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The Prophets- Wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

    Day 142

“And the Lord said to him, Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and who cry for all the abominations that are done in its midst. Slay utterly old men and young men, young girls, and little children, and women; but do not come near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary.(Ezekiel 9:4,6)


Ezekiel is again angry and recounting an experience that could not have happened in Babylon, only in Jerusalem. This prophecy is either a recapping of what has happened in a different light or a vision that came to Ezekiel in Babylon as a reminder, explanation for the exile. He is certainly making the destruction and exile a punishment from God, not a political grab/gain for the Babylonian Empire. 


While the descriptions seem far fetched to many people today, I believe he is so over the top because of his inability to effect any of the changes/returns that the earlier prophets had demanded/requested. Ezekiel, I believe, suffers from survivors’ guilt and the guilt of one who could not make a difference in the outcome. He is suffering from his own need to fix that he could not control. Ezekiel is having a confrontation with himself, a dark night of the soul, and has to learn that he can only do the best he can and is powerless over the actions of other people. 


The first verse above tells us of God’s mercy and grace. God is sending someone to mark the foreheads of the people who recognize their errors and the errors of the people around them. Because they can “sigh and cry for all the abominations that are done in their midst” it shows God of their desire to return and, rather than allow Babylon to destroy everyone, God wants to save these people. It is interesting that the mark on the forehead has a similar significance to the mark of Cain-that this person is protected by God. 


I believe that we have forgotten to “sigh and cry” for the errors we make and the errors those around us make. We have become so used to defending our actions, refusing to admit our responsibility for our “missing the marks”, mistakes, failures-however you want to put it-and this makes us unable to “sigh and cry”. God and Ezekiel are reminding us that acknowledging our wrongs, seeing the wrongs of our friends, family, society is a holy action and one deserving of salvation. Actually, as I write this I am realizing without the “sigh and cry” we are not worthy of being saved. Hence, Rabbi Heschel’s teaching that “prayer will not save us, it may make us worthy of being saved”. 


Ezekiel has the people begin at the Sanctuary, I believe, because that was his place of work and service. It is the place and people who should have been helping the people return to God before the destruction began. It is the place where Ezekiel was ineffective and the place of his greatest shame. Instead of realizing his responsibility, he is in fact blaming the other priests and wanting revenge on them, I believe. How human is this! The more shame Ezekiel feels, the more he is unable to accept his responsibility for this outcome, the more blame he puts on another(s). Remember, Rabbi Heschel teaches “in a free society, some are guilty all are responsible”. 


He is interested in killing those fellow priests because he will then get revenge and call it God’s will. Revenge is never God’s Will, it is humankind’s will. We think that we can “get even” and exact our pound of flesh for the harms another(s) has inflicted upon us. It never truly works out that well, however. We cannot exact revenge and live a life compatible with God. God doesn’t seek revenge, only connection, purification. Whenever humans seek revenge, we become less than human, distant from God and never fully satisfied from our revenge. Yes there are schadenfreude moments and they don’t last long as well as realizing that what we hated done to us, we have done to another. Beginning at the Sanctuary does allow everyone else to see that no one is above God’s ways of living and everyone has to face themselves and God at sometime in their lives. 


In recovery, we have the mark on our foreheads. Before, it was a mark that everyone could see and know to stay away from us because we were not able to be reliable, not able to be truthful, not able to be honest, not able to live a life compatible with God, decency, kindness, justice and love. In recovery, we have turned our lives over to God’s will and God’s teachings, we “sigh and cry” for the errors of our past and the ones we make now-no longer hiding from you, me, and God. In recovery, we also rejoice in our transformation to being an instrument of God’s love, mercy, kindness, justice and truth. We rejoice in our return to God, society, community, family and our authentic self. 


I have the mark on my forehead and I “sigh and cry” at my errors and mistakes. I also “sigh and cry” at the errors and mistakes on another(s). I no longer have to “get even”, I no longer have to blame, I no longer feel less than, I no longer accept the shame another(s) want to put on me. God’s grace and mercy have truly saved me and I am so grateful. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 141

“And God said to me, human, do you see what they do? The great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to drive Me far away from My sanctuary? And I went in and saw;…all the idols of the house of Israel portrayed on the surrounding wall. …have you seen what the elders of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of pictures? For they say, the Lord does not see us; the Lord has forsaken the land.(Ezekiel 8:6,10,12).


The first verse above is a haunting question that is still ringing in my ears and God is still asking, I believe. It is the question that begs God’s call to Abraham and all of us since to:”Lift up your eyes and see!”. We have become more adept than our ancestors, possibly, at not seeing what we see because we see what we want to. They were masters of this behavior as we can see from the verses quoted above and the words of all the prophets. 


Do you see what you do, is the question that is calling out to me. I am humbled by looking at the ways we have driven God out of God’s house, not just the Churches, Mosques, Temples and Synagogues, how we have driven God out of our world and consciousness through the idols we have made of God. How often have we looked at our abominations and seen them as holy acts instead? We have become more and more entrenched in our own ideas, political correctness, self-deceptions, idolatry, etc. We are so entrenched that we are unable to “lift up our eyes and see!”. We need cataract surgery in order to lift the film that blinds us to our abominable actions. We need to “circumcise the foreskin of our hearts” as Moses commands us in Torah.

Yet, we don’t. We engage in different forms of idolatry, some more sophisticated and some so vulgar that it is impossible for us to believe it is idolatry. We are do engaged in our self-deception and deceiving another(s) we have come to buy our own lies! This is the greatest abomination of all to me; because just as the study of Torah leads to the living/doing of Torah, the engagement in self-deception and deceiving another(s) leads to living an idolatrous life and doing idolatrous actions.

We hide behind God’s words, proclaiming the ONE WAY to salvation and God. Yet, we are the idolators seeking everyone to follow us for our gain, not for God’s glory nor gain, according to Ezekiel here. Today, we don’t even hide the idols in the darkness of our rooms, rather we proudly display them with the buildings we name for someone who has enough money to pay for them. We worship names like Trump, Bezos, etc. not because they have done anything Holy, rather because they are loud, rich and lie with impunity. The charlatans who proclaim “on advice of counsel” in criminal or civil matters are hiding behind the bill of rights to hide their own guilt. The idol worshipers who twist God’s words and commandments from their pulpits, who say one thing to everyone and hold themselves to lower standards, who accuse another(s) of what they themselves are doing, the ‘dark money’ people who are pulling our strings of government so we are no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we are a government of the rich and powerful.


The people are told that God has forsaken us because of homosexuality, the immigrants we take in, the Jews, the Blacks, the Asians, etc by these charlatans. We are told that _____ has caused all of this trouble(fill in the blank) and that is why we have to do such and such. God has forsaken us because of YOUR idolatry is the pitch that this Shysters, Con people, Snake Oil Salespeople are using and it is working. These are the people who have abandoned God, these are the people who Ezekiel is saying caused the destruction of the Temple, Jerusalem and the defeat of Judah.

In recovery, we are constantly aware of the abominations we did in our life prior to recovery and, while we are nowhere near perfect today, we have left the paths that lead us to those abominations. We are constantly in conversation with our “higher consciousness” and with another(s) to keep ourselves in check and out of the paths that led to destroying our lives and the lives of another(s)! We no longer worship at the feet of idols, we know what is truly important, connection. We are aware that no amount of fame, fortune, etc will bring us authentic connection and we are not willing to engage in faux connection. In recovery, we have left the darkness of our rooms and celebrate our connection to God/Higher Power by walking in the Light of God and being grateful for God’s show of Grace to us. 


I also have done abominable actions. I also “lift up my eyes and see” every day. I realize that I also deceived myself to see what I wanted and not what was. I bought into people who were actually just deceiving me and, once again, I am on the outside looking in at idol worshipers, lawyers who lie, people for whom I am an easy scapegoat and ‘friends’ who deserted me. I have a part in this experience and my actions were wrong/stupid and I am portrayed as evil by the people I counted on. It is sad and I can relate to God’s sadness here. I also am committed to not be “indifferent to the sublime wonder of living” anymore and to celebrate connection to real friends and to people who walk their talk. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 140

“The survivors shall escape to the mountains, like doves together, each person shall moan their iniquities. …horror shall cover them, every face shall betray shame… I will treat them in accordance with their own ways and judge them according to their judgements.”(Ezekiel 7:16,18,27).


The last verse above is an interesting one for me. It is God being God’s least merciful version of God. While we keep insisting on FAIR and everyone treated the same, here, the prophet is saying we will be treated as we acted and judged as we judged! Oh no, we will be treated as we treated others, so if we were racist and slave masters, we will be treated with racism and become a slave. If we were greedy and stole from our employees by underpaying them so the “shareholders could profit”, then we will be underpaid and stolen from, etc. While the lawyers tell us ‘if you do it for one, you have to do it for everyone’, do the lawyers want to be treated like they treat another(s)? I think not! Do government officials want to be treated the way they treat us citizens? Again, I think not. God is promising to treat us according to the ways we treat others and all of us should tremble. Are we ready to stand before God and be judged in the manner we judge another? Most of us count on God’s mercy and grace so the last verse above is terrifying to most of us.

It is important for us to hold onto this verse as it will cause us to be more Godlike in our ways of being and in the judgements we make. It will allow us to be less judgmental and more open to mercy and grace. It will give us the opportunity to constantly change our ways of being so we are more in concert with our Godly nature. Holding onto this verse eliminates the need for “it’s not fair” and sameness in acting and judging. Since all of us are created unique, what is fair for one, cannot be fair for another and what is just for one, can’t be just for another-rather we have to act in accordance with God’s Will for us individually and judge each person as individuals, not go by some metric.

This is how the survivors in the first verse above will relieve themselves of the shame and horror of their actions. Moaning over our iniquities is the first step on our journey back to a decent way of living and reconnection with God and another human being and humanity in general. We need to see the horror of our actions, we need to experience the shame of being created in the image of God and not recognizing nor honoring this truth. Instead, we go about our business thinking of ourselves and what is “best” for us and ours. Not being responsible for what is right and good in God’s world, not caring for the stranger and the needy and the poor in body, mind, finances, and spirit. We, the ones going about our business as usual, are the ones who are poorest in spirit and don’t realize it. We are spiritually bankrupt and claim to be flush with cash.

What is needed is a little horror and shame on the part of our leaders and on our part as well. False accusations are the same as murder in Jewish Law because they murder the integrity and dignity of another(s). Promoting lies, rewriting of history, cover-ups, blaming another(s) for ones flaws and failures, etc are all things that should bring us to horror and shame, yet many people extol these ways of being as Godly and people support them because self-deception is a major disease, as Rabbi Heschel teaches. In his book Who is Man, Rabbi Heschel in 1963, teaches: “There are slums, disease, and starvation all over the world and we are building more luxurious hotels in Las Vegas”. Some 60 years later, we are no better, maybe worse. 


In recovery, we experience the horror and shame of our actions that are in direct violation of God’s Will and Ways. We gather together to help each other face our flaws and failures, own up to God and to another(s) the direct nature of our errors and find ways to make amends to the people we have harmed. These principles are cornerstones of our recovery as we need to constantly “keep our side of the street clean”. Once we have come face to face with the horror we have caused and our faces betray the shame we experience from these actions, we are on the road back to decency, God as well as family, friends, community and, most importantly, our authentic self and a way of being in the world that honors our uniqueness and is compatible with being a partner of God’s.

I have faced with horror the negative ways I have acted and the paths that I have taken that led me away from God. I have experienced the shame of separating myself from God, believing the lie that I was doing God’s Will. I also faced with horror and shame the foolish belief in people I trusted to be true to their word and stay connected and helpful at all times. I am grateful that these times have been fewer and fewer in my 32+ years of recovery. I know that I am unafraid of God’s judgement as I have made amends and T’shuvah with those I harmed and with God. I also know that I have learned whom to trust and whom not to. I have taken off the blinders and stay open to the T’shuvah of another(s) as I pray people are open to mine. Even when it is not accepted nor acknowledged, I have learned that T’Shuvah takes the horror and shame away from me. Thank you God for the gift of horror, shame and T’Shuvah. God Bless and Stay Safe, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 139

“The word of God came to me.Yet I will leave a remnant, in that some of you will escape the sword and be scattered through the lands. And those of you who that escape will remember Me among the nations…how heartbroken I was through their faithless hearts which turned away from Me and through their faithless eyes which lusted after their fetishes. And they shall loathe themselves for all the evil they committed…”(Ezekiel 6:1,8-9).


Since Ezekiel is in Babylon when we first encountered him, I believe this is a retrospective view of what happened and a cautionary tale for the people to begin/continue the process of returning to God and letting go of their lusts and fetishes. God’s desire to connect with humans is so powerful in that God does not destroy completely. God keeps the covenant God made with Noah to never destroy the entire world again because humans act ungodly.

Being scattered among the nations is, I believe, a key to our return. Without going to another nation, being under their authoritarian and arbitrary rule, we will not be able to appreciate being a nation that worships God, not royalty, has a set of standards that enhances the dignity of every person, and can start to promote this way of being in the land they are living in order to be stronger in their resolve to not make the same mistakes they did before and learn from the mistakes of their ancestors. 


It is a revolutionary idea that Judaism in general and Ezekiel above is promoting: GOD CARES! God is so deeply involved with us that God is heartbroken by our faithlessness, by our turning away from God, by our lustful eyes and our running after the latest fad and fetish. We have to be in exile to see this? All of our Holy Books remind us that God is deeply involved in the plight of humanity. The Temple worship service is proof of God’s involvement, yet it became and empty ritual. Our prayer services are proof of God’s involvement and desire to connect, yet it can easily become boring, archaic and void of any power, going through the motions. Our study of Torah, Talmud, etc. is proof God cares and wants to improve our beingness. Yet, we make it about the arguments rather than immersing ourselves in the text to connect with God. 


Once we realize how heartbroken God is, we loathe ourselves for the evil we committed as the beginning of our T’Shuvah, our return to God. We need to have this deep disgust for our behaviors so we can taste the bitterness of our actions, like we taste the bitterness of slavery through the Maror at Passover. Tasting the bitterness will stop us, hopefully, from going down this same road again, from breaking God’s heart with our unfaithful heart and eyes. When this realization occurs, when we turn back to God with a clean heart and clear eyesight, we are then able, like Ezekiel, to hear the word of God that comes to all of us. Prophecy may have ended with Micah, however, the word of God still comes into our beings.


In The Prophets on page 226, Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Never in history has man been take

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 138

“But she rebelled against My social ordinances and My statutes…she rejected my social ordinances and did not walk in my statutes. ..Because you defiled My Sanctuary with all your detestable things and your abominations, I will withdraw from you showing you no pity nor compassion. …I will scatter one-third in every direction…”(Ezekiel 5:6,11,12).


What I am hearing from him, today, is not anger, though the text is clear that God is angry. Rather, I am hearing God’s deep disappointment and sadness, God’s pathos and desire to connect, God’s bewilderedness at the ignorance, stupidity and callousness of humankind.

In the first verse above, God is lamenting more than railing against the Jews for rejecting a way of living together in peace and harmony. The Social Ordinances are the glue that keep the people together, keep them working together and able to settle differences without losing connection. It sounds angry to most of us because we cannot hear the difference between anger and pain-it is a subtle nuanced difference in many cases. Yet here, Ezekiel is portraying the deep pain of God and himself at not being able to bring the Jews of Jerusalem together to follow the path of God that will help them live well. 


I hear the call of Ezekiel and the Call of God to return to the path, stop rejecting and rebelling and begin again to embrace and follow God’s path, God’s teachings and God’s design. The blueprint for living well is given to us through God’s Torah, God’s teachings, and each of us has to discern the teachings through our soul’s lens, not through our minds-trying to rationalize God’s teachings only led and leads us to rejection and rebellion. My path is different from yours by design, religious behaviorism and spiritual plagiarism is anathema to God’s Will and God’s Teaching. We get to immerse ourselves in text, find the way to live it in our unique way and join with our community to lift up our collective life to serve God, not the idols we make.

Rebellion and rejection lead to defiling God’s Sanctuary, we are taught. When we take stock of our ways, we can realize the ways we have defiled God’s Sanctuary, the Earth, till now. Yet, we have “religious people” denying Climate Change and Pandemic and the solutions to these grave threats! Why? Because they are still rejecting God’s social ordinances and statutes. They are still rejecting “E Pluribus Unum”, out of many-One. They reject the Shema Prayer, that we are all part of the Oneness of God when we hear, listen, understand and wrestle with our selfish desires and the lies we tell ourselves. 


The people of Judah engaged in these practices 2600 years ago, and we are still doing these detestable things today. We are still calling another human being an abomination in order to not face the abominable things we ourselves do. We work so hard to hate another human being, we work so hard to dominate another human being, we work so hard to obstruct goodness and kindness, not because we disagree with it rather just to exert our power. Yet, we call ourselves “religious people” who are doing God’s Will. I call it Bullshit and it is time for all of us to stand up against this defiling of God’s Name and God’s social ordinances and statutes.

I hear Ezekiel warning us that destruction is coming, God’s enabling is over, God will show no mercy nor pity. Yet, in the next breath we are told that one-third of the people will survive, so God’s mercy doesn’t end ever. We are the descendants of that one-third, we are the inheritors of God’s teachings and God’s Will, we are the recipients of the gift of freedom because our ancestors made a choice to come to America to give us what they lacked in their home country. Yet we are continuing to act like the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah. We, the survivors have to live in the shadow of the remnant that survived and the light of the God’s mercy and compassion. 


In recovery, this is the theme of our lives, living in gratitude and honoring the saving power and grace of God. We continually make living amends for our past abominations, rebellions and rejections. We are dedicated to following God’s Will, living together with another(s) in harmony and peace, not needing to control and/or exert power and be the welcoming light for the people behind us that are seeking what we have found. We share our joy, our path gratefully and joyously. In recovery, we honor the path of those who went before us by living happy joyous and free. 


I also know how I have followed the ways of the people of Judah and defiled, etc my world and the world of people around me. I also am proud of the path I took 32+ years ago and see how I fall back into rebellion and how I rebel against those who seek power and reject God’s Path, through their “talking the talk and not walking the walk”. While not perfect, I am grateful that I have honored my inheritance of surviving and thriving by staying with God and not giving into mendacity and self-deception. How are you honoring the inheritance of God’s Teachings and God’s Path?  Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 137

“And God said to me, human, I am going to break the staff of bread in Jerusalem and they shall eat bread by the weight, in anxiety, and drink water by measure, in horror. So, lacking bread and water, they shall stare at each other, heartsick over their iniquity.”(Ezekiel 4:16-17).


In this Chapter, Ezekiel is speaking in a much more punishing voice for God. He is not able to see any good nor is he able to give any hope to the people. Jeremiah, while angry, also found compassion and Ezekiel, so far has not been able to. Ezekiel began as a priest, so he witnessed the other priests and the people engage in empty rituals that had no influence on the people’s actions. They might bring a sin offering and then go out and do the same thing right away. Ezekiel’s punishing rhetoric may be from his own frustrations and anger with the mendacity of the people while in Judah and Jerusalem.


In the first verse above, Ezekiel is describing the need to break the people through famine. These people who live in a land flowing with milk and honey, are now left to ration their meals and even their water. The implication, to me, is that they have so defiled the land, defiled their covenant with God and each other, the land cannot/will not produce enough food for the people. This is what happens, I believe, when we take what we have for granted, when we don’t see the correlation of our actions today with outcomes later and we are so arrogant to assume that God will always be on “our side”. The horror and anxiety that is present when we are afraid of where our next meal will come from and/or how we will feed our children is palpable in his words. 


This defeatism has been present throughout the millennia, and it is present in our world today. In America, as well as across the globe, families go to sleep hungry and fearful, which leads to more separation, crime, and exile. Some religious leaders say this is happening because God is punishing these people, overlooking the way the leaders, religious and secular have used people’s horror and anxiety to gain and wield power over them. Mendacity, denial of responsibility, and perversion of Justice were what God was so angry about and needed to purify the people of Judah from. Yet, it seems as if we have not learned and are arrogant as the nations of antiquity that are no longer around and, we can learn from this verse to stop thinking: “it won’t happen to me!”


The last verse above is probably the saddest to me. Ezekiel is saying that we are unable to be heartsick over our iniquity unless we experience dire consequences for our behaviors. It is only when the Jews are lacking bread and water, do they “stare at each other, heartsick over their iniquity”. As I said above, Ezekiel was a priest and his frustrations and anger/punishing may come from both the people’s inability to be changed by the rituals and his own inability to effect a change in the people. 


In this last verse, Ezekiel is telling us that the people and the priests failed in this pursuit, we could not/would not allow the Holy rituals to change our behaviors, we couldn’t/wouldn’t act our way into right thinking and feeling, we broke the promise/covenant of “we will do and then we will understand” that was made at Mt. Sinai. Only when famine strikes, only when we are too weak to resist will we be able to understand the errors of our ways and begin to be able to begin the process of T’shuvah, repentance, return and new response. Does the punishment fit the crime? Maybe, because without the punishment, the people would never admit to the crime. This was true then as it is true now, we have not learned much from Ezekiel, the other prophets and the experience of Judah. Well, we have learned to cover our mendacity more, engage in more self-deception and denial more and better, I guess.

In recovery, we know the moment of horror and anxiety was the beginning of our recovery. It was in this moment that we could surrender our will to the Will of God and begin to change our ways/paths/thinking. We were suffering from a famine of the spirit if not our bodies, we were in horror over our emptiness inside and could no longer lie to ourselves and others that we were “fine” and the self-deceptive/self-destructive  behaviors we were in engaging in were actually helping us. In recovery, we have made it a point to stop living in mendacity, we have learned we are not perfect and making mistakes doesn’t mean we are a mistake and we can repair our past and present each day. In recovery, we feed our spirits and our inner life with healthy, holy actions and these fuel our purpose and passion each day. 


I stare at the horror and have felt the anxiety that my “fight or flight” brain chemistry has created and I have done T’shuvah for it each time. It has lessened over the years and, I understand it more and better each day. I know the heartsickness of being exiled and, in my case, not being allowed back. I know the sadness of seeing the destruction of family, friendships, etc. I also know the value of reconnection, of friendships that never wavered and the love of people, both old and new.  Being heartsick helped me clear out the poison of my actions and the actions of ‘the powers that be’ so I face today clean and excited for the next chapter. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily prophets 

Day 136

“Go to your people, the exile community and speak to them. Say to them: Thus says the Lord, your God-whether they listen or not. Then a spirit carried me away…”Blessed is the Presence of God in God’s place”. Human being, I appoint you watchman for the House of Israel; and when you hear a word from My mouth, you must warn them.”(Ezekiel 3:11,12,17). 


We are still learning of Ezekiel’s call from God and his experience of this call. Imagine being able to experience the Presence of God and know that this experience is beyond words while still using  words and descriptions to point to the magnificent, breath-taking, spiritually infusing meeting with God. To know that we are in God’s presence is so awesomely terrifying and Ezekiel is letting us know that we don’t have to hide from God’s call and God’s Presence. “Blessed is the Presence of God in God’s place” is a prayer all of us need to recite each day. Without God’s Presence in God’s place, we could not live our presence in our place and then the world falls apart again and exile happens again! 


God is telling him, in the first verse above to do the work God is calling on him to do without worrying about the results. Amazingly, God is concerned with the solution to Israel’s problem of being in exile which is Israel letting go of its stubborn, rebellious, brazen ways and returning to God. A simple solution that, it seems, is very hard for the Israelites to follow. We are faced with the same dilemma today-return to God, or continue in our rebellious, stubborn and brazen ways. One leads to redemption while the other leads to exile, death and possible extinction. We complicate our lives by seeking convoluted solutions while God and Ezekiel are telling us be in the simple solution, stop running away from God and your authentic self. 


Ezekiel is told by God to be the watchman for Israel, an apt description for all the prophets. Ezekiel is also told to sound the alarm when God tells him to so that people have the opportunity to change their individual ways and, hopefully, create a community of people who change from their pathway of destruction to a pathway of creation, joy, love and return to God. In fact, later in this chapter, Ezekiel is told if he doesn’t warn the people that God tells him to warn-he will be responsible for their deaths and liable for their deaths as well. God is sending a messenger to promote life, to promote return and show love, mercy, kindness and concern. I find this description of God’s love moving and powerful. 


Rabbi Heschel teaches: The prophet’s duty is to speak to the people, “whether they hear or refuse to hear.” A grave responsibility rests on the prophet:…The main vocation of a prophet is …to let the people know “that it is evil and bitter…to forsake…God”(Jer.2:19), and to call upon them to return.”(The Prophets pg. 19). I believe that this is the duty of all of us, since we are all descendants of the Prophets. While we think of prophecy as being a seer, a diviner of the future, Rabbi Heschel’s words remind us that our duty, as descendants of the prophets is to speak to people in our lives and in the life of the world and let them know the evil, bitter ways they are forsaking God and show them a path of return. God is calling us each and every day to return as individuals and as communities. We have to be louder, stronger, more compassionate, more transparent, more authentic, more truthful, and more loving to ourselves and others: holding hands and “walking humbly with God” and each other. 


In recovery, being in the solution is the only thing we can control and we know this. We keep it simple because every time we complicate life and experiences, we fall back into old habits and pathways. We know how blessed we are and we make gratitude lists as well as say prayers of gratitude for everything we have. In recovery, we want what we have and we speak truth to all people we encounter during a day, week, month, year. We no longer look for the loophole, we look for how to best serve God and another human being. In recovery, we carry the message to others who suffer from a spiritual malaise and bring hope, solution and love to those we encounter-no matter how they respond to us.

I know the blessing of God’s Presence being in God’s place and that place is within me. I understand Ezekiel’s ecstatic experience not only from the text and immersing myself in it, also from my own ecstatic experiences with God’s Presence overwhelming me, my body, my thoughts and my soul. It is impossible for me to describe the experience, yet Rabbi Heschel’s words above, and all of them, speak to me of his experiences with God’s Presence. Being a watchman for years has brought me joy and sadness, scorn and accolades, death and life. A watchman is not well-liked when the crisis of the moment is over and the watchman is still calling because we have to-it is in our bones to call out God’s warning. This is not usually a welcome call by people, yet we guards have to sound the alarm. The ridicule and the hatred that is heaped on the guardians for God still doesn’t stop us, although I needed to rest for some time after my last experience with scorn, sadness and people trying to kill my spirit. We get to be the guardians for God and to our people, let’s rejoice in the gift of the experience of God’s Presence being revealed to us and carry the simple solution of returning to God to people across the globe. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 135

“A spirit entered me when He spoke to me and I was set upon my feet as well…He said to me, “Mortal I am sending you to the people of Israel, that nation of rebels…for the sons are brazen of face and stubborn of heart. I send them to you and you shall say: Thus says Adonai, your God. Whether they listen or not, for they are a rebellious breed, that them may know there was a prophet among them.”(Ezekiel 2:2,3,4,5).


What Ezekiel is describing in the first verse above is similar to what the Midrash describes as the Israelites reaction to both the parting of the Red Sea and the receiving of the 10 Sayings. A spirit entered them and each Israelite had their own unique experience with God and were uplifted and moved. Ezekiel’s experience, while sounding like he was smoking some really good dope, is actually not that uncommon. 


Love is a spirit that enters us, stands us up and allows us to hear differently and more attentively. Hatred, unfortunately is also a spirit that does the same. Ezekiel is telling us the importance of keep hatred out of our beingness, as I am understanding the verses above. Rebellion towards God, brazenness and stubbornness are all actions that lead to and comprise hatred. God knows the people may or may not listen to Ezekiel and God is sending him anyway. God sends us prophets from love, not for punishment, not for scolding, not from wanting to exile us.

Yet, we continue to act like the people of Judah who were exiled to Babylonia and, still, stayed rebellious and brazen, both in captivity and in Judah. Rebelliousness, brazenness is not just an action, it’s an attitude that eats away at our soul from the inside out. Living in this brazenness of face does not allow us to appreciate, rejoice and take advantage of God’s grace, love and loyalty. We continue to reject the words of the Prophets, from the Bible up to today’s prophets. We quote them, we “revere” them, yet we don’t heed their words. 


We see this in the way our democracy is unfolding. Our founding fathers (and mothers) wanted us to grow our democratic ways, not shrink them. They wanted to ensure that we would never go back to a King George way of being-where power was so centrally located that we would again be under the tyrannical rule of a lunatic despot. We see how their words are not being heeded in the ways racism, anti-semitism, anti-anyone who is White Anglo Saxon Protestant/Evangelical is growing each day. We see the ways the words of the prophets past and present are not being heeded by belief in and promotion of the BIG LIES. 

The last verse above is so beautiful and so telling. Rabbi Tarfon, in Pirke Avot, says “it is not our job to finish the work and we are not free to annul it.” The prophet’s job is not fulfilled if the people listen, it is fulfilled by his delivering the message. Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The life of a prophet is not futile. People may remain deaf to a prophet’s admonitions, they cannot email callous to a prophet’s existence…Ezekiel was told to not entertain any illusions about the effectiveness of his mission:”  (The Prophets pg.18).  We judge ourselves and others on results that we have no control over, while God, as Rabbi Heschel so beautifully explains, judges us on our efforts. Ezekiel’s effectiveness is proven by our still reading him and, I hope, learning more and more from him. 


These verses give hope and strength to those of us in recovery. We have had Spirit enter us and stand us up-in fact this is the only way we stopped engaging in our own brazenness and rebelliousness. We have done inventory many times on how we defied God, what we knew was the next right thing to do, the harm we brought and how to repair the damage. In recovery, we know and appreciate our imperfections rather than try and hide them and deny them as we did before. We were deaf to the voice and words of the prophet until Spirit entered us, in many different forms-even the form of a judge and jail. We now carry the message of Spirit to another(s) and we are not investing in the results, only in the solution. In recovery, we know we are blessed and we continue to study the words of the prophets of old and our modern day ones to mine them for new, different and deeper ways to connect to Spirit and let Spirit lead us. 


I have been blessed to have Spirit enter me. I also heard the voice of God calling me and, finally answered with Hineni, here I am. I was one of the people the prophet is speaking about, the brazen rebel, who kept up the rebellion long after I had been defeated, captured and exiled. I realize that the rebellion I was in and the brazenness I practiced were smokescreens for the inner emptiness I experienced and the loneliness I felt. Not being known and seen for who I am, a terrible experience that led to years of drunkenness and crime. So many people harmed by me and I pray that my t’shuvah has been accepted by most. As someone who has delivered a message for 32+ years, I know the feeling of futility that comes when it goes unheard, ridiculed, made irrelevant. I also know the experience of being exiled for continuing to be me and being rejected by the very people one has reached out to help. And, Ezekiel’s words brings me back to what is important, doing the work and staying out of the results. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 134

“In the 30th year, on the 5th day of the 4th month, when I was in the community of exiles by Chebar Canal, the heavens opened and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month…the word of God came to the priest Ezekiel, son of Buzi, by the Cebar Canal…and the hand of God came upon him there. Like the appearance of the bow…that was the semblance of the appearance of the Presence of God. When I saw it, I fell on my face and I heard the Voice speaking.”(Ezekiel 1: 1,2,3,28).


Ezekiel begins with a description of an encounter with God that is unlike the other prophets. Yet, when I read this account again, I am realizing that Ezekiel is attempting to give us a picture of God that he encounters-majestic, light, powerful, all-seeing, and none of this is God, these are some of God’s messengers only. The real presence of God is the light, the radiance above everything else and, the Voice. 


Ezekiel begins his prophetic work after he has been in exile for a while. He is also a priest, so connection to God is a daily practice for him. Yet, it takes a while for him to receive prophecy and, I believe, for him to be convinced that it is not false prophecy. He has his vision sitting by the Chebar Canal in Babylon, with the other exiles, presumedly from Judah, and I imagine they are talking about their woes of being in exile and calling out to God to redeem them. In this context, Ezekiel has his first vision. 


What is so important to me in the opening verses, is that along with the visions, he heard the Voice of God. He is able to have a complete experience and, in Judaism, we believe that the Voice that Spoke at Sinai, is still speaking today and we have to tune to God’s frequency. In order to do this, we have to be like Ezekiel and the other prophets and listen with our whole being.

Ezekiel is describing the experience of hearing the Call of God, being Guided by God and being totally Connected to God. It happens to/for all of us whether we realize it or not, in fact, most of us blow off this experience as coincidence, unreal, etc, because of the power of it and the responsibility of the experience. Ezekiel, the priest, knows that his new experience with God is a new chapter in his life and he can never go back to his old ways, even though they were good and of service, he knows that he has been “touched” by this experience in ways he may never fully understand. 


In the last verse above, Ezekiel speaks of his experience of being overwhelmed by the semblance of the Presence of God to the point of falling on his face, for fear of dying if he actually saw God. Yet, he was still able to hear the Voice of God speaking to him. Rabbi Heschel teaches: “This, it seems was the mark of authenticity: that fact that prophetic revelations was not merely an act of experience but an act of being an object of an experience, of being exposed to, called upon, overwhelmed and taken over by Him who seeks out those whom He sends to mankind.”(The Prophets pg.419). The issue raised by Rabbi Heschel is one which modernity disregards. I believe all of us have this experience at different times in our lives, which is the reason I can believe Ezekiel’s words. While I have not had the same experience, I have had “white-light” experiences where I have been overwhelmed and taken over by God. “Eureka” moments are such experiences, when we see what is in front of us new and see the solution to the challenge in front of us; this is such an experience. We are the objects of an experience with God and most of us blow right by these moments because we are too blind and deaf to notice them. 


In recovery, we are so aware of these spiritual awakenings, often at the moments they are happening and more often in retrospect. In recovery, we become more and more attuned to being the object of an experience of God and a tool of God to bring more goodness, hope, strength and love to our corner of the world. Without having the experience of an encounter with God, it is more difficult to stay in recovery. We are constantly seeking to “improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God” and our recovery is based on our daily spiritual condition. In recovery, we welcome these moments of connection with, being the object of and overwhelmed by God as it helps us grow and furthers our ability to live well and be of service to another(s).


I have had these experiences as well, the first I remember was as a teenager, sitting in a dark chapel at my Temple in Cleveland, Ohio. I was unable to understand the message and I ran away from the Voice of God for many years, until I was exiled again in a prison cell. I think exile helps us here better because we are so desperate to return home. I realized that day in December, 1986 that there was no “home” for me without God, without change and without returning to my roots. Since then, I have had many of these encounters and, while I have been criticized by peers, colleagues, bosses, congregants alike for my speaking about them loudly and powerfully, I realize how much freer I am because of them. The responsibility that these encounters place on me make me freer in that I am able to live into my purpose, my service and my beingness more and more from these experiences. Hearing the Voice from Sinai that still speaks is a gift I wish/hope everyone experiences. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 133


“Depart from there, My people, save your lives, each of you from the anger of God. Yes, Babylon is got fall for the slain of Israel as the slain of all the earth have fallen through Babylon. Thus says God: Babylon’s broad wall shall be knocked down and her high gates set afire…Jeremiah said to Seraiah, When you get to Babylon, see the you read out all these words.”(Jeremiah 51:45,49,58,61). 


In the first verse above, I am overcome with emotion regarding God’s love for all of us, even when we screw up so bad that we need to be exiled. While many people are afraid of anger and think it is evil, out of control, etc, they fail to realize that it is our actions that trigger the “anger of God”. Righteous Indignation on the part of the prophets and God is not the same as ego hurt that turns into anger nor is it the same as the desire to deceive people by tapping into their hurts, turning these hurts to anger and using the people to further your self-serving cause. Righteous Indignation is a necessary attribute of both God and humanity. This seeing the evil being perpetrated, the indifference to it by the people has to raise God’s temperature, and should raise ours, because it goes against God’s nature and God’s teaching.

While we don’t engage in anthropomorphism, we have to describe God and events in words that we humans can understand. God’s Righteous Indignation is the result of humanity’s refusal to return to a life of decency and righteousness. The prophet Jeremiah, along with his colleagues, exhorted the people to return numerous times, alas to no avail. The biggest difference between how God’s anger is portrayed/thought of by many people and the truth of God’s anger is: people wanted to write Judaism off as having an Angry God and Christianity as having a loving God; Buddhism and other eastern religions speak of detachment, etc and having an accepting disposition towards all things that happen. While this works for a great number of people, Judaism’s use of “God’s Anger” is as a purifying agent. God doesn’t want to have to purify us after we have been born holy and pure. God also doesn’t want us to walk around feeling like we can never return to God and a life of service, holiness and goodness.

So God put T’Shuvah into the world and, through God’s words to Cain and Moses, through the words of the prophets to the generations of people, called on the people to engage in T’Shuvah and they refused. Why would someone refuse God, refute God, abuse the gifts that God gives us? It has to be because of a soul sickness that and after generations of passing this sickness down and generations of building up the ego and the mental belief that God is not needed, we follow the rituals as a kind of lip-service to older generations rather than experience the relevancy of them in our daily living. The priests, the Rabbis, the clergy of all kinds, the royalty, the wealthy all conspire to use God’s Righteous Indignation as a weapon against a population they want to control; “God will punish you for this” “You will go to Hell for this action”, the preaching of hellfire and damnation have no role in explaining God’s Righteous Indignation.

We are afraid of this Righteous Indignation because we are afraid to see the errors of our ways, the paths we have followed that are in direct conflict with the paths of God. We are afraid to do T’Shuvah because we see admitting our imperfections as weaknesses and not strengths. We use the imperfections, the strengths and vulnerabilities of another(s) against them. We do this so we don’t have to look too closely at ourselves, we don’t have to suffer the pain of our own purification and we don’t have to stop living in mendacity. God’s Righteous Indignation is with Judah, Israel, and all the other nations who defy the humanity of another(s) and treat humans as objects for their use. 


In recovery, we are able to purify ourselves with the help of God, another human being and community. We engage in T’Shuvah and we become more afraid of hiding than of being vulnerable. We are able to experience the hope that Jeremiah’s words, when spoken by Seraiah, give to the people in exile. In recovery, we are grateful for the Righteous Indignation of God that brought us to our knees and made us see the truth of our living and the path to change and the path to love, gratitude and community. 


I have engaged in anger for my ego’s sake at times and, mostly, my anger that is so condemned is the righteous anger at injustice, immorality, covenant-breaking, engaging in behaviors that could bring death to the person and/or people around the person, a malaise to and for God’s path of living well. Because of the ferocity of my indignation and the “accepted” way I, as a Rabbi, am supposed to act and be in loving acceptance of evil things, I am vilified, categorized, crucified and convicted of being a liability. I accept in this “politically correct” atmosphere this is true. God would not be allowed to have Righteous Indignation in today’s world! Again, not all of my anger is holy and pure-I know this and admit to my errors. I am deeply sorrowful that the anger that is righteous indignation is so easily tossed aside. We believe the anger of ego if it comes in a nice package and/or from someone “like us” and reject it otherwise. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 132

“Babylon was a golden cup in the hand of God, it made the whole world drunk, the nations drink of her wine therefore the nations went mad. God made the earth by God’s might, the world was established by God’s wisdom… Every man is stupid without knowledge, every goldsmith is put to shame because of the idol for his molten image is a deceit-there is no breath in them.”(Jeremiah 51:7,15,17).

As the end is near for Babylon’s rule, Jeremiah is reminding us of the pitfalls of both alcohol and drunkenness. While it is true that Babylon began as a tool of God, to get the nations, especially Judea, to wake up-Babylon went too far and became too enamored with itself. This is the great problem for all of us. When we are serving God, legitimately and fully, we have to remember to keep serving God and not ourselves. We have to keep serving God and not getting puffed up and drunk on our service. In this first verse, Jeremiah is reminding us to not get “high” off of the closeness to power, much less power itself. He is reminding us to stop becoming so drunk that we cannot discern sanity from madness, God’s will from our will, service to God and another(s) from serving self and the powerful.

This is a great conundrum for all of us today. In this world of instant fame and celebrity, pleasure seeking and escapism, power and prestige-serving God seems so pedestrian to many. While to others, they have convinced themselves and a lot of others that by treating the poor, the needy, the stranger as criminals, they are doing God’s will! This is how drunk we can become. The people of Judea were drunk on the belief they could go through the motions of serving God in the Temple, while serving themselves in their daily living. Jeremiah is, in my ears, screaming at us to learn from the errors of Judea, stop serving the kings and people in power who are drunk with their own stories and lies, speak truth to power and stand for and with God. This is our inheritance from the Prophets and this is our call from God. 


When we are drunk with power, etc we forget that it is God made the earth and God’s wisdom established this world. We get to either enhance God’s creations or we detract from them. We use God’s wisdom to make our corner of the world a little better each day or we use God’s wisdom to destroy the world a little more each day-the choice is ours because God gave us free will. 


When we use our free will to make idols, to worship the lies and BS we tell ourselves and other validate, we are stupid and without knowledge. We keep believing, to this day, that the idols we have created actually have breath and life in them, no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary! Mendacity and self-deception are major diseases, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, and Jeremiah is calling us out on our own. Will we hear him today? 


Rabbi Heschel teaches: “…it was Babylon whose might and splendor held many nations in her spell. A state of intoxication, a voluntary madness over came the world, eager to join and to aid the destroyer, accessories to aggression.”(The Prophets pg. 164). Rabbi Heschel’s words should be ringing in our ears, as loudly as Jeremiah’s. We are in a state of intoxication in our country today and have been for a long time. We are drunk on ‘whiteness’, on the power and superiority of white people, on the subjugation of people who are ‘not like us’. Unfortunately, this is a trait that happens within all groups, not just white people. Because we have separated ourselves from each other and made camps, rather than one country, each group believes that ‘the other’ is not like us so we have to be afraid of them and/or overpower them. This is the joining and aiding that Rabbi Heschel is speaking to me about as I read his words today. This is the aggression that we are accessories to by listening to separation speech, false speech, and inciting/fear producing speech-we all have free will to engage in this aggression and to shut it down, which are you choosing to do today? 


In recovery, we are experts in drunkenness and where that leads us. We are survivors of our own madness and the madness of “friends” who drank with us and encouraged us in our drunkenness. We are witnesses to our own idolatry and stupidity. In fact, in recovery, recounting our stories is to help another, not glorify our stupidity, recounting our stories is to help us recommit to not create the same errors as we once did. In recovery, we have a spiritual practice and a daily learning and growing that keeps us humble, of service and proud of our progress. We are dedicated to never returning to the “voluntary madness” that Rabbi Heschel teaches us about as well as not returning to the shame of our stupid reliance on idols of our own making.

I have been both the aggressor and madman as well as the servant of God. I have been blessed to be able to see the both/and of life and make choices that are not rooted in mendacity and self-deception most of the time. I have been an aid to liars unwittingly, I have been fooled by another(s). I know that I have served myself, at times, before serving God. I know that the vast majority of my living has been, is and will be authentically me. I know that I howl more like Jeremiah than speak softly like people think I should. I also know I have kept faith with God and always returned to decency, love, truth, kindness and compassion. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 131

“In those days and at that time, declares God, the people of Israel together with the people of Judah shall come and they shall weep as they go to seek the Lord their God. They shall…come and attach themselves to God by a covenant for all times which shall never be forgotten. In those days…the iniquity of Israel shall be sought and there will be none; the sins of Judah, none shall be found, for I will pardon those who survive.”(Jeremiah 50:4,5,20).


This is Jeremiah’s prophecy regarding the fall of Babylon and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem and Judah. Now, when Babylon is captured, all the captives who are descendants of Jacob will once again come together and stay together.Their first act after this reunification is to seek God. No longer are they going to argue over who is right, no longer are they going to be seduced by false gods nor the mendacity of their leaders and priests. They are going to seek God, the God of their fathers and mothers, God who led us out of Egypt, God who brought us to Canaan, God who made a covenant with us and has kept it. This coming together with a singular purpose and as one people, one mind, one spirit causes them to weep with joy at their reunion with each other and the anticipated reunion with God. 


The covenant will be new for them, it is the same Covenant that God made with us at Sinai, I believe, and the same as God promised our ancestors. The difference in these verses is that there is no more hedging on it, no more looking for loopholes, we will live life on God’s terms, not ours from this day forward. We will not forget this covenant, we will teach it to our children, we will put into action the words of the V’ahavta prayer. We will constantly remind ourselves and each other to Shema, to hear the call of God to us each and every day. We will take care of the stranger, the poor and the needy as we have been all of these and God, as well as fellow humans, has cared for us.


The “reward” for returning and re-covenanting is that we will begin with a clean slate. The last verse above is the coming together of God’s hope and our dream, to be clean and to be pardoned. God doesn’t want our shame nor does God want our blaming each other. God’s desire is for us to live together, find ways to agree to disagree when there are differing opinions and focus on our shared values, our shared dreams and our shared connections with each other and with God. God wants to pardon us so we can leave the past in the past and see today and every day as new, with the opportunity to do T’Shuvah for past errors, see our positive actions and move forward without the baggage of yesterdays weighing us down. 


Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The rule of Babylon shall pass, but God’s covenant with Israel shall last forever…The climax of Jeremiah’s prophecy is the promise of a covenant which will mean not only complete forgiveness of sin, but also a complete transformation of Israel.”(The Prophets pg.129-130). I am stuck on the first sentence of Rabbi Heschel’s, we people forget the truth that history as taught us; authoritarian rulers always come to an end and God-conscious people of faith last forever. Every nation has suffered a downfall because they became fat and left God and the covenant. While we are still waiting for a complete transformation of Israel (the people not the country) we are able to experience the complete forgiveness of God and our fellow humans when we ask for it and change our ways. 


In recovery, we know that we have to make a covenant with God/higher power/universe in order to stay right sized and not buy into the lies our minds tell us. We come together with others in recovery because we realize we need other people to help us seek and find God, seek and find our way out of situations that used to baffle us, seek and find our way to a truer and better version of ourselves. We know that if we forget this covenant, if we do not seek forgiveness when we miss the mark, joy when we hit the mark, forgive another(s), allow ourselves to be clean of shame and blame, we will fall off our path and become captives again. In recovery, we begin our days with prayer, meditation and commitment to live the spiritual principles God/higher power has given us one grain of sand more each day. 


I know the joy of reunification, I have experienced it with family and friends. I also know the relief and joy of being forgiven and being clean and new each day. I also know the sadness of being ostracized and exiled because some people forget the covenant with God and will not accept my T’shuvah. I am blessed by God with being renewed each day and the faith God has in me (and you) to fulfill a little more of our covenant each day. I also realize God’s pushing me to grow my own sphere of influence and move from my zone of comfort to do more for people who feel like strangers in their own skin and life, for these poor and needy people who do not see their light, their brilliance and continue to be bogged down in shame and blame. I/we have to liberate ourselves from the prison of what was, what ought to be and move together to the freedom of doing what God desires and accept our being welcomed and wanted by God and each other. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark


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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 130

“Why do you glory in strength? Your strength is drained, rebellious daughter you who relied on your treasures. I am bringing terror upon you…Afterword, I will restore your fortunes. Your horrible nature, your arrogant heart has seduced you.”(Jeremiah 49:4,5,6,16).


Jeremiah is continuing his prophecy regarding the nations around Judea. The first 4 verses above are for the Ammonites and the last is spoken to Edom. Jeremiah is railing against all the injustice and stupidity practiced by these people of power, wealth and education, I believe. 


His first question resounds to this day. God and modern prophets ask the same question, yet ‘strongpeople’ seem unable to hear this question, or ponder this question or respond in any other manner than ‘strongpeople’ have for the ages: ‘I am powerful and I am Sovereign/god over you’. This is plain stupid when we view what has happened throughout history to these ‘strongpeople’ and their countries, lives, etc. Yet, people still worship strength, real or imaginary as we see in our world today. 


When these ‘strongpeople’ are overthrown, the people taking their place (more often than not) are the ones who were abused and they then buy into the lie of: ‘now I am the strong one and I am Sovereign/god over you’. It has been a vicious cycle throughout the millennia. None of the people in power realize that their strength will drain and their treasures will not protect them. It is a truth that history has borne out, yet we refuse to learn this story. 


Ammon is called a “rebellious daughter” because she could/would not follow God’s ways and paths. Instead they kept moving farther and farther away from justice and kindness and love till they became suspicious of everyone. The paranoia that must have been present, in my reading of these verses, was gigantic. When one is suspicious of everyone else, when this suspicion leads to paranoia, the only result for the individual and the country is terror. Living in the terror of their paranoia, their injustice, their stupidity must have been unbearable. AND, they would not turn back to God because they were too stuck in their strength, power, treasures, and stupidity. 


Even with all of this, God promises Ammon that it will be restored one day. This is not, however, a blanket promise with no effort by Ammon, as I understand Jeremiah’s words. Ammon has to do t’shuvah and call to God, renew its own covenant with God and, then their fortunes will be restored.


Edom is told that their horrible nature and arrogant heart has seduced them and led them to ruin and total destruction. Unlike their cousins, Edom’s problem is not their reliance on strength and wealth, although they did that too; Edom’s sin was/is their horrible nature-a nature where suspicion, hatred, judgmental thinking, disregard for all of God’s ways so they have no claim or hold on them, and their arrogant heart-believing they were above God’s laws and paths-above everyone else with their power and strength. Their hubris was beyond the beyond. They were to be destroyed because of the depth of their arrogance and horrible nature-a deadly combination as the world has seen over and over again. Sound familiar today? 


Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Justice may be properly described as “the active process of remedying or preventing what should arouse the sense of injustice.”(The Prophets pg.204). Jeremiah is telling us that the nations did not engage in this process. As I am writing this today, I am appalled at how often our country does not engage in this active process. I am saddened at how often “good people”, “holy people” engage in unjust actions while trying to wrap themselves in the cloak of righteousness. “On the advice of Counsel” has become a catchphrase for people to do unjust, unkind actions towards another, while living within “the letter of the law” that was made by humans, not God. This is happening on a macro and micro scale today.

In recovery, we know that our only dependence can be on God. We know the insanity of depending on strength, riches, power, etc. We tried and failed miserably. We came to God in supplication, in remorse, in t’shuvah and God raised us back up, as Jeremiah says about Ammon today. In recovery, we practice justice, kindness, righteousness and gratitude each day so we can enhance our spiritual connection and enhance our standard of living well. 


I have been destroyed a few times and God has restored me when I saw my part. I have made errors and these errors have resulted in great pain for people around me and close to me. For this pain, I am truly remorseful and have done t’shuvah. The people who participated in these errors, however, remind me of Ammon and Edom-never wanting to own their part, blaming everything on the bad one and living arrogantly, relying on their status, strength and wealth. I pray for them to realize the errors of their ways before the families, organizations, communities suffer for their lack of heeding the prophet Jeremiah’s words. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 129

“Surely because of your trust in your wealth and in your treasures, you too shall be captured. Cursed is the one who is lazy in doing God’s Holy work. I know..the wickedness that is in him. Therefore I will howl for Moab. For fire went forth…consuming the brow of Moab. But I will restore the fortunes of Moab in the days to come, declares God.”(Jeremiah 48:7,10,3031,45,47)


The opening verse is a familiar refrain for Jeremiah and God; stop thinking that wealth, treasures, property, royalty, power, prestige is going to protect you from ruin. On the contrary, these things may well be one’s undoing. Because people since antiquity have tried to use these things to stop disaster from befalling them, physically, spiritually and emotionally. At one time, the Church “sold” the idea that donating enough would save your soul from damnation. This is true for all denominations, not just the Church. Jeremiah is reminding us that none of the material things we use to “protect” us and convince us that we are okay will, in the end, prove protective.

What is the crime that most people commit, especially those with wealth and treasure? The crime of being lazy about doing God’s holy work. The text uses the word used for the building of the Temple and the word used in the 10 Commandments for not working on Shabbat. What is God’s holy work? Caring for the stranger and the poor, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves, living transparently and truthfully, etc. Not doing this is the way we show “the wickedness that is in” us. We are constantly faced with the choice to take the next right action when it is needed or to put it off for a time convenient for us/wait for someone else to do it/deny that God’s call is the next right action.

When we commit the crimes enumerated above, God howls for us, as God “howls for Moab”. God’s howl is, I believe, both a howl of deep pain and sadness as well as a call for us to hear, wake up and rejoin the covenant with God, return to God’s side and be the partner we were created to be. We are not created to massacre people because of the color of their skin, nor the religion they practice; nor are we created to deny truth so we can have power, nor deceive others for our own personal gains. God’s howl is a call to us to return to our basic goodness of being and remember who we answer to. 

The fire that consumes Moab is the purifying fire that has to come about to get rid of the dross that our actions have created and we have allowed to accumulate inside of us and in our homes, families, communities, countries. It is unfortunate that we still cannot hear Jeremiah’s words and realize he is talking to us today as he spoke to the people of his era. We hold on to the hope of the last sentence, God will restore our fortunes, without appreciating the steps necessary to make that happen-our return to God and to Godly actions, our retaking our proper place in caring for the poor and the stranger because we were strangers. When will we appreciate the passion of those who rail for justice, truth, love, kindness and hate mendacity and deception?  


Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The prophet was filled with a passion which demanded release; if he tried to contain it, its flame burned from within him like a fever…Jeremiah felt the divine wrath as springing up from within.”(The Prophets pg. 116/7). Rabbi Heschel is explaining what happens to the prophet, not that he wants to sound or be angry-it is not a choice because the injustices to God and to the people are so great that his identification with God and the downtrodden, the disadvantaged is so great, it bursts forth from his soul. We think that this type of passion is not good and should be kept for a spiritual leader in a service in a house of worship, yet Rabbi Heschel reminds us, at least he does me, that passion for God and living God’s words and ways is an inside job that follows us everywhere in all our affairs.


In recovery, we have let go of our old ideas that money, power, etc will shield us, protect us and/or make us happy. We know happiness, joy, power, etc all come from doing the inner work necessary to be partners with God, connected to another(s) and live a life of service and spirituality. We do not seek to change other people, places or things, we seek to stand for and with God and spiritual principles. We howl at the lost souls who come to recovery and leave, ever fearful of the destruction that awaits them. We are grateful for our recovery and we repay the “bounty God has given us” with actions that honor our humanity and the humanity of another(s). In recovery, we are the recipients of God’s Grace because our lives and our fortunes have been restored by God.

I howl for me, I howl for you and I howl for God. I know Jeremiah’s pain and anguish from the years of seeing people continue to use old ideas and old ways that have led to destruction of their souls/inner lives and the destruction of their physical beings and another(s) life as well. I howl louder because I have been restored to life and to fortune, I howl louder than most because of the fire in the belly that never goes out-always sensitive to the howl of God and God’s call to me to heal my corner. My howls are misinterpreted at times and, in a few instances, used for my ego rather than God’s service. I am aware of this and do T’shuvah for these times. I am not, however, going to be a quiet soft-spoken person; I am loud, in your face and an Advocate for your Soul and this mission of mine will never end. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Mark Borovitz <rabbimark@rabbimark.com> 

Daily Prophets

Day 128

“Thus said God: See waters are raging from the north, they shall become a raging torrent, they shall flood the land and it’s creatures, the towns and their inhabitants…Fathers shall not look to their children out of the weakness of their own hands. Because of the day that is coming for ravaging all the Philistines”.(Jeremiah 47:2,3,4).


As with Isaiah, Jeremiah is not just a prophet for the Jews, he is a prophet for all the people of the land around Judea. His prophecy is meant, I believe, to let everyone know that God is deeply involved in the matters of humanity. God Cares! Unlike the gods of mythology-God cares about, is deeply involved with and, in some ways dependent upon our being human. When there are nations that continue to break the covenant with God, the “waters raging from the north” are waters that purify and cleanse the self-serving, false ego/pride, and uncaring features of the nations that the water rages in.


When we go to war as a nation, as individuals,  collateral damage occurs. When this happens, people are sad or apologize for these events, yet everyone accepts it as part of war. Jeremiah is reminding us that we cannot control the destruction that happens. War is like a flood, going any way and anywhere it wants, destroying whatever is in its way and never looking back. 


When this “torrent” is unleashed, the prophet tells us that fathers will not be able to look at their children because of their inability to help save them. Rather than see their children “drown” in the floods of war, fathers will look away out of shame and helplessness. What an excruciatingly sad experience this must be for both father and children. Kids find that they cannot trust their parents to care for them and save them in the most perilous of times and parents have to confront their powerlessness and their culpability in causing these floods to come. Jeremiah is giving us all hope that evil ends, power mongers lose power, idolatry and mythology give way to God and truth, at least for a moment until the next group tries to prove that it is stronger, more lasting and more powerful than God and spirit.

We continually seek to grow in our being human. This entails us being more Godly, living the Divine Image we are created in more each day. It entails, as Rabbi Heschel teaches:” synthesizing morality as a supreme, impartial demand and as the object of personal preoccupation and ultimate concern, consists of human ingredients and superhuman Gestalt… And if these are characteristics of human nature, then man is endowed with attributes of the divine.”(The Prophets pg.271).  We cannot call ourselves human beings without our morality, our pathos, our care and concern for another(s), and our demand for and participation in justice. This is what Rabbi Heschel is saying to me. Yet, we live in a world where many of the people who claim to be spiritual leaders and God’s representatives/servants, preach hatred, separation, worship of power and lies, follow the liar to our own ruin and betray God’s will and the spirit of our founding fathers. We get to choose-are we going to be the Philistines, the Moabites, the Egyptians, the ruling class of Judea or are we going to be the remnant that repents, turns back to God and lives in a manner that is in concert with our being human?


In recovery, for many of us, it took this “raging torrent” to stop us on our path of destruction. We were truly unable to stop ourselves, even when we saw where we were heading and the many lives we were harming. We needed an intervention by God in order to hear the words, love and care of another(s) that we needed to be in recovery. In recovery, we are constantly on the lookout for the signs that we may be turning back to the path that caused the “raging torrent”. Being human is the only path for us to regain the trust and love of self, God and another(s). It is the path we choose to follow each and every day-growing one grain of sand more and being more human each and every day. When we are attacked by the Philistines in our midst, we do not give in nor give up to their treachery and their mendacity. In recovery, we “practice these principles in all our affairs” we do not compartmentalize our living, we live as a whole and complete human being.


I know the “raging torrent” of both the consequences and cause of the Philistine behavior. I have been this torrent in my addiction and in my criminality. I know the trust I broke, the covenant that I tore up with my daughter, my family, friends, etc. Most of it has been repaired and healed, the clean-up is always difficult, messy and incomplete, unfortunately. My recovery is based on being human, imperfect and messy and loud and lovingly human. Along my journey of recovery, I have found many fellow travelers, I have convinced many people to join this journey and I have run into some Philistines. When the Philistines act like the false prophets; sounding loving and caring, all the while plotting their takeover and their power grab; the pain is excruciating and the realization of my own self-deception tears at my soul. This is the saddest experience, I have looked at people I helped and could not stop the torrent mendacity that came their way. I am sad and apologetic at my inability to see the Philistines in front of me. I know that they will also feel the “raging torrent” and I am sad for them as well that they are so stuck in their own self-deception. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 127

“Have no fear, My servant Jacob, be not dismayed Israel. I will deliver you from far away, your seed from their land of captivity. But you, have no fear…For I am with you…I will not leave you unpunished, but I will chastise you in measure.”(Jeremiah 46:27,28). 


These words seem to have been spoken before the destruction of Israel and they could have been spoken after as well. Jeremiah is trying to reassure the people that their exile will end while earlier in this chapter he spoke of Egypt and Amnon being completely overtaken by Babylon. 


Jeremiah is promising the people that God has not forgotten them, even though they have forgotten God. He is assuring them that God’s loyalty and love is not fleeting as theirs is. He reiterates “Have no fear” twice in 2 verses because he and God know that the people are afraid. They are seeing Egypt and Amnon be overtaken, they are seeing Babylon at their gates, at their Temple and taking away their leaders, etc. so of course they would be afraid. We/they are in the most fear when we know we have done something wrong and we realize we are going to have to experience the consequences of our behavior. Jeremiah and God are telling us to not fall into fear and despair at what is going on around us, rather know that God is still the Deliverer God was in Egypt and ever since. 


Deliverance is an important word/concept here, I believe. God is not saying “don’t worry, children, nothing bad will happen even though you have betrayed My covenant”, “it is okay for you to do follow false gods and I will protect you and let you go howling after Baal, with no consequences,”; God and Jeremiah are teaching us that we have to experience the consequences of our behaviors AND their is still deliverance from exile and captivity. So many people today, do not heed this teaching.

Many of us today still want to do whatever we want to and have no consequences, ie, the College Admission Scandals happened because people believed they were above the rules. Yet, the prophet Jeremiah is reminding us that no one is, no country is, above God’s Rules. Israel/Jacob have a special bond with God, yet they too suffer the consequences for their behaviors and are sent into exile. 


The difference between God and us is that God seeks to take us out of our captivity and exile no matter how many times we break the covenant. Yet, many human beings seek to keep some of us in captivity and exile. We are afraid of the power that a prophet has so we exile them, put them in jail, demean them, smear their name, etc in order to not face the truth and change the ways of those in power. Power is the goal and the prize-once achieved, hold onto it at any and all costs. It doesn’t matter that the people who have it then go against the principles they purported to have when they were out of power, it doesn’t matter that they lie, cheat and steal to gain and hold onto power. Nothing matters except their power and showing everyone how they wield it, no matter whom it harms and they would never seek to bring their exiles back nor let them out of jail because of fear of the ones they treated so poorly.


In recovery, we are aware of our exile and our captivity. We know that without the help of God, (the Universe, higher power, higher consciousness, etc) we would still be stuck in exile and a captive to the forces that trapped us before. We know that we have been delivered and rescued. We also know that we will be imperfect in our carrying out our covenant with God (or whatever you call the creative force of the universe) and God knows it too. We are no longer afraid of our imperfections, nor do we need to hide them as we know that God just wants us to improve. We have experienced the prophet’s words:”I will not leave you unpunished, but I will chastise you in measure”. We know, that we have been treated kindly and lovingly by God for our misdeeds and our betrayals. In recovery we begin and end each day with gratitude, knowing that God’s grace is always with us. 


I have been an exile, a captive and a free person. In fact, I have been free while being imprisoned, thank you Rabbi Mel Silverman. I have also been one who takes captives and pushes people into exile. Prior to recovery, I was aware of what I was doing and I knew why-to gain power and allay my fears of powerlessness. In recovery, I have not been aware of doing it, as I always leave the door open for T’Shuvah and reconnection. I realize I have not been as clear about this as I needed to be, so people don’t know that exile is temporary, God will deliver them back to all of us and we will rejoice in their return. Because of my ways of doing things, I have been made into a horror and terrible person by some and I am sad that some people in power have exiled me with no path back-these liberal/progressive people who “care so much” for whomever the underdog is, rather than for what is right in the moment. It was difficult to accept and this teaching from Jeremiah explains to me why and now I can be in acceptance a lot more and feel sad for those who need to keep me and so many others in exile because they are afraid to see themselves and their errors. “Chastise in measure” is not good enough for these people in power, they want to crush and write some of us out of the narrative so they can feel good about their decision to be as UNGODLY as possible. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets 

Day 126

“And now, thus said the Lord, God of Hosts, God of Israel: why are you doing such great harm to yourselves…For you anger me by your deeds…They answered Jeremiah…We will not listen to you in the matter in which you spoke to us in the name of God. On the contrary, we will do everything we vowed to make offerings to the Queen of Heaven…as we and our fathers, our kings used to…(Jeremiah 44:7,8,15,16).


In speaking to the remnant that left Judea and went to Egypt, even though Jeremiah had told them not to, Jeremiah sees the people have not learned anything from their experiences nor have taken in the years of his prophecy nor the prophecy of those who preceded Jeremiah. The prophet is overwrought with fear for the people and anger towards them. He was brought to Egypt against his wishes, he risks his life again to save his people and to serve God. This is the greatness and dedication of the prophet. He just can’t keep his mouth shut and “stand idly by the blood of his brother”. 


The first verse above is the question that continues to ring in my ears and, I believe, still is being asked by God up till today. Why do we do such great harm to ourselves? Are we just oblivious to what is happening in the world? Are we oblivious to the far reaching consequences of our behavior both good and bad? Are we too arrogant to see that we are carrying the errors of our ancestors into our present? Rather than do T’shuvah and Tikkun(repair) for the errors of our ancestors, we are compounding them by our own actions. Rather than search for ways to serve God and another(s), we seek more ways to serve ourselves and gain power over another(s) so they serve us also. Rather than seek truth, we seek to enlarge our mendacity, our self-deception, the deception of another(s) so we can gain more and more power. 


It is so sad to see this happening on a macro and micro level, even and especially in some very large pulpits across our country. In churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, in the senate and house of representatives, in our state capitals and our local municipalities, people are preaching the gospel of senseless hatred, worship of idols, lies/twisting of truth, all while giving lip-service to serving God. These are the deeds that ‘anger’ God-a betrayal of our covenant with God, a refusal to follow the path of God (in our own manner), a refusal to do T’Shuvah and Tikkun-asking for forgiveness and changing our ways. 


God is calling to us, still! Yet, the remnant then, as with many of us today, refuse to listen, refuse to heed God’s call. Just as today, both some of the people and some of the leaders mentioned above, by their actions refuse to listen to God’s call and the words of Jeremiah. They, like our ancestors, vow to act in the ways that caused the destruction of Israel, Judea and Jerusalem-believing they will be okay and flourish by flouting God. Insanity at its height!


Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The anger of the Lord is a tragic necessity, a calamity for man and grief for God. It is not an emotion he delights in, but an emotion He deplores…The Lord must punish, but He will not destroy.”(The Prophets pg. 294). Hearing these words of Rabbi Heschel, we are able to see our history in a different light. Rather than go along with the “party line” of Christianity and some Jews that God of the Hebrew Bible is an angry God, Rabbi Heschel, like Jeremiah above, is teaching us that God is not angry, we cause anger to be displayed because of our stubbornness and deafness. God grieves every time we cause our own destruction, our fall from grace, our exile. In the Talmud, we are taught that God cries out between the 2nd and 3rd watches at night, “My children are in Exile”. This cry is cry of deep pain and grief as Rabbi Heschel teaches. We can end the exile and the grief of both God and us through T’Shuvah and Tikkun-when will we ever learn and turn?


In recovery, we relish in God’s love and the love of a community that is dedicated to serving God and another(s). Our recovery is because we have returned from the exile we caused and we are welcomed back by God and community. So, we have to pay it forward through our deeds and our love, our loyalty and our devotion. In recovery, we keep learning each day, repairing our spirits and our actions each day and seeing the truth of ourselves and another(s) as well as the world a little more each day. This is how we have learned from our past and the past of our ancestors. This is being in recovery. 


I lived in oblivion prior to my recovery and, I have fallen into obliviousness while in recovery. I have followed and put my trust in “People of the Lie” as M. Scott Peck writes about. I have misused the trust of another(s) on some occasions. I have been imperfect and continued to repair and grow from my errors. I have made it a point to not embody Einstein’s definition of Insanity and I am enraged by my obliviousness and the obliviousness of another(s). Watching people wrap themselves in ‘holy garb’ while doing unholy actions is infuriating to me. I, like my ancestor Jeremiah, could not hold myself back, many times when I was infuriated by the actions of these people, including myself. My anger got me into trouble because it was seen as personal, rather than my being angry at mendacity and lies, obliviousness and deeds which anger God. I would rather be me, with all the fallout, than live in mendacity. God Bless and Stay Safe, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets 

Day 125

“Azariah…and Johanan… and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, you are lying! So Johanan… and all the army and rest of the people did not obey God’s command to remain in the land of Judah. “Thus said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: I am sending my servant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and I will set his throne over these stones…”(Jeremiah 43:2,4,10).


We continue to see this formula throughout the book of Jeremiah and through the books of all the prophets; the people in charge ask for God’s command, God’s words and, when they don’t get the answer they want-they accuse the prophet of lying! This is a pattern that continues to this day, it seems.

The arrogance of people to ask for the sign, the word of God and then completely demean and degrade as well as de-humanize the person giving the message. We see this so often in the Bible, especially in the Books of the Prophets. Yet, Jeremiah did not flinch, did not change his message because it is God’s message. This is the dilemma of the prophet: if they speak truth to power, they may die; if they don’t speak truth to power, they will burn up inside as their betrayal of God and their mission will burn their soul. So, they choose to continue to speak truth to power and, even though their message is not received well-they continue to live and carry God’s message.


The response of the people is so chilling to me because we experience these arrogant people all the time. We are living in a time where some people do not obey God’s command to stay in their lane, to live a life of Truth, Justice, Compassion, Kindness and Love. Rather, they engage in false prophecy by telling people lies and outrageous slander from their pulpits (religious and secular pulpits alike). They defame others in order to make themselves look good. It is an old story and, at this time, one that has gotten totally out of hand. 


Just like Johanan and the arrogant men, today’s deceivers will cause their own destruction and, unfortunately, take many others to their ruin as well. We have seen this with suicide bombers and, I am saying that the arrogant ones who are so sure they are correct will bring about destruction for all of us, as we saw with the Covid-19 response in it’s early stages. These arrogant people; elected officials, company CEO’s, Board of Directors in profit and non-profit arenas, who are so arrogant that they believe they can silence the voice of their prophets/founders/dissenters, so the Truth will not come out and their deceptions will be accepted as truth; will find that “my servant” will eventually win. This is the promise of God: God’s truth will win out, God’s name will be exalted and God’s ways will be followed. May it happen soon!


Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Worship preceded or followed by evil acts becomes an absurdity… The prophets of Israel proclaim that the enemy may be God’s instrument in history…Instead of cursing the enemy, the prophets condemn their own nation.”(The Prophets pg. 11&12). Johanan and the arrogant ones wanted to portray their piety by asking for God’s word and direction, and when they did not hear what they wanted to, they disobeyed. We live in absurdity when our leaders, great and small, preach their piety and do evil. When leaders of religious organizations can manipulate God’s words, God’s ways to suit their petty and small purpose of power, prestige and influence. We see this from the pulpit and from the Board Rooms as well as in the pews/seats of the sanctuaries. We see this in world of government and in the world of influence buying by corporations, individuals and in the followers of these deceivers and practitioners of mendacity. “When will they ever learn” asks the song, I pray it is soon!


In recovery, we no longer go shopping for the answer we want, we seek out God’s voice, God’s guidance and the help to carry out God’s will for each of us. We do this by belonging to a community of other seekers of God’s word-it is an arena where people from conservative to progressive, people of all colors and genders, people of all sexual types and religions all come together to hear from each other and to share God’s message of hope, community, truth, kindness, compassion and justice. In recovery we are not concerned with any of the differences that people engage in for their own benefit, we are concerned with engaging in the similarities that will help us live better each and every day. We know that our survival and our thriving depends on community, God, truth, decency and letting go of our deceptive paths and our own self-deceptions.

My experience with today’s reading is great. I have been the arrogant one and I have been Jeremiah. Being the arrogant one feels better in the moment, because of the rush of power it gives and the connection to other arrogant people it gives. Yet, living as a messenger of God is longer lasting, more fulfilling and suits me better. While I have made errors in my messaging in my recovery, I also know that living like Jeremiah; with all of the problems, disregard, betrayals, I have experienced; is still a better life because I am connected to God and so many of God’s truthful servants. This has to be enough, I cannot depend on the deceivers to validate me, nor can I allow them to deceive me into joining with them/capitulating to them. I know that hearing God’s call, following God’s message and will is the only way to truly live. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 124

“And they said to Jeremiah the prophet…pray for us to the Lord, your God…That the Lord your God may show us the way where we may walk and the thing that we may do.Then Jeremiah the prophet said to them..I will pray to the Lord, your God, according to your words…And it came to pass after 10 days that the word of God came to Jeremiah”(Jeremiah 42:2,3,4,7).


The people who chased Ishmael back to Amnon, who sought revenge for Gedaliah’s death come to Jeremiah to find out what to do. They are afraid of the Babylonia’s response to Gedaliah’s death and they are headed to Egypt. First, however, they decide to check it out with Jeremiah, the prophet. 


The first two verses above give us a hint as to what is to come from all of this. These people lived in Judah, they were Jews and worshiped at the Temple. Yet, when they come to Jeremiah, they say “the Lord, your God, not the Lord, our God. While it may seem like a slight difference or a grammatical mistake in the writing, I believe it is very telling.

Whenever we use 2nd person pronouns, as in families one parent says “your child”; as with “your team”, “your group”, “your community” “your people” “your God” in conversation/dialogue with another member of the same group/family/community/faith-we are separating ourselves, we are setting ourselves above another(s) person and we are setting up the rejection of whatever is said by the “you” we are speaking with.

The Jews are asking for Divine Guidance, yet they are not owning their relationship with God. It is a subtle action by this remnant of Judea to sound good while planning to do what they want to do no matter what Jeremiah reports God says. They know the “way to walk and the thing that we may do” from all of Jeremiah’s earlier prophecies, from the Torah God gave us at Sinai, from the call of their own souls; yet they want to hear it from God-this seems much like the Korach story in The Torah. 


Jeremiah, gives them a subtle and necessary rebuke in his response. Rather than rejecting this obvious slight to God and to himself, Jeremiah reminds the people that God is God of everyone, especially them! “I will pray to the Lord, your God, according to your words” is telling the people God is not outside of them, God is not a possession that anyone can ‘own’, rather God is calling to all of us and God is everyone’s guide and source of wisdom, strength and love, as I understand this verse today. 


Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Implored by the people to pray for guidance, Jeremiah, on one occasion we know of, had to wait ten days for the word to come to him.(42:7)”(The Prophets pg. 548). Reading and re-reading these words remind me that our prophets were following in the ways of Moses and Bilaam, both of whom were prophets of God and both of whom called out to God and waited for a response, they did not give in to the pressure of the people’s impatience, they did not give into their own anxiety, they stayed loyal to God’s ways and God’s time. So many people want a quick answer and the answer they want to hear. In today’s living, waiting 10 minutes for an answer is too long and not many people want a response, they just want to know the answer so, if it is not to their liking, they can reject it and seek another answer from someone else. Jeremiah does not let the crisis of the moment become his emergency.


In recovery, we know that quick fixes and answer shopping does not work out well for us in the long run. We know that separating ourselves from our peers, our family, our fellow workers, our fellow alcoholics/addicts, our fellow humans is a recipe for disaster and will lead us out of recovery. The steps of AA are in the plural because the founders of AA, Dr. Bob and Bill W, knew that community was a basic foundational principle for recovery and returning to society after isolating and abandoning family, friends, etc. In recovery, the me turns into we through our inner work, our inventories, our amends, “our conscious contact with God, as we understand God” and our being of service to another(s). As Johann Hari says: The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is connection.”


I have been both the people and Jeremiah. I have gone against the saying of Hillel, “do not separate yourself from the community”. In my pre-recovery days that is all I did. My recovery has been about connection and community, God and service. Blaming another for whatever happens harms me and them. Being responsible for my part and allowing another(s) to be responsible for theirs whether they accept it and acknowledge it or not. I know that God is God of all people, there is not “My God is better than your God” comparison that can happen and me stay in recovery. People either know my heart and my soul, my kindness and love or they don’t. I give these freely to all I encounter, sometimes in non-traditional ways. I am not seeking a quick fix nor an easy answer anymore-I wait for God to respond to me and I wait for the people who know me and honor this knowing to respond. Slow and steady is the path of connection to God and joy. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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The Prophets - wisdom to enhance our daily living

Daily Prophets

Day 123

“…Ishmael… came to Gedaliah…and there they ate bread together in Mizpah. Then arose Ishmael..and struck Gedaliah…with the sword and killed him. When Johanan…and all the captains of the forces with him heard of all the evil that Ishmael…had done. They took all the men and went to fight with Ishmael…”(Jeremiah 41:1,2,11,12).


Gedaliah was appointed by the captain of the Babylonian Army to be governor of Judea. This would allow some self-rule within the confines of being conquered by Babylonia. However, Ishmael, a descendant of the royal family of Judea, was convinced by the king of Amnon to kill Gedaliah so he, the king of Amnon, could have power over the people. I believe Ishmael thought he would be restored to the throne after he helped the king of Amnon capture Judea. He was, of course, wrong. 


In looking at the first verse above, Ishmael, who was known to Gedaliah and whom Gedaliah was warned about, came to break bread and eat together, presumedly,  as friends and fellow sufferers of the destruction of the Temple and the Kingdom. Gedaliah had been warned that Ishmael was going to kill him and he could not believe it, how could a fellow Jew kill another Jew after what had happened to the kingdom of Judea, after everyone had fought together to save it. Gedaliah must have thought ‘Ishmael is my countryman, my friend, he would not harm me-he knows that I am here at the pleasure of Babylon and I am fair and concerned for my people’. He was wrong, whether through misguided beliefs or arrogant beliefs.

Gedaliah did not see who Ishmael was and the anger, hatred, jealousy that was boiling inside of him. Ishmael did not see who Gedaliah was, doing the best he could to keep some autonomy for the Jews in Judea and Ishmael did not see himself as being used by the king of Amnon. He was so consumed with anger, rage and jealousy that he could not see what was true and what wasn’t. Nor, could he hear the still small voice inside of him that was probably saying ‘don’t do this’.

This is the greatest problem we faced then and now. The Midrash on the destruction of the 1st Temple is it was destroyed because the powers that be perverted justice and took unfair advantage of the poor and the needy and the stranger. They refused to hear God’s call to return and do the next right thing. We are still in the same situation. Political power has joined with wealthy power to ensure them continuing to be in power and take the power of choice away from everyone else, all the while convincing the people that they are the “good guys”.

Gedaliah fell prey to thinking that people meant him well and he did not see who was standing in front of him, rather he saw who Ishmael could be, he saw his facade, not the real Ishmael. Johanan, saw the truth about Ishmael and Gedaliah could not hear nor believe him. This blurred vision is what killed Gedaliah and it continues to kill us today; morally, spiritually, as well as literally.

While Rabbi Heschel does not comment on this chapter specifically, he speaks often of ‘self-deception’ and mendacity. In God in Search of Man, on page 10, he states “self-deception is is the chief source of corruption in religious thinking, more deadly than error.” Gedaliah and Ishmael both engaged in self-deception and because of that, Jewish History was changed. Today, many people in this country and across the globe are doing the same thing, engaging in self-deception so deeply that they can no longer discern truth from fiction.

In recovery, we put on a “new pair of glasses” as Chuck C’s book title suggests. We get to begin repairing our vision and, many times, we go to the opposite extreme and see everything as beautiful and don’t recognize the danger and the mendacity of another(s). This is helpful and kind to NO ONE. As we grow in recovery, we learn to discern better and stay away from the people who only show us a facade, being kind and loving and not trusting everything they say or do. A true both/and. In recovery, we see ourselves for who we truly are as well and each day take actions that bring us more in concert with our true selves, rather than the false self we created so many days, weeks, years ago. In recovery, we put on a “new pair of glasses” and see the colors of the world, not just the dark nor just the white. In recovery, we see life in its glory and beauty along with the ugly and mendacity and deal with life on God’s terms.


I have been guilty of being both Ishmael and Gedaliah. I took advantage of people in my years prior to Recovery a lot. Like Ishmael, I was full of rage and anger at society and the people in it. I saw only ‘what can I get from you’, never the true you and I harmed many people and harmed myself for years. Today and for the past 32+ years, I have been better about seeing people for who they are and meeting them where they are at. When I get betrayed, I am usually surprised, like I am sure Gedaliah was. The hurt of betrayal, however, lessens as I see my errors in vision. Remember, “Et tu Brute?” We have all had these moments, and I choose to use them as failing forward moments, lessons to grow by. There are still a few of these betrayals that will never stop hurting, and they don’t ruin my life anymore. I would rather give someone the benefit of the doubt than miss an opportunity to connect. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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