Do your "need" overwhelm you and rule the way you live? Year 4 Day 12

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 12

“Short is the way from need to greed. Evil conditions make us seethe with evil needs, mad dreams. Can we afford to pursue all our innate needs, even our will for power?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 7)

The simplicity, truthfulness of the first sentence stops one in one’s tracks, at least it does me. When we are filled with our “need”, we see nothing else but them, we become blind to the “need” of another, the “need” of the universe, the “need” of God, the “need” of humanity. We are so blinded by fulfilling our own “need” we validate whatever we do in the pursuit of fulfilling our “need” even when, and maybe especially when, what we are doing is the next wrong thing! “Need” comes from the German “Not” which means “danger”, what we have come to worship, our own “needs”, what we have come to pursue at any and all costs, according to the original definition is “danger”! Isn’t this what this first sentence is telling us?

“Greed” which comes from the Latin “avarus” meaning “long for, crave” is a short journey from our incessant, obsessive focus on “need”. Truly what does one need-food, clothing, shelter, companionship, purpose and meaning, learning, and maturing of the soul and, of course, health. No one “needs” $400 Billion dollar net worth! No one “needs” to be a sycophant in order to have or be near power. No one “needs” to lie in order to ‘get ahead’, to ‘win’. No one “needs” to reject the outstretched hand of one they have harmed. We learn this in the Bible, of course, when we immerse ourselves in the story of Jacob and Esau. While the Rabbis of old, and new, keep making Esau a ‘bad guy’, the text doesn’t tell us this, it is the “need” of the Rabbis to validate the wrongdoings of Jacob, to make him into a ‘perfect spiritual giant’ maybe because of their own “need” to have ‘perfect heroes’. While Esau, the guy who stayed home and cared for his parents, even after they both screwed him out of the blessings, the guy who comes to meet Jacob and embraces him, the guy who tells his brother, I don’t need your gifts but if you “need” to give them to me, I will accept them for your sake, he is the “bad guy”?? King Saul rejected David’s pleading to return and not be killed, he rejected the pleadings of his son Jonathan to restore David to his rightful place at Saul’s right hand, why-because Saul’s “need” for power, his “need” for recognition, his “need” to crush his opponents, real and imaginary, was greater than the “need” for truth. It is truly a “short way from need to greed”.

What are the “evil conditions (that) make us seethe with evil needs”? They are the same conditions, I believe, that makes “short is the way from need to greed”. “Evil conditions” are always around us, as Cain is told in Chapter 4 of Genesis: “sin couches at your door, it desires you much, and you can master it”. Negativity is a short step away, we can, in our addiction to “need”, in our obsession to fulfill every “need” we have, in our entitlement to having our “needs” met always and forever, no matter what else is happening, no matter who “needs” real help, true justice, compassion, comfort, mercy, love. All of these “conditions” and more are in our air, they fill our airwaves, they are the foundation of so many podcasts, movies, dramas, books, and politics. What is the necessity of defaming Jimmy Carter upon his death by many people? He built homes for the poor, he reached out to the downtrodden, stood up for his truly Christian values, he was the person who began peace for Israel with its neighbors with the Camp David Accords, he may have said things that we disagree with, and he was an amazingly active ex-President. He also let his “needs” be second to the needs of another(s). He fought against his own “evil conditions” and worked hard to never “seethe with evil needs”.

We, the People, have to put an end to our endless pursuit of “all our innate needs”. We, the People, need to stop our reliance on someone else coming to our rescue. On this last night of Hanukkah for 5785, We, the People, “need” to take a page from the Maccabees’ gather together and call out to everyone else: all who are for human dignity and value, all who honor the “unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all people, all who welcome the opportunity to fulfill the “need” each of us was created for, all who believe it is imperative to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all it’s inhabitants therein” JOIN US! We, the People are in dire straits, “our will for power” has overtaken all of our senses, it has overridden all of our better angels in our institutions-not completely- and the people who “seethe with evil needs” are in the majority in our Congress, in many states, and they are loud, proud and promote the lies they are telling themselves and the deceptions they are buying into from their ‘fearless leader’. It is up to “We, the People to stand up for the truth, to fight against the evil that is being spewed and practiced in our name, in our country, in Israel, across the globe. There is no ‘sitting on the sidelines’, we can no longer ‘wait for someone else to do it’, We, the People have to face the “evil conditions” within us, we have to deal with our inner “will for power” and then confront those charlatans in the Churches and Mosques, Synagogues and Temples who promote these inauthentic “needs”. We have to stand up to and vote out the mendacious ones who want to deny the words on the Statue Of Liberty, who want to deny people the same opportunities they and/or their ancestors were given. We, the People have to say NO to the “short way from need to greed”, we have to say YES to fulfilling the “need” of another and ourselves to honor the faith the universe has in us to do the next right thing, saying YES to our higher angels.

Saying yes to my higher angel was difficult for me for about 20 years, from 16-36. I took the “short way from need to greed” and lived in “evil conditions (that) made me seethe with evil needs”. I know these words of Rabbi Heschel so well because I lived them! When I went to do my T’Shuvah at my father’s grave in 1990, I made my amends to the man who taught me how to be a moral human being, in the face of evil, for my turning away from his path, for “running to do evil”. It was one of my hardest amends, I wept at his grave for the wrongs I had done which sullied the family name. I know, however that all of us can recover from our “evil conditions”, all of us can stop pursuing “all our innate needs” and our “will for power”. I have done this by being of service and not kidding myself about my altruism. I serve because I know whom I serve, God. I know that the people I serve are God’s creations and their responses have no bearing on my service. Neither praise nor vilification matters, being of service, which blocks the “short way from need to greed”, is the goal. I am able to get there every day, at least for a minute:) God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How are you allowing your "personal interests" to separate you from the values you 'hold dear'? Year 4 Day 11

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 11

“Interest is a subjective dividing principle. It is the excitement of feeling, accompanying special attention paid to some object. But do we pay sufficient attention to the demands of universal justice? In fact, the interest in universal welfare is usually blocked by the interest in personal welfare, particularly when it is to be achieved at the price o renouncing one’s vested interests. It is just because the power of interests is tyrannizing our lives, determining our views and actions, that we lose sight of the values that count most.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 6-7)

The above paragraph is a lot to digest all at once and I didn’t know how to break it up into two sections:) As we prepare to enter 2025, as we prepare for the next Trump Administration, as we prepare for the changes in climate, in energy, in politics, in our everyday living, the words above are strong warnings and path forward pointing. The question is, as always, will we heed the words, will we take the next right path, will we ignore and continue to use our “interest” as “subjective dividing principle”?

We have proven over and over again, throughout the millennia, that “universal welfare is usually blocked by the interest in personal welfare”. We have continued to ignore the second third of Rabbi Hillel’s wisdom: “If I am not for my self, who will be for me? If I am only for my self, what am I? If not now, when?” Because of our deep commitment to our “feelings” and our “interests”, we have come to ignore both “universal justice” and “universal welfare”. We are in the midst of a period of time where caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy is seen as stupid, as Trump says, “beat the hell out of journalists” who call him out on his lies, who report the truth instead of his party line. Donating to charities is done by middle-class and poor people at a greater rate than by the uber wealthy, because we have a commitment to something greater than ourselves. Rather than responding to Rabbi Hillel’s question/guidance, most people think that one’s “personal interest” should always come first, that any sacrifice of one’s “needs”, “interests” for the sake of anyone else is insane and only a fool would do that. Trump calls people who go into Military Service and lose their lives, become injured, “losers”, he has no clue as to why someone would put themselves at risk to fight for an ideal, for their country; the idea of being of service to something greater than oneself is anathema to Trump, Bannon, Musk, Miller, Project 2025, Vance, et al.

God has been co-opted by the self-interests of some clergy of all faiths. “I know what God wants and that is Donald Trump to be President” was heard in Houses of Worship throughout the United States, “Donald Trump is anointed by God” was another mantra, “God sent Trump to save us and bring about the coming/2nd coming of the Messiah” was another one. None of these sayings nor the clergy spouting these blasphemous statements believed this bullshit, they just said it because they were currying favor with the rich, with the powerful, with the Trump campaign, because they believed it was in their best interest, not God’s to do this. Clergy have been willing to ignore “universal justice”, “universal welfare” forever in order to keep in the good graces of the rich and powerful-just read the prophets, read the destruction of both Temples and how the priests allowed their self-interest to override the interests of God and the needs of the people. Isaiah tells the priests that “God doesn’t want your sacrifices”, God wants our hearts, our actions, yet even the Clergy, those supposedly answering a call from God, are unable to go above their “personal interests” to serve something greater than themselves.

“The power of interests is tyrannizing” and we have never thrown off the yoke of this tyranny, of this tyrant. We have come to be so enslaved to “the power of interests” that we can’t even hear the voices of the redeemers, the people who keep shouting to us, calling to us, cooing to us to come back to service, return to the fold of the Bible, re-engage in being of service, of caring for the sick and the needy, welcoming the stranger and the poor, finding our inherent commonality in the principles we hold dear. Ending our willful blindness to these very principles and values because we are so beholden to “the power of interests” inside of us, the “power of interests’ that society has dictated take precedence over everything else, “the power of interests” that we believe will give us the power to control our own destiny is crucial if we are to return to a way of being that is “compatible with being a partner of God” as Rabbi Heschel describes what being human means. We are living under the tyranny of “interests”, most of which are not authentic needs. We see this in our politics, in our religious institutions, in our schools, in our families, across the globe, which in turn leads us to become servants of mendacity, worshipers of the lies we tell ourselves and the deceptions of another(s) that we buy into. Does anyone believe that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos really care about the poor and the widow? Does anyone believe that these ‘good christian folk’ who chant “Jews will not replace us” care about the welfare of the stranger or the needy? Does anyone believe that the Congress will “defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic” at the risk of being opposed in their next primary?

We, the People have to take back our country! We, the People, have to take back our religious institutions! We, the People have to stand up for “universal justice”, we have to end the racial disparity that permeates the Criminal Justice System and the power of the wealthy to delay, delay, delay justice being served in both Criminal and Civil cases. We, the People, have to stand for “universal welfare”, caring for the people who, for whatever reason, can’t care for themselves, giving them the tools to live well, unlocking the spiritual power they have within them so they can live well. We, the People, have to stand the fuck up and say NO to the lies and YES to the wisdom of Rabbi Hillel above. NOW is the time!

I have stood for the principles and values that are found in our faith traditions, found in our constitution for the past 36 years, it ain’t easy, I make mistakes and I learn from them. I refuse to be silent, I refuse to be ‘political’, I refuse to not live “an examined life” and I know, as my Rabbi and friend, Ed Feinstein says, this makes me dangerous. I am not always welcomed in ‘polite society’, I leave chaos in my wake because I believe being for me and for you, living the principles and values in real time rather than spout them is possible and necessary, I take the blows and do it “my way”. To a better 2025, God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How are your "needs" getting in the way of living your values? Year 4 Day 10

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 10

“Having absorbed an enormous amount of needs and having been taught to cherish the high values, such as justice, liberty, faith, as private or national interests, we are beginning to wonder whether needs and interests should be relied upon. While it is true that there are interests which all men have in common, most of our private and national interests, as asserted in daily living, divide and antagonize rather than unite us.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 6)

Reading and re-reading the first sentence, I am struck by the meaning in-between the words, the chords it strikes within a person and the indictment of our societal education system. Using the word “enormous” signifies the overproduction of “needs” society has produced both as a whole and within the individual human being. Do we really “need” to be billionaires? Do we really “need” to “keep up with the Jones”? Do we really “need” to be lied to and deceived so we can ‘feel good’? Do we really need to ‘drink the juice’ that following “the party line” or “believe the cult leader” demand? Do we really “need” to go to war and take over the land and culture of another group of human beings rather than find ways to co-exist, acknowledging everyone’s right and “need” to belong to their own tribe and be part of the whole world as well? Do we really “need” to be xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Catholic, antisemitic, racist, in order for ‘our kind’ to survive? Do we really “need” to have the latest and greatest ______ to feel okay?

All of these “needs” we have “absorbed” have not brought us to a place of wholeness nor a place of inner growth. They have not helped us to “cherish the high values, such as justice, liberty, faith” as universal values, as values that everyone is entitled to, as the Declaration Of Independence asserts, it says “all men are created equal” not just those living in the 13 colonies, not just those who’s skin is white and they could not live up to these “high values”even as they knew them to be right and true. Instead, even the men writing this holy document, took these “high values as private or national interests” not as universal ones. These values did not extend to the Black men and women they brought from Africa to be slave labor, they did not extend to the Indigenous People who were here before them and, following the words of the Bible, cared for the land and the creatures on it much more than the ‘white man’ ever did. Do we really believe that our “enormous amount of needs” should be the guiding light upon which we base our actions, upon which we allow ourselves to indulge in actions that go against the “high values” we have been “taught to cherish”, which we use “private or national interests” as excuses for acting against these “high values” when choosing our self-interest uber alles?

We have witnessed throughout the millennia how “our private and national interests as asserted in daily living divide and antagonize rather than unite us”. We are in such a dramatic period right now. The death of President Jimmy Carter points out how being a person of faith, of decency, living the “high values” mentioned above, can make a difference in the world. I did not agree with President Carter vis a vis his words and actions towards Israel, I did not think he was a particularly strong President, and I know he was a decent man, a man who did not shy away from admitting his own errors, a man who lived his principles in all of his affairs. Agree or disagree, I respect his congruence and his passion, he did push Habitat for Humanity to the forefront of our consciousness. Now, we have Trump and his hate-filled rhetoric, his angry and hate-filled sycophants who are willing to do his bidding and their own to show how their interests are the only ones that matter, that the “high values, such as justice, liberty, faith” only apply to their personal interests, only are viable for them and their cronies and the rest of the people have to become their slaves, their lackeys! Their “private and national interests, as asserted in (their) daily living, (are meant) to divide and antagonize us”. This is their hope, this is their goal and this is the challenge for all of us.

We, the People have to take a stand for the “high values” that we have “been taught to cherish” as universal values, not just private nor national ones. No where in the Bible does it say these values are only for the Israelite people, they are for all people! “Justice, justice you shall pursue, righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue”, are not for one people, they are for all people. “One law for the citizen and stranger alike” is universal, not private nor nationalistic, “love your neighbor” is not only for people of the same skin color or faith. “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” is not for the invaders alone, it is for all people in every land. We, the People, have to say NO to the “enormous amount of needs” that society has put upon us which are not truly necessary, we have to say NO to the ridiculous notion that our values are private and/or national interests. We have to END our silence, END our acquiescence to the ‘strong leader’ who is actually a weak suck. We have to say NO to the lies we have told ourselves and the whoring after our ‘heart’s desires’ and what our eyes settle upon. We the People, have to say YES to practicing the principles and values we cherish, that are universal in all of our affairs. We, the People, have to say YES to using our values to unite us, to help us see our commonality and cherish our uniqueness as helping us all reach the goals of “justice, liberty, faith” and kindness, truth, love, caring for the stranger, the needy, the poor, giving voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. We, the People, are being gifted with the opportunity to move humankind forward and set us upon the right path for growing our society into “a more perfect union”.

Harriet and I were talking about “needs” and “interests” the other day and then again yesterday, on her Birthday. Our needs are minimal and we have them covered, our interests are vast and we engage in them as we can each day. We are interested in people, in change, in growing our personal spiritual paths and in growing our relationship ever more. We realize that we can say no to our wants and not make them into needs. We do not “need” to do the perfunctory nor the ‘looking good’ things to impress anyone else. We do “need” to be of service and share our thoughts, our ways, our learnings and teachings with people. We do “need” to be part of the world and contribute through our writing, speaking, engaging where asked and when needed. We are not using our “high values” to divide and antagonize anyone, we are using them to unite us with people who also want to rise above their self-interest to respond to the call of the universe/God that reverberates in all of us. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Year 4 Day 9- How do you deal with the pull of 'societal norms', advertisements, and self-deceptions in your everyday life?

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 9

“We cannot make our judgements, decisions, and directions for action dependent upon our needs. The fact is that man who found out so much about so many things knows neither his own heart nor his own voice. Many of the interests and needs we cherish are imposed on us by the conventions of society; they are not indigenous to our essence. While some of them are necessities, others, as I pointed out before, are fictitious, and adopted as a result of convention, advertisement, or sheer envy.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 6)

These words, this belief of Rabbi Heschel, go directly to the heart of what it is to be human, I believe. At the heart of all humane actions, at the core of living life with and on purpose are the choices we make and what goes into “our judgements, decisions, and directions for action”. For some, it is what the Bible says and how the people who lived 2000 years ago say we are supposed to carry out their “directions for action”. For others, it is what the Bible says as they understand it today from their own readings and experiences, helping them make “judgements and decisions” using the stories and ways of the Bible as their anchors-again as they understand the Bible. For others, it is what the spiritual leader says the Bible says, it is their clergy who tell them what the proper “judgements, decisions, and directions for action” are. For still others, it is what their “heart” tells them to do, resulting in their ability to ignore anything but their own “heart” and “voice” tell them while, as stated above, the know “neither his own heart nor his own voice” because we are so easily manipulated and deceived, we are so excited to engage in our own self-deception.

We have come through an election season(s) where the loudest and most negative voices seemed to be the most persuasive. We are told that many people voted their “heart” and listened to their “own voice” because of who they felt would best satisfy their “needs” without any regard to the truth of the speakers, the truth of their own “heart and own voice”, without any regard as to whether their “needs” are “indigenous to our essence” or not. This is not just true during election season, however, this seems to be true today with more force and more power than it was in 1958, at least to me. We see companies rise and fall based on these “fictitious” needs, we see people hired and fired based on a “result of convention”, because it is ‘politically correct or politically incorrect’. We continue to make “judgements, decisions, directions for action” based on erroneous information, with systems that are false and never search out the ulterior motives of our “heart and our own voice”, much less the ulterior motives of the advertisers, the societal promoters, etc.

We are a bundle of needs and interests, this is part of being human. The challenge, always, is to discern which ones are “indigenous to our essence” and which ones are not. Without doing this, we are always going to be susceptible to the whims and deceptions of another(s) and we will never find the truth of our “own heart and own voice”. This is the situation Rabbi Heschel found us in some 66 years ago and, unfortunately, we are deeper in this hole, sinking more and more into this quicksand as the years pass. This is the question that we all face: who will we choose to be? Will we choose to stay blinded by our own “interests and needs”, by our own need to be part of the ‘in’ crowd of society? Will we choose to be ruled by the lies we tell ourselves, by our envious nature, by societal norms and conventions? If so, how do we spout the words of the Bible, knowing we are bastardizing truth and holiness, knowing we are only marching lock-step with the mendacious aspects of society, of those in power, of the authoritarians, etc? Listening to the ‘religious’ people spout validations for their lies and power grabs is as disheartening and sickening as listening to the progressives, the non-religious point their fingers at the deceptions of another(s) while ignoring their own lying ways. Yet, here we are, still, again and worse!

There is a solution, there is a way back, out, forward and we just have to be willing to take it. It is time for We, the People to take back our religious texts from the charlatans, from those whose agendas are personal rather than for humanity. It is time for us live into the prayer found in Deuteronomy 6:5, “You shall love Adonai with all your heart, all your soul, all your everything. These words/things which I command you shall be on your heart. You shall teach them to your children, speak of them when sit in your house, walk on the way, lie down, rise up. Bind them for a sign on your hand, for frontlets between your eyes, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

This prayer, this piece of wisdom is the pathway on which we will make “judgements, decisions, directions for action” from a place of truth, spirit, and that are “indigenous to our essence”. We have to commit to love life, love truth, love humanity with everything we have-this is not the same as liking everything, agreeing with everything, it is about having love in our entire being knowing those who are stuck need compassion and we have to check ourselves to make sure we are not engaging in self-deception. All of the teachings of the Bible are to “be on your heart”, not yet in our hearts, but on them so they work their way in, so our hearts become more mature, wiser, and understanding of what is truth and what is deception, what is kindness and what is mendacity, what is love and what is subservience. We are then told to learn and keep learning, discuss and keep discussing-never believe that we are masters, that we know this stuff cold. Always be teachable and watch what we grab for and what we stare at. Staring at what another(s) have and being envious of it will lead us to believe we can take it from them or another, that we are entitled to things and we will “whore after them” as it says in Numbers. Finally, we are asked, as my Rabbi and teacher, Ed Feinstein says: “if your gates and doorposts could talk, what would they say about what goes on in this house, what is the essence of the people inside-congruent or incongruent, willing to do T’Shuvah or believing they are always right?

I know this to be a powerful pathway to making choices that are congruent with our essence because I have followed it for these past 36+ years, using it to know when I am in error and when I am being faithful. It is hard, I want to help another by yelling and shaking them to wake up and, knowing how many people tried to do the same to me and it fell on deaf ears, I let go of this inauthentic need. Instead, I continue to live one day at a time growing in truth, growing in love, growing in learning, growing in congruency, growing in compassion. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Ending the weaponization of technology that undermines the social advancement of civilization- Year 4 Day 8

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 8

“To stem the expansion of man’s needs, which in turn is brought about by technological and social advancement, would mean to halt the stream on which civilization is riding. Yet, the stream unchecked may sweep away civilization itself, since the pressure of needs turned into aggressive interests is the constant cause of wars, and increased in direct proportion to technological progress.” ( Insecurity of Freedom pg. 6)

Rabbi Heschel, in the words above, captures the ongoing human dilemma, how to live in the both/and of progress and restraint. Hence, the Bible was given to us to help us navigate the “stream on which civilization is riding” and to ensure that we don’t have “the stream unchecked” because it truly “may sweep away civilization itself”. Religion, which has gotten such a bad name, rightfully so because of the charlatans that have wrapped themselves in their false interpretations of what the Bible is actually saying, actually is a gift that helps us use technology to promote social advancement, it helps us navigate the “stream on which civilization is riding” without being swept away by the man-made rapids of “aggressive interests”.

We are witnessing, once again, a moment in time where some men, and now women have joined the fray, have become so needy to keep power, to take power, to abuse power and to be ‘king of the hill’ that across the globe there is a constant drum beat of war-external and internal. Here in America, we are engaged in another “great civil war” between the white folk who are desperate to hold onto power and are using the Bible and religion to validate their “aggressive interests” and jettisoning of the rule of law, of being held accountable and those who say NO, those who are going around the country and declaring what the Bible says in Lev. 25:10 “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. There are those who want to fight the white folk trying to hold onto power by saying only certain minorities belong to their group, throwing Jews out of their coalition as the women’s movement, the Black Lives Matter movement have and those who say we need to all have a seat at the table, even those with whom we disagree. Our news media is overwhelmed with liars and grifters either at the head of the various media outlets or by giving the grifters, liars, war mongers (like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Kash Patel, AOC, anti-semites like Ilan Omar, et al) air time and validity.

Technology has advanced so much and what is an amazing tool for education, edification, etc has been turned into a weapon of mass destruction by people who have turned their “needs” are actually “”personal desires in disguise”. We see this in the way lies are promoted by people like Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin, Bibi Netanyahu and his family, Trump and his merry band of liars and cheats, etc. We are watching the prescience of Rabbi Heschel’s words come to life. Technology is being used to launch drones and missiles that are crippling the electrical grid of Ukraine and the liars and grifters, the idolators and charlatans say nothing-because they have more in common with the authoritarian regime in Russia than they do with the freedom fighters in Ukraine! And this is whom will be in power in all three branches of government come January 20, 2025. While AI is an important tool for advancing society, it is also a dangerous one in the ‘wrong hands’ and the ‘wrong hands’ are in power and winning the battle of this civil war right now, here and in Israel.

All is not lost, we do not have to sink into despair! We, the People, have the power to overcome what is happening right now, we have the power to stand up for the advancement of society, the advancement of civilization, we just have to exercise it and use it wisely. We, the People, have to learn, grow, re-learn (whatever the case) how to live in the “Both/And” of life. We, the People, have the opportunity to re-read the Bible and see how we have faced this dilemma before and overcome it, to re-read history and see how we have been at the brink of civilization and, instead of it falling into the abyss, it grew into something more and better, if only for a moment. We are celebrating Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah - all capturing moments in time when tyrants were waging war against the spirit and the teachings of the Bible, the spirit and teachings of how to live together in peace, the spirit and teachings of how to advance civilization and do so in proper measure and in measured steps. The Maccabees were waging a war against the Jews who were becoming hellenized more so than against the Greeks themselves. They were afraid of losing the essence of Judaism, rather than seeing how some aspects of hellenism could enhance Jewish ideas and ideals. Judah Maccabee was a HERO, and his descendants fell into the abyss because of their need to hold onto power and it corrupted them to the point of them becoming more hellenized than the Jews killed in the Hanukkah wars and then sold out to the Romans, who ushered in the 1900 year exile from the Land of Israel, the Land of Canaan. Christ came along at this time and preached the words of the prophets, he, too, believed: “Not by might, not by power, but by My spirit alone says the Lord” as the path to promoting civilization while not letting it go unchecked. He believed in a civil war that began in the soul of every person, a way of being that allowed our basic goodness of being to triumph, as the Bible shows us in a myriad of ways. Yet, his followers became rabid anti-semites, blaming the Jews for everything bad and scapegoating them up to and including with Adolf Hitler!

In this time of celebration, lets remember that Hanukkah translates as “dedication”, it reminds of Sukkot, when we rejoice at all that is the earth’s bounty that we can enjoy and we are all equally worthy and dignified, we all can survive the elements with our combined efforts and without cooperation, we will become extinct. None of us will survive forever, the “personal desires in disguise” as needs are bullshit and We, the People, like our ancestors, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Judah Maccabee, before us have to stand up and say YES to the advancement of civilization and technology being controlled by the social advancement of “one law for the stranger and citizen alike”, “love the stranger because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt”, “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. This is the basis for our new adventure: Spiritus. This is an online community of people discussing how to live our spiritual and moral values in everyday life and in all of our affairs. If you are interested, please email me at rabbimark@rabbimark.com. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Whims or Aspirations, Authentic or Artificial needs- how do you know the difference? Year 4 Day 7

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 7

“Unlike animals, man is the playground for the unpredictable emergence and multiplication of needs and interests, some of which are indigenous to his nature, while others are induced by advertisement, fashion, envy, or come about as miscarriages of authentic needs. We usually fail to discern between authentic and artificial needs, and misjudging a whim for an aspiration, we are thrown into ugly tension. Most obsessions are the perpetuations of such misjudgments.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 5-6)

Reading and re-reading these words, we are able to come away with a “duh” response, of course what Rabbi Heschel’s words convey, the spirit as well as the prose are truth and perception, which makes the reading and re-reading of them all the more necessary. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, an 18th Century Jewish Mystic, said about his book, Path of the Just, that if one was going to read it only once, don’t bother because the words in it, the ideas in it were truths that are universally accepted and because they are so universally accepted, they are easy to ignore and overlook. The same is true with all the great philosophers, mystics, prophets, holy texts. Yet, we, modern human beings, keep believing in ‘one and done’. In medical schools they would show some procedures, like drawing blood, once, then have the students perform it, then have them teach it. Our belief in our own excellence is a dangerous belief, our need to be certain and our need to be ‘master race’ is a recipe for disaster, war and slavery.

All of this is my prelude to Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above. Human beings are a conglomeration of needs, both “authentic and artificial”, some “indigenous”, like food, clothing shelter, the need to be loved, the need to love, the need to “not be alone”, the need for people to help us where we are weak, uninformed, unable to perform a certain task because it is not in our skill set, etc. Some are “induced” by outside forces, like we decide we “need” a Mercedes-Benz rather than a Honda because what will the neighbors think? We “need” a bigger house in a better neighborhood, development, whether we can afford it or not because it will signal we have “arrived” and other such societal pressures that people feel. Lets face it, having last year’s or, God forbid, 2 years’ ago smart phone is so gauche, so ‘pedestrian’, so ‘not cool’ that we keep upgrading until we are either so stuck in our dissatisfaction with what we have or we are trapped by our spending into constantly trying just to keep up with our payments.

The worst actions we take against ourselves and one another though, I believe, come about because of “miscarriages of authentic needs”. Inevitably, when “we usually fail to discern between authentic and artificial needs” we will sabotage ourselves, those around us and we will commit actions that, upon reflection, we will abhor and certainly would hate for these actions to be committed against us by another. Yet, in our “miscarriages of authentic needs” we commit grave crimes against ourselves. Instead of loving ourselves so we can love our neighbors, we do hateful actions to ourselves and aer unable to see neighbors and instead we see competitors, enemies, people we have to be better than. These “miscarriages” result in our becoming farther and farther away from our own authentic self. They result in our believing the lies of a grifter, autocrat, and eventually falling into the trap of slavery; we repeat the storyline of the Children of Israel who were lulled into slavery by the wiles and slight of hand of “a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph”. When people claim not to “know” the people who have helped them, when they forget the debt we owe to the people who first gained our freedom, helped us in times of trouble, stood with us against an onslaught of lies and subterfuge, we know they want to manipulate the rest of us into forgetting so we lose our moral compass, we buy into the “artificial needs” that they are promoting and we “suspect our neighbor” instead of loving them.

We, the People have to recognize we are in such a time right now. We have to wake up to what is, not wring our hands and engage in self-flagellation, we have to look at our own errors of “misjudging a whim for an aspiration”, we have to look within ourselves and see the “obsessions that are perpetuations of such misjudgments”. We, the People have to return to a time when our focus is on making these United States a “more perfect Union”, making ourselves a better human being today than we were yesterday, constantly seeking to root out our “artificial needs”. We, the People are being called to account and the next 2-4 years will determine our loyalty to the principles the U.S was founded on, to the principles that religious traditions are founded upon, or it will show us our loyalty to falseness, to authoritarianism, to hatred of another which in turn shows us our own self-hatred. We, the People, are being tested, not by God, by our own understanding of freedom for all, we are being tested by grifters and liars to see how far they can push us. We, the People, are being tested by our own angels and demons to see if we are willing to become enslaved to ideas that have been proved invalid throughout the millennia, to see how long it will take for us to once again revolt against the greeks and our fellow Jews as the Maccabees did and their eventual downfall because of senseless hatred, the fall of every great world power because of their “perpetuations of such misjudgments” as they became more and more enamored with themselves and stopped looking within truthfully. The ruin and destruction that happens before these realizations, however, is devastating-revisit the 2nd World War and what it did to Europe, Japan, America, how many people died because the rest of us didn’t care enough to get out of our selfish and “artificial needs” to see truth, to stand up for our neighbor and, instead, be “America First” no matter what country one wants to substitute for America. We, the People are being called today to say NO to falseness and to our own “artificial needs” our own “misjudgments”, our own “obsessions” and say YES to truth, to kindness, to repair, to wrestling with our angels and demons  and to  living more authentically each day.

I have read this passage over and over again and it keeps showing me new ways of seeing myself and the worlds around me. I do not choose the texts I write on as much as they choose me. I have been wrestling with “aspirations and whims” forever and I choose “aspirations” much more than “whims” these days. I am constantly on the lookout for “misjudgments” by myself and another. I see how the lies of another(s) set fire to my fear of buying into their lies which leads me to buy into my own lies which leads me down a path I travelled in my youth and it was too destructive to repeat. I keep pushing myself to grow along spiritual lines. I believe I am one grain of sand better each day and I will wrestle like this forever. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What "needs" have you made into "gods" ? Year 4 Day 6

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 6

“Needs are looked upon today as if they were holy, as if they contained the totality of existence. Needs are our gods, and we toil and spare no effort to gratify them. Suppression of a desire is considered a sacrilege that must inevitably avenge itself in the form of some mental disorder. We worship not one but a whole pantheon of needs and have come to look upon moral and spiritual norms as nothing but personal interests in disguise.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 5)

Rabbi Heschel tells us in the next paragraph that the “needs” he is speaking of are those that are “synonymous with interest”. The truth is, the fulfillment of some “needs” is holy, when these “needs” are congruent with the spiritual, moral, physical welfare of a person and persons around them. This is not the same as the “needs” most people seek to fulfill today, nor what he saw in 1958 America!

The “needs” being spoken about here are merely “personal interests in disguise”, reminding us of the verse from the Book of Numbers 15:39 “Do not scout out/seek after your heart and your eyes because you will whore yourselves after them.” Rather than seek to fulfill the “needs” of the universe, the “needs” of another, the “needs” we uniquely created to fulfill, we scout after what ‘our hearts desire’, ‘be whatever we want to be’, and other such bullshit. In fact, when denied one of our “needs”, many people will lash out against the person in power who denies us, the person who doesn’t have power to deny us and suggests that it might not be the right thing to “scout out” and “seek after” these “personal interests in disguise”.

Therapists and Psychiatrists make millions and millions of dollars helping people ‘fulfill themselves’ without any concern as to what is an authentic need and what is a “personal interest in disguise”. Parents have come to worry that denying their child will mean they will be mentally, emotionally scared for life and will not be able to function in society. Society, rather than taking this wisdom above to heart, rather than living into the Holy Texts of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, the teachings of the Buddha, the Dalai Lama, etc, has indeed made “needs our gods”. Society has written a script that “keeping up with the Jones’” is the only way to be, after all, how can you deny your 7year-old a smart phone when all of the other kids have one? A car as transportation is no longer enough, we have to have one with all the bells and whistles. At 16, we have to give our kids their own car so they don’t drive ‘an old man’s car’. How can we live without the latest iPhone, Smart TV, computer, etc? REALLY!

As a Rabbi in an Addiction Recovery Center, using Judaism/Spirituality as part of the treatment modality, the number of people who believed we were giving them “cruel and unusual punishment” because we took their cell phones for 30 days, we restricted their movements for at least 30 days, we made the different parts of their treatment plan mandatory, was huge. Parents would call us and be frantic because they could not talk to their ‘kids’ (some as young as 18 and as old as 50) whenever they wanted to. I reminded them that left to their own devices, their kids would have wound up in jail, institutionalized or dead an they would not have been able to call at will then either. The residents were resistant to the denial of their “desires” and would rail on and on about the ‘unfairness’ of it. I would show them the door and remind them they were not in jail or prison, they had a choice when they asked for admittance, I would show them their intake form and the reasons they gave for wanting to be in recovery and tell them I would support their choices whether I agreed or not-they just couldn’t “gratify” them because they were really “personal interests in disguise”. Most would laugh and say:”Well Rabbi, I had to try, it has worked at other places” and we would laugh together.

Another learning from witnessing the phenomenon described in Rabbi Heschel’s words above is how people who are wealthy, especially ones who either inherited their wealth or made a big score in their careers, believed that their “personal interests” were synonymous with their “needs”. Their children learned their ways of being entitled from their parents. Some of these wealthy parents would call the headmasters at the private schools to have their kids grades changed so they could get into ‘the right’ schools, some had paid high-priced attorneys to get their kids off with a slap on the wrist while people without their wealth would face real-world consequences: jail, prison, felonies on their record, loss of insurance, drivers license, etc;  for the same actions! They truly believed denying their children their desires, denying them what ‘everyone else had, was doing’ would lead to a mental health crisis and the kids played along with this idea and controlled their parents. Because the parents “worship not one but a whole pantheon of needs” letting their kids control them and manipulate them was second nature and, in some cases, deadly.

We, the People have made too many bad decisions based on these false “needs”. We, the People have created the monsters who are coming after us in this time and who have tried to devour us in the past. The “rhyme” of the past with 100 years ago is that another group has made their “personal interests” into “needs” and sold these “needs” to an unaware populace who are going to be crushed when they realize, hopefully not too late, the puppets they are/were and the lies they bought into precisely because both wealthy and poor, middle class and working class did not look out for authentic needs, for one another and worshiped idols and practiced idolatry rather than seek truth and practice true moral and spiritual norms.

Today is Christmas, it is also the 1st day of Hanukkah, both of these holidays along with Kwanza celebrate the spiritual nature of humanity, the resilience of the human spirit, the dedication/rededication of human beings to living authentic spiritual and moral principles and values. As my friend and Teacher, Rabbi/Hazan Danny Maseng teaches: Jews are chosen for a job, not because we are “so holy”, rather because the job of bringing the Bible to the world through nourishment actions. The same could be said for every spiritual tradition and the people who worship nothing. We all have a job to fulfill, both as individuals and as groups, I have continued to turn towards and run towards the “needs” that I am uniquely qualified to fulfill, I continue to be rebuffed more lately than ever before, and I continue to seek truth and love, wholeness and kindness, keeping my own entitlement in check, forgiving more and resenting less. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Dealing with our Obliviousness - Year 4 Day 5

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 5

“Oblivious to the fact of his receiving infinitely more than he is able to return, man began to consider his self as the only end. Caring only for his needs rather than for his being needed, he is hardly able to realize that rights are anything more than legalized interests.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 5)

Rabbi Heschel states “self-deception is a major disease” in his interview with Carl Stern, 10 days before he died in 1972, here he is also reminding us of another major disease of human beings: being oblivious. Oblivion is both a state we enter into willingly and unwillingly, I believe. For many people, they are unaware of their obliviousness and, unfortunately, become unwilling to see what is in front of them, see what is so clear to another, see what is healthy for their soul, for their body, for their minds because they want to live in the euphoria of obliviousness. In the writing above, a human being who wants to “consider his self as the only end” has to stay “oblivious to the fact of his receiving infinitely more than he is able to return”, otherwise he can’t ‘have it all’, she can’t ignore the poor, blame the stranger, they can’t lie to everyone, believing they are above the laws of the country and of the spiritual world.

This is the situation we find ourselves in today, the same as Rabbi Heschel wrote about in this essay on “Religion in a Free Society” back in 1958! The only difference is that being “oblivious” has reached new heights/depths and is being sold by the grifters and bought up by those wanting to ‘have a hero fight for them’ like hotcakes! It is so ridiculous that these grifters are being compared to King David, to Jesus, to the Apostles and people, in their oblivion are buying into the subterfuge and the deception by another(s) because it means they do not have to live with the realization of “the fact of his receiving infinitely more than he is able to return”. As the Psalmist says in Psalm 116:12-14: “How can I repay the Lord for all the benefits he put upon me. I will raise the cup of salvation and call the Lord by name. I will complete the vows I made to the Lord in front of the Lord’s people.” Living with this realization causes one to realize the debt one owes for their life and is more than most people want to live with, it ruins their self-image to be ‘dependent on’ someone else, on a power greater than themselves, because then they can’t claim to be ‘self-made’.

We are into this oblivion so deeply, some wonder what it will take for the masses to wake the fuck up! It seems only a cataclysmic event will shake people out of their oblivion, only something that is so personal, so painful will cause people to see what their obliviousness has wrought and, hopefully, it will not be too little too late. When people like Musk want to ‘cut the waste from Government spending’, which is a good idea by the way, while keeping the spigot that has fed them and made them rich and powerful open and not under any regulations nor scrutiny, we have a problem. When the people, in their obliviousness believe that this is a good thing, we have a disaster in the making. Rather than return to the people some of the profits that the Government grants, bailouts, subsidies have caused Musk to earn, he wants to cut his return for the “benefits” he has received even more! He believes in “caring only for his needs” and he believes that his “interests” should be considered “rights”. Forget the obligations that “rights” bring to us, forget that he has received far more than he can give back, he has believes he is entitled to what he has stolen, conned, been given from the Government and the suckers he has convinced to be with him. The same is true of Trump, Bannon, Miller, Patel, Putin, Orban, even Bibi. These people have sold their souls for the power to convince people to be “oblivious to the fact” that they have a debt for all they have received. Instead they have sold people, with the help of ‘christian’ nationalists, evangelical ministers, Rabbis of all denominations, etc that ‘god’ loves them more because they are rich, because they can sell ice to an eskimo in winter, they must be the anointed of God and they will be or bring the ‘messiah’ soon; just ask Mike Huckabee, Joel Osteen, et al.

We, the People, have to wake up! The Shofar blown at Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur is still sounding from Mount Sinai. Each day, 24 hours a day, the sounds of Shema Yisrael, Hear, Listen, Understand, everyone has to wrestle with their soul, with one another, with God to leave their oblivious nature and be engaged in the world, find ways to repay the debt of “receiving far more than he is able to return”, knowing we are not supposed to pay it back in full, just keep chipping away at it. We, the People, have to say NO to the lies of the charlatans and the grifters, NO to the false prophets and priests that seem to have sway over so many of ‘the faithful’, NO to the making of ones interests into legal rights. We, the People, have to say YES to living with our eyes open, have to say YES to the search for Truth, have to say YES to putting our obligations ahead of our rights and our desires, YES to living the principles of the Bible, YES to the vision of the prophets: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”(Isaiah 2:4). We, the People, can make this a reality once we swear off our own obliviousness, once we tune our hearing to the frequency of the spirit, once we wrestle with one another in a search for truth, for decency, for rising above “caring only for his needs”. It takes all of us to do this and we will never be 100% out of obliviousness, we need one another to help us uncover our eyes from our blindspots, see what is in front of us that we are willfully blind to and move forward in our quest to return to the world what we are so freely given; most of all: “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev. 25:10)!

Having been a grifter and a thief, a liar and a cheat, I know viscerally what Rabbi Heschel is saying. I also know the power of T’Shuvah, the power and possibility of change. While we can never ‘go back’ I have found I can return to the soul I was created to be, to the divine need I was created to fill. I know the dangers and the draw of obliviousness, and while I pride myself on not fooling myself anymore, I also see how oblivious to some things I was. Be it because of hubris or blind trust, I was oblivious to the changes some people wanted to make, oblivious to the changes in society that I never believed would affect me because everyone knew me and where my heart lies. I am not a victim of anything or anyone because it was my obliviousness that caused me to suffer (meaning “to bear”) the experiences I have in the past years. “I, I did not know” what was happening below the surface and this obliviousness caused pain to some of the people I love the most. I wrestle with people to stay out of obliviousness each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What are you obligated to do in your daily living? Year 4 Day 4

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 4

“Absorbed in the struggle for the emancipation of the individual we have concentrated our attention upon the idea of human rights and overlooked the importance of human obligations. More and more the sense of commitment, which is so essential a component of human existence, was lost in the melting pot of conceit and sophistication.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 5)

Reading this, 2 days before Christmas and Hanukkah, given the promises of the Trump Administration, hopefully fills us with trembling awe. I am amazed at the insight, knowledge and prophetic vision of Rabbi Heschel and the courage and strength he had to call out what was, what is, and what will be if we don’t change our course. Evidently, the change of the 1960’s, the Great Society only lasted for a few years while the “melting pot of conceit and sophistication” has grown exponentially larger.

The first sentence is so subtle because on one level why not be “absorbed in the struggle for the emancipation of the individual”? Why not concentrate “our attention upon the idea of human rights”? It makes so much sense it seems on the surface. As we delve into what Rabbi Heschel is saying, however the second half of the sentence bowls us over with its simplicity and brutal honesty. We have become so enamored with our “human rights” we ignore the “rights” of another, as we have seen these past 14+ months on College Campus’ and across the globe in the ‘Free Palestine’ demonstrations which intimate, when they don’t outright say, that the only path to ‘Free Palestine’ is to kill the Jews and demolish the State of Israel. We have seen the growth of “identity politics” to such an extent that a proven liar, grifter, convicted fraudster, convicted sexual assaulter was elected President of the United States this past November, while the Democratic Party was busy speaking to different identities, Trump was busy speaking outrageous statements, falsities, etc to a public hungry for someone to speak in a language they could understand, to a public that was so uninformed they would believe his bullshit while the Democrats had Beyonce, Trump had lies and, as Mark Twain told us, “a lie is halfway around the world before the Truth has put its shoes on”. Kamala Harris tried, the odds were against her as a woman, a woman of color and she was knighted nor chosen by the people. I applaud her for her courage and her hard work-the fault rests with the party not pushing the issue of obligation more, in my humble opinion.

We are in desperate need, as a society, as individuals to return to “the importance of human obligations.” As Rabbi David Wolpe wrote, “Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world.” When we are obligated, when we are obliged, we are binding ourselves to a way of being that recognizes Truth and separates it from fiction, we bind ourselves to a way of living that is compatible with being a partner with God in perfecting this world, in moving creation forward. When we live obligated lives we take actions that respect the infinite, inherent dignity and value of every human being, including ourselves. When we live into the obligations of being human, the rights of another have to be respected and, when another is doing the wrong thing, we have to tell them so we do not bear the guilt of “standing idly by the blood of our neighbor”. When we are aware and act in accordance with “the importance of human obligations” we no longer blame the stranger, the poor, the needy for our woes, we no longer seek to accuse another of that which we are guilty of, we no longer seek control for our selfish, self-centered, narcissistic pleasure. Instead, we seek to make the world a better place because we are obligated to, because we know we are doing the next right thing when we live an obligated life.

It is so sad to see how our “sense of commitment, which is so essential a component of human existence, was lost in the melting pot of conceit and sophistication”. It is evident in the way we fight for ‘our’ rights and ignore the rights of another-like the women’s movement which has remained silent in the face of the rape and torture of women by Hamas terrorists or Amnesty International,  who has not spoken out about the taking of hostages by Hamas nor has the Red Cross visited the Hostages-what was I thinking, these are Jews we are talking about and the “obligations” of these groups end where the “rights” of the ‘underdogs’ begin. The world has been split apart by the intensity of human rights ‘violations’ Israel is accused of- has the destruction in Gaza been horrific, yes, is it necessary, I don’t know, what I do know is that our obligation, both Jew and non-Jew, as human beings is to ensure the safety and security of our citizenry, to welcome the refugees and the strangers, to care for the needy and the poor. I know Israel saved Sinwar’s life when he was in prison, I know Jewish hospitals care for Palestinian people, I know Israel is not perfect and I know we are obligated to seek to be better each day, not be perfect.

What has happened is both the progressives and the conservatives, the far right and far left, have become more concerned with the “human rights” of themselves and those who are ‘on their side’ than with the obligations of being human which are found in the moral and ethical codes in the Bible and elsewhere. For the fundamentalist religious people, their literal reading of the Bible which has 70 different meanings is how they focus on ‘their rights’ and then make themselves into warriors of a false god. For the fundamentalist progressive, their misplaced feelings of spirituality relieve them of their obligation to be congruent and respect every one, not just ‘their people’. Be it the conceit of the fundamentalists, the sophistication of the progressives, this “struggle for the emancipation of the individual” has been co-opted by the fascists, the opportunists, and the wanna be oligarchs and all of us will suffer because neither the obligation to be human nor the rights of the individual will be served under the Trump administration unless you are part of the upper crust of fascists, opportunists, and/or oligarchs.

I am aware of the need for our return to human obligations. “I am, therefore I owe” is a mantra I have been saying for over 36 years. It is what I grew up with and forgot and then remembered when God hit me over the head with a 2x4 in 1986. I have remained obligated which is how I can forgive another when I have been harmed, how I can ask for forgiveness when I have erred, how I can withstand the hurts of being open and transparent because the rewards outweigh the hurts 1000fold. It ain’t easy and it is simple-live an obligated, moral life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Responding to "what does God require of man" - Year 4 Day 3

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 3

“The Bible is an answer to the question, What does God require of man? But to modern man, this question is suppressed by another one, namely, What does man demand of God? Modern man continues to ponder: What will I get out of life? What escapes his attention is the fundamental, yet forgotten question, What will life get out of me?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 4-5)

I am writing for a second day on this topic because the thoughts and wisdom move me to. The writing above goes to the very heart of what it means to be a person in the world, how to be human. Rabbi Heschel is presenting us with, what seems to me, a clear choice- are we going to live our lives as if there is a demand, a call for us to rise above our self-centered, narcissistic ways or are we not! A simple choice that we make many times a day with our actions and our words. A simple choice that is full of nuances and complexities, that is made by us all the time with or without our awareness.

“What does God require of man” is the question that haunts all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we ‘believe’ in God or not. Every human being hears a call within them to go above themselves, to be more than the selfish, narcissistic, crass homo-sapien that is part of our human nature. This question is not denying the homo-sapien part, the ‘animal instinct’ part of us, it is asking us to respond to something higher, to a “power greater than ourselves” as AA puts it. How we respond to this ‘call’, to this ‘requirement’ is the choice we have, we don’t have a choice not to hear it, not to respond to it.

Some of us respond to it with a loud and firm NO-I won’t do for anyone other than myself, my family, my circle of friends. Some of us respond with a loud and firm NO-I won’t care about nor do anything that doesn’t serve me to help another person. Some of us respond to the ‘demand’ to be more than our ‘animal instinct’ calls us to be with a loud and firm YES-caring for the stranger, the needy, the poor is an important part of my spiritual life, not hating my enemy in my heart, loving my neighbor as I love myself, we are all created in the Image of God, all of us have certain unalienable rights, etc is at the core of my being human. Some of us, maybe even a majority of us, are apathetic, indifferent to the ‘demand’ and go about doing what is expedient and easy never taking a stand on one side or the other. This is the most dangerous group because they are the most easily swayed and least able to live into principles and values they say they care about.

Every day we have opportunities to respond with an affirmative action or a negative reaction to “the fundamental, yet forgotten question, what will life get out of me”. By this I mean each day we are presented with opportunities to say, with our actions, that we are hearing and heeding the requirements that God presents to us or to say, with our actions, that we are not heeding them. This is a daily question put to us, it is a daily response we have the choice to make and we are in a period of time where so many of our elected officials, who claim to be ‘good christian, muslim, jewish’ people deny the call of God, deny what “God requires of man”, denies there culpability and their crimes against the very people Jesus, the Bible, the Koran care about! We are in a period of time when authoritarians are able to convince the ‘masses’ to go against their personal interests, go against the very Bible, Holy Texts they proclaim allegiance to and support the very people who say NO to doing anything for anyone that won’t serve them. This is the state of affairs we find ourselves in right now and it is scary.

We, the People who say YES to the demands of God, who want to be able to have it said when we die that we added to this world, we lived our principles and we made the world a little better because we were in it, have to rise up and speak up. We have to remind the large percentage of people that indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society” as Rabbi Heschel says. It goes along with his statement “in a free society some are guilty, all are responsible” so there is no “I did not know, I was only following orders” defense for the evils that man perpetrates on man, for the evils that authoritarians and their cronies perpetrate on the masses, like Musk, Trump, Orban, Putin, et al. We, the People have to stand up and be firm in our defense of the human spirit, in defense of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Bible, the Koran, the New Testament. We, the People, also have to take stock of our actions each day, be it through a 10th Step as is taught in AA, through confession, through a daily practice of T’Shuvah as Judaism calls for, or a gratitude practice, a practice of self inventory as some Eastern spiritual traditions call for-whatever way one chooses, we must keep current with ourselves and not fall into the trap of the progressives nor the conservatives of always believing in their own righteousness and rightness. We, the People who value principles and declare an allegiance to the spiritual call within us have to constantly be in awareness of how we live them and how we don’t, with all of the nuances of living. It is hard and this inventory is eye-opening, we become filled with “trembling awe” and an awareness of the power we possess and the surrender to something more than ourselves we need to do. Only through seeing our own difficulties will we be able to have mercy for those who are indifferent and be able to speak to them in ways they will be able to hear-especially after they realize the truth of what their indifference has wrought.

I have done this inventory throughout my recovery, it is part of my daily T’Shuvah practice. I have dreams about things I have to make right from years ago and things I did right years ago that I forgot about. This way of being, knowing that I am doing the best I can in the moment to fulfill “what does God require of” me gives me the strength and confidence to continue, to fight the odds, to go against the grain, to remain alert, aware, and in the war to overcome “indifference to evil”. I continue to rail against mendacity in all its forms, I continue to offer ways to hear the ‘demand’, the ‘call of our souls’ to do something greater than our narcissistic self calls us to. I continue to believe in the power of good to overcome evil and to make this a daily reality, we have to teach the nuances of evil as well as the nuances of good. We have to give people the proper tools to be able to hear the evil in them as well as the evil outside of them, we have to demand of our religious institutions the teaching of TRUTH, not dogma; the teaching of spirit, not the glories of the past, etc. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Have you forgotten or never knew the "fundamental, yet forgotten question, "what does God require of" you? Year 4 Day 2

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 2

“The Bible is an answer to the question, What does God require of man? But to modern man, this question is suppressed by another one, namely, What does man demand of God? Modern man continues to ponder: What will I get out of life? What escapes his attention is the fundamental, yet forgotten question, What will life get out of me?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 4-5)

In the 68 years since these words were written, in the almost 52 years since Rabbi Heschel’s death, rather than learn and use his wisdom, rather than ask ourselves the “fundamental, yet forgotten question(s), we have ignored him, the questions and engaged in narcissistic, self-centered quests for power, wealth and ‘getting ours’. It is more than sad, it is a sacrilege, it is one promoted by Clergy and laypeople alike, it is one that is taking us down the path to self-destruction through Sinat Hinam, senseless hatred of one another, the purported cause of the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70AD.

Notice that Rabbi Heschel is not saying the Bible, here he speaking about the Hebrew Bible, the ‘old testament’ to some, is the answer, just that it is “an answer”, there is nothing xenophobic about Rabbi Heschel’s writing above, he is speaking to all of us, find the texts that are “an answer to the question, What does God require of man” in you own spiritual discipline, but please find it! Rabbi Heschel’s use of “modern man” is not a pejorative, as I hear him today; he is not saying humanity was so much better before. I believe he is speaking to us, here and now, to the ways we have become ensconced in our journey away from this question, the ways technology, in 1958, was changing things, how quickly people forgot what happened when Hitler was in power and how McCarthy, the Blacklist, the murdering of Ethel Rosenberg, the treatment of Black people, etc. Hearing him call out to us and seeing how far down this self-centered road, how much time people spend trying to be social media stars, influencers, celebrities for doing nothing, hopefully, makes these words reverberate within us and move us to ask the “right questions”.

In the larger world, we see ‘leaders’ like Franklin Graham support people who only ask “what will I get out of life” who could care less about “what does God require of man” and only decide that they can “demand of God” whatever they want, use God’s name to support their hatred, their greed, their inhumanity towards humanity!! We see that a liar, grifter, convicted felon named Donald Trump is rewarded and admired for gaming the system, for going against the Constitution, for laughing at the principles of the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, and those ‘good christian folk’ in the Congress and the Supreme Court say: “yes master, yes anointed one,” and they bend their knees and kiss the ring-not of God, not at the throne of Heaven but at the throne of Trump, at the altars of mendacity, coveting, whoring themselves for power, stealing from the poor to enrich themselves and their benefactors, murdering the soul and spirit of people, of democracy. This is not “what God requires of man”, this is not the response God is looking for when asking the question: “what will life get out of me”. Yet, these “evangelicals”, these “Torah-living” Jews, and so many others shout the praises of the Mendacious One in Chief and watching these supposed ‘faithful’ bow down to a liar and cheat, a person who was corrupt and now has taken his corruption to the Nth degree because of the power he wields, is disgusting. It is, in my opinion, why people walk away from religion, why religion has such a bad name and taste in people’s mouth-the people in charge, the clergy and the boards of directors are charlatans.

No matter how much they say they are on the ‘right side’ of an issue-this is for both the ‘conservatives’  and the ‘progressives’-when push comes to shove, many of these people give into asking “what will I get out of” this decision, this experience, this moment. When we are willing to install election deniers to head the departments of Justice, Defense, Treasury, the FBI and say this is what the people want, we are well down the slippery slope to authoritarianism, we are heading into a world where God is no longer in charge, Trump and his gang of thugs are. We are on the roller coaster ride where Musk, an unelected person, will be controlling the Republican Party along with Trump for his own good, for his own greed-after all being the richest man in the world, having a net worth of over $400 Billion is never going to be enough and ‘god’ wants them to have more and more while the poor, the needy, the stranger suffer!! They must have some version of the New Testament to validate this, just like the Jews who called for the assassination of Yitzchok Rabin, who call for the annihilation of the Palestinians, who think they should rule over Gaza and the West Bank, who support and praise Donald Trump’s love of hatred,  have some version of the Bible that eludes me and most people. The one we have says “Love your Neighbor as yourself”, “Proclaim Freedom throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein”, “remember you were strangers in the Land of Egypt”, etc and teaches us the dangers of political power that is absolute, teaches us in black and white, in white and black the travails and errors of Kings Saul, David, Solomon, etc as well as the great things they did. In the Bible, there is no whitewashing, clean ups of the errors of human beings, rather the Bible tells us about us in all our glory and in all of our ugly!

It is time for all of us to Stand the Fuck Up and Shout NO to these people who want it only for themselves, who are refusing to ask themselves and all of us the real question that the Bible is an answer for, the authentic question that Jesus preached about, the deep question that moved Mohammed to found Islam. It is time for all of us to have the “dark night of the soul” that Jacob had when he had to confront his crimes against his brother. While Jacob could not take in the totality that moment, that experience could teach him, we can! I will write more on this tomorrow because this question has haunted me since Rabbi Silverman first presented it to me in Prison in 1987. I keep asking myself “what is life getting out of me” today, yesterday, etc and doing this inventory the first time made me cry and tremble, doing it today makes me cry and tremble because I see the nuances of life that I miss an opportunity to impact, I see the barriers I put up and the ones another(s) have put up to keep me out of the fray, thereby limiting my usefulness and I have let God down and myself down. It is hard to have these questions be the guiding light of my existence and using this lamp helps me help another and heal my errors. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Recovering the Questions we need to live well - Year 4 Day 1

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 1

“The most serious obstacle which modern men encounter in entering a discussion about the ideas of the Bible, is the absence from man’s consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers. This, indeed, is the status of the Bible in modern society: it is a sublime answer, but we no longer know the question to which it responds. Unless we recover the question, there is no hope of understanding the Bible.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.4)

Here we are, 66 years after these words were written and delivered and we still face this “most serious obstacle” and what is worse, in my opinion, is that we have so many people who are only interested in what serves them, how to use the Bible to their advantage, rather than filling the void in our “consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers”. We are farther and farther away from Rabbi Heschel’s warnings above and throughout his writings, we keep getting farther and farther away from the “problems to which the Bible refers” because we seem to be unable to relate the wisdom, the pain, the joy, the struggles, the spiritual awakenings and the thickheadedness of the Bible to our own lives. It seems as if “that old time religion” that is sung about has lost its meaning, its purpose, and its shine because it is not dealing with the problems of today nor did it deal with the issues of humanity “in the good old days”.

Hawking the “USA TRUMP BIBLE” doesn’t address “the problems to which the Bible refers”, calling Trump ‘the anointed one’, giving his the status of a descendant of King David by doing this, is not going to whitewash the ethical, moral, spiritual flaws, missing the marks, and sins of the man. Selling the big and little lies of autocrats, setting up a kleptocracy, bending the knee and kissing the ring of the Grifter-In-Chief, will not bring us closer to filling the void in our “consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers.” I am positing that the very issues we face in our society today from the need of business to provide for its shareholders and not its customers, the need to deny, defend, depose by not only health insurance companies but by everyone who is called out for their crimes against the spirit of the law, the letter of the law and their inhumanity towards their fellow humans like racism, anti-semitism, hating the stranger, etc.

What happened, one might ask, how did this absence occur? The answer is a simple one, once the ‘people in the know’, once the ruling class got tired of hearing the words of the prophets because they did not want to change their ways and did not want to surrender to the wisdom and “sublime answer” of the Bible, the absence began followed by the need to spin the meaning, the words, the lessons, the warnings and the questions the Bible gives us and responds to. When one is not willing to change, one doesn’t want to hear about what they are doing wrong, what they need to do better at, what they need to change. Hence, a cottage industry has grown up around going back to “that old time religion”, back to the “good old days”, back to “Make America Great Again” times of slavery, of the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire era, back the union-busting days of Ford Motor Company, back to the days of “America First”, etc. “The absence from man’s consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers” is so great and dangerous, the idolators and charlatans at the core of these old/new ways have conned the very people they disdain, the people they are going to ruin and take unfair advantage of to vote for them and their sycophants while they steal their homes, their livelihoods, their meaning and purpose!

We, the People must change “the status of the Bible in modern society”! We are being given the opportunity, the task, the demand is upon us to “recover the questions” for which the Bible is the answer. We, the People are being presented with the joy of and the gift to bring to the world what the Bible stands for: Righteous Justice without taking bribes of any kind; Truth in all our affairs and the willingness to keep learning more and more, circumcising the foreskins of our hearts; Kindness and mercy towards all including ourselves, knowing we are imperfect and our goal is to grow one grain of sand better each day; Love our neighbor, ourselves, God, and the stranger, poor, widow, orphan, and needy as the Passover Haggadah tells us to; remembering the words of Rabbi Hillel, “in a place where there is no humanity, be human”! Because the Bible has these and more as responses, because the Bible helps us to stop committing adultery by worshiping the idols of the rich, powerful, like Trump, Bibi, Orban, Putin, MBS, etc; because the Bible helps us learn to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, because the Bible teaches to “righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue”, because the Bible reminds us to rebuke our neighbor when they are doing something wrong so we don’t bear any guilt by staying silent, because the Bible tells us to not run after the majority to do evil, We the People have to recover both the questions and the responses the Bible gives us. Unless and until we do, we are not engaging in the authentic work we are created for and we will always feel the nagging of not being right-sized nor in the right place, we will be constantly trying to fit in rather than belong.

Yesterday I celebrated 36 years of continuous recovery from alcohol and crime, double Chai-2 x life. I have had two lives, one as a son of Jerry Borovitz, z”l, learning the lessons of the Bible, learning the questions that the Bible has the responses to, then a break after Jerry died and a return to the earlier ways that Jerry, Abe, Harry, taught me. Of the two lives, I find this one, filling the “absence from my consciousness of the problems to which the Bible refers” more fun, more fulfilling and richer than the other way. I know these guys who are grabbing power in all the ways the Constitution gave us the power to stop, they are liars and grifters-better ones than I was evidently-and they have no interest in finding the “sublime answer” nor “the questions to which it responds”. I am not one who “fits in”, I am not good at playing the ‘politics’ of a situation-, I am the guy who can’t control himself in the face of mendacity and bullshit, I am the guy who, in the woke climate, is considered a liability, no matter how much good I have done. I get it, I know it is a lonely existence at one level and I can attest to the warmth and belonging I experience knowing that: I am connected to the spirit of the universe, I am connected to the people whom I have helped and who have helped me, I am loved and loving, I am connected to so much greater things than just my selfishness and self-centered ways which, for the most part, I have left in my years of non-recovery, and much more. All because I listen each week, each day for the “sublime answer” to the questions that this experience is the answer for. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Using the "depths of reason" and wonder to reach "cognitive insight" into living better - Year 3 Day 366

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 366

“Religious thinking is an intellectual endeavor out of the depths of reason. It is a source of cognitive insight into the ultimate issues of human existence. Religion is more than a mood or a feeling. Judaism, for example, is a way of thinking and living.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 4)

Rabbi Heschel was a professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1946 till his death in 1972 which makes the first sentence very powerful as well as thought-provoking. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel remind us that we never have to give up our minds to engage in “religious thinking”, in fact, we have to go to “the depths of reason” to truly engage in it. WOW!

I have to be in two places at the same time, using the two faculties of reason and wonder to be in “radical amazement” in order to be both intellectual and mystical, to be both in and “out of the depths of reason.” Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that “religious thinking” does not mean ‘follow me and all your troubles will be gone”, it does not mean “only I can fix it for you”, it doesn’t mean one can jettison the very principles and teachings of the ‘founder’ of the religion and still be engaged in “religious thinking”. It doesn’t mean that one abdicates one’s mind for some greater good. Rather I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to be free! To use the freedom we were gifted at Mount Sinai and have fought for ever since to engage with the values and principles of higher consciousness, “of the depths of reason” so we can live better than we are, in order to keep pushing ourselves to greater “cognitive insights” and wrestle with “the ultimate issues of human existence”.

We hear so often that “we are not feeling it in services”, “I am not in the mood to pray”, and other such poppycock from young and old alike. What they are missing is that “religious thinking” is not to make us “feel better”, it is to challenge us, it’s goal and purpose is to make us better human beings and we will never get there as long as both clergy and congregant, leader and citizen, stranger and neighbor, listen to the bullshit that passes for “religious thinking” today! The clergy who anointed Trump the messiah are not engaged in “religious thinking”, they are not having “an intellectual endeavor out of the depths of reason”, they have no “cognitive insight” nor do they care about the “ultimate issues of human existence”. NO, they only care about their particular agendas which, unfortunately, have been about power, control and wealth since time immemorial, whether it as Greek, Roman Mythology, Judaism once the Kingship became totally corrupt, Catholicism after the Pope took over. The beauty of “religious thinking” the care, the concern, the motivation to do the next right action has been jettisoned by these scam artists called priests, ministers, imams and rabbis in favor of currying favor with idolators, with people who despise “religious thinking” and want to keep the masses “in the ether” until it is too late for them to realize how their pockets have been picked, how their freedoms have been lost and how their “intellectual endeavors” have been bastardized and turned against them. We have been here before and we will recover, we will progress and then the backlash will raise its ugly head until society accepts “religious thinking” as an essential skill and delving into the “cognitive insight  into the ultimate issues of human existence” is the purpose and meaning of living.

We, the People are in desperate need of these skills, we are in desperate need of letting go of our need to ‘feel it’ or ‘to be in the mood for it’ when it comes to “religious thinking”, when we are being called to be both in and “out of the depths of reason”. Only by going to “the depth of reason” can we leave the shores of reason and connect to the greater “cognitive insights” that “religious thinking” can bring us to. Only by being both in and out of the depths can we connect with truth, wisdom and understanding how to be in the solution for the “ultimate issues of human existence”. “Religious thinking” requires us to not abdicate our minds and intellects, according to Rabbi Heschel’s words above, it does not ask us to have our head in the clouds or in the sand. Rather, “religious thinking” demands we end our mendacious ways of practicing ‘being religious’, we stop allowing ‘those people’ to define what religion is, we take back the wisdom, the truth, the “cognitive insight” that “religious thinking” affords us. We fire the liars and the progressives, the ‘magicians’ and the conservatives and take back the beauty, the insights, the thinking that religion gifts us with.

We, the People have to end our separation of religious adherence and our everyday lives. As said above, “religion” is “a way of thinking and a way of living”. We cannot pray once a week, three times a day, five times a day, go to confession often and then treat the stranger like a criminal! We cannot have a “spiritual life” and support the taking away of freedoms because we like this or that political candidate, this or that brand of politics. We cannot have a religious or spiritual community that stays silent in the face of Adolf Hitler like we did in the 1930’s and 40’s, we cannot call ourselves “religious” or “spiritual” and support mass deportations, the perversion of justice, the ‘kissing the ring, bending the knee’ to some political con artist and say “Jesus told me”, “it says in the Bible”, “the Koran teaches me”. We, the People have to educate ourselves and our children in the beauty of “religious thinking”, in the experience of being both in and “out of the depths of reason and being able to hear the “cognitive insight” of  our soul and the exquisite experience of being connected to the ultimate source of the universe for a few seconds, maybe a couple of minutes. Prayer, meditation, study will help us get here as long as we are free from being “adjusted to the conventional notions and mental cliches of societal thinking.

I have decided to continue writing each day on Rabbi Heschel’s thinking. I believe with what is happening in the world, it is being of service to delve into his insights and thoughts to help us navigate today’ backlash to progress, the rise of authoritarians so We, the People are able to withstand the onslaught, meet it and defeat it with “religious thinking”, with actively using it as “a way of living”, and using both “reason” and wonder to connect to the our higher selves and ‘see’ the solution. This is the work I have engaged in since 1987, I am a work in progress and I don’t act ‘holier than thou’ like some of the people on the ends of the continuum seem to do. Both conservatives and progressives that I know spout wonderful words and their “way of living” is antithetical to any and all of the “religious thinking” they espouse. So Sad. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What societal ideals are you still chasing even though you know they are false? Year 3 Day 365

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 365

“We define self-reliance and call it faith, shrewdness and call it wisdom, anthropology and call it ethics, literature and call it Bible, inner security and call it religion, conscience and call it God. However, nothing counterfeit can endure forever.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg 3)

I wrote on the first two couplets yesterday and today I want to finish this crucial idea. “Anthropology” is “the study of human societies and cultures and their development” according to the Oxford online Dictionary. This is not the same as ethics, yet we give such enormous weight to the “societal norm”, we have put so much faith human development and our ‘humanistic’ values that we believe they are ethical, after all, as Richard Nixon said and Donald Trump has proven, “if the President does it, by definition it is legal.” In ethical living, one doesn’t worry about the society, one worries about what is the next right thing to do, one is concerned with being right-sized, serving something greater than oneself, not going along to get along, and no longer serving the “status quo”. In living an ethical life, one is no longer concerned with anthropology, because the society, the group, the culture has said it is okay to hate Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, Blacks, etc. It is very sad that we have grown in our anthropologic ways and not our ethical ways! Goebbels has had more of an influence than Ghandi, than Jesus, than Moses as evidenced by Trump, Musk and the parade of billionaires who are coming to them to ‘kiss the ring’.

As a teen-ager until my mid 30’s, “inner security” was the holy grail of psychology and, for many, spirituality and, in my years as a Rabbi, I have been asked more times than I can count for guidance on how to achieve this “inner security”. What the psychologists lied to us about, what the false prophets and false gurus sell to people is bullshit! One can never achieve “inner security” because life is always on the move, things are always changing and we can never be sure and secure that this action in this moment will be the best for us in the long run. We can be assured that we are doing the best we can in this moment and never secure, never sure because there is no certainty except that change is the constant. “Religion” is the very opposite of “inner security” because, as Rabbi Heschel says over and over, “religion” is a constant communication of demands upon us by the Ineffable One. We are constantly being called to serve and to constantly review and repair our errors, ‘religion” doesn’t belittle us because of our errors, it reminds us of our imperfections and humanity, it doesn’t promise us a rose garden, it gives us the tools and the path to tend God’s garden-the earth and one another.

While none of us can prove the existence of God, we also have to stop giving into the fallacy of our “conscience” being the same as God. While our “conscience” is a filter through which we hear God’s call, God’s demand, this hearing is specific for each individual and different for each of us, ergo-not the whole being, the entire entity that is God. In Judaism, we don’t know what God is, God is too large for our definitions and cannot be manipulated by our limiting definitions, so we ‘define’ God by what God isn’t.

The last sentence above is the one that we all need to immerse ourselves in.The Roman Empire did not last forever, the Greek Empire didn’t last forever, no civilization from antiquity that was built on falsehoods, on idolatry, on authoritarianism is with us today. The only one to survive intact is Judaism. It survived because there were leaders and prophets who brought the people back to “God”, back to “ethics”, back to “religion”, back to “faith” and back to the “Bible”. Each great civilization has fallen because they became so enamored with themselves that they became counterfeit, they discriminated against people, they made the ‘stranger’ unwelcome, they abused the poor and the needy, etc and they fell in battle, in economics; the people lost what little freedoms they had.

I read the last sentence above and I say “please God” because it will take an “act of God” to unmoor so many people from their “counterfeit” belief in a liar and a cheat, a grifter and an immoral leader, be it the one in Russia, in Hungary, in Saudi Arabia, in Turkey, in Israel, in the United States, wherever in the world the people buy into the lies of the leader, they believe them because these charlatans have used religious idolators to buffer their claims of being ‘anointed by Jesus’, ‘only they can fix it’ ‘lets rebuild the 3rd Temple, hate ‘those people’ make America great again’, etc. I believe what is counterfeit cannot last forever-the 100 years Reich lasted about 12 after all. It is imperative, however, for all of us who “know”, all of us who are unwilling to live “counterfeit” lives to stand up and say NO to the liars, say BULLSHIT to the grifters, call the ‘religious’ phonies IDOLATORS, and help people see truth once again. Rabbi Heschel’s demand, as I hear him loud and clear this morning is to live as “descendants of the prophets”, to “speak truth to power”, to respond to the demands of the moment, to live the most spoken commandment in the Bible-“love and care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, and the orphan because you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. Rabbi Heschel’s voice is ringing in my ears, and I pray in yours, to remember how we were treated as slaves in Egypt and we brought out to be free. I hear the words of Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. None of us are exempt from this demand, command. None of us get to sit on the sidelines while the idolators, the grifters, the liars spread their poison and enslave so many. None of us get to fiddle while the world, while freedom burns, as the world did in the 1930’s with Nazi Germany.

I know the truth of the last sentence viscerally. I lived a “counterfeit” life prior to my recovery, I know the pain and the anguish it brought to the people around me, to myself as well. I know that it took an ecstatic event to wake me up and, thank God, once awoken I have not turned back to the lies I lived into while asleep. I lived a willful blindness because I knew better and made so many substitutions for truth that I cannot tolerate any bullshit now. I am unwilling to be politically correct and nice when I hear the words of lies and mendacity, of deception and self-deception from another person and from myself. I have many compatriots who are not as blunt, who couch a rebuke in better terms and I admire them-it just isn’t me. I am not perfect and not always correct, yet about 80-90% of the time my inner lie detector proves true and I have to say something because I cannot allow “counterfeit” ways to survive, I can’t be a party to lies. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What misplacements do you make to soothe yourself when you are doing the next wrong thing? Year 3 Day 364

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 364

“There is no substitute for faith, no alternatives for revelation, no surrogate for commitment…We are guilty of committing the fallacy of misplacement. We define self-reliance and call it faith, shrewdness and call it wisdom, anthropology and call it ethics, literature and call it Bible, inner security and call it religion, conscience and call it God. However, nothing counterfeit can ensure forever.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 3)

This paragraph follows the one I wrote on parts of on Friday. After calling it like it is about the institutionalization of religion, Rabbi Heschel calls out these “institutions” and all of the charlatans around in 1958, and we didn’t heed his call then and we are suffering the consequences of these charlatans and idolators, this “misplacement” makers today on steroids.

We are witnesses to and, in some cases, participants in “misplacement”. We keep hearing of and buying into the “alternative facts” theories and lies, we keep being told about the “revelations” of the ‘holy christian nationalists’ who tell us they want to take us back to a place of ‘godliness’, whose only “commitment” is to themselves and their almighty power and wealth. We are watching millions of people being led down the primrose path of lies and deceits who have substituted faith in a leader for faith in God, who are believing in the “revelation” of the ‘new messiah’, who have made autocrats the “surrogate” for God and their “commitment” to them is ironclad. We are in trouble and most people are willfully blind to the trouble we are in and will be in as we move backwards to the ways of discrimination, slavery, and robber barons.

“We are guilty of committing the fallacy of misplacement” causes me to experience “trembling awe”. I am trembling because I have to look at my life and see where I have committed this “fallacy” and when I have gone along with another who has, is, will commit this “fallacy”. We, the People have to look at ourselves individually, as a community, as a faith, as a country and be responsible for “committing the fallacy of misplacement”. We see this “fallacy” happening in our courts, all the way from the local courts to the Supreme Court who are being political and calling it ‘strict constitutionalists’. We see this “fallacy” happening in our Congress with Republican lawmakers favoring the wealthy, desiring to cut the programs that help the poor, the sick, what they call “entitlements” and calling it populism. We see this “fallacy” happening  with the ‘christian nationalists’ who do everything that Christ was against and calling it ‘christian’. Writing this, I wonder if we will ever learn, if we will ever rise above our baser desires and live into the spiritual heritage that has been passed down and within us for the millennia.

“Change is the only constant” is attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and nowhere is this more evident than in the Hebrew Bible, yet the ‘powers that be’ don’t want change unless they can control it and manage it-which is the opposite of the essence of this wisdom. Change happens and the more we try and control it, the more we find ourselves in the predicaments mentioned above. Self-reliance is not faith, it is the antithesis of faith. Faith entails a knowing that there is more than me in the world, there is more out of my control than in it, that I/we will be able to respond to the reality of any and all situations with wisdom and sustainability, among other things. Yet, people are under the illusion that the ‘self-made’ man who is a ‘strongman’ and “self-reliant” will have the power to bend change to his will and thereby help us. WRONG-this liar in chief that is about to become the President, who is the head of governments in Hungary, Russia, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, etc will only bend the laws and ways to their benefit and the benefit of their cronies while claiming complete immunity from the laws of humanity and the laws of God. Witnessing people’s faith in the “self-reliance” of the mendacious ones is sad, it is cruel and it is punishing.

Believing the lie that we can experience “shrewdness and call it wisdom” has been with us for so long and the Bible, etc are the antidotes to this particular lie as well. While very few like the phrase “eternal truth, eternal wisdom” this is exactly what the Bible is-which is why so many clergy over the 3000+ years of its existence have tried to shape it and bend it to their will, to fit their narratives, to defend their sins, their bastardizations of it’s laws and ways. We have seen so often the destruction and ruin that this belief causes and we continue to return to this same “fallacy of misplacement” without any recognition of where we will end up. This is a prime example of Einstein’s saying: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results”.

It is time for We, the People to say NO to these two misplacements, NO to the “substitutes for faith” we have bought into, NO to the “alternatives to revelation” we have swallowed hook, line, and sinker, NO to the “surrogates for commitment” that we have chosen instead of choosing God, Higher Consciousness, and we have to do it NOW. We all need to examine ourselves and root out the deceptions of self and the deceptions by another as well as the deceptions we are promoting in order to be able to save ourselves, to change the ruinous and destructive path we are heading down. We can do this by immersing ourselves in our Holy Texts, not the unholy ones being printed in China that says “God Bless the USA” on it and the profits are going to Trump.

I am yelling, I am screaming, I am uncontrollable about mendacity and lies because I know what it is to decimate people with them, because I lived 20+ years as a liar and a fraud; showing people what they wanted to see and not who I was nor what I truly wanted-their money and my sense of power. I believed in “self-reliance” because I couldn’t trust that people would stick around, having lost my father at 14 to another heart attack, so I could only count on me as no one else understood me-or so I believed. People tried- I couldn’t hear so I went with the societal norm of “self-reliance” and believed “shrewdness” was “wisdom” because I saw how the rich were worshiped and cowed to. In my recovery I am deeply sensitive the lies I tell myself and the lies I hear, the subtle meanings of people who are ‘the best’, ‘the kindest’, ‘the most spiritual’, ‘the wisest and most caring’ for those ‘poor downtrodden people’ who are actually just putting on an act and I call it out and experience the consequences for calling it out, which hurts and is a better hurt than staying quiet. I wrestle with the lies I tell myself and the things I am oblivious to daily and I pray more people will “do T’Shuvah every day” to find their ways of doing the same. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Is your Spiritual Life helping you get into "good trouble"? Year 3 Day 363

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 363

“Little does contemporary religion ask of man. It is ready to offer comfort; it has no courage to challenge.It is ready to offer edification; it has no courage to break the idols, to shatter callousness. The trouble is that religion has become “religion”-institution, dogma, ritual. It is no longer an event. Its acceptance involves neither risk nor strain.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 3)

I am into the last days of Year 3 of “Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel- I will be switching to the writings of Pirke Avot, Chapters of our Ancestors on Dec. 17.

It is hard to conceptualize that the words above were written and delivered in 1958, 76 years ago Rabbi Heschel saw what was happening and, OY, how it has gotten worse. “Come to me and Jesus/God/Allah/the Law will solve all of your problems” is an oft heard phrase. “Just pray harder, do better, and everything will work out as God has planned”, “What have you done to make God not love you” and other such bullshit is spewed about in Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, and it is disgusting, idolatrous, mendacious, and wrong. The “challenges” of “religion” today are about towing the party line, voting the ‘right’ way, hating those with whom we disagree, seeing anyone who is not like us as an enemy who has to be defeated, either vanquished or enslaved. These are not the “challenges” Rabbi Heschel deems to be the essence of “religion”, these are the ones that humans have bastardized for their own power. Just as the Rabbis were afraid of the prophets, afraid the people would actually imbue, embrace, and emulate the words and deeds of the prophets and get Rome upset, today’s religious leaders are afraid of the government, their Boards of Directors, their flock.

Instead of the “courage to break the idols”, today’s “religion” is in the idol manufacturing business. When we make our spiritual leaders into gurus, when we hold up political candidates as the one to vote for, when we speak politically rather than spiritually, when our political choices have to be in line with what the ‘religion’ wants rather than what God wants, rather than what the Bible teaches and preaches, rather than what Jesus spoke about, rather than helping the poor and the needy, welcoming and loving the stranger and our neighbor, it is all BULLSHIT- hence one of the reasons people are staying home rather than tend to their spiritual needs, hence one of the reasons people are going to therapists, to psychedelics for their spiritual problems and not going to their clergy. It is time for We, the People to demand our clergy tend to their own spiritual crisis’ and then help us with ours, it is time for us to demand of our seminaries that the people they ordain have a strong spiritual core and practice-“institution, dogma, ritual” are not enough because they do not lead us to “shatter callousness” as we witness in the history of the Church, in what is going on in the Churches, Temples, Mosques today, what is happening in countries across the globe who claim to be ‘guided by their “religion”, when in fact they are guided by their greed, their need for power, their desire to have dominion over everyone else, - in other words to practice more “callousness” in the name of God not shatter their own.

We are at a point in our existence as a nation, once again, where we have a battle to wage because “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and dedicated can long endure”. These words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg ring in my ears and I am calling to account the Religious Leaders of all faiths to uphold what “religion” is: a revolution, a “breaking away”, an answer to the call/demand that each of us has within us, and so much more. We have to demand that our “institutions” stop trying to serve the egos and needs of the Board Members and they return/begin to serve the spiritual, moral, and physical needs of the people and return to a loyalty and practice of what our Bible teaches us-whether it is the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc- it is time for We, the People to demand our our Boards of Directors transparency, truth, compassion rather than hiding, ‘half-truths’, and callousness. The bottom line is not the profit/loss statement, yes it is important, the bottom line is the concern, care, compassion, the breaking of idols, the shattering of callousness, etc.

Rabbi Heschel is speaking directly to all of us, challenging all of us to engage in our “religion” in a serious manner, to immerse ourselves in the Books of the Bible so we can stop repeating the errors of our ancestors, including the Rabbis who try to make our heroes perfect rather than human. When our heroes, gurus, are perfect and we know we can’t be nor are it is easy to pray to them for compassion and forgiveness while not taking the steps necessary to improve, to do what they do, to not do what they don’t and to discern their errors so we don’t repeat them. We, the People have to return to the “risk and strain” that “religion” puts upon us. We have to risk the ridicule of so many when we demand to live the words of the prophets, when we point to the actions we are engaging in are reflective of the actions of previous eras that led to ruin, we have to stop trying to “make America great again” and instead make ourselves one grain of sand better today than yesterday. This is the “challenge” of “religion”, this is the pathway to “break the idols, to shatter callousness”, this is how we connect with another soul and see them as fellow travelers on the journey, rather than enemies we have to eradicate. It is the pathway for the law to enhance life, to live into “justice justice, righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue”, knowing we will never get it completely ‘right’ and we are on the path. These are some of the ways to return “religion” to its rightful and necessary place in our lives and the life of the world.

I believe these words, I smash idols when and where I see them, I am blunt and not political in my ways-more like a bull in a china shop. After being mendacious and a deceiver prior to my recovery, I have a bullshit detector that is around 80+% correct and when I detect it and my warnings are ignored and I see the danger, the disrespect, I am uncontrollable and this gets me a bad reputation, it gets me into ‘trouble’. Yet, it is “good trouble” to me by virtue of fulfilling the commandments to “rebuke your neighbor and don’t bear guilt because of him” and “don’t stand idly by the blood of your neighbors”. It is lonely and it is worth it. I beg of all of you to make your clergy and yourself responsible for “good trouble” in these times of religious mendacity. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you rejecting what "Religion" is supposed to be or 'religion' as charlatans practice it? Year 3 Day 362

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 362

“Religion begins as a breaking off, as a going away. It continues in acts of nonconformity to idolatry.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 67)

Rabbi Heschel in the paragraph preceding these sentences speaks of Abraham’s being told to leave Haran, , his familiar surroundings, even his father’s house, and take with him his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the souls they had ‘made’ in Haran, “to a land I will show you”. He goes on to say: “This is how the religion of Abraham begins.” Reading these sentences gives me the shudders, it gives me trembling awe, a sense of hope and a questioning of how often we all forget what “religion” is and how badly it has been bastardized.

What passes for ‘religion’ today is “a breaking off, a going away” from the basic tenets we find in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the Koran which may explain why so many people no longer want to identify with any religion! We are witnesses and, in many cases, perpetrators of making “religion” into idolatry! Instead of “nonconformity to idolatry”, “religion” has made itself into idolatry and clergy have become the idol makers, much like Abraham’s father-according to the Midrash about him. The clergy who extol people who want to unwelcome the stranger, who want to strip citizenship from naturalized citizens, who want to subject any people to be 2nd class citizens/people, are idolators and idol makers. They have lost their calling and their compass. While Hebrew National products claim they “answer to a higher authority”, these clergy, of all faiths, who engage in being idol/king makers are answering to their lower authority, to their self-interest and power-hungry selves. The exact opposite of Rabbi Heschel’s definition of “religion’!

Christ taught about being humble and generous, not hoarding wealth or tooting one’s own horn, treating others, even enemies, with kindness and refusing to engage in conflict with others. When we look at the riches of the Catholic Church, which could feed the entire world on what it has in its vaults, when we hear and watch the evangelical preachers like Joel Osteen speak about wealth being so good, when we watch the kissing up of Jews to those who have wealth and power, we are seeing, hearing and watching the exact opposite of what “religion” is, as Rabbi Heschel’s words define it. Yet, people are like animals lapping up the lies and the bastardization of Christ’s words and teachings, Moses’ words and teachings, Mohammed’s words and teaching because we have raised people to be ignorant of the real teachings, unaware of how to immerse themselves in the texts of these great people and see how books of the Bible are relevant to our way of being in this moment, like the Book of Samuel on power, politics and corruption by both Saul and David. Yet, these False Prophets who call themselves ‘keepers of the faith’ extol the arrogance of David, the duplicity of both Saul and David, the lies that keep them in power and promote hatred against their ‘enemies’ who are anyone that challenges them with truth, faith, spiritual audacity. When will we end our “breaking off, going away” from what true “religion” is?

We cannot return to “religion” as long as we refuse to engage “in acts of nonconformity to idolatry”. We have become so accustomed to conformity that we are afraid, we ostracize, we decry, we deny, anyone who goes against conforming to ‘proper societal conduct’ be it in business, religious, sexual, governing realms. If we want to run a business with the consumer being more important than the shareholders, we will soon be out of a job. If we call out people for spouting beautiful Bible quotes and not living them, we will no longer be the spiritual leader of that community and get a reputation of someone that ‘no one can work with’. If people are in same-sex relationships, the ‘religious zealots’, who are actually bigots, want to imprison, deny and make illegal these relationships-although we are supposed to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves”. If someone wants government to be “of the people, by the people and for the people”, they are called subversive, they are called UnAmerican because we know America was founded by rich, religious people who wanted it to be a ‘christian nation’, although there is no basis for this lie, our current elected officials in office and about to take office spout this bullshit all the time. They want everyone to bow down to their Idols, assisted by some Clergy of all faiths they want conformity to idolatry and this is what they call “religion”!

We the People have to stand up! We are being called to end our own conformity to idolatry through our inaction all this time to the idolatry that has been taught for a long time. We have not arrived at the ‘christian nationalism’ of Project 2025 or the insanity of Ben G’vir, Smotrich, and Netanyahu overnight, these ways of being; their idolatry and those who worship them and their idols; have been brewing and incubating for a long time, they have worked the long con, they are grifters par excellence and using what they call ‘religion’ as cover has been successful and brilliant. Hence, We the People must take a stand against them and every form of “idolatry”. We, the People have to examine ourselves for any “idolatry” that we are engaged in, we have to call out the people around us who are practicing conformity to “idolatry”, we have to hold our Rabbis and Priests, Ministers and Imams accountable for their promotion of idolatry and we have to hold business leaders, government officials, and the Boards of our Institutions-academic, religious, non-profit- accountable for their need to be right, their need to be smarter than “religion” and their need to be worshipped by the people they are supposed to be serving. It is time for We, the People, to return to “nonconformity to idolatry” once and for all.

I am a believer and practitioner of “religion” as Rabbi Heschel defines it. I read these words with trembling awe. I tremble for the times I engaged in conformity to idolatry by not hearing the call of another, by being too stubborn to learn, consider a different way. For the times when I did not listen to the call of my soul and instead went along with what was expedient, which never worked out well for me and those around me. I am in awe of the multitude of experiences of “nonconformity to idolatry” that I engaged in with my people, my teachers, lighting this path for me. I find comfort in this “nonconformity” while also experiencing being on the outside, being a little lonely while never alone. As one who knows the cost of conformity on my soul, being on the outside and a little lonely at times, is worth the price of being at home and at one with my “nonconformity to idolatry”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you using Faith to have rule and dominion over another person or to satisfy a human need? Year 3 Day 361

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 361

“The purpose of faith is not to satisfy curiosity or to fulfill a human need, but to confront man with a sublime challenge, to satisfy a divine need.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 67)

“The purpose of faith” is delineated here in a way that seems totally out of step with most people’s understanding of it today, and probably for most of our existence. People use faith as a way of fulfilling the “human need” to understand something, to accept something as “God’s Will” and as I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning I have become aware of my revulsion to this phrase. Most people use their ‘faith’ as a salve, as a comfort rather than as “a sublime challenge”. “Faith”, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today, is defining it as the pathway to the test of our excellence, our ability to excel past our selfish desires and power grabs “to satisfy a divine need.”

When we look at our predicament today where people put party over the constitution, allegiance to people rather than standing firm in principles, when autocrats sound like ‘populists’ to the very people they have taken advantage of for years, and the Church and Clergy praise this type of living, the following of these undivine needs, we are truly in for a wild ride where the autocrat and his/her collaborators in the Churches, in the Temples, in the Mosques, along with their sycophants will support and fulfill the needs of the autocrat rather than the “divine need” that is “the purpose of faith”. This is the greatest challenge for humanity-end our incessant need to only fulfill the selfish ‘needs’ of the rich and powerful, the kings and queens, the leaders of governments, etc and begin again, begin anew “to satisfy a divine need.”

Think about all the times we have heard “it is God’s will, Inshallah, B’ezrat HaShem” and other such lines from the ‘religious’ of different faiths, rather than asking themselves: “how can I “satisfy a divine need?”, “how do I allow myself to be confronted “with a sublime challenge?” These questions fall by the wayside when I want to control people rather than help them find the “divine need” they were created to satisfy. When we hear that people who are rich are more loved by God than those who are poor- we should stand up and scream IDOLATOR to those mendacious autocrats. In the Bible, according to some commentaries on the flood-it was caused by the inability of “men of renown” to treat the poor well, to not rape the women, etc. 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible we are told to care for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow and the orphan, we are warned against false prophets, anyone who becomes King has to follow certain rules, etc. This is not the way of some of today’s clergy who see themselves as the true inheritors of Biblical traditions, who believe they can ignore the Books of the Bible like Samuel I &II, the different books of the Prophets, the stories of the destruction of the Temple, the rebuilding of the Temple and the subsequent destruction because of our actions, because we tried to use “faith..to fulfill a human need” rather than “to confront man with a sublime challenge, to satisfy a divine need.” As Pete Seeger wrote and sang: “When will they ever learn?”

We have to end our reliance on “God’s will” etc, we have to begin to hold our clergy, our religious institutions and ourselves accountable to fulfill “the purpose of faith” as Rabbi Heschel is defining it above. Beginning with the call of the Bible to “love your neighbor as yourself”, to remember that everyone “is created in the Image of God” and we all have within us “the spirit of God breathed into our nostrils”. There is no better than/less than in the world of faith and spirit, there is only those who accept the “sublime challenge to satisfy a divine need” and those who don’t. Those who seek to hear the call of their souls and those who seek to satisfy their more negative, selfish urges to have power and dominion over people they are afraid of so they deem them inferior. Anti-semitism is a way of people using Jews as scapegoats and prosecuting us for the very crimes they commit, from antiquity forward. In the Middle Ages, since Jews could only be merchants and money-lenders, the Princes and Kings forced us to take the heat and hatred that their policies, which we were powerless to go against if we wanted to survive, caused. It is true today as it was then and the defiance of Bibi and his right-wing sycophants don’t help the cause of the Bible, “the purpose of faith” at all-in fact they detract from it just like the mendacious clergy in America who extol the life-threatening policies of Trump and his band of oligarchs.

We, the People have to stand defiant, we have to break off, go away from these liars and deceivers. It is up to us to stand up and let our voices be heard-not for a special interest group, not for just one people, rather for all people including those who are in charge, We, the People have to call out idolatry just as our ancestors, the prophets, did. We, the People, are needed to stand up for the divine needs each of us represent, respond to the call of the poor and the weak, give aid and comfort to the stranger and the needy, surround the widow and the orphan with love, financial support and good counsel in navigating life without their father/husband. We, the People have to once again accept and live into “the purpose of faith”. We, the People, have to rise above our  self-deceptions and selfish desires to “satisfy a divine need”.  Only you can answer this call that has reverberated in the souls of humanity and the universe since the beginning, only you can decide to serve something greater than yourself. This is the real “Will of God” as the Bible teaches us.

I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my father and grandfathers, grandmothers and mother, aunts and uncles, who showed me with their actions how to go beyond my desires and help another human being, how “to satisfy a divine need”, how to face a “sublime challenge”. Even while I was ‘out there’ doing crime, indulging in my alcoholism, I still did some good, I knew better even when I ‘couldn’t’ do better. In the past 37 years, I have shown up to “satisfy a divine need” and risen above selfishness and power most of the time. The “sublime challenge” that I face each and every day is how do I be in truth with myself, how do I surrender to and fulfill the desires/calls that God and humans ask me to? I wrestle with taking care of me and not only me, I seek to fulfill the words of Rabbi Hillel; being for myself and not only for me and doing it NOW, in each moment, in every day, in every year a little more and a little better. It isn’t a perfect science, nor is it a linear progression, and I see the progress, little by little, one grain of sand at a time. I am grateful to all my teachers who help me on the journey of growing my faith and my purpose. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Allowing Faith to lead us to an understanding of how to live well. Year 3 Day 360

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 360

“He who seeks God to suit his astuteness, to appease his vanity, to satisfy his curiosity, will find at the end a figment of his imagination. He who goes out to seek God on a bridge of abstract demonstrations will arrive at a castle in the air. Only a bridge made of life itself, of deeds of compassion, of instants of wonder, of moments of reverence will lead us to an understanding of what faith has to say.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 67)

All people of faith need to take this litmus test given by Rabbi Heschel in the words above. All people need to ask themselves these questions, respond to these demands regarding their allegiance to their flag, to their Declaration of Independence, to their constitution, be they live in the USA and/or anywhere. All leaders need to be held accountable to these standards and every clergy needs to measure their search for truth and decency, their loyalty to the covenant with their faith that they proclaimed on the day of their ordination.

One of the issues facing us today is “he who seeks God to suit his astuteness” because so many people are so certain of what God wants us to do; just ask Jerry Falwell Jr., Joel Osteen, the people from the Federalist Society, Project 2025, Orthodox Jews, Baptists Ministers, Radical Muslim Imams, etc. All of them trying to show how smart and erudite they are with their machinations and twisting of the words of the Bible, the meaning of how to live well and together so they have the power-much like Samuel who was so distraught that his sons, who were totally inappropriate as his surrogates, were not wanted by the people to lead them after Samuel, he did everything he could to screw up King Saul psychologically. His lies, like the lies of “he who seeks God to suit his astuteness” lead to the theocracy that will destroy countries, turn people away from faith and cause the ruin of democracy and freedom. Theocracies have never wanted to “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev.25:10)

We see the people who “seek God to appease his vanity” in our elected officials, in some of our Clergy, in people who want to be, or are, autocrats. These people will hold photo ops with a Bible(sometimes upside down) to show their faux allegiance to God when really they believe they themselves are better than God, know more and are better suited for the job of God, King, ruler, than God! This is how vain we humans can get. Seeking God “appease his vanity” is the search for proof that one doesn’t really need God, that one is able to know what is best just because they are so smart, so intuitive, etc and one wants to satisfy one’s beliefs in their own greatness. This person also is always surprised that people don’t recognize their superior talents, brilliance, abilities, etc and they become autocrats because their ‘brilliance’, their “superior talents’, etc were not recognized so they are going to “show everyone” who is really in charge, and it ain’t God.

“A figment of our imagination”, “a castle in the air” is what passes for faith these days for many people. It is what religious instruction has become not because of religion, but because of who is teaching it, who is practicing it and who has become its spokespeople. We are in a crisis of faith that is of our own making. We have had the opportunity for 3500+ years to immerse ourselves in the Bible, to see ourselves in every chapter, to understand ourselves by understanding the archetypes found in the Bible, to find better ways to govern ourselves through justice, mercy, truth, kindness, righteousness, charity and T’Shuvah, using the stories of the Kings of Israel and the Prophets as our guides. Yet, we have not, we have not heard nor taken to heart Rabbi Heschel’s words above, we have not responded to his call for us to be different which is what God asks of us in the Bible. Jews are not chosen because we are so special, we are chosen to be different than the nations at the time, different than the pagan religions at the time and we are still chosen to be different now, which is what Rabbi Heschel is calling us to do by building a different bridge.

“Only a bridge made of life itself, of deeds of compassion, of instants of wonder, of moments of reverence will lead us to an understanding of what faith has to say.” We, the People are being called to build the one bridge that will bring us to wholeness, bring us to tolerance, bring us to be just, bring us to be merciful, bring us to admit our own errors, bring us to be kind. This is the bridge of “deeds of compassion”-being able to not hate your neighbor in your heart, to feel sad for how stuck someone is in their own self-deception while also helping them see the truth, supporting causes that promote health and are seeking cures for diseases like Multiple Sclerosis, cancer, Diabetes, Addiction,-knowing that there is a spiritual component to the healing process that we have to address as well. This is the bridge “of instants of wonder”- wow I woke up this morning, the sun rises in the East and isn’t sunrise more amazing than anything I can create? Seeing the newness of the texts we read, the prayers we pray, the air we breathe in, knowing that nothing is the same as yesterday because we are in wonder. This is the bridge “of reverence”, a bridge that takes us out of our negativity, out of our “vanity”, out of our “astuteness”, a bridge that grounds us in what truly is, not what we have bastardized and sullied. We get to be on the bridge that takes us, one step at a time, to standing in truth, in joy, in the fullness of being who we are created to be. This is how we are led “to an understanding of what faith has to say.” Only by being on the bridge, walking away from the bullshit and self-deception can we gain glimpses of this understanding.

I have been able to gain glimpses because of the study, inner work and acceptance of what is that I have learned, through very difficult lessons sometimes. The joy of being in faith because of wonder, awe, reverence, compassion, truth, justice, righteousness, kindness is like being able to traverse a very bumpy, uphill climb like runners do, like mountain climbers do. I am wrapped in the warm blanket of knowing and understanding that this is the call I have to respond to in this moment and rejoice in my portion. “Understanding of what faith has to say” is exhilarating, exhausting, liberating and puts fences around what I can and can’t do. I find new ways to live in the ways Rabbi Heschel is calling us to and I am once again in awe of the power of forgiveness, the power of kindness, the power of compassion for another who is stuck and can’t seem to hear the call for compassion, etc towards another(s), who seeks revenge rather than rapprochement. Faith call us to pray for them not hate them-this is the challenge for all of us. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you aware of whether your faith is in God or Idols? Year 3 Day 359

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 359

“Jewish faith, I repeat, is not a formula. It is an attitude, the joy of living a life in which God has a stake, or being involved with God. Such faith is neither an easy nor secure attachment. Nor is it an attitude acquired all at once or once and for all. It takes an instant to trust an idol; it takes ages to achieve attachment to Him. It requires effort, stirring, strain, preparation…Faith implies striving for faith. It is never an arrival; it is always being on the way, man’s effort to come out of his callousness.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 66)

Faith, as Rabbi Heschel speaks about it above, is neither blind nor “easy”. It is not to be thought of as a ‘one and done’ experience, it is a constant striving and wrestling within oneself and with the creative force of the universe. It not being “an easy nor secure attachment” gives people the ‘permission’ to abuse it, make fun of it, to commit horrible actions in the name of ‘their faith’, which is actually idolatry in disguise.

We are in the throes of another backlash against what Rabbi Heschel is speaking about above. In fact, he foresaw this situation some 62 years ago, he was able to see the seeds of ‘mis-faith’ being sown then and this speech to the Rabbinical Assembly back in 1962 was his attempt to stem the tide of his vision of what was happening: “it takes an instant to trust an idol”. The people proclaiming faith to ‘christian values’ to ‘jewish law’, to ‘sharia law’ so loudly may be the ones that have fallen into idolatry because their leaders are taking them there. The people who are waving the flag of ‘Christian nationalism’ the strongest, speaking of the need for America to be a ‘christian nation’ are not engaged in faith as Rabbi Heschel is describing it; and while he has defined this as “Jewish faith”, we are well aware of his embracing of other faiths as valid and his friends numbered many Christian, Catholic and Muslim clergy and people.

How do we cultivate “the joy of living a life in which God as a stake, or being involved with God”? We have to first see the true nature of our self-we have to take a dive into our inner life, we have to leave the conscious, rational, defensive thought patterns of our minds and the irrational defense and victim mechanisms of our emotions and allow the “still small voice” inside of every human being speak and be heard. We get to acknowledge the good and not good, we get to learn from our past and our intuition. We get to strengthen our connection to truth and to the world outside of our selfishness and narcissism. It is a daily practice to ‘keep’ it and grow it. It is not automatic nor is it rote.

Faith, as described above, “requires effort, stirring, strain, preparation.” This is what most people miss-they believe they don’t have to work at it, they think they are protected by it, they are sure everything they do and/or their fellow cohorts do must be good and right because they are people of ‘such great faith’ and don’t have to question themselves because if they are doing it, it must be right and good in the eyes of their ‘god’-which in actuality is their “trust an idol” mentality, self-deception, mendacity sold to them by their ‘church’. “Faith” is sold as an easy thing, a “one and done” experience that stays with one forever and Rabbi Heschel is calling out these lies and demanding that we end our fascination with “easy” and get into the “strain, effort” of “faith”. By doing this the “stirring” of our inner life and our “knowing the next right action to take” comes alive and we find ourselves in “preparation” for the next miraculous experience of connection, of being in “the joy of living a life in which God as a stake, or being involved with God”. We do not get there by listening to Mike Johnson, Project 2025, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Bernie Sanders or Ron Reagan, who isn’t afraid to “burn in hell”, et al. We do not get there by treating the stranger poorly, by making the poor into criminals, by turning away the needy and by lying to the people who depend upon us for love, truth, compassion, kindness.

The truth of Rabbi Heschel’s words:”It is never an arrival; it is always being on the way, cannot be overstated. They also give all of us an opportunity to realize all of life “is never an arrival; it is always being on the way”. Doing this allows us to be more truthful within ourselves, it means we don’t have to hide from our moments of ‘no’ faith. We don’t have to be ashamed of ‘not being in full and true faith’ like we are exhorted to be by the idolators who are in charge of our Temples, Churches, Mosques in many places around the globe. Each day, Jews recite a blessing before they even get out of bed: “I am grateful to You, God for restoring my soul to me with compassion, great is Your faithfulness”, acknowledging God’s faithfulness, not our own, putting upon ourselves the commitment, the obligation to grow our faith and to be on the road to faith. This is why we are so put off guard by “the faithful” by those who have “drunk the Kool-Aid”, they give off an air of certainty that we know is impossible and yet, many people are envious of the ‘certainty of faith’ of the people who follow their idols, their idolators and charlatans. This is the problem with idolatry-it gives us certainty in today’s uncertain world and idolatry’s promise of a ‘better life in the next world’ is so tantalizing for many people they are willing to crush the “still small voice” needed to exert the “effort to come out of his callousness”.

Idolatry, bastardization of Holy Texts, the Declaration of Independence here and in other countries that is happening now as it always has, is the pathway to defeat “man’s effort to come out of his callousness” and We, the People, Jews and non-Jews have to take back “faith”, we have to once again speak the words of the Prophets, we have to “Speak Truth to Power”, it is the only way out of our own callousness and mendacity, it is the only way to once again “to achieve an attachment to Him” and find the power to live in ways that make us worthy of being a partner with God. It is hard to do this, it takes effort to keep my attitude in line with my faith, it takes spiritual practice like this writing to help me let go of the calls of the idolator within me and those outside of me. I have given into them before, God knows, and I keep learning from those times to make this a better moment. It is hard, yes AND it is joyous to be able to know I don’t have to prove anything to anyone because I know myself, I hear the “Voice” inside of me and around me and take the next right action whether I want to or not. I am blessed by being “out of my callousness” and demanding others do the same-not for my sake but for theirs, God’s and the world’s! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

P.S. my latest podcast is up:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/74FzSVg8mJcyiUIB76qvHb?si=092b4b44c5f74430 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f-your-feelings-with-rabbi-mark/id1587525986