Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 108

“And the sign flashed out its warning” part of verse 5 of Sound of Silence is so maddening to me, as I sit here 62 years later remembering the teen-ager I was at the time, remembering the social justice advocate I was and my family was. I am pissed off at myself for losing sight of “the sign flashed out its warning” throughout my ‘lost years’, throughout my addiction to alcohol and criminality. This song represented hope, power to the people, and an resurgence of prophecy that filled me up and then I got deflated by Vietnam, by the lies of people, by the race to have the most toys, etc.

Here we are, in 2026, “and the sign flashed out its warning” again/still and we the people seem to be too blind to see it, too deaf to hear it, too egotistical, too enthralled with power, prestige, wealth and/or the search for same to heed it!

What is it about humanity that we the people are more apt to go along with societal norms that we know are wrong, go along with the mental cliches that hinder our search for knowledge? Is it really so simple as “don’t rock the boat”? I am one of those who did go along with the mental cliches and my response was being a criminal, not the best life path for a person. Yet, today, if one is a ‘big enough’ criminal, it is a great life path-ask Musk, Trump, Kushner, Lutnick, Bessent, et al. While they all claim to ‘love God’ the ‘God’ they love are two aspects of idolatry, of false gods: worshiping power and money! And what is even more egregious and infuriating, to me at least, is the safeguards of the Congress and the Supreme Court are silent, are acquiescing, are folding like cheap tents! Then, to top it off, enough of we the people still ‘believe in Trumpism’ while their savings are dwindling, the prices they pay for groceries, for gas, etc are going up and they do not have enough money in the market for its rise to really help them!

“The sign flashed out its warning” is happening every single day, it comes from the Voice on Sinai, it comes from the prophets of our time, it comes from the prophets of the Bible, it comes from the text of the Bible. We the People are being bombarded with “the flashing” and we keep ignoring it, we keep doing the exact opposite of the Call of “the sign flashed out its warning”, like Jonah. Yet, like the people who try and get over the tracks as the arm is coming down, the flashing lights are going off and they still think they can beat the train because whatever they are doing is so much more important than “the sign” that is flashing, we the people are continuing to speed by “the sign” because the societal norms we are trying to adhere to, the search for money, property, fame, prestige, etc are more important than hearing and understanding what is True and Real, we the people find ourselves in a situation where our Freedom is at stake.

I can hear Vought, Kushner, Lutnick, Miller saying to Trump: “let us deal wisely with them because they are stronger and more numerous than we”, just like the Pharaoh in Egypt. These people know their scriptures and are unabashedly not afraid to twist the meaning, twist the words, twist the text to fit their needs and too many of we the people are stupid enough, naive enough, spiritually immature enough, to GO ALONG with their bullshit! This is the spiritual bankruptcy that the month of Elul comes to repair.

“The sign flashed its warning” is what this month is all about. The flashing light you see is the call to regain our moral footing, to return to the state of being that is awareness of our place in the world, a return to the connection we have with Adonai, Jesus, Mohammed, higher consciousness, however one describes the Power Greater than Ourselves in the Universe. This “sign” has “flashed its warning” forever and we the people have ignored it from Adam and Eve through today. We the People seem to enjoy rolling around in a quicksand of our own making while the cure for what ails us is at our fingertips: RETURN!

I am infuriated, irate, bewildered by the state of affairs because I know the freedom of using this month of Elul to “get right with oneself” to RETURN to my essence, my spiritual core, to my community in new and better ways, to return to my place in the world with renewed energy and clarity, to take the reins of what I have power over and let go of the things I am powerless over. The inventory, the T’Shuvah, the asking for and granting of forgiveness that this month of Elul brings to me is exhilarating, uplifting, and  each year I live into being one grain of sand better and at a higher spiritual level again by one grain of sand. It is a simple action of being real, of seeing the truth of one’s soul and living into it a little more this coming year.

ACTION STEP:

How are you ignoring  “the sign flashed out its warning”?

What do you gain from this ignorance?

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 107

I have been thinking about and living into the “Sound of Silence” song, thinking about when it was written, the poetry of it, the power of it and, in this last verse, the foresight of Paul Simon in realizing the “neon god” that “the people bowed and prayed to”. While I wrote about this on Friday, I am still thinking about it today. Given the news, the lies, the grift, the destruction of our democracy in favor of a ‘more powerful executive’ branch that no longer needs Congress’ approval to spend, to make or break treaties, to decide whom our allies will be, etc, the “neon god” of Trump is getting larger and larger in some circles, and I am at a loss as to the reason for this.

We the People are well aware of the consequences of being one who “bowed and prayed to the neon god they made”, it is resplendent throughout history, the United States of America came into being because King George thought the Colonies should bow down and pray to him! Now, 250 years later, the Republicans, the ‘christian’ Nationalists, the White Supremacists, the Orthodox Jews, the seekers of money, power, and prestige, all have come together and are hellbent on taking away the Freedoms found in the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers found in the Constitution, the safeguards against a ‘king’ ruling our country found in the Constitution, the Rule of Law found in our Constitution, and, of course, the basic moral, ethical spiritual commandments of God found in the Bible, in the New Testament.

Psalm 121, verses 1&2 call out to me at this moment: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come” My help comes from Adonai, maker of heaven and earth”. I am calling out my colleagues in the Clergy to make this Psalm COME ALIVE in your hearts, in your minds, in your souls and spread THIS message to your disparate flocks, not the message of MAGA, not the message of BIBI, not the message of JEW/ISRAEL HATRED, not the message of ISLAMAPHOBIA, not the message of HATE THE STRANGER, not the message of TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANYONE YOU CAN, ESPECIALLY THE POOR, etc.

Yes I am pissed! I cannot “stand idly by the blood of my neighbors” because God is calling me and you, all of God’s People to care for one another, to lift up the poor and the needy, to love and welcome the stranger, to see the Image of God in each and every one we meet. We the People, in this month of Elul, are called to remember that just as the writer of Song of Songs tells us “I am my beloved and my beloved is mine”. We the People are God’s beloved and, We the People are being called by Paul Simon, by the prophets, by the Psalmist, by the authors of the Bible, by the words of Christ to RETURN TO MAKING GOD OUR BELOVED! We can only do this when we REJECT “the neon god they made” and REJECT bowing down to and praying to the ORANGE IDOL in the White House, to the Puppet Masters behind the Orange Idol, to the fascists on both the right and the left!

It is so simple to return to our basic goodness of being, to return to bowing and praying to Adonai, to God, to return to the authentic self we are born to be. NOT EASY, just simple. It takes engaging in this month of Elul with great excitement, great seriousness, great anticipation, great trembling awe, and a great commitment to RETURN AGAIN TO THE LAND OF YOUR SOUL, as Reb Shlomo Carlebach teaches us in his song “Return Again”. We the People are given this gift of taking 40 days, the same number that it took to get the slave out of the People who left Egypt in the desert, to review, repent, rejoice, make our amends and our changes so we can reconnect, renew, resign our Covenant with God. This gift of Elul, of the 10 days of T’Shuvah, is also a mirror into our beingness, into our core, and it allows us to change from the selfish, unwilling, unwitting, witting ways we have fallen away from our authentic self, from God’s call, from our neighbors and from our Beloved.

Having engaged in this process for 39 years earnestly and in-depth, I can testify to the both the simplicity of the process and the difficulty of it. Looking back over my past each year, because I review the ways I have acted in the past to see if they need repairing based on new insights, is painful and exhilarating, embarrassing and exalting, enlightening because I keep taking new skins of the blinders I have worn and “Lift up my eyes and SEE” the beauty of living well, the horror of my errors upon another and my soul, the joy of repentance and learning new paths to living well, and the love of reconnection to people, to God because of making a T’Shuvah and accepting a T’Shuvah. What a journey this life is/can be.

ACTION STEP

Look at the Subtle ways you are still worshiping “the neon god you made”

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

This Blog, today, is dedicated to the life of ANNETTE SHAPIRO, Z"L

To ANNETTE, A WOMAN OF VALOR

Today’s Blog is dedicated to Annette Shapiro, z”l, who passed away this past Friday. Annette was, and to me, still is, a force to be reckoned with. She was the Grande Dame of Jewish LA and beyond. Her 78 year marriage to Leonard Shapiro is a marvel of love, of joy, of bearing unbearable sadness, and moving forward all the time.

While her accomplishments are too many for me to recount here, what I want to talk about is her soul, her energy that helped her family and so many of us, her ‘projects’, live lives so far beyond our dreams it still seems surreal. The love for her children, her extended family-about 150 strong- and the rest of us is too large to describe and through the pain of loss of parents, of relatives, of her son, David Shapiro, z”l, Annette kept on being a “professional volunteer”, a patron of the arts, a patron of the people. While Annette had her ‘professional self’ which she shared with everyone, which she taught to my wife, Harriet Rossetto, she had a personal self that exuded the same love for ‘her people’ that her ‘professional self’ exuded for everyone. When it comes to love, Annette was totally congruent.

I met Annette when she became President of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, the first woman to hold this position in the LA Jewish Community. She visited all the agencies that the Foundation awarded grants to and she came to Beit T’Shuvah down on Lake Street. What an experience, Annette was like blown away with the stories, with the recovery, and thought the building was a wreck, the neighborhood dangerous, all of which was true, and decided to have a resident whose parents were Holocaust survivors and she was a junkie come speak after hearing of ‘Lila’s’(not real name) experience of joy at her first Shabbat at BTS. That started a 30+year relationship that, for me, still goes on.

Annette was excited to learn my story, in fact Annette was a storyteller herself, she was a curious mind person-always interested in knowing another person’s thoughts, ideas and, when she felt necessary, “I have a suggestion” help for those she was talking to. Annette’s laugh was infectious, it was loud, it was joyful, it was heartfelt. Being a bit of a bull in the china shop, Annette always had a “suggestion” for how I could tone it down a little/actually a lot and we would laugh at my feeble attempts and agree that being me was more important than being political. Annette’s suggestions were like commandments for so many of us because they were delivered with the same love I find God has in the Torah/Bible and Annette was never judgmental in the years I was blessed to be in her orbit.

Annette wanted to see Beit T’Shuvah flourish and, when her Granddaughter needed our help, she called Harriet and we showed up. The first Shabbat Annette and Leonard attended was a trip. They hadn’t seen their granddaughter in a while, they were hurt and angry, Harriet did a session before Shabbat and then they experienced Shabbat under the Tent, with raucous singing, loud preaching(me) and gun shots noises filling the air. To say Annette was nervous, enthralled, bewildered, and excited is an understatement. Then, in a meeting where ‘normal people’, the Jewish Professional world was at, Annette announced that Addiction was a major disease in Jewish LA and, while her family member was not a drug addict, she had an addiction and it was Beit T’Shuvah that was helping her and the family. That did it, the rich and famous of Jewish LA began to trickle to our doors to get help in a Jewish framework for their kids, their spouses, their adult children. Annette and Warren Breslow began our Capital Campaign in 1998 and by 1999, they/we had raised $5million to renovate and inhabit a new facility in West LA where Beit T’Shuvah still is.

What Annette was to me is too hard to describe. She was a mentor, a wise elder, a friend, a confidant, a woman of valor. Annette taught me it was okay to be me, she had my back and when I was too far off the reservation, she would meet me, usually at Factors, and make her “suggestions” as to how I could fix it, change, etc. Annette and Leonard were regulars at Shabbat Services and Leonard would laugh and give Annette an elbow if he thought my sermon applied to her and they would laugh together. They were the example I have followed in my relationship with Harriet all these years. Annette was prim and proper and, when I told her she was “a stand-up broad”, Annette laughed, Leonard laughed and she hugged me saying it was the nicest compliment I could give her. Annette taught me/us to give more when adversity strikes, to do the next right thing a little more.

Annette Shapiro was my friend, while there was physical distance between us, while my action in Feb.2020 made it hard for their to be much conversation, spiritually we have always been connected and, speaking to her last week, telling her my/our love for her and the connection in our eyes validated this. Annette, forever grateful, forever loving, Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 106

“And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made” is pretty remarkable given the times we were in when this was written, given that Vietnam had not yet exploded, it was in the aftermath of JKF’s assassination, and LBJ was working on the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Great Society. What keeps striking me over and over agin is Paul Simon’s ability to SEE what the rest of us couldn’t, to try and speak to us even though we the people were not hearing so well, to not be deterred by any of this, much like the prophets of old. AND WE THE PEOPLE still are not listening, still not touching the “sound of silence”, still bowing and praying to “the neon god they/we made”. WTF, PEOPLE!

Today is the 8th day of Elul, it is one week since we began this dive into our SELF, this exercise to STOP GHOSTING OUR SELF, to live into “the soul we are created to be” rather than follow the bullshit script we have made up for our self or the one that has been foisted upon us by another(s), by life. This is the choice and the opportunity that this month, really any day/week/month, gives us with the full force of forgiveness, compassion, mercy overwhelming every other spiritual force, even and especially “strict justice”. When we the people seek to be forgiven by making a “searching and fearless inventory”, as we say in AA, make the amends we can and must, then forgiveness is granted either by the person we have harmed and/or God. We the People are commanded to not hold resentments, to forgive easily, to welcome people back in our lives as we want to be welcomed back into the lives of the people we have harmed, as we want to be welcomed back into the Covenant with God after we have harmed, defamed, ignored, disobeyed God’s Will!

This 8th day of Elul is our “circumcision day”, it is the day when we have to “circumcise the foreskin of our hearts” as Moses commands us to do in Deuteronomy, just like we welcome the baby boy into the covenant on the 8th day-so too do we welcome ourselves back into the covenant as we engage in the work of Elul. On this 8th day, We the People admit our guilt for bowing and praying to “the neon god we/they made”, just as the Israelites in the desert built the Golden Calf. The difference, however, is the people in the desert were newly freed slaves and their leader had been gone for 12 hours longer than they thought he was supposed to be gone and were bereft that he would not return; We, however, “bowed and prayed to the neon god we/they made” not out of fear, rather out of blind obedience to ‘societal norms’, overpowering rationalizations to satisfy our greed, our lust for power over another(s), over women, over business, over other nations, etc. The unraveling of democratic norms in the USA, in Israel, the unraveling of basic ethical and moral tenets is the result of “the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made” and We the People are the only ones who can right the ship, can change course and the path to doing this is to use this 8th day of Elul and “circumcise our hearts” to serve God, to serve one another, to serve our authentic self.

The time this song was written was a difficult time for me, I knew my father was sick, his business was starting to fail, he was stressed and having another heart attack, and I knew the world was full of shit. I was having my Bar Mitzvah in 1964, so while Paul Simon was prophecizing, I was learning the Torah Portion for my Bar Mitzvah-appropriated named Lech L’Cha- go to yourself/for yourself…and be a blessing. I was speaking up and out and not being listened to except by my father who agreed with me and told me it was an uphill battle that society did not want us to win, the battle for ethical and moral behaviors, decency, being judged for the content of one’s character not the money in the bank, not the color of one’s skin, not the religion one practiced. AND, he was desperate that his son’s knew how to pray to God, to say Kaddish for his soul after he died. While I went and “bowed and prayed to the neon god they made”, the societal one of money, I knew it was wrong and have spent the last 40 years circumcising my heart over and over again because the foreskin is stubborn and wants to grow back. Today, on the 8th day of Elul this year, I am circumcised again, the ‘neon god’ of money, of needing to be seen, needing to be heard, is pretty much gone, I know I have enough and I am enough! I know that my prophetic voice will never reach the millions that Paul Simon’s has and that doesn’t make mine any less important, any more relevant than his, it just means that, following his example and the example of so many people I, Mark Borovitz refuse to bow down and pray to the neon god of societal norms and mental cliches anymore!

ACTION STEP:

Make a list of the “neon gods” you still bow down to

Make a concerted effort to “circumcise the foreskin of your heart” today

What fears keep you from being the authentic you

How are your false needs, your facades allowing you to be less than moral

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 105

“But my words, like silent raindrops, fell and echoed in the wells of silence”. These final words of verse 4 of Sound of Silence are reminders to We the People on this 7th day of Elul, this ‘Shabbat’, that compassion and mercy are in the air, they are so prevalent in the the spiritual realm at this time of year for this very reason-Don’t let God’s Words, the words of the prophets “like silent raindrops” fall into “the wells of silence” ANYMORE!

We the People are a week into this period of GRACE that God provides us so we can allow ourselves to be embraced and enveloped in “arms that might reach you”, and engage in the learning that Torah(the Teaching) avails to us, the learning and being that the entire Bible gives us freely. The question that is on my mind each and every day: “how am I taking advantage of the Grace that God gives me?” Not as an entitlement, rather as a gift that I am supposed to use in the manner, the intent, the spirit it is given in. God’s Grace during this month is for We the People to RETURN, to GET RID OF THE SCHMUTZ of this past year that is still hanging on to us, and to leave the “echoed…wells of silence”. Is this really too much to ask?

I am asking questions in the body of this blog because I am trying to make the point crystal clear: DON’T GIVE INTO THE SILENCE our RATIONAL MINDS KEEP TRYING TO OVERCOME US WITH! Don’t give into the noise of the liars and grifters of course and, as I am experiencing this Elul, this year, I realize the silence that is so loud, that is practiced by so many people is a Cancer that kills. It kills the connection between people, it kills the knowing “I owe” because of the aid and help, sometimes life-saving help, that a person did for me and I don’t want to be reminded of this fact. Silence, like cancer, kills the basic goodness of being that we all are created with, it kills the living into the spirit of God’s Will even though one is living into the ‘letter of the law’ and can rationalize the wrong-doing, the forgetting of the debts we owe, using ‘the courts’ to declare spiritual bankruptcy and believe our debts are discharged-WRONG!

Hence the NEED for this month of Elul! Each year the Torah is read from beginning to end, each year we read the call of the prophets, each year we celebrate the Holy Days, each year we succumb, hide in “the wells of silence” because we the people are too afraid to face Truth, to engage with “the person in the glass” as the poem goes. And each year, the gift of the Rabbis and Sages is this month of Elul. In Israel and in the U.S.A. the “wells of silence” are deafening, they are ringing in my ears and, I pray, in yours as well. This month, this “Shabbat” day of Elul is for us to regenerate our spirits, to gird our loins for battle with the forces inside of us and outside of us that want and depend on us living in “the wells of silence” so they/we can do the dirty work, the power grabs, the grifting, the taking of freedoms away from We the People. Another question: Are We the People going to continue to allow this to happen?

“An unexamined life is not worth living” according to Socrates and “an examined life is painful” according to Malcolm X and BOTH ARE TRUE. This is the reason, I believe, that the forces of compassion and mercy are so prevalent right now, to mitigate the pain(not erase it) and to buoy our spiritual knowing that we the people have to engage in examining our lives. I have been doing this since 1987, during the month of Elul and on a daily basis. I have found things from years ago that I just did not either think about or dismissed as okay ways to be. I send out my T’Shuvah and don’t worry about the responses. I keep repaying the debt that I have incurred over the years from the people who have and keep helping me to the best of my ability. I am sad that some of the people whom I have helped do not feel the same AND, I experience the reciprocity of generosity from so many different people, places, that the sadness is very small, and, in full disclosure, still there. While I have never done ‘sad’ well in my younger years, I am getting very comfortable with the experience and hold no resentments nor angers. I am just sad that so many people are so pathetic, in need of divine pathos, they cannot see the very actions they are taking would have meant their demise-Stephen Miller, et al and, more importantly, you and me. Elul gives We the People the opportunity to go back, to pull ourselves out of “the wells of silence”, to take “My words” and no longer let them “like silent raindrops, fell”. Rather take the “My words” as delivered by “My prophets” and use them to RETURN, to FIND YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF and jettison the FALSE SELF you have been reveling in and get out of the pig sty of jealousy, hatred, elitism, power-grabbing, money-grabbing, etc all to get out of the knowing YOU OWE! I OWE and repaying the debt is a joy and life’s mission for me, one I have continued to engage in to this day.

ACTION STEP: Make a list of how you fall into and play around in and pull yourself out of  “the wells of silence”

GOD BLESS and Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 104

“Hear my words that I might teach you, take my arms that I might reach you” are, to me, Paul Simon channelling the call of the prophets, whether he was religious, whether he knew the prophets or not. My premise, as I have stated before, is that we are descendants of the prophets, we all have within us a prophetic voice and, in Paul Simon’s case, his voice comes out in his songs, in his actions as well.

On this 6th day of Elul, these words from verse 4 of “Sounds of Silence” are ringing loud in my ears, they are getting past the tinnitus that I suffer from and, again like Judah’s words to Joseph, going right to my soul. The beautiful, fearful, trembling, awesome aspect of Truth is that our souls know it when they hear it and no matter how hard our rational minds try to blot out the truth, our souls know it, store it, bring it up to us time and time again until We the People finally surrender to it. This is one of the objectives of the month of Elul, it is one of the goals of Yom Kippur: admit, relish, roll around in, and commit to TRUTH! Yet, as we the people continue to hide like Adam and Eve in the Garden, as we the people continue to lie as Cain did regarding his brother Abel, as we the people continue to turn to Golden Calves like the Israelites did, we the people continue to ignore the “words that I might teach you” from Moses that are in our Bible and continue to repel the “arms that I might reach you” even though we KNOW that only through the “outstretched arm of God” were we brought out of Egypt. What is our need to reject “my words” and “my arms” is the question God asks over and over, as I read the Bible, as I understand the prophets.

It is not modernity that has caused these problems, as I have listed above, this way of rejecting words of Truth, repelling arms that want to hold us, goes back to time immemorial, the question I have is, as Pete Seeger asks, “when will we the people ever learn”? I believe We the People are capable of learning, I know We the People are capable of changing, I also know how easy it is to reject the “words that I might teach you” because one doesn’t like the messenger, the “words” are inconvenient to the goal of fame, fortune, power, and the “arms” enveloping and reaching one will cause a total breakdown of the facade, of the masks we the people have been wearing. It is, once again, a battle between our rational minds and our intuitive minds.

This battle is well portrayed in the Talmud with some of the Rabbis trying to rationalize the irrational, by their very nature some of God’s commands in the Bible make no sense! Hence they are called statutes, commandments, yet, even the Rabbis of old tried to make sense of them rather than surrendering to the wisdom of God, rather than embracing the “arms that I might reach you” that God extends to all of We the People each and every day, that are even more wide open during this 40 day period. Every child wants to be held when they have a boo-boo, yet We the People are refusing God’s offer to hold us in “arms that might reach you”! WTF??!! It is unbelievable to me that I rejected being held for so long, it is miraculous to me that I finally surrendered to a power greater than myself and I allowed myself to be held and healed when I thought all was lost.

Jewish lore has it that God is calling out to We the People from Mount Sinai each and every hour of each and every day. The calls are AYECHA, where are you, SHEMA-hear, listen, and understand, and EMET- Truth. These words, like the words of the 10 Sayings/commandments, like the words of the prophets are all given as gifts because of God’s great desire that God’s  “words that I might teach you” will help we the people change into We the People whom have the same goals as God; to make the world a little better than when we found it, to speak truth to power, to care for the needy and the poor, to welcome and love the stranger because we were strangers in a strange land(for Jews this has been the story of our existence), to send up for Justice, to be merciful, to be compassionate, to pursue righteousness, to be a Mensch!

This is the path I accepted almost 40 years ago and I am still on it, I have NOT arrived nor will I ever. This truth is embedded in my psyche and, rather than give me permission to quit, it is the driving force to keep going on. I use these 40 days to Shema/“hear the words that I might teach you” and “take my arms that I might reach you” through hearing and experiencing God’s call as I did in that jail cell and to experience the joy of God’s embrace, even when I screw up! Being in Covenant with God means the “words” and the “arms” are never retracted, all I have to do is rejoin after I have gone astray.

ACTION STEP: Notice, make a list of the “words” that you hear and the “arms” that reach you which you follow and which you reject.

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 103

“Fools, said I, You do not know Silence, like a cancer, grows.” This is how the fourth verse of “Sound of Silence” begins and it is entirely appropriate for this 5th day of Elul. We the People have an obligation to our SELF,  to take stock of the “cancer” that has grown within us, to see the ways we the people have allowed it to metastasize in our minds, our hearts, and how this “cancer” of “silence” is trying to enter our souls! While Jesus is quoted as saying: “Forgive them Father, for they do not know”, in the case of human beings, in the case of we the people, we can claim no such ignorance, before Paul Simon wrote this song, some 62 years ago, the Bible, the New Testament, Jesus, Moses, King David, the prophets all railed about “silence” in the face of inhumanity, “silence” in the midst of cruelty, “silence” while being surrounded by deceit, thievery, and deception. Yet, throughout the history of humanity, we the people, have lived in “silence”, in “quiet desperation”.

This 5th day of Elul 5786, when we are 1/8th of the way to Yom Kippur, is, hopefully, the day We the People  begin to fight our way out of the “silence” that has prevented us from living in the light, living in a way that is congruent with the soul we are created to be, living the melody of the inner life that is uniquely ours. This day, HaYom, can be the day when we realize that “darkness” is “my old friend”, not because of the depression one may experience, rather because “darkness” comes before the light of God, the Spirit of God in the creation of the world and, I posit, in all creations. “Darkness” is the signal that something new is at hand, that the chaos and emptiness We the People have been experiencing is over and our mission is to reach up, down, out, to the Ineffable One, to the soul of another human being, to the higher consciousness of our intuitive mind and experience the “Or HaGanuz”, the same Light that God says “Let there Be” and “there was”.

As long as we the people allow the “cancer” of “silence” to grow, as long as we the people spread this “cancer” to children, to family, to friends, to allies, to enemies, the “Light” cannot come through. Hence “darkness, my old friend” is crucial to our growing up and out, going through and reaching up to find God, to find the authentic self we are created to be-by no means perfect, by no means not having to do this next Elul, even the day after Yom Kippur, just that by making “darkness, my old friend”, we the people stop the “cancer” of “silence” from growing and metastasize! I believe this is the goal of Elul, this is the goal of the prophets, this is the goal of T’Shuvah; stop the “cancer” of “silence” from growing.

It takes many forms this “cancer” of “silence”, one form is denial in the face of proof, watching the video tape, the pictures of the errors we have made, the standing “silently” by the blood of our neighbors, offering our children up to the idol Moloch through helping them stay in “silence” of what they are witnessing, denial of the commandment to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” because we want power, wealth, etc. The ways in which we engage in “silence” are too numerous to delineate here, We the People find new and inventive ways to rationalize to our Selves our “silence”, ‘what will the neighbors think’ is an old one that my father, Jerry Borovitz, z”l, once said: “I don’t give a damn”. And, as much as I love my father, he too fell prey to the “cancer” of “silence” and it might have contributed to his way too early death.

We the People do not need to suffer in this “cancer”, this 5th day of Elul, hell the entire month, the entire 40 days gives us the Grace, the Compassion to END OUR “SILENCE” and vanquish this “cancer” from our being. As the saying goes, “IT AIN’T EASY” and it is doable. The more We the People reveal our Self to our Self, the more comfortable we become living in our skin, the more we are willing to uncover the truths about our Self that we have been hiding from, tamping down, afraid of and unwilling to go and be with “darkness, my old friend”, that is healthy rather than the darkness that is debilitating, depressing, enraging, and causes us to hide more, to live in too many of the ways that we are commanded not to be! This is the difference between “darkness, my old friend” and the “darkness” of shame, of hiding, of blame, of fear. The difference is just being revealed to me as I write this. “Darkness” is not the problem, our use of it is!

Looking at my life through this lens, I am shuddering at my own ignorance of this distinction, even though I know that distinctions are necessary if we are to have a true and clear picture of what is, to fully live in radical amazement. I am more aware of the nuances and subtleties of “silence”and the “cancer” it grows because of today’s writing.
ACTION STEP:

Do an inventory of the “silences”  and the “cancers” within you

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 102

Wow, this is the 4th day of Elul, the 4th day of the Rabbis demanding of We the People to take “a searching and fearless inventory”, as we say in AA, to see where we are in our lives, to check in and evaluate our progress, our retardation in living the life we created for. It is an exhilarating process and one that brings all of We the People to a place of humility, bringing us back to connection, to returning to our rightful place, to moving the ball forward on our life’s purpose and mission, bringing us to see our subterfuges, our lies, our mendacity, etc, as well.

In their song “Sounds of Silence”, Simon and Garfunkel point out the issue that faces us today, 60+ years ago Paul Simon was able to articulate what was happening in the USA and, unfortunately, still is. “People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening, People writing songs that voices never shared, And no one dared Disturb the sound of silence”. This is the month designated for all of We the People who continue to hide from “speaking”, combat “listening”, keep their “voices” quiet, and continue to “silence” the call of their soul, the demand of the Voice on Sinai each and every day. AND, We GET to end these self-deceptions, We get to return home this month, and We get to reconnect with self, with another(s), with the force in the universe! This is the GOOD NEWS!!

The rest of the story is: to learn how to engage in “speaking, listening”, sharing our “voices”, disturbing the “sound of silence”. This seems to be the issue that has haunted and daunted human beings since the time of Adam and Eve. The “sin” of the Garden of Eden was NOT eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, it WAS HIDING/NOT SPEAKING UP when God called out to them, it WAS not listening to God’s words and realizing they were not ready for this knowledge, It was the beginning of being controlled by “the sound of silence” rather than the sound of our soul. Unfortunately, this tradition is alive and well, having been fed and nourished all these years, in this moment.

We the People see this tradition in the advertising that bombards us, in the way the politicians talk, in the ways we ignore the call of the strangers, the needy, the poor, and in the silence we endure and keep as democracy is assaulted, the lessons of freedom are ignored, and the laws of common decency, the ways to BE HOLY, the words of Christ, the words of the Bible, are bastardized, this is the Hillul HaShem we the people are either promoting, participating in, going along with or fighting. It is not “those” people who are the problem, as Elul comes to inform us, it is We the People who are continuing to be afraid to “disturb the sound of silence”.

To “disturb the sound of silence” is to let go of the buttoned-up image we have created for our Self, to smash the idols we have so meticulously built,  to destroy the myriad of places where we hide from our truth, from speaking from our souls, speaking from our intuitive mind, listening to the Call of what is being said, not just the words, doing as Judah did with Joseph and letting someone “speak in our ears”. In our finding our authentic voice, We the People will once again write songs like Paul Simon, like “Sound of Silence” and our voices will rise up and be heard like the “shot heard around the world” and We the People will begin another revolution, the revolution of Freedom from the Bondage of Self, the revolution of Freedom to Speak TRUTH, no matter what, the revolution of Standing up for the Voiceless and Powerless, the revolution of Caring for the Needy, loving the Stranger, the revolution of NO-SCAPEGOATING, the revolution of “Becoming the soul you/I are/am created to be”, the revolution of Kindness, of Love, of Holiness, of Charity, of Justice FOR ALL, of Mercy, of RETURNING home.

This is what has happened, is happening to me because I made a decision to “disturb the sound of silence”. It is not an easy decision to make, I had to be in a jail cell for the umpteenth time in order to be able to be “listening” not just hearing, to “speaking”, not just talking, to not cover up my spiritual awakening with a return to “the sound of silence”. In these 39+ years since that experience, I have used the month of Elul to continue to “disturb the sound of silence” that keeps intruding in on me like a bad penny, keeps coming back and disguises itself so well that I am not aware I am in it until something shakes me awake, which the month of Elul always does. To the people who believe I heard them and did not listen, I am sorry, to the people who thought I was just talking and not speaking to them, I apologize, to the people who felt ignored because “the sound of silence” was controlling me, I ask for forgiveness for all of these ways I fell prey to.

ACTION STEP:

Make a list of the “sound of silence” you fall prey to, the times and ways you hear and don’t listen, talk and don’t speak, etc.

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day101

“In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth, there was emptiness and chaos, darkness on the face of the deep” gives We the People a clear vision of darkness that is NOT horrific, terrible, fearful. While Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel may not be “religious Jews” and they may not have been trying to write a spiritual song, the more I delve into this song during this month of Elul, the more I am seeing the influence of growing up Jewish in Queens in the shadow of the Shoah, in a family of Eastern European descent. Simon and Garfunkel remind us, that “darkness, my old friend” is true for many of us who, “in restless dreams I walked alone…when my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light that split the night and touched the sound of silence”. While St. John of the Cross was the first person to coin the phrase: “dark night of the soul”, we encounter this experience throughout the Bible from Noah on. It is only since our “eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light” that We the People can hear the voice of our souls, the voice of God, the Call from Sinai, be touched and changed by the words of the prophets to “return”, because that “neon light that split the night and touched the should of silence” that was stifling the voice of my soul, the words of heart, the knowing of my intuition.

The “dark night of the soul” experience is documented throughout our history and I want to begin with Jacob, our ancestor for whom the Jewish People are named Israel, who had a couple of these experiences and, unfortunately, did not allow them to pierce his way of being entirely. In Jacob, we see the issue of not giving oneself over completely to the experience of having our “eyes stabbed by the flash of a neon light”, we see the result of returning to the “sound of silence” which the Bible documents both in the killing of the people of Shechem and when Joseph brags about his dreams. He has moments where the “flash of a neon light” reminds him of who he truly is, what his purpose is and how to carry it out AND, he can’t hold onto it. Moses, on the other hand, can and does!

Bill Wilson had this “flash” and, with Dr. Bob Smith, began, founded Alcoholics Anonymous, which has ‘saved’ millions upon millions of lives in these 91+ years of existence and, in full disclosure, I am one of their members. Steve Jobs, Louis Pasteur, DaVinci, Chagall, Mozart, Beethoven, and every creative genius in any and every realm of living has had a “dark night of the soul” where they realized how “touched by God” they are/were and saw the path of their lives clearly, in full color. When our “eyes are stabbed” it indicates the suddenness of awakening, the surprise of ‘seeing for the first time’, the trembling awe of coming face to face with our truth, our authentic self. Moses’s awe is well documented as is King David’s, yet, Joshua’s not so much, Judah’s dark night is shown and his change is also said out loud for all to see.

Johnny Mercer reminds us to “have faith or pandemonium liable to walk upon the scene”. He also calls out to We the People to “spread joy to the maximum, bring gloom down to the minimum” reminding us that both exist, just as Simon and Garfunkel remind us that both “the sound of silence” and “the neon light” both exist. It is up to We the People to decide which ones we are going to “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate”.

The same is true for this month of Elul, both our ‘missing the mark’ and our ‘victories’ are true, and, when we allow ourselves to be moved by the “dark night of the soul”, when we don’t hide from the brightness of the “flash of neon light that split the night and touched the sound of silence” We the People are able to grow into the souls we are created to be, as Thomas Merton teaches us. When we “have faith” the “pandemonium” that does walk along is less likely to overtake our life script, our life style.

I know this to be true, I know the trembling awe of the “dark night of the soul”, the overwhelming experience of “the flash of neon light that split the night” and forced me to hear the sound of my soul, the voice of God, the call of decency and goodness, the vision of WTF had I been doing up to now, I knew right and did wrong, I was a mess and finally accepted it and I knew there was hope, so I began to study, to pray and my faith shut the door on the pandemonium that my alcoholism, my criminality kept stoking. Life is “bumpy, bumpy” for me as Rabbi Ed Feinstein describes in “The Holy Thief”, and, with the vision from “the flash of neon light” that I still receive, it always will be.
ACTION STEP:

How have you responded to the “dark night of the soul” you have experienced

Do you follow up on your “flash of neon light that split the night” or leave it

How are you living in the “both” making informed choices rather than the “or” and feeling trapped

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

1st day of Elul

Today is the first day of Elul, yesterday was announcing the New Month. On this first day, I want to share a few thoughts. Elul is the month prior to Rosh HaShanah, getting us prepared to start a ‘new year’, in a sense. Tishrei, the name of the month that Rosh Hashanah is in, is actually the 7th month in the Hebrew Calendar. It was replaced as the first month by the month of Nissan, the month of our exodus from slavery in Egypt. Now, 6 months after being liberated, 3+ months after receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, we are called to watch the video tape of the ways we lived in the past year(s) to see where we hit the mark and where we missed the mark. Hence, We the People are given Grace by God to repair the mistakes, enhance the goodness and make a plan for going forward, knowing we will always come back to this month, always watch the video tape, always repent, make a plan for restitution and repair, always see the goodness of being we are/live, and find ways to “accentuate the positive” while not being able to “eliminate the negative”, we can tone it down and “don’t mess with Mr. In-Between”!

Living “with mr. In-Between” could be the greatest of our ‘missing the mark’ because it means we are not willing to stand for what we believe, we are not willing to make a decision, we are not willing to leave our self-deception, our fear of ‘being wrong’, our fear of ‘having egg on our face’ and we are not willing to face God, to face “the person in the glass”. This is the tragedy of “mr. In-Between” and far TOO many of we the people are living here-hence Johnny Mercer’s song from 1944 is so relevant today. If Judaism had an English song to define, this one could be it. It encapsulates what this month of Elul is all about!

Putting this together with Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” is a wonderful beginning to do the work of this month, to engage in the joy of darkness, the power of “the positive”, the jettisoning of “mr. In-Between” and, toning down “the negative”. What is “the vision” that is “softly creeping” and “left its seeds while I was sleeping”? Is it the vision of one who believes he/she is above the law, is it the vision of one who believes they never have to make an accounting of their Soul, a Chesbon HaNefesh? Is it the vision of one who has determined not only that they know God’s Will, what Jesus really meant by his words, they KNOW they are ABOVE God, ABOVE everyone else, and so narcissistic that they can not see the forest for the trees? Is your “vision softly creeping” and “left” the “seeds” of self-rightness, of self-adornment, of self always being on the ‘right’ side of issues and actions? Is your “vision softly creeping” one that shows the goodness and the power of when you “accentuate the positive” and the devastation and power of destruction when you don’t “eliminate(tone down) the negative” and the indifference and evil that you help to perpetrate when you “mess with Mr. In-Between”? Is this what keeps you tossing and turning at night? If it isn’t during this month, then you are STILL HIDING from the Truth of your existence, the Truth of how you are Ghosting God, the Truth of how you are Ghosting your Self!

Sitting down with pencil and paper, with a blank sheet on the computer, iPad, Phone, any tablet you have is the beginning, it is the only path on which to begin this journey from the past to the present in order to be clean, clear-eyed, ready, and excited for the future. I know because I am still doing it, I have been doing it for the past few weeks, to be honest. I sent a T’Shuvah to people and heard Crickets back, I asked someone to forward this T’Shuvah to a whole bunch of people and was told nope, I get it, I am old news, the people I knew before, most of them don’t want to hear me, -while sad and a little hurtful, I get it and accept it-don’t like it and accept it. Someone over the weekend asked me the worst thing about my retirement and I responded with: “the phone doesn’t ring” and I had an awareness that doing what I did/do well means the phone doesn’t have to ring, I taught people how to fish and that is good enough. The people I owe amends to, I have offered the requisite 3 times and I am clean. I am tossing and turning in my sleep, according to my Oura Ring, so I am still looking at the video tapes of this past year and the myriad of ones previous to this year. It is ugly at times, it is joyful at times. I understand and experience “in restless dreams I walked alone narrow streets of cobblestone”. Cobblestone streets are slippery and uneven, which is what I/We are engaging in this month, seeing the slippery slope we went down knowingly and unknowingly. And, this journey We the People have to “walk alone” because the “narrow streets”  the streets of truth, of decency, of subtlety, of authenticity, of faith, of being Holy, etc. Each year, I walk these streets and, because of this practice, I walk these streets each day-to the best of my ability.

Action Step:

Begin a list of “the positive”, “the negative” and “mr. In-Between”

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 99

Welcome to Rosh Hodesh Elul! This is the beginning of the month of Elul in the Hebrew Calendar and it is the start of our countdown to Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. We the People, whether Jewish or not in my opinion, are entering a time of “no-time”, a period of days where we begin to prepare ourselves for the new year, clean up the wreckage of our old year(s), acknowledge the good we have done and how to enhance our basic goodness of being more in the coming year. This is a time that is set aside for We the People to look at how often and in what ways We Ghosted God and Ghosted Self in the past year(s). It is also a time where we have to, as Simon and Garfunkel teach us, welcome “darkness my old friend”. This is a moment, period, in time, where “darkness” can truly become “my old friend”, a moment when We make “darkness” a teacher and a motivator, a warning and a joy to recognize earlier and earlier, a way that is no longer fearful, it is a way we embrace because we know it is part of the creative process. For the next 40 days, this blog is going to explore the ways We the People can make “darkness, my old friend”.

In this “time of no time”, as my teacher Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man taught me, We the People are taking care of the business at hand, living our lives one day at a time, being in the moment AND watching the video tape of this past year(s), reviewing our actions, our inactions, our foibles, our strengths, our joys, our sorrows, etc which testify to the person we were in this past year(s), when we gave into our fears, when we resisted the temptation to run after the majority to do evil, when we rebuked our neighbor from a place of love, fear, and care, when we were holy, when we were loving and welcoming the stranger, caring for the poor and the needy, standing up to immorality, injustice especially when done in God’s name! 

On this first day of Elul, We the People need to begin this process of making “darkness my old friend”. To do this, we have to stop hiding from ourselves, stop lying to ourselves, stop rolling around in self-deception like a pig rolls around in shit! This is a tall order for most of We the People, especially for we the people who desire power, wealth, retribution for whatever slights our fragile egos could/can not handle because of their inability to hear, deal with and act on TRUTH!

Hiding from truth is the #1 culprit in our Ghosting God and Ghosting Self! It is at the core of all our “missing the marks” throughout our lives. Hiding from Truth is the foundation of the grifter, the autocrat, the narcissist, the ‘good old boy’, the Non-Christ following ‘christian nationalist’, the desecrators of God’s Name, non-Torah ‘orthodox jews’, etc.  Elul has to begin with We the People watching the retrospective of our year without editing out the ‘bad’ parts, without making excuses for our wrongs, without being shamed by our indifference and our own evil actions. Rather, We the People are called to view this retrospective with equanimity, with a curious mind, with a mind excited to learn more about our self, to learn more about how to live well, and to learn more about how to BE HUMAN.

Being HUMAN, of course, means being fallible, being imperfect, being able to withstand falling down over and over by Getting Up each and every time. This is another GIFT of THIS 40 DAYS! Being able to see how we recover from our errors over the past year and prior years, being able to imbue the wisdom of the Bible, the call of the Prophets, the words of Psalms, the demand for Justice by Abraham and by Moses, is a GIFT! This gift allows us to never despair, it reminds us that the only constant is CHANGE, it tells us to discern when someone is “a scoundrel within the bounds of Torah” and when someone is a Torah Scholar because their wisdom and their actions are in service to something greater than themselves, because they see the Image of God each and every person is created in and treats them with dignity, knowing they have infinite worth and never needing them to ‘be like me’ because they embrace their uniqueness.

I have been watching these videos for all my life, up until 40 years ago, I was not motivated to change, I was too afraid to change, I was too into hiding, I was too afraid to face the “darkness” and had no idea how to make it “my old friend”. I have learned to do this in these ensuing 40 years, I also recognize my actions over the years that hurt some people and made/make TShuvah for them. I don’t apologize for being me, I do apologize for being a caricature of me, I don’t apologize for my efforts to help another in the way I believed to be best and I do apologize for any hurts people experienced because of my way of doing this. I don’t apologize for being an advocate of the soul of another and I do apologize to those whom I could not speak to in a way they could hear. These are some of the ways I have reconciled and connected with “darkness, my old friend”.
ACTION STEP: BEGIN WATCHING THE VIDEO TAPE OF THIS YEAR

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 98

I keep wondering what is happening within me and within the world. Internally there is much turmoil, much angst, much hurt/sadness; all of which I will delineate beginning tomorrow, as my and, hopefully, your preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In the world around me, I/We are being bombarded by lies, cover-ups, thievery, scams, people being placed above the law, bullying, and attempts to tear out the foundation of our democracy and our freedoms.

In the weekly Torah Portion, that I began yesterday, there is a verse, Deuteronomy 16:19 which reads: “You shall not pervert Justice, nor shall you recognize people (give favor to someone in power, someone you know), and don’t take a bribe, because a bribe blinds the eyes and perverts the words of the righteous”! I add the exclamation point for effect. Given that Todd Blanche’s first official act after being confirmed by the Senate, THANK YOU SEN. CASSIDY, was to give Donald Trump almost complete immunity from any crimes he has committed and will commit as well as the crimes of his ‘outside’ advisors! If this is not a perversion of Justice, I don’t know what is! The asshole who condemned the Central Park 5 without knowing anything and who could not admit they were innocent even after they were proven Innocent by DNA, now has Blanche’s cover, the cover of the Justice Department to do whatever he wants and he is going to do it all before the Midterms because he is afraid of a Blue Wave.

We the People have been taking bribes forever, we go along with the liars, we follow our self-deceptions to the wreck and ruin of another(s) and ourselves, we engage in ridiculous rationalizations to soothe our consciences, we are willfully blind to the truth, to what is happening, and-most of all- to the participation in the dissection of justice, the empowering of the Pharaoh, the lapping up whatever Trump, Vance, et al say like trained seals for some of we the people.

We the People, who in the late teens of this Century up till now, have been more worried about ‘optics’, more concerned with ‘the poor’ (fill in the blank) that with the rights and freedoms FOR ALL! Hence we have the rise of the Fascist Democrats, OOPS, I mean Socialist Democrats, who want to burn it all down, who are not respecting nor honoring the will and wishes of the vast majority of We the People to find the middle ground, to not take the bribe of their self-deception to believe “only we know what is needed”.

“Perverts the words of the Righteous/Tzadick” is the issue that has faced human beings forever. The perversion of the Bible, the ways it was added to and subtracted from by Ezra and other scribes is atrocious and criminal, that they and ‘religious’ people since them could “pervert the words of the Righteous” is infuriating to me, it enrages me and I am volcanic about it. That the greatest perverts of justice(and maybe perverts in other areas of living) use the Holy Words of the Bible to justify their abhorrent behaviors, their lying, cheating, stealing, their bribing of judges, their bribing of Senators and Congressmen with promises of things to come or with threats of things to come is WRONG, ENRAGING and WHY ARE NOT We THE PEOPLE THROWING THEM OUT?!!

“If you can’t beat them join them” is an old adage that I followed into the depths of spiritual hell, of moral bankruptcy, and it seems to be what is going on now. Senators Cassidy, Cornyn, Tillis all know better, all know what is happening and they decided to “join with the majority to do evil”, another teaching from the Bible that is being perverted! I know how difficult it is to go against the grain, to swim, canoe against the current, and how spiritually important and morally necessary it is in times like these, maybe in all times as the prophets cajole, beg, cry out to We the People as they do. I am thinking about my Rabbinate which certainly wasn’t ‘according to Hoyle, plan’, how many people thought of me, and maybe still do, as a “niche Rabbi”, saying “who else but ‘those people’ would have him”? If the people saying/believing this are right, I know that my message, my channeling of the prophets is what is right and good now as it was then, I know my message of spiritual growth, moral uprightness, loving the stranger, practicing kindness, love, truth, justice, not taking bribes is the foundation of a spiritually, ethically wonderful life. I may be a “Niche Rabbi” and my “Niche” is living the verse above, living the words from Sinai, living the truth of my soul.
ACTION STEP
Make a list of the times you have followed the commandment above

Make a list of the times you have not followed the commandment above

Discern the context of both and how you gave in to “running after the majority to do evil”

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 97

Beginning on Thursday, which celebrates the new month of Elul, this blog will focus on preparing ourselves for Yom Kippur, a new and, hopefully, improved version of my High Holy Day prep workshop

I am in complete bewilderment as to how most Americans and Israelis go along with Trump, Bibi, et al. I am at a loss to understand the horrific hatred of Israel by the left while extolling the terrorist organization, Hamas, never mentioning Oct 7th in any of their speeches, and proclaiming the ‘rightness’ of killing babies, attacking kids at a Peace Concert, taking hostages, etc. I am at a loss to understand the ‘fine christian nationalist folk’ like Mike Johnson who HATES the stranger, HATES his enemies, while Christ preaches to love and welcome the stranger and, upon the cross, he prayed for the people who put them there saying, “they know not what they do”. AND, I am excited for today, for every new day, for the possibilities, for the wonder, for the love of Harriet, Heather, Miles, my family, friends, and, of course, bridge!

The Torah Portion being read in Synagogues and Temples throughout the world this week is: Shoftim, Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9. It begins by commanding us to put “officers at all of your gates” and they shall administer “righteous judgement”. I am wondering what Ben G’Vir believes should be the “righteous judgement” doled out to him for his hatred of the Palestinians, his decimation of the West Bank, his desire to take Gaza, whether it belongs to Israel, which it doesn’t and never did because it was the land of Philistines and even King David didn’t conquer it? I wonder what Bibi believes is “righteous judgment” for his lying, his corruption, his believing he is above God, above the law, above… and his buddy-buddy relationships with Putin and other autocrats, while dismissing his role in constantly funding Hamas so the Palestinian Authority could never be strong enough to actually run a Palestinian State? I wonder what Trump, Lutnick, Bessent, Kushner, Wytkoff, Miller, Vance, et al believe is “righteous judgement” for their decimation of the rule of law in America, for their senseless hatred being vomited from their mouths against anyone is not in their circle, who care nothing for the citizen and even less for the stranger? I wonder what Musk, Kennedy Jr., Vought, Cassidy believe is “righteous judgment for decimating the health of our nation, putting children at risk for diseases long ago cured? Of course, these bigots, these idolators proclaim their ‘fine love of the Bible’ and GO AGAINST THE VERY ESSENCE OF THE BIBLE, as the Ramban teaches us what “You shall be Holy” comes to tell us: DON’T “be a scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah”, ie don’t use the letter of the law to kill the spirit of the law.

And this is not about ‘them’, it is about We the People because, after all, the people, the movements that degrade human beings, that denigrate the infinite worth and dignity of a human being, that declare themselves above other human beings, and defecate on the uniqueness of each and every person so they can create their ‘perfect followers’ are made up of us or at least flourish because We the People allow them to spread lies, hatred, anti-semitism, be Islamaphobic, homophobic with no restraints, with no consequences, telling these Idolators, these Haters, these NON-CHRIST following mendacious bastards what they are doing is permissible. Trump, Kushner, all of them could have been stopped if the Congress, if Mitch McConnell had lived into the faith they wear so ‘proudly’ on their sleeves, Oh Yeah, they did, because their faith is power, their path is to be at war with their ‘enemies’, to take the country back to a time when Jews were not allowed and Blacks were slaves! Wake up, We the People! El-Sayed is no savior, AOC is not presidential material,  Bernie is a one-noter and his rallying cry is getting lost in the Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic rhetoric he and his cronies are spewing! The Kushners believe they should be allowed to buy anything and everything they want with the money from Saudi Arabia-the country that supplied the vast majority of the Terrorists on 9/11! Trump sent Kushner to negotiate with Iran and things are worse than before the war started, worse than before they opened their mouths to negotiate a real estate deal rather than an end to the war.

I have experienced both “righteous judgment” for my errors and the retributive judgment of those who use my vulnerabilities against me. “Righteous judgment” is painful because it is in response to my errors of judgment and of action, my soul aches for these errors; retributive judgment is painful because it is an attack on my soul, it is an attack at my essence and the need of another to annihilate me, my goodness is something I reject and stand against. I do not allow my loss at understanding the evil that is prevalent today to kill my own goodness of being.

ACTION STEP:

Are you aware of the difference between “righteous judgment” and retributive judgment?

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 96

Beginning on Thursday, which celebrates the new month of Elul, this blog will focus on preparing ourselves for Yom Kippur, a new and, hopefully improved version of my High Holy Day prep workshop

I awaken each morning excited for the day and dreading the news; what horrendous, idiotic, undemocratic action did Trump and the Republicans in Congress do yesterday, what idiotic and anti-semitic action did the Socialist Democrats do yesterday, knowing I have to live in the tension of this cognitive dissonance, excitement for what I will learn about me, about living well, about Harriet, and dreading the continued decimation of everything I grew up on, the tenets of democracy, as my 9th Grade Civics teacher, Ed Roach, of blessed memory, taught us, the Bill of Rights is also the Bill of Responsibility. The anti-semitism of both the left and the right, which I mention often, gives We the Jewish People much dread and fear, after all we have seen this movie before.

Today, I am shaking my head at the degradation that Bill Cassidy displayed on Friday as he voted for a man he knows is unqualified to be Attorney General by saying the next person would be worse. This kind of rationalization of the betrayal of one’s morals, one’s standards of decency and competency never work out well for the self-betrayer, Mr. Cassidy. I am also, as I write this, realize most of the people in the Senate betray their oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution, to represent ALL the people of their state, not just their party. The ugly, distasteful partisanship is the proof of their betrayal of their promise, their oath, their responsibility to “one nation” and their weaponizing their ‘christian nationalist supposed faith’, their bastardization of the words of Christ and the words of Moses, the warnings of the prophets and the wisdom of the Bible and New Testament is an ABHORRENCE, one that is worse than their misguided belief that homosexuality is an abhorrence. Idolatry, taking God’s Name in Vain, Misrepresenting God by bastardizing God’s words are violations of the 1st 3 commandments and these bastards don’t care! Oh how far the Jews who support Netanyahu and Trump have fallen as well, We the Jewish People who gave the world the Torah and the Bible, the 36 times of welcoming, loving, caring for the stranger and the poor, the needy and the widow and orphan, displaying such hatred, such violence, such acquiescence to bullshit and indifference to the evil they are participating in.

El-Sayed spoke with Obama and the Jews were not mentioned? El-Sayed’s disdain for ‘regular’ democrats wasn’t talked about? Bernie and his babies like El-Sayed have their heads so far up one another’s asses, as well as their own, they believe that We the Centrist Democrats should automatically yield to their power, to their beliefs, to their way of thinking or get the fuck out of their way. The arrogance and smarminess of El-Sayed comes through all the time, to me AND I don’t want Mike Rogers to win in Michigan, I do want to “take back the Senate”, “take back the House”, and I also know that doing it with people like El-Sayed who truly believe they are smarter and ‘more in touch with the people’ than the rest of us, is dangerous in itself.

Where does this leave the majority of We the People? It leaves us with the task of standing firm for our principles, it leaves us with the opportunity to speak to these ‘progressives’, who in many ways are as reactionary as the far right, and find compromises, not everything they speak about is bad and find the common ground as well. Reminding people of loyalty to allies is crucial in these times of ‘let me get mine’, reminding We the Jewish People of our loyalty to the Covenant made at Mount Sinai, loyalty to the Voice that continues to call from Sinai, loyalty to the principles of the Torah, loyalty to the knowing that learning never ends, none of us are the smartest in the room, there are many ways to see things and, while the majority rules, the minority’s voice is never forgotten and never denigrated.

I have found living in the sadness of “how far we have fallen” and the fear of the anti-semitic rage that is happening all over this country and the globe, is difficult at times. What is more confusing is that my personal life is not touched by the abhorrent behaviors, lunacy, and hatred that is overtaking our democracy, our world. I live in a bubble and in relative safety AND I know it could disappear in the blink of an eye. Only by knowing that there is a Power Greater than Myself, knowing God gives me guidance, knowing that the music of my soul, when I play it out loud(some would say too loudly) do I have the wherewithal to withstand the onslaught of violence against my principles, the assault on the Truth of God, the hatred being spewed by so many and Stand with God, Stand with Truth, Stand with the Stranger, Stand with my People whom I may disagree with and know that we are “kin under the skin”!
Action Step: Do something to lessen the assault, the violence in life

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 95

Todd Blanche gets confirmed to be the WORST, MOST CORRUPT Attorney General of the United States while Bill Cassidy whores himself, once again, to the wishes of Donald J. Trump who made sure he lost the primary for his Senate seat in Louisiana, talk about cognitive dissonance! John Thune ‘stands’ up to Trump by not passing his NON-VOTING RIGHTS bill and he succumbs on everything else, how do these Republican Senators live with themselves. The Democrats can’t decide if they support Israel, Jews, and the middle class or they hate Israel, Jews  and the middle class. Bernie never talks about the middle class, he only talks about the poor and the wealthy, he doesn’t talk about what it must feel like to have been under constant attack for 78 years as Israel has been nor is he and his ilk separating Israel from Netanyahu. By the standards of that swarmey Abdul El-Sayed, there is no difference which We the People know is bullshit. It is interestingly abhorrent to me that both the right and the left engage in mendacity, that truth has no bearing on their decisions, their policies, their morals. How do they live with themselves?

What is most concerning to me is that WAY TOO MANY of We the People are not asking ourselves this question: How do I live with myself when I am supporting mendacious candidates, lying movements, and ignoring my neighbors’ cry for decency, for being seen, for care, justice, compassion, kindness? Yet, since we the people are so intent on bastardizing, weaponizing the words of the Bible, the words of the prophets, the words of Jesus, why am I surprised that the country is in the state that it is in? The clergy who are preaching ‘fire and brimstone’, who are preaching all is fair after October 7th, who vilify the poor and the stranger, whether here ‘legally or illegally’, are Desecrating God’s Name-the worst sin because in doing so, they are creating a false image of God, they are taking the name of God in vain, they are bearing false witness, they are murdering the souls of so many, they are stealing from the poor to give to the rich, they covet what another has to the point of cheering the theft of “der fuhrer” Donald Trump.

We the people who continue to support the ICE raids, support the vilification of Israel, support the decimation of Iran’s civilian infrastructure, support the lies and mendacity of Hegseth, Bessent, Lutnick, El-Sayed, Bernie, AOC, the ‘squad’, et al, are creating/promoting the end of democracy in the United States, ignoring the truth that is in front of our eyes, Ghosting God, themselves, their constituents, and the rest of We the People. This ignorance of those of us who voted for them or are in their district is anathema to anything Christ said, no matter what Paula Cain-White says. This ignorance of the needs of the stranger and the poor is anathema to the core tenets of the Bible no matter what Ben G’Vir and Smotrich say. This ignorance by we the people on an individual basis and our claim of ‘loving our brothers and sisters’ while ignoring them and only seeing them as a ‘them’, an object to use for self is anathema to the very existence of the Bill of Rights! Yet, We the People continue to be both ignorant and ignoring-hence Donald Trump is in charge of tearing up the Constitution, the Country’s morals and ethics, and our sanity!

This question is front and center within me: How do I live with myself? This question has haunted me forever. I couldn’t stand being ignored so, at 3, I took a walk that ended up with me in a police station-was that an omen, a portend of my future or what? Since then, I have hated to be ignored, ghosted, etc and yet, I ghosted many people, ignored the cries and the pleas of the people who truly loved me so I could ‘do my own thing’ and wind up hurting everyone who cared and people who trusted me. Since my spiritual awakening, almost 40 years ago, I have been wrestling with these two forces; doing the next right thing so I can live with myself and not being ignored. The first I have control over and the second I am powerless over. It is so hard to be ignored, to be shunned, to be considered not relevant. This is the ultimate betrayal of the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” and I am guilty of this and have been the victim of this betrayal. It saddens me to think of how many times and people I have ignored truth, I have ignored people who were trying to help and/or hurt, ignored the cries of the poor and the needy, missed seeing the stranger much less loving her/him. And I know each day I am improving, each day I betray myself, God, and You the People a little less. I see my ignoring is through bridge, I ignore signals from the opponents and sometimes my partner because I am focused on my plan which results in bad scores! WOW, how subtle and far ranging ignorance is! Being ignored by people still hurts, bothers me and I am still bewildered by it; the difference today is I don’t have to chase being seen, I don’t have to chase being heard because I know who I am, I know my own worth, I know my strengths and the areas of weakness and I know I am one grain of sand better each day!

ACTION STEP: Make a list of the people, signals, inner calls you keep ignoring and see how this ignorance impacts your life

God Bless and Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 94

Rand Paul gets his revenge by referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ for exercising his constitutional rights, Trump goes after Birthright Citizenship again, El-Sayed is being pummeled by Islamaphobia, by AIPAC, Hegseth is being supported by Trump again, Cuba is being treated inhumanely by Rubio et al, hatred spews from the Republicans and the Socialist Democrats, and Max Miller, a horrific human being, still is running to keep his house seat! All the news that’s fit to print is the news that We the People continue to see, participate in, be indifferent, and/or be enraged by what is happening in our name by the idolators, charlatans, grifters in power.

El-Sayed needs to make his stand on Israel much clearer, he needs to explain his anti-semitic statements, because just as with the fascists on the right, those on the left should not be in power in America. We the People fended off the Fascist push by Coughlin, Ford and Lindbergh in the 1930’s/40’s and We the People are being called upon by the Voice from Sinai to fend off this latest onslaught of hatred, of prejudice, of power grabbing, of using the words of Christ, the words of the prophets, the words of Moses to weaponize their inhumanity towards human beings. It seems so clear to me and I am at a loss to understand how good people can still fall for the lies, the deceptions, opening up their beings to the “cancer of the soul” that is becoming an epidemic once again. We fought a Civil War when this cancer was at its worst epidemic proportions, we thought, and now we know this was just a resting time for the parasites who revel in spreading Cancer to We the People because they believe once we buy into the lies, once we experience this cancer, we will have to go to them for the cure which, according to them, is more hatred, more violence, more war, more profit for the few while the many suffer with no medical care, no insurance, no savings, and the cost of living keeps rising so Trump and his people can make more, more, more, as the song goes.

Having visited Cuba on a cultural mission, I can attest to the amazing creativity, talent, kindness, and longing to be free of the Cuban people so Rubio’s efforts to hurt them, to make it more difficult for them to have food, etc is horrendous-all to make up for his parents leaving the Island rather than staying and fighting Castro? AIPAC getting so involved in political campaigns that it is causing more anti-semitism even among the people who also support the candidates they are supporting makes sense in what reality? That ‘fine christian nationalist gentleman’ Mike Johnson thinking it is a good thing that Max Miller is being accused of spousal abuse, hurting his child and is not kicking him out of the caucus because, I guess, Republicans don’t mind the macho-man, toxic masculinity, nor do they mind when a ‘woman is put in her place’? I am at a loss to understand this double standard, ha, ha!

The difference between reality, defined as what is happening right now, and TRUTH makes my head spin. The cognitive dissonance that happens when  putting these two real experiences together is mind-boggling, irrational and can only be reconciled through my soul. I, like so many, have to stop my constant movement, my mind from going a million miles a minute, and allow my soul to engage with my negative inclination, my baser self so I can discern what the next right action is, needs to be. It is hard when there are so many voices within me and outside of me clamoring to be heard, trying to drown out the “still small voice” of God, of knowing. It is hard to allow myself to do what “I know in my bones” is true and right because I can’t prove it to anyone, I can’t even prove it to myself and societal norms dismiss anything that can’t be “proven”, hence the non-reliance of God, on spiritual truth, on spiritual disciplines, relying solely on the weaponization of God’s words through Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, Mohammed, et al. Each day I wrestle with this dissonance and each day, just when I believe I have it reconciled, some new assault on Truth, on Freedom, on Decency, on Love, on Kindness, on Compassion happens and, I am back in the shit again.

The only solution that works for me is to live into the words of Habakkuk 3:19: “God is my strength… God guides me to high places”. When I allow God’s guidance, when I acknowledge that my strength comes from God and I am obliged to use this strength to serve God, to serve another(s), to rise up from my worst ways of being to being decent, life is wonderful, the dissonance recedes and I find ways of being okay with those I disagree with, I am at peace with those who shun me. It is a hard road to get here, I have worked hard over the years and I am realizing my own errors throughout my life, making amends that are overdue and I am just becoming aware of them, and not concerning myself with the response or non-response of those I have sent my T’Shuvah to.
ACTION STEPS:

How are you keeping God as your guide rather than your mind/another

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God Ghosting Self

Ghosting God Ghosting Self

Day 93

Each morning I sit down at my iPad and play different games to get my mind active and, at the same time thinking about what I want to write about. I do the NY Times Wordle, Mini Crossword and the Crossword, all to varying degrees of success. And my day begins when I awake and am grateful to God for another day, for “returning my soul to me with compassion” and cleaning it up overnight. My recognition of both gratitude for being alive and the compassion shown to me by God, by Harriet, by all of you, by my family is necessary for me to truly appreciate the gifts I receive daily-no matter what my bridge game score was the day before:)

All of this to say that without a spiritual program, too many of We the People fulfill Habakkuk’s words in chapter 2 verse 19: “Woe to him who says to the wood, Awake. To the dumb stone, Arise. Can it teach? It is overlaid with gold and silver and there is no breath at all in it.” Too many of We the People follow the will of these idolators, calling them gods, calling them genius’, calling them “master” instead of worshiping God, instead of knowing the truth of one’s inner life, instead of hearing the call of their souls, instead of hearing the pleas of the poor and the needy(which has no relation to economic status), instead of loving the stranger, etc. And knowing we are being ‘led by the nose’ by the Pharaoh’s courtiers gives me more awareness of how many of we the people are so indifferent, so unaware, so ridiculously stupid believing any of the people in power care about them, their plight AND these idiots keep voting against their self-interest, against what they know to be right and good, against the tenets of the ‘religion’ they claim to hold so dear, like Mike Johnson proclaims so loudly and proudly while Real Christians CRINGE at his actions!

Then, of course, there are the ‘brilliant ones’ on the far left who think Israel should not exist, that are as anti-Semitic as their counterparts on the far right, who want to blow everything up rather than repair the damages they, the far right and we centrists have made. We the People, all of us have bastardized the Declaration of Independence, done our best to fuck up the corrections to the Constitution that the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments have made, and continued the institutionalization of prejudice, it is just a matter of whom those ‘good white christian nationalists’, ‘fine upstanding ‘religious’ jews’, ‘caring about the underdog progressives’ and every other group that revels in bastardizing their faith, their ethnicity. Prejudice has no boundaries when it comes to whom practices it and this is the “cancer of the soul” that Rabbi Heschel speaks about and this “cancer” has spread throughout the United States, Israel and the globe. This cancer, as practiced by its proponents, is murdering the instructions of the Bible, the truth of Jesus’ words, the intuitive mind Einstein speaks of, and murdering the dictate to: “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” which is on the Liberty Bell on display in Philadelphia, Pa! Is it any wonder why the Prophets are so understudied? To study the prophets, to hear their call, to immerse ourselves in their wisdom, is to be forced to take action, beginning with our self.

I have lived at a level of outrage most of my life, I am coming to realize. I inherited from my father, my grandfathers and I have not been able to tame it so well as my brother Rabbi Neal Borovitz has. My outrage comes from the prophetic inheritance that I realize I have and have been using most of my life. Unfortunately some of the times I was using my inheritance from Jonah and running away from what God wanted, to the belly of the prison instead of the fish and in the belly of the prison is where I found God once again. For the rest of my life, I have been living  Robert Kennedy’s words: “Some men see things as they are are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not”. WHY NOT a) call a piece of wood a piece of wood rather than worship the callousness and the cruelty that piece of wood when fashioned into a tool of destruction, when added to a raging fire to give it more fuel; b) stop worshiping what is dead and gone, ie, m the good old days, and stop stoning people with the lies, the subterfuge, the deceptions on full display today; c) let go of the self-deceptions and bastardizations we the people are using to pat ourselves on the back for being ‘god-fearing people’?

This fight I have been having with the people who worship wood and stone is a long one, going back to childhood. My outrage has overflown and been misunderstood as egotistical anger and I have been unable to explain it until now. The Truth will Set You Free and it does, for me at least. I am not ashamed of me, I have made errors, big ones at times, and I keep coming back to worshiping God, not the idols, the lies that so many of we the people are worshiping today and throughout history. How can a descendant of the prophets, which we all are, NOT be outraged?

ACTION STEP: Discern personal anger from righteous indignation and stop worshiping everything but Truth and God

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 92

Why do I bring the political into the realm of spiritual, people ask me. “Leave the political to the politicians and you take care of the spiritual needs of the people, only”, I have been directed, told, ‘ordered’ to do when I was a Rabbi at an institution in Los Angeles, Ca. I did not listen, of course, partly because I am stubborn and mostly because, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, God was involved in the politics through the prophets, through the Torah, through the mitzvot. Everything political has a spiritual component, has a moral component, has to do with helping the poor and the needy, loving the stranger, practicing kindness, truth, compassion, love, justice, mercy in ALL OF OUR AFFAIRS!

Today, at this moment, I do not know the outcome of the Democratic Senate Race in Michigan. I do not know if the Anti-Semitic Socialist Democrat candidate won or not, I do not know if this hater of Israel, this human being who believes in Hamas, celebrates Oct 7th, thinks Israel should not exist, favors the underdog and is willfully blind to the fact that NO ARAB NATION has wanted to give comfort and shelter to the Palestinian People since they, the other ARAB NATIONS, told them to leave their homes while they, the other ARAB NATIONS, decimated Israel in 1948-AND THEN THEY DID NOT and gave nothing to their cousins will win in the general election. I do know that Bernie and his “Squad” want to see the ONLY democracy in the Middle East cease to exist. This, these ‘fine progressive folk’ who don’t believe in freedom for all, only freedom for ‘their people’ believe will make the world safer, democracy stronger as the Hamas continues to impose ridiculous fear on their ‘constituents’, the Palestinian Authority continues to be useless and weak, and the Koran or their interpretation of the Koran becomes the law of the land. This is deeply personal to God, this is deeply political to God, and so it should be to We the People.

Habakkuk 2:18 says: “What use is there in a carved idol whose maker has shaped it, a molten image, and a teacher of lies”. Both Bernie and his “Squad”, Trump and his thugs, fit this description in my opinion. AND, the News Media who fail to call out the anti-semitism because they are so appalled by Israel’s cruelty in Gaza and the West Bank, which is also true, also fit this description. The Carved Idol is ‘the poor Palestinians’ who turned down numerous opportunities to accept negotiations that gave them 95% of their requests-What say you about that El-Sayed, Bernie, AOC, et al? What do you know of the torment that Israelis have gone through for 78 years waiting for the next suicide bomber, the next bus stop bomb, the next …? AND Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben G’Vir et al are WRONG and despicable, they are NOT acting in the ways of the Bible, they are not hearing, listening, understanding God’s way and words, they do not love mercy, they are not acting justly, etc. AND NEITHER ARE YOUR BELOVED HAMAS, Bernie and his Babies!

Between Trump and Bernie, those of We the People who are seeking an authentic relationship with a power greater than ourselves, who are wrestling each and every day to keep our “rational minds the servant” and use our “intuitive minds (as) a gift”, who are dealing with how to be one grain of sand better each day, have no home, have no advocates, have no party that gives a shit! This is true for both Republicans and Democrats who are just tired of the same old bullshit and do not want the ‘new way’ that Trump has brought nor the hatred, anti-semitism, revenge of Bernie and his babies.

It is WAY PAST TIME to leave these “teachers of lies”, these teachers of hate, these teachers of grift, these teachers of ‘purity’, these teachers of chaos in both camps. It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to reassert the principles in the Declaration of Independence, to live into the Command to LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and Rebuke your neighbor, and NOT HATE YOUR BROTHER IN YOUR HEART! Of course none of these ways of being get people riled up, none of these ways of being get people out to vote, the conventional thinking goes. BULLSHIT! This is path that God has given us, be it through the Bible, the words of Christ, the New Testament, etc and We the People are being called in this moment, from the Voice on Sinai, to leave EGYPT once again, to realize the subtle ways we have turned back to the narrowness of one-way thinking, the blindness of either/or thinking and “Lift up our eyes and SEE! See the truth that surrounds us instead of the mendacity and self-deception that tries to blind us. See the mercy that we can provide rather than the cruelty we seem to enjoy. See the Love that we spread, that is so sorely needed rather than the hatred that is being spewed from both camps. See that God’s Camp is the only one worth being in.

ACTION STEP: What are the idols you have created, are you a teacher of lies, a student of liars?

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 91

Reading the newspaper, listening to the news, watching the pundits all leave me wanting. Wanting for TRUTH, for REAL, for decency, for kindness, for stopping our consistent “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” as Einstein teaches us the definition of Insanity. Yet, We the People find new, interesting, novel ways of living and promoting the insanity of staying stuck, staying the same.

Ghosting God, for those who are not aware of how I am using this phrase, is any and every time we the people turn our backs on doing the next right thing, every time, we the people refuse to “lift up our eyes and see”, every time we engage in handwringing rather than SEE the water, the path, the way to being free that is all around us, as what happened with Hagar. We the People Ghost God every time we the people go along with those who “have plundered many nations”, every time we go along with those “who gets evil gain for his house”, every time we join in the “shame” we bring onto ourselves by “cutting off many people”. We the People Ghost God every time we have “sinned against our souls” according to the prophet Habakkuk in the 2nd chapter of his book verses 8-10. Of course we the people have decided to not pay attention to the teachings of the prophets, the words God had them speak, the inner rot of We the People that was happening in Judea prior to the Destruction of the 1st Temple and the exile to Babylonia. Of course, we the people have determined that no matter how reminiscent the words being spoken now by our ‘fine christian nationalist friends’ on the right nor the assurances of ‘our equally fine progressive socialist friends’ on the left are of Nazi Germany, no matter the words of Spain in the 15th century seem to coming from the mouths of “Der Fuhrer”, Donald Trump, no matter how the actions of hating the stranger, making fun of the weak, the poor, the needy happens, THIS IS NOT THE SAME-according to many of we the people. Really, how foolish.

Of course, whenever and wherever we Ghost God,  we also Ghost our authentic Self. This is the issue that has faced humanity since the beginning, from the time Adam hid from God after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is the first recorded time that a human being Ghosted God and the Bible is replete with how often this has happened. The entire story of the prophets as a body of work is the story of human beings Ghosting God for their own supposed gain. Of course the truth is they did experience more wealth, more power, and more fealty. All of this at the cost of the dignity of we the people, all this at the cost of what would befall future generations. What relevance could those stories of antiquity have for us, many of we the people ask. This is how easy the descent into Insanity is: asking the most ridiculous, inane, and wrong questions, getting the ‘right’ answers to these ridiculous, wrong questions and then proceeding from this faulty foundation. The descent into believing the lies of the powerful, the mendacity of the false prophets who call themselves ‘servants of god’ in their ministries, in their pulpits, and-worse of all- believing our own self-deceptions so we can ‘get ours’.

The Chaos, the Insanity, the Cruelty of this moment cannot be solved, cannot be defeated by our rational minds! The only possible way to defeat these “Deadly Sins” is through a spiritual renewal, through an authentic connection with the Power Greater than Ourselves that some of us call God. Only by hearing the Call, by listening to the Voice, by understanding what is being demanded of We the People can we end the rottenness in the world today. Only through the work of Elul, the need to clean our houses, to make our amends, to change the narrative we tell ourselves, to let go of the lies and self-deceptions we use as warm blankets can We the People join with the dictates of the Bible, the words and deeds of Jesus and CELEBRATE God, REVERE God, WALK in God’s WAYS, LOVE MERCY, DO JUSTLY, etc. This is the challenge for all of We the People!I During this period, the end of Av, the month of Elul, the 10 days of Return, We the People are given an extra dose of Grace to accept with clarity the things we have done and those we haven’t on both sides of the ledger-good and not so good. The technology to right ourselves is found in our writing the truth to and about ourselves. The question, as always, is: How many of We the People will use this extra dose of Grace to change, to repair, to reconnect with God, with those we have harmed and give forgiveness to those who seek it and reconnect with them? I have been doing this for 38+years and I keep finding new ways to see old behaviors, to understand the impact on another(s), and to make things as right as possible. I also know the sadness of people who just don’t want anything to do with me, no matter how much I had helped them in the past. When we allow 1 “oh shit” to wipe our 1000 ‘atta boys’, we are Ghosting God, Ghosting Self.

ACTION STEP: Do an Inventory of how you “walk in God’s ways and you don’t

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 90

In 10 days Jews across the globe will begin the month of Elul, the month prior to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the month when We the People get to review our year(s) and see what harms we have brought to another(s), make our amends and change our patterns. Before there was psychology, there was/is T’Shuvah, there was/is Elul, there was/is the practice of prayer; looking inside oneself and seeing what we need to change, what we need to enhance and what we need to tame within us.

Last Shabbat we read from the Torah an immensely important verse that goes unnoticed, not heard, not listened to, not followed too often: “You shall  eat, be satisfied and bless God for the good land God has given you”(Deut.8:10). Of course, eating is not the problem, most everyone is more than happy to eat, blessing is not the issue either because many people are willing to give gratitude before and/or after a meal. The issue is the middle command: “be satisfied”. This is the greatest issue for humankind today as it has been in every age. The prophets spoke about it, King David was chastised for his inability to be satisfied and, as my friend and teacher, Rabbi Hazzan Danny Maseng says: “King David lost his connection to God after his sin of having Uriah killed so he could have Bathsheba for a time”. Wars are fought because We the People have been unable to “be satisfied”. Our world today is being run by idolators who claim they are “living according to Jesus’ words and deeds”, “living what the Bible teaches” and they are LIARS! They are unable to “be satisfied” with “the good God has given you”. They are insatiable, they want more, more, more and it is in direct violation of the Bible’s commandment above.

Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Xi, et al are NEVER satisfied, so we are in a war with Iran that is driving the world into both a financial and energy crisis, we are not supporting the Free Country of Ukraine because Trump has a man/homosexual(?) crush on Putin, taking over Venezuela’s gas business for his gain and the gain of his cronies, threatening to take over Cuba, etc are all examples of Trump’s inability to “be satisfied”. Kushner, that ‘fine orthodox jew’ is willing to sell out the United States for a pot of gold from the Saudis, the Qatari’s, the Emirates, etc because he, like his father, never has enough! And this is whom some of we the people have foolishly and proudly put in charge of our welfare-people who could not give a shit what happens to We the People because all they care about is “Getting Mine”! Yet, it is not just the assholes in charge who are unable to follow this simple commandment from God. Many of the most ‘God-fearing, ie Idol worshipping’ people are unable to follow this simple instruction. The erroneous thinking of most people is that if I am satisfied, I will not strive for anything more, I will settle for what is and not try to get/make more. THIS IS NOT WHAT THE COMMANDMENT IS SAYING! In fact it is saying the exact opposite!

Our insatiable needs are one of our traits that push We the People out of proper measure, out of the path of living well. Hence our daily T’Shuvah, our using the Month of Elul to prepare our souls, our bodies, our minds for the forgiveness we receive on Kol Nidre and the amends we have to make prior to Yom Kippur are the paths We the People need to take to tame the traits that push us away from God, away from another(s), and away from being our authentic self. What the Commandment is really saying, in my opinion/experience, is: You need to nourish your body and this is a good thing, you need to not overindulge in eating, drinking, or anything lest you become insatiable, and you need to remember to be grateful, to share your bounty with those in need, and to bless the people who help you be able to provide food, no matter how meager it may seem, and to bless God for giving you life. AND we eat 3-5 times a day, so this comes to teach us that satisfaction is short-lived and we have to keep reminding ourselves to be satisfied, to be grateful for what we have, to nourish our minds, bodies, spirits so we can stay connected to the Source of All. This is the great challenge We the People face, how to keep moving the ball forward, moving towards greater and stronger connection with our own authenticity, with our connection to God, our connection to one another and not fool ourselves into believing the lies of ‘more, more, more’, ‘smartest person in the room’, ‘the one with the gold rules’, ‘the one with the most toys wins’, and other such bullshit.

I bought the bullshit above for far too long and my dissatisfaction brought me to jails and prisons, to raping the trust of so many people including family, and I just can’t do it anymore. I am grateful for what I have, I am satisfied with my life, I do strive to be one grain of sand better, I am uncovering more and more of my authentic self and not being embarrassed by being me. This is the joy of this commandment and it is the way out of our current example of what ‘more, more, more’ does to We the People

ACTION STEP:

Keep an inventory of when you are satisfied and when you aren’t

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark