direct result of Hamas’ unwillingness to return the hostages and deny the different agreements for a Cease-Fire that have been presented by their allies in Egypt, Qatar, etc! In the news coverage on the left, this fact is left out! It is left out in the calls of the protestors who portray Hamas, a terrorizing force in Israel, in Gaza, who use the people of Gaza as their human shields, who claim it doesn’t matter how many are killed ‘for the cause’, as freedom fighters! They want to exterminate the Jews, kill all zionists, displace Israel from its land, etc. This is what they call Justice? This is what they call morally right and fair?

And the world says nothing except to condemn the Jews! I disagree with Netanyahu and his band of thugs on almost every issue, they have perverted what is in the Bible for their own purposes. They have sought to do the same with the Justice System in Israel as Leonard Leo and the Federalist society have done in the US. And, a two-state solution is the only just and fair way of dealing with the issues in the Middle East, which the world has conveniently forgotten about was the original idea of the UN in their Partition Agreement in 1947! It was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who killed that idea, it was the Arab Countries surrounding Israel who went to war in 1948-all of whom had supported Hitler in WWII!

I am, as you may have noticed, enraged by what is happening both in Gaza and in our country. I am saddened by the lack of participation and discussion of what is morally right and fair. I am looking at my own call to “do justice”, my own actions to be just and fair, moral and truthful. It begins within, I continue to put guardrails up to tamp down my unjust impulses, I continue to speak out, loudly and softly, whenever I witness injustice. I am overwrought at what I see happening in our country, how the Supreme Court has become so corrupt that, instead of being an instrument that “proclaims liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, it has become an instrument to deny freedom and liberty to the masses in favor of the few. I cannot stay silent while people “make thin” their personal responsibility to “do justice”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Immersing Ourselves in Rabbi Heschel's Teaching - A Daily Spiritual Guide for Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 187

“Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent. The conscience builds its confines, is subject to fatigue, longs for comfort. Yet those who are hurt, and He who inhabits eternity, neither sleep nor slumber.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

The people who are impacted by the “human violence” of another, according to Rabbi Heschel, “neither sleep nor slumber”. The impact of prejudice, violence that is physical, mental, spiritual, does not leave its victims, it always weighs on us. This is true for children who are abused as well as adults. This is true for women who are ‘under the thumb’ of their fathers, husbands, etc. This is true for ethnicities that have been scapegoated like Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims. This is true, also, for the people who care about their neighbors, who abhor injustice whether they are powerless to end this “human violence” or they have the power to stop the perpetuation of it.

The spiritual harm is so great and, as science teaches us, has such far-reaching effects, that it is passed down through the generations. Jews have felt the effects of anti-semitism since Antiquity and the perpetrators have engaged in it throughout the ages-be it the Greeks, Romans, the Church, etc. This epigenetic inheritance has extenuated the personal responsibility of the anti-semites, it makes thin their responsibility for their actions and has become a societal norm! For the Jew, it has made us very sensitive to the least hint of anti-semitism and our reactions range from hiding to fighting, from seeing it everywhere and ignoring it until it is too late. When we stand against it, we are called overly sensitive, aggressive, oppressors, etc. by those who want to eliminate us and/or keep us in our place.

Blacks in America have the same reactions, they are sensitive to the slightest hint of racism, they are acutely aware of being accused of crimes they have not committed, being given longer prison sentences than whites, receiving education that doesn’t always meet the education of whites, etc. They have become accustomed to white people crossing the street when they are walking towards them, they are used to being passed over for jobs and positions, they are susceptible to the gang violence that has come to be ‘normal’ in some neighborhoods and fight for their dignity each and every day. The same is true for Hispanics who are labeled by some as criminals, rapists, etc. in our current political climate.

Each of these ethnic groups along with everyone else who experiences the “human violence” of ‘the man’ are very aware of their need to be hyper alert. Blacks have the experience of the deep South and slavery, Jim Crow and the KKK, and now the MAGA movement. Jews have the experience of slavery in Egypt, being wanderers for almost 1900 years and in our wandering being expelled from every country in the world except for the United States where the Protocols of Zion and Father Coughlin perpetrated anti-semitism, where there were quotas on college enrollment, where people march screaming Jews will not replace us. Just as Blacks re-experience the old wounds of slavery and discrimination every time they are denied their proper due and there is a killing like George Floyd, Jews re-experience the trauma of anti-semitism, the concentration camps, ghettos, and exile of the past whenever there are demonization of Israel, of Jews, when there is a celebration of Hamas and people who want our extermination.

The issue spiritually for everyone, of course, is none of us should be able to “sleep nor slumber” when there is human violence being perpetrated anywhere against anyone. One can argue that Israel’s response is too much and to forget the rape, torture, murder that initiated this response is also an act of “human violence”. To hold the Israeli government totally responsible is to encourage Hamas to continue to terrorize, to give aid and comfort to Iran in their quest to kill the Jews, yet, the people who claim to be victims of “human violence” have no issue with the “human violence” they perpetrate. The demonstrations that are taking place and some of the media coverage conveniently forget how many Cease-Fire proposals Hamas has rejected, how long they have kept hostages which is against International Law, how their crimes against humanity are being whitewashed. Just as when Black people are arrested, abused, even killed for “driving while Black” and the perpetrators ignore it, so too with the Jews when we are threatened with extermination, the perpetrators are celebrated!

For each of us, the issue is deeply personal or should be. We have to stop sleeping well while “human violence” in any form is being perpetrated anywhere. I think of my own crimes and misdemeanors in this realm and, while I have done my T’Shuvah, made my amends, I also know the negativity never leaves the world. I hope and pray my amends and T’Shuvah keep the negativity where it belongs, in the past. I have been the recipient of amends by another(s) and whatever the unresolved feelings were prior, upon being asked for forgiveness, they were lifted from my soul and my inner life. This is the power of T’Shuvah, the call of the amends process-to allow for the past to be relegated to its proper place rather than continually be part of the psyche of the one that is/has been harmed. I have done many amends and I do so again-for those who have been harmed by my actions, knowingly and unknowingly, of spiritual/emotional violence, I am truly sorry. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 186

“Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent. The conscience builds its confines, is subject to fatigue, longs for comfort. Yet those who are hurt, and He who inhabits eternity, neither sleep nor slumber.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

Rabbi Heschel’s highlighted words above describe the state of affairs for most people. Many of us “build its confines”, meaning we continually put borders and limits on where our conscience takes us. This is how we are able to stay silent in the face of evil, hide our heads when wrongs are being done in ‘our name’ by governments, religions, family members, etc. By building these boundaries, we allow our consciences to be soothed by self-deceptions, we go along with the wrong doing and deceptions of another(s), we abdicate our responsibility to serve and engage in a “higher calling”. Building these boundaries, these “confines” we allow ourselves to be spiritually, morally, and ethically lazy. Be it the treatment of the sick, lame, elderly in Ancient Rome and Greece, the treatment of people in the Dark and Middle Ages, the hatred of Jews for the millennia, the enslavement of Blacks in America, etc, these are the results of building these confines, limiting our moral outrage, caring just for our own well-being.

Rabbi Heschel gives us a ‘reason’ for building these “confines”; “fatigue, longs for comfort”. Fatigue comes from the Latin meaning “tire out”. One of the English definitions is “a lessening in one's response to or enthusiasm for something, typically as a result of overexposure to it.” Our consciences have been exposed to the evils of slavery, oppression, anti-semitism, fear of ‘the other’, for so long that we seem to be unable to respond to them with anything but indifference. Looking at the phenomena of Trump’s popularity, hating the stranger proclaiming the goodness of terrorists and rapists in Gaza, the ho-hum towards Putin’s rape of Ukraine, harkens back to earlier eras, we still haven’t learned how to invigorate our consciences and stay true to our inner values.

Comfort comes from the Latin meaning “strengthen”, in English we use “the easing or alleviation of a person's feelings of grief or distress.” Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is a warning and a call to us to not “strengthen” our inability to respond to the indifference our consciences have adopted, to not “alleviate” our bad conscience over the distress of another person/group nor “ease” our moral outrage at lies, deceptions, slavery, unkindness, etc. Yet, we continue to do this, we seem, historically and in real time, to be unable to express the moral outrage of the Prophets. Our conscience is in turmoil and we put different salves, ointments, etc to alleviate the turmoil because we are afraid to face the truth and act accordingly. We are unable to deal with the nuances and subtleties of living a life of “moral grandeur and spiritual audacity” as Rabbi Heschel said in a telegram to President Kennedy in 1963.

While some say that prophecy doesn’t happen anymore, I disagree. We have seen prophets in our time, like Rabbi Heschel, Rev King, George Orwell, and so many others. We have the words and deeds of the prophets of antiquity we can study and learn from. We have, within us, the fire of the prophets and we are called “descendants of the prophets”. Jesus’ words were his interpretation of the prophets words, using the same themes in his sermons. Western Morality comes from the Bible and the prophets proclaiming their value to those in power. Yet, we seem to easily forget, to “limit” our consciences, to allow them to “tire out” and seek to “strengthen” our indifference rather than claim our inheritance of “fire in the belly” from the prophets of old.

There seem to be so many causes in the world today and there is only one cause we need to be concerned with: our ways of dealing with our conscience. We, the people, have to take up the mantle of the prophets, we have to take up the words of the Bible, we have to take up the call of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, etc and take the next right action rather than the most expedient one. We have to imbue the courage of the prophets to do the bidding of our souls, our spirits rather than soothe our conscience seeking ‘comfort”. We are being called today, as we are every day, to stand for what is right and good, to take actions to ensure that everyone is treated with dignity and value, every person is seen as a divine need. We are commanded to free/ransom the captive, this applies to our selves, our consciences as well as to another human being. As we end our celebration of leaving the physical slavery of Egypt, we embark on the journey of leaving the spiritual slavery of a lazy conscience. This is what counting the Omer means this year.

My recovery is based in, and I continue to find, the ways I am in the spiritual slavery of a lazy conscience. In these years of recovery, I have kept the words and deeds of the prophets, Rabbi Heschel, the early Hasidim, my father and grandfathers as my north star. When I don’t, I am in danger of losing my moral compass. I am loud and the “fire in my belly” burns hot and explosive, something that is not accepted in polite society and some people recoil from. This saddens me and, in all these years, I try to temper it when appropriate and I don’t always succeed. I am afraid of indifference because, knowing my own history, I am acutely aware of how easy it is to fall into a lazy conscience and bad actions, comforting myself with mendacity and going along with negativity and deception. I cannot do this- I cannot go backwards. I would rather suffer the arrows of those who use my vulnerabilities against me than not heed the fire within. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 185

“Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent. The conscience builds its confines, is subject to fatigue, longs for comfort. Yet those who are hurt, and He who inhabits eternity, neither sleep nor slumber.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

The issue Rabbi Heschel raises about “human violence” strikes at the heart of our existence, for me. How do we define “human violence” is important because many people mis-define it, in my opinion. “Human violence” happens whenever and wherever we categorize another human being as “the other”. Whenever we ignore the plight of those who are suffering, we are committing “human violence”. Whenever we fail to recognize the divine image of another human being, we are committing “human violence”. When we need to make someone else bad so we can be good, ie comparison, we commit “human violence”. When we need to rule over ‘those people’ we commit “human violence”. In other words, all of us are guilty of committing it.

The words Rabbi Heschel uses to describe our consistent engagement in “human violence” are soul-shattering, hopefully. “Interminable” means “without end”, “unbearable” means “not able to be endured or tolerated”, and “permanent” means “lasting indefinitely”. Since the days of Cain and Abel we have been confronted with “human violence” and we continue to engage in it even though it harms our souls, it harms the souls and bodies of another(s), and ew have seen how it ravages our humanity. It seems to be enjoyed by some people so much they are surprised when they are held to account for their violence towards another(s), the MAGA crowd is bewildered by the fact they are being held accountable for Jan. 6th when they believe their “human violence” was a just and good cause-the end of democracy! We, the people, have to come to terms with our inner life, with our need to compare and compete to such an extreme that “human violence” is the norm and is celebrated.

Putin, Sinwar, G’vir, Netanyahu, Orban, MBS, the Ayatollah, are but the faces of physical “human violence” we read about and hear about today. What they all have in common is their ‘people’ have gone along with the physical violence they have perpetrated. In the case of Netanyahu and G’vir, as well as with Sinwar, the Israelis and Palestinians in the ‘streets’ do not all agree with their tactics, Israelis are demonstrating and arguing with their government to end senseless violence, the people of Gaza who disagree with Hamas and Sinwar are still too afraid, know the depth of the “human violence” Hamas and Sinwar engage in, using human shields, hospitals, Mosques to hide in and store weapons in. Hamas decided to end the Cease-Fire on Oct. 7th and are not willing to admit their crimes while some in the world condemn Israel for its retaliation, which can be argued is devastating. When Putin condemns Israel for defending itself when he invaded a sovereign country, Ukraine, we see the effects of the permanence of “human violence”, we witness the cover-up, clean-up of the “interminable” and “permanent” nature of it.

The student demonstrators on College Campus’ decry what is happening in Gaza right now, and it is devastating. They also call for “from the river to the sea” promoting the extermination of Jews, the end of the State of Israel and are unaware of how they claim “human violence” is “unbearable” and at the same time promote it - as long as it is against “the Jews”. Why is “human violence” bearable when it is against the Jews, as we have seen throughout history. Just as in the early days and throughout the Second World War, people don’t want to go to war to save the Jews, so too today-the attack on the Israeli people who reached out an olive branch, who helped the people of Gaza navigate check points and helped them get to hospitals, gave them work in their homes and their fields, were the ones who were killed, tortured, raped, taken captive! The student demonstrators seem fine with this situation-only Israel should stop the fighting- not Hamas. This is how subtle and “interminable” “human violence” was, is and always will be until we put an end to it.

The only way to end the physical “human violence” is to heal the soul sickness that causes it. We live in times where spiritual illness is rampant, our solutions for it have been alcohol, drugs, work, blame, shame, violence-just as the Bible stories about Cain & Able, Adam & Eve in the garden, Pharaoh in Egypt, and so many more stories of “human violence” found in the pages of the Bible-not to validate this way of being, rather to decry it, to inform us as to the causes and the truth that “sin couches at our door and we can master it”. Isn’t it time to “turn our swords into plowshares”? Isn’t it time for “men learn war no more”? We have the power to do this, we have the technology, we need, as Maimonidies teaches, a physician of the soul to help us heal our spiritual maladies and “grow along spiritual lines”. We need a program of spiritual recovery and we need to engage in it today!

I have committed “human violence” in my recovery and I am remorseful for these acts. While my way of being is bombastic and loud, I am sensitive to the lies people tell themselves, I also have engaged and indulged in missing the humanity of people, missing the need and cry of people at times and for this I make my amends and do better each day. I also have helped many people end their inner violence towards themselves, doing so lessens the “human violence” we commit towards another(s). I continue each day to let go of the hurts and the arrows I have experienced, I continue each day to appreciate the joy of connection, the lessening of inner violence. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 184

“Our standards are modest; our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent; yet human violence is interminable, unbearable, permanent. The conscience builds its confines, is subject to fatigue, longs for comfort. Yet those who are hurt, and He who inhabits eternity, neither sleep nor slumber.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 91)

This is the third way Rabbi Heschel speaks about how we were/are “dealing with our bad conscience”. Whether it is about Black people, Brown people, Asian people, Jews, Muslims, etc; we seem to be able to tolerate the injustice that is perpetrated upon someone else with the idea that progress is being made, why are they so impatient, etc. The same actions which if done to us would make us angry and cause revolt, we soothe our conscience by saying “why are they so angry”. Rabbi Heschel is calling us out because “our standards are modest”, “our sense of injustice tolerable, timid; our moral indignation impermanent;”

Living into his words above in the first sentence must cause us pain, guilt and personal recrimination, I believe. I know they do for me. How can I pray, be a person of faith, call myself human and have modest standards? The Bible and every other spiritual text demands we raise ourselves up to the standards of spiritual health, spiritual decency. They demand we “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev. 25:10), that we stand up for one another, we ransom the captive, etc. Yet, in the 61 years since the Conference on Race and Religion where these words were spoken, we seem to have gone backwards, we have retreated to more modest “standards”, the voting rights bill has been gutted, the treatment of Black and Brown people has gotten worse, the alliances of minorities in this country has fallen apart, and we get angry with one another, rather than being angry at injustice!

When “driving while Black” can still get an innocent person murdered by police, when walking down a street in a neighborhood where one doesn’t ‘seem to belong’ can get one beaten, when police are not prosecuted for their crimes, when a former President is helped by the Supreme Court and lower Courts to evade responsibility and justice, we are witnessing “our sense of injustice” being tolerable and, even, turned upside down. What makes these Justices, these keepers of our Constitution so timid? I believe it is their desire to serve their politics rather than justice, their desire to proclaim their fidelity to ‘christian justice’ rather than to the justice that Christ speaks of nor the justice that the Bible speaks about. Rather than being people who do not take bribes nor recognize one person over another nor have one law for the rich and one for the poor as the Bible instructs us; these Justices have made it their raison d’être to do the opposite. Thomas and Alito take bribes, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch follow a christianity that would be unrecognizable to Christ.

We hear much from the charlatans about their “moral indignation” that is focused on freedom for all, they are against voting rights, welcoming the stranger, feeding the poor, upholding the Constitution when it is inconvenient for them, etc. Their “moral indignation” is focused on anyone and anything that may impugn on their power grab, their wealth, their sense of injustice towards white people.

We find the “moral indignation” of some minorities to be “impermanent” as well. The protests against Israel, the calling for an immediate cease-fire make no mention of the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, no mention of the illegal taking and keeping of hostages by Hamas and the fact that they have not let the Red Cross visit any of the hostages. They forget to mention there was a cease-fire in effect on Oct. 6th, 2023 and it was broken by Hamas! They seem incapable of having any “moral indignation” towards Hamas and their allies who murdered, raped and killed so many Israelis-‘oh yeah, that’s Jewish Blood and they deserve it’ seems to be their attitude. The deaths in Gaza of innocents is horrific-no one is denying it-, Bibi and his right-wing government have done a terrible job in prosecuting this war, and rockets are still being fired into Israel, Hamas does not want a cease-fire nor were they willing/able to provide 45 living hostages and keep moving the line on a deal. When the perpetrators of evil are being celebrated as freedom fighters, when terrorists are being hailed as heroes, we witness “moral indignation” impermanence!

I am drawn to these words because I have fought against my own issues with allowing injustice to be tolerable, moral indignation to be impermanent, being timid in the face of lies and deceit. I have not been able to stand it in the world, in another(s), and, most of all, within myself. I have spent my life railing about it and, in my younger years when I felt powerless and a victim, I turned to alcohol and crime and joined the injustice. My recovery has been about yelling from the rooftops against injustice, prejudice, racism, religious intolerance. I have been at at odds with the people who donated to the organization I was Rabbi and CEO of, I have been at odds with the people we were helping, I have been at odds with colleagues because I am hypersensitive to injustice. There are times when this hypersensitivity has caused me to become volcanic and explosive, which doesn’t always make me popular nor heard. My moral compass is as exacting for myself as it is for another(s), I learned this from my father, z”l. I am sorry to the people who have felt the wrath of my volcanic explosions because of my moral indignation and have been overwhelmed by it-I am not sorry for having a heightened sense of moral outrage. My moral compass has given me the joy, the gift, and the burden of speaking out and I am grateful, even though it has gotten me into trouble at times. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Using Rabbi Heschel's wisdom and teachings to live better today

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 183

Another way of dealing with a bad conscience is to keep the Negro out of sight. The Word proclaims: Love thy Neighbor! So we make it impossible for him to be a neighbor.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 90)

Rabbi Heschel continues to give us ‘ways’ of dealing with a bad conscience. What is so remarkable is that he assumes people have bad consciences! As we have seen throughout history up to today, many people are immune to their bad consciences because they spend little, if any, time delving into their inner life. Today’s quote reminds us of “out of sight, out of mind”.

While Rabbi Heschel is addressing the issue of racism against Black people in 1963, not much has changed nor were Black people the only ones who were kept “out of sight” in the history of the United States. Today it is the homeless we are keeping away from the ‘good neighborhoods’, passing laws that allow law enforcement to move them off the streets even if they don’t want to be moved. We still restrict the people who are our neighbors based on economics and housing prices. Throughout our history, we have segregated the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Jews, anyone who is not ‘white like us’. It is a stain on America and a way of ‘solving’ the problem of our “bad conscience.”

In the Bible, “Love thy Neighbor” is in the context of one way to be holy. It is not just the neighbor next door or two doors down, it is everyone who inhabits the neighborhood, everyone who dwells in the city, county, state, country. All of us human beings are neighbors, all of us our related as we say “Our parent, our sovereign” in the Avinu Malkeynu prayer. Yet, we are constantly and consistently ignoring this truth, we are constantly and consistently seeking to “keep those people out” of our neighborhoods, our seats of power, our churches, Temples, Mosques, restaurants, etc. “No Irish need apply”, “No Jews allowed”, “Colored water fountain”, are all stains on our history, ways the WASPS and others dealt with their “bad consciences”. Today, it is the Jew, the Arab, the Muslim, the Hispanic, who are being isolated again, who are being kept out of college campus’, neighborhoods, who are being ghettoized because of not being wanted in ‘our neighborhood’. This is being done by ‘god-fearing’ people-imagine if they were pagans!

We are witnessing the effects of “out of sight, out of mind” as well as the effects of the lies we tell ourselves and. another(s) about “those people”. Be it the MAGA movement, the Christian Nationalists, the White Supremacists, the Progressives who are as intractable as the far-right conservatives, they continue to use a scapegoat to deal with their “bad conscience”. They are manipulated by the liars and the charlatans, the money and the power of outside groups who have an agenda-authoritarianism. The call of the students on campus’ around the country for a Cease-Fire in Gaza, their hailing of Hamas as “freedom fighters”, their portrayal of Israel as oppressors when Hamas could have built Gaza into something terrific and a destination like the French or Italian Riveras, is frightening. The fact that these protests began the day after the Oct. 7th massacre of over 1200 Israelis, the taking of over 240 Hostages, seems a little fishy to many of us. Yet, they wrap themselves in the flag of Hamas and extol authoritarianism, support the extermination of Israel as a country and Jews as a people. This is how they deal with their “bad conscience”, kill the ones we don’t like, do the bidding of their Iranian influencers who would never put up with these types of protests. How many of these passionate protestors want to live under Sharia law? We witness the lies of the far-right as they seem to be supporting Israel when, in truth, they also hate the Jews, remember these are the people who chanted “Jews will not replace us”!

The only real way of “dealing with a bad conscience”, as I ponder Rabbi Heschel’s words, is to invite everyone into our tent. The Passover meal which was eaten on Monday and Tuesday evenings, was to be shared with neighbors if our family could not eat it themselves. There was no ‘leftovers’ allowed. In the Haggadah, we invite the hungry and the needy into our homes to share in the meal and the liberation of the soul that the Exodus from Egypt represents. We have to invite the different parts of our inner life to engage with one another to wrestle out the differences between what we know to be true and right-“love your neighbor as you love yourself”, and what we know is wrong-“keep the_____ out of sight”. We have to deal with our inner conflicts, hear the call of our soul that gives us a “bad conscience”, hear the call of the prophets whose only job was to give a “bad conscience” to the Priests, the royalty, the wealthy as well as the rest of the people. We have to deal with our desire to be deceived and need to deceive another(s). All of this is the inner spiritual work that we are called to by every Holy day in every spiritual tradition as well as by the daily prayers and practices of every spiritual discipline.

I am guilty of dealing with my “bad conscience” at times with ‘out of sight, out of mind’. This year, I am being liberated from this way of being-I retreated after being wounded and feeling abandoned and this is wrong on my part. I made a mistake that profoundly impacted many people and while I disagree with the decisions of the people in power, I am wrong in my retreat from everyone. I am remedying this. I am seeing the choices made by people as them doing what they thought was best with their own “bad consciences” playing a role in their decisions. I, however, cannot blame them nor anyone for my decision to retreat. I am back, I am being more of who I truly am. This is my response to being brought out of Egypt this year. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark