The Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 25

“Come, let us turn back to Adonai; For God as torn and God will heal us, God has wounded and God will bind us.”(Hosea 6:1)

Hosea is calling to Israel to turn back to God, to return to God without fear of being rejected. Hosea is reminding us of God’s Pathos towards for humankind. Hosea is reminding us of God’s deep feelings for Israel and all of humanity. I hear the call of God towards each and every one of us to ‘do Tshuvah, return, come back, I miss you, I will care for your wounds and welcome you home’ is what the prophet is saying. Adonai’s love of and for people is so great, it can withstand any and all betrayals, if we will return in love and responsibility, is what I hear the prophet saying. Hosea is reminding us how much God cares. 

Rabbi Heschel uses this passage to show divine pathos, divine concern and divine love as well as divine anger. In his book The Prophets on pages 282-283, Rabbi Heschel speaks of divine anger as a “secondary emotion, never the ruling passion, disclosing only a part of God’s way with man”. Earlier on 282, he says “The anger of God must not be treated in isolation, but as an aspect of the divine pathos, as one of the modes of God’s responsiveness to man. Rabbi Heschel uses this verse to show how the prophet turns terror into a song. 

What most of us see as anger, Rabbi Heschel is telling us that it is a way of responding to us. It is not wrath for the sake of wrath, Adonai is not a ‘vengeful God’ as portrayed by many who don’t understand the relationship between God and us. Rather, Adonai is in a relationship with humankind that reveals “an intimate accessibility, manifesting itself in God’s sensitive and manifold reactions” and in speaking about “anger” he goes on to say: “the biblical term, however, denotes what we call righteous indignation… it is impatience with evil”(The Prophets, page 283). Oh how much I want to have this experience and then I realize we all can and many of us do. We get afraid of our anger so we let it either go inward (depression) or egocentric and it becomes rage and wrath (bullying/power).

Our elected officials and many prominent Clergy need to understand the difference and hear the call of God to stop practicing evil by repeating past errors. Our officials are wrapping themselves in some ‘holier than thou’ cloth and perpetrating evil rather than being impatient with it. They have used the Words of God to bastardize God and humans. Black Lives Matter, the Women’s march, the different social justice movements of my youth and my adulthood are all examples of expressing our righteous indignation. We need to support them and correct them when they get too full of themselves. 

And what a wonderful teaching for all of us, ‘come back, I want you home, I know that I sent you away after you turned your back on all that was important to Me and I still want you to come back to me, come home. Come back, I know that I tore you apart, I know that you are hurting, come back and I will heal you and we will be closer than before. Come back, I know you are wounded and afraid, I know you think that I was wrathful for punishment, I know that you don’t understand that it was the only way you could hear, come back and I will bind your wounds and bind us together even stronger.’ This is the divine pathos that I experience from this verse and from the call of Hosea and God. 

I have been engaged in a battle with anger for most of my life. In recovery, I believe that it has been mostly righteous indignation, when something is wrong, and there have been times when it is about ego. I can’t help myself as I see the evil coming to the doorstep. I know that to some it has harmed their sensibilities and their sensitivities, for this I am sorry. I also know that for some (many I hope) it has shown them how much I care and it has broken through their armor to have them hear the call of “Come, let us return to Adonai”. I also know that I have turned the anger against me, especially in this last year, and I have been depressed and resentful and lost. I am grateful to many people for helping me through this period and I am hopeful, joyous and free of resentments and egocentric anger. 

I am sitting here with so many thoughts. I am grateful for all of my wounds, my tears and, most of all, my healings and my being welcomed back by God. I am also unrighteous indignation that we don’t teach our young people these messages of the Prophets and God. It is because so few of us want to immerse ourselves in the words, the pathos, the experience of the prophets. I was blessed to begin to live these words some 34+ years ago and I continue in my imperfect way to still live them. 

The great teaching here is that Adonai wants us back, accepts our imperfections and will bind us to Adonai a little stronger each time we return. I know this to be true with Adonai and with many of you-we are stronger and better each time we ask for and grant forgiveness and healing. How has your anger been righteous indignation and with whom can you effect healing with? 

The Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 24

“Hear this Priests, Pay attention House of Israel. Listen house of the king because justice is your responsibility. Their habits don’t let them return to their God for the spirit of harlotry is within them, they do not know Adonai.”(Hosea 5:1, 4)

Hosea is calling everyone together in the beginning of this Chapter. He begins with the Priests  and Kings and the leaders of the people and then the people themselves. He calls them out for their practice of injustice in the first verse. Hosea and God are not letting anyone off the hook for the injustices’ that are happening in Israel. They “were shocked not only by acts of injustice on the part of the scoundrels but also by the perversion of justice on the part of the notables” as Rabbi Heschel says on page 202 of The Prophets. Power means responsibility to do right according to this verse, not the entitlement to do what we want. 

This is the power and beauty of the prophet, they are unafraid to speak truth to power and they do not need to get the result they are hoping for. In the second verse for today, verse 4, Hosea and God are telling the people in power what they need to do and why they are not hearing Hosea. Their message is to let go of the habits that are bringing them down and attach themselves to Adonai once again. I am noticing the 2 names of God used in this verse, Eloheyhem and Adonai. The first reminds me/us of the words from The Song of the Sea, “This is my God” and the second reminds me/us of the personal relationship Adonai has with me/us. 

Rabbi Heschel speaks of the ‘spirit of harlotry’ as denoting deep passion for the actions being taken as well as an intense pathos the prophets have for God. In The Prophets, he has an entire chapter on the “religion of sympathy: I understand Rabbi Heschel to be teaching us that Hosea has the utmost sympathy and pathos and emotion for God and the betrayal of Adonai by Israel and its leaders. He goes on to explain in this chapter that one cannot separate emotion and passion from spirit, “Emotion is inseparable form being filled with the spirit, which is above all a state of being moved.” This teaching of Rabbi Heschel on page 316 of The Prophets, is so important to take in. Being filled with the spirit has to be tempered with a deep pathos for God, it is the state of the soul, Rabbi Heschel teaches and if we are not careful, the state of our soul can deteriorate, I know. 

We see this deterioration in the realm of addiction, in the realm of politics, in the realm of religion, etc. Our political reality is one of deterioration and our leaders have the spirit of harlotry within them and it is killing us. We have some prophets speaking and they are not hearing. Some of our elected officials see their status as the Priests and Kings of Israel saw theirs, entitled to do what they want and they are the smartest people in the room. They see themselves as doing whatever it takes to hold onto power and to use power for their welfare, not the people’s and not God’s. We, the People, must take back our house. God, through Hosea, is calling out to us to be just. Adonai is calling for us to remember that we are all responsible, as Rabbi Heschel says: “In a free society, some are guilty all are responsible”.

In recovery, spirit is the ‘secret sauce’. When Hosea repeats the phrase “knowing Adonai” he is speaking of an intimate relationship, as I have said before. The intimate relationship with Adonai/God here is that with God’s help I can change my habits and turn back to Adonai. I can find comfort and rest in the embrace of mercy, kindness, righteousness and truth. Turning from the ‘bad habits’ and turning to a life of principle, meaning and God imbues us with the ability to enjoy life, to care for others and to live with and on purpose. “Knowing God” is what the 11th step is all about, “sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.” This is the antidote to the “spirit of harlotry” that we all have engaged in prior to our recovery and that many people who think they are fine are engaging in as we speak. 

On a personal note, I am shuddering at the times that I have failed to act justly and righteously. I have stood accused and I am guilty. I believe that we all have to look at our past with a critical eye and see our being through God’s eyes and not our rationalizations. Paying attention to the “little things” is one of my strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes I am too much in the weeds and sometimes, I overlook and don’t hear another because I am not paying attention to everything around me. I have not hear and not been responsible to and for acting justly. I am sorry for these actions. I am also aware of my imperfections and know I will make this error again, again and again. What I am proud of is my ability to return and, hopefully, you are proud of your ability to return. Because of “knowing Adonai” my habits have become filled with the spirit of god instead of the spirit of ego, pride and harlotry. I am filled with hope and promise for today and everyday because of my ability and yours to “know God” and use God’s help to change the habits we need to. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 23

“Ephraim is addicted to images/idols-let him be. They turn to drunkenness. They whore themselves out and against God. They love beyond measure.”(Hosea 4:16, 17)

The prophet is calling Ephraim to account by telling the People Israel who they are and what they are doing. When I say, who they are, I do not mean at their core, I mean who they have become by hiding from their core beingness. Hosea is so upset by the situation in Israel, he is indicting the entire nation. He is holding all of the people responsible for what the leaders are doing. I believe he is trying to get the people to rise up against the oppressors in their midst and inside of themselves. 

Hosea’s constant reminder of the people’s whoredom is to let them know that when they are engaging in indiscriminate sex, they are being unfaithful to God. The idea that my ‘religious’ and/or spiritual life is separate from my ‘real’ life is anathema to Hosea and, by extension, to God. 

Hosea adds new wrinkles to our whoredom. Addicted to image, booze, love all are signs of idolatry to Hosea. He is telling us what happens when we put anything before or more important than Adonai. When we turn from God, according to how I experience these verses, we turn to addiction, image-consciousness, booze and sexual impropriety. None of these things are necessarily bad in and of themselves, they are terrible when we engage in them out of proper measure. 

We are living in a time where whoring ourselves out is almost commonplace. In DC, State Capitals, cities and towns, politicians will push through legislation in order to help the people who donate the most to them. Our last tax cut did nothing to help most people except the rich, famous and corporations and it happened because the Mega-Donors to the Republicans wanted it. CEO’s have to do what their shareholders want, not always what is best for everyone, otherwise they are out of a job. People stay in jobs because they are afraid to lose their paycheck, health insurance, etc. Paying outrageous sums of money to get one’s child into the “right” schools from pre-school to college and those bribes being accepted. 

Image is more important than substance to most people. We buy the image and the lies that people show us. We believe the lies and image that we show others. We are more interested in keeping up with the Kardashians than we are with keeping up with God and our authentic self. We have become People of the Lie as Dr. M. Scott Peck writes about in his book of the same name. We buy the lies and images of others and we tell lies about who we are. 

Drinking and indiscriminate sex go hand in hand. They have been issues forever, remember Noah. What they both do is help us turn away from God for our own desires. In the third paragraph of the Shema, we are told to ‘not scout out after our hearts and our eyes because we will whore after them’ precisely because these issues of excessive drinking and sex are so dangerous, seductive and idolatrous. 

Recovery is the antidote to Hosea’s indictment. It is not a defense, it is the rehabilitation needed to return from these insidious crimes/disease. Recovery is turning back to God. Recovery is living a life of principles and hope. Recovery is living a life of authenticity and transparency. Recovery is constantly and consistently checking in with oneself to see how our inner life is doing and to ensure we are living with integrity in all of our affairs. 

Reading these verses and hearing Hosea’s voice and God’s voice, I am scared. I am scared not of punishment, rather I am scared that our actions are causing this type of sorrow to God and to others. I know that we are all guilty of these behaviors at any given moment. I am scared that most of us don’t realize how we are guilty and only blame and accuse ‘them’ of these crimes. 

I am scared because I, once again, realize the war I have been waging within me to resist these ways of being. I left the crime and the booze (actually they left me), I have not left all of the ways of being and thinking that Hosea articulates. I have whored myself to raise money to help people in need. I have agreed with people about things that I know to be wrong. I have allowed the enemy of my enemy to be my friend when convenient. I became addicted to my image and my way of being. I allowed myself to be a caricature of me and laughed about it when I should have been hearing God’s call to me to stop. I have done these things in my recovery. I know this. 

I know that I have used my program of recovery to do T’shuvah each time I have engaged in these behaviors. I know that the return to God has been joyous and always met with open arms. I know that the love of family and real friends is so much better than the instant gratification then pain caused by falseness and whoring. Finding our “whoring” ways and our paths to “being drunk” are necessary for us to be able to return. God and the world needs the real me and you. May we find our authenticity now! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Weekly Parsha - BeShallach 5781

This week’s Parashah is BeShallach. It tells us the story of leaving Egypt, getting to the Red Sea, crossing it and then complaining! Sort of typical for the rest of the Torah, something great occurs, the Israelites feel entitled and are waiting for God to do something, complain when this something. 

We also have the “Song of the Sea” in this Parashah. I want to focus on this today. Moses and Israel sang a song to Adonai, saying “I will sing to Adonai” is how it begins. The verse starts out as a plural and turns into a singular. Each Israelite sang his/her own song, their voices came together and it was as an individual that the song originated. This, to me, is how prayer works best. We do a lot of communal praying and it has to be each person singing their own song. 

How do we do this? We each bring our voice, our joy, our sorrow, our fear and our faith to each and every prayer. We do this by not allowing group think, not allowing our voice to be shouted down nor silenced by ourselves. Each of us has a unique word of Adonai to bring to the world and we get to sing it. Crossing the Red Sea was another of Israel’s spiritual awakenings. The experience of it was individual and the response had to come from each person. So too for us, we each have to respond in our own way in our own voice to the experience of Adonai helping us, saving us, giving us clarity. 

Their awareness is told in the next verse: “Adonai is my song and my salvation, this is my God”. Realizing the personal nature of being saved and the source of our inner song is critical to our continued growth. God being my song is my experience of knowing that I am but a trusted servant of God and a trusted servant for other people. The individual experience is shared with everyone else so we know that we need each other, none of us is better or worse than anyone else and we get to share our song, our salvation and our own personal experience of God.

This year, between writing on the Prophets each day and this week’s Parashah, I have a new experience of “God of my understanding” that is in the 12-steps. Each Israelite defined God for her/himself. We cannot have the same understanding of God since each of us has a unique relationship with God. Which also means that I am not to judge your understanding, experience, relationship with God and not compare me to you, mine to yours. Taking comparison and competition of out my daily way of being in the world allows me to appreciate and embrace “my God” more and more each day. 

“I will praise God and I will exalt God” is the ending of this verse. What an order! How can I say this? Yet I do each morning in our prayers. What does it mean to exalt God? I have to hold God in the highest esteem, I have to continue to raise God up. I do this by raising myself up, my actions are held to a higher standard and I grow each day to meet these standards one grain of sand. 

How do I praise God? I have to live a life of gratitude and respect. I get to respect God’s creations; climate, nature, other human beings, etc. I do this by remembering that everyone is created in the Image of God. I remain grateful for the people who love and support me and I learn to be grateful for the people who want to destroy me, compete with me, and don’t like me so much. Being grateful for all of life’s experiences is the best way to praise God. 

Each of us needs to grow our individual voice, spirit and being. Only then can we join together as the Israelites did on the other side of the Red Sea. We all have crossed the Red Sea, some of us many times, and we will have to cross others. We do it as individuals with others. This is the truest experience and definition of Community, in my opinion.

I have been blessed with my own voice and I sing my own song, sometimes too loudly and too off key, as Harriet reminds me. I pray that we all continue to sing our song and join with the songs of each other to create the symphony that God desires. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 22

“Hear the word of Adonai Children of Israel…Because there is no truth, no kindness and no knowing of God in the land. (Hosea 4:1).

After telling the people that a reconciliation is going to happen in Chapter 2, Hosea sees what is happening through God’s eyes and exhorts the people to stop their lying ways. Later in the chapter we again learn that Israel will be subject to the logical consequences of its actions, yet I hear the pleading of Adonai and of Hosea for connection. The call of the Prophet Hosea is to stop being a whore, stop your idolatry. In this verse, Hosea is telling Israel (and us) how idolatry begins, flourishes and destroys relationships. 

Rabbi Heschel speaks of Hosea’s preoccupation is with God, “the abandoned One”,  in this situation, he “never pleads for the people”, “He has only one perspective: the divine partner.”(The Prophets, pg 49). Hosea is not willing to deal with nor dwell on the “weakness of man”(ibid). As I read Rabbi Heschel’s words I believe we get an inkling of what it means for Hosea, and I believe, every prophet to have a “knowing” of God, this deep identification with the Divine. In Hosea’s case, idolatry is the sin and being a whore is the crime. 

We begin to whore ourselves when we give up on truth, kindness and worship becomes a path to get what we want, as I immerse myself in this verse. It is as true today as it was then. Hosea is pleading, yelling, crying out and standing up for Adonai to Adonai’s children, asking them how they could walk away from their home base, their connection, their parent, their lover, their foundation.

In politics, in faith groups, in our family home; truth, kindness and knowing of Adonai has receded, if not fallen away. Some of our elected officials on both sides of the spectrum, some religious leaders of all faiths are more interested in telling the lies and spewing hatred against their ‘enemies’ than they are at looking for and engaging in truth and kindness. When people are persecuted and threatened for speaking truth (like who won the election) we are in deep trouble. When our elected officials deny the rights of anyone based on race, color, creed, religion, gender, etc, they are not knowing Adonai, they are worshiping idols, mainly themselves. When killing the Speaker of the House and/or the VP of the country is ok with someone in government, it is terrifying. 

Recovery is the search for truth. It begins with an admission that has been denied for the entire time of our addiction, we are powerless over….(name it). Each one of the 12 steps helps us to uncover more and more truth. We are never done in our journey towards complete truth, yet, we know that each step, each experience, each encounter with God brings us closer to and opens our eyes up more to truth. This is what makes Recovery for everyone. We all need to engage in truth more often, more completely and more earnestly. 

Recovery also requires us to be kind to others and to ourselves. Every recovering person knows that a deep connection to God/Adonai/Higher Power/etc, is necessary for continued recovery and living well. Knowing Adonai is an intimate relationship and I finally get “God of my understanding” that is in the steps. Since knowing God is about intimacy, how can you and I have the same intimate relationship with God, each one of us has a uniquely different and similar intimate relationship with God because each of us is uniquely different and similar!

Truth was my enemy for so long and kindness was only for suckers in my addictive years. I made a commitment to Heather, my daughter, to be in truth when I got our of prison the last time in 1988. I knew that without truth, I would go back to prison, I would crush her spirit again and I could not whore myself out anymore. My relationship with Adonai my loyalty and gratitude to Rabbis Mel Silverman  and Rabbi Heschel(whom I never met), my love for my family, my daughter, my wife; my commitment to my soul’s work, all are too important to go back to lying and meanness. 

Reading this verse reminds me of how important the real relationships I have are. I no longer seek out faux connections and fauxthentic people (a term Harriet coined) no longer take up my time nor space in my being. What you see is what you get has been my mantra for my entire recovery, it is not always pretty and it is me and truthful. I realize how often I was having an intimate relationship with someone and they were not on the same page as me. I would get angry and now I realize they were unknowingly and/or knowingly practicing idolatry-the worship of self. Whenever I have bought my own press, I was guilty of idolatry. I see my times and paths to “no truth and kindness and no knowing Adonai” and am correcting them daily. Are you, I believe so:) Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- a daily take to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 21

“I will betroth you to Me forever. I will betroth you to Me with righteousness, justice, kindness and compassion. I will betroth you to Me with faithfulness and you will know Adonai.(Hosea 21, 22). 

These words from Hosea are spoken each day of the week when we put on our T’fillin. After Hosea speaks of how the wife/Israel has whored herself to Baal and other false gods, he tells us of God’s desire for our return and God’s acceptance of us when we return in these verses. My brother, Rabbi Neal Borovitz, says we use these words as a way of declaring that “we bind ourselves to God and to others as brothers/sisters and the last line verb ‘know’ means willing to enter into an intimate relationship with both God and another.” I agree with him and he told me to do my own drosh as well:) 

God made a Covenant with us, individually and collectively, at Sinai. It was a continuation of the Covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. With each generation we are able to discern more and more the subtleties of this Covenant and, as an individual and as Israel, deepen the ‘marriage’ to God, self and each other. This is the forever commitment. Every morning we get to recommit to God, self and another(s) our foreverness. Every morning we get to remember we are not in this alone. 

The Covenant is made with all the elements that comprise a healthy and holy relationship. Even after Israel has strayed (and Hosea’s wife had strayed) God is taking us back with justice tempered by righteousness, kindness and compassion. Even though God has plenty of reasons to,  God is not willing to cut ties forever with us, as individuals and as a people. Every morning we get to renew our vows to be just, righteous, kind and compassionate in all our affairs and with everyone we meet. Every morning we get to renew our commitment to act Godlike and take back the people who have broken their vows with us when they call. 

The Covenant is made in and with faithfulness. Each morning we thank God for returning our soul to us with compassion and declare Great is Your faithfulness. Each morning when we put on T’fillin, and even if we don’t we can pray this prayer, we get to reaffirm our faithfulness and to God, to the principles of our Covenant and to our commitment to continue to deepen our understanding of and actions of faithfulness to and with our Covenant. 

Rabbi Heschel says on page 57 of The Prophets “Knowledge encompasses inner appropriation, feeling, a reception into the soul… that it often , though not always, denotes an act involving concern, inner engagement, dedication, or attachment to a person. It also means to have sympathy, pity, or affection for someone.” Just as in a marriage, each day we get to know our partner better and more intimately. Rabbi Heschel  is refining and redefining what knowing is here. While it has the connotation of sex in Hebrew, it is so much more. I am struck by this explanation of Rabbi Heschel’s. 

To know God is to have inner engagement with God, to be attached to God and God’s principles and creations. To know God is to have concern for God and for God’s people, all of us humans. To know another person is to be attached, dedicated, show sympathy as a pathway of affection. To know your partner is to receive them into your soul and open your soul to receive theirs. This is our pathway to love, to reconciliation and, I would suggest to God. 

Being in Recovery takes this daily betrothing. Each day we commit to our recovery through action, through principles, through service and through love. We get to be accepting of everyone as the 3rd Tradition of AA says, “the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking”. I would suggest that we all could apply this idea to our living. The only requirement for membership in our group is a desire to belong and bind ourselves to God, to the Covenant, and to one another!! Imagine how different life would be if we all could live this principle of recovery. 

I realize that I have bound myself to God and to another(s) in so many ways over the years and I realize that I haven’t always done it with righteousness, kindness and compassion. I woke up this morning thinking about this passage and realized that I am bound to Beit T’Shuvah and Beit T’Shuvah is bound to me even though our relationship has changed. What hasn’t changed is my commitment to the Covenant and Principles Harriet and I read with the help of many people, especially Elaine Breslow, z”l. While I spent about 6 months lost and hurt, binding myself to God was the best healing agent along with Harriet and other friends and family. I harbor no resentments because I am bound to God and to humanity with justice, kindness, righteousness and compassion. I am bound in faithfulness and forever. This knowing of people, letting them into my soul and receiving theirs has been the gift of these past 32+ years. My covenant with Harriet, Heather, Neal, Sheri, nieces and nephews, friends has grown deeper and stronger because of this binding. I pray that you renew your covenant each day with more determination and love. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- a daily take to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 20

“Rebuke your mother, rebuke her-for she is not my wife and I am not her husband-and let her put away her harlotry from her face and her adultery from between her breasts.”(Hosea 2:4) 

I am going to spend a few days on Chapter 2 of Hosea because it is so rich and meaningful to me and hopefully you. After calling out the ‘spirit of whoredom’ in the first chapter, Hosea and God are asking for reunification. Where the word rebuke is, it could be translated as strive or contend with your mother. What a wonderful message to send, as children we can strive/contend with our parents when they are worshiping false gods. In fact, it is our obligation. 

Listening to the call of the Prophet and God is so beautiful and shows us that God keeps the Covenant and the love for us even when we don’t. “Let her put away her harlotry from her face and her adultery from between her breasts” is a pleading for our return to God. No matter what has been done, God still wants us back. This is the definition of Unconditional Love to me. 

In The Prophets on page 50, Rabbi Heschel describes beautifully what love is and the choice we get to make.“In the domain of imagination the most powerful reality is love between man and woman. Man is even in love with an image of that love but it is the image of a love spiced with temptation rather than a love phrased in service and depth-understanding; a love that happens rather than a love than continues; the image of tension rather than of peace; the image of a moment rather than of permanence…”

We have to decide how we are going to define and live our love. It is more than a feeling, it is an action. Rabbi Heschel is challenging us to look at ourselves and see if we are a one-night stand type of lover or in it forever. Is our love steeped in service and depth-understanding or once the temptation is over so is our love? Is our love a permanent fixture in our lives or just a moment when we need it? God is pleading with us to return in this verse, according to Rabbi Heschel. God wants permanence and pledges permanence in God’s Love. 

Looking at our world and current situation, We, The People, have to rebuke, plead, strive and contend with our leaders to put away their harlotry and their adultery. Whenever  our leaders go against their duty to serve country in order to serve themselves, they are being harlots and committing adultery. Whenever they pander to ‘their base’ rather than be of service to all and to the constitution, their “adultery is between their breasts” and their harlotry is on their face for all to see. We have to contend and rebuke them for their sake, for our sake, for the sake of our country and democracy and for the sake of Heaven. Hosea’s words give us strength to speak with longing and power. 

In recovery, this is the only way to live. In fact, we are recovering from being harlots and adulterers! We need the rebuke, the pleading and the striving with family, friends and God in order to see where our wonderful ideas about escaping, etc landed us. We are so taken by the temptation, we forgot to be of service and we had skirted through life on the surface, never taking time to have a depth-understanding. Recovery is the result of hearing the pleading, rebuking, striving within ourselves and with others. 

Re-reading this verse informs me of the need to have the 2nd step of AA be “Came to believe a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”. Without the help of God, there is no giving up our harlotry and adultery. It feels too good to let go of, it is too easy to cheat on our current lover with our love for our ‘drug of choice’. Who wants to be tied down when we can flirt and flit around? Without God’s help, without God’s longing and wanting us to return, we are too afraid to ask. The 2nd step tells us that God wants and desires us. In our prayerbook, the 2nd prayer of the intermediate prayers of the Amidah (the standing prayer) is God wants our return, God desires our return. 

I spoke yesterday of my own ‘whoring’ and today’s verse reminds me of how often I strove with people to bring them back from their harlotry and adultery. I am so grateful for God using me as a messenger to so many. I am so grateful to Harriet, Heather, Ed, Neal, Sheri, my family and friends who helped me, gave me strength and courage to forge ahead. I am also sorry to everyone who I pushed away instead of bringing them closer. I am sorry for not always striving and rebuking people in ways they could hear. I am grateful for the permanence of God’s love for me. I am grateful for the permanence of the love of so many for me. I am grateful for the times people have rebuked and contended with me when I was acting as a harlot and adulterer, which have been few and far between in my recovery. I am grateful for this experience of “living intercourse” with God as Rabbi Heschel says, this ongoing, wrestling, hugging, hearing, holding onto, and loving relationship that God has never abandoned. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Daily Prophets

Day 19

Hosea was a Prophet who prophesied about the Northern Kingdom of Israel from the time of Jeroboam II and after. Rabbi Heschel says he dealt primarily with its religion, morals and politics. He, as Amos, was totally attuned to Divine Pathos and love. As the days go on, I will write more about his life and path. 

“When Adonai first spoke to Hosea, Adonai said to Hosea,“Go take for yourself a wife of whoredom and children of whoredom; for the land will stray from following Adonai.” She conceived again and bore a daughter and He said to him, “Name her Lo-ruhanah for I no longer accept the House of Israel of pardon them.(Hosea 1:2, 6)

What a beginning! According to this opening, Hosea is giving us a foreshadowing of what is to come. “Take for yourself a wife of whoredom” is interpreted as “a woman who is filled with the spirit of whoredom” according to a footnote on page 52 of The Prophets. The note goes on to explain that it was after they were married that his wife’s disposition revealed itself. Which makes a lot of sense and is the way life works for many people. I am struck by the explanatory note, because I think about all the ways humans are filled with the ‘spirit of whoredom’.

Adonai is comparing an unfaithful wife to the Northern Kingdom and wants Hosea to know the experience of being cheated on. I hear the Call of God to Hosea as a call to all of us to realize how we have been unfaithful to Adonai, to another(s), to ourselves. I am thinking about how subtle our ‘spirit of whoredom’ is within us and how often we overlook it, are oblivious to it and lie about it to ourselves as well as others. God is calling Hosea and the rest of us to realize our own ‘whoring ways’. 

In verse 6 is the great fear that every person has. Our amends, our T’Shuvahs, will not be accepted. We will have gone too far in our negativity, in our spirit of whoredom. While it sounds harsh in this moment, it is a warning that can be averted by our actions. We get to be more sincere and committed to our T’Shuvah’s and change our ‘whoring’ ways. 

This is reminding me of the need to continue to take our own inventory and hear the opinions and rebukes of others. We all whore after something, there is something that we want, need, etc. that we are willing to give ourselves away for. Some of us give away truth in order to get through a day. We see this in our Politics daily. When Sen. McConnell says he will be obstructionist because that is what the opposition party does, he forgets the oath and he is whoring himself for power, for money and for fame. God is not telling him to support the rich and screw the poor! God is not telling him to let people die as he allowed in this past year by going against the science in his alliance with Donald Trump.

 Recovery is about recovering our essence and our essence isn’t about being a whore! Yes, the spirit is within all of us, it is just not our essence, unless we give in to it. There is a spirit to be cruel within us and it is not our essence, unless we give in to it. This is why prayer, meditation, inventory, T’Shuvah are so essential to living well. Without a daily/weekly spiritual practice of these tools, we will sink into whoredom and then we will find ourselves, like Pharaoh, too deep in our own lies and beliefs to hear the call of the Prophets around us. 

I know that in my recovery, I whored myself. I agreed with/did not argue with people who could help the cause I was involved with and building. I whored myself by not holding people/employees to the standards I believed in and gave them a lot of entitlement. I whored myself when I would get angry with others because of my own shortcomings. I whored myself when I took my disappointment out as anger. I whored myself when I took actions from a place of fear and scarcity. While many of these actions did what they purported to do, the actions took a heavy toll on my soul and on me. I am grateful that Adonai has given me the wisdom and spirit to see this and correct it. Will you look for the ways you whore yourself and correct them? I hope so. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- a daily take to enhance our daily living

The Prophets

Day 18

“I will wipe it off the face of the earth! I will not wipe off completely the house of Jacob declares the Lord…I will restore my people Israel, they shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them…And I will plant them upon their soil, nevermore to be uprooted from the soil I have given them says Adonai, your God.”(Amos 9:8,14,15)

Amos has been telling Israel what they are doing wrong and that God is disappointed and the logical consequences of their behaviors is destruction. Earlier Amos spoke of God wanting to wipe them out and God repented. Yet, Israel did not change their ways, if anything, they got worse because they were spared. 

As we finish the Book of Amos the last words are not everyone is engaging in these reprehensible behaviors so a remnant will survive. Israel is called a “sinful kingdom”, because of it’s breaking the Covenant with God to treat the people on the bottom of the Totem Pole as well as those at the top. Yet, God repents again at the end, God gives Israel hope and God again shows love and care for Israel in God’s promise. 

Rabbi Heschel reminds us Amos ends with a message of hope. Yet, Israel became the “10 lost tribes” because they were scattered among the Assyrian Kingdom. They had become so full of themselves and so broken that they must have bought into the Assyrian way of life and there was no one to return. 

This passage also demonstrates Rabbi Heschel’s belief that the Prophet held God and Human in one moment, at all moments. Amos was able to be with both God and Israel at the same time. The disappointment God felt, Amos felt and conveyed. The message and belief that Israel could change is apparent in the words of Amos. The consequences of Israel’s behavior which pains both God and Amos as well as the hope and promise of the future which they all can hold onto burst through in the end of the Book of Amos.  

Our country has some reckoning to do. We will not do it if partisan politics, lies, and bullying continues. The parallels between what Amos accuses Israel of and what has/is happening in the United States are striking. Worrying about the deficit after the trillions they gave in tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations and spent in the past year is ludicrous on the part of the Republicans. Allowing people who engaged in and supported treasonous actions on Jan.6 while calling out others for standing up to bullies and cowards is sad and disappointing. The Democrats who need it to be their way or the highway are not fulfilling God’s call either. I pray that the Chaplains of the House and Senate read Amos to their chambers and engage members in productive discussions of how to fulfill God’s call instead of the call of their egos. 

In recovery we have to hit a bottom. As Harriet Rossetto says: “we are either in recovery or denial” and “you don’t have to be an addict to be in recovery”. All of us need to be aware of our bottoms and make a decision to change. For some of us the destruction that we experience is obvious and harsh. For many of us, the destruction is subtle and slow and it is our inner life that erodes and we are bewildered by this. There are logical consequences for our behaviors, positive and negative. Most of us don’t think that we will or should suffer them! Amos is telling us, just as recovery teaches us that we will. 

Recovery gives us the practice of inventory and amends, Judaism gives us T’Shuvah, an accounting of how/when we miss the mark and when we hit the mark. Living a life of Recovery and Judaism is not about being perfect, it is about constantly knowing what we are doing, what we have done, checking the path we are on and making the proper course corrections. In order to do this, we have to hear the call of the prophets in our lives, we have to hear the call of God to us. We do this a little more each day by continuing to look inside and discern our strengths and where we need to do more learning and exercising to mature our souls. 

As I read these words this morning, I was brought back to the destructions I have brought onto myself. I have been saved by God and others, I have lost the illusions that I held before about me and a lot of other people and I am stronger for it. While destruction, ie, loss of a business, financial setback, loss of a position/job, being demeaned and have your vulnerabilities used against you all, etc. all hurt and feel like it is too hard to climb up from the hole; I know that this is a lie we tell ourselves because I have emerged from the darkness, disappointment and sadness stronger, more whole, less angry and more determined, more joyous. The ‘secret’ is to see/hear our part, be in the solution of repair self and harm, let go of resentments and join with God/Higher Power to do one grain of sand better today than yesterday. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- a daily take to enhance our daily living

The Prophets

Day 17

“Listen to this, you who devour the needy, annihilating the poor of the land…tilting a dishonest scale… acquiring the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.”(Amos 8:4-6). 

God is calling out to Israel, through God’s prophet Amos. What the people witnessed everyday and seemed okay and normal were horrible actions to God and Amos. So horrible, that the Prophet could not stay silent, God could not stay silent. Amos is telling the powerful and the wealthy that their actions are abhorrent and God is calling them to account. Implicit in here is the painful rebuke of God through Amos. This rebuke is seen as angry and, again, I hear and experience the rebuke as painful and loving. Amos and God are dissenting against the horrible treatment of the poor and the needy. They are calling out to the humanity of the people of Israel and showing their love and hope in them by this calling. They are pointing out to us the reason for Israel’s demise, how a nation so strong, so connected to God, so protected by God, could fail. 

In the very beginning of his book The Prophets, Rabbi Heschel speaks about the Prophets’ sensitivity to evil and uses this passage from Amos as one of the examples. “The things that horrified the prophets are even now daily occurrences all over the world. There is no society to which Amos’ words would not apply.” How sad it is that this is still true in our very advanced society. While we have advanced the ways we can kill, maim and mistreat others, we haven’t advanced to far from the time of the prophets in how we treat each other is how I understand what Rabbi Heschel is saying. Rabbi Heschel goes on to say: “To us a single act of injustice-cheating in business, exploitation of the poor-is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare fo the people; to the prophets it is a deathblow to existence:” 

How important are these words for our Congressional leaders right now. After years and decades of our leaders being the people who needed to listen, the day of reckoning is here. We have so many signs and need to heed the call of the Prophet and I pray that our leaders answer the call, not of President Biden (although that would be nice to stop the warfare in the Senate) rather the call of the needy and the poor, the call of the Prophet and God. We can help them by sending them these words, letting them know that their pettiness is endangering our democracy and to truly be “one nation under God” means we have to respond to God’s call. 

Hearing these words make me tremble with awe and fear and reading Rabbi Heschel on top of them makes me want to hide under the covers! The fear I experience is not the fear of “punishment”, the fear of being found out. I have been punished and I have been found out, by me, by you, by God. Punished meaning forced to be real and seen and forced to see the real you. Forced to see how I have devoured the needy through both actions and inactions. I see where and when I let nothing stand in my way to get what I thought was due me and what was right forgetting to hear what God was calling to me. This Holy Rebuke fills me with trembling fear and not punishing fear. The fear is the precursor to the Awe of getting to stand in the Shadow of God, to witness the Love of God and to experience the unwavering Hope that God has in me. I am wondering if you can have the same experience? I pray that you can. 

I am having this experience because the experience of Amos’ words is how much God cares and Amos cares. Amos takes such risk in delivering his message and he is compelled to do it anyway because of his love of and for God and Israel. He is calling us to listen and yet so many of us don’t. In fact, all of us go deaf at least once in our lives. I am in awe of the power of listening and hearing the truth from another and from God. I am in trembling awe of the experiences of being able to speak God’s truth to another(s), of witnessing the transformation from being one of the people to whom Amos is speaking to being like Amos and being a prophet in their own home, own right. The purpose of the Rabbi, to me, is to be this megaphone for God. These words were/are the reason that no one was turned away from Beit T’Shuvah because of lack of money. They are the reason that Harriet and I have always been available to anyone who seeks us out. The ways that I have been the person/people Amos is calling to are many, the ways I have not been the person/people Amos is talking about are more, I am grateful to acknowledge. This is why it is so important to be “found out” by yourself and others through inventory, T’Shuvah and connection. This is why it is so important to listen to the call of our souls and the words of others who are rebuking for your/my sake not for theirs. Nothing in Amos’ words help him be better than someone else, they help him speak truth, reach out to save another(s) and serve God. I pray we all follow Amos’ example. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Weekly Parsha- Bo 5781

This week’s Parashah, Bo, comes at an auspicious time in our country’s history. I am struck with our story of Exodus from slavery coincides with the story of the new President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden Jr, calling for unity and an end to senseless hatred, racism, destruction and being uncivil. These 4 ingredients are foundational to/for enslaving another(s) human beings. 

One of the points I speak about every year in this Parashah is the opening in Hebrew: Bo el Parro, come to Pharaoh. A seemingly odd choice of verbs yet very telling, God is in every person. We are all created in the Image of God and we all have infinite dignity and worth. At the risk of being redundant, I want to stress here the importance of this opening verse. God is saying, in my opinion: “Come to the Me that is in Pharaoh and speak to the Me that is in Pharaoh so Pharaoh can hear the Me that is in himself.” What a different way to see another human being, not as an enemy that has to vanquished rather as a Divine Image that needs to hear the call of my Divine Image. I am overwhelmed with sorrow and joy as I write this. Sorrow at the times when I saw another as an enemy and went to “get even” and enslave them or kill their spirit in order to win. Hindsight is always 20/20 and I offer my T’Shuvah to the people who have experienced me in this way. Most of the time, I thought I was doing what was necessary to defeat the Pharaoh in you and while this may have been in my heart and soul it wasn’t in my actions all the time. Again, I am truly sorry and my plan is to remember this moment and speak in ways you can hear whenever I can. 

Joy for the times when I saw/see another as a human being in distress and I am able to reach out, speak to you in ways you can hear and we learn together how to be one grain of sand better. I know I experience Joy most of the time and, in reading this verse this year, I have become aware that this is one of the reasons I do! I am also thinking of the words of President Biden yesterday in his Inaugural Address and in the words of his campaign to reach out to another, to reach across the aisle. We have let partisanship, the need to be right and the belief that Trump was sent by Jesus (and before Trump another right-wing conservative) stunt our journey to ‘a more perfect union’. We need to immerse ourselves in God’s words here in the opening of the Parashah and meet the Divine Image in the people we disagree with, speak to and from the Higher Consciousness in each of us, and, to paraphrase what Joe Biden said yesterday to the new employees he swore in, let your gut’s knowledge open your heart so your brain is delivering your gut’s knowledge clearly, kindly and decently. 

What a way to begin a Presidency! And it is found in our Parashah this week. Moses says to Pharaoh, “How long until you humble/submit/surrender yourself to Me. Send My People and they will serve Me.”(Exodus 10:3). Joe Biden swore his oath on a Bible that has been in his family for almost 130 years. He is familiar with this passage from Exodus, I am sure and his Inaugural address was his admission of submitting to God’s Authority and asking all of us to do the same. What a contrast from the Pharaoh that was his predecessor! 3 of the 5 Former Presidents joined to wish Joe well and the country well. Moses’ exhortation to Pharaoh was not just for the Israelites, it was for Pharaoh to save his own country and people. It was a pleading with Pharaoh, “until when” will we surrender to God’s Will, ‘until when’ will we humble ourselves before another(s) Divine Image, another human being? These are important questions to ask ourselves as Congress and people start to dig in and get stuck in their ideology, lies, beliefs, etc and need to win at all costs, even ruin of our nation which is what Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, 6 other senators and over 100 House Republicans did on January 6. Even after they were attacked, they still could not admit truth, they could not humble themselves to the will of the people, they still wanted to serve Pharaoh. How sad and yet, how often do we do the same thing? 

Pharoah’s courtiers ask him the same question a few verses later. In verse 7 they ask Pharaoh, “how long will this one be a snare for us, don’t you know Egypt is lost?” Who’s the person that can call our Congresspeople together and deliver this message? Maybe President Biden, I don’t know, I know that someone has to. How often are you/me/us so sure of ourselves that we cannot admit error? How often do we go deaf when someone is speaking to our Divine Image? I am dealing with this very situation right now. I had to rise above my desire to get even and see the Divine Image in people who don’t even realize that they are acting from their Pharaoh. It is hard, I want to act from my Pharaoh place and, for a while, I did. It just is not me anymore nor do I want to return to that me. What are the areas that we can agree on? What are the principles we share? What is the best way for us to serve God in our own way and together? These are the questions that come up for me this week, this year. Seeing ourselves in Torah allows us to learn and be in truth and take the next right action. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Mark 

The Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 16

Continuing to re-read Amos is chilling to me as well as hopeful. Watching the Inaugural yesterday rekindled a pride, hope and proof that our democracy works and can work better, if we will seek truth, not let perfection getting the way of ‘more perfect’ and see our country and ourselves as works in progress. I feel this way every 4 years whether I voted for the person taking office or not. I was especially uplifted yesterday by the ex-Presidents club that came together to let our entire country know that we can find togetherness in our shared love for our country and our service. I was inspired as I am at the beginning of each Inaugural and this year, I am still inspired and hopeful. 

Amos inspires me also. In Chapter 7 as God is letting Amos know what will happen to Israel because they have broken the Covenant, Amos says “Adonai, pray forgive, how will Jacob survive, he is so small.”(Amos 7:2,5). Each time, God repents and says it will not happen. I am so inspired by Amos because he stands up to Israel and stands up for Israel. He stands up for God and to God. WOW! Talk about speaking truth to power. He is the epitome of Rabbi Heschel’s description of a prophet in his interview with Carl Stern in 1972, “The kind of man who combine a very deep love, a very powerful dissent, a painful rebuke with unwavering hope.” Amos is our model for living, I believe. He is willing to stand up for Israel because he sees Israel’s flaws and cares for Israel. God too cares so God repents because Amos asked and God heard truth from God’s prophet. We get to do this also. We get to pray to God for others and we do this when we get out of ourselves. At an AA meeting I attend, one of the members said: “whenever I get stuck on me…” I loved this description of selfishness and narcissism, stuck on me. Amos goes beyond the me to embrace the we, he goes beyond his hurts and traumas to care for and about others. I am proud of the times I have done this and embarrassed about the times I didn’t. How often are you “stuck on me” and how often are you embracing the we? 

We all are descendants of the Prophets, Jew, Christian, Muslim, all of us have the gift to combine love, dissent, rebuke and hope. Also shows us the way when one of the priest’s of King Jeroboam tells him to get out of here and stop prophesying. Amos, responds by saying: “I am not a prophet… I am a cattle breeder and a tender of sycamore figs. Adonai took me away…and said to me ‘go prophesy to My people Israel’.”(Amos 7:14-15). Amos tells the priest what is to befall him and it isn’t good. What is most important is that Amos recognizes his calling is from God. He is not concerned enough with what the priest thinks or the King thinks to stop him from speaking the words that God gives him. Yesterday, I listened as President Joe Biden told the 1000+ people he was swearing in to listen to their gut and allow what is inside these go up to their heart and then have their brain speak the words in a way that is kind and decent, Harriet and I remarked that the President was counseling us all to live from our souls and not our intellect. I think about the times I combined love, dissent, rebuke and hope in proper measure and the times I didn’t combine these essential ingredients in proper measure. Finding the right combination for the moment takes being present in the moment. It means I have to be maladjusted to conventional notions and cliches as Rabbi Heschel teaches. 

All of us have a word of God in us, as my friend, teacher and guide Rabbi Ed Feinstein teaches, and we have to speak it. We have to shout it sometimes (a trait I am very good at), we have to whisper it sometimes (not so good at this sometimes) and we have to speak it clearly and in ways another person can understand (jury is still out on this one). I know that the word of God that I am compelled to speak is powerful and needed. I know this, because like Amos, I heard God call me, finally some 34+ years ago. I have kept hearing God call me and I know that my word is needed as is yours. I know that we all get to live from our guts and allow the words and experience of God in our gut can open our hearts and help our brains find the best way to speak to another human being, as Joe Biden said yesterday. I pray that you will hear God’s call to you, speak it to us and help to make a ‘more perfect union’ within oneself, within our community and within our country. Stay sage and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets - a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 15

As we prepare for the Inauguration of Joseph Robinette Biden, our 46th President, the words of Amos ring out to me. In Chapter 6 the prophet calls out to the people, exhorting them to see what truly is and how they have been acting. He calls out to the “notables of the leading nation on whom the house of Israel pin their hopes”(Amos 6:1). Amos is so concerned with the ways of the leaders how they are taking the people down a road of ruin and destruction. I am thinking about where we are as a country and a people. We have let our leaders take us down a ruinous path more than once. Our Government is based on checks and balances for justice and mercy, not a power grab for the financial benefit of a few elected people. Yet, these past 4 years have shown us what happens when this behavior is left largely unchecked. Let me be clear, this happens in Democratic and Republican administrations and with Congresspeople of both parties. 

Amos is speaking to all of us when he says: “Yet you ward off a day of woe and convene a session of lawlessness.”(Amos 6:3). I am struck by how prescient his words are to all of us. We keep thinking the Prophets were only for their time yet, as with Torah, they are for all time. I am thinking about the times I have “convened sessions of lawlessness” this was the chaos and destruction of my days of active addiction. I wish I could say all the days of my recovery never had these sessions, yet this would be a lie. I, like many of us, have engaged in false pride as Amos tells the House of Israel: “Adonai swears I loathe the pride of Jacob and I detest his fortresses. I will declare forfeit city and inhabitants alike.”(Amos 6:*8). I am thinking of all the times I was so sure I was right and couldn’t hear others’ opinions, warnings and advice. I think of how I bought my own press at times and became blind to the dangers in front of me. I think of how I thought I had built a cushion, a protection around me it turned out to be forfeit. I blame no one for my destruction, I realize that I missed the signs because of my pride, my hurt and my disbelief. I am sad for those who suffered because of my pride over the 32 years of my leadership of Beit T’Shuvah. None of it was intentional, and it doesn’t matter, the actions were wrong and I am sorry. I ask all of us, on this day of a new administration beginning  to see how our pride has caused lawlessness in our inner world and to those around us that we love and the ones we don’t love as well. 

We are coming out of an administration that: “turned justice into poison weed and the fruit of righteousness to wormwood.”(Amos 6:12). The prophet Amos, in the name of Adonai is exhorting us to turn back to our roots as a people. The people Israel was founded on and with Grace, Justice, Righteousness and Truth. He is telling us that all of these fundamentals have been poisoned and ruined. When I look at the past 4 years, I see the same. 

Justice has been perverted to serve Trump and his cronies, Grace has been granted to the powerful few, Righteousness was thrown to the ground like the family separation, and Truth was replaced with ‘alternative facts’. For 4 years we have been bombarded with lies, perversions, false pride and power grabs. While it is easy to blame Trump and his mobsters, it is more important to see how we all have done this in our own ways. It is imperative, if we are to learn from Amos to, to see how we are not so much better than people we look down upon. We have to see our own inner racism, we have to look at our own bias’ and prejudices that are “cancers of our souls” as Rabbi Heschel teaches. We all need to find our part in each and every interaction and not just blame another(s). 

God is angry that the poor and the needy have been used and perverted. President Biden, Vice-President Harris, Congress, Courts, I pray that you will take your oaths seriously and not serve a political agenda. I pray that you will serve God’s agenda and the People’s agenda. I pray that the rest of us also serve God’s agenda and the People’s agenda-letting go of false pride, lawlessness, and revering justice, righteousness, truth, and Grace. Each of us has a part in this endeavor of democracy, will you step up to your part? Stay safe, God Bless Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the United States of America and you, Rabbi Mark

The Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 14

Continuing with Chapter 5 of Amos, I am finding a strong connection with both Adonai and Amos. Rabbi Heschel says in his book The Prophets: “It was not only iniquity that had aroused the anger of the Lord, it was also piety, upon which His words fell like a thunderbolts. Sacrifice and ritual were regarded as the way that leads to the Creator. The men and institutions dedicated to sacrificial worship were powerful and revered.” I am going a little nuts here. Like the prophets of Israel, Rabbi Heschel disturbs me greatly. He, as he says in his interview about the prophets, “gives me a bad conscience”. As I think about God’s anger, I do understand how God’s words can be understood as said in anger and they are harsh. Yet, I am reminded that rebuke is a Mitzvah, a part of the Holiness Code and God’s rebuke feels like anger because of our fear of God and our thinking that we can appease Adonai as idol worshipers appease their idols. 

In fact, Adonai doesn’t work that way. Because Adonai is abstract, ‘the Ineffable One’ as Rabbi Heschel refers to God, it is easy to believe that if we do the rituals, it will be good enough. I know many people who think because they go to pray everyday, observe the Sabbath, keep the laws of kashrut (food laws in Judaism) they are pious and can do anything they want. It is okay to cheat on taxes, in business, on my wife, etc. We have built powerful religious institutions, we have built powerful secular institutions and the people in charge think they can “get away” with things because they live out the rituals of their institutions. Many Priests, Ministers, Imams, Rabbis, and other Clergy believe that they can hide their imperfections and get away with acting them out because they follow the “rules and rituals” of their particular religion. In my addiction, I lived a life of ‘if I can take it then it is mine’, I always had a job as a cover for my criminality, I made hanging out at the bars a business selling stolen merchandise so I could drink all day. In my recovery, I realize how I stayed sober and have not always acted from my highest moral place. I think this understanding of what Rabbi Heschel and the Prophet Amos is saying is something intuitive within me and all of us. When we allow ourselves to go past what is expedient, we realize that we know when we are putting on a facade and when something is real to us. Being real means that study, prayer, ritual, Shabbat go through us rather than us checking them off and going on to the next thing. I can’t count how many times people have quoted the Bible, the Big Book, the New Testament, etc to me and when I ask them what it means to them, how it changes them, they can’t answer. 

The secular institutions have become so strong that the words and lies of the Internet rule the Political Parties. Fake news, stop the steal, defund the police, etc. are all battle cries that show the power of the extremes. We have too many people who take up a battle cry in order to get elected, to turn our country from a democracy to either a theocracy or a secular rule that regulates every aspect of life. Our secular institutions have the power to accept or reject people based on religion, color, creed, gender, etc. in the most subtle of ways and, sometimes, not so subtle. We hear about calls for unity from the people who tried to break the backs of the working poor, people of color, Barack Obama, who denied the results of a free and fair election until it was almost too late. We have been ruled by people who don’t see differences, they see hatred and politics is a blood sport. Yet, they say that they are only playing by the rules:)

Amos has a message for all of the people mentioned above and for all of us: “I loathe, I spurn your festivals, I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies. If you offer Me burnt offerings…I will not accept them. …Spare me the sound of your hymns, and let Me not hear the music of your lutes. But let justice well up like water and righteousness as a mighty stream.”(Amos 5:21-24)

I am sitting here trembling. I keep being overwhelmed by righteousness and justice. I am trembling for all the times I have not allowed justice and righteousness to rule me, guide me and be the actions I take. This trembling is not a self-loathing, rather it is my awareness of my imperfections and the trembling brings me to the awe of God’s forgiveness and understanding of our imperfection. This is why I started today’s writing with God being the Rebuker-in-Chief. God is not asking for our perfection here, God is demanding that we walk our talk and stop saying one thing and doing another. Aren’t we all tired of other people doing this? God’s call and question is to us: are you tired of doing the actions that you hate being done to you (to paraphrase Rabbi Hillel)? 

We see this behavior in our leaders, our parents, ourselves and our children. The prophets of Israel saw this thousands of years ago. Rabbi Heschel exhorts us to study the prophets and I know why. STOP THE LIE, is what I hear Amos saying in this passage. Justice and Righteousness have to prevail over our need to look good, look holy. They have to break through our facade and our lies to lead us to an authentic awareness of God, Reality, ourselves and another(s) human beings. What a lot of people miss is this is possible, otherwise God would not be demanding it of us. God cares so much about us that God sent Amos to tell Israel and us that we can change. God is giving us the path through Amos. Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Silverman, Rabbi Omer-man, Rabbi Shulwies, Rabbi Feinstein, Rabbi Neal Borovitz have been Amos to and for me and I am so grateful to all of them. Heather, my daughter, and Harriet, my wife and Sheri, my sister have been Amos to and for me. I pray that I honor their words and guidance more often than I don’t. How are you practicing justice and righteousness more in your daily living? How are you still lying to yourself and propping up your facade? Who is/are Amos in your life. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Daily Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets 

Day 13

Today we commemorate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and I want to take a quote from his speech on Vietnam. “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.”  Maybe the reason that Rabbi Heschel called Rev. King a prophet is because these words to me describe the life of a prophet. As I am reading Chapter 5 of Amos, I realize how much Rabbi Heschel’s description of the prophet from his interview with Carl Stern in Dec. of 1972: “a man who is able to hold God and man in one thought, at one time, at all times”Amos is a shepherd who is overwhelmed with the Spirit of God and the Call of God to a point that he cannot stay a shepherd and has to follow the demands of his inner truth as Dr. King describes above. Amos not only opposed the government’s policy, he was calling them back to Adonai as a parent calls a child, a lover calls to their partner, a teacher to their student. Apathy was not a choice for Amos or any prophet. “Hear this word which I intone”(Amos 5:1), the I in Hebrew is Anochi, the first word of the 10 Commandments. The identification is complete in this verse. Amos and God have melded. I hear the call of Pirke Avot 2:4, “Nullify my will before Your Will so Your Will becomes my will”. Amos has taken up God’s call, he is shouting it out across the land of Israel and he prays people listen. This is what Rev. King did, this is what Rabbi Heschel did. Now, we get to do it also. Amos was privileged to be a prophet, as were Rev. King and Rabbi Heschel. We are privileged also! We get to use our voice to speak out against racism and hatred, against sedition and power, against unnecessary pain and terror. We have to speak out, loud and proud through our agony and push through our apathy and uncertainty. Amos did all of this as did Rev. King and Rabbi Heschel. No one is 100% certain of anything 100% of the time in my opinion and experience. In fact, if we wait for that certainty, Rome, Washington DC, Jerusalem will all burn. I know the role that fear has in speaking out. I know the role that fear of losing has in taking action that is ‘against the grain’. I know that Amos had to be overwhelmed by God and his will nullified so God’s Will became his. I believe this is true for all of the prophets, especially the ones we have had and do have in our midst. We are descendants of the prophets, we can hear the words of prophets like Father Greg Boyle who teaches us kinship and to erase the margins. We are descendants of the prophets so we can march and write and allow God to overwhelm us into action. 

What action you may ask? “Seek Me and you will live”(Amos 5:4,6). Who is Amos railing against and for? “You enemies of the righteous, you takers of bribes, you who subvert in the gates the cause of the needy”(Amos 5:12). Oh how arrogant are we? We advanced Western Society types, who are so full of ourselves that we can’t see how the prophet Amos was and is speaking to us. I realize how subtle it is to be a taker of bribes. I have taken the bribe that my Yetzer HaRa has offered to feel good and not always had the interests of others in my actions, rather I took the bribe of feeling good for myself. I did what Rev. King was speaking about, giving into uncertainty, apathy and fear. Scarcity ruled me for most of my addiction. There was never enough and I had to get more, consume more and, no matter what, there was never enough. In my recovery, I still get overwhelmed by this experience and I go to seek God so I can live. When I have ‘taken a bribe’, moved someone who was a referral from a donor up on the waiting list, when I have let someone stay in jail longer because someone who was a full-pay wanted/needed that bed, I realize that I made those decisions knowingly and admittedly. I don’t need to defend or be defended, I just need to see the subtle ways I took bribes and I ask that you all see the subtle ways we are guilty of Amos’ charges as well. 

“Seek me and you will live” is reverberating through me. As every person in recovery, as every person of faith will attest to the truth of these words. While some people talk about the hiddenness of God, the prophet Amos is debunking this myth. If I keep believing that God is hiding, doesn’t care, etc. it gives me free reign to make policies that are good for me and a small number of people, these policies just are not God’s Will. Knowing that every time I seek God, I live better, I find God and connect to Adonai gives me the strength to carry on through the uncertainty that Rev. King was speaking about. I know that with all the errors I have made over these part 32+ years, I have constantly and consistently sought and seek God so I can see myself clearly and truthfully, do T’Shuvah, move on and live. How are you see seeking God so that you can truly live and live a full life? I believe this is the secret to the success of Rev. King and Rabbi Heschel. 

“Seek good and not evil that you may live” Amos says in verse 14. He goes on to say in verse 15 “hate evil and love good”. This is the way to God and to establish justice and receive God’s Grace according to Amos and I would agree. We have become so blind and confused that we cannot differentiate between good and evil. We see this in the polls that say 43% of Americans approve of Donald Trump! We see this in the way that people are denying the need for the Covid-19 vaccines. We see this in the way many of us do business, the ways that many of us defend ourselves when we do wrong. These words are ringing in my ears and shaking my body. I have to look again at the ways/times I have confused good and evil. Loving good and seeking good are not intellectual endeavors, they are actions that must be taken daily, hourly by us and for us and everyone else. On this day commemorating Rev. King, I pray we all allow our prophetic voice to overwhelm us as Amos did, hear the call of the prophets past and present, and join with the 46th President of the United States to find a middle path to reviving and recovering the soul of our country. In doing this, we will recover our own souls and paths. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Daily Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 12

Our inability to hear and heed the call of Adonai is so prevalent in Chapter 4 of Amos, as it is in all the words of the Prophets. After berating Israel for carousing, taking advantage of the poor and needy, then bringing sacrifices to make everything okay, Amos goes on a rant. One of the things that I missed in studying Amos before is how much I can and must identify with both the people Israel and the prophet Amos and Adonai. All of us have had the experiences of all three and most of us don’t realize it and/or pay the experience no attention. Ask yourself, how often do/did you take actions that were not correct and think ‘everyone does this’, ‘I am entitled’, ‘I will atone on Yom Kippur’, etc. The Rabbis of the Talmud made it very clear that people think that way so they decreed that to say “I will sin and atone on Yom Kippur” doesn’t work! Seeing how I have done this in the past makes me want to vomit at my arrogance, entitlement, and deafness. It takes all three to do this and, while we are not perfect, it is a call to us to continue to do T’Shuvah, take inventory so we stop this behavior quickly. 

I hear Amos’ plea to the people Israel to look at themselves and turn back to God. “Yet you did not turn back to Me” is a phrase that is said 5 times in Chapter 3 of Amos verses 6-11. I am struck by the pain of Adonai and the prophet Amos in these verses. As Rabbi Heschel writes in The Prophets on page 35: “The song of lament concerning the obduracy of the people, with its recurrent refrain, five times repeated, “Yet you did not return to Me,” is an expression of God’s mercy and of His disappointment.” How easy it is for us to get confused and try to confuse/deceive others by reading these verses and making them into harshness and anger rather than mercy and disappointment. I did this for years, I realize. I heard judgement and castigating when the people that loved me were showing me mercy and expressing their disappointment. It is so easy to lie to ourselves out because we got caught, we love to deceive, we don’t want to be responsible and we just want to do what we want to do with no recriminations nor responsibility. Adonai called to me more than 5 times, more than 1 prophet reached out to me. I thought my brother, Rabbi Neal Borovitz, spoke to me in anger and disdain, now, re-immersing myself in Amos, I see how disappointed, afraid and merciful he was being towards me. It is humbling, it makes me joyous to realize this truth about Neal and so many others who have called and I have been unable to hear. I, like many people, have gotten resentful when people have chastised me for my own good as ‘who do they think they are’, ‘yeah, you do the same things’, etc. Rather than seeing in their eyes and faces and hearing in their voices the pain, disappointment and merciful plea to return. God’s words, “Yet you did not return to Me” are words of desire and welcoming. 

How can we hear these words as a call to begin again? How can we hear God’s mercy and take it in and return to our core essence? How can we help our country heal? “You have become a brand plucked from the burning” (Amos 4:11) is a beginning, I believe. Every person in Recovery knows that we have been burnt by our addictions and almost consumed by them and we have been saved by the Grace of God. America was founded by the Grace of God, we have won wars by the Grace of God, our Capital was invaded on Jan. 6 and it survived by the Grace of God, our democracy has been threatened by lies and deceptions from the top and it has survived by the Grace of God. Are we, as Americans, willing to go to any lengths to grow and deepen our democracy, our commitment to truth, our repayment to God for saving us? To do this means we have to be as dedicated to steps 4-9 as anyone who is in recovery. To do this we have to do T’Shuvah each and every day/week so we can return to God and repay God’s Grace. 

God has saved America, we ask God to Bless America all the time. God has saved the Jewish People, we ask for God’s Blessings 100+ times a day. Amos says: “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel”(Amos 4:12), which is commonly seen as a predictor of punishment according to Rabbi Heschel, is God’s last hope to change the hearts and souls of Israel. Maybe a face to face meeting will open their hearts, their minds and their souls. I know it did for me and every recovering person, “Having had a Spiritual Awakening as a result of these steps” is the beginning of the 12th Step of AA. I had a Spiritual experience/meeting with Adonai in a jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca in December of 1986 and it changed my life and the lives of so many others. I ask our Senators and Congresspeople, our Clergy and Laypeople, are we truly willing to meet God and have our hearts and minds changed? This reminds me of a statement by President George W. Bush, when I met him in Los Angeles for a roundtable discussion of faith-based recovery with 6 other people, he said: “I’m an old drunk who God opened my heart and I never have to drink again.” Maybe if we all let God in our hearts, we will argue for the sake of heaven and what is the next right thing to do to carry out God’s Will instead of arguing for the sake of ourselves, our own power and what serves me best! This is the way to honor Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel, RFK, JFK, LBJ and their struggles to make this happen. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Daily Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 11

Amos is a prophet who is deeply connected to God, as are all prophets. Yet, to me, Amos is so upset and worried about the people and God that he sounds angry when he is being compassionate. He sounds vengeful when he is scared that the People Israel are destroying themselves. Amos is asking the people to hear these words of God, he is calling to them to hear and listen and change and this is the compassion Amos and God have for the people. It is also the words and tone of a man who has, as Rabbi Heschel teaches in his book, The Prophets, “the inner compulsion to convey what the voice proclaims; not escape for shelter, but identification with the voice.” Amos is identifying with the voice of compassion from and for God and the people Israel. 

The opening of Chapter 3 of Amos is so interesting and beautiful and sad: “Hear this word, that Adonai speaks upon you Children of Israel…You Alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth-that is why I will call you to account for all your iniquities.” This is Amos’ and God’s statement about chosenness, you are chosen to carry out God’s mission, don’t mistake chosen ness as divine favoritism or immunity, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us in The Prophets. 

OY! I am sitting here at my computer at 2:30am on the Friday before MLK Day and I am embarrassed about myself, my people and people in general. I am embarrassed about all the times I felt like I “had something coming” because I was part of the chosen people. I look back at the days prior to my recovery and I am experiencing the words of Amos viscerally. In my years of recovery, I look at the ways I have been living in the world of “white male privilege” and the world of being hated for being a Jew. It truly has been a both/and. I have been chosen to carry God’s Word and Ways to my corner of the world and I have taken for granted that people will understand me and indulge me in my ways, not always considering the best way to connect to them. I am embarrassed about the missed opportunities because of my own entitlement thinking. My current state of being is to appreciate the chastisements as well as the accolades, the hurts as well as the joys and use the hurts and chastisements as ways to ‘fail forward’ grow from and not be resentful towards the humans who deliver these (valid or not) and hear the voices of Amos and God in the truthful chastisements and hurts. 

I think about our current state of affairs and I say OY again. We are living in a world of entitlement with little to no embarrassment. What has/is happening with our government is a snapshot of this. Listening to Rep. McCarthy call for unity when all he has done is sow seeds of discord and lies is almost laughable if it wasn’t so serious. He believes “his people” have been chosen to do as they wish and they are immune from any responsibility and consequences. He must not be reading the same Bible/Old Testament that I am! Trump and his minions will “get away” with their crimes because of Trump’s pardon power-yet, to accept a pardon one has to admit that they are guilty of crimes, so their own admissions will stay with them. Kushner, Ivanka, MBS, et.al. all believe in their entitlement and privilege and forget the responsibility that comes with it. We can see this play out with many people of privilege, white and people of color, and I believe this latest attack by the white supremacists, haters, Q-Anoners, all people who believed they had the right to upend our democracy because they were sold lies by Fox News, Breitbart, Parlor, OAN, etc. has woken most people up. I don’t know if the changes we are seeing right now will stick, yet Jan. 6 did more to get people to hear the word of God than any other event in recent history. We all see privilege come into focus with the Vaccines for Covid-19, people trying to jump the line, rich donors trying to buy their way in, calling hospitals and other healthcare sites to get theirs because they donated money. These are the people Amos is talking to.

And, Amos is talking to all people. All of us have to look inside of ourselves and see how we have come to believe that there should be no consequences for our behaviors. The men and women who opposed the Electoral Count on Jan.6, 2021 believe they should not be held accountable-the people who are against healthcare reform, social security, etc because of personal responsibility don’t take any! Yet it is not just pointing the finger at ‘them’. We have to remember that when we point our finger at another human being, three more are pointed toward ourselves. It is time for us to once again return to looking inside and seeing how we have bastardized our privilege, our chosenness, using it for gain instead of service. 

“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan… who defraud the poor, who rob the needy”(Amos 4:1) As I read these words on this day, I am trembling with fear and awe. These words, written 2000+ years ago, are wringing in my ears. Rabbi Heschel says this is referring to the women who were addicted to wine and I think of how I defrauded the poor and robbed the needy in my own addiction. I am thinking about how all of us have done this in overt and subtle ways. I am in awe of our ability to do T’Shuvah and to change also. This is the compassionate message of Amos, as we will see later, you can change, I can change, we can change. 

On this MLK weekend, I am asking all of us to look inside ourselves and see how we can hear the words of Amos, see that we are all God’s children, all equal in dignity and value and all unique. Look inside of ourselves and make a commitment to live our uniqueness, carry out God’s mission for us and be one grain of sand better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Weekly Parsha- Va'Era

Weekly Parashah - Va’Era

This week’s Parashah continues the story of our Exodus from Egypt and the struggle between Moses and Pharaoh, the struggle between Moses and the Israelites and the struggle of the Israelites within themselves. It is a struggle between slavery and freedom. God ‘appeared’ to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, the Parashah begins. This name is about God’s power, according to the Rabbis, and to Moses, God proclaims the name God has reserved for the Israelites, Adonai, representing God’s mercy and connection. It is interesting that this name is introduced in this Parashah when the plagues begin. Yet, it is also fitting because each time God relents on a plague, it is from mercy, I believe. As I am immerse myself in the opening verses, I realize how much I wanted God’s mercy shown to me and not my enemies/opponents. I realize how much I did not want “all-powerful” to render my justice, rather I wanted “mercy” to-for me and not always for you.:) This opening verse and God’s taking back the plagues time after time, teaches me to ask for mercy for others and show the same mercy I desire towards others. This is what I believe Dr. Susannah Heschel means when she speaks of seeing people who practice their Pharaoh-like instincts in the world as pathetic, meaning I have to show them Divine Pathos, Divine Concern and realize how sad it is that someone else is so stuck in this negativity and disrespect for God’s creation. I also realize when I acted from an “all-powerful” place without regard for the mercy others needed nor their opinions. To all of you, I sincerely apologize and know that I have learned a lot of lessons this past year and over the years that I will not repeat in the coming years. 

There are two more verses that I am struck by this year. In Shmot 6:9, “But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.” When told earlier in last week’s Parashah, the Israelites were joyous and now they can’t even hear. How is this possible? According to the Rashbam, it is because they had expected to get some rest and now it was worse than ever. Pharaoh’s idea of increasing the pressure to break their spirits seemed to be working. It is an interesting parallel to how slaves in America were treated-harsh labor, poor food, separation of families, beatings, etc. is it any wonder why their spirits were crushed? I see this in addicts, their families and, to be truthful, in every human being. During this pandemic it has become apparent how many people are suffering from a crushed spirit, from lack of connection, from fear of financial insecurity, from job loss, from food insecurity, from education being worse than it was, from the incitement to insurrection by the President and his minions, by the moral depravity of our government through treating poor people as criminals, etc. For addicts, ‘why bother’ has become even more pronounced. Johann Hari says that the opposite of addiction is connection and these have become frayed and, not being able to have in-person meetings has impacted so many people struggling with this fatal disease. I am reminded of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in God in Search of Man about being loyal to the first experience of a Spiritual experience and staying loyal to our responses to that experience. It is the only way to hear through our crushed spirits. It is the only way to remember we have a reason to be here and remind ourselves to live life on God’s Terms, not according to the terms of our enslaver. 

In verse 7:3 of Shmot, God says that God will harden Pharaoh’s heart. This seems like a set up for Pharaoh to fail and very unfair of God, similar to our the gods of Greek and Roman Mythology behaved. What does the verse really mean? First, the word ‘Akasheh’ in Hebrew can mean harden and fierce. When I read that God made Pharaoh’s heart fierce, I understand this to be that God did not want Pharaoh to merely surrender by giving up, God wanted Pharaoh to surrender by allowing himself to be confronted and defeated by a Higher and Truer Being. It is so important for all of us to remember that surrender to God is joining the winning side and being able to live according to our soul’s call and knowledge, not by our intellect and emotions alone. God wants Pharaoh to be a worthy adversary, God wants Pharaoh to experience the same afflictions as the Israelites, I am sure. More importantly, for me, is that I have to have a heart that is strong enough and hard enough to withstand the many disappointments that I will experience and stay rooted and grounded in God’s Will and not give in to my whims and fantasies. God has hardened my heart to strengthen me for the battles to come, God hardened Moses’ heart to withstand the onslaught from both Pharaoh and the Israelites and stay true to God. We are ruled by a Pharaoh right now, Trump, McConnell, McCarthy, et al. and we have to be the Moses’ for them and for all people whether they agree or not. This battle for the soul of this country mirrors the battle for the soul of the Jewish People that we have been engaged in since Egypt and the battle for our own soul which is a daily battle and struggle. I pray your soul is winning your battle so we can join together to win the larger battles in the name of Adonai. God Bless, Shabbat Shalom and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Daily Prophets- a daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 10

Continuing with Amos’ exhortations to Israel we see the sadness of God when Israel and Judah break the Covenant and forget their Redeemer. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book The Prophets writes: “Yet the nations were not, like Israel, condemned for internal transgressions”. I understand this to mean that while the “ignoring of the covenant of brotherhood” is a terrible crime, it is even more devastating when we break a deal made a long time ago, while Israel was in Egypt and then at Sinai, and made directly with God. This internal hurt is so much more devastating and personal. Israel and Judah have a personal relationship with God and they have been unfaithful to the Covenant. While it is common to see anger in Amos’ words, I see his being the bringer of God’s sadness that the people God redeemed, the people that God took to be God’s own, the people that God saved from Egypt have “Spurned the Torah of Adonai…beguiled by the delusions after which their fathers walked”(Amos2:4). I am struck power of these words. I want to hide in embarrassment for all the times I have spurned the Torah of Adonai and the delusions I have given into. When we confuse role for entitlement, when my actions are based on my role and not my soul, I am giving in to the delusions of grandeur that I have from time to time. I call it buying my own press/BS. I realize the subtle ways I have both spurned the teachings of Torah and given into the delusions of my mind. I am aware of the devastating pain when an internal relationship ( a close relationship that has a bond/covenant to it written or unwritten) is broken, especially with no recognition of the harm, rather blame the one who is harmed. I have done this and I have had this done to me. These are truly the greatest hurts and pains. This, I believe is what Amos is speaking of, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us. Yet, the pain we feel does not mean we lash out and do the same, we don’t get even. I have to own my part and have Divine Pathos for those that can’t own their part, as Dr. Susannah Heschel taught me. I am not speaking of the Halacha as the Rabbis have codified, I am speaking of the Torah’s path to living well and decently. Again, I am speaking of the internal relationships, the close covenantal ones. None of us are perfect and that doesn’t mean we don’t have to be responsible and growing. Are you aware of your path away from the Torah of decency and kindness? Are you aware of the delusions you still follow? Are you willing to do T’Shuvah for the 

I am thinking about our current experience in the United States and how members of Congress were not willing to hold Donald Trump accountable for his transgressions and instead went along with his lies and tried to end our democracy. These people have spurned the Torah(teaching and words) of the Constitution! Not only Donald Trump is Amos speaking to, he is calling out to all of us and especially the enablers among us. “Because they have sold for silver those whose cause was just, and the needy for a pair of sandals. You who crush the heads of the poor into the dust and push off the road the humble of the land”(Amos 2:6-7) Amos is railing against the rich and powerful, the kings and the priests who have sold not only others, not only crushed people, but have sold their own souls as well. God is calling out Israel for being unjust. God is calling our Israel for mistreating the poor and the powerless. God is calling Israel out for “thereby profane My holy name”(Amos2:7). These words describe our country now and we need to make the changes so as to not destroy ourselves. Our internal transgressions have never been fully healed and acknowledged, which is why the reckoning with our Racial Inequality and our hatred of “the other” is being addressed now and needs to be! The Congress has sold its soul for silver, it has crushed the poor, the needy, the just and the humble in order to curry favor with their party and get reelected. It is time for all good people to stand up for their country. Not some political agenda, the agenda of the USA, the agenda of the Bill of Rights, the agenda of those who fought and died for our freedom, the agenda of every immigrant, from the Mayflower to today, the agenda of decency, justice, kindness and truth. This is true whether one is a Republican or a Democrat, conservative or progressive or, like most of us-in the center, a little right, a little left just not at the extremes. When getting elected is more important than fighting for truth and right, we are living the way that Amos rails about. 

“You made the nazirites drink wine and the prophets not to prophecy”(Amos 2:12) As a recovering Alcoholic who has not ‘drunk wine’ in over 32 years, I understand this to mean going against sacred vows we make. I am thinking of how I have made myself go against the different vows I have made. I am thinking of why we have the Kol Nidre Prayer each year, we will go against vows and we will fall short, that is not the issue for Amos, I believe. The issue is how we break our vows and then defend ourselves and/or deny that we have. I know that I have been indecent at times and wrapped myself in some righteous garment. I know that I have that person and I am sorry for the times I have and be more vigilant in the now and forward. Reading these words of Amos reminds me of Rabbi Heschel’s introduction of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Rabbinical Assembly Convention in 1968, 10 days before he was killed from the book Abraham Joshua Heschel Essential Writings selected by Susannah Heschel. “Where in America today do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel> Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. God has sent him to us.” As I ponder this introduction, I think of all the people who have spoken out and been cut down and/or silenced and marginalized, I am frightened. We can no longer be a cookie cutter nation with everyone in lock step with each other and/or one’s side. We have to listen to the prophecy of others, we have to learn/relearn how to hear each other and not believe we are the only ones who know truth and everyone else is fake news. We cannot have the Capital attacked anymore. It is up to our leaders to compromise and do what is best and right according to a higher good: caring for the widow, the stranger, the poor and the orphan. Leaving our racist past in the rearview mirror and looking forward with everyone in the car and on the bus. Judging people based on the “content of their character and not the color of their skin” as Rev King taught and I would include not the religion they practice is not only a goal, it is our destiny, as Jews and as Americans. How have you “ordered the prophets not to prophesy and made the nazirites drink the wine”? How have you stifled your own inner voice, the voice of God to make your actions okay? Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Daily Prophets- A daily take on the Prophets to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 9

Elijah’s departure from earth in a “fiery chariot” has led to many stories about him not dying. In fact, some say that Elijah’s return will herald the Messiah coming. Elijah is also used in Rabbinic literature as one who sits among the poor, strangers, etc waiting for someone to do a kindness. I think about Elijah from the Bible and the way that the Rabbis have recreated him to be and wonder why. 

As I said in the beginning of this endeavor, the Prophets were the first spiritual counselors in our tradition. The Rabbis wanted to lessen the impact of the prophets in order to put more order into the world and not rely on inspiration, as my friend and teacher Rabbi Igael Gurin-Malous taught me yesterday when we were talking. The Rabbis were creative, for sure, in the ways they made the Talmud so central to our way of being for so long. The Rabbis were correct to distinguish that we would need a road map to live well. They were also afraid of Jews being wiped out because if the Prophets were central, the Jews would have tried another revolt against Rome and been annihilated. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about the Prophets and the Prophetic Voice filled all of his writings, in my opinion. His book on the Prophets got him out of his study and into the streets, according to his interview with Carl Stern in 1972, just prior to his death. All of his social justice work, his work with Vatican II, Rev. Martin Luther King, and the movement against the war in Vietnam, stemmed from his reading of the Prophets and Torah. He was vilified by some as mixing in where he didn’t belong and to him, these demonstrations, talks, writings were exactly where he belonged.

Rabbi Heschel serves as a model for all Rabbis. Let go of the need to worship the Halacha, let go of the desire to stay in the Beit Midrash, get out into the streets, stand up for those who need help and lead your congregations and organizations to do the work that God calls us to. These are more acceptable today than in earlier times, yet we are still not there. Too many Jews accept and agree with what happened at the Capital last Wednesday. In fact, there were Jews who participated with White Supremacists, people who think that “6 million wasn’t enough” who were proud of “Camp Aushwitz”!! I am aghast at this and I am angry. I am not afraid to say that Donald Trump is a clear and present danger. That is easy to do, as many Republicans are now saying. What is more difficult is to call out the people who helped foment this insurrection.

Elijah and the other Prophets would be screaming from the mountains and the valleys to throw out Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and the rest of the Republican Senators who objected after the insurrection and knew that they were playing a political game. Our Rabbis have to do the same, not just the liberal and/or progressive Rabbis (whatever that label means) but all Rabbis. 

We have let politics intervene in our relationship with God. I hear the words of Amos ringing in my ears. “Adonai roars from Zion, shouts aloud from Jerusalem…For three transgressions of Tyre…they handed over an entire population to Edom ignoring the covenant of brotherhood.”(Amos 1:1,9). Can we hear God roaring or are we too devoted to worshiping the false idol of Halacha, the false idol of power, the false idol of lies? Amos is a shepherd and he is overwhelmed with and by God. He is calling to the rich, the mighty, the powerful. Today, we are too caught up in kissing the rings of these people to call to them to change their ways. What is wrong with our leaders that they cannot hear God roar? They are too fat with their power and they have wrapped themselves in the cloak of zealotry for god, an idol they have created. The Jesus they worship is the Jesus they have created who loves the rich and the powerful, not the poor and downtrodden. This is not the Jesus that I have learned about from my Christian/Catholic friends. 

Just as the Jews who suck up to the Trumps, Cruz’, Hawley’s, McCarthy’s of the world are not worshiping Adonai. They are worshipping the Halacha, maybe, but really they too are cloaking themselves in righteousness and I am disgusted by it. 

Amos is telling us that when we break the Covenant of brotherhood, we are playing with fire as the next verse says: “I will send down fire upon the wall of Tyre and it shall devour its fortresses.”(Amos1:10) We have broken the Covenant of brotherhood in this country for a long time. In the song “America the Beautiful” we sing “God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood”. Where is that brotherhood? It left the building when we stopped living by the good and following God’s call. It is time for us to listen to the Shepherd from Tekoa, use their spiritual guidance and throw out the bums who are trying to make our country into an authoritarian state with them being in charge.

We need to hear and heed the call of the Prophets and let them direct us. I understand the need for certainty which Halacha brings, I understand and agree that having a roadmap is important in order to navigate the world. I also understand and know that the Prophets’ voice is unstable and volatile. I have that voice and I have used it well most of the time and not so good at others. When I use it not so good, it is harmful and scary. When it is appropriate, I have saved lives. I am no prophet! I, like you, have a prophetic voice that has been handed down to all of us from our ancestors and I believe it is time to use it so America does not burn down. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark