Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Spiritual Path towards Living Well

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 67

“The prophet is a person who suffers the harm done to others. Whenever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet’s angry words cry. The wrath of God is a Lamentation. All prophecy is one great exclamation. God is not indifferent to evil!”(Essential Writings pg.86)

The last two sentences above hold an idea that has perplexed human beings forever. People who want to deny the existence of God claim that God is indifferent to evil, they point to the myriad of atrocities that have occurred over the millennia and ask “where was/is God”. Yet, people of faith claim that God is in the salvation, God is in the redemption of the oppressed, God responds when we call out to God, God sends prophets to remind us of what the solution is as we learn in the different Psalms. Rabbi Heschel is calling out to us to not give in to despair, not give in to the lies of those who want to defeat us, those who want to deny our faithfulness. They know there is strength in our faith, strength in our adherence to the words of the prophets, and they want to render us weak as the Philistines did with Samson.

Our situation today is even more perilous than in earlier times. People of false-faith, charlatans who use the worlds of the Bible, the words of the prophets, the words of Christ, Mohammed, Moses to lure unsuspecting people who want to believe to believe in lies, practice idolatry, become “indifferent to evil”. This is in direct contradiction to Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, in direct violation to the words of the prophets, and, unfortunately, very believable to so many people who willingly go into the slavery of idolatry and lose their freedom, their goodness, their ability to discern truth from lies, fact from fiction.

During Hanukah, we say a prayer, “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who performed wondrous deeds for our ancestors in days of old at this season.” This prayer is to remind us that the deeds performed for our ancestors, the miraculous defeat of the Greeks, the miracle of the “oil”, were not one-time events. I believe we celebrate Hanukkah, we celebrate Passover, we continue to receive Torah on Shavuot, we sleep in the Sukkah, we rejoice on the Day of Atonement, in order to recapture the faith, the spirit, the energy God imbues us with to carry on, to live decently, to leave our indifference and be involved in the world, bring goodness, stand up against evil, and be worthy of being descendants of the prophets.

It is time for us to, once again, to live into the miracle of Hanukkah-the victory over the idolators, the victory over the Jews who remained indifferent to the words of the prophets and the calls of God. In Jewish lore, the first Temple was destroyed because of the people not treating the widows and orphans, the poor, the needy and the strangers well. The Second Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred between people. We are experiencing both of these phenomena today in the United States and across the globe. Yet, we are remaining indifferent, we are standing idly by the bloods of our brothers and sisters, we are saying that God is indifferent to the calls of the captives, the cries of the poor and the stranger, the tearing of the garments of those whose loved ones have died from war, famine, et. LIES, LIES, LIES, these are all lies said by the people who have their own agenda-be it those who are willing to “die in hell” like Ron Reagan, or those who twist the words of the prophets and of God like Mike Johnson, the Ayatollah, Hamas, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, et al.

God has imbued all of us with the knowledge of good and evil, God has imbued all of us with the discernment to ferret our the lies we tell ourselves and the ability to rise above our self-deceptions and the deceptions of another. God has given us the command to never be indifferent, God continues to send prophets and teachers to us, which I believe Rabbi Heschel is both! He is not teaching us something we do not know, he is reminding us of what is in our soul, in our hearts, in our mouths which we have willingly chosen to forget, willingly chosen to remain blind to.

The fate of the world is too precarious to leave to the control of those who believe God is indifferent to evil, that they can say one thing and do another, they can deceive us forever. We, the people, have to use the words of God, the call of the prophets, the teachings of our spiritual traditions, the wisdom of Rabbi Heschel and Rev. King, the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, Martin Buber and Harold Shulweis, Father Greg Boyle and John Pavlovitz to name a few. The Recovery Revolution is a spiritual revolution, a spiritual path that honors the words of the prophets and of God. It is a path upon which we honor the last sentence above: “God is not indifferent to evil”. We know the evil that God is not indifferent to because we have practiced it, we are repentants, we are redeemed by God’s love, care, kindness, wisdom and by God opening our eyes to see truth, to see the future, to see what is good and how to achieve it. The recovery revolution is based in spiritual principles, that begins with our surrender to a higher truth, God wants us, God needs us, we are better than our worst actions and we can no longer remain indifferent to the evil we have done nor the evil we see around us. We are recovering our humanity through cleaving to the teachings of the prophets, God, the wisdom of teachers who give us paths to travel down in our own way. The teachers above, and so many more, all have one thing in common: they are “not indifferent to evil” as they live into the call to be “Imitatio Dei”, Godlike. Lets all root out the evil in us, leave the comfort of deception-self and another(s)- and join with God in lifting up the oppressed. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 66

“The prophet is a person who suffers the harm done to others. Whenever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet’s angry words cry. The wrath of God is a Lamentation. All prophecy is one great exclamation. God is not indifferent to evil!”(Essential Writings pg.86)

Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom and teaching above is crucial for our understanding and imbuing the Bible, the prophets, and God. Lament comes from the Latin meaning “weeping, wailing”. “The prophets angry words cry” gives us a new and different understanding of the importance of their words, the importance of their actions and a deeper understanding of what it means to witness the bastardization of God’s will, the unraveling of good in the world by twisting the words, the will and the intention of God’s direction, and the pain it causes one to see the destruction of spiritual norms, spiritual wisdom, and morality.

We are in need of more prophets, or descendants of the prophets as Rabbi Heschel defines us. We are in need of being a “reminder of God”, we need to dedicate ourselves this Hanukkah to fulfilling the “divine need” we are created for a little more. Yet, until we can have the angry “cry” of the prophets, we will continue to stand idly by while the charlatans, the terrorists debase the word of God, the teachings of Christ, the way of Mohammed, the spiritual program of Eastern Philosophies, etc. The prophets are wailing and weeping as they scream at us to stop being indifferent to the suffering of any and all people. Their cry is louder than the cry of those being harmed because their wailing is powered by a divine voice, their weeping comes from the “fire in the belly” that defines their compassion, their clear-sighted vision of what is right and good as well as their seeing the wrong and the evil.

This is the greatness of Rabbi Heschel, he is a descendant of the prophets, he is, in my estimation, a prophet himself. Just as he described Martin Luther King Jr. as proof that God had not abandoned the United States of America, Rabbi Heschel is proof that God has not abandoned the Jewish people. Along with so many people, Jewish and not Jewish, who claim Rabbi Heschel to be ‘their Rabbi’, he inspires us to raise our voices, pray with our feet, our actions, and cry as the prophets did. These cries, while they come from weeping and wailing, are not cries of helplessness. These are cries that call for action, that call for repentance, that call for change, for kindness, for truth, for love. Yet, we hear that the Old Testament is a book that depicts an “angry God” and “angry prophets”. How sad that people buy into these lies for the sake of being sheep that live in indifference.

Listening to the cries of the people of Gaza, listening to the cries of the people of Israel, listening to the cries of the families of the hostages, listening to the cries of Jewish students on Campus, listening the the cries of people who are constantly put down, used and abused, listening to the cries of farmworkers, should make us all respond with “the prophet’s angry words cry”. We need to seek solutions and, in reality, it is the same solution for all. Rather than criticize Joe Biden for vetoing the Ceasefire resolution in the UN, which is historically anti-semitic since 1967 like Ocasio-Cortez is doing, we should be calling on Qatar to stop funding the terrorists, to hand over the leaders of Hamas who live in luxury in their land. We should be demanding that Hamas leave Gaza, that they stop their torture of both the people of Gaza, the hostages, and the people of Israel. We should be crying angry words to Netanyahu for his betrayal of the Jewish people, the Israeli people. We should be crying angry words to the leaders of College campus’ across the nation who are not educating our young to see the whole picture, who are pushing an agenda (conservative/progressive) that is one-sided. We should be crying angry words to our Congress that seems incapable of finding solutions to the problems we face in America today-gun violence, anti-semitism, racism, voter suppression, mendacity in the highest echelons of government.

Listening to the cries of people who have been shunned for speaking truth, listening to the cries of people who stand up and speak truth to power and are ostracized for it, listening to the myriad of people who take up “the prophet’s angry words cry” way of being and being exiled for it, has to make the rest of us angry and cry out at the injustice we witness and participate in. When we have more people in jail and prison than any other nation, when our criminal justice system as well as our civil justice system is so heavily weighted by racism and money, we have to wail and weep over our betrayal of the Biblical dictate to judge each case on its own merits. We have to speak out and speak loudly because it is apparent the people in power have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the call of the prophets, to the will of God, no matter what Mike Johnson and his ilk proclaim. There is no honor in going along to get along, there is no trust in selling out like Kevin McCarthy.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith’s program of recovery is prophetic in spirit and nature, it is, like the Bible, like Rabbi Heschel’s teachings and writings, a program of action based on the wailing and weeping of marginalized people-addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, people who don’t ‘fit in’. Being responsible to God, being responsible to another human being, being responsible for our actions without a lot of lawyer talk, is what the prophets called for and what people in the Recovery Revolution live. We weep over our callousness, we wail about our acts of injustice and mendacity, we cry for the souls of those who are in need of recovery and cannot face the truth, be they alcoholics or just people with the “ism” of alcoholism! God Bless, Happy Hanukkah, stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living Rabbi Heschel's Wisdom - A Daily Path to Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 65

“The prophet is a person who suffers the harm done to others. Whenever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet’s angry words cry. The wrath of God is a Lamentation. All prophecy is one great exclamation. God is not indifferent to evil!”

As we continue to celebrate/observe the holiday of Hanukkah this year, and in every year, these words hopefully are resonating within our souls. We are all descendants of the prophets, we are all imbued with the same sensitivities as the prophets, yet we seem to have become inured to the evil, the harms, the crimes being committed in our name, in God’s name!

Hanukkah translates to mean “dedication”. Each year, at the winter solstice, we are being called to dedicate ourselves to the freedom, to decency, to justice, to goodness, to fighting for God’s will to be front and center in all of our actions. Yet, as Rabbi Heschel reminds us, we cannot do this as long as we turn a blind eye to the crimes committed against another, as long as we continue to commit crimes against our own souls. We are all guilty of being perpetrators in the crimes of our times through our silence, through our going along to get along, through our mendacity and our self-deceptions. In each moment we are able to dedicate ourselves to being more like the prophets and less like the Greeks, the Romans, less like Putin, Hamas, Trump, et al. We are called by the prophets, we are called by God to “suffer the harms done to others” rather than commit these harms. Rabbi Heschel is teaching us, again and again, to stand with the prophets instead of being the people they called out, the people they railed against. And, we continue to be deaf to their call, we continue to believe we are right, we continue to be inured to the evil, the violence, the terror we perpetrate upon another human being and upon ourselves.

While some portray God and the prophet as angry in the Hebrew Bible, Rabbi Heschel is opening us up to a different reality, the spiritual reality of God’s cry, of the prophet’s cry over what we are doing to the gift of life, the gift of creation we have received. The only remedy for us, the only way we can begin to redeem ourselves, dedicate ourselves to God’s will, to God’s call, to the wisdom of the prophets, is to end our criminal behaviors. As we can see in the world today and throughout history, very few of the criminals are ‘put away’, are brought to justice, rather they seem to be running the world today as they have in the past. We, the people, have a wondrous opportunity to dedicate ourselves to dealing with the evil inside of us, to end our self-deception of ‘rightness’, of believing the lies we tell ourselves, of participating in the crimes of nations, communities, of clergy, and of our own indifference to the crimes that happen on a daily basis. We have to stand up to the people who believe that Palestinians are less human than Jews, we have to stand up to the people who believe Hamas are ‘freedom fighters’, we have to stand up to the people who believe the hostages should not be seen by the International Red Cross and they deserved to be taken hostage. We have to stand up to the fundamentalists who believe the United States is or should be a ‘christian nation’, we have to stand up to the people who look down upon the homeless population, seek to blame the stranger for the ills of society, engage in Anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia, anti-LGBTQ+ behaviors.

Most of all, we have to stand up to the evil inclination in all of us. We are given the tools by the prophets, by God, by our spiritual traditions to harness our evil inclination in the service of good, yet we seem to enjoy indulging in negativity. Be it the impugning of reputations because of our imperfections, be it the cries for the extermination of the Jews and of Israel, be it the denigration of the dignity and value of any human being, we have to say NO to ourselves, we have to rise above the internal fray and hear the call of our souls, the call of the prophets, and suffer the harms we have done to another, suffer the harms that are done in our name by another, and stand up against the people who enjoy their criminal behaviors and validate these behaviors by wrapping themselves in the flag of their country or their misinterpretation of God’s will, no matter who it is.

Those of us who are part of the recovery revolution observe and celebrate Hanukkah each day. As my Rabbi, Rabbi Ed Feinstein teaches, the most important day of any holiday is the day after the holiday: “how has it changed you”, he asks. We, who are engaged in our own recovery ask and answer this question each day-no matter which holiday we have just celebrated. We are constantly seeking to spread the message to people who are still suffering from their inability to see the crimes they are committing, hear the words of the prophets and heed them. We are dedicated to self-improvement, to spiritual growth, to service and to truth.

I live in self-deception less and less each day. I am dedicated to growing and I suffer whenever I see crimes committed against anyone. I also have committed crimes against another and am dedicated to not repeating them. Rabbi Feinstein says I am more a prophet than a rabbi and my prophet self sounds angry when in reality, I am crying out to people to hear me, to hear the call of their own souls, to change, to not reject me, not reject their spiritual life, not reject the words of the prophets nor the teachings of the Bible. My cries have sounded angry because I see mendacity and deception as the root of the “7 deadly sins”. I have indulged the anger at times, I have been unable to control myself and this has led to harms as well. I am sorry for these harms and I am sad that I have been misunderstood by people as well. I am responsible and I re-dedicate myself to goodness each day. Happy Hanukkah and God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 64

“A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepting. The knowledge of evil is something which the first man acquired; it was not something that the prophets had to discover. Their great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. I am my brother’s keeper.”(Essential Writings pg.86)

The last two sentences above is one of the hardest for most of us to take in, comprehend, and engage with. It is counter-intuitive for someone to “be decent and sinister, pious and sinful”, AND it happens all the time. Because of our “indifference to evil”, because of our “silent justification(s)”, we refuse to believe that someone can be both, we continue to live in a binary world of either/or. We refuse to see the humanity of anyone who disagrees with us, we all can and do become both decent and sinister, pious and sinful”. We have failed to look beyond the surface in seeing people, we make our decisions about another human being and that is it-nothing will change our minds. While we only have one opportunity to make a good impression, the realness of any human being comes out through getting to know them, to know their soul, to help them out of their willful blindness which also enables us to get out of our own willful blindness. Yet, we continue to engage in “a silent justification” of our own decisions, of our own ‘rightness’, of our own “evil of indifference”. When we get angry at the unhoused for being in ‘our neighborhood’, when we practice NIMBY against people who are ‘not like us’, when we only want to be with ‘our kind’, we are being both “decent and sinister, pious and sinful.”

In our political world, we go along with people who hide their “sinister” thoughts, intentions and actions because we deem them “decent”. We believe the words of those who portray themselves as “pious” while they practice “sinful” actions. We experience this phenomena with Mike Johnson, with the evangelicals who are supporting Donald Trump, with the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation who promote ‘christian’ values that are antithetical to the teachings of Christ and the prophets, etc. We witness this with the progressives who extol the words of the prophets and practice anti-semitism, hatred of anyone who disagrees with them and/or who question their incongruences. We watch in horror as extremist Muslims and Jews practice the same “sinful” actions, have the same “sinister” designs against one another and their ‘own kind’ who disagree with them in the name of Allah and/or Adonai!

In the Bible, we think Cain is asking a question: “Am I brother’s keeper” when it could also be that he is coming to the realization: “I am my brother’s keeper”. We all are “my brother’s keeper” and we keep denying this truth, we keep using “the evil of indifference” to stay willfully blind to this fact. We are living in a world that has always needed all of us to accept this truth that Cain learned so long ago and needs to now very badly. We listen to people talk about the stranger, the poor, the needy, in terms of harshness and hatred rather than in ways that honor the truth Rabbi Heschel articulates above:”I am my brother’s keeper”. Rather than do anything, including selling a Torah, to ransom the captives, we allow people to be held in captivity by terrorists, by Putin, for weeks, months, years on end. Some of the most “pious”(?) among us believe it is right to enslave people and then extol the benefits of slavery like Ron DeSantis and some of the people in Florida. Our partisanship, our belonging to the tribe, the gang, the group helps us to be both “decent and sinister, pious and sinful” and we stay blind to this truth.

The recovery revolution is the revolution of Judaism, of Islam, of Christianity, of all spiritual disciplines. It is a revolution for the truth of our humanness, it is a revolution for ending our participating in “the evil of indifference”. It is a revolution for holiness, for Godliness, for awareness of and avoiding the pitfalls of doing “sinister” acts while looking “decent”; for ending our justifications of being “sinful” by bastardizing what being “pious” is. Joining this revolution is imperative in our time and has been in every time, the Israelites joined at Sinai, the prophets reminded us of our commitment to recover our ability to be “decent” and “pious” while leaving the pull of “sinister” and “sinful”. Their raging against this is found throughout their words to the Priests and the Kings, the rich and the powerful and the people who followed them. In recovery, we are constantly aware of and act on: “I am my brother’s keeper”.

I am guilty of “silent justification”, of being both “decent and sinister, pious and sinful”. I have not practiced being “sinister” since my recovery began, I have been sinful, however. I also have sought to learn about another human being beyond the surface/facade they have shown. I have lived:”I am my brother’s keeper” in these past 35 years to the best of my ability in the moment and grown into living this way more and more. I am enraged at the injustice I witness and speak about it. I am upset with the people who openly practice being “decent and sinister” and I become bombastic about it. I confront this way of being in myself and in another human being which, at times, causes me great trouble and gets me exiled. Yet, I cannot live with myself if I don’t call it out, if I don’t get confrontational when I witness “the evil of indifference”. “I am my brother’s keeper” is more than a phrase, it is a way of being. When I witness the ways some of the ‘progressives’ have abandoned Israel, when I witness the ways some of the ‘conservatives’ abandon the stranger, the needy, I am enraged and wonder what it will take for all of us to adhere to God’s teaching: “I am my brother’s keeper” and end our “evil of indifference”! God Bless, Happy Hanukkah, stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 63

“A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepting. The knowledge of evil is something which the first man acquired; it was not something that the prophets had to discover. Their great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. I am my brother’s keeper.”(Essential Writings pg.86)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching about the knowledge of evil is so important to remember and immerse ourselves in. Evil is what Adam and Eve learned about when they ate of the fruit of good and evil, they also learned what is good and the nuance between them, the ways to discern one from the other. This knowledge has been passed down to us throughout the generations. What we seem to miss, however, is the call and demand of the prophets to open up our eyes and see the evil in front of us, the evil within us and the “evil of indifference.” We have shut our eyes to this evil, we have become drunk with our own power of willful blindness, our increasingly dangerous skill at hiding in the shadows and calling it sunlight. We have ‘grown up’ to a new and blinding reality-mendacity in the form of the holy!

So many ‘religious’ people are indifferent to the evil that their idolatry causes in the world, in their communities, in their families. We are witnessing a renaissance of the hell of bygone eras where ‘religious’ people spouted verses from the Bible, from many holy texts, to validate their evil and their indifference. The prophets did not just talk to the people of Israel and Judea, they spoke directly to the Priests and the Powerful. They did not point out the obvious, they pointed out the lies of the Priests and the powerful, the hiding they were doing in plain sight, the unholy actions they were taking under the guise of doing the service of the Temple and of God. The “evil of indifference” was so great to the prophets, they risked everything, life, liberty, etc to get the Priests and the powerful, the people and the children to return to God and Godliness. Yet, then as now, their pleas fell on deaf ears.

We know evil when we see it, we just choose to ignore it for our own personal gain, because of our fear of standing against the norm, out of a lack of courage and being trained in the ‘art’ of indifference. Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah, a celebration of the victory over the Greeks in 167BCE or there about, yet it is also a ‘victory’ supposedly over Hellenism for Judaism. It is also a Civil War between the ‘religious’ and the secular Jews in Judea at the time-sound familiar? In their zealotry, the Maccabees were blind to the “evil to indifference” they practiced, they overpowered their ‘enemies’ in the Jewish world because they believed in their ‘righteousness’ and, as history has shown, became as corrupt as the people they replaced, as Hellenized as the people they fought against. Today, also, we see these ‘religious’ people trying to take over the country in Israel and in the United States so they can impose their ‘kingdom of god’ which is nothing more than idolatry, bastardization of the holy teachings and in direct opposition to the teachings of the prophets. Yet, these ‘religious’ people are so blinded by their inner evil they are masters at what the prophets discovered: “the evil of indifference”.

Just as Deborah, Tamar, and other women saved us in Biblical days, just as Joan of Ark, Isabella of Spain taught us what it means to stand for truth and discovery, it seems women like Liz Cheney, Cassidy Hutchinson, Nancy Pelosi are doing the same here in the United States. Women in Israel are calling Bibi and his gang of idolators to task about their “indifference to evil” in dealing with Hamas prior to Oct.7th, their indifference to the suffering of the hostages still in Hamas’ grasp, their indifference to the plight of the people in the West Bank as the settlers go after them with the full cooperation of some of the IDF! We need to heed these women, we need to follow their examples and cross political, ideological lines to end our dependence upon and our relishing in “the evil of indifference”!

We do this by joining what I call the Recovery Revolution. What better time than now to make a decision to truly turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God, remove the blindfolds we have put over our souls,  to end our passionate love affair with “the evil of indifference”! We are in a time of great spiritual courage, the forces of the Cosmos are pulling us to freedom, be it Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, all of these celebrations of the Winter Solstice are also invitations to end our love affair with “the evil of indifference”, to stop engaging in the lies we tell ourselves about how ‘right’ we are in our indifference to the plight of another. The Recovery Revolution calls for us, as the prophets call for us, to help the needy and the poor, the sufferer and the stranger; to care for one another and to live into the commandment: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”. In recovery, we learn to love ourselves for who we truly are, to engage in life on life’s terms, to stop being engaged in “the evil of indifference”.

I am not indifferent, I ended my love affair with the “evil of indifference” years ago. I am bereft at how this evil has grown over the years I have fought against it in myself and in the communities I have been part of. I realize that the call of the prophets is very strong within me and I am not always ‘nice’ in my desire to smash this “evil of indifference”. While I know I can’t eradicate it, I keep believing if I smash it into enough small pieces, the people I am trying to help will be able to see it, manage it and end their affair with it. I am going to keep trying and, it is at times a very lonely place, a misunderstood place, and a place of hope, strength and connection to God and to people. God Bless, Happy Hanukkah, and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 62

“A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepting. The knowledge of evil is something which the first man acquired; it was not something that the prophets had to discover. Their great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. I am my brother’s keeper.”(Essential Writings pg.86)

Continuing his thoughts and fears regarding “indifference to evil”, Rabbi Heschel, as I hear him this morning, is a prophet and a historian, a teacher and a guardian for all of us. These words from an unpublished manuscript describe what is happening right now as they described what was happening in his time and in every generation. We make “a silent justification” for our “indifference to evil”, we go along with the media, we go along with the ‘leader’, we go along with our immature inner voices and we stay silent and indifferent in the face of evil.

Listening to Liz Cheney these past few days has brought home Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above in a very dramatic and profound manner. While I disagree with many of her policies, while I disagreed with many of her father’s policies, I see her stubbornness and her determination to not be indifferent to evil. She was/is willing to be an outcast from the Republican Party, she was willing to lose her seat in Congress, she was willing to work in a bi-partisan manner to root out and make public the evil of January 6th 2021 and accuse the perpetrator(s) of this assault on our democracy. She is a hero and an anomaly in that she went against Trump, went against her party, went against her colleagues and stood for democracy and truth.

Her colleagues did the opposite, they are still doing the opposite, and we are in danger of losing the democratic way of life so many have died for. The “silent justification” of Kevin McCarthy, Ronna McDaniel, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, et al, is making “possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.” These people have a lot of help from Fox, from other media giants, from the people who have drunk the Kool-Aid and, like the people of Jonestown, are willing to be led by a lunatic who is so narcissistic he will harm the people who have been loyal to him for his own gain. Many people have come to accept the evil of Trump and his cronies, the evil of hating the stranger, taking advantage of the poor, shunning the needy, scapegoating the Jews, the Muslims, the LGBTQ+, the person of color, etc to feel better about themselves. The “indifference to evil” is justified because it is allowed to grow and fester in silence, which is why Liz Cheney is heroic in her public stance against both the evil and her condemnation of her former colleagues in staying indifferent to this evil.

In the reporting on the War in the Millde East, a war for the very survival of Israel, a war against a terrorist group who’s raison d’être is to annihilate the Jewish people, we hear little about the evils of Hamas, we hear much about the belief in the words of Hamas. Many of us Jews watch and listen in horror as the media, some commentators, even politicians rail against Israel (and by extension Jews) without ever condemning the evil of Oct 7, 2023 which caused this war. Watching the support of Hamas around the world, the love of Hamas and, by extension the hatred of Israel and Jews, in the UN, the words of Rabbi Heschel come alive in my mind, in my heart and in my conscience-this “silent justification” of the “indifference to evil” against Jews is not new, and it is exhausting, it is difficult to bear, it is fear-producing and it is a betrayal of the alliances, the values, the spiritual principles we say we share. Mike Johnson and his Republican cronies tying aid to Israel in this time of need to defunding the IRS, to his border craziness is another example of their “indifference to evil” and their “silent justification” of the evil they condone, spread and support.

The protests in Israel prior to Oct. 7th 2023 are examples of the opposite of “a silent justification”. They refuse to accept the evil of Netanyahu and his crazy compatriots in their evil ways of: demeaning Justice; of trying to colonize the West Bank; their bastardization of the Bible-instead of Justice Justice you shall pursue they pursue injustice, they give and take bribes which blinds the eyes of the righteous. The people of Israel stood up to their evil, they did not stay silent, they did not stay indifferent! There are continued protests regarding the hostages, regarding what is happening in the West Bank. We hear nothing of any protests in Gaza against Hamas, we hear of no protests of what Hamas did to the people of Gaza in any Arab city in the Middle East, in any city around the world, especially in the United States. Unlike the Civil Rights era of the 60’s, unlike the Anti-Vietnam era of the 60’s-70’s, unlike the myriad of times we have had to ‘take to the streets’ to defend, support, rally for the human dignity and rights of any and all people, be it LGBTQ+, George Floyd, etc our ‘partners’ have fallen into “a silent justification” for their “indifference to evil”; how sad!

I pray each and every day for the Recovery Revolution to permeate people as it has permeated so many of us in recovery. The spiritual values and principles are guiding lights on the path to no longer being silent, no longer being indifferent. Our recovery is rooted in our need and our awareness of the evil we perpetrated ourselves and the evil we were indifferent to, and the evil we stayed silent about. Rabbi Heschel’s words give me a new understanding of one cause of my addiction, my silence about the evils perpetrated upon me, upon my friends and family. While I was too young to know it at the time, as I grew-I kept the secrets, I stayed silent. In recovery, I knew I could not stay silent any longer and have been Very loud:)! We all need to take off the blinders, come out of the ether, and be in recovery! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 61

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself, it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.” (Essential Writings pg. 86)

As I immerse myself in the last sentence above, the words of Elie Weisel come to me: ““We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Along with these words of truth and wisdom comes the quote attributed to Edmund Burke: “Evil flourishes when good men do nothing”. These two teachings are the proof of what Rabbi Heschel is saying above: “Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself, it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.”

Yet, we continue to witness the engagement in this “indifference”, we continue to witness and, for some, participate in it. “Indifference has become the norm, it is used as a cover for both the far left and the far right to engage in vilifying the victim, proclaiming their ‘rightness’ in their engagement in both “indifference” and in “evil”. In the Ukraine, there are people in the United States and across the world who have grown tired of supporting the freedom of the Ukrainians, they are tired of the war and feel like it is not their business to help people across the globe and/or are afraid of war with Russia. This “indifference to evil” has allowed and encouraged dictators for the millennia, this “neutrality” tried to keep us out of World War II, it is a cancer that spreads through the body of a nation and through the souls of humankind. It kills the spirit of freedom, the word of God, the lesson of the prophets.

In the Middle East, “indifference to evil” allows people to condemn Israel and proclaim Hamas as ‘freedom fighters’! It is a contagious disease that is spreading throughout the world, the murder and rape of women and children, the ambush and murder of over 1200 Israelis, the crossing of boundaries of a sovereign nation are of no real consequence because of people’s “indifference to evil”. The evil of Anti-Semitism is contagious, ignored and, in some cases, celebrated. Not caring about, not differentiating between good and evil, not seeing the nuances and the lies of this situation and any situation is a form of “indifference” to me. Whitewashing Israel and/or Hamas is a subtle form of “indifference to evil”.

We, as a people, have lost our way in the pursuit of personal gain, personal pleasures. We have grown our ability to “not easily be moved by the wrongs done unto other people” by making them into non-human, less than us, etc. The global crisis’ are of a personal making, as I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning. Because of our own lack of action, our own neutrality because it isn’t happening to us, we watch in silent complicity as people are denied their right to vote, their right to representation because of gerrymandering, their right to determine what happens within their own bodies, their right to die, their right to be free. We, the People, have to end our “indifference to evil”, we have to end our tacit support of the liars and charlatans who tell us God wants us to hate another human being for their sexual orientation, their belief in helping the poor, the needy, the hungry, their fight for freedom and safety, their belief in the promises of being taken out of the ‘Egypts’ they find themselves in, for demanding the release of the captives, etc. We, the People, have to turn inward and root out the “indifference” that stops us from “doing nothing” while evil is flourishing. We, the People, have to end our desire to not get involved, to believing ‘it doeskin’ concern us’, and end our support of the oppressor with our neutrality, our silence.

We can only do this by following the wisdom of Socrates: “An unexamined life is not worth living” and acknowledging the truth of Malcom X: the examined life is painful”. We are told in the Bible, in the Talmud, to continue to examine our lives, examine our actions, learn and grow, repair and change, not to be perfect and to be involved in living a whole life, an examined life, a life of standing up for truth, a life of standing up for justice, a life of seeing the nuances of each and every situation we find ourselves in. We are called to, as the Kotzker Rebbe reminds us, take each of the 10 sayings/commandments, personally: don’t murder our own souls, don’t prostitute ourselves, don’t steal from ourselves, don’t lie about and to ourselves, etc. This is how we end our “indifference to evil”, this is how we not “stand idly by the blood of our brother/neighbor, this is how we “Never Again” stay neutral in the face of evil, in the face of mendacity, in the face of hatred.

This is another of the foundations of the recovery revolution, examining our daily living as well as our previous living. We take “a fearless and thorough moral inventory and as we progress, we “humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings”. We seek each day to grow in awareness, to grow in living the principles of spirituality, to grow in living more decently, kindly, more aware.

This way of being which I have wrapped myself in since 1987 is hard. It is painful for me to see the myriad of ways I went along to get along. It is painful for me to see the times I was unable to contain myself and became bombastic, difficult, and combative in the face of “indifference to evil”, in my estimation and experience. I cannot save my face and my ass at the same time, so many times I have come off as arrogant, angry, immoveable, in the face of both “indifference” and what I saw as evil-mainly the mendacity that people spread. I have not been neutral, I have not been patient, I have not been easily mollified, and this has caused pain for me and those around me. While I am sorry for the pain, I do not apologize for my inability to stay silent in the face of “indifference to evil”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 60

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself, it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.” (Essential Writings pg. 86)

The last sentence above rings in my soul and, as Rabbi Heschel says earlier a, “disturbance in relationship between God and man.” What did the prophets rail about, what was their core message to the powerful and the rich, the people and the priests? It was to stop our “indifference to evil”. We humans have practiced our indifference in a myriad of ways going all the way back to Cain and Abel. The midrash around the Tower of Babel, where the builders were more upset about a brick falling and shattering than when men fell off the tower and were shattered. There is a midrash that up to 80% of the Israelites stayed in Egypt because they were so used to slavery, they were so indifferent to the evil being perpetrated upon them, they decided not to leave slavery and hardship! Throughout the Bible, we are told to be concerned about the plight of every human being, to care for everyone, to “not stand idly by the blood of our neighbors”, yet, we continue to be indifferent to the evils that were perpetrated by humans upon humans from antiquity till now. In listening to Rabbi Heschel’s words, his voice, I am disturbed, I am constantly looking inside myself to root out my own “indifference to evil”, my own “indifference” to the plight of another human, another people, to the members of my community and even my family. Are you aware of your own “indifference to evil”?

The word insidious comes from the Latin meaning “lie in wait for”, “an ambush”, “cunning”; Rabbi Heschel’s use of this word in describing “evil” warns us against our arrogance, is a reminder of God’s admonition to “remember what Amalek did to you on your journey…how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary.” (Deuteronomy 25:17-18). Our “indifference to evil” lies in wait for us, it ambushes us much like Amalek did, it cunningly convinces us that we are not indifferent, we are taking a stand, all the while we are “not making any difference” between what is good and what is evil, not taking a stand for God, for decency, for spiritual values the prophets called us to, not being responsible for our inaction, for our ‘going along to get along’, for diminishing what truly is with the ‘it’s not so bad’ and/or ‘they get what they deserve’ and/or ‘white people should rule’, etc. Indifference is so cunning that we believe the charlatans who tell us what they are doing is not evil, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed tells us to take advantage of ‘those people’.

Even the phrase “the other” is an evil we have become indifferent to. There is no “other”, there is only another, we are all human beings made in the Image of God, all of us have infinite dignity and worth, all of us are unique and bring something different to the world. All of us are a “divine need” and a “divine reminder” as Rabbi Heschel reminds us elsewhere. Yet, our “indifference to evil” has become so “insidious" that even the people who are called “the other” have adopted this misnomer as their cause! Rabbi Heschel’s march for civil rights, his campaign against the Vietnam War, his going to the Vatican during Vatican II, all point to his unwillingness to allow “indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself” be true for him and for the millions of people he was standing with and for. We, the people, are called to care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor and the needy, it is demanded that we ransom the captive and we are commanded “when you encounter your enemy’s ox or ass wandering, you must take it back”(Exodus 23:4)! This is how much the Bible is aware of our propensity to “indifference to evil”.

We always have to be on guard against our “indifference to evil” and that of all human beings. We have to wake up and realize the disguises this evil takes, we need to be aware of it “lying in wait” for us, how it ambushes us and the cunningness of “indifference”. We are being called by Rabbi Heschel to remember our obligation to God, to our faith, to truth, to justice, to goodness, to kindness, to truth, to love. I hear him screaming in my head and in my ears to be aware of the myriad of lies we tell ourselves to cover up our “indifference to evil”, to mask the “insidious” nature of our “indifference” and ‘rest easily’ with the evil that is going on around us as “that’s just the way the world works”. NO, it isn’t the way the world is meant to work, NO it is not the ways of the Bible, the Koran, the New Testament-no matter what the Ayatollahs, the Imams, the Priests, the Ministers, the Rabbis, the far-right settlers, the far-left progressives say to make themselves right. It is time for people of faith to stand up and say NO to our practice of “indifference to evil”.

This is what the Recovery Revolution is all about; saying NO to “indifference”, saying YES to being aware, to making mistakes and repairing the damage, to seeking justice, truth, kindness, faith, goodness, to love. We are in a constant state of flux because we are always learning and growing, we are always uncovering and discovering old patterns and new ways of being. We practice our spiritual values and principles in all our affairs, which makes being indifferent, almost impossible.

I lived “indifference to evil is more insidious” for a long time, until my recovery, until my return to Judaism and decency. I can’t stand it now, in myself nor in another, I am afraid of it because it is another way to hide from God and from me. More tomorrow, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 59

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself, it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.” (Essential Writings pg. 86)

Immersing ourselves in the second sentence above, in light of current events as well as historical events, causes us to look inside of ourselves to judge our way of being. The word for prayer in Hebrew means to look inside/judge ourselves. Asking ourselves when we have remained either “neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto others” can be/is a long list. Rev. Martin Luther King, a friend and partner with Rabbi Heschel, said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We have forgotten this truth just as we have forgotten the anguish of the prophets at the slightest injustice and harm done to anyone, even though society accepts it.

Be it the war with Hamas, the war with Putin, the war with Iran, the civil war in Syria, the war against terrorism across the globe, we have to remember and be moved easily by the injustices. “War is Hell” according to General Sherman, and there is no ‘moral’ way to conduct it. Israel is a land that both Palestinians and Jews have a claim on since Biblical days, it is not an either/or proposition. Being indifferent to this truth, on either side of the equation, is evil and produces more wars, more “wrongs done unto other people.” This is the issue for the world and for Israel and Palestinians that want a solution. While this is unpopular in many circles, a two-state solution is the only moral, spiritual and logical response. If we are not crying about the innocent people in Gaza who are being uprooted, dying, then we cannot claim any moral ground. If we are saying everyone in Gaza who is dying is an ‘innocent civilian’ and not accounting for the myriad of deaths of Hamas people, we cannot claim any moral ground. If we are not rooting out the cause of this war, Hamas’ evil and terroristic attacks on innocent Israelis, the raping of women, the killing of babies in their cribs, we cannot claim any moral ground. If we are not moved by the slaughter of people by Russian drones for no reason other than Putin’s desire for more, we cannot claim any moral ground. If we are not moved by the Russians who are dying, we cannot claim any moral ground. When we only seek to blame, when we only want to look at ‘one side’ as ‘the bad guys’, we are remaining “not easily moved by the wrongs done unto others”. When we forget the hostages taken by ISIS, Al Qaeda, Russia, Hamas, and blame the response, which at times is over the top, we are being neutral to the horrors perpetrated upon these people.

When we see the wrongs done by our criminal justice system and do nothing, when we “remain neutral” about the plight of people fleeing the oppression of their native lands for freedom in the United States, we are remaining indifferent. When we see the homeless and complain about them ‘being in my neighborhood” we are “not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people”. When we sit idly by while legislators enact laws that discriminate against women, people of color, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, we are guilty of indifference. When we say we don’t have an opinion, nor do we want to get involved, we are being “impartial” which is another form of indifference when it comes to “wrongs done unto other people.”

In our boardrooms, in our schools, in our Halls of Congress, in our communities, in our homes we have adopted an attitude of indifference that is sometimes overt and sometimes covert. No matter what “side” we are on, no matter whom we are rooting for, we have to be aware, involved and stand against any of the “wrongs done unto other people.” Rabbi Heschel asked: “How can I pray when the death of thousands of innocent Vietnamese are on my conscience?” How can we say that our Bible, our Koran, our New Testament gives us the right to perpetrate wrongs onto another human being? How can we not see every human being as a Divine Image, a Divine need, a Divine reminder as Rabbi Heschel teaches? By being indifferent!

In the Recovery Revolution, that was begun some 3000+ years ago, and enhanced some 88 years ago by Dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson, there is no place for indifference. While AA per say “doesn’t have any opinions on outside issues”, it speaks to the individuals need to not be indifferent to the harms we have perpetrated and may continue to perpetrate unto other people. We are calling ourselves to account every day, just as with the practice of T’Shuvah, and holding ourselves to the standard of morality, decency, repentance, change, new responses. In the Recovery Revolution, we follow the path of wholeness that any and all spiritual disciplines have given us-we recognize the worthiness of every human being including ourselves and we realize we are here to serve not be served, we are here to help the needy, the poor, the stranger, etc-not take advantage of them.

I am guilty of standing idly by at times, thinking it wasn’t my fight on rare occasions. Most of my life, I have been engaged, I have railed against indifference, I have been told ‘mind your own business’, ‘stay in your lane’ and I have responded by taking actions that show it is my business and the whole world is my/our lane. I have been abrasive, loud, overbearing in my passion, in my fear of being indifferent, and, no matter the consequences, hiding is not an option, quiet is not my jam. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 58

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself, it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous.” (Essential Writings pg. 86)

These words of Rabbi Heschel send shivers up my spine. I can hear him calling out to us to change our ways, to wake up, to end our choice to “not differing” between good and evil. The Hebrew phrase for “indifference” I am translating to: “a captive soul”. Isn’t this what “indifference to evil” truly is, a soul that has been taken captive by our inability, our choice, our willful blindness to the evil around us?

We have, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, come to accept evil as an everyday ‘just the way things are’ way of being. We have rejected the fire of the prophets to whom any injustice, any evil perpetrated upon another was cause for alarm and immediate rebuke. Yet, as we can see in our governments, in our business, in our protests even, evil flourishing, evil being called good, evil being celebrated as ‘holy’, as what Jesus taught, as what the Bible says! We are in the midst of a bastardization of the prophets, a rewrite of what history has shown us, a return to ‘the survival of the fittest” mindset that cares only about being “the fittest” evil we can perpetrate. While evil is flourishing, too many of us are fiddling like Nero did as Rome burned.

When Hamas is celebrated as ‘freedom fighters’, when the settlers and right-wing Israelis celebrate the killing of innocent Palestinians, when the Arab Nations decline to stop Hamas, when the world perpetrates anti-semitism, when the Evangelicals rejoice that Israel will cause the Rapture, when the U.S. congress puts conditions on supporting our allies in their war against terrorism and aggression, we are witnessing evil on the part of the perpetrators of course, and, more importantly, we are guilty of, condoning of, and witnessing of the “indifference to evil” Rabbi Heschel is calling us out on. When the Governor of Florida can say that Blacks learned a trade from being slaves, when books on the Holocaust are banned, when LGBTQ+ people are denigrated and legislated against, and the people of the States sit idly by, we are guilty of “indifference to evil”. When a woman has no control over her body, when a male can tell a woman what she can and cannot do, when the Bible supports this and we go along with this travesty, we are participants in the “indifference to evil” that will upend our world.

We stood by in the 1930’s as Hitler and the Nazis came to power, as they perpetrated Kristallnacht, as they invoked the “Nuremberg Laws”, as we learned of the “Wannsee Conference and the “final solution”. We did nothing because we ‘didn’t want to get involved’, we did nothing because ‘it was just the Jews’, we stood idly by the bloods of our brothers because we were engaged in “indifference to evil”. Here in America, we went along with Henry Ford, Father Coughlin, America First, Charles Lindbergh, et al because we didn’t want to ‘fight a war for the Jews’. In the same era, we stood by while Black people were lynched and left hanging on trees, we heard Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and got caught up in the music and not the message, we did nothing as the rights of every immigrant population were denigrated and our message of “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” was a bumper sticker that most people never paid attention to. This is how we condoned and were guilty of “indifference to evil”.

Today, are we any better for our history? Have we learned any lessons? Rabbi Heschel was not always well received because of his insistence on our waking up, recognizing and repenting for our “indifference to evil”. Immersing my self in his words, thinking about the myriad of ways society wants our souls to be captives of the “indifference to evil” that permeates our world today, I hear his plea, I hear his demand, my conscience is disturbed and I can’t sleep well. Listening to the Republicans in Congress condone their savagery towards the poor, the needy, the stranger, while We, the People, do nothing to stop it, is another example of our complicity, our condoning, our being guilty of “indifference to evil”. Hearing “the squad” blame Israel for Oct. 7, support the evil of taking hostages, the stories of what the captives who have been released have gone through, and still believing the ‘heroism of Hamas’ and supporting these congresspeople is another example of theirs and our “indifference to evil”!

Recovery is freeing our souls from captivity, it is ending our “indifference to evil”, it is being responsible for the evil we have perpetrated and the evil we have been indifferent to. In recovery, as in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and all other spiritual/religious disciplines, we do our own inventory, we open our minds and our hearts up so our souls are no longer imprisoned in our bodies by a thick wall of evil and “indifference to evil”. While we are working on our self, we are also helping another human being, we are students and teachers, we are learners and professors on how to recognize the signs of “indifference to evil”, how we can end our self-centered thinking and acting. The recovery revolution is needed now more than ever, I believe. Adopting and living into Rabbi Hershel’s concern about our “indifference to evil” is more needed today than it was 50+ years ago when he wrote this. It is not popular to shout about this cancer from the rooftops and we must if there is any hope of freeing our souls from the captivity of “indifference to evil”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 57

“What is sin? The abuse of freedom. A failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge. The root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart, lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.” (Essential Writings pg 85)

These words, this wisdom from an unpublished manuscript of Rabbi Heschel’s are as relevant today as when he wrote them, at least 51 years ago. Our “lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive” seems to have grown rather than us becoming more aware and understanding! Human beings seem to be unable to find ways to “turn our swords into plough shares and our spears into pruning hooks”, we have lost our ability to learn from Cain and realize we are “our brother’s keeper”. Hamas is celebrated and Israel is castigated, a truce is set and Hamas claims responsibility for a terror attack in Jerusalem. People say they love  Jesus and turn their backs on the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy. We have become a society that knows no shame in our mendacity, our deceptions, our warmongering, our hate, our blame and shame.

While society has a hand in this horrific situation we find ourselves in, the responsibility rests upon all of us. As I wrote yesterday, we seem to be denying our what makes us human, according to Rabbi Abraham Twerski, the ability to make “free-will moral choices”. We have done a wonderful job at exercising our free-will, we have enslaved people, we have dictated how people ‘should’ act from our free-will, we have started wars from our free-will, we have voted in authoritarian governments in democratic elections from our free-will, we have continued the millennia-long anti-semitic crusade against Jews from our free-will, etc. What we haven’t done is be human, we haven’t used our free-will to make moral choices, and herein lies our dilemma and our solution.

“What is at stake in being alive” is our spiritual survival, our moral survival, our physical survival and none of this is determined by outside forces, unless we allow them to be. We, the People, can choose to throw off the yoke of the kingdom of greed, the yoke of the kingdom of power, the yoke of the kingdom of mendacity, the yoke of the kingdom of deception, the yoke of the kingdom of terrorism, the yoke of the kingdom of fundamentalism. We can break these yokes and no longer be directed by the liars who turn us this way or that way as farmers do with oxen. We, the People, can choose to see the truth clearly rather than live life through the veil of lies and self-deceptions we have bought into and tell ourselves each and every day. We, the People, can choose to return to our roots, return to the basics of living: stop murdering one’s own soul and the soul of anyone else; stop whoring ourselves and/or turning another into a whore for money, property, prestige, self-gain/self-worth, no longer whore ourselves at the altars of our false gods, our false self-seeking bastardization of God’s will; end our stealing from our soul, stealing from another human being, stealing from the poor and the needy; stop ‘taking the fifth’ and no longer lie  about everyone else and ourselves, no longer use God’s name for our self-centered, self-aggrandizing lies and false testimony; return to living in gratitude for what we have, end our need to take from someone else what they have, end our jealous and envious coveting and learn to have joy for the success of another human being.

While it is convenient to blame governments, society, radicals, and they have their responsibility in creating the world we are living in today, it is more appropriate to take responsibility for our part the creation of this mess, our part in participating in “sin” through our “lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.” We can choose to keep the status quo or we can choose to change the paradigm at which we live. This change will mean living by Rabbi Heschel’s phrase: “In a free society, some are guilty all our responsible”. We are being called by the spiritual forces in the universe to end our blame game, to stand tall and take responsibility for our errors of judgement, our self-seeking bastardization of the Bible, and every other spiritual/religious text, etc. We are being called to end our senseless hatred of religion because of the actions of people who claim to be “God fearing people” while they are, in reality: idolators. Be it Ben-Gvir in Israel, Johnson in the America, Sinwar in Gaza, or any of the myriad of liars and misinterpreters of the Big Book of AA, the Bible, the Koran, the texts of Buddhism, etc. We are being called to imbue the call of the Universe, the demands of God, the lessons of the prophets, the hope of Jesus, the prayers of Mohammed and live them in all our affairs so we can, one person at a time, change our current situations and make our corner of the world a place of redemption and revelation.

This is what the Recovery Revolution is all about. In recovery, we separate the lies and the truths we have bastardized, the deceptions we have bought into and the self-deceptions that have guided our living poorly, that have helped us to misunderstand “what is at stake in being alive”. In recovery, we begin with the commitment to live according to a standard that is higher than our self-serving old mentality, we are committing to live a life that understands and embodies “what is at stake in being alive”. We take our own inventories, we make our amends, we commit to living differently than we did, we know living well is dependent upon our daily spiritual health. We learn to live in both the call of God, the call of spirit and the call of our neighbor. We let go of being self-centered and become centered on doing the “next right thing”. It is a way of being aware of our imperfections and, rather than hiding and denying them, celebrating them as ways to learn and “fail forward”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 56

“What is sin? The abuse of freedom. A failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge. The root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart, lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.” (Essential Writings pg 85)

“What is at stake in being alive” is a daunting question for most of us. Our “lack of understanding” is what causes most of the strife we are all experiencing in world events, communal events, and in our personal lives, I believe. Rabbi Heschel’s call to us is to delve deeper into what it means to be alive, to enhance our understanding of “being alive”, to end our willful blindness of and our indifference to “being alive. This is a concern of a spiritual nature and goes beyond religious differences, it is a call to activating our spirit in our everyday lives.

Rabbi Heschel teaches us elsewhere that “our destiny is to serve”, so “being alive” begins with our engagement in service to humanity, to God, to our authentic self. Yet, we witness and engage in service to our lower selves, to our false egos, to power for our own sake, and to selfish desires. Hamas, Putin’s Russia, Iran, and the other terrorists organizations, while wrapping themselves in either ‘godly’ or ‘patriotic’ garb are actually serving their own selfish desire for power, for “world domination” that denies “what is at stake in being alive”. The murdering of children, elderly, adults for the sake of one’s ego and power trip is an “abuse of freedom”, an example of “free will run riot”. Without the rest of us standing up and saying NO, terrorists will continue to strike fear in the hearts of humans, continue to make the world unsafe for anyone who is ‘not like them’, and continue the “callousness, hardness of heart” that we witness, that we are subject to, that is overwhelming our consciousness. While there are many legitimate differences with Netanyahu and the way some Israelis think and act towards the Palestinians, the terror, the evil of Oct. 7th changes all equations, requires that we not give into terrorists, that Hamas has to be banished from Gaza if there is any chance at a solution to dignity for both peoples.

In America, we see and hear Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Steve Bannon, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, and the majority of the Republican Party exhibit a “lack of understanding of what is at stake in being alive” also. Their obsession with power over the individual rights of women, people of color, Jews, Muslims in their commitment to: making America a “Christian Nation”; to their “America First” insanity; to their belief in “white power/rule” is another grab for power for the sake of power only. They have convinced themselves that the “Prosperity Gospels” is the true word of Christ, that their unwelcoming of the stranger, their mistreatment of the poor and the needy, their need to control the reproductive health of women, their obsession with LGBTQ+, is in accordance with the New Testament and with the teachings of Christ and the prophets! These ‘good christian fellows’ have usurped the Biblical teaching of not taking bribes because bribes blind the eyes of the righteous, they have usurped justice, kindness, love, truth, with their lies, their bastardizing of what is just, their inability to be kind and loving towards anyone who is not like them. They are feeding their false egos, their lower selves while proclaiming their actions are for the sake of Heaven!

Business leaders are more interested in ‘the bottom line” than in serving the greater good, even in serving their customers and clients. “What’s in it for me” is the underlying theme that runs through every board decision in many companies, how do I ‘kill the competition” is a question heard in many C-Suites, maximizing profits for shareholders takes precedence over what is good for humanity. Money, power, prestige are the key ingredients to success in our business communities, no matter what the cost is to another human being, to humanity in general. We see this with Health Care providers who are so inundated with the ‘rules’ of both government and insurance companies, they are unable to provide the care they want to because of these constraints. Everyone is looking at ‘the bottom line’ in dollars and sense rather than in how to help another human being, rather than taking seriously their responsibility to be good stewards. They respond to the worries of their backers, their shareholders, while failing “to respond to God’s challenge”!

Jewish tradition believes that God is calling to us each day from the mountain top, in the gates of our cities, in the fields of our farms with the same question: “Ayecha, where are you”. Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is reminding us to “take the cotton out of our ears and put it in our mouths” as some people in recovery suggest to newcomers. The Recovery Revolution, like all spiritual disciplines, is a revolution against inauthenticity, against false egos, against giving into selfish desires and against indulging our lower selves uber alles. In recovery, we love one another until and even after a person can love themselves again. Love in the forms of acceptance, brotherly love, understanding, humility and service. Rather than see how we can use our recovery to ‘be in charge’, we use our recovery to be of service. Rather than use our recovery to dictate, we use our recovery to accept people where they are and help them to understand how much more they can be. Rather than see and point out our differences in a show of power, we use our recovery to join with and see our similarities and celebrate the uniqueness of each and every human being.

I still suffer, at times, from “a lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive”. I continue to read, learn from, study, and be informed by Rabbi Heschel, by spiritual sources, by my previous errors, by my successes and the successful living of people. One day at a time, I grow in my understanding, I respond to God’s challenge a little better, and I wake up energized and excited to learn. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 55

“What is sin? The abuse of freedom. A failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge. The root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart, lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.” (Essential Writings pg 85)

Rabbi Heschel’s teaching of “the root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart” is so profound and so simple. I am hearing him call out to all of us to “circumcise the foreskin of our heart and be stiff-necked no more” as Moses teaches us in Deuteronomy 10:16. As a Jew, as a human being, I have to hold the horror of innocent casualties of the war against Hamas and terror along with the horror of the evil Hamas did on Oct. 7, the horror of the evil Hamas does by using civilians as human shields, by using schools, hospitals, Mosques as hideouts for their weapons, entrance to their tunnels, etc. When we are unable to hold two seemingly opposing thoughts, ideas, experiences in our being at the same time, we are being hardhearted, we are being callous, and, according to Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above, we are engaged in the “root of sin”!

When our media presents only one side of what is happening, they are being callous and exhibiting a “hardness of heart” as well as promoting the same to us. When we talk about the hostages in the same vein as the prisoners being released we are being insensitive and showing a disregard for the truth. When we go along with negativity, when we support people who want to destroy some one else just because they are Jewish, Muslim, etc, we are exhibiting a “hardness of heart”. Yet, we continue to see ‘good people’ do this all the time. Listening to the rabid antisemites and/or anti-arabs without any pushback is another example of being callous because there is a blatant disregard for truth, for seeking solution where there is strife, for seeing every one as a human being. It doesn’t matter what ‘side’ one is on, when we don’t see the people on ‘the other side’ as human beings, we are being strangled by the “root of sin”.

This experience is not born of the conflict in the Middle East, it is not born in the conflict in Ukraine, it is not born in the conflict of the United States, the root of sin is born in our homes, in our schools, in our workplaces, in our communities, in our society. Callousness is a learned way of being, disregarding what is true and what is the next right thing to do comes from our upbringing, from our despair, from our witnessing callousness in another, from our bastardization of God’s challenge. When the far right believes it can dictate to a women her choices regarding her body, when they believe they can dictate to immigrants like their ancestors that they are less than human, when they follow Donald Trump and the Heritage Foundation who want to end our democracy and say they are constitutionalists, when they want to denigrate the poor, keep their white power and privilege and do it in the name of Christ, we see how powerful and enticing the “root of sin”, “callousness, hardness of heart” truly is. When we cannot see the horror of 3 friends being shot for no apparent reason other than they were wearing traditional Palestinian/Arab garb, we are being blind, we are practicing callousness, we have hardened our hearts. When we cannot see the suffering of the people in Israel over Oct 7, over the 75 years of being at war, fearing the suicide bombers, the rockets, the wars started by other nations/people. When we cannot see the frustration of the numerous times we were close to a 2-State solution only to have our ‘partner’ say no, we have closed our hearts to any other idea than the one we have, misguided, callous as it may be. When we aer unable to circumcise our hearts, when we are unable to end our being stiff-necked, we are not being “progressive” we are actually being regressive. When it comes to anti-semitism, both the far right and the far left are in agreement: It is the fault of the Jews! When we believe “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” we strangle everyone else with the “root of sin” we are perpetrating.

The only solution, as I hear Rabbi Heschel, as I understand the Bible, as I learn from all spiritual texts, is to follow a path of recovery, to join the Recovery Revolution. We all have the opportunity to begin each day with a prayer of gratitude for being alive, a prayer that recognizes the compassion and faithfulness God has towards us and in us. We all have the opportunity during the day to honor the gift of life we have today by being more compassionate towards another and ourselves, being more faithful to our inner life, our souls and the inner life and souls of those we encounter. We have the opportunity to be of service rather than demand we are served, to understand another rather than demand to be understood, to help another up from the pit of despair, from the hell of “callousness”, the strangulation of “hardness of heart”, from the “root of sin”. We can only do this when we are recovering our humanity, when we are recovering our ability to see the whole picture, when we demand of ourselves to engage in truth rather than disregard it, when we take our own inventory before taking another’s, when we rebuke a neighbor from love of their humanity rather than to make ourselves better. We have a choice each and every day: to grow in “callousness, hardness of heart", deepen our “root of sin” or “Choose Life”!

I have experienced and perpetrated “callousness and hardness of heart” even at times in recovery. Upon realizing it, I quickly seek to repair the damage and return to a place of compassion and being faithful. I have remained faithful to the principles of recovery, the “challenge of God” even when I have been unable to fulfill either fully. I also have experienced the “callousness, hardness of heart” of people around me, of ‘friends’, and it is tremendously painful. The “root of sin” grows so deep in some of us we are unaware of it and this is the greatest pain I experience, the people who have hurt me, abandoned me and are ‘righteous’ in their actions. I ask for forgiveness for the my own “callousness”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 54

“What is sin? The abuse of freedom. A failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge. The root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart, lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.” (Essential Writings pg 85)

What is so difficult that we have a “failure to respond to God’s challenge”? We are in a world that seems to continually abuse freedom and have “a failure in depth”. Vladimir Putin scolds Israel on the death of “innocent” people, Hamas is celebrated as ‘freedom fighters’, Iran is put in charge of the UN Human Rights commission, immigrants are vilified in the United States and across the globe,  Donald Trump is the favorite of the Republican Party’s nomination for President in 2024, Joe Biden is excoriated for being a decent human being, etc. Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above is a call to action and humanity seems to be missing in action, absent without leave.

Watching the news, reading social media gives me heartache and headaches. Listening to students on College Campus’ who march for the extermination of Jews and the destruction of Israel, hearing the xenophobic rants of Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu, and their allies in Israel, seeing how Qatar honors the leaders of Hamas, wondering where the billions of dollars given to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority go when their citizens are in poverty, all point to our “failure to respond to God’s challenge”, our “failure in depth” and we hear cheers for these actions. How sad, how dangerous, how depressing.

I believe the “failure in depth” comes from our love affair with vapidity. We seem to be unable to stay grounded in the foundations that God has given us, decency, morality, love, kindness, justice, compassion, truth. Our society has fallen in love with mendacity, deception and promotes the latest lie that sounds good, that makes our worst impulses seem holy, and bastardizes the word of God, the teachings of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, our holy texts. We witness and celebrate the liberation of our negativity with joy, glee and are willing to sacrifice our spiritual health for more likes on social media, for a promotion at our job, for a lawsuit that has little merit just to settle and get more for ourselves.

We, the People, have to “fail forward”, we have to learn from the “failure in depth” of our ancestors, of our selves and repair the damage to our inner lives, to our souls and to the inner lives and souls of people we have harmed. While we are overjoyed at the release of the hostages by Hamas, we are failing to hold them accountable for taking the hostages in the first place. We are failing to condemn the actions of Oct. 7 and blame the victims, Israel, for what is going on in the Middle East. Not one Arab country has condemned the actions of Hamas, Joe Biden is losing support among the progressives and young people for standing with Israel, for condemning Hams, for resisting the lure of terrorism, while the progressives in this country celebrate the terrorism of Hamas, abandon the Jewish people who have stood up for the downtrodden. I hear Rabbi Heschel’s call to us to end our love affair with “sin”, to end rejoicing in our “failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge”. I hear his cry to us to return to our humanity, to being human in response to the failures of another. I am overwhelmed with his demand we return to the words and deeds the prophets have spoken to us.

We can do this! We can “fail forward”! We do this by demanding of our politicians and elected officials to be “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” once again. We have to demand our elected officials and politicians no longer pay attention to the special interests, to the lobbyists, to the false claims of people, to the idolators claiming to represent God’s will. We need to be more discerning in what we are teaching our children, we have to be more discerning in promoting truth rather than mendacity, we have to end our self-deceptions so we can discern the deceptions by another(s) and not buy into them. We have to look inside of ourselves and end the “cancer of the soul, the eye disease” of prejudice and hatred.

Every spiritual discipline has a remedy for our “failure to respond to God’s challenge”  our “failure in depth”. The remedy begins with a “fearless and searching moral inventory” as it is called in AA, it is called T’Shuvah in Judaism, confession in Christianity, “lifting the veils” in Islam, meditation brings this about in many Eastern spiritual disciplines. In other words, the Recovery Revolution begins in earnest for all of us when we are willing to look at the myriad of ways we have had a “failure to respond to God’s challenge”. We have “a failure in depth” because, prior to being a part of the Recovery Revolution, we have not looked beneath the surface, have not engaged in the work of maturing our inner life, not cared about our love affair with self-deception. The Recovery Revolution is how we “fail forward”, I believe, in whatever path we take to find our inner core of decency, our inner connection to the creative force of the cosmos, our inner connection to goodness, truth, grace, kindness, love and compassion.

I am aware of the many times I have been guilty of  “a failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge” and I am deeply remorseful for allowing my false ego to overrule my soul’s knowledge. Immersing myself in Rabbi Heschel’s brilliance shows me how, at times, I have worked to save my face rather than serve God. I shudder at these thoughts. AND, I also know how often I “respond to God’s challenge” with Hineni, here I am. I am experiencing serenity (clarity) at the overwhelming experiences of delving deeply into my soul, into prayer to hear the call of God, the words of the prophets and act in concert with them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 53

“What is sin? The abuse of freedom. A failure in depth, failure to respond to God’s challenge. The root of sin is callousness, hardness of heart, lack of understanding what is at stake in being alive.” (Essential Writings pg 85)

Immersing ourselves in these words of wisdom from Rabbi Heschel, looking at our world today, hopefully causes us great concern and a deeper look inside of our selves, a better connection with our souls’ calling. Rabbi Heschel’s definition is, for me, very timely as we face an election cycle, a war in the Middle East against terrorism that is funded and supported by Iran, a war in the Ukraine against abject aggression by Putin and his oligarchs, a call for the end of voting rights, civil rights, any and all rights of ‘the other’ by elected officials and those wanting to be elected/re-elected.

Rather than “proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all it’s inhabitants thereof”(Leviticus 25:10), we seem to be promoting the “abuse of freedom” throughout the land, the world. When terrorists are proclaimed as ‘freedom fighters’, when Hamas is allowed to dictate the conditions upon which the hostages they took on October 7 will be freed, when the worlds kowtows to the whims and desires of the leaders of Hamas in their rich enclaves in Qatar, when the world fails to recognize the torture and disdain the terrorists have for the people they are ruling as ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas do, and we call them ‘freedom fighters, we are abusing freedom, we are abusing the very foundational tenets of freedom. When we are silent witnesses to the abuses of power of Putin, the senseless killing of children, the outrageous capture of women and children by the Russian forces in Ukraine, we are abusing our freedom also. When we go along with the hatred being spewed by either party of our democracy, when we point our fingers at another  human being and/or group as the source of ‘the problem’ we are abusing freedom.

The “sin” we commit with our silence is overwhelming. The “sin” we commit with our support for “abuse of freedom” is devastating. The “sin” we commit with our hatred of Jews, Muslims, people of color, LGBTQ+, is painful. All “sin” comes from the “abuse of freedom” that we commit in our inner life, I believe. We have become so bereft in our inner life that we confuse the search for ‘inner peace’ with freedom, we are witnessing people who have come to believe in their own search for ‘inner peace’, their way, at all costs to another human being as right and good. These abuses of freedom, these sins will not stop until we acknowledge our “soul sickness” as the Big Book of AA calls alcoholism. This “, “soul sickness”, however, is not limited to alcoholics, it is rampant in every part of our society, it is infecting every human being in the world. It is the “sin” we have to deal with now or we will continue our “abuse of freedom” and our “sin” and pass it on to our children and to the “fourth and fifth” generations. We have failed to grow the spiritual resilience of our ancestors, the pioneers who braved much danger, elements, life itself, to give us the gift of freedom, the ability to be free and, instead, allowed this resilience to atrophy, repeated the same actions of the people our ancestors ran away from who were abusing them, who restricted them because of color, race, religion, creed, etc. How sad!

We do have a choice, even now, even after the generations of “sin” passed down to us, even after our own “abuse of freedom”. As long as there is breath within us, we can choose to see our errors, we can “take the cure” for our “soul sickness”, we can repent and return to our basic goodness of being. Just as the people of Nineveh did in the Book of Jonah in the Bible, we too can change the course of our future by learning from our history, by clearing away the prejudices of our minds so we can hear our souls. We can cure the eye disease which causes our judgmental attitudes towards another human being, another group based on their religion, their nationality, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, etc. We can and desperately need to end our “abuse of freedom” towards another, and, as importantly, end our “abuse of freedom” toward ourselves. We have to end our ‘need to be free’ at all costs, we need to end our belief that we can do whatever we want whenever we want. We are not free when we “do as we choose”, when we “do our own thing”, when we “go along to get along” when we adjust to “conventional norms and ideas”. We are not free when we do things just so we will be liked, because we are conflict avoidant. We are in desperate need of reclaiming the spiritual principles upon which freedom is based.

This is why we are so in need of joining the Recovery Revolution. Rabbi Heschel’s words, wisdom, teachings, brilliance are in sync with the principles of the recovery movement because both promote Spiritual Principles to live by. These are not platitudes, these are no esoteric ideas, these are real life solutions to the “sins” we commit daily, to the “abuse of freedom” we perpetrate upon our selves and another(s) each day. Living into the spiritual principles that are found in the Bible, in the Big Book, in the New Testament, in the Koran give us a freedom we have not known before. They give us the opportunity to fulfill the hopes and dreams of our ancestors who escaped terrorism, enslavement, authoritarianism, to come to America, to go to Israel, to change the ways of government throughout the world so people can live free.

I have abused my freedom at times, I am deeply remorseful for these abuses. I also know I confused my desires with the God’s call. I have, in my recovery, lived into the spiritual principles God gives all of us a little better each day and I live freer and spread more freedom. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 52

“It was through our failure that people started to suspect science is a device for exploration; parliaments pulpits for hypocrisy, and religion a pretext for a bad conscience. In the tantalized souls of those who had faith in ideals, suspicion became a dogma and contempt the only solace. Mistaking the abortion of their conscience for intellectual heroism, many thinkers employ clever pens to scold and to scorn the reverence for life, the awe of truth, the loyalty to justice. Man, about to hang himself, discovers it is easier to hang others.”(Man’s Quest for God pgs. 149-150)

Rabbi Heschel’s last sentence above is haunting. It is disturbing in its truth and simplicity. We humans have grown in technology, in medicine, in factual wisdom and in our ability to kill our spiritual and mental health over the millennia. Whether it is Putin in the Ukraine, Hamas in Gaza, Assad in Syria, the Ayatollah in Iran, we are witnesses to people who push the limits so far that their own death, figuratively and literally, are in danger so they instead start wars with another country, within their own country, and seek to kill their ‘enemies’. While Rabbi Heschel was speaking of the Nazis, the Russians, the Japanese, the Italian dictators, we see this today both in the dictators, the terrorists and in the ‘populist’ authoritarians who are on the rise across the globe today.

Abraham Lincoln said: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure” and these words are as true today as they were in 1863. We witness the imprisonment of more people here in the US than in any other Western Country. We witness the senseless killing of people in mass shootings, in domestic violence, in police brutality, in everyday arguments and wring our hands, complaining about mental illness as the cause instead of looking to Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom above! The problem is our gun laws, the problem is our our unwillingness to see “all men are created equal”, the problem is a deep need to blame another for our ills and issues rather than be responsible, the problem is we erroneously believe if we can have power over another, we will survive and thrive. The problem is we have come “to scold and scorn the reverence for life, the awe of truth, the loyalty to justice.”

We are witnessing this civil war in Israel right now both internally and externally. Netanyahu was asleep at the wheel because he was/is more concerned about his power, his staying out of court, his not being responsible for his actions, than about the safety and security of the people of Israel. He is/was more concerned about the unacceptable actions of the settler movement than he is/was about the dignity of both Israelis and Palestinians. And, Hamas is a terrorist organization that cares even less about the people of Gaza than Netanyahu! I wish there was a civil war in Gaza, where the people of Gaza would rise up against Hamas for their own dignity, for their own freedom. I pray the end of Hamas in Gaza will signal freedom and dignity for the people of Gaza and the safety, security for the people of Israel bringing a peace that both sides deserve.

In America, we are also engaged in a civil war. We are being pulled in two opposing directions by the MAGA crowd and by the ‘progressive’ crowd. Neither one actually respects the dignity of all, neither one is seeking a spiritual solution, neither one is following Ben Franklin’s advice: “we all either hang together or we hang separately”. Both extremes are more engaged in their false beliefs and their ‘rightness’ than in being responsible, finding solutions for all, and healing the attacks on the dignity and worth of the people they are ‘fighting’. Be it Donald Trump and the Heritage Foundation or “the Squad” and the progressive movement, both have decided who they accept and who they reject, both have steadfast rules for treating anyone who is not “them”. We, the People, who believe Lincoln’s words, who believe God’s words, who follow the examples of the Prophets and Jesus, have to stand up and say NO to these people who want to hang us!

There is a solution to these problems: spiritual health, spiritual values, curing our “eye disease” and “cancer of the soul” called prejudice, ie the recovery revolution. This solution begins with seeing every person as worthy, reflecting the Image of the Divine we are all created in back to one another. Doing this allows us to respond with a resounding YES, HERE I AM, to God’s question; “Ayecha, where are you?” When we say YES, we begin to stop our descent into hanging ourselves. We end the need to hang one another, we no longer need to perpetrate anti-semitism, racism, xenophobia, religious wars, power grabs. We no longer need a ‘bad guy’ to feel good about ourselves. We no longer need to terrorize our neighbors into submission to ‘our way’ of being. We no longer promote false interpretations of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc. We no longer seek to destroy ourselves with our addictions to power, to wealth, to drugs, to escapism, to mendacity and to deception of self and/or another.

Recovery for me has been to find the solution, to find the middle path, to stand up for all people, to stand with Godliness, with decency, and live the spiritual principles of recovery, of faith, of all religious and spiritual heritages. Love, mercy, kindness, compassion, justice, reverence, and, most of all, seeking truth are the principles I and everyone in recovery practice each day, practice meaning we don’t always get there and we never leave the path of these principles. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 51

“It was through our failure that people started to suspect science is a device for exploration; parliaments pulpits for hypocrisy, and religion a pretext for a bad conscience. In the tantalized souls of those who had faith in ideals, suspicion became a dogma and contempt the only solace. Mistaking the abortion of their conscience for intellectual heroism, many thinkers employ clever pens to scold and to scorn the reverence for life, the awe of truth, the loyalty to justice. Man, about to hang himself, discovers it is easier to hang others.”(Man’s Quest for God pgs. 149-150)

“Mistaking the abortion of their conscience for intellectual heroism, many thinkers employ clever pens to scold and to scorn the reverence for life, the awe of truth, the loyalty to justice” is, to me, an apt description by Rabbi Heschel of what is and has been happening in our world today. Abortion comes from the Latin meaning ‘miscarry’ which is defined as ‘the failure of something planned’. We are subjected to the propaganda of people who have failed to live up to what their conscience and the moral conscience of the world. We are witnesses to and victims of so many “clever pens” which scold us when we show “reverence for life”, when we are in “the awe of truth” and exhibit “loyalty to justice”.

Whether it is Elon Musk and his band of anti-semites, his cohorts of authoritarians, or it is Donald Trump and his allies the Heritage Foundation and the Republican Party, or it is ‘the squad’ and their allies the progressives, or it is Hamas and their allies Iran and other terrorists, the use of the propaganda, the use of their “clever pens” have torn apart and deceived ‘the masses’ of what is “reverence for life, the awe of truth, the loyalty to justice”. Unlike the 1930’s when it was Germans who were willing to follow an authoritarian leader, we have peoples from many countries who are eager to follow authoritarianism, believing it will give the people power, certain that ‘their guy/gal’ will be good to and for them.

People who make up these masses are so far down the rabbit hole of deception and mendacity they are unaware of “the abortion of their conscience”, they believe it is heroic to support terrorists, both foreign and domestic. We are in a time where the educated “elites” who make up the Heritage Foundation have created an atmosphere and a way of being that denies freedom to anyone and everyone who is not a member of their group. They have a plan that is an “abortion of their conscience” which they validate by saying it is ‘christian’, they have ‘anointed’ Donald Trump to be their standard bearer in public while in private, their plan is for any and every Republican that wins the Presidency. While the masses believe defeating Trump is the goal, the real goal has to be defeating the lies, the deceptions of authoritarians, in re-awakening the moral consciences of all people, no matter what country, what color, what religion.

The people of Gaza who have followed the terrorists of Hamas, who have not risen up against these people who spend billions on themselves, on their hideouts, on their weapons while the people of Gaza suffer and blame the Israelis, have to share the responsibility of what is happening now. Yes, Netanyahu and his band of far-right zealots who are more interested in power, in shielding themselves from being held responsible for their crimes, who want to be ‘the strongmen’ who will save everyone, we witnessed the massive protests in Israel by a coalition of people who are willing to say NO to the overreach of Netanyahu and his allies. We witness the calling to account of their failure to protect the people of Israel from Hamas’s reign of terror.

The people of this country are also responsible for “the abortion of conscience” that is happening here as well. We, the People, have to stand up and say NO to authoritarianism on the right and the left. We, the People, have to stand up and say NO to these ‘intellectual cowards’ who are denying the “reverence for life, the awe of truth, the loyalty to justice.” One cannot have “reverence for life” and deny equality to any one group, use power to promote an agenda that excludes Jews and Muslims, Catholics and Buddhists, Christians and secular, and/or promote fascism in any and all forms. One cannot have “awe of truth” and say “my way is the only way”, ignore the plight of the poor and the needy, unwelcome the stranger, etc. One cannot have “awe of truth” and only see their ‘side’, their ‘way’, because we say God is truth and God is everything, we all have a word, phrase of God within us and when one of our voices is missing, one of our voices is silenced, truth is unattainable.

We, the People, need to join the Recovery Revolution! We need to begin to heal our Soul Sickness that is so apparent in our actions. We need to live into the Spiritual Principles of recovery, which are universal across all spiritual disciplines; love, truth, loyalty to moral principles, justice, kindness, caring for those who are less fortunate, being forgiving, charity in money and in judgement, being of service, seeing clearly what truly is, living in radical amazement, being accountable and acknowledging our imperfections, etc. We, the People, are capable of this.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I am grateful for being alive! I am grateful for the blessings I receive and have received. I am resentment free and forgiving of all, I ask for forgiveness from everyone. I am dedicated to the spiritual principles of living, growing my “reverence for life, awe of truth, loyalty to justice” more each and every day. I can respond YES I AM, to the definition of rich we find in Pirke Avot: one who  wants what they have. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 50

“It was through our failure that people started to suspect science is a device for exploration; parliaments pulpits for hypocrisy, and religion a pretext for a bad conscience. In the tantalized souls of those who had faith in ideals, suspicion became a dogma and contempt the only solace. Mistaking the abortion of their conscience for intellectual heroism, many thinkers employ clever pens to scold and to scorn the reverence for life, the awe of truth, the loyalty to justice. Man, about to hang himself, discovers it is easier to hang others.”(Man’s Quest for God pgs. 149-150)

Today is the 60th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it is the day of the first day of any sign of real hope of getting all the Hostages out of the clutches of the terrorist Hamas group and out of Gaza. We need to stay engaged in the ideas and the principles President Kennedy charged us with, we need to re-energize the hope, the promise, the equality that President Kennedy, Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy, Rabbi Heschel and so many others brought to the world in the 60’s. “In the tantalized souls of those…” is as an apt phrase for our situation today as it was when Rabbi Heschel wrote it in 1943. To tantalize means to “torment”, ideals is from ideas, suspicion is distrust, dogma is “a set of principles laid down by an authority as inconvertibly true”, contempt is to believe everyone, something is beneath you, and solace means comfort. Using these definitions, this sentence above says: in the tormented souls of those who had faith in ideas, distrust became inconvertibly true and a supercilious attitude was the only comfort for them.

Just as it was the state of affairs of the world in the 1930/1940’s, it seems as if it is the state of our world as well. The myriad of people who claim to be people of faith, have faith in some ideal which is not Godliness, which is not the words of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, etc. They are “tantalized souls” and suspicion has become their dogma, they suspect everyone but “their people” and they hold “their people” to intense scrutiny. The level of distrust, mistrust in these so-called ‘people of faith’ is so high, there is no way to communicate with them, there is no chance of finding common ground, there is no compromise to be reached. This is also true of terrorists, they are so set in their “ideals” there is no compromise. Both groups, unbelievably, want to to dictate terms of our surrender, want us to know it is “my way or the highway” and it takes an act of war for us to wake up and fight for truth, for freedom, for democracy, to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”!

We have to realize and face the reality of the world we have created, we have been so enamored with ideals, with ideas, we have allowed the charlatans, the deceivers, the self-deceptions, and mendacity to creep into our understanding and reading of the US Constitution, US history, the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, all to our ruin. “I think, therefore I am” by Descartes is the phrase of people who have “tantalized souls”, they are tormented by lies, by the deception of societal norms, because the Bible tells us ‘I am, therefore I can think’ and it then gives us the parameters within which to act so we can act our way into right thinking. The ‘people of faith’ who have been elected to serve in Congress have forgotten President Kennedy’s words promoting service, they have bastardized the words of the Bible to “care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor, the needy”. These people have made suspicion their dogma and take comfort in looking down at everyone else to such an extent they have anointed Donald Trump as their savior, they have signed on to the 2025 project, and they are attempting to end our democracy, end our freedoms, and rule forever. Sounds like the 1000 year Reich doesn’t it?

Today, we see the people with such ‘high ideals’, on our College Campus’, support terrorists as freedom fighters, believe the raping of women, the killing of children, the murdering of young people at a music festival, the taking of women, children, elderly, men are all good and righteous acts if done by ‘the oppressed Palestinians’. Yet, they don’t seem to realize they would not have the freedom to protest in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Egypt, in Qatar, etc. They seem to be willfully blind to the goal of the terrorists Hamas, exterminate Jews and disappear Israel. We have raised a generation of people to have distrust and mistrust in anyone and any idea that doesn’t go along with theirs. We have raised a generation(s) of people with the ideas of critical thinking gone completely haywire. They turn critical thinking into criticism of anyone who doesn’t agree with them, they have turned critical thinking into believing anyone who is ‘critical’ of ‘the ones in power.

The world needs recovery! We need to live by a set of spiritual principles because the world and all of us are suffering a “soul-sickness” as Father Martin teaches. We need to rededicate ourselves, as we gather around the Thanksgiving Table, to the spiritual principles of the Bible, to the actions God is demanding we take in order to save ourselves. As Father Martin says: “The result, then, of living these principles should be serenity, which is nothing more than Peace of conscience.” May we all find serenity(clarity) now! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 49

“It was through our failure that people started to suspect science is a device for exploration; parliaments pulpits for hypocrisy, and religion a pretext for a bad conscience. In the tantalized souls of those who had faith in ideals, suspicion became a dogma and contempt the only solace. Mistaking the abortion of their conscience for intellectual heroism, many thinkers employ clever pens to scold and to scorn the reverence for life, the awe of truth, the loyalty to justice. Man, about to hang himself, discovers it is easier to hang others.”(Man’s Quest for God pgs. 149-150)

I am in awe of Rabbi Heschel’s wisdom, vision, and prophetic words. Writing this in 1938, expanded and published in 1943, his words echo today’s reality in chilling realness. We have come through a pandemic that is still being called a hoax by some people who want to ‘hang’ Dr. Fauci and the other scientists who gave us good scientific advice and developed cures for Covid-19. We witness the anger of people and their opposition to the different preventative techniques and paths that science gave us. Their belief that these were governmental controls on our freedom, we didn’t need them and we suffered needlessly is but one example of “people started to suspect science is a device for exploitation.”

Our governments have become “pulpits for hypocrisy” all across the world. The authoritarian/‘populist’ dictators say one thing and do another. Trump’s “I am your retribution” and other such statements are words to convince people of the hypocrisy of “the deep state” while being the “deep state” himself. Rather than stand up to the liars and deceivers, rather than stand up for truth, some in our government want to stand up for the liars and deceivers, the authoritarians and the hypocrites because it gives them ‘power’. We are witnessing a time, similar to the pre-civil war times as I learned about them, where some of our elected officials are not interested in upholding the Constitution as much as they interested in holding onto their own personal power. We are hearing and seeing actual fighting or threats of violence in the Chambers of Congress. We are hearing and seeing legislation being brought forth that limits Voting Rights, a woman’s right to choose her own health care, bargaining for the safety of our allies, and a witch-hunt to help Donald Trump get re-elected! George Santos is the extreme example of hypocrisy that the Republicans were wont to overlook until it became too extreme even for them. Yet, we have Marjorie Taylor Greene spreading lies and conspiracies about Jan. 6, 2021, we have Jim Jordon promoting baseless lies about President Biden, we have Tommy Tuberville preventing the promotions of our Military harming the readiness and morale of our volunteer Armed Services. We have ‘the squad’ promoting the extermination of Jews and the end of the State of Israel by promoting the words of the Hamas terrorist organization “from the river to the sea”, calling them ‘freedom fighters’ who killed innocents, riddled babies bodies with bullets, took hostages, glided into a music festival about peace with guns and mowed down over 300 young people! Is it any wonder that people see “parliaments pulpits for hypocrisy”?

While the first two bastardizations are terrible, I believe the third, “religion a pretext for a bad conscience” is the most devastating desecration of God’s Name that we engage in. As I listen to the ‘religious right’ of all religions, to the ‘progressive left’ of all religions, I am left abandoned, I am left alone, I am left in sadness for God. People like Mike Johnson who claim the Bible is their north star and offer legislation that will turn away the strangers, impoverish the poor and the needy even more, cut aid to the elderly, stand idly by the blood and calls of our allies, is it any wonder people refuse to believe religion has anything good to offer? When the Rabbis supporting the settlers teach it is okay to murder innocent Palestinians, when they are spreading venomous lies and denigrating the Image of God all people are born with, for their own political and power grabs, is there a question about their desecration of God’s Name-the worst sin in the Jewish tradition? When Hamas and the Palestinians refuse to acknowledge the rights of Jews and Israelis to the State of Israel in the ancient homeland of the Jewish People, when the Arab States, in the name of Allah call for the extermination of the Jewish People, is there any doubt as to their using faith as “a pretext for a bad conscience”?

We can learn from the failures of our ancestors, from the failures of our parents and our own failures. I believe Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith learned from the failures of doctors, therapists, professionals, and their own experiences to form Alcoholics Anonymous. I believe Rabbi Heschel learned from the failures of Jewish History and world history to form his teachings on how to live well. We have the gift of their wisdom and the wisdom of many other ‘failures’. Just as Edison kept trying new ways with electricity, we have to “fail forward” in our recovery of science, government and religion to help us live well. We do this by engaging in the Spiritual Revolution that the Recovery Revolution promotes. We do this by coming out of hiding, by shining lights on our failures, on the failures and mendacity of societal norms that are unhealthy and unholy, repairing the damage of these failures and finding new ways to promote the benefits of science, government and religion.

I have “failed forward” for 36+ years. I am bewildered as to why the liars, like Hamas and individuals like Trump and those closer to home, are believed while my words, the words of the Israelis have to be “verified”. I realize the damage my lies prior to my recovery wrought and I work to repair the damage each day. I seek truth and do my best to live in truth in a world of lies and masks. I miss the mark and I continue to get up, make T’Shuvah and move forward. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 48

“The outbreak of war was no surprise. It came as a long expected sequel to a spiritual disaster. Instilled with the gospel that truth is a mere advantage and reverence weakness, people succumbed to the bigger advantage of a lie-“the Jew is our misfortune”-and to the power of arrogance-“tomorrow the whole world shall be ours”, “the peoples’ democracies must depend upon force.” (Man’s Quest for God pg. 149).

The last two phrases above, “tomorrow the world shall be ours”, “the peoples’ democracies must depend upon force” are so tantalizing to the ear and the hearts of racists and anti-semites, authoritarians and their followers. We hear echos of these themes, if not the same words, from people like Rick Santorum, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Johnson, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Elon Musk, and so many of both the ‘progressives’ on the left and the ‘conservatives’ on the right. Hamas and their partners, Hezbollah, Iran, Russia, Qatar, Saudia Arabia, etc don’t have the pretense of democratic rule, they are just authoritarians and/or terrorists, so they believe and work towards the first goal: “tomorrow the whole world shall be ours”.

The issue here, as I am hearing Rabbi Heschel’s call from 85 years ago in today’s context, in today’s world, is to learn from our errors of the past. There is a saying: “when someone tells you who they are, believe them”, both the ‘progressives’ and the ‘conservatives’ are telling us who they are: anti-semitic and only interested in their own race, hence they are willing to sacrifice, denigrate, all other races. The authoritarians are telling us who they are: hateful, bullying, destructive, terrorists. Why is so hard for the rest of us to believe them, just as it was difficult for Europeans and Americans to believe Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito in the 1930’s?

Joe Biden has counseled Israel to learn from the errors of America following 9/11 and this is good advice. I would add the world should learn from the errors of the 1930’s and 40’s and not let the rampant anti-semitism and the lies, ‘half-truths’ of the media and the terrorists enhance what the goal of the potentially deadly for democracy coalition of ‘progressive’ anti-semites, ‘conservative’ anti-semites, and  Hamas terrorists with the authoritarians thrown in-the end of democracy, the return of theocracy and authoritarianism to Europe, to America, to the world.

There are adherents to the last two phrases above in Israel, in Europe, in America, some of the names mentioned above and a vast army of other people joining them. We cannot let them worm their way into our hearts and minds, we have to heed the words of the Bible, “don’t scout out after our hearts and our eyes because we will whore after them”(Numbers 15:39). We seem to be incapable, as individuals and as groups of heeding this wisdom, this command. We are constantly in danger of believing our own lies, we are constantly wrestling with our own self-deception to seek and find truth, seek and find a path of living that connects us to God, to decency, to one another for the sake of uplifting our brothers and sisters, not denigrating them.

To do this, we have to see how our society has moved from a co-operative to a waring, win at all and any costs society. We are not meant to “kill the competition”, we are not meant to “get ahead at any and all costs” , we are not meant to “just win, baby”. We are created dependent, we are taught to grow into inter-dependence, to make coalitions so that everyone is welcome. In the same chapter of Numbers, we are commanded to have “one law for the citizen and the stranger alike” in a few different ways. We are not to discriminate as we have in this country since our founding, we are not to treat Arabs different than Jews has Israel has done since its founding, we are not to “hate our brothers in our hearts” as Christians have towards Jews for millennia and as Arabs have done for over a hundred years. We are not to use force to convince people “our way is the best way”, we are not to use subterfuge to disguise our authoritarian and terrorist goals in order to dupe people who are willfully blind to truth.

One of the foundational principles of the Recovery Revolution is T’Shuvah, Inventory. We have to look at our past to see how we missed the mark and how we hit the mark, we have to see our imperfections, improve upon them knowing we are imperfect beings, repair the damage we have done through missing the mark and being proud of the ways we have hit the mark. These yearly and daily inventories keep us in line with the command from Numbers above:”don’t follow your heart and your eyes because you will whore after them.” We stop being whores looking out for our selfish immediate desires and we become servants of the good, the holy, and of one another.

I have been guilty of using the power of persuasion and the vulnerabilities of another against them. I did this throughout my ‘career’ as a conman and a thief. I did not care about the effects of my actions on another human being and I was blind to the damage I was causing. Only through joining the Recovery Revolution have I been able to see the damages and repair them, only through joining and taking my place in the Recovery Revolution have I been able to help another(s) let go of the lies Rabbi Heschel tells us of above. While I have also experienced my vulnerabilities used against me, I have learned to feel sad for the people who have to do this-they are pathetic and in need of divine pathos, Godly compassion. I have learned, the hard way, that willful blindness, self-deception leads to destruction and a daily inventory of the lies I tell myself leads us to wholeness. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark