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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 297

“To celebrate is too share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. In acts of consumption the intention is to please our own selves in acts of celebration the intention is to extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing.” (Who is Man pg. 117)

In the Bible, we are taught that it is God that goes before the Israelites to ensure their victory over their enemies, reminding us it is not just about us, we are not the all-powerful Oz that we have come to believe we are. Yet, this gift from God, this going before us has been bastardized to mean that God is vengeful and unmerciful in the “Old Testament”. How absurd and sad! Yet, how powerful a method to hide the truth of these deceivers: we want to please our selves with power, we want you to serve us, we want to have it all, etc. This way of thinking and acting have been with us from the beginning of humankind and, at times, it has been overwhelmed by people walking in the ways of God instead of walking in the ways of power.

We are in a time right now that calls for us to distinguish what we need to consume to survive and thrive and what we are consuming just because we can. I am thinking about the laws of Kosher eating in the Hebrew Bible. My friend and teacher, Rabbi Edward Feinstein, taught me that the laws of Kosher eating come to remind us, just because we can doesn’t mean we should, doesn’t mean it is fitting and proper. Keeping Kosher is another way to be conscious and thoughtful as to our actions, as to our consumption. Can we say the same about all of the other things we are trying to consume, are our actions fitting and proper in all areas of our living? Probably not, because we are human, we are imperfect. Rather than turning our imperfection into neurosis’, let’s use them to help us make decisions regarding the paths we choose to make choices.

We are in a crisis right now, whether the mendacious ones, the deceivers will convince the majority, including people who will be harmed by their actions, that they are acting in God’s name, according to God’s Will, all the while pleasing only their selves, caring nothing about their fellow human beings. We are seeing this in business, in politics, in the breakdown of neighborhoods, in the increase of street crimes, in the increase of mass shootings, in the increase of racist, anti-semitic acts, anti-asian acts, etc. We are experiencing a time of great upheaval, of a desire to return to the ‘good old days’ of white supremacy, of pitting one group against another, of riling up the ‘troops’ to storm the Capital, to get ready for a civil war. All in the name of ‘celebrating of great history and the intent of the founding fathers’. We need to stand firm against the liars and cheats who are ruining democracy and trying to overtake freedom with authoritarianism.

We need to go on a new ‘food’ plan, a new/old way of being ! A way of being that allows us to surrender our need for control and certainty to God, a way of being that helps us lose the weight of false ego, pride, fear of missing out (fomo) and our insatiable hunger for power. This way of being is found in the Hebrew Bible, in the Gospels of the New Testament, in the Koran and in every spiritual discipline there is. It is a hard path to begin, it is a hard way of being to live every day and we will falter and we will err on this journey. Yet, we can begin this ‘consumption’ plan today by letting go of the irrational fear of Charlottesville, “Jews will not replace us” was the chant by these “good people” as the former President declared, or the lies of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers of how only their form of White Christianity will save us. Of course we will have to take the deceptions of the ‘Prosperity Gospel’ promoters off our plates as well. We will have to limit our intake of bastardized teachings from our spiritual texts and close our mouths and minds to the mendacity of ‘strict constitutionalists’. Every day, we are served extreme ideologies on a platter and it is up to us to reject these seemingly sumptuous meals in favor of the middle path, in favor of a meal that is satisfying and not indulgent, providing nutrition and not too rich in carbs, in flour, in anything that gets us bloated and fat. We can have differing opinions and learn from one another without needing to consume another human being as our slave, our enemy. We can live in ways that are compatible with our being a partner of God!

In recovery, we are always adjusting our consumption. In fact, I would posit, that we are in recovery from our incessant need to consume. “One is too many and a 1000 is never enough” is a saying in recovery and this is the theme we are on a ‘diet’ from, the desires and needs we need a new way of being to handle appropriately. In recovery, we are acutely aware of our tendency to enslave, to give into our fears and our false egos and know that surrender is our only answer so we can once again gain control of our actions and life.

I am always battling my physical weight. I am aware of my ability to go on a diet and lose weight and sad at my inability to keep it off forever. I am elated with my lack of desire to consume everything in my orbit and all the oxygen in the room in most other areas of my life. I am grateful I have learned to listen enough to learn from so many and I am humbled by God’s faith and trust in me. I am also in awe of God’s mission for me and giving me the power to carry it out. I can’t rest on my laurels and I can’t worry about tomorrow. I can only be in today and I can only feel sad for those who want to control and consume me, want to enslave me and harm me. I resist and God helps me remember to stand for truth and walk in God’s ways and not need to ‘get even’ anymore.  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 295

“To celebrate is too share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. In acts of consumption the intention is to please our own selves in acts of celebration the intention is to extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing.” (Who is Man pg. 117)

Humanity has always mistaken consumption for celebration, I believe, because of our inability to get past our selves! We are so self-centered and self-seeking we confuse consumption with celebration. We seem to be hard-wired to consume everything we see and have the desire to conquer, rule and control everything around us. Doing this causes us to engage in the consumption Rabbi Heschel is speaking of above.

I believe the root cause of this out-sized need to consume everything, to have the biggest and the best, etc is fear. Many of us live with fears that we are not even aware of, fears that we can’t name consciously, fears of not enough, fears of being left out, fears of what happens when we die, fears of powerlessness and many more. Some people turn to religion to deal with their fears, some people turn to spirituality to deal with their fears, most people turn to power, control and mendacity/deception to deal with their fears, hence Rabbi Heschel’s observation above.

Fear and faith co-exist! The word for awe in Hebrew is the same word for fear because both awe and fear provoke reverence in us, when we engage the experience we are having, rather than trying to control it. I have heard many people ask “where is your faith” and I respond, “I have absolute faith in God, it is you and me that I have fears about”. Because of the need for certainty and our dependence on ‘knowing all’ we have forgotten that at Mount Sinai, at the Red Sea, at the Last Supper, at Mason Temple on April 3, 1968, Rev. King delivered his “Mountain Top” speech, and so many other events in the history of humankind that are moments of great trembling, great fear, great awe and absolute displays of the certainty of God, the certainty of prophecy and the uncertainty of life!

Turning to faith is not the same as the so-called ‘religious leadership’ of the National Prayer Breakfasts want us to believe. Turning to faith is not what the deceptive proponents of the ‘prosperity gospels’ would have us believe. Turning to faith is not what the White Christian Nationalists would have us believe either. Turning to faith is to turn inward and outward, to realize the similarities every human being share and the call/demand of God to care for our self, care for the all selves, care for all of God’s creations. Turning to faith is to be afraid to “see God face to face” because the radiance is too great for humans to handle. Turning to faith is adopting an attitude of gratitude for being alive. Turning to faith is to never take anything for granted, not even our breathing. Turning to faith is to mature and grow our inner life, to connect our souls and our minds, to ensure that we immerse ourselves in God’s words and seek to understand their meaning for us, seek to do God’s Will: “Love your Neighbor as You Love your Self” and “Love God with all your heart, soul, your everything”, “love mercy, do justly and walk in God’s ways”! These are not impossible tasks, these are all doable for each and every one of us once we surrender our need to control, our need to lie to another(s) and to our selves, once we allow ourselves to dream the dream of Godliness and holiness that are embedded in our natures.

We are in the midst of a crisis of faith, because we are being bombarded with bastardizations of what faith truly is. Any faith that is not inclusive, any faith that is discriminatory, any faith that is ‘holier than thou’, is not a true faith in God. Any faith that seeks to shut people out forever for their errors is not a true faith in God. Any faith that seeks to control everyone and make everyone bow down to it, is not a true faith in God. Faith in God, living a spiritual, principled life is never certain, we are told there are 70 ways to understand each verse in the Bible, the New Testament was written in Aramaic and translated into different languages and we all know how much is lost in translation. We are hearing the word of God through the voices, bias’, lies, and need to control of humans, so we must, in order to have a faith that guides us and helps us move through our fears, engage personally in the principles and teachings of our faiths and not let someone else’s opinions rule us.

In recovery, we find solutions to our various crises’ of faith, our various fears and uncertainties. This solution is to seek and relate to “God, as we understand God”. Not as idolatry or control, rather to engage in a relationship with God, to struggle and wrestle with God and our fears and uncertainties, to immerse ourselves in principles rather than in consumption and lies. It is a work in progress and this road is much better than the one we used to be on.

Awe and fear have always co-existed inside of me and for over 20 years, I thought that was a bad thing, a defect of character inside of me. I know now, that the path to a mature relationship with God has to have this both/and. I continue to cultivate the relationship and learn how to live with this both/and 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 295

“To celebrate is too share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. In acts of consumption the intention is to please our own selves in acts of celebration the intention is to extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing.” (Who is Man pg. 117)

Someone asked me the purpose of this daily writing and blogging it and I thought about the question with consternation, inquisitiveness and joy. Consternation because I thought the title says it all, this is for everyone to learn and share in the wisdom, brilliance and teachings of Rabbi Heschel for our everyday living. My curiosity was peaked by being asked this question at all, wondering what this person was getting that made the question relevant for her. I am joyous that the question was asked so I could explain, it made me know this is being read and, whether I am clear on my intention or not, it has at least one person thinking about Rabbi Heschel, thinking about how to live well and reading this daily! I want to be clear about my intentions, much like the first sentence above; this blog is a celebration of Rabbi Heschel’s impact on my life, a sharing of the greater joy we, I and all of the people who have learned Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom with me over the years, have experienced and participated in and how this  joy helps us participate more fully “in an eternal drama”. It is to let you, the reader, know I am available to help you navigate with purpose and passion in all areas of your life and a snippet of how I help a person apply this type of wisdom to any and all parts of their life.

These past 295 days are my sharing in the “greater joy” of living life on its terms, not the ones I want, not the false narratives that so many people are spouting today. We all have an opportunity to share in the greater joy of living, to participate in an eternal drama if we are willing to follow a few simple paths that God/the Universe has set out for us, the first of which being to “Love God with all of our heart, soul, our everything”. To do this we have to love our self, love our neighbor, love our enemies with all of our heart, soul and everything. Each of us are created in the Image of God, each of us has within us the spirit of the Universe, each of us is endowed with the need for connection, love, service, community. Yet, in false narratives that we make up and/or adopt from another that is made up, we lose sight of these truths, we forget this simple path and we make war, false accusations and dangerous lies against another so we can be all powerful.

Our need to be God causes us to worship idols, to participate in an action that is the antithesis of the “eternal drama” Rabbi Heschel speaks of above. We cannot “share in the greater joy” Rabbi Heschel is speaking of when our joy is derived from mendacity, from ‘winning the war’, from ‘beating the competition’, from showing off how strong, smart, rich, famous, powerful we are. This is the reason so many ‘successful’ people have such utterly sad inner lives, why they are so envied for their outside achievements and in such terrible turmoil in their inner lives. Divorce, being mis-attuned with children and partners, being feared rather than loved, fearful their inner demons may ruin a carefully crafted outer image, etc are all. Writing this blog is a way for me to participate in the “eternal drama” of joy, of life, of love, of service to people who are in need and desire of a more mature and congruent inner life.

We forfeit our share when we indulge in idolatry in all of its forms. When we allow our selves to be ‘bought off’ by money, power, prestige we are engaging in idol worship. When we buy into the lies of Trump and his band of thieves, power-hungry mongers, sycophants, we are engaging in idol worship. When we buy into the lies of religious leaders, spiritual gurus that they have the answer and they alone are the truth, we are engaging in idolatry. When we buy into the lies we tell ourselves that we need to buy these lies, that these lies are actually the truth, we are so spiritually ill that we need a physician of the soul to help us be on the path of spiritual healing and psychological clarity.

In recovery, we are constantly searching for and living a path towards spiritual healing and psychological health. In the 3rd step we “made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, as we understand God”. We are willing to surrender our fears and our self-centeredness, our self-pity and our need to be right, our false ego and our need to be the director of everything so we can “participate in the eternal drama” of living well, so we can “share in a greater joy” and rise above the misery we have been in and we have caused/shared with those around us.

I have to let go of the false narratives I still tell myself, I have to surrender the caricatures of me that I have created, I get to do this by sharing the joy of living that I experience, by not allowing the doings, defining, opinions of people who want to harm me infect me with doubt, despair and/or send me back to idolatry. I have been participating in the “eternal drama” more and more and staying out of the drama people create as well as creating personal drama less and less. 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 293

“Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.”(Who is Man pg. 117)

We have become consumers of junk science, alternative facts, false moral equivalency, deceptions and ‘celebrity’ status. Polio is showing up in waste water because people don’t want to be vaccinated nor do they want their children vaccinated because they are believing the junk science of the vaccine deniers. We have lost over a million people to Covid-19 because these same deniers convinced millions of Americans to not wear masks, to not be told what to do with their bodies while supporting people who want to decree what a woman can or cannot do with her own body! Because people are so willing to believe the lies of leaders, both religious and secular, they have betrayed their interests, betrayed the health and welfare of their children and families, they have betrayed the call of the universe to participate in the solution instead of becoming the problem. Yet, we are being bombarded by these deniers, these liars who are following the lead of the Tucker Carlson’s, the Sean Hannity’s, the Matt Gaetz’, et al and people are consuming these lies as if they were their mother’s milk. I believe they are caught in the confines of consuming the lies that appeal to their greatest fear, being left out/being out of the group. What Donald Trump was able to masterfully create was a narrative for people who felt left out and feared being displaced by “those people” that he was one of them, that he is their champion not because he is different, rather because he is like them, they are ‘his people’.

This consumption of lies and deceptions is so far reaching that it touches every part of our lives. Even with the documentation done by Eisenhower, even with the oral histories done by survivors of the Shoah, people are denying the Holocaust happened, they are denying the death of 6 million+Jews simply because of Hitler’s desire to scapegoat the Jews, simply because of the racial prejudice against Jews that was started by the Catholic Church a millennia ago. For so long, up until Vatican II and Rabbi Heschel’s efforts to get Jews killed Christ out of the Catechism, and mission to the Jews revoked, Catholics consumed these lies and, like Blacks, Hispanics and Asians as well as Jews today, this consumption confined the Jews to a certain status, engendering hatred and animosity. What makes these lies and deceptions so attractive and palatable to be so consumed?

I believe it is the same thing that Trump tapped into. People are so afraid of change, they need and crave certainty so badly that anyone who promises the status quo and guarantees the certainty people are wanting will be blindly followed. We are witnessing one of the most distressing times in our Nation’s history. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to task, calling us to speak out, calling us to reach out to everyone we can and stop the mendacity that will kill freedom, end the deception that is killing democracy, surrender our need to live in the past and welcome the changes that each new day brings. Stop trying to hold on to the heirlooms of the past and immerse ourselves in the beauty and challenge of here and now. We will always be consumers, the question that Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom brings up for us: what are we going to consume? Are we going to be confined by the consumption of lies and deceptions? Are we going to be confined by the consumption of power and prestige? Are we going to be consumers of true celebration, true inner appreciation and welcome “the sublime wonder of living”? Are we going to consume truth and solutions more than lies and problems?

In recovery, we seek to be in the solution and, at times, be the solution. The solution to all of our issues today, according to Dr. Paul, is acceptance. We have to accept what is, we have to be in truth and clarity about what is happening right now in front of us to be able to adapt, change, respond and be in the solution. Without acceptance of truth, of reality, we are not in recovery, we are in our addictive thinking-which is what is happening all over the world. We are in desperate need of recovery, recovery of truth, recovery of dignity, recovery of our ability to truly celebrate and recovery of real freedom.

I see the subtleties of my own consumptive behaviors in my recovery. I believed the lies and deceptions of another(s) without too much questioning because I believed it would serve the mission I was on. I consumed the ‘friendship’ of people who needed me and whom I needed (or thought I did) and I have been thrown out with the trash when I was not useful anymore. I am also sure that there are people who experienced me in the same light. I am sorry for their experience and my part in it. I am sorry that I was so deep in my own narrative that I could not see the deceptions and mendacities of another(s) and, in truth, did not realize my own lies I was telling myself. Writing this today has me realizing the myriad of ways consumption confines me, confines everyone unless we are first serving a higher purpose, unless we are first in inner appreciation of life and our place, unless we are, as Ben Zoma teaches, happy with our portion in life. Without appreciation for what we have we become consumer whores and this exacerbates our angst and does not allow for celebration. 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 293

“Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.”(Who is Man pg. 117)

Remembering these words were spoken in 1963 to a group of students and faculty at Stanford University and hearing them, reading them today is mind boggling and totally in keeping with the “good old days” and “old ways of being”. In the “good old days” of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of Judea, the Greeks, the Romans, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Spanish, the Ottomans, the Germans, the British, and, now the Americans, people in power become more interested in consumption than in celebration, more interested in self than in living up to the threshold of God, more interested in consumption than in the plight of the poor, the needy, the stranger.

The prophets, whom some of us still study and learn from while many more of us read as an assignment to be forgotten immediately, foretold the dangers of this grave error and the people in power did not listen then nor have they since. The lure of consumption is as addictive as any drug, any drink, yet we congratulate consumers on their purchases, on their filling up with more and more, we are envious of the people who can suck all the oxygen out of the room, fly on their private jets, buy multiple homes, automobiles, jewelry, clothes, etc. We are in awe of the people who have forgotten that once they were poor, once they were on the outside and now, having a seat at the table, have forgotten, denied, their obligation to include everyone, to make a “bigger table”, as my friend John Pavlovitz teaches. This is how addictive and blinding our desire for consumption is, for us the onlookers and for the people consuming.

We see it in all the fad diets, all the get rich quick schemes, all the long cons/ponzi schemes, we see it in the ways people will ‘bet their rent money’ on the false hope of winning the lottery. We see this desire play out in our searching for mates, for friends, for likes on social media. We see evidence of our need to consume in our closets and in our refrigerators, in our offices and in our homes, we see it in our hoarding, in our clutter, in our envy and in our jealousy of another(s). Yet, we are still unwilling and/or unable to admit to ourselves how confining this consumption is, how confining our desire/addiction to consumption is and how it is threatening our very freedoms, both internally and externally. Consumption confines us through scarcity and deception. We have become believers that the consumers at the top of the pyramid know what they are doing so we try and copy them, we listen to them as if they are wise and caring, as if they have our best interests at heart and then we find ourselves enslaved to them, we find we “owe our soul to the company store”, we become encircled in the chains of consumption, in the chains of deception and in the chains of slavery.

We are witnessing the beginning of the ruination all of the civilizations mentioned above experienced, I believe. We are at the beginning of the lies from religious leaders who are bastardizing God’s words, God’s Will, our individual, personal connection and understanding of the Ineffable One’s call and demand for us. We hear them constantly tell us Christ was the Lion, Christ was the conqueror, while the words of Christ in the Gospels is about treating the poor, the needy, the stranger, the addicts, the whores, the thieves, etc with love and respect, with kindness and assistance. We hear them speak of how God wants perfection, how doing as many mitzvot as possible is all that matters, how making someone else wrap T’Fillin, is good whether they want to or not, whether they understand the meaning and the inner connection or not. We hear them tell us there are 70 ways to understand the Bible and only their way is the correct ONE WAY. We hear and take in their lies like dogs waiting for a treat, we let go of our ability to discern wheat from the chaff, lies from the truth, soul knowledge from our self-deception.

In recovery, we check in with our self each day to find the lies we are telling ourselves, to find the meaningless consumption we are engaging in, to find the unwitting ways we are still enslaving ourselves and another(s). We work hard each day to practice the principles of the prophets, the principles of spiritual connection and growth.

I am guilty of consumption and the slavery of same. I have been enslaved by my need for the latest and best in electronics, shoes, etc. I also have learned to wait and discern the differences between my wants and needs, I also make sure that I take care of God through my Tzedakah/tithing prior to taking care of me. I am grateful for what I have and want my life, my stuff, my friends, my enemies, my family, and my spirit. I know where consumption takes me and I have stayed out of the depths I went to prior to 1988 and continue to grow and learn. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel’s Wisdom - A Daily Path to LIving Well

Daily Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 292

“Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.”(Who is Man pg. 117)

In looking up words Rabbi Heschel uses, I am always startled at my misconception of many of them as in today’s words, sublime and solemn. Sublime comes from the Latin meaning “up to the threshold” and solemn means “customary/celebrated at fixed times” according to the dictionary online. Reading the last sentence above with these meanings, using Rabbi Heschel’s foundation of radical amazement, gifts me with the understanding that celebration’s essence is to have my inner life, my soul call attention to the aspects of life that are customary, that are regular and be aware of them. Stop taking everything/anything for granted, I hear Rabbi Heschel telling me, start to and continue to allow our inner life, our spirit, make us aware of the celebration of each action that moves life forward, that serves a higher purpose, that promotes us “up to the threshold” of holiness, goodness, kindness, service, justice.

Looking at the news, reading the things we celebrate, worry about likes and clicks, are all ways to distract ourselves from these important, fundamental truths Rabbi Heschel is teaching us. We have lost, it seems, the ability to live sublimely, to live “up to the threshold” because nothing is ever “good enough”, nothing is perfect and we have come to use these two profanity’s against ourselves and against one another. How many of us truly see our daily actions as good, good enough, perfectly imperfect? How many of us complain about, admit to, proudly declare how not good enough we are? We are so fixated on ‘celebrating’ the wins, the likes, the clicks, the adoration, the approval of another that we are no longer paying attention to all the ways we are living “up to the threshold” and celebrating them and ourselves. We are so fixated on the outer shell, we come to define solemn as “not cheerful, serious, dignified” customarily celebrating waking up each morning as a miracle. We are so fixated on “getting it right” we are blind to the joy of connecting with our soul, our family, friends, partners, nature, God, another human being.

We can change the ways we are living once we surrender our need for certainty. Once we surrender our need to be defined by another’s standard, society’s standard. Using the word perfection is an example. Who defined perfection? Some man who wanted to control another, some man who wanted his wife to feel inferior, some man who wanted his children to fear and please him is probably who defined it and many other men went along with him. Perfection, not good enough, social media, are all levers of control that also are sold to us as certainty. A religion that offers certainty also is bastardizing God because God is so unknowable and so infinite that we can only experience and worship,  celebrate and be in partnership with God “up to the threshold” of our understanding and spiritual maturity. We celebrate God at fixed times and customarily throughout the day when we eat, when we pray, when we take the next right action. Yet, many of us are oblivious to this truth in favor of the the lie and deception of perfection, good enough, how many clicks/likes did I get this time!

We are in desperate need, as a society, of a new/renewed awareness of what it means to celebrate, what it means to immerse ourselves in the essence of living, in the essence of celebrating, in the essence of connection, in the essence of imperfection. We have the ability to accept and adapt to new/old concepts and ideas, we have the spiritual tools to “live up to the threshold” of our capabilities, yet we are constantly falling prey to the deception and the lies, to the control and the power of societal norms, of bullies and authoritarians, to the false needs of another and the facades we wish to show the world. Rather than be “dignified” lets be customarily celebrating our actions of kindness and love, rather than being “formal”, lets get to know the inner life of ourselves and another human being. Rather than experiencing something as unparalleled, lets enjoy and enhance our living “up to the threshold” of the moment. We have the ability, we have the spiritual nature, do we have the willingness?

In recovery, we celebrate each day of recovery with gratitude, with joy, and this is a “customary” action we take. We live “up to the threshold” of our ability in the moment with the knowledge that each moment is different, our best is forever changing and we can only do what is in front of us now and to the best of our ability today.

Sitting here writing this, in New York City, I am having an experience of joy and relief. I am always connected to Rabbi Heschel and being here in the City he called home for so many years, I feel the connection a little stronger. I also am aware of the ways/moments I don’t “live up to the threshold” of my abilities, when I give in to the baser desires of my humanity. I am also aware of how much, how often and how customary it is for me to celebrate life, actions, the people in my life and the heroes who have helped to shape me, mold me and bring me closer to God, to authenticity and transparency. I am uncontrollable to most people because I do have the desire to push myself and another(s) to the “threshold” of God, love, justice, kindness, compassion, truth, etc. 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 291

“Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.”(Who is Man pg. 117)

“Lending spiritual form to everyday acts” is, has been, and always will be a profoundly difficult and enriching endeavor. As we have learned in prior writings, spiritual comes from the root spirit, which in Latin means breathe, the Hebrew word is Ruach, wind. We can understand Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above to infer, at least for me, that whatever we breathe life into, whatever we take a breath before doing, we are able to approach true celebration, provided that the actions we are taking are for good, for God, for the sake of higher self. As with everything in life, we can use the same energy to promote principles of God, principles of holiness, principles of decency, justice, love, compassion and their opposites. Unfortunately, people who want to demean God, demean human beings, who believe they are to be served and power is theirs use the power of breath, the power of spirit to deny freedom to another(s), enrich themselves, obstruct justice, and are spiritually ill, as Maimonides teaches in his book The Eight Chapters.

For the majority of people, we seek to use our breath for good, we seek to breathe life into decency, kindness, love, compassion and are, unfortunately, easily misguided, deceived and lied to. It is a trait of humanity to want to believe so we can connect to one another, living in suspicion of our neighbor doesn’t promote “love thy neighbor” as we are commanded to do. Yet, many of us have come to suspect our neighbor because hatred and mistrust has been breathed into us from childhood, protecting ourselves from another human being has been fed us along with mother’s milk. Fear, mistrust, comparison, competition, power, all are the antonyms of what Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, in my opinion.

We need to return to the roots of religious and moral actions, not the interpretations of people with self-promoted agendas, rather the essence of the words of the Bible, the words and actions of the Prophets, of the Kings, of the writings, of the Psalmist, of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, etc. We are not going to be able to breathe life into God’s teachings, we are not going to be able to use the wind of spirit to move our corner of the world to being a little better today than yesterday without the foundation of truth, love, compassion, justice, kindness, connection. Yet, many people, especially as we head into the midterm elections, are going to breathe hatred, lies, anger, promote connection through negativity, as well as extol injustice and non-freedom. They are doing this under the banner of religion, under the banner of god-all the while practicing the worst of idolatry, denying the truth of the first 3 Commandments!

We need to return, especially as we approach the Hebrew month of Elul when we are supposed to look back on the year past, make T’Shuvah (amends) for the wrongs we have not made yet and celebrate through inward appreciation the goodness we have breathed life into. We need to be thorough and fearless in seeing how we have lent spiritual form to our everyday actions, how we have breathed life into those nearest and dearest to us through love and kindness, how we have shared breath with people who needed a kind word, a word of encouragement, a word of rebuke in order to return to their rightful place. We get to revel in these actions and, I believe based on today’s reading of Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance, we need to gain more inward appreciation so we can gain strength from our prior good acts to do more of them today. We have to gain more appreciation for our self, for our ability to breath goodness, love, truth, justice, compassion into our daily actions so this way of being becomes more “normal” and, like physical exercise, we build our spiritual muscles and clear away the plaque that may be in our spiritual arteries.

In recovery, many of us awake with a gratitude for being alive. We take our first breath upon awakening and immediately realize we have this day to breathe more life into our newfound way of living, the opportunity to build up our spiritual muscles and clear out the junk that has blocked us from hearing our souls, for living from our spirit and from “doing the next right thing”. In recovery, we quickly learn to use the power of our decency to lift up and breathe life into the pitiful form we had become. In recovery, our inner appreciation meter grows each day and, like a Geiger counter, we are drawn to more and more ways to serve God, to serve another human being, to serve humanity, to serve all of God’s creations and, in doing so, are of maximum service to our self.

As I begin my inventory and review of the past year, I am struck with how much people have breathed life into me, have breathed life into the principles I hold dear and how much and often people have reached out to connect. Of course, I am painfully aware of the ones whom have cut off breath from our relationship and these relationships have died. Without blame, shame or fault finding, it is just the way it is and I have to see my part, accept it, try to repair it and allow for the ones who want to not reconnect and send love and blessings to them. It is sad to look back at the errors I have made based on putting too much breath into some places and not enough breath/spirit into other places. 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 290

“Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.”(Who is Man pg. 117)

“Lending spiritual form to everyday acts” is a challenging endeavor for all of us and it is the most worthwhile and invigorating endeavor we can engage in. Yet again, this is an internal experience, an individual experience and we are bombarded with all of the “experts”, “religious” leaders, “faith-based” groups who are trying to tell us there is only one way to achieve the experience of appreciation and spiritual form! It is so antithetical to Rabbi Heschel’s beliefs, his friendships and connections with people of faiths different from his, with people whose level of observance was different and these connections were deep, respectful, connected and open.

Today, we have Hillsdale College setting the tone for our public education in many states, they have as their goal to educate our children to revere “good Christian values” according to them, according to the conservatives like the Kochs, the DeVos’, the far right promoters like Tucker Carlson, et al. We are in danger of losing our freedom on all fronts and we are in danger of losing our ability to lend “spiritual form to everyday acts” unless it is the spiritual form that someone else, some human has decreed! Going against everything the Bible teaches us, going against the wisdom and teachings of Rabbi Heschel, yet they call themselves “godly people” all the while worshiping the idols of power, money and prestige. When religion and riches blend into one, when there is such a cozy relationship, we can, in my opinion and study of history, know that what is being promoted is not God’s Will, but the will of the rich and famous. When religion and government blend into one, when the laws have to be ‘in line with someone’s vision of the divine’, we know we are losing freedom, autonomy, and the few want to crush the spirit of the many. Yet, we sit back and watch as the few attempt to take over our lives, crush our freedom and use the tactics of Pharaoh against us again!

The Diary of Anne Frank is being banned in a Texas School District because it could be interpreted as and/or used as a teaching in Critical Race Theory, as a teaching in slavery, in Europe and a correlation can be made to our Country’s history. Can’t have this happen according to these Hillsdale-trained, Hillsdale-supporting conservatives. How are they “lending spiritual form to everyday acts”? THEY ARE NOT! These and so many more actions by the Plutocrats, the Religious Far Right, the Conservatives are not meant to lend “spiritual form to everyday acts”, they are meant to crush the spirit of anyone who is not like them, they are meant to co-opt the unwitting people who believe they are being saved while being used as slaves and pawns, they are meant to deny people of color, people of another faith than theirs, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press! Hillsdale, Peter Thiel, Donald Trump, Moscow Mitch McConnell, Conniving Kevin McCarthy, and their sycophants want power and control for 100 years, America has their own ‘visionaries’ of a 100-year rule; sound familiar?

“Lending spiritual form to everyday acts” calls us to live and act according to the lessons found in the Bible. It calls to us as individuals, just as everyone at the Red Sea and everyone at Mt. Sinai heard the words of God differently, had a different experience of being saved, of being connected to God, so too are each one of us having a different experience of being called, a different experience of understanding and following God’s Will. This is not to say that the values change, only the ways we each live them is different because we are all different. Rabbi Heschel is calling us out on our sameness, I believe. He is reminding us to not fall into the trap of religious behaviorism and spiritual plagiarism that Hillsdale, Koch’s, Carlson’s, Thiel’s et al’s ways are demanding. Don’t fall into the trap of fear, hatred, mendacity and deception they are setting and lets get the people who have fallen into these traps free. This is an everyday act that has to have a spiritual form to it.

In recovery, we are focused on our ability to live according to spiritual principles and each day we ask for guidance to see, hear and act on what “God would have me do”. We know that we are susceptible to the lies of our minds, the deceptions of our desires, and the mendacity of another. We are aware of our propensity to lean into the “easier and softer way”. So each day, we begin with awareness, prayer, meditation and continue to check in with ourselves and another(s) throughout the day to stay on track.

I have a deeper, richer and more meaningful life because I have been able to follow the teaching above. Spiritual forms are the pathways of my living and, sometimes I fall off the path. Yet, T’Shuvah, amends, are part of the pathway of life according to God so engaging in them is also “lending spiritual form to everyday events”. I am aware of my inner Pharaoh, my inner Egyptian, my inner Israelite in Egypt and in the Desert, my inner Moses and work hard to stay in the Desert and be more redeeming than enslaving. A new freedom has been thrust upon me and I am engaging with it and finding new ways to make my actions into spiritual forms, to celebrate the beauty and awesomeness of life, good and bad. 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 289

“Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.”(Who is Man pg. 117)

Rabbi Heschel is expanding both our definition of celebration and his and practical experience with the concept of celebrations I believe with his words above. We are so caught up with the outward ceremonies, the public demonstrations of another and/or ourselves that our celebrations are often acts of consumption, acts of entertainment, acts of diversion, acts of distractions. We see this happening when the protests overshadow the injustice being protested, when people are gawking instead of marching, when we deride the people who are demonstrating for justice, for kindness, for truth we are engaging in public demonstrations for the sake of our selves, for the amusement of the crowd, gang, boss, etc. While we are giving lip service to the protestors, while we shake our heads in sadness at the homeless tragedy in our country, most of us are not moved enough to do something about it other than blame the politicians, the homeless themselves, and whomever else we can.

While it is easy to point to the public demonstrations of the charlatans, the deceivers, Rabbi Heschel is speaking to all of us. When we pray in community, are we experiencing an inner appreciation for God, for community, for our soul, for the changes we are making daily to live a little better today than I did yesterday? Are we going to Temple, to Church, to the Mosque to pray for our selfish desires? Are we showing up to be seen and to see another(s)? Do we go to the demonstrations against injustice to be moved or to be seen? Are they performance art to/for us or are they meaningful?

These are the questions that immersing myself in this first sentence are bringing up. Just as with every other era in history, performance art is what is popular, pomp and ceremony is what is seen with reverence and/or derision. Yet, is the popular moving us to appreciation? What value are we putting on the performance art of public demonstrations and outward ceremonies? Do these demonstrations and ceremonies move our inner life, do they change our spiritual nature? Are they moving us closer to being merciful, loving justice, walking in God’s ways? Are we answering the demand and the call to join and make a difference because of these ceremonies, are we touched enough by the demonstrations to support the principles on which they are based?

We see the earnestness of many of the people performing these ceremonies and organizing these demonstrations and, unfortunately, we then see how they are co-opted by the mendacity of another, by the deceptions of the few and by the self-deception of the people themselves. Liz Cheney is an example of what happens when one person takes a stand for truth, for the constitution in today’s climate. Much like many times before, the lone voice of truth gets overwhelmed by the cacophony of the mendacious ones, this voice goes from being on the inside to being cast out and on the outside. Liz Cheney is a hero because she did not sell her soul to get back in. She has spoken truth, she has stood for her principles and beliefs and her outward ceremonies and public demonstrations have engendered appreciation, awe, and spiritual growth to so many of us who only saw her as one-dimensional, just a right-wing conservative, just Dick Cheney’s daughter. We have come to appreciate her strength, her stance for democracy, her belief in the Constitution. When everything was on the line, Liz Cheney’s public persona and her inner life came together to show all of us what lending spiritual form to everyday acts can lead to.

In recovery, we get to show up at meetings with our whole self. We no longer put on different faces, different incarnations of self depending on the situation. What you see is what you get and we are consistently showing up authentically and transparently. While this makes many people uncomfortable because authenticity and transparency is not always pretty, it is not always ‘nice’, it is always seeking truth, jettisoning mendacity and leaving our deceptive selves behind. Is self-deception still present, yes, just tamped down greatly and our transparency and authenticity allow us to be more aware of it rearing up and more open to hear someone else point it out to us.

I have led outward ceremonies that had a degree of performance art to them in order to move people to appreciation and move their inner lives towards “walking humbly with God”. For the most part these ceremonies were successful in helping both the congregation, the people participating and me grow our spiritual life, repair and heal our inner wounds and grow in our appreciation of what life is, what it has in store for us and excited to see what is going to happen next. I did not speak about politics per se, I spoke of the spiritual and moral principles that we, people of faith, have to uphold, stand for and fight for. The questions I ask above are the questions I have been asking myself for 33+ years. Prior to that, much of what I did was for show and I am repulsed by those memories, I hold on to them so I don’t repeat them. gislation, to see how I can help the individual, because we often get lost in the ‘them’. I look for the soul of another because this is the public demonstration that moves me to appreciation and spiritual growth the most. 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 288

“Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.” (Who is Man pg. 117)

To “climb above” our baser instincts is to get out of ourselves and get over ourselves. We are living in a time of great inner turmoil which is being played out in our outer living. We are sensitive to any and every slight, any and every word, any and every action that, without the context, we believe is against us. While not being a victim, many people claim to be victimized by ‘the system,’ ‘those people,’ perceived hurts and slights, and even their own guilt and shame. We see shrinks for this, we turn to addictive behaviors and substances to relieve ourselves of this angst, and many of us stay stuck and/or return to the comfort of this inner turmoil. I believe this to be the true issue we are facing in our inner turmoil between entertainment and celebration.

We are entertained by standing up to ‘the man’ and we are distracted by people reminding us of how ‘those people’ are ruining our lives, how they are the ‘enemy’ and the cause of the current state of affairs we find ourselves in. We are entertained with ‘bread and circus’ of politics, of institutions, of religious ceremonies even. This happens because even religious ceremonies have become irrelevant and oppressive through their lack of spontaneity, their lack of depth, their lack of meaning and their lack of impact on our inner life. There is, however, a solution!

We have within us the capability to change, the motivation to look inside and transcend our old behaviors, our old beliefs and the lies we have been telling ourselves. We have the power to move forward and block out the deceptions and mendacities we are hearing all around us. We have the gift of spirit and community to no longer need the same things we did before, to no longer twist lies into truth, to no longer need to make good guys and bad guys, to no longer be victims of our own making nor of anyone else’s making. We have the power, the capability and the path out of these slaveries and break out into the light of freedom, the power of spirit, the joy of celebration.

This path begins with us, it begins with shifting from believing we can think our way out of any and every situation into believing in radical amazement. Going from our belief in conventional notions to a belief that everything is new and fresh. Using eternal wisdom in a fresh and new way to see today’s living and today’s challenges in the present, in the moment and not try to use old solutions to solve them. While old solutions may have great wisdom and use, we have to make them new and fresh because this moment has never happened before, we can’t use cookie cutter solutions to solve new and different challenges. We “climb above” our need for certainty by living in radical amazement, by being “maladjusted to” our old ideas, our old glasses. Only by seeing today fresh and new, only by seeing yesterday in today’s light can we move forward. Radical amazement means we can never be ‘pigeonholed’ and never stop learning. To understand and experience the Torah in each of the Torah’s 70 faces one has to be in radical amazement and the same is true for everyday living.

Transcending our usual and common ways of being allows us to pay attention to the long term effects of our actions, to see our actions in the light of our current situation and to make our amends, change and grow from each and every daily activity. While we probably will never achieve this level of mindfulness, we can work on this way of being every day. Each day, when we review our day, we can write down the ways and events when we were in radical amazement and what we learned from these experiences. We can see where we kept using old solutions to respond to today’s issues and how our old ways of being adapted to today’s challenges. We begin to live in the nuances of life, we let go of our old visions of our self, we let go of our need to make allies and enemies and we accept people for who they are, not who we want them to be. We are gifted with the freedom and the spiritual uplift to “love our neighbor” whether we like them or not.

In recovery, this is the path of joy, love, kindness we follow so we can leave our old ways in the past where they belong. We embrace new and different ways of facing and transcending old issues. “We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us” is one of the promises of recovery and it is promise that comes true more and more often than many of us realize. In recovery, we are constantly in a state of transcendence, not always achieving it and always striving for it. We have “climbed above” our old ways and we live freely and spiritual one day at a time to the best of our ability in the moment.

I still have some of the old ways of seeing life and they serve me when I keep them fresh and they don’t serve me when I am stuck in tunnel vision. I have “climbed above” many old ideas and ways, I have used radical amazement to use my strengths in new and different ways and I have an attitude and practice of gratitude each day. I am grateful for life, for learning and even for the hurts and injuries because they help me learn and grown. 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 287

“Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.” (Who is Man pg. 117)

As I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, I am struck with the understanding that our confrontation with our actions is a gift from the Universe, from God to help us grow, learn, improve and deepen our connections to self, to another(s), to God/Universe. Whenever we take the time and put in the effort to confront our actions, to give attention to the “transcendent meaning” of what we are doing, we have reason to celebrate. Whenever we confront the demons we live with, the demons that entice us from outside of our selves, we have reason to celebrate. While confrontation is not the same as ‘winning’, Rabbi Heschel is affirming the power, the strength, the courage of our confronting these demons as reason for celebration. I watched with sadness Liz Cheney’s defeat in the Wyoming Primary. While we hold so many divergent views, I admire Ms. Cheney’s stance for democracy. Of course she voted with Trump most of the time he was in office, she is a Republican and he was promoting the conservative values she holds near and dear. Yet, when it came time to pay attention to the Constitution, to pay attention to the orderly transfer of power, Liz Cheney confronted Trump, his sycophants and the entire Republican power structure. Liz Cheney, in her concession speech, celebrated her confrontation, spoke of how she and we can “climb above” the lies and deceptions of Trump and his mendacious followers. Liz Cheney is a hero for taking the road less traveled by the Republican Party in the last 14 years, the road of celebration, the road of confrontation, the road of paying attention and giving serious consideration to the “transcendent meaning of one’s actions”.

Confronting oneself is also a cause of celebration. Yet, we are usually only seeing where we are falling short, or being told where and how we fall short. We see the world as a competition, as a battleground, etc and we are constantly measuring our insides by someone else’s outsides, we are constantly comparing our self to another self and this is how we come to isolate, to seek escapes, to engage in entertainment as “a diversion, a distraction” because it seems too painful to confront these demons that are attacking us from inside and out. It doesn’t seem to make sense that we can win any battle against them so we quit, we quietly go about our business, escaping whenever and wherever we can, through alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, work, mindless entertainment, our devices, etc. We are diagnosed with different “mental disorders” that are made up for the benefit of Big Pharma and the Psychiatric Community to validate their existence and charges, one sees the TV ads for better living through chemicals and there are very few visits to a Psychiatrist where medication is not prescribed! While in many cases these pills help lift a person out of the deep hole they are in, they are not magic bullets, they do not take the place of confronting our demons with the belief/hope that we can, like Jacob in Genesis, prevail against them. Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance above can strengthen our resolve to confront the demons, to realize and pay attention to our ability to climb above our current situation and make things better, brighter and stronger today, tomorrow and each day after.

We are able to climb above our current morass, our current situation, when we confront the lies, the indifference, the deceptions we have been telling ourselves and listening to in another(s). We are able to see the long-term effects of enjoying entertainment and jettisoning celebration. We need to choose to celebrate, we need to enjoy the long-term effects of our actions that promote goodness, kindness, truth, love, justice, dignity, compassion, and mercy. More tomorrow on this!

We begin our recovery journey precisely because we have been confronted with the long-term effects of our actions, either internally or externally. For some of us it took getting arrested by law enforcement to realize how arrested we have been by our indifference, our obliviousness, our choices to escape, our decision to engage in diversions and distractions. For some of us it took the call of family finally being heard to realize our imprisonment. For some of us it took a “dark night of the soul” to realize how our self-imprisonment has/had imprisoned so many of the people we said we loved. In recovery, we are confronting our demons of self-loathing, self-deception, and willful blindness each day.

Transcending my inner demons and inner crap is a daily, moment by moment experience for me. While I am much farther ahead in my celebrating as Rabbi Heschel defines it above, I know that I am not THERE yet. I am constantly engaged in “climbing above” my hurts, my sadness, my inner lies and inner demons to be able to have a positive impact on and with my family, friends, community, world. Truth is the greatest and most wonderful experience I celebrate. Unfortunately when confronted with lies and mendacity, indifference and betrayal, I still fail, at times, to “climb above” the traps these situations and people lay for me. I still react/respond with volcanic proportions and watch how these deceivers joyfully cheer my errors and use them against me and mine. I am a work in progress and celebrating the awareness while committing to use it better this week than I did last:) 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 286

“Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.” (Who is Man pg. 117)

Confrontation comes from the Latin meaning “with face” and we have come to put a very negative connotation and denotation on this important word. Using this meaning in the last sentence above I hear Rabbi Heschel calling to us to face the truth that all of our actions have transcendent meanings. All of our actions have meanings that “climb above” what they may appear to be. In this way, celebration is not just about being happy, it is truly living in joy because we are able to “face” our self, we are able to “face” the truth of the ways our actions “climb above” the self deceptions we engage in to ‘make them okay’. We are able to pay attention to the larger context of the impact of our actions long term. When it is something positive, we are able to celebrate the long term effects of our actions, when it is not positive, we are able to be ‘honor’ the effect of our actions and change them through T’Shuvah, rather than continually denying our part in the negativity.

Herein lies the challenge, how do we confront the meaning of our actions that climb above the seemingly good intentions we think we are bringing? When we are in self-deception, when we live in a mendacious way of being because we truly are unaware, how can we realize the “transcendent meaning of one’s actions”? Rabbi Doctor Abraham Twerski, in his interpretation of Luzzatto’s Path of the Just, calls this being oblivious. Luzzatto in his preface reminds us of how “common for people to be oblivious to those ideas whose truth is unchallenged”. We cannot be in any meaningful, truthful celebration while in denial, obliviousness, deception, mendacity and we want to believe we are, we are desperate to make excuses for and defenses of our actions without looking at or for the long-term effects of our actions. By not delving deeply into how our actions impact the immediate moment, the immediate surroundings, the moments to follow and the universe in general, we are able to stay in denial, we are able to keep deceiving our self, we are able to confuse entertainment for celebration. This is the state of being we find ourselves in more and more in today’s world.

We entertain ourselves with out prejudices, with our lies, with the lies of another. We entertain ourselves with the obliviousness and denial of our actions and both their intent and impact. We are constantly being called to wake up by the universe and we have the uncanny ability to fool ourselves into believing we are woke, we are aware, we are concerned, we are respectful, we are celebrating, we are honoring God, flag, principles, etc. This is the danger of mendacity, this is the danger of indifference, this is the danger of self-deception, this is the danger of ‘needing to be right’, this is the danger of obliviousness. The only antidote to these dangers, to these terrible paths that lead to prejudice, hatred, enslavement, “eye disease” and a “cancer of the soul”, as Rabbi Heschel defines prejudice, is having a passion for truth, having a practice of T’Shuvah daily, having a practice of introspection, compassion for both self and another, confrontation with oneself, forgiveness for one’s self and another, etc. Engaging in these practices daily allows us the opportunity to see the “transcendent meaning of one’s actions” and celebrate our ability to confront our self, another human being, the universe with truth, with our whole being no matter when the actions occurred, today or years ago, the call of today’s learning is to continue to confront oneself, continue to make oneself aware of the far-reaching effects of one’s actions and to leave indifference, deception, etc for awareness, awakening and truth!

In recovery, we are so aware of our default of mendacity and self-deception that we constantly do “fearless and searching” inventories. We do this once a year in a long form and we do it each day, much like the Jewish practice of t’shuvah. This is how we “keep our side of the street clean” and continue to mine our past and present for the lessons and actions that will ensure a future with more love, compassion and less deception and indifference.

I realize the long-term effects of my actions in retrospect usually. I am sorry for the harm I have brought upon people from my actions, I am sorry for the self-centeredness I have practiced knowingly and unknowingly. I am sorry for the obliviousness I have been in that has impacted family, friends, co-workers negatively. I celebrate the ability to “climb above” the intentions I may have had and confront the reality of what is, what was. I am grateful for T’Shuvah with allows me to constantly see my actions, my being in new lights based on new awarenesses, leaving another state of obliviousness, and finding more truth inside of me. Today’s writing overwhelms me with joy at the realization of how much celebrating I have done, how much I have to celebrate for awareness, leaving obliviousness and self-deception and for the “transcendent meaning” of my actions that posit

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 285

“Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.” (Who is Man pg. 117)

Being immersed in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and teachings allows us to continually see new and nuanced understandings of both the wisdom itself and how to apply/live it each day. Staying in radical amazement, ie being maladjusted, gives us the opportunity to continually learn and grow. What are the preoccupations of daily living we are engaged in and what are the preoccupations of daily living we should be engaged in? These are the questions Rabbi Heschel is asking me today-this is how he is disturbing me today!

For many of us, making ends meet is the primary preoccupation of daily living. I understand this and am acutely aware of the pressure of this preoccupation and I am also aware, with the gift of age and perspective, how we make ends meet, what we do to make them meet and making sure the “ends” are more than financial are crucial to our long-term survival, physical health, emotional health and spiritual health. There are a lot of people for whom the Pandemic was a life saver! Many people left the jobs they hated, they felt stuck and trapped in, to go out and find a career that gives them work/life balance, a way of making a financial living that no longer sucks their spirit and impairs their spiritual and emotional health. Entertainment is now a welcome diversion as a breather rather than as a distraction for the mind “from the preoccupations of daily living”. Entertainment has it’s proper place in their lives whereas before it did not, it was out of proper measure which in turn threw everything else in their lives out of proper measure. Proper measure is different for each of us, so we have to find our unique proper measure of which preoccupations of daily living are for us to focus on each day, hour, week, month, etc. What we do need to understand, however, is that these preoccupations are the same for each and every one of us. They will differ in intensity, in ability, in focus, in timing, yet they are the same for all of us,I believe.

The first preoccupation, in my experience, is/needs to be with our spiritual life. Too many of us have neglected our inner life, our spiritual life out of a misguided belief that this is about religion and not science. As the Webb telescope has shown me/us, the universe(s) is so infinitely amazing and intricate and we/I am connected to every particle of matter, every atom in this vast expanse by a connection that is indescribable and unknowable and absolutely true. Yet, many of us are so preoccupied with other things, we ignore this primal need and component of what makes us human. As I tell many people who can not believe, God, spirit is the space between us and another human being that makes it possible to connect with one another. Another example of spiritual living is our connection with animals, while our dog, SweetPea, cannot speak-we communicate and live together in a non-verbal manner than transcends my rational mind. Our intuition is an example of inner life/spiritual life, yet so many of us pay little to no attention to it and/or do not grow it into maturity. Most of us do not see the need to mature, pay attention, grow our inner life, our spiritual life and wonder why we feel so disconnected and discontented with our daily living.

A rich spiritual/inner life begins with a connection to another human being, a connection to something greater than our self, a connection to nature, to our soul, to our ‘gut instinct’. This connection is one that doesn’t have to be ‘rational’ and it does have to have an ineffable quality to it, a quality that is too awesome to describe. In other words, we have to get out of the need for “evidence-based” practices that make us the same as everyone else and begin to explore the proper way for us to connect to our inner life, to the universe, to another(s) human being, to the animal kingdom, to nature. We do this through prayer, meditation, study, immersing ourselves in what is, acting in loving ways whether we feel like it or not, as Harriet Rossetto teaches and more. Love is not a rational experience, a biological connection is not the same as love, a co-dependent relationship is not the same as love. Love is, as M.Scott Peck defines it: “going beyond one’s own limitations and boundaries to nurture and enhance the spiritual growth of oneself and/or another.” This definition reminds us of the spiritual nature of love and our need for engaging in loving actions towards ourselves and towards another. I will write more on this tomorrow.

In recovery, our first few steps into a new/old way of being allows us/forces us to engage in spiritual practices. We seek to realize the myriad of ways we are powerless over so many things we thought we should have power over and learn to accept what truly is, become immersed and engaged in, as I said yesterday, “Life on life’s terms”. No longer needing to “be in control”, we are better able to navigate our actions and our inner thoughts, inner experiences and grow to be loving and kind to everyone.

Growing one’s spiritual life never ends, as I have taught, forgotten and am reminded of daily. I am constantly seeking to grow along spiritual lines and remembering, just as the Torah ends with the Israelites poised to go into the promised land, my life will end before I am totally spiritually fit. Each day, I grow my inner life/my spiritual life by one grain of sand and this preoccupation helps me deal with the rest of what life brings a whole lot better. 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 284

“Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupations of daily living. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.” (Who is Man pg. 117)

Since time immemorial, we have sought to distract our selves, our souls, our minds from the preoccupations of daily living. In the time of the Greeks, it was the Olympic Games, in Roman times it was Chariot Races and Gladiators and Christians and Lions, we have sports, social media, games, etc to divert our attention away from the issues of our daily living. While it is not bad to engage in entertainment, it may be necessary to distract our minds for a minute so we don’t get so engrossed that we can’t see the forest for the trees, we are in danger today of only engaging in entertainment, only diverting our selves from what is true and good, true and dangerous. We are in danger of distracting our mind from the truth of daily living, from the path of decent, holy, fulfilling daily living. Herein lies the issue for us today. Are we willing to return to a confrontation of self, a confrontation of another, are we seeking to give attention to the “transcendent meaning” of our actions or are we too far down the rabbit hole of entertainment, distraction, diversion?

Our political system has become one distraction after another, one diversion after another until we are now seeing the fruits of the far right and the far left coming to bear fruit. The “political correctness and optics” of the far left make it impossible for a good person to make a mistake and move on-Al Franken had to resign his Senate seat because he did what men did back in the day, he apologized, he admitted his errors and he was ostracized and forced to resign by the “political correctness police”. There is no perfect person, we all make errors and if we are going to be defined by the errors we make rather than the good we do, when the good outweighs the errors, we are setting standards that are impossible to attain, giving our young people more reasons to engage in risky behaviors and push people farther and farther apart.

The false piety and rigidity of the far right has diverted our attention away from their desire to control women’s bodies, minds and souls, their desire to dictate who is allowed into their country so it stays pure for the White European ruling class, all the while quoting Scriptures in a way that bastardizes the meaning, the intent, the holiness of these words, ideas and pathways. Trump and his cronies stole millions from us, the taxpayers, while we were getting enraged by one thing or another that he was saying/doing. Moscow Mitch and Peter the Great Thiel are diverting attention away from the preoccupations of daily living like wages, freedoms, healthcare, climate, by focusing on the lies they are spreading about the needs of the ‘poor’ corporations, the desperate needs of the 1%, the goodness of Putin, Orban, MBS, and other dictators/authoritarians.

We are in a struggle for the soul of this country, for the soul of our fellow citizens, for our own soul. Because their entertainment techniques are so sophisticated, because their distractions are so blinding, we are all in danger of losing our ability to hear the demand, the call of God, of the universe, of our souls. We have to re-engage in daily living, re-engage in the activities that give meaning and purpose to our living, we have to discover/re-discover our passion for truth, our passion for learning, our passion for love, etc.

In recovery, we are acutely aware of our propensity to distract ourselves, to divert our attention from what is in front of us, to some sort of escape, to a denial of what is, etc. In fact, this is one of the many things we are recovering from. “Life on Life’s Terms” is a constant theme of our recovery, being engaged in what is, dealing with what should be, seeking truth and reality, facing life with the help of friends, people in recovery, and God/Higher Power is our solution to avoiding being distracted from our preoccupation with daily living. We have fun, we entertain ourselves in proper measure and in appropriate ways today in our recovery.

I distract myself to this day because I am fearful of being too intense with my self and with another. I know my desire to help/fix something is so great that I can be overbearing, seem arrogant, act in ways that are not politically correct, and this has harmed another(s) and harmed me. I still am diverting myself with games on my devices, I still watch mindless television to ‘zone out’, and I find myself doing it less, on most days. I am aware of not wanting to confront certain people, not wanting to speak truth to some people, not wanting to engage in a battle with the people who follow the extremes because when I see their phoniness, I want to scream and yell and say “the emperor has no clothes”. Yet, today, I am painfully aware of the phoniness I have been selling myself. I am painfully aware of my seeking entertainment to distract me away from the demand that daily living is putting on me. I believe in confrontation, I believe in truth, I believe in making errors, doing T’Shuvah, and forgiveness. The fact that people who have known me want to continue to put in a box, treat me with disdain while smiling at me is just sad, the reality that I made a mistake, have done T’Shuvah and they are unable to forgive is tragic. Especially because they are proponents of either the far left and/or the far right! 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 283

“The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or spectacle.” (Who is Man pg.117)

The last sentence above is the world we find ourselves in today. People go to concerts to be entertained, as well we should. We are aware of what the exchange is: we pay money for a ticket and the band, orchestra, comedian, actors perform. We are being entertained by someone else, we are receiving pleasure from the actions of another and we all agree this is cool. The issue today is that too many people are being entertained by their wealth, their power and their ability to make change through subterfuge. The issue today is that too many people are being amused and entertained by elected officials who could care less about the welfare of the people who are paying with donations, with volunteering, with their entire being to elect/re-elect them.

We are seeing this spectacle play out throughout the country, throughout the world. Putin, Orban, Trump, Thiel, McConnell, Koch, et all believe they can act with impunity, without any responsibility, without any repercussions to their actions. Remember Donald Trump said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose a singe vote. He was correct!! We are watching a new form of the ‘Christian’s and the Lions at the Coliseum’ from the Roman days. Today it is watch the Far Right and the Far Left attack everyone else and get paid to do it, we the People are the Christians in today’s assault on truth, in today’s power grab, in today’s mendacity.

We, the People, however, are the problem! We are sitting “idly by the blood of our brothers/sisters” by being amused by these rallies, these rants on Fox News, Breitbart, etc. We, the people are  participating in these amusing spectacles by cheering the liars on, by supporting them with donations and votes and we are unaware of the harm they are bringing, the ruining of our lives the lives of everyone “not like us”. We are so enamored with the spectacle, so believing in our own grievances, and so needing to “win at all costs” we are blind to our actions, to our participation in this passive state of being entertained. The people running this entertainment show are really good con-artists. They have us believing that we are celebrating truth, justice and the American Way while we are participating in the elevation of a plutocracy, the installation of authoritarianism, the election of people who will rape and plunder everyone, everything they can to consolidate power, to do what they want to enrich themselves, etc.

We can no longer afford to turn a blind eye to the entertaining aura of our times, we can no longer give in to the call to participate in the amusement of another, we can no longer turn a blind eye to all these and we can no longer call these demonstrations celebrations! Calling them celebrations is what keeps us in ‘the ether’, in willful blindness, in self-deception. It is time for all of us to wake up, to “circumcise the foreskin of our hearts”, to stop taking things and life for granted, to believe these assaults on celebration, assaults on freedom, assaults on humanity and assaults on the teachings of the Bible are no big deal. These assaults are killing us because we see them as entertainment, as amusing rather than the dangerous enslaving actions their perpetrators are using them for. Let us not be like the world was in the late 1930’s wondering how Hitler and the Nazi Party took over, let us not repeat the errors of the German people who laughed at Hitler and then were sent to the camps by his decree. Let us not be the like we were in 1968, so torn apart by Vietnam, so fearful of Freedom for All, that a liar like Richard Nixon and a “bagman” like Spiro Agnew were running the country!

In recovery, we guard the dignity of another and of ourselves zealously because we had trampled on it so often prior to our recovery. We are overly sensitive to never substitute entertainment for celebration. We are committed to not amuse ourselves at the expense of another, we are dedicated to helping everyone and anyone who desires recovery from all of the spiritual maladies that cause depression, anxiety, addiction, a general malaise. We celebrate the wonder and joy of life and we speak sincerely and truthfully to everyone we know.

I have been amusing to many people over my lifetime. I have made myself into a caricature at times and I regret this. I regret the times, prior to recovery, when I used people as entertainment by ‘celebrating’ with them while I was stealing from them at the same time. I regret the times I foolishly believed what I was doing was connecting and in reality the people were using me for their entertainment. I regret allowing myself to get ‘wound up’ without having all the facts and being the entertainment for these people as well as the harm to another that I brought.  I regret the ‘bullets’ I put in another(s) gun which enabled them to entertain themselves while I was semi-publicly flogged. I am grateful for my ability to celebrate the joy of life, the love of God,  the joy of Heather and Miles, the joy of friends, the joy of sharing life with a soulmate who gets me, loves me, and helps me grow. This is the celebration I believe Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. 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 282

“The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or spectacle.” (Who is Man pg.117)

Rabbi Heschel is so brilliant in his differentiation between celebration and entertainment/amusement. We have so totally confused the two that there seems to be no separation, no distinction between them. Which, of course in my opinion, is one of the roots of our problems. We need to have a dramatic shift forward in our actions, our thinking, in our living and it begins with basic principles and actually living them, not just giving lip service to them. It is truly time to declare a Moral Emergency again, as Rabbi Heschel suggested to President Kennedy in 1963, it is time to rise to the Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity we are created for and to be.

We begin with a basic principle that God is Truth, therefore we have to strive to seek truth, we have to have a Passion for Truth as Rabbi Heschel’s last book is titled. To seek truth means to take off the blinders, let go of the outcomes we want, see the things that could change our preconceived notions, and be maladjusted to the cliches we have long accepted. Since God is Truth and God is the entire picture, anything less than a rich and full vision of what is cannot be the whole story! When we are making decisions without being fully informed, by definition the decision has a better chance of being flawed than when we are fully informed and make a decision. Beginning with a desire to seek out the whole story, to make informed decisions, to revere Truth can lead us back to celebration.

The next principle is the recognition that we are all created in the Image of the Divine! Not some of us, not just white people, not just rich people, all human beings; male and female both! Knowing and accepting this Truth allows us to recognize the similarities in one another, it allows us to see partnerships and collaborations where we saw competitions and wars before. This principle helps us have appreciation for differing opinions and give us the strength to resolve differences through compromise, not quitting, not blocking, not filibustering, not overpowering. Rather we engage in a give and take of ideas, methods and respect. Combining these two principles allows us to have a different experience of living, of self and of every other self we encounter. These first two principles give us a foundation to ward off the onslaught of the mendacious ones, the people who relish in their Moral Ignominy!

The next principle is gratitude. Waking up each morning being grateful to be alive, grateful for what life has in store for us today, grateful to engage in and enjoy the entire day: good, not so good and everything in between. Another gratitude is for having the ability to navigate whatever comes our way, having the confidence that we(either solely or with the help of another(s)) will figure it out and deal with the consequences of our actions and/or the actions of another.

Another principle is learning: each day waking up with the excitement that we will learn something new today, see something we thought we knew from a new perspective, keep our eyes open, our minds alert and our souls engaged in our daily experiences so we can never see life the same from one day to the next, from one hour to the next. Learning is a discipline, as Rabbi Heschel says in his interview in 1972, and it will be good for us, for our family, for our community to become more intentional and disciplined in our learning.

Having reverence for truth, appreciating the God-Image in each one of us, experiencing learning and gratitude are crucial to our being able to celebrate, otherwise we are ‘celebrating’ falsehoods, mendacities, idols, authoritarians, liars. The choices are pretty clear, they were clear in the 1930’s and the America First’ers wanted to support Germany and Hitler-“when we ever learn, when will we ever learn”?

In recovery we know that reverence and appreciation are keys to our long-term living well. We are acutely aware that the opinions of another have to be heard, honored and, at times, argued with. We are dedicated to learning each day, peeling a layer of the onion off, and are grateful for this day, this moment.

Celebration brings about core contentment in me. It gives me the strength to move forward, living the principles above have navigated me through a myriad of challenges and gifts in my recovery. I am imperfect in living these principles and I do a little better each day. I relish in my reverence for learning, in my reverence of my teachers, my mentors, my entire family-cousins, uncles, parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, grandson, daughter. I am so appreciative of the learning, doing, engaging and living that Harriet has helped me achieve and we have achieved together. As the song says: “they can’t take that away from me”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 281

“The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or spectacle.” (Who is Man pg.117)

In his interview with Carl Stern, Rabbi Heschel speaks about reverence in different ways, his reverence for his relatives, his community who taught him of the importance of the inner life, his concern over whether his living is worthy of his daughter’s reverence, the reverence for truth, for love, for humanity, etc. I am concerned as to what we revere today, in our fast-paced, get it now, need more likes, celebrity adoring ways of being. It seems we are willing to revere mendacity and deception more than we are willing to revere truth, God, love, human beings!

We are in desperate need of a Spiritual Revolution. We are in desperate need of some “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity” as Rabbi Heschel said to President John F. Kennedy. We are in desperate need of an exodus from the slavery of lies, of deception, of self-deception, of idol-worship, of bastardizing the Holy Texts that are the foundations of democracies, of decency, of growing our inner life! We are in need of more than a Moses or Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha, we are in need of a spiritual awakening for all of us. We are being called to throw off the yoke of mendacity; get out from under the burden of “optics”; the harsh labor of “being like everyone else”; the false need of having what someone else has rather than being content with what one has. We are in need of a leader, the question is: would we follow one, would we leave the Egypts we find ourselves in, especially if it means going against the grain, being maladjusted to the “conventional wisdom” of our day? I am not so sure we would.

My skepticism arises from our inability to use the lessons of the past to leave these slaveries we find ourselves in. We have been at the edge of the Red Sea and, unfortunately, more people have turned back to slavery than willing to cross the Red Sea into the unknown of freedom. A commentary on the Bible says only 20% of the Israelites left Egypt, if only 20% of us were willing to leave slavery today. The far right and the far left are making so much noise that the 80% of us who are ‘in the middle’ can’t even hear ourselves think and so we just give up and go along with one extreme or the other knowing it is wrong and just too tired to fight.

Hence, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, our revolution begins, our exodus happens when we begin to revere truth, have appreciation for the struggle of freedom that has been with us forever, revere our teachers, revere the wisdom of the Bible, of the Constitution, understand our Holy Texts and our foundational principles in light of today. We are being called upon to live in this moment, to follow the elders and wise people of today, to Choose Life! It all begins with us rising up to the level of Moral Grandeur without heeding our baser instincts that ask “is it good for me” and instead asking “is this the next right action to take”. The frauds that were perpetrated by people in regards to the PPP money during the Pandemic, the frauds around Unemployment Money, the frauds of Congress and the Supreme Court that are still being engaged in all happen because the people running these institutions and/or having control/power in these institutions are asking “is it good for me”. Instead of Moral Grandeur, they live in Moral Ignominy!

We, the People have the power and the call to extricate ourselves from these ways of being. We have the strength, the numbers, the path to leave these slaveries, these oppressive paths and patterns as well as these authoritarian leaders. What we need is the will to do this. Rather than clap for these liars who say Jesus was the Lion who devours people, rather than cheer on senseless hatred, rather than “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor”, rather than wring our hands, we have to DO something to end this charade by these charlatans. Kevin McCarthy has told us if he is Speaker of the House, the people’s business will come in a distant last to his need to humiliate the people seeking truth about what has been going on in government recently. His actions show his disdain for the Capital Police who protected him and gave their lives, their bodies for his safety on Jan. 6th! To defeat the Kinless Kevin we have to have the WILL to rise up and speak truth to the people who want to live in deception. We have to have the will to rise up and say with our actions: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” as Howard Beale declared in the movie Network.

In recovery we know we can only have a personal exodus from the slavery we have willingly marched into when we take action on the demand, the call of freedom, of family, of the universe. Our actions and our lives become testaments to Howard Beale’s words and to the uprising of, as Rabbi Abraham Twerski told me, true faith in action. In recovery we do not know exactly where we are going or how we are going to get there, we only know we are marching towards living a life of Godliness, of decency, of a richness of our inner life that propels us forward 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 280

“The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or spectacle.” (Who is Man pg.117)

The third sentence above is the goal of living, as I understand Rabbi Heschel this morning, yet it is very hard to maintain and even harder to sustain for most people. At least in the manner Rabbi Heschel is speaking about celebration. Because of the confusion of celebration and amusement/entertainment, people have become deceived and/or have deceived themselves that they are in the active state of celebration, they are “expressing reverence or appreciation” to God, to the Universe, to the Ineffable One all the while they are being entertained by idolators, by charlatans, by fascists, by wolves in sheep’s clothing, and, in turn, amusing their puppet masters greatly.

To express reverence to God one must stop engaging in idolatry, in self-deception and this is much too difficult for most people, judging by the state of the world and seeing the world through a historical lens. The prophets called out the Kings, the Priests, the wealthy for their substituting entertainment for celebration, for substituting mendacity for truth, for substituting empty rituals for authentic engagement, for substituting lip service for T’Shuvah. We have the record of this, which in itself proves the concerns of the Rabbis at the time for the human ability to forget, to deceive, to engage in self-deception so the Prophets are included in the Bible. The farther we get from truth, the deeper we engage in self-deception, the louder are the lies we are hearing, the closer we are to confusing celebration and entertainment/amusement. The more confusion we experience and engage in the more freedom we let go of; which leads us to liars and falsehoods. Which leads to the destruction of the human spirit, the deconstruction of the Bible, and the imprisonment of the spirit.

Today, we are finding ourselves in the midst of an onslaught of amusement and entertainment. We are being berated by so-called ‘freedom fighters’ who want to make Capitalism king-who want to have a Plutocracy-and want to control every aspect of how everyone but them lives. Reading about Blake Masters and J.D.Vance is pretty scary because they are graduates from “elite schools” consider themselves above everyone else and attack the “elites”. They are willing to kill anyone who stands in their way, according to some of their campaign ads. They are bought and paid for by Peter Thiel who only complains that Donald Trump did not go far enough and destroy enough of our norms so the Plutocracy could take over. Masters, Vance, and their comrades are talking about “a hundred year reign”. Sound familiar, it should because this is what the Nazi’s promised. Yet, many people are showing reverence or appreciation for these people who want to take their freedoms from them, who excel in deception and selling their lies!

We are unable to be in the active state of celebration whenever we take positions that are extreme in nature, when we want to blow up the Biblical mandates and paths it is impossible to be appreciating what God has given us, it is antithetical to revering and loving God. Yet, we are seeing this a lot right now with the Midterms coming closer and with the polarization of our society. The Bible is a manual for how to live together with one another, how to appreciate the different visions, understandings each person has in order for us to get a better and truer picture of what is. The Talmud is a book chronicling 800 years of conversations regarding the best ways, in their time, to fulfill God’s instructions, commandments, desires and revere the Covenant we have with God. This is our inheritance from our ancestors as well as the inheritance of evil, of mendacity, of power-seeking, of slavery. We have a choice to make each and every day-celebration of Godliness, celebration of self and power.

In recovery, we are engaging in being more consistent in the active state of celebration, more consistent in appreciating this moment, this day, the people around us, the ability to learn and discuss similarities and differences in opinion and in ways of being. Learning about traditions of other faiths, other people, other recovery groups across the nation brings us a wider lens in which to see life and how to live well.

I am enraged at the lies of the Peter Thiel’s the Blake Masters’ Keri Lake’s et al, I am aghast that Kevin McCarthy is so focused on himself that he will kiss the ring of Trump, kiss the ring of Thiel and the Koch’s and the rest of the Plutocrats in order to be ‘speaker of the House’. I am enraged at my own lies, my own confusion of deception and reverence. I am grateful for the awareness of my self enough to recognize and return to celebrating Truth, revering God, connecting with 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 279

“The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or spectacle.” (Who is Man pg.117)

Last week’s decision against Alex Jones points out the grave danger in seeking “to be amused or entertained”. Alex Jones and his ilk are merely puppet masters of the “bread and circus” entertainment show that has overtaken the world. Like the Roman circus of Christians versus the Lions, the Salem Witch Trials, the House on UnAmerican Activities of Joe McCarthy, we are experiencing a new level of amusement and entertainment from our political leaders, from the social media experts and from one another.

We are sinking more and more each day, week, month, year into the “suspect your neighbor” that Rabbi Heschel spoke about in 1972. Alex Jones has created a multi-million dollar empire on this theme, Donald Trump won the Presidency on this theme, the Republican Party of today has become more about this theme than about governing, about democracy, about truth. This not so gradual sinking into this snake pit is amusing and entertaining to the ring leaders and very serious and believable to the followers, believers of these lies, these deceptions. And, the ring leaders know this, they relish it and, when held accountable like Alex Jones is being held accountable, they cry foul, they are victims, they shield their money or try to so they can continue to rant, rave, lie and destroy with impunity. This is how far our substituting amusement and entertainment has come, this is how far down the rabbit hole we have gone and this is how desperate these white men are to hold on to power, prestige and money. Alex Jones is a con man, a grifter, a flim-flam man, who may or may not believe anything he says and just ‘plays to his base’. Sound familiar Moscow Mitch, Mendacious McCarthy, Crooked Cruz, Greedy Greene, Molesting Matt? Yet, somehow these charlatans, these deceivers are still powerful, still can confuse and screw up the principles of the Constitution and the needs/will of the people! Why?

The reason is in the second sentence above, I believe. We, the People seek “to be amused and entertained” more than we seek to celebrate, more than we seek to be responsible and loyal, more than we seek to be free! Isn’t this a sad commentary on our state of being, isn’t it a sad commentary that we complain about people being on their devices while supporting the tech companies that have caused it? Is it a sad state of affairs when Mark Zuckerberg has more sway over what we believe than truth does? When the Internet and Google are teaching our children and ourselves more than schools and our own critical thinking is? Yet, we are here because we love “to be amused and entertained”! At issue is the entertainment has turned dangerous, it is rotting the minds and the souls of young and old. It is leading a group of people to believe they have the right to kill people with whom they disagree, they have the right to enslave/make second class citizens anyone who isn’t like them (white) and who doesn’t agree with them. LGBTQ, people of color, Jews, Muslims all should leave the country unless they want to take their proper place as workers and underlings to these elite and brilliant people without morals, without belief in the words of the Bible, who have bastardized Jesus’, Moses’ and Mohammed’s words and teachings. This is happening because these charlatans, these fake preachers, these unprincipled white people and their lackeys have found the key to ‘winning’, entertain and amuse the masses and they will follow one anywhere, even to ruin.

“We are engaged in a great civil war” Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg address and we are still engaged in this civil war, we are still testing whether a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men(humans) are created equal…can long endure”. These words ring true, ring deeply in the souls of people who are Republicans like Lincoln, people who are Democrats like Kennedy, people who still believe the soul of our nation are the words on the Statue of Liberty. People who believe we are beacon for those “tired, poor …yearning to breathe free” people and welcome the stranger, care for the poor, the needy, as a demand of God, as a fulfillment of the teachings of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed.

In recovery, we learn to celebrate by engaging “life on life’s terms”. We no longer seek to substitute celebration with amusement, we no longer go along with mendacity so we are accepted. We have, as Rabbi Heschel believed we could, become the solution to the problem of amusement, of entertainment by a return to celebrating the good, welcoming the stranger and never shutting the doors of our meetings, the doors of our hearts, the doors of our souls to anyone.

I am guilty of being entertained by devices, wondering how many likes this blog will get and I celebrate life rather than need to be entertained or entertain another with lies, with deceptions. I do not seek power for my sake nor for the sake of power itself, I have a power within me that I use each and every day to benefit another person, to serve God and to fulfill me. Bread and Circus’ of the past no longer amuse me, they disgust me; watching those of today scare me and disgust me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 278

“The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state-it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or spectacle.” (Who is Man pg.117)

Today is Tisha B’Av-the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av where we commemorate the destruction of the Temples, the loss of Jerusalem and many other tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people. All of these losses are, however, losses that we ourselves caused by turning away from God, away from celebration, towards amusement and entertainment. We are warned of this happening exactly because we wanted to entertain ourselves or be amused by another and the consequences are prophesied in the Torah, yet we failed to heed the call, the demand of the Ineffable One. After these traumatic events happen, we ask “how could You let this happen” and other God-blaming questions. We do this because we are afraid, too embarrassed, too stubborn to admit our responsibility and our errors. We do this rather than wear the sackcloth, fast and repent like the people of Nineveh in the story of Jonah. We do this because our addiction to amusement and entertainment could be the longest and most pervasive addiction humankind has engaged in.

Our insatiable need to be amused, entertained, which leads us to destruction and ruin, leads us to a natural and, for a long while, invisible descent. We go to entertainment to escape the real world we are living in, and the real world we are living in is constantly seeking to amuse the powerful, entertain the ‘masses’ so they go along with ways of being that harm themselves, their families, their cities and their country. We see this all the time with Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, they are not commentators or newscasters, they are entertainers playing to a large audience to serve a very small audience. What is their payoff for their entertaining ways? They make a lot of money, they get a lot of attention and they participate in the evil of indifference, the evil of destruction, the evil of standing “idly by the blood of their brothers/sisters”. And the ‘masses’ lap it up, swallow their mendacity and entertainment as truth and gospel. This allows these ‘masses’ to storm the Capital, elect people who want to overthrow democracy in favor of authoritarianism, and to engage in senseless hatred towards ‘the rest of us’. These ‘masses’ are amused by their actions, entertained by the ‘celebrities’ who ‘fire up the base’ and applaud an authoritarian who is bigoted, prejudiced, hateful! Viktor Orban received a standing ovation at CPAC in Dallas, embraced by conservative Republicans?! He entertained his crowd with rants against anyone who wasn’t White, Christian, like him-he was celebrated as the one of the two last bastions of hope for White Europeans, the other being Vladimir Putin! Entertainment and amusement has rotted the souls of these ‘masses’ and made it impossible for them to distinguish truth from lies.

Tisha B’Av, commemorating our errors is a day of mourning. It is not, however, as I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching, a day of mourning our losses, it is a day of mourning our errors, our senseless hatred, our need to be entertained at the cost of the dignity of another human being, our need to amuse ourselves by destroying truth in favor of ‘alternate facts’, by playing with the minds, hearts, and souls of people who are desperate to hold on the “old order” for fear of change. Caring for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, the needy is spoken about 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible, yet it is the commandment we trample the most in our search for entertainment and our engaging in amusement. Jews will be in Temple today as they were last evening, they will chant the prayers of sadness and loss, they will not put T’fillin on till this afternoon, and most of our people will not consider their perpetuation of the ways and actions that brought about the destruction we are commemorating. We can and must take note of, be responsible for, make amends for and change these paths of murdering the soul of another and ourselves.

In recovery, as with so much of Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, we are acutely aware of the distinction between celebration and entertainment/amusement. We destroyed our lives and the lives of our loved ones and the lives of people we don’t even know through our race to be entertained and amused. We used people as means to our ends without caring what being used did to them. In recovery, we engage in celebration and connection, building and re-enforcing, truth and joy.

I am blessed to celebrate the milestones in my life in recovery with people I love and I am beyond grateful. I am blessed to celebrate milestones with many other human beings in their recovery. I am blessed to celebrate with family and friends their milestones. I am blessed to be able to celebrate the lives of people whom have died at their funerals and beyond. I work hard to stay away from amusement, from entertainment as Rabbi Heschel is describing above for fear of the addictive power they both have. I have created my own destructions, I have done things that allow people to amuse themselves at my expense and then point their fingers at me rather than be responsible for their part; each Tisha B’Av I remember these moments and commit to not repeat them. Those who are entertained by my errors, my ways I say: “God Bless and stay safe” Rabbi Mark