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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 217

“Worship and living are not two separate realms. Unless living is a form of worship, our worship has no life. Religion is not a reservation, a tract of time reserved for solemn celebrations on festive days. The spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

We have been watching “A Small Light” about Meip Gies’ actions to help the Frank family in Amsterdam during the Shoah. It is based in truth with dramatic license and it is a prime example of what Rabbi Heschel is teaching us. While the actions of Meip and her husband Jan are not the only examples of “living is a form of worship” and religion is not spoken about directly, the series is a story of bravery, of caring, of putting into action the principles of worship, the principles of decency, the principle of “love your neighbor as you love yourself” and “don’t stand idly by the blood of your fellow human being”. I am thinking about the vitriol and the inhumanity of Nazis and Nazi Germany while proclaiming to be ‘good christians’!

Of course, it begs the question, “what would I have done” in their situation and I believe it the real question is “what am I doing today to emulate their heroism?” Herein lies the true question Rabbi Heschel’s words ask us. What are we doing today to prevent the little/small atrocities from becoming part of our fabric of living? We are witnesses to so many subtle hatreds, subtle actions of ‘that is the way life is’, we have become so used to the rantings and ravings, the scapegoating of another(s) so people can take advantage of another(s), the mendacity and deceptions that occur daily in order to stop someone from seeing what we are really doing to fleece them, to overpower them, to ‘win’ and to rule. These small atrocities which we have come to accept as ‘the way of doing business’ are exactly, I believe, what Rabbi Heschel is demanding we end, demanding we integrate our worship and our living.

None of us have clean hands in this realm, which is why Rabbi Heschel’s words are so disturbing and cut so deeply into our souls. We have relegated worship in such a way that the Berrigan brothers, Rev. King, etc were put in jail because people thought clergy should keep to their pulpits and not get involved in politics. We have separated our worship, our Biblical teachings from how we live so well there are people who spout the words of Christ, the words of Moses, wrap themselves in conservative values, in progressive values, all the while bastardizing these eternal truths, treating their neighbors with disdain, when having power over them treating them like lepers, taking advantage of their positions, their wealth, their power to flex their muscles and ‘show them who’s boss’.

Each of us has to have a “dark night of the soul” as Jacob did in the Bible, as St. John of the Cross describes. Most of us run away from this experience so we don’t have to change, so we can keep separating our living and our worship. Meip and Jan and the many people who helped them as well as the many “righteous Christians” who at the risk of their own lives saved Jews, hid Jews are the examples of rising above our fears, rising above our selfishness, risking everything to do the next right thing, to integrate our morals and our actions, to integrate our worship and our living, to integrate our spiritual principles with our being and doing. We are all guilty of separating worship and living, we are all imperfect in this realm, this is not the point of the teaching above to me, the point is to be more aware of our lack of integration in areas of our living, make our T’Shuvah for this, repair the damage, change our ways, bring our worship and living together a little more each and every day. Doing this is hard, it is ‘unnatural’, it is antithetical to societal norms, it is also refreshing, it is exhilarating, it is a spiritual awakening and it is joyous and it is true freedom.

In recovery, we have prayers, we have actions that match our prayers. We have principles and actions that strengthen our principles, we are always seeking to be welcoming, fearless and thorough in our daily, yearly inventories, compassionate and contrite in our amends. We are constantly seeking thru prayer and meditation “to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand God” and we continue to reach out to people without being judgmental, without being ‘holier than thou’. We seek each day to integrate our worship and our living “one grain of sand” more.

I am aware of when I have separated worship and living and when I have integrated them. I am aware of when I have weaponized worship and when it has been weaponized against me. I am remorseful for my separation and weaponization and the pain this caused. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 216

“Worship and living are not two separate realms. Unless living is a form of worship, our worship has no life. Religion is not a reservation, a tract of time reserved for solemn celebrations on festive days. The spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching, “living is a form of worship” is a very profound one. Immersing oneself in his wisdom, we can see what entity is being worshipped by us and by another(s). Rather than spouting great religious phrases or quoting the Bible, either in words or by citations, we have to look at our actions and the actions of those around us to determine what our “worship” truly is. Far too many of us say one thing on the Sabbath and “festive days” and do another during the rest of the week, month, year. To say one is a follower of the Bible, of a religion because one performs mitzvot, the ‘proper’ deeds while being exclusive, cruel, denying the dignity of all human beings, comparing and competing with their friends and enemies to see who can have the most power is a complete bastardization of religion, a denial of God’s will and self-deception.

As Rabbi Heschel teaches throughout this book, his other books, and how he lived his life, if one is not moved inside, if the deeds and the actions don’t change the inner life to one of compassion, love, kindness, truth, justice, mercy, then they are empty actions. Unfortunately, many people take actions that are antithetical to the core religious beliefs they espouse and are change their inner lives to be harder, more entrenched in their ‘rightness’, less open to dialogue, unable to see the many faces and facets of the Bible, weaponize their religious beliefs to harm another, practice senseless hatred of their fellow citizens and strangers, etc. All of these ways are the ways the prophets pointed out to the powers that were prior to the destruction of the Temples, all of these ways are the ways Jesus railed against in his time, yet we continue to see people extol these evil paths as virtuous, as God’s will! What we are witnessing is actually idolatry, what we are witnessing is evil disguised as ‘good’, what we are witnessing is deception and mendacity in the name of power.

We are witnesses to some people taking part in religious celebrations, espousing false morality, attempting to make their will God’s will instead of making God’s will their will, selling a way of being that is in direct conflict with the Biblical values and actions they supposedly ‘worship’. When we see people vote to not pay the bills they and their predecessors billed yet complain about the people who are truly unable to pay their rent, pay for food and call them criminals, call them people who are unloved by God, we are witnesses to power plays, to mendacity and to inhumanity. If we are to judge people on the “content of their character”, as Rev Martin Luther King Jr, a dear friend of Rabbi Heschel’s, teaches, then these false prophets, these false ‘religious’ people need to be called out and judged by their actions; as our actions are the true testaments of our character, not our words.

When we live in ways that go against our “worship” we have to be real about it, we have to acknowledge our imperfections, we have to repair our thinking, understanding, we have to make our amends and we have to take actions that will bring us into more congruence with “worship”, we have to take actions that will change our inner life, improve our character, put our traits to use in “proper measure” as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz teaches. We are witnesses to “the spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation”, we are witnesses to the crimes committed in the name of the spirit, in the name of God, in the name of religion and it is time for us to stand up and shout from the roof tops: Mendacity, Mendacity. It is time for us to fight against the deceptions of these charlatans, it is time for us to hold our selves, one another, our institutions-religious and secular- to the higher standards of morality and being more human!

We have been watching “A small light” on Hulu, the story of Geip Mies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family. I am aghast and amazed once again how ‘good’ people could transform into inhuman people from fear, from blame, from self-deception and from buying into the deceptions of another(s). I also realize the importance of the teaching above because this transformation happens in stages, it happens because we don’t practice what we preach, we don’t heal ourselves, we live a ‘do as I say not as I do’ life. I am guilty of this, as is everyone. The difference my recovery has made is I am aware of these ‘missing the marks’, I make the necessary repairs quicker, my inner life grows and matures, I am in denial and self-deception for shorter periods of time and I do my amends. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Day 215

“Worship and living are not two separate realms. Unless living is a form of worship, our worship has no life. Religion is not a reservation, a tract of rime reserved for solemn celebrations on festive days. The spirit withers when confined in splendid isolation.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above was relevant in 1955 when this book was published, it is a restatement of the call of the prophets, it is critical for us now. We live in a world of bifurcation, an either/or world, a time of great extremes. We are witnessing a bastardization of what worship is, we are participating in facade of ‘living religiously’. When people proclaim, “my way is the way of God”, “this is the only way”, “God wants us to exclude people”, “God doesn’t love the poor, the stranger as much as God loves the rich and the citizen”, they are separating their living from their worship. Even worse, they have turned worship into a self-serving act that has nothing to do with God’s will, God’s call. Hence, I understand the title of this book to humble us to allow ourselves to be found by God instead of telling God and another(s) that we know God!

It is impossible for people to call their “living is a form of worship” when their living is based on, promotes hatred of anyone not like them. It is impossible for people to call their “living is a form of worship” when they take the words of God and twist/spin them to satisfy their need for power, when they spin them for their own political gain. It is wrong for people of faith to badger, belittle, abhor the stranger and the widow, the poor and the orphan, and call this God’s will. It is told that there are 70 ways to understand and live the Torah/Bible so there cannot be just one way. Kindness, love, welcoming the stranger, caring for the needy and the poor are mentioned so often in the Bible, whether Hebrew Bible or New Testament, it is insane for people to separate their politics, their actions from their study and their worship.

I believe one of the reasons so many more people respond “none” when asked about their faith is they are aware of the mendacity that ‘people of faith’ are engaged in. They are tired of hearing the same old worn out phrases and the same either/or, my way is the only way, interpretations of the Bible by clergy. They are exhausted by the lack of congruence in our religious institutions. Jesus hung out with the very people today’s religious ‘authorities’ denigrate. The prophets stood up for and called out the deception of the Priests and the ruling families by telling them God doesn’t want their sacrifices, God wants their hearts, their actions. We are witnessing the culmination of these empty rituals today as people leave Synagogues, Churches, Temples in droves.

We have empty services even for the people who attend. Our worship is to enhance our living, Rabbi Heschel is teaching us and we are still practicing ‘one day a week’ religiosity, we are still engaging in ‘twice a year Jews’, we are still staying impervious to the call of our worship, we sit with wondrous decorum in our services committed to not having any of the prayers, none of the experience permeate our inner lives. We see the ways our religious institutions do not practice the principles our religions are founded on. God in Search of Man is not a good book title, it is Rabbi Heschel’s understanding of God’s call to us, it is Rabbi Heschel’s expression of love and faith in humankind that we can change and return to a better, more congruent way of living.

In recovery, “we practice these principles in all our affairs” is a key component of our new way of living. We were perpetrators and victims of keeping everything separate, we could ‘love’ someone while isolating from them; we could ‘have a high moral standard’ while stealing; we could ‘seek’ God through artificial means and not live into the insights we gained. Living life congruently with our principles, with our program of recovery is the goal and we achieve it each day; if only for a moment. We are constantly working to bring our disparate parts together and live as a whole human being.

In the past 35+ years, my worship and my living are much closer together each day. I work to be congruent, I struggle with my disparate parts and I practice principles in my daily actions. I grow from these writings, from study, from prayer; I know that each day, my prayers move me closer to God, they help me live more congruently. I also know that I have flaws, I make mistakes and I do T’Shuvah for them. Of course, I have to accept when people are not willing to accept my T’Shuvah, I have to accept the ways institutions do not live their principles and  I am sad when this happens. In making my worship and living come together and inform one another, I experience meaning and joy. 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 214

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

Immersing ourselves in the words and deeds of the prophets, taking seriously what they did and said causes us to never be neutral. Many people want to stand on the sidelines while one side fights with another and this is what leads us to the situations we are currently in. In Germany, people stood by while the Nazis rose to power and began their purge of Jews and other “undesirables”. In Hungary, people stood by while the Hungarians and the Germans, after the war was already lost, sent Jews to the death camps, killed Jews at the waterfront and kept their shoes. In every age, in every country, people have stood by, being neutral and great crimes against the poor, the needy, the stranger, the voiceless and the powerless are committed in the name of god, in the name of progress, in the name of nationalism, etc.

We are witnesses to these same issues today. People stand by, staying neutral while the Governor of Florida bans books, rewrites history, discriminates against people of color, LGBTQ+ human beings and wraps himself in the cloak of Jesus! Jesus, of course, hung out with the very people DeSantis and the Republican Party are hating on! We are witnesses to the Progressive Democrats who claim to be standing up for the marginalized and will vote against a bill that raises the debt ceiling, will oppose anything that doesn’t give them everything they want, will call out compromises as evil and people are staying neutral about these antics.

It is time for us to heed the words of the prophets and follow the path of the Rabbis of old. The Rabbis took the words of the prophets to heart and they compromised where necessary. They had an opinion on all facets of living and sought to find ways to compromise and harmonize the myriad of interpretations of God’s words and the prophets actions. We are taught to “not stand idly by the blood of our neighbors”, I interpret this command to mean we cannot stay neutral on issues affecting the welfare of any and all people. Yes, we must compromise at times, yes we will not always get our way in a democracy, this doesn’t give us the right to ‘take our marbles and go home’. This doesn’t give us the permission to not be in the solution to whatever ails our society, our community, our selves. We are commanded to “choose life”; this is a command that reminds us all to be engaged in whatever is going on around us, it is a call/demand from God to continue to move forward in fulfilling the obligation to be human!

We are facing grave dangers today, as we have in every era. Just as the prophets railed against the powers that be in their time, we also have to take a stand to help the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan. We have to get off of our butts and be engaged in voting, in marching, in supporting people and ways of being that help us move towards the messianic era. In Jewish lore, Elijah the prophet, the harbinger of the Messiah, lives among the poor and the needy. The poet, Danny Siegel writes: “If you always assume the man sitting next to you is the Messiah Waiting for some simple human kindness–You will soon come to weigh your words and watch your hands. And if he so chooses not to reveal himself in your time–It will not matter.” We have to be engaged in life, we have to be engaged in doing the next right thing, we have to be engaged in the solution and stop being part of the problem through being neutral.

There is nothing neutral about recovery! We are always seeking to do the next right thing, to hear Good Orderly Direction, to be involved and immersed completely in our living, our deeds, our words matter. We come to believe that we matter, that we have the power to change the trajectory of our lives and return to being human again. In recovery, we know we have to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

I have not lived neutral; neither in recovery nor before. My actions have not always been right, even when they have been I have been scorned, rejected, yet I have never stopped being involved, I have never given into the call to quit. I can’t stand by, I can’t be neutral. I have to be who I am and, while loud and abrasive are not considered good manners in ‘polite society’, they have served me and countless people to heal and be in the solution, to never be neutral. 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 213

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

In the last sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us, teaching us what is at the root of evil, I believe: “how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call to us to deal with both the neutral and our needs in order to not commit the evil, not commit “the silent atrocities, the secret scandals” that he taught us of earlier. When we refuse to take a stand, when we refuse to have an opinion, when we don’t discern/judge what is the next right action, we are in danger of falling into the abyss of evil, we are in danger of falling into ‘the neutral acts”. There really is no neutral action if we are to be serious about our covenant with God, our role as human beings. Each and every action leads us to the next, each and every action we take has consequence and meaning, each and every action grows or retards our inner life maturity and our outer life. The fallacy many people live under is being neutral is being benign, this is self-deception at its highest and a cover for the evil that is perpetrated in the name of the neutral.

Our needs cause us great consternation and great joy. When they are authentic needs, when they are needs that help us serve one another, serve our inner life, fulfilling them brings joy, betterment to those around us, beauty, and spiritual growth. When they are inauthentic, our needs cause us to have puffed up egos, do harm to another(s), be oblivious to the demands of decency and goodness, seek power and prestige for their own sakes rather than for the sake of moving ourselves and our community closer to goodness and farther from evil. We have been sold a lie by society that fulfilling the “American Dream” will bring us joy, happiness, etc. As we have witnessed, the amount of depression, addiction, isolation, low-grade misery has increased as we have ‘done better’. It is sad that people still believe having power over another human being will bring them joy, having a core of people to serve their needs without regard to the needs of these people will protect them, having inauthentic needs fulfilled with satiate them. All of these ‘promises’ by society have proven false, they have been debunked over and over, yet we continue to mishandle our needs, we continue to deal with our needs inappropriately and move forward our ability to commit evil, to engage in the “silent atrocities” and “secret scandals” without care or concern for one another and for our own souls.

We are witnesses to what seeking to fulfill inauthentic needs brings; war in Ukraine, non-governance in our House of Representatives, protection of the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes, protecting the tax cheats by lessening the enforcement branch of the IRS, putting more of a burden on the poor by insinuating they are lazy and don’t want to work, making voting harder, attempting control of women, racism, anti-semitism, and other prejudicial behaviors. We are witnesses to the upending of constitutional and moral norms by the judicial system, justices deciding medical issues with no medical knowledge, the polarization of our society reminiscent of the pre-Civil War era and the authoritarianism reminiscent of the 1930’s-1940’s when some in Congress and the Media extolled Hitler and Nazism. These are all happening because we have not put into practice the lessons we have learned, through pain and suffering, of “how to deal with needs”.

In recovery, we know our false needs got us into grave danger; the dangers of loss of life, harming another, no longer being healthy, spiritual bankruptcy, depression, anxiety, isolation, unhealthy fears, obliviousness, selfishness, etc. We are acutely aware of our ability to engage in fulfilling our inauthentic needs so we are constantly stay vigilant, constantly on guard to be aware of when these false needs creep into our mind and let them go as soon as possible, so we don’t bring harm to ourselves and to anyone else. We do this through self-examination each day and by asking for help and guidance from another.

I am dedicated to hearing the call and demand of my soul/spirit. I am aware of the call of my desires and how they lead me to foolish behaviors and empty ‘victories’. I choose each day to live authentically, to fulfill the authentic needs, to serve and to love fiercely, completely and the best I can. Forgive and let go are authentic needs I fulfill. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 212

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

We are witnessing the wisdom and truth of the third sentence above, “our possessions” are, possibly, more of a problem than our passions, we have become more passionate about our possessions than we have about how to live in ways that are compatible with being God’s partner! When Harlan Crow responds to a question about his ‘friendship’ with Justice Clarence Thomas with the statement that if Thomas wasn’t a Justice, they probably would not be friends, we see the passion Crow has for his possessions and his power; he will make friends with a Black man while extolling dictators and loving Hitler, while believing in consolidating power.

We are witnesses to the tax cuts for rich and corporations that Republicans passed in 2017 which promised wealth for everyone in order for the ‘base’ to buy into it-and once again the Republicans were liars. We are witnesses to the lies they keep telling their constituents and voters and blame everything on ‘the democrats’ all the while looking to consolidate and safeguard their power and their possessions. We are witnesses to the rulings of the Supreme Court to favor rich, to favor dark money in politics from Corporations, to favor injustice when they will not stay an execution of an innocent man because “due process” was followed. We are witnesses to the myriad of draconian laws being passed in some States to make it harder for ‘those’ people to vote. We are witnesses to the denial of bodily freedom to women. We are witnesses to cruel and unusual actions towards young Black men by police. We are witnesses to mass shootings  being the norm in our country and “you will not take my AR-15 away from me” being the rallying cry from politicians who are beholden to the gun lobby! The Republicans are passionate about their possessions all right, just not passionate about their fellow human beings, even their own constituents! The constituents are passionate about having power over their women, power to carry their guns and meekly go along with the lies and deceptions of their elected officials while wallowing in poverty, poor health conditions and options-this is how dangerous self-deception and mendacity is; it gets us to extol and support the very policies and actions that enshrine those in power and make our own lives worse. These childish, boorish, power-hungry despots have no concern for what is best for our country nor the majority-they are playing to their rich constituents and backers.

We are witnesses to the Democrats who are planning to vote against the debt-ceiling bill, calling it hostage taking, calling in ‘giving in to terrorists’. They are correct, this crisis has been caused by terrorists, it is a hostage negotiation, so what? When their is hostage taking, police, FBI and other agencies have hostage negotiators, should they not negotiate to free the hostages? In Iran we negotiated a hostage release, we have done the same with the Soviet Union-remember Gary Powers, we have done the same with Russia! These Democrats are playing for their crowd, they are not interested in what is best for our country-they are able to preen like spoiled children because there are enough votes to pass the legislation-rather than act like statesmen/women, rather than act like adults, they are excited to go in front of the cameras and display their loyalty to ‘progressive ideology’. They are being as childish and disloyal as their Republican counter-parts!

In recovery, we are aware that each possession comes with great responsibility. The more we amass, the more responsible. Rather than bemoan what is, we seek to improve our lives and the lives of those less fortunate- “there are no dues or fees for membership”, we welcome people and let them know we will love them until they can love themselves. We follow the teachings of the Bible, “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, “care for the stranger, the needy, the poor” with passion and fervor, we know that we have to change the narrative of life, ours and society’s to these passions, to these principles, to get out of the neutral, to stop with the lies and deceptions of self and another(s). We, in recovery, are forging a new path, one that on which we “trudge the road to happy destiny”, and one that is a beacon to those who want to deal with “the problem of 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 211

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

“Evil flourishes when good people do nothing” is attributed to Edmund Burke and Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above goes even further, I believe. Good people, at times, engage in the neutral, engage in pride at their goodness, give their needs free rein. Today is the day after we remembered the sacrifice of life men and women have given so we can “breathe free”. While there were speeches and tweets extolling the virtue of these men and women; today, most people will retreat to the neutral, forget the words we heard and spoke and go back to life as usual. Herein lies the challenge of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom. Authentic needs have to be met. Rabbi Heschel, I believe, is speaking about the inauthentic ones, ones society has manufactured in order to control us. Needs we are being told through advertising, technology, political rhetoric that are false.

One of the most neutral acts most people take is to ‘look away’ when something is happening and they don’t want to get involved! We have, as a society, convinced ourselves that it is too dangerous to get involved, it is too scary, it is ‘not my fight’, etc. We are afraid of losing position, power, money, possessions, social status if we get involved. Look what happened when women reported rape accusations in the past (and probably still now) they were not believed by police, subjected to humiliation by defense attorneys and the courts, cast out by the communities they belonged to, etc; so many rapes and sexual assaults went unreported. We have had to enact “whistleblower laws” to protect those coming forward to report unlawful, unethical actions by people and companies, we have had to enact laws about workplace abuse, etc; all because people did not want to get involved and support the people who were telling the truth. We still witness companies and people paying large fines without admitting guilt, without taking responsibility. These are examples of the neutral to me.

When people are afraid of taking a stand, when “on advice of counsel” replaces conversations, reconciliations, when we ‘go along to get along’, we are living in the neutral. We are more worried about our possessions, our status, than we are about truth and the way we live with our self, the way we live with God. When we “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor”, when we are more worried about saving our faces than saving our souls, when we are more concerned with the loopholes than the truth, we are engaging with the neutral in ways that lead to our ruin as human beings. We are forgetting that our greatest challenges are to “live a life compatible with being a partner of God” and “to be human” as Rabbi Heschel teaches elsewhere.

Possessions, power, prestige, have taken an outsized place in society, they are the definers of who we are for most people-the haves and the have-nots. We are measuring ourselves by a yardstick that is false, that is neutral, that allows us to do the wrong thing and make it okay because we won, because we can. Jewish tradition, with it’s Mitzvot, is a statement of: just because we can doesn’t mean we should, as I understand our way of being. Just as “perfect is the enemy of the good”(Voltaire), so too is the neutral the enemy of goodness, of the moral and ethical as well as the spiritual. There is no neutral in the Spiritual realm, there is no neutral in our souls, yet, we allow our rational minds and our emotional states to overrule our souls rather than having our souls be the arbiter of our actions.

In recovery, we know we cannot be neutral about anything. Being neutral pushes us backwards, allows our old “stinking thinking” to prevail and leads us back into self-inflicted pain and suffering. We use our path of recovery to keep moving forward; we are acutely aware that there is no neutral, there is no standing still.

I have been wrong in my passions at times, I have let them get the best of me. I also know that my bombast in most cases comes from my fear of the neutral, from my fear of letting the loss of possessions, mine or another’s, rule me/us. I stand for my beliefs, I stand against lies, deception, hiding, and this is not done in ‘polite society’. I will not change, I am responsible for when I let passions override what is the next right thing to do and I am responsible for my actions which stand in the face of mendacity and politeness. I am different today from honoring the fallen and I pray everyone else is also. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 209

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

Today is Memorial Day in the United States. Immersing myself in the first two sentences above and thinking about the men and women who have given their lives so that all of us can enjoy freedom causes me to pause. These men and women were not neutral, they were not passive, they were not indifferent, they were not filled with “envy, greed, and pride”. They along with all of their comrades in arms, the men and women who went to war so there is an America for the rest of us did not engage in neutrality, they did not engage in mendacity. They served their families, their communities, their country; as do all of the current people in our armed services. We owe them our gratitude in our deeds as well as our words.

We often believe and preach about the neutral acts, actions which are neither good nor bad, we see our needs as paramount to our survival. However, every actions either moves us closer to God, to redemption, to the messianic period or retards us from these. Every action either improves our inner life or numbs us to our own inner and authentic needs. We have come, as Rabbi Heschel writes about in his book Insecurity of Freedom, to believe our needs are always authentic and the non-fulfillment of them results in mental and emotional upheaval. This is a lie, this is self-deception, this is diametrically opposed to the actions of the men and women who have given “the last full measure” to ensure our freedom, to save our democracy.

Neutral comes from the Latin meaning “neuter gender” which is defined as neither masculine nor feminine in speaking about words and other inanimate objects. People are not inanimate objects, authoritarianism is not an inanimate object, democracy is not an inanimate object. Today we will hear speeches by politicians who believe their need for power, their need for friendship with dictators, their need for control are authentic needs and in having this they are serving the greater good, they are protecting the democracy and freedom our brave men and women fought for and some died for! This is the height of mendacity to me. These same men and women who extol our fallen soldiers, our heroes, are willing to go to the brink of financial collapse rather than pass the debt ceiling bill. They are willing to deny the freedoms that our men and women fought for to ‘those people’ of whom they know don’t want to follow them blindly. Yet, they will lie with reckless abandon to their constituents, they will smile the false smiles of the charlatans.

We are witness’ to “what is first at stake”: the democracy that was founded and passed on to us, the inheritors of the American Revolution. We are witness’s to “what is at first at stake”: the continuation of the freedoms that the Union fought against the Confederacy for. We are witness’ to “what is at first at stake”: the cruelties and atrocities that Hitler and Nazi Germany committed and our response to defeat the Nazi’s and say NO to their cruel ways. Today, on this Memorial Day, we have to be witness’ to “what is first at stake”: justice and freedom for all; the rights enshrined in our Constitution and our Bill of Rights; the rights enshrined in all of the Amendments since; the dignity and value of every individual given to us by God; the call to fight against the mendacity and lies of the neutral, the call to fight against “moral equivalence”!

In recovery, we know that we are only one act away from losing our way, from retarding our progress and falling back into old ways. This is not to say we seek perfection, it is an acknowledgment of our awareness that no action is neutral, every deed has meaning and power, leads us towards ruin or sanctuary, as Rabbi Heschel teaches. We are engaged in a way of living that is responsible and progressive, we are engaged in a way of living that recognizes our foibles, our errors, makes amends, changes our ways. We are living a life of being open to forgiveness from another, forgiveness of another and forgiveness of self.

I learn anew each day of the neutral, I know I am responsible for all of my actions. I am fighting for “what is first at stake” and taking actions and do deeds that help the progression towards redemption. This is how I honor the sacrifice of those who have died so I can live freely. This is how I honor and celebrate Memorial Day each day! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 209

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is first at stake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions pose no less a problem than our passions. The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal with evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (God in Search of Man pg. 383)

Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, reminding us of the root of our what is “wrong and corrupt”: “the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride.” This is a problem that has plagued humanity since our original existence and continues to plague us. Yet, we constantly seek to point our finger at another(s) rather than look at our self. Because we succumb to our own “envy, greed, and pride” and are unwilling to actually deal with the internal issues that bring them into play in our lives, we seek to blame another(s), deny another(s) their rights, their needs, and make ourselves feel good by denigrating another(s).

We can look at our history, we can look at our present day and see how the way we currently “deal with envy, greed, and pride” is leading us to the brink of war, civil and world, to the brink of moral bankruptcy and spiritual disaster. The polarization in America is a direct result of “envy, greed, and pride” not being dealt with well. In fact, it is a direct result of people exploiting these traits in themselves and another(s) to gain power, to keep power, to make anyone ‘not like us’ the enemy. These people have exploited the “envy, greed, and pride” of people so well, they have convinced these people that “those people” are out to get them, that “those people” have to be annihilated, “those people” are stealing your jobs, “those people” are … They have done such a good job that the people following them are willing to go along with ideas, with actions that go against their own self interest in order to engage in their “envy, greed, and pride.”

The party that is currently not in the White House is envious of the power of the Presidency, they are envious of the power of the majority in the Senate, so they will do anything to win these seats of power. When they had control of the Senate and the White House, they installed Justices to the Supreme Court who would be ‘proud christians’ and rule according to their religious beliefs. They appointed people who would do the bidding of the greediest of their flock. Hence basic rights have been lost to women, to minorities, to our democratic way of voting, and, possibly, they may decide that courts rather than scientists/FDA know what is medically best for people! Some states have gone on to redistrict their voting maps so the party in power stays in power. They are using our democratic system to their advantage and to keep authoritarians in power, to keep freedoms and liberty for themselves and not even for the people who vote for them. The denials of governmental aid for medicaid, the denial of immigrants to live in their cities by sending them to ‘blue’ states, the cruelty with which they treat LGBTQ+, people of color, non-Christian people is atrocious, yet they wrap themselves in the flag and claim to be the ‘true Americans’.

We are facing, as humanity always has, a crisis of faith, a crisis of conscience, a crisis of “the neutral”. “Envy, greed, and pride” are issues that we all face, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that we have to deal with these issues, not ignore them. We have to ask ourselves and look at our actions to see if these issues are the ones that are guiding us, if these traits have overpowered us to the point of us being blind and indifferent to them and to the pain, sorrow, cruelty they cause another(s). In the first sentence above, Rabbi Heschel is calling us to account for how we are dealing with “envy, greed, and pride” and I hear him asking if we are aware of how they impact our daily living, how they impact our living well-spiritually and morally.

In recovery, these three are part of the seven deadly sins. We are so aware of the cost of giving into our “envy, greed, and pride” that we do a 10th step/review of our actions each day. We know the insidiousness of these traits, we know how easily we can rationalize giving into them and we know where it leads us and those around us: cruelty, fear, relapse, etc.

“Envy, greed, and pride” plagued me for years, I didn’t know how to deal with them well. Through my recovery, through my mentors, through Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, I deal with them much better, I don’t take them out on another, I find myself being real with me, listening more to my soul and knowing my place and my worth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Year 2 Day 208

The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)

On this day of Shavuot, on this day of revelation, it is important for us to open our hearts, our eyes, our spirits to the truth of Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. It is not only truth, it is also the call we have to pay attention to as well. We are being called to “make the world worthy of redemption” and we have the ability to do this, we have the paths to do this as laid out in our respective faiths, and we have the inner resources to do this-we just have to have the willingness to get beyond our selves, get over our need for control and certainty, let go of our individualism and fill one of our basic needs; to love and be loved, to be part of and to belong to another(s). 

We can do this, we can use the works of our hands, our minds, our mouths, to serve the greater good while still taking care of ourselves. We can “choose life” as Moses exhorts us to in Deuteronomy by feeding our souls as well as our bodies and minds, by using our “rational mind” to serve our “intuitive mind”. We all do many things that “are preparations for ultimate redemption” without being aware of the. When we welcome the stranger as Abraham did, when we care for the needy and poor as we are told 36 times in the Torah to do, when we seek to be part of rather than apart from, when we join together to serve something greater, we are doing “preparations for ultimate redemption.” 

When we are separating one another by racial, gender, sexual orientation we are not making “the world worthy of redemption”, when we seek to gain and hold power for our self-aggrandizement, we are not making “the world worthy of redemption.” When we have one law for the citizen and another for the stranger, when we exploit one another, take advantage of the vulnerabilities of another, we are not making “the world worthy of redemption.” 

Today and every day, we can experience revelation and do our part to bring about redemption. Every day we get to look back on the day before, do our repairs for our ‘missing the marks’ and enhance the myriad of good we created. Each day is a new beginning, we don’t rest on yesterdays achievements nor do we engage in negative self-talk because of yesterday’s errors. We get a ‘do-over’ every day that we have breath within us. We get to grow one grain of sand more each day and we do not have to judge ourselves by our worst behaviors, our worst mistakes. 

Accepting Torah, entering/re-entering a Covenant with God, as we do today, is a statement of hope as well as faith and commitment to action. Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance above calls to us, as the prophets call to us, to take off the blinders we have been wearing, to take the cotton out of our ears, to stop being in fear of being seen, to truly hear God, to see the whole picture that is being revealed and to get into the action of redemptive acts. Today, we take off the masks and facades we have been wearing and hiding behind, today we engage ourselves in the work in front of us, the work only we can do. Today, we start anew to “make the world worthy of redemption” by redeeming another human being with kindness, love, truth, justice and mercy. 

Recovery is a path of redemption that everyone can take! We are recovering our true selves, we are letting go of the lie: “if we live a false self long enough doesn’t it become our true self?” We let go of our need to look good and feel good for the higher need to do good, to do right, to “practice these principles in all our affairs”. In recovery we are taking one day at a time and building a life that is worthy of being redeemed and taking actions that “make the world worthy of redemption.” We know our assent is not linear, it is an ebb and a flow existence, we are aware of our foibles and our strengths, we know we are both animal and angel, we also know we can keep our new commitment and our new vision ‘a day at a time’! 

Since today is Shavuot, I am not writing this today, I am working on being worthy of redemption and helping bring redemption about sooner rather than later. I know i do my part to both retard and move redemption forward. My commitment is to do more of the latter than the former a little more this year. 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 207

“The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)

Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, I ask myself what happened to our commitment to “do and then understand”? I am thinking about Einstein’s quote: “the intuitive mind is a gift, the rational mind a servant. We have come to forget the gift and worship the servant.” While people will pay millions for a piece of art from a famous artist, we will pay $1000’s for seats to our favorite musician, we will also vote for people who want to take music, art, etc from our school curriculums! While we will be in awe of the genius’ like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, et al, we will ignore the genius in ourselves and in so many others. We all have an intuitive mind, call it our inner voice, conscience, spirit, higher consciousness, in us; we will either not hear it, ignore it, and/or override our intuitive mind in favor of the rational mind.. Isn’t it time to celebrate and use the gift of our intuitive mind? Isn’t it time to recommit to our response at Mount Sinai to “do and then understand”?

Our intuitive mind, which I call our ‘knowing’ like our rational mind, needs to be fed, needs to be nurtured, needs to mature and needs to be heard. How often have we said: “I should have known better” or “I knew the right answer and I talked myself out of it”? This is where our rational mind has overridden what we truly know, what our intuitive mind is telling us. Unfortunately, there are not many places where intuitive thinking is taught, where intuitive mind is nurtured, where intuitive mind is listened to even when we speak it. Not only have we forgotten the gift, as Einstein says, we have become afraid of the gift because we will be ridiculed, we will be shunned, we will be ignored by the loud bullies who want to use their rational minds and ours to control us and have power over us. When we engage our intuitive minds, we are no longer subject to the mendacities of another(s) and we no longer engage in self-deception. Our intuitive thinking and acting on it give us a greater understanding and vision of what is and how to “make the world worthy of redemption”.

While we may teach religious education, how to perform rituals, what to celebrate on Holy Days, we are not teaching and nurturing our spiritual essence enough, I believe. When we deny our young people the opportunity to engage in learning in their own way, when we deny the insights and intuitions of our children, we are teaching them to “forget the gift and worship the servant”. When we ignore the wisdom and truth of our spiritual texts and instead see them as rules and have only one way to do them and understand them, we are aiding our own “worship the servant” ways. We need to engage in the wisdom of the Sages; there are 70 ways/faces to the Torah, the Bible. We need to immerse ourselves each year in the study, the essence of the Bible so we can continue to grow our intuitive mind, so we can increase our intuitive learning, our ‘knowing’. We have seen throughout our history and certainly in our time, knowing right from wrong can easily be distorted, the hatred of the Jews throughout history does not come from an intuitive mind, slavery and prejudice against black people did not come from a deep ‘knowing’ what God wants, using the fears and desire to be deceived to make wrong right and right wrong is not the work of our intuitive minds, it is not the actions of people who commit to doing God’s will as we did at Mount Sinai. We are in desperate need of heeding Einstein’s words, we are in desperate need of living into Rabbi Heschel’s teaching. We are in desperate need of integrating our rational mind to serve our intuitive mind, integrating our ‘math brain’ to serve our spiritual ‘knowing’.

This is the goal of recovery, we let go of our need for rationalizing and denying. We ‘join the winning side’ of following a way of living our spiritual principles and grow our ability to hear our intuitive mind, our ‘knowing’ and follow through on them rather than ignore and/or rationalize what we want over what is true and the next right thing to do.

I have always heard my intuitive mind and for a while I ignored it, rationalized it, etc. In my recovery, I have honored it. I am guilty of miscommunication what I ‘know’, I am guilty of being too loud and too brash, too blunt and too abrasive. I know my delivery has been used against me and against truth. I know that I could not rationalize the “usual way”, I could not stand by the injustice, the destruction of goodness that was taking place. I pray that eventually my warnings will be heeded and my ‘knowing’ used to improve our 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 206

“The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)

As the Jewish world prepares to celebrate the Holy Days of Shavuot, the day on which God ‘appeared’ at Mount Sinai and spoke to every one of the people who left Egypt, these words, hopefully, resonate and reverberate. Tomorrow night, Jews around the world will gather to study, to repair ourselves, to get ready to receive the 10 Sayings/commandments once again. Each year we receive Torah, each year we recommit to God’s call to us, each year we say: “Na-aseh V’Nishma”, we will do and then we will understand. Unfortunately, each year we quickly forget all of this and, after we are done celebrating, we go back to our old ways.

Shavuot is not just a holiday, it is a Holy Day, a day of recognition, a day of commitment, a moment of choice. We are called to do more than hear the words of the 10 Sayings/commandments, we are called to act on them. We are called to  acknowledge that God is God and we are not! We are called to remember we were “brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” God’s “mighty hand and outstretched arm” was not a one and done experience, God is always reaching for us, always calling to us, always waiting for our reconnection. Yet, we seem to be unable to follow through on what we heard at Mount Sinai and continue to hear each day. The Talmud says that God cries out each night for   us because we have put ourselves in exile from God. While many people wonder where is God, in any situation, God’s question is: “Where are you?”

Our technology, our hubris, our inability to live with uncertainty, our rational minds, our search for power and prestige, wealth and security have led us to where we are today; separate from God, deaf to God’s call, and unable/unwilling to “make the world worthy of redemption.” Whether it is the election of leaders who care only about weaponizing Government, who only care about tearing down our democratic process’ for their own power and gain, whether it is people who blindly and willingly follow their baser instincts and drives, whether it is our seemingly incessant need for self-deception and being deceived by another(s), we continue to mouth the words of faith, we continue to preach the ‘word of God’ and, like our ancestors, continue to fail in the doing and understanding of God’s call to us at Mount Sinai, throughout the Bible, God’s call to us today, and we keep hiding from “God’s Search for Man”!

Isn’t it time for us to let go of our old ways? Isn’t it time for us to actually follow through on both God’s call and our response? Isn’t it time to surrender to God’s will rather than try and make our will God’s will? Isn’t it time for all of us to actualize “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”? Does Jim Jordan really want the hatred and lies he spreads, the venom he puts out done to him? Does Mitch McConnell want the Supreme Court politically packed against him? Yet, we find ourselves unable to live into the words of Jesus and the words of Rabbi Hillel who said: “what is hateful to you, do not do unto another”. We seem to be unable to “Na-Aseh V’Nishma”, do and then understand these truths, these ways of being that we hold up as dear and holy. We seem to speak the words of God and act in direct opposition to them. And while people wonder why the Redeemer hasn’t shown up, where is God; I suggest that in our present state we would not recognize the Messiah, the Redeemer and maybe she/he has been here and we ignored the message and the opportunity to be redeemed!

In recovery, redemption is a foundational goal and action. All of the steps, all of our actions point towards our making ourselves “worthy of redemption”. We “Came to believe a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity”. Sanity, in this context for me, is the awareness and knowledge of God’s call and our actualizing taking the actions that we are directed and then understanding and experiencing the redemption God’s grace gives us.

I have erred in making “the world worthy of redemption” at times and I have heard the call of God and taken the actions that have made no sense to me only to understand the depths of knowledge and joy that come with them. I continue to immerse myself in life, I continue to ask: “what is the question this experience is the answer to”, “what is the action I am being called to” and “what have I learned today”. I live into the challenges of my life, the challenges of being alive, the challenges of making “the world worthy of redemption” a little more each day and I pray we all do 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 205

“The world is in need of redemption, but the redemption must not be expected to happen as an act of sheer grace. Man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption. His faith and his works are preparations for ultimate redemption.” (God in Search of Man pg. 380)

OY! Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is so appropriate for the times we find ourselves in right now. While I believe redemption is an act of grace, it is not “an act of sheer grace”, as Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above reminds us, we have “to make the world worthy of redemption.” It would be great if someone, ie Elijah the Prophet, the Messiah, could/would come and make everything wonderful, cause a world-wide redemption, according to Jewish wisdom and experience, this is not going to happen on it’s own.

It is a radical statement to many; “man’s task is to make the world worthy of redemption”, yet whether Christian or Jew, we realize that Jesus, Moses, Torah, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, all speak of the ways we humans have to act. In the Hassidic tradition, Reb Moshe Sassov of Leib says: “If you treat the person next to you as the Messiah, you will come to watch your words and your hands. If he/she chooses not to reveal her/himself, it will not matter.” Maimonides, the famous Medieval philosopher, wrote about a messianic era, where we change our ways so the Messiah can come and be heard, so we are worthy of redemption.

We do not seem to be doing so well in this regard right now. We are still suffering from our moral infection and we seem to have turned it into a moral pandemic, as I wrote earlier. We have made the world more unworthy of redemption, believing we can do whatever we choose and be exempt from the consequences of our actions. Our Climate Crisis is an example, climate change is undeniable, yet many people want to deny it, want to carry causing the problem to get greater because of their comfort, their denial, their pandering to the baser instincts of themselves and another(s).

“Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall men learn war anymore”(Isaiah 2:4) is not just a nice saying, it is not just a wonderful tune in the Hebrew, it is God’s dream, God’s demand, God’s call to all of us to lay down our weapons, to stop the seemingly endless and cruel ways of war. We are witnesses and participants to not just the war in Ukraine, Russia’s attempt at an unadulterated land grab, we are witnesses to politics being a battlefield for power, not for the people. We are witnesses and participants  to the rich using a myriad of weapons to keep their money and not pay their fair share of taxes and help redeem their brethren, their neighbors, their fellow citizens and the strangers they don’t know. We are witnesses and participants to the hatred and vitriol brought about because of mendacity and permission to oppress anyone ‘not like me’. We are witnesses and participants to the opposite of what Isaiah says in the same verse above, we are turning plowshares into swords and pruning hooks into spears. We are witnesses and participants in making the world less safe, more ruthless and being held hostage to the lunacy and indecency of a few.

The Republicans in Congress who are holding our credit hostage are so full of it, it is inconceivable to me that more people are not calling their hypocrisy out. They say we have to be responsible financially, yet they approved the spending that we causes the debt, they are now saying not to pay for what we already spent while berating people who are in default over their enormous student loans! This is taking personal responsibility? This is the way these ‘good christian folk’ believe Jesus would act and this is what they believe will bring about the ‘second coming of Christ’? As Pete Seeger asked in 1955, “when will they ever learn?”

In recovery, we have laid down our weapons of mass destruction, we have put down our swords and our spears, we work each and every day to turn them into the tools we need to live well, to live decently, to live responsibly, to live according to the will of God and not the will of our demons, our negativity. The only requirement for membership in recovery is a desire to lay down our guns, our knives, our lies, our deceptions, and rebuild our lives according to the principles that will make us worthy to be redeemed. Just as prayer will not redeem us, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, it will only make us worthy of redemption, in recovery, we know our actions are towards the goal of “trudging the road to happy destiny”, it is a slog and we are committed to slog it out together. 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 204

“The problem of living does not begin with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes. The problem of living begins with the realization that all of us blunder in our dealings with our fellow man. The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent, are the true seat of moral infection.” (God in Search of Man pg.383)

The moral pandemic we are in the throes of, I believe, stems from our indifference to the dignity and humanity of people who are ‘not like us’. We are so used to seeing the differences, seeing the threats, believing the lies we tell ourselves, the deceptions of another(s), blaming anyone and everyone else for what ails us, we have become indifferent to the divine dignity and worth of each and every human being, no matter race, color, creed, religion, ethnicity. Society has used mendacity and ‘proof’ to help us continue and grow our “moral infection.” There is no place in the Bible that says Black people are inferior to white people, yet, we have made Jesus white, we have made every ‘hero’ white in order to make our treatment of black people as inferior, as slaves,  a ‘divine’ right. Our need to subjugate another person to our will, not God’s will, is a foundational part of our “moral infection.” Pharaoh was told: “Let My People Go” and he was unable to rid himself of his “moral infection” which led to his people being drowned in the Red Sea. While the plagues seem harsh to our modern senses, they were the consequences of the “moral infection” of the Egyptians. How do each of us practice some form of inferior/superior relationship in our thoughts, our actions towards another human being?

“Alternative facts” is another sign of our “moral infection”. Facts are, we can interpret them in many different ways and that is normal and important. Just as the Torah has 70 faces, (there are 70 ways to understand each verse) no one can claim to have “the only way”, so too can there be only one story, one Torah, one Bible (Hebrew and New). When we engage in these alternative facts, we are engaging in mendacity, we are engaging in the silent atrocities of deception and using the vulnerabilities of another against them. We are being indifferent to the evil we are perpetrating, we are calling evil good and good evil. All in the name of “being right”, all in the name of “winning”. We all engage in alternative facts when we deny the “blunder in our dealings with our fellow man”. We all engage in alternative facts when we are part of the “the secret scandals” that we are hiding for ourselves and/or for another(s). We read the Torah and the Bible each year, some each day, we pray each day, yet we are unwilling to face the truth, the wisdom, the call, the demand of God with our opaqueness. We are being called to not only be transparent, we are being called to open ourselves up so the diamond that is our soul, our being can be like a prism and shine light, reflect and refract the light of God, the light of our self, and the light of another human being.

Another sign of our “moral infection” is the ways we treat one another. When we see people in need as a threat, when we see people who are different than us as threats, when we witness the cruelty of the taskmasters who want to punish another race, another gender, another… for the sheer joy of power, for the sheer enjoyment of their ‘friends and base’; we are deep into our “moral infection”. When we are lying to one another in order to get ahead, when we deny the truth, when we spin things so much that they no longer have any foundation in reality and truth, we become so deep in our “moral infection” that we believe we are the morally healthy ones! When we take advantage of loopholes and then deny another from using them, ie affirmative action, when we engage in retribution for the slights we have experience, real or imagined, we are in our “moral infection.” When we fail to hear the call of the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy, the stranger, we are deep in our “moral infection.”

Healing our “moral infection” is what recovery is all about. “Practicing these principles in all our affairs” describes the move from being sober to being in recovery. Our addiction is no longer in charge, our “moral infection” is being healed and we have taken inventory and stock of ourselves and how to live as better human beings by making our amends, changing our paths of living, no longer living in secret nor silence.

I have been making my amends by the way I continue to live free, live in truth, live without resentment. I live in wonder, radical amazement, gratitude and love. I am, at times, hurt by another, bewildered by the hate in the world and the hate towards me, and I have learned to accept rather than retaliate, to speak my truth, rather than continue the lies, be responsible for my part and leave another to be responsible for theirs-whether they do or not, is up to them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 203

“The problem of living does not begin with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes. The problem of living begins with the realization that all of us blunder in our dealings with our fellow man. The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent, are the true seat of moral infection.” (God in Search of Man pg.383)

We are in the throes of a moral infection, a moral pandemic if you will, right now. We have so many events bombarding our sense of morality, our sense of spirituality, our sense of what being human actually entails. While it is both fair game and an easy target to rail about the politicians who want to bastardize the word of God, who want to be as unmerciful, unwelcoming, unholy as possible while wrapping themselves in the flag of the US and in the name of Christ, it is more important, correct, and holy to look at us, the people who have empowered them, the people who support them, the people who have been either willfully blind to them and/or indifferent to what they were/are doing.

It is time for us to engage in some redemptive inner work, whether you call it confession, t’shuvah, amends, or some other practice, and we have to do it throughly, fearlessly, in truth, transparency, and authentically. We have to take the blinders off, we have to stop our indifference, stop making our self more important than God’s will, than the plight of another human being, than the fate of our democracy. The experiment called the United States is only 247 years old, it has so many possibilities for growth and we, the people should not be indifferent to what so many have given so we can be free, or at least freer than any other country on earth. Yet, we, the people, have been asleep while some autocrats, some wealthy people, some liars and deceivers have been at work to undermine our morality, to undermine our freedoms, to undermine our ability to discern that we have a moral infection.

We have been asleep for a long time and did not watch what was happening with our Supreme Court and our laws. We have been blind to what the far right, the UnChristian Right, UnChristian Nation, UnAmerica Firsts, have been planning and implementing to stop free and fair elections, to end a woman’s right to choose, to deny freedom of expression to anyone not like them. We have been indifferent to the calls for moral leadership, for spiritual practices to be lived out, for congruence between our faith and our actions, for adherence to our constitution rather than a dismantling of same. We have been indifferent to the calls and cries of those less fortunate, we have been deaf to the screams of the powerless and voiceless, we have been too busy ‘getting ahead’ to care for the stranger, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the needy. We have abdicated our morals and contributed to the “moral infection” that is pandemic size right now.

It is not too late, however, to admit our wrongs, to do the t’shuvah, the confession, the amends to reset our compass, morally and spiritually. It is not too late to take off the blinders we have worn so comfortably, it is not too late to shake off the indifference we have engaged in. It is not too late to get into action. Rabbi Heschel teaches “A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of faith”, because as we all know, “faith without works is dead”. We have to respond to the call of God that we hear through our prayers and meditations, the call of God we hear through our study of Rabbi Heschel, Rev King, St.Francis, Pastor Niebuhr, the prophets, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed. We have to respond to the call of God that we hear from the poor, the needy, the stranger, the powerless, the voiceless. These are the “leaps of action” that are needed right now. It is time to take our own inventory instead of taking someone else’s. It is time to make amends for our part instead of blaming someone else. It is time for us to repair the damage to our souls, to our spiritual health and repair the damage we have done to another’s soul. It is time!

In my recovery, living into the principles of recovery, I find the nuances of my actions becoming clearer and clearer. I do not blame anyone for my life, I do give a lot of credit for what I do well to God, to Rabbi Heschel, to Dr. Susannah Heschel to my father, to the teachings of Torah, to Rabbi Feinstein, to my family, to Harriet. I continue to spread the word through my teaching, my living, my being of service. I  also do not blame anyone else for anything ‘bad’ that has happened to me, I own my part, do my t’shuvah, and pray for those people that need me to be ‘the bad guy’. I ask God and another for forgiveness each day, I heal my “moral infection” each day through this writing and I am grateful to all who read and hear 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 202

“The problem of living does not begin with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes. The problem of living begins with the realization that all of us blunder in our dealings with our fellow man. The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent, are the true seat of moral infection.” (God in Search of Man pg.383)

The prophets were railing against and warning us about “the silent atrocities, the secret scandals” and we ignored them when they lived and we ignore them now-at our own peril. Humanity is in distress, we have forgotten what it means to be human, as Rabbi Heschel says often. We are in the throes of a spiritual malady that has ebbed and flowed throughout the history of humankind. This spiritual malady is indifference to our own blunders “in our dealings with our fellow man”, willful blindness to our own blunders, and even, purposeful blunders/deceptions in dealing with one another. The root of this spiritual malady is our desire to be “masters of the universe”, our inability to acknowledge a power greater than ourselves, our belief that “God is on our side”. We see this in the political, the social, the religious, and even the spiritual realms of living today as we have throughout history.

It seems as if this spiritual malady is passed down, generation to generation and we applaud people like Michelangelo, Cicero, Jeremiah, Da Vinci, for their art and their words without ever truly taking in the meaning and the message of their words and their art. When the showing the statue of David from the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, gets a teacher fired, when speaking of the history of slavery and how the southern plantation owners used slave labor to line their pockets with profits is banned, when books on the Holocaust are banned, all in the name of God, of Christianity, of decency, we are deep in the throes of a spiritual malady. When truth is sacrificed for power and control, when decency is sacrificed for winning, when mercy is sacrificed for popularity, we are deep in the throes of a spiritual malady.

In our churches, our temples, our synagogues, our mosques we hear the lies of ‘come to us, we have all the answers’, ‘come to us and find inner peace’ and other such poppycock. When our clergy, our spiritual leaders are preaching and/or teaching the “one solution” run away from them. Life is complicated, life is messy, life is full of blunders “in dealing with our fellow man”. Yet, too many people want to reduce life to a series of equations. Some people can’t believe in a power greater than themselves because of the evil in the world, some people believe that success is God’s way of showing one is a favorite and failure is a sign God doesn’t love you as much as God loves the favorites! Being rich, poor, middle class is not a sign of God’s love or disdain. This is an example of the spiritual malady affecting all of us. Jews were called to spread the words of Torah so everyone would have a framework to live within and live by; so we all would be aware of “the silent atrocities, the secret scandals” humanity is capable of and prevent ourselves from pursuing them. Jews were called upon to hear the words of Moses, the teachings of the prophets, learn the stories of the Bible as real life experiences that are common to all humanity; jealousy, competition, comparison, theft, thirst for power, doing whatever one wants, going through the motions, etc, as well as mercy, kindness, connection, covenantal love, caring for one another, joy for the success of another human being, sharing the wealth, living justly and being in truth. We are called to do T’shuvah, inventory, each and every day so we can recognize the ways we drift from our path of living well, repair the damage and course correct our way of life. The sad news is most people do not do this. This spiritual malady is so strong, so overpowering, and so blinding that many people fail to allow their Rosarys, their Prayers, their Mitzvahs, their actions to change their inner life, like the Priests at the time of the Prophets and the destruction of the two Temples, many people go through the motions, go through the Bible and never have either go through them!

I am guilty of blunders “in dealing with” people, I am guilty of missing the mark, I am guilty of “silent atrocities and secret scandals”. I can take solace in my T’Shuvahs for these actions, I can take pride in the lessons I have learned from them, and I have much gratitude for the spiritual healing I have received from God and so many people through the years. I live out loud today, I live transparent today, as I have throughout my recovery. I practice a spiritual discipline so I don’t fall into the old patterns and I recognize when I drift from the path quicker each year. I am learning to live with sadness and pain without lashing out as I have in the past. I am grateful for everything I have, even my sadness and pain, my troubles and my wonderful life.   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 201

“The problem of living does not begin with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes. The problem of living begins with the realization that all of us blunder in our dealings with our fellow man. The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent, are the true seat of moral infection.” (God in Search of Man pg.383)

Throughout the history of humankind, these words of wisdom have been ignored and dismissed. This truth has been spoken by Moses, by the Prophets, by the Rabbis, by Christ, by Buddha, by Confucius, etc. Now we hear them again from Rabbi Heschel, some 58 years ago and we still ignore and dismiss them. In our misguided, mendacious belief that perfection is the goal and an attainable goal. Buying into the philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome (both civilizations having been destroyed) we engage in self-defeating actions, give a home to the cancerous actions of atrocities and scandals towards another human being and help spread the “moral infection” that is so rampant right now, as it has been during other times in history.

Elon Musk believes he has the right to his Anti-Semitic opinions and to express them publicly and loudly. He believes his ways of being are the example for all people, he is sure that he is always right, always perfect in everything he does and it is everyone else who is screwing things up. He was called, “the Henry Ford” of our generation-an apt description given Henry Ford’s anti-semitic spreading of the “elders of Zion protocols” and other anti-semitic tropes and behaviors. At the same time, Republican lawmakers are trampling on the 1st Amendment rights of teachers, parents, students, etc through banning books, deciding what the history of the United States should be, rather than teaching and learning from our past they are trying to whitewash it, making life and death medical decisions for women and believing they know more that the FDA. Rather than be responsible for the bills we have run up under both Republican and Democratic leadership, rather than helping the poor and the needy, rather than welcoming the stranger, they want to push us to the brink of defaulting on our word. Rather than both sides of the aisle admit “that all of us blunder in our dealing with our fellow man” they blame one another. Where is the taking of personal responsibility that is called for so often when caring for the poor, the needy and the stranger? What is preventing Kevin McCarthy from agreeing to a “Clean debt ceiling bill” and then arguing and compromising on spending for the next budget? What would he be saying if Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats had tried to extort his fearless leader and the man he bows down to; Donald Trump? He would have called it blaspheme, he would have called it a sin against god since he believes that god is with whomever has the gold, the power.

While I am pointing out some of the rascals of our time, I am using current events to show how pedestrian our blunders are, how we ignore them with our self-deceptions, with our clean-ups, with our rationalizations. We find so many ways to ignore the blunders “in our dealing with our fellow man” precisely because we want to have power over another, we want to seem like we are in control, like the rules do not apply to us. Even our Judges lean into their politics rather than lean into the constitution and the law nowadays. Their defense of impropriety, of hiding, of ‘if I do it, it must be okay’ is sad and dangerous. People looking for every loophole to validate their blunders, using the blunders and vulnerabilities of another against them are them are being extolled and proudly proclaim their blunders “in their dealing with our fellow man.” Rabbi Heschel is calling to us, he did during the ‘best of times’ under Ike and during today’s longing for the ‘good old days’ of Father Coughlin, Christian Nation, America First’s promoted by Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, et al. Will we hear the call?

Recovery is all about hearing the call. Whether from a power greater than ourselves, from a family member, from a Judge, a police person, an eskimo/friend, from deep in our soul,  we come into recovery because of hearing a call. We quickly begin to move from defending our blunders to realizing them. We become aware of our errors in judgement and our errors in deeds, we slowly come to the realization that our way is not the only way nor necessarily the best way. We become teachable and we exchange the glasses of doom, blame, shame for a new pair through which we see possibility, responsibility, imperfection, community, and the truth of needing another(s) human being and being needed by another(s) human being. In recovery, our realization “that all of us blunder in our dealings with our fellow man” is seen as a relief and a challenge, not a defect nor something to hide. 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 200

“The more deeply immersed I become in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. It also became clear to me that in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty while all our responsible.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 225)

I was moving on to another piece of wisdom from Rabbi Heschel today, but, I am stuck on these sentences with all that is going on in our country right now. Kevin McCarthy is claiming that his Republican led House of Representatives passed a debt-ceiling increase bill knowing that the whole story is the that bill adds to “the suffering of human beings” and “that in regard to the cruelties committed in the name of a free society” they are guilty and all of us are responsible. The bill he and his cruel cronies passed would harm the people who need assistance most while ensuring that big Pharma, uber-wealthy people and corporations save more and the gap grows. His own constituents, both in his area of California and throughout the Red States would be negatively impacted-yet he says with a straight face he is helping the “average American”. Ron DeSantis’ war on people who are not white like him, not Christian like him seems to know no boundaries. He is against truth, he is against giving medical care to people who need it unless they tow his line, he is against a woman’s right to choose, he is against the idea of redemption. DeSantis, in his christian view, must believe he “is without sin” because he keeps “casting stones” at people who he has decided are less than he is. How does one go to Church, read the Gospels, pray to the Virgin Mary and hate the very people Christ served, the very people Christ lived among? Yet, he is considered the best choice to unseat Trump as the head of the Republican Party!

I am not speaking about the politics of these people, I am speaking of their morality and their spiritual sickness. I am immersed in the words of Rabbi Heschel above and keep being bewildered at the callousness and cruelty of people in leadership positions, of people who support the Neo-Nazi/White Supremacists who marched in Washington DC over the weekend. I am enraged that Sen. Tommy Tuberville would admit that MAGA Republicans are white supremacists and be proud of it, that Marjorie Taylor Greene has a lie to tell about someone other than herself as to what ails us as a country.

I am saddened by the inability of people to be in dialogue with one another. I experience the spiritual ailments of people unable to hear facts and deny them. I am seeking ways to help heal the isolation and anger that is rampant right now in the way people ignore one another, in the ways we find more and more to ignore “the sufferings of human beings”. I am in search of promoting ways to live life “the prophets sought to convey.” We are in desperate need of returning to the ways of the Bible, the lessons of the Bible, the path of return laid out in the Bible. God wants our return, we say everyday 3 times in our prayers. God implants knowledge within us and demands we care for the “sufferings of human beings” not add to them. Each and every day we are supposed to do T’Shuvah, an inventory of our day-good and not good; repair the damage/harm from the not good and enhance the good on the next day; and make a plan how to grow from our successes and our failures, ie fail forward. God wants our return, God wants our goodness, God needs us to treat one another well, God calls each of us to account and responsibility and we have to answer Hineni-Here I Am! Standing idly by the blood of our neighbor/brother/sister is an example of how co-responsible we are for one another!

In recovery, we do our 10th step each night. Each morning we write out a gratitude list, we pray for guidance and the strength to carry the guidance out. We have to be of service so we don’t sink into the selfishness of our past, we have to be vulnerable so we can learn more and be more authentic. We have to be responsible for another alcoholic who is suffering so we don’t lose our humanity. These are some of the ways people in recovery live Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above.

I have to be vulnerable in order to be grateful, I have to be grateful for the bounty I enjoy. Gratitude and vulnerability, responsibility for “the cruelties committed” by my fellows gives me the impetus and the sight to right the wrongs, to lift up the fallen, to be a light to another, to love more and resent less. Without responsibility there is no recovery, there is no T’Shuvah, there is no forgiveness given by me and/or by God and/or by anyone else. 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 199

“The more deeply immersed I become in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. It also became clear to me that in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty while all our responsible.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 225)

Witnessing what is happening in our world right now, knowing the history of humankind, we need to live into both Rabbi Heschel’s words and actions more rather than less! Whether it is extolling choking a person to death on a subway, mass shootings, holding the nation’s economy hostage so as to reduce the aid we give to those less fortunate, engaging in mendacity, holding sham hearings, we are in a state of being where we are ignoring “what the lives of the prophets sought to convey.” Humankind has the erroneous idea that perfection is the goal and we deny our foibles, our imperfections. We hide them from ourselves, we defend them as right and true to another(s), we live lives of dis-integration and take our angst over imperfect natures out on another(s) so as to feel good about ourselves. We are missing the wisdom, the demand of Rabbi Heschel, the call of the prophets and the will of God to be responsible. Without responsibility there is no integration of the self. We have seemingly opposing inclinations by design and we seek to deny this inner struggle by looking good, defending what we do wrong and not being responsible for our errors. This is a denial of what it means to be human, hence we continue to commit cruelties “in the name of a free society.”

Using the Torah, Jesus’ words, any of the Eastern philosophies, we see that imperfection is the permanent state of humanity. The goal of these spiritual paths is to be responsible for and to our imperfections, to stop the war within ourselves that we fight because we mistake our inclinations being at war with one another rather than realizing they compliment one another. Our good/divine inclination keeps us striving to hear and respond to the demand of ‘what is the next right action to take and to be responsible for our errors and our successes in this endeavor. Our evil/earthly inclination is the power and force to fulfill this demand and to stop hiding from ourselves and another(s), to be in action and learn from our errors and our victories. Living into a spiritual discipline, going to therapy, are to help us to integrate our inclinations and have them work together. Our challenge is to serve something greater than our self, our ego and in doing so, we realize our ability to stop the war within, to rise above our need for certainty and perfection and live into, as Rabbi Harold Shulweis taught, being Godly.

We are so lost in denial, in irresponsibility, in shame and blame, in dis-integration, in spiritual sickness, we have come to believe that bitter is sweet, that hiding is transparency, that kicking the poor, the needy, the stranger is actually caring for them, that might makes right, that mendacity is truth. Without being responsible for all that is happening in our lives individually and collectively, we stay stuck in doing the opposite of “what the lives of the prophets sought to convey.” We shirk our responsibility for what is happening, we ignore “the sufferings of human beings” rather than have concern for them. We actually hear people deny their cruelties towards one another, we witness the degradation of human beings and stay silent, we wring our hands rather than standing up for one another, rather than “thou shall surely rebuke thy neighbor”. To “love thy neighbor as thyself” we must be responsible for one another, we must be responsible to integrate our inclinations, we must stop the blame/shame cycle, we must embrace our imperfections and improve our self each and every day.

In recovery, while we don’t take one another’s inventory, we help one another live better, learn to accept our imperfections. While we pray for the removal of “every defect of character” we also acknowledge it is going to take our inner work to transform these “defects of character” into character assets. Our recovery stands on the foundation of being responsible and learning to live an integrated life.

I look at my life continually. I do the best I can in every interaction and there are times when my vision is clouded and I have been dis-integrated, causing more harm than good. I know this, I make amends for these moments, I learn to improve, be more integrated in my inner life, and I know integration in some areas has come very slowly. I seek to be responsible for my actions and the actions of another. I know Rabbi Heschel’s words are the path forward, concern for the suffering of human beings, including ourselves and being responsible and healing the cruelties we perpetrate are the only ways to heal our selves and our 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 198

“The more deeply immersed I become in the thinking of the prophets, the more powerfully it became clear to me what the lives of the prophets sought to convey: that morally speaking there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. It also became clear to me that in regard to cruelties committed in the name of a free society, some are guilty while all our responsible.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 225)

While progress is the hallmark of a healthy society/civilization, Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above reminds us of the need to use our past to make progress, to move forward in our care and concern for one another and for ourselves. Blame and shame are the enemies of responsibility and when we immerse ourselves “in the thinking of the prophets” we can move past both of these to being responsible for our part of each and every situation. As I immerse myself in the wisdom above, I am certain that being responsible is the path to healing the inner turmoil every human being experiences and moving us to a healthier and better society. While we learn to lie and deny from a young age because we are afraid of punishment, afraid of embarrassment, this is not a sustainable way of living well. Blaming of another for our foibles is how we stay stuck in the past, how we limit our human connection, how we shirk our responsibility, how we mislead ourselves into thinking we are safe.

Responsibility begins at home. It starts within ourselves. The Bible gives the examples of people who take responsibility for their actions, good and not good, as well as showing us what happens when we don’t take responsibility for our actions and for ourselves. Adam hides, he blames Eve, and he is sent out of the Garden of Eden until he can learn how to be responsible and teach responsibility to his children/descendants. Cain denies his crime and is sent to wander,Isaac goes along with the subterfuge of Rebecca and Jacob and when he hears Esau’s cry for a blessing, he still blames Jacob rather than admit his part in the theft. The Israelites learn how to do T’Shuvah, how to be responsible, how to admit their part in the various errors they make learning how to be free people. King David gives us the lesson of, after hearing of his crime, admits and repents.

It is crucial for us to be responsible for our part in every interaction; the good we do as well as the not good we do. Nothing is ever 100% our fault nor our doing. It truly takes a village to make things happen, good and not good. Witnessing what is happening in the world and our country right now, the return to authoritarianism, the return to false interpretations of spiritual truths, the bastardization of “what the lives of the prophets sought to convey”, we, the people, have to be responsible for the parts we play in the meanness, the vitriol, the selfishness, the deceptions, the mendacity that is plaguing us. It is not ‘just their fault’, we have a part and we must examine ourselves before we blame another. While I can and do rail about the charlatans, I also look within myself to be responsible for how I have allowed, through indifference, being too busy to notice, staying in my own silo, these deceivers to take such a strong hold on our society, on our government, on our daily discourse. Until we take personal responsibility, any solution we dream up will never truly work for long-term change. As a witness and participant to the progress of the Civil Rights movement in the 60’s, because people themselves could not be responsible for their prejudices, could not do T’Shuvah/Amends for their evil actions, the progress was only temporary, there was not sustainable change and movement so everyone could declare victory over our innate desires to blame, shame and rule over another group of people.

In recovery, the 10th step of AA is to “continue to take personal inventory and promptly admit when we are wrong”. This is the responsibility that all of us in recovery have to take in order to be in recovery. Our old ways of blaming, denying, shaming don’t work, they are antithetical to living well, to living a life of service, to living a life dedicated to principles, to spirituality, to something greater than ourselves.

I rail against the lies, the indifference, the refusal to learn from our past, for the Torah, from the prophets, etc that I engage in as well as those another engages in. I see the subtle ways I have been indifferent to the call of God, the call of people both before and since my spiritual awakening. I also know there is no perfection, only progress. What is most important is that I continue to seek the truth within me, I continue to hear the truth from another(s) so I can be one grain of sand better each day. Being responsible means my flaws no longer define me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark