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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 45

“The terror and anguish that came upon the Psalmist were not caused by the calamities of nature but by the wickedness of man, by the evil in history.” (God in Search of Man pg 368)

The more I immerse myself in these words of Rabbi Heschel, the more I understand the verse in the Torah that says “people are evil from their youth”. The issue that has faced humankind since the beginning of our creation/evolution is our learning to be wicked/evil. As I have written before, M.Scott Peck, the author of A Road Less Travelled, defines evil as “using the vulnerabilities of another against them”. In the Jewish Tradition, rather than Caveat Emptor-let the buyer beware, we are taught that the seller has to disclose any and all flaws, information about what someone is about to buy. We are taught to use knowledge to help another human being, not take advantage of another person.

“The wickedness of man” is speaking to our inner desires, our negative impulses that drive us to either be victims or perpetrators of evil, of harm, of striving to be number 1 at any and all costs. We are taught that this is good from our youth because we share and we love and we embrace when we are infants, we know we need help when we are infants, we laugh and we cry from the inside when we are infants. Yet, as we grow older, we learn how to get our way through manipulation. We learn how to be ‘the best’ or not try at all. We learn how to escape and we learn it is good to ignore our more spiritual, divine inclinations. We are taught ‘stranger danger’, ‘they are out to get us’, money, power and prestige is our only protection against ‘them’. These ways of being are the root of our wickedness and the cause of the evil we perpetrate.

Many of us are uncomfortable hearing this, we want to defend our actions, we point to all the reasons we have to protect ourselves and, as we all know, the best defense is a good offense. Some people use the phrase: “I am going to get them before they get me”. No one can deny the validity of this way of being given the world as we know it, given the history of evil for millennia, yet, if each of us continues to act in these ways, we will continue to go down the slide of evil and wickedness until we forget the words of the Psalmist, the lessons of the Prophets, and the promise of freedom from anguish and terror that we were given at Mount Sinai.

We can turn our learning around if we are willing to change and face God instead of hiding from God. We can turn our wickedness into goodness if we are willing to listen to our own better angels, our own higher consciousness. We are capable of bringing goodness into the world instead of wickedness when we are not focused on being number 1 and we are focused on being the best human being we are capable of in each and every moment.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution from Spain in 1892, Jose Marti says “It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing”. He goes on to say “a selfish man is a thief”. These two quotes remind us of who we truly are, who we can grow into rather than taking the path of least resistance and going along with the crowd, learning evil from our youth and using the vulnerabilities of another against them. We have within us the power to stop our ‘normal’ behavior, we have the power to stop the people who want to cause anguish, narrowness, tightness upon another person, group, religion, class of human beings. We have this power and we seem to be refusing to use it. The power of Putin, Hitler, Trump, Hawley, Cruz, McConnell, McCarthy, Jordan, Biggs, et al,  is the power to convince people that it is in their best interest to hate someone else. It is in their best interest to give more power to despots, to authoritarians, to haters because ‘we are in this together’; all the while using these very same people to gain power and enslave them. Orban, MBS, and the rest of their cronies care very little if at all for anyone else, they only want to use us to enhance their own power, enhance their own stature and enhance their own egos. We experienced throughout the ages, especially in Nazi Germany, in Rwanda, in Bosnia, the devastation this way of being brings. It is truly up to us to root out the evil and wickedness we have learned in our youth and return to love, caring, kindness, justice, compassion and truth that our higher selves know to be right.

In recovery, we have perpetrated the “evil of our youth” upon so many others, we were the terrorists causing anguish, creating a tightness in the being of those who loved us, and enslaving them through this anguish and terror. People had to reject us even though they loved us and saw the good in us because of our actions and this made them be people they just did not want to be. In recovery, we live each day letting go of the evil and wickedness we did, seeing the subtle ways our thoughts go back to our prior learning, and practicing love, tolerance, service and kindness as our antidote to our ‘old ways’.

As a person who was “evil from his youth”, my recovery is based on “how can I help”. I have learned that there are still subtle ways evil creeps in, old habits die hard, and I am continuing to let go of these negative ways as soon as I realize them. I am committed to not causing anguish, terror 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

Year 2 Day 44

“The terror and anguish that came upon the Psalmist were not caused by the calamities of nature but by the wickedness of man, by the evil in history.” (God in Search of Man pg 368)

This wisdom from Rabbi Heschel is as true today as it was in the time of the Psalmist, as true as it was when Rabbi Heschel wrote these words. Yet, we forget this truth, we paper over it by blaming it on another human, any group that is not us, even on it being God’s will! We have to recover our terror and anguish, we have to look inside of our own beings and see when and where we create terror and we create anguish in the hearts of another for the wrong reasons.

Calling someone else a terrorist is normal in our society today. We throw the word around to describe anyone who doesn’t agree with us, who is trying to change things, who is working to upend the status quo. This is not to say there are not terrorists who use fear, bombs, violence, hateful rhetoric as a method of putting anguish in our hearts, who are trying to take over control of everything we do. Rather, as I am reading this brilliance from Rabbi Heschel, I realize we relegate another to being a terrorist, we live in anguish and fear of ‘the other’ which doesn’t allow us to see the terror and anguish we cause.

Anguish comes from the Latin meaning “narrow, tightness” and the Hebrew word is “tzar”, the root of Mitzrayim/Egypt. When we are in anguish we are in a narrow space feeling the tightness of being enslaved. Isn’t this what the terrorists want? They want us to feel the tightness of slavery, they want us to feel as if we are helpless and powerless over our fears and them. They are trying hard to sell us a lie that terror wins, that we deserve to be enslaved, that we no longer are able to discern between truth and mendacity, that our best choice is to go along to get along. These are the tactics of every terrorist, be they in politics, running a nation, a business, a family, being a member of a group that wants power, an employee who feels wronged, a family member who wants all the attention to be on them, in other words: we are all capable of bringing terror and tightness, fear and narrowness of vision to each and every group, endeavor, nation we belong to and/or are trying to conquer.

We are watching this play out in our politics, in our businesses, in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: so many people are in fear of what will happen if they buck Putin, if they say no to Trump, if they stop Musk, etc that we have all become enslaved to the whims of people who perpetrate evil just because they can! They are all ‘evil geniuses’. Yet, we “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor” because we are afraid of the consequences of standing up to these evil bullies. No matter how many times we have seen good triumph over evil, we still are afraid to stop it when it begins. Kevin McCarthy is afraid he won’t be Speaker of the House, so he is going to go along with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, et al and impeach Joe Biden? He is going to investigate Nancy Pelosi? He is going to go along with wielding his gavel to punish anyone who disagrees with Trump, with Jim Jordan, with Gaetz and Greene etc? This is an example of the evil and wickedness the Psalmist is speaking of. Richard Nixon used the FBI, IRS, and any branch of government he could to spy on and punish his enemies-he covered up a break-in at the Democratic Headquarters when there was no way he was going to lost the election anyway! Yet, here we are some 50 years later witnessing the same types of behaviors in our elected officials. We still haven’t learned much from our recent nor distant past have we?

There is hope, however. Being in Cuba where things are desperate because of the embargo alone and then we have to, for some reason, keep tightening it-I couldn’t bring a box of cigars back because just before we went, that and Rum were put on the things we couldn’t bring back anymore. The desperation is also because of the Cuban government and, like here in the US, in Russia, in China, in the entire world-those in Government live better than the average Cuban. While seeing the poverty and the disrepair of Habana, we also witnessed the amazing resilience and spirit of the Cuban people. Their music is fantastic, they have government schools that teach music, dance, art, etc and the young people are so engaged in the arts that they use them as an outlet for their despair. Adults flock to concerts by Chamber Orchestras, bands, Symphonies, etc and are respectful, engaged and wowed by the talent. We say a concert by a group whose leader plays all over the world and he had his two daughters play with the band-it was a family affair as the whole group play and live like family.

We recovering people are aware of terror and anguish. We practiced it, caused it and felt it. Terror and anguish is one of the roots of our addictive behaviors, I believe. We were afraid of everything and most people, we felt the tightness of our fear and we became enslaved to the erroneous belief that life was so narrow we had to go along to get along, we had to follow the leader and, in turn, made our lives narrower and we became terrorists to those around us. More tomorrow.

God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 43

“The world is in flames, consumed by evil. Is it possible that there is no one who cares? (God in Search of Man pg.367)

These words are haunting me greatly as I prepare for a Cultural Trip to Cuba including praying at the Synagogue in Havana and doing a little teaching there as well with my dear friend Rabbi Laura Owens. They are haunting me as we prepare for Tuesday’s mid-term elections. They are haunting me as we prepare for the onslaught of election deniers, the onslaught of armed people scaring voters away from the polling stations, the new ‘poll tax’ in Florida where, even though the people said it was okay to vote with a felony conviction, Ron DeSantis is arresting people for exercising a basic right of democracy.

They haunt me as I listed to Blake Masters and Kari Lake speak so despairingly about people seeking refuge at our borders, forgetting that even the “FOUNDING FATHERS” ,who they say they are defending, were either immigrants themselves or descendants of immigrants seeking refuge from the King of England and other Autocrats in other nations. We have forgotten our roots, we have forgotten our beginnings and we have forgotten the words on the Liberty Bell that come from Leviticus 25:10! We have forgotten how our ancestors, some as far back as 1607 and some as recently as last year, braved treacherous journeys so we can “breathe free” when we denigrate refugees. We are consumed by evil it seems in this country and people are covering their evil up with politics, instead of calling it what it is: HATRED.

The greatest evil is the evil we have become indifferent to. In his chapter on Wonder in God in Search of Man, Rabbi Heschel  says: “Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.” The people calling themselves patriots are, in fact, plutocrats. They are people who believe they are the smartest people in the room and no one should ever question their brilliance and decisions. They believe that everyone else should serve them, except for their fellow plutocrats. Peter Thiel is backing many of these people like Masters and J.D.Vance-people who hate the people they are asking to vote for them, people who have disdain for the poor, the needy, the stranger-forgetting the ways Vance’s ancestors were treated for being poor hillbillies and drug addicts as he depicts them in Hillbilly Elegy.

This is one reason “the world is in flames, consumed by evil.” We have forgotten our own roots. One day, I ran into a person whom had been helped at the Recovery Center I am retired from. I asked him why he didn’t come around and tell his story now that he was successful and he said: “I am disgusted that I had to sink so low as to need the charity of this place”. I was flabbergasted and it brought these words home to me in a powerful way. “The world is in flames, consumed by evil” because we have become embarrassed by our roots, we have become embarrassed by our neediness, we have become embarrassed by being the strangers, we have become embarrassed by being poor. Because we have become so embarrassed, we begin to hate the people who hold mirrors up to our faces. We hate and despise the parts of us that another human being represents that we are trying to disown, to forget, to rewrite. This is what is happening right now in our country, to our democracy.

Liz Cheney who is not in agreement with most of my opinions/beliefs on key issues, is campaigning against these Plutocrats, these freedom deniers, because saving democracy is more important to her than being in power. What a concept, she is more concerned with stripping the facade off of these so-called Republicans, these so-called believers in democracy than she has been about her own political future. She doesn’t agree with many of the policies of the candidates she is campaigning for and she sees kindred spirits in their fight to preserve our democracy and to make this a “more perfect union”. We are “consumed by evil” because our own “indifference to the sublime wonder of living.” We are “consumed by evil” because of our “indifference to evil” as Rabbi Heschel says elsewhere. We have the power and the strength to stop this assault on goodness, on truth, on holiness, on spirit, on Godliness, on love, on justice, etc-the question we all have to answer is: do we have the willpower to push back against these deceivers or are we the Israelites in Egypt when Pharaoh dealt with them slyly and they succumbed?

I have been writing this blog for almost 2 years beginning in January of 2021 with the prophets and Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom for the past year and 43 days. I am taking a spiritual rest beginning tomorrow until I return from Cuba on the 15th of November. I pray for the health, well-being and safety of everyone. I pray for the health and well-being of our democracy and for the world. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 42

“The world is in flames, consumed by evil. Is it possible that there is no one who cares? (God in Search of Man pg.367)

These two sentences of Rabbi Heschel, published in 1955, when everything was ‘so good,’ reflect the unspoken fears of many of us. We are watching, today, the world in flames in the Ukraine, the price gouging of the Saudis’, the authoritarianism of Orban and, here at home, the violent rhetoric of one political party that has been hijacked by the MAGA message. We are witnesses to the worst evil possible, as M. Scott Peck describes: the using of the vulnerabilities of a person against them. We are witnesses to the lies and deceptions of people who say one thing to get a vote all the while using the slight of hand of a 3-card monte player.

We are a world that has always had fires going in different parts of the world. Remember, Judaism is the only civilization to transition from antiquity to present day. Rome burned, Greece was destroyed, the Assyrians are no more, Egypt was drowned, Spain, England, France, all have had their heyday and fell from grace because, I believe, the fires they lit and fanned through the ways they treated the stranger, the poor, the needy caused them to rot from within. Evil will consume the perpetrators as well as the victims and we forget this truth believing we can master the evil we bring to the world. We erroneously believe we can be saved from ourselves, from any consequences because we are ‘in charge’! History teaches us the fallacy of this thinking and, yet, we ignore the lessons of history in favor of our superior ways.

The United States was/is supposed to be a beacon of light for the stranger, the needy, the poor as evidenced by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Yet, the prejudice displayed at Ellis Island reminds us of a promise unkept. Quotas to keep our Jews, Muslims, Irish, Italians, and others from entering is another example of not fulfilling the promise of Lady Liberty, not fulfilling the intent of the Founding Fathers (and Mothers). Yet, people went along with these policies because of the evil that flourishes within each of us when left unchecked, when left unresolved, when not overwhelmed with awareness, commitment, spirituality, and direction from God/Higher Consciousness. We are still facing this problem/issue today in America, we are still electing people to our Congress who want to perpetrate evil on citizens and strangers alike when they don’t agree with them, when we stand up and say no to their evil ideas, to their eye diseases of prejudices and to the cancer of the soul they try to spread to everyone with their racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, etc. It is time for us to wake up, it is time for us to stand up, it is time for us to do the inner work so we don’t buy into moral equivalence like Trump used at the Charlottesville “Jews will not replace us” rally, the naming of the people who attacked our Capital as patriots exercising their right of dissent, their right to bear arms, all poppycock to foment an armed rebellion and Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, stay silent and watch Adam Kissinger and Liz Cheney be threatened, ostracized for speaking truth. Rather than being like Nathan Hale, for whom no military bases are named, they are like the Confederacy that began and lost the Civil War. Maybe the lesson is that the evil of slavery, the evil of prejudice, the evil of hatred, the evil of fear-mongering never left us, it went underground and found ways to worm itself into the fabric of our society.

“The world is in flames, consumed by evil” is a descriptor that needs to shake all of us to our core. We have to stand up to this evil, we have to denounce it, we have to do a deep dive inside oof our self to see the insidious ways we have succumbed to it, how we go along with evil without being totally aware of it and how we go along with it in the name of getting along, in the name of not wanting conflict, of not wanting to lose, of wanting to be on the winning side. The BIG LIE is that evil wins! The BIG LIE is that we cannot fight it, we cannot rid the world of it. The BIG LIE is we are powerless over the evil that lurks in our hearts, minds and gets perpetrated in the world!

Recovery is the denouncement of these BIG LIES! Each day we gather together, people in recovery, to help one another raise our self up from these BIG LIES, each day as the Buddhists teach we engage in “noble speech” and “noble listening”. We have a motto in recovery: “Say what you mean, mean what you say and don’t say it meanly”! We also are deeply aware of how much we owe back to the world because of our prior evil ways, for the evil we put into the world prior to our recovery.

I find my self inquiring how am I helping to fan the flames of evil and how am I extinguishing these flames. Of course I do both, as does everyone. My main paths of extinguishing these flames is this blog; to say hello to everyone I see in stores, on the street; to watch my words more and to keep advocating for the souls of the people who seek me out. I am extinguishing these flames of evil through studying with people, through keeping in touch with people, through connecting with people transparently and authentically. I am more focused on extinguishing these flames of evil because I have dealt with the ways I fan these flames by working very hard to keep myself in proper measure, to breathe before I respond, to respond rather than react and to feel divine pathos for people who are still stuck in fanning these flames while doing everything I can to stop them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi heschel’s wisdom - A daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 41

“The ancient Rabbis knew that excessive piety may endanger the fulfillment of the essence of the law. “There is nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life … . Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stake one may disregard every prohibition of the law.” One must sacrifice mitsvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitsvot”. (God in Search of Man)

The more time I spend with these words, the more determined we all should be to stop the “excessive piety” of the charlatans who are preaching they know that God wants them to ignore the pleas of the downtrodden, stop listening to the demand to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, buy into the lies and meanness that is so rampant as justifiable and necessary. We are living in momentous times, as each era has been, and we are blessed to have the teachings of Torah, of the Bible, the Koran, Buddha, and the wisdom of people like Eckhart Tolle, Dalai Lama, Rabbi Heschel, Martin Luther King Jr. and all of their true disciples on how to fulfill the teachings for the benefit of all people.

Yet, we still fall into the trap of believing that some lives are more important than others! We still buy into the mendacity of another(s) and we are willing to, as they did at the Tower of Babel, sacrifice humans for the sake of the goal, for the sake of themselves, for the sake of ‘the cause’. Immersing ourselves in the words and wisdom above cause us to look at our own actions and ask ourselves how important is optics, how important are these behaviors and ‘rules’ we have come to adopt so we can be ‘part of the pack of leaders’? It is amazing to me that lies and innuendos spread by Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr, Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc are given any breath when we immerse ourselves in the words above, yet they are being screamed out in some social media circles and taking a tragedy and making the victim at fault. This is a terrible denial of our own humanity as well as a denial of facts. We are falling into the abyss of deception which will bring down our freedom to choose, our freedom to speak, our freedom to practice faith or not. All of these are in danger when the goal, the deed becomes more important than  a human being.

We have a cure for this situation, however. It is called taking off our blinders, calling B.S on the liars and seeing each and every person as an equal member of the human race. How much money one has, how smart one is, how much one gives to charity, how much work one does to better humanity does not mean they are a more worthy human being than anyone else. We are all endowed with “certain unalienable rights”; to be children of the Creator, to be given the dignity worthy of our heritage-children of the Sovereign-, to be treated with care and kindness, to “love our neighbor as we love our self” so we have to practice self-love and spread truth, justice, kindness and compassion to everyone.

Living the words above means letting go of our need to ‘have it our way’ and do it God’s way, live in accordance with morals and ethics, and, most importantly, put human life ahead of tribal rituals. We are being called to take sides in every moment, either stand for the principles of Torah, decency, kindness, truth, Justice, compassion, mercy and love or we stand against these principles. There are no alternative facts, alternative principles in the Spiritual world, in the world we were given to grow and nurture. “Nation shall not life up sword against nation, neither shall people learn war anymore” seems to have been forgotten as a prophecy, as a teaching, as an exhortation of the Prophets to the people to not give in to our lower desires, not give in to our immature feelings and understandings of what it means to Be Human! We have forgotten that God is calling to us to return, each day we are to do T’Shuvah, return and repent, repair and have new responses to life’s daily challenges. We do this when we take in the words above and make them alive in our souls, alive in our brains, alive in our actions!

In recovery, we are constantly laying down our weapons of mass destruction, our actions of selfishness, harshness, meanness, and picking up the tools to create goodness and service to further the goal of maintaining and saving human life. Doing this helps us regain our humanity and save our souls from the hell we were putting them in.

I have, at times, confused what is life saving and what is self-serving. The majority of my life has been involved in life-saving and not self-serving so I can stand in front of the mirror and not hide from “the man in the glass”. I also am unafraid to be responsible for my errors and my goodness. We are traveling with the Documentary: “the Jewish Jail Lady and the Holy Thief” and meeting new people whom we can serve, bringing hope and solutions to communities that have been decimated by the loss of one person to overdoses, incarcerations, etc. and then have the loss multiplied by the vast number of people who have succumbed to the disease of addiction. I have been able to speak truth to power and, at times, have them listen and heed and staying out of the result, being in the solution, has allowed me to continue to move forward in my way and not need to be right, not need to win. Rather, the ‘win’ is connection, friendship, love. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living rabbi heschel’s wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 40

“The ancient Rabbis knew that excessive piety may endanger the fulfillment of the essence of the law. “There is nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life … . Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stake one may disregard every prohibition of the law.” One must sacrifice mitsvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitsvot”. (God in Search of Man)

Immersing ourselves deeper into Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom allows us the opportunity to examine our daily actions, our beliefs, our authentic needs, our self. Since there is “nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life…” how are we preserving our own? How are we preserving the life of our neighbor? How are we engaging in life-affirming activities that are life-enhancing for each of us as individuals and for all of humanity as a whole?

The central prayer in Judaism, the Shema, is a prayer that ends with the Oneness of God and, as Rabbi Harold Shulweis taught me, we are all part of this Oneness. At our core, in our being, in our humanity, we are all part of the Ineffable One, part of the Oneness that holds our world together. We are created in the Image of the Divine, ergo, we are part of the Divine, we are “God’s reminders” as Rabbi Heschel teaches, so we have to stop our erroneous belief that we have to murder the soul of another in order to ‘win’.

There is no ‘win’ in the ways people are trying to ‘win’ today and forever,  there is only Pekuach Nefesh, saving a soul/life. While there is, of course, the physical aspect to saving a life, helping someone who is sick, caring for the wounded in battle, stopping to help when we see someone stuck/sick on the road, etc, of more concern for me as I dive deeply into Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance, is the spiritual aspect, the psychological aspect of saving a life, of preserving our spiritual health and the spiritual health of people around us, people we can(and I would add must)touch and reach out to. This is a much ignored authentic need, this is a much maligned and forgotten action, this is a belief we have shunted to the side in favor of puffing our selves up to think well of our self, we have shunted to the side in favor of feeling downtrodden and enslaved, etc.

Many people think little of their spiritual health, little of the spiritual health of another, even people who go to Churches, the Mosques, the Temples do not put a lot of stock in their spiritual health. Rather they are, like the pious people, endangering the essence of the law, of prayer by paying lip service rather than attention to preserving their spiritual life and nurturing the spiritual life of people around them. Given the state of the world today I believe it is imperative we start paying more attention to our spiritual health and well-being. We are in desperate need of connection for the sake of learning and growing, not for the sake of ego and ‘winning’. We don’t need to determine our worth by how many likes we have on TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. We don’t need to determine our well-being based on what designer clothing we just bought, what ‘star’ we just met, what deal we just closed, what promotion we just got, how much our home is worth, what our spouse looks like, etc. All of these externals have been pushed on us by societal ‘norms’ and they are controlling our inner life, our spiritual health and they are killing us, making us susceptible to the lies and deceptions of another person, making us kiss the ‘tush’ of people we know could care less about us as humans and our actually using us for their benefit, etc. We do not need to continue to kill our inner life, to feed poison to our soul anymore. In fact, Rabbi Heschel is telling us we have an overriding obligation, a sacred duty to preserve our inner life and feed and nurture our souls to grow and flourish.

We do this reaching out to the people closest to us and letting them know what we need to do to preserve and grow our spiritual health and well-being. We engage our higher self/higher consciousness and look into the depths of our being and listen to what our soul, our higher consciousness, God, intuition, higher knowledge is telling us. We stop connecting on a self-serving basis with our traits and brains and/or with another and connect with our traits and brains to serve our spiritual insights, our spiritual needs and the spiritual insights and needs of another(s). Remembering Einstein’s wisdom-we need to remember the gift of our intuitive mind and have our rational mind serve it, rather than continuing to forget the gift and worship the servant. Each day we are given a myriad of opportunities to preserve and grow our spiritual well-being, lets take advantage of them more that we seek to take advantage of another human being.

In recovery, we have had to face the wreckage of our self-serving behaviors and have the atrophy of our spirits reflected back to us through the faces of those around us and the people, who for some unknown reason, still love and care for us. We know, as is said often, our recovery is based on our daily spiritual condition and if we are not right inside, we will soon return to the scenes of our worst behaviors and situations. Each day we seek to grow one grain of sand more together, healthier and wiser in our inner life.

I have, at times, engaged in preserving the souls of another(s) at the expense of my own. This has caused me angst, problems and sadness. More tomorrow. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

living rabbi heschel’s wisdom - a daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 39

“The ancient Rabbis knew that excessive piety may endanger the fulfillment of the essence of the law. “There is nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life … . Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stake one may disregard every prohibition of the law.” One must sacrifice mitsvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitsvot”. (God in Search of Man)

As we are one week away from the MidTerms and we are witness’ to the language of violence, hatred and the savage beating of the husband of the Speaker of The House of Representatives, Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom from 67 years ago is, hopefully, ringing in our ears and disturbing our daily living. We are facing a scenario much like Germany in the 1930’s, Italy of the same time period, the Holy Roman Empire of 1492 and before, 1948 Israel, the times of Noah and the flood, and other times throughout history where people believed that violence against their fellow person was the right thing to do to show how powerful they are, how fervent they are in their loyalty to falsehood and mendacity, how they can command their ‘foolish followers’ to do anything for them.

How can these so-called ‘good christ followers’ condone the lies they have been telling about the 2020 election, the democrats, the Jews, people of color? How can they adore Kyle Rittenhouse who crossed State Lines to kill human beings in cold blood and then get a free pass because, he who brought the gun and was brandishing it, felt like his life was in danger! The jury bought this lie and the Republicans have extolled him. How can these people who swore an oath to defend the Constitution have solidarity with people who are trying to destroy the tenets found in it? How can Mitch McConnell say that Jan.6th did not happen as an insurrection and defend Donald Trump’s use of violent rhetoric even against him! How can Mike Pence claim to be deeply religious and use hate speech, condone violent rhetoric, and put into place policies that deny the very dignity that Christ preaches about in the Gospels to the very people Christ was ministering to? How can these ‘god-fearing’ people extol Mother Theresa and seek to blame, shame and deny services to the very people she ministered to her entire career?

How can Jews of any denomination continue to vote for these fear mongers, these hate spewers? How can they claim to love God and hate God’s creations-human beings unlike them? How can they claim to serve God and go along with people who decry the stranger, the poor and the orphan? How can they recite the prayer, Shema Yisrael, and deny that we are all part of the Oneness that is God? How can they study the Torah and believe that only some of us are created in “the Image of God”, only some of us have the “spirit of God” breathed into us? How can they believe it is okay to cheat, abuse, another as long as they are not Jewish? How can they use ‘Shabbos Goys’ knowing everyone is supposed to rest on the Sabbath?

How is all of this possible? Because we pay lip service to the tenets we proclaim, we are not willing to, as Rabbi Heschel did, live these tenets no matter what someone else may say. We are not willing to “pray with our feet” as Rabbi Heschel described marching in Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We are not willing to go against the popular grain for fear of missing out. We are not willing to stand for our principles if the powers that be won’t like it. We are not willing to cancel a class to join a march for freedom as Rabbi Heschel did, we are not willing to be unpopular for standing up for God, for the stranger, the poor, the needy as Rabbi Heschel did, we are not willing to risk the wrath of people to stand for the stranger, the poor, the needy, for what is right and good about humanity, to stand for being human, as Rabbi Heschel demands us to be.

In recovery, being of service is paramount to having a good life. It doesn’t matter if it means cleaning coffee cups after a meeting, writing postcards for voting rights, marching for women to have the right to choose, calling for everyone to be vaccinated so no one risks the life of another on some insane theory, realizing that God has endowed each of us with a talent that can help another human being/humanity at large and we are all called to be of service to the stranger, the poor and the needy which, in turn, enhances our humanity and is a living amends for the myriad of times we ignored the needs of humanity and individual human beings for our selfish desires.

Today is my birthday, today is 34 years to the day since I walked out of prison to go to a re-entry facility and begin life anew. I made a vow 36 years ago to change my ways, to hear what God is trying to tell me and to follow God’s demands not the demands of my desires. I also committed to giving truth, love, kindness and spirit back into the world and rather than taking advantage of another human being, I would be of service to who ever I could help. I have followed through on this commitment and I continue to honor it. I am acutely aware of the times I haven’t. I am acutely aware of the pious people who have stood idly by the bloods of their brother and, overwhelmingly, I have not. I am still responding to God’s Demand, God’s Call and through Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and tutelage, I continue to find new ways to serve, new ways to save a soul and new strength to overcome the disdain, the muck and mud that are slung at me and stand with God and with like-minded human beings to protect and serve the voiceless, the powerless, the needy and the stranger. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Living rabbi heschel’s wisdom - A daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 38

“The ancient Rabbis knew that excessive piety may endanger the fulfillment of the essence of the law. “There is nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life … . Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stake one may disregard every prohibition of the law.” One must sacrifice mitsvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitsvot”. (God in Search of Man)

To live a spiritual life devoid of the politics surrounding us, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words above, is to live a life of selfishness and, actually, not be spiritual at all. While many confuse religion with the way some people interpret and practice it as fundamentalists, religion enhances our spirituality and our spirituality enhances our religion as I learned from Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man over 32 years ago. As soon as we separate one from the other, we are beginning a descent into self-deception and mendacity. Many people wave their religious behaviorism as a flag/banner showing how pious they are while being devoid of spirituality, while not adhering to Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above. Others proclaim their superiority by ‘being spiritual not religious’, again a specious argument. Spiritual disciplines, religious rituals, all lead us to the same place, a sense of and a commitment to a “Power Greater than ourselves”, “Higher Consciousness”, etc. We are being challenged today, just as we were in 1955 when this book was published, just as we were in the 30’s and 40’s, just as we have been throughout our history, to be human, to care about human life as much as God cares, as much as the Universe cares, as much as the Spiritual forces of the Cosmos care.

What does the phrase “to preserve human life” mean to us today? We are witnessing the destruction of human life in so many ways. We have put the dollar ahead of human life, we have put our power ahead of human life, we have put satisfying our needs ahead of the life of another human being. We have forgotten that “to preserve human life” we have to first get in touch with our own humanity. We have to, as our religious leaders and spiritual leaders teach, see the dignity in our self, see the Image of the divine in our being, experience the theta waves of oneness with the universe in order to be in concert with the humanity of another.

We fail to realize that our selfishness is not preserving our own life, it is killing our souls and then, naturally, we murder the souls of any and all people. The excessive piety of the Maga crowd, like Stephen Miller, Marjorie Taylor Greene, et al leads to their inability to see the humanity in anyone else, especially anyone who is not 100% in agreement with them. The excessive piety of the far-left with their Anti-Semitism and vitriol against anyone who is not 100% in agreement with them has caused many to ignore the humanity of those who may be allies at times, as well as the people they are arguing against. In both cases, excessive piety, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance above, leads to the ignoring of human suffering, the ignoring of human dignity, the ignoring of human needs.

Our excessive piety towards any philosophy, religion, spiritual discipline, idea will always lead us to ignoring the human condition of our self and of everyone else. We will fake it for a while, however in excessive piety we are unable to truly care for our self, we are so intent on fulfilling the rules and rituals, following the philosophy and being ‘perfect’, we are unable to allow our self our imperfections, let alone the imperfections of another(s). We get so caught up in ‘doing it the right way’ we become blind to the myriad of ways to fulfill any mitzvah, we become blind to the commandment to care for the poor, the needy, the hungry, the stranger! We are so caught up in our need to be right, our need to be perfect, our need to disassociate from what is in order to achieve some type of nirvana, that we fail to see how we are killing our own humanity, how we are stomping on the divinity in another(s) human being, and how we are heading for disaster, heading for slavery, heading for destruction.

In recovery, we “continue to take personal inventory and promptly admit when we are wrong”. We have to keep a daily, hourly, record of what we are doing well and not so well. We have to “promptly admit when we are wrong” so we don’t fall into the trap of rationalizing our mistakes, blaming things on another, shirking our responsibility. Our daily inventory keeps our humanity front and center for us, it keeps the humanity of another(s) in the forefront of our living and we are able to be kinder and gentler with our self and with everyone else.

I have to vote for people who care about human beings in need. I pray that most people will let go of their excessive piety towards a personality and vote to keep the soul of democracy alive. I  have devoted the past 35 years to this goal and I have fallen short at times and I know I have hit the mark more often than not. I work hard to not blame my self, another, the universe for what has happened in my life and I take responsibility for my part. I am also responsible for what I do today, how do I help another human being out of their suffering? I am blessed to be able to reach out, lend a helping hand, need nor expect anything in return and know that this makes today a good day. Helping a human being who suffers takes precedence over anything else in life. Doing this helps me be more human, kinder to myself as well as to you and keeps me in line with the divine demand to 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

Year 2 Day 37

“The ancient Rabbis knew that excessive piety may endanger the fulfillment of the essence of the law. “There is nothing more important, according to the Torah, than to preserve human life … . Even when there is the slightest possibility that a life may be at stake one may disregard every prohibition of the law.” One must sacrifice mitsvot for the sake of man, rather than sacrifice man for the sake of mitsvot”. (God in Search of Man)

We are facing the danger “the ancient Rabbis” knew about and were worried about. Many people are becoming/have become so obsessed with the fulfillment of the laws they have come to make up, rather than the laws of the Faith and Spirituality, we are watching the loss of life happen and not even noticing it. We are watching people be beaten and hosed, gassed and bombed for their desire to be free, to be treated with dignity and respect, to be seen as equally worthy and valuable. Rather than live the thoughts and the warnings of “the ancient Rabbis” we are watching demagogues, authoritarians, deceivers, liars, cheats, dullards and even our Justice system treat the life and dignity of anyone not like them, anyone not genuflecting to them, anyone not bowing down to them, anyone not proclaiming their fidelity to them as not human, not important, not mattering, needing to be destroyed, locked up, put in cages.

We have seen this for years in this country and many of us believed it would be different with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and it was for a minute. Then the South rose again and got statues of insurrectionists, of treasonous people put up across the land. When Black people were starting to come up, the Klan got more violent, more murderous and, nothing happened to them. We watched the Klan march in New York City in the 1920’s with Fred Trump proudly among them and, unlike the Kennedy boys, his son carries on in Fred’s tradition of racial animosity, religious hatred. In 1964, with the passing of the Civil Rights Act many of us, again, believed it would be different, only to have Nixon/Agnew work with Thurmond, et al to begin to tear it apart, something that would be accomplished by Trump’s court and the Tea Party/Maga combination.

We have watched every immigrant group be scapegoated since the mid-1800’s. Whether it is the Chinese brought here for slave labor to build railroads, etc, the Italians, the Irish, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and of course, the Jews and the Hispanics forever and always; the country who has Lady Liberty in it’s New York Harbor to welcome people, to give new immigrants hope and light has berated, been prejudicial and continually used their immigrant status against them. Believe it or not, there have been many whites who have raped, robbed, pillaged, murdered and done other sundry actions, yet we only hear about the Hispanics and Blacks. There are many whites who have laundered money, done insider trading, who run the banking system, the media, financial markets, yet we only hear about ‘the Jews’. There are many white people who are organized crime and have been throughout our history, making some of their crimes legal now, yet we only hear about the Irish, Italian, Hispanic, Jewish, Black gangsters-amazing isn’t it?

These god-fearing people of NO FAITH, are extolling scriptures and bastardizing the words of spirit and of God. They have made it their business to, as Trump did, turn the Bible upside down and inside out to suit their purpose. Rather than fulfilling Scripture, rather than fulfilling spiritual truths, rather than fulfilling what our higher consciousness tells us, they are dead set on fulfilling their needs for power, control and wealth. They are dedicated to the proposition that only they are equal and every one else is inferior. I know this because, while they offered consolation and ‘comfort’ to Speaker Pelosi, none of the Republicans stopped talking or condemned the rhetoric that makes the attack on her husband possible. Just as Yitzchak Rabin was killed because of violent rhetoric, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, so too has violence been perpetrated by many, including Jan. 6, 2021, because of the violent, evil rhetoric of Trump, Jordan, Meadows, McCarthy, McConnell, and the rest of the people who have “stood idly by the blood” of their brothers and sisters. It is time to speak up and vote them out of power, it is time for them to experience the logical consequences of their actions, it is time to say NO to this insidious hatred! VOTE, VOTE, VOTE for truth, kindness, justice, mercy and compassion-vote in ways that are in concert with God’s path, not the path of Oligarchs, Pharaohs, Putins, Trumps, Koch’s, etc.

In recovery, we are acutely aware of how we murdered people’s souls by our deceptions, our mendacity, our rape of their trust and the shattering of their hopes that this time we meant what we were saying. We are so overcome with regret for our past actions we made a vow to remember them in order to stay away from them today and tomorrow. We have made/are making our amends and changing our ways because of these past actions. We have a new way of living that makes us want to and need to live a moral and ethical life, no longer engaging in the deceptions of the past and preventing new deceptions from taking root.

I am enraged at how these people of NO-FAITH continue to bastardize God’s desires through their ‘strict adherence’ to the laws as they want to understand them. More tomorrow! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 36

“Rules are generalizations. In actual living, we come upon countless problems for which no general solutions are available. There are many ways of applying a general rule to a concrete situation. There are evil applications of noble rules. Thus the choice of the right way of applying a general rule to a particular situation is “left to the heart,” to the individual, to one’s conscience.” (God in Search of Man pg. 327)

We are in a moment of great peril today. We see the dismantling of the rights and freedoms accorded people by our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence and by every Spiritual Tradition/Discipline. Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is only the latest in a long line of haters, disseminators of anti-Semitic lies. We have Marjorie Taylor Greene who is being hailed by the Republican Party for accusing the Rothschilds’ of starting the Wildfires, calling Jamie Raskin a communist and a pedophile, etc, etc. We had Pizzagate in 2016 and ad nauseum through the ages. We have the Stanford report on their exclusion of Jews and non-welcoming of Jews in the 50’s and 60’s. We have the assault on a woman’s right to choose, an assault on vaccines to keep us safe, an assault on the rule of law, an assault on our freedom to vote, an assault on our democracy by Ye, Greene, McCarthy, Trump, De Santis, Abbott, et al. Yet, people cheer and clap when Greene says she wants to ‘kill the bitch’ Pelosi, impeach Joe Biden, arrest the FBI, etc. There used to be a “bring your child to work” day - now the people fawning over Greene, Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz, J.D. Vance, Blake Masters, Kari Lake, and the like believe we should “bring your AK47 to work”. Why not blast away the competition, the people who speak truth, the people who don’t agree with you- my heart is telling me this is okay must be their inner dialogue.

I understand the Rabbis’ desire to set hard and fast rules which they realized could never hold so they adopted another way to understand the rules, follow the law and allow individuality and personality to be part of living within the confines of the Torah/Teaching from God/Higher Consciousness. They put the minority opinions into the discussion that was written down and we now have parameters within which everyone is able to live-if we choose to live with Godliness and Holiness in all of our affairs. They even went so far as to say, if at all possible-never make a law that would make people feel far away from God and/or the law. This is the caveat within which we have to live-while there are some absolutes-don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet, no idolatry- most of life comes down to choices of how to follow a way of living that is compatible with being a partner of God, choices of how best to honor the infinite worth and dignity of every human being including our self. The Jewish Tradition teaches: “To destroy one soul is to destroy an entire world and to save one soul is to save an entire world”. It doesn’t differentiate between race, color, creed, ethnicity, in fact Biblical living calls for us to have “One law for the citizen and stranger alike”. There is no difference between us that allows one person to enslave another, to allow one person to believe they are above the rules, laws, desires of God and humanity, to allow one person to believe they can spread mendacity for their own power and greed with impunity and call themselves Godly.

Here is the great challenge for all of us, how to stop these unholy imposters, these unGodly messengers pretending to be people of faith, these money-changers, power-brokers in our Churches, Mosques and Temples who curry favor with the Kevin McCathys, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, the Donald Trumps, the Ron Di Santis’, the Greg Abbots, Jim Jordans, et al. People who are supposed to be messengers of Christ’s teachings, of Mohammed’s prophecy, of Moses’ insight and warnings. We have to uncover their falseness and their deceptions, we have to stop allowing these haters, these demagogues to drive us into being an authoritarian nation, a nation that denies it’s heritage, it’s mission and it’s raison d’etre. We have to do everything in our power to repel this assault on our freedom, our choices, our souls. These liars call themselves ‘god-fearing people’ ‘christian nationalists’ yet there is nothing Godly in what they are doing-God demands truth from us, not lies, and there is nothing Christian in what they are doing and saying-Christ cared for the powerless, the voiceless, the stranger, etc. Greene, et al and their ministers of greed and power are the very things they accuse everyone else of-they are using Goebbel’s playbook like masters. We have the power to stop them, we have our votes today, this election. We have social media, we have the power of pen and tongue - let us use it for God’s Sake, for Democracy’s sake, for our freedom’s sake!

In recovery, we recite the Serenity Prayer at most meetings. Reinholt Niebuhr’s prayer asks us, demands of us to be proactive and concentrate on what things we can change, our self, our responses and our actions. It is an activist prayer which is telling us to stop concerning our selves with things out of our control and engage in what we can control and change.

I believe we can control and change the trajectory of our democracy. I believe, as Rev Niebuhr demands, we must engage in this struggle. We may or may not be at the brink of a Civil War, I do know we are engaged in a struggle to determine if this nation, under God, will survive this latest assault on it. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 35

“Rules are generalizations. In actual living, we come upon countless problems for which no general solutions are available. There are many ways of applying a general rule to a concrete situation. There are evil applications of noble rules. Thus the choice of the right way of applying a general rule to a particular situation is “left to the heart,” to the individual, to one’s conscience.” (God in Search of Man pg. 327)

The great conundrum for us all in taking in these words of wisdom is to be so present in the moment we are in that we cannot use yesterday’s way “of applying a general rule” to today’s situation. We are forced, pushed, called to see the nuances of this situation and not compare, not compete, maybe not even be consistent with yesterday’s actions. This is how we continue to evolve, continue to change, continue to grow. Staying the same, never changing no matter what new information comes in, acting the same in every situation is a lazy person’s way of life. It is not the life of a dynamic human being, it is the life of a static person. It is not the path to be human, it is the path denial, the path of fear, and it is followed by people who are not willing to grow their heart, grow their conscience and/or be in touch with and listen to either of these nor the cry of their soul.

Our houses of worship are failing us and have failed us, which may be why affiliation is at a low point right now. They have failed because they are more interested in dogma than in spirit. They have failed because they speak the words of imperfection and their actions are the actions of disdain for our human weaknesses and punish the sinner rather than lift up the fallen. Religious leaders have been co-opted by political issues in order to ‘serve Christ’ while the Bible reminds us to serve God and not politicians. The Bible reminds us that each of us has planted within us the Spirit of God, the spirit of the Universe which, when we allow it, when we grow it, gives us all the insight to know how to handle every situation. It does it through the stories and the ways different Biblical Archetypes apply the general rules to specific situations. The Bible, The Talmud, the commentaries all teach us through stories of ancestors how to apply and how not to apply the general rules to specific situations, not to do the same thing rather how to think and see this situation for what it is, not what we want it to be.

Our religious institutions need to stop worrying about a woman’s right to choose and speak about our responsibility to see every human being as having infinite worth. Our religious institutions and communal organizations have to be less concerned with what clothes we are wearing, what music we are listening to, how things look, and more interested in what is happening in our souls, relieving the spiritual distress that so many of us are in. Our religious leaders need to be reaching out to the downtrodden and the needy, the widow and the poor, the mothers who are in need, the children who do not know how to discern what their conscience is telling them, the fathers who have blocked spiritual arteries to their heart’s knowledge and to all of us who are just seeking spiritual growth rather than being told what to do and lied to about what attributes God wants us to use. Our religious institutions and communal organizations along with our religious leaders must seek God not Greed, Spirit not Power, Progress not Perfection and help the rest of us do the same.

The path to growing one’s intuition, our hearts’ knowledge, our conscience and our consciousness is study, prayer, meditation, being present in this moment. It is a hard path and we will falter on it, we will trip and fall back into old ideas and patterns. This is part of being human! No matter what your religion is, no matter what your spiritual discipline is, living it in the street, living it in your home, knowing and accepting our imperfections along with our infinite worth, dignity and talents is the only way to grow. To paraphrase Rabbi Heschel from his interview with Carl Stern, a life without learning is not worth living.

In recovery, we know that one foot in the past and one foot in the future is not a good place to be. We have to have both feet in the present, in the now. Many times we ask our self the question: “What would God have me do in this moment?” Our answer depends on our spiritual condition and we know when our response to this question is selfish and self-serving, mean-spirited and enslaving, we must seek help from someone else we trust, because we cannot trust our self in any moment that is self-seeking, self-serving.

I find my growth happens every morning as I write this blog. Rabbi Heschel has been my guide, my disturber, my teacher, my friend, my yardstick for the past 35+ years. I am grateful to Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, who turned me on to the wisdom and brilliance of Rabbi Heschel while I was in prison, I am grateful to God and the State of California for intervening in my life when I was about to fall off the cliff and put me in prison so I could learn how to learn, how to listen, how to apply “general rules to a particular situation” through growing my heart’s knowledge, being able to hear my conscience and my soul once again. I work hard to stay in the moment, I work harder to not fall back into old ideas and patterns of behaviors, I work hardest to live the principles of faith/spirit/God in all of my affairs today and accept my imperfections and ‘fail forward’. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 34

“Rules are generalizations. In actual living, we come upon countless problems for which no general solutions are available. There are many ways of applying a general rule to a concrete situation. There are evil applications of noble rules. Thus the choice of the right way of applying a general rule to a particular situation is “left to the heart,” to the individual, to one’s conscience.” (God in Search of Man pg. 327)

I find myself in awe of the wisdom above and in sadness over how we have ignored training our heart, raising one’s conscience and one’s consciousness to be able to fulfill the last sentence of this brilliance from Rabbi Heschel. We are in a situation where our religious institutions have failed us, where our clergy have failed us, where our parenting has failed us, where our psychology has failed us, and where we have failed ourselves.

We no longer teach our children the words and ways of our faith traditions as they were originally conceived through Divine Revelation or Divine Intuition, we teach them the words and ways of faith as a weapon, as a tool to ward off ‘those people’, to put fear into our children and give them the erroneous ideas of being saved by a deity, being rewarded for martyrdom, following the ONE way. Our religious institutions have failed us by not training our hearts, not growing our souls, only appealing to our minds and our emotions. Our religious institutions have failed us because they are willing to sacrifice what is right for what is expedient, what is holy for what will keep the doors open, ‘on advice of counsel/optics’ for what is true. Within each of us is a soul yearning to be heard, a spirit pushing to be utilized and a heart waiting to be circumcised, hoping to be broken so the power of knowledge, the beat of a different drummer can be free and the light from outside can come in to strengthen our hearts.

Our secular schools are not supposed to be teaching morality, they are not supposed to be training our souls, our hearts. Yet, we leave it to them because our religious institutions have failed us so greatly. We are in need of a revolution, a spiritual revolution as Rabbi Heschel describes elsewhere in his writings. We are in desperate need of a rebellion to love, to wholeness, to raising our consciences, and our consciousness!

This rebellion has to begin at home, however, not just in our religious institutions. At our dinner tables there is more to talk about than grades and sports, more to engage in than social occasions. There is the ‘arguing’ over what is truthful and what is moral, what is correct in this situation and how to keep our moral compass in the midst of lies, deceptions and mendacity. There is the conversations around our own self-deceptions, our own imperfections and our spiritual development. How are we raising the souls of those around us and our own souls at our dinner tables, in our backyards, in our get-togethers  with friends and family? How are we holding our selves and one another accountable for maturing our souls a little more each day? How are we raising our consciousness towards our Divine Intuition one grain of sand more each day? How are we lifting up our conscience to meet the needs of any and all situations we find our self in daily?

These questions are imperative to ponder and consider if we are going to grow our free will. The solutions to these questions and more will determine our progress on our journey to the Promised Land, on our journey towards true freedom and our journey towards wholeness. We are in desperate need of asking the right questions for the situation at hand. The world is in dire need of us “enobling the common” and being human as Rabbi Heschel teaches and as he lived.

Having immersed myself in the paragraph above for the past few days and many times over the years, I have such respect, admiration, love and joy for the way my father, z”l, taught us all to think for our self, to grow our souls and mature our spirits as well as teaching us how to act morally no matter what our emotions and/or mind told us. Of course, I went off the rails for 20+ years from this path and, because of his teachings, I had a path to return to. I know that I have to apply my spiritual nature to my daily living, that separating them, compartmentalizing my life always leads to negativity, to incompleteness, to feeling like a fraud. I was always faulted for saying that I was great when asked how I was, I came to believe that what people did not/do not understand that being alive, being teachable, being grateful, being excited for what lies ahead infuses me with the desire and the strength to have my heart broken, because more light will come in and I will see errors in my thinking, areas where my intuition needs to mature and the places/times my neediness overtakes what is true, real and right in front of me. It helps me realize the willful blindness I have/do practice. I am great every day because God has returned my soul to me for this day. In recovery, we say we live one day at a time and this is a joyous experience for me. I plan for tomorrow and I live in today-how can this be bad? I keep recalibrating my moral compass and making sure I am heading true north each day, I continue to ‘argue’ for the sake of heaven and my soul as well as for yours. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 33

“Rules are generalizations. In actual living, we come upon countless problems for which no general solutions are available. There are many ways of applying a general rule to a concrete situation. There are evil applications of noble rules. Thus the choice of the right way of applying a general rule to a particular situation is “left to the heart,” to the individual, to one’s conscience.” (God in Search of Man pg. 327)

I have been immersed in these words for the past 24 hours and I have thoughts bouncing around in my head and my heart, in my conscience and in my consciousness. I am thinking of the phrases: ‘this is the way we have always done it’ and ‘it was good enough for me so it is good enough for you’ and other such idioms. Rabbi Heschel’s words above remind me to stay in radical amazement at all times, to constantly be maladjusted to these generalizations  and these rules that we feel compelled to follow exactly as written. Rabbi Heschel is demanding that we actually be present in our actions, in our living situations and stop hiding from what is in favor of some mirage we see or want to see.

I am thinking of the ways the “noble rules” are being bastardized by our Court system from the Supreme Court all the way down to local courts. The Supreme Court has ruled that a corporation is to be treated like a person, they have ruled the legitimacy of secret and dark money for political contributions. They have opened the door to abuses of power by Senators like Lindsey Graham and shut the door on the civil rights and voting rights of minorities. They have applied the power of the Court to tell a woman what she can do with her body and the government that can’t tell men to be vaccinated! Our Court system has become so politicized by K street money and the Federalist Society, the prove the verse in the Bible that says: bribes blind the eyes of the wise. Rather than seeing the Constitution for what it is, an amazing document that is purposely left to interpretation and being amended, they want to put it in stone and make it a fossil. We, the People, have to say no to this hijacking of our courts. We, the People, have to say no to not holding people in power accountable. We, the People, have to take Abraham Lincoln’s words and put them into action: “that government of the people, for the people and by the people shall not perish from this earth.”

We, the People, are able to say no, we are able to vote our heart, our spirit, our true self if and when we stop making it okay for us to use “evil applications of noble truths.” When the rules become weapons to denigrate, enslave, isolate and force people into hard labor in order to put food on the table, we have become like the Pharaoh in Egypt. When we go along with the bastardization of “noble truths” we are going against Moses’ many exhortations in Deuteronomy. When we become drunk with power and believe the rules don’t apply, we are acting like the people prior to the flood. When we spread lies about someone else in order to feel good about our self, in order to build our self up, we are engaging in the behaviors that caused the destruction of the Second Temple. When we are treating the stranger, the poor and the needy as criminals, we are acting the same way the people in power did prior to the destruction of the First Temple.

What we are failing to realize is that this is what leads us to exile. What we are failing to realize is that we are already in exile! We have separated our self from God, from one another with these “evil applications of noble truths”. We have used rules to keep people “in their place” like the Caste system of India. We have taken the revolutionary spirit and the reasons their is America and turned them against the very people America was created for; “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. Instead of “lifting my lamp” we are allowing a minority to turn out the lights on our democracy. Rather than “the golden door” we are allowing a minority of prejudiced people, scared people open the iron bars of prison literally and figuratively. We, the People, are the only ones who can turn the tide back. We, the People, are the only ones who can re-light the lamp of Lady Liberty. We, the People, are the only ones who can open the iron bars and help people through “the golden door”. We, the People, have to act our ways back into right thinking, We, the People, have to respond to the demand of Rabbi Heschel’s words and the call of God to BE HUMAN!

In recovery, we leave the prison of old behaviors, we leave the iron bars blocking us from seeing how to apply a general rule to a specific situation. We do this by using the spirit of the rule to point us in a direction. There is a general rule to acknowledge our powerlessness over a substance and/or behavior and we, in recovery, have to use this rule to realize we are powerless over people, places and things. We also realize that what works in one situation will not work in another in the same way. We are acutely aware that each moment is different and if we don’t adapt the rules to the situation, we will fall back in our recovery.

I am still swirling with thoughts and experiences of this wisdom of Rabbi Heschel. I am still seeing how I fall into the trap of finding the wrong way to apply the general to the specific and that I do this less and less with each day. More tomorrow, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Living Rabbi Heschel’s Wisdom - A Daily path to living well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 32

“Rules are generalizations. In actual living, we come upon countless problems for which no general solutions are available. There are many ways of applying a general rule to a concrete situation. There are evil applications of noble rules. Thus the choice of the right way of applying a general rule to a particular situation is “left to the heart,”27 to the individual, to one’s conscience.” (God in Search of Man pg. 327)

To go beyond the rules, to go beyond the requirements is what Rabbi Heschel describes above. The “countless problems” we encounter each day of our life are not always concrete situations. Even though, many of us want a ‘one-size fits all’ solution, this is just not the case if we are to live authentically, spiritually, and intellectually honestly. Yet, we continue to do this, we continue to make complex situations concrete, we continue to take simplicity and turn it into mendacity, we continue to engage in deceit, subterfuge and power struggles because ‘we know better’. Rather than seeing the “many ways of apply a general rule to a concrete situation”, we crave the certainty of a solution that worked then, works now and will work in the future without any creativity, any changes to the solution and, as Rabbi Heschel points out, this is just not possible.

The more certainty we crave in our rules, the more opportunity there is for “evil applications of noble rules”. One of the most glaring is the “noble rule” of free speech. This was put into our Bill of Rights as a protection against being silenced by government as the Colonists were by the King of England. It is not to be used for hatred, for violence, for insurrection. It is not to be condoned by leaders like Kevin McCarthy does with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, et al. It is not to be bastardized with racists tropes, anti-Semitic tropes, with political ads that are lies like the ones from ‘sanity in government’s Stephen Miller who, like Greene, Jordan and their cronies enjoy bullying, lying, wielding their powerful megaphones to deceive ‘their base’ and prevent them from hearing truth.

In our work place and in our homes we have come to believe that a rule has to be applied the same to each person in the work place and/or home. We have come to legislate ourselves into the sameness and the lunacy that Rabbi Heschel is pointing out above. We cannot treat each person the same at work because each person in a work place has different talents, different ways of doing the same work and, in opposition to Henry Ford, human beings are not robots, they are not automatons, they have to have freedom to their work in the way they know best. This is the path to creation of new and interesting ideas, products, ways of doing things and it is impossible if we are all treated the same. When we are unable to discern that there are different jobs in our work place and the people filling these jobs deserve the freedom to do their job in the best ways they see fit, get the job done of course, we limit the productivity of our work place and we limit the creativity of our workers, and we limit the company’s ability to grow and sustain itself.

We, the People, need to stand up to the bullying of our Elected Officials and the people running for office. We need to stand up to their fear-mongering and deceptions. We need to discern the situation we are in and stop trying to solve it/resolve it with past solutions, that probably were only band-aids anyway. It is time for us to go inside and see what our intuition and our spirits are telling us, it is time for us to stop using “noble rules” for our benefit and in pursuit of evil. It is time for us to stop bastardizing our sacred texts, our sacred relationships, our sacred self through stunting our self with foolishness and mendacity. We are able to rise above the negative calling to apply “one size fits all” and the “if you do it for one, you have to do it for all” mantra that political correctness on both ends of the spectrum seem to call for.

In recovery, we are constantly seeking solutions to the issues we face each day. Some people erroneously believe if they do today, what they did yesterday, they will stay in recovery. This self-deception has been proven false over and over again, yet some people still seek an “easier and softer way”, hoping they will not have to do the deep dive into seeing everything new, every situation with a “new pair of glasses”. In recovery, we know our life is constantly changing and staying in the present, in the now and seeing what truly is are necessary in order to go beyond the rules and immerse ourselves in the situation, finding a solution that is appropriate for this moment, knowing it may not be for another moment.

I have been guilty of what Rabbi Heschel writes above, I have tried to use the same solutions that did not work before and try to make them work in another situation prior to my recovery. I am guilty in my years of recovery, just a lot less so. I work hard to see each situation on it’s own merits, I use my insights, my wisdom, the advice I seek from another, and I glean a solution that is unique to this moment. I do this in my work as an Advocate for the Soul of another person, an organization, the world around me. I continue to use the general rules and apply them with purpose and passion and nuances to seek solutions for everyday life situations. This is the purpose of this blog, finding new ways and situations to apply Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and brilliance to our everyday living. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 31

“The ultimate requirement is to act beyond the requirements of the law. Torah is not the same as law, as din. To fulfill one’s duties is not enough. One may be a scoundrel within the limits of the law. Why was Jerusalem destroyed? Because her people acted according to the law, and did not act beyond the requirements of the law.”(God in Search of Man pg.327)

The more I immerse myself in these ideas/thoughts of Rabbi Heschel, the more I find the nuances which were fairly well hidden in my subconscious mind come to light. The word Jerusalem in the Hebrew comes to mean ‘city of wholeness’ and when we only act “according to the law”, we are destroying the wholeness we seek as humans. While we are satisfying a need, a compulsion, a necessity so we can feel accomplished, fulfill someone else’s rules, fulfill God’s rules, do what we need to do to get ahead, we are not satisfying the deep craving in the soul of every human being to be whole, to be complete. In fact, as I am experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s words above, we are destroying the very pathway to the wholeness we seek.

While we will never get ‘there’, just as we never get to the Promised Land by the end of the Torah, we can continue to make this journey if and when we decide to “act beyond the requirements of the law”. We saw this with the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence says “all men are created equal”, not just white men, and it is an incomplete document because they did not include women. However, the fact that they went beyond these requirements at the time, by a Southerner Thomas Jefferson, shows the reason our nation survived two wars with England and a Civil War as well.

The Jewish People have survived with our roots intact and our Torah as it is for over 2500 years, some say over 3300 years, because people have been willing to go beyond the letter of the law and serve the spirit of the law as well. The Prophets tell us the story of the destruction of both the Northern Kingdom (Israel) and the Southern Kingdom (Judea) and the reasons for both, giving lip service to the law, bring sacrifices that did not change the inner life, the heart, the spirit of the people, rather being punctilious about the letter of the law, the requirements, while not being engaged in the spirit of the law, in not “going beyond the requirements of the law.” And we learned from this that we have to remember and act, to paraphrase Pirke Avot, the world endures because of 3 things, Torah (a teaching of how to live) Service (fulfilling the words and will of God) and Acts of Lovingkindness (going beyond fulfilling the words and will of God to acting Godly in all our affairs). While this is a tall order, it is the only way to experience more wholeness in our inner life, it is the only way to experience a serenity and calm in our inner life, it is the only way to engage our subconscious and bring more clarity, more wisdom, more wrestling to light in our lives.

Going “beyond the requirements of the law” has to become a daily routine that we never do routinely. If we are to move towards wholeness and freedom for all, we must stop our narrow viewing of Torah, the Bible, the Koran, the Constitution, and begin to turn them around and around, upside down and sideways to glean all of the different paths to wholeness that they give us, to immerse our selves in all the different paths to freedom that they uncover for us. Doing this means creating the Bigger Table that John Pavlovitz speaks about. Doing this means changing from a “me” society to a “we” society. It entails as moving from seeking to be ‘somebody’ to knowing and embracing being an ‘everybody’ as Joe Dispenza teaches and as Rabbi Harold Shulweis teaches being Ehad, part of the Oneness of God/Universe. We do this by giving voice to our true inner desires, to our soul’s call, to our unique talents and gifts. We do this by allowing our deeds to change our inner life, by being immersed in our actions such that we become transformed, recreated by them. Each and every day is an opportunity to move towards wholeness and/or destruction. We have to choose life, we have to choose wholeness, we have to choose freedom, otherwise destruction/negativity “couches at our door and it desires us much”.

In recovery, this is the path we seek to follow. When we make “a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God” we are seeking wholeness, we are seeking freedom from the “bondage of self”. We are seeking to go beyond the self to join with the Higher Self, both ours and the One of the universe. We do this on a daily basis and we seek to grow one grain of sand more whole each day.

I hav experienced this journey towards wholeness for the past 35 years. It has been one step forward and two steps backwards at times and 3 steps forward and ½ step backwards at other times. Today, I know I am more whole than I have ever been thanks to Rabbi Heschel, my path of recovery, Torah, my wife and family, my friends and my non-friends. I am taking the lessons of the experiences over these 35+ years and incorporating them into my daily living and each day is calmer, more whole and freer than the days before. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 30

“The ultimate requirement is to act beyond the requirements of the law. Torah is not the same as law, as din. To fulfill one’s duties is not enough. One may be a scoundrel within the limits of the law. Why was Jerusalem destroyed? Because her people acted according to the law, and did not act beyond the requirements of the law.”(God in Search of Man pg.327)

One of the errors that many of us make when we read Rabbi Heschel, Eckhart Tolle, Dalai Lama, John Pavlovitz, the Bible, the Big Book of AA, and all other spiritual texts is just that, we read them, we analyze them, we become mindful from them, yet we don’t experience them. To read any of the people above, to read the St. Francis Prayer, the Serenity Prayer is only a half measure. We must experience the words, we must immerse our self, our spirits, our inner life, our higher consciousness in the words and go beyond the words. If all one does is rationally read the sentences above and ponder them, one will never be able to glean the brilliance and the wisdom of these sentences, one will never be able to have a light shine on them from Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, one will stay in a mode of pondering and thinking, arguing and agreeing, rather than “act beyond the requirements” of intellectual stimulation.

This is, I believe, how we become “a scoundrel within the limits of the law”. This is a quote from Ramban, the famous Jewish leader in Spain who participated in the Disputation and wrote these words as a commentary on the sentence: “You shall be holy because I, the Lord, am holy” from Chapter 19 of Leviticus. It was in response the question of why is this verse in here when we have accepted Torah? He went on to use sex as an example; a man has sex with his wife whenever he wants with no regard to her needs, her desires, her physical, emotional and spiritual state. This is permissible, and not holy! We can, if we look see these behaviors in our own lives as well. Whether it is sex, our race for success, our taxes, our interpersonal relationships, our business ethics, we can, if we search find the paths we take to “be a scoundrel within the limits of the law”.

Many of us are so aware and, at the same time, immune to this truth that we will change the rules to fit our needs, our particular situation and then deny this to another. We do and will lobby to change the rules of zoning, of welcoming new people into a neighborhood who are ‘different’ than us, etc. I have watched municipalities add extra police presence to shopping areas because ‘those people’ (usually black, brown) have come shopping here. While this is legal, the business owners requesting the extra police are doing it from fear and prejudice-scoundrels within the limits of the law. How often have you and/or I set a different standard for our self, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, than we do for another and berated another for not living up to our expectations? How often have we used our power of status, wealth, pen and tongue to win an argument, a lawsuit, a labor dispute by using isolated incidents and taking them out of context? How often have we used the vulnerabilities of another against them in order to ‘win’? How often have we rebuked someone else for the very things we do and then either excuse our same behaviors?

Most of us have, at one time or another, or will “be a scoundrel within the limits of the law”. Most of us have and will deny this, ignore this, and defend ourselves for doing it! Just a fact that is hard and necessary to face. Going “beyond the requirements of the law” means to accept our propensity to want to be right and immerse our self in the whole story. We have to continually experience the actions we are taking, we have to continually experience the wisdom and path of living well that our holy texts, our amazing interpreters of spiritual living give to us. We have to let go of our need to be right and see the nuances of our actions, our thinking and the ways we block off the voice of our higher consciousness/the voice of our soul. We move from wealth being power over to wealth being power to help, we move from berating another for our disowned parts to recognizing our self in another human being, we move from prejudice to seeing people of color, non-christian people as human beings as dignified and worthy as we are. It takes a constant awareness and commitment to change for this to happen, it takes a deep dive into our inner life and marriage with our soul’s knowledge to make this happen and we can do it. As we say in recovery, we have to “let go and let God”, we have to stop having “contempt prior to investigation”.

Immersing and experiencing these words cause me pause, I am well aware of when I did this in my distant past and examine the ways I still am “a scoundrel within the limits of the law”. I have found myself less a scoundrel and more engaged in going beyond the letter of the law. I know I go the extra mile for another, for a cause and for God. I also know that I am capable of fooling myself. Many times I claimed I was doing something for the ‘sake of heaven’ and it was for my sake. I have not, in these past 34 years, however, used the vulnerabilities of another against them so I could ‘win/succeed’. Of this I am proud. I am constantly immersing my self in the moment and staying present more and more each day. I experience what I read by writing about it, growing from this blog and rejoicing in my progress. I pray you rejoice in yours as well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 29

“The ultimate requirement is to act beyond the requirements of the law. Torah is not the same as law, as din. To fulfill one’s duties is not enough. One may be a scoundrel within the limits of the law. Why was Jerusalem destroyed? Because her people acted according to the law, and did not act beyond the requirements of the law.”(God in Search of Man pg.327)

Rabbi Heschel is really disturbing for many of us in this teaching. What does he mean “to fulfill one’s duties is not enough”? I have pondered this sentence for years and I have come to understand Rabbi Heschel calling to us to go beyond the boundaries and limitations of our duties to immerse ourselves in our duties so we change our inner dialogues, our inner emotions and our inner experience. It is easy to follow the rules, it is easy to fulfill a duty, it is much more difficult to have the rules and our duties change us. Hence, the following sentence “One may be a scoundrel within the limits of the law”.

We live in a society that allows people to skirt the law in a myriad of ways. Gil Cedillo, Keven de Leon have not resigned from the LA City Council after being unmasked as participating in racist, mean-spirited conversations about groups of people and individuals. They are within the law to do this, they can even say they are fulfilling their duty as elected officials to stay in office, yet, they are scoundrels because their motives are purely selfish and self-serving. They are not unusual, unfortunately. Many of our elected officials have been ‘outed’ as supporters of racism, anti-semitism, etc and the establishment wants to reward them-just look at Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene. While our congress people are elected from a particular district and/or state and they are to serve the interests of their constituents, they also take an oath to serve the entire country. Yet, instead of serving the whole country, they serve special interests that keep them in office, that keep them in power and “fulfill their duties” while being “scoundrels within the limits of the law”. We see this also with corporations and individuals who will pay fines and not admit guilt, who will sue the people they have harmed, who seek to win at any and all costs while keeping on ‘the right side’ of an issue and/or a law.

As individuals, we can “fulfill one’s duties” and still be scoundrels as well. This occurs when we take advantage of another person’s ignorance, take advantage of another person’s vulnerabilities, manipulate people to go along to get along, etc. We seem to be unable to live into our duties in a manner that changes our inner life. We seem to be controlled by FOMO, fear of missing out. We seem to believe that if we can put someone else down, we build our self up. We act in ways that “fulfill our duties” and harm another(s) without any remorse or repentance. It is an accepted mode of living in society, we call it survival of the fittest. Let the buyer beware is one way we justify being “a scoundrel within the limits of the law”. Another way is blaming our victims, another way is trying to control the actions of another person through money, legislation, and bastardization of holy texts. This way of living has led to our society being addicted to pleasure, wealth, power, greed, war and hatred of “the other”. It has led to blame and shame of anyone who is ‘different’ from us in ethnicity, race, creed, religion, etc. It has led to a deterioration of our morals, ethics and decency and has put freedom on a collision course with authoritarianism.

Rabbi Heschel’s demand above, however, gives the antidote to these seemingly benign activities. When we go beyond the letter of our duties, when we go beyond the letter of the law, when we stop doing things for our own gain only, we are in recovery from this terrible dis-ease of more, of power, of greed, of selfishness. We are able to do this when we remember whom we are serving, God, people, something greater than our self. Going beyond the mere “fulfilling our duties” becomes a path of inner wholeness and clarity, a path towards self-satisfaction and connection with the universe, with humanity and a sense of accomplishment of service and living our particular mission. The path to this is to be fully engaged in doing the next right thing with intention, with passion, and with purpose. We no longer do things by rote, we no longer ‘mail it in’, we engage in the action with our whole self, not being distracted by what is next, not being distracted by our devices, not being distracted by worries from our past nor fears of the future. We are present in this moment, we are immersed and listening for the wisdom of our inner life, our souls’ knowledge and we begin to transform our FOMO’s, our need to be right, our greed and thirst for power into knowing we are in the place we are supposed to be, knowing when we are right without needing to prove it, realizing we have enough for the moment, and we are enough always!

This is the path for all of us who are in recovery. We let go of our old ideas, realizing they have not served us in positive ways. We seek to improve our inner life and mature our intuition while recognizing and rejoicing in our newfound truth that we are imperfect and will never be perfect nor are we expected to be perfect. We engage in life with a spirit of curiosity, passion, gratitude, excitement and acceptance. We learn a little more each day about living well, about joy, about authenticity and connection. All this happens because we go beyond the “requirements of the law”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 28

“The ultimate requirement is to act beyond the requirements of the law. Torah is not the same as law, as din. To fulfill one’s duties is not enough. One may be a scoundrel within the limits of the law. Why was Jerusalem destroyed? Because her people acted according to the law, and did not act beyond the requirements of the law.”(God in Search of Man pg.327)

Now what are we to do? We have celebrated new beginnings, we have cleansed our selves of our past errors (we hope), we have brought in the harvest of our actions and rejoiced over the ending and beginning of a new year of reading, studying Torah, so what do we do today? Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is one of the best responses I have ever heard. Today, the day after the celebration, the day after the Holidays, is the day to commit to living in the spirit of the law, to go beyond the “requirements of the law” not to be more precise to the letter of the law, rather to immerse our self in the teachings of the Torah, in the spirit of the Torah, to understand the laws are here as an entry point to our souls, the key to unlock our connection with God, our connection with community, our connections with family and with our own soul. We can’t do this if we are so focused on the requirements, if we are living our life to check the boxes, if we are holding our self and everyone else to a standard of perfect adherence. We cannot go beyond the letter of the law if we fail to see that the law is the beginning and not the end.

Herein lies the issue for every human being-what end am I trying to achieve, as opposed to what end is the Divine calling me to? Our ends are too often trying to either be the best at fulfilling the law, skirting the law, and/or bastardizing it. We see this in the recent scandal in the Los Angeles City Council. While all of the participants in the racist comments and despicable name-calling were entirely within the law of Freedom of Speech, they showed themselves to be everything they complained about had happened to them, to their people, showed themselves to be racist and anti-semitic all the while staying within the requirements of the law. To go beyond the requirements would entail these people who got caught and everyone one of us, to examine our bias’ and our prejudices, to cut out these cancers of our soul and correct the eye diseases that cause us to be so intolerant. To go beyond the requirements of the law means we have to have a spiritual awakening from all of our celebrations, all of our Holy Days. We have to immerse our self in the life affirming and life changing experiences of each and every day.

We have to see that the law is not the end all/be all. Passing laws to restrict people’s rights and freedoms, keeping people ‘in their place’ are not paths to fulfilling the spirit of any of the laws of Torah. Torah is the big book of recovery from our human condition, as Harriet Rossetto teaches, and it tells us the story of our condition and how being connected to God; loving mercy, doing justly, walking in God’s ways; brings us to living a life full of joy and heartache, error and forgiveness, love and loss, mendacity and truth, and how to lean into joy, love, forgiveness, compassion, justice, mercy, and truth! It only happens when we use this day to lift up our actions because of yesterday’s learning, it only happens when we are more concerned with connection and spirit than with power and prestige. It only happens when we let go of our need for control and we are controlled by a power greater than ourselves, by God. Not the false gods that some people are quoting as prosperity gospels, as the one who wants the infidels killed, the false god of vengeance, the idolatry of blaming misfortune on the ones experiencing it rather than accepting that “nature does not go against itself” as the Talmud teaches.

Rather, we have to see how to use the law to fulfill the commandment: “You shall be holy because I, God, am holy.” We cannot be holy when we are living in mendacity, we cannot be holy when we are living in self-righteousness, we cannot be holy when we think we are the power, the smartest, etc.  We cannot be holy when we are stuck in the minutiae of the letter of the law, we cannot be holy when we are engaged in religious behaviorism. We cannot be holy if we do not grow spiritually each day.

In recovery, we recognize that the steps are here as suggestions, and they are very good ones! We also work with sponsors who help us apply them to our life, to our understandings and help us grow in the spirit of our program of recovery. We are recovering from living in a black and white world to once again see the colors, the grays, the blues, pinks, oranges, etc so we can live immersed in what truly is rather than what our eye disease has been showing us.

Each day is the day after for me. I have always believed this, I have immersed myself in more than the requirements forever, for over 23 years in order to skirt the law and I got arrested for my efforts more than once-a real slow learner am I. In these last 35+ years I have worked hard to learn and grow each day. I am reflecting on the many times I went beyond the letter of the law, I am reflecting on the times when I thought I was and, in retrospect, I wasn’t. I know each day has helped me cut the cancers on my soul away and that going beyond the “requirements of the law”, growing spiritually each day is the Chemotherapy I need and use to guard against the cancer of rigidity from returning. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 27

“This is one of the rewards of being human: quiet exaltation, capacity for celebration. It is expressed in a phrase which Rabbi Akiba offered to his disciples: A song every day, A song every day.” (Who is Man pg. 118)

Today is Simchat Torah, we dance with the Torah and rejoice in and with it. While it is a loud celebration, it is also a time of quiet exaltation. Exaltation comes from the Latin meaning raise aloft, raise upward. Today, Jews all over the globe raise the Torah up and pledge allegiance to God, to the principles of Torah and to help the stranger, the poor, the needy. We do this in quiet exaltation because it is only a pledge between us and God, it is a commitment that we make with our spirit, our mind and our heart. We actualize our capacity to celebrate and be part of a celebration of truth, justice, mercy, kindness, compassion, and love.

The last sentence above is one that speaks to all of us. Frank Sinatra sang “Without a Song” and in it, like Rabbi Akiba’s wisdom, he reminds us that: “without a song the day would never end …when things go wrong a man ain’t got a friend without a song.” Where is the song: in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls. We get to sing it every day, we get to raise our self up by singing the song that is uniquely ours, singing it in concert with everyone else’s song making a cacophony of sound and music that opens the hearts of everyone a little more, makes us a little less judgmental every day, raises our standards of living one grain of sand each day. In the quiet exaltation of singing our unique song, we realize our focus on comparisons, competitions, past hurts, future fears are all for naught. We get a glimpse of what freedom truly is, where we are going towards and how to move forward.

We sing the words of Torah when we read it, we sing hymns in Church, we sing songs in the Mosque, we sing our prayers, we sing songs of love. In the Jewish tradition one of the central prayers is the V’Ahavta, “and you shall love”. We sing of our love of God with all our heart, all our soul, all our everything. When we are able to love life, to love God, to love our self, to love another(s), to love everyone with our heart, our soul, our everything, we have reached a level of freedom that is unknown to most people. While most of us don’t stay there for long, as Michael Corleone said in Godfather III, “every time I think I am out, they pull me back in”, those of us who have experienced this level long to return. We return on a day like today, not just because we are dancing with God’s wisdom and teachings, rather because today we are singing our song, with joy, fervor and love. This is the key, of course, to sing our song and not the song of someone else. To sing our song without trying to drown out the song of any one else. To sing our song, letting go of our need to deceive another, to act mendaciously, to engage in self-deception. I would posit that singing one’s own song is the antithesis of deception, mendacity, isolation, and self-deception/self denigration.

We can use today as an example of what this looks like. When I led a congregation, I would unwind the entire Torah Scroll and wrap it around the people gathered for our celebration. Each person would point to a word in the Torah and that would be their word for the year, to live with, to embrace and to celebrate in quiet exaltation, raising upward from where they were prior. Each year some people would return for this one service only so they could get their word of Torah. We have the same opportunity today, whether Jewish or not, whether in Temple or not, open the Spiritual book you count on, your ‘go to’ spiritual text, flip through the pages quickly, stopping on a page; close your eyes and point to a word, look at it,  and find the meaning of the word for you today and for the next year. If you don’t want to do this, here are some words I have had in years prior: truth, kindness, life, exaltation, love, choice, liar, rebel, wonder, awe, return, response, speak.

This year, I was studying with someone yesterday and my word of this year jumped out at me, mist. In reading Ecclesiastes, the word mist jumped out to me. Every thing that I believe is permanent just isn’t. I get to remember to seek God and live Godly each day, as much as I possibly can. I get to be accountable for me and to me, I get to stay in this moment, this day and not be imprisoned by the past nor the future. I get to remember the vanity of my youth and the stinking thinking of my own puffed-up importance. I get to turn my heart and my soul to the best life has to offer, using each experience as a teaching moment and learning the lesson of this moment in order to make the next moment better. Mist also means watering my soul with the elements God/Universe has provided, no longer asking ‘where’s mine’ rather taking in the nourishment of this day, staying present with the people, the surroundings, the learning, the joy of this day without needing to moan about what was and isn’t, without needing to fear what is to come, just remembering the wisdom of Rabbi Akiba and these words from “Without a Song”, “I got my troubles and woes but, sure as the Jordan will roll, and I’ll get along as long as a song, strong in my soul.” We all have songs in our souls, we all need a word to trigger a stanza, a lyric, a melody for each year so we can build the symphony that our life truly is. This is the “quiet exaltation”, the celebration I understand Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom gives us. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 26

“Repentance is a decision made in truthfulness, remorse, and responsibility. If, to be sure—as is often the case among us—instead of deliberate decision we have a coerced conversion; instead of a conscious truthfulness, a self-conscious conformity; instead of remorse over the lost past, a longing for it; then this so-called return is but a retreat, a phase.”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

Today is Shemini Atzeret and tonight is Simchat Torah. We remember our deceased loved ones today and tonight and tomorrow we rejoice ending Deuteronomy and beginning Genesis again. Yet, how can we remember the lessons and love of our deceased and rejoice in the presence of Torah when we have a longing for the past, when we are retreating from this moment? To paraphrase Rabbi Heschel, what is the state of our remembering, what is the state of our rejoicing?

Here is the great challenge of being human, as I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. Yizkor, to remember, is to honor and cry for the loves who are no longer with us and in the prayer we say for our dead, we commit to do acts of Tzedakah, righteousness, in their name. We cannot be righteous when we are longing for the past, when we are stuck in our grief, when we are retreating rather than moving forward. At the Red Sea, God told us to go forward instead of looking backward with fear and longing. Throughout our journeying through the wilderness, we longed for a return to the past, to Egypt, to slavery with euphoric recall moments that never happened and we did not turn back. Can we say the same for us today? Can we remember our dead with determination to carry on the goodness they began? Can we remember our dead with a renewed commitment to being one grain of sand more righteous today than yesterday? Can we remember our loved ones by being truthful and responsible?

We are in a world that still wants “the good old days”, where the ones in power now are afraid of the “riffraff” who are seeking a seat at the table. We, the free descendants of former slaves, the free descendants of the oppressed minority throughout the millennia, must do all we can to make room for everyone to have a seat at the table if we are to honor our dead with righteous actions, if we are to be responsible to their memory and to do the T’Shuvah they were unable to accomplish. We have to make a “deliberate decision” to remember our departed with righteous behaviors and to open our hearts, our minds, our self to being on the path of righteousness.

What is the state of our rejoicing if we want this return to the “good old days”? It is stale and mendacious. It is impossible to rejoice in the words, the teachings, the excitement of learning anew, of staying fresh and forward thinking and seeing when we are stuck on the past, when we are retreating to an idea that was never as good as our euphoric recall tells us it was. We never ‘finish’ the reading of Torah because there is always something to learn, something to discover, something to uplift us and to strengthen us in our battles against the “coerced conversion” of our negativity, the “coerced conversion” of those in power, the “coerced conversion” of our fears, etc. It is impossible to rejoice when we retreat back into defensiveness, when we retreat back into shame, when we retreat back into self-deprecation, when we retreat back into conformity.

We can, however, overcome all of the roadblocks to rejoicing, all of the turbulence that prevents us from being present and looking forward. The solution is T’Shuvah, a return of remorse for our errors and for the errors of our ancestors. The solution is T’Shuvah a return to truthfulness in all our affairs; seeing every person with hearts of love, respect and dignity as brothers, sisters, cousins, because we are “all kin under the skin” as my friend and teacher Rev. Mark Whitlock teaches and preaches. The solution is T’Shuvah, a return to being responsible for our actions, responsible to make our corner of the world more welcoming, more just, more compassionate, more caring, kinder, more loving than when we found it. The solution is a return to “deliberate decision” making, to mining the spiritual texts we engage with each day for new and different ways to serve. The solution is a return to our words at Mt. Sinai: “we will do and then we will understand”. The solution is a return to our words as we crossed the Red Sea: “This is my God and I will honor God”. The solution is a return gratitude for this day and the actions that shows our gratitude.

I am so grateful for all the people who have crossed my path. I remember my relatives with love and joy, I am remorseful for the years and days when I did not honor their memory, their love, their commitment to me with righteous behavior and I have and continue to make a “deliberate decision” to grow the righteousness and love they instilled in me. I also am returning to a state of rejoicing in this moment and every moment that I can through leaving “the good old days” and ‘the bad old days’ where they belong, in the past! I also am returning to truthfulness, responsibility and acts of gratitude, righteousness, kindness, compassion, justice and truth today as I do every day. My remorse for my past acts stays with me enough so when I get close to repeating them, I remember this is not who I am today, this is not what I need to do today. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark