Comment

Ass-kissing, Going along to get along or radical amazement-where do you live? Year 4 Day 73

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 73

“The shock of radical amazement, the humility born in awe and reverence, the austere discipline of unremitting inquiry and self-criticism are acts of liberating man from the routine way of looking only at those features of experience which are similar and regular, and opening his soul to the unique and transcendent.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 15)

Tonight is the Rabbinic holiday of Purim, when the Jews were saved from Haman (boo) and Mordechai (Yay) was honored by the King and Queen Esther saved the people Israel from extinction in Persia. It is a troubling holiday for many people because rather than show grace and compassion, when they had the opportunity, the Jews of Persia killed tens of thousands of people, a real “I’ll show you, you anti-semite”. It also is a holiday that ‘celebrates’ getting drunk as the Talmud says, “ad lo Yodea” “until you don’t know the difference between Mordechai and Haman”. Reading the words above, reading Jonathan Greenblatt’s ass-kissing praise of Trump’s arresting Mahmoud Khalil, I realize to celebrate the disastrous actions by the Jews of Persia and by some Jews ever since, like Baruch Goldstein, Meir Kahane, Netanyahu, the West Bank Settlers, we have to be drunk and not know the difference between good and evil not know the difference between right and wrong. Which is exactly what Khalil’s arrest shows, exactly what Trump’s administration is promoting and what a USEFUL IDIOT Greenblatt and other ‘good jews’ are!


Rather than having “the shock of radical amazement” change and motivate these assholes and know-it-alls to understand, see and fight for what is right and good, they are oblivious to even noticing the wonder that surrounds them because they live in a world of certainty and sureness-‘only I can fix it’, said by the one who is intent on breaking everything that makes us free and democratic. Yet, there are jews, christians, muslims, blacks, hispanics, who claim to be ‘god-fearing’ people who go against the dictate of Hillel: “ Be careful with ruling authorities, they don’t befriend a person unless it suits them and serves them, they seem like friends and don’t stand by you in your hour of distress”(Pirke Avot 2:3) and another one: “A brute is not afraid of sin…nor is someone who engages in too much business, wise. In a place where there are no humans, BE HUMAN.” (Ibid 2:5) Given the world today, I am amazed at Greenblatt’s words and actions of kissing the asses of the people in power and calling this “jewish” when Hillel the Elder, a revered Rabbi in the Talmud, tells us it is wrong! Of course Greenblatt and other Jews will defend their choices and Trump to the death because he “resonates” with the people. Haman(boo) resonated with the people, Stalin did also at first, Hitler, Sabbatai Zevi also resonated, were they also to be praised???

“Radical amazement”, “awe”, “reverence”, “humility”, “self-criticism”, “unremitting inquiry”  are the only paths to “having an authentic awareness of that which is” as Rabbi Heschel says in Man is Not Alone. These traits reside within each and every person and those who choose to live into them are often derided as ‘head in the clouds’, ‘unrealistic’, ‘not living in the real world’, stupid, easily manipulated, etc. Rather than seeing themselves as imprisoned in their rational minds, in their desires and fears, in their need to have power or be close to it, Greenblatt and the other ‘useful idiots’ who are supporting Trump, who want a dissenter like Khalil deported are forgetting Germany in the 1930’s, they are forgetting America in the 1930’s, they are oblivious that the law being used to deport Khalil is the same one that was used to deport and not allow Jews into America during the McCarthy years and that was a great time for freedom, for civil liberties, wasn’t it?

Only through the ways described above can We the People have the experiences which will get us out of the routine “same shit different day” attitude and way of being in the world. Only through wonder can We the People truly see what is, what could be, what should be and how to get there. Our rational minds are the servants to help us get there and out intuitive minds are the seer, the visionary, the pathfinders for us to fulfill our soul’s purpose, to live into the “self we were created to be” as Thomas Merton says. We the People are being called to “unremitting inquiry”, Rabbi Heschel is demanding that we never stop asking the right questions so we can be in the right solutions. It is a hard way to live, Socrates taught: “an unexamined life is not worth living” some 2400 years ago, Malcom X taught “an examined life is painful”. As the saying goes: “no pain, no gain” which makes it ridiculous that We the People keep running away from true “humility” which comes from “awe and reverence”, that we keep being adjusted to the conventional notions and mental cliches of societal norms rather than be maladjusted like Moses, Abraham, the Prophets, the 20% of the people who left Egypt, Rather than be like the Jews of Persia and enjoy killing, We the People are able to be “liberating” ourselves through letting go of these old ideas, being self-critical to learn and grow, find  and live into our individual uniqueness and transcendence. WILL YOU??

As a devotee of Rabbi Heschel and radical amazement, as someone who read the entire sugya of the story of “ad lo yodea” where Raba invites Rabbi Zera over for Purim-they both get drunk, Raba slits Rabbi Zera’s throat and then prays and he is healed. Next year, Raba invites Rabbi Zera over and the response is: “a miracle doesn’t occur every single time”! To the Jews who don’t want to know the difference tonight, I offer more than a few words of caution! As a drunk who knows the damage I inflicted in my drunkenness, I am deeply remorseful. As a human being who fell into the clutches of not being self-critical at times and was blinded by it, I offer many words of caution! Radical amazement is such a gift that is open to everyone. It takes humility, not mealy-mouthed head down, begging for scraps, true humility, knowing who one is, living a “unique and transcendent life” and helping another(s) do the same. It changes how I was with my daughter, Heather, acknowledging her as a person, not just ‘my child’, giving her agency and doing my best to ensure she knew I loved her as a person. This way of being is the path to the loving relationship I have with Harriet, it is also the reason I have spiritual friends and also the reason I am not always liked so much. I am certainly not everyone’s “cup of tea”. I can’t ‘go along to get along” like Greenblatt and many others do-not in my nature nor nurture-my father didn’t and I am not ‘politically correct’! While I know I am not always right, I do live “an examined life” and it is painful and the pain leads me to living in radical amazement, awe, reverence, humility more and more each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Is creativity achievable without freedom? Year 4 Day 72

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 72

“Although all men are potentially free, it is our sacred duty to safeguard all those political, social, and intellectual conditions which will enable every man to bring about the concrete actualization of freedom which is the essential prerequisite of creative achievement. Insecurity of Freedom pg.15)

Over 60 years ago Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, in his “I have a Dream” speech said:”Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, I am Free at Last” which is a quote from a “Negro Spiritual” speaking about death as the ultimate freedom when one is a slave. Hearing Rabbi Heschel’s words written 5 years prior to that speech and prior to ever meeting Rev. King, I immediately thought of these words. “Free at Last” is not just about outer freedom, it is also about inner freedom. Without inner freedom, without sharing our path to inner freedom, we will never move beyond “potentially free” and we certainly will not fulfill our “sacred duty to safeguard all those political, social, and intellectual conditions…”. This, of course, is the demand of the first sentence; to see what our “sacred duty” is and this “sacred duty” is not just about some ritual we perform to ‘look good’ in the ‘eyes’ of God or the people in our houses of worship, it is about how we help every human being “bring about the concrete actualization of freedom” and this is what Rev. King may have been pointing to when he ended his I have a Dream speech with “Free at Last”. He unburdened himself of the shackles of sticking to the page, he allowed his soul to speak for him and he, as Mahalia Jackson suggested, preached his Gospel, the same Gospel found in the Bible, in the words of Jesus, etc.

In our present climate, these words, the words of Rev King seem trite and ridiculous. Maybe they were then as well, I just remembering being enthralled by Dr. King and his speeches because they said the same things that my father, z”l, was teaching my brothers and me-it is our duty to treat all people with respect regardless of race, color, creed, religion. In the 1960’s I was not aware of Rabbi Heschel, unfortunately, and these words written in 1958 point to his being able to incorporate the errors of past generations and what he saw in the moment with his prophetic vision and give us these warnings, which, of course, we have failed to heed. The goal of our Declaration of Independence and the path laid out by the Constitution are lofty and match this first sentence above; the issue being that we have failed to move them forward to a tipping point whereby every different administration, every different Congress, every single citizen will accept their “sacred duty to safeguard all those political, social, and intellectual conditions…” We are witnessing the exact opposite of fulfilling “our sacred duty” right now, Trump and his people, under the direction of Putin and ‘christian nationalists like Russell Vought, are doing everything they can to undo these “safeguards” and to tear down the “concrete actualization of freedom” for all people and limit this “concrete actualization of freedom” to only the select few of their choosing, not even all who bend their knees and kiss their asses will experience this “actualization” and they are too spiritually immature to realize it. Rather than have “creative achievement” that come about because of this “actualization of freedom” people like those in power in the US and across the globe believe they can force people to be “creative” even though they are enslaving them. It hasn’t worked so well in Russia under Putin, it has never worked that well for any autocrat, any despot Monarch for any long period of time. Greece fell, Rome fell, Babylonia, Assyria, England, Spain, France, the Ottoman Empire, Germany, Italy, Japan, China, why not the US? We thought we were immune because we were founded on religious freedom, we enshrined freedoms in the first amendment to our Constitution and we became oblivious to the warnings of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha all of whom, in their own way, called to us to not think we are so high and mighty, not believe our own press and treat every person with dignity and respect-we are all equal in the eyes of God, in our Higher Consciousness, whether we believe it or not; this is just a spiritual and moral truth.

We, the People are being called by the words above, by the current situation, by Rev. King’s words, by all of the holy texts of every spiritual discipline to our “sacred duty to safeguard all those political, social, and intellectual conditions which will enable every man to achieve the concrete actualization of freedom..”! We the People have abdicated this “sacred duty” for far too long and the current situation of bullying, of disloyalty to the Constitution, to our allies and friends, of racism, of hatred, of disdain for the principles found in the Bible all while wrapping themselves in the ‘flag’ and ‘christian values’ is the result! We the People have to get off our asses and demand change, demand that our elected officials do their “sacred duty” and ensure freedom for all so we can have more “creative achievement” and be a better nation today than we were yesterday, just as we have to be better human beings today than we were yesterday if we are to continue to “grow along spiritual lines”. We the People are being called to show up and stand up for our brothers and sisters as Deuteronomy teaches “Love the stranger because you were a stranger in the land of Egypt”; Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that without our doing our “sacred duty” freedom will be lost for all people and then the words on the Liberty Bell and in Leviticus 25:10 will ring hollow as they did for almost 2000 years and there will not be anyone to: “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. Is this really what We the People want to leave as our legacy to our children and grandchildren? Is this really what We the People want our final will and testament to say?

I am sending postcards to the White House for the Ides of Trump and while I do not to see anyone do to him what was done to Caesar, I do think it is time for our Congress to tell him “You’re Fired”! In reflecting on my life, I believe that I accepted the “sacred duty to safeguard…” and enabled many people “bring about the concrete actualization of freedom” and they then use this “freedom” to bring about “creative achievements”. It is a joy and an honor, to be a witness to the throwing off the inner shackles which have kept people (including myself) slaves to societal bullshit and lies, slaves to their own self-deceptions, and watch in awe and wonder at their “creative achievements” in their newfound “freedom”. This is the fight we all have to fight, both in our own lives and help another(s) with their inner wars to be free with all the rights and responsibilities that freedom carries according to the Bible. I have not always been “nice” in my manners and I have seen helping people see the handcuffs and prison cells that keep them locked up and help them find their road to freedom as my “sacred duty”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Who are the real traitors? Who are the people who sacrifice for the greater good? - Year 4 Day 71

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 71

“Freedom is the liberation from the tyranny of the self-centered ego. It comes about in moments of transcending the self as an act of spiritual ecstasy, of stepping out of the confining framework of routine reflexive concern. Freedom presupposes the capacity for sacrifice.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.15)

These descriptions of and defining terms about “freedom” are so poignant in our times and I believe “freedom” has become so bastardized and ignored that we have become oblivious to what it is, how to keep it, how to grow it and how easy it is to lose it. It is so interesting that the people who hate immigrants are descendants of immigrants and/or immigrants who came here to pursue ‘the American dream’ because Musk couldn’t do it in his native South Africa because of his prejudice and hatred of anyone not white like him. Earlier in this chapter Rabbi Heschel reminds us of the “true essence” of “freedom”: to sacrifice prejudice even if it hurts, to give up superstition even when it claims to be a doctrine. We are witnessing the exact opposite of both sacrificing “prejudice” and “to give up superstition”. “Prejudice comes from the Latin meaning “in advance of knowledge” and superstition comes from the Latin meaning “to stand over”. In both cases, truth and knowledge are being “sacrificed” not “prejudice” nor “superstition” and we see both running rampant in the world today. We are so “prejudiced” that we are willing to let go of the “freedom” that our Constitution and the Amendments guarantee! We are so superstitious that we are willing to have Trump, Musk, Putin, Bibi stand over us as Pharaohs and their minions like the taskmasters in Egypt so we do their bidding and, like Joseph did in Egypt, there are Jews who are willing to gouge the populaces so the wannabe oligarchs, these Pharaohs and their courtiers can get richer!

It seems like a dream, like an unrealistic way of being reading the words in bold above. What was Rabbi Heschel thinking? How could he have such a utopian view of human beings after witnessing Nazi Germany firsthand, after losing so much of his family and a way of life in the Shoah? I would say that is exactly how and why he is calling out to us and demanding we not fall asleep again, that we “lift up our eyes and see” what truly is, not what the Pharaohs, the wannabe oligarchs, the liars and the deceivers are trying to show us. He is demanding we stop playing the shell game with these cheaters and recommit to the covenant of freedom that was made by the founding fathers of this great nation. It is a great nation and only people who want to deceive and enrich themselves want to ‘make it great again’-as we can see with the chaos and disruption the Musk/Trump administration is doing and the effects on the economy, the market and everyday items that ‘only they can bring down’!


The only sacrifices that are being made in this moment are the ones by people who believe in “freedom”, who know the “tyranny of the self-centered ego”, not by the people elected to maintain and grow our freedoms. These people are seeking the approval of Putin and his minions, Trump and Musk, Bannon and Miller, Bibi and Smotrich, etc. They have abdicated their duties for fear of not being re-elected, for fear of Trump’s private militia, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, coming after them and/or their family. They are afraid of Pam Bondi filing charges against them, etc. Rather than seeking “moments of transcending the self”, rather than having an experience of “spiritual ecstasy”, these ‘good christians’ who do not follow what Christ preaches, instead stay within “the confining framework of routine reflexive concern. And We the People elected them!!

This is our moment, this is our calling, this is the meaning of Lent, of Easter, of Ramadan, of Passover, of all holy days in every faith and spiritual discipline. We the People need to reclaim our “freedom”. We do this by reclaiming our personal “freedom”, by going back to the basic principles of faith and “freedom”-transcending our lower selves and serving our higher consciousness, our “intuitive minds”. To do this we have to first acknowledge the lower self for what it is, a servant to our higher consciousness, a servant to our intuitive mind. We the People have to know that both ‘selves’ are necessary and needed in order to be human and to be free. We can “transcend the self” when we are aware of and in service to our higher consciousness, to our intuitive minds, to our spirits, to our “gut instincts”. We have the moments of spiritual ecstasy Rabbi Heschel is speaking of more and more often, and, we live into the words of the V’Ahavta  prayer: “You will speak of them when you lie down..teach them to your children..” In other words, the more we serve our higher consciousness, our intuitive minds, the more we live the principles and values found in the Holy texts of every spiritual discipline and the better off we are to ward off, fight back against the autocrats, the wannabe dictators, the mendacious and despicable useful idiots of these ‘leaders’. Living to serve our higher ‘self’, “stepping out of the framework of routine reflexive concern” means we are in “sacrifice” of saving our face, we “sacrifice” our false selves, our masks and our mental make-up for truth, for goodness, for “freedom” and then we can and will “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”!

I am enraged, bereft and bewildered at the loss of “freedom” so many of us are experiencing right now. I watch as Musk, an unelected IMMIGRANT, who has been on the DOLE OF THE GOVERNMENT his entire business career, is slashing every freedom and safety net for people ‘not like him’. He and Trump and the rest of them are hurting white people, people of color, Jews, Christians, Muslims alike without a care in the world for another human being. I know this way of being, every addict, everyone knows this way of being and anyone who says they don’t understand and/or they are good people living ‘good christian values’, ‘living what is written in the torah’ are LIARS and stuck in self-deception! I lived as a narcissist and a bully, a deceiver and a grifter; I hurt a lot of people and I have lived these past 36 years doing TShuvah. I know the signs of the lie and it drives me crazy, I hear Rabbi Heschel’s words in my head and know I have to do something, so I write to you each day, I post on social media, and I support people who stand up against these “People of the Lie” as M. Scott Peck describes in his book of the same name. Rabbi Heschel is calling me to do more, to not settle, to not give into despair and to fight for the Good, for the Holy, for the Principles and Values of the Bible. I hear him remind me that the Prophets stood up knowing the people would not listen, Moses gave us a prophecy of what would happen when, not if, we succumbed to a Trump, a Putin, a Musk and I fear, once again it will take great suffering to regain “freedom”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

How do you define Freedom? Year 4 Day 70

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 70

“Freedom is the liberation from the tyranny of the self-centered ego. It comes about in moments of transcending the self as an act of spiritual ecstasy, of stepping out of the confining framework of routine reflexive concern. Freedom presupposes the capacity for sacrifice.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg.15)

Sitting at my computer, reading these words leaves me understanding Rabbi Heschel’s teaching in God in Search of Man that “freedom” is an event. For most people, “liberation from the tyranny of the self-centered ego” never occurs or if it does, they are not aware of it. In AA there is a saying; “I may not be much but I am all I think about”. Psychologists/therapists ask:”how does this make you feel”, making the feelings and thoughts of the individual uber alles. While it is important to think of oneself and know how experiences make us ‘feel’, the ridiculous emphasis on the individual, on ‘success’, on wealth and power for the sake of the individual’s mental health has led us to live in “the tyranny of the self-centered ego”.

In government, we no longer have “public servants”, we have people whose ego is so self-centered and they are so consumed with being re-elected, they no longer care about what is good and right, they are hellbent on lying and deceiving their constituents about their votes, their lack of progress and forcing the country, the state, the city, to suffer under the “tyranny of their self-centered ego”. Rather than be the “public servants” envisioned by the founding fathers, politics is a full-time job. Rather than serving the greater good ala Daniel Webster, they serve their agendas, their party leader’s whims and desires and they too become trapped in the “tyranny of the ‘leader’s’ self-centered ego”. Isn’t it horrifying to realize how UNFREE our elected officials are, how UNFREE we are and how difficult it is to become liberated?

Individuals are totally susceptible to falling into the “tyranny of the self-centered ego” and not realizing it because our societal norms are to fight to be right, never surrender, and, especially in this modern era, deny, deny, lie, lie, never take responsibility for anything ‘bad’, always take credit for anything good, use deception and mendacity to ‘fool’ the public, our neighbor, our family, etc. We are so stuck in this “tyranny” that we are unaware of how tightly our “self-centered ego” has us by the throat and is chocking the spirit out of us. We are oblivious to the death and destruction of our creativity, our ability to see and hear truth, to participating in the covenant made with God by our ancestors and re-made by each of us with our birth. The “self-centered ego” is a tyrant! It is a despot that leads us to engage in autocracy, in absolutism, and it uses oppressive power, cruelty for the sake of cruelty, chaos, deception, fear, blame and scapegoats to feed itself and imprison the individual and the people around it. The “self-centered ego” begins with Cain and has continued through this moment. it is the root cause of entitlement, of enslavement, of not welcoming the stranger, of making poor people into criminals just for being poor, of using jails and prisons to deal with people who have mental health challenges, etc. The “tyranny of the self-centered ego” is so devious that we are unaware of how it kills the kindness within us, how it stops us from being, as Thomas Merton says,: “the self we were created to be”.

Of course the same is true in the religious realm. We have people put into positions of power and they say they are serving God when really they are serving themselves, their egos, their agendas. Leaders of Churches, Temples, Mosques routinely make decisions and invent rituals that exclude people, the lay leaders have their agendas and if the Priest, Minister, Imam, Rabbi doesn’t follow it, if they speak truth to power, they are fired. Most clergy, however, succumb to the whims and wishes of “the board”, most clergy live in the “tyranny of the self-centered ego” because they believe their interpretation of scripture is correct, most are unwilling to truly entertain arguments questioning their rulings, questioning their actions, questioning them. Rather than being a forum and a place for divergent ideas, most religious institutions have their own dogma, their own ‘flavor’ and work hard to promote their own agendas. This is, of course, OUTRAGEOUS!

Easter is April 20th and Passover begins on April 12th; the period of Lent is to prepare for Easter and the period between the first of Nissan, March 30, and Passover is to prepare to be liberated. This confluence of Holy Days is not accidental, after all Christ’s Last Supper was a Passover Seder. They both are the root stories of Christianity and Judaism. Yet, we seem to see them only as times to get together, ask when do we eat, be bored by the reading of the Haggadah, unless there are antics and theatrics, go to Church to show off our “Easter Bonnets”, etc. Both Easter and Passover are about “the liberation from the tyranny of the self-centered ego”, i.e. “freedom”. We the People have to engage in these Holy Days if we want any chance of having an experience of “freedom”, if we yearn to unshackle ourselves from the “tyranny of the self-centered ego”, our own and/or the ones that are controlling us like Presidents, Senators, Congresspeople, Clergy, Parents, Siblings, bosses… We, the People are being called upon to STAND UP for our true selves, to REBEL against the tyrannical madness of governing bodies in every realm of our life, to ENGAGE in truth and goodness, to UNDERSTAND that the stories of Passover and Easter are not one and done, rather we have to engage in UNSHACKLING ourselves from our “self-centered egos” every day.

I know the “tyranny of the self-centered ego”, I lived it for over 20 years and knew I was enslaved to it, without any hope of being free of it. I was ruled by it and Passover never meant much to me since my Grandfather died and stopped leading the Seder. This year, as in the past 35 years, Passover is the time for me to do an inventory since Yom Kippur. On Yom Kippur, I was clean and caught a glimpse of the purity of my soul, the cleanliness of my being-I schmutzed it up quickly and for me to be liberated on Passover, I have to rid myself of Chometz, all the leavening, all the fat that has accumulated around my soul, my mind, my inner life. I learned this from Rabbi Mel Silverman in prison and have engaged in letting go of one of the “tyranny’s” that prevents me from “liberation from … my self-centered ego” and also allows me to have more compassion for those who are still stuck in their own. I am grateful for the “freedoms” I enjoy and look forward to expanding them. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Comment

Comment

How do you define "Freedom" and are your definition and your actions congruent? Year 4 Day 69

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 69

“Although political and social freedom must include all this, even the freedom to err—its true essence is in man’s ability to surpass himself, even to act against his inclinations and in defiance of his own needs and desires, to sacrifice prejudice even if it hurts, to give up superstition even when it claims to be a doctrine.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 14)

The definition, “true essence” of freedom as defined by Rabbi Heschel above is startling and, of course, ‘right on the money’. People have a warped idea, belief in what “freedom” is and in today’s politics, as has been true throughout the millennia, “alternative facts”, “spin”, denial, outright lies and chaos are seen as being free. Abusing and bullying those in need, those who have less power, less agency, less advocacy is seen as strength and courageous. “Prejudice” is seen as smart and a saving grace against “those people” and “superstition” is what keeps so many people from believing what their eyes are seeing. This is true across the globe and, on a more personal level, throughout families, religious institutions, ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ groups also. We are in such disarray as human beings, we have lost our compasses, we have lost our path towards and of “freedom” and don’t even know it! This is how deep and how dearly we are locked in self-deception and mendacity. OY, VaVOY!

Yet, the good news is that we have the "ability to surpass” ourselves, our false egos, our selfish, narcissistic habits. This experience of surpassing oneself is rampant throughout the Bible, unfortunately, not surpassing ourselves is more rampant:( and everything changes at Mt. Sinai; not the behaviors of human beings rather the pathways to be able to “surpass himself” are made clear, sort of. Murder, theft, adultery, false testimony, coveting were all rampant in Egypt and in Canaan, even among the Israelites I believe. These were ‘just the way the world works’ and along comes this band of ex-slaves and God which no one can see nor hear with their physical ear who ‘appears’, ‘speaks’ and makes a covenant with the people which they accept, even though they don’t always follow it. The same is true for us today, we make a covenant with someone, some entity, and we pledge to be loyal and true to this covenant even though we know we will not be perfect. Hence, be it with God, with higher consciousness, with our spouse, our children, our employers, our employees, we have to know we will, at times, fall short and we will continue to use our “ability to surpass” ourselves to make things right and grow along spiritual and moral lines.

More good news is that we can “act against our own inclinations and in defiance of our own needs and desires”! While this is not always the case, we are able to have our ‘good inclination’ direct our ‘evil inclination’ to do the next right thing and this is, for many, a daily occurrence that is fleeting on some days and may only happen once or twice while acting with “our own inclinations” may happen more often, we know that we can rise above them, we can master them as God tells Cain-“sin desires you much and you can master it”. While it is difficult to do this, as our inclinations lie to us and make it seem as if we don’t follow them, we will die, we will suffer great loss, we will be unhappy, etc, history has shown and many people’s personal experience validates our ability to “act against our own inclinations” brings about stability, care, kindness, loyalty, connection and honoring our covenant. In a marriage, at least in good lasting marriages, both partners “act against their own inclinations” to stay together especially when one or the other does something stupid, hurtful, wrong-be it to their partner, themselves, to another human being, this affects both partners and to stay together is to “act against the inclination” to leave and give up. We have the same issues when we our intuitive minds say one thing and our rational minds say another. Our “inclination” is to go along with what is rational, what is in keeping with the “conventional norms” of society, we don’t want to be a ‘freak’, an ‘outcast”, and to be in “freedom” we have to go against this inclination, we have to be “maladjusted to norms and words” so we can have “an authentic awareness of what is” as Rabbi Heschel’s definition of “radical amazement” teaches.

We the People have had a skewed vision of what “freedom” is and what it entails to be free, I believe. To act “in defiance of our own needs and desires” takes great spiritual strength and vision. It takes a surrender to the principles and values one finds in the Bible, the holy texts of every spiritual discipline and the commitment/covenant to follow through on “practicing these principles in all our affairs” as the 12th Step of AA calls for. We the People are being called to stand up for true “freedom” in all realms, political, social, familial and personal. This can’t happen unless we begin and not end with ourselves. Committing to strengthen our “ability to surpass” ourselves and taking actions that allow us to exercise this “ability” has to be a daily commitment and actions. We the People will no longer give ourselves and another(s) excuses as to why we chose not to “surpass” ourselves, we will be responsible for missing the mark and grow one grain of sand more to “surpass” ourselves more often. We the People are being begged to “act against our own inclinations” for selfish desires, for more and more power, money, prestige, sex, drugs, rock and roll. This can only happen when we begin each day with the gratitude found in the Modeh Ani prayer, found throughout the tenets of every faith/spiritual discipline and remembering to be grateful for what we have and what we don’t have! We the People are being reminded that we are so much more than what our rational minds tell us, that we have within us the light and sight to see and live in a world that is truly free; this is the messianic vision and We the People have within us the wherewithal to bring ourselves and those around us a little closer to this vision each day.

I have learned how to do these things and do them more often than not during each and every day. I wrestle with my “inclinations” and I am not ‘on the circuit’ as a speaker or at cocktail parties because I speak and act in “defiance of my own needs and desires” much of the time, I take into account what is right and good, true and loving and do the best I can to act accordingly. While I miss the mark often, my ‘true north’ is always in the direction that Rabbi Herschel’s words give to us. I am hearing his voice decrying what  he was a witness to; the “simonizing” of his faith so people would ‘like it’ and not be too ‘burdened’ by it. Rather than help us me be free, “mainstream” Judaism tried to put me in a straight jacket. I rebelled and am living life according to the Biblical dictates as I understand them and invite you to do the same. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Comment

Comment

Do you know that each of us has the "freedom to err" and the call to do TShuvah? Year 4 Day 68

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 68

“Although political and social freedom must include all this, even the freedom to err—its true essence is in man’s ability to surpass himself, even to act against his inclinations and in defiance of his own needs and desires, to sacrifice prejudice even if it hurts, to give up superstition even when it claims to be a doctrine.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 14)

In the writing above, the first thing that stands out to me is, “the freedom to err”. This is one of the first freedoms we learn about in the Bible, remember the Garden of Eden story, and the last freedom we give to ourselves and to another(s).  Our society has been and is so consumed with perfection, with “getting it right”, with the fear of being shamed and deemed unworthy when we “err” that this “freedom to err” has been subjugated to the demand to perform perfectly. We experience the pressure of “getting an A” on every test in school, in sports, in business, in marriage, in our children, in, in, in. We have lost, if we ever had, the “freedom to err”.

Immersed in this thought brings me to an understanding of our lack of “freedom to err”, we misinterpret, misunderstand the Bible’s teachings about consequences for our actions. We also misinterpret and misunderstand the Bible’s teachings about TShuvah. Just the fact that people in the Bible commit errors, think about Cain killing Abel and God not intervening, is proof that we have the “freedom to err”. The story leading up to this homicide shows that we also have the freedom to do better after we err-Cain is told that “sin couches at your door, it desires you much and you can master it”. Yet, this truth goes unheard by Cain and he resorts to killing and then complains about his consequences-never once expressing remorse. Throughout the Bible we have stories and prophecies about the consequences of our errant ways, of the gross errors we will, do and may make, These are not punishments as prescribed by Biblical commentators, they are lessons and prophecies and are a flashing neon sign that we not only have the “freedom to err”, we will always make mistakes.

We human beings are well aware of our imperfections, we have a litany of things we do wrong, not ‘good enough’ that runs through our heads daily, for some of us hourly, for others every few minutes. Yet, rather than understand that we are not created to be perfect, rather than accept our need to “fail forward”, “learn and grow”, we have set up a system that measures success by how much money one has, what is the latest great thing we have done, who is the Greatest Of All Time, etc. The idea that we would willingly and confidently admit to our errors of judgement, actions, our unwitting mistakes of judgement and our lack of knowledge is anathema to our being. Hence the Bible’s direction about TShuvah!

According to the mystics, TShuvah was put into the world before the world was created and I add because God knew we would screw up and need a way back. This is the what God tells Cain, in their first exchange, ‘if you do right, you are uplifted”, showing there is a way back, the major theme of the beginning of the Book of Leviticus is about bringing sacrifices for a physical experience of expiation, Yom Kippur the day of Atonement aka At-One-Ment is the day we can be completely clear and clean for a minute of two. Rabbi Eliezer, in the Talmud, Shabbat 153(a) says we should do TShuvah one day before we die and since none of us know the day of our death, we should do it each day validating that we will take bad actions and they don’t define us. Yet, we continue to make fun of, shame and be ashamed of the errors we make, the ones friends and family make, and we punish people, no matter how much good they have done-one Oh Shit wipes out 1000 Atta Boys/Girls.

We the People have to accept and engage in our “freedom to err” as a gift from the universe, as a truth of our higher consciousness and end our constant loop of shame, guilt, saying I’m sorry and the repeating the same shit over and over again. We have become so afraid to show our imperfections that we have people who will lie about losing elections, being wrong, committing crimes, abusing people, denying rights and decency to “those people”. We the People have to stand up and speak truth to ourselves, we have to stop telling our children that what they do reflects upon the whole family and will make us outcasts AND We, the People have to, in turn, stop making outcasts of an entire family because of the actions of one member! Having the “freedom to err” doesn’t give us license to fuck up, it is only an acknowledgment of our imperfect status, it gives us the experience and permission to repent, restore what we have torn, and find new ways to deal with the emotions, inclinations, etc that these repeating experiences trigger. We the People are being called to stand up to the bullies who make fun of our imperfections, use our insecurities, our vulnerabilities against us and call them out. We the People have to wave the banner of our “freedom to err” and add it to the “Four Freedoms” that FDR laid out in January of 1941: “the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear”. We the People must demand the “freedom to err” because without it, we will never achieve the other “Four Freedoms”. We the People begin this old/new way of living by doing our own inventories, our own admitting of errors, speaking of our imperfections to our children, our parents, our family, friends, co-workers, communities and governments. Our society has to let go of these old ways of using vulnerabilities against people and embrace the imperfections of self and one another with the responsibility to do TShuvah. In this way, the “freedom to err” becomes a foundational learning experience rather than a foundational hiding excuse.

I have been “free to err” for my entire life and only in the last 38 years have I enjoyed it. I have been ‘beaten’ up by another(s) for my errors, I have paid the consequences for my errors(sometimes more than I think they were worth) and I am still standing, growing, writing, preaching, and teaching. The “freedom to err” has given me access to all sorts of freedoms, the ones FDR speaks of and the greatest one for me-the freedom to learn. It also gives me my unique pathway to fulfill the Biblical paths of living well and overcoming my own errors, change my paths, both external and internal, change my thinking and act my way into a spiritual life that gives me so much more than I deserve. “Freedom to err” has given me the insight and eyesight to know when I am lying to myself, to another(s), and when I am being lied to, it has given me a dedication to truth that I have inherited from the prophets, my grandfathers, and my father. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

What is your definition of Freedom and are you living it? Year 4 Day 67

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 67

“The will is not an ultimate and isolated entity, but determined by motives beyond its own control. To be what one wants to be is also not freedom, since the wishes of the ego are largely determined by external factors. Freedom is not a principle of uncertainty, the ability to act without a motive. Such action would be chaotic and subrational rather than free.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.14)

Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the challenge of truly living free, free from our self-will, free from our “wants to be”, free from our ‘doing what we want when we want’. It ain’t easy and it is doable, at least for moments at a time. The writing above begs a few questions; the first being: what does determine our “will”? While many of us believe we are “in control”, the wisdom above is telling us maybe we have a lot less control that we think. Having a rich inner life and living an “examined life” as Socrates calls on us to do, we can be in truth with ourselves and see how often our “control” is being determined by so many outside forces: upbringing-positive or negative, desires-realistic or not, resilience or entitlement, whims of society, power exerted upon us or by us, psychological make-up and spiritual immaturity or maturity for a few. When “keep up with the Jones’” is the mantra we live by, when “retribution” is our goal, when “making it” at any and all costs makes sense, when using “those people” when referring to another human being or group of people, when “racism, anti-semitism, etc” are seen as good and ways to get ahead-we are not free and our will has been determined by “motives beyond its own control”. Yet, we seem to be unaware of this truth, many people would rather believe the lies they tell themselves, that their ‘leader’ tells them than open up their eyes, circumcise the foreskin of their hearts, and choose life, choose truth, choose blessings. In fact, in America today-more people believe the lie than seek the truth. I believe the reason for this is because truth is messy, it is elusive and it is never complete because as we learn more, we see more and as we seem more we experience more of the truth of every situation. A lie, on the other hand, is clean, it is tight, it is tied in a bow and it never changes, it is easier for lazy people to digest and it appeals to the masses who are lazy regarding growing their inner life and maturing their spiritual health.

The words above could shatter what many people think, especially the second sentence. What could Rabbi Heschel possibly mean when he says “to be what one wants to be is also not freedom”? Isn’t freedom all about ‘being who one wants to be’? Don’t we learn “you can be anything you want to be” from an early age? Are we really trapped when we want “to be” anything we want to be? Of course it is not black and white, there is so much nuance to these words and Rabbi Heschel is correct, I believe! We are so caught up in self when we want “to be” what we want to be that we miss a lot of sign posts, a lot of danger warnings on the road to our ‘being ourselves’ and we often miss the truth about ourselves, the call of our inner life and the success of being human that each and every person has within themselves. We are witnessing today, as we have throughout the history of humankind, the challenge of dealing with our own egos and the egos of another(s). There are many malignant narcissists leading business, governments (Federal, state, and local) in countries across the world. There are many malignant narcissists who are heads of households and hold their children and their spouses captive while they “be” who they want to be at home. There are many on Boards of Directors of religious and non-profit institutions who’s egos are being fed by their power and their “good works” which maybe are not so good because they are serving their egos before serving the needs of another. Clergy as Symbolic Exemplar is a similar trap. Many people go into jobs, careers in all fields including the Clergy as just that-a job, a place to have power, respect, to hide and this is not freedom at all. We have see the effects of this way of being with the widespread clergy misconduct that has been publicized and has been swept under the rug, the alcoholism, addiction, sexual misconduct that clergy and other people in power have committed, When we look at the toxic masculinity that is having a resurgence, the “me too” movement that went too far with accusations that hurt innocent people, the racists and anti-semites in the minority communities fighting one another, the common denominator is ‘freedom to be who we truly are’ when these same people haven’t a clue as to who they are and they are spiritually immature and taking their spiritual maladies out on whomever is near and convenient.

We the People are being called by the words above, by the teachings of all spiritual disciplines, by the Voice on Sinai that is constantly calling to WAKE UP! There is a demand in the universe for truth and for freedom, real freedom and, while we will never get completely free, the path to this goal is laid out for us and it is not through our ego, through our money, through our lies, through our grift, through our strength, etc. They only path for us to reach the goal of “Freedom” is through our inner life, through our souls. Think about Nelson Mandela, he was freer in his prison cell than the guards who were guarding him, the same is true for many others, yours truly included. Everyone doesn’t have to be arrested to find spiritual maturity and everyone needs to “grow along spiritual lines” if we want to be free. Our egos and our wills will never stop being influenced by outside issues and forces, this is not the point. Rabbi Heschel is calling to us, as I hear him this morning, to mitigate these outside forces and not be enslaved by them, to end our checking on ‘which way the wind is blowing’ before making a decision to act, to do the next right thing no matter how we think or feel, to live into the holiness code and learn from the stories in the Bible the best path to take and not be held captive by our egos and wills, by the whims of society, by the desires and needs of the malignant narcissists in our lives. We the People can do this by finding teachers and guides that help us discover the truth within ourselves, help us hear the music of our souls better and play the score that our inner life is writing. Our inner life and our souls make symphonies that rival the greatest composers and most of us are tone deaf to them-this is the tragedy that We the People suffer from daily.

I continue to grow along spiritual lines, I know when I am enslaved by ego and will and I work hard to not be ruled by them and I am not always successful. I continue to seek spiritual guidance, spiritual growth through study, via spiritual guidance, via being of service to another, via this blog. I am not the “to be” I dreamed of as a kid and my life is so much better for it! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Are you sowing the seeds of freedom's destruction because of your compulsions? Year 4 Day 66

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 66

“The danger begins when freedom is thought to consist in the fact that “I can act as I desire.” This definition not only overlooks the compulsions which often lie behind our desires; it reveals the tragic truth that freedom may develop within itself the seed of its own destruction.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.14)

I began to listen to President Trump’s address to the Joint Session of Congress and I had to stop- his denigration of the Democrats, President Biden, his praise of the way he treats the people and countries that have been our allies, friends and partners and his joy at firing people, like he is on his ‘reality’ TV show were too much. I watched the sycophants of the Republican Party praise him, I watched Mike Johnson call for decorum while praising the release of the people who brought destruction to the Halls of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, it was just too much for me. It brought the opening quote to life in a most powerful way and the cautionary words of Rabbi Heschel’s that I am delving into today.

I want to make very clear, Donald Trump is not the biggest problem facing Americans today, nor is Elon Musk, RFK Jr., et al. The biggest problem we are facing as Americans is that we are not looking into the dark “compulsions which often lie behind our desires”. Trump, Musk, the Republican sycophants, are just giving into these “compulsions” as are the people who believe every word these lying grifters are saying. All of the hullabaloo around tariffs, firings, etc-while real and necessary, is masking the real issue facing all of us. We, the People are engaged in a denial of the “compulsions which often lie behind our desires”, we seem to be willfully blind to how we are participating in growing “the seed of its own destruction”. I sit at my computer each day, I read a few sentences from Rabbi Heschel’s vast wealth of writings (haven’t touched the unpublished works, the works in magazines, etc) and I wonder how we have wound up so far from our roots, so far from the ideal as portrayed by the prophets, so far from our own basic goodness of being, so far from the words of the Bible propelling us to care for one another, to “love your neighbor as yourself”, to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

One of the ways we have wound up here, I believe, is that we have not raised the souls of our children, just as many of our parents did not raise our souls. We and they raised our minds, our bodies, our emotions and, the most important part of every human being, the soul, our spirit, were ignored! This is not an indictment of parenting nor parents, it is just a fact that I have observed over my 70+ years of being alive. We allow our children to go to religious schools, to Temple, Church, Mosque and when they come home they see the opposite of the behaviors and ways of being they are learning. We give over the spiritual education and maturing to a group of people, Clergy, who themselves in most cases are spiritually immature, who are more into dogma than spirit, who “act as I desire” and call it “god’s will”, who promote a xenophobic, nationalistic, prejudice that has torn our country apart in earlier times and is tearing us apart right now. Maimonidies, the famous 10th Century Jewish philosopher, teacher, physician, wrote a treatise called “Shemonah Perakim” which goes into great detail about the spiritual sickness human beings fall prey to and how “the physician of the soul” is to help them heal their spiritual malady. At issue for him is that most people who are spiritually sick don’t believe themselves to be and need the “physician of the soul” to diagnose them. Today, these people are supposed to be the Clergy people and most Clergy are too afraid, too drunk on the Kool-Aid of the dogma of their faith, too afraid to stir the pot and piss off their board of directors and lose their job, to stand up and BE the “physicians of the soul” that are needed in this moment.

We, the People need to demand more from the Clergy of our time, in our neighborhoods. These are the people who should be leading the march on Tesla and across the country as the Clergy did at Selma, Alabama 50 years ago this month! We the People need to do our own introspection into the “compulsions” that underlie our indifference to the undoing of freedom that we are engaging in politically, morally, individually, and spiritually. We, the People are needed to stand up to the lies we are telling ourselves, to the ‘worms’ in our brains that are convincing us that bad is good, that up is down, that lying and grifting is truth and generosity, that stealing is giving, that hating is loving, that treating people as animals, calling them “vermin” is welcoming the stranger, that cutting Medicaid and other social service programs is caring for the poor, the needy, etc. We the People have to begin again to heal these “compulsions which often lie behind our desires” we have to recognize “the tragic truth that freedom may(has) develop within itself the seed of its own destruction”. We are witnessing it today, the breakdown of spiritual health is due to our unwillingness to engage in soul work, to honor the wisdom of our souls, of our “gut instinct”, and follow the truth especially when it is inconvenient. We the People have “become fat and kicked…forsook God and ignored God’s rock of Salvation”(Deuteronomy 32:15). We the People need to “return…and I will heal your faithlessness”(Jeremiah 3:22), we need to hear the words of Hosea, chapter 14:2-5, ringing in our ears, tasting them in our mouths and guiding our hands and feet:”return to God for you have stumbled in your iniquity…I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely”. We the People are being called by the words above, by the forces of the Cosmos, by the stirrings of our souls and our hearts, to heal our spiritual maladies, to return to the person we are meant to be, to be the divine need only we can fill.

I have been engaged in this quest for spiritual health for 38 years, since Rabbi Mel Silverman became my teacher in prison. Each of my spiritual guides, along with my constant companionship with Rabbi Heschel- keep me disturbed! I can never rest on my laurels or accomplishments because there is always more spiritual growth to engage in. My first spiritual guide was my father and his death caused me to be spiritually bereft and I did not recover from that trauma until some 22 years later. My diagnosis of the problem for most people today comes from my experience of being adrift after his death and my years of helping thousands of people find their spiritual health and live productive lives. I refuse to buy into the lies and the subterfuge of societal norms, I stand against the ‘good people’ on the ‘right side’ who are still spreading spiritual disease so they can have power and prestige-on the right and left. I believe we can heal and I commit to continue to help. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Is "I can act as I desire" your definition of Freedom? Year 4 Day 65

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 65

“The danger begins when freedom is thought to consist in the fact that “I can act as I desire.” This definition not only overlooks the compulsions which often lie behind our desires; it reveals the tragic truth that freedom may develop within itself the seed of its own destruction.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.14)

Considering these words were written in 1958 and Ike was in the White House with Nixon as his VP and today we have Trump as President and Vance as VP, these words seem very prescient.

The first sentence about is the result of poor education, poor upbringing, poor religious education and the “do as I say, not as I do” school of parenting, teaching, living. I am thinking of my 9th grade Civics Teacher, Ed Roach, his memory is a blessing, who taught us that first and foremost: freedom, citizenship is based on our ability to be responsible to both, that they are responsibilities as well as rights, that the Bill of Rights doesn’t give us carte blanche, it sets up for us a way of being that holds us responsible to live truthfully, respectfully, and with another’s well-being in mind. He would take a group of us to Washington DC each winter break and we would visit the monuments, the Halls of Congress, the Smithsonian, etc to see what it takes to keep “freedom” alive and well. It seems as if the current occupant of the White House never learned these truths, never has felt responsible for anything except his imaginary success.

This “I can act as I desire” is one of the fallacies that many people grow up with, especially among the “privileged elite”. While the Republicans speak about elites in such derogatory terms, they are actually the ruling members of the “elite”. They graduated from ‘top’ schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton, etc; they sit in their offices buying politicians and supporting the right-wing agendas that lower taxes for them, only; that deregulate their businesses so they “can act as I desire” and not held accountable; proclaiming their ‘love of god/christ’ they continue to want to gut all social safety net programs for the poor and middle class. Of course, in today’s Republican Party, they also believe that Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, are here to be subservient, that we are all ‘second-class’ or ‘third world’ people who come from “shithole counties” as Trump has expressed. Musk, Trump, Vance want America to become what South Africa was: an apartheid state; a state where “those people” know their place; a place where dictatorship is good, true freedom is bad; where “If I want it, I can take it and if I do it, it must be legal” is the prevailing ethic(?).

The idea expressed in the first sentence above is not a new one, it is not only in politics, it is also very prevalent in our everyday living. The Bible is an antidote to this way of thinking and being-yet it is being used to fortify the lie expressed in the first sentence. It is being used to fortify the bastardization of freedom, to put us deeper and deeper into the “the danger” Rabbi Heschel is warning us about. Because We, the People and our religious and educational leaders have failed to promote “true freedom” to us, our children and grandchildren, we find ourselves in the predicaments of today: our government giving itself over to Putin; people believing the lies of the ‘charismatic leader’; being spiritually sick and not realizing it; clergy helping lead us into the spiritual sickness that will end our freedoms; etc. Rabbi Heschel’s “In a free society, some are guilty all are responsible” is ringing in my ears, my soul right now. We, the People have failed to “guard and do” the ‘laws’, the upkeep of being free and, because of our laziness, our arrogance, we are in danger of losing it all to a buffoon, to a racist and antisemitic foreigner, to a hillbilly asshole who looks good and to a ‘christian nationalist’ who seeks power for himself and his cronies and a loud-mouth ‘street’ fighter who has degrees from Georgetown and Harvard!

We, the People have to take our own inventory, see our own responsibility in the demise of our freedoms, stop blaming everyone else and clean up our own house. We, the People are in desperate need of doing a 4th and 5th step as we say in AA, of doing T’Shuvah as laid out in the Jewish Tradition: doing our inventory or hearing the rebuke of our behaviors from another, finding ways to repair the damages we have wrought, owning up to our errors to the people we have harmed, making whatever restitution necessary to make them whole, and creating new paths so we don’t do the exact same thing again-creating new neural pathways so we can leave the bonds of slavery to old ideas and ways; confession and contrition in the Christian world are very similar to both the Jewish way and the AA way-so no matter whether one is an adherent to a religious path or a spiritual path-there is a way to avoid the “danger” to “freedom” from erroneous thinking and “privileged actions”.

Our legal system, our moral system, our constitutional system and our religious systems have failed us badly and the payment has come due, it seems. What we have to remember is that all of these systems depend on human beings-us-to function and to work well. All of these failures are laid at our feet because We, the People have been responsible to make them work well, to hold those in charge accountable and to stand up for and to fight for the “hard-won freedoms” that our fathers, our ancestors fought for and some gave their “last full measure” for. Be it Washington’s farewell address, Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, FDR’s “Four Freedoms” State of the Union address, Kennedy’s Ask not what your country can do for you Inaugural address-we have been given fair warning what would happen if we failed to hear, guard and do what is necessary so that “Let Freedom Ring” stays a constant. Just as in the Bible, what people call vengeance on God’s part is actually just prophecy, telling what will befall us when/if we turn away from our soul’s calling, our inner life’s knowing, God’s suggestions on how to live well. We are living in these predictions, living in the wreckage of our past errors of arrogance, of far left/far right policy wars, of our desire to be deceived. The question is will we come out the other side or will we lose our “freedom” because of our negligence and a bunch of grifters taking advantage of same.

I know these “dangers” because I lived them and now I don’t. I received a Pardon from Governor Newsom last week as recognition of my way of being sober, decent, of service. I needed a pardon because of falling into the danger Rabbi Heschel articulates above. I believe in “freedom” and I will fight to my last for “freedom for all” and I pray you will also. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

How do you define and live "Freedom"? Year 4 Day 64

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 64

“We all share a supreme devotion to the hard-won freedoms of the American people. Yet to be worthy of retaining our freedoms we must not lose our understanding of the essential nature of freedom. Freedom means more than mere emancipation. It is primarily freedom of conscience, bound up with inner allegiance.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 14)

I am not sure that the first sentence above still holds true. To “share a supreme devotion” means to “consecrate”, to be loyal to, to hold dear, “the hard-won freedoms of the American people”. In today’s America, we are witnessing the smashing of these freedoms, some by a sledge hammer or chain saw (thank you Elon Musk) and some by a 1000 little cuts. “Consecrate” brings to mind a ‘religious’ connotation and, while it is important in my opinion to have a spiritual connection, every drop of blood shed for this country’s freedom from the Civil War through WWII is a showing of this “supreme devotion”. Yet, according to people who witnessed Trump’s musing about the military, calling them losers, this devotion is no longer valued in the MAGA America. The Republican controlled Congress also has lost their “supreme devotion to the hard-won freedoms of the American people”, even the ones they fought for! Remember it was a Republican, President Teddy Roosevelt, who was called the “Trust-buster”; a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves; a Republican, Ronald Reagan, who told Gorbachev “tear the wall down” and would never call a dictator ‘his friend’.

The focal point for me of the wisdom above is: “we must not lose our understanding of the essential nature of freedom. Freedom means more than emancipation. It is primarily freedom of conscience, bound up with inner allegiance.” As we are approaching Passover in 6 weeks, as we read in the weekly Torah portions about what is happening after our exodus from Egypt, we are reminded that “freedom” is an event. It happens for the first time in the Jewish story at Mount Sinai. While we call Passover “Z’man Heyrutanu”, the season of freedom/liberation, the Passover experience of leaving Egypt is simply and only liberation. Freedom does not occur until we reach Mt. Sinai when we proclaim our “allegiance” with and to God. With our “allegiance” to and with God and one another, we are able to make “free-will moral choices” and without “allegiance” to something greater than ourselves, we are not-a simple and complex way of being. Yet too many people believe that “Freedom” means only “emancipation” which is very ironic as those people, like Trump, MAGA, Project 2025, etc want to enslave everyone else to serve them, to pay for their lifestyles, to grovel at their feet, as displayed on Friday in that horrific, embarrassing scene in the Oval Office by Vance and Trump and then the ass-kissing by Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and other Republican officials. How far we have fallen from the experience at Gettysburg: “We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.”

“Freedom of conscience” is what was given to us at Mount Sinai. It was given to us in the form of Torah, of the stories as well as the “path to walk down”, aka Halacha. Without the knowing of what is right and good, without the ability to choose something other than our self-serving, self-centered, base desires, there can be no “freedom”, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel today. We also learn that each of us has an inner knowing, that every human being is endowed with the “spirit of God” just as Adam and Eve were in their creation. Without an “inner allegiance” to the words spoken at Sinai, without an “inner allegiance” to the Bible, to the Constitution, we easily and quickly sink into the abyss of mis-information, the abyss of believing the “big lie”, the abyss of ‘the one with the gold rules’ rather than caring for the stranger, rather than “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, rather than seeking truth. Of our own ‘free will’ the American people voted in as President a person who told us who he is, a narcissistic egomaniac, and who told us he would be a dictator on day 1. Rather than having “allegiance” to the “conscience” of America, rather than having “devotion” to the Constitution, the current ‘leaders’ of America are devoted to themselves, have “allegiance” to money and power, have jettisoned the words and demands of the Bible so they have lost their “conscience” and pay no attention to the call of their inner lives.

We the People have to stand up, we have to march, we have to protest, we have to show our “conscience”. We have to call out our “devotion” to principles that match the call of our souls, of our inner life. We have to engage our “conscience” in all of our affairs. We have to recall the Sinai Experience, we have to recall the experiences of Egypt, of Assyria, of Babylonia, of our wandering throughout the 1700 years between the loss of Jerusalem, the crucifixion of Christ and the American Revolution. Only when we won our “freedom” from England could we begin to dream of being free, only when the Constitution was amended and ratified could we begin to live into the freedom of choice, the freedoms of religion, press, assembly, protest, and speech. It is up to We, the People to call upon Congress, to call our State Houses, to march in the streets, to donate any and all causes which support our “hard-won freedoms”. It is up to We the People to stand up for the stranger, the needy, the poor, the widow and the orphan. We, the People are being called to assemble, we are being reminded of what happens when the ‘king’ allows his second-in-command to take a wrecking ball to the people who helped make Shushan great again, who helped save Egypt, who assisted Ferdinand and Isabella, who stood with Lenin… We, the People are the only ones who can preserve what our ancestors, our founding fathers, our parents and grandparents fought for in WWII-“freedom of conscience, bound up with inner allegiance”.

I have fought against the bullshit of Trump, MAGA for most of my life-as a kid I couldn’t stand that rich ‘assholes’ were more important than good people, they had more say and sway. As a person in recovery, I still can’t stand that this is true and my Rabbinate is all about helping people find their “inner allegiance”, their inner freedom. As we approach the Season of our Liberation, I think about what I am truly loyal to, not just what I say I am  loyal to. I have remained loyal to the principles of Judaism, I have stayed loyal to my “Sinai experience” in a jail cell in Dec. 1986, I have stayed loyal to the people who helped me, I have stayed loyal to the call of my soul. Not perfectly and mostly. I live into the “freedom of conscience, bound up with an inner allegiance” to something greater than myself and I feel a little freer each and every day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

How are you going along with the societal norms of fatalism and inertia? Year 4 Day 63

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 63

“Judaism is forever engaged in a battle against man’s deeply rooted belief in fatalism and its ensuing inertia in social, moral, and spiritual conditions. Abraham started in rebellion agains his father and the gods of his time. His great distinction was not in being loyal and conforming, buy in defying and initiating.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 14)

Reading these words, thinking about the world in 1958 and now, I am fearful that “Judaism” is losing its “battle against man’s deeply rooted belief in fatalism”. We are witnessing the destruction of the norms of democracy as we have known it, the destruction of the defense of the constitution as we have seen administrations protect it before, the cruelty of a wannabe “mafia don” and his henchmen who are using him for their gain, for their power, and will kill him when they succeed, just like in the movies and real life. “Don Trump” learned nothing from the betrayal of “Sammy the Bull” it seems and, most importantly, the ‘christian’ nationalists selling of their fatalism, “christian” idolators selling “fatalism” and the “inertia” that comes along with it to their ‘flocks’ has led so many people to be deceived sheep who are happy to have their medicaid slashed, their social safety nets destroyed, their freedom’s greatly limited so the “don” and his ‘capos’ can enrich themselves-after all we all know that the “family” has to ‘wet its beak’ at the cost to the masses!

What is so deeply saddening is that the words above were not heeded in 1958 nor subsequently and we are paying for our ignoring them now. The bill has come due and, just as the Israelites in Egypt, we still think we are immune from the consequences of not paying our debt, not protecting freedom “to all its inhabitants therein”, and our slow-walking into servitude. This is so apparent in the ways the ADL has ‘gone over to the other side’ by defending Musk, setting up a fund that is investing in Tesla, Amazon, etc so it can stand up against the myriad of anti-semitic assaults on Jews in America. It could be called ironic, I call it fucking ridiculous that the ADL is willing to support and defend a Nazi sympathizer, a racist from South Africa and his companies in order to ‘make money’ which they say is going to fight the very core of this asshole’s being! Give me a break!! Not to be outdone, an Orthodox group Israel365 is honoring that “great zionist” Steve Bannon-an avowed white supremacist! Somehow, these frumma Yidden (strict Jews) , these “grossa machers” (big shots) have twisted Torah, Bible, Jewish History into such a pretzel, that they believe people who act like the Pharaoh and his courtiers did in the first chapters of Exodus, people who adhere to a way of being that has resulted in terrible experiences for Jews are “our friends”!!! Talk about “inertia in social, moral, and spiritual conditions”! WTF???!!

I am trolled by people who believe the bullshit of Israel365, Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL and other right-wing Jews, who believe the mendacity of Bibi and his gang of thugs, and I say-God Bless you and I pray every day for your eyes to be opened before it is too late. It is a tragedy when we realize not only that our heroes and people we count on to protect and defend our freedoms, our rights, our faith betray us. Here, we have the people who are telling us who they are, how they will betray us and so many Jews are living in the “inertia in (their) social, moral and spiritual conditions”. We, the People are being called today and everyday by our faith, by our spiritual discipline of Judaism to fight against the “fatalism” being promoted by so-called ‘religious leaders’, by so-called ‘defenders of Israel’, by so-called ‘freedom fighters of MAGA’. It is time for We, the People to relearn the lessons of Abraham’s life. It is time for We, the People to be in “rebellion against the fathers and the gods of his time” and stand up for The Ineffable One, stand up for the way of being the Bible teaches us, stand up and rebel against even God when God is unjust-as Abraham did in Sodom and Gomorrah. It is time for We, the People to say NO to the YOKE OF TRUMP, MUSK, MAGA, BIBI, PUTIN and YES to accepting the Yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven!

There is only one way to do this- let go of our need to be liked, let go of our need to enrich ourselves at the cost of our souls, let go of the voice of perfection that rattles around in our minds, let go of the voice of shame and blame that is a constant companion and gets exploited by the grifters, let go the fears being exploited by the deceivers in order to control us. This letting go of our worst fears means we are no longer controlled by them and no longer can our vulnerabilities be used against us-the ultimate evil practiced by one human towards another. All of the dictators, fascist leaders, communist leaders have used people’s vulnerabilities against them and created an atmosphere of evil and suspicion. We the People have to say NO to these liars and YES to CHOOSE LIFE.

We do this by enhancing our spiritual condition. “Judaism” is a path towards wholeness and spiritual health. It is a way out of our “fatalism” and it doesn’t allow us to live in inertia. Each mitzvah, each “thou shall” and “thou shall not” are for our continued growth and to help us with our poor eyesight. While some faiths promote a fatalism that teaches ‘this is your lot in life and the next world will be better’, Judaism reminds us that we all have choices, we can “proclaim freedom”, we can do T’Shuvah and change, we can repair our old errors and ways, we can welcome the stranger, care for the poor and the needy, redeem the captives, “love our neighbor as we love ourselves”, we can live the hope of the psalmist, the passion of the prophets and the courage of Abraham, we can follow the leadership of Moses and reject the lies of Korach. We have these choices and the only way to make them is to get our own “social, moral and spiritual conditions” in order. We the People are in desperate need of spiritual counseling, not just therapy. We need to have a “Physician of the Soul”, as Maimonidies writes, to help us do a deep cleaning of our spiritual arteries and clear out the plaque that has made our spiritual veins so constricted that the “fatalism” and “inertia” of the mendacious ones sound true! We, the People have the opportunity to take heed to the words above and take the nest right action right here, right now.

I have fought this battle for my whole life and, for a period of 23 years-15-37, I lost the battle and everyone around me, people I never knew were harmed greatly. Since I have accepted and engaged with Judaism on the level Rabbi Heschel is speaking about, I have benefited greatly from spiritual counseling and continue to offer it to another(s) for their benefit and their ability to ward off the liars and idolators. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

What makes lies and loyalty to personalities so appealing to humanity? Year 4 Day 62

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 62

“We are taught to prefer truth to security, to maintain loyalty even at the price of being in the minority. It is inner freedom that gives man the strength to forgo security, the courage to remain lonely in the multitude.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.13-14)

Reading these words, thinking about a seminar being held about Religion in a Free Society, looking at the great people of history, and seeing what is happening today is truly a shock to one’s system and, for people of faith, a betrayal of everything that is holy and good!

The “conventional notion/wisdom” today is to lie and keep lying, to shout the lies from the rooftops, use one’s wits and deception to speak to the lowest common denominator to get ‘our people’ to join in the spreading of lies and misinformation. When the Tea Party was formed, it was because there was a Black man in the White House, not because they actually wanted to govern. The leaders of MAGA have no use for governing, only grifting and creating more wealth for themselves and their cronies. We are watching good people who know better twist themselves into pretzels to defend their wrong doings because rather than “prefer truth to security”, they are preferring security to truth-watch some of the town halls Republican House members are having. We are in grave danger of abdicating the examples, the lessons, the wisdom of the prophets, of Moses, of Jesus for “security” that will turn out to be our ruin.

This situation doesn’t happen just because there is a leader like Trump, Putin,  Bibi, et al, it doesn’t happen because their lies are so wonderful and their ability to baffle us with bullshit is on such a great level. NO, the truth is that these grifters, these liars, these deceivers and dictators/mafia bosses only can flourish when We, the People allow them to, buy into their lies, seek to be deceived, and harbor resentments that get fed by the mendacity of a great deceiver. The real issue is our inability, our unwillingness “to maintain loyalty even at the price of being in the minority.” Our need to ‘fit in’ takes precedence over our call to “maintain loyalty” to something greater than ourselves. We are watching the same story over and over again, human beings sacrifice their loyalty to principles, to values, to the foundational wisdoms and freedoms that our ancestors had when they formed the ancient lands of Israel, Judea. The prophets railed against the deceivers of their times, they forfeited their own “security” to speak truth to power, they knew they were in the minority and they spoke out anyway. The examples of the prophets need to be spoken about and studied in all times and especially now: their is a call in everyone’s inner life to speak truth, to live in truth and this need is greater than our need for security, because without truth We, the People are never secure. Please allow this to sink in.

FOMO is a real thing today-fear of missing out- and this way of being gives us cover to deceive ourselves into going along to be with the ‘in-crowd’, with the ‘power-brokers’, to have ‘a seat at the table’. Yet, it also, usually, requires us to let go of our loyalty to spiritual truths, spiritual practices, the foundational principles of faith and the Bible. Trump, Putin, Bibi all are laughing up their sleeves at the ‘religious’ people who flock to them and call them ‘savior’, ‘precursor to the messiah’, ‘sent by god’, and other such bullshit. The MAGA masses are slowly learning the truth about the 2025 project that Trump denied knowing about on the Campaign trail and has implemented in these first 45 days with reckless abandon. When their Medicaid is cut, when their Social Security is raped, what will they say-these ‘loyalists’? Their votes come from feelings of betrayal because they believed that as white people(for the most part) they would always have privilege over ‘those people’ and the ‘jews’ in charge would be put in their place, etc. I tis because of the Religious Establishment who have engaged in deception and lies, in hatred and bigotry that these untruths have been allowed to flourish over the centuries, here and around the globe. The Religious Establishment of all faiths have twisted the Bible to their needs, they have bastardized the stories, made perfect heroes out of flawed people, taken phrases out of context and made religion a burden of bullshit rather than the beauty of truth, wisdom it is.

We, the People must return to the ways of the prophets, to the ways of Jesus, to the ways of Rev. King and Rabbi Heschel, the ways of the Hassidic masters, and all of the great spiritual leaders before and since. These entail speaking truth to oneself as well as to another(s), seeing what is true and right, what is really happening that is not true and right and speaking out about it. We, the People, have to do our own T’Shuvah, seeing where we have fallen out of truth, where and when we do not “maintain loyalty” and amend our ways, find the path to freedom through truth and loyalty to principles. We find our “inner freedom” by doing our own Chesbon HaNefesh-our accounting of our souls and this “inner freedom” leads to the outer freedom of speaking up and out, not falling for the deceptions of another(s), being more concerned about “truth” than “security” for without being true to oneself, there is never any security; we are always in fear of being found out! “Maintain loyalty” to the call of one’s inner life, to the call of our higher consciousness is the path of freedom, it is the path of our ancestors, it is the path laid out for us in the Bible and every time one of our ‘heroes’ forgets this-disaster happens. King David is a prime example of this as are the Kings that followed him leading to the ‘lost tribes’ and the destruction of the Temples. Is this really the stories We, the People want to keep engaging in over and over again? We, the People of this moment can change our narratives and the lies we tell ourselves, will you?

I live in truth and when I am not in truth, or I am not sure of being in truth, I feel it in my guts. I am troubled and loud, sometimes accusatory, and I have to do my own tshuvah to find out my part in whatever is happening. I still react and blame first at times and then come back to “maintain loyalty” with the principles I accepted and have helped me grow into being a better human being. It is difficult to not go along with the majority and I know I am in the minority and accept that living in truth is the only “security” that is truly available to me. All other “security” is smoke and mirrors. I am grateful for Governor Newsom granting me a Pardon on Wednesday evening and I am grateful to and for everyone who supported this pardon with letters and love. I am firm in holding onto truth, even when it proves me wrong and to maintaining loyalty to principles as the path to inner freedom. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Comment

Comment

Freedom is the ability to choose, to act, to love and a constant obligation! Year 4 Day 61

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 61

“He is told to abhor self-complacency, to enjoy freedom of choice. He has been given life and death, good and evil, and is urged to choose, to discriminate. Yet freedom is not only the ability to choose and to act, but also the ability to will, to love. The predominant features of Jewish teaching throughout the ages is a sense of constant obligation.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

In the words bolded above, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that “freedom” is more that our ‘doing our own thing’, being ‘free’ to do as we wish. Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word “ability” is interesting to me. I hear him asking us to realize our “ability to choose and to act” doesn’t mean do what we want to do, it means we have “the ability to will, to love”. In other words, any actions that go against our “will”, our intuitive minds, our soul’s cravings is probably not true “freedom”, hence the last sentence above. Living in “a sense of constant obligation” could be anxiety producing, (look at how many Jews go to therapists:) and in is, the essence of “freedom” according to my reading of the Torah. After the Israelites/slaves left Egypt-they went from being slaves to completely doing what they wanted to, they had no ‘instruction’ manual, they were being led by Moses and, given how many people were on that journey, the people who were not right in front didn’t hear much from him directly-it was a game of telephone. It was only when we reached Mt. Sinai, where the Aleph of Anochi was ‘spoken’ that everyone heard the essence of the Ineffable One. It was only at Sinai that our “freedom” began. Up until then, we did not have choice, we did not know any different that to be ruled by our emotions, by our rational thinking, we were even afraid to dream so as to not be broken hearted once again. Once we accepted the way of decency, morality, ethics, spirituality, we gained the “ability” to make free-will moral choices; which had been impossible up until then.

This is an important point in our ways of being. Just like a child who doesn’t know what is good and what is not good, the Bible shows us that people need to learn about “will, love” as actions of “freedom” not rebellion. We are able “to choose and to act” as assholes, as pernicious, as deniers, liars, grifters, we are able “to choose and to act” as oligarchs, as dictators, as idiots, as addicts, as, as, as…! Yet, this is not the “freedom” of one who has “a sense of constant obligation”. This was a radical experience for the Biblical human being that occurred after Sinai and throughout the wanderings in the Desert. Holding on to this radical experience, this inheritance has proven difficult for Jews and non-Jews alike. Jewish people have called obsessive exacting attention to detail over the 613 commandments fulfilling their “constant obligation”. I disagree, in Genesis Rabbah, we are taught that “every day God makes new laws in the Heavenly Court” - why are we bound by the ones from 200 years ago?

“The ability to will, to love” is the “constant obligation” that makes us free as I immerse myself in Rabbi Heschel’s words above. Of course, the goal is to fuse our will with God’s will, to surrender our need to be right to the spiritual truths and forces that hover over us at all times. Yet, even the ‘religious’ zealots have forgotten this goal, as the Talmud teaches us the Rabbis told God to fuck off when God showed signs that the Rabbi they were in opposition to kept being supported by God’s signs in the Tanour Shel Achni story. This is, unfortunately, a common action by human beings ever since. In the desert, there were wrong choices and actions and there was acknowledgment that they went against the will of God, the Rabbis of the Talmud and many ever since, have bent the will of God to meet their will instead of the other way around, as have most people. Instead of asking ‘where is/was God’ in Germany, Rwanda, Bosnia, on October 7, 2023, we should be asking where were we? Why did We, the People not take the next right action, why did We, the People not listen to the calls of our souls, the messages of people around us who told us to get out, to stop stirring the pot of hatred between peoples, to stop funding Hamas’ terrorism, etc? These are questions that no one wants to respond to, because it shows how enslaved we are to our emotions, to our rationalizations, to our lies.

We, the People are being called to live into the “constant obligation” of ensuring “freedom” for ourselves and for humanity in today’s quotation and in today’s happenings in our world. We, the People have to renew our sense of “constant obligation” to mean we are needed, we are wanted by the force of the universe to ensure that “freedom” is not only proclaimed throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein, “freedom” that is in concert with the 10 sayings, with the ways the Torah lays out using our lived experience to these paths. “Freedom” is not doing life the same way life was lived in Ancient Judea, nor in the ways that caused the destruction of the Northern Kingdom nor the loss of the Temples, Judea and made us wanderers once again from 70AD till 1948. “Freedom” is our “ability to love” one another whether we like or agree with one another. It doesn’t say “like your neighbor”, it doesn’t say agree with one another, it says to “love our neighbor as ourselves”. This is a “constant obligation” that is rarely fulfilled, unfortunately. We, the People are being called to stand up for the “freedoms” the Bible gives to us, the ability to “make Free-Will Moral choices” as Rabbi Twerski teaches, the “ability to will” so that our will becomes like God’s will as Rabbi Tarfon teaches in Pirke Avot. We, the People need to come together once again, we need to re-visit the Sinai experience this Passover-not as a historical fact, rather as a call to action. We, the People in our preparations for Purim have to remember there will always be those out to kill us, either literally or spiritually-are you listening BIBI? We, the People, have to gather at Passover to once again be like the Rabbis at B’nai Barak, planning the revolution against the new Roman Emperor and his minions-Trump, Musk, Putin, Bibi and how we are going to once again ensure that a “government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth”? Otherwise, since the Revolutionary War, all those brave men and women who died for our freedoms, all the immigrants who faced brutal conditions on ships and once they landed in the “golden Medina” have all died in vain and this is the greatest desecration of God’s name and the height of Avodah Zarah, idolatry!

I fight to ensure that I keep it fresh, I keep using the principles to fuel my “constant obligation” and it brings me joy, a feeling of accomplishment, a sense of failing forward. I am living in “freedom” of choice, actions, will and love more each day! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

The Anxiety and Demands Freedom of Choice brings - Year 4 Day 60

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 60

“He is told to abhor self-complacency, to enjoy freedom of choice. He has been given life and death, good and evil, and is urged to choose, to discriminate. Yet freedom is not only the ability to choose and to act, but also the ability to will, to love. The predominant features of Jewish teaching throughout the ages is a sense of constant obligation.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

The phrase “self-complacency” is defined to mean: “a strong sense of satisfaction with yourself especially when this prevents you from having sympathy or empathy for another”. WOW, can you imagine living like this?! We see this all the time and here is Rabbi Heschel some 60+ years ago, calling us out on our behaviors. We encounter so many people who live in this manner-even those who are not so happy, so wealthy find they have a “strong sense of satisfaction” with what they are doing  and are kept down by society, by someone else-hence the blame game never ends. When our elected officials living in self-complacency, as they are right now, they think nothing of passing a resolution to cut the services to the poor, to the needy-after all, these are ‘god-fearing men and women’ who read their Bible every day and nothing gets through their thick shields, their souls. Rather than “enjoy freedom of choice”, many people would rather stay in their self-complacency. This is the bane of our existence-the belief that “only I can fix it”, because buying into the self-complacency of another leaves us open and vulnerable to the whims, the horrors of their behaviors with no ready defense against it, as we have seen throughout history.

Yet, “freedom of choice” seems to produce undo anxiety in people. We are a species who do not want to be told what to do by some God and we are willing to be sheep to the shepherds that have presented themselves like; Attila the Hun, the Pharaohs of Egypt,  the Emperors of Rome, Ferdinand and Isabella, Hitler and the Nazis, Stalin, Putin, Ayatollahs, Trump, Musk, Bibi. Look where being sheep has led us-only to destruction, despair, war, and then, finally, to revolution and a new opportunity to “enjoy freedom of choice”. As Rabbi Heschel says above: we “have been given life and death, good and evil” which is found in Deuteronomy 30:19. The call is to “choose life” which entails freedom to find out we made the wrong choice and repair the damage we have done because of it, change our ways, learn from our mistakes and have a plan not to repeat them again. Yet, those who self-complacent and those who are spiritually immature that follow them like lap dogs, don’t believe in their ability to be wrong, admitting they make a mistake is anathema to them and, these are the people who have led humanity into great wars and massive destruction. And people hear the same things over and over again from Attila til now and “when will we ever learn”, a Pete Seeger refrain, is the question We, the People have to ask ourselves.

We are also being called “to choose, to discriminate” which is an important coupling of ideas. Discriminate is defined as: “recognize a distinction; differentiate” and perceive or constitute the difference in or between. In Hebrew, the word for discriminate also means to examine, to test, to check, as in “check one’s heart”. In the words above as in Deuteronomy, we are being told that to “enjoy freedom”, to “choose”, we also have to know what we are choosing. While it is within our power to choose evil, while it is within our power to go along to get along, the mandate, the demand from God, from our Higher Consciousness is to “choose life”. This means we are being “discriminate” in our choices, we are letting go of our “self-complacency” which we need to “abhor” otherwise the magnetic pull seems so strong we are unable to resist, and we need to be guided by the principles of freedom-community, love, concern for one another, caring for the needy and poor, healing of the sick, accompanying the dead, celebrating the bride and groom, seeing the basic goodness of being in people and rebuking them when they are not living up to these principles as well as experiencing someone rebuking us as love and deep faith in our ability to be better, to live into our divine image, to our soul’s calling.

Throughout history “to discriminate” has meant keeping people out, putting people into camps and groups that don’t deserve the same as we do. From antiquity till now, this is how people have ruled and kept order-making an outside bad guy so no one will challenge my authority, my ruling. We see this with making ‘migrants’ vermin, Palestinians ‘animals’, Jews ‘vermin, blood poisoners, nazis’, Ukrainians ‘war-mongers’, etc. When people speak like this, when the progressives paint white males as the enemy, when white males paint civil rights, freedom of choice as evil doings by ‘those people’ they are purposely not using their powers “to discriminate” and are deep in their “self-complacency.

We, the People are being called, our inner strength and maturity is being ‘tested’ in this time as it has been for our ancestors in their times. 100 years ago, during the “roaring 20’s, there were undercurrents of “evil”, of “self-complacency” happening that no one paid attention to, that were considered ‘lunatic fringe’ that came to power in the ’30’s and spread throughout the world-remember the German Bund, Lindbergh praising Hitler, Father Coughlin, Henry Ford and his Protocols of Zion? We are witnessing similar hatred and power grabs by Trump, Musk, the so-called Republican Party, Putin, Orban, Xi, Bibi, etc and it is one of our “enormous responsibilities” to stand up and say NO. We, the People have the opportunity to do T’Shuvah for the errors of our ancestors, to learn from their mistakes, to fail forward from 100 years ago. We, the People have within us the ability and the desire to CHOOSE LIFE, we have the command to do this in the Torah, now we need the courage to follow the call of our souls, the longings of our hearts and the knowing of intuitive mind-making our rational mind a servant of these three entities instead of the leader. This is the challenge for us, to live in wonder, radical amazement, “to be maladjusted” to conventional wisdom and see what truly is so we are not fooled again, we do not follow the leader to meanness, to hatred, to evil.

I have dedicated my recovery to “enjoy freedom” and “to choose, to discriminate”. I am not always right-I learn, I fail forward, doing a little better the next time. I refuse to shut up about what I see, I refuse to become deaf to what people see in me, I continue to CHOOSE LIFE. I will always fight the despot, the evil in myself and in another-it is hard and not always wanted and I continue to do this. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Comment

Comment

Are you accepting the "enormous responsibility" that comes with being human? Year 4 Day 59

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 59

“As a free being the Jew must accept an enormous responsibility. The first thing a Jew is told is: You can’t let yourself go; get into the harness, carry the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven. He is told to bear loads of responsibility.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

Reading this, immersing ourselves in these words, thoughts, wisdom only makes the actions of Jews, of all people of faith who believe that ‘trump is the messiah, Bibi is god’s instrument of justice and restoration of Israel’ are idiots, and have thrown off “the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”! Rather than “accept an enormous responsibility to speak truth to power, to stand with the voiceless and powerless, to care for the stranger, to feed the poor, to extend dignity to all human beings because they are created in the Image of God, Trump, Bibi voted with a dictator that kills people just because. They voted against a country fighting to stay free while proclaiming the right of Israel to defend itself against terrorists. Yet they both are celebrating the greatest terrorist of our time: Vladimir Putin! They both voted with Iran-that great democracy and friend of Israel, to destroy Ukraine, where many ancestors of Jews were from both in Israel and America. There are many Hasidic dynasties from Ukraine, Reb Noson, Reb Nachman’s scribe, the Twerski family, etc all come from the Ukraine so the betrayal by Bibi and his ‘frumma yidden’ (orthodox jews) is all the more horrific. These assholes, these liars, these ‘keepers of the flame’ have taken one another out of “the harness”, thrown off the “loads of responsibility” they are called on to carry, and rejected the “enormous responsibility” that comes with being a Jew, that comes with being human!

What is happening in America, in Israel, around the globe is atrocious and odious. The inability of people, especially people who claim to be ‘the faithful’ to not see the warning signs of the Bible, to not see the similarities in history, to rejoice is ridiculous.The enslaving of a people, to celebrate the cruelty shown to the needy, the poor, the orphans and the widows as well as the stranger, is beyond words. The alliances with dictators like Orban, Putin, Xi, Kim Jung Un by the Unfaithful is enraging to people who celebrate our ability to “carry the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”. Watching the Republican elected officials in Washington DC go along out of fear of reprisals from the Proud Boys and/or Oath Keepers reminds me of Benedict Arnold! The party of Lincoln, the party of Reagan is the party of Putin via Trump and Musk, Miller and Bannon and the ‘unfaithful’ anti-religion people calling themselves ‘christian nationalists’ are loving this change. Likud, the party in Israel of Begin, who made peace with Sadat, has become the lover of dictators, the lackeys of Putin and Trump-all the while believing their own lies that they are in charge and god wants them to hate the poor, mistreat the Ger, the stranger in their midst, pour salt in the wounds of the hostages’ families, allow the hostages to die in Gaza rather than make this deal happen 450 days ago.

In the Tractate Yoma on page 86b, it says:”Reb Meir says Great is repentance(T’Shuvah), for one person’s T’Shuvah, the entire world endures. As it is said: I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely for my anger has turned away from him”(Hosea 14:5). It doesn’t say “from them” rather “from him” because he repented everyone is healed. While it has a hint of Christ in this statement from Reb Meir as my friend and teacher Danny Maseng points out to me, I hear the words above echoed: we are “told to bear loads of responsibility” and what we are seeing right now from the Far Right Jews, the MAGA crowd, the supposed ‘conservative’ groups is the throwing off of responsibility-“some people say”, “I was told”, “I heard” are the clean-ups on Fox News, from Trump, from his Press people who, like almost everyone else is hired for their looks, for the ass-kissing not for their expertise. How can Marco Rubio look himself in the mirror when he supports the very dictator, the very system that his parents fled from Cuba?? How can the Hassidic Sects support the very system that killed so many of their own in Ukraine and Russia??

We, the People have to get enraged, we have to tell the trolls to shut the fuck up, we have to stand up for the voiceless and powerless, we have to change our governments back to democracies, back to the foundational values and principles of our founding. Israel was not founded to be a theocracy, America was founded because of people seeking religious freedom and both were the places where people seeking freedom, opportunity, change came to in droves. We, the People have to take on the “yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven” and pull together to push the charlatans, the idolators, the Desecraters of God’s Name out of power. We, the People have to accept the “enormous responsibility” that comes with being human, that comes with living a spiritual life, with being a partner of God. We, the People have to “get into harness” and pull together carrying the heavy load of “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev.25:10). We, the People are being honored with the call to “rebuke your neighbor”, to “not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor”, to not “bear false witness”, to “not murder the soul of another”, to “not make false images of God”, etc. All of these commandments from the 10 sayings, from the Holiness Code are meant to guide all people of faith and spirit to reject the lies of the False Prophets and speak the Truth and NOW IS THE TIME!

I am enraged, my grandparents came from Ukraine, my nephew was a Peace Corps volunteer there. Zelensky has fought off the paper tiger that Putin is and is being ‘rewarded’ by Trump and Bibi with betrayal, with venom and vile. I know this way of being-I acted in similar ways prior to my recovery-I took advantage of good people for my own gains. Since 1987, however, when I first began to accept “the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven”, when I began my journey of T’Shuvah - return, repentance and new responses- I have run to be responsible for the good and for the not good I have done. I bear “loads of responsibility” in living free, I have to honor the journey of my grandparents from Russia/Poland and the Ukraine to give me a life of freedom and possibility by living the best I can in this moment. Both of my grandfathers were members of Workman Circle, both fought for freedom and decency in their own ways, both treated everyone who crossed their paths with respect, both sent money to relatives in Poland, in the Ukraine even during the war-whether they could afford it or not. From this lineage, I am over the top with shame and embarrassment at what the heads of two countries that I love are doing to democracy, to loyalties, to allies, to us. Please join me in being outraged and fighting back. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Entitled or Obligated- which is your modus operandi for life? Year 4 Day 58

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 58

“Every child is a prince; every man is obliged to feel that the world was created for his sake. Man is not the measure of all things, but the means by which to accomplish all tasks.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

In the Jewish liturgy there is a prayer, Avinu Malkeynu which translates to “Our Parent, Our Sovereign” which, I believe, is the foundation for the first phrase above. Thinking about this prayer, it shows how much Judaism thinks of the human being and of God. God is sovereign, aka higher consciousness, power greater than ourselves, prime mover, whatever one calls the creative energy in the universe; and human beings are in the palace, we are children living in the palace, we are royalty and we have a purpose to fulfill. Each of us, as the Talmud teaches, has infinite worth and dignity, equal to everyone else in worth and dignity, and, finally, we all possess unique worth and dignity-we all are different and have unique qualities that separate us from one another while uniting us because we need one another’s uniqueness to ‘finish the job’. These two ideas are meant to, in my opinion, fuel the life of the Jew and non-Jew. Knowing we are all “princes and princesses” gives us a sense of duty, a sense of responsibility as it is used in the Jewish tradition-not entitlement! While there are many Jews who see their status as entitlement and create havoc, antithetical actions, because of their ‘entitlement’ status, this is not the intent of the first phrase above. It is a bastardization of the teachings of the Bible, of the Talmud and it is a sin against God.

The second half of the first sentence above is a tricky one. In fact, it can and has led to great catastrophes perpetrated by the very people who are supposed to understand the meaning of this phrase, who are supposed to be living examples of the wisdom, beauty and awe of this concept, yet they don’t. Instead, the rich, the royalty, the learned use this phrase to keep the masses in line, to invent the “prosperity gospels”, the validation for occupying the West Bank, taking of Ukraine, wanting to take Greenland, Canada, etc.  Pastor Joel Osteen pays himself an annual salary of $54,000,000 from his church profits. Donald Trump’s idea is for America to take Gaza and develop it while the Palestinians who lived there are dispersed to other lands-like the Assyrians did with the Jews, like the Holy Roman Empire did in 1492, like so many countries have done to the Jews throughout the millennia. Vladimir Putin claiming that Russia was attacked by Ukraine and Trump, some Republicans going along with this LIE now, etc are examples of how this beautiful teaching, this grand idea can be abused, bastardized, and prooftext for evil!

The real meaning of the second half of the first sentence above is that human beings have an obligation to experience the world as being created for their sake in order to use their uniqueness, their talents to improve it-not rule it! This seems to have escaped the Clergy who preach it, the powerful who abuse it, the rest of us who willingly fall prey to the lies of the Osteen’s, the Prosperity Gospel pushers, the Bannon’s, the Miller’s, the Vought’s and 2025 projects. People seem to forget wisdom of Rabbi Simcha Bunim of P'shiskha who used to say that: “everyone should carry two slips of paper with them. On one we should write, “For me the whole world was created” and the other should say, “I am but dust and ashes.” We have to look at them when we change pants each day, when we reach for our money, for our keys, etc-i.e at least a few times a day. It is time for We, the People to demand the leaders of the world, the leaders of our faith traditions return to living an obligated life rather than an entitled life! We the People must change our ways, deciding to be an active participant in our life, in the life of our cities, states, countries and no longer allow the atrocities that these entitled bastards are perpetrating, those in the past that have become ‘ho hum’, those in the present and the ones in the future. It is way past time to put “throw the bums out” and we have to see this as one of the infinite tasks which we are measured by. It will not be easy, it will be frustrating, painful, dangerous, it will entail going against the grain, standing firm in the face of ridicule, an onslaught of hatred, possibly going to jail (think of Alexei Navalny) and even death. However as Patrick Henry said: “Give me liberty or give me death”.

We the People are being called to our obligation to live up to and into the lessons and actions of our ancestors, using the errors of our Biblical figures and in our history since the Bible was canonized. These lessons include the knowledge that the Maccabees defeated King Antiochus IV, Kings Saul and David protected the kingdoms of Judea and Israel (yes they were separate for a time before the great split) from the Philistines primarily, the American colonies defeated the British, the Baal Shem Tov and Hassidism prevailed over the objections of the ‘mainstream’ Jewish community leaders, Israel defeated the Arab Nations that attacked it in 1948, 1956, 1973, etc. We, the People have to demand the end of the reign of terror of King Donald, Co-King Musk, Putrid Putin, Bad Bibi, etc. We, the People have to rise up against the Reprehensible Republicans who are acting entitled instead of obligated. We, the People have to stand with and for one another’s uniqueness as badges of honor, recognize the princely nature of all human beings, all genders, all colors, all races. We, the People are being called in this moment to stand with one another against the arrogance and entitlement of the rich and the people in power. We are being given strength and purpose in the words above. To paraphrase Socrates: “An unobligated life is not worth living” and to paraphrase Malcolm X: “an obligated life is painful”. Both of these statements are true and We the People need to live into them both, walk thru the pain and reach the joy of being a “prince”, of fulfilling our need to be “obliged” and make our corner of the world better. We, the People need to answer the question: what were doing while the world burned, while the Fascists, the Deceivers were ruling? God forbid we say we did nothing. We the People also have to remember the words of Rabbi Tarfon in Pirke Avot 2:16: “We are not obligated to finish the work, neither are we free to desist from it”.

I believe it is time, past time to get into action! I have lived an obligated life for the past 36 years, I lived an obligated life for my first 15 and I was obligated even in my 20 year hiatus from decency in all my affairs. I believe in the royal nature of every human being, I believe we are all obliged to live into our infinite worth and dignity and to treat one another dignity. I also know I fall short and when I do there is T’Shuvah to get back on the path. I am screaming to everyone DO YOUR TSHUVAH and get on the path of being spiritual warriors and lets save our corner of the world together. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Living into our calling to be elated and dedicated even though the work is never done - Year 4 Day 57

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 56

“We are not taught to feel accused, to bear a sense of boundless guilt. We are asked to feel elated, bred to meet the tasks that never end. Every child is a prince; every man is obliged to feel that the world was created for his sake. Man is not the measure of all things, but the means by which to accomplish all tasks.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

The truth of these words above escape many of us. We have, it seems, lost our ability to hear what is being asked of us, “to feel elated”, because of the accusations and guilt we are laden with from parents, from clergy, from society in general. We have been controlled and confined by the accusations and guilt, we have lost our ability to “feel elated, bred to meet tasks that never end”. Trump and his cronies are perfecting the Goebbels playbook of accusing someone else of that which you are guilty of. Some progressives have made accusing everyone and making them pay for the errors against humanity we all have committed no matter what the context. The ‘woke’ shit has gone too far and the ‘Jesus loves the rich’ bullshit has taken us over an edge. We have lost the wisdom of the words above and the means, strength, commitment to carry them out!

WE WOKE UP THIS MORNING!!! Hurrah, Hurrah, in the Jewish tradition, upon awakening, before getting out of bed, we say: “Thank you God for returning my soul to me with compassion, great is your faithfulness”, we are elated to be alive. There is no “oh shit, I woke up again” in the Jewish tradition-even though there are many Jews who feel this way:)! We then get out of bed with a mission, to be compassionate to ourselves and those we meet and to faithful to our covenant with God, faithful to the call of our soul, be faithful to the commitments we have made and will make. Compassion is not the same as compliance, complicity, allowing someone else to walk all over the principles and values of the Bible; it is to allow another person their imperfections, to allow for our imperfections without making our worst actions, our errors define nor confine us. Compassion is knowing how sad it is when someone is so stuck they cannot see the forest for the trees, when someone is angry that you walk around elated and joyful to be alive and you can smile at them rather than be put down by them or get angry at them. Compassion is what keeps us in conversation rather than taking up arms against another human being. We also have to have compassion for ourselves, we have to realize that being “bred to meet tasks that never end” is frustrating for a ‘goal-oriented person, society’. It is a herculean task to take on these tasks, like loving your neighbor, caring for the sick, the poor, the needy, welcoming the stranger, helping your enemy. Compassion is a trait that needs to be nourished, nurtured, it is not a trait that makes one weak, it is not a trait that cedes power to another-no matter what Trump, Bannon, Musk, Bibi say or do. It is time for We, the People to demand more compassion from the leaders we have elected-whether we voted for them or not. It is time for We, the People to stand up for this value in our country, in our cities, in our personal lives. COMPASSION NOT ACCUSATIONS!

Continuing the power of the “Prayer upon Arising”, God’s loyalty to us and to the Covenant is what we are acknowledging and grateful for in this prayer. We are also, by our acknowledging God’s loyalty making a commitment for us to stay loyal, faithful as well. This is a great challenge, as we see today. Being loyal to our souls, to our principles, to our shared values when we are gaining something is ‘easy’ for most people. Yet, the prayer we say has nothing to do with gain or loss- only faithfulness, only loyalty to justice, truth, kindness, love, to our covenant. The measure of our humanity comes to the forefront when we are called to be loyal and faithful to our principles, our values as defined in our covenant with God and one another through the Torah no matter what the gain/loss ratio is. The measure of our faithfulness and loyalty are shown to us and to the world when we are confronted with wrongdoing, evil, disloyalty, idolatry, someone attempting to take God’s ‘throne and crown’, by another person, group. What do we do? Do we stand up and shout “this is wrong, this is bullshit, this is blasphemy” from the rooftops, do we do whatever we can to overthrow the idolators, the deceivers, the liars and grifters? Do we hide away in the cellars, do we go along to get along. Loyalty and faithfulness are easy to speak about when there is nothing at stake and what most people miss is that “there is something at stake in every event”-our souls, our connection to one another and to the spirit/force of the universe.

Being “asked to feel elated” begins in the morning with this prayer, I believe. This prayer sets the scene for us for the rest of our day and lifetime-we will never be able to fulfill the endless tasks of compassion, faithfulness, as well as seeking truth, “love our neighbor as ourselves”, caring for the sick and needy, welcoming the poor and the stranger, seeing the humanity, the divine in everyone we meet-especially in our ‘enemies’. We are given the gift of being God’s representatives here, we are given the gift of breath, of spirit, of an intuitive mind in order to stay faithful to our principles and values each and every day. It is time for We, the People to use this gift wisely and as completely as we can-after all this is what we are “bred for”. We the People are being called in this moment to be loyal and faithful to the spiritual truths of our beingness, to the goodness of being at the core of every human being, to stand up for the “little guy”(we are the little guy), to stand against those who are breaking the covenants we made with God, with one another, with our ancestors from the Israelites wandering in the desert until they could get the slave mentality out of their spirits, to the prophets, to the Founding Fathers of the United States, to freeing of the slaves by Lincoln, to the safety nets of FDR, to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, to  Great Society/Voting Rights, Civil Rights legislation, to today when we are being faced, once again, with terrorism from the top of governments-Russia, Trump, Iran, etc. We the People have to deal with the never-ending task of ensuring that we constantly “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. This task is crucial at all times and especially now! What will you tell your children and grandchildren about what you did as America was being raped-stand by or stand up?

I can’t stand idly by, I am raising the alarm in my individual talks and in my writing-I don’t have the bully pulpit nor megaphone of some of my colleagues and I REFUSE to stay silent. We have to stop the Musk, Trump, Bannon, MAGA machine NOW! There is no time to waste nor to lose. I beg of you to take part, make calls, go to demonstrations, vote in the special elections to switch the House majority. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Ending Boundless Guilt and Endless Accusations - Year 4 Day 56

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 56

“We are not taught to feel accused, to bear a sense of boundless guilt. We are asked to feel elated, bred to meet the tasks that never end. Every child is a prince; every man is obliged to feel that the world was created for his sake. Man is not the measure of all things, but the means by which to accomplish all tasks.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

The first sentence flies in the face of societal conventional notions! People have used accusations and put guilt upon one another forever, especially in many religious communities! How often have we heard of Catholic guilt, Jewish guilt, etc? How often have we been told by our clergy that we are wrong, our opinions are stupid(maybe not in those words), our questions are blasphemy? How many people, after suffering in prison for crimes they did not commit, have been freed because someone took a stand to not just accept the accusations of ‘the law’ and listen to the cry of the souls of the innocent? Hell, we have a President who calls himself King because he falsely accused others of what he was doing! We have a regime in the highest office in the land who believes and is following the playbook of Josef Goebbels to a T-accuse others of that which you are guilty of, they are following the examples of the great ‘freedom fighter’ Roy Cohn, et al. The problem is that we are being “taught to feel accused”, we are being asked, burdened with “a sense of boundless guilt”!

As a white male, I am considered guilty by some of the progressives just for being white. As a Jew, I am considered guilty by both progressives and regressives for being a ‘Christ Killer’, a terrorist, a Zionist, and any other ‘ist’ you want to label a Jew as. I am not alone, everyone who has a stake in their lives, everyone who stands for something that “mainstream society” doesn’t like gets accused. “Mainstream society” has been accused also. In the “Me too” movement, women were given a voice to speak out about things that were wrong and how they were wrong. AND that went too far also because then everyone and anyone could be and was accused of wrongdoing. While there is no doubt women were treated wrongly, they were treated as objects instead of as human beings-“boundless guilt” towards all males is not the answer either.

Just as some not all non-Jews are antisemitic, not all anti-Israel is antisemitic, not all males are anti-women. Just as not all Republicans are cruel bastards, not all of the accusers have clean hands themselves. We have lost the ability to distinguish what is a real accusation and what is a convenient one to “get the heat off of me”. How often when speaking to someone about their behavior do they deflect by accusing you “what about what you have done”? Jews have been made to feel “boundless guilt” for the millennia re: Christ’s crucifixion. It was in the Catechism of the Catholic Church until Vatican 2 when Rabbi Heschel helped to convince Cardinal Bea and the Pope to take out “Jews Killed Christ” and “Mission to the Jews” from the catechism! Talk about “feel accused” and “boundless guilt”-  this was a prime example of both!


Trump, Musk, Vance, Vought, Patel et al are capitalizing on the upbringing of so many people re: feeling “accused” and accepting the accusations of “those in power”, especially Clergy-so when the Pastor, Rabbi, Imam, Priest preaches the same words as Musk, Trump, et al- the congregants are catapulted back to their earliest days of religious school and family life-where daily accusations were commonplace. I am suggesting that We, the People once and for all say FUCK YOUR FALSE ACCUSATIONS! FUCK YOUR PUTTING “BOUNDLESS GUILT” ON ME!

It is time for We, the People to take back our inheritance from the prophets, from Abraham, Isaac, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and remember we are being “asked to feel elated”! We are partners with the Ineffable One in creating a better world, we are called to live with purpose and passion, we are be loved by an unending love, we are blessed to be able to connect with one another and a force that we can never adequately describe. We are given tasks that will never end and which we move forward in for the next generation as an inheritance, as a gift of remembering it is not about the end result, it is about our ability to rejoice in the doing of life’s tasks, in the radical amazement of connection and love. It is time for our Clergy to preach these truths and it is time we demand that Clergy and Congregants alike follow the dictates of Deuteronomy 16:20 “Tzedek, Tzedek, Tirdoaf” “”Justice Justice you shall pursue” is the usual translation. The ‘real’ translation is: “Righteousness, Righteousness you shall run after”. This verse comes after we are told to “not pervert judgement”, for Judges to “not be familiar with a person who is in front of them”, and to “not take bribes because bribes blind the eyes of the just”-hence Lady Justice with her blindfold. Where are our religious institutions in decrying the current state of affairs? Why are there ‘good christian folk’, ‘torah jews’, and so many other ‘true believers’ supporting the perversion of Justice, the rape of righteousness, the false accusations that are being amplified from the megaphones of UnTruthful Trump and Malicious Musk? These two grifters who would be broke if not for the government and the bankruptcy laws, these two BUST OUTS who would be nothing if not for the belief in the basic goodness of people. Yet, too many people are going along with these RAPISTS out of fear, out of PTSD of being accused and told they were guilty by the very religious and family systems that are supposed to uplift us and protect us. It is time to call these religious and family systems to account. It is time to hold them accountable and change the ways of society once and for all. Otherwise, freedom will not be proclaimed throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein-it will be available to the “select few” who bow down and bend over far enough for ‘the king dumptrump’.

I know the this feeling, I was raised by a Jewish mother:)! I know the “boundless guilt” that some women, people of color, etc have put upon me. I know the truth of “One oh shit wipes out 100+ atta boys”! Yet, I work each day to leave the accusations and guilt in the past. While I am certainly guilty of many things, I make my amends, I improve my ways and I work really hard to leave the past in the past. I also reject and feel sad for those who want to keep the past alive in the present. I have found I do not need them to forgive me, I do not accept their accusations and relieving myself of the “boundless guilt” of another is true freedom. I pursue “righteousness” each day and I reject the lies of the deceivers and grifters. I am standing up against mendacity and false accusations and for EMET (truth), Tzedek, and Justice. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Comment

Comment

What is the source of your living- Freedom or necessity? Year 4 Day 55

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 55

“The most commanding idea that Judaism dares to thinks is that freedom, not necessity, is the source of all being. The universe was not caused, it was created…The inevitable is not eternal. All compulsions are a matter of choice. A tinge of that exemption from necessities is hiding in the folds of the human spirit.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

These words and ideas can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, which is one of the facets of Rabbi Herschel that I love so much. While these words reflect Rabbi Heschel’s deep faith in God and the Bible, they don’t exclude the agnostics, people of any other faith.

What a radical idea to ponder on and live into: “freedom, not necessity, is the source of all being”! Rabbi Heschel is positing that all of the mitzvot, all of the imperfections of human beings, all of the stories in the Bible point us to finding the greatest gift God could have given to human beings; Free-Will. He is telling us, as I hear him today, that we Free-Will is the source of our being, Free-Will gives us choices, it forces us to be non-robotic, to engage in thinking, feeling, emoting, loving, hating, isolating, being part of a community, etc. All of life is about choice, not just compulsions, and Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that without choice, without Free-Will, we would be no different than the animals-run by our needs, by our instincts, and as we have seen throughout history, this usually leads humans to run amok. Rabbi Abraham Twerski, z”l, had a talk on “Animals and Angels”, if you can find it, please listen to it-it is wonderful. In this talk he said that what sets human beings apart from animals is our ability to “make free-will moral choices”. Neither animals nor angels have this capacity, he went on to say and spoke about what the cause of our addictions are; lack of spirituality. He went on to say just as someone who has scurvy needs vitamin C, because nothing else will cure scurvy, so too someone who is deep in their compulsions needs spirituality to cure them.

Bending the knee at the foot of the ‘leader’, going along to get along, staying silent for fear of retribution, being primaried, not being part of the “in crowd”, all are choices. Addiction, meanness, cruelty, needing to be right/smartest person in the room, are choices. Love, sobriety, faith, listening to the call of our spirits, our souls are also choices. This is the dilemma that we human beings face: which choices are we going to make? Do we continue to make the choices that we feel are “necessities”, do we take a closer look at these “necessities” to see if they are real or just filling a false ego need?  Do we choose to be part of a community of people seeking to do the next right thing or a community of people seeking to ‘get ahead’ at any and all costs to another and to their souls? Do we choose a life of recovery or a life mired in the myriad of addictive behaviors and substances readily available to us? Do we choose to be part of a cult or to be part of faith community dedicated to freedom for all?

The words above stir up these questions within me. Harriet Rossetto, my wife and founder of Beit T’Shuvah, says the Torah, the Bible is the “Big Book of Jewish Recovery from the Brokenness of the human being”. This is not too far from the idea that “the most commanding ideal that Judaism dares to think is that freedom, not necessity, is the source of all being.” Delving into the Bible, all of the mitzvot come to us as repairs for the errors of our heroes, not because they got it all right! The imperfections of everyone in the Bible teach us about Free-Will and the frightening things that happen when we use it unwisely, when we use it for our own selfish needs, desires. They also teach us what happens when we use our Free-Will wisely, in line with the divine, using it to promote the welfare of everyone, adding to our corner of the world, helping the person next to us, the person across the globe from us. Esau is an example of using Free-Will wisely; he is denied his blessing by trickery, his mother plots against him, and he stays home, takes care of his father and mother while the ‘good son’, Jacob, is in Haran, learning how to be a better conman from his Uncle Laban. While the Rabbis make Esau a bad guy, the truth is he comes to welcome his brother home with honor and love and is rejected because of Jacob’s guilt. Moses is another example of Free-Will when he doesn’t turn away from the burning bush-we have no idea how many other people saw the bush burning and turned away from it. While reluctant to do God’s bidding, he eventually chooses to and the rest is history.

We all have Free-Will and what we do with it depends on how well we have matured our spiritual nature. We all have “a tinge of that exemption from necessities hiding in the folds of the human spirit” and the challenge Rabbi Heschel, the challenge the Bible, the challenge that Judaism and all faith traditions present to us: will we seek this “exemption”? Will we engage in the “necessity” of spiritual growth that we have shunned up until now or continue to grow if we have been engaged in it? Will we use the wisdom stories of our faith traditions to grow our knowledge of what is the next right thing to do to help us rise above the compulsions that we miss-believe we have no choice to overcome? Will We, the People stand up for what is right and kind? Will We, the People leave the lies and self-deceptions that have fueled our acquiescence to grifters, ‘kings’, cult leaders, etc? Will We, the People find the spiritual counselors, the spiritual teachers that speak to our souls and grow into being free? Will We, the People immerse ourselves in the Bible and learn from the imperfect heroes what to do and not to do when we are faced with the same/similar situations? Will We, the People live in concert with the Covenant God makes with each of us and all of us?

These questions are not being asked rhetorically. I ask myself these questions daily. I am subject to compulsions, to erroneous choices, to feeling trapped, and the only way out of these boxes for me is spirit. This is the reason I have had a spiritual guide since Prison in 1987, it is why I continue to be an advocate for the soul of people to this day, it is why I continue to study with people and to learn more about them and myself no matter what side of the table I am on. I know the lure of addictions, I know the feeling as if it is not a choice to use or not use-yet it is a choice because there are so many people who have chosen to put down the drink, the drug, etc. The choice to put down our need for power, for greed, for cruelty is also difficult and not impossible. The power I wielded was in service of a higher principle, even when I didn’t get there, even when I allowed my necessities to get in the way-the intention was always serving something greater than myself. I use my Free-Will to the best of my ability each day and, all in all, I can report that over 50% of the time it is for the good. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Comment

Comment

Redeemer or Enslaver- which are you, which do you support? Year 4 Day 54

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 54

“When the Voice of God spoke at Sinai, it did not begin by saying, “I am the Lord your God Who created heaven and earth.” It began by saying, “I am the Lord your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Judaism is not only deliverance from external slavery, but also freedom from false fears and false glories, from fashion, from intellectual will-o’-the-wisps.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 13)

Of course we have all heard the first commandment over and over again and, Rabbi Heschel is pointing out an important aspect of God. God is introducing Godself as a Redeemer, an entity that cares about the human being, that, as said earlier has “a stake in the life of every person”. I am hearing God’s humility in this first commandment unlike I have heard it before. Rather than puffing our God’s ‘chest’, God is telling us we are so important, there is so much love in God for human beings-collectively and individually, God cares about our redemption, God is invested in our being free from all the things that bind us, that imprison us-external and internal. This theme is carried on throughout the Torah and the Bible climaxing with the prophets and the ‘angry God’ bullshit is proven false because God is our redeemer, God wants to heal our backsliding, God takes us back in love, etc as the prophets tell us-it is human beings who are recalcitrant, who have fallen in love with the myriad of slaveries that other human beings convince them are really freedoms that is the problem-not God. Rabbi Heschel is pointing out to us what we already know and stay oblivious to: God wants to redeem us, God cries when we are in exile, God needs us and we need God, redemption and freedom.

We are engaged in a time when “false fears and false glories” are rampant and considered to be true. We are in a moment when “external slavery” is being called ‘safety’, ridding our country of “vermin”, getting rid of those who are “poisoning the blood of our people”. We are in a moment where science is no longer important-even though God gave our scientists the spirit, knowing, passion to physically heal people and prevent illness’. We are in a moment where privacy is not important nor are the agreements that have made America a leader of democracy. We are hearing about the “false glories” of Trump, Musk, et al while they are nothing if they don’t have the Federal Government funding their projects, if they are not cheating the ‘little guy’, etc. Tesla and Space X could not have survived without Government Funding and he is tearing down the same Government that made him because he thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. Trump knows nothing about loyalty-except he demands it of people to him. Yet, being loyal to the Constitution, which he swore to uphold means nothing, loyalty to the people who have worked for him is stupid in his warped mind, upholding the covenant we made with one another in this country at the time of the Civil War, World War II, the Civil Rights movement means nothing to this liar.

The Republican party’s going along with the false fears that Trump/Musk/Vance/Vought are spreading is atrocious. It is cowardly and it is enslaving. They have become willing slaves to the ‘great leader’ who is “making America great again” only in the eyes of his true believers. These charlatans and their co-conspirators in the Religious Communities are making a mockery out of the first Commandment! They do not care about God as Redeemer, they do not care about God’s Will, they do not care about having an intimate relationship with God because Trump/Musk think they are GOD!! They are spreading lies and Clergy, Religious zealots are repeating them, giving them credence and exhorting anyone who says differently. Why should any of us care about people seeking refuge from terror, rape, slavery in their country of origin, after all, our ancestors were not seeking refuge when they came here on the Mayflower, when they landed in Jamestown, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue with a lot of Jews leaving Spain. We have a short memory span, like when the St. Louis came here in May of 1939 and was refused entry and we told Cuba not to take them as well so they could die in the Camps of Nazi Germany! This is what the “Self-Righteous” Christian Nationalists, Jews, et al support and the agenda they push and, they say it is in God’s name? What bullshit when the first commandment is about Redemption, about leaving slavery.

The issue, of course, is our inability to leave the inner slavery of “false fears and false glories”. We have become such weaklings that we have to build ourselves up with the lies and deceptions that we are “strong”, that we are “in control”, that “we are the greatest”, that “those people” are the problem, etc. We have needed someone to blame since the Garden of Eden and isn’t it sad that We, the People refuse to learn the lessons of blaming and shaming? When we refuse to be in truth, when we refuse to be responsible for our actions, good and not good, we resort to blaming someone else, we resort to feeding our inner shame demon who is always hungry. It is time for us to relate to the Ineffable One, to the Force of the Universe, to Higher Consciousness as a Redeeming energy that helps lift us up out of the external and internal slaveries we find ourselves in, be it our choice to willingly walk into the imprisonment like the Israelites in Ancient Egypt or have it imposed upon us like Putin, Orban, et al have done in their countries and DUMPTRUMP/MUSK are attempting to do here. We, the People are being called in this moment to hold our religious institutions accountable-call out our Rabbis, Priests, Ministers, Imams for their acquiescence to power instead of upholding the Prophetic Tradition of speaking Truth to Power-Abraham and Moses both spoke Truth to God and we are afraid to do the same with mere mortals? WTF!!!

I am calling out the Clergy who are silent and/or going along with the powers that be. It is disgraceful, it is a violation of the vows we take when we are ordained to go along with such rampant enslavements, such denigrations of human beings, such unwelcoming, uncaring, deceitful, whoring, coveting, stealing, and bearing false witness. Yet, I see it happening, I am powerless over what others do, I know this and I am not powerless to call it out. I am standing on my soapbox, I am calling out to We, the People: STOP BELIEVING THE LIES. Turn back to being human, to being a partner with God in redeeming our corner of the world. Return to living the Covenant made at Sinai and preserved till now. Return to wrestling with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Amendments keeping the Rule of Law sacrosanct for all. Return to a way of being that honors your soul and the souls of everyone else, to a way of being that “proclaims freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. This is my call, this is my prayer. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment