Ghosting God, Ghosting Self
Day 26
Each morning I wake up, sometimes WAY TOO EARLY, and I am excited to be alive and dreading what the latest horrific news from Trump et al is going to be. This is NOT Trump Derangement Syndrome-it is knowing what a lying, cheating grifting asshole is capable of-since in my youth I was one! Knowing that everything coming out of his mouth is probably a lie, except when he says he doesn’t think about the average American- only the rich idiots who keep kissing his ass and sucking his you know what! Yet, he was able to defeat a good and decent man like Dr. Cassidy in Louisiana, one of the places where his followers are getting royally fucked! What is wrong with people? The bombing in San Diego at the Mosque he called a terrible thing-thank God he didn’t say, ‘well, you know, they hate Trump and the Muslim people come from shit countries, and we are at war with them’ and other such idiocy-can you imagine, I am grateful he wasn’t an asshole this time, pretty low bar that he and his gang of incompetent thugs continue to go under it!!
Hegseth in Kentucky to campaign against Thomas Massey while the ‘war’ with Iran rages on, Kushner and Wytkoff in the Middle East, Russia, etc seeking money for themselves and Trump while Marco Rubio keeps his nose up Trump’s ass, and other ridiculous goings on that capture our imagination and sense of horror. The best may be how many stock trades he has done and then those companies are either visited by him, promoted by him, obtain Government contracts, etc. His graft, his destruction of the emoluments clause is total and unprecedented and our Congress which is supposed to be one of the checks and balances on the President and the Supreme Court is DOING NOTHING!! These ‘fine Christian men and women’ are turning a blind eye to the stealing by Trump while wanting the 10 Commandments to be posted in every school. Jesus complained about “the money changers in the Temple” while these “true believers” cheer Trump’s thieving ways and give him another 1.8 billion to give out to the Jan 6 rioters, the Proud Boys, etc. Is this really what Jesus would want?
The Jewish Republicans who are cheering these behaviors on, who are in lockstep with Netanyahu in Israel, who promote hatred of the stranger, who believe the enemy of my enemy is my friend, who are putting stumbling blocks before the blind and cursing the deaf are even more disgusting to me! How can these ‘learned jews, bible thumping practitioners of everything that goes against the prophets, that is inline with all of the actions like senseless hatred, ignoring the cries of the poor, the needy, the stranger, call themselves Jews, I just don’t know. I am positing that to BE A JEW, is so much more than birth identity, so much more than circumcision, so much more than Bar/Bat Mitzvah, following dogmatic rules imposed by the Rabbis and other men. To BE A JEW is to “be a light unto the nations”, it is to “be a blessing”, to carry the words and deeds of God to every experience we have, to “love the stranger” said 36 times in the Bible, to do TShuvah for our errors, to come back to the fold because God heals our backsliding and loves us in our return, to know that where the truly repentant stands, not even the most saintly can reach her/his level. Yet, what do we have? We have Rabbis who say the right things and look right through people, who we are told to not take their ignoring of one personally because he/she does it to everyone. We have Rabbis who look to be politically safe rather than use their prophetic voice and call out the Bullshit around them. We have institutions who are so afraid of losing their funding they will not speak out nor up-even the ADL under Jonathan Greenblatt has caved to Trump, to the Republican massacre of Truth, of Decency, of Kindness, of Love!
It is way past time for Jews to START BEING JEWS/JEWISH again/for the first time. We wandered in the Desert for 40 years to get slavery out of our inner life, we wandered in the desert for 40 years to experience the wonder that wandering provides for us, we wandered in the desert for 40 years so we could learn how to be free, how to be a people, how to serve something greater than ourselves in our own unique way-not according to some bullshit societal nonsense! The way that some of these ‘frumma yids’ worship the Golden Calf of Trump in Florida and DC, the way that Meir Soloveitchik promoted a Christian Bible day when the speakers were calling for the US to be a ‘christian nation as the founding fathers wanted’ (WRONG), and NOT speak out about Religious Freedom, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to choose, etc is mind-boggling to me. We the Jews who believe we are “a light to the nations” have to speak out and speak up; have to live by the 10 Commandments, the Holiness Code, etc and CHOOSE LIFE instead of the slow death of allowing our rational mind, our fears, our need to be certain, our need to be rich to kill us softly.
ACTION STEPS:
Decide how you are going to stop Ghosting God, losing your authentic self and serve God instead.
GOD BLESS, Stop GHOSTING GOD, GHOSTING SELF, Rabbi Mark