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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 44

“The Almighty has not created the universe that we may have opportunities to satisfy our greed, envy, and ambition. We have not survived that we may waste our years in vulgar vanities. The martyrdom of millions demands that we consecrate ourselves to the fulfillment of God’s dream of salvation.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

“We have not survived that we may waste our years in vulgar vanities” hopefully, causes us to take a pause and do an accounting of the way we are living. While this was originally written in 1938, it was updated in 1943 and modified for publication in 1954. Rabbi Heschel is, of course, speaking of “the martyrdom” of both the soldiers who fought and died in WWII as well as the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis and the millions killed in the Concentration Camps and innocent civilians killed by the bombings and battles it took to defeat Germany, Italy, Japan. He was seeing the forgetfulness of humanity and the willful blindness of people so they could ignore the horrors and ‘go on with their lives’, I believe.

This has been the way of humankind forever, unfortunately. We go through life-changing world events and then, in our search for certainty, in our desire to not learn from past failures/mistakes, we believe we can ‘just pick up where we left off’. Yet, so many soldiers came back changed from WWII, for Korea, from Vietnam, from the myriad of wars and skirmishes in the Middle East, the 2 Gulf wars, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without the rest of us helping them to recover from these traumas, with most people thinking, including the soldiers themselves, ‘lets just move on’. So, we have watched history repeat itself, we have witnessed terrorists become ‘freedom fighters’, we have ignored the root causes of the wars and conflicts believing we can just return to wasting “our years in vulgar vanities”. How sad, how treacherous, how demeaning to those who survived and those who died. It is time for all of us to end our desire to “waste our years in vulgar vanities”, to cease and desist from our engagement with self-centered and selfish goals to ‘get ours’, our denial of the rights of every person to live free from terror, our need to enslave another people, our belief that if we can put someone else down we will seem better, the “win at all costs” mentality which permeates our world view.

We see the subtlety of this way of being in the ways the Congress of the United States is operating; what it takes to fund the government, how some of the members of Congress refuse to do their job to help the poor, the needy, to welcome the stranger, to send aid and comfort to our allies in their fight for their own freedom from the terrorists of Russia, Hamas, Iran, ISIS, etc. We see how they fight with one another over stupid shit, how they “waste their years” in Congress “in vulgar vanities”. They are not “humble servants” here to aid and serve the greater good, they are selfish, “vulgar” people kissing up to their wealthy donors and shitting down on every one eel. They could care less what their constituents want, what they need, they only care about their getting elected and holding power so they can line their own egos and pockets. This is true for our many members of our government and governments all over the world.

It is time for us to face truth, to face ourselves, to look at the “man in the glass” as the poem says. We have the power, the urge, the spiritual strength to end our “vulgar vanities”, we just have to surrender to something greater than ourselves. This is the issue: Are we willing to serve the Almighty, are we willing to serve the universe, are we willing to serve the spiritual needs of ourselves and everyone else? Are we going to continue to wrap ourselves in the cloaks of ‘self-righteousness’, the cloaks of ‘we are the only ones who are right’, the cloaks of ‘needing to blame another and make everyone who doesn’t think the way we do bad’? Are we going to put up with Trump’s calling anyone who doesn’t agree with him “vermin”? Are we going to allow the Freedom Caucus to hold up our governmental business? Are we going to allow Tuberville to hold up the necessary Military appointments for his own right-wing craziness? Are we going to stand idly by while Hamas puts out false propaganda and blame Israel for the war in Gaza? Are we going to only call for a cease fire by the Israelis again while the hostages are not seen, nor checked on, not returned? Are we going to abandon the people who have stood by us so we can feel good about ‘helping the underdog’ who have allowed terrorists to rule them, to speak for them with their rockets, who have denied them any help while making themselves rich and famous in Qatar? There are a myriad of “vulgar vanities” we seem to “waste our years in.”

Recovery is the solution, the revolution we need in this moment. Just as the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Living, Confucius’ teachings were all revolutionary, we need to re-join the revolution of recovery, spiritual recovery. Whether one’s recovery is based on the Biblical teachings of the prophets and Moses, Jesus’ Gospels, Mohammed’s revelations, Buddhist teachings, AA spirituality, being rebels for service, being a rebel for the sake of a power greater than ourselves, being rebels who see the dignity, worth, uniqueness of every human being, is the goal. These paths entail a deep look inside ourselves, a decision to no longer “waste our years in vulgar vanities”. Living a life of faith, of spirit is letting go of our need to be right, our need to live in hierarchies, our need to be ‘king of the world’-that job is taken by our Higher Power/God. I have been a rebel for most of my life, prior to recovery I rebelled against everything and in my recovery I rebel for the greater good, for the sake of another, for caring for me and you. Isn’t it time to honor the Martyrs who made it possible for us to live free? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 43

“The Almighty has not created the universe that we may have opportunities to satisfy our greed, envy, and ambition. We have not survived that we may waste our years in vulgar vanities. The martyrdom of millions demands that we consecrate ourselves to the fulfillment of God’s dream of salvation.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

Rabbi Heschel is calling all of us to account! While it is easy to point the finger at another human being, another group of people, we have to first, as I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning, look at ourselves. Each of us has to engage in an accounting of our souls and answer the question we are being asked: how are we engaging in satisfying “our greed, envy, and ambition”? We have created a society where these negative attributes have taken on a life all their own. We hide behind our ‘righteousness’, our ‘goodness’, our ‘fulfillment of self’ while engaging in self-centered actions. We manipulate what is true, good, right for our own needs/benefits. We live inauthentic lives and call our selves good. This has been true throughout the history of humankind and we are witnessing this mendacity over and over again in our society, in our countries, in our neighborhoods.

The war against the terrorist organization, Hamas, has become a cause celebre for the left and the right. It has, once again, exposed the underbelly of antisemitism that never seems to leave the consciousness of the world and people. While the numbers being quoted out of Gaza are all from Hamas, while the reports from journalists are probably true with the caveat that they cannot report the whole truth or they will be killed by Hamas, the world and the media report them as absolutely true. While many of the marchers for ‘free Palestine’ may have very good intentions, they are unaware, hopefully, of the antisemitic phrases they are using, they are unaware, hopefully, of the aid and comfort they are giving to terrorists, to Iran, to Russia, to authoritarians across the world. This is not a war between Judaism and Islam, this is not a war against a powerful Israel against a poor downtrodden, oppressed minority, this is a war against terrorism, this is a war against evil, this is a war against the “greed, envy, and ambition” of Hamas because Israeli society has flourished while they have siphoned off the money being given to the people of Gaza for their own purposes, because the leaders of Hamas live in luxury in Qatar, because the leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority have lined their pockets instead of building rich, wonderful, caring societies for their people. Yet, the people of the world seem to be missing these truths because of their “envy” of Jews.

In our own country, we are witnessing the “greed, envy, and ambition” of Donald Trump and his band of merry people. When the Republicans fail to call out his fascist talk, when they refuse to condemn the people around him like Stephen Miller and the other architects of his authoritarian ideology, when they go along with the Heritage Foundation’s ideas of a takeover of our democracy in order to put an authoritarian, theocratic government in it’s place, they are examples of taking the name of God in vain, taking the opportunities we are given to improve our world and help one another and using these opportunities for their “greed, ambition” because of their “envy” of authoritarian rulers of past eras. We are witnesses to the denigration of democracy, the fall of freedom, the toppling of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Instead of heeding the words of Abraham Lincoln, they are engaged in denigrating them by working hard to ensure these sentiments, the cause so many Union soldiers died for does “perish from this earth”!

Looking inward, we have to look at our own deceptions, both of self and another. I hear Rabbi Heschel call to us to end our senseless hatred of one another, our needless “greed”, our “ambition” that is out of proportion, and our ridiculous “envy” of someone else. We all are created equal, we all have infinite dignity and worth, we all have a unique purpose. There will always be people richer and poorer than any one individual in monetary wealth, there will always be bosses and employees, yet, as the Bible teaches, “all of us stood at Sinai”, all of us stood on the precipice of the Jordan River preparing to enter the Promised Land, from the heads of the tribes to the water-dweller. We all have a stake and a place in life, we all have a talent/gift to bring to the world, we all have love to give, aid to share, and a goal to attain. “The Almighty” has created a universe where we can all find fulfillment, all find our place, all be connected, all enjoy the fruits of our labor, all can be free of terrorists-domestic and foreign, bullies-in our neighborhoods and politics, and of our “greed, envy, and ambition”.

“For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority-a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.”(2nd Tradition of AA). This is the response of Recovery to the “greed, envy, and ambition” Rabbi Heschel is speaking about. In recovery, whether it be in a meeting, in a family, in our work, we are constantly sifting through our negative attributes of “greed, envy, and ambition” to seek counsel from “a loving God” through conversations, mentorship, learning with another person/people. We take the mantle of “trusted servants” and wear it in all of our affairs. We know that we can no longer try to be “ruthless in business” and kind at home because the split grows and grows till we become ruthless in all of our affairs! We seek guidance and wisdom from outside of our own minds, we connect with other souls and learn new and better ways to deal with life on life’s terms. This is one of the ways we carry on the Revolution of Recovery! God Bles and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 41

“The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had winded. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 150)

The last three phrases above are very disturbing to me, and I hope everyone! Rabbi Heschel, like the prophets, is a very disturbing human being to me. He disturbs complacency, he disturbs societal norms, he disturbs our consciousness and our conscience. His words and teachings, in the tradition of the prophet Amos: “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”(Amos 5:24). We, the People, have to decide if we are going to heed his wisdom, his tradition, his love or are we going to continue to barter these away?

We are so stuck in our own needs, our own self-importance, our own need to be right, that most of us are unaware of how we barter “love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.” We have become so willfully blind that we cannot see the differences, we refuse to see the nuances, we have polarized our world, our faith to such an extent it would be unrecognizable to the prophets, to the Rabbis, to the Desert Fathers, to Moses, to Jesus, to Mohammed. Yet, we continue to declare the ‘rightness’ of our actions in their names! How sad it is that we are so lost, so blind, so ensconced in mendacity that we are unable to engage in love, wisdom, and tradition.

We are in the midst of a war in the Middle East, in the Ukraine, and the war is for the survival of all of us. It is not a war about territory, even though it is made out to be, it is not a regional war, even though people want to make it out to be so they can stand back while the world comes apart. It is a war for the survival of freedom, for the survival of imperfect goodness over terrorism and power. It is a war for the primacy of wisdom and the end of believing information from tainted sources and the end of believing in the lies of those who proclaim their ‘love of the people’ when their endgame is power over these same people and riches for themselves. The war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine is a call to stop bartering away our spiritual principles, to end our insatiable desire for power, for information, for the latest fad, to stand up for what is right and true-freedom to be who we were created to be, freedom to fight terrorism and mendacity, freedom to distinguish between truth and fiction, to distinguish between evil and the tragedies of war, to distinguish between standing with and for Godliness and standing with the myriad of terrorists like Putin, Hamas, Iran, and those in our own country and across the globe who use their power to treat the poor, the needy, as “less than human” and bar the stranger rather than welcome them. Instead of ransoming for the captives, those in power who proclaim their love of their neighbors, who claim to be cruel in the name of their idols which they call god, all terrorists try to take everyone who is not them, everyone who is not ‘in the club’ captive with their wars-figurative wars with their powers to legislate, and literal wars as we see how Putin and Hamas/Iran have done in Ukraine and Israel.

We, the People, have to call out our elected officials to stop bartering away our declarations we made in 1776, end our bartering away of the love of country and people we made in 1787 when we wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as well as the introduced the idea that more amendments were going to be needed. We, the People, have to call out to our religious leaders to stop their oneupmanship, to end their beating of their chests and their “fire and brimstone”, “God will punish you”, “we are doing God’s will” when they are only instigating and promoting prejudice, mendacity, and spreading these cancers of the soul. We, the People, have to end our reliance on bartering and get back to our basic goodness of being.

While AA wants to remain above the fray as to opinions on outside issues, which is a good idea, recovery is the answer as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel today. In order to end our bartering, we have to recover the essence of tradition-a dynamic path of living that holds dear the basic principles of love, kindness, compassion, rebuke, justice, freedom, welcoming the stranger, caring for the poor, the needy, ransoming the captive, etc and never doing it in the same exact manner as has been done before. We have to recover our basic need to be loved and to love, our search for wisdom not just regurgitate information and call them facts. Recovery is the revolution we all need to join! In recovery, we love the newcomer(stranger) until they can love themselves, we all interpret and engage with the Big Book in our own understanding (ala 70 faces of Torah), we all work with one another to be one grain of sand better today than we were yesterday, many of us begin our days with gratitude for being alive, like prayer. We are constantly seeking to return to our authentic self and live along spiritual principles.

When I stopped bartering love, loyalty, holiness, wisdom, tradition for my self-centered needs, I began my recovery. I still fall prey to bartering on occasion and I am blessed to be rebuked by another, disturbed by Rabbi Heschel, and/or called to account by a power greater than me(sometimes my wife and/or my daughter). Living a life disturbed by Rabbi Heschel gives me the gift of living a life of love, kindness, justice, no more bartering and truth. I am a rebel and have joined Rabbi Heschel’s revolution! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 40

“The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had winded. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 150)

Having immersed ourselves for days in this paragraph, we come to the last phrases and delving into how we have “bartered… loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion” can help us see a future way of living that is more authentic to the call of our souls, to becoming “the self we were created to be”, and living in harmony with all people.

Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to stop deceiving ourselves as to what we are doing, bastardizing our basic goodness of being, our foundational principles and paths for momentary gain. He is lifting the veil of mendacity under which we all seem to be viewing our ways of living, our principles, the principles of the Bible, etc. We all have been party to and witness’ of what happens when we deceive ourselves that our success is being loyal no matter how we achieve this success. We all have been party to and witness’ of bartering our principles in one area of living in order to gain support, monetary success, in another area. We all know how our government works today where everyone in their respective party is supposed to go along with the party line, toe the party line no matter what their constituents need, no matter what is true and right, no matter the stakes. Liz Cheney is a perfect example of what happens when an elected official goes against the party line-she was ostracized, defeated in her re-election bid by the Republican Party. Democrats supported Rashida Tliab’s right to promote extermination of Jews and destruction of Israel as a way of being loyal to ‘the party’. We have come to deceive ourselves/barter away our loyalty to the Founding Fathers who never believed the Constitution they wrote was written in stone, who set up amendments for the purpose of changing, who knew the ways would have to be constantly re-defined and understood in each proceeding era, by being “strict constitutionalists” which is another term for achieving their own selfish goals rather than what is best for all.

In the Bible, Numbers 15:39, we are taught: “do not scout out after your heart and your eyes which you will whore after”. As individuals, we have transgressed this commandment, this principle so often. This is a very personal instance of trading our loyalty to principles for our momentary and monetary success. Think of the myriad of people any of us have betrayed so we can “get ahead”. Apple did it with Steve Jobs, Synagogues have done it with their spiritual leaders, institutions do this with their leaders and the employees backstab one another in order to “get ahead”. Business engage in spying on one another, “killing the competition”, lying about their achievements, not mentioning the risks, not taking responsibility for their actions which harm, all in the name of success, all to serve their ‘higher’ goal of winning. We do this in so many areas of life and it begins with how we decide to live personally, how we choose to either “scout out after our hearts and eyes”, give in to our baser desires whether they are good for us or not, or we choose to stay loyal to our authentic selves, stay loyal to higher consciousness, stay loyal to God’s call. We have become oblivious to the need to constantly making this choice, to being aware  of the myriad of disguises selfishness, success wear so as to confuse us as to what is good and right, what is bartering “loyalty for success” and harming our inner lives, harming our world.

There is a solution, of course. It calls for us to strip away the false exterior, the deceptive armor we have put on, to let go of our facade of strength and ‘rightness’, to engage in an authentic Chesbon HaNefesh, an accounting of our souls personally, communally, country-wide. We need to “go back to the drawing board” and look at the foundational principles of our way of living. What do we value? Do we value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Do we value that all people are created equal, all people are created in the image of the Divine? Do we value the call to welcome the stranger, care for the needy and the poor, the widow and the orphan? Do we value the health and well-being of everyone? Or do we just pay lip service to these values and do what we want so we can ‘get ours’? With Russia’s attempt to grab Ukraine, Iran’s attempt to destroy Israel and exterminate Jews through its proxies, the polarization here in our country, the Anti-Semitism and hatred spewed throughout the world right now, it feels like we are at a tipping point, again. We need a revolution- we need to revolt against our pursuit of “success” at the cost of being loyal to decency, kindness, and the other values listed above.

Recovery is just such a revolution. In recovery, we welcome everyone, we love people without any reciprocity until they can love themselves and pay it forward. In recovery, we take responsibility for our actions, good and not good, improving the good and making amends for the not good ones. We continue to take this inventory every day so we don’t drift off our path, off the path of goodness, kindness, etc. We stay loyal to the principles even when it means calling someone out on their behavior and their self-deceptions. In recovery, this makes us popular, it makes us feel whole and connected. I have stayed loyal to people and principles in my recovery, sometimes that loyalty has not been reciprocated and I stay loyal to the principles. I continue to be responsible for my side of the street and work to keep it as clean as possible. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 40

“The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had winded. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 150)

In Pete Seeger’s song, Where have all the flowers gone, he asks a question: “when will you ever learn”. Reading and rereading the last sentence of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above brings this question to the forefront of my mind. Rabbi Heschel’s words, sentences, teachings call out to our morality, our spirituality, our actions. He is demanding, in his kind, quiet voice, the same changes that the prophets before him demanded and, like the Israelites of old, we seem to be unable to heed his words, unable to take in his wisdom and put his demands, actually God’s demands and humanity’s demands, into action!!

Barter comes from the “old French” meaning “to deceive”. While English has defined bartering as “exchange”, using the French meaning may better describe what we have done and what we are doing. We have deceived ourselves into believing that convenience is holy. We are continuing to bastardize holiness for our own convenience, for our own selfish, self-centered satisfaction. We see this happening in all areas of living; political, economic, religious, personal. Politically, we see the contrast in the War with Hamas, the War against terrorism. Israel is fighting for its very existence, it is fighting to root out terrorism, to end the constant worry about rockets coming from Gaza, to end the fear of infiltration and murder, rape, hostage-taking by Hamas terrorists funded by the Arab world, especially Qatar and Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is a bully who wraps himself in a false cloak of holiness with his oppressive, authoritarian policies while giving immense power to “religious” right-wing zealots. His inability to safeguard the border with Gaza is because of his need to satisfy these zealots. While he talks very tough, he deceived the people of Israel and Jews across the globe with this ‘tough talk’ while, like Nero, fiddled as Israel was in turmoil. Hamas and the rest of the world have backed Israel into a corner in a no-win situation because the world allows itself to be deceived, to have “bartered holiness for convenience”; no matter how often Israel dropped leaflets, no matter how often Israel suggested people leave Northern Gaza, the bombing was going to created collateral damage that would be used against Israel and Jews worldwide.

We see this in the demonstrations that immediately blamed Israel for Hamas’ day of terror, for Hamas’ rape, killing, invading, and hostage-taking! The world is being deceived and is engaging in self-deception by not condemning Hamas, by not demanding of Qatar to bring the Hamas leaders in their country to trial, by not helping to root out terrorism no matter where it is found. Glorifying the Hamas cowards who glided into a music festival about peace and began killing, raping, and taking hostages is another example of how people have “bartered holiness for convenience”. This happens because we want to make things easy and we are too used to 10-second sound bites rather then delve into the essential meaning of what is happening, what is truly holy. We want to make ‘simplify’ everything rather than see the simplicity and beauty of the complexity of life. Joe Biden’s response is a contrast to the mainstream anti-semitism, Jew-Hatred, blaming the victims we witness around the globe. He is calling for humane treatment of Gaza civilians while standing with Israel. He doesn’t let his personal feelings for or about Netanyahu alter his personal conviction and his morality to do the next right thing, to stand against terrorism, to stand for holiness. He is not willing to deceive himself nor the American people into believing there are any ways to defend Hamas, that there are any good reasons to support the terrorism of Oct. 7.

We have a choice today and every day, in this moment and in every moment, the Bible tells us to: “Choose Life”, choose decency, choose to care for the stranger, the widow, the poor, the needy, the orphan. Israel has not always done this, Netanyahu has “bartered holiness for convenience” because he is a crook and he doesn’t want to be held responsible-sound familiar? He has deceived the people who believed his rhetoric and his promises of safety and he has been found a liar, he empowered the worst of religious zealots who do not heed Rabbi Heschel’s words, they do not act on the teachings of the prophets, they are addicted to their lies, to their power, to being authoritarians and there bastardization of our Holy Texts.

Kristallnacht happened yesterday and today 85 years ago, it is still happening today; to Jews, to minorities, and we have to make good on the sacrifices of our ancestors-Never Again! We have to recover our holiness, we have to stop deceiving ourselves and everyone else that we are being ‘holy’, we are being ‘faithful to God’, following the dictates of the Bible, New Testament, Koran, etc. with our lies, our self-serving interpretations, our “prosperity gospels”, etc. We have to recover the joy of liberation from the narrow place called Egypt, the narrow places of deceit, and recover the dedication of “Na-Aseh V’Nishma”, we will do and then we will understand when we accepted the 10 Commandments at Mt. Sinai. We can do this when, following the example of people in recovery, we act our way into right thinking and feeling because our thoughts and our feelings oft lead us astray as we are warned: Don’t scout out after your heart and your eyes lest you whore after them. Lets stop bartering our holiness for convenience and return to the goodness of being we are created for, return to living the life our self was created for. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 39

“The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had winded. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 150)

Religion is not superstition-full stop! Yet, because of our need to live in an “either/or” way of being, we seem incapable of holding two thoughts at one time in our being. Because of the divorce of science and religion, around the time of Galileo, I believe, these two crucial ways of relating to the world have become locked into a contentious battle. Neither of these disciplines are antithetical to one another, yet humans in their need for superiority, have made them so. Some scientists have labeled religion “superstition” and some religious people have labeled science “blasphemy”-neither are true and too many people have bought into these deceptions and we find ourselves locked into a war. This war is also an internal war, we find people who ‘choose’ sides deny the truths of the ‘other side’. This divorce of science and religion has fueled a war of words and actions; to the point where people are unable to discuss, appreciate and find common ground. Rather than seek to learn with and from one another, we are witnesses to and participants in a ‘straw-man’ issue.

We are in desperate need “to believe” in something greater than ourselves. We are in desperate need to “honor our mothers and fathers” by brightening “the light our fathers had winded”. Yet, we seem to be hellbent on “evidence-based” thinking and “blowing out the candles of light”. Herein lies our challenge: how to live into and accept the hypothesis’ and proofs of science and the truths of the Bible and the prophets. They are not antithetical, they both come from a power greater than ourselves, they are both true. Religious/spiritual living has evolved from the very “light our fathers had winded” as has science! While “evidence-based” is called ‘scientific’, it doesn’t take into account the resilience of the human spirit. While our education system, both secular and religious, engages in either “evidence-based” or “biblical” methods, neither takes into account the wisdom of proverbs 22:6: “Teach each child(person) according to his way” or the wisdom of Hillel (paraphrasing here): “speak to each person in a way they can understand”. We are not in need of more dividers, we are in need of more acceptance.

Our need to depend on the “evidence-based” theories of today negates the test of time, the foundational aspects of how we have survived and thrived to last this long on earth. Humanity has fought with one another in a false struggle to prove Darwin’s theory-the survival of the fittest- while denying the truth that the Bible screams at us to “care for  and welcome” the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan-the least among us. This is not to decry advances in science, in knowledge, it is to decry throwing “ the baby out with the bathwater” way of modernity. We have a rich tradition of seeking truth, we have a mandate to understand the Bible in all of its “70 faces”, which demands “rigorous honesty”, it demands “radical amazement”, it demands living in “both/and”. As we have seen throughout the past, when one ‘group’, scientific or religious, goes to great lengths to deny the whole picture, when one group stakes their very existence on the denial of any other ways of learning, of seeing the world, we have a very skewed world. When religious people want to deny the scientific advances in medicine, in climate, in a myriad of meeting life’s challenges, we see people die needlessly, we see people suffer immeasurably, for no good reason. Who do these people think gave our scientists the spirit, wisdom and drive to make the wonderful advances we have achieved if not God? When scientists, rationalists, humanists, have to laugh at those of us who have religious and spiritual beliefs, we see people suffer from depression and despair, people rebel against the “conventional notions and mental cliches” that rule this group of people, we are witnesses to the wars, the cruelty, the addictions that have created more divisions between people, we have seen the destruction of “am I my brother’s keeper?”, the destruction of “love your neighbor as you love yourself”.

There is a solution, however. We have to enhance “the light our fathers had winded” through seeking harmony, through turning “our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand him”(3rd step of AA). Scientists like Einstein believe in a power greater than themselves, scientists have sought the source of energy that keeps the world afloat forever. People of faith have sought God, as they understand God, as a source of energy, a source of spirit, a source of morality. Whether the Bible was written by God and/or divinely inspired is immaterial, whether one can “prove” the veracity of the biblical sites and people is of no consequence, because the validity of the Bible is unquestionable, the “light our fathers had winded” has survived till today, the Jewish people have survived till today, our connection with “a power greater than ourselves” has continued to today. This connection is the beginning and end of recovery-full stop!

I have spent the last 36 years fueling the light my father and grandfathers had winded. I spent many years prior to recovery trying to extinguish this same light. Thank God I was unable to extinguish their light, unable to extinguish the light of my soul. This is the challenge for everyone, to live in the light of the “both/and” our ancestors “had winded”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 38

“The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had winded. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 150)

I shudder to think of what Rabbi Heschel would be thinking and saying about our world today! Rabbi Heschel, in my opinion and in the opinion of many, was a prophet for us, just as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a prophet. While we quote their words, we invoke their memories, we seem to distrust their words and actions by not heeding them, by not imitating their actions. Rabbi Heschel’s words above, are as true and urgent today as they ever been.

We have worked so hard “to perfect our engines”, be they our cars, our tools, our filmmaking, our music, our printings, our internet, etc, while we “let our inner life go to wreck.” We continue to externalize our living, we continue to seek to achieve wealth, power, perfection, while we allow our inner life to go to rot, to go to seed. It is so depressing, so despairing to witness the myriad of ways Fascism, Christian Nationalism, Fundamentalist Religious Zealotry, have overtaken our political system. It is infuriating to witness the myriad of ways mendacity and deception have overtaken truth, overtaken the words, the deeds of the Bible, the prophets of old, the teachings and actions of Rabbi Heschel, Dr. King, the teachings and actions of people like Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries and John Pavlovitz. Our medical system, in its drive to perfection, has lost the personal touch of our family doctor knowing each of her/his patients giving way to impersonal referring out; our spiritual leaders are taught to refer people to ‘professional therapists’ rather than help congregants and seekers to find the answer to our basic questions: “what is the meaning and purpose of my life?”

Rather than engage in the work of our inner life, rather than “recover our passion, discover our purpose” as Harriet Rossetto changed the motto of Beit T’Shuvah to, we have been bombarded with negativity, told that our jobs, status, money, power, define us. Rather than take seriously that all of us stood at Sinai, all of us are created in the Image of God, all of us have infinite dignity, we seem to be repeating the errors of our ancestors who built The Tower of Babel. We use language to confuse one another, we use the Internet to spread disinformation, to support racism, anti-semitism, hatred of Muslims, LGBTQ+, Asians, and to spread hatred and anger.

Isn’t it time for us to stop our reliance on our new “evidenced-based” solutions and return to the lessons and teachings of the basis for our morality, our systems of justice: The Bible, the Prophets, their disciples like Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel? Isn’t it time for us to call out the so-called ‘religious people’ who preach hatred, who preach a hierarchy of holiness, live like they are the best and only people who ‘know what God wants’ while actually engaging in idolatry, while bastardizing the words of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed? Isn’t it time to return to a way of being that grows our inner life, that helps us deal with the issues of our time respecting the infinite dignity and worth of every human being? Isn’t it time for us to end our dancing with terrorism on every level; in our politics, in our religious institutions, in our business, in our homes Isn’t it time for us to end the mendacity of hate political advertising? Isn’t it time for us to end the deception of the religious charlatans who claim ‘my religion is the only true one’? Isn’t it time for us to end our self-deception of believing ‘we(me and my people) are the only ones who know the truth’?

We have a path of healing the wreck of our inner lives. We have a way to end our senseless hatreds, our negative self-talk, our mistrust of the prophets of old and the prophets of our time. We have leaders and teachers, we have the power to disobey the “conventional norms” or society. Rabbi Heschel gives us a solution; live in Radical Amazement, “the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is, therefore, a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.”(Man is Not Alone pg.11). The conventional notions and mental cliches we have bought into, the ways of Henry Ford with his Protocols of Zion, his despicable treatment of the workers who made him wealthy and powerful, the insanity of Elon Musk, Donald Trump, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Society, the Progressive Left, etc, have “let our inner life go to wreck.” It is time for us to revolt, it is time for us to rebel against these lies, these liars, these charlatans! It is past time to hear and live into Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and teachings, it is past time to follow the examples and leadership of Rev. King-“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

The path is recovery! We are in desperate need of recovering our inner lives, recovering our basic goodness of being, recovering our passion for justice, love, kindness, compassion, for spiritual growth. We have the AA steps, the Bible, the mitzvot, the Koran, the Gospels, the Eastern spiritual disciplines which all lead us to a rich, vibrant, inner life, a ‘resurrection’ of living from the inside out, of hearing and heeding the call of our souls. While we will never “arrive”, we can keep growing and making progress along spiritual lines. We can do this. This is my daily challenge and I keep moving one grain of sand towards this goal each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 37

“The conscience of the world was destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves. Let us remember. We revered the instincts but distrusted the prophets. We labored to perfect engines and let our inner life go to wreck. We ridiculed superstition until we lost our ability to believe. We have helped to extinguish the light our fathers had winded. We have bartered holiness for convenience, loyalty for success, love for power, wisdom for information, tradition for fashion.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 150)

Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence above is as true today as it was when he first spoke it/wrote it! We are in dire need for “the conscience of the world” to be rebuilt, to be rebuilt as the Bible, the prophets have imbued us with, have given us examples of, have reminded us of our purpose in making the world a little better than when we found it, a little better because we are here. The generation that fought against senseless hatred, unchecked power, rampant greed, in Europe and in Asia gave to us a world they believed would learn from what happened in World War II. Yet, today we have Holocaust deniers, rabid anti-semitism, senseless Islamaphobia, fear of the stranger, hatred of anyone we feel threatens our hold on power, terrorists who claim to be ‘freedom fighters’ and people willing to believe the mendacity and deceptions of so-called leaders. Many of We, the People, have become willfully blind to the lies of these so-called leaders, these people who traffic in conspiracy theories, who are “wont to blame others rather than themselves” and follow them down into the tunnels of self-deception, hatred of ‘the other’, blaming the Jews, the Arabs, the LGBTQ+, the Blacks, the Asians, etc for all of the ills of society. Never once do these followers of the deceivers look inside of themselves, never once do these pathetic people hear the call of God “Ayecha, Where are You” nor do they answer “Hineni, here I am”. We are living in a time where most people are pointing their fingers at everyone else, calling out the incongruities of everyone around them, that don’t agree with them, rather than look inside of themselves.

Whether it is Netanyahu in Israel who continues to shirk his responsibility for what happened on Oct. 7, in Israel, who continues to blame everyone else and be bellicose in his denials and his ‘strongman’ attitude, or it is Donald Trump who also is bellicose and blaming of everyone who opposes his lies and mendacity by calling them “thugs, insane, leading a witch-hunt, etc” or it is Putin in Russia who jails his political opponents for calling out his lies, his thievery, or it is the Iranians who fuel, feed, financially support Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorists around the world-they all use the same playbook-blame everyone else, wear down the people of conscience, confuse people with lies so the truth becomes indecipherable. This is a ‘winning’ political strategy, as long as one can convince people of the ‘truth’ of their deceptions, of them mendacity, one can gain political office, one can bastardize the principles of Christ, the teachings of Mohammed, and the examples of the prophets, including Moses.

How is this possible, one might ask. It happens because We, the People, have not learned the lessons for our ancestors from Biblical times till now. We have become so enamored with our own sense of progress, our erroneous belief that we are so ‘advanced’ from the time of antiquity, that morality is so imbued within us, that we don’t need to learn from the prophets, we can put words in Christ’s mouth, we can deny the truth of the Hebrew Bible and our need to see the imperfections of our heroes, etc. We have let go of the teachings that are the foundation of our moral, judicial systems, we have jettisoned truth in favor of feelings, in favor of hiding, in favor of running away from looking in the mirror! We have forsaken God, we have forsaken the spiritual courage of our ancestors in coming to America, we have come to believe in the myth of freedom rather than the truth of it. While many of us “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants thereof” (Lev. 25:10), we have not made it our ‘battle cry’, we have not made liberty a reality for all people of our land. We have singled out different ‘minorities’ for scorn, for blame, for prejudice. Even the word ‘minorities’ is a misnomer because we are all, supposedly, Americans, yet we find ways for “the conscience” of our country to be “destroyed by those who were wont to blame others rather than themselves”.

We do have a solution, however. It is called Recovery! We need to recover not only our sobriety, our clear-eyed, clear-headed vision and thinking, we need to recover our spiritual essence, our connection to our ancestors, our commitment to goodness, decency, living God’s will, “turning our lives over to the care of God”. There are millions of us who have ‘returned from the dead’, come back from our destruction of our own consciences, had a rebirth of spirit and re-learned the lessons of our ancestors, committed/re-committed to living life along spiritual principles rather than the principles of mendacity, greed, prejudice. As Harriet Rossetto says: “You don’t have to be an addict to be in recovery.”

While my conscience was never completely destroyed, prior to my being in recovery which happened before I stopped drinking, it began in prison thanks to Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, it was so buried under blame and shame I could not access it. It was also buried under the fear that change wasn’t possible and no one would believe my change. T’Shuvah and the Bible, AA and Spirituality gave me hope and I have continued to regain my conscience through the bombardment of negativity and mendacity, through my own self-deceptions and the abandonments and being used by another(s). Each day, I am blessed to regain a conscience that allows me to live a life that is compatible with being a partner of God, as Rabbi Heschel teaches. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 36

“We cannot dwell at ease under the sun of our civilization as our ancestors thought we could. What was in the minds of our martyred brothers in their last hours? They died with disdain and scorn for a civilization in which the killing of civilians could become a carnival of fun, for a civilization which gave us mastery over the forces of nature but lost control over the forces of our self.” (God’s Quest for Man pg. 150)

“How can I pray when the deaths of 1000’s of innocent Vietnamese are on my conscience” Rabbi Heschel asked in his interview with Carl Stern. I am thinking about this statement and what is going on in the world, in our country, in our communities. What would Rabbi Heschel say? I am not sure and I believe he would point out the difference between America’s War in Vietnam as self-serving and from a puffed-up, prideful place of John Foster Dulles, Robert McNamara, et al-not a war for the survival of America. Israel is in another fight for it’s life, a fight to kill off the people who are dedicated to the extermination of the Jewish People and the end of the State of Israel. While the citizens of Gaza may be innocent, they are at least culpable because they have been able to “dwell at ease” with Hamas as their leadership! While we have proof of Hamas Terrorists celebrating the killing of Innocent Jews at a music festival, in their homes, on their streets, as “a carnival of fun”, the vast majority of Jews do not experience the death of civilians as “a carnival of fun”-true some Jews do, as evidenced in videos from one IDF person-however this is not the norm! I believe Rabbi Heschel would be mourning the deaths of the innocent civilians in Gaza, and crying out for the return of the Hostages, mourning and crying over the killing of Jews again just because we are Jews. I believe he would be seeking a solution to this problem and call on all of us to rise to our higher selves-fighting terrorism, fighting prejudice, standing for and with freedom, hearing the call of the prophet: Nation shall not lift up sword against Nation nor shall men learn war anymore.”

Here in the United States, I watch in horror as I hear the insanity of the right and the left in Congress, on our streets, on our College Campus’, in our halls of Academia, in the rallies for Donald Trump, at the rallies led by Rashida Tlaib, Ilan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, et al supporting terrorists! I have come to the realization that I am unsafe in America, I am unsafe in the world because I am a Jew, because I am a centrist, I am a thinker who seeks truth, ie the whole picture; I seek to understand and realize the nuances in every situation, I don’t believe we can make informed decisions without seeing the nuances, the whole picture. I am unsafe in the Democratic Party because they don’t want people who seek to stand for spiritual principles and be willing to engage in give and take to uphold these spiritual principles. I am unsafe in the Democratic Party and in America because I am unwilling to go along with mendacity, with supporting Terrorism, with ‘conventional notions’. I am unsafe in America and in the Democratic Party, of which I have been a life-long member of, because they are afraid to call out Tlaib, Omar, Bush, et al for their terrorist threats to Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party, saying they will not support the Democratic Nominee for President unless he bows down to Terrorists, to Terrorism, to Hamas! How sick and sad we have all become, how far from the Kennedy Democrat I was in the 1960’s up until now.

And of course, the Republican Party, the Republican Jewish Coalition, who ‘stand with Israel’ are not willing to stand for democracy in Israel, in the Ukraine, to give aid and much needed money to rebuild Gaza and help its citizens without trying to aid and help the rich in this country! Rather than a democracy, Mike Johnson and his cronies are seeking to enshrine the plutocracy/kleptocracy they began under Donald J Trump. Even the Republicans who are ‘never-Trumpers’ support the demise of the IRS collection bureau unless they are collecting from those who can least afford it. The idea that the rich, the plutocrats and the kleptocrats should pay their fair share of taxes is ridiculous to the Republicans in the House of Representatives and they are willing to not give aid to Israel, to Ukraine, to rebuild Gaza - all the while proclaiming their love and loyalty to Israel and to democracy!

What all of this has in common is we are being bullied, governed, oppressed by People of the Lie, the name of a book by M.Scott Peck. Hamas, their supporters, Qatar who hides the leaders of Hamas and has given them Billions of Dollars in extortion money knowing what they are using it for, attacking Israel, enriching themselves and not helping the people of Gaza, the rest of the Arab world who have refused to renounce terrorism against Israel for fear the terrorists may attack them, the people in Congress who see their seat at the table as a way to bully and oppress anyone who doesn’t agree with them- all are “People of the Lie” and We, the People, have to vote them out, have to find ways to silence them, reveal their mendacities and subordination of rights, of freedom, of truth to their constituents, here and abroad.

We, the People, have to recover our “control over the forces of our self” and we have to recover the pain and empathy of senseless hatred, senseless terrorism, senseless murder as we witnessed on Oct. 7. We, the People, have to recover “control over the forces of self” so we can stop our selfishness, our self-centeredness, and remember to care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor and the needy. We, the People, have to recover “control over the forces of self” so we can ensure everyone has a living wage, everyone has access to health care, everyone has choice over their bodies, everyone is given the Infinite Dignity that all everyone deserves as a birthright because we are all created in the Image of the Infinite One. These are basic principles of recovery, of Judaism, and We, the People, have to recover these principles inside of each of us.

I am still agitated, I keep “control over the forces of self” better now than I have in the past. In fact, because I could “lost control over the forces of self” I found myself abandoned and sent out of the place I had helped to create and build. I also know there was a different way to handle the situation, it did not have to end the way it did-yet it did. I am not shirking my responsibility, I have been in recovery to have “control over the forces of self” and I know mendacity, hiding, “people of the lie” push me over the edge. I never want to lose my outrage for “people of the lie” lest I go back to hiding, lying! At least I am aware of the work that is in front of me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 35

“We cannot dwell at ease under the sun of our civilization as our ancestors thought we could. What was in the minds of our martyred brothers in their last hours? They died with disdain and scorn for a civilization in which the killing of civilians could become a carnival of fun, for a civilization which gave us mastery over the forces of nature but lost control over the forces of our self.” (God’s Quest for Man pg. 150)

Rabbi Heschel’s description of our civilization is as powerful today as it was when he wrote this in 1938, updated it in 1943 and published it in 1954! Whether he was speaking of what was happening and what was going to come in Nazi Germany in 1938, he was speaking about the devastation the war was bringing to all of Europe in 1943 as well as the mass murdering of Jews by the Nazis, or he was speaking of the aftermath of death and destruction that happened in the Concentration Camps, all of these are proof texts of his writing above.

We keep trying to find ways to “dwell at ease under the sun of our civilization” all the while cheating, deceiving, “killing the competition”, authoritarianism, money, power, prestige, building walls for our borders and homes, racism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, etc  run rampant and, in fact, are used for the benefit of those who are in power to make it possible for them to “dwell at ease”! We are witnesses to the ‘fun’ the powers in Government had when dropping Napalm on the innocent citizens of Vietnam and validating their actions with “the red scourge” of communism in Southeast Asia infecting America! We have seen the streets of our own country bleed the same red blood as all of us have when people are arrested and killed by police for “driving/walking while black”, when people are attacked for being a Jew, for being a Muslim/Arab, when people went to work on 9/11/2001 in the Twin Towers, so the perpetrators could “dwell at ease” having served the idolatry they claim is God/Allah/Jesus. We have witnessed the uproar of our College Campus’ over the racism during the 1960’s which led to, helped along, the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 1965, both of which have been denuded by subsequent bigots and racists. We are now witnessing the uproar of our College Campus by people praising the Terrorists of Hamas as being ‘freedom fighters’ and threatening Jews all over-calling for a Jihad in this country!

How can we “dwell at ease” when Israel, who was mercilessly attacked on Oct 7, has over 240 of its people held hostage with no contact by the International Red Cross nor the U.N. who, while ignoring the Jewish Hostages, are crying for the ‘poor people’ of Gaza who have accepted the rule of terrorists, who have hid terrorists in their homes, mosques, hospitals, etc either out of fear or out of solidarity. How can we “dwell at ease” when we witness the joy, “the carnival of fun” Hamas had while slaughtering young people at a concert about peace and love? How can we “dwell at ease” when listen as the world’s sympathies once again turn away from the Jewish People and actually turn against the Jews once again. How can we “dwell at ease” when leaders of governments on all sides are only concerned with their political lives, with their holding onto power rather than doing what is right and good for the people they are supposed to be serving?

How can we “dwell at ease” when we have been abandoned by the people we have fought side by side with? When the “left”, who so many Jews have joined in seeking their rights to  “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, immediately joined Hamas, joined the mendacity of proclaiming FREE PALESTINE, From Sea to the Ocean, saying the charter of Hamas to destroy Jews, to destroy Israel is a just cause, it is a freedom fighter’s cause! How sad and how disturbing to those of us who still believe in justice and liberty for all. How sad for so many Jews to realize how we have been used and abused, how our vulnerabilities, our principles have been bastardized, abused and how we have been abandoned and, in some cases, hunted by the very people we marched shoulder to shoulder with. How can we “dwell at ease” when the values of God, the principles of the Bible, the calls of the prophets are used against us, when we are subjected to the “evil of the heart” of our ‘friends’ and enemies?

How can we “dwell at ease”? We need a program of recovery, we need to be in acceptance and awareness of what is, not what we want reality to be. We need to live into God’s principles more and more each day, as we learn to in recovery. We need to not lose our dignity, our humanity, our spiritual principles in the face of the onslaught of despicable behaviors towards us. We need to know it is okay to kill the person coming to kill you first, that our lives are no less valuable and worthy as the people who are coming for us, who are trying to subjugate us, who are lying to us. We can “dwell at ease” when we “carry the message” to everyone who suffers from the delusions of power, of racism, of anti-semitism, to all people who are in the throes of the “cancer of the soul” we call prejudice. We can “dwell at ease” when we put “our own house in order” by growing our spiritual life into one of acceptance, love, truth, kindness which we practice in all of our affairs. We can “dwell at ease” when we get angry with a heart of peace, when we go to war with hearts of peace and knowing this is a last resort, when we govern with love, kindness, compromises, knowing we are not the smartest person in the room and another person has ideas that are as good, and could be better to implement-as in the “group conscience” we take in our recovery meetings.

I have been able to “dwell at ease” to a certain extent in my recovery. In fact, this gift from God has given me the strength to improve my decency, my spirituality little by little each day for these past 36 years since I started studying Rabbi Heschel with Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, in prison. While I am agitated when I witness mendacity and lying, in myself, in those around me, in government, etc, I am “at ease” also because I know that I am following the call of the prophets, the demands of God and the teachings of Rabbi Heschel in my agitation and, only because I can “dwell at ease” with myself and with God’s will, can I be agitated for the sake of heaven-not for my own sake. My agitation, which is interpreted in a myriad of ways, comes from my knowing I cannot “dwell at ease” with the world, with myself, unless I agitate for truth, love, kindness, welcoming the stranger, caring for the poor and the needy, standing up for principles. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 34

“Either we are ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil. Let the blasphemy of our time not become an eternal scandal. Let future generations not loathe us for having failed to preserve what the prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created in thousands of years. The apostles of force have shown that they are great in evil. Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness. We will survive if we shall be as fine and sacrificial in our homes and offices, in our Congress and clubs as our soldiers are on the fields of battle.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

Rabbi Heschel’s comparison, call for us to “be as fine and sacrificial…as our soldiers on the fields of battle” is especially poignant in this moment. It gives me pause and has caused me to look at elected officials, dictators, authoritarians, and all of us in a different light. There are soldiers, citizens called upon to fight really, in Ukraine and in Israel/Gaza. Hamas is not an army, they are not soldiers nor are they ‘freedom fighters’; they are determined, as was Germany and so many other countries throughout history, to “kill all the Jews”, just as Putin is not a “freedom fighter” looking to ‘protect the Russian people of Ukraine”! Yet, they both are crying over the devastation of the people who are defending their land, their very existence, and parts of the world are buying their bullshit, forgetting that everything happening is because they started these wars! Why is it that world leaders cannot “be as fine and sacrificial…as our soldiers on the fields of battle”? Why is it we are more worried about our economic ties, we allow ourselves to be held hostage to the oil of the Middle East, the cheap factories of China, than we are about what is right, what is good, what is freedom? Are we aware of how we are “slaves of evil” because we are more worried about our wallets than our souls?

We are engaged in, witnesses to, participants of the Chaos Theory of life, as perpetrated by Trump, Gaetz, Tubervile, Johnson, Jordan, Hamas, Qatar, Putin, Orban, Xi, Bannon, Cruz, Netanyahu, et al. Matt Gaetz, because of a personal beef, help the entire US Government hostage for over 3 weeks-where was his sacrifice to meet the sacrifice “as our soldiers on the fields of battle”? Tuberville, who has finally been scorned by his own fellow Republicans in the Senate, has held up all promotions, necessary military promotions, because of his hatred of women being able to choose what they do with their bodies. Neither Gaetz nor Tuberville have ever served in the Military; neither one understands sacrifice, yet both believe in being “apostles of force”! In Israel, Netanyahu is unable to take responsibility for what happened, he is unable to remember what he learned in the Army as a Captain, he seems to be unable to be a leader who sacrifices himself for truth, rather than sacrifice another for his lies. Jordan, Trump, Mike Johnson, et al, never could imagine being “as fine and sacrificial… as our soldiers are on  the fields of battle”! They would rather be the bomb throwers, the ones who glide in and take advantage of innocent people who want to believe they are sincere, they want peace, they are capable of being decent, people; only to find out they are idolators, deceivers.

WE, THE PEOPLE, must end the reigns of terror! We must demand our leaders stop being “apostles of force” and making us into “slaves of evil”. It is time for Israel to accept the truth of a two-state solution. It is time for the Palestinians to accept the same truth and POLICE their own extremists as Israel must to with theirs. It is time for the Arab world to end their dance with Chaos and Iranian backed terrorists and recognize, partner with Israel-no longer believing they are capable to dictating terms to the world because of their oil reserves. The citizens of this country, the USA, have to demand our leaders stop enslaving us to chaos and lies, end their alliances with “apostles of evil” like Putin, Fascism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Anti-Asian, Racist actions, etc. WE, THE PEOPLE, have to stand up and be counted as “ministers of the sacred”, we have to be willing to “be as fine and sacrificial… as our soldiers are on the fields of battle”!!

We have to follow the examples of people in recovery and practice the principles of our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, the Bible, the Prophets, Jesus, Mohammed, in all our affairs. This is about how we live by the examples of “our soldiers on the fields of battle”, not any particular religion nor any particular bastardization of religion. It is following the example of millions of people who left a life of mendacity, self-deception, a life of being an “apostle of force” and a “slave to evil” so we can find our authenticity, be responsible and transparent in all our affairs! We are not perfect so we “continue to take personal inventory and promptly admit when we are wrong”, we do this so we never sink into being “slaves of evil” again. This is what is needed in each of us and in all of us! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 33

“Either we are ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil. Let the blasphemy of our time not become an eternal scandal. Let future generations not loathe us for having failed to preserve what the prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created in thousands of years. The apostles of force have shown that they are great in evil. Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness. We will survive if we shall be as fine and sacrificial in our homes and offices, in our Congress and clubs as our soldiers are on the fields of battle.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

The last sentence above is one we still have to learn, it seems. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel teach us the difference between existing and surviving. I believe he is speaking to us about our humanity surviving, our goodness surviving, the survival of God’s call to us to be “ministers of the sacred”. As the heart wrenching news of the destruction of human lives in Gaza is broadcast in the media, it is important to not forget the 240 Hostages that no agency, not the Red Cross, not the UN, has seen nor checked on. It is important to remember that Hamas is a Terrorist organization, funded and trained as well as directed by Iran and Hezbollah which uses their own citizens as human shields! It is important to ask the question of who broke the Cease-Fire that was in place on October 6, 2023. It is important to ask who benefits from the calls for “a pause”, not the people of Gaza who have been imprisoned by Hamas for years, who have never seen the Billions of dollars that has flowed into Hamas from Qatar and others, who have never had enough fuel, never had their cities and homes improved upon, have never had their coastline developed with the ‘aid’ that has flowed into Gaza. AND the devastation breaks our hearts, it is terrible to look upon, it is frightening to come to grips with the results of our inability, our unwillingness to “be as fine and sacrificial in our homes and offices, in our Congress and clubs as our soldiers are on the fields of battle.”

It is time, right now, to call upon the Bibi to resign. It is time, right now, to call upon Qatar and the other funders of Hamas to stop sending their money to terrorize Israel. It is time, right now, for the citizens of Gaza and the Arab countries to throw Hamas out of Gaza, out of the West Bank. It is time, right now, for the UN to stop its Anti-Semitic rants and lies. It is time, right now, for the Arab Countries and the Palestinians to find leaders that are willing and can make peace with Israel and find a two-state solution that is just and right. It is time, right now, for the Republicans in Congress to stop their petty gamesmanship and approve the necessary aid for Israel, Ukraine, humanitarian efforts and rebuilding of Gaza, for the border security etc. It is time, right now, for the people in Congress to throw out Santos and Menendez. It is time, right now, for The Supreme Court to stop some members from receiving gifts as “bribes blind the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous”(Deuteronomy 16:19).

We begin all of these actions in our homes, in our offices, in our clubs. It is time, right now, for our homes to be places of learning and loving, of raising our children to be “the self they were created to be” as Thomas Merton teaches us. Our homes should be the places of wild and deep ‘arguments’ of truth seeking, understanding the nuances and complexities of history and the present. It is time, right now, for our offices to be places of service-not socialism-where we live not the finest of our Biblical dreams; no matter the different socio-economic status everyone respects the dignity and worth of every human being, that everyone is necessary and needed: “All of you stand here today your heads of your tribes…to the stranger …to the drawer of your water that you should enter the covenant”(Deuteronomy29:9-11). All of us are entered in the Covenant, no matter what faith or non-faith we practice, all of us need to serve the Covenant rather than the self-centered desires of power, greed, etc in our offices. It is time, right now, to return to service in our offices and business and leave the greed, the mendacity behind.

These are the sacrifices that we in recovery offer to God, to one another, to the people we have harmed. We are fighting a different battle than the soldiers on the field, we are fighting for our survival as human beings. We are engaged in the war for our humanity and turning to the example of “our soldiers on the fields of battle” helps us keep slogging away. We speak of “trudge the road of happy destiny” as an example of the soldiering it takes to recovery the very ways Rabbi Heschel is speaking about; being “ministers of the sacred” instead of “slaves of evil”. This choice is in front of us daily and we continue to choose the former over the latter. I make this choice each day and, for the past 35 years I have stayed away from criminal activities and chosen life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 32

“Either we are ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil. Let the blasphemy of our time not become an eternal scandal. Let future generations not loathe us for having failed to preserve what the prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created in thousands of years. The apostles of force have shown that they are great in evil. Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness. We will survive if we shall be as fine and sacrificial in our homes and offices, in our Congress and clubs as our soldiers are on the fields of battle.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

“Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness” is the demand of God, it is the demand of humanity and it is the demand that humanity continues to ignore.

“The apostles of force” continue to flex their muscles, continue to be immune to the call to goodness, continue to wrap themselves in the ‘clothes of righteousness’ and continue to wage war with “goodness”. This has been true throughout the history of humankind and, while goodness prevails at moments, we have not found the strength to defeat “the apostles of force”. In this moment, when the terrorists of Hamas continue to have fuel and food, supplies and tunnels while denying the same to the people of Gaza, some of us watch in horror at the deaths of ‘civilians’ in Gaza, listen to the calls for a ceasefire while ignoring there was a ceasefire on October 6th and Hamas is the entity that broke it, and experience the hatred of Jews that has risen up to the surface after being ‘kept under wraps’ for a while. This is an example of one of the disguises that “the apostles of force” use-decrying the fight of Israel and Jews for our very existence. We have forgotten the 1930’s in Germany, Europe, the United States when Jews were vilified and our very existence was threatened and, “the apostles of force” almost won. We forget the history of Black people in America who to this day are discriminated against and the Jews stood with in the Civil Rights movement. We forget the discrimination of the Chinese, the Irish, the Italians, that was rampant and now is ‘under the surface’. We seem to be able to ignore the ways “the apostles of force” work hard to deny “that we can be as great in goodness.”

Even in Congress, Mike Johnson wants to help the rich avoid paying their fair share of taxes by tying the aid to Israel to defunding the IRS. He and his fellow Republicans, want to ignore the need of the Ukrainians in order to help Vladimir Putin and Russia! Yet, he says he is following the Bible while he seeks major cuts in funding for the poor, the needy, the children, the stranger. I am not sure what Bible he is reading and he does this with a smile, with ‘love in his heart’ portraying himself as a ‘good christian’ while denying “that we can be as great in goodness” as Christ calls us to be in the New Testament. Christ hung out with the poor, the leper, the hookers, the ne’er do well-not the rich, the famous, the powerful. This is an example of one of the disguises of “the apostles of force” take on.

We have “to reveal that we can be as great in goodness” as “the apostles of force are great in evil”. It is within us to do this, it is the call of our souls, of our inner lives, and it is the call of God to us. We do this by standing for what is right and good, by acknowledging our own errors, by repenting for our mistakes and changing our ways. We have to stop “hating our brother in our heart” as we learn in Leviticus, we have to stop turning to the “false gods” of power, lust, greed, force, which only empower the evil within us. We have to lessen the power of our self-deceptions and we have to be allies with one another in the fight for goodness, the war against “the apostles of force”. We can do this! We have the technology-prayer, T’Shuvah, introspection, meditation, study, engagement in and with our holy texts, letting go of our grudges, seeing the infinite dignity of every human being, etc. We have so many more similarities that differences, we do not have to fight one another ‘in the name of god’ because this is not what God wants! As the Torah teaches us: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”(Lev.19:18).

This is the goal of recovery! While most people go to and believe recovery is about an addiction to a substance or a process, the main thrust of recovery, as I experience it, is to “reveal that we can be as great in goodness”. Today, I celebrate 35 years since I left prison for a re-entry program. Torah, Judaism, Recovery have all led me away from being an “apostle of evil” and with the help of so many people, family, friends, strangers, I have been able to reveal I am capable of being “as great in goodness”. In our prayers when we return the Torah to the Ark, we say: “It is a tree of life.. all of its ways are ways of pleasantness and all of its paths are peace.” Let’s find our unique way to “reveal the we can be as great in goodness.” God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 31

“Either we are ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil. Let the blasphemy of our time not become an eternal scandal. Let future generations not loathe us for having failed to preserve what the prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created in thousands of years. The apostles of force have shown that they are great in evil. Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness. We will survive if we shall be as fine and sacrificial in our homes and offices, in our Congress and clubs as our soldiers are on the fields of battle.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

We are witness’ to the loathing of “future generations” on our College Campus’, on Social Media, in the streets of our cities when we see the Anti-Semitism that is rampant and the glorification of terrorists. While “the apostles of force have shown that they are great in evil” we hear calls for a “cease-fire”, we hear calls for humanitarian aid, which is needed and Hamas will appropriate it as they have done with all of the other aid that has been given to Gaza over the years! Yet, we continue to hear how bad Israel and Jews in general are.

Each generation, since the Holocaust, has taken for granted “Never Again” and we have not taught the lessons of “the prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created”. Rather we have taught the lessons of self-centeredness, of seeking power for its own sake. We have taught the lessons of the conquerors, the slave-masters, we have taught that some people are worth less than another, we have taught that we can shirk our responsibilities in favor of our false, inauthentic desires. We have taught scapegoating is legitimate, fearing the stranger is logical, ignoring the poor and the needy is expedient, taking God’s words and demand and turning them into what we want, validating our idolatries is good and holy! We have failed the future generations, we have taught them to loathe the truth of the Bible, the lessons and calls of the prophets, the foolishness of the martyrs and saints, and the scholars have promoted a disdain for what is right, what is truthful, what is holy, etc.

What is happening in the world today is an existential threat to freedom, to humanity, to the words and deeds of “what the prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created” and we have to take a stand, we have to re-energize their teachings and deeds with our deeds, our words, our teaching. We have to stop the bastardization of “the prophets and saints”, the deceptions and the mendacity of “the apostles of force”, and the glorification of terrorists. Israel is being vilified for standing up for itself, for doing what is, unfortunately, necessary to exist and there are many across the globe who decry ‘the atrocities of Israel’ while celebrating the invasion and murder, slaughter, beheading, of babies and elderly, young people attending a concert dedicated to peace, taking hostages and not allowing the Red Cross to visit them. These same people say nothing about Hamas’ treatment of the people they rule in Gaza; never building up Gaza with the billions of dollars they receive each year, nothing about Hamas’ use of their own citizens as human shields, nothing about the building of tunnels under hospitals, UN centers, schools etc. If this isn’t a loathing of what “the martyrs” fought and died for, what is?

People should not hold other people hostage for their own goals-full stop! Israel should not have ignored the plight of the people of Gaza nor the plight of the people in the West Bank-this was, is wrong. Hamas, the Palestinian Authority should not have ignored the plight of their own people by refusing to make peace-full stop! The Arab countries should not have ignored and fueled the hatred of Jews that is has-full stop! The Republicans in the House of Representatives should not hold the government and We, the people, hostage in not wanting to fund the government unless the myriad of social programs that help the needy, the poor, the elderly, the children are cut-full stop! They should not be bargaining with the aid that Israel needs to fight terrorism-full stop! Our college campus’ should be places of learning, of debate, of learning how to hold two things at one time in our heads, our hearts, our souls-full stop!

A program of recovery is what is needed, what I hear Rabbi Heschel calling for in his wisdom above. In recovery, we relearn the teachings and deeds of “the prophets and saints, the martyrs and scholars” through the Big Book of AA, through the stories we are told, through the deaths of those who could not grasp a spiritual way of living. We re-learn that the force of our will cannot bring us to wholeness and peace, will not allow us to live without fear of losing, and delivers us to become “slaves of evil” rather than “ministers of the sacred”. This is our challenge and our salvation. may we respond and live lives compatible with being a partner with God. God Bless, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 30

“Either we are ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil. Let the blasphemy of our time not become an eternal scandal. Let future generations not loathe us for having failed to preserve what the prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created in thousands of years. The apostles of force have shown that they are great in evil. Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness. We will survive if we shall be as fine and sacrificial in our homes and offices, in our Congress and clubs as our soldiers are on the fields of battle.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

Immersing ourselves in the first two sentences above allows us, calls for us to determine what is “sacred” and what is “evil”, as well as what is “blasphemy”. “Sacred” is explained in numerous areas in the Bible; human life is sacred, animal life is sacred, rebuking one’s neighbor is sacred, not hating one’s neighbor in one’s heart is sacred, caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy is sacred, having one law for the stranger and the citizen alike is sacred, “proclaiming freedom throughout the land and to all it’s inhabitants therein” is sacred, treating the captives in war with dignity and respect is sacred, standing up against Amalek/blotting out Amalek is sacred, redeeming the captive, doing T’Shuvah, our covenantal relationships with God and humanity is sacred, and so much more. Choose Life we are told by Moses, stop looking towards heaven for answers when the solutions to life’s challenges are “in our hearts, in our mouths”.

Nowhere is hunting for sport, senseless killing for our own power, denying the dignity of another human being, treating the poor as criminals, not redeeming our people from poverty, ill-health, etc, called sacred. There is no place in the Bible that extols humanity’s ability to proclaim one way as the only way, there is no place in the words of the prophets that extols killing for sport, be it killing animals or humans, there is no place where the prophets extol war for the sake of power and greed, there is no place where the prophets proclaim the right to subjugate the needs of the many for the needs of the few in power. Evil comes in so many disguises, it comes dressed as ‘sacred’ at times, it comes to us through mendacity and deception. It holds us captive, it makes slaves of us through our engagement in self-deception, our misreading of the text, our using what is holy and sacred for our selfish desires and drive for money, power, and prestige. We witness this “evil” daily, we are perpetrators of “evil” when we ignore it, when we explain it away, when we are indifferent to it! Rabbi Heschel, in this essay begun in 1938, is calling us out and some 85 years later we seem to continue to be deaf to his call, to this choice.

We participate in blasphemy by being indifferent to “evil” and to the “sacred”, by ignoring the call to be servants of “the sacred”, by bastardizing and blaspheming what is holy and good, what is true and right. We participate by not calling it out, by not standing up against this blasphemy, by electing authoritarians, by electing these ‘religious’ people who stand for themselves, not God; who bastardize the Bible, the New Testament, the prophets, the Koran, etc. When Mike Johnson extols the 2nd Amendment right to have AR-15’s, when he claims to be a follower of Jesus and works to gut programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare to the needy and poor, Child food programs, he is demonstrating what a blasphemer is, what being a “slave to evil” is and his faux sincerity is nauseating. When Hamas claims outrageous numbers of dead and wounded and the press/media blindly accept these liars words as truth, we are witnessing the lure of “the evil” and how easy it is to be captivated by it. When we hear the UN speak of humanitarian aid, which is sorely needed by the people of Gaza and not to be given to Hamas (which they have never distinguished), and do not think it is important to visit the hostages taken.on Oct. 7th, they are demonstrating their indifference to evil while wrapping themselves in some bullshit humanitarian cloak. The people who speak the loudest about their being “ministers of the sacred” are usually the ones who blaspheme the most and are willing “slaves of evil” carrying out the demands of evil with reckless abandon-be they Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Progressive, Far-Right, etc.

I have wrestled with people all my life, I have wrestled with my self all my life to overcome being a captive to evil, to stop my blasphemy and, in the last 35 years “the sacred” has won much more often than “evil”. I have been accused of blasphemy when I speak the truth, when I call out and question the Sages of old, when I refuse to go along with conventional ideas and ways and I am proud of it. I am not proud of the times I have gone against the principles of recovery, the principles of God and blasphemed. I don’t hide them and I am continue to seek “the sacred” and Choose Life! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 29

“Either we are ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil. Let the blasphemy of our time not become an eternal scandal. Let future generations not loathe us for having failed to preserve what the prophets and saints, martyrs and scholars have created in thousands of years. The apostles of force have shown that they are great in evil. Let us reveal that we can be as great in goodness. We will survive if we shall be as fine and sacrificial in our homes and offices, in our Congress and clubs as our soldiers are on the fields of battle.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

Reading Rabbi Heschel is, at times, difficult! His wisdom, his teachings, his combining of prose and poetry make quoting him easy; living into his words takes an inner experience of his brilliance, a decision to imbibe his calls to us a little at a time. I have been experiencing Rabbi Heschel as a teacher, a master, a guide, a prophet, for almost 35 years, he continues to give me a “bad conscience”, a measuring stick of where I am at in my inner and outer life, a reality check on my incongruences and where I am walking my talk. My raison d’être in writing this blog is to share my experiences with Rabbi Heschel’s teachings, and provide a pathway for people to experience him for the first time and/or anew.

The first sentence above makes me shudder! I hear Rabbi Heschel calling us to account, to account to and for ourselves when we are “ministers of the sacred” and when we are “slaves of evil”. We do not live in one and not the other, only a slim minority of people are “slaves of evil” nor “ministers of the sacred” all the time. Most of us live in both realms and the challenge is to admit this to ourselves, to stop wrapping ourselves in the ‘cloaks of piety’, to stop believing the lies we tell ourselves and the judgmental ways of society that label us ‘bad seeds’ for our negative actions. Given history and our present, Rabbi Heschel is teaching us that we have a choice, a minute by minute choice, as to where we want to live; in the freedom of the sacred or in the slavery of evil. His choice of descriptors is very important to me: minister comes from the Latin meaning “servant” and slave meaning “captive” from Latin.

Rabbi Heschel’s use of these two words are apt descriptors of the choices we make each day, in each situation of living. Are we going to serve or are we going to stay captive is the question Rabbi Heschel is asking, it is the question God asks throughout the Bible/Holy Text of every spiritual discipline. Yet, it seems that most of us are unaware of this question, unaware of our own captivity, ignorant of our choices and adjusted to societal needs, conventional thinking, etc rather than the calls/demands of God from Sinai: “Hear, Choose Life, Let Freedom Ring throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein, Care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, Love Your Neighbor as You Love Yourself”, etc. We seem to be captives to our baser urges, we seem to be under the spell of the authoritarians, the deceivers, the power-hungry, wealth-driven minority that continue to promulgate the Big Lies, be it about elections, the stranger, people who are not male, people who don’t ‘fit the mold’, etc. We are “slaves of evil” when we go along to get along, when we stay silent in the face of injustice, when we are unwilling to stand up for and be “ministers of the sacred”! It is hard, it is lonely, it is walking on a narrow path, it is living into the nuances, it is being Godlike by distinguishing what is light, what is dark, what is chaos, what is wandering, etc, knowing we don’t have all the answers, listening to our souls knowledge rather than the rationalizations of our minds and the call of our captors.

In recovery, we find ourselves at the crossroads of being “ministers of the sacred or slaves of evil” every day. We know the slavery of evil, we have been captives of our old incongruent, evil ways. This knowing is ever-present in our decisions; are we moving one step closer to our ministry, our serving, or are we moving one step back into slavery, into our captivity. In recovery, we constantly seek ways to be of service; our work becomes not just a means to be self-supportive, it becomes an opportunity to serve another individual; our meetings are places to be of service, to welcome the newcomer(stranger), to “hear’ the call of God to be in recovery, to allow another to love us until we can love ourselves and then give the same love back to the people around us, and to, above all, “Choose Life”!

I wrestle with these choices each day, I know some have felt captive by my way of being and I am sorry. I have worked diligently to be a “minister of the sacred” and make amends when I am a “slave of evil”. I continue to “grow along spiritual lines” knowing I will never achieve perfection, nor do I need to; all the while seeking spiritual progress, living into God’s call and Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom a little more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 28

“Soldiers in the horror of battle offer solemn testimony that life is not a hunt for pleasure, but an engagement for service, that there are things more valuable than life; that the world is not a vacuum. Either we make it an altar for God or it is invaded by demons. There can be no neutrality.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

Rabbi Heschel’s is demanding we take a stand. While I am not prone to ‘either/or’s’, there are times when we have to choose. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us how to make this choice: “either we make it”(our life) “an altar for God or it is invaded by demons. Elie Wiesel teaches us: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.” To live a life of meaning, of purpose, of Godliness “we must take sides”.

Do not confuse “take sides” with choosing to support the demons that try to invade our lives constantly, do not confuse “make it an altar for God” with idolatry, with injustice, with hatred, with choosing to support terrorists and/or authoritarians. When we “make it an altar for God”, we are choosing to stand for and with the prophets and against the multitude of Pharaohs we encounter in our lives, against the terrorists who proclaim their terrorizing is in the name of God, against the different incarnations of Amalek, people who use the vulnerabilities and kindness of a person against them. Rabbi Heschel and Elie Wiesel are calling out to us to take the blinders off, to rid ourselves of the cancer of prejudice, and to discern and distinguish truth, to stand with and for what is right, what is just, what is Godly.

This is a difficult task for most of us. We have a multitude of bias’ and we have a need to ‘be right’. We are witnessing the practice of living prejudices and proclaiming they are Godly, we are watching, some of us in horror, leaders, elected officials, proclaim the ‘right’ to subjugate people they are afraid of, people who challenge the status quo, to be heretics, to be the cause of the ills of our world. This happens daily to Jews, to Muslims, to people of color, to the ‘rebels’ in dictatorships, and too many of us “stand idly by the bloods of our neighbor”. Whether it is in the Middle East, in Ukraine, in Washington DC, in our own neighborhoods, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of our duty as human beings to care for one another, to remember we are  all created from the “mold of Adam” and we all have infinite dignity and worth. We cannot, however, join with the terrorists, join with the idolators, join with the demons who invade our lives through treachery, through mendacity, through self-deception, etc. I am hearing and experiencing Rabbi Heschel’s call to ‘get our own house in order’, to let go of our need to calculate which side will be best for us and join the side of God, join the side of doing the next right thing-no matter the cost because the cost of joining the side of the demons, the side of the idolators, the side of the terrorists is destruction, is the killing of the Godliness that is within each of us. It is hard to discern at times and the noise from the demons seems to fill our heads with so much deception we want to equivocate, we want to make moral equivalency, we become paralyzed and/or we join with the idolators believing they are speaking the words of God. We see this with the Republican Party’s bowing down to Donald Trump/authoritarianism, we see this with the people who believe fight sensible gun control, we see this with the people who believe they should control a woman’s body, the rights of LGBTQ+, make this a ‘Christian Nation’ which is troubling for those of us who are not ‘Christian’, for those of us who don’t believe they are promoting Christ’s agenda nor God’s.

In recovery, we are blessed by putting on a “new pair of glasses” and we repent for our choosing to allow the demons to invade us, rule us, to change us, to lead us to ruination of our selves and so many other people. We “made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God” so we can take a stand, so we no longer live in the neutrality of doing nothing, no longer live a life of taking a stand against God, no longer stand on the sidelines while our world burns.

T’Shuvah, recovery, studying Rabbi Heschel, have caused me to live differently than I did. There are times when the demons have invaded and I haven’t noticed, and I constantly am drawn back to serving God, to making my life and helping others make their lives “an altar to God”. I am not neutral, I take a stand for what is right and good, I am loud, abrasive, difficult in the face of mendacity and fight the demons that try to invade my life and the lives of other people. My ways may be politically incorrect, hard for people to hear, and standing with God is more important than being liked, famous, etc-this is how recovery, T’Shuvah, Torah, and Rabbi Heschel have changed me! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 27

“Soldiers in the horror of battle offer solemn testimony that life is not a hunt for pleasure, but an engagement for service, that there are things more valuable than life; that the world is not a vacuum. Either we make it an altar for God or it is invaded by demons. There can be no neutrality.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

“Either we make it an altar for God or it is invaded by demons.” This wisdom from Rabbi Heschel is so needed today, now and, if we are to last as a democracy, if we are to see freedom survive around the world, we have to engage in making our world “an altar for God” because we are witnessing how easy and how insidious the demons are! Last night there was another mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, number 565 this year. The war in Israel, where Israel is fighting for its very existence is ongoing, hostages seem to have become lost in the media coverage of the devastation in Gaza-not even the Red Cross has visited them- the Republicans in the House of Representatives have elected an election denier as the Speaker of the House, a man who doesn’t believe in freedom for all-only those who agree with his far-right views. So much of these incidents are done by ‘people of faith’ and for ‘religious reasons’ as have so many wars, conflicts, etc. So often, these horrors are the result of people who believe they are acting in God’s name and people who wrap themselves in some garment of ‘righteousness’ and validate evil, validate their prejudices, validate their oppressive actions.

It is important, as I wrote yesterday, to see the nuances, to not have myopic vision, AND it is just as important to call out evil, to be involved in the fight for freedom, not the fight to continue prejudice, hatred, racism, religious fanaticism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia. Since October 7, when Hamas murdered, tortured babies, elderly, and everyone in between in their homes and, for some, while sleeping, took over 200 hostages, paraglided into a music festival and mowed down young people having a good time celebrating peace and love, there have been 312 anti-semitic incidents in the United States and this increase is happening all around the globe. Yet, we are not paying attention to these facts, we continue to vilify Israel for its devastating bombing of Gaza with no mention of the hostages that Hamas refuses to release, with no mention of the fact that the people of Gaza have allowed Hamas to rule them, they have celebrated the rocket attacks, parents praised their children for the terrorism, the murders their children perpetrated. And, the media believes the ‘news’ coming out of Gaza as truth even though it comes through the terrorists of Hamas! We are being invaded by demons and, unfortunately, many of us ‘good people’ are succumbing to the demons inside of us, our prejudices, our inability to discern truth from fiction, our sympathy for ‘those poor victims’ who are actually perpetrators.

Of course the people of Gaza are suffering! Of course there upticks in Anti-Muslim actions, of course faith has a place in our society, and of course we have to see the whole picture of what our world has become, is becoming, and could become. There are no “good old days”, there is no “make America great again”, because these slogans keep a myth going that never was! We are told to read the Torah, the Bible each year and see new ways to live into the will of God in this moment, not living the same as we did last year. We have to take a stand, we have to stop using seeing both sides as a path of having our being, our world “invaded by demons”. Terrorism is demonic-full stop! We have allowed terrorists to hold us hostage for far too long! Be they Islamic terrorists, like Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Iran, or domestic terrorists like the far-right MAGA crowd, or world terrorists like Orban, Putin, Xi, etc. As Charles E. Weller taught generations of typing students: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”

Recovery in general and in my personal recovery; our daily goal is to make this day “an altar to God”. I am aware of my imperfections, I am aware of my shortcomings, I know each morning I make commitments to God, to people, that I fall short of completing by nightfall. I also know I am progressing, I am on guard for the demons that invade me, the demons that live within me and I wrestle with them everyday as does everyone in recovery. We do not hide from ourselves nor anyone else. Prior to recovery, I terrorized my family, people around me and people who didn’t really know me, in my recovery, I make amends for those actions and I realize-sometimes sooner, sometimes later-how I have terrorized people in my recovery-there is no perfection. I have made my T’Shuvah, I have forgiven myself, I have changed. Each and every day, I know the demons, inner and outer, want to and do chip away at the altar to God that is my life and I know I add more than is chipped away with my dedication to Godliness, to truth, to awareness, to discernment, to forgiveness. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 26

“Soldiers in the horror of battle offer solemn testimony that life is not a hunt for pleasure, but an engagement for service, that there are things more valuable than life; that the world is not a vacuum. Either we make it an altar for God or it is invaded by demons. There can be no neutrality.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 151)

The news is full of “war atrocities” committed by Israel in its war against Hamas, its war against terrorists who have committed unspeakable acts. There are, regrettably, many deaths in Gaza because of the actions of Hamas, not Israel. While Israel is being vilified for responding to the attack, the declaration of war by Hamas, the world has forgotten the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel above. While Israel has built up its troops at the border, they have not entered Gaza as they weigh the incalculable loss of life an invasion will bring. We are being subjected to the anti-semitic view that the war in Gaza is in a vacuum, that the perpetrators are the Israelis, that the ‘innocent’ civilians who cheer, who support the terrorists of Hamas are being crushed by Israel, not by their own people, that Hamas’ pleasure as related in the tapes and the instructions found is ‘a fight for freedom’. Yet, we seem to forget the Israeli and foreign hostages taken, raped, beaten that are still in Gaza, we seem to forget the babies that were killed mercilessly, we seem to forget that Hamas spent their money on building tunnels, building and buying rockets and other arms and ammunition to kill Israelis, to kill Jews as they happily proclaim. Israel drops leaflets, sends text messages to let people know before the bombs drop, Hamas fires rockets often into Israel and infiltrates/crosses the border in surprise attacks and slaughters.

Rabbi Heschel’s description of what a soldier goes through; “the horror of battle” is accurate as so many of the soldiers who were in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the two Gulf wars, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc attest to. No Israeli that I have ever spoken with nor heard has celebrated “the horror of battle”, they have been changed forever by this “horror”. War alters the lives of each and every soldier especially when they serve as “an engagement for service”, which is what the Israeli reservists are doing. Yet, as we can discern from one of the telephone conversations where a terrorist is proclaiming how many Israelis he killed on Oct. 7 and his parents and family are praising him and Allah for this slaughter of innocents, terrorists kill for pleasure, Hamas soldiers enjoy and celebrate every death they cause! This is whom is being praised by some of the world, who have used ‘innocent’ civilians as human shields, who have prevented people from leaving Northern Gaza to seek refuge! While they claim to be fighting for Allah, while their supporters in Qatar, Iran, and across the globe praise them and Allah for every Jew that is killed, murdered, slaughtered, raped, it is clear that they are not fighting for anything more valuable than life, it is clear that they are bastardizing the teachings of Islam, the war they are fighting is for self, not for God.

We, the rest of the world, have failed once again to understand and see the nuances of this war, we have, once again, reduced this war to “good guys and bad guys”, to Israel being bad and the ‘poor Palestinians, poor Hamas, poor terrorists’ being good. Israel has made many errors in its treatment of the territories-full stop! Arafat, Abbas, Hamas have rejected numerous overtures for a peaceful settlement-full stop! Instead of looking for how terrible the Jews are, instead of blaming all Palestinians, why not seek a solution that honors both the safety, security, dignity of the Jews and the safety, security, and dignity that every Palestinian deserves? Watching and hearing the people on the left celebrate Hamas’ gliding into a concert and killing innocent people, their denial of the murders of so many Israeli, American, and other nationalities is disgusting. It is a betrayal of humanity, it is a betrayal of God, it is a betrayal of Allah, it is a betrayal of principle, of decency, of truth.

We are in desperate need of recovering our sense of dignity, our knowing that living principles is more important than staying alive through betraying our inner knowing, our connection to God, to something greater than ourselves. For those of us in recovery, we make this commitment to serve, we make this commitment to value life’s principles every single day! We “practice these principles in all our affairs” because we know the slippery slope of not seeing nuance, not seeing the whole picture, because we are acutely aware of the danger of “just this one time”. Just as we say about a drink, drug, etc-“one is too many and 1000 is not enough”, we know this to be true about our commitment to service, to truth. Living in the “both/and”, leaning into the nuances of life is difficult and it is the only way to recover what is truly valuable in life-our dignity, our souls, our humanity. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 25

“God will return to us when we shall be willing to let Him in-into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, not our courts and investigating committees, not our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the Father of all men or no man, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of man is not in his will to power but in his power of compassion. Man reflects either the image of His presence or that of a beast.” (Man’s Quest for God pg.150)

Immersing ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, as with all of his wisdom, demands we look inside of ourselves and do our own Chesbon HaNefesh, our inner and outer accounting of our souls. We have Country Clubs that keep ‘the riffraff’ out, we have clubs that are exclusive, we have so many areas where ‘those’ people are not welcomed. We have nations that believe they are entitled to take the land of another country just because they can. We have a war in the Mideast where countries are negotiating with terrorists because of a hostage crisis, much like the Iran Hostage Crisis and with terrorists and countries that call for all Jews to die. We are in the midst of an internal war in our own country between forces that are for fascism and authoritarianism versus people who believe in democracy and want to grow the U.S. into “a more perfect union”.

Yet, we are confused because these forces of evil, these terrorists, these fascists are proclaiming they are doing evil in the name of God, when they are actually doing these despicable actions in the name of themselves, in the name of power, in the name of idolatry. Rabbi Heschel’s call to us is to say NO to the lies, the mendacity, the deceptions of the charlatans, and to our own self-deceptions. Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to end our discriminatory ways of exclusivity, of blaming the poor, the needy for being poor and needy, to help the stranger who is homeless and stateless, to recognize and live into the will of God, not the will of our evil urges, not the will of our blood thirstiness.

I hear Rabbi Heschel reminding us that God doesn’t leave us, it is us who leaves God and God’s ways. His wisdom above refers to the ways we have left God, the ways we separate from one another, the ways we practice power and greed rather than compassion and kindness. We use the words of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc to validate our “will to power” rather than God’s will. We pick out phrases and sentences that are meant for prophecy and use them to call God “vengeful”, etc and we bastardize the words of the prophets to validate the very actions the prophets called out about the priests, the rulers, the wealthy! We keep trying to ‘put God in chains’, relegate the teachings and will of God to our desires and destructive natures and deeds. We are unwilling to accept Rabbi Heschel’s truthful reminders of the nature of God, the demands of God, the desires of God all the while wrapping ourselves in the garment of ‘religion and piety’.

We are in the midst of a crisis, globally, in our country, and in our homes and personal lives. The foundation of our inner and outer crisis’ is to be found in Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance above: “Only in His presence” will humanity find and live “the power of compassion”. We are not compassionate towards ourselves because we demand some straw man of perfection. We are not compassionate towards another because we see in them the weakness, errors, every human being possesses. We are not compassionate towards ourselves nor another because we are unwilling to “let Him in” to our lives, to our minds, to our spirits. Instead, we are worshiping at the altar of idolatry, the altar of mendacity and this is how we are reflecting the image “of a beast” rather than the “image of His presence.”

Recovering our faith, our being “willing to let Him in”, our basking in “His presence” is the essence of recovery. In our recovery movement we “came to believe a power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity” is the second step in our path to freedom, just as “this is my God” was the second step in the Israelites path out of the grasp of the Egyptians after they crossed the Red Sea. In recovery, after we cross the threshold of truth and awareness-our powerlessness- we seek God because we know we are unable to move forward in freedom, compassion, kindness, truth without being in “His presence”.

I struggle with mendacity-my own and the worlds-knowing that any engagement in lying does not “let Him in” and I am alone and bereft. When I “let Him in”, I am not alone, I am not lost, I am not wandering, I am reflecting God’s image and overwhelming the “beast” inside of me with compassion, love, kindness and truth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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