Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 117

“God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance, which means a deep certainty that it is better to be defeated with Him than be victorious without Him.” (Man is Not Alone pg.92) 

Immersing ourselves in the totality of this sentence is overwhelming and frightening and exhilarating and comforting. Allowing these words to confront and defeat me, which Rabbi Soloveitchik uses as the definition for redemption and I use as a definition of surrender, has caused me to examine life through a lens that is not always reflecting beauty, grandeur and ‘success’ back to me. Herein, to me, is the brilliance of Rabbi Heschel; he is giving us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the myriad experiences we have in living life, review the ways in which we have handled/are handling these experiences, and use our ability to be with God/higher consciousness as the measure of success, not the desired outcome being the measure. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us how to confront our self and another self, how to measure ‘successful’ living, and how to improve our standard of living with simplicity and truth. 

Yet, while it is simple and poetic, it is not so easy to fulfill. And, we do and we must. The beauty of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is that we are never truly defeated when God “is of supreme importance”. The reason we are never truly defeated is that with God we are never alone, we are never out for the count and our wisdom continues, our examples teach and our souls shine a light for another to pick up where we left off. We are never truly defeated because, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, we are going towards the sovereignty of God, ergo we are never lost nor are we aimlessly wandering when God “is of supreme importance”. We will never be perfect, of course, and there are more and more people who are engaging with God in this manner and jettisoning the idol worship I have written about before. Some people are not even people of “faith” as most of us define faith and, yet, they keep the spirit and the morality of God close to them and “walk in God’s ways” whether they give God attribution or not. 

It is time for all good people to come to the aid of their country and their fellow human beings. We do this by continuing to live a life based on the “supreme importance” of God and acting in Godly ways. We are doing this when we care for the stranger and the needy and the poor. We care for them by acknowledging their innate dignity and value, we care for them in the ways we ensure they can get the help they need-even though they may not want it right now it is available. We can remember that the stranger, the needy and the poor are not just unhoused and collecting government aid, they are us, they are our family members, our neighbors, our community, etc. We are all strangers and in need and, at times, poor in spirit, in mental and spiritual as well as physical health. When we treat one another with the dignity and importance we want to be treated with, we are making God “of supreme importance”. When we treat our self, our soul with the dignity and importance that God does, we are making God “of supreme importance”. 

Making God “of supreme importance” is, I believe, the only way Moses could lead the Israelites through the wilderness, the only way Christ could lead the early Christians, the only way Mohammed was able to speak to the Arab world. It is the only way our country could be created and sustained, it is the only way Hitler could be defeated, it is the only way Lyndon Johnson could get the original Voting Rights Bill passed and the path for Bobby Kennedy to be the leader he was. It is the only way Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel the Berrigan Brothers, and so many others could sustain their dedication to Civil Rights, leaving Vietnam, and interfaith dialogue, cooperation and friendship. We all can and, I believe must, see our living as when God “is of supreme importance” and when we put ourselves/our egos of supreme importance. While a frightening inventory, a powerful one as well when we see how often we ‘get it right’ and keep God alive in life. 

In recovery, whether you use the term God, Higher Power, Higher Consciousness, is immaterial, what matters is that we make something other than our egos, our pride, our lower reptilian brain “of supreme importance”. We are constantly seeking to improve our “conscious contact” with something greater than our self which is the teaching above. Staying in “conscious contact” with a power greater than ourselves is making God “of supreme importance” and the path of living our recovery in all of our affairs. 

I am joyful that I have made God “of supreme importance” so much in my life of recovery that Harriet Rossetto and I could lead and build Beit T’Shuvah into the home/community/shul/space where everyone belonged. We had a lot of help to make it happen, for sure, and all of the helpers also make God “of supreme importance” whether they were consciously aware of this fact or not. Being defeated with God also made it possible to do T’Shuvah and move forward for me. I have never been totally defeated and, while this last defeat was devastating, I have been able to pick myself up and, with the help of God, continue forward on my journey and adding my gifts and talents to my corner of the world. Because God “is of supreme importance” to me, even when I am not acting this way, I am able to return ‘home’ to God, to family, to friends, to community. This is the greatest reward-never losing my place. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 115

“God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance, which means a deep certainty that it is better to be defeated with Him than be victorious without Him.” (Man is Not Alone pg.92) 

Focusing on the end of the teaching above is of crucial importance, I believe. Living in a world of ‘win baby win’ and ‘zero sum’ can cause us to believe the lie of ‘winning at any and all costs is all that matters’. Many people believe this and practice this. We keep trying to capture the ‘market’, gain a bigger ‘market share’, use bribes, deception, etc to get ahead, and so many other ways we engage in being “victorious without Him” as Rabbi Heschel reminds us above. This life of win/lose, either/or belies a deep truth that is known to most of us and we hide from and run away from: Being human means to wrestle with our dual natures of animal/earthly and angel/divine. To be human involves letting go of old ideas and our self-deceptions, relinquishing our need to ‘win at all costs’, open our self up to hear the call of God/Higher Consciousness and respond to this higher calling, path of living. 

We find ourselves in an era of great mendacity and deception in order to win. We see this in our political realm with the denial of the Voting Rights Act, the new laws allowing state governments to overturn the popular vote of the people of their state, the denial of a woman’s choice to have a baby or not, the turning away of immigrants at our borders who are suffering and in need of refuge, the lies being promoted by people who know better, the idolization of a demagogue and the hero worshiping of people who tried to stop the certification of free and fair elections. All of this done by the very people who claim to revere the constitution and our founding fathers. The fact that they are so supported by the ‘religious right’, aka charlatans and idolators, is beyond belief to those of us who believe and live, however imperfectly, a life of God being “of supreme importance”.

Yet, these deceivers have tapped into the animal/earthly instinct of fear and panic that we all have and need God’s help to keep in check. These deceivers, these liars these idolators, these charlatans have tapped into the reptilian brain of survival and fight/flight. Their appeal is they are telling the people whom they have deceived ‘you don’t have to flee, I will fight for you’ all the while lining their own pockets, getting vaccinated and boosted, wearing masks and obtaining the best medical care possible because of their status while telling their followers to stay the course, don’t vaccinate, don’t wear masks, get the snake oil we are selling! Having just observed the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference and Holocaust Remembrance Day, listening to these ‘religious people’ who have so bastardized Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc is frightening and a prime example of what happens when winning is more important than “walking in God’s ways”.

We see this in business affairs, no one really cares about truth and what is best for the consumer in the Corporate World today-they only care about serving their shareholders and only the top of their shareholders. Insider trading is still happening under different disguises, denial of guilt and responsibility happens all the time as these same companies pay out large fines that are just the ‘cost of doing business’ for them because the profits they gain far outweigh the fines. We reward these CEO’s with bonus’!

In recovery, we come to realize the numerous ways we deceived ourselves into believing life was a zero-sum game, believing that we could ‘win’ it our way and not have to hear and listen to our higher consciousness/God’s call. We tried drowning out the call of truth inside of us and it worked for a while until it didn’t In recovery, we learn how to deal with our opposing inclinations and harmonize them to work together for the greater good of self, another, and God.  

I am reliving the empty victories I won without God being “of supreme importance”. I am shivering over the memories of how many people I harmed and used for my own ‘win at all costs’ mentality. I am guilty of mendacious behavior and self-deception prior to my recovery in 1988 and I have made my amends to as many people as possible and continue to live differently as a living T’Shuvah and Tikkun/repair. Yet, I also know that there are times in these past 33+ years when I acted in ways to win without God being “of supreme importance” and, each time I realize this, I do my T’Shuvah. I am also realizing that I have become less and less patient with people who continue to deceive and fool good people into believing they are acting with and for God, all the while acting for and with themselves only! It enrages me because I see a reflection of what I used to be and my fear of someone falling prey to the machinations of a charlatan as people fell prey to mine causes me to stand up and scream: “the emperor has no clothes”. There are people who have heard me, there are people who have used my way of being against me and to enhance their deceptions and there are people who have used the idolators, the charlatans to defeat me for their own reasons. Knowing I have made God “of supreme importance” in my living allows me to suffer these ‘defeats’ with joy, resolve and hope. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 115

“God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance, which means a deep certainty that it is better to be defeated with Him than be victorious without Him.” (Man is Not Alone pg.92) 

I am immersed and obsessed with this sentence as is my wife, Harriet Rossetto. Making God “of supreme importance” is not following any religious laws, doesn’t make the United States a ‘Christian Nation’ nor was it founded to be one! Rather, when God is “of supreme importance”, we can fully embrace the foundation of our becoming a nation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” These words of our Declaration of Independence show that making God/‘their creator” “of supreme importance” is embedded in our national DNA. Yet, we have so many charlatans like Pence, Pompeo, De Santis, Sanders, Manchin, Sienna, McConnell, McCarthy, and other politicians who want to deny these rights/blame to certain groups of Americans, whichever they are afraid will work for them to lose the ‘power’ they have, seek, are obtaining. There is not a hint of prejudice in our Declaration of Independence towards people of color, people of different faiths, etc while, there is a prejudice against women. Yet, we are a nation whose founding document, agreed upon by the 13 Colonies, is non-prejudicial and deeply spiritual. 

Herein lies one of the challenges Rabbi Heschel is demanding we answer. Are we, in our lifetime going to promote the foundational spirit of our founding documents or are we, in our lifetime going to promote the foundational spirit of England and King George? Are we going to move towards the Promised Land, the basis America was founded upon or are we going back to Egypt and become slaves to bias’, authoritarianism, hatred and under the thumb of false idols and mendacity? Rabbi Heschel’s words above are calling us to respond to life through the lens of God’s “supreme importance” in everything we do, all of our affairs and in how we treat our fellow human beings. He is reminding us that life/living is not about “winning at all costs”, it is not about a “zero sum” game, rather it is about Who/what is at the core of our beingness, are we serving God in all of our affairs-which means caring for, respecting, growing and nurturing all of God’s creations, especially our fellow human beings!

Yet, as we can see over the years, these fundamental principles have been bastardized and twisted around. We see this in our politics and we see this in our religions, we see this in our ethics and we see this in the way we ignore/mistreat our fellow human beings and even our selves. As I am learning from my new friends Pastor Ed Treat and the Center for Addiction and Faith and Elder Joe Paul, as well as old friends like John Pavlovitz, Rev Mark Whitlock, Rev Najuma Smith Pollard, and others-the ‘prosperity gospel’ preached by the politicians and their co-conspirators in church and the people who put on the National Prayer Breakfast, is utter BS and not what Christ nor Paul taught, wrote, said nor would recognize as the Christianity they practiced. The Judaism that keeps being prejudicial and unwelcoming, rigid and unforgiving, static and stale is not the Judaism of the Torah nor of the Rabbis of old, it is one based in fear and need for power-which our Sages debated and wrote down the different ways of fulfilling the law so the people of the time could choose and they set the path for us to follow-never stay stuck in the past. 

When God is “of supreme importance” we never stay stale, we are always promoting new and different ways to fulfill God’s call, God’s demand, the call and demands of the people around us and those around them, etc. We are blessed, as I am reading Rabbi Heschel this morning, with the opportunity to respond to this wisdom and necessary way of living by fulfilling the words written above by Rabbi Heschel. We can and must, make God “of supreme importance” in all of our ways, all of our decisions and in all of our connections-otherwise we are empty and contributing to the emptiness and despair that is so prevalent in our society today. 

In recovery, we ask ourselves in the morning and throughout the day, how is this serving God, what would God have me do, which of God’s principles do I need to practice in this situation. We know that to grow in our recovery, we have to enlarge our God consciousness/Higher Consciousness. We are painfully aware that if we don’t we will fall backwards and return to selfish, inadequate, uncaring, self-centered lives we just left. 

When I use the word demand in relation to Rabbi Heschel, I am speaking of the manner in which he speaks to the truth of our inner life, the cry of our souls and the prophetic voice that keeps telling us that we are not alone, God cares, God is calling and God is always searching for us. Rabbi Heschel and God let me know all the time that I am not alone and, as long as God is “of supreme importance” in my living, I will survive and thrive from every interaction and experience I have. When God is “of supreme importance” I am emboldened to be me, to not hide, to err and to forgive, to reach out to save another human being and to be rejected. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 114

“God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance, which means a deep certainty that it is better to be defeated with Him than be victorious without Him.” (Man is Not Alone pg.92) 

Absorbing myself in the first sentence above, I remembered a comment Rabbi Heschel made to Carl Stern in the interview he gave just before his death in December of 1972. In it, Carl Stern asked Rabbi Heschel: “What made the Vietnam War a religious issue?” Rabbi Heschel replied: “Of course it’s a religious issue, for what does God demand of us primarily? Justice and Compassion..”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg.400) While it is easy to talk about separation of Church and State, which is necessary for a free democratic state, it is more subtle and difficult to jettison the morality of religion, the morality of our inner lives. What can be more spiritual, as Rabbi Heschel goes on to say in this interview, than human “justice and compassion”? To make God of supreme importance means that justice, compassion, connection, kindness, love, truth, treating all people with dignity and seeing one another’s uniqueness, have to be the foundations we build our society on, the measuring stick for all of our actions. 

The Prophets, according to some people, meddled in the affairs of Israel and Judea back in antiquity, what right did they have to bring God’s word to the ruling class, to the wealthy class, to the priestly class? Because these classes forgot that God is of supreme importance and without this way of being; ego, fear, power, slavery of another, justice denied and bastardized, marginalize ‘those people’ and senseless hatred and mendacity become good things to do. While these religious, wealthy and ruling classes deceived themselves that they were serving God, God was not of supreme importance to them as evidenced by the fact they would not heed the words and directions of the prophets who came as messengers of God to save the people by having them return to their roots, to their foundational inner life of service, love,  justice, compassion, kindness, truth, caring, etc. 

God is intimately involved with the human being in the Bible, Hebrew and Christian, yet we have regulated God to spirituality and prayer/study in a vacuum. We have allowed the so-called ‘religious’ people who go about preaching hatred, intolerance, one-way to God, those who cozy up to power just as the priestly class in ancient Israel did, to be the spokespeople for religion and for morality? I hear Rabbi Heschel, Pastor Niebuhr, Rev. King, et al,  calling out to all of us and demanding, disturbing, disrupting our ‘serenity’ to unmask these liars, these charlatans who are only serving themselves, they are not making God “of supreme importance” they are making themselves supremely important and getting into bed with other charlatans, other power-hungry, insecure, mean, unjust, uncaring, unkind, mendacious, deceiving, unloving haters! 

We, people of faith; whether religious faith, spiritual faith, moral faith; must do as Rabbi Heschel taught us at Selma, Alabama-pray with our feet! We must turn the moral compass of our country, our states, our cities, our communities, our families and our self towards God and Godliness. Remembering that holiness is an everyday/all day action and way of being. It is not some saintly way of being-it is simply “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. It is happening in our country right now, we have to support this groundswell of activity in any and every way we can. Covid-19 has shown us the inhumanity of people towards another person AND it has shown us the heroes of our healthcare systems, the heroism of people to stand up and get the vaccine, wear a mask, honor the humanity and dignity of another human being and their own humanity. We saw the change in the 1960’s from slavery/inequality to freedom and voting rights, civil rights-we have seen the overturning of these God-given commandments/laws since then and it is time to stand for, with God and make God “of supreme importance” in all of our affairs. We have the power, the technology, the inner strength and the moral demand as well as the mental capacity to rise above our self-deceptions and the mendacity/deceptions of these charlatans/elected officials and “religious leaders and followers” who actually are trying to destroy Godliness and Holiness rather than promote it. 

The third step of Alcoholics Anonymous says: “made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God…”. This step, so early on, indicates the “supreme importance” of God to us recovering people. While we are never perfect in the actions of turning our will and life over to God-we are human after all and fallible-we make a statement of clarity for our self. We are clear that to recover our dignity, our humanity, our passion and purpose, we must become God-Centered instead of Ego-centered. This step is a statement that we are acutely aware of our need to reconnect with God/higher consciousness in order to live a life of morality and decency. In recovery, we know if God is not “supreme importance” we will substitute some idol in God’s place and fall out of recovery and deep in the holes we are recovering from. 

Please begin to and/or continue to follow my friends and teachers: Dr. Susannah Heschel, Pastor Ed Treat, Rev Mark Whitlock, Rev Najuma Smith Pollard, John Pavlovitz, Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, and whomever else you know who disturbs your status-quo. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 113

“God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance, which means a deep certainty that it is better to be defeated with Him than be victorious without Him.” (Man is Not Alone pg.92) 

Rabbi Heschel is giving us the blueprint for our relationship with God, with our self, with our higher consciousness, with one another and with the physical world. After reminding us that God is “eternal challenge, an urgent demand,” Rabbi Heschel is stating both the obvious and the obscured truth that victory is not measured by who won, rather by whom we were fighting for. 

One problem we have today is, of course, a large minority and/or small majority of people do not believe that God is important at all, much less supremely important. They will go around and preach the gospel as they are told it, as it suits them, to give them stature and power and a sense of belonging. Yet, they are preaching and living emptiness because they are missing the truth of the gospels they are preaching, they are using the words of God to enrich, empower themselves while enslaving and imprisoning anyone who doesn’t bow down to them. This is not the way of God, this is not the way of Jesus, this is not the way of the Prophets, this is the way of IDOLATORS who are the people described in Deuteronomy as false prophets, as idol worshipers. These people are trying to take over the United States as they have in Russia, Turkey, China, Hungary, etc. They are passing laws that will limit free speech, stop the free flow of intellectual ideas in schools depriving young people of their right to seek and find the truth of life. They say God is important and act for their own importance instead. 

These idolators are preaching that God is against abortion, yet nothing in the New Testament nor the Hebrew Bible states such a fact.Since we are a free people and God gave us our Free-Will, to take away choice from one group seems a little incongruent with this truth. These idolators are passing laws in many states to deny the right to vote to people of color or at least make it more difficult for them to vote and proclaim the ‘whiteness’, I mean ‘rightness’ of these laws. These idolators view the world through the “eye disease” of prejudice and they are spreading a “cancer of the soul” of America, of individuals and an affront to God. 

To the many people who do not want to be associated with the god of these idolators, I say Congratulations for being able to distinguish fact from fiction, truth from deception. I also say it is imperative to join the fight that Pastor John Pavlovitz, Rev Najuma Smith Pollard, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Rev William Barber, and so many others are fighting against these idolators. Join those of us who are continuing the cause of freedom and truth that began so many millennia ago with Abraham. Join with those of us who are seeking to immerse ourselves in God and Godliness, in the lessons of the Bible and the ways of morality and justice, love and truth, kindness and compassion. Join with those of us who deeply believe it is our privilege to carry on in the words, the deeds, and the paths of Rev Martin Luther King Jr, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, John Lewis, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner; the last three the Freedom Riders who died in Mississippi. 

In recovery, we are aware of the trap of living falsely and proclaiming that God told us to! One of the subtle lies people who are in sobriety and not recovery say is that God must have wanted us to go through and do what we did so we could get here (meaning a seat at a meeting), which I believe is another way of lying to our self and to another human being. All of us had choices, until we didn’t, and God never wants us to make the wrong choice, God does give us free-will to make these wrong choices and then we, and everyone around us, experiences the consequences of our wrong choices. God did not, nor does not, want us to suffer in order to come near to God, doesn’t want us to harm another person so we ‘learn our lesson’, cries when we are in exile and separate from God. 

Prior to my spiritual awakening in 1986, God was of importance to me, just not “of supreme importance” and immersing myself in these words today make me painfully aware of the difference. I understand my frustration and righteous indignation with the idolators, with the charlatans, with the false leaders, with the people who want to look good while doing wrong, etc today because I was one of them. I was the guy who would do all of the things these idolators are doing for my own gain. I also am aware that my frustration with these ways since making God “of supreme importance” comes from my ability to see these charlatans, these liars and their insidious ways of blinding people and using good people, good words, good teachings, and God to further their needs, their bank accounts, their optics while destroying anything and everything that is holy, good, Godly in their way. I have yell(ed), rant(ed) and rav(ed) when I see/saw this happening in order to have the people being fooled to see the “supreme importance” of God rather than the lies and subterfuge of the idolator. Sometimes I was heard, more often I was marginalized both because of my delivery and because the people being fooled wanted to stay fooled and blind, did not want to hear and see truth/God rather they wanted to see the shiny reflection of themselves that the charlatan was giving them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 112

“God is not an explanation of the world’s enigmas or a guarantee for our salvation. He is an eternal challenge, an urgent demand. He is not a problem to be solved but a question addressed to us and individuals, as nations, as mankind.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 92)

As I have been pondering these sentences for the last few days, I have been thinking; what are the questions that God is addressing to us? I know that God is a demanding God, something some people are upset/disquieted by. Yet, if we are not aware of God’s demands, if we are not aware of God’s questions for us as individuals, human beings, nations, then how can we be in an authentic relationship with God, with our self? This is the challenge, I believe, Rabbi Heschel is giving to us: ask our inner self what is the question we were created for and how do we meet and serve the demands of God? 

God (or higher consciousness if this is more acceptable) is demanding certain ways of being in order to truly take our place as a partner with God in making the world a little better each and every day. God, through the Prophets, Torah, Rabbi Heschel, our Sages, et al, keep giving us a nudge, a call, disturbs our self-congratulatory celebrations at how wonderful we are for doing the bare minimum. Why do so many people want God to be just pure love with no demands, no obligations, etc? Because they are lazy, because they want to blame the believers of God who is ‘demanding and vengeful’/‘Old Testament God’ according to these people and that is why there is no peace-it is the fault of the Jews. 

Yet, God of the ‘old testament’ is not vengeful, not angry, God in the Old Testament is demanding and engaging us in a covenantal relationship that is loving, caring, calling and truthful. God is always trying to get our attention and calls us to task because we keep trying to be the kid who gets away with doing the least, taking the most, and hiding our true self from everyone-even our self. Having a rich inner life is both joyous and painful. The pain is from our awareness of being deaf to God’s call, God’s question, God’s demand as well as being deaf to the calls, questions, demands of another human being to us. In fact, I would say they are one and the same. We cannot be people of faith, we cannot be people of God, we cannot even consider ourselves as being human unless we are willing to respond to God’s questions, calls and demands through the questions, demands and calls of another human being. Each and every day we get the opportunity to “enoble the common” as Rabbi Heschel teaches and being deaf to God’s questions, demands and calls causes us to miss an opportunity to serve, to care and to be human.

God’s questions, in addition to Ayecha, where are you, are many and differ with each of us for each of us has a different calling, upon each of us is a different demand to fulfill. And, God is questioning each one of us: How are we loving our neighbor as ourselves? How are we caring for the stranger and the poor, the widow, the orphan, the needy? How are we helping every human being achieve personal and national freedom? How are we feeding people, caring for the sick, redeeming the captive, living our covenant with God, acing in loving ways towards family, friends, etc? These questions are being asked at Mt. Sinai, in Jerusalem, in Mecca, in Rome, in Washington DC, in Moscow, in Ryiad, in New York, in Paris, in London, etc. They are being asked in our homes, our streets, our communities and in our souls. It is time for us to truly answer these questions, respond to the demands of God and see each person as a human being in need of some kindness, care, love and connection. This is how we live in a covenantal relationship with God, not through dogma-through connection. 

In recovery, we are so aware of the demands and questions God is calling out to us. We want to continue to question God-“what would God have me do” is a constant question we ask. Yet this question is a way of answering the demands and questions of God because we are engaged in God/Higher consciousness rather than lower self-satisfaction and desire consciousness. In recovery, being of service for another human being is one of the ways we respond to God’s call and God’s demand. 

I am struck by the bombardment of messages, thoughts and emotions I experience today and each day by writing this blog. I heard God demanding me to get back into life and give out my wisdom and learnings from Rabbi Heschel, the Prophets, and, of course, God to as many people as possible. I am hearing a demand to help people-all and any people-achieve a way of living that is compatible with their covenant with God. I am hearing God’s question to me-“whom have you touched with goodness, wisdom, kindness and My words today?” I am hearing the call of people clearer and clearer each and every day. I hear God’s demand that I stop worrying about the people I want to hear me and concentrate on the people who can/will hear me. Continue reaching out to the deaf, continue to help the blind see again, and speak into the ears of the people who are enslaved by their egos, their fears, their attention to the wrong details-optics, power, etc. I pray you open your ears, your hearts and your souls up to hear God’s call and the call of the people around you who need you as God’s call as well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 111

“God is not an explanation of the world’s enigmas or a guarantee for our salvation. He is an eternal challenge, an urgent demand. He is not a problem to be solved but a question addressed to us and individuals, as nations, as mankind.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 92)

We are failing in our response to the eternal challenges and urgent demands that God is presenting to us, as individuals, nations, human beings. We can see our failures in the number of unhoused people there are in the United States and beyond. We can see our failures in the number of incarcerated people and formerly incarcerated people there are in our country. We can see our failures in the amount of anti-depressants that are prescribed in this country daily. We can see our failures in the way we treat strangers and poor people, like criminals! We can see our failures in the ways we bully people into our way of thinking. We can see our failures in our need to deceive our self and everyone else as well as our need/desire to be deceived.  We can see our failing to respond to God’s challenges and demands in the way we treat each other with disdain, mistrust, uncaring. 

Every one of us has been called out by God’s demands, the demands of our higher consciousness for those who don’t believe in God. There are people who suffer from illnesses that we could find a cure for, develop a treatment for but the pharmaceutical companies don’t think they can make enough of a profit on the drug/treatment to warrant the cost of research and development and their Boards of Directors agree, ‘take care of the shareholders, not the people’ seems to be their mantra. We see this in their advertising, we see this in other business as well. Shareholders are more important than the general public, profits are more important than people’s lives. This is an accepted practice in our world and this is a failure to respond to God’s demand and challenge to treat each soul, each person with dignity, respect and reverence. 

We are engaged in senseless hatred of one another because there are people who believe if they can find a scapegoat for people to blame all their troubles on, these so-called leaders can control the masses and amass power for themselves. We see this in politics, we see this in business, we see this in religious charlatans as well. When a person of the cloth preaches hatred, bigotry, anti-semitic tropes, fear of “the other”, they are engaging in and promoting this senseless hatred. As Rabbi Heschel said in 1963, “prejudice is an eye disease, a cancer of the soul” and there are people right now, who are the victims of this eye disease and this spread of cancerous poisons. Yet, people are wiling to go unvaccinated, blame the government for some unknown control that is in the vaccine when it was developed under the watch of “their fearless leader”! This is the power of mendacity, the power of deception, the lure of self-deception. This is the power of senseless hatred, the need to blame and shame another person and the inability to be responsible for our own actions, our part in this drama called living. 

We are able, however, to respond to these challenges and demands differently. We have the power, the inner strength to be respond in the ways Rabbi Heschel responded. He left his study to advocate for the “mission to the Jews” be taken out of the Catholic Catechism teachings and was successful. He was a friend of and to Rev Martin Luther King Jr and left his study to speak at conferences, march in Selma and speak at Rev King’s funeral. Rabbi Heschel left his study to protest against the Vietnam War and remind us that “some are guilty, all are responsible”! He did this as a Polish immigrant fleeing the Nazi war machine, he did this as a Jew who knew he couldn’t pray to God if he couldn’t see the Tzelem, the God-Image in another human being. We have the same opportunities, we have the same wherewithal as Rabbi Heschel, as Dr. King, as Moses, as the Israelites who left Egypt, as the runaway slaves, as the survivors of the Holocaust, as the survivors of the Rwandan Genocide, as… We have to begin to respond to God’s demands and challenges with Hineni-Here I am instead of hiding and lying and deceiving. 

In recovery, we “turn our will and our lives over to God as we understand God” very early on and then we begin to learn and differentiate our will from God’s will. While nothing ever happens in God’s world by accident, we also know that not everyone is living in God’s world nor are we all the time. In many ways, like the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, in recovery we make the commitment, take the action and then we understand both the logic, the reasoning for the actions and this illumines the path in front of us a little more. In recovery, we are constantly seeking to respond in a positive manner to God’s call, demand and challenge. 

For the past 33 years, I have heard, sometimes clearly and sometimes not so clearly, God’s demand and challenge for me. I have answered this call all the time, sometimes in ways that are not easily accepted by another(s) and in ways that harm God’s message to another(s). For these times, I am deeply sorry and remorseful.  Mostly, I have responded in my unique manner and brought a message from God, a challenge to all of us, including me and I do it without prejudice, without a need to be right, without a need to deceive and with a passion to help, save, and care for my fellow human being. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 110

“God is not an explanation of the world’s enigmas or a guarantee for our salvation. He is an eternal challenge, an urgent demand. He is not a problem to be solved but a question addressed to us and individuals, as nations, as mankind.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 92)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above certainly goes against conventional notions and the mental cliches of many people. Enigma comes from the Greek roots ‘fable’ and ‘speak allusively’. Salvation means ‘to save’ from the Latin. I hear Rabbi Heschel disturbing our sense of calmness, our inner peace, our meditative state with this teaching and the bright light he shines on truth from his own inner light. Going against popular belief and demand, Rabbi Heschel is telling us to stop bastardizing God, stop saying that our faith is based on God being the answer to all of life’s enigmas, things are not necessarily happening because God wants them to! We all hear and some of us say, ‘there must be a reason, it is God’s Will’ when it is clearly the self-will of a human being and/or a group of human beings! The abdication of Godliness and Faith by many of the Clergy in Nazi Germany is an example of this truth. Please read Dr. Susannah Heschel’s essay on this subject in the book “On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence”.  The Crusades were not God’s Will, the terrorist attacks are not God’s Will, rather it is human’s will, human desires that people try and paint with the brush of God’s Will so it is acceptable to more people and the leaders can enlist many to be their foot soldiers. 

Today, as in the past, some charlatans are telling us God’s Will is to hate, yet in the Bible, the Israelites are told not to hate the Egyptians, who enslaved them! How is it possible for these good leaders who claim to have “God on their side”, as Bob Dylan sings about, to preach hatred, preach violence, support the people who attacked our Capital and our Democratic Way of Life, support the people who chanted “Jews will not replace us” at Charlottesville and call them “good people”, support the racist viewpoint of denying voting rights to minorities, believe that it is right to hate/be suspicious of the immigrant/stranger in our midst? The Bible tells us to do the opposite of these actions that are being spoken about with reverence in Churches, Mosques, Temples, Synagogues across our country. We are surprised by what happened at Congregation Beth Israel last Shabbat while preaching these types of actions are good and holy when ordered by my leader/preacher in the name of the False god they are praying to.  It happens because they are not good leaders, because they are not people of faith as Rabbi Heschel and Biblical tradition and teachings define faith. 

Faith is not a cure all, it is not the answer to everything in life, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel. Faith is a beginning to responding to God, not a guarantee of our being saved. We hear a lot of ‘being saved’ and many of us know we have been-yet our salvation is not guaranteed by God just because we ask for it, just because we finally surrender to the fact that God exists! Salvation occurs when we begin to respond to the demand and challenge that God confronts us with daily. We have become so focused on either denying God’s existence because of the way the world is and/or exhorting God to finally bring the “end of days” and destroy all the ‘unfaithful’-meaning anyone who doesn’t believe like I do. Rabbi Heschel is calling us to stop with our childish faith, let go of our using God to embellish our self/our reputation, and cease our willful and wanton disregard for the truth that there are many ways to hear/serve God’s call. Rabbi Heschel is not telling us what the demands of God are, what the challenges of God are, he is reminding us that faith, belief in God is not a walk in the park, it is an obligation rather than a free ride. 

In recovery, we are aware that we have to find a “God of our understanding” so we have a path to follow. We pray to God for strength to carry out God’s will, not the will of our lower self, not the will of our addict self, rather the will of our soul, the will of a “power greater than ourselves” that has no beginning nor end. We want God to be the guarantor of our salvation, we want God to save us, yet we know that it is an inside job as well as a change in our actions and a partnership with God. We cannot act ungodly and think it is okay because God is on our side, our belief in God is enough. In recovery, we are painfully aware of the descent into hell and death that believing God will save us no matter what and God is the explanation for all the allusive things in life will bring. 

While my belief in God is a cornerstone of my living, I also know that I believed in God prior to my recovery/transformation. The difference is that the demand and challenge of God was never taught to me in the way that Rabbi Heschel teaches me. It seemed like God was just another controller, “God says so” meant an end to questioning and delving into any deeper understanding of the demand and challenge God presents to us. This way of being left me bereft and unsatisfied, not disbelieving, just not knowing how to believe and how to hear the demands and challenges God was giving me with clarity. When God opened my heart and my hearing in a jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca in 1986, I began to clear out the wax in my ears, have angioplasty done on my spiritual arteries, and respond to the challenge and demand God gave/gives me. I don’t always respond well to the challenge, I am not always able to meet the demand, and I am constantly listening for both and to improve my responses. I hear the challenge and demand as a love song and a statement of faith in me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 109

“Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original with every soul. Even the meaning of the divine is not grasped when imposed by a doctrine, when accepted by hearsay.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

I am, once again, trembling inside from Rabbi Heschel’s words. Seeking the “meaning of the divine” is a lifelong journey and search that most people do not engage at all and those that do, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, don’t search very far or deeply; they just take the doctrine and dogma that an authority figure, usually clergy and/or parental, give them. Rabbi Heschel calls to us to remember that the “meaning of the divine” is truly different and the same for each and every one of us. Since each of us are created uniquely, each of us has a different divine message and way to bring the divine’s message to the world. Given our wondrous unique experience of the divine, how can we understand, engage with and/or accept what someone else tells of what the divine means, forces us to be imprisoned by a doctrine of the divine rather than seek our own meaning of the divine and relationship with the divine? 

I believe in the Mitzvot, I believe in the Torah being God’s Eternal Truth, I also believe that, as the Sages teach, it has 70 faces so no one can impose their doctrine on another, only share their understanding and the ‘face’ they see knowing it’s not the entire picture and their sight can be impaired. Living a life of decency, caring, kindness,  compassion, justice and truth is the path to grasping the meaning of the divine, I believe. Yet, to achieve this way of living, I have to let go of my preconceived notions, I have to let go of the doctrines and ‘absolutely sure’ ideas that I have accepted and worshiped because what is decent and kind in one situation may not be decent and kind in another. Whenever I hear the words “because the Torah says so”, or “this is what is in the Bible” or any such reasoning, I know the person saying it is using a doctrine, a supposed certainty, to ease their own uncertainty, to ensure they ‘get it right’ and fit in to their groupthink and/or trying to control me/us. 

When we accept “the meaning of the divine” by hearsay, we are denying ourselves the beauty, the experience, the infusion of energy that we desperately need and desire. Yet, we are afraid to ‘go it alone’ or join with other seekers who are not bound by the conventional notions, the doctrines, the dogma which seek to crush our own curiosity, our spiritual quest/journey, our unique gifts and talents from the divine. Today, we see hoards of people who accept the “meaning of the divine” by indoctrination and hearsay and the mendacity of another(s). Accepting these doctrines, this hearsay evidence, these mendacities are a surrender to idolatry, a statement of laziness, an act of fear and an affront to the divine, as I understand Rabbi Heschel’s words today. Immersing ourselves in the Bible, in the Torah, in the Koran, the New Testament, allows us to see the eternal divine message and apply these principles to today’s experiences, not by dressing and living as they did 2000+ years ago or 500 years ago or even as they did in 1860 America. We use the wisdom, the divine messages to make today better than yesterday, we make a Covenant with the divine, with ourselves and with our fellow human beings that is relevant for how we can personally live the 10 Commandments, We all engage in soul enhancing and soul destroying activities daily and they are different for each of us. We have to develop, engage with our own unique understanding of the divine so we do not continue to murder our own souls and we do not allow another to murder our souls by succumbing to their doctrines, their hearsay evidence and their mendacity, self-deception.

In recovery, we say: “the God of our understanding” and I believe this is in keeping with Rabbi Heschel’s teachings above. It has to be an original and unique understanding of the meaning of God in each life, otherwise we can’t be fully nor truly connected to it and all we are doing is paying lip service to an idol we have created. In recovery, we are constantly seeking to improve our “conscious contact with God as we understand God” so we never rest and think that we ‘know’ God. 

I have rejected most doctrines that require me to walk in lockstep and not have my own interpretation. This is one of the reasons I can follow Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and use him as a guide to improving the ways I live. Rabbi Heschel is not demanding I follow a certain path, he is disturbing and demanding that I find my own path to the divine, to living well through my soul, my spirit and my inner life. I am in agony each time I find myself walking lockstep in a dogma, doctrine, and/or the hearsay evidence of another because I am being lazy and not investigating/seeking the truth for myself; even if it is my own way of being from a day ago, a year ago, etc. Just because I did this then, doesn’t mean it is right and good to do now. I have experienced this agony too many times and I have also experienced the “thrill” of developing and following my own understanding and meaning of the divine. I know how far and wide the impact of teaching these ways of individualizing the meaning have extended. I know finding my own meaning of the divine has encouraged, allowed, inspired many people to find their own and help many more people find theirs and live these unique meanings. Can’t get any better than this and how blessed am I for Rabbi Heschel showing me the way and so many others including God helping me not give into the hearsay, mendacity and doctrines of the authoritarians and the enslavers. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 107

“Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original with every soul. Even the meaning of the divine is not grasped when imposed by a doctrine, when accepted by hearsay.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

Rabbi Heschel is calling to us, in this first sentence, to a) be aware that God is calling, b) respond to God, and c) respond in an authentic personal manner. I believe this sentence is a call/plea to all of us to stop seeing life, the world, our texts, one another through someone else’s lens, through the “conventional notions” of society, family, tribe, etc. This call goes unanswered by many of us because of our fear of being different, being made fun of, being shamed in public, having egg on our faces, being ostracized and exiled, being not acceptable to anyone/someone/society.

We can begin our original responses to God, to life in the way we teach and study texts/Torah, the way we pray, the way we engage with the world around us, etc. As Rabbi Heschel says in his interview with Carl Stern, we have to immerse ourselves in the text, not just pick it apart as ‘critical thinking’. I believe Rabbi Heschel was reminding us we cannot have an authentic experience of the Bible, of the Torah, of life without immersing ourselves in them and then we can use ‘critical thinking’ to understand how to use the text, our experiences, our spirit to enhance our life and the lives of the people around us. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to stop copying someone else’s thoughts and ways to God, to life. This is so important a teaching for us as many of us feel like frauds because our responses are just copies of someone else and, at times, copying an original response we had in the past, kind of like ‘mailing it in’. 

When we are responding to God as an original, without copying the ways, thoughts, actions of another we can have a spiritual awakening and a spiritual experience. This does not mean we are not performing the Mitzvot, the commandments, the ways of living well that God/Torah/Sages have given to us. Rather, it means that we are not trying to copy someone else’s practices. When we are responding to God from our soul, in an original manner, we are totally in the moment, we are unable to even know what a former response was because we are in awe of this moment, we are engulfed in our experience of being seen by the Ineffable One/another soul, seeing beyond what is in front of us, seeing the light, the brilliance, the solutions, the questions, the demands and our unique abilities to respond to all of these mini-experiences in the larger experience of being called to by God, by another human being, by our higher consciousness. 

Seeing ourselves in the texts we study and live by is an awesome and frightening experience. We get to cross the Red Sea, stand at Mt. Sinai, enter the Promised Land; we get to engage in sibling rivalry, build Golden Calfs, continually bitch about what we don’t have and whine for what we want! Well, I guess one could say we do immerse ourselves in the Torah as we have sibling rivalry, senseless hatred and comparisons between people, when we copy/use the ways of another to respond to God we are creating our own Golden Calf, when we bow down before money, power, prestige, another person we are creating our own Golden Calf, and when we constantly complain and only see what we don’t have, what we think we ‘deserve’, we are following the ways of our ancestors in the Desert. The purpose and reward of Rabbi Heschel’s call to us is to stop practicing the negative paths of our ancestors and our own prior negativity, to stop putting up walls and covering ourselves with make-up and masks. It is also to appreciate the wonder, beauty, importance, need, talent, gifts we each have to change, to learn from the errors of our ancestors, the errors of previous moments in our life, to learn how to live lives that are compatible with being in relationship to the Ineffable One as well as compatible to being human, to being a part of the solution that we are created for. 

In recovery, this is an issue also. Many people want to copy what someone else does and believe they will have the experience of that person if they do the same things. Yet, it rarely happens this way. We all have to have our own experience of recovery, we all have to follow the guidelines of the 12-steps, etc in our own unique manner, otherwise relapse is waiting to happen and, usually, does. In recovery, we all have an opportunity to be original, we all receive the tools and learn how to use them to peal back the layers of the onion that have been blocking our original response to life. 

Immersing myself in text, in life has brought me to where I am today. I am an original and I only have been upset with myself when I have tried to be a copy of someone else, when I have tried to calm down in the face of injustice, mendacity, etc. I have gotten into altercations with people over my responses, which when they are original I am at peace with me and when they are copies, I fight from my ego instead of from my soul/spirit. I am sorry for the inauthentic responses to God and to another human being I have engaged in from fear, expediency, fitting in, etc. I feel the tears and sadness of my inner life as I reflect on these times. I also am elated with my usual way of being-original, helpful, engaged, advocating for the soul of another, an organization, a way of living. I commit to being more original each and every day-hope you will also! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 107

“Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original with every soul. Even the meaning of the divine is not grasped when imposed by a doctrine, when accepted by hearsay.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 91)

In a world dominated by social media copycats, celebrity impersonators, wanna be famous for doing nothing culture, the first statement above is anathema. In a world where politicians continue to curry favor with the “boss” so as to not hear “you’re fired” by imitating the “boss”, copying his cadence and words, promoting his lies and bowing down to kiss his ring, these words have to be denied. Yet, some 70+ years ago, Rabbi Heschel was warning us about precisely this moment, which is not a new moment of course, it is a moment, a way that has repeated itself over and over again throughout our history-copying the ways of another, worshiping of authoritarianism and authoritarians, bowing down at the feet of ‘the current stars’ and fads of the moment. What most of these idol worshipers don’t realize is how far away they are and are going from truth, from God, from authenticity, decency, kindness and their own spiritual core.

Rabbi Heschel’s solution is simple and so difficult, at times, to fulfill. We are taught in Religious Institutions how to pray, how to learn, what to pray, what to learn, etc. We are taught the ways of acting, thinking, worshiping and loving God and another human being of our ancestors, of the Bible and either explicitly or implicitly told this is the ‘only way’ to do it right. In 1951, when this book was published, very few were aware of their inauthentic way of responding to God, even fewer were aware that God was still calling “Ayecha”(where are you”) every day to all of us and, a handful of people, were brave enough to speak out about this sameness that was happening in Churches, Temples, Mosques, etc. Rabbi Heschel was brave and willing to stand up to the ridicule he may have gotten, the anger he may have encountered from the people who just wanted to maintain the status quo, ‘don’t rock the boat, Rabbi Heschel’ may have been on many people’s minds, the membership numbers grew and people were bored and felt it a chore to go to many houses of worship as is still the case now. 70+ years later, even the ‘innovations’ are being copied by everyone else! We have to stop trying to be like someone else and appreciate our unique being and be responsive to God, to another human being, to nature, to animals in our own unique way. We have to appreciate and be responsive to all of these entities because God is in all of them, they all contain the Ineffable and we have to meet the ineffable in each of these entities with the ineffable in us, as Rabbi Heschel teaches us, so our response has to be our own. Otherwise, we are lost, we are adrift and we are in danger of dimming the light, the brightness and the brilliance of our spirit and soul. 

I am not speaking of changing the prayerbook for everyone, although I learned that the prayer book originally had the opening idea, the closing blessing and space in-between for each person to add their personal prayer/conversation with God, with their inner life. Doing this ensured that everyone’s response was original. However, to ensure uniformity, to keep control of what was happening, the Rabbis codified the prayerbook, the Talmud, the Bible, so it would be somewhat unchangeable, everyone would have the same text to recite in the same melody and we could become good soldiers for God. Rabbi Heschel is blowing that way of being up, to me, with this first sentence above. He followed the Halacha (the law) and made sure to integrate Agada (intention). He prayed the prayers in his own unique manner and intensity, I believe, and he was an original thinker, scholar, human being. He saw the unique humanity in every soul, he was responsive to the moment, to the call of God in each moment and his activism was not for his ego, rather it was his unique response to God’s call for all of us to be more human, to see the ineffable in each and every human being, in nature, in the animal kingdom and respond to the needs of people rather than using their vulnerabilities against them! We need to respond to God, to God’s call to us, to the call of another human being in an original, kind, caring, loving, just, etc manner, otherwise we become robots and automatons, no longer being human. 

In recovery, we are told that the 12 steps are suggestive only. It is also suggested to choose a sponsor who has what you want and go through the steps with them in a manner that works for both of you. Yet, as with everything in life, there are many people who say: “The Big Book says” when it doesn’t. There are people who want unity to mean sameness, who are afraid to not be in a narrow pathway of recovery for fear of ‘using’ again. What they don’t realize is they are still living in an addictive manner. In recovery, we can, and I believe we must, experience the freedom of expression, the freedom of a unique response to God, to life; gratitude as a personal and unique action. 

When I first read this passage so many years ago, I made a commitment to follow Rabbi Heschel’s guidance. I have worked diligently to keep everything fresh, to keep myself fresh and I have succeeded mostly. There are times when my response is similar/the same on more than one occasion and these are times when I am not being original. Today is new so my response has to be new, different, nuanced otherwise I am being stale, even copying my yesterday self is not good, as I understand Rabbi Heschel this morning. More tomorrow, God Bless and Stay Safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 106

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect it. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)

The last sentence haunts me daily! I woke up this morning at 2:30am thinking about it and each time I read it, immerse myself in it, I understand it a little more. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, calling to us and reminding us that the experience of faith, the experience of being seen for who we truly are, the experience of seeing our true and authentic self as well as the Divine Need we are to fill in this world, to share our wounds and our healing, to “stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us” cannot be a mental exercise! We can never think our way into any of these experiences and, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel, our mind will make us impervious, help us make and wear a mask, and is the source of our “mental make-up” when our soul is not alive in our mind. 

Just as Mitzvot, Religious Doctrines, Dogmas, Rites, etc done from a performance aspect miss the spark of the Divine that is necessary to infuse these actions with meaning, purpose and our self; just as we run the risk of falling into religious behaviorisms and spiritual plagiarisms, when our thoughts and actions are determined solely by our mental thoughts and our lower consciousness, we miss the human connection and the connection with the ineffable in us and beyond us.  We have within us, three centers of control: our minds/intellect, our emotions/feelings, and our soul/higher consciousness/spirit, I believe. We live in a society that tells us “what the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve” according to Napoleon Hill and it is a mantra that people have used since he said it and even prior to his coining this phrase, society, especially since the Renaissance, has lived this. We have forgotten how much our spiritual life matters, how much knowledge and brilliance as well as foresight our souls have and we waste it because we have inherited and promoted as well as added to society’s erroneous belief that “mind over matter”, etc is the only way to live well. We see the results each and every day and they are scary, they are deadly, they are destroying the fabric of life and the fabric of community, democracy and freedom. 

“The soul must be alive in the mind” is a way of being that acknowledges and demands our integration of mind and spirit. It is a way of being that acknowledges the importance of our inner life, the need for our soul to be the arbiter, the controller of our actions and beingness in the world. Our minds and emotions have votes, have important information and wisdom to add to our ways of being, our actions and our souls become the decider of what is good, what is right, how we are able to  bear seeing our authentic self-warts and all-how we are able to see the soul/ineffable in another human being, how our next action is going to impact us, another, and the Ineffable One. This is why the education, maturation and freeing of our soul and living from the inside/out is so crucial to making our world more whole(holy) and we, the people, more in sync with the call of higher consciousness/Ineffable One. 

We are in a Spiritual Crisis, I believe worse than, in Rabbi Heschel’s lifetime and it was not good then either. His rallying for Civil Rights, for getting out of Vietnam, for stopping the indiscriminate death of innocent Vietnamese, etc is well-known and, at times, misunderstood. What his teachings and thinking are focused on, to me, is encapsulated in this last sentence above: growing/maturing our souls, being aware of and educating our inner lives so we infuse our actions with the proper measure of respect, awe, love, intention, etc to reflect the rays of the Ineffable in us and beyond us, to respect and carry along the people in our community and to open our wounds to healing and love. My soul says YES, this is the path to living well. Yes, this is the pathway out of the Spiritual, Moral crisis we all face and Yes, this is the path to ensuring dignity, democracy and freedom to all people of our country.

In recovery, we learn to ‘trust our gut’ as clean out the our spiritual arteries and reconnect our souls and our minds. We are constantly engaged in educating our inner life and listening to the Ineffable in us and beyond us through waiting for the second thought, checking our thinking and decisions with another trusted person, and deepening our connection to the universe, to our higher consciousness and to our self. 

This last sentence is one of the many sentences that envelop me in the love and being seen by Rabbi Heschel and God. I live them to the best of my ability each day. I also see how I have gotten off track by at times because I could and I was blind and deaf to my soul’s call. I also know that I have been accused of being off track, when my soul was speaking to me, I was screaming from my “soul being alive in my mind” and seeing what was and what would happen if we stayed the false path, gave into the deceptions/optics we wanted to see and believe. It is a difficult way to live, sometimes unpopular, always humbling and, after the rejections and exiles, connection to self and the Ineffable One comforts and envelopes me in love. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- Special MLK Edition

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 105

“The challenge we face is a test of our integrity. We are all on trial, we are all under judgement. The issue is whether we are morally strong, whether we are spiritually worthy to answer God’s demand…The problem we face is to be or not to be human. The situation of the Negro is the test, the trial, and the risk.” (The Insecurity of Freedom, pg. 104)

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I was drawn to this passage in the paper Rabbi Heschel wrote in March of 1964, titled: “The White Man on Trial”. It is frightening that almost 60 years later, we are all still on trial. We are facing God’s demands and deceiving ourselves that we are meeting them, that we are spiritually worthy to consider ourselves people of faith, while watching the corrosion of rights; the imprisonment of Black and Brown people at alarming rates and for many crimes that White people get lighter sentences for; getting angry at the homeless people who have no home to go to because of addiction, mental health issues, traumas suffered defending our country; and putting money and power over the health and well-being of human beings and our democracy. 

The issues that Reverend King fought for have not been solved, in fact, I would say they have gotten worse. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is being eroded, slowly but surely. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been demolished, decimated, and found to be not needed by the Supreme Court, a majority of whom believe in the inferiority of different races, creeds, etc evidently, because immediately after their decision, many states began to limit the voting rights of people of color, poor people (except for poor whites who vote their way of course) and allowed the legislatures, the vote counters to decide the outcome of elections, not the voters themselves. Sounds a lot like King George to me. 

One of the trials we face today, I believe, is the penultimate sentence above, “The problem we face is to be or not to be human.” The “good church going, god-fearing” are the people who are imprisoning people of color at an alarming rate, who are dismantling our democracy so they can get and hold power in their authoritarian manner, who continue to advocate for their “Christian Nation” and “Christian Values” while trying to scare people about “sharia law” and promote the White Supremacists’ values and insurrections as well as their Anti-Semitic, Anti-Muslim, Homophobic tenets! They are upholding and revering the leaders of the Confederacy as heroes instead of the treasonous villains they were. These “good church going, god-fearing” people falsely believe and engage in the self-deceptive ways  that allow them to believe they are the true humans and everyone else is vermin. How ridiculous, how sad and how scary! 

God is calling all of us to stop these charlatans, to end their constant denigration of God’s Name through their worship and devotion to their “god-fearing” ways, their idol worship and their inhumanity. We need to stand up to their lies, their insurrection and their desecration of God’s Name through their mistreatment of God’s Children-everyone who isn’t them. We do this by demanding our elected officials act in accordance with their oaths of office, we censure and evict the members of Congress who participated in the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021; we put the Trump family in jail for their crimes instead of being afraid of them. We support the human rights of all citizens and we find ways to properly and safely reform our immigration system. We vote, vote, vote and we help all people who qualify to vote get to their polling stations, apply for Mail-In ballots, without suggesting how they vote, only that they do vote. We need to organize a March on Washington, Austin Texas, Columbus, Ohio, Tallahassee, Florida, Jefferson City, Mo. and all the other states that are engaged in stopping vote in order to promote the stealing of our democracy. 

Rather than stop the spread of Covid-19, these “good church going, god-fearing” deceivers have convinced true people of faith, true God-Fearing people that stopping the steal of democracy is real and truthful. They are taking the strong belief that people have in God and in our system and using this belief to lead them into the Red Sea, as Pharaoh led the Egyptians, only for all of them to drown-not Pharaoh of course, just the people he could convince to lead. Jim Jordan, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, et al will not suffer from their actions, it is all of the rest of us who will. They are the ones who believe they are the Oligarchs and their worship of Vladimir Putin is so great, they are emulating all of his actions. Rather than tell the truth, they continue to obfuscate the truth so they can continue to fleece the government, the people they deal with, the entire country out of our money, our freedom and our spiritual worthiness and moral strength. 

We have to stop the stealing of our democracy, the stealing of the soul of America, the stealing of our dignity and the stealing of our humanity. We have to stop letting our humanity be determined by the loudest, most deceptive, most cunning and conning voices of our time. We have to stand up as the real People Of All Faiths, People dedicated to Honoring God’s Name, People of Integrity and Compassion, People who live our Humanity out loud, for and with everyone. We have to say NO to the mendacity of these deceivers and YES to “God’s Demands”! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 104

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect it. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to commune, receive and reflect is part of our human/divine nature, I believe. It is one of the gifts that God has given to us as a response to our basic need for belonging, connection and love. Receive can be understood to mean ‘take again’ from the Latin, which supports the myth that we receive all of God’s instructions in the womb and then just prior to birth, the angel who taught us touches us above our lips, causing the indentation between mouth and nose as well as making us forget everything in our conscious mind. This myth has been used to explain Deja Vu, among other things, and I am reminded of it now because we every time we choose to bear our selfs to be seen, we take again the light, strength and connection of “the ineffable in us: and “beyond us” and turn it inward to grow our inner lives and outward to help another part of God’s creation and creatures grow. I am understanding Rabbi Heschel to be reminding us that we already have the answers to the challenges of today, we just have to connect to “the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us” to access these solutions and put them into practice.

Reflecting the light, wisdom, solutions, strengths of our inner lives, our inner wisdom from the ineffable in us and beyond us is our way of ‘bending back’ towards God, towards our higher consciousness, towards another human being(s), It is not enough, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel, to “suffer” and “receive”, these rays from the ineffable, we have to give it back, we have to not hoard for our own good, rather we have to ‘bend it back’ as the Latin origin of the word describes. Too many of us are not willing to reflect back to people our inner wisdom, inner chaos, inner strengths and inner weaknesses, as Rabbi Heschel reminds us in the first sentence above. We know that we are capable of reflecting the rays of the ineffable back to another human being(s) and yet, we get afraid of how we will look and sound, how vulnerable we will make ourselves and how our transparency will be used against us. Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to let go of our fears enough to experience the joy of reflection, the fulfillment of the need we were created to fill and the ecstasy of connection through reflecting and receiving, receiving and reflecting throughout the day, week, months, years. 

So what do I do with my fears of my vulnerabilities being used against me? Vulnerable comes from the Latin meaning ‘wound’. Using the myth I wrote about above, we are born wounded and, as Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack in everything and that’s how the light gets in”. We all are wounded spirits, we all have ‘suffered’ numerous wounds, cracks, etc, this is part of the human condition, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel and life. And, we have a choice what to do with our wounds; some of us lick our wounds and retreat into a shell that makes us “impervious to what He longs to show”, some of us lash out and ‘get even’ by wounding as many other people as we possibly can, and, some us use our wounds, our vulnerabilities to grow closer to the Ineffable One, grow closer to our authentic self, grow closer to humanity and seek a shared healing and response to our wounds. We will never completely heal all of our wounds, we will never completely know and understand all of God’s wisdom, however, using our vulnerabilities to take back the wisdom, strength, light and love we have in our subconscious and use it in our daily life; using our vulnerabilities to see the wounds and character of another human being(s) and connect with them on a soul to soul level and responding with love, compassion, kindness, truth and justice to all of the challenges and situations life gives us is the goal of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching and words today. It is only fitting and proper aka Kosher for all of us reflect what the light of God that resides in our souls and open our wounds to and for the light that heals. 

In recovery, we are in a daily quest for solution and more inner knowledge and real connections to another person(s). We grow in our awareness of the inner wisdom and inner wounds we have as well as the wisdom and wounds of every human being. Rather than protect ourselves, rather than hide our wisdom and light, using it for our gain only, in recovery, we share, we reflect our wisdom onto all the people around us as well as show our wounds with fear and trepidation AND hope and healing. This is how we create and/or join a community of sharing, taking of wisdom and bending that wisdom/light back onto the entire community. 

56 years ago, last Friday, we buried our father and he was a man who reflected light, strength, could see the inner lives of his children and, at times, hid his own wounds. Yet, his experience of anti-semitism, being a Jew in the Army Air Corp in WWII, made him more sensitive to the plight of minorities and he did not feel superiority, only compassion and empathy. After years of hiding my wounds, my inner life and light, I proudly follow my father’s example of reflecting God’s light, my soul’s light onto my community, I take in the light and the arrows of another human being(s) and I use my wounds to heal another and me, I use the inner wisdom to honor my lineage and God. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- A Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 103

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect it. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)

Rabbi Heschel is calling us to hear, understand and acknowledge our need to “suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect it.” It is, after all, what makes us human! Yet we spend so much time dehumanizing ourselves and so many people around us, people we have never met and people we want to control. We dehumanize them and ourselves by not being believing we can ‘bear’ to be seen. Many people believe that they are being seen when another person appeals to their basest instincts, then they become fanatics for this person and ‘drink the kool-aid’ and lose their own humanity because they are not being seen, they are being manipulated. They are not seeing their ‘leader’ they are seeing the facade he/she is putting up. If we are hiding from the Ineffable One, who is constantly calling for us and loves us unconditionally; warts and all, we have to hide from our true self and the self of another person. 

Commune comes from the Old French meaning: “to share”; receive in Latin means: “take back” and reflect comes from the Latin meaning: “bend back”. Rabbi Heschel is speaking to us not only about faith, but about life itself. He is teaching us that we have to share what we are given, not hoard everything. The 1 percenters in our country have to share their wealth through paying their fair share of taxes, supporting the charities that are engaged in helping people through the stress and strain of life, creating economic opportunities for more people to grow their ‘nest egg’. The rest of us, I hear Rabbi Heschel saying, must give our fair share as well to the charities, taxes and give each other a leg up in living instead of seeing the success of another as an assault on our security, our opportunities, etc. Sharing is what is called for in the Torah when we are commanded to bring tithes to the Priests for their welfare, to give to the poor and the needy and to share in the Passover Meal if there is too much food for one family to eat. Sharing includes helping people who are stuck in their self-deception, mesmerized by the phony facade of a charlatan, grifter, con person, who only wants power for their own selfish needs/desires. Sharing means to engage in truthful conversations and have what is best for another person’s interests the forefront of our minds, souls, hearts. We all have been guilty of hoarding, looking out for number 1, believing the lies of another because they make us feel good, validate our worst fears and give us an enemy to hate and blame. This way of being is the exact opposite of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching and the opposite of what God is calling us to be. 

We saw great examples of sharing during the beginning of this Pandemic. States were sharing information, doctors and nurses, equipment with each other, when their outbreak was over, they sent their expertise to another place. Our Federal government, on the other hand, hoarded supplies, information and put out disinformation. Donald J. Trump suggested that swallowing bleach would cure/protect against getting Covid-19, he forgot to tell the people he got the vaccines as did his family, he kept hosting events that spread the virus and denied the science of masks, social distancing, etc. Instead of behaving as South Korea, Donald J. Trump convinced a large minority to keep the spread of Covid-19 going, thinking it would help him and/or the drug companies whose cure/medicine he was pushing. We are seeing the effects of our lack of sharing and seeing the truth of our situation, both with Covid-19 and the state of our democracy. What was set up as a system of checks and balances has become a grab for power, control and authoritarianism! We, the people, need to share our fears with each other, we need to share our hopes with each other, and most of all we need to share our humanity with each other. We need to not only ‘bear’ ourselves to be seen, we have to actually see and share our strengths and weaknesses with one another so we can build stronger bridges to help everyone live well. Without our seeing one another, we cannot call ourselves people of faith, we cannot swear allegiance to the Ineffable One with any truth. Without seeing and sharing our self, our beingness with another human being and all humanity, we are just like Trump when he held a Bible upside down and didn’t know it nor did he care. 

In recovery, we go to meetings, we share with one another our “experience, strength and hope” in order to be seen and to see another person. We are constantly seeking to be seen and, when we are unable to discern truth, we seek out another person to help us uncover the truth. Sharing our being is our way to connection with people and with the Ineffable One, our path to wholeness and being a loving, kind, caring human being. 

I have shared my story so many times in order to help another person. I have sought to share and engage with another person/group of people in truth, in the discovery of truth and, on occasion, to decompress by gossip and foolishness. I know that sharing me will give another person ammunition against me and I know it is the only way to connect, love, be loved, experience joy, truly care and be cared about, and the greatest kindness I can show to me and to you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - a Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 102

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91)

I am trembling at the impact of Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, demands, and prophecy above. His use of the word suffer is so interesting to me, of course his choice of words are poetic, meaningful and thoughtful, Suffer comes from the Latin meaning: to bear from below; the dictionary also uses the word tolerate as a definition which comes from the Latin: to endure. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, hopefully, is causing psychic disturbance for all of us! Rabbi Heschel is speaking about how/when faith comes into our lives and I would add “when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect.”, are the only times we are truly alive, truly able to relieve our inner conflict between who we are and who we present to the world, truly able to fulfill our Covenant with God, our Covenant with another human being and be true to our authentic self. “Suffer ourselves to be seen” is the first step to achieving any of the above. What are our hesitancies, what are our fears, what are our roadblocks to know that we are able to ‘bear’ ourselves to be seen, that being seen is not embarrassing and/or threatening, it is not shameful nor demeaning, it is the only path forward to faith, to real connection, to growing our humanity and our dignity! 

To “suffer ourselves to be seen” is a lifelong task and journey, we are always uncovering new and old hiding places, parts of our self that we were unaware of and parts that we hid so long ago we had/have forgotten about them. Being seen by the Ineffable One is much easier than being seen by our significant other, our children, our parents, siblings, friends, co-workers, people we interact with. Being seen by the Ineffable One is always happening, we can’t hide from God, we just can ignore the call to change, to interact, to serve, to respond to the demand to be our true self that the Ineffable One calls to us each and every day. The problem for most of us arises when we have to interact with another human being and we deceive ourselves into believing we are not able ‘to bear’ to be seen as we are, so we engage in the inner conflict of hiding parts of our self that we think/know someone else will find unacceptable. We do this to ‘fit in’ to ‘be part of’ to be ‘accepted’ all the while knowing “if they really knew who I am they would leave me”. This intentional split that we create has long lasting effects and we get so used to doing this, we are so addicted to showing the face we think someone else will accept/like, it doesn’t seem like a choice, it just seems natural. 

These are the lies we tell ourselves in order to engage in this type of self-deception. We are unaware of the vulnerability we have to then believe the deceptions of another, because we don’t want to be ‘outed’ for our deceptions we will hold the deceptions of another; and because we become so deep in our own deceptions we become unable to tell fact from fiction. We see this in the political realm all the time across the world, otherwise authoritarianism would not be able to flourish as it has in history and is now. We see this in our spiritual realm when we witness the people that are unable to ‘walk their talk’ and admit their foibles, their errors and do T’shuvah for them.

In recovery, we are afraid, at first, that we cannot bear ourselves to be seen, we will be rejected by even more people if we allow ourselves to be seen, hell-we can’t even bear to see our self at the beginning of our recovery. What we do see is not necessarily our true and authentic self, we are usually only seeing the negative parts of our self and wrongly believing our negative deeds/actions/thinking define us. Our ability to “suffer ourselves to be seen” is a slow and steady process, which is why the fourth step of AA is only the beginning, we have to continue to ‘take our own inventory’ and allow ourselves ‘to bear’ and ‘endure’ more truth about our self-usually having the most problems with our good attributes. In recovery, we uncover, see and allow ourselves to be seen in order to be more whole as a human being, be of service to another human being and fulfill our task/demand from the Ineffable One. 

I spent much of my first 35 years of life hiding from everyone, sure people were able to discern my cons, my lies, yet only my father discerned my being and saw the real me. It was a painful existence before and, especially, after my father died when I was 14+. Now, at 70 years of age, I can say I have spent the past 35 years bearing to be seen, coming out of hiding, fearful of being seen and more fearful of hiding, more fearful of letting my father down again, more fearful of not following the teachings and path the Ineffable One has laid out for me, more fearful of losing the covenantal connections I have with my brother and sister, daughter and grandson, Harriet-my wife and partner, my friends and the world. This passage reminds me I can “suffer” myself to be seen and the people who want to use my authenticity against me-oh well-aren’t they pathetic and in need of Divine Pathos. I offer my pathos to the people who used me for being me when it was convenient and needed by them and used my authenticity against me when it suited them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - a Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 101

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

I am stuck on Rabbi Heschel’s phrase “when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-“ because of the power it gives to each and every one of us as well as the faith Rabbi Heschel has in the human spirit. We all, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, have the power, the yearning, the drive to face the ineffable within us, to see the spark/image of the Divine we are created in and the Divine need we are created for. For most people, this yearning and drive is tamped down from the age of 2, when speech, rules, etc come into our consciousness from parents and society. While rules, speech, being taught morality, compassion, are important and necessary to living well, they can also be stifling, paralyzing and suffocating when they are used to control our drive to face the ineffable within us and live our uniqueness, our spark of the Divine out loud. Political correctness, go along to get along, comparisons, optics, fundamentalism, anarchy, etc enhances society and individual power to control ‘the masses’ and make good foot soldiers for the generals who want to deceive, wear their own “mental make-up” and never face the ineffable within themselves. We are bombarded by social media, cable TV, newspapers, neighbors, with their own need to hide behind their self-deceptions and the mendacity of another(s) to hide our own ineffable spark, to imprison our yearning and power to face our ineffable self and use our power to effect real change in our way of living and the way the world lives. We are capable of using our ineffable self to drive our lives and influence people towards living a life compatible with being a partner of the Ineffable One. 

As we remove our “mental make-up” we are able to discern, nurture and grow the ineffable spark within us and connect with the ineffable spirit beyond us more and more each day. We do this through prayer, through meditation, through our actions, no longer performing actions rather being the actions we take. As Rabbi Heschel teaches, we learn how to be immersed in the Bible to learn the next right action to take and how to be immersed in our living, immersed in each day, living in wonder, awe, joy as well as experiencing sadness, heartache, loss, etc. Being connected to the “ineffable in us” as well as “the ineffable beyond us” changes our state of being. We live in wonder, awe, joy, connection, truth, confidence and we experience sadness, loss, heartache, never getting stuck in our experiences, only learning and returning home to “the ineffable in us “and “the ineffable beyond us”. 

Society and the people in power are afraid of ‘us common folks’ tapping into the power of “the ineffable in us” because then their control is lost, they would have to face their own spark of the Divine and come face to face with their true selves and be responsible for the death of spirit they have caused within themselves and within another(s) human being. Since each of us are supposed to do T’Shuvah(daily inventory of how we hit the mark and how we missed the mark, making amends, etc.) one day before we die, and none of us know the day of our death so we need to do T’Shuvah every day, I believe it is imperative and incumbent upon each one of us to show compassion and empathy as well as make amends to our spark of the ineffable we have ignored, imprisoned and covered up. This is another of the challenges I hear Rabbi Heschel giving to us in these teachings. 

In recovery, we are constantly seeking “to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God” so we can better do God’s will. This daily action allows us to face “the ineffable in us” and use the light of our soul, the radiance of our divine spark to see and face “the ineffable beyond us”. This is how we can come together for the common good of our group, our family, our community, our world. The better “our conscious contact with God as we understand God”, the better our seeing another person(s) as deserving of respect, kindness, compassion, etc rather than seeing an enemy, a danger, a label. In recovery, we are engaged in seeing the divine spark in another person(s) so we can retain our own. 

I am so aware of the ways I cover up “the ineffable in me” at times, it is painful as I am writing this today. I do it when I am afraid of not belonging. I wear my “mental make-up” from fear of not being accepted and not being ‘one of the gang’. I apologize to the people I have hidden from, it is wrong and harmful to them and to me. Recent experiences have shown me that living from “the ineffable in me” doesn’t necessarily make me acceptable to some, it can and has gotten me shunned and exiled, and as I thought I was alone on a deserted island, I realized that I was enveloped by “the ineffable beyond me” and found both my places of belonging and gratitude for the many people who embrace me. The “mental make-up” will always lie to me, the ineffable in me and beyond me always tells me the straight story, gives me power and yearning to be connected and shows me the light and the love of fellow human beings and of the ineffable one. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - a Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 100

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

I have been immersed in this paragraph for years and I realize that Rabbi Heschel is calling to us as the Prophets of the Bible called to the people of their time and, just as their message is timeless, so is Rabbi Heschel’s. We are being called to regain our integrity and our authenticity by Rabbi Heschel. His words above: “we have almost forfeited our face” are calling to us to return to our essential, authentic, integrated self. We are in danger of losing what makes us human and unique by wearing “masks” and “mental make-up”, as I understand Rabbi Heschel’s call to us. He is calling to us just as God calls to us, he is telling us that we are not alone, we do not have to live a life of loneliness and pain, we do not have to continue to hide and try to ‘look good’ for another person. We can, and I would add, must remove our masks, take off the “mental make-up” and “stand face to face” with our true self and with “the ineffable beyond us”. 

Standing “face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us” is an act of courage and of necessity. It is an act of surrender and power, fear and awe, love and connection. While most of us are afraid to take this stand, afraid to be real and authentic, Rabbi Heschel is calling us to overcome our fears and stand face to face with our true self and with the Ineffable One.

The first step to doing this is to surrender, to allow ourselves to be confronted and defeated by a Higher Truth. One of the higher truths we have to confront and allow ourselves to be defeated by is that what we have been doing, the ways we have been hiding, acting, etc, have left us lonelier than ever, more disconnected from our self, from truth and from each other and we are bereft and miserable. While most people have become accustomed to living in low-grade misery, Rabbi Heschel is telling us that we do not have to stay in this state, we do not have to believe the lie ‘life is hard and then you die’. I hear him calling us to live a life of vibrancy, excitement, service and connection. Rabbi Heschel is giving us a solution to our sense of aloneness and disconnection, to our imposter syndrome and fear that we will be found out, to our disgust with our self and with life, to our zero sum attitude and our false sense of security and control.

Part of the solution is to come face to face with our unique Image of God and with the Image of God we can apprehend in the world. It is to come face to face with our unique Image of God and the unique Image of God in another human being. It is to stop hiding from ourselves, appreciate our uniqueness and the gifts/talents we bring to the table that help us live well and share them with humanity so we all live a little better, as well as accepting the talents/gifts of another human being so we and the rest of humanity can grow, flourish and enjoy life a little better each day. Part of the solution, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words today, is to allow our light, our brightness, our hope, our brilliance to radiate inside of us and outside of us, to stop putting a blanket on our souls, on our uniqueness in order to ‘fit in’ with everyone else. Instead of competing to be like someone else, instead of comparing our self with another self, instead of buying into society’s control and pigeonholing of us, part of the solution to our aloneness, loneliness and disconnection is to be the truest and most authentic self we can be in this moment, knowing as we engage in cleaning the schmutz off of our souls, we will grow in authenticity. We are not alone in this world, we do not have to wallow in loneliness and disconnection, we are connected to one another and we are connected to the Ineffable One, to the universal force of the cosmos. Loneliness, aloneness, disconnection is a choice we make, not something forced upon us by the Ineffable One, rather it is something we learn, we have the power to unlearn it, we have the power to stop teaching it to younger generations and we have the power to make the choice to be connected to our authentic self, humanity, and the universe. 

In recovery we spend the beginning of our journey cleaning out the schmutz we created, accumulated, inherited. It is a difficult task, one that is excruciatingly painful and exhilaratingly joyous. Seeing how we have hidden from our authentic self and the pain we caused so many people, including ourselves, is almost unbearable, I am shuddering as I write these words. Our competition, our comparing, our “mental make-up” almost killed us and wounded those who love us so deeply. We also become aware of the ways we can make amends, repair the damage, restore dignity to the people we have harmed and those that love us as well as to ourselves and make a different plan for living well and surrendering the lie that we are alone and lonely for the truth that we are connected and we matter. 

For the longest time I felt alone no matter where I was and whom I was with, except when my father and I were together, the two of us. When I was at my lowest, knowing I was going to prison again, disappointing Heather, I heard the Ineffable One call to me and I have not been alone since I began to follow Rabbi Heschel’s formula. More tomorrow. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - a Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 99

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

While “mental make-up” may seem to some people a good thing and it can be at times, it was, in 1951, something that worried Rabbi Heschel greatly and we can see why, given the result of decades of piling this “make-up” on. It has led to more mendacity in our daily living, it has led to more blame and shame, I believe. It has led to more self-deception and deception of another, it has led more of a loss of self-dignity and self-worth as individuals, it has led to an attitude of “let them eat cake” from the .01% who are super-rich and it has led to a loss of faith and, in the face of all the ‘new-age’ spirituality cults, it has led to more isolation, death, addiction, etc. 

These pounds and pounds of “mental make-up” we have caked on have caused us to lose sight of our real face, our real make-up as human beings, as direct partners with the Divine, as people capable of rising above their petty jealousies to help care for another human being in distress. The call for power, prestige, control is a false call-it is a call that comes from centuries of wearing “mental make-up” and only adding to it, never wiping it off. We have and are losing sight of the similarity of purpose each and every human being has, make a difference, make our corner of the world a little better than it was, use our unique gift to help another human being live better. 

We are able to and need to see ourselves as I describe above in order to remove the “mental make-up” that is so caked on. It has become part of our upbringing, part of our epigenetic inheritance. We may not be able to change our epigenetic genome quickly, we can however change the way we treat ourselves. To do this, we must begin with the premise that we are okay without our make-up on. To be au natural is to be proud, to honor what God created, to rejoice in what we have and who we are. It is to go back and change the Garden of Eden story from one of shame and blame to one of pride and connection. Beginning with our self, re-educating our minds and emotions to the song of our soul, to the beauty and wisdom of our spirits. When our souls become the arbiter of our actions, we learn new ways to handle old situations and we grow into the lives we are supposed to live, not the ones society, our parents and/or our self-centered, egotistical thoughts have set us on. We see the world through new eyes each and every day. We are able to better live in Rabbi Heschel’s “radical amazement” state of being. We are seeing everything fresh and new, not bogged down in yesterday’s morass and the trauma of years ago, rather we are seeking new solutions and to the morass and trauma we experienced and has been transmitted down to us. This is not a denial of negativity, this is a way of being that means yesterday’s negativity cannot stop me today from finding a solution to the challenge of living, finding a response to the demand of life/God today. When we remove the “mental make-up” we are able to see new possibilities, new solutions and new challenges. 

Once we take off our “mental make-up” we raise our children differently, we treat employees and employers with kindness and truthfulness, we realize the joy of serving people in need of what we have to offer and we reach out for the help we need because of our lacking expertise in the area we need help. Kindness, truth, loving, compassion, caring, justice, etc no longer are seen as weaknesses, they are strengths and connecters to all of humanity. We are able to see the soul/Divine Image of another clearer and brighter when our “mental make-up” is removed. 

In recovery, we are constantly working on not only removing the old “mental make-up” that has almost cost us our face, our lives and the lives of another(s), we are engaging each and every day in wiping clean the new make-up we purposely and inadvertently put on each day with our daily prayers, meditations, gratitude lists, review of our day. We are so aware of the danger of the lies we tell ourselves, the blaming of another(s) for actions we know are not right to take, and trying to defend the indefensible, and where these ways lead us that we constantly speak to our spiritual guides, sponsors, therapists, friends and seek guidance and advice to keep our side of the street clean and be the best self we can be in this moment. 

Having removed much of the “mental make-up” I had caked on, I thought I was done with it and, re-reading this passage and immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words as well as the writing I have been doing for this past 12+ months, I realize that I put some of this make-up on me and that blinded me to realities I didn’t want to see, fogged up my eyesight so I couldn’t see who was being a ‘Brutus’ to me and how I was harming other people. It has become painfully clear to me, which I believe I am conveying through this writing and I am more committed than ever to remove the make-up, not worry about where the chips may fall and speak my truth and my vision, allowing for my mind to be changed by a connection from another soul to my soul and my soul to my mind. I am committed to putting my mind in the passenger seat more and my soul/spirit in the driver’s seat. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom- a Daily Path to Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 98

“Some of us blush, others wear a mask which veils spontaneous sensitivity to the holy ineffable dimension of reality. We all wear so much mental make-up, we have almost forfeited our face. But faith only comes when we stand face to face-the ineffable in us with the ineffable beyond us-suffer ourselves to be seen, to commune, to receive a ray and reflect. But to do that the soul must be alive in the mind.” (Man is Not Alone pg 91).

What is the “mental make-up” we wear, as a religious community, as a secular community, as a Republican and/or Democrat, as citizen of a country, as an employee , employer, as a  child, sibling, parent, lover? We take on many different roles within our lifetimes and, in light of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, I wonder if we change our make-up depending on the ‘role’ we are in? Is it possible to go ‘au natural’ in our living? 

We have seen much bigotry, hatred, murder, etc  in the name of one religion or another and because of this, many people have written religion off completely. The religious leaders who promote these ugly, ungodly behaviors are wearing the “mental make-up” of self righteousness and power-seeking/hungry. They use the tenets of their faith to control people and, because of the heavy use of make-up, they actually believe and/or or convince themselves to believe these terrible actions, these lies and bastardizations of both the letter and spirit of Scriptures are in service of God. All the while, they are lining their pockets, the pockets of their benefactors, the pockets of their faith to exert more and more power over individuals, communities, governments, countries to bend to their will, not the Will of God. This is, of course, the large scale, long term effects of what begins a long time before. The “mental make-up” religious leaders, clergy, etc wear is put on while in their youth. We learn it in our religious education how we have been persecuted for our beliefs, how we have to stand with our people who believe the same as we do and see anyone who doesn’t accept our way as an enemy, etc. Religious leaders, clergy then learn in Seminary how they have to project an image of complete allegiance to the tenets and principles of their faith and this leads to the myth of perfection which leads to “Symbolic Exemplar” as Rabbi Jack Bloom writes about tin his book of the same name. We have seem the false self of many of our religious leaders and clergy and come to venerate them and learn from them to put on make-up ourselves. Some religious leaders need to wash their faces, have their eyes checked, change their hearing aids, clean the wax out of their ears, face their own imperfections, celebrate them, approach God and one another with openness and transparency so they and we can repair the damage our “mental make-up” has caused. As religious leaders and clergy, the power we possess is the power to draw nearer to God through our actions and helping another human being through spiritual crisis’ and using this power to enslave people to our will, to our way or the highway of religious experiences and devotion is proof of our “mental make-up” of power covering up our deep-rooted fear of incompetence. 

In our political realm, the “mental make-up” gets heavier and heavier. We are in an era where some of our elected officials are sounding more like King George than like Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and/or Ben Franklin. There actions are more like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee than Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and/or Harry Truman. What makes the make-up look even worse on these elected officials is they know the truth, they know better and are better than the lies they spout, the insurrection/civil war they are fomenting. When you listen to their earlier words, especially spoken when they were in power, and then the words spoken when they are not in power, it is easy to see the “mental make-up” of power over all, obstruction when not in power, lie and cheat to block anything meaningful and helpful to their own constituents! Yet, they pontificate and keep putting their make-up on with help from the media, social and traditional, the press and the people who themselves are engaged in their own self-deception, wearing their own layers of “mental make-up” who readily buy the deceptions of these elected officials. 

In recovery, we are continually wiping off the old “mental make-up”, taking it off layer by layer. We have been so engaged in our putting this make-up on, like everyone else, we don’t even know where the real person is for a while because we are constantly peeling this make up off, even having to scrape it off like the barnacles on the bottom of the boat. In recovery, we know that the taking off of our “mental make-up” is a life long experience because we easily fall back into putting in on every day. 

I have been wiping the make-up off and putting some on every day for the past 35 years. Rabbi Heschel has been such a disturbance in my life, giving me a bad conscious every day that I am constantly wiping the falseness, the self-deception off of me to the best of my ability each day. Some days are better than others! I realize my loudness and my passion break through when I have been wearing the make-up of ‘go along to get along’, sitting idly by the damage another person is doing because of optics, political correctness, fear of losing position, money, etc. and I can’t do it anymore. My wiping off of the make-up, many times, is a loud, painful affair for me and those around me. I am sorry to those I hurt in these moments. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark