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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 185

“The world is such that in its face one senses owingness rather than ownership. The world is such that in sensing its presence one must be responsive as well as responsible. (Who is Man pg.108)

How do we sense the presence of the world? For many people the world is a dangerous, frightening place to live, going all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Bible. For many people the world is full of mystery, glory and beauty and we have to navigate it carefully. For a few, the world is the Garden of God and we are blessed to be able to tend our corner/plot of God’s Garden, while we will have some fallow years, the abundance, the connection, the responsibility and the ability to respond lift us up and fill our beings with joy, sadness, love, and truth. 

When we fear the world, when the world is a dangerous place to live, we believe that the world owes us, hence the many entitled victims we encounter. This is NOT to say that people are not victimized, we all are at one point or another in our lives, it is to say, however, when we fear the world, when the danger outweighs the mystery, we tend to believe that we are owed something rather than our owingness as Rabbi Heschel is speaking about above. There are people who have destroyed another person’s work because they ‘felt assaulted’ by the other person telling them the truth. There are people who are feel entitled to sue a company, a person, because the person screwed up and wants to blame another rather than being responsible for their errors-think Donald Trump and his minions/followers like….

Adam and Eve did not know how to handle the knowledge they obtained from eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge.They mistakenly turned their knowing into shame, they wanted to hide from God, cover themselves up and thus began the “masking of the human being”. As Rabbi Heschel says in Man is Not Alone, we all wear too much mental make-up and we are forfeiting our faces, which I understand as our authenticity. Victimhood is not authentic-being victimized is. Yet, we have the ability to decide to change our story when we choose differently than Adam and Eve, when we choose differently than the ‘entitled victims’ who wear their wounds with justification and victimize everyone else. We have to rise above our feelings and “sense its presence” so we can be both responsible and responsive to the world as it is, to the Call of God as it comes and leave our state of perpetual victim. We can and must do this now, God is waiting, another human being is in need and waiting and we have a unique responsiveness to the needs of both God, the world and another human being that no one else can replicate. 

In being responsive and responsible we are acknowledging the truth of our existence, the need for our existence. We are acknowledging that we all matter-everyone is important, necessary, needed, and has the capacity for love, truth, kindness, compassion, mercy and justice. In being responsive and responsible we are declaring our adherence to the demand, the call, the expectation that lays deep in our souls and we begin to engage and grow our unique talent to add to our plot of the garden, to tend it better in good times and be less defeated in bad times. Our garden is not going to grow the same all the time, no garden does, yet by being responsive and responsible, we do not blame another for our crop failure, we do not seek to ‘game the system’ by suing another to stop them from flourishing, we do not seek to be paid for work we have not done, we no longer overpromise and underdeliver, etc, we only seek solutions to what is not the “what ifs” “could have, should have” and “if only you would have__”. 

In recovery, seeing the world for what is and living “life on life’s terms” is a cornerstone of the new/old way of relating to one another, to the world and to our selves. We have guides and mentors who we go to in order to check out our thinking and see where and in what ways/areas we are using the correct fertilizer for our plot of the garden and how we are not. We appreciate the advice and the learning to be both responsive and responsible to something greater than our false needs and our momentary feelings. In recovery, we sense the presence of the universe and our small and vital role in furthering it or retarding/destroying it. 

Covid-19 and my error at my mission/work that gave people the opportunity to exile and marginalize me have made me realize how often I was responsive and responsible to/for another person, a way of being, God, Judaism, Spirituality and non-responsive and not responsible to and for my self, my soul. I was/am filled with spirit and with joy when I am responding to the needs of another, including and especially God. I also realize that my outbursts, especially the one that led to my not being able to fulfill any Rabbinic Duties at Beit T’Shuvah, came from my not responding to and being responsible for the turmoil that I was experiencing in my inner life. While some may say “oh Mark, he couldn’t give up control” the truth is/was I couldn’t stand to see the good work, the powerful spirituality and integration be diluted and I was fearful that the robust program I and many other people had developed would wither away. Because I was fearful, I wasn’t responsive and responsible to my soul and the rest is history. 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 184

“The world is such that in its face one senses owingness rather than ownership. The world is such that in sensing its presence one must be responsive as well as responsible. (Who is Man pg.108)

We are to sense an owing to God for our life, I believe is inherent in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. We are under the mistaken impression that our lives are our own and we can do anything we want with them. While it is true we have free-will and we can, in fact, do whatever we want to; Rabbi Heschel’s reminding us that we are also accountable and held to the standard of being human. While we can walk by a homeless/unhoused encampment and not notice, there is a nagging inside of us to do something, even if it is only to feel empathy and compassion for the unhoused/homeless people and their plight. While we can see something terrible happening in our neighborhood and do nothing, we experience a knocking on our soul, a tugging in our inner life to help in some way. These are a few examples of why this teaching is so crucial to our humanity. 

We are commanded to “Be Holy” in the 19th Chapter of Leviticus. What does holy mean, really? It is not for the ‘sainted ones’ or the ‘holy rollers’ it is for all of us to participate in holy actions. “Do not stand idly by the blood of your brothers” is one of the ways of holiness. Yet, look how often we, even the most vocal of religious, holy rollers, conservative, progressives among us, forfeit our holiness, forfeit our humanity by doing the opposite of this commandment. We stand idly by the blood of our brothers (and sisters) each and every day without even noticing it. We watch as good people are tarnished with lies, innuendos, and do nothing and/or join in on the mendacious gossip/slander. We stand by as MBS, Putin, Assad torture and gas their own people and the people they are trying to conquer because of fear, oil, money, etc. We stand by and do nothing as the politicians rant and rail about public safety and arrest the homeless, people of color, for no good reason. The John Lewis Civil Rights act is stuck in Congress because Republican Senators would rather “stand idly by the blood of their brothers and sisters” so they can get and retain power and control! These “good god-fearing, idol worshiping religious men and women” would rather see women denied control of their choices regarding abortion, men and women, especially Black men and women,  not be able to freely vote because they are afraid of democracy. Yet, they will quote the Bible and do the opposite. They believe they should be able to own their own narratives, they believe they should be able to own another person(s), they believe they should own the power and control of 350 million people! 

We, the people, have to remind our politicians, on the right and left as well as in the middle, Republican and Democrat, that they owe us and God. They owe God and us the equality that is inherent in each human life, they owe us and God their best and highest self and service not the lowest and basest self. They owe God and us the unvarnished truth rather than the spin and the lies/deceptions they are spewing. We owe ourselves and our fellow humans honesty and voting as if we owe one another rather than voting our pocketbook. We owe ourselves and one another opportunities to improve our standard of living, helping people not just get off the streets or out of jail or abstinent from their addictive cycles, we owe ourselves and one another real jobs, real mental and spiritual help, actual recovery techniques and places to recover-no matter how long it takes nor how much money one can afford. We owe God and one another our best effort in the moment we are in, not some mythical best nor the best of yesterday-the best we can be in this moment is all we owe and it seems like such a steep price to pay for so many and most of us refuse to pay what we owe. 

In recovery, we know our recovery is dependent upon our spiritual condition. Each day, we are grateful for this day, we are aware that tomorrow is not guaranteed and we have to make the most of today by repaying the debt we owe. We owe God and the people around us a debt of decency, honesty, openmindedness, willingness to change, kindness, love and truth. Each day, in recovery, we pay at least the interest on our debt and are infused with more and more power and joy to begin to pay off the principle. 

I come from a long line of people who did not “stand idly by” while injustice happened, who did not engage in mendacity and power grabs. My relatives taught me to respect every person I met because we are all created equal, we all have the same unalienable rights and no matter the color of one’s skin, we are judged by the content of our character. My grandfathers lived this way, my parents and aunts and uncles lived this way, and my daughter and nieces and nephews live this way. I cannot “stand idly by the blood of my brothers and sisters” and this gets me in trouble a lot! I rebuke someone when they are doing the wrong thing, going down the wrong path and, while I am not always ‘nice’ about it, I am vilified at times and loved at other times. I am at peace with being rebuked for my beliefs, I am okay at being rebuked fairly and unfairly, I am engaged in acceptance of people who use my rebukes against me and claim to be victims and/or hurt by the truths I speak. I have to pay my debt in my unique way because my debt, like my soul,  is unlike anyone else’s. 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 183

“The world is such that in its face one senses owingness rather than ownership. The world is such that in sensing its presence one must be responsive as well as responsible. (Who is Man pg.108)

So, Rabbi Mark, what owing are we to sense, someone asked me. I thought, what a great question. One of the owings is found in the first chapter of the Bible, take care of our corner of God’s Garden, this world. Rather than exploit our natural resources, care for them, use them wisely, for the benefit of everyone-not just for the few. Remember, oil and gas come from God, not humans, ergo, they should be shared with all-not used to enslave people, not used as power, rather used to benefit all. Make a profit, don’t price-gouge just because you can! Our food is another resource, we are told to tend God’s Garden and too many of us forget this. We think it is our land, our crop, when all belongs to the world, we are merely tenants and travelers passing through, we die and the world remains. 

We owe ourselves and everyone else dignity. As we learn in the Talmud: “Anyone who destroys a single soul it is as if they destroyed an entire world and anyone who saves a single soul it is as if they saved an entire world”. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg taught my Rabbinic Class that this means every soul has infinite dignity and value. We owe it to ourselves to treat our self with this dignity and value. This means, as I am understanding Rabbi Greenberg today, we have to stop denigrating ourselves, we have to stop believing the lies we tell ourselves, we have to let go of our great desire to be deceived by another and buy into our own self-deceptions. We have to acknowledge the goodness of our being, we have to appreciate our uniqueness and our talents. We have to stop comparing and competing because we are unique and our task is like no one else’s. We have to see the dignity in all human beings. We have to stop seeing allies and enemies and see fellow travelers with whom we share a planet, climate, land and air for breathing. We have to cease and desist from our self-deception of superiority over another human being, another race. We have to recognize and honor the dignity and worth of everyone, whether we like them or not, whether we agree with them or not, whether we are from the same ‘tribe’ or not. After all, we all are created in the Image of God, we all are of the species-homo-sapiens, ergo: we all belong to the same large tribe, humanity!

We owe one another and ourselves freedom and release from slavery. We cannot give this to another person without first realizing our own enslavements, many of them enumerated above. Yet the greatest enslavement, in my opinion, is the enslavement of false stories, false narratives, mendacity itself. One of the largest false stories and narratives we tell ourselves; ‘not my monkey, not my circus’, ‘not my problem’, etc. We are called upon to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan to teach us everyone matters, everything matters and to not be indifferent. Indifference is the greatest mendacity we engage in. When we feel powerless, often we become indifferent, when we feel frustrated, we become indifferent, when we see evil, we do nothing from fear and from indifference, when we experience the pain of another, we do nothing for fear of being ridiculed so we become indifferent. When we watch or listen to the racism that is rampant in our country and the world and we do nothing to stop it, we are being indifferent. When we buy Russian products, including their Vodka, while Putin massacres innocent Ukrainians, we are being indifferent. When we see people convicted of crimes because they “were driving/walking/standing while black and do nothing, we are being indifferent. When we stand idly by while people are made fun of, the butt of jokes, because they are fat, skinny, Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, black, brown, etc  we are being indifferent. Indifference leads to and lends a sympathetic hand to these evils and more. We owe it to ourselves to engage in seeing the truth, of being in reality when facing the world, not the self-designed, self-seeking reality of indifference and narrow vision, the reality that the world is showing us, the reality of kindness, truth, love, justice, mercy and compassion. 

In recovery, we acknowledge the debt each day through prayer and meditation as well as action. We reach out to people and let them know they matter, we look for opportunities to be of service and aid another. When asked, we do not refuse a service request unless we are truly unable to fulfill it. We know that we have to be self-supporting through our own contributions and we have to provide for another who is less fortunate. We have to also be able to ask for the help we need and receive it with grace and dignity. In recovery, we realize we owe our lives to a power greater than ourselves, we owe the people around us the dignity they so richly deserve just for being human and we know we owe it to ourselves to treat ourselves with dignity, kindness and love. 

I am guilty of being indifferent at times and writing this made me realize the subtle ways I have succumbed to this terrible way of being. I also recognize the dignity and worth of another and always try to, even in rebuke, speak to the soul of another. More tomorrow, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 182

“The world is such that in its face one senses owingness rather than ownership. The world is such that in sensing its presence one must be responsive as well as responsible. (Who is Man pg.108)

It is 59 years since Rabbi Heschel first spoke these words at Stanford University and, they are as true, valid and relevant today as they were then. We are desperately in need of heeding his words and wisdom. WE OWE! What a concept in the 21st Century when most people are trying to say they are owed. This is not to denigrate nor condemn the important social movements led by people such as Rev William Barber, nor the John Lewis Civil Rights Act that some members of the Senate refuse to pass, my statement is a response/reaction to Rabbi Heschel’s words. We are trying to own everything, homes, business, people, territory, land, governments, control of everyone else, etc. and we are willfully blind to the truth of our owing the world, our owing another person, our owing rather than our owning. It is imperative we open our eyes and see the truth of existence, the truth of being human-we owe, we are indebted and we must begin to make payments on our debt, even if it is only the interest payments. 

We are living in a culture that believes ‘if I can take it, then it is mine’. This was/is the motto of criminals for as long as I can remember-I used it often to assuage my self in my misdeeds. It is also the culture of the boardroom and the bedroom, the seat of the car and the seat in government, it is the motto on the battlefield and the sanctuary. We are all susceptible to this culture, we are all engaged in living this either overtly, subtlety, in awareness and/or in blindness. We are seeing this in the Ukraine today in 2022 and we have seen this in wars fought throughout the ages. We have seen this motto/culture in action in the ways people use God to validate their inhumanity towards one another. We are in the season of liberation, on our way to freedom in the three major Western Religions and we are still fighting for who is right? We are allowing the crazy, power-hungry, self-seeking charlatans who have convinced their followers to go against everything that is God, from the Bible, to say: “I have the only right way”!  We see this motto being played out in business all the time in their advertising, in the ways they engage in competition and subterfuge. We are able to, when we take off the blinders, to see the people who bastardize the movements that are engaged in social change. When white men from the South can call themselves the poor minority that is in danger of being eradicated so they can continue to own the narrative of this country, we are witnessing the bastardization of civil rights and the mendacity of power. 

We forget how much we owe whenever we shut someone’s opinion off because we don’t like what they are saying, when we don’t agree with them, really when they are speaking truth to us and we do not want to change. We forget that we owe a debt whenever we find it inconvenient to repay at the particular moment. We forget our debt when we want to own rather than owe. We forget our debt when we need to rewrite the story so we can ‘look” good rather than be good. We forget our debt when we seek to destroy the very people who helped us because we are disgusted that we needed help.

Sensing the owing we all have can only be realized when we actually face the world, as Rabbi Heschel teaches above. What a concept, we have to face the world just as it is and just as we are. We are not able to face the world with our “mental make-up”, with our false self, we have to face the world as we truly are, as our authentic self with no trappings, no lies, no mask. Herein is the reason acknowledging our owing is so difficult, we are afraid to see the real us, we are afraid of the changes we will be compelled to make, we are afraid we will be forced by our own nature to pay our debt rather than own the life we want to own rather than live the life we are created for. 

In recovery, we know we owe a debt. We owe a debt to the people who helped us get into recovery, our ‘eskimos’. We owe a debt to the people we have harmed while being enslaved to bad habits and erroneous principles. We owe a debt to God for giving us a path of decency and wholeness to follow so we can begin to own our true scripts and let go of the false ones. In recovery, sensing our debt is so liberating rather than trying to own our false stories, our false scripts and our false selves. 

I am in awe of the confluence of events that are happening in this moment, Easter, Ramadan, Passover, my father’s birthday, my brother’s birthday coming up in a couple of days, Putin’s inability to defeat the Ukrainian people, the fact that my parents’ grandchildren are either involved in serving people as an occupation or they are supportive of the organizations and people who are. We are in a period of awareness of our debt, we speak about it at the Seder, we hear about our owing at the Easter Table, we are subservient to the Will of God during our fast of Ramadan. I sit here and think of how much I owe to all of you, to the many who have come before me and to the ancestors I don’t even know about. To the heroes who left Egypt, England, Spain, Eastern Europe, who saw an opportunity for a better life and gave it to all of us; I acknowledge the debt we all owe you and commit to continue to repay it each and every day. To God who has “blessed me beyond my deserving”, I commit to continue to repay my owing to You. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 180

“Meaning is found in responding to the demand, meaning is found in sensing the demand.” (Who is Man pg.108)

As we enter Good Friday, Shabbat, Passover and continue in Ramadan, I wanted to give a few final thoughts and ways of being from this teaching. It is such a profound sentence, it is so antithetical to what many people understand as a path to a whole life of being human as Rabbi Heschel teaches us. Happy Easter and Passover. 

We are desperately searching for meaning and purpose in all the wrong places, as I understand the totality of this sentence. Just the act of searching for meaning and purpose belies the truth Rabbi Heschel is telling us. Our purpose is in sensing and responding to the demand(s) of God, of the Universe, not in finding what we love to do. I know this is radical, yet I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to find what God is demanding, calling us to do and then… We will learn to, grow to love what the demand is because it is a reciprocity of the love God gives us. We will love the call and the demand because we will realize the good we are doing, the holy we are bringing and the uplifting of our own souls that is happening. Just as the Prophets did not ask to be prophets, just as Moses did not ask to be the leader of the Exodus, we too do not ask for the demand, we sense it and then we can respond to it or not. 

Jonah is the story of someone rejecting the demand while feeling entitled. He believed that God owed him something for not destroying Nineveh! He did not want to respond to the demand and tried to flee to the other side of the world and wound up in fish! Yet he cared more for a plant than he did for human life and, this is the definition of entitlement to me, when one cares more about ‘stuff’ than human life-they are demonstrating entitlement. 

Moses rejected God’s demand 5 times until he realized it was fulfill it or die. I believe this is an important lesson as well. The reason many of my colleagues walk around with dead eyes is because they have rejected God’s demand so they can keep their jobs! I am positing the reason so many people are so angry, so despondent, so lost, so addicted to being miserable and/or causing other people misery is because they are not sensing the demand of God/Universe and/or they sense it and don’t respond to it which causes vapidity in their living. Living a vapid life is the worst torture possible, as I am experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s words today. It is the end all of life, it is the defeat of one’s humanity, and it is a denial of the gift of life, the joy of life, the toil of living well. 

Rabbi Heschel is calling to us, I hear it, as demanding of us to stop living for fun, stop living in self-glorification, stop living for the next like on Instagram, Facebook, the next retweet on Twitter, the best seller on Amazon, the despair of exile, the tolerable sadness of slavery, the false joy of being in the “in crowd”/country club folks, the prestige money buys you without the inner resources to handle the prestige, etc. Rabbi Heschel is calling on us to be true to the demand that God causes us to sense, to stop denying the truth of our soul, of our 2nd brain-our gut- and embrace our unique sense of demand. Rabbi Heschel is demanding we stop talking ourselves out of the call we get, the demand that is placed on us, we acquiesce to the need we are created to fill and the healing we are created to bring to the world. 

Passover, Easter, Ramadan, all are spiritual experiences that we need to actualize and engage in. We are able to use this time, this season to marshall the forces within us and the people around us to both sense and respond to the demand. We are able, in this moment, with this spiritual light and pathway to ‘see’, respond, and walk the path of uniqueness and joy, divine need and reminder, healer and one in need of healing that we are created to be. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is: how to be human and how to be a partner with God. Yet, so many of us are unwilling, insensitive, and/or just willfully blind and deaf to the demand, the call, the need. 

I am not including a special recovery here because Passover, Easter and Ramadan are the paths, the spiritual experiences, the calls, the demands, the cries of God to us to be in recovery! Be in recovery, my fellow clergy from your denial of the humanity of those closest and furthest from you-be really engaged, not faux-engaged as so many clergy are. Be in recovery, members of non-profit boards who want to ‘protect’ the institutions that have helped them, their family members by taking the passion and the creativity out of the organization and make it act “on advice of counsel” instead of on the demand of God! Be in recovery, business leaders and the top 1% by paying your fair share of the tax burden, not just what you can get away with, pay your employees a fair, livable wage because without them-you have no business!! Be in recovery, government workers and department heads-remember the people calling with concerns and needs are the same people who pay your salary through their taxes, be kind and helpful rather than abrupt and unhelpful. Be in recovery, Senators and Representatives-remember God demands Justice, Mercy, Love, Truth, Compassion and Kindness, not the hate speech you are spewing nor the gridlock you are causing while people are suffering. 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 180

“Meaning is found in responding to the demand, meaning is found in sensing the demand.” (Who is Man pg.108)

Today is the end of the 30th week of my writing, learning, immersing myself more and more in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, brilliance and teaching. It is also the day before Good Friday and the beginning of Passover and I hear Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above to be so important for this moment. We are in a moral, spiritual and physical crisis right now; Russia/Putin, Saudi Arabia/MBS, Syria/Assad, Iran/The Ayatollah, China/Xi, Hungary/Orban, etc are all trying to destroy the spiritual meaning of these Holy Days, the Holiness of the human being, the power of the human spirit and they are trying to bend the moral arc of the universe towards injustice! We have a two party system of government that is falling apart because these new lawmakers who do not want the government to force them to have vaccines, want the government to force women to have babies. There are lawmakers who defend the right of the gun owner and not the right of the victims of violence. There are people who believe and spread Antisemitism all the while calling themselves people of faith! There are lawmakers who still believe, enact laws and/or give lip service to the rhetoric of prejudice and hatred. These people and their supporters in the Church, Mosque, Synagogue, Temple are NOT responding to the demand of God, are not finding meaning in their lives except to hate, lie, denigrate their humanness along with the denigrating of all humanity. 

The factual basis of Easter and Passover have been argued for a long time and, frankly, who cares! What is important is the demand that both of these Holy Days, the demand that Ramadan are putting out to and for us. It is a simple demand, really, the Torah says it in Deuteronomy, God’s demand is to be Godly, to act in the ways the Bible teaches us to towards one another and towards God, to act justly, lovingly, kindly, compassionately and truthfully. Rather a simple demand and we find it so hard to fulfill. We are so interested in winning that some of us, in the name of progressive values, in the name of welcoming all, in the name of conservative values, bulldoze our way through life believing we have the one way to fulfill God’s demand. How sad and harmful is this. How meaningless are these attempts at power through ‘the right side of the issues’.  

What is being missed, ignored, etc is the demand of Easter, Passover, Ramadan, the demand of daily life is to make room at every table for every person who is hungry to “come and eat”, for every person “who is in need to partake in the Passover Sacrifice”. While these words come from the Haggadah, they are spoken daily in the Bible, we are reminded of our obligation/the demand to be open and welcoming, helpful and instructive in our prayers each and every day. Yet, we seem to miss this simple demand, this simple truth. 

At our Seders (Passover Meals), at our breaking of the fast of Ramadan, at our Easter egg hunts, dinners, let’s change the discussion from what is wrong with those people to what is the call of God to help make our corner of the world better. Instead of complaining about what we lack and how others are lucky, thieves, ruthless, etc lets give gratitude for what we have and commit to the demand of God to be loving today. Let’s commit to the demand of God to do justly in all of our affairs-rich paying their fair share along with everyone else. Let us commit to the demand of God to speak truth and be open to learn more each day so our truth can become a reality and we can let go of the false ideas we have adopted. Let us commit to the demand of God to live on and with purpose to care for our fellow human being-we are our brother’s keeper, we do not have to continue to follow in Cain’s footsteps. Let us commit to the demand of God to show up without masks, without mental make-up, without pretense-just live our soul’s script, live the divine demand we are created to fulfill. Simple demand, simple ask and it is so hard for humanity to fulfill! 

In recovery, we know it is a simple demand and we are constantly working to stop complicating our lives. Life is simple and complex, living entails: living in the both/and, the yin/yang, the black/white/grey and, most of all, living together and finding common ground to succeed in living a life of purpose and meaning.  In recovery, we are in a daily struggle with our negativity and, each day, our care and concern for another soul, our care and concern for meeting God’s demand is at stake. 

I am engaging in responding to the demands put in front of me rather than the ones that are in the past. I am realizing the demands change with my own spiritual growth and/or retardation. The number one demand is: stay the course of decency, stay the course of growing my inner life, stay the course of love, truth, kindness, compassion and justice. I hear the demand of the moment to spread the wisdom I have gained, share the experience I have and not worry about who takes it, who agrees with me and what happens after I am done. Just as with my former employment, once I leave a room, I am powerless over what people do with the wisdom, teaching, experience I have imparted. What they do is not the demand put on me- what I do with the gifts God gives me is the demand I am hearing. Get off the sidelines, get off dwelling on the past, get back into the purpose I was created for. This is the demand and in responding I will enhance meaning and purpose in my life. 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 178

“Meaning is found in responding to the demand, meaning is found in sensing the demand.” (Who is Man pg.108)

The first half of the teaching above is so foreign to most people. The reason it is so foreign is that most people, as I said the other day, are unable to hear the demand. Most people are unable to tune into God’s frequency and they stay tuned to the frequencies that most appeal to them and give them comfort. 

The demand that God gives to all of us, individually is not supposed to comfort us! By its very nature the demand is going to disturb us and disrupt us, yet we want comfort, we want peace, we want tranquility, we want serenity without understanding the meaning of many of these words nor understanding the demand that God places upon us is never going to be easy to respond to and the only path to have meaning, purpose and passion in our living. 

The charlatans who say “follow me and all will be easy and well” want to fleece us of something, money, time, adoration, etc. They need people to feed their false sense of self-importance and they need people to do their bidding and, in some cases, they need people to become their slaves, sexually and in other ways. The deceivers who tell you, “only I can make everything better”, “only I know how to fix this”, “only I can save you” are authoritarians who don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves and seek power at any and all costs to another human being. What these two broad classifications have in common is their lack of care, concern, for the human being standing in front of them, their lack of concern for God’s demands, God’s call, God’s ways. 

Yet, they have a tremendous amount of followers, they have so many people who are willing to give them their cash, their votes, their hearts, their minds and their souls. How is this possible, one might wonder. It is possible because we are unwilling to answer the demands of God, we are unaware of and uneducated in the Ways of Godliness, ways of decency, ways of hearing the call of the soul of another human being because we are so sure of our way, our needs, our superiority. We are unable to respond to the demand of God because we are unwilling to surrender. Surrender is a dirty word to most people, yet they surrender to their egos, they surrender to the lies and deceptions of the charlatans and deceivers mentioned above and so many others! Surrender to the demand, surrender to the response that is appropriate for them to fulfill the demand-NEVER! This ‘never surrender’ mentality is good when fighting the evil of Putin, the evil of Trump, the evil of MBS, the evil of indifference, the evil of either/or living, the evil of prejudice, the evil of the deceivers and charlatans, etc. In fact it is a necessary part of the fight against these evils. This mentality does not originate in the mind, however, it is the soul that continues to battle these evils, it is the soul that promotes this  ‘never surrender’ mentality. However, it is precisely this attitude that the deceivers, the charlatans, the authoritarians, etc use to fool so many people. It is this ‘never surrender to the outside enemy that I/we have created to take your attention off of the true enemy, the true evil, the true demand of God,  the true call that is in your soul, the authentic needs of your inner life’, attitude and way of being that may, in the end, destroy us. 

Hence the need for Holy Week, Ramadan, Passover cleaning and the week of celebrating/remembering. Hence the need to get back to our basic goodness of being, clear out the schmutz, the puffed-up parts of our egos/self that block us from responding to the demand, that block us from experience true liberation, a true path to freedom, a true way of living well and going to the land God is trying to show us! More tomorrow on this. 

In recovery, we are constantly seeking to “improve our conscious contact with God” and we keep listening for the demand on God’s frequency, not our own. We know how easy it is to make our voice sound like it is God’s and we are very afraid of doing this once again-we do, after all, have priors in this way of being. We are seeking to rise above our self-centered desires and walk/trudge the path to freedom, to our place and give back to the world what we stole from it, truth, kindness, justice, compassion, love. 

I have encountered many obstacles to hearing the demand of God clearly. I realize that, while I/we are leaving a home of 45+ years and leaving with regrets and sadness, I am following the call of my soul, the call of the Torah Portion of my birth-Lech L’Cha. God is telling me, once again and this time I am listening,  to “go for yourself, go to yourself, go out from everything/person/place you know to the place I am showing you”. I know this is the demand I need to respond to, I am realizing that this demand has been in the universe for a lot longer than I have heard this, I am excited to say I have heard the call, the demand and I am responding to it a little more enthusiastically after this writing/revelation. Leaving Egypt means leaving the schumutz behind, getting rid of the lies I tell myself and being better at seeing what is, not what I want it to be. 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 178

“Meaning is found in responding to the demand, meaning is found in sensing the demand.” (Who is Man pg.108)

To sense the demand means to be alive, to be aware and to be engaged. I heard stories of students who were upset with Rabbi Heschel because he would cancel a class to attend a rally, not understanding that if one is not engaged in life, if one is not engaged in caring for the poor, the needy, the stranger, than one can never sense the demand, one can never find real meaning in their living. Yet, like those students, so many of us are still complaining about caring for the poor, the needy and the stranger. 

We have become so stone-faced and wear so much armor that many people don’t flinch when Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, Moscow Mitch McConnell spew their false claims, swear fealty to a person whom they call a liar and reprehensible, Donald Trump. We are deaf to their lies, we go along with their treachery, we even go so far as to applaud their hatred of the poor, the needy, the stranger while they claim they are people of deep faith! How ridiculous, yet there are a lot of Evangelicals, Jews, Catholics, Hispanics, etc who bow down to them and to Trump, who support their efforts to ‘whiten up this country a little more’, agree that ‘white is right and might’, etc. It is so antithetical to Rabbi Heschel’s teachings above and I am at  a loss to understand/explain this phenomenon, almost. 

The explanation comes from our lack of engagement in our own inner life. It comes from our inability to see the neediness of our selves. It comes from a denial of the spiritual poverty we live in and a fear of facing the ways we are a stranger both to our self and to the world. Unlike Moses who “was a stranger in a strange land” and learned to live there and thrive with wife, family, job, etc; we are afraid to acknowledge that we are a stranger by design, we are a stranger because we are endowed with a demand  from God that is like no one else’s. It is our fate to be a little lonely, knowing we are never alone. Yet, because we are still looking to fit in, looking to be rich, trying to seem self-contained and self-sufficient, we are getting more and more impoverished, more and more spiritually bankrupt, more and more of a stranger who experiences life as being on the outside looking in. 

We are in desperate need of cleaning out the fears of being authentic, the fears of getting back to the core of our being, the fears of confronting the truth about ourselves, the truth of our being a slave to the whims of our own emotions/ego. It is a perfect time in the spiritual world to confront lies we have been telling ourselves, the deceptions of others that we have been buying into for fear of facing the truth, the destructive actions that have become natural and, seemingly, constructive. During this Holy Week, this period of Ramadan, the preparation and then the 8 days of Passover, we have to begin to say no to the mendacity that has ruled our living, we have to say no to the people who continually turn the stranger away, we have to say no the lie that we are not the poor and the needy, we have to say no to the people who refuse to care for them and make the rich and powerful into the poor and the needy! 

We need to say yes to the rescuing of the captives, we need to say yes to the prophets of today, we need to say yes to ending the “eye disease/cancer of the soul” of prejudice in any and all forms. We need to say yes to seeing the Divine Image that is in every human being, we need to say yes to the caring for one another, we need to say yes to ensuring equal opportunity and yes to the individual equity that people build in themselves. We need to say yes to the call of our soul which is the only path to sensing the demand of God. 

In recovery we are taught that service is a two-way street. We both need to ask for the help we need, maybe even ask what help we need, and offer the help we can give. Welcoming the stranger is something that recovery does very well, everyone is seen as a gift to the group, an asset that makes the whole better and a human being in need of kindness and love. We are aware of our own spiritual deficiencies, which is what brought us to recovery, and we embrace the imperfections of ourselves and one another with patience, kindness and we hold on!

I have been in the spiritual poverty of despair and sadness and, I realize, for no real nor good reason. I fell prey to the lies and deceptions of another(s) and began to believe them. Doing this prevented me from adding my wisdom, service and energy to the world, it prevented me from sensing the demand from God, it stole the meaning  and joy of living from me, and I am sure I wasn’t so pleasant to be around. In the Talmud, we are asked if these sufferings are dear to us and, today, I realize that my soul said no and it was overridden by my mind and emotions because they said yes. I am shuddering at the subtlety of my experience. And, I am committed to stand up, with the help of the people who know me, love me, trust me and whom I know, love and trust, to the challenges of life today, the demands of God today and the service I can bring today. It is time for me to be liberated from the lies, the deceptions, the sufferings I have bought into and I hope you are liberated from yours. 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 177

“Meaning is found in responding to the demand, meaning is found in sensing the demand.” (Who is Man pg.108)

As we move from Pandemic to Endemic, as we enter into a time in the spiritual world of great energy to be liberated and on the road to freedom, these words of Rabbi Heschel ring in my ears over and above my tinnitus. We seem to be unable to “sense the demand” of God because of the noise of our own desires, demands of ego and emotion, demands of our ‘leaders’, families, friends, employers, employees, governments, etc. There are so many demands put upon us that we easily become deaf to the demands of God, the demands of our own humanity. We default to these secondary demands, these demands to feed our egos, the egos of another, feed our fears of not ‘making it’, not being accepted, not belonging so often and so much that we have lost the authentic demands, the authentic call, the authentic message that only we can bring to the world. 

Many of us have been crushed by the weight of serving too many masters and never serving them ‘good enough’ according to them. We have had our spirits crushed much like the Israelite and other slaves had theirs crushed by the “harsh labors of the Egyptians”. We have accepted this state as part of our lives and we have accepted that this will never change-which is the antithesis of Holy Week, Ramadan, Passover. We go to Seders, we go to the Mosque, we go to Church and most of us do not immerse ourselves in the spiritual demand of this moment. Most of us are too crushed to sense there is a higher demand, a higher calling, a higher YES we can engage in. Most of us see purpose and meaning being diminished by the drudgery of going to work, being enslaved by the demands of our own egos, our employers, our family, making a living, etc. 

This is the reason this time of year is so crucial to our humanness. Without being reminded that “every person should see him/herself as if they too came out of Egypt” we would continue to accept the slaveries we find ourselves in as just part of life. Without being reminded that death is not the end of our lives, we live on in our teachings, our connections, our loving actions, we would continue to believe “eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow you may die”. Without fasting to remind ourselves that our souls need to be nourished at least as much as our bodies, we would continue to pay no attention to our inner wisdom. Yet, we have the opportunities afforded by faith communities and by mediative communities to remind ourselves that slavery can and must end! 

We are the ones who have to end it. We begin by seeing ourselves as slaves and seeing what we are still/will be enslaved by. We are able to then make decisions as to which slavery we are willing to leave this year, which slavery are we going to ask for help to leave, which slavery are we going to allow ourselves to be led out of. Which false self are we going to shed this year so we can be more authentic and sense the demand of God a little clearer this year. Without being liberated from our egotistic demands, the demands of another egotist, the demands of authoritarians, etc we will never be able to sense the demands of God, the higher demands being human entails. We are in a spiritual vortex right now, the forces of the universe are here to help us be liberated, be more attuned and begin the long journey to freedom, purpose, etc. To take advantage of this force field, we need to begin to sense the demand, sense the presence of God, sense the meaning that is beyond the mystery, meaning that is unseen and unintelligible right now in our current situations, sense the meaning in connecting with another(s) who are being liberated and give help to them and receive the help we need from them. 

In recovery, we are constantly aware of the stimuli to go back into slavery, to return to the prisons of our minds, false egos, ‘go along to get along style of living’ etc. We are also acutely aware of those Pharaoh’s who are working hard to entrap us by saying what we want to hear just to lure us in as a spider does with a fly. Yet, we are in recovery because we began to sense a demand that we hoped/thought could give our lives meaning, we began to sense a call and a path to be human rather than just function as a human being. In recovery, we continue to cultivate this inner sense-our sixth sense if you will-because without the meaning that sensing the demand brings, we would quickly go back to old and destructive ways. 

I am struck by this phrase. I have been closed to sensing the demand of this moment mainly because I have felt very irrelevant and as I wrote this blog today, I realize, once again, feelings are not facts. I am as relevant and free as I choose to be today. I am also acutely aware of the enslavements I allowed myself to be trapped in; mistrust, buying the BS of another, not attending to the call of my soul enough, getting caught up in my own ego, etc. I also realize that I need to and am committed to leaving these inauthentic ways of living. I have the know-how, we have the technology, I have the community to help me and I am leaving Egypt metaphorically and, with our move, physically. I am off to the desert to wander and relearn how to be free. 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 175

“This is the most important experience in the life of every human being: something is asked of me.” (Who is Man pg.108)

As today begins Holy Week for Christians, continuation of the month of Ramadan for Muslims and the week of cleaning house for Jews prior to Passover, I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call out to all of us to not get so lost in the details, so focused on the ‘task at hand’ that we miss the true ‘ask of God’ to and for us as individuals, communities and humankind. That all three of these times of introspection, celebration and connection coincide with one another, as we are entering the endemic of Corona, is a sign that something is being asked of all of us, all of humanity is being called to remember what is important: connection, co-operation, consideration, along with justice, mercy, love, truth, kindness. 

It seems as if we have lost the ability to have this “most important experience” because we are willing to sacrifice our higher hearing, our higher calling, our higher humanity, at the altar of personal profit, success, optics, self-importance. We are seeing the insanity of Putin and his invasion of Ukraine for no reason other than he wanted to-is this really what is being asked of Putin? We are seeing the rest of the world deal with him and with Russia carefully for fear of nuclear war which is listening to what is being asked of our leaders-stop a madman and don’t destroy the world. Terrorists are killing Jews and non-Jews in Israel for the “sake of Allah” when it is really only for their sake and believing the lies of their leaders, secular and religious. God is not asking any one to take innocent lives, not Putin, not terrorists, not Assad, not the street gangs, not the criminals. God never asks us to kill innocents, in fact, there is a story about even killing the guilty that says if a court carried out a death sentence once in 7(some say 70) years, it was considered a murderous court! Yet, all of these entities, including the good citizens who sit on a jury, seem to mishear the ask of God in times when the ask of their own ego/emotions are in charge. We are mis-attuned to God in these moments and, as we have seen over and over again, the destruction that comes from this way of hearing is deadly. 

In our country, we seem to be having a renaissance of deafness to God’s ask to and for us. Rather than hear the ask to care for the stranger, the poor and the needy; which is what the Torah commands and what Jesus preached; we seem to be hearing the ask to blame the poor, the needy and the stranger. Rather than see the humanity of each and every person which is another ‘ask of God’, we seem to be seeing the differences and using the needy, poor and stranger to gain political points, rather than see them as the ask God has put in front of us. We have to hear the ask of God to care for one another, to never let another human being suffer and starve, work to end the slavery of one another and care for the best interests of one another even when we don’t want to. 

This Holy Week, month of Ramadan, this week before and then of Passover are moments to remind us of the ask of God, to remind us to search our inner self for the ways in which we are enslaved. These next two weeks in the Jewish calendar, 3 weeks in the Muslim calendar, and 8 days in the Christian calendar are gifts to us: to clean out our ears, so we can hear the ask better and clearer; to clean out the puffed up parts of our ego and our emotions so we can rise to the need God has created us for; and join hands across all of the man-made boundaries we have set up to embrace one another and to acknowledge our need for one another so we can leave the bondage of Pharaoh and the bondage of our ego.

In recovery, we are acutely aware of the “bondage of self” that is lying in wait for us, hiding in plain sight and calling to us with such logic and reason that we get fooled by it. Our egos are so cunning in the myriad of ways they trap us into believing that something selfish and self-centered is actually good, holy and right! In recovery, we do the best we can to guard against our egos enslaving us while knowing that we need our ego to propel us and our ego must help us hear and carry out the ask of God. 

Staying attuned to the ask of God is to stay attuned to the ask of another human being. Hearing the call of the soul of another, being an advocate for the soul of another, begins with hearing the call of my own soul, being an advocate for my soul. I have not always been able to do this, I sadly report. I have allowed my ego to run shit at times in my life and I have not cared for my own soul well enough at times to hear it’s crying out to me. I have been an advocate for the soul of another at times to the detriment of my own soul and these moments have always led to my being bombastic and, some would say, difficult. I realize the slavery I need to leave this year is the slavery of being too busy to hear the call of my soul and the new ask of God to me. While the ask contains using my skills, I am realizing that the ask changes as I change, the ask grows as I grow and the ask is softer and louder as I “circumcise the foreskin” of my heart, my soul, my mind more and more each year. Cleaning out the Hametz, the leavening from my inner life has begun and, I pray, will be completed by the beginning of Passover! 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 175

“This is the most important experience in the life of every human being: something is asked of me.” (Who is Man pg.108)

Today marks the beginning of the 30th consecutive week of writing on Rabbi Heschel’s teachings. This writing and immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and wisdom is giving me more freedom, more insight and more joy than I have experienced previously with Rabbi Heschel, which is saying a lot. 

Rabbi Heschel’s life, prophetic voice, teachings, his belief in the possibility of human beings to be human, his writings, his activism, his ability to deal with scorn and with ridicule, with love and friendship, with the reality of his world of his youth being utterly destroyed all speak to the wisdom above. Rabbi Heschel kept listening to what was being asked of him and he responded, Here I am (Hineni) and he knew that to live life is to serve another(s) human being. 

One of the “something”s being asked of all of us is to end slavery! As we prepare for the Seder and the Holiday of Passover beginning next Friday, as we prepare for Good Friday and Easter beginning next Friday, as we are in the midst of Ramadan now, it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to know we are able to leave the slaveries we have become accustomed to, accept the help of our own particular ‘Moses/Israelite community’ and make haste to leave quickly before the portal to liberation and freedom closes. We also have the honor and privilege to bring our families and friends with us as well as allow them to lift us up out of our enslavements. To do this we have to recognize the slaveries we are currently in, remembering that to leave Egypt is to leave a narrow place. 

Slaveries come in all shapes and sizes, most of them are very subtle and go unnoticed by people. This is why living in Radical Amazement, as Rabbi Heschel did and defines, is crucial to leaving slavery and going to the Promised Land. We are enslaved to optics- how we look, how the people we engage with make us look, what will people think of me, how many likes to have, how many followers do I have, etc. We are enslaved to ‘the right causes’- making sure we are on the ‘right’ side of any and every situation-having no impact on our actions towards another person or in any other area of our living. We are enslaved to either/or, win/lose, zero sum thinking and living. If we don’t ‘win’, if we are not ‘right’, if we don’t ‘crush and destroy’ our ‘opponent/competition’ then we have failed and will be laughed at, will be out of the club. We are enslaved to being a victim and blaming everyone else, accusing another of that of which we ourselves are guilty of. We hear and see this in the political realm, we hear and see this in the courtrooms, we hear and see this in our media, we hear and see this in our institutions, we hear and see this in our homes. Unfortunately we are unable to hear and see these behaviors and slaveries in our own selves!

Looking at the world as it is right now, listening to the outrage of some people at the injustices and knowing how they practice the same injustices, indecencies and lack of humanity towards people who are not ‘their people’ or how ‘embarrass’ them, is truly sad. Granted they are not bombing or massacring people, yet, when we take the soul of another person and denigrate it through lies, through “on advice of counsel”; when we forget what another person has done for us throughout our relationship and only judge them on the last bad action, we are truly killing their soul and their spirit. This need to do this, the need to use people and throw them away when it is convenient, this is committing spiritual murder and many of us are enslaved to this way of being without realizing it-‘it is just business’, ‘it isn’t personal’, ‘you caused this yourself’, etc are some of the tropes that denote the enslavement to transactional relationships, using and abusing people and forgetting that we owe, forgetting that “something is asked of me”. 

In recovery, we reconnect with this voice that is asking/demanding something of us. Recovery is our path out of the narrow places of self-centeredness, self-conceit, self-obsession and onto the path of freedom, service, connection, truth, etc. In our recovery, we are the Israelites and the other slaves who left Egypt and the road to the Promised Land is not smooth and easy, it has a lot of potholes that we fall into, a lot of errors we commit and, the beauty of being on the road to freedom is, we can return over and over again to our calling, to our community and to our authentic self. 

One of the slaveries I have been in is despair and I wasn’t aware of how much I was in it! I lost ‘my place’, was exiled and have watched the myriad of changes that are taking place with some sadness and some hope. I did not realize how ‘lost’ I felt until we began packing up to leave LA as home this past week. I have been lost and enslaved to looking okay so no one knows how I am, not even myself! The narrowest of places for me is the place where I lie to myself so well, I am unaware of the lies. I am both sad and excited, scared and hopeful, worried and elated, seeking the promised land and stuck in old paths. I am leaving the slavery of optics, falseness, worry about what another thinks of me and heading for more authenticity, true love, connection and kindness. 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 174

“Over and above the din of desires there is a calling, demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that follows me wherever I turn. What is expected of me? What is demanded of me? (Who is Man pg. 107-108)

We are witnessing a seminal moment in the history of humanity, again. There have been many such moments throughout the millennia and, as we prepare for both Passover and Easter as well as Ramadan, we have seen the unimaginable heroic and courageous stands that our ancestors have made precisely because they responded to the call, the demand and the expectation of something greater than themselves. Herein is the call of Rabbi Heschel’s questions, writings, teachings and wisdom. Like the prophets of antiquity, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that we are more than our pettiness and pride, envy and enmity, we are human beings created in the Image of God, we are able to rise above impulse-driven ‘needs’ to serve a higher, truer and greater cause-our humanity and the humanity of another. 

Vladimir Putin is not our problem, our problem is the fear we have of Putin, the selfish desires to use Russian Oil, etc rather than rely on other sources because the other sources are price gouging. Our problem is the belief in what someone is saying rather than what we are seeing. Our problem is the spiritual fortitude of our leaders to say NO to atrocities, NO to war-mongering, NO to dictatorships, NO to senseless hatred and killing. We have had this problem forever, and we continue to do the same things we always have, Einstein’s definition of Insanity. Hitler, Stalin, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Congo, to name a few eras and places/people where these ‘war crimes’ have occurred and how the world turned a deaf ear to the pleas of those being persecuted. 

“What can I do” we cry out, we are only one person-yet Christ was one person, Mohammed was only one person, Moses was only one person, each soldier that liberated the camps in Europe and in the Pacific was only one person. Rabbi Heschel is calling us out to be one PERSON, a real person, a caring person, a person committed to being human. Stop caring about the money and start answering the call of our fellow suffering human beings. Stop worrying about being re-elected and pass the legislation needed to end the suffering of the very constituents who elect you! Stop worrying about nuclear destruction and worry about the spiritual and moral destruction that is, and has been, happening! Each of us can respond to the call, the demand and the expectation by being human, caring about our human race. Because of our inability to see the human in every race, color, creed and religion, we have lost our ability to be human, we have lost our ability to pay attention and respond to the call, the demand, the expectation Rabbi Heschel speaks about. We owe one another, we owe ourselves, we owe God for our lives, our livelihoods, and the bill is due and payable. We pay it with our responses, we pay it with our decency, we pay it with our compassion and we pay it with our humanity. 

We are at another crossroads in our human history, be it how we deal with the criminal Putin; how we deal with the criminals in Congress who want to deny voting rights to “those non-whites”, and/or who want to deny the attack on Jan. 6, 2020, and/or who want to accuse everyone who doesn’t agree with them ‘friends of pedophiles”, and/or who cater to the rich and treat a corporation as a person; the criminals in State Governments who want to decide the outcome of elections based on their bias’ not the will of the voters; the criminals who rob the dignity of another through using their vulnerabilities against them; etc. There are many criminals roaming our country and our globe, not mentioning the criminal price-gouging of gas, goods from China, etc, and we have to answer the call to bring justice, kindness, compassion, caring, love and truth to respond and confront these criminalities and enjoin and enforce the ways of Christ, Mohammed, and Moses-the real ways, not the bastardizations that some people have made them into. 

In recovery, we had a seminal moment that brought us to our surrender, our acknowledgment that we were in  spiritual and moral bankruptcy. We had a decision to make, continue down the path we were on causing more damage to another and to our self or be defeated by a higher truth, a truth that demands and expects us to be human, to care, to be just, to love, to practice kindness, to speak and hear truth and have compassion for another and for our self when we fall short of these ways of being. 

I have spent the past 35+ years making the decision to hear the call, the demand and the expectation. I realize my ears are not what they used to be (actually Harriet told me my hearing was going bad) and I now have hearing aids. I also have been improving the hearing of my soul, my conscience, to be attuned to the call of God, of my fellow human beings and of my teachers and friends. I lost my hearing and my sight for a little bit and I am regaining both,  hearing and seeing better than I every have before! I have faced many seminal moments in my life and I am committed to making the choice to hear the demand and respond, meet the expectation and exceed it, listen for the call and be honored to answer it. There are many such calls, demands, expectations in life and they all have the same essence-will you BE human and be good stewards of God’s world for the next generation? 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 173

“Over and above the din of desires there is a calling, demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that follows me wherever I turn. What is expected of me? What is demanded of me? (Who is Man pg. 107-108)

In the second, third and fourth sentences above is the ‘ikar’, the main principle of being human, of being a contemporary of God, of being created in the Image of God, in being the highest evolution of the animal kingdom if “God” talk is to much for you. We are all being asked questions, not the usual ones from another person, the deep, disturbing inner questions as Rabbi Heschel illustrates above. Rabbi Heschel follows me wherever I turn, expecting, demanding and I know I fall short, don’t we all. His activism came from him hearing the demand and the expectation that nagged at him, that motivated him, that made his life have meaning, purpose and love-I believe. 

We all have these questions following us, we all know that there is an expectation for and of us. Yet, we run from these, we blame another for ‘putting them on us’, we develop psychiatric/psychological diagnosis’ from not meeting the expectations of another or that we put on ourself. We do put false expectations on ourselves, we do buy into society’s expectations and demands of us and these are not what Rabbi Heschel is teaching us about in my understanding of his words today. We use these excuses to evade and avoid the demands and expectations that our talents, purpose, gifts, call out to us to use and employ for the betterment of our corner of the world, to recognize and assist another human being and to care for one another with love, kindness, justice, truth… 

We have seen glimpses of people answering the questions that follow and haunt them. We have see the breakthroughs in the way governments work, from the Royal Family/King/Pharaoh model to more democratic governments and, of course, back to dictators and tyrants, even in the democratic models! We have seen glimpses of people responding to the demands of their souls/force in the universe by creating amazing music-Mozart, Beethoven, Sinatra, Ella, Billie, Beatles, etc all practiced their craft from their spirits, they all heard a melody, a phrase, etc in their beings and translated it into a song, score, etc. We have seen glimpses in our scientific breakthroughs, Pasteurization, Flu shots, Cancer treatments, Polio Vaccines, Covid-19 Vaccines, all represent the response by humans to a demand that not just society placed upon them, a demand that was causing them sleepless nights, an anxiety that motivated them and an inner calling that would not stop, I believe. 

What most of us miss, however, in Rabbi Heschel’s words is that all of us have a demand and expectation coming from our inner life, from our spirit/soul. We all have a call and a demand to stop whining about victimhood, to stop blaming another, to stop shunning our responsibility for our own actions and for moving forward in our care for the needy, the poor, the stranger within us and outside of us. Rabbi Heschel is not saying all of us are going to be Superman and save the world, he is reminding us that there is a demand for all of us to take better care of the planet so the world will be saved. He is disturbing us so we will all stop aiding and abetting the Putins of the world and the dictator inside of us. He is reminding us of the expectation that we will be human and not just for our own sake, rather for a higher and more meaningful purpose. Rabbi Heschel is calling us to face the demands and expectations and meet them to the best of our ability each day, I believe. 

In recovery, we say expectations are resentments waiting to happen. Yet, the expectation that Rabbi Heschel is speaking of is the purpose and goal of recovery- BE HUMAN, imperfect, responsible, just, loving, kind, truthful, caring and compassionate towards another and towards oneself. We are constantly engaged in being human in recovery and we know we fall short at times, so we have amends/T’Shuvah. We are constantly hearing and doing the best we can to respond to the questions and the demands and the expectations to live well and do the best we can today. 

I find that these questions got buried, I got deaf to these expectations and demands. I realize that the onslaught of negativity, the lack of responsibility by anyone else involved in my demise and the sadness of being exiled blinded me and deafened me to the questions, demands and expectations of God and I am embarrassed (happily). I allowed so many emotions (real and false) to cloud my inner life that I stopped hearing and looking for the demands and expectations. I am on the hunt now. I know that there are people who will never own their part, I know that I have to let them and my need for recognition go, I know that I have more to give and the demands of God are clearer and stronger. I also am realizing that I allowed people talking at me and in my ear to block the call, the demand and the expectation that is true and right for me now. While my gifts and talents haven’t changed (they have matured and gotten better), where I offer them and who needs them has. Letting go of my expectations, letting go of the expectations of another person(s) allows me to hear and respond to the expectations of God, of the universe and of humanity. 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 171

“Over and above the din of desires there is a calling, demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that follows me wherever I turn. What is expected of me? What is demanded of me? (Who is Man pg 107-108)

Having sat with these words on my heart and on my soul for over 24 hours, I realize the outrageousness of Rabbi Heschel’s words. How outrageous is it of God to have expectations, callings, demands, and then ‘sit’ and wait for humans to respond. We have free will, we can do what we want to, by Divine design I might add, and where does it say we have to meet God’s or anyone else’s expectations, demands, calls, etc? 

Putin can go into Ukraine just because he wants to. MBS can kill Khashoggi because he feels like it. Trump and his minions can lie and foment treason and no big deal. Wealthy people believe they can flout the law and get away with it (which happens most of the time), politicians like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Lindsey Graham accuse other people of doing what they themselves are doing, a page from Goebbels playbook, hatred permeates so much of life and decisions as does optics, the most progressive along with the most regressive retreat to their exclusive country clubs and gated communities all the while decrying the actions of ‘the other’! Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, prophesizing to us about “a calling, demanding, a waiting, an expectation”? Who does God think God is? Our creator, our salvation, our neighbor, our guide, our hope, our strength, our redeemer? More than all of these, which God is and always has been, is God the creative force of the Universe whom has entrusted the growth, the maintenance and the connection of this planet Earth into the hands of human beings. 

Whether God’s calling, waiting, demanding, expecting is outrageous or not is an individual decision. What is very plain to ascertain, however is the arrogance of humanity! What is the reason we believe we are not “our brother’s keeper” when our entire moral system, and legal system I believe, is based on the Biggest Book of Morality-the Hebrew Bible! What is the reason we believe that we can take advantage of, deceive, overpower, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the needy, etc when we are expressly told to care for all of these people? How arrogant is it of us to act as if some human life is less valuable than another/mine? How arrogant to pass laws of exclusion, to pass laws that enable slavery, pass laws that limit free speech for some and give free reign to the lies of another? How arrogant to say that men can decide the choices a woman can make with her own body? How arrogant to say God doesn’t love you if you are poor, stricken, etc? 

The call and the demand, the expectation and the waiting by God are manifest through the calls of the poor, the demands of the needy, the waiting to be free by the enslaved and the expectation that we will repay the gifts life has given us by fulfilling the call, demand and expectation right here, right now! The sub-chapter these words are taken from is title Indebtedness. Instead of seeing how we can get out of paying our debts like Donald Trump does, instead of suing God for collecting on our debt of gratitude, debt of life itself as Donald Trump and his cronies do, it is time for us to drop our false facade of arrogance, it is time to admit our need for God’s/Universe’s spiritual strength and assistance, the need for assistance and connection with another(s) human being and hear the call, respond to the demand, meet the expectation and do it today and every day. We will never complete the task, we will never get it all done, and hearing, responding, meeting the call, demand, and expectation is all that Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to do, today!

In recovery, we keep cleaning up the wreckage of our past and work hard to clean up the wreckage we cause in the present each and every day. We also are so aware of the pain of our past wreckage, we are careful to not make today’s errors as bad as our past ones. We drop our arrogance and we acknowledge our powerlessness and our need to change. We seek to serve and pray for knowledge of God’s will for us so we no longer buy into the self-deception that we are the be all/end all! In recovery, we become aware of the call, the demand, the expectation and the waiting and work hard each day to respond a little more and better. 

I am aware of my own arrogance and I know that in my recovery I heard the call of God and did not respond to it, rather I responded, in a very few incidents, to the call of my ego, my mind, my emotions. I was WRONG in doing this and I am grateful it wasn’t that often. I have seen and experienced the ‘love and gratitude’ of some people for helping them and/or their families at the time of greatest need, only to be abandoned, shamed, exiled when they had a chance to get back at me for helping them. I have learned from my experience to not be mad at the people who have helped me, even though this seems to be the conventional notion of many humans. If someone needs help, they believe they are weak and weak get taken advantage of and if you know my weakness, you have to be beat down so you can’t use it against me, is the conventional wisdom-how sad! “No good deed goes unpunished” is their motto and I am grateful for the experiences they have given me so I lessen my own arrogance 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 171

“Over and above the din of desires there is a calling, demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that follows me wherever I turn. What is expected of me? What is demanded of me? (Who is Man pgs 107-108)

What makes Rabbi Heschel so brilliant, wise and disturbing is his ability to put into words what most people experience in our inner life and are afraid to/unable to articulate. In the first sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is disturbing a conventional notion and mental cliche, we do the right thing because we desire to do it. WRONG, as I am experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s words this morning.  I am realizing that our desire to see ourselves in this light of desire to do what is good, is another way of hiding from our self, hiding from another, hiding from God. We are afraid to admit the truth that our desires have to take a back seat to the call, the demand, so I can fulfill the expectation that my life is to fulfill and stop making God and the people who need my fulfilling the expectation wait. 

This is a complex idea, as I write it, yet, it also is simple. We are born with different drives, the drive to rule the world and the drive to connect with people. Both of these drives are part of God’s creation of us/of our natural evolution if this is more palpable than a Creator. It is also true that our desire to rule and our desire to self-satisfy is a stronger desire than our desire to create for most of our lives. In fact, as Rabbi Heschel notes in his book Insecurity of Freedom, these desires have become needs and not satisfy them results in psychological disorders for many! We have come to define our desires as needs, our desires as good, our desires as right, our desires as important and our actions are reflective of our desires to “do good”. These are the lies we tell ourselves, these are the conventional notions and mental cliches we have come to accept so we can block out the calling from our ears, the demanding from our inner life, the expectation from our soul and the waiting from our consciousness. We are engaged in the wrong inner war, as I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words today. 

The war most people engage in is a war of denial, distrust, denigration. It is an inner battle to stop the incessant demand to do the next right thing and rise above our desires, to realize that being obligated is more important than waiting to be moved to do something, more important that doing only what one ‘feels’ like doing. We deny this truth so we can continue to distrust people who know they are obligated to help the needy, the poor and welcome the stranger and denigrate both the people who hear the call and the demand of the Bible to not only love your neighbor, but to welcome the stranger and care for the poor and the needy-whether one reads the Hebrew Bible and/or the New Testament, the Koran and/or the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, at least 36 times we are commanded to care for the stranger, the widow, the poor, etc. being reminded that we were strangers in Egypt. This goes against the conventional way of life, which is to subject the stranger to the same hardships we faced when we first immigrated to the country we live in, it is wrong and yet it is conventional wisdom. We want to say our desire is to do good, yet we know that doing good when it doesn’t cost us anything is easy and doing what is right at some sacrifice to oneself, going against conventional ‘wisdom’/notions is too risky for most of us. 

This is an inner war that all human beings have, some of us engage in battle to rise above desires and conventional notions, to let go of the mental cliches that enslave us and others of us are too afraid to so we deny and stay safe, warm and cuddled in the lies we tell ourselves, wrap ourselves in all the “right and good” causes we take up no matter right or left, conservative or progressive, powerful or pauper, we would rather deceive our selves than engage in the battle to hear, much less respond, to the call, the demand, the waiting and the expectation. 

Being in recovery is a decision to engage in the battle for our inner life, to be confronted by the calling, the demand, the waiting and the expectation. While “expectations are resentments waiting to happen” between humans, the expectation of God for us to be authentic, responsive and responsible, leave our feelings aside to answer the obligation and the demand that is in front of us is what fuels and propels our recovery. Faced with difficult choices because our desire is to one thing and there is a nagging call to do another, we ask ourselves “what would God have me do” or “what is the next right thing to do without regard to my desires”. In recovery, we continue to clear away the schmutz/junk that blocks are hearing these calls, demands and expectations because God and people have waited for our gifts long enough and it is time for us to share them. 

This first sentence, as you may be able to tell, is pulsating through me. I have been shamed by others my entire life because of I live my inner war out loud. When I was ‘out there’ being a drunk and a criminal, it was my response to not being heard, not being able to accept the conventional notions and mental cliches like those mentioned above and others. My response was WRONG! And I did not know another way to respond at the time. More on this tomorrow. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 170

“The source of insight is an awareness of being called upon to answer. Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness, oppression.” (Who is Man pg. 107)

The last pair in this sentence/teaching is “carelessness, oppression”. Rabbi Heschel’s words here echo for us the words of the prophets, the message of the prophets, the message of the Bible, the message of the psalmist, the message of God. Namely, we can be better than our base instincts of kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, etc. we can go beyond our own personal problems, obsessions, feelings, desires to meet and overcome the objective challenge of carelessness and oppression. Yet, while the truth of these words is beyond doubt, the ability to take the actions to make them come to fruition seem to be much more difficult for many people. John F. Kennedy told us to: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” and in the 60’s up to today young people join the Peace Corp and spread goodness and kindness, ingenuity and wisdom around the globe. Yet, we have lost thae spirit of camaraderie, the spirit of working together to make the necessary changes to overcome carelessness and oppression. Rather, many people have accused everyone else of being careless and seek to rule over people according to their conservative, progressive values and their prejudices and dogmas.

We have become careless with what it means to ensure the freedoms of our revolution of 1776, our constitution, our Bible. We have become careless with the ways in which we treat one another and our respect for the dignity and God Image found in every human being. We have become careless in our dealings with our own inner life-believing that we can be okay from the outside in, rather than realizing a healthy, free life begins with a healthy, rich and free inner life. We are careless with the soul of another, rather than advocating for our own soul and the souls of another(s), we seek only to advocate for what our desires are at the expense of anyone and everyone else. We are careless with our affections, living in a transactional world where our word is as good only for this moment because a better ‘deal’ may come along. We are careless with our relationships, we can stop talking to our loved ones because of a single slight, a different way of relating and children cut their parents off, siblings stop talking to one another until a funeral makes them share the same space, spouses ‘lose interest’ in one another and decide to divorce rather than caring for the soul of the marriage. 

The oppression that exists today is palpable, we see it in Ukraine, we see it in Los Angeles, we see it in China and we see it in Florida, we see it in Israel and we see it in New York. There is not a part of our earth which is oppression free and this is so sad. We oppress one another, even intimate relationships, with our inability to meet and overcome the objective challenges that are placed in front of us, be they physical health issues, mental health issues, spiritual health issues, financial issues, personality issues, etc. We oppress one another with force of will, with power, with seduction, with money, with power/position, with fear, with love. Most of us do not realize the ways we oppress one another because we do not investigate our inner life enough, we are not doing our T’Shuvah writing each day, we are not using prayer to ‘look inside of ourselves’ as the Hebrew word for prayer can be translated to. We are not seeing ourselves in every story, every chapter of the Bible and we have ceased to listen to the message of the prophets personally. Rabbi Heschel’s optimism is refreshing and, hopefully, catching/infectious. We can and must overcome the careless and oppressive ways we live. We can and must rise up to meet and overcome the challenges of “inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness, oppression.” We have the power of our own souls to make this happen, it is time for us to be advocates of our souls and then advocate for the souls of another so we meet, overcome, and, please God, put to rest these UnGodly ways of life. It is time for all good people to come to the aid of our country, our fellow human beings and our self. 

In recovery, we have suffered the negative consequences of our carelessness and the people who have been around us have experienced the oppressive ways we have acted towards them. Our daily goal is to live one grain of sand better, repair one careless path we had taken, make amends for the oppressive ways we interacted with another person and move forward in meeting and overcoming the challenges Rabbi Heschel speaks of. 

I have been careless and oppressive-sometimes knowingly and usually unknowingly. I am constantly seeking to rise up and meet this challenge in myself and in the world. I have done a better job helping another meet this challenge in themself and how they can repair the damage they have wrought than I do helping myself at times. I realize, in this moment, that much of my carelessness has been the result of either past oppressions, feeling oppressed in the moment or anticipating someone oppressing me. It has made me oppressive and careless as a defense mechanism rather than for my pleasure and power. My commitment is to continue to meet and overcome the challenges Rabbi Heschel speaks of a little more each day. 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 169

“The source of insight is an awareness of being called upon to answer. Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness, oppression.” (Who is Man pg. 107)

Immersing oneself in this sentence brings a great deal of angst to some, denial to many and indifference to most. We have become a society that abhors helplessness and suffering. We have come to see these two experiences as weak and unbecoming. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that helplessness and suffering are part of our society, they have been around since time immemorial and our challenge, today as has always been the case, is to find strategies to overcome those ‘conventional norms and mental cliches’ that allow us to ignore the helplessness of another, the suffering of so many. While to many people, this sentence seems logical and/or ‘liberal’, to me it is a call to action and an acknowledgement that there is so much more to be done!

The most heinous response to the helplessness and suffering in the world is indifference. I believe Rabbi Heschel’s use of the phrase “objective challenge to overcome” shows that there is an action to be taken by one and all, in fact, our humanity, our being human depends on the action of responding to this challenge. Yet, there are so many people who have become indifferent, unmoved by the helplessness and suffering of another human being and this is the reason we find ourselves in the situation we are in:senseless hatred and bitterness toward one another, use of mendacity and deception to gain power for self, not to serve, etc. The fact that our governing body, the US Congress cannot find ways to compromise and help every citizen vote easily and fairly, that they can figure out how to tax the middle-class and not the rich or the corporations and not be able to relieve the suffering of so many here at home is unbelievable to me.  That the people who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States blatantly and proudly lie about January 6, extol people who committed treason and then ask and accuse a Black Woman during a Supreme Court Nomination hearing through racist language and berate her for working to “overcome the objective challenge of helplessness and suffering” as a Federal Public Defender is mind boggling. Yet, I understand the reasoning of Ted Cruz, et al, they have to attack anyone and everyone who wants to serve, who wants to take up the challenge Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of because they are indifferent to the suffering and helplessness of another human being! They are so tied up in themselves, their careers, their lies they don’t even see the  helplessness and suffering, just their political gain. The great problem is that people who are indifferent have a lot of support. They take the vaccines and then work to get everyone else not to take it? They see the suffering and death caused by Covid-19, put a target on Dr. Fauci, withhold Federal funding for people who are suffering and helpless in the face of this pandemic and wrap themselves in God and the flag?!?!

The next group is the group that just denies that the helplessness and suffering is happening to the extent it is, they admit some but “surely you exaggerate, Rabbi”. They also deny that there is anything they can or should do about it, when they finally admit it exists. The unhoused have been living on the streets of LA and every city for years, yet it isn’t a problem to deal with until they come into the ‘upscale’ neighborhoods and the response of people is: NOT IN MY BACKYARD, NOT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD! People who are trying to restrict people are denying their challenge and I would say obligation to overcome the helplessness and suffering of the unhoused. It is high time we all meet this challenge and stop denying the humanity of the unhoused, stop denying the needs of the unhoused, stop segregating them from us and remembering we are all “kin under the skin” as my friend Rev Mark Whitlock says. 

In recovery, we gather together to meet and overcome the helplessness and suffering of people who still drink, use, gamble, work, are anxious and/or depressed, stressed beyond to the extent they no longer can function well. We know our purpose has become reaching out to one another to help another person in spiritual and emotional distress find respite, recovery and discover their passion and purpose. In recovery, we meet this challenge daily. We are not indifferent nor in denial anymore. 

I read this teaching from Rabbi Heschel and I feel angst. I am in angst over the enormity of the challenge of overcoming the helplessness and suffering I see daily. I am in angst over the experience of people who have lost hope and feel abandoned. I am in angst over our inability to meet the challenge of being more humane and human towards people who are helpless and suffering, instead we treat them as lepers, blame them, etc. I also have hope because I know that I, along with Harriet and the staff at Beit T’Shuvah, over 33 years helped to relieve the helplessness and suffering of 1000’s of people. I am hopeful because of the many people who left BTS and now have recovery centers, sober living, business’ and careers in fields that help the helpless and relieve the sufferings of another. I am looking for the next area to bring relief and believe this blog is a path forward. Harriet and I are available for speaking and consulting as a way of meeting the challenge Rabbi Heschel gives us. I am humbled to be able to help another person overcome the suffering and helplessness they are experiencing. 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 168

“The source of insight is an awareness of being called upon to answer. Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness, oppression.” (Who is Man pg. 107)

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom in the second sentence above is so overlooked today, as in every era. We have made personal problems an objective challenge with the identity politics that is happening throughout our living. Whether in Congress, on the campaign trail, in schools and in workplaces, every identity wants to stake out a place and platform for themselves, which can be good and connecting and the problem is that most of these identity groups want to exclude any other group from joining. We hear about the terrible ‘older white men’ and, being an older white man, I hear the call of women and people of color to be added to the table, where they certainly have always had a place-the problem is to exclude all ‘older white men’ is to do to another what is hateful to you. I don’t believe this is the point of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. It is to be inclusive and to aid and serve. 

It is time for all of us to rise above our personal problems, resentments, angers and find ways to work together-across gender lines, across color lines, across political lines, etc to honor the call and challenge “to overcome inequity and injustice”. This challenge began with the killing of Abel by Cain in the Bible; “the voice of your brother’s bloods cries to me” God says to Cain after Cain asks: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In the 4th Chapter of the Bible, we are taught to overcome our jealousies and pride so we do not commit murder, physically, emotionally and/or spiritually. When we crush the spirit of people, as white men and women have, we are not heeding one of the earliest principles and teachings of the Bible. Yet, there are many ‘god-fearing’ men and women who continue to worship the idol of self, of personal problems and worries, at the altar of prejudice and entitlement, I am sad to say. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that the challenge, the call to overcome inequity and injustice is a call from the Ineffable One. I know this because humanity has shown, over and over again, our incapability of holding these challenges in the forefront of our being. When the one group gains power, they are unjust and practice inequity towards all the other groups as history has proven over and over again.

The Holiday of Passover which we will begin to celebrate on Friday, April 15, 2022, is a reminder for all of us each year that slavery can, will and must end. Slavery is the highest form of injustice and inequity, I believe. We are told “ each person is to see him/her self as if she/he had been redeemed from Egypt” according to our Haggadah. I would add we all have to see how we have acted more like Pharaoh than Moses in some areas, some actions, some traits we have. If we are to answer the “objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice,” we have to first find and face the inequity and injustice we still engage in. I know people who are in the forefront of the fight for justice and democracy who practice inequity and injustice in their daily lives without even being aware of these practices! In fact, when confronted they deny and defend-all the while being part of a country club that excludes people because of personal whims/disputes, forgetting the low wages of the people who serve them, etc.

We all have within us our own experiences of inequity and injustice that has been perpetrated upon us, as well as the epigenetic experience of inequity and injustice perpetrated upon our ancestors. To live Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, we have to let go of those experiences-we have to dig deep in some cases to find their roots-not forget them, not deny them, let go of them because they have consciously and unconsciously been influencing our behaviors for years and causing us to do to another what is hateful to us which, according to Rabbi Hillel, is what the Torah teaches us not to do. We have to answer the challenge inside of us before we can truly respond to and, hopefully one day, end the ways of inequity and injustice that we see each and every day. 

In recovery, we do a “searching and fearless moral inventory” to seek out and bring to our consciousness the inequities and injustices we have done to another so we can find the place inside of us that had given us permission to perpetrate these evils onto another human being. In recovery, we know we have to get to the root of our feelings of inequity and injustice so we can stop treating another(s) as we were treated!

I have been responding to the challenge Rabbi Heschel speaks about all my life. Sometimes my responses have been totally inappropriate and wrong-I was coming from a hurt and wounded place so I wanted to hurt and wound the person in front of me whether they had hurt me or not-I used them as surrogates for the ones who had. I remember the experience of how unjust and inequitable life was when my father died at age 42 and I was 14. My dad answered the challenge of inequity and injustice when he raised the pay of Black men to the same as White men for doing the same work-something that just wasn’t done in 1959 Cleveland, Ohio. We were all ridiculed for this and, he died far too young. I lived this experience of injustice and inequity for over 20 years and, even in my recovery, I have carried it with me. I know that this experience also has caused me to respond to these challenges with help and aid to those in need of recovery 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 167

“The source of insight is an awareness of being called upon to answer. Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness, oppression.” (Who is Man pg. 107)

The word insight comes from the Dutch meaning ‘inner sight, wisdom’. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, reminding us, of our gift of inner sight and inner wisdom that so often goes unnoticed and ignored. He is giving me the cause of our ignorance and blindness-we are “being called upon to answer”. The truth of this sentence is so apparent in our lives yet, as Rabbi Moshe Luzzatto teaches, precisely because a sentence, a way, an insight is true and we accept it as such, we tend to ignore it! 

While many people have insight into another person’s ways, motives, skills, etc such as employers, shrinks, therapists, social workers, clergy, con people, parents, friends, etc, very few of us take the time and make the effort to see inside of ourselves in truth, discovery and eagerness. Most people deny their inner lives, their inner truths and run from the call to answer unless it makes them money, gives them power, helps them have fun and such. Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence is the key to living well, in my opinion. It is the root cause of most great discoveries, inventions, innovations. Only by having the insight, the awareness of “being called upon to answer” can one truly prosper and flourish. 

I believe that music is an example of personal insight and awareness. While it is certainly an occupation and a way to make money, celebrity, etc. it also comes from a calling that one has to express oneself in ways that go beyond words. Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, etc all had patrons and the music they wrote came from a deep calling inside of them. The Black spirituals of the 19th century came from a deep calling and awareness to answer the question of how to express the indignity and pain of slavery. The blues and jazz, big band and rock and roll all express the answer to the call of bringing a wordless path to express the emotions, the inner struggles and the outer mess of life in that moment. Rap/HipHop music is another example, the early stars were just talking about life on the street and their words, while hard to hear, are real, raw and an answer to the inner pain of being black, young and harassed by cops, society and their own people. All of these forms of music speak to the inner life of the people who hear them and touch them in their soul, causing spiritual responses that are inexplicable and real and true. 

We are all “being called upon to answer” a demand, a need, a question and most of us ignore this call in favor of another call-our ego demands, our personal desires take precedence over the call and demand of our own inner lives. We forgo our inner wisdom to satisfy our desires and wants, we lose sight of our authentic needs in favor of our need to be seen, thought of, celebrated in certain ways. We see this daily in our elected officials who are more interested in spouting lies and untruths (half-truths are untruths), being seen on National TV, accusing good hardworking people who want to serve of the actions that they themselves are taking. Many of our Senators and Representatives, Governors and Mayors, State Houses and City Councils are more interested in calling someone else out than answer the call, the demand of something greater than themselves. These charlatans are doing this because they have insight into what their constituents want to hear and how they can keep power so they play to their ‘base’ and accuse people of being ‘elites’ when they themselves graduated from Ivy League Schools! They accuse people of not caring and weighing in on their identity politics while denying the identity of another group.

In recovery, this “awareness of being called to answer” is, for most of us the doorway into our recovery. Our answer to the awareness of being called is to change the ways we have been living. Living life from the inside out rather than the outside in. We realize and admit that no amount of stuff has been able to satisfy the demand that is nagging at us, disturbing our conscience. In recovery, we begin to hear the true call of our inner life, we mature and engage with the inner wisdom we have blocked out and enjoy life anew each day. 

I answered the call in December of 1986 with a YES and have spent the past 35+ years responding to the demand, the call and the awareness of how many layers there are to my response. I have grown and matured my insight, my inner wisdom and continued to engage with it.  At times, I have not always listened to the insight and wisdom because I have, upon retrospect, been blind to it at times. I have allowed needs to override wisdom, I have allowed desires to override insight, I have denied what is in favor of what I wanted it to be. While these times have decreased immensely over time, in relearning this teaching of Rabbi Heschel, I see where I still commit these errors. I know what I know and I am committing to live more of what I know and not let my need to be liked, accepted, etc blind me to the insights I have nor my desires for a larger platform and/or to be relevant override my inner wisdom. While I know I won’t be perfect, my daily inventory, prayer, meditation will focus on this activity. 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 166

“What is the truth of being human? The lack of pretension, the acknowledgement of opaqueness, shortsightedness, inadequacy. But truth also demands rising, striving for the goal is both with within and beyond us. The truth of being human is gratitude; its secret is appreciation.” (Who is Man pg 114)

This last paragraph of Rabbi Heschel’s writing on embarrassment is so important for us to lean/live into. We all hide some part of ourselves out of shame, fear of being ostracized, our negative judgements of ourselves and fear of being seen. Yet, Rabbi Heschel is saying we have to acknowledge that we do this, we have to acknowledge our fear of being found inadequate, etc. It is part and parcel of being human, I hear Rabbi Heschel teaching us, as Rabbi Twerski also taught, that unlike all other animals, we are born incomplete and our life-long task is to complete ourselves and grow into the fullness of what a human being can be. 

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Many humans stunt their own growth out of fear: fear of not having enough, fear of lack of control, fear of being seen naked and inadequate, fear of not being accepted, fear of … So we resort to putting on pretenses, hiding ourselves/being opaque to hide our fears from another and even from ourselves. I was asked once, “if you live a false self long enough, doesn’t it become your authentic self?” This is how subtle pretension, opaqueness shows itself-the person was so afraid to be seen and they wanted to believe their pretenses, they wanted to be applauded for their opaqueness/hiding! This is not the case as I understand Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom. Yes, in some moments this person could face their authentic self, they could speak around it to me and, out of fear, out of shame, they had to retreat to their hiding place. 

The antidote to this way of being is also true for all humans. Striving and rising to our higher self, to meet God’s/Universe’s demands and calling. In each of us is that still small voice; call it God, call it intuition, what is important to acknowledge it. It calls to us all the time and we drown it out with our fears and our desires, we imprison this voice/relegate it to the back of our consciousness so we don’t have to act on it’s instructions, it’s calling to us. And, it nags at us at the most inopportune moments, when we have been shortsighted, when our inadequacies overtake us, this voice calls to us to get real, get truthful, see ourselves for who we are and use our inadequacies to grow and/or ask for help, acknowledge our shortsightedness and go the proper ‘eye’ doctor. The “goal that is both within and beyond us” I believe, is growth, is openness, is aid and service, is kindness and compassion for oneself and another self, is connection and covenantal relationships, truth and love. We can only achieve these goals through authenticity, growth, a new pair of glasses, and, of course, radical amazement-seeing the world fresh and new, seeing our self fresh and new each and every day. 

Gratitude and appreciation are the mainstays of this way of living. Being grateful that we can and need to be embarrassed by our actions, the actions of those around us and the actions of our country and the actions of people across the globe. Embarrassment is the precursor of change, as I understand this subchapter of Rabbi Heschel’s book. When we experience embarrassment, if we are to let go of the conventional notion of the word, we are aware of our inadequacies and our opaqueness, we are aware of our misdeeds and our false premises upon which we have built a life. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us to be thankful for uncovering a truth about our self, to be pleased at seeing our true self without filters. He is calling to us to realize the immense worth of our self and the high price we pay when we hide from ourselves and everyone else. Realizing the price of being human, being authentic, is mere pittance in comparison to the price we pay for hiding, lying, living in fear of being found out, etc. 

In recovery, peeling the layers of the onion one membrane at a time is our work and we engage in it with gusto, with fear, with hope and with dread. Sometimes we retrace our steps in order to put one of the membranes back on-ie hide some of the ugliness we have uncovered. Continuing the journey of recovery means we have to face the ugliness and repair it and accept that it may be our shortsightedness that calls it ugly and their is a purpose for these warts that has yet to be revealed. 

I live a really open life, what you see is what you get. I am bombastic and concerned, I am rough around the edges and totally devoted to being an advocate of the soul of another human being. I am a father and a brother, a husband and a friend, I am a lover of people and, at times, a hater of a few. I am worried about being irrelevant and fear being looked down upon. I am an outlier and want to be on the inside to effect change. I am an exile and a communal leader. I am…. Grateful and appreciative of being embarrassed 2+ years ago, being exiled at the same time. I hide my emotions at times and they leak out in a myriad of ways. Every morning I thank God for restoring me to life and I appreciate the opportunity to be one grain of sand better today than yesterday. I am more afraid of hiding than being seen for the most part and I am using my embarrassment to become more aware, to hear the call of my soul clearer and rise and strive to meet the goals within me and beyond me. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark