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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 157

“What the world need is a sense of embarrassment. Modern man has the power and wealth to overcome poverty and disease, but he has no wisdom to overcome suspicion.” (Who is Man pg. 114)

It is almost 60 years ago Rabbi Heschel spoke these words and look at us now! The unprovoked war in the Ukraine may provide the world with a sense of embarrassment, I do not know if it will last, however. We went through the senseless hatred of Rwanda and Bosnia, the terrorist’s bombings all over the world and, of course, 911 here. We fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israel has been fighting for its survival, even though many people do not understand or believe the Arab calls for the Jews to be driven into the Sea. We may get a sense of embarrassment, as the world did after WWII; our challenge is to use the embarrassment to stay aware and to change our responses and our actions. We have had numerous ‘wake-up’ experiences and we keep hitting the snooze button, as a world, as a country, as an individual. 

I shudder to think what Rabbi Heschel would be saying now, the anguish he would be experiencing at our inadequacy to be embarrassed and to use our embarrassment to move forward, to motivate change and to embrace our higher self. Anguish is evident on the faces of the Ukrainian People who are fighting so valiantly, it is evident in the Biden administration for their inability/unwillingness to enter the fray in a more meaningful manner, it is evident in the actions of so many people who are doing whatever it takes to help the refugees, especially the neighboring countries who are taking them in at the risk of their own country being attacked by the Manic-In-Charge in Moscow. I hope to see the anguish on the faces of the Russians who are so happy with their ‘show of strength’ that is so bogged down by a much smaller country and, supposedly, less brave army. It is time for all of us to experience the anguish that God must experience when God cries out “my children are in exile from me” each evening. It is time for us to use our embarrassment to be aware of what truly is, what is important and to change our ways.

Another area of embarrassment is our unwillingness to overcome poverty and disease. We have seen this exacerbate over the past 2+ years of the Pandemic. Rather than follow the science and work together to minimize and bring Covid-19 to an end quicker, people wanted to exploit the vulnerabilities of one another for their own power and stroked the fires of suspicion and disbelief, beginning with Donald Trump who told people ingesting/injecting bleach might be a good idea! And people listened to him!! We have seen a steady rise in the suspicious nature of people, the almost automatic disbelief of whatever is said by “those people” and this has led to a split in our country, in our cities, in our families that may never be healed. Our inability to overcome poverty and disease can be directly linked to our inability to overcome our suspicion of one another. We are unable to find the motivation, the open-heartedness to come together and agree on the facts, much less any compromise to find a cure for what ails our society. In fact, as Rabbi Heschel teaches above, what ails our society is our lack of embarrassment and our lack of trust. 

I have watched families disintegrate because of suspicion and a lack of embarrassment. Parents are suspicious of their children’s activities so they act as ‘helicopters’ hovering over them all the time and the children are stifled and enslaved. The kids become crippled from their parents suspicious actions that tell them they are incapable of making good decisions, choosing good friends, writing good papers, doing well in college, etc because these ‘helicopters’ are hovering, correcting and, at times, doing all the work for their children under the guise of ‘love’-when really it stems from suspicion and disbelief. When caught, the parents are embarrassed, as in shamed, they are not embarrassed enough, usually, to stop the behaviors, to change their ways and to stay aware of themselves more acutely. 

In recovery, we are constantly reminded to give people the benefit of the doubt and to give ourselves a break as well. We become part of a community of people who are seeking to improve their lives through living principles of decency, truth, kindness, t’shuvah, love, and living justly. It is through our embarrassment that we are able to be aware of what we need to do to make these principles our default and reset actions. It is by trusting another who is a little further ahead on this journey to recover our integrity and our essence rather than being suspicious with a  ‘what’s in it for them’ attitude. In recovery, we find leaving our suspicions at the door and joining together to find solutions is a better and higher plane to live on. 

I have been both suspicious and giving the benefit of the doubt to people. I am suspicious when I hear people speak and, instead of pinging like crystal, they thud like lead. I keep pushing them to find truth and let go of their lies and their suspicions, embrace the embarrassment of awareness and grow. I do this because I believe each and every person has within us/them a soul, a goodness of being and I always believe in change. No matter what has happened over my lifetime, I continue to believe in people’s ability to rise up to meet one another with love. 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 155

“I shudder at the thought of a society ruled by people who are absolutely certain of their wisdom, by people to whom everything in the world is crystal-clear, whose minds know no mystery, no uncertainty.” (Who Is Man pg. 114)

Immersing oneself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom reminds me of the introduction to the book Path of the Just by Rabbi Chaim Moshe Luzzatto, where he tells the reader not to bother if the reader isn’t going to keep re-reading the book because everything in it is truth we all accept yet, precisely because we accept it, we forget these truths and act in opposition to them. The same, for me, is true with Rabbi Heschel-no matter how many times I immerse myself in his wisdom, I learn something new, I see a nuance that I had not before and I am disturbed by my blindness to some of these truths and the ways people bastardize them. 

Sitting with this sentence for more than a day, I keep coming back to the carnival barkers of religion. “Follow my way and you will be saved”, “Turn your troubles over to God and don’t worry about a thing”, “I know the one right path for everyone”, and other such poppycock gets blared from vans, street corners, Church and Temple bulletins, from the Pulpits of so many different religions and sects. Yet, we know deep inside of us that these ‘religious’ people who are so sure of their ‘rightness’ can’t be correct. There cannot be just one way for everyone because we are all created different and unique, at the Red Sea, every Israelite and every other person who left Egypt with them had their own unique experience-hence the statement “this is my God”(Exodus 15:2) is in the singular. Each person standing at Sinai had their own unique experience of hearing God speak the silent letter Aleph, we are told there are 70 ‘faces’ to Torah-70 ways to understand each verse, chapter, book-so how is only one way possible? It isn’t and the promoters of ‘one-way to God, one-way to happiness, one-way to anything’ are just that, promoters, cons, grifters who use the vulnerabilities and susceptibilities of human beings to make their name, line their pockets, and/or sit in the seat of power/next to the seat of power. God’s Will is simple, as I immerse myself and learn from Rabbi Heschel, other Holy Texts, other teachers and guides: Do the next right thing, be a decent human being, listen to the call of one’s soul and allow one’s soul to be the arbiter of one’s actions. How to fulfill it is much more difficult. Yet, we keep finding the grifters who are clear-eyed and “absolutely certain of their wisdom” selling their cons to the world and with such fervor it is difficult not to get swept away with them. Especially because they look successful-having money, property, prestige, etc-not realizing they got it through the same grifting, con artist methods! We keep seeing this scenario play out over and over again and I wonder how is this possible. This morning it hit me!

We begin to believe in the certainty of another in our families. As infants and toddlers, we need to believe in the absolute certainty of our parents, we need them desperately in order to get food, clothing shelter, love, care, etc. Parents think they have to portray their infallibility so their children will feel safe and this is the disease model of family systems. Rather than allow children to correct their parents, we are told “children should be seen and not heard”, “honor your father and mother means not to correct them in public”-which has morphed into don’t ever correct them in many homes. We have a need to be secure and to have certainty which is counter to the fragility of life. Our need for certainty and security has led us to the martyr’s question:”Why Me?” Our response to the need we feel for certainty and security is to portray our infallible self, our absolute certainty and deceive everyone into believing ‘he is right’. If we get enough followers, enough likes, enough votes, enough … to win and be in power, this is all that matters. 

In recovery, our response to the uncertainty of life is to embrace it, live a life of principles and openness to learn, and connect with people on a soul-to-soul experience. We don’t need to prove anything to anyone and we no longer have the absolute need to convince another person of our ‘rightness’. Rather, we continue to “grow along spiritual lines” “seeking spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection”. In recovery, we let go of our old ideas of ‘just one way’/‘my way or the highway’ thinking and acting and embrace the both/and of living in uncertainty and rejoice in the experience we are having. 

I also thought my father was infallible, until at age 7 I saw him on a gurney going into an ambulance because he had a heart attack. He looked so small and so frail. I experienced the fragility of life and didn’t understand what to do with it. I kept believing everything would be okay-my father was my superhero. At our dinner tables we had lively discussions and, at times, my father would speak of his failures, his errors and even allow one of his sons to win an argument and say-you are right and I am not. From the time I was 10 or 11, my father kept giving me lessons, gifts of wisdom and knowledge that I was too young for and he knew it-he also knew his time was limited because of his heart condition. I forgot, didn’t know how to use these lessons for a long time and I am grateful my father taught me them and showed me how to show up, no matter how fragile and uncertain one is. I have been open to change for the past 35 years, I have incorporated many pearls of wisdom that I have gleaned from other people, I have made it a practice to stay teachable and Rabbi Heschel shows me how each and every day. 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 155

“I shudder at the thought of a society ruled by people who are absolutely certain of their wisdom, by people to whom everything in the world is crystal-clear, whose minds know no mystery, no uncertainty.” (Who Is Man pg. 114)

The enormity and impact of these words and this teaching hit us like an airstrike, if we are willing to face ourselves and be in truth with our self. Rabbi Heschel, a religious, pious man, proclaimed to all of us, as wise as he was/is he is never certain of his wisdom nor is he crystal-clear on all things. This is not the teaching of a human being with false humility-this is the teaching and truth of a man who is God-Centered, People-Centered and Soul-Centered. Rather than saying he has all the answers and/or religion has all the answers, he is saying he, and we, should never be so sure of anything that we can’t learn more, change our way of being upon receiving new/conflicting data and stay teachable and open to hear the messages and direction of someone smarter than us and of God. 

Yet, even though this teaching is almost 60 years old, it still goes unheeded, it still goes unlearned, and people are still seeking to be and/or are willing to be “ruled by people who are absolutely certain of their wisdom”. We see this in Russia today with people believing the lies of Putin, their fear of standing up to him and his thugs, their laziness at not seeking truth and ceding to the desires of another. We see this with authoritarian rulers and their subjects throughout history. The Magna Carta, the American Revolution were such anomalies at their time because they broke the yoke that these so-called ‘all-wise’ people had put on them. President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people are humbling all of the governments showing their defiance of the onslaught of a more equipped army doesn’t mean a walk-over victory; freedom is a strong motivator, not being ruled by a dictator who is not as wise or as certain as he likes to portray. Yet, today we find ourselves in the same situations because of the need/desire/self-deception that so many people engage in so they can follow these false wizards. 

We are experiencing this in our politics today as in the past. Lyndon Johnson could not admit his errors in Vietnam, Nixon could not admit his errors and prejudices, Bill Clinton could not admit his affair(s) and never really was contrite about what he did to the nation at that time, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could never admit their error in going into Iraq on false information, Barack Obama has never really admitted his errors in governance and, of course, Donald Trump still believes and sells the lie that he is the smartest guy in the room. Knowing what we know, in the face of all the evidence, there are almost 1/2 of the people in the US who still believe in Trump, who still would vote for this PT Barnum-type, this grifter and liar. In the face of all the evidence to the contrary, people still believe in Trump’s wisdom, his certainty and his “crystal-clear” eyesight.

Rabbi Heschel is calling us to account for ourselves and for the people we are believing in. He is asking us to search our inner self and decide if we are really going to believe that the BS of people who say they are never wrong, who are so sure of themselves and their ‘wisdom’, their eyesight that they don’t need to check their glasses. Is this really the path we want to go down, knowing that only God has ultimate wisdom, and, even God learns and changes God’s decrees based on what is happening on the ground according to my read of the Bible. We are willing to follow these arrogant, people and allow them to practice their mendacious ways to our detriment. 

In recovery, we acknowledge that no human power could have stopped our addiction, we know this because we kept trying and trying to control our drinking, drugging, need for love, co-dependency, workaholism, competition and comparisons and nothing worked until we surrender to the certainty that we do not know everything about everything, that we need help and we need to stop deceiving ourselves that we can be crystal-clear and certain of our ways and our wisdom. In recovery, we work with another person, with a spiritual guide to develop our inner life so we can hear the call of a power greater than ourselves to do the next right thing and not need to be right, need to be the smartest person in the room anymore. 

I like Rabbi Heschel have always shuddered and rebelled against people who are so sure of themselves. While I have been accused of being this type of person, I know that I was continually learning, my philosophy of everything works out because we learn from everything we are doing-even if the result isn’t what we want it to be-was/is difficult for some people to grasp, I have searched myself and know my way of being was never that I was the ‘great and mighty Oz’. I have subjected to people who believe they know it all, in fact, a lawyer told me that he and his investigator were the only arbiters of truth about a situation I was involved in. When I asked about appealing, questioning, presenting my side of the case-in front of so many ‘progressive, politically correct’ people, this charlatan lawyer told me NO-this finding is the Truth, the whole truth and you have no rights! When I asked if we had left America, these politically correct, progressive people stayed silent-I was reminded later that they are the ‘right ones’ and they are so sure of their wisdom-they can’t be questioned! How sad and terrifying. Yet, this is our current state of affairs, on both ends of the spectrum-Rabbi Heschel’s shudder has come home to roost. 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 154

“There are slums, disease, and starvation all over the world and we are building more luxurious hotels in Las Vegas. Social dynamics is no substitute for moral responsibility.” (Who is Man pg.114)

With the backdrop of bombs falling in civilian neighborhoods in the Ukraine, the devastation being caused by a madman intent on being a bully and his Chinese allies, these words have even more power for all of us. We have watched our Veterans become homeless/unhoused and live in tents on the street for years before inviting them in to our VA grounds in Los Angeles, and I am sure, elsewhere. Human beings who went to fight for our country, for the freedom of people across the globe and we are building gated communities, hotels that are more luxurious than the ones Rabbi Heschel was speaking about in 1963-65, and we are spreading disease because 1/2 of the US doesn’t believe in Covid-19 vaccines as they listen to the lies of the far right and left leaders who, by the way, have gotten their vaccines while convincing others to shun these same vaccines!

We are witness, mostly silent, to the starvation of people in the United States, China, Russia, etc-not just ‘third-world’ or poor countries. We stand idly by the blood of our neighbor and are angry at Rev. William Barber who, like Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel, remind us of the human beings who are suffering from being poor and having to choose between inflated rents and food, inflated rents and medical care, and they suffer from the demonization that comes at them from the radical right and the false prophets of the ‘prosperity gospel’ who claim that God loves the rich better and the poor must have done something that God doesn’t like-what BS and we who know better, must call out these charlatans and these liars.

Social dynamics is a sociology term that is defined as: a branch of social physics that deals with the laws, forces, and phenomena of change in society. I got this definition from the internet and it has nothing to do with morality and/or our responsibility to be moral in our actions towards another human being and toward ourselves. Dealing “with laws, forces and phenomena of change in society” does not a moral person make. In fact, I would suggest that social dynamics has contributed to the immorality that we find ourselves and our world mired in. We have witnessed the changing of laws to fit the desires and the whims of the rich and powerful, elected officials no longer have the greater good of freedom at heart and in their every action, they have the greater good of greed, of the few at heart and in their every action because they have been co-opted and bought. “Starvation, disease, slums- they brought this upon themselves and if it is too unseemly to look at, lock those people up so we don’t have to see the degradation and the humiliation of a human being and restore our cities and streets to the pristine nature they once were and to their appropriate ‘whiteness’” seems to be the rationale of these enslavers, these idol worshipers. 

It is time for all good people to come to the aid of their fellow human being as well as their country. Neighborhoods, cities, states, countries are made up of human beings and as long as we ignore the humanity of another person, ignore our own humanity, bombs in Kyiv, unhoused in our streets, a pandemic that has killed almost 1 million Americans and over 6 million human beings worldwide, people dying from hunger and malnutrition will continue to devastate our ability to be human. We are engaged in a war for the soul of the individual, the community, the congregation, the country, the world and the only path to victory is to make being human, being moral, being responsible one Jew for another, one Christian for another, one Muslim for another, one Buddhist for another, and all of us for one another-we have to stop separating ourselves from one another because the way to God is multi-faceted, even including agnostics and atheists, because our sense of what is a human being and what it means to be human comes from God and we get to find our own unique path to living humanely and joyously.

In recovery, we are aware of our need to feed our soul so we can repair the inhumane actions we took prior to our journey into recovering our integrity, our humanity and our soul. We are aware of the false self we promoted and lived for a while and are determined to find the cure for the scurvy of our soul through actions of service to people who are ill, people who are hungry, people who need shelter. We are committed to regaining/gaining a moral compass that keeps us on the path to our true north. In recovery, we are grateful for our second chance to live well.

I have sent money to organizations helping the Ukraine and Harriet and I have, for the last 30 years, given 10%+ to Tzedakah. We support the different causes we have connections to and we support the general community funds. We have worked together for 33+ years to help people regain their moral compass, we have fought against the scourge of addiction, criminality, spiritual bankruptcy and we are both grateful for and to God for sustaining us in our life’s work. While we have retired from Beit T’Shuvah, we continue to respond to people who call us for help, continue to help people find their moral voice and continue to speak truth to power and don’t waste our time with people who cannot/will not stay loyal to God’s principles and justify their actions with “on advice of counsel”. 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 153

“I am afraid of people who are never embarrassed at their own pettiness, prejudices, envy and conceit, never embarrassed at the profanation of live. A world full of grandeur has been converted into a carnival.” (Who is Man pg 114)

Reading these two sentences over and over again, which is how I digest what Rabbi Heschel teaches us, is frightening for their simplicity, truth and our continuing to be unaware/blind to the damage people who are never embarrassed do, how they/we profane life and, as we see in our present day as well as in our history, how we have created a carnival that is not fun! 

Witnessing the assault on the Ukraine and the Ukrainian people and understanding the fear of Nuclear War, I am grateful that President Biden and our Congress is willing to send arms, etc to the Ukrainian people who are heroic in their defense against a power greater than themselves. I am amazed at how long it has taken, given our experience with Hitler and Nazi Germany. There are so many parallels to draw between Putin and Hitler and the greatest is they both have made this world of grandeur, the grandeur of life into a carnival, into the carnival game of whack-a-mole, a carnival game of hitting barrel shooting, etc. Putin is accusing Ukraine of what he does, the old Goebbels technique, he is trying to take an independent nation and make it heel to his power and his whims, he is telling his people they are plotting against us, and he is using his weaponry to destroy centuries old buildings, hospitals, civilian targets with no provocation. We, people who appreciate the grandeur of life, must stand up for #Save Ukraine. We, people who are tired of and have learned from the carnivals put on by autocrats and dictators, have to stop Putin now or suffer devastation and destruction to our countries, our homes, our soldiers, ourselves unlike the world has ever seen. This profaner of life will not stop with the Ukraine any more than Hitler stopped with Czechoslovakia!

We, people who appreciate and are in awe of the grandeur of life, the grandeur of the world, have to stand up for its grandeur, we have to say NO to the forces that want to and are profaning freedom, truth, loyalty, with their prejudices, their pettiness, envies and conceits. We are facing now what should have been faced in 2014 and wasn’t. We should have faced Russia when they helped/encouraged Assad of Syria to use Chemical Weapons on his own people, and we didn’t. Now is the time and Ukraine is the place to honor this wisdom that Rabbi Heschel is giving us. 

We begin with ourselves, of course. How are we turning our life and the lives of those around us into a carnival by not appreciating, being in awe of, and not tending to our corner of the world to enhance the grandeur of life, the grandeur of the world? We have allowed and participated in the rape of our forests, the drilling for oil in lands that should be sacred, the outsourcing of jobs we wanted to pay less for, the outsourcing of manufacturing so we could exploit workers in another country when workers here stood up for decent wages, decent working conditions, no more Triangle Shirtwaist tragedies. We have stood by and participated in the disintegration of the family unit making how things look more important than how they really are, our children are investments not people, they have to be okay for us to be okay, etc. We have made a carnival of life by not caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, and the orphan. We have created an unhoused disaster through our inaction and our blaming of the victims. We have made money on the backs of those less fortunate and we have dealt with people in treacherous manners and called it ‘just business’. There are so many more ways we have turned the grandeur of life and the world into a carnival-what are the ways you have? 

In recovery, we are constantly on guard for the ways we turn the grandeur of life into a carnival. We are do our inventory to see how we have done this in the past and, hopefully, we are hyper-aware of these tendencies we nip them in the bud when they rear their heads in the present. And we don’t always do this because they disguise themselves so well and ‘everyone else is acting this way’ mentality takes over. This is why we take stock of ourselves daily to minimize the damage of our carnival leanings and desires as well as make us aware and embarrassed by them.

I am guilty of doing this and, sitting here writing this blog, I realize the ways I made myself into a caricature was the most devious and destructive method I employed in converting the grandeur of living into a carnival. I was the ringmaster at times and, through deep introspection, I realize the positive methods of the carnival to get people to appreciate life and what they have, God and the healing power of T’Shuvah and living Jewishly as well as living Rabbi Heschel’s teachings. I also realize how the negative and profanation of life that comes with carnival life and participating in carnival activities is so harmful. For the negativity I brought/allowed by not appreciating and acting in accordance with the grandeur of living, I am deeply sorry. I also am deeply appreciative for Jewish prayer, which causes me to rejoice in and be aware of the grandeur of life, of the world and of one another. Prayer is my song and my chant to myself and God to see more of what is real, more of my inner life and repair the ‘broken’ parts and praise God for the strength and wisdom. 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 152

“I am afraid of people who are never embarrassed at their own pettiness, prejudices, envy and conceit, never embarrassed at the profanation of live. A world full of grandeur has been converted into a carnival.” (Who is Man pg 114)

How is it possible to never be embarrassed by one’s own pettiness, prejudices, envies and conceits? I have thought about this phenomenon for many years in my own life and in helping people recover from their addictions. The people Rabbi Heschel describes are not addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, criminals that I was nor were they those I was privileged to meet and help for the most part. The people Rabbi Heschel is afraid of, unfortunately, seem to gain control through deception and looking like they care without every really giving a damn. 

We all share in the profanation of life, to a greater or lessor degree. This teaching is not asking us to never engage in our own pettiness, prejudice, envy and conceit, as I am experiencing it today. Rather, Rabbi Heschel’s fear is our inability to be embarrassed by these distasteful and self-degrading behaviors. This is the problem-we all engage in these ways of being, unfortunately, with the hope that we learn from each encounter exactly because we are embarrassed by these ungodly ways of being. In the Torah, we are told to help our enemy if his ox has fallen; care for the stranger, poor, needy, etc; we are told not to hate the Egyptians even though they enslaved us and we are told to stop the senseless hatred with our brothers, the Edomites. We are told this, I believe, because God knew that we could fall prey to the ways Rabbi Heschel lists above and we needed a path, an instruction, a command to not give into to our lowest thoughts. 

Seriously immersing ourselves in Torah, living Jewishly prevents us from not being embarrassed when we fall prey to our worst ways of being. Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings force us to confront the ways we are profaning life, ours and another’s, so we can be embarrassed and aware and change our patterns, do our T’Shuvah and move forward. Unfortunately, this is not the norm, in families, in work environments, in Boards, in politics. We see more and more the need to deny and defend our worst behaviors and do so convincingly. In my experience with families, there were so many times the parents could be embarrassed by what their child/children had done because of how it reflected upon them, not because they profaned life so badly. Yet, after the entire family was in treatment, the parents could finally admit their own ways of profaning life and be embarrassed for their own pettiness, prejudice, envy and conceit. This led to a family healing and understanding that had never been there before and parents could see their children as independent and children could see their parents as human. This led to being able to help each other whenever anyone was heading down the path of profaning their life, which in turn would profane the lives of the entire family because we care for and are responsible for one another. 

And, unfortunately, we had about 35% of the families/parents who would not participate in this type of healing and awareness. They needed to hold on to their ‘rightness’ and their blaming so they never would break the facade of perfection, the mask of ‘holier than thou’ and be red-faced embarrassed, aware and responsible for their prejudices, pettiness, etc. These people are/were pathetic, as Dr. Susannah Heschel explained to us when she visited Beit T’Shuvah. Pathetic as in ‘isn’t it sad that someone is so stuck’, as in we need to show the same pathos for them that God would and God has shown/given to us. These people are still human beings, they still have an Image of God in them and this teaching reminds me/us that we have to rise above our own hurts and angers, pettiness and prejudices, to create a space for people who are stuck to come to for help, to return to for help and be open to their T’Shuvah and forgive them. Being embarrassed allow us to not carry the resentments that would cause us to act out against them in the same manner as they have towards us. 

In recovery, we are always on guard against the above-mentioned ways of being and we become acutely aware of the ways we have profaned life while also realizing our embarrassment at acting in these ways had pushed us to hide more. Only upon realizing that being embarrassed is a healthy reminder of the impact of our actions and we can only be embarrassed when we become aware of our errors, we welcome facing truth, admitting when we have erred, and making the amends necessary to repair the damage we wrought as well as take the necessary actions to improve our spiritual awareness and our intellectual and emotional intelligence so we don’t do the same action again. 

I have profaned life and I am embarrassed by these actions, I have been embarrassed for most of my life and in my recovery, I have welcomed this state more and more. I argued when people would point some flaw out and, my arguing was not to be right, it was to understand. I am a little stubborn and stiff-necked, I am a Jew after all, and I argue to learn and it is the way I am able to keep the learning with me-I am an active learner, just like I am an action junkie. I know there are people who think I defended to the end and I am sorry for this. I know there were times when it took me too long to be embarrassed and this is what I have worked on-being aware and embarrassed quicker when I give into the ways taught above. 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 151

“I am afraid of people who are never embarrassed at their own pettiness, prejudices, envy and conceit, never embarrassed at the profanation of live. A world full of grandeur has been converted into a carnival.” (Who is Man pg 114)

Rabbi Heschel was afraid of people as described above in 1965, can you imagine his fear in today’s world? We are living at a time where pettiness, prejudices, envy and conceit are, I hope, at their pinnacle. I say hope because if this is the pinnacle, then these ways of being can begin to lessen day by day, till embarrassment becomes the norm. I hear Rabbi Heschel call us to revel in our embarrassment because it is a sign of awareness and response to our engaging in these ungodly ways of being. All of the issues we face in our living, both on a political/national level, local level, familial level and personal level, are centered around the words and teachings above. 

On a national level, both parties engage in pettiness and prejudices rather than compromise and doing the next right thing. The left is prejudiced against the right and vice a versa. They disengage from one another and there is no room for compromise and no way to move the country forward towards the promise of 1776, the hope of the Declaration of Independence, the goal of the Bill of Rights. We are witnesses to the attempted destruction of the democracy that is 248 years old. This is happening because the politicians in DC are not willing to be embarrassed by nor recognize their pettiness and prejudices, they continue to lie and manipulate people while lining their pockets and claiming their adherence to their principles! What a load of horse dung! 

We see this phenomenon on a global stage as well. Putin’s lies and pettiness regarding the Ukraine and his subsequent invasion of Ukraine is nothing more than envy and conceit. He is envious of the West, envious of China, envious of Ukraine, a small country, and he is conceited enough to believe the Ukraine would just surrender and the world would leave him, the great Vladimir Putin, do what he wants to. He believed Russian Oil would save him and make everyone cower before him. At the time of this writing, it seems as if he is mistaken and he is not embarrassed by his errors, his conceit nor his envy-he is doubling down by bombing maternity hospitals, residential neighborhoods, etc. Saudi Arabia’s MBS is not taking President Biden’s call and speaks to his good pal Vlad? Yet they get so much aid from the US-maybe he needs to be cut off, held responsible for Khashoggi’s murder which he ordered, etc. We are witnessing the issues that are based in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above. Without being able to experience embarrassment, these people are dangerous, evil and destructive. 

For those of us who are embarrassed by our own pettiness, prejudices, envy and conceit, we are suffer from the fatigue of fighting against these people who revel in their pettiness, etc. While it has been increasingly clear that some of the people in our government and in the world have always been incapable of embarrassment, these Spiritual diseases of pettiness, prejudice, envy and conceit are rapidly increasing in the population of this country and the world. When almost 1/2 of the country cannot accept the free and fair election results of 2020, we are witnessing the triumph of the leaders who lead from and appeal to the pettiness, prejudices, envy and conceit of their followers. When we make a health issue like the Pandemic of 2020 a political football and prolong the effects through inaction of vaccinations and masks, we are witnessing the triumph of these deceivers. When we cannot pass a national Voting Rights Bill, when women’s free will choices are again under assault, when sexual orientation overrides decency and kindness, we are witnessing the success of the Charlatans who falsely wrap themselves in flag and God. They are the true idolators of our time and they have no loyalty to God, to our Bill of Rights, to our Declaration of Independence. We have to fight through our battle fatigue and never let these mendacious people win, never let these Traitors to God and Faith succeed. 

In recovery, we engage in a “searching and fearless moral inventory” to root out our prejudices and pettiness’, our envy and our conceit. It is an essential foundational footing for our recovery. We have to be embarrassed by these ‘ugly’, inhumane behaviors and thoughts so we can begin to trudge the road to wholeness, community, decency and sense of agency for our self that reflects the authenticity of our souls. In recovery, we are liberated from these ways of being that lead to us isolating, separating and defeating God’s vision and call for us. 

I am embarrassed and have been when I have engaged in these thoughts which always lead to inhumane behaviors. I realize there have been times when I wasn’t aware of envy and believed my prejudices against the charlatans was a good thing. I realize that I was envious of people who were recognized on a large scale for what I was doing and/or for bastardizing or quoting me without attribution. I realize that I was prejudiced against people who were for the bullies, who hung out with people who meant me and my people harm, who said one thing and did another, who looked good on the outside and were hiding their insides because it was ‘polite’. I was prejudiced towards people who were judgmental about me and prejudiced against me-doing what was hateful to me to another person. I am embarrassed and grateful to be more aware through Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom. God Bless, pray for Ukraine,  and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 150

“There is hardly a person who does not submit his soul to the beauty parlor, who does not employ the make-up of vanity to belie his embarrassment. It is only before God that we all stand naked.”(Who is Man pg 113)

Our inability to accept “before God that we all stand naked” is the root cause of our employing “the make-up of vanity” we wear and our unwillingness to be embarrassed. Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom is a reminder for all of us to stop trying to hide from God, from ourselves because it just isn’t possible. All of us, at one moment or another, come face to face with our authentic self and face our self without make-up and are unable to get to the beauty shop for our soul quick enough.

What happens when this moment occurs is the greatest challenge for us, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words today. Either we run to the beauty shop and put on more make-up so we can get relief from our embarrassment and our experience with God and authenticity or we can allow our awareness of our embarrassment move us to change our ways, continue to take off the old make-up and turn to a spiritual practice to enhance our already beautiful soul. Unfortunately, most people choose to run to the beauty shop as quick as they can and put on more and more make-up. 

People who are defensive and blame the victim are people who are unwilling to be authentic, who are afraid of standing naked before God. People who dominate another are people who keep putting on the make-up of superiority and snobbishness, people who engage in mendacity and untruths to get chosen/elected are people who run away from standing naked before God. Putin and the other authoritarian rulers/dictators using fear and punishment to hold onto and expand their personal power and wealth are people who are afraid to stand naked before God. 

These ways of being are learned, however, not innate. Adam and Eve were not afraid until they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and after becoming aware, they had a choice and they chose to hide! We see children/infants who are totally authentic, they have not learned to hide, they have not been taken to the beauty parlor of the soul and not had “the make-up of vanity” put on them yet and they are a joy and a wonder to behold. It is us, parents, adults who teach them to hide, teach them that their authentic self should not be exposed because of our fear of them being ridiculed, shunned, etc. While our initial reasoning is ‘good’, it is flawed because it sets our children on the same path of spiritual unhappiness, spiritual hiding and spiritual misery/depression/anxiety that we suffer from. Our fear of being seen for our inauthenticity is as great as our fear of being seen as an authentic self. We have placed ourselves in a no-win situation. 

This is where Rabbi Heschel’s teachings are so helpful, they light the path back to authenticity, to wholeness, to stop going to the beauty parlors and putting on the make-up. Allowing our self to be embarrassed is the response to acknowledging our shortcomings, our errors, our inability to fully appreciate our greatness, our call from God, our awareness of where we are and where we are going, our determination to repair the harm we have brought, the good we have done and find ways to enhance our living one grain of sand at a time. Awareness, embarrassment and T’Shuvah go hand in hand and they give us the pathway to change, the ability to stop going to the beauty parlor, the courage to put away our “make-up of vanity” and the Grace to stand naked before God-it just doesn’t get any better than this. 

In recovery, we have the experience Rabbi Heschel is teaching us above. We have gone to the beauty parlor, put on the make-up, and lived inauthentically for a while. For most of us in recovery, we had a moment of standing naked before God that made an impression, an awakening if you will and this propelled us into recovery. What we recover is our authenticity, our integrity and our connection to something greater than ourselves as well as true connection to the people we love and learn how to truly care for the well-being and the soul of another human being. 

Oy! I have stood naked before God often and I hear God’s assessment of how well I am hearing and heeding God’s demands/calls to me. This is the difference between now and 35 years ago. I was naked before God and I heard God’s call-I was like Jonah and ran away from or tried to. God always caught up with me. I look back on these last 33+ years and I see when I put on make-up and I am embarrassed. I also see when I did not and I was received with love and when I wasn’t. I am realizing how blind I have been at times. I am not afraid to stand naked before God nor have I been because I know each day I do, I grow, I make my T’Shuvahs, I accept the T’Shuvahs of another, I forgive, I move forward and I learn. I have closed down the beauty parlor I sent my soul to, I have thrown away the make-up I have used for years and I stand up straight before God and before people, apologetic for my errors and unapologetic for being who I am. I am blessed to have people who care and love me enough that they love me without make-up and without any ‘beauty touch-ups’. 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 149

“There is hardly a person who does not submit his soul to the beauty parlor, who does not employ the make-up of vanity to belie his embarrassment. It is only before God that we all stand naked.”(Who is Man pg 113)

Rabbi Heschel is giving us the gift of awareness and a path to wholeness in all of his teachings and the teaching quoted above is one of the hardest to incorporate into our living. Rabbi Heschel is giving us a direction for our Chesbon HaNefesh, our accounting of our soul each and every day/evening. It is a recipe for a daily unmasking of ourselves and a daily cleaning our face and our soul of our vanity. His recognition that this is a human problem takes the pathology out of the experience and we are able to use this teaching to see what “make-up of vanity” we have put on this day and how we can clean it off and find ways to stop adding this particular “make-up” to our self/soul any more.
If only people would take this seriously! We keep hiding from embarrassment rather than embracing it.

I find Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word “employ” interesting. I am understanding this word to intimate, at least for me, how much we pay people, in any number of ways, to put the make-up on us, to be like the make-up people on a set and constantly ‘fix’ our “make-up of vanity”, how we lose our own sense of self because these ‘employees’ keep feeding our vanity and ego so we can’t see the truth nor are they willing to speak the truth. It happens in business, it happens in Church, it happens in families, in marriages, etc. We all have a need for approval and we all have a need to be seen as ____(fill in the blank). Yet the greatest need we have is to live in connection and truth, covenant and kindness and we are unable to have these experiences when our ‘employees’ keep fixing our make-up and we keep putting new make-up on over the old ones that have become caked on us. 

Seeing our country as it is, right now, is seeing a large group of people who have ‘employed’ many other people to keep the make-up of their vanity, their lies, their subterfuge, intact and looking fresh. These ‘employees’ keep spreading the big lie by speaking some truth and then covering it up with their lies and their make-up, William Barr is just the latest example. This large group of people who are being employed to keep the make-up fresh for their leader(s) do not realize that they also are wearing the make-up of mendacity and the make-up of UnGodliness! These so-called ‘good christians’ are going against the teachings of Christ with their hatred, their racism, their inability to see clearly through their make-up and have the Image of God that another human being carries revealed to them, no matter what the race, creed, religion, etc of another human being is! 

We are in difficult times today as we were when Rabbi Heschel first taught this wisdom. Some of us have the advantage of being part of the experience of Selma and seeing the horror and then the triumph of Rev King who asked Rabbi Heschel to march with him. Some of us saw the miracle of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts passed by Congress that had many racists in it. Yet, President Lyndon Johnson took off his “make-up” and saw the humanity of non-white people and said we must ensure their rights and acknowledge their humanity. Yet, some 60 years later, we are facing the same issues as we did in the ’60’s, we are fighting for the dignity of all people again because the racists and the deceivers did not covert to the religious maxim that we are all created in the Image of God, they just rested until they could gerrymander enough votes to give them the power to return to hatred and ‘white people are the only true rulers’ way of being. The ‘south has risen again’ and hatred, violence has returned, disgracing God’s laws and principles, harming God’s children is their path and they have no embarrassment about doing this. Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is calling on all of us to take off our “make-up of vanity and see one another as Divine Images and treat one another accordingly. It is time to #SaveUkraine and defeat Putin and stop feeding the Putin in each of us. 

Recovery calls upon us to wipe off as much of the old make-up as possible early on so we can use the embarrassment we experience from doing the Chesbon HaNefesh, accounting of our soul, to enhance our daily living. We also continue to wipe off the old make-up as we become aware of it while making sure that we wipe off any new “make-up of vanity” we put on each day. In recovery, we seek authenticity and transparency which are antithetical to putting on make-up!

I realize the make-up I have use most is one of being impervious to the arrows, the pain, the hurts I have experienced. This make-up is old, it goes back some 56 years and, I realize, many people walked away from me when I took the make-up off and expressed my anguish and pain, either asked for their help or I accused them of helping my ‘enemies’. They walked away, in part, because if I was going without make-up and calling out to them to take their make-up off, it was just too scary for them and “not the way we do things around here”. I realize I use anger as a make-up for hurt sometimes and I use Rabbi Heschel and Torah as tools to help me take the “make-up of vanity off. 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 148

“There is hardly a person who does not submit his soul to the beauty parlor, who does not employ the make-up of vanity to belie his embarrassment. It is only before God that we all stand naked.”(Who is Man pg 113)

These words of wisdom from Rabbi Heschel are haunting me right now. I keep wondering what the reason is for our spending so much time and money in the beauty parlor Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. It is so antithetical to the very nature of our soul to submit it to these beauty parlors we employ, yet we continue to do so. I am sitting at my computer writing this with tears in my heart and disturbances in my soul. 

We experience the harm of these actions in the myriad of ways some politicians knowingly and intentionally speak untruths so they can get their followers to vote for and support them in their deceptions and mendacity.These people, whom we have trusted with the safety, security, vision of our country, are engaged in self satisfaction and in promoting a way of living that celebrates ‘white Christians’ while denigrating everyone else. The beauty parlors they go to are so insidious, these shops continue to reflect the wonder and awe of hatred, racism, protectionism, isolationism, etc. It is difficult to fathom the depths of self-deception that some politicians employ so they don’t have to face themselves and their actions. 

Many in the media use the same beauty parlors as our politicians use. They continue to spread lies, deceits, speaking to the fears and the lowest of our animal desires, kill our ‘enemies’ or anyone who we deem a ‘threat’ to our emotional, physical, monetary well-being. Some media people, after taking the Covid-19 vaccines, kept spreading mis-information about the same vaccines to their watchers. Some media people, knowing full well the 2020 election was legitimate, still promote the lie it was ‘stolen’. Some media people speak to the fears of people with sensational headlines and take bits and pieces of what is said and done so out of context that they seem very believable. Some media people have made careers from their lies and deceptions to the point they themselves are unable to discern fact from fiction. Even worse, some of these people know they are lying and are proud of their fictions and their ratings. All for the sake of money, power and prestige. They continue to go to their special beauty parlors and see the false reflection of success in the mirrors provided. 

Religious leaders and their followers, people of faith, are not immune to the lure of the beauty parlor. In following dogma rather than God, in promoting the lie that there is only one way to God, theirs, in defying truth and dignity for power and renown, we people of faith and religious leaders continue to extol one another and continue to reflect the rightness/whiteness of our way. When we use the vulnerabilities of our flock to promote our mendacity and our lies, we are engaging in evil. When we continue to help people hate, disagree and sow discord, we are taking the Name of God in vain. When we are more interested in how we look and how many followers we have, we are creating a false image of our self and helping to create a false image of God. In the Bible, there is no perfection, no perfect people, only people who keep moving forward to learn how to live together and find wholeness and peace. Yet, by submitting our “soul to the beauty parlor” we are living contrary to every ideal God stands for. 

In Exodus, God says we are to build a Mishkan, a place, and God will dwell among us. It is impossible to experience God’s presence when we are constantly going to the beauty parlor of mendacity and deception. It is impossible to experience or espouse God’s teachings, love, spirit when we continue to engage in the lies that our trips to the beauty parlor promote. One of the reasons that religion is on the wane in our time, I believe, is because many people are seeing the roots of religious people’s being and then the false coloring religious leaders on putting on to cover up their souls, to cover up God’s truth and they don’t want any part of their mendacity. 

In recovery, we reflect on the time, money, spirit we have left at the beauty parlors we employed so we could keep lying to ourselves. Seeing this accounting on paper leaves us ill with regret and begs the question, how could we fall so far away from our essence? Yet we did and our recovery is a daily challenge to walk by the old beauty parlors and not find new ones to go into. It is a hard habit to break and break it we must so we can enjoy the fruits, tasty and sour, of our recovery. 

I find myself reflecting on the beauty parlors I have visited in my recovery and I am embarrassed. While these visits did not last long, usually, and I admitted to my false sense of self upon realizing the effects of these visits and/or upon being told of my visits, I see the damage I did and could have done to another human being and to my self. I am heartened by the fact that I have continued to minimize these visits, let go of my need to be right and allowed myself to know what is right, and I continue to learn and grow my soul each day. I also know that while the lure of these beauty parlors is great, the call of my soul has to be greater. My soul’s call to me gets greater through constant contact with God/Higher Power and through maintenance and attention. 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 147

“It is a protection against the outburst of the inner evils, against arrogance, hybris, self-deification. The end of embarrassment would be the end of humanity.” (Who is Man pg 113)

The last sentence above says it all and, unfortunately, I believe we are on the precipice of the end of humanity. Human beings may survive and exist for a long time, my concern is that we are ending the practice of humanity in our time. It is not a show of humanity to invade another country just because one nation wants to. It is not a show of humanity for the rest of the world to sit idly by with sanctions that are strong and not strong enough to stop a thug from killing innocent people, destroying cities, towns, a way of life the Ukrainians took years to build. People are worried about nuclear war, it destroys the thug as well, yet the world’s humanity is in serious jeopardy when we get scared by talk and the same talk as Adolf Hitler used at Munich with Neville Chamberlain-President Biden, learn the lesson of appeasement and of fear. 

We are on the precipice of the end of humanity when our religious institutions and leaders when religion and religious leaders become “dull, oppressive, insipid” as Rabbi Heschel teaches us on page 3 in his book God in Search of Man. Religious leaders are shallow/lacking vigor as the dictionary defines insipid. And we often see that religious leaders want to be passionate about a political issue without connecting to the inhumanity of the issue and/or being so passionate about the immorality of an issue, they forget to see the humanity and how they are affected. We have all witnessed too often the oppressive ways religious leaders and the fundamentalists of their flock use religious teachings as a weapon and wield this weapon to provoke fear and obedience rather than using the teachings to promote more humanity, more justice, more love, more connection to one another! It is a travesty against God, against the Bible, against humanity; yet they promote themselves as the ‘only true believers’. I have been told how sorry they are for me as I am not going to be saved because I am not a Christian-and this passes as being human towards one another? As I write this, I wonder how different these fire and brimstone, fundamentalist religious leaders who need to control the body of a woman, who need to make sure people die in the Death Chamber for their sins, who need to impose Christian Law on American citizens, who need to stand up for excluding people of color from voting, who need to praise the ‘white’ race, who think it is fine to lock people seeking a better life up in cages, especially small children and separate them from their families and lose them in the system. This is what America stands for? This is what God stands for? No wonder our religion has declined!

When optics is more important than substance, we are losing sight of our humanity. When institutions lose their missionary spirit for the sake of ‘on advice of counsel’ we are losing sight of our humanity. When people have to serve the rules rather than the rules serve the people, we are losing sight of our humanity. On this past Shabbat, Chabad in Ukraine was on the phone all day trying to get people out of harms way and into safe territory even though their understanding of the day of rest is to not use a phone, saving a life was more important-which it is in Judaism. Religion becomes dull, from the Dutch meaning crazy, when “faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit;”(God in Search of Man pg 3). It is insane to bastardize God’s Name and make false images of God and religious teachings and pathways for the ‘protection’ of God and religion. It is crazy to see how many religious followers have lost their connection with their own families, communities and engage only with ‘their own kind’. We are all created in the Image of God, we are all Kin Under the Skin, as my brother Rev Mark Whitlock teaches, we are all commanded to care for the stranger, the poor and the needy in our midst and, I would add, inside of us. We have to return our religious leaders and our religious institutions to promote humanity, not political nor fundamental falsehoods! It is crazy to believe that finite humans can understand nor comprehend nor receive all that the Infinite One has to say, so fundamentalism, only one-way is an inhumane practice as well as anti-religious. We, the people, have to retake our religious institutions, our religious texts and restore the humanity to spiritual and religious practice. 

In recovery, we are so aware of our own efforts to end humanity through our own actions. Not only were we acting inhumanely, we were forcing another human being to suffer their own actions of inhumanity towards us by not having us in their lives, by becoming afraid to trust people, experiencing the abuse we heaped upon them, the abandonment and message that there was something wrong with them, etc. We engage in living amends each and every day by restoring their humanity, their dignity and showing dignity and being human towards everyone we come in contact with-to the best of our ability. 

I am guilty of some of the actions I describe above and I was guilty of many more prior to my recovery. I work hard to ensure that humanity continues, grows and flourishes within me and outside of me. This daily writing, hanging out with and learning from Rabbi Heschel helps me offend less often and I am continuing to search for ways to be of service and love. 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 146

“It is a protection against the outburst of the inner evils, against arrogance, hybris, self-deification. The end of embarrassment would be the end of humanity.” (Who is Man pg 113)

As we can see in the world today, hybris and self-deification seem to be winning the war for the soul of the world and there is no embarrassment to protect ourselves from those perpetrating the horrors hybris and self-deification lead to. Hybris is an ancient Greek word meaning the “intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade” and it morphed into hubris, “meaning excessive pride or self-confidence”. Self-deification is defined for our purposes as ‘the belief in one’s own judgment and vision to the exclusion of any proof to the contrary’. In ancient Greece, one with hybris eventually caused their own downfall, which is usually true with hubris as well. Hillary Clinton exhibited hubris when she forgot to campaign in the Midwest in 2016! Donald Trump is all hubris with hybris as he used stolen emails to benefit himself, used threats of violence, albeit lawsuits and slander, to keep people from telling the truth. The politicians who believe they are above the social, moral and legal limits that a decent and democratic society puts upon its citizens exhibit hybris and hubris! We see this in the catering to the White Nationalists by the people who don’t think of themselves as white nationalists still believe they are better because they are white. We see this in the draconian laws restricting voting rights, a woman’s right to choose, ability to immigrate to this country of immigrants, etc. We see hubris and hybris in the advertising world, in the business world, in the religious realm as well.

The violence is the exertion of power just because someone can in cases where physical violence is not happening. The violence of psychological, spiritual abuse to children, adults, is immeasurable most of the time and, because there isn’t ‘empirical evidence’, many times pushed aside by the victim, the perpetrator, and the judge/public. We see the effects of the Holocaust onto the 3rd generation in many families, we see the effects of Castro’s revolution on the generations of Cubans who left and who stayed, we see the effects of Richard Nixon’s attack on decency to this day. We see the effects of slavery to this day on Black People, we see the effects of Anti-Semitism on Jews, Islamaphobia on Muslims, Homophobia on LGBTQI people, etc. We see how people perpetrating violence without any embarrassment harm not just their targets, they harm all of us.

“Evil triumphs when good people do nothing”, this saying, attributed to Edmund Burke, is what we are seeing today in the Ukraine. Putin and his Oligarchs believe they should be in charge of the world and should be worshiped. These violent thugs have the hubis and the hybris to scare the rest of the world because of their nuclear capabilities. Yet, they are too full of themselves, they worship themselves too much and want to be worshipped so greatly they would never chance destroying themselves. They know any nuclear strike would be answered immediately and mutual destruction would happen. Yet, the world cowers as it did in 1937 with Hitler. The world is not embarrassed enough to take action and we see the evil that is breaking out around us.

This outbreak of evil is not just ‘over there’ with Putin, however. It is with the Supreme Court, with the Congress, with the elected leaders that push an agenda that is theirs and for their deification not what is best and a solution for what ails us here at home. Some religious leaders are not using Scripture, Prayer, belief in God to move our moral and spiritual living forward, they are using them for their own aggrandizement and power. We are witnesses to a great calamity, the loss of the embarrassment that comes from our awareness of hybris and self-deification and using shame and blame to embarrass another person into following our lead, worshiping us. Rabbi Heschel’s words are a warning and a solution, will we heed them? 

In recovery, we work daily to stay out of hybris and self-deification. Self-deification is a dangerous and slippery slope. We know we need the help of guides, spiritual and moral, to ensure that we are taking the “next right action”. We learned from our prior living that we are prone to believe our own lies/press and be arrogant and perpetrate violence, physically, psychologically and/or spiritually on another person. In recovery, we keep an inventory, seek out spiritual guidance often and create a pattern and path of living that helps us stay aware and embarrassed. 

I am embarrassed by my arrogance and I am aware of the moments where I bought my own press as well. I allowed myself and allow myself to be confronted by my spiritual guides and my inner circle whenever they get a hint of arrogance and/or self-aggrandizement. It is subtle at times, when I think that someone owes me something for my helping them, I am in danger of being arrogant. I have found solace in the daily inventories I make so I am able to be embarrassed. I have come to find comfort and joy in that embarrassment is my soul’s knowledge finally reaching my intellect and emotions and the redness that I show and the heat I feel are signs of connection of my parts and integration of my soul and my 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 145

“It is a protection against the outburst of the inner evils, against arrogance, hybris, self-deification. The end of embarrassment would be the end of humanity.” (Who is Man pg 113)

As we watch in horror what is happening in Ukraine and immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, we realize the reason we need to be embarrassed more and more and we need to be aware of our actions, our way of living. Putin and his thugs are invading a free country just because they believe they can, their arrogance is so strong and their embarrassment so weak  they actually have deceived themselves into believing their lies, actually believe that this makes them stronger and tougher, etc. 

Arrogance is a major disease in our world, as it has been throughout the millennia. Embarrassment is a protection when we use it as a ‘halter’ around our rationalizations, around our self-deceptions, etc. We do this by remembering who is in our neighborhood, God! As Rabbi Heschel teaches us we “live in the shadow of greatness” and we are “ a contemporary of God”. God/Higher Power/Higher Consciousness/morality puts a ‘halter’ around us, to lead us towards finding ways to live together with our differences and our similarities. Yet, many of us throw off this ‘halter’ and we continue to defy a higher standard of living through our arrogance. This arrogance is that we can lie with impunity, cheat and get away with it, entitled and not be responsible, above the law and force you to follow my law, live the only true path to god and this makes me immune to criticism, the one with the gold rules and the rest serve, etc. 

We see this in our faith communities through their adherence to dogma rather than their response to human suffering. We see this arrogance in religious leaders who play politics rather than serve God. We see this arrogance in trying to control women’s right to choose while saying they have the right to choose to stay unvaccinated. We see this arrogance in their bastardization of Scriptures to make power more important than kindness, lies more important than truth, vilifying the pressing needs of the poor, the needy, the stranger rather than serving these needs and many more ways. We need to call our faith communities to account and demand they become embarrassed at their arrogance, demand they return to God and serve people in truth, let go of their own lies/self-deceptions, stand up for the needy, the stranger, the poor, promote freedom and understand that there are, at least, 70 ways to understand the Bible so no one way can be ‘the’ way. We need to demand our faith communities return to welcoming the stranger, the one who has strayed from God and is returning, the women who make their own choices, the people who have been assaulted by the money-hungry carpetbaggers of today, people of color who have been marginalized in subtler and subtler ways, people of different faith traditions so we can learn of our similarities and rejoice in our differences. We need to demand our faith communities let go of their arrogance, be embarrassed and rejoin God in promoting truth, love, justice, compassion, kindness, etc. 

We see this arrogance in our elected officials all the time, unfortunately. Both poles, far right and far left, accuse one another of being arrogant without looking in the mirror! The arrogance is the belief by some elected officials that they are above the law, they can do anything they want, they can live double lives without any consequences, condemning in another what they do on a daily basis. Yet, when they are ‘found out’, they deny, they declare their innocence, they rail against the unfairness of the situation and they accuse their accusers of lying. Rather than be embarrassed by their inability to control themselves, they are proud of their ‘above the law’ status. Rather than admit to the evils that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, they are proud of the ‘patriotism’ shown that day. Rather than censure and dismiss Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar for their attendance at, speaking at and agreement with a white nationalist group who chanted for Putin, applauded Hitler as a hero, Kevin McCarthy gave a weak statement, while censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their seeking of truth-can’t get much more arrogant than this, Kevin McCarthy!

In recovery, we have been shunned by so many for so long because of our past. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is so powerful for us reminding us to not do what is hateful to us to another person. We cannot allow our hurt at being shunned by faith communities, employers, family members cause us to be arrogant towards anyone, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of believing we can be in recovery and live arrogantly.

I am arrogant at times and I am called arrogant more often than I actually am. I realize my visions, my insights and the ways I go about achieving them can be experienced as arrogant and I have to do a better job of explaining my path to another person. I have been arrogant and dismissive when I experience someone being deceptive with me and I have come across arrogant to those who do not want to be exposed. I have been arrogant in my thinking that I had earned some respect, some understanding from people because of the good deeds I had done, not realizing/accepting that 1 “Oh Shit” wipes our 100 “Atta Boys”. I am embarrassed by my awareness of my being blind to some truths and grateful that I can be embarrassed and use this ‘halter’ to lead me forward with strength, better vision, truth and love. 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 144

“It is a protection against the outburst of the inner evils, against arrogance, hybris, self-deification. The end of embarrassment would be the end of humanity.” (Who is Man pg 113)

Rabbi Heschel’s continuation of the importance of embarrassment chills me to the bone. As I immerse myself in his words, I am getting more and more embarrassed at my not being embarrassed and I fear for our future given some leaders do not have a sense of embarrassment as Rabbi Heschel teaches about it and they have Nuclear Weapons and/or bio-chemical weapons, etc.! I have great concerns for our future given people’s deep concern about optics without being concerned about their inner lives, truth, substance, etc. When one can become a celebrity; rich and famous; because of their outrageous behaviors and then have millions of people want to be like them, we are in trouble spiritually, morally and emotionally. When people are too ‘embarrassed’ to admit their errors, do T’Shuvah/make amends, have a plan to not repeat the behaviors again, we become a society that is based on power rather than mercy, greed rather than feeding the poor, the needy, the stranger, etc. 

The embarrassment Rabbi Heschel is speaking of is the awareness we get to live a life which can “replenish a wondrous expectation” as I wrote about a few days ago. It is also an awareness of how we have squandered the moral capital of our ancestors, how we have failed to learn the lessons of history and keep repeating the failures of our ancestors. It is an awareness of the well-worn paths we keep taking which lead us to a spiritual bankruptcy and our need to take the “Road Less Travelled”  as Dr. M. Scott Peck writes in his book of the same name. The path we need to take is found in our Holy Books, in the Hebrew Bible and its many commentaries of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Tibetan Book of Living and Dead, etc. It is not to be found in the latest fashion trend, nor is to be found in how many likes one has on TikTok, Instagram, etc. 

The path we need to take is one of awareness of our strengths and awareness of our foibles. It is a path filled with embarrassment, the need to have a halter on us because the inner evils work so hard to break out of us. They grow stronger each day unless we are aware of them, work to maintain the inner tension(balance) between our opposing inclinations and grow our spiritual life each and every day. We fall into the trap of our inner evils whenever we defend our actions, positions by blaming another without taking responsibility for our part. We fall into the trap of our inner evils whenever our ‘need to be right’ overtakes our need to be loving. We fall into the trap of our inner evils every time we are in comparison and competition with another person and stoop to our basest behaviors and thinking in order to “win at all costs”. We fall into the trap of our inner evils when we adopt the lie that life is a ‘zero-sum’ game. These traps are especially insidious because they are so ‘normal’ in our societal life and rules. 

To protect ourselves “against the outburst of the inner evils” we need to “lift up our eyes and see” as God told Abraham in the Hebrew Bible. We have to take off our blinders and leave our state of willful blindness. We can do this by growing our inner lives, maturing our soul and enhancing our spiritual life. We do this by reprioritizing our decision making process; our souls/inner knowledge/gut intuition become the arbiters of our actions with intellect/rationalization and emotions/desires having votes and they can no longer veto what we know to be the next right action. Fulfilling the Mitzvah of T’Shuvah each and every day allows us to see where we have “missed the mark” and where we have “hit the mark” so we can repair and grow our ‘misses’ and enhance and grow our ‘hits’. 

In recovery, we are aware of the myriad of ways our inner evils burst out and the damage they caused to the people around us, the people we love and to our self. We realize the danger of going down this path with a new ‘cover’ looking good in our recovery, still hiding from the work of walking the path less travelled. People with long-term recovery have see people ‘fake it till you make it’ and fall by the wayside because they did not take this new spiritual, moral, ethical path with all their being, it was more lip service than dedication. In recovery, we work hard to repair the damage from our outbursts and grow our inner life so we can manage these inner evils. 

One of the light bulbs that went off for me is Rabbi Heschel doesn’t say the inner evils will go away! I know this to be true and I am embarrassed that I let them burst out of me thinking they had disappeared and/or I had a handle on them. I am also embarrassed by my awareness of breaking the halter that God and other trusted guides put on me to help me with containing my inner evils and the damage I wrought because I would not let myself be led. I am grateful to be embarrassed by these awareness’ and many others. I am embarrassed by my awareness of the inner evil of self-deception and all the subtle ways it has/had a hold on me. I am embarrassed by the awareness that some of my awareness’ come after the fact and damage has been done. I am embarrassed at my awareness of how I deceived myself to ignore that the people I trusted and helped would ever me less than human when I made an error and did not believe in T’Shuvah nor in truth. 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 143

“It involves an awareness of the grandeur of existence that may be wasted, of a waiting ignored, of unique moments missed.” (Who is Man pg 113)

Continuing his teaching about embarrassment, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the joy of embarrassment and the embracing of it rather than the hiding from and fear of embarrassment. At issue for all of us is whether we are aware of “the grandeur of existence” in the first place. Herein lies the greatest problem of humankind, I believe Rabbi Heschel is teaching us: our existence is grand, miraculous, a gift, and we need to stop taking it for granted. We waste our existence by not being aware of the grandeur of being alive, of the grandeur of being a divine reminder, the grandeur of being a divine need, the grandeur of being able to love, laugh, cry, mourn, connect, be kind, etc. 

Our generations, the 21st Century is not that different from other times in history; we are constantly hiding from “the grandeur of existence”, we are constantly staying unaware of the amazement of being alive, being able to think, speak, care for another, bring new life into the world, and if we are able to be aware, we seem to be unable to sustain this awareness and grow it. We are too caught up in our own self-centeredness to be aware and therefore incapable of being embarrassed. Yet, our unawareness could be the beginning of our embarrassment which would lead to becoming more aware of the grandeur of our existence, the grandeur of the existence of every human being, animal, nature, etc. This awareness along with the embarrassment would lead us to “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall men learn war anymore.”(Isaiah 2:4). 

God is waiting, Rabbi Heschel teaches us in his interview with Carl Stern and I have a new way of experiencing  this concept. How often have we left someone waiting for us, be it because we are ‘running late’, we forgot, we ignored their cry, we turned away from the misery of another human being, we stayed focused on our self, etc? Every time we keep someone waiting, we keep God waiting. Every time we ignore the call, the need, the cry of another human being, we keep God waiting. Each time we stay silent in the face of wrongdoing, evil, we keep God waiting. We deceive ourselves into believing that these calls from fellow humans should go unanswered because they have “to figure it out themselves”, they should “pull themselves up by the bootstraps, just like I did”, “my father beat me and it made a man out of me”, etc. While the immigrant makes good story is a true and wonderful one, it is the rare one today as we have made immigrants the enemy, people of another faith the enemy, people of a different color the enemy, etc. We ignore moments of waiting whenever we make separation rather than connection. We ignore moments of waiting whenever we make someone else bad/less than us so we can feel good about our self. We ignore moments of waiting when we need to conquer another rather than cooperate to build a better world. 

Many of us do get embarrassed by “unique moments missed” once we realize them, yet this embarrassment is not used to help us sharpen our senses to stop missing unique moments, most of us use it to put another person down and/or feel bad about ourselves. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that every moment is unique, every moment is pregnant with beauty, awe, amazement, grandeur, joy, aliveness and it is only us humans who dull our senses, being stale, blind, uncaring. We have the opportunity to end our willful blindness to the uniqueness of each moment. We have the power within us to appreciate that this moment will never be again and we can seize the power of it, the joy of it, the holy of it, the connection with another this moment brings, the connection with God, the connection with our inner life, our soul. We have this opportunity with each moment and, while none of us will ever be ‘perfect’ in this task, we can all improve our awareness of the grandeur, the waiting and the uniqueness of each day, week, month, etc. 

In recovery, we have a daily inventory to help us be more aware of the grandeur of existence, the waiting we have ignored and the waiting we have answered, and the unique moments of the day. We, who have been unaware for so long and delved so deeply into the morass of degradation and ignorance, know it is our life that is at stake if we do not stay aware of the grandeur of living, of hearing and responding to the waiting of another and God, and awaken to the uniqueness of moments in our day and our life. In recovery, we train ourselves to be embarrassed when we ignore this way of being. 

I am embarrassed for the times I took existence for granted and have not been aware of the grandeur of it, I am embarrassed for the times I thought; ’same shit, different day’ and I am so remorseful for the waiting I ignored, the unique moments I have missed. I also am grateful for the overwhelming moments of appreciation of the grandeur of existence, the relishing of it, the gratitude to God for my being able to live in this grandeur and the showering of love from my parents, siblings, wife, daughter, grandson, extended family, and friends. I am grateful for all the calls I have answered and the ones I will in the future of people who were waiting for a helping hand, a person who could meet their concerns. I am so grateful for recognizing the multitude of unique moments in my life and the lives of people around me. I am embarrassed by the joy of life I experience and the embarrassment helps me realize the many joys I have. 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 142

“Embarrassment is a response to the discovery that in living we either replenish or frustrate a wondrous expectation.”(Who is Man pg.113)

OMG, reading this sentence in light of what is happening in the world is, for me, proof of Rabbi Heschel’s prophetic vision, voice and teachings. The issue for all of us is to be embarrassed so we can make the necessary changes to the ways we live so we begin and/or continue to replenish this wondrous expectation called humankind, this wondrous expectation called service to something greater than ourselves, this wondrous expectation called peace and harmony. We all need to be embarrassed as a response to the newfound awareness we gain through Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. 

Yet, most of us are not embarrassed, most of us are not even discovering “that in living we either replenish or frustrate” the desires of God, of another human being, of life. Since we are not interested in this discovery, we can have no response and we will never be embarrassed. We have not progressed much from Adam and Eve hiding in the Garden of Eden, no matter how technologically skilled we may be. 

Putin’s attempt to conquer Ukraine is an example of someone who is not interested in a “wondrous expectation”, Putin is showing the world he is only interested in his desires and expectations, he is worried whether he will look weak or strong, whether he can pick up where the former Soviet Union under Stalin left off and fulfill his false, cruel expectation of Putin is King. Putin is unfazed by the truth that he is frustrating this “wondrous expectation”. The rest of the world, for the most part, however, is embarrassed and so they are responding mostly appropriately. We are coming to the aid of Ukraine, we see the heroism of the people, of the leadership and we are responding with support, with sanctions and with spirit. This is an example of helping to replenish a “wondrous expectation”.

Religious leadership speaks of the “wondrous expectation” and, unfortunately, has done so much to frustrate it rather than replenish it. We Rabbis, Ministers, Imams, Priests, have to own up to our errors and we have to be embarrassed more so we can truly lead our communities to replenish the “wondrous expectation” of God more and more. We need to stop the hatred, we need to stop the lies from our pulpits, we need to hold ourselves, political leaders and the Jew in the pew, the Catholic in the pew, the Muslim on the rug, the Christian in the pew, the Buddhist in the temple, etc accountable for replenishing the “wondrous expectation” their birth and life represent. We need to confess our acts of frustrating this expectation, we have to stop kissing up to power and, instead, follow the lead of Nathan the Prophet to King David, the lead of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the actions of Rabbi Heschel, the path of John Lewis and speak truth to power, stay true to our unique mission and, as Father Greg Boyle says, practice “radical kinship”. 

Our political leadership is lacking in morality and spirituality. They are, for all their supposed religiosity, frustrating God’s “wondrous expectation” and are proud of it. When Marjorie Taylor Greene can speak at a rally of Neo-Nazi’s and it takes Kevin McCarthy 3 days to decide that this is not a good thing, they both are frustrating God’s “wondrous expectation”. The Senate could not pass a voting rights bill that ensures every American can vote, is treated with dignity and has the freedom to choose their own elected officials, these fine ‘church-going, god-fearing’ mendacious scoundrels. Governments are here to serve the people, Priests are to serve the people, communities are formed to serve its members, this is how we replenish the “wondrous expectation” of God, of our souls, of another human being-we are not here to serve our selfish self, we are not here to get what we can and screw anyone else, we are not here to frustrate “a wondrous expectation” through cruelty, war, mendacity, slavery, etc.

In recovery, we begin by acknowledging the paths that helped us frustrate this “wondrous expectation” that came into being when we were born. We opener eyes, our minds, to allow the truth of our souls to penetrate the emotional and intellectual ignorance we lived by. Upon our realization of our many paths of frustrating God’s “wondrous expectation” we are embarrassed and this embarrassment leads us to repair the damage we have done and change our paths so we will begin the process of replenishing. 

It is 2 years since I acted inappropriately and set off a chain of events that has led me to a new sense of appreciation of embarrassment and a new path of replenishing the “wondrous expectation” that I frustrated. I am embarrassed by the awareness of how one wrong action did frustrate the “wondrous expectation” of God and change so many lives and that I did not see this nor did I consider this outcome prior to my “missing the mark”. I also am sad that I wasn’t embarrassed nor aware of the depth of this teaching earlier in my life. I am grateful that I am not embarrassed at being embarrassed, I am grateful that I can face my embarrassment with joy and hope. I am elated to be able to grow in embarrassment and replenish the “wondrous expectation” I was born to fulfill. 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 141

“Embarrassment is the awareness of an incongruity of character and challenge, of perceptivity and reality, of knowledge and understanding, of mystery and comprehension.”(Who is Man pg.112)

Continuing to experience this teaching, I am embarrassed by the inability of so many of us to be embarrassed and/or aware of the incongruity of knowledge and understanding we display. This inability to be both aware and embarrassed has led to war, famine, rejection, slavery, racism, caste societies, bastardization of religious principles, idolatry, authoritarianism, etc. It is the root cause of the crash of 2008, our gridlock congress, the search for absolute power in government, the cruelty of authoritarianism, etc. 

The greatest problem, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is we are not embarrassed at our incongruities, not that we are unaware. In some cases, of course we are, and in the majority of times we live incongruity of knowledge and understanding it is with full awareness of this fact. There is no way the Republican Party did not know what they were unleashing when they continually called the election of 2020 “a stolen election” and called upon their supports to “stop the steal”! Not only were they aware of what they knew and how they were using their knowledge, they were the perpetrators of stolen elections for years by limiting the availability of voting places in minority neighborhoods, making it harder for people of color and older people to vote, etc. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell can stand up and straight-faced lie to the people and use their knowledge of truth to twist the facts, to denigrate the actions of their opponents and turn around and do the same action is disgraceful and they are not embarrassed by it! McConnell would not entertain talking to Merritt Garland during an election year, yet pushed through a Supreme Court Justice one month prior to the 2020 election! He is aware of his incongruence  he just doesn’t care nor is he embarrassed by them-he wears them as a badge of courage and honor! 

We see this in our religious institutions as well. When we are more concerned with cozying up to power than with the principles of our faith; we are in trouble. When we use the knowledge we have as religious leaders, scholars, to take advantage of our congregants and the people who trust us, we are aware and not embarrassed. When religious institutions are more concerned with optics and lawsuits that with staying true to the foundational principles of their faith, we are aware and not embarrassed. When we take the principles of our faith-decency, love, compassion, truth, justice, kindness-and use them for our benefit or the benefit of power, we are using our knowledge in an incongruent manner from our understanding of how to use it. In the Jewish tradition, there are 70 ways to understand Torah and some ardent fervent practitioners believe their way is the only “right” way-they are using their knowledge for power, control and self-aggrandizement, not for understanding God’s Will in the moment and how to use their knowledge for the sake of God and another(s) human being. Yet, they and others like them are not embarrassed at their awareness of their incongruities, they seem proud of them while denying they are being incongruent. What a conundrum! 

In our families, we see denial of incongruities all the time. Parents try to put up a facade of all knowing, my way or the highway, if you don’t like my rules…, don’t you question your father/mother in the home or in public, etc. Parents are constantly telling children how much they love them all the while being too busy to know their inner lives. Parents forget what it was like to be a child, adolescent and treat their own children like they were treated, which they hated! We see how parents ignore the spiritual health and growth of their children just as theirs was and only want them to be happy. We parents have to be more embarrassed so we can be more congruent with our children and teach them a different path than we were given. 

In recovery, we are absolutely embarrassed by our awareness of our incongruity of knowing and understanding. We realize early on how much we understood and knew and our myriad of ways to bastardize both knowledge and understanding. We come to the awareness of our incongruities through our inner work and spiritual growth. Then we are able to put our knowledge and understanding together to hear the call of our intuition, the call of our soul. 

I have come to realize how incongruent my knowing and my understanding of the best ways to use my knowing have been, at times. I am embarrassed as I write this at my unawareness of my incongruence. Immersing myself in this teaching is helping me rectify my incongruence and be more committed to ensuring my using my understanding of a situation is in concert with my knowing and my knowing, my skills, my talents are used in concert of my understanding of how to use them in the moment, making the necessary tweaks to meet the situation at hand and not rely on yesterday’s understanding or knowing. I am embarrassed that I was aware at times of my incongruence and I fell prey to it because of fear. I am embarrassed that I failed to speak and act from my knowledge and understanding of a situation and see that every time I failed, the situation got worse and more hurt was sustained by me and another person. 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 140

“Embarrassment is the awareness of an incongruity of character and challenge, of perceptivity and reality, of knowledge and understanding, of mystery and comprehension.”(Who is Man pg.112)

The news from the Ukraine is horrific and puts an exclamation point on how aware we should all be of the incongruity of our perceptions and reality! Yet, many of us are not embarrassed nor aware and this is the scariest, saddest truth we can face. Worrying about the people of Ukraine who participated in free and fair elections, who have been bullied by Putin, Trump, the Republican Party, etc makes our embarrassment even more poignant. We all need to write our leaders to step in more forcefully than they have, send troops, bomb Russia, etc. Putin is using Hitler’s playbook, he is using Goebbels’ belief that accusing someone else of what you are doing is a winning strategy. Chamberlain fiddled while Hitler took Europe, please God we have learned something since and from World War II!

Which brings me to wonder how the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln and Reagan, are either not embarrassed by the awareness of their incongruity of perceptivity and reality or, worse yet, not aware of their incongruities! Ted Cruz’ father fled Cuba, of course Trump told us that he was involved in Kennedy’s assassination, because of Fidel Castro and he is supported and has supported Putin and Russia. Yet he sees no incongruity here. Moscow Mitch McConnell is so reverent when talking about Ronald Reagan yet takes Russian money and supported Trump’s love for Putin. He also sees no incongruity here. I can’t even get into the incongruities of Trump, his family and his lackeys, like Steve Banyon, Mike Pence, et al.

The Republican Party is engaged in not allowing free and fair elections, making it harder for people of color to vote, and they see no incongruity in billing themselves as the Party of Lincoln and discriminating based on color of one’s skin. They see no incongruity here? The party that was so against vaccine mandates, describing them as Nazi-like cruelties, continues to negate the free choices of women about their bodies and the health. No incongruity is seen or acknowledged here by these liars. 

God put T’Shuvah into the world because God knew we would make mistakes. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling to us to stand up and stop being blind to our incongruities of perception and reality, to stop holding on to conventional notions and mental cliches, to stop worrying about how things look and see how things are. We are so worried about how we look, physically, politically, emotionally, spiritually that we are unaware of how we really are, the reality of this moment, the reality of our being needed to stand up for God, for the stranger, the poor and the needy as well as the widow and the orphan. It is time for all of us to do T’Shuvah, to take an inventory and see the truth of who we are, what we have done, make amends where necessary and take the actions that are needed whether they are convenient or not. It is time to stand up with and for God, it’s time to wear our embarrassment on our faces, our garments and change our ways of trying to make the world adapt to our concepts and take off the blinders we wear and put on the glasses God has given us at birth to see where and how we can be of service to another rather than enslave another to serve us. 

In recovery, we learn early on that one cannot save one’s ass and face at the same time. Prior to recovery, we only cared about how things looked and what reality we could create so we could get what we wanted-usually money, etc. We might have been aware of the incongruities of our lives, we just were not embarrassed by them enough to change. In recovery, we are constantly seeking to uncover our incongruities between our perceptions and reality. We know that reality begins and ends with a connection to a power greater than ourselves and without a commitment to something greater than ourselves we will continue to believe our own press, the lies we make up and the perceptions we want to hold onto. In recovery, we are committed to letting go of the lies, seeking truth, aligning ourselves with reality and being embarrassed. 

The more I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words, the more embarrassed and aware I become. I have perceptions that I have been afraid, loath to let go of for fear of being alone. I have been engaged in ways of being that have been, at their foundation, false because I started from a perceptive premise rather than a premise rooted in reality. I have been hurt emotionally because I chose to live in my perceptions rather than see what was truly happening. I also am realizing living in my perceptions is not only incongruent, it is arrogant. Staying willfully blind to the reality in front of me is also embarrassing and harmful to another human being. I realize that reality is wonderful, difficult, eye opening, painful, joyous and the only way to truly serve God, another human being and one’s self. I am embarrassed by my awareness of my incongruities of reality and perception and I am not humiliated by them, I am not humiliated by the lies, the betrayals, the public airing of my less than stellar behaviors. I am embarrassed for the people who betrayed me and Harriet, the people who have enjoyed the public flogging and humiliation they participated in as perpetrator and/or listener. I pray they get as embarrassed and aware of their incongruities as I am of mine. 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 139

“Embarrassment is the awareness of an incongruity of character and challenge, of perceptivity and reality, of knowledge and understanding, of mystery and comprehension.”(Who is Man pg.112)

Our challenge from Rabbi Heschel is to be embarrassed by our “awareness of an incongruity of perceptivity and reality”, yet so many people are unable to distinguish the difference so there is no difference! When we listen to the grifters, liars aka politicians, power-hungry despots, ‘experts’ on what God wants, racists, haters spin their false ideologies upon an unsuspecting group of people who drink it up like guppies, we are too unaware to even be embarrassed. 

Whether it is Trump, Cruz, McConnell, McCarthy, or their minions spreading these ‘alternate facts’, or Putin, Orban, MBS, Taliban, ISIS, etc spewing their self-serving deceptions, or ‘religious’ leaders telling people they know what God wants and only their way is the right way, we are bombarded by the perceptions of another(s) so much, so loudly, so powerfully, it is almost impossible to not believe them. We fall asleep at the wheel of life when we allow the perceptions of another(s) and/or our own perceptions to become a stand-in for reality. 

The difference between perception and reality has been with us from the beginning of our humankind. We perceive a threat so we go into fight or flight mode often when there is no threat. Just because a Black young man is walking along the street in Beverly Hills in the evening doesn’t mean there is a threat to anyone’s life, wallet, etc. Yet, I have seen police cars stop this young black man just for being black because his skin color is a perceived threat by a group of people who view racism as rational! Just because one person is a Jew and another person an Arab, doesn’t mean they are threats to one another, yet the perception is, in many people’s heads, that they hate one another and they will kill one another given the opportunity. Just because a Muslim is arguing about something happening in America doesn’t mean they are a threat to be a suicide bomber, yet the perception is, in some circles, they must be and every Muslim is here to impose Sharia law on America. Just because someone says something louder and louder and at every opportunity they have does not mean it is real, just because it is on the internet, on TV, Cable, Radio, Newspapers, etc doesn’t mean it is real. 

We see the results of our unawareness of reality, our not being in agreement with reality and believing our perceptions and/or the perceptions of another(s). Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, Rwanda in the 1990’s, wars in the Middle East since 1948, Afghanistan in the 2000’s, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine today-all have their roots in buying the perceptions that another person(s) have conjured up because we are intellectually and spiritually lazy! We are afraid to be embarrassed so we go along with people who appeal to our baser desires; power, prestige, money. We stay unaware of our incongruities in order to not be embarrassed by them, we defend our lies and the lies we are being told in order to not be embarrassed and aware. We do this so we don’t have to change, we don’t have to stand up to our lying leaders, we don’t have to worry about ‘losing it all’, we do this because we are not willing to stand with God!

Not being embarrassed is so much worse than being embarrassed. The embarrassment  of our awareness of our incongruities between perceptivity and reality is much better than the embarrassment of believing the mendacity and engaging in the self-deception that our perceptions, the perceptions/pictures people are painting! 

In recovery, we are constantly seeking to distinguish between what is real and what is our perception. Immersing ourselves in recovery engages us in this search as we come to find out how our actions impact another, how are resentments kill us and spread poison throughout our system and the spiritual/emotional systems of another, and our need to engage in a daily practice of seeing the truth of our day, our living. 

As a former con man, I know painfully well the damage my selling another person on my perceptions and/or giving their perceptions support in the face of reality. I believed my own BS for a while and upon being arrested again in 1986, finally heard the voice of God, the voice of reality that had been speaking to me forever. I was embarrassed then and I am embarrassed now when I become aware of my own incongruities between what I perceive and what is real. I continue to study Rabbi Heschel so I stay grounded in reality. I continue to speak with Rabbi Ed Feinstein so I stay aware of reality. I continue to engage with my writing so I can compare my perceptions to what is real. I continue to argue with Harriet Rossetto so I do not become willfully blind to my incongruities. I continue to hear the voice of God, the voice of reality, the call of my own soul so I can be embarrassed. I welcome this embarrassment because it means I am aware and I can change. I have been unaware at times and it has cost me and some other people dearly and for this I am also embarrassed. I also forgive the people who sold me on their perceptions for their own needs and used me for their purposes. I also ask forgiveness from anyone who perceives that I have done this to 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 138

“Embarrassment is the awareness of an incongruity of character and challenge, of perceptivity and reality, of knowledge and understanding, of mystery and comprehension.”(Who is Man pg.112)

Our willful blindness to our not being in agreement with the challenge that living our Godly Image is astounding! It is the root cause of the hatred, power-hungry despicable actions by some, unfortunately no longer the few, and the root cause of our internal strife that we believe can be healed by having enough money, prestige, alcohol, sex, gambling, action, etc. Rabbi Heschel is calling to us with a painful rebuke, I believe, as well as a deep love for humanity and God in the same moment and in every moment. In other words, Rabbi Heschel is a prophet in our times and, unfortunately, like the prophets he is misunderstood, misread, etc, remember the core of his being is to take action, not just study him. While some of us have been liberated from Egypt, we are no longer in a physical prison/slave plantation, we are standing at the foot of Mount Sinai and building, worshiping and/or watching idolatry happen in real time and doing nothing! We are not embarrassed by our incongruity of character and challenge, in fact, some of us are proud of it-ask Fox News, OAN, etc. 

Our character as individuals, as a community, and as a country are being challenged by so many issues today and some of us are unaware of these challenges because we are afraid to be embarrassed, people on both sides of any issue fall into this trap. We are so engaged in proving ‘we are right’ and ‘we have the only right way’ to fix something that we fail to see the true challenge that these issues bring-are we going to be human, are we going to live life as partners of God, are we going to fulfill the divine need we were created for? These are not right/left challenges, these are not Republican/Democrat challenges, these are challenges we all face to be human, rather than just call ourselves human beings. Rabbi Heschel teaches us we are able to and need to “enoble the common” with each of our actions, a command from God is an opportunity to refine our inner life and, unfortunately, without being embarrassed, we are unable to achieve these goals. In fact, without our awareness and our embarrassment, we are unable to even realize that our #1 challenge is to be human towards one and all. 

We are constantly faced with the inner strife of doing what we want and what is good for our self and another self. We are constantly faced with the inner strife of living a life based in and of truth and/or living a life of self-deception, deception of another and mendacity. When we succumb to the mendacity and self-deception, as many people today are and many people always have, we put on dark glasses so we cannot see the reflection of divinity in the people we choose to scapegoat and treat another human being as less human, less worthy than we are. Our inability to stay loyal to God’s call of Ayecha, where are you, and our inability to stay loyal to the response of Abraham, Hineni, here I am, are the result of trying to relieve our inner strife through external means. 

Do we really need to support Putin in his dictatorship? Do we really need to support MBS in his killing of dissidents? Do we really need to stand idly by the bloods of our neighbors, brothers, etc? Do we really need to abandon the men and women who serve in our Armed Services when they return from combat? Do we really need to ignore the unhoused, the formerly incarcerated, the newly recovering person, the families who can’t afford food, clothing, and shelter as well as medical supplies and have to choose which to buy this week? Do we really need to blame another rather than help another? Do we really need to worship at the Golden Calf’s of the Confederate States of America, the authoritarian path of some so-called leaders, the sham of the so-called religious leaders who preach the opposite of God’s challenges to us, the self-deceptions we engage in, etc? The answer, evidently is a resounding YES from many people here in America and across the world. They need to in order to stay unaware, to not be red-faced and not have to change. The challenge they meet is not the challenge God has given to us, when we ever learn? 

In recovery, Chuck C wrote a book called A New Pair of Glasses in which he speaks about the changes in ‘eyesight’ that occurred to him and he adopted in order to cure the blindness that he had about his behaviors, his alcoholism, his philosophy of life and his inability to make agreement between his character and the challenges of being human while he was drinking. This is the challenge for all of us in recovery, to put on new glasses, to see the truth of the consequences of our actions and end our ‘but we meant well’ excuses. In recovery, our intentions take a back seat to our actions, one day at a time, we bring congruency to our character and challenge. 

I keep seeing how I hide from some of the challenges life gives me through food, through frustration and each day, I am lifting another membrane of the mask I wear to stay unaware and being more responsible to and for the challenges God gives me and bringing my character more and more into line with these challenges. I am embarrassed at the weight I have put on because of my hiding from some challenges, hiding from some truths and hiding from myself! I am committed to being more congruent in character and challenge. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark