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Responding to the "State of Moral Emergency we are in through Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - Year 3 Day 283

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 282

National Days of Repentance and Change

TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 16, 1963

I LOOK FORWARD TO PRIVILEGE OF BEING PRESENT AT MEETING TOMORROW AT 4 P. M. LIKELIHOOD EXISTS THAT NEGRO PROBLEM WILL BE LIKE THE WEATHER. EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT IT BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION. WE FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOD AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO HUMILIATE NEGROES. CHURCH SYNAGOGUES HAVE FAILED. THEY MUST REPENT. ASK OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CALL FOR NATIONAL REPENTANCE AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE. LET RELIGIOUS LEADERS DONATE ONE MONTH’S SALARY “TOWARD FUND FOR NEGRO HOUSING AND EDUCATION. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MR. PRESIDENT DECLARE STATE OF MORAL EMERGENCY. A MARSHALL PLAN FOR AID TO NEGROES IS BECOMING A NECESSITY. THE HOUR CALLS FOR HIGH MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

Immersing ourselves in the words in bold above, remembering what the 1960’s were like, the images of people being tortured with high power water hoses, beaten with night sticks, burning crosses, hangings and killings of innocent people just because of the color of their skin, the faith they practice, the voting rights of all they were protecting, and looking at today we experience a type of Deja Vu that is neither euphoric nor a time for indifference. We are in a desperate need because we are in, in my humble opinion, a greater “moral emergency” than we were then! No matter which “side” one may be on, both “sides” are declaring the other one ‘immoral’ and herein lies our greatest challenge.

Stop choosing sides! Once we decide ‘who’s team we are on’ we immediately make the “other” team wrong and bad, evil and despicable. We begin to spread lies and get our ‘supporters’, aka cult fans, to believe them so there is no dialogue possible. In the entire telegram up till now, Rabbi Heschel has been laying out the issues that Clergy have to face within themselves as well as within their congregations and now he is calling on President John F Kennedy to “declare a state of moral emergency”, a call to action to change the moral state of our country, to truly take actions that prove we are “one nation UNDER GOD” rather than a nation of charlatans, idolators, and bastardizers of the words of God, of the prophets, of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed. We are unable to do this when we choose sides that have anything other than morality, spirituality, kindness, truth, love, justice, compassion as the core.

We have become so used to the binary choices of ‘right/wrong’, ‘win/lose’, ‘us/them’, etc we have forgotten that “all people are created equal with certain unalienable rights…”, we are ignoring that “all people are created in the Image of the Divine”, all people-regardless of color, race, ethnicity, faith-have infinite equal unique worth. We are taking the idea of have dominion and rule as an entitlement rather than as a responsibility, killing animals at will/for sport rather than for food, killing people because we don’t like them, giving children AR-15’s so they can shoot up their schools, pressuring teachers to give their children good grades because of threats, winning at any and all costs, rather than “caring for our corner of the world” we are exploiting it for all we can get from it for ourselves. Rather than being stewards for the generations to come, we are destroyers of climate, of resources, of the dignity of those with whom we disagree.

Living in a Non-Binary Thinking world has nothing to do with gender, with sexual preferences, with labels, it has to do with responding to the “moral emergency” that has always been in our midst. Living in it means that religions and Clergy no longer fight for control rather we seek to help the people we serve find their path to a higher consciousness, to serving something greater than themselves, finding a way to care for the stranger, the needy, the poor, etc; being able to discern the myriad of voices within them and determine which voice in the moment is their soul’s voice and which are the ones who want to convince them there rationalizations are ‘good’. Living in a Non-Binary Thinking world means I have to hear the words of people I may not agree with in this moment and know they also are in need of being shown dignity and, if I truly believe they are mistaken, to help them see the errors of their ways; “rebuke your neighbor and not bear guilt because of him”(Lev.19:17). Living in a Non-Binary Thinking world means the only standard you have, the only loyalty one has is to Truth, is to The Next Right Action, is to Justice for all, is to “Proclaim Freedom throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev.25:10), is to grow one grain of sand better, one grain of sand more into one’s own authenticity, one grain of sand more connected to one’s soul, to one’s loved ones, to one’s community. There are many ideas I have about Living in a Non-Binary Thinking world to come:)

In the years prior to my T’Shuvah, my repentance and change, I was part of the reason for the state of moral emergency! I lived life as “a winner takes all” game, even though I grew up with a sense of loyalty to doing what is right, I lost my way, I moved into the “either/or”, Binary-Thinking world I have been railing against. I marched in the 60’s for civil rights, I marched against the war, I protested the Kent State Killings, which were just up the road from The Ohio State University I briefly attended. I also was getting drunk, running card games, hustling hot merchandise, etc and making both things okay- my Binary-Thinking allowed me to have 2 separate lives which eventually collided. In December of 1986, the crash happened and I was blessed to have an ecstatic experience of knowing the Universe (God) was trying to give me a message and I had to learn it once and for all. Rabbi Mel Silverman taught me about the “state of moral emergency” I was in along with so many others, he turned me on to Rabbi Heschel and he taught me how to see myself in the texts I was reading and to get out of the old ideas I held onto to so tightly, that a human changes their spots, that T’Shuvah is the proof that change is not only possible it is mandatory, He taught me how to stop living in either/or and move into ‘both/and’. My years at Beit T’Shuvah were my payback to Rabbi Mel, to Rabbi Heschel, to my father and grandfathers, to all my teachers by showing so many others the “state of moral emergency” they were in and how to rise above it and bring order to their lives and resuscitate their morality and their kindness, find their truth and their love, do justly and walk in the path of their soul. Each day I work hard to stay out of Binary Thinking and do more good than not good. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

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Day 5 of Repentance and Change Month- leaning into Rabbi Heschel's thoughts - Year 3 Day 282

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 282

National Days of Repentance and Change

TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 16, 1963

I LOOK FORWARD TO PRIVILEGE OF BEING PRESENT AT MEETING TOMORROW AT 4 P. M. LIKELIHOOD EXISTS THAT NEGRO PROBLEM WILL BE LIKE THE WEATHER. EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT IT BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION. WE FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOD AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO HUMILIATE NEGROES. CHURCH SYNAGOGUES HAVE FAILED. THEY MUST REPENT. ASK OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CALL FOR NATIONAL REPENTANCE AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE. LET RELIGIOUS LEADERS DONATE ONE MONTH’S SALARY “TOWARD FUND FOR NEGRO HOUSING AND EDUCATION. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MR. PRESIDENT DECLARE STATE OF MORAL EMERGENCY. A MARSHALL PLAN FOR AID TO NEGROES IS BECOMING A NECESSITY. THE HOUR CALLS FOR HIGH MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

One of the reasons I have chosen to begin Elul and restart my Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel with this passage is: “they must repent”. In the spiritual realm, the most prominent powers at this time of year are: truth, forgiveness, compassion and acceptance. In order to repent, our Clergy must be in truth with themselves, with their Higher Power, with their Higher Consciousness, with their congregants. The role of clergy is very difficult and, because or the erroneous misconception that clergy are supposed to be perfect, rather than human, Clergy have to be in truth with their own families as well. It says in the Bible that the High Priest has to make “expiation”, for his “missing the marks”, those of his household and then for the People Israel. If our Clergy are not being truthful with themselves, if they are still excusing the “missing the marks” they have committed, what right do we have to demand of our flock, our family, our world to engage in confession, in repentance, in change? This is the issue we all have to face.

We need Faith Leaders who are willing to engage in “National Repentance and Personal Sacrifice”, we need Faith Leaders who are willing to “repent” in public as well as private, who are willing to go to the people they have harmed and make their amends, make restitution and speak about how they are changing their ways, how they have grown from this process of being in truth with themselves and with another(s). We are desperately in need of leaders who are willing to live their faith out loud and very loudly. Not the bullshit that we are hearing from the charlatans and the idolators who want to make the US a ‘christian nation’, not the crap about “sharia law” that makes everyone else second-class citizens, not the lies of the so-called ‘orthodox’ Jews who want to live under ‘torah law’, because all of these groups constantly violate the principles of the ‘laws’ they claim to revere. They all desecrate the name of Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, and the very ‘laws’ the Bible proclaims! We need Faith Leaders who are willing to confess their errors so they can be heard above the noise and mendacity of these idolators. We need “Religious Leaders to call for National Repentance” and begin with their own to show all of the rest of us how to do it.

Because the forces of the Cosmos are inclined towards repentance, compassion and forgiveness, I call the 40 days from the beginning of Elul through Yom Kippur as the time of “getting right with self, with another(s), and with God. On Yom Kippur we are forgiven, on Kol Nidre we are told: “I forgive as you have spoken” and the rest of the day is for us to forgive ourselves, to see our pure soul, to recommit to the covenant we have with God and to embrace the community around us. We need to engage in “Personal Sacrifice” during this time- the “personal sacrifice” of our false egos, the “personal sacrifice” of the lies that have fueled us for so long, the “personal sacrifice” of our self-deceptions which have blinded us to truth and to authentic connection with another human being and with a higher power. We have the energy of the universe calling to us and pulling us in the direction of forgiveness and, most of all in the direction of compassion and acceptance.

Doing the work of repentance allows us to be embraced by people we love and who love us even though we didn’t always appreciate them. We are embraced by their forgiveness and acceptance of who we are, we are embraced by their compassion for our flaws and their knowing we will never be perfect. We now have the “job” of accepting our true and authentic self. We can use the acceptance and compassion of those whom we have harmed, knowingly and/or unknowingly, to become more rooted in knowing ourselves, in having compassion for ourselves, and accept ourselves with our imperfections and never need to hide again. Compassion and acceptance, forgiveness and truth uncover all the ways of being that we have tried to hide-both the ugly and beautiful ways of being. These forces so prevalent right now help us to see clearer, to hear sharper, to taste the bitterness of b.s and the sweetness of truth more fully, and to sense the touching of real and authentic in ways that send goosebumps through us. We have the paths to accomplish this, we have the roadmaps to Repentance and Change, I pray we have the Religious Leadership this year that leads us to accomplish this Holy Task.

I have repented for the past 37 years and each year I see more of my authentic self and live more authentically in the following year(s). This year, I repent for my withdrawal, for opting out and feeling afraid to be ‘pushy’. I have allowed my fears of rejection to stop me from putting myself out there more. Yes, I have written almost each day and yes, I am doing some things-being in truth with myself, I know I have made excuses for my lack of active participation, I have tried to put out “the fire in the belly” that is my voice, the voice that makes me worthy of being a descendant of the prophets (as we all are) and worthy of being a descendant of the family generations before me. I have been coming to see this truth and I am changing my ways-not sure how I am going to accomplish this and I am committed to doing it. I am repenting for the errors I have made this year, I am sorry to the people whom I have disappointed, I am sad about the connections that have been lost or are lying dormant, I am committing to reconnection, to repentance, to change, and to redemption. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Happy 3rd day of Elul-Changing our Synagogues and Churches per Rabbi Heschel's words - Year 3 Day 281

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 281

National Days of Repentance and Change

TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 16, 1963

I LOOK FORWARD TO PRIVILEGE OF BEING PRESENT AT MEETING TOMORROW AT 4 P. M. LIKELIHOOD EXISTS THAT NEGRO PROBLEM WILL BE LIKE THE WEATHER. EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT IT BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION. WE FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOD AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO HUMILIATE NEGROES. CHURCH SYNAGOGUES HAVE FAILED. THEY MUST REPENT. ASK OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CALL FOR NATIONAL REPENTANCE AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE. LET RELIGIOUS LEADERS DONATE ONE MONTH’S SALARY “TOWARD FUND FOR NEGRO HOUSING AND EDUCATION. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MR. PRESIDENT DECLARE STATE OF MORAL EMERGENCY. A MARSHALL PLAN FOR AID TO NEGROES IS BECOMING A NECESSITY. THE HOUR CALLS FOR HIGH MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

I am wondering how the “Church Synagogues” responded to Rabbi Heschel’s truthful denunciation of their work! How audacious and powerful the statements that are bolded above are. Yet, today we can say that Church Synagogue have failed us to a greater extent rather than a lessor one, we can say with surety that these entities learned nothing from Rabbi Heschel’s words and deeds, Rev. King’s words and deeds, the words and deeds of other Religious leaders like the Berrigan Brothers. It is safe to say this because so many people answer NONE when asked what religious order they belong to, because around 27% of Jews did not consider being Jewish to have anything to do with religion. We have witnessed a deep divide in the way Judaism as a religion is being practiced and the political power that some Orthodox Jews in America and in Israel are trying to use to attain their goals which go against so many of the principles found in the Bible. We have witnessed the failure of the Church to rein in their own priest/pedophiles and the cover up that caused so much addiction, mental illness and death. We witness the radical Imams and Mosques who preach “death to the Jews”, “death to America” and the support that terrorists get from young people especially as we saw on college campuses this past year. In the face of Oct. &, 2023 and the latest round of executions, we watch Hamas and the Orthodox Jews of the settler movement, those who follow Ben G’vir, Smotrich, Deri, all Kahane-like haters.

“Church Synagogues” have failed in educating our young and inspiring the parents of today to live the spiritual values of Islam, Christianity, and/or Judaism. We are turning out robots who blindly follow the extremists and/or anarchists who believe it is all bullshit and all that is of importance is what I can get for me. When I was a criminal, I believed if I could take it from you than it was really mine in the first place-how is that for convoluted thinking! Today’s “Church Synagogues” are, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways teaching the same ways. They have bastardized the words of Christ to make it okay to take advantage of the poor, to allow graft and money to show how “God loves me because I am rich” and other such bullshit-like control over a woman’s body, misreading of biblical texts to suite then proclivities, accusing another of the very things they are guilty of and supporting dictators and authoritarians, the exact opposite of what Christ was put on the cross for-he was killed for speaking truth to power whereas many of today’s clergy-especially in the MegaChurches- worship power over truth!

In the Synagogues, we hear “the People Israel Lives” without defining what the “People Israel” is! We are not all the same, we are not supposed to be, according to the Ancient Sages, no one has more value and dignity than another in the Jewish tradition, yet Bibi and his gang of thugs believe they do and only they are the “real Jews”-much like many of the Orthodox here in the US. We are watching Chabad and other Chassidic Sects go so far from their revolutionary roots and work hard to sit in seats of power or at least next to those in power. We are witnessing Jews here and in Israel care nothing for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, and/or the orphan which we are commanded to do 36 times in the Torah. We are watching, some of us in horror, as these “real Jews” take the words of the prophets and do everything they warned us not to with reckless abandon believing they will not suffer nor cause the same fate as we experienced in 586BCE or 70AD! What Chutzpah!!

Not to be outdone, a majority of the rest of the Synagogues have been so boring and trite, worried about raising money rather than souls, the people join for the B’Nai Mitzvot of their children and the party/money afterwards. They reject the spiritual message of our faith and our Holy Texts as irrelevant because it won’t help my kid nor me make money, get a job, have a career, etc. The Synagogues have failed to make Judaism vibrant, necessary and alive in the souls of people and, except for High HolyDays, they remain less than full on days of worship. Our Jewish Federations are not much better, they have also lost the vibrancy of Judaism, the passion and fire in the belly of the prophets, they also are catering to the rich and powerful ostensibly so they can help the poor and the needy,  believing the ends justify the means.

I am a product of a failed Synagogue-not the Clergy in my case, the religious directors who wanted to drill the recitation of prayers into us, the learning of how to read and say the words of prayer and Torah in Hebrew without the meaning and the vibrancy of what it means to pray. Even though I knew instinctively that prayer was important, I did not let it penetrate me because it was not deemed important in my shul at that time. I have, especially on Yom Kippur, made amends for the Synagogues and the Churches that have failed us, I have done T’Shuvah for them as the High Priest did for himself and his household and then the People Israel. I believe we have to live the saying we find over the Holy Ark in many Synagogues: “Know before whom you stand” which seems to be ignored by both Synagogue Boards and congregations. I am grateful that I, along with so many people, created a Spiritual Community, a Jewish Congregation that was vibrant, spiritual, loud, raucous, with the spirit of the prophets and the boldness of the Baal Shem Tov to bring meaning, purpose, introspection, community, caring, and love into the Synagogue so people, after their first time at services could say: “this feels like home”. Judaism is a rebellion, it rebelled against the norm at the time and, if we stay true to our roots, we have to continue to rebel against being stuck in old ways, we have to continue to see the text anew and allow it to embolden us to move forward. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Seeing the Good in ourselves through the words of Rabbi Heschel - Year 3 Day 280

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 280

National Days of Repentance and Change

TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 16, 1963

I LOOK FORWARD TO PRIVILEGE OF BEING PRESENT AT MEETING TOMORROW AT 4 P. M. LIKELIHOOD EXISTS THAT NEGRO PROBLEM WILL BE LIKE THE WEATHER. EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT IT BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION. WE FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOD AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO HUMILIATE NEGROES. CHURCH SYNAGOGUES HAVE FAILED. THEY MUST REPENT. ASK OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CALL FOR NATIONAL REPENTANCE AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE. LET RELIGIOUS LEADERS DONATE ONE MONTH’S SALARY “TOWARD FUND FOR NEGRO HOUSING AND EDUCATION. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MR. PRESIDENT DECLARE STATE OF MORAL EMERGENCY. A MARSHALL PLAN FOR AID TO NEGROES IS BECOMING A NECESSITY. THE HOUR CALLS FOR HIGH MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

During the Month of Elul and every day of every month, Rabbi Eliezer says we should do T’Shuvah. Maimonidies defines T’Shuvah as a complete inventory of our actions that day, in previous days as well. Given this “atza tova”, good advice, I think it is crucial to look at how we have “done” something about the “Negro Problem” and all of the other problems that racism, xenophobia, fear and hatred bring about. I think it is important to balance our view of ourselves and our leaders, mostly however, ourselves. Many religious leaders have called for more tolerance, more understanding and more welcoming of the stranger into our communities and into our congregations. There has been more and more inviting of faith leaders of other religions to speak in Temples, Mosques, Churches, there is more interfaith work being done now than at any time in our past. We see the melding of faiths to march for civil rights again, we see the meeting of the spirits to call for lifting people out of poverty, of no longer criminalizing being poor and a tremendous outcry for reform of our criminal justice system that is both racist and anti-poor people. We all need to look at our own actions which have “done” something about racism, about injustice, about ensuring the rights of everyone because as Rev. King said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Seeing wherever and whenever we have stood for justice, stood against racism, welcomed the stranger, lifted a person up, done Tzedakah, is important for us to see the whole picture of our year, not get bogged down in what we didn’t do and see more of the whole picture of our ways of living well and not-so-well. Remember, seeing the good is important so we can continue to enhance the good as we lessen the not-so-good in our daily living.

“Demand of… Personal Involvement” is not just for “Religious Leaders”, it is for all of us. Looking at the past year(s), we need to see how we have personally stood up for the weak and the poor, the needy and the stranger in all of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways they have been ‘picked upon’, ‘bullied’, ‘blamed for society’s ills’, etc. When we challenge the ‘conventional thinking’ of people who blame all of the problems on ‘those people’, on “those immigrants who are poisoning the blood of our people, our country” we are getting personally involved in standing up for turner, standing up for one of the most, if not the most mentioned principle in the first 5 books of the Bible, “Care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the orphan and the widow”. It is vital that we see how we have been personally involved in helping raise people up from being put down, how we have refrained from joining the crown that bullies, that blames and we stand firm next to, we support the stranger, etc from beside and we lead them to the same ‘promised land’ that our ancestors have led us to. The reason this is so vital is we tend to ignore the good we do as if it is no big deal and it is a big deal!! We have to be responsible for the good we do as well as the errors we make.

In our inventory we also have to see how we have honored the people around us and people we don’t even know. When we use an invention that was created by another human being for good and for the purpose it was meant for, this is a way of honoring the inventor. When we say hello to another human being, whether we know them or not, we are honoring the divine in them and in ourselves. When we help another person, open a door, let someone in while driving(even if we don’t want to:)), when we support the people around us in following their passions and purpose, when we donate to a charity that helps people realize their dreams, helps people recover their authenticity, we are honoring humanity. When we learn from our teachers, from our ancestors, when we study ancient wisdom without the commentaries so we can imbue what the words and the context mean to us without fear nor favor, we are honoring the gifts of those who have come before us. When we argue with the different interpretations and commentaries on history, on art, on spiritual matters for the sake of learning and growing, we are honoring our own spirits and minds. These are some of the ways we are not humiliating another! Our challenge is to find ways to enhance these positive ways of being and do more of them during each and every day.

I know the ways I have done both, I am proud that I have been able to take the next right action sooner rather than later in most of my recovery years. I am not proud of the times I have not. I am grateful for my ability to be personally involved in my life, in my family’s life, in the lives of those who sought my aid and comfort. I am humbled by the immense amount of teaching and learning I have gathered from so many other people-be they Rabbis, Priests, Drug Addicts, Alcoholics, Businesspeople, Artists, young and old. I am blessed to be able to learn from the Holy Texts I am privileged to read in their originals and to seek new experiences with these texts each time I engage with them. I am beyond joy because of being able to honor people for what they bring and not just see their flaws. I see my flaws daily and I am grateful to see the good I do each day as well. Enhancing the good is the goal today and every day! I have been listening to binary dialogue, either/or thinking and spewing for a long time and I know when I did my Chesbon, I realize the grey and the both/and of living. I know that there are no easy solutions and simplicity is found in our goodness and our ability to seek the higher plane of goodness for another and for me. No more binary-seek the whole picture is the path to Truth and wholeness for me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Joyous 1st Day of Elul-Repentance and Change through the teachings of Rabbi Heschel - Year 3 Day 279

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 278

National Days of Repentance and Change

TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 16, 1963

I LOOK FORWARD TO PRIVILEGE OF BEING PRESENT AT MEETING TOMORROW AT 4 P. M. LIKELIHOOD EXISTS THAT NEGRO PROBLEM WILL BE LIKE THE WEATHER. EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT IT BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION. WE FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOD AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO HUMILIATE NEGROES. CHURCH SYNAGOGUES HAVE FAILED. THEY MUST REPENT. ASK OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CALL FOR NATIONAL REPENTANCE AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE. LET RELIGIOUS LEADERS DONATE ONE MONTH’S SALARY “TOWARD FUND FOR NEGRO HOUSING AND EDUCATION. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MR. PRESIDENT DECLARE STATE OF MORAL EMERGENCY. A MARSHALL PLAN FOR AID TO NEGROES IS BECOMING A NECESSITY. THE HOUR CALLS FOR HIGH MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

Today is the first day of Elul, the month of preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. On Rosh Hashanah, we rejoice in meeting God for the celebration of the New Year and the anniversary of the day humankind was created. We recognize we are entering an Awe-Filled time, not that every day isn’t, it is during the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that we go over our Elul introspection, make as sure as possible that we are up-to-date on our amends and our gratitudes, the changes we need to make and the goodness we bring. The sentence that is bolded above causes me to tremble with “terrible awe” as I think about the subtle and not-so subtle ways we “continue to humiliate Negroes” and so many people that are considered “other”. There is no “other” for a person of faith, for a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc-we know we are all created in the Image of the Ineffable One, we are all created with Higher Consciousness, we all have to ability and the obligation to rise up rather than sink down. Ergo=we are all equal in worth, dignity, and different in uniqueness and energy, which are not comparative categories. Yet, “we continue to humiliate” Black people as we are witnessing in our Presidential Campaign by Trump, “we continue to humiliate” Jews as proven by the great rise in anti-semitism that began at Charlottesville in 2017, “we continue to humiliate” Latinos and Muslims, Asians and Indians from India as well as Native Americans, in Israel “we continue to humiliate” Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, “we continue to humiliate” anyone who is different than us and who has different spiritual, moral, and political values that we do! And this is being done by Clergy, by the “faithful” ‘religious’ people in our midst! And this is who Rabbi Heschel is begging President Kennedy to rebuke! What Chutzpah, what faith, what morality and what courage. An immigrant calling upon the President of the United States to do what is right and good, holy and moral, a Rabbi castigating his fellow Clergy of all faiths including his own.

We Clergy, who will be leading the services on Shabbat, during the week, on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, etc need to look inside of ourselves and see how “we continue to humiliate” ourselves and people with our fearfulness to speak truth to power. We have to look inside of ourselves and do a deep dive into the ways we“forfeit the right to worship” by  humiliating ourselves at the altar of making a living, humiliating ourselves for fear of not working, forfeiting our truth and our souls for the sake of being liked. We have to come to grips with the truths of how we have neglected to stand for what is good and right, moral and holy for fear of being scolded by ‘our board’. We have to do a Chesbon HaNefesh, accounting of the soul, of the myriad of ways we have sent people who come seeking wisdom and guidance away to the ‘therapists’ rather than seeing and hearing the call of their souls; “Rabbi why is my life important” questions that no therapist can help them find. We, Clergy, have to look at the ways “we continue to humiliate” those who have different religious views, different moral views, how “we continue to humiliate” ourselves by failing to “rebuke, rebuke your neighbor and bear no guilt because of them”, by staying silent in the face of evil, in the face of imorality, in the face of lies and mendacity. We, Clergy, all clergy of all faiths and spiritual disciplines, are in need of heeding the words of Moses to Joshua: “be strong and courageous”. We, Clergy, need to take the moral and spiritual strength of Rabbi Heschel, of The Baal Shem Tov, of so many of our ancestors and end our tendency to “continue to humiliate”!

We, who are going to go to Temple on Shabbat, on Rosh Hashanah, on Yom Kippur need to look inside of ourselves to see how “we continue to humiliate” our children, our parents, our siblings, our friends, our neighbors, our enemies, our employees, our employers, the homeless on the street and the people who walk by us and we never acknowledge. It is imperative that we take note of how “we continue to humiliate” the clerk in a store, the barista are a coffee shop, the bak teller, the gardener, etc by failing to even say hello, by ignoring their plight and continue to try and “squeeze the last dime out of them”. We, the ‘faithful’ have to examine our grasping onto the deceptions of another and our own self-deceptions, admitting to the lies we tell ourselves and letting go of these lies and being responsible for the harms they have wrought. The spiritual energy of these next 40 days is compassion, forgiveness, reunification-will you join in?

I have engaged in humiliation of another and I have made amends for it, I have been misinterpreted as engaging in humiliation and I am sorry people have taken offense when they misinterpreted me and I am remorseful that I was not clearer in my words/deeds. I refuse “continue to humiliate Negroes” since I was a child as my family employed Blacks and we treated them as we would one another. Our family housekeeper called my Grandfather, Uncle and took care of all of us in one way or another for years. My father, being humiliated in the Army and when he looked for jobs as a Jew, was told to change his last name and he would not nor would he humiliate anyone else nor allow us to. I am loud and can blow up at the worst possible moments with no ‘apparent’ reason and I know that the fire in my belly at what is not right, what is not holy, what is not moral, what is not good, when lies and deceptions are being agreed to makes me crazy. I have never been able to tolerate it, even when I was perpetrating these ways in my actions prior to my recovery! I work hard to not “humiliate” anyone else and I also work hard to rebuke my neighbor so I don’t bear guilt and because I have faith we all can do better. More on that during the month. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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National Days of Repentance- through Rabbi Heschel’s teachings- Year 3 Day 278

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 278

National Days of Repentance and Change

TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 16, 1963

I LOOK FORWARD TO PRIVILEGE OF BEING PRESENT AT MEETING TOMORROW AT 4 P. M. LIKELIHOOD EXISTS THAT NEGRO PROBLEM WILL BE LIKE THE WEATHER. EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT IT BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION. WE FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOD AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO HUMILIATE NEGROES. CHURCH SYNAGOGUES HAVE FAILED. THEY MUST REPENT. ASK OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CALL FOR NATIONAL REPENTANCE AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE. LET RELIGIOUS LEADERS DONATE ONE MONTH’S SALARY “TOWARD FUND FOR NEGRO HOUSING AND EDUCATION. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MR. PRESIDENT DECLARE STATE OF MORAL EMERGENCY. A MARSHALL PLAN FOR AID TO NEGROES IS BECOMING A NECESSITY. THE HOUR CALLS FOR HIGH MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

Rabbi Heschel’s next words are a clarion call needed in this moment at least as much when he wrote them if not more! “PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION”. We have all heard the pronouncements of our Religious Leaders, we have all heard the numerous calls to action, the “solemn declarations”, very few of them go to the marches, very few of them lead the protests, very few of them have the courage of Joachim Prinz, the former Rabbi of Berlin who spoke before Rev King at the March on Washington, very few have the tenacity of Rabbi Heschel who would cancel a class on ethics in order to attend a march, a gathering to protest racism, hatred, the Vietnam War, because what good is teaching ethics, teaching Torah, teaching the Bible, if one is not going to live them? We hear the “solemn declaration” of hatred and envy, fear of losing power, and, most of all in my opinion, fear of being found to be fraudulent phonies. Many of us fellow clergy watch in horror as our colleagues serve the masters of greed, money, prestige, fame instead of serving God, Jesus, Allah, serving the people we are called to serve and call on us for direction and guidance. When our “religious leaders” continue to care more about their pocketbooks, their renown, we are dangerously close to the conditions that caused God to regret creating humanity in Chapter 6 of Genesis! We, clergy, are called for the mission to reverse the trend of evil that humans learn from their youth and help people turn back to the basic goodness of being that we are all created in and with-yet some of my sisters and brothers in the clergy are more concerned with keeping their boards of directors happy, keeping their standing and their stature than responding to the call of service that demands rigorous honesty, seeking of truth and constantly rooting out of our errors and engaging with our congregants and the world in true humility-the humility born from our acknowledging our imperfections and working to be one grain of sand better each day.

Personal involvement means living our lives out loud rather than keeping the darkness we feel, we do secreted away so no one truly sees us. Personal involvement means getting out of our offices and pulpits and, like Rabbi Heschel, Rev. King, Pastor Niebuhr, taking to the streets to march, to speak, to go to Congress and lobby lawmakers, to publicize our errors, our repentance, and the ways we will change and challenge everyone we know and don’t know to do the same. Personal involvement means no longer preaching a good sermon, it means living the words we preach. It is to stand with our fellow clergy who are vilified and demeaned because they stand up for the poor, the stranger, the needy, who are victims of “cancel culture” whether we agree with their interpretations or not, if they are engaged in T’Shuvah, in living life out loud, in seeking to be a little better each day, if they are practicing the principles of truth, love, kindness, justice, compassion in all of their affairs, if they are unwilling to take the bribes of job security, reputation so they will compromise their principles, every clergy person should be standing with them-this is personal involvement in a cause that is so much greater than us-it is the cause Micah the prophet tells us-“Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God”(Micah 6:8). Justice, mercy, walking with God doesn’t mean we all agree on what the text means, we just agree that each of us has a word of the Bible within us and we all have different ways to “Do and Understand” God’s will and we all have a unique path to fulfilling the divine need we were created to fill. Yet, if we are not willing to stand with our colleagues, if we are not willing to stand against the laypeople who want to control the spiritual life, the spiritual well-being of the congregation, a subject they know very little about, then how are we “walking humbly with God”. Unfortunately, too many Clergy have the mis-impression that they are God, they ‘know’ God’s will rather than continue to search for it, rather than realizing each event in our lives calls for different “midot”, measurements of attributes, because no two events are the same, no two moments are the same, no two people are the same, we are not the same as we were yesterday. Everything grows or retards depending on our personal involvement in our lives and the lives of another(s). As Clergy isn’t it time we realize this, isn’t it time we act upon this, isn’t it time we stop relying on the interpretations of 2 millennia and see how the Bible applies to us today? Personal involvement means to be present, live in the here and now, use the principles of the Bible to inform our actions in these new situations not live like we did in the 1st Century BCE or CE, or the 16th Century in Poland or S’fat.

It is time for all Clergy, all people to get up off their asses, off their couches, off their pulpits and become involved in the matters that concern God most: the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan-all of the people who have no power, who have no voice-we Clergy are here to give voice to, to raise them up and to call out the Truth to Power, to call out the Lies of the ruling class, to make it uncomfortable for the comfortable and make it comfortable for the uncomfortable. My life has been about this and even when I was a criminal, my rebellion was against the lies and b.s. that I saw in front of me. I have been railing about this situation for my entire rabbinate, I am a ‘niche’ Rabbi because I have to be involved personally with each person and there is only so much of me. I have to be leading and walking with the people who are not treated well, who have been forgotten and those who have forgotten their own worth and importance! We, Clergy have to lead the way by “loving our neighbor as we love ourselves”-this is the first step in “personal involvement” in repentance and change! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Living Into Rabbi Heschel’s Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 277

During these turbulent times in our world and as we begin the Hebrew month of Elul, the month prior to Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur-the month of our introspection and T’Shuvah I am drawn to a telegraph that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel sent to President John F. Kennedy. I am drawn to it because I believe we in America, in Israel, Jews as well as non-Jews across the globe need to take responsibility for the conditions in this world, own our parts, do our T’Shuvahs, our repairs and have new responses to events in our lives. I believe we are in need, during the month of Elul/September to have a:                                            

                                         National Days of Repentance and Change

A Yom Kippur for All of Us

A Month of Elul that is real and Life-Changing

Rabbi Heschel’s telegram:

TO PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY, THE WHITE HOUSE, JUNE 16, 1963

I LOOK FORWARD TO PRIVILEGE OF BEING PRESENT AT MEETING TOMORROW AT 4 P. M. LIKELIHOOD EXISTS THAT NEGRO PROBLEM WILL BE LIKE THE WEATHER. EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT IT BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. PLEASE DEMAND OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT NOT JUST SOLEMN DECLARATION. WE FORFEIT THE RIGHT TO WORSHIP GOD AS LONG AS WE CONTINUE TO HUMILIATE NEGROES. CHURCH SYNAGOGUES HAVE FAILED. THEY MUST REPENT. ASK OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS TO CALL FOR NATIONAL REPENTANCE AND PERSONAL SACRIFICE. LET RELIGIOUS LEADERS DONATE ONE MONTH’S SALARY “TOWARD FUND FOR NEGRO HOUSING AND EDUCATION. I PROPOSE THAT YOU MR. PRESIDENT DECLARE STATE OF MORAL EMERGENCY. A MARSHALL PLAN FOR AID TO NEGROES IS BECOMING A NECESSITY. THE HOUR CALLS FOR HIGH MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY. ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity)

Rabbi Heschel’s words above “everyone talks about it and nobody does anything about it” describes how we deal (or not deal) with issues that have vexed us forever-issues that go to the very heart of the Biblical Commands of “Love thy Neighbor as thyself”, “Care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow and the orphan”, “pursue justice and righteousness”, the entirety of the 10 sayings, the response of “we will do and we will understand”. We acknowledge problems, we see the inequities in our world, we discuss ways to change them and then we seem to do nothing to make them come to fruition. We pass laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 only to have future Congress’ water them down, the Supreme Court declare them unnecessary, and the states disenfranchise voters who they think will not support their party! We are watching, some of us in horror, as a woman of color is being denigrated by her political opponents as she runs to be the next President of the United States, we are “standing idly by the blood of our brothers/sisters” as both Palestinians who want peace and harmony as well as Jews who want the same are being marginalized by the extremes in their midst. We have allowed the “inmates to run the asylum” and refuse to take our responsibility for what is happening-choosing to blame another rather than see the 3 fingers pointing back to us. In the Bible, after the “Mishkan”, the Ark, the Altar etc are erected at the end of Exodus, the first “new laws” we learn about are the laws/need to look within ourselves and be grateful for what we have, see where we have erred, see where we have denied, and make an offering, a rapprochement with God, with the people we have harmed, and with our selves. T’Shuvah, return, repentance, new response is what we learn about in Leviticus and, while it seems boring, dry and dull, it is the glue that holds families together, holds communities together, holds peoples together with a power greater than ourselves. It is the essential ingredient for being able to live with oneself and with one another-when we engage in blame only, when we deny our responsibility to make the necessary changes, we will continue to “talk about it and nobody does anything about it.” Thinking about the prophet Amos, who contrary to what everyone else saw, proclaimed the ruination of Israel because of the lack of people being responsible, I think, the lack of humility and bravery that T’Shuvah entails. We all know what happened to the Kingdom of Israel-Amos was correct, unfortunately, and the ones who declared their own righteousness in denigrating all of the principles of the Bible were destroyed. Bibi, Ben G’Vir, Smotrich, study your Bible a little better, stop ignoring the prophets. Preachers and Evangelicals, Baptists and Jews, immerse yourselves in the Holy Texts you hold so ‘dear’ and turn away from your blaming and do nothing ways and join the prophetic way of being, of hearing, of doing.

We are witnesses to this behavior happening all the time be it in families, schools, government, workplaces. Remember how long it took for labor laws to come into effect that some states are trying to change! Clergy are standing idly by and/or leading the charge while the questions of the 60’s regarding freedom to vote, freedom to live, civil rights, a women’s right to make her own choices regarding her body, even freedom of religion are under attack once again. Clergy are staying silent in the face of anti-Semitic and Islamophobia, they are once again afraid to anger their patrons, their donors, the hierarchy of the Church, the powers that be, etc. We are witnessing the very leaders who should be leading us to freedom, leading us out of Egypt, getting the “money changers” out of the halls of power instead invite the charlatans in, welcome the people who engage in idol worship, be it through their bastardizations of our Holy Texts or the ignoring of them.

I have written and spoken about the ‘do-nothing’ but talk about it nature of human beings often in the past. I am watching in horror as we face another test of our spiritual commitment to one another, to God’s will, to freedom, to truth, to justice, to compassion. It is time for all Clergy to look inside of themselves and admit their dependence on the ‘donor’ class for their livelihood and how they give up parts of their soul in order to keep their jobs. It is difficult, I know and I also know that getting fired is worth the price of saving our own souls and dignity. While I am loud and bombastic and I know how hard it is for Clergy to go against the grain and keep their jobs, I also know it is imperative in order to not be culpable in another era of “senseless hatred”. It is hard for us to do what is right and this is the call we have been given-we are descendants of the prophets, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed.  God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 276

Last writing for 3 weeks-restart on Sept. 2/3

“Our premise is the certainty of being able to educate the inner man; to form as well as to inform the personality; to develop not only memory but also the capacity for insight; not only information but also appreciation; not only proficiency but also reverence; not only learning but also faith; not only skills but also inner attitudes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.56)

Today is Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of Av, the day the Rabbis proclaimed as a national one day of mourning for the destruction of both Temples and, have since, added every other cruelty, destruction of community that has happened to the Jews ever since-except for the Shoah, the Holocaust. Orthodoxy was defeated when they wanted to add the Shoah to the list of “bad things that happened to good people” by the rest of Jewry because Tisha B’Av represents the calamities we brought about because of our bad behavior and the Shoah was pure hatred of Jews just for being Jewish. The destruction of the 1st Temple was because of the ways the people in power, including the Priests, treated the widows, the orphans, the poor, the needy and the stranger, according to Rabbinic lore and the 2nd Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred between people that caused embarrassment and harm with the lies and mendacity that was the way of the world in Judea at the time. Isn’t it wonderful that we commemorate these terrible ways of being that caused destruction and ruin on Tisha B’Av, that we mourn the destructions all the while we continue to engage in the same behaviors that caused them!!!

The last phrases that are bolded above, along with our current situations in the world,  point out the danger in “only learning” and “only skills” being our reason d’être. What good is learning if we are not also going to have faith-isn’t the reason to learn to deepen one’s faith in, and trust in what we are learning and to use the lessons of our past to have “sincerity” and “be genuine” in our dealings with one another and be in truth with oneself? We have learned how to pray, how to beg, how to bluster, how to beat our chests, how to be victims, how to be superior and we have failed to have trust that being genuine human will suffice and move us forward as individuals and as humanity. We have failed to grasp sincerity and faith the lessons from Tisha B’Av, from the Bible impart upon us because we are too busy being ‘victims’ and living in ‘identity politics’ and/or worried about ‘optics’. We watch the same people who are causing or trying to cause the destruction of another person/people wailing on the floor this morning in Temple Services or this Friday at the Mosque or Sunday in Church- mourning some fantasy glory rather than putting their learning to good use, using their “learning” to make life better for all-they are being led by mealy-mouthed people for whom being political is more important than being faithful! Rabbis and Clergy who are more worried about their jobs and status than about truth and leadership. These ‘learned people’ like Mike Johnson and Ben-G’vir care only about their power and Sinwar cares only about getting his and getting even-not using their “learning” to be more human, more genuine, more in line with the divine. The great question is how they and their ancestors for the millennia have gotten other learned people to go along with them and allow them to cause more and more reasons to mourn on Tisha B’Av! How sad for them and for us, how irresponsible of the rest of us for allowing them so much oxygen in the room.

We have the skills to pray, we have the skills to read texts in the original, we have the skills to learn and to gather information, to be proficient, to remember, etc and what we have done with the teaching and learning of these skills is forget to use them to influence “the inner attitudes” of human beings. We have forgotten that just teaching our children to read prayers and to learn a Torah Portion for their Bat/Bar Mitzvah means nothing if we haven’t influenced and helped them learn how to change their inner life, grow their spiritual selves, and live life as decent human beings. It is not enough, my dear Rabbinic Colleagues to go along with the status quo and throw up our hands, it is not enough to read the words of the prophets each Shabbat Morning and not fulfill them, not be moved by them. It is not enough to extol the ‘sages of old’ in their mendacity and their move away from what our Holy Bible teaches us in the prophets, from King David, Moses, etc. It is not enough to teach the adults that they only have to drop their kids off and make their lack of participation palpable to them and to yourself. It is not enough to hide behind ‘your contract’, ‘your livelihood’ as the reasons for short-changing the very people you have been “Called to Serve”!

It is time for all of us to re-assess ourselves in relation to Rabbi Heschel’s teachings above. It is time for all of us to end our self-deceptions and denials, our deceptions of another(s) and our lies. We have to start with ourselves and then broaden our approach. I have been using “learning” to be more “genuine” and “sincere” since my recovery. As a friend of mine told me yesterday, “Mark, you are not political, you do not play the game” and he is right. What you see is what you get because I was a thief and a con, a drunk and a liar, a hider and it almost destroyed me and harmed so many people who loved/love me in those times. I refuse to “go along to get along”, my current situation of retirement is a direct result of my lack of political correctness, my lack of worry about optics, and, I was wrong in the way I acted-full stop! I was not wrong in my assessment and my concerns all along nor was I heard. While the prophets of old were not heeded, they kept talking from Amos to Micah, even Jesus was heard and not heeded to this very day. It is time for us to end our “ritual mourning” for the “good old days”, stop our “make America Great again” and “from the River to the Sea” as well as all the other stupid slogans.

It is time for us to cut the cord of lies and mendacity, it is time for us to be genuine and sincere in “love your neighbor as yourself”, its time to embody “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. It is time for us to use the “learning” of Tisha B’Av, the “skills” of mourning to deepen our “faith” and grow our “inner attitudes”, raise up our souls and the souls of those around us. My new way of doing this is through this blog and the way I greet people, the reaching out of my hand over and over again-whether someone takes it or not. I am engaged in living the lessons from my errors as well as from my ‘victories’ each day. I pray you will use today to be more “genuine” with yourself and engage in daily spiritual growing. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Leaning into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 274

“Our premise is the certainty of being able to educate the inner man; to form as well as to inform the personality; to develop not only memory but also the capacity for insight; not only information but also appreciation; not only proficiency but also reverence; not only learning but also faith; not only skills but also inner attitudes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.56)

We are going on vacation beginning Wednesday of this week, so today and tomorrow will be the last two days until Wednesday, September 4th. Also, tonight begins the Holy Day, the Fast Day of Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av which, according to our lore is the day when the Temples were destroyed and we have put all the other destructions that we experienced and suffered because of our idolatry, because of our senseless hatred, because of our failure to care for the poor, the need, the widow and the orphan, because of our resistance to treating the stranger well and having one law for the stranger and the citizen alike, because of the inability of judges to resist the various bribes they were offered and, ultimately, accepted.

Looking at the bolded phrases above are prime examples of how Rabbis and Clergy as well as Boards and congregants fool themselves as Jews have for the millennia. Rather than being like King David, rather than being able to hear the lone voice of men and women calling us back to truth, decency, being fair and just, merciful and kind, loving and compassionate, our Rabbis and Boards lead us into the same ways that have destroyed us as a community, as a people, as a nation. Rather than learning from our history, we seem to revel in repeating it!

Whether it is the hatred of Ben-G’Vir and Smotrich and their allies, the hatred of Netanyahu towards anyone holding him accountable, the disdain of the left for the religious people who follow the spirit as well as the letter of the law, whenever it is the dismissal of the spiritual principles the Rabbis teach in their Congregations and Jewish Schools by parents and lay leaders, we have come to disregard the lessons of Tisha B’Av, we ignore the ashes we are sitting in and have come to believe that we have risen from these ashes because Jerusalem is restored to Jewish governance, Israel is once again a State and, if the crazies have their way, there will be a Third Temple. We are still living in fantasy land, we are still ignoring the call of the prophets and the lessons of kingship and how wrong it went for the Jewish People. We are forgetting what happens when we “scout out after our heart and our eyes and we whore ourselves after them”(Numbers 15:39) which is part of the second prayer after the Shema/V’Ahavta. Instead of not whoring ourselves, whoring ourselves is an art form for the lay leaders, for the business leaders, for the Rabbis themselves in order to ‘keep the congregation going”.

We have failed to have “appreciation” for the information imparted in our Holy Texts, we have failed to appreciate the errors, the miscues of our ancestors and repair them externally as well as in the inner lives of each individual, our Rabbis and teachers are not leading us to appreciate what we have been through and take the information of our errors and misdeeds to heart, cause/help us to do T’Shuvah to repair the damages in the spiritual as well as physical, intellectual and emotional realms and have appreciation for the difficulty of living well, of not whoring ourselves and appreciation for the miraculous paths of the Bible. As we say in our prayers regarding the Torah, “It is a tree of life…all of its paths are peace”, yet our Rabbis are not helping us to fulfill this promise, they are not willing to stand for what is right and true in the face of losing their income, their ability to get ‘another job’ and, most of all, failing to follow the call of the spirit within them and within the people who need to hear the message most. When “information” is used and manipulated without “appreciation” for truth, for what it imparts, for how it affects the inner life, it is like a useless prayer, it is a sin.

While it is important to have “proficiency” when praying and reading Torah, just being able to rush through the service, the Torah readings, mean NOTHING! There used to be a game show called “Name that Tune” where people would try and guess the name of a song with as few notes as possible, well there are many Jews who believe finishing their prayers as quickly as possible is a badge of honor and shows how good they are. There are a myriad of Jews who, during the Torah Reading and the Haftorah reading, go out to the “Kiddish Club” and get drunk on Shabbat morning, because they already know what it says and they are experts in carrying out the Mitzvot-just ask them. We have lost our capacity for reverence-full stop. Look at the ways we treat older people-rather than learning from them, we dismiss them, rather than honoring them, we consider them burdens and drains on resources. Where are the Rabbis featuring the wisdom of our elders in our congregations, oh yeah, the ‘older’ Rabbis get put out to pasture as well.

We have lost our reverence for the miracle of waking up each morning, of the sun setting each evening, we have lost our reverence for the miracles that abound around us all day long and for the angels that keep going up and coming down on Jacob’s ladder which is still here. We have lost our ability to revere anything because of the mendacity and lies, conspiracy theories and mistrust that has been sown in our political arenas, in our families with the lies parents tell children and in our Temples when the Rabbis don’t stand up for the principles they spout off about and live into the principles of Torah, of decency, of engaging like the Prophets.

The more I learn, the more I appreciate! The more proficient I become the more reverence I have. I was so far down the rabbit hole, I had fallen so far into the Abyss, my recovery and being saved like the Israelites were from Pharaoh and Egypt rekindled my desire to learn and become more proficient in studying and, most of all, in living well. This experience also rekindled the appreciation I had as a kid for my father, for my grandparents, for my aunts and uncles, it makes me remember how blessed I am to grow up in my family, have the cousins, siblings, parents, nieces and nephews, friends that I have. I still forget to appreciate it all at times and this is reminding me. My continuing to recover my passion and practice my purpose also gives me reverence and awe for life, for the Grace I experience when I fail forward, when I miss the mark. I no longer need the validation of people who withhold it as a sign of power and control. I don’t have to “prove I am right” as well because I have can “stand in awe” of the truth without needing anyone to validate me-it is an inside job that comes when I appreciate what I know and become proficient in living with reverence. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings- A Daily Path for Spiritual Growing

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 274

“Our premise is the certainty of being able to educate the inner man; to form as well as to inform the personality; to develop not only memory but also the capacity for insight; not only information but also appreciation; not only proficiency but also reverence’ not only learning but also faith; not only skills but also inner attitudes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.56)

I am highlighting the phrases I am talking about in this paragraph and I sit here wondering aloud “how did we get it so wrong?”. People on the extremes can and will claim “this is exactly what we are doing”, and they are-just not with the same understanding of the Bible that Rabbi Heschel, Hasidism, Kabbalists, and others understand/understood the Bible. The far right and far left ‘religious’ people believe they can and must “form as well as inform the personality” of another according to their will, not according to whom the person in front of them is. We are witnessing another instant in time where the extremes are seeing children/people as their tools, as serving the power structure and will of the ‘leader’ and we see this in the establishment Religions, not just in cults.

Serving the Pope, the Ayatollah, the Head Rabbi, the Evangelical Council, the Southern Baptist Conference, etc has become more important than serving the individual and God for many people. Serving the whims of the politicians to curry favor and get the Supreme Court Judges they want has been in the Christian Nationalists playbook for 40+ years and they got it. While there is no where in the Bible that forbids abortion, these ‘good christian folk’ have rewritten the Bible according to their whims and their desire to dominate women. They even go so far as to rewrite what happened in the past, their anti-semitic, anti-Islam behaviors, like the Crusades, to make themselves ‘right’ in their massacre of towns, innocent women, children elderly just so ‘their religion becomes the only one’. What bullshit and hiding behind the Bible, bastardizing Jesus’ words to do this to Jesus’ people, is about as shameful as one could get and the people promoting these lies, have no shame-just ask their ‘messiah. Donald J Trump!

The ‘religious’ left is not much better with the way they want to rewrite the Mitzvot, they have decided that “repair of the world” is the most important commandment, even though it is no where to be found in the Bible. Rather than take responsibility for the mundane, for the everyday, they continue to be flag bearers for the ‘rights of the poor’ while not wanting to hang out with the poor and help them form and inform their personality, they are not so interested in hearing their insights and/or being reminded of their bad acts nor the bad actions of their people. While they donate to the “right causes”, have the “right politics”, they hang out in their exclusive Country Clubs and behind their gated homes/communities.

What are we, the Rabbis, the Cantors, the Educators, and Clergy of all faiths doing?? Are we forming and informing the personality of the child who sits before us, in our classrooms, in our Sanctuaries using truth? Are we helping them develop and engage in the memories of our ancestors, using them to learn how to be and how not to be? Are we helping them develop the “capacity for insight” and allowing their insights to impact our thinking and being? NO! Hence the move away from religion by so many young people. We did not heed Rabbi Heschel’s words in 1962 and we have continued to bury his teachings above and his call/demand for action on our part ever since. Being a product of this educational system caused most of us to run away after Bar/Bat Mitzvah, age 13, with the approval and consent of our parents because they had done the same thing!

We have found ways to make the richness of our heritage, the important spiritual developments of our ancestors and, in turn, us boring, unimportant, and, ‘for those people’. Being religious has nothing to do with what sect one belongs to, it has nothing to do with the clothes one wears, nothing to do with the checklist of commandments one performs. Being religious has to do with the “inner life”, it has to do with how we continue to “form and inform the personality” of ourselves and those who are our students, congregants. It has to do with developing our memory of getting out of Egypt 3500 years ago and yesterday, it has to do with sharpening our memory so we can see what is right now better and honor our insights of what is possible tomorrow and the next days. We, the people who have been called to our careers of being Rabbis have to throw off the yoke of ‘keeping the job’ and reaccept the Yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. The arguments we have, which the people on the extremes claim to be for the sake of heaven while being actually for their own sake, have to include the call to serve, have to use our religious teachings in the way they are meant to be used and we have to continue to do our own personal inventory. It is not getting better and I am calling out my colleagues to stand up against their own lies and bullshit, stand up to the people telling them how to be Rabbis and serve the souls, the inner life of their people!

I am a product of the educational system Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. In my Temple, the teachers were boring and the Senior Rabbi and Cantor were electrifying. The “old men” who came for daily services in the morning and evening were from another world and were kind and of deep faith. They taught me how to ‘daven’ and not pray, the Clergy tried to instill in me the belief that doing the right thing is its own reward and the educational system was not so interested in the inner life! I went far away from the teachings and the love, the memories and insights I had and life was not too good. My return, my T’Shuvah, begun in prison in 1987, has brought me to a new understanding of memory and insight, the Rabbis I have called my teachers, including Rabbi Heschel, have helped me “form and inform” my “personality, “develop memory” and “have the capacity for insight” which I have used to help many other people recover their true personality and find their own insights into text, into how to live in this moment and how to face the future with joy, excitement, dread, and, most of acceptance and knowing they are not alone, we are all connected to one another and to our history/ancestors. This way of being is difficult and the educational system I used was not inline with the prevalent systems and it worked for many who had been turned off before. I am not a genius, my delivery is not for everyone and the teachings are eternal and necessary in order to live well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Leaning Into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Growing our Souls

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 273

“Our premise is the certainty of being able to educate the inner man; to form as well as to inform the personality; to develop not only memory but also the capacity for insight; not only information but also appreciation; not only proficiency but also reverence’ not only learning but also faith; not only skills but also inner attitudes.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.56)

Rabbi Heschel’s first statement above is, in a sense, outrageous! He believes that the foundation, the proposition which is sent out from our tradition is “reliably true” that we are “able to educate the inner man”! He is not taking into account the failure of our attempts at doing this, he is not taking into account the history of our inhumanity towards one another, it seems, or is he? Is the statement above so rooted in truth for Rabbi Heschel that he takes it upon himself and all of the other teachers throughout the millennia the “failure” to “educate the inner man” so the inhumanity towards one another can end? The Shoah, the Nazi takeover of Germany, the death of so much of his family made it impossible for Rabbi Heschel to not know the inhumanity we do to one another, yet, he believed fervently in his soul, with his entire being that the foundational proposition of Judaism is that it is “reliably true” we can “educate the inner” person. Now, he is charging all of us to do just this. Let go of the need to churn out Bar and Bat Mitzvah idiots, let go of the desire to give pap to the ‘powers that be’ in the Synagogue, engage in our tradition so that our students, our congregants can be “a light unto the Nations”, that each of us becomes a true inheritor of the charge to Abraham: “Lech L’Cha”, go to yourself/go for yourself” and “be a blessing”.

Our religious education is woefully lacking in regard to the first “premise” above. We have failed to help our young grow their inner life, we have allowed, sent them to therapists for what are truly spiritual issues: “why am I here”, “what’s the point”, “how do I deal with the opposing forces within me”, etc. These are not psychological issues, these are issues of our inner life, these are the issues that force us to deal with our inner life, with our spiritual beingness, or to run away and hide in a myriad of ways: alcohol, drugs, work, money, fame, power, depression, reckless behaviors, “stinking thinking”, food, gambling… We are in desperate need of the Rabbi to take his/her proper place, to use her/his own experience of growing their inner life as an example for all of us. Rather than hide the struggles of their inner lives, we need the Rabbis to show each of us how our tradition helped them “educate their inner life” to meet the challenges we all face. Rather than give us some ridiculous notion of ‘perfect heroes’ show us the flaws of our ancestors and how they found ways to rise above their flaws to do something good and holy. Rather than whitewash their errors, engage us in discussions of how we make the same errors for the same reasons even though we hide them from ourselves, even though we deny them and we wrap ourselves in the Talit of righteousness  whether from a ‘progressive’ lens or a ‘conservative’ lens, we all need to look at ourselves once again, each day and see how we drift away from our need to “educate the inner” self. It is time for all Rabbis, all educators, all parents, to take their proper place in their own education and the education of our young people’s inner self!

We are in a desperate struggle for the soul of democracy, for the soul of freedom precisely because, in my opinion, we, Rabbis, have failed to “educate the inner man”. We are still living in the Dark Ages of hiding from ourselves, hiding from the universe/Ineffable One, hiding from one another-just as Cain tried to hide from God after killing his brother, some say a part of himself, Abel. Just as Judah could say that Tamar “was more righteous than me” and King David could listen to and hear the voice of Abigail to not kill Naval, so too can we hear the call of our teachers to “educate our inner life”, to raise our  spirits to meet the challenges to our freedoms, to defeat the myriad of Pharaohs that abound in our daily lives-both the inner and the outer ones. We need to remind our congregants, our young, ourselves that it is “reliably true”, there is a “certainty” that we can “educate the inner man” and we can “educate the inner woman” and make our world a little better than when we were born.

We Rabbis can, and I would add, must stop being puppets on the string, end our careers as marionettes being played by the ‘bosses’, the ones signing our paychecks. We have to remember who we truly work for: A Higher Calling. We have to remember and engage in the call of our souls, the results of our educating our inner self, our souls. We have to promote and call out the “certainty” of our times, of all times; without “being able to educate the inner self” of everyone, we will once again participate in the destruction of freedom, the destruction of our values, the destruction of what the Torah, the Bible stand for and teach us. This is a call out to the fearful Rabbis who don’t want to confront the mendacity of the ‘people in charge’ or the Orthodoxy of Hate and Lies that Ben G’Vir, Smotrich, and the other lying Rabbis who call for us to “do what is hateful to us to another” in the West Bank and Gaza, who are too timid to call out the lies of Trump and his Republican ass-kissers in spiritual terms. This is a call out to those arrogant asshole Rabbis who believe ‘only I know what is right’, ‘only I can fix the issues’;  pontificating while never seeing the individual in front of them nor the reflection of their spiritual malady that faces them each day in the mirror.

Being someone who was so lost, so ‘out there’, so trapped in an Egypt of my own making, I know with “certainty” that our tradition is “able to educate the inner life” because it has mine over these past 35+ years. I study with people not to learn the stories, but to learn the lessons for living well. I engage in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings not for my mind, rather to “educate” my inner life. I know Judaism has made my inner life so much better, stronger, more educated and closer to the wholeness we all seek because I was so lost, so disparate, and now, I am better. I still err, I still know the weak spots, the ways I can be shaken in my inner life and because of the “certainty of being able to educate the inner life of man” I recover, I do T’Shuvah and I work to build my life as a work of art, I stand up to the lies, I stand for truth in all it’s facets and I practice love in all my affairs. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Ways of Living Well from Rabbi Heschel - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 272

“Is it not possible that there are idols in our homes, in our minds, in our temples? Religion finds itself in a continuous battle with idolatry. It is bound to reject as vulgar and destructive certain values that our own people cherish and worship!” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 54)

How much have we learned since these words were spoken in 1962? I am afraid not too much! The “idols in our homes, in our minds, in our temples” seem to have multiplied with the progress of technology, not diminished, they seem to grow each day on Social Media, on Cable TV, on the various ‘news’ channels that are nothing more than money-making machines for the companies who own them and their shareholders.

In our homes, there is a trend to ‘worship’ the father or mother; obeying their every word and ‘command’. Seeing them as ‘god’s’ representatives and ‘knowing what is best for their child’ without ever peering into their soul. This trend is a more fundamentalist trend, be it religious or philosophical, urban or rural. While the people who are adhering to this idolatry claim, at times, to be ‘god-fearing’ people, they are actually just carrying on a tradition of misogyny, idolatry, through the very “vulgar and destructive” “values” that religion “is bound to reject”. The saddest part of their experience is they are totally oblivious to their hypocrisy and their idolatry, they are willing to destroy democracy, cause and participate in a civil war to hold on to their idols, follow the dictates of their authoritarian leadership in order to hold on to the lies they tell themselves and the idols they hold dear. It is a reminder of Rachel, Jacob’s wife, holding on to the idols of her father that she stole when confronted. Many of the sages try and clean this idolatry up by saying ‘she was trying to stop her father from worshiping them’ when in reality, she had not let go of them for herself, and, rather than be truthful, she lied to everyone including her husband who proclaimed death to anyone who stole them and, by extension, worshiped them. Jacob’s proclamation was the death sentence for the wife he ‘loved’ so much without him knowing it. This is an example of the “Values that our own people cherish and worship” that religion “is bound to reject as vulgar and destructive.”

We have become more oblivious to what these idols in our minds have created through these past 60+ years. We have raised and are raising generations of people who learn that “those people” anyone not like ‘us’, are less than human. When the Governor of Florida proclaims that Black people were able to learn trades while they were slaves and it was good for them, we are witnessing the idolatry of the mind. When the Republican Party can nominate 3 times a serial philanderer, a convicted felon, someone found liable for sexual assault and rape, someone found guilt for cheating the government and the banks out of billions of tax and interest dollars, we are witnessing idolatry. When so many people in America can buy into the undemocratic platform of Project 2025, when the lies about Democrats from 8 years ago are being recycled and hailed as true, we witness the idolatry of the mind bringing to us “vulgar and destructive” “values” that we need religion to “reject”, yet some practitioners of ‘religion’ proclaim

these lies, these idols as holy, as Jesus’ words and deeds. This is how far down the rabbit hole we have fallen. We are truly at the “Mad Hatters” party!

I am sad to report that idols abound in our temples, churches, mosques as well. When Rabbis in Israel and in America can celebrate the destruction of the people of Gaza and proclaim that Oct. 7th was ‘approved by god’ because we hadn’t destroyed the Palestinian people, we are hearing the words of idolators. When these ‘religious’ people are willing to send only some Israelis to fight this war because their sons and daughters have to study Torah so these same lies can be perpetuated and the new forms of idolatry can be raised and flourish, we are witnesses to “idols in our temples”. When Jews are ostracized because of their faith and because we support Israel while disagreeing with the government, when there are bomb threats and protests against Jews and Jewish students on campus’, we are witnessing idolatry in the mosques. When ‘god-fearing, white christians’ march and proclaim: “Jews will not replace us” and they are called “good people” we are witnessing idolatry in our churches.

Society is so infused with idols, be it money, fame, power, hatred, the idolatry of optics, of kissing ass to raise money, of betraying the values that religion and decency stand on, betraying the very ideals democracy is founded on from the Bible, it seems like an impossible task to rid ourselves of them. Yet, this is when/where monotheistic religion entered the world before and where/when it can/must enter today! We have to return to Mt. Sinai, we have to hear the sound of the Shofar and the call of Shema-Hear, Listen, Understand. We have to return to the values that were not practiced in Egypt and in Canaan, we have to “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, we have to remember and honor that all people are created in the image of God, we have to create a space and a way of being that honors the stories found in the Bible building on the moments of kindness and grace, truth and love, repentance and return to make them more common than rare. We have to hold our secular as well as religious leaders accountable for helping us break the hold the “idols in our homes, in our minds, in our temples” have upon us as individuals and as a society. We have the path, we have the stories of how “certain values that are destructive and vulgar that our people cherish” lead us to exile, to homelessness, to wandering. Let’s put down the proper roots that lead to building a good foundation for freedom, love, kindness, co-existence.

Through writing and studying, through my recovery, I have grown into a way of being that recognizes the idols of my mind so much quicker. I apologize to those who were harmed by my lack of awareness and deafness to these idols. I hear them come into my mind and, I let them pass through me instead of holding on to them as I used to. I do this by acknowledging them and thanking them for their opinion and letting them know they can go back in their closet. I know they will never completely leave me and I know I can “reject” them. Harriet and I rid our home daily of the idols that want to live with us and we have rejected Jewish communities whom enjoy displaying their idols as representations of God! Living without idols makes life a lot harder, it makes it impossible to buy into the ‘way things are’, it makes staying silent almost impossible and it makes life a lot lonelier. It also makes life richer and more meaningful, keeps us in closer contact with God and one another as well other non-idolators. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Learning from Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 271

“”Love thy neighbor as thyself” is, according to Rabbi Akiba, the essence or epitome of the Torah. However, according to Rabbi Ishmael, the epitome and the design of the Torah is the design to keep our people away from idolatry. Rabbi Akiba’s view is known to all of us; Rabbi Ishmael’s view is forgotten.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 543)

Are we so arrogant as to not heed Rabbi Ishmael’s view? I think we have been for a long time, as his “view is forgotten”! We continue to promote the positive aspect of the “Love thy neighbor” which is critically important and holy, while we forget to see how even this commandment has, within it, the possibility of being evil. As I quoted yesterday from the Ramban, in his commentary on the verse “You shall be holy because, I, God, am holy” which comes prior to “Love thy neighbor…” that it is possible to be evil within the boundaries of Torah. “Love thy neighbor” can result in making someone into a celebrity and ‘worshiping’ them, it can lead one to follow them into a descent into hell, to forget all that one knows to be true and buy into the lies of authoritarianism, buy into the self-deception that going along to get along will allow one to ‘fit in’, etc.

There is nothing wrong with “love thy neighbor”, in fact it is at the end of following the holiness code in Lev.19, that we reach this way of being. Yet, as I think about the teaching above, I realize more and more that to reach this state of being, we first have to look at the myriad of ways we practice idolatry and call it love, the myriad of things we  use to push away what we ‘know in our soul’ to be true and buy into the falsehoods, deceptions, cliches, conventional wisdom of societal norms. It is too hard for most of us to truly look at ourselves and, therefore, we hide from the different idolatrous practices that we have acquired over the millennia. We do not want to know Rabbi Ishmael’s view precisely because we would have to let go of and give up on habits and ways that have become established norms. We would no longer be able to lie with impunity, there would be no way for us to tolerate hatred, racism, slavery of any kind. We would no longer have a two-tiered system of justice, we could not make women into second-class citizens anymore. There would be no using the Bible as a weapon, there would be not be any path to deny the dignity and worth of another human being. We would find solutions to extreme poverty, malnutrition, end the incessant wars for the sake of power and learn to live together in some type of coexistence.

We would no longer allow the Church to hate on Jews and Muslims, we would no longer go along with the Rabbis who preach hatred towards Arabs and “Goyim”, we would no longer permit the Imams to preach suicide bombings and “death to the infidel”. It would be impossible for us to misrepresent God in the myriad of ways we do now. Governments would not be able to oppress those who disagree with them, everyone would have the promises from Exodus 6:6-8 we all will be taken out of from under the harsh labors of the taskmasters who rule us, we will be set free from the inner taskmaster that lies to us in such believable ways, we will be redeemed and know we are worthy of being alive and we will be pointed to our rightful place and know we belong. We will be pursuers of righteousness and justice, kindness and love, truth and goodness and we will reject the evil thoughts that arise within us and those of the people around us-we will not stop them from coming we will be able to not act on them, finally.

Idolatry takes so many forms, it is so insidious, and yet, we ignore it so often. We have people in our government who claim to be ‘god-fearing’ people who go against the very principles and examples of Jesus, of Moses. We have people in government who are so tied to their ideology they are unable to discern the nuances of situations and just spout rhetoric that hurts good people. The Rabbis who are preaching ‘death to the Palestinians” are idolators, they are using the Bible to validate their evil- they are the epitome of the Ramban’s teaching- they use the Bible to do evil rather than heed Rabbi Ishmael’s warning about idolatry. The Christian Clergy who are preaching the ‘prosperity gospel’ are calling millions of their followers to worship the “Golden Calf” they have made of money, themselves, the rich, the powerful, etc. The Muslim Clergy who are promoting hatred and “Death to America, Death to Israel”, who cheered at 9/11 and Oct. 7th, are idolators as well leading people away from Allah to themselves. All of these ‘clergy’, ‘people of God’ are nothing more than idol worshipers and the people who follow them are also guilty of idolatry. We are given two brains, one in our head and the other in our gut-the one in the brain can be convinced to go along with idolatry. The one in our gut, ie our intuition, our soul, can’t and is what we have to engage along with the brain in our heads in order to have understanding, wisdom and knowledge in every situation. Yet, we continue to ignore what our ‘second brain’ tells us in order to satisfy what we can rationalize and what we fervently believe is in our best interest. It is only when we are back in Egypt do we realize the folly of our thinking and then cry out for freedom.

In looking both backward and forward, I realize the ways I set up idols for myself. I believed my own press, I acted, at times, with impunity and a lack of grace. I sought out people to worship and my worship was always rewarded with rejection at some point, because once my usefulness was over, these ‘gods’ didn’t need me anymore. Hence the power of T’Shuvah and recovery came into my life and I have been plugged into this power ever since Dec. of 1986 and the current surges and recedes and it never stops. I have stayed connected to God and continue to examine the ways I have engaged in “Avodah Zarah” strange worship/idolatry over these past 35+ years. I am aware of how this practice has led me to deep sorrow and deeper pain, how bereft I felt whenever I moved from the space where God dwells within me into the space of letting someone/something else control me-especially when it was my out of proper measure ego that took over. I have learned, through the different trials and tribulations, that I can’t go down the path of idolatry at all, as soon as I step in that direction, I fall into the abyss and it never works out. I also know that my way of being is not everyone’s “cup of tea”, hence I am not always welcomed into ‘polite society’, which truth be told, I don’t want to be in anyway. What it takes for me to “fit in” is another form of idolatry for me and I can’t practice idolatry in any form. My daily writing has taught me this and I am constantly seeing my errors and my foibles in Rabbi Heschel’s teachings. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Leaning into the Teachings of Rabbi Heschel - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growing

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 270

“Another malady is the intellectual irrelevance of tradition to the person, the collapse of communication between personal problems of the individual and the message of our heritage.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 53)

I am continuing to write on this essay of Rabbi Heschel because of the relevance it has to our situation today and as we approach Tisha B’Av, the day we commemorate the myriad of destructions that have befallen the Jewish people because of our errors, our not living into the ways of the Bible rather than living according to the Rabbis, I believe our lack of spiritual education and the sad state of Jewish education as well as the worship of “Idols in the Temples”, which is the title of this essay, has to come to a halt for all of us to flourish and thrive. This Tisha B’Av, this Elul, this High HolyDay Season let us all take up the mantra of “We are not going back”!

Rabbi Heschel is describing the situation we are still facing, in the first sentence above. We are still so engaged in either saying “these are the words of God written by the finger of God” or “ this is a nice myth and who cares” that we continue to miss the intellectual, the spiritual relevance of the Bible, of our tradition to an individual human being. When we continue to say it is about the “People Israel”, or “the Christian Nation” or “the Muslim Nation” etc we fail to recognize the individual, we are melding the personal with the global, the individual is no longer important, what is important is “the group”, “the heritage the way I want it to be”, in other words, when there is intellectual irrelevance the opening for authoritarianism is greater. When Judaism is no longer engaged in what is good for the individual human being, when we are not recognizing the infinite worth and honoring the dignity of another person created in the Image of the Divine, it becomes fertile ground for the ‘I can solve it all’ strongman leader and we all know where that leads to-destruction and devastation, the fall of the Temple twice, the loss of our homeland for almost 1900 years, the growth of an industry called anti-semitism or ‘blame the Jews’.

The Bible is a road map for how to live well and the myriad of ways we fail to do this. The Bible is replete with the errors of human beings, the jealousy of Cain that is still alive and well today, like the “Age of Grievance” by Frank Bruni discusses. We have seen since the beginning of humanity the “personal problems of the the individual” and how the Bible continues to deal with these issues. It begins with living in the Garden of Eden and that doesn’t work, then the first offering causes jealousy between siblings and the death of one brother and then the realization of the crime by Cain and his crying out for mercy. We see the “personal problems of the individual” continue to impair the connection to the soul of the individual as well as the connection to something greater than ourselves landing us in Egypt-the narrowest of places where we allow ourselves to become enslaved and subjected to the harsh labors of taskmasters. As I am writing this, I realize how our religious education is not helping us leave Egypt, it is sinking us more and more into the narrow places of either total obedience to what the ‘right-wing rabbis’ say or a reaction formation to what they say and throwing the baby out with the bath water.

We have the opportunity to use our heritage, the Bible to solve the “personal problems of the individual” by applying the lessons learned of how we sink into slavery, into egotistical actions, how we fail to connect to our souls, a higher power. We also have the paths to wholeness that the Bible gives us, “love your neighbor as yourself”, care for the stranger, the poor, the needy in your midst”, “do T’Shuvah every day”, be like King David who could admit his errors and repent and hear the truth from another person when he wanted to do something wrong, etc. We are given an inside look at how both Cain and Jacob wanted to kill the good within them, Cain did when he killed Hevel, mist, that surrounded him and Jacob ran away from the parts of him that he despised, goodness, simple truth, loyalty that Esau represents. We have so many examples of jealousy and hatred, we have so many examples like Jonathan and David of love and commitment, we have the warnings of Nachmonidies: “don’t be a scoundrel within the bounds of the Torah”. Yet, we continue to “dumb it down” in our religious schools and in our Synagogues, we want to give the people what they want rather than give them what they need. The Rabbis who are leading the revolution forward and helping the young and old grow their spiritual lives, deal with the “person problems of the individual”, are both hailed and fired! It is hard for the wealthy to admit they need to heal themselves because they have let their success cover their “personal problems” and when they are pointed out to them, they get so angry that they are seen for being less than perfect, they have to get rid of the one who peeks them.

We are in desperate need of recovering the lessons of the Bible that help the individual heal from within. We see what the different “personal problems of the individual” have wrought in our political, business, and personal lives. We are witnessing what happens when these problems are hidden from sight, not dealt with and then leak out into daily living. We see these leaks in our social media, we see them in people like Elon Musk and the MAGA crowd, we see them in AOC and her “squad”, we see them in the right and left wings of thinking, of politics, of religion. We have lost our way to the middle as Maimonidies suggests, we are suffering from a myriad of spiritual maladies and not seeking spiritual physicians. It is time for us to admit to the “personal problems of the individual” and use our heritage to heal them, it is time for Rabbis to re-assert themselves as spiritual physicians and stop sending people to therapists for their spiritual issues.

My rabbinate is one of spiritual healing for myself and for another. I have spent the last 35+ years preaching spiritual healing to people in the pews and to the Rabbis who lead them. I am grateful for the many people who learn with me, who teach me, who help me grow along spiritual lines. Recovering the lessons of our heritage in order to deal with the “personal problems of the individual” has been the message of my life’s work and I have been called a “niche Rabbi” because of this. Till today, I bristled at hearing this and writing this makes me cry that more colleagues are not joining me in my “niche”. I am grateful to my teachers who keep helping me see how to use our heritage to grow my spiritual health! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Living into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 269

“What young people need is not religious tranquilizers, religion as a diversion, religion as entertainment, but spiritual audacity, intellectual guts, power of defiance.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 53)

While Rabbi Heschel was very focused on the young, the same is true for all of us. We, the young he was talking about in 1962, have not changed the very things that turned us off on religion so long ago! We have continued in the tradition of “religious tranquilizers”, we go to Synagogue because we ‘have’ to - there are many “three-day a year Jews” in the world, showing up ‘late’ on Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur; sitting through absolutely boring services, standing and sitting on cue all because of some superstition we might get struck dead if we don’t, or some guilt that was put upon us by our parents, grandparents, etc. We are torturing our children and grandchildren in the same ways we were tortured and don’t even realize it or just say “we had to do it also”

We, the young he was speaking about are now the adults he was admonishing. We, the young he was talking about are now the Rabbis he was yelling at (figuratively yelling). Yet, we continue in the tradition of the people Rabbi Heschel was railing against, the tradition of “religious tranquilizers”. While Rabbis are trying to get more congregants, keep their jobs, by making their services hip and cool, whitewash the difficult parts of the Bible, ‘stand with Israel’, etc, doing whatever it takes to make the Board and the members happy, my colleagues have forgotten what their calling is! We seem to forget that our careers are not jobs, they are not 9-5 and get a paycheck, they are not to have “strict boundaries”, we have been called to serve-full stop! Our service is as physicians of the soul, our service is to elucidate and argue with people over how to clear away the superfluous from the texts and see the foundational principles of what it means to be human. Our service is to be husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, knowing that we will always be split and letting our loved ones know we love them and we are here for them AND we have to be here for the congregation as well. It is a tremendous balancing act and living in proper measure in the moment we are in is what we need to be trained in as well as learning the texts in our Rabbinical Schools.

Rabbis today are in desperate need of the “power of defiance”. This power is being used to make sure that we have ‘work/life balance’ and we take ‘self-care’ time- both of which have importance and, I believe not the power Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. The power he is speaking of is the “power of defiance” towards the Boards of Directors who want to dictate how we speak, what we say, who hold our contracts and renewals over our heads. The power to defy the ‘conventional wisdom’ in favor of wonder and awe, the power to defy the ‘norms of the congregation’ in favor of serving the souls of the congregants. The power to defy the lies and subterfuge of ‘optics’, and the self-deception of the congregation. The power to defy the lies people tell themselves and the lies we tell ourselves. We are the  spiritual leaders and we have to defy the limitations that lay leaders put on the spiritual growth of the individual and on us as Rabbis.

We have to have the “intellectual guts” to argue with the text, argue with the Rabbis, argue with the tradition. We have to see the texts as literature as well as Eternal Truth and Wisdom. We have to use our intellect to discern the ways the sages lied to us for their own power and their belief that the lies were the only way to perpetuate Judaism. We have to have the “intellectual guts” to acknowledge the flaws of our Biblical heroes and be in awe of the myriad of times and ways they went beyond their flaws and self-interests to help another, to build a community and to shape Judaism and Israel. We have to have the “intellectual guts” extol King David for his ability to change when someone tells him he is doing the wrong thing, to be responsible for his deeds and his misdeeds! We have to stop saying ‘it is written in the Torah’ and ‘the Rabbis said’ as excuses for ridiculous ‘mitzvot’. Hillel the Elder said in Shabbat 31a, “what is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor, the rest is commentary, now go study”. We have to have the guts to say this to our congregants and lead them in how to live this way!

“Spiritual Audacity”, is something that Rabbi Heschel had in abundance! The word’s origin from the Latin is “bold” and in English we often use it as a negative, as in describing “rude or disrespectful behaviors”. How sad that a word as important as “audacity” has been bastardized for the sake of control and power. We, the Rabbis, need to be “bold” in our sermons,, we need to be “bold” in our approach to our congregants, we have to follow the lead of Moses, our teacher, in speaking truth to the people, those in power and those not in power. We have to have the “spiritual audacity” of the prophets to call bullshit whenever and wherever it exists. We need to remember that keeping a job at the cost of our “spiritual audacity, intellectual guts and power of defiance” is a sign of a deeper spiritual malady within us. Better to be fired by a Board of Directors than face oneself in guilt and shame and not be able to look at “the man in the glass” nor come face to face with God. This is the challenge of being a Rabbi, being called and knowing who one’s employer truly is-the Ineffable One.

I had a great clergy team growing up, they related to us and they spoke to us rather than at us. I had great teachers and role models for my Rabbinic studies as well. What each of them told me was to be me in all my affairs, to speak to people in ways they could hear and not give into the wants of the people I was serving, rather give them what they needed spiritually, intellectually, and morally, Being a loud-mouth, an in-your-face kind of person, I brought my winning(?) Personality to the text and to the people. While people would object to me calling Abraham a pimp, calling Jacob a liar, cheat and thief, I was willing to defy the power structure of the Rabbis and the Board of Directors to speak truth, to use the good and the not-so-good actions of the Biblical figures to help each of us learn about our humanity and the struggles we face are timeless and are the ‘right’ ones because our earliest ancestors dealt with them-sometimes well and sometimes not so well. I would not nor can I now go along to get along. I am unable to keep my mouth shut in the face of mendacity and deception and I do my own inventory daily. I have the audacity, guts and power to defy norms, argue with the conventional wisdom and be bold in my insights for myself and another. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Leaning into the Teachings of Rabbi Heschel - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 268

“General studies are taught on a high level of learning, while religious education is satisfied with cliches buttered with sentimentality. As a result, religious instruction acquired in childhood fades when exposed to the challenge and splendor of other intellectual powers in an age of scientific triumphs.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 53)

“Israel is always right”, “America, love it or leave it”, “Bibi is the strongman we need”, “MAGA is the American way” “It is written in the Torah”,  and other such B.S. comes to my mind after reading the quote above. Our religious education is so bad, our spiritual growth so stunted, we aer fail to hear, see and change the ways our religious education is taught. This is true in all denominations of Judaism-we have dumbed down religious education so badly that the main reason to go to Hebrew School is for the Bar/Bat Mitzvah money and party. In more ‘traditional’ circles it is to learn the ‘right’ way to perform deeds that have no inner meaning and ‘follow the rules’ as laid out by the Rabbis, both from the time of the Talmud to the Rabbis of their communities-all of whom paid/pay more attention to their holding power, adding to the ‘glory’ of the Mitzvah than they do to the inner life of the child, of the parent, of the individual Jew.

“You have to stay Jewish so Hitler doesn’t win” “Israel is our homeland and we can’t talk against it for fear of the non-Jews anti-semitism”, and other phrases like these were ones the “baby boomer” generation grew up with. Our fathers’ had served in World War II and seen or heard from people who were there the accounts of the Concentration Camps, we listened to and/or watched in horror the Eichmann trial and heard what the Nazis and their collaborators had done to Jews and non-Jews so being Jewish was a badge of honor rather than a stigma and when we went to Hebrew School and to Services-boredom and pap was served in vast quantities. The timing of this paper was at the time when I was getting ready to study for my Bar Mitzvah and I had been in Hebrew School for 4 years already, going over the same “cliches buttered with sentimentality”.

Rather than delve into the inner meaning and lives of  our Biblical figures, religious education is still content with serving up “sentimentality” and “cliches”. We see this in the current younger generation of Jews participating in the protests and calling for a world wide Intifada. We hear it in their condemnation of Israel-full stop. We see it in the myriad of addictive activities, substances, process’ they are engaging in and their need to blame someone else for their spiritual maladies. We all suffer from spiritual maladies and blaming someone else never helps. The problem is they go to therapists, alcohol, drugs, ‘medicine’ like psilocybin, to solve what are issues of meaning and purpose. The last place they would go is to a Rabbi, to a physician of the soul, because of the lack of “challenge and splendor” of their childhood religious education.

This brings about an even greater problem. Because of the lack of “challenge and splendor” of their childhood religious education, even those who continue to engage in Jewish pursuits live at the surface of Jewish thought and meaning for a long time. Because we do not teach our children how to use intellectual rigor in their Jewish education, because we fail to help our children see and wrestle with the spiritual insights of Torah and the Bible, we fail to teach them how to “Shema”, how to hear the voices inside of them clearly, how to deal with their “earthly desires” in ways that don’t harm them or another(s), how to grow from homo sapiens to being human. This is the greatest tragedy of the ridiculous and stupid practices that are being called “religious education”. Rabbi Heschel was railing about these practices 60+ years ago and the Rabbis didn’t listen and we have closed our ears and our souls even more since. My generation did not do what we said we are going to do and what we were/are called to do: “You shall teach them diligently to your children, shall talk of them when you sit in your house…”(Deuteronomy 6:7)! We talk about sports, the Olympics, the ‘news’, the election, etc and we fail to engage in the more difficult and nuanced conversations with our children, young and older, about how to live in a world that is neither black nor white, neither all good nor all bad, where there are no perfect answers only responses in the moment and the ‘wars’ that rage within our inner life-a voice calling for us to ‘get ours’, a voice calling for us to “help the poor and the needy’, a voice calling for ‘beating the crap out of our ‘enemies’ and a voice seeking to find a way to coexist without conflict, if not in peace.

The questions that are abounding now re: Israel, the U.S, the world are the same ones we have always faced. The responses are nuanced and there are no all good nor all bad-yet without good foundational religious education, we fluctuate to the extremes and call our enemies our friends and our friends, our enemies. Bibi’s refusal to hear President Biden’s warnings is Biblical. In the Book of Samuel 1, we learn the story of Naval, who was so mean, who could not care about anyone except himself and his needs, when his wife saved his life and told him about what almost happened to him and his household, “his heart died within him and he turned became as stone”, he died 10 days later. When our religious education is poor, when we don’t “teach our children” how to wrestle with opposing truths, when we fail to help them raise up their inner lives, we set them up to be as obtuse and as unfit for leadership as Bibi is now. King David, on the other hand, does “Shema”, he has an idea, an impulse and when someone, in the case above, the wife of Naval, Abigail, tells him the truth, he changes course and acknowledges her wisdom and is grateful for her interference. Isn’t it time for us to be more like King David and hear, listen and understand the workings of our inner life, heal our spiritual maladies with the help of our Rabbis and teachers? Isn’t it time for us to stop the pap and “cliches buttered with sentimentality” we give our children and prepare them for the rigors of being human by truly educating them spiritually?

I was unprepared for what life was to hand me and I went to ‘religious school’ through high school. I am still learning how to deal with “life on life’s terms” through my studies and learnings with another(s). It is always interesting to me that I still have the spiritual maladies that brought me to destroy the love my family had for me and today, because I have people who are “physicians of the soul” in my life, I can turn back from these maladies, know they are mostly healed and I don’t have to ‘pick the scab’ that has formed over them. Instead, because of the spiritual and religious education I have received from teachers, from other learners, from the Ineffable One, I keep growing and living better each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Teachings from Rabbi Heschel- A Spiritual Path for Living Better Each Day

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 267

“Without minimizing the corroding influence of the general social climate, I insist the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction is the major cause of this failure.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 53)

The “failure” Rabbi Heschel is speaking of is the “spiritual illiteracy, ignorance as well as idolatry of false values” that I wrote about yesterday. If the “general social climate” was corrosive in 1962, what would Rabbi Heschel call it today? If there was  a “vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” then, what would he think of the ‘over-the-top’ Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations of today? What would he think of the numerous ‘religious’ schools who have cut down to once a week and believe it is okay for young people to attend soccer, baseball, flag football, etc rather than spend Shabbat in Temple, with family, etc? OY!!

Remember, Rabbi Heschel was speaking to his colleagues and students who were Rabbis and Spiritual leaders, teachers and Executive Directors of religious institutions. He was not speaking to parents or educators, he was speaking to the people most responsible for the “religious instruction” in their institutions. While we have siloed the role of Rabbi more and more since the 1960’s, it is still the Rabbi who should be overseeing and participating in the “religious instruction” of the children and their parents. It is the Rabbi who has to hold everyone in the Synagogue responsible to stop making excuses and easing the slippery slope of “vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” -full stop! It is the Rabbis who have failed all of us, as I am hearing and understanding the words above, which is actually an indictment of the religious establishment some 60+ years ago that has only gotten worse.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam, are such rich spiritual traditions and disciplines and the myriad of attempts to trivialize them are, in my opinion, criminal. When Rabbis speak about God wanting war with ‘those people’, and point to one verse while ignoring the myriad of verses that speak about finding ways to “love your neighbor as yourself” which was the most important principle according to the sage Rabbi Akiva, when they make another people, their cousins actually, into Amalek, and call for their destruction and treat them as ‘not even human’, and forget the story of Cain and Abel in the Bible where Cain is told “your brothers’ bloods cry out to Me”, is mind-boggling. When they refuse to realize they are acting more like Pharaoh than like Moses, they contribute greatly to “this failure”, they make “the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” easier to accept and to promote. When the Rabbis refuse to take a stand on what is good and right, when they are afraid of ‘pissing off’ the major donors and/or congregants, when they act as employees of the institution instead of employees of the Tradition and/or God, “the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” is apparent to everyone.

When ‘good christian Clergy’ anoint Trump and his MAGA crowd as Jesus incarnate, when they preach that ‘those people’ are evil, and Jesus only loved the rich and powerful, their bastardization of Jesus’ principles as written about in the Gospels is over the top! When they speak of locking the stranger up in cages, when they speak of white power, when they see the Jew, the Muslim, a person of color as less than they are because they, the ‘good christian Clergy’ are white, how is anyone to believe the tenets of Christianity? How is anyone not going to see Christianity as Vapid and Trivial?

When Imams and Ayatollah’s preach “death to the Jews”, “Death to America” how can anyone take them seriously as people of God? When they help to cover up bombs and arsenals under and in their Mosques and then decry the explosions that happen because the intelligence points to their hiding weapons of destruction, how can anyone put their faith in the tenets of Islam? When they seek to kill their own adherents because they are not ‘religious enough’ is it difficult to understand how people experience “the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction””?

There is “vapidity and trivialization” going on in all spiritual disciplines by the charlatans and the people ‘out to make a buck’. We, the People, have to demand more from our religious leaders, from our Rabbis, Imams, Priests and Ministers. We have to demand they speak to us about the beauty of “religious instruction”. We have to demand they stop “taking the spirit out of “ the spiritual disciplines that have, in many ways, held the world together for the millennia. We have to demand they end their incessant manner of making the stories and the lessons, the commandments and the ways of living “of little or no importance” in our daily living. We, the People, have to demand of our Spiritual Leaders that they be Spiritual Leaders! We, the People, have to demand from the Lay Leadership they no longer treat the Rabbi, Priest, Minister, Imam as employees of the institution and respect them as employees of our tradition and of God/Allah, etc and hold them accountable to live into the tradition and judge them on their willingness and ability to lead all of us to a higher standard of living, to a level of failing forward, helping us up the steps of imperfection so we can celebrate our own spirituality and helping us fulfill the mandate to grow in Holiness. This is the only way for things to change, it is the only way to restore meaning, importance, flavor, spirt and joy into “religious instruction” and, by extension, our daily lives.

I have been fighting this fight for a while and I have the battle scars to prove it:) I am also aware of what Rabbi Heschel’s words above mean in real time, in our time. For so many recovering people, being turned on to a Judaism that is meaningful, hip, fun, that touches their souls, was the catalyst for their recovery. Not all attend Temple, not all of them join religious institutions, and all of the people found meaning and purpose through study and engagement in “the religious instruction” they received at Beit T’Shuvah in those years. We wrestled with the Text and argued with one another in order to learn more and better how to live well. Cancel Culture, political correctness, optics are the current killers of meaning and purpose through religion, they are the instruments being used by ‘the powers that be’ to keep “the vapidity and trivialization of religious instruction” alive and well in today’s world. We are engaged in a war for the soul of America and for the soul of “religious instruction” and while separation of church and state is necessary in a democracy, is a prerequisite for freedom, without meaning in our “religious instruction”, there is no freedom nor democracy. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Learning from Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path for Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 266

“Few of our contemporaries have ever absorbed the challenge of the prophets or the grandeur of the Book of Genesis, though they have attended Sunday school and were thrilled with the confirmation ceremonies. What prevails in the field of religion is intellectual as well as spiritual illiteracy, ignorance as well as idolatry of false values. We are a generation devoid of learning as well as sensitivity.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 52)

In the last two sentences above, I hear Rabbi Heschel crying out to us to end our “intellectual as well as spiritual illiteracy”! In these past 60+ years since he spoke and wrote these words, made this appeal to us, taught a generation of Rabbis how to rise above their “intellectual as well as spiritual illiteracy”, it has gotten worse. Clergy no longer have the respect they used to have, their voices have diminished unless they follow the ‘party line’ of dogma and deception, unless their followers are fundamentalists who are afraid of uncertainty. For the majority of people who identify in one way or another, either as members or lapsed members of a faith tradition, Clergy have no relevance to their living because Clergy have been too afraid of losing their jobs to stand up to boards of directors, elders, etc. They have lost their prophetic voices and being a Clergy-person has gone from a calling to a career, Seminaries have gone from an absorption of “the challenge of the prophets” to a technical training school. We have fallen deeper and deeper into the abyss of “illiteracy” and our “ignorance” is so great we don’t even realize it! Rabbi Heschel’s words above are prophetic, not as if he were a seer rather that he embraces what is and speaks truth to power. He is speaking to the very people he is accusing of “intellectual as well as spiritual illiteracy, ignorance as well as idolatry of false values”, his contemporaries, the Rabbis of the Conservative Movement of Judaism in America.

When we are more afraid of losing our jobs than of speaking truth, we are living in the “idolatry of false values”. When we see what is and call it wonderful and holy, we are living in “ignorance”. When we hate our neighbors, when we treat the stranger as an enemy, when we fail to see the equal worth and dignity of another human being because they are a different color, different faith, different gender, different sexual orientation than we are, we have fallen down the abyss of spiritual illiteracy. When our Clergy promote “ignorance, idolatry of false values, spiritual illiteracy” we desperately need to call on the prophetic voice we each have. We have to fire the Board of Directors, the Elders who hire and keep such an abomination as the ‘spiritual leader’ of our congregation because their need to control him/her is greater than their need to serve the congregation by installing a woman/man who is spiritually literate, who shuns the “idolatry of false values”, who continues to learn so she/he will not fall into “ignorance”. It is time for We, the People, to stand up for ourselves, to stand with the true values of faith, to stand up for the spiritual principles that are the foundation of faith and stop going along like lambs to the slaughter, stop falling deeper and deeper into the abyss of “spiritual illiteracy” that will bring us back to Egypt, will make us slaves to the newest Pharaoh. I am calling out to Clergy to end their fear of losing a paycheck and be more afraid of losing their souls. Now is the time for all Clergy to come to the aid of their fellow human beings and I pray they will!

We have to return to learning- not studying for a grade or a job training, true learning. We are in desperate need of learning so we, the people who care about the prophets, who want to absorb and meet “the challenge of the prophets” can stand up to those ‘who claim to know god’s will’ with their hatred, with their prejudices, with their whitewashing sins because the sins and the sinners help them attain their goals. We have to take back religious education from the hands of those who love and live in “the idolatry of false values”, those who keep promoting these “false values” as real, who claim Jesus hated the poor and the needy, who teach that caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy, etc doesn’t apply to ‘those people’, et al. We, the people have to reclaim our spiritual heritage, our spiritual literacy so we can promote God’s vision of “make wholeness and peace” in heaven and on earth. We, the people, have to reclaim the truth that our spiritual legacy and life is not far away from us, it is in our hearts, in our mouths, and we have to access it. We, the people, have to realize we are all “standing here” this day and every day, on the precipice of moving into the “promised land” and or going back to the narrow places of “spiritual illiteracy” and “idolatry of false values”. We have to “Choose Life”!

The only way to do this is by being sensitive to the needs of another, learning more about our own spiritual needs and maladies and healing our maladies so we can promote our spiritual nature more. We have to learn how to be “sensitive” to the needs of another as well. We have to be “sensitive” to what is actually happening rather than buy the lies of ‘those in charge’. We have to be sensitive to the hearing God’s call, the call of our higher consciousness and respond to these calls rather than the calls of our lower selves, the calls of mendacity and deception. Just as the Haggadah says: if we hadn’t left Egypt then we would still be in there, the freedom of the next generation depends on it. We can do this, we must do this.

I engaged in the “idolatry of false values” for a long time. I am embarrassed and ashamed of the actions I took in those years, especially because my father and grandfathers taught us not to! Dad, Grandpas, I am sorry. In my recovery, I have engaged in spiritual literacy, beginning with Rabbi Mel Silverman, my prison Rabbi. I have been pigeoned-holed as only good for ‘those people’ who are in recovery and people would tell me how ‘undignified’ I was for extolling “the challenge of the prophets” for the masses and I should remember who I work for. I told these people I work for God, I work for the people I am serving and this made me both popular and unpopular with the different incarnations of the Board of Directors. I didn’t change when the culture changed, I have not “stood idly by” while people bastardized faith, recovery, life. I have not stayed silent when people could not, would not see themselves in the Bible and thought they were ‘above the law’. I have made many mistakes and learned much from them, I have fought for what I believe is true and right. I am not embarrassed anymore, I can go to the graves of my ancestors with pride and a sense of continuing their ways. I am still promoting spiritual literacy in the face of those who want to keep us illiterate and I ask you to join me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Learning from Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 265

“Few of our contemporaries have ever absorbed the challenge of the prophets or the grandeur of the Book of Genesis, though they have attended Sunday school and were thrilled with the confirmation ceremonies. What prevails in the field of religion is intellectual as well as spiritual illiteracy, ignorance as well as idolatry of false values. We are a generation devoid of learning as well as sensitivity.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 52)

This paper was presented to Rabbis of the Conservative movement in 1962, 2 years before my Bar Mitzvah, and it had no lasting effect upon the Rabbis there, evidently. I say this because we still suffer from an “intellectual as well as spiritual illiteracy”, we are still living in both "ignorance as well as false values”. I cannot imagine the experience of Rabbi Heschel as there were many of his students at this convention and he was, it seems, once again speaking to people who could not, would not hear. Like many of my generation, “the challenge of the prophets or the grandeur of the Book of Genesis” was not really communicated well. We were taught how to ‘pray the prayers’ in flawless Hebrew never really concerned with what the prayers were saying and the Bible was not taught as a living, breathing document of eternal truth nor eternal wisdom. Religious education was not that great some 60 years ago and it has gone downhill ever since. At the risk of angering my contemporaries, many people came to Beit T’Shuvah and were amazed at how smart Judaism is, how it gives us a roadmap to heal the spiritual maladies that cause us angst, depression, addiction, and helps us deal with our physical illness’ as well and wondered why their Jewish Communities, their Rabbis didn’t offer these remedies with which to deal with life on life’s terms to them.

What does it mean to absorb “the challenge of the prophets or the grandeur of the Book of Genesis”? It is not what the religious zealots scream out that it means, it is not how to hate one another, how to make an enemy out of someone who has a different opinion than you. It is not that God is punishing and spiteful, demanding, etc. When one immerses oneself in the prophets, we experience God as calling us back home, calling us to be our authentic self, reminding us of what is important-service and truth, kindness and compassion, love and covenant. These are the main challenges of the prophets, along with acknowledging our imperfections and errors, we are called to return so “God can heal our backsliding”, we are not called to be perfect, we are not called to hide our flaws! Yet, people of all faiths and creeds, all denominations within the myriad of religious orders still try and portray themselves as ‘being right’. We are a people who have heard “the challenge of the prophets” and decided, like Adam in the 3rd Chapter of Genesis, chosen to hide from God, from ourselves and from those around us-all the while portraying our facade as authenticity and truth. We have numerous examples of how people do not and have not “absorbed the challenge of the prophets” and not too many of those who have and are responding to this challenge.

Treating anyone as a ‘second-class’ citizen is denying “the challenge of the prophets” so these ‘religious’ people who created and buy into Project 2025 are anything but religious-they are idolators and deceivers. Believing the color of one’s skin gives you privilege and/or means you are inferior is ridiculous for people who hear and absorb the words of the prophets. Going against God’s suggestions in the Bible by banning abortion seems to deny “the grandeur of the Book of Genesis” and the rest of the Torah. Accepting bribes as a Judge on the Supreme Court as Alito and Thomas have done goes against the teachings in Exodus and Deuteronomy on how to be a judge and seek righteous justice. Taking advantage of the poor, the widow, the orphan, the needy is in direct opposition to God’s will which is expressed 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible-yet these ‘good-christian religious’ adherents to Trumpism, believers in MAGA continue to go against God’s Will and the words of the prophets. We are told to welcome the stranger in the same breath as caring for the poor, orphan, widow, and needy, yet these ‘good-christian fellowships’ want to put the stranger in cages, they separate families, they accuse others of the things they are doing and have done, they do not take responsibility for any wrongdoings and they call themselves ‘god’s people’, ‘defenders of the faith’! What they  are liars, cheats, blasphemers, idolators.

We are in desperate need of our Clergy to stand up against the deceit and the subterfuge of these idolators, we are in need of our Clergy to teach the values and the principles  of our different faiths to our children and to our adults. We, the Clergy, need to stop pontificating and worrying about the small stuff and get to work Kashering the Souls of our congregations. We, the Clergy,  have to help them absorb “the challenge of the prophets” and not make excuses for ourselves nor them. We, the Clergy, have to admit our errors and seek forgiveness from the congregation for not helping them absorb these challenges. We, the Clergy, have to make prayer meaningful and learning accessible as well as necessary for the well-being of children and their parents, young adults as well as older adults. It is time for us, the Clergy, to go past our fears of losing our job and accept the “challenge of the prophets” to speak truth to power, stand with the poor, the needy, the stranger in each of our congregations, in each of our communities, and in each individual we encounter. We, the Clergy, have to engage in the work the prophets started and add our energies and skills to move the grand project of humanity forward; not finish the work and stop our incessant excuses not to engage in it.

As you might have noticed, this is a subject near and dear to me. I don’t know if my life would have been better, different if I had the education Rabbi Heschel is speaking of. I know I would have had clearer choices, I might have realized there wasn’t something defective within me and it wasn’t my fault that my father died so young, that I couldn’t save him and God wasn’t punishing him, me, my family. Absorbing “the challenge of the prophets” did not come to me until I was in prison the 2nd time because I was too stuck in my false self to absorb it the first time in prison. I am remorseful for the harm I caused my daughter, my family because I was so stuck in my own mendacity. Since then, I am totally absorbed in “the challenge of the prophets” and I keep seeking new ways to express and help another(s) engage in this challenge. While I don’t have a pulpit anymore, this blog has become my bully pulpit, the different groups I am a part of are my fellow learners and I continue to believe that there will be a tipping point of people who come to desire to absorb “the challenge of the prophets” and join me in moving their words and deeds forward. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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Leaning into Rabbi Heschel's Teachings - A Daily Path of Spiritual Growth

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 264

“Contemporary general education, all strictures notwithstanding, must be credited with remarkable accomplishments in the teaching of science as well as in other subjects. In comparison, religious education must be regarded as having fallen short of its goals. It would be irresponsible to conceal what most of us acknowledge.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 52)

This essay/talk, “Idols in the Temples” was given in November of 1962 to a convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Rabbis who belong to the Conservative Movement within Judaism. Oh, how I wish these words could have, would have been heard and heeded. While there are people who will argue about our general education accomplishments today, we have still done a good job at teaching the “3 R’s”, and we have made higher education and trade schools more available than ever before. While the bias of some colleges to the left and to the right is overshadowing the education at times, all in all, the teaching of science, math, reading, is still very good.

The main issue of this paper is, of course, the sad state of religious education! How far we have fallen in caring for the moral and spiritual needs of our young and ourselves. We have sent them to Churches, Temples, Mosques, etc and celebrated their lifecycles and then bastardized the very ways of religious life they are taught, that we were taught. We see no value in growing our spiritual life and we accept phony “ecstatic” moments as religious events, as religious education-they are not! We have spent the past centuries dumbing down religious education and not making it part of our everyday lives.

The ‘good christian values and people’ that Trump and the Republicans speak of, that the Heritage Foundation and Freedom Caucus proclaim as their guiding light are nothing more than bastardizations of Christ’s words and deeds. Their promoting racial hatred and Jim Crow laws, their support of white supremacists and the KKK are nothing more than hatred disguised as religious fervor. The ways they are dealing with the poor and the stranger, the widow, orphan and the needy are despicable according to what the Bible says and Jesus did! Yet, they proclaim that Jesus loves them because they are rich and powerful, the exact opposite of what Jesus said and did-yet they seem to be ‘getting away’ with their lies and deceptions.

Jews, here in America and in Israel, are not doing much better! The so-called ‘religious jews’ have vilified their own people by calling those who do not hold their same opinions and take the same actions ‘not really jews’ by asserting they are the ‘true jews’! They have made it a point to not care for the poor and the needy, the stranger and the widow/orphan unless they are in their ‘camp’. Their hatred of Arabs and Palestinians, our cousins by the way, is palpable and disgusting- going against the teachings of the Bible! Yet, they seem oblivious to any of these “Hillul Hashems”, Desecrations of God’s Name, they commit on a daily basis. Whether it is portraying Bibi as a great Prime Minister or Trump as a savior of Jews/good for Israel, these days ‘good jews’ go along with the hatred and deceptions that have come to be commonplace from both of these men and their ‘camps’.

Radical Islam has taken the Koran to depths that also have no relationship to the words and deeds of Mohammed. Islam means “submission to God” and, instead, these radical disbelievers want everyone to submit to them! They have been willing to kill people, innocent people, for a long time, in order to get their way-not Allah’s way- their selfish, power-hungry, wealth producing way. The royal families, the heads of Hezbollah, Hamas, all live very well while the masses live in squalor and poverty. The money spent on caves and weapons could have made Gaza a vacation paradise and put enormous pressure on Israel to find a two-state solution-yet these “good muslims” decided to make war, to submit to their deceptive and evil minds instead!

We are worse off in our religious education today than we were 62 years ago! Imagine if our religious schools would have been teaching spiritual principles and how to grow, mature, and nurture our spiritual health to both kids and their parents. Imagine if instead of dogma, the ways of the Bible were spoken about as ways to live with one another, if instead of the goal being confirmation, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, etc the goal of religious education would be to grow moral and spiritual adults who are never satisfied in either realm because we know we can and must grow at least one grain of sand better each day.

I have been teaching how to live Jewishly for over 35 years ever since I first learned this path in Prison from Rabbi Mel Silverman and Maimonidies, Buber, the Hasidic Rebbes, Rabbi Heschel, and then when I was released from Rabbi Omer-man, z”l, Rabbi Shulweis, z”l, Rabbi Feinstein, and many others. I learned early on that what the commentators say about the Bible or the Talmud is not as important as how I understand and say about the words and actions in them. I realized early on that our way of understanding and living into the words and deeds that we are taught about in our Holy Texts is what makes them Eternal in Truth and Wisdom. I realized there truly is “nothing new under the sun” and I was, at first, angry with the poor education I received while attending Hebrew School and realized they were responding to the wants of their congregants, not leading their congregations to what God wants and/or the needs and wants of the spiritual lives of their congregants. I have compassion for them as well as contempt. In leading the residents and congregants of Beit T’Shuvah for almost 30 years as their spiritual leader/Rabbi, I have been more concerned with the understanding of the text, with calling out our heroes when they were wrong and extolling their capacity to rise above their selfishness and do the next right thing. I am in awe of King David who, for all of his womanizing, depicts the war within so well-he is a poet and a psalmist as well as a warrior and selfish-a killer and a lover who, when confronted could admit both his wrongdoing and ask for forgiveness. He had compassion and strength-he was both the lion and the lamb. This is the religious education we need more of, not learning to hate, rather living into “love thy neighbor as thyself”. We need our religious education which never stops to speak to our spiritual needs and not be so concerned with the dogma of any and all denominations. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

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