Are you believing God is on your side rather than you being on God's Side? Year 4 Day 137

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 137

“Humanity can thrive only when challenged, when called upon to answer new demands, to reach out for new heights. Imagine how smug, complacent, vapid, and foolish we would be, if we had to subsist on prosperity alone. It is for us to understand that religion is not sentimentality, that God is not a patron. Religion is a demand, God is a challenge, speaking to us in the language of human situations.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.97)

We the People are being challenged each and every day, every minute of every day and, judging by the chaos that is ruling us all right now, we are not meeting the challenges so well! We the People do not have to “imagine how smug, complacent, vapid and foolish we would be” because WE ARE! There is no need to imagine, we are already here and the MAGA world is bowing and genuflecting at the feet of Miller, Trump, Vance, Lutnick, Ben Shapiro, and Witkoff, et al. They have no idea how screwed they are with this ‘big beautiful bill’ that will mortgage the future, cause interest rates to go up, could cause a rise in inflation, and, wait for it, KISS The ASSES OF THE 1%!

As we approach Shavuot, the time of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, I want to call attention to those ‘great jews’, those ‘torah-desecrating jews’ who celebrate Trump and his thugs along with Bibi and his thugs. Rather than meet the “challenges” of today, rather than “answer new demands” these Charlatans, these PAGANS are calling this ‘god’s will’ -it may be, yet many of us have no idea what god they are worshiping. They have made a conscious decision to ‘worship gods they do not know’, ie money, power, fame, so they can clean up their self-serving, narcissistic actions as ‘god’s will’! BULLSHIT, I call on you PAGANS trying to pass yourself off as Torah Jews. Read the Torah, see how many times it says care/love the stranger, how many times it talks about holiness and how to live with one another, how much redemption is focused on be it at the Sea, at Mount Sinai, in the Desert, the entire book of Leviticus. Rather than accept the Will of God that people should be free, these ASSHOLE PAGANS are trying to put everyone under their thumb. These desecrators of God’s name are arm in arm with Osteen, Cain-White, Hagee, et al.

Rather than read, study, follow the great thinkers and Jews of centuries past, like Ramban, Rambam, Buber, the Baal Shem Tov, Reb Nachman, Rabbi Heschel, these desecrators are following the likes of Meir Kahane, the ways of the Jews who engaged in senseless hatred during the first and second destructions of the Temples. These ‘grosse yidden’ believe they can act in the same ways that have brought calamity to our people in the Desert, at the Sea, in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora and everything will be okay because they “have God on their side” as the Bob Dylan song from 1963. The lyrics tell it all, and while many do not consider Dylan a religious human being, the last stanza says it all: “So now as I’m leaving, I’m weary as hell. The confusion I’m feeling ain’t no tongue can tell, the words fill my head and they fall to the floor, That if God’s on our side, he’ll stop the next war!” Isn’t this what the main thrust of the Bible, of the Torah all about? Isn’t the most ink in the Bible given to how to repent, how to redeem, how to return to God, to “all of its ways are ways of pleasantness and all of its paths are Shalom(peace/wholeness/welcoming)? Yet the “rabbis” in charge of the Trump/Bibi loving groups want cruelty and destruction, they do not want “one law for the stranger and citizen alike”. They want power and wealth, they do not want “redeem your kinsman”. They want to be ‘king’ or close to the ‘king’, they do not want “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”. They do not want judges who will not take bribes, they do not want elected officials who believe their duty is to serve a higher calling than the whims of PAGANS. They do not want to hear about “new heights” because they are so focused on new lows and these PAGANS are calling themselves ‘religious’?!?! I hear Rabbi Heschel calling them out, I hear our ancestors, the prophets, railing against them, I hear my relatives asking “du bist a Yid, you are a Jew?”

We the People are needed to “thrive” once again. It is up to us to MAKE HUMANITY GREAT AGAIN, not that we ever have reached the top in our history. It is up to We the People to deny the PAGANS the victories they so desire, it is up to us to call out these PAGANS in all faiths, for me, especially Jews, who are willing to deny the Truth of the Bible, the Call of the Torah, the Spirit of God that hovers over us looking to be let into our hearts. It is up to We the People to circumcise our hearts so the light of the universe, the intuitive mind can overtake the selfish, narcissistic ‘rational’ brain that only seeks instant gratification, that believes they are greater when they put another ‘in his place’, that a woman is ‘to serve a man, have no independent thoughts, etc’. Rather than realize the Life-Saving actions of women in the Torah, in the Bible, these ‘frum jews’ ignore the debt we owe to the women ancestors, deny the wisdom of our mothers, grandmothers, etc. We the People are being given an opportunity to right the wrongs that have been perpetrated from centuries. We the People are being given the opportunity to end the smugness, the complacency, the vapidity, and the foolishness that is and has been overtaking us as individuals and as groups of people. We the People ave being challenged to tell the ‘UnRelgious Right’ to move out of the way for the People of God, Jew, Christian, Muslim, are taking back the reins and giving them over to God’s will as told to us by Moses, by Jesus, by Mohammed, not as interpreted by the PAGANS!

I have been seeking to “answer new demands” each and every day and I do, sometimes well and others, well I miss the mark. I know I am challenged each do so I can thrive and grow, no pain-no gain as the saying goes. I refuse to be smug, vapid, foolish nor complacent and I have railed against the people who engage in these ways. My railing, my loudness, my ‘inappropriate’ ways get me into trouble in the ‘politically correct’ atmosphere that was and the one that is-it is politically correct to hate ‘those people’ and I say BULLSHIT to Trump, Miller, Bibi, Ben G’Vir, et al. It is not politically correct in Judaism to really live into the words of the prophets, they have to be mitigated by the Rabbis because the Rabbis were afraid of losing control of the people. I have lost a lot because I am unrelenting in my aversion to smugness, vapidity, foolishness, etc and I am cool with it because to hold on to my position, my place, money by acting in these abhorrent ways would kill me. God bless those who can and believe they are ‘fighting the good fight’. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"Purifying our hearts and sanctifying our minds is done through a "Leap of Action". Year 4 Day 136

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day136

“Required is a breakthrough, a leap of action. It is the deed that will purify the heart. It is the deed that will sanctify the mind. The deed is the test, the trial, and the risk. (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 97)

These sentences bring to mind for me, Moses’ challenge to the children of the slaves who left Egypt as his own life was drawing to a close: “Heaven and Earth are my witnesses, I put before you life and death, blessing and curse, CHOOSE LIFE! (Deuteronomy 30:19). To make a choice is to take an action, to choose life is an action that honors oneself, honors humanity, and makes it possible to stand up to the testimony of “heaven and earth”. This is a reminder that We the People are being called to “choose Life” in every mundane deed we do, to realize that We the People have it within our power to bless ourselves and one another and to curse ourselves and one another. It is not about ‘god’ or ‘the devil’ doing anything to us, it is about our choices, blessing and life, curse and death. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to remember that every deed has implications of the choice Moses laid out for We the People!

What do We the People have to “breakthrough”? Our own apathy, our own indifference, our own lack of spiritual strength to make the choice Torah reminds us of. When we are indifferent to the suffering of another because we say “thank god it isn’t me”, we are in desperate need to have a “breakthrough” by our intuitive mind to remind our rational mind that “what one does to another human being, they will do to you”. The lunacy of believing any of us are immune to Trump’s chaos, to his hatred, to his racism, to his delusions of grandeur and belief that he is the DON of DON’s in mafia language is inexplicable at this point-yet there are many who believe they are immune. I would suggest they look at Elon Musk who not only is not part of the ‘team’ anymore, his companies have lost a lot of value. I would suggest they look at Bibi and Israel and see how Trump has abandoned them to deal with Hamas directly and praise the Syrian President who killed many Americans.  I would suggest they look at the people who were in the first Trump White House who have been targeted for truth telling. I would suggest they look at the people, institutions, businesses who are being targeted by the Tariffs and Trump himself because they are not bending over enough for him to fuck them so he will fuck them any way he can. Remaining indifferent to the plight of immigrants is reminiscent of 1930’s Germany when people were indifferent to the plight of the Jews and to have someone raised a Jew who has Holocaust survivors in his family tree be the person leading this discrimination is BEYOND, BEYOND! Having Jews cheer Trump and Miller on is the most disgusting display of ignorance, ass-kissing, spiritual bastardization and desecration of God’s Name one could imagine! Yet, here we are.

The “leap of action, is a change in our way of being, it is to remember that God cares about the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy as well as the rest of us, there is no human being that God is not concerned with, according to the Bible, according to the actions of Christ. Yet, we are witnessing people who tell us that harsh treatment of the stranger, enslaving the poor, imprisoning the needy is exactly what Christ desires and what the Bible speaks of-where they find these one liners is a mystery to me and how they contort themselves like a pretzel to come up with these interpretations is amazing-all in the name of keeping themselves dirty while trying to portray ‘purity’ to the masses. Be it the Orthodox Rabbis who proclaim that Oct 7 was god’s wake-up call to the Israelis to take over all of the land, Joel Osteen and John Hagee who claim Christ wants his pastors to be rich and by donating to them the people will become rich, or Paula Cain-White promising Passover Blessing for buying her crosses, WE THE PEOPLE have to say NO to the CURSES of Trump and his supporters, fellow grifters. WE THE PEOPLE have to “require a breakthrough” by our lawmakers and force them to take “ a leap of action”, insist they “purify their hearts” through “the deed” and they allow “the deed to sanctify their mind”. All of this happens when we realize that it is only through our actions that redemption will come, only through our T’Shuvah/Amends will life change for us and for the many, only through making our rational mind a servant to our intuitive mind will we be able to see what the next right action to take is. We are in desperate times and these times call for deliberate actions, they are calling out to We the People to engage with and stand with God as the Torah directs us to.

Living an examined life is always a risk, taking a “leap of action” “the test, the trial” because both involve truth with oneself, they involve the judgement of another, they involve taking a stand for what is right, what is good, what is true. These are not popular ways, as we have seen throughout the millennia. Yet, trying to live according to “the script’ society lays out for us hasn’t been so good for us either, addiction, murders, wars, greed, etc continue to be our plagues. We repeat the Tower of Babel story every day with the ways we treat ‘those people’ (whomever ‘those people are today). We keep hearing proclamations that “God is on our side” by the religious communities on both ends of the spectrum and, as I was saying to Harriet yesterday, isn’t it time for us to BE ON GOD’S SIDE? This is another message I am hearing loud and clear this morning from Rabbi Heschel. We the People are being called to take “a leap of action” to CHOOSE LIFE! We need to “breakthrough” our indifferences and our fears, our apathy and our wanting to fit in. We the People are being called to “purify our hearts.. sanctify our minds” so we can meet “the test, the trial” head on and no longer be more afraid of taking “the risk” than we should be of not taking the “risk”. It isn’t easy nor is it ‘safe’, it is necessary, however, if we are to be able to live in and with integrity, if we are to follow the words of Reb Zusya, “they will ask me: why were you not more like Zusya?”

I have been engaging in these “breakthroughs” for most of my life, ignoring many of them when I was in my ‘addictive’ years and following them in my recovery years. It isn’t easy, nor do I do either quietly. I cannot follow the script, as Harriet reminded me yesterday and, truth be told, I don’t want to. I have to live with myself, I have to be in truth, I have to shout it from the rooftops because this is the calling I hear for myself, to stand with and on God’s side, to hear the prophets and be worthy of being their descendant. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"Man's hostility to man", Jettisoning the Truth for personal gain, the banes of democracy and freedom - Year 4 Day 135

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 135

“Mere knowledge or belief is too feeble to be a cure of man’s hostility to man, of man’s tendency to fratricide. The only remedy is personal sacrifice: to abandon, to reject what seems dear and even plausible for the sake of the greater truth; to do more than one is ready to understand for the sake of God.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 97)

The first sentence above is the lie that the ‘progressives’ live under. They believe with the ‘right’ knowledge, the ‘right’ belief system, people will stop hating and hurting one another, they erroneously think/believe that the Cain and Abel story is just a myth put into the Bible(which many of them may give lip service to and don’t have a clue as to it’s import nor personal meaning) to control people. The MAGA PAGANS, however, know this first sentence to be true and they have capitalized on it to the ruin of our democratic norms, to the ruin of “let freedom ring”, to the ruin of the very people who support them, the young, the poor, the disenfranchised. To this moment, the PAGANS continue to use the truth of this first sentence while the ‘progressives’ continue to deny its truth-no wonder we are in the state we are in!

We the People have to stand up and SCREAM ENOUGH!! Demanding what is right and good, demanding “freedom to all its inhabitants therein”, demanding to “love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt” are not ‘pie in the sky’ ideas, they are the very foundation of the freedom from bondage the Bible speaks to, the core principles of finding one’s place in the world, recovering one’s passion and living one’s purpose. These demands are the commandments that have made America possible, they are at the core of our historical myth of coming into being, America is made up of immigrants, gang-members, neer-do-wells, and other such “riff-raff”. People, by and large, came here seeking a better future, escaping some autocratic, lunatic monarchy, and they were people of all faiths. Today, we are watching the PAGANS round up the very people their ancestors were and put them in horrific conditions, we are witnessing the BIG LIE aka the Big Beautiful Bill, being shuttled through  the Congress and the Republicans are like sheep being led to the slaughter because they are afraid, they are cowards, they are “too feeble to be a cure” for Trump’s “hostility to man”. Trump is a person who has “killed” his brother’s memory, made sure he would not be a ‘nice guy’ like his brother, screwed over his brother’s children re: their inheritance, and people cheer him, people support his racist, xenophobic ramblings and send money to him through crypto, bitcoin, etc. WTF!!

We the People have to engage in “personal sacrifice”. We have to because our lawmakers, our elected officials will not, they will not “reject what seems dear and even plausible for the sake of the greater truth” because their status as Senators, Congresspeople are more important than their souls, than their integrity, than their faith, than democracy, than God-for these ‘find upstanding christian IDOLATORS, for these PAGANS who claim ‘Jesus’ is telling them to screw over all the people he loved, ‘Jesus’ is telling Mike Johnson to cozy up to the money-changers in the White House and fuck over the poor, the widow, the stranger, the leper, etc. While autocrats have always used this type of playbook, the only remedy has been when We the People stand up, march, protest and say NO, NO, NO to these lies. Alexei Navalny was such a person, he knew what would happen when he returned to Russia, and he did anyway because “personal sacrifice” for the “greater truth” was more important to his very existence than his life. This is a man of faith, a man of truth, a man who teaches us how to be human!

We the People are being called upon to do whatever is necessary to protect TRUTH in this age of Trumpism that denies truth, that provides alternative facts with the use of a sharpie, that promotes bleach as a cure/prevention for Covid, that believes it is okay for kids and adults to get Polio, that says who needs True Science, when they have their own storytellers saying it is okay for the US to have measles outbreaks, smallpox again, etc because it will be good for our children! We the People need to demand that TRUTH be spoken and all the lies of Trump, Vance, Miller, Rubio, et al be exposed and they be made to repent, to repeal their acts of “hostility to man”, of their “acts of fratricide”. We the People are being called upon to demand of our elected officials, Democrats and Republicans alike to REPENT their sins of commission and omission, to do REPAIR the damage they have wrought, to CHANGE their paths of mendacity and speak truth to their constituents, their colleagues, to the courts and the President. We the People are being called to demand of the Supreme Court and the entire Judicial system including the DOJ, “Justice/Righteousness, Justice/Righteousness shall you pursue” not personal agendas, not the agendas of your donors, your benefactors. “Bribes blind the eyes of the wise” so the Judicial system has to stop taking the bribes of the parties, of the people, of the wealthy and the powerful. We the People must ‘take to the streets’ and demand these changes right now before it is too late. We the People have to stand for and with the ‘clerks’ that are being fired who have kept us safe, who have made sure the money from FEMA rolls into the places needed, the IRS is secure, the Social Security checks keep coming, the Medicare covenant is sacred, the Medicaid covenant is seen as caring for the poor, the needy, and not as an ‘entitlement’, that the rich pay their fair share, nothing more nor less, like everyone else. We the People have to end our tendency towards hatred, we have to end our pointing of fingers and be the change we want to see.

I had all the knowledge, I knew what was moral and what wasn’t and I was still a drunk and a thief! When God/Spiritual awakening hit me over the head with a 2x4 while sitting in a jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca. is when I first became truly aware of the hostility, the fratricide I had committed and been involved in. It was shocking and disgusting, this is when I began to read Torah as a personal path to wholeness and my desire to live free, to stop being a slave to my inner Pharaoh began. I am grateful to Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, for not laughing at me when I wanted to study, for “getting me” and introducing me to Rabbi Heschel. I have lived these past 38 years taming my “hostility to man” and using this energy to help my fellow human being; I have spent these 38 years in “personal sacrifice”, “to do more than I am ready to understand for the sake of” something greater than myself-another person, God, etc. It is a much better life! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Is Faith a weapon of Mass Destruction or the Path to Wholeness for you? Year 4 Day 134

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 134

“We must act even when inclination and vested interests would militate against equality. Human self-interest is often our Nemesis! It is the audacity of faith that redeems us. To have faith is to be ahead of one’s normal thoughts, to transcend confused motivations, to lift oneself by one’s bootstraps.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 97)

In the wake of the senseless murders of two young Israeli Embassy workers, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, these words are resonating deeper and deeper within me. In a time when idolatry is trying to pass itself off as ‘faith and once again being used as a reason for hatred, as a “weapon of mass destruction”, the only response has to be for people of “faith” to stand up, to rise up and say NO to the hatred being spread by the ‘good christian folk’ who want to make Jesus a warrior and a friend of the rich and powerful, rather than the man who hung out with the poor, the outcasts and railed against the very people he is now the ‘hero’ of, say NO to the ‘good jewish folk’ who want to go against the words of Samuel in the Bible who says the land of the Philistines, current day Gaza, is not for Israel to take and who forget that we are told 36 times in the Torah to “love, care for the Stranger because we were Strangers in Egypt, say NO to the ‘good muslim folk’ who say Islam is about killing the infidel rather than seeking peace. We the People are being called today and everyday to stand the fuck up and say NO to these liars, vote/Impeach these autocrats out of office, live the principles of our different faiths rather than go along with the PAGANS who have taken our faiths over and choking the spirit from them!

Yes, I am pissed off about the senseless killing in the name of ‘free Palestine” by someone who probably has no sense of the history of this conflict, nor the intricate issues and agendas surrounding this conflict, nor the arrogance of both sides in rejecting any offers of settlement as well as the pressure put upon both sides by their ‘religious parties’ and their ‘neighbors’. I am also pissed off by the feeding of racism, the promotion of senseless hatred by the ‘religious right’, I am over the moon about the ridiculous slogans of those ‘progressives’ who want to support an authoritarian government, a terrorist organization like Hamas over Israel, a flawed democracy and a democracy nonetheless! Most of all, I am so angry that throughout the years since the Bible was written and codified, We the People have rejected the ways of faith laid out in it, since the New Testament was written, We the People have rejected the ways Jesus lays out how to live in faith. We the People are being called by the words above and the times we are in to “Repent, Repent” as Jonah says to the people of Nineveh who LISTEN and do their T’Shuvah so they can live!

Isn’t it amazing, the people of Nineveh, the most corrupt and indecent people on earth at the time, could hear Jonah, the reluctant prophet, and change their ways but We the People cannot? Isn’t it disgusting that people are using “faith” to uplift their “normal thoughts”, to deepen their “confused motivations” and make them good, right and decent? Isn’t it the height of Avodah Zarah, idolatry, to use faith to put We the People into positions of hatred, greed, racism, confusion rather than engage in “faith’s” true purpose as Rabbi Heschel teaches us above? Yet, none of this makes a difference to so many of We the People! None of the desecration of God’s Name that is taking place in the White House, in the Churches, in the Temples, Mosques across the country bothers a strong minority of people. None of the tearing apart of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Amendments, that is happening seems to bother the Republican Majority in both houses of Congress, doesn’t seem to impact the ‘conservative’ Supreme Court Judges who are in the majority there also. These ‘conservatives’ are doing everything they can to support NOT conserving the principles of our founding documents and they still call themselves ‘conservatives’! What are we missing here?

We the People of authentic faith, who struggle each day to live the principles of our faith one grain of sand better, who know of our “confused motivations” and “normal thoughts” are being called upon to transcend these lower ways of living and live into the call of the Bible, “you shall be a holy nation”, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”, “proclaim freedom…”, and all of the rest. We the People who know that faith is “loyalty to an experience and loyalty to our response”, is really faithfulness to the principles and actions that will change our thinking. We the People who committed to “doing and then understanding” have to stop using our “servant” mind (the rational one Einstein talks about) to make decisions and, instead, use our “gift” mind (the intuitive one Einstein speaks of) to make the decision and the servant one to carry it out. When this happens, the confusion becomes clear, the fog is lifted, the veil is taken off and We the People once again experience the Covenantal Love/Marriage we agreed to at Mount Sinai. This is the ultimate pathway to “lift oneself up by one’s bootstraps” and find the wholeness and holiness that is inherent in each of us, that is our inheritance and then we find our place, we want what we have, and we do not need to compare more compete with anyone else for our place in the world.

We do not need to continue to allow the PAGANS on the right to use senseless hatred to separate us, we do not need to continue to allow the PAGANS on the left to use ‘political correctness’ to separate us. It is truly way past time for We the People to find our commonality, to remember we are ALL CREATED EQUAL, that all of us have “certain unalienable rights.. life, liberty(freedom) and the pursuit of happiness”. For far too long, We the People have engaged in and allowed the denigration of people to be defined as someone else’s ‘pursuit of happiness’ and this too has to stop. No GRIFTS, No PAGANS, No more lies and idolatries is our slogan and We the People have to implement this way of being and demand it of the people around us and the leaders we elected.

It is hard to write this because senseless murders anywhere, under any ‘cause’, are unwarranted and put a tear in the fabric that makes us human. I experience this tear getting larger and wider each day as more and more people believe the PAGANS and bend the knee to TRUMP the CHUMP. I don’t know what will be, I only know I live in T’Shuvah and in faith each day so I don’t contribute a lot to the senseless hatred I see around me. It isn’t easy! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Protection of Self-Interests at the cost of one's spiritual health - Year 4 Day 133

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 133

“We must act even when inclination and vested interests would militate against equality. Human self-interest is often our Nemesis! It is the audacity of faith that redeems us. To have faith is to be ahead of one’s normal thoughts, to transcend confused motivations, to lift oneself by one’s bootstraps.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 97)

These first two sentences above describe a reality that Paula Cain-White, Joel Osteen, the Republican Congress, the ‘good christian folk’ that promote ‘prosperity gospel’, who denigrate Jesus as he works his wonders in the Gospels as ‘liberal bullshit’ need to hear, heed, and live into! The question I have is what happened to these ‘people of faith’ that they can so blithely and easily betray everything that True Christian Faith holds dear? What happened to a Stephen Miller, the grandson of Holocaust survivors that he hates immigrants so much? What happened to Steve Bannon that he wants to take down the very system that gave him power? What happened to poor Elon Musk that he needs to defame, debase, ruin the very place that gave him the opportunity to be the richest man in the world? The traumas they must have suffered and the rejection of faith and spiritual healing is quite evident in their actions.

A more personal question is what happened to the people who still support these assholes, these PAGANS that they would jettison everything they know about their faith, about Jesus, about Moses, about the New Testament, the Koran, the Bible in favor of their ‘vested interests’ being protected by a liar, a man who shows no loyalty in return for the loyalty of another(s), a man who surrounds himself with idiotic sycophants who can’t get the job done and will not uphold the constitution, the ways of Jesus, the dictates of Torah, they only worship power and money. What happened to the people who worship at Trump’s feet that they would let go of their faith, their spiritual corpus colosseum would become so split that they celebrate cruelty, violence, hatred, forgetting they were strangers in Egypt and the call to love the stranger, care for the stranger, to love your neighbor as yourself, to proclaim freedom to all the inhabitants of this country, etc?

The demand of Rabbi Heschel above was made regarding treatment of Black people in the 1960’s, it holds true today for everyone who is not “in Trump’s club” and this includes the poor schmucks who voted for him, went to his rallies and will get screwed over by his ‘big beautiful bill’. The word “militate” is defined as “a powerful and/or conclusive reason to prevent something”. We all have self-interests, duh! Yet to be human means we can choose to prevent our self-interests from denigrating another human being, from enslaving another human being, from treating any human being as if they do not matter. Rabbi Heschel is calling upon us all to do this, to remember that every human being is created in the image of the divine, each one of us has infinite dignity and value, each of us is unique and has a particular plot of the garden to tend, grow, nurture, and share with the rest of us. The words above are a call to action, to stop our incessant need for more, more, more. Each year at the Passover Seder, we say Dayenu! Enough! Well isn’t it time for us to say ENOUGH to our “vested interests and inclination” towards evil?

While one can point to self-interest bringing about great things, when it is only self-interest we witness the bastardization of these great things. Take Facebook, Meta for example-a great idea to connect people, to give people an online community to learn and share. Because of Zuckerberg’s greed, self-interests, and inclination towards evil, he built a marketplace and a gathering place that promotes lies more than truth, that sells anyone’s shit whether they deliver or not, that takes advantage of people’s vulnerabilities, etc. All in the name of ‘doing a good thing’. His self-interests (and that of Sandberg, et al) has brought about an upheaval of how we treat the stranger, how we buy into Russian propaganda, how we vote against our self-interests and the needs, interests of our neighbors by electing people who want to tear down our Constitution, who see the Declaration of Independence as weak and stupid a document as the Gospels of the New Testament. And they did this by believing PAGANS will care about their interests, they bought the bullshit of the rallies and the Social Media lies as well as the mendacity of right-wing podcasts that electing people who want to deport the immigrants, who want to have the ‘white man’ always in control, who believe the rich should be richer and fuck the poor in their ass is in their self-interest!

We the People must take a stand TODAY and every day to honor the principles of the Torah, the Bible, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, to honor TRUTH, JUSTICE. MERCY, as we are called upon to do by the prophets. The “human emergency” is happening right here, right now and We the People cannot wait for some ‘savior’ to help. Just as when we left Egypt, just as when we stood at the Red Sea, We the People have to take the first step, We have to live into the commandments of “you shall not murder” so We cannot go along with anything that harms another human being, that robs people of dignity and value. Living into “Don’t whore yourself”, We cannot continue to sell our souls for our “vested interests”, “do not steal” causes us to no longer take advantage of the most vulnerable as God lives among them. “Don’t LIE, forces us to be serious and deliberate in discerning truth from lies, fact from fiction and doesn’t allow for alternative fact bullshit! “Don’t covet” calls upon us to stop being so greedy, so unhappy with what another person has, as Ben Zoma says, “who is rich, one wants what they have” rather than having what they want. Coveting is the worst because it causes us to never accept Enough, to never say Dayenu. Yet, We the People can say NO to ourselves, can accept Enough, can live the 2nd 5 commandments of the Big Ten. Will we, is the question the sentences above ask us.

I have lived in both arenas and found when I only in my interests and inclinations, shit goes really crazy! I have also found when I speak, live, act in ways that promote equality, that promote the commandments, many ‘good people’ oppose me because I am not a Bibi lover, I am not ‘politically correct’, because I have no patience for mendacity and I get volcanic when a person is disrespecting towards people who deserve respect and whom I love. I still seek to live in the proper measure of self-interest and knowing the interests of another is my concern! A tall order and I am still figuring it out God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Engaging in Imaginative Sympathy and Cooperation to defeat the Resentments that are running our Country today - Year 4 Day 132

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 132

“What we face is a human emergency. It will require much devotion, wisdom, and divine grace to eliminate that massive sense of inferiority, the creeping bitterness. It will require a high quality of imaginative sympathy, sustained cooperation both in thought and in action, by individuals as well as by institutions, to weed out memories of frustration, roots of resentment.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 96)

Continuing from yesterday’s blog, experiencing these turbulent times, realizing that the anger/rage at how the most vulnerable are being treated in “the land of the free and the home of the Brave” is one way of using the “devotion, wisdom and divine grace” to rid oneself of “that massive sense of inferiority, the creeping bitterness”, it is not time to be in the solution.

We are living in a moment where “memories of frustration, roots of resentment” are in control and running the show. President Trump promised a retribution presidency and he is following through on his promise. The Project 2025 people promised to end their “frustration” at not ‘being kings’, their “resentment” towards people of color, those of religious affiliations that are not ‘christian nationalism’, ‘prosperity gospels’, and those dreaded LGBTQ+ people who are ‘poisoning our youth’! And both were elected to run the country, to deny our alliances that support freedom for all, that denigrate people who follow the words and deeds of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, all the while proclaiming their ‘deep religious fervor’. In other words, we are under the thumb of some of the biggest PAGANS the world has seen, the people of antiquity had nothing on these IDOLATORS, these PAGANS, these Blasphemers. Listening to Trump denigrate Zelensky while extolling Putin is like listening to Lindbergh, Father Coughlin, the German American Bund! Watching him accept gifts from Qatar, make deals with MBS, both sponsors/friends with Hamas, Bin Laden, (remember most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis), and just so we know completely where Trump the Chump is at, he extols the new leader of Syria-who killed AMERICANS!

What surfaces from these behaviors is, besides treasonous behavior that he wants Congress to make not a crime in his “big, beautiful bill” that will ruin the lives of millions of Americans while helping the 1%, how much “frustrations” and “resentments”, when allowed, to rule will destroy the freedom that has lasted almost 250 years. When Putin, MBS, Orban are called heroic and “strong, good looking” we are in a crisis of our own making that could tip us over from a fragile democracy to an evil autocracy with the ‘christian nationalist’ haters being in charge, using Trump the Chump as a frontman. Since the Civil War, since the 14th Amendment, ‘the south’ has wanted to make Black people slaves again, since around the same time, ‘the north’ has wanted to make “no Irish need apply” universal to all immigrants,(even though they were immigrants or descendants of same), and Trump the Chump is the vehicle for these frustrations of 165 years are being worked out on the masses of Americans who just want to get along with one another, who just want to find ways to “love the stranger” as we are taught throughout the Bible, who believe in “love your neighbor as yourself” from Leviticus Chapter 19, who believe in the principles of the Bible, the love Jesus showed the poor and the weak. The Bible has no place in the governing nor in the living of these PAGANS and their mendacity in using the Bible, in using Jesus’s name to shade their idolatry may be the most vile of all. Be they Jewish, Muslim, Christian they are engaging in the ways of Avodah Zarah, idol worship and Hillul HaShem, Desecration of God’s Name!

We the People must respond to this “Human Emergency” immediately, forcefully, and with “imaginative sympathy, sustained cooperation both in thought and action”! There is no time to waste, We the People have to take to the streets, we have to find ways to stage our own individual and united Boston Tea Party in our neighborhoods, in our cities, in our States, in Washington DC. To have “imaginative sympathy” is not to condone nor appease these PAGANS, these wannabe autocrats; it is to realize they suffer from a Soul Sickness from which they cannot recover as long as they are in power, as long as Stephen Miller can celebrate doing to immigrants what was done to his Grandparents in Nazi Germany, as long as Vought can lead the charge to harm the poor and the needy, as long as Cain-White can extol a ‘white Jesus’ who is a lion and who denies that “the meek shall inherit the earth” and believes the Sermon on the Mount is a liberal fake. We the People are being called to imagine how sad it is for these sick assholes and take away their power to harm, figure out how to cooperate with one another in ways that sustain one another rather than vie for power and control between progressives and conservatives. We the People are being called to find the solutions to today’s lies and “eliminate…the roots of resentment” that we have towards one another! We the People must remember the senseless hatred between the people of Judea that helped Nebuchadnezzar breach the walls of Jerusalem and destroy the Temple so we don’t make that error. We the People need to join together to take the next right action and follow the Bible’s pathway for being human, for living together, to “welcome the stranger”, to “do justly, love mercy, and walk in the ways of God”. We the People are in desperate times and we have to NOT react in desperate ways, rather We the People can and must live the principles of Decency, Truth, Love, Kindness, Justice, Righteousness and be the example of how to be FREE so that the fence straddlers join our uprising against the “resentments and frustrations” of the PAGANS that threaten our democratic norms.

I have learned, from Dr. Susannah Heschel, how to have rachmones, compassionate pity for these PAGANS. They are pathetic, in need of Divine Pathos, and We the People have to show it to them while rebuking them over and over again as an action of holiness! I do this with myself, I do this another(s). It is humorous how much easier it seems to be for someone to rebuke me than accept a rebuke for themselves. I find the rebuke to be a great statement of faith, someone believes in me so much, they know I can do better than I am in this moment! This is the thrust of T’Shuvah, this is the path to reconciliation, this is a prime example of unconditional love. Knowing where the “roots of resentment” gets me, I do not resent these PAGANS because I can’t go there and be human, rather, I engage in “sustained cooperation” with people and institutions that are built on and dedicated to Truth, Justice, Kindness, etc. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Responding to the "human emergency" of this moment- Year 4 Day 131

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 131

“What we face is a human emergency. It will require much devotion, wisdom, and divine grace to eliminate that massive sense of inferiority, the creeping bitterness. It will require a high quality of imaginative sympathy, sustained cooperation both in thought and in action, by individuals as well as by institutions, to weed out memories of frustration, roots of resentment.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 96)

Reading and rereading these words, knowing they were both written and spoken in 1963 and went unheeded then as they are now causes me great pain, anger, and hope. The truth that we have gone through “a human emergency” before and made progress, even though much of it has been clawed back by the PAGANS, gives hope to those of us who are people of faith in God, in Jesus, in the Gospels, in the Bible, which can be bastardized, all are based on the spiritual principle of love-for our neighbor, for ourselves, for God, for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan, the captive, the slave. No one is exempt from being loved by God, by Jesus, by all of us human beings. I hear Rabbi Heschel exhorting us to face the “human emergency” of callousness, of senseless hatred, of scapegoating, of autocracy, of mendacity especially in regards to the words of the Bible, Jesus, the Prophets, etc, of greed and grift, of supporting the proponents of slavery, of prejudices, etc. This is our challenge today and everyday; there is always “a human emergency” because we humans are wizards at finding different ways to harm one another, to betray one another, to denigrate one another, to lie about one another, to murder one another.

Immersing myself in these words and looking that the second sentence above, I am also hearing Rabbi Heschel call out to us to improve, educate, mature, live into our inner life, our soul’s knowing. Spiritual health takes at least as much time and devotion as our physical health does and it leads a healthier body and a healthier mind because we stop buying into the lies we seem to endlessly tell ourselves, we end our obliviousness to what is right in front of us, and we wear a “new pair of glasses” so we see life anew and with wonder and radical amazement each day. Spiritual health is a commitment, it gives us a daily reprieve from the malaise of low-grade misery, it points us on a path of action that relieves any despair we may feel, any “what’s the point” we may hear from another and/or from within ourselves. Spiritual health is “wisdom”, the wisdom of the ages, the wisdom of truth and sight, vision and understanding, the wisdom of taking the next right action no matter what one feels or thinks, it is honoring the response given at Sinai so many years ago, “Na’Aseh V’Nishma we will do and then we will understand”. Spiritual health is the trajectory of the Bible and the prophets are the people who promote it most of all. And, as was true in 1963 and is true today, many people exploit the prophets for their own sake, many people want to ignore the prophets for fear of the uprising they could cause in We the People, and they are the key that will “eliminate that massive sense of inferiority”.

The prophets rail against the powers that be, in today’s America they would definitely be put in jail by Trump the Chump and his Chump brigade of greedy grifters! The prophets also raid against the inaction of We the People, the falling away from the Spiritual Principles found in the Torah, in the Bible, and then our sitting around moaning and groaning. Just as the slaves who left Egypt remembered the ‘fleshpots of Egypt” that they supposedly ate from(they were slaves who got NOTHING), We the People have come to romanticize ‘the good old days’ when America was great? America has done great things for many people and all of its greatness was as a beacon of hope for those who suffered from a “massive sense of inferiority” because of persecution in their home country from the Irish to the Jew, from the Chinese to the Central Americans. America’s greatness came from people who had a Spiritual core from which they took actions, Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Bush, Biden all welcomed the stranger and made freedom ring! Yet, today we are in the throes of a gang that makes Nixon, Watergate, Agnew’s grift seem like bupkis, like nothing. We the People are in desperate need of realizing the words of the prophets are words that tell us how important we are: GOD CARES ABOUT US, GOD WANTS OUR RETURN! Doesn’t get any better than this, so how can we be inferior to anyone when God cares and wants each one of us as individuals who are living our soul’s purpose and living life with passion and responding to the “human emergency” of this moment?

Living into our soul’s knowing, ensuring our spiritual health each and every day allows us to let go of “the creeping bitterness” that seems to be enveloping our nation. Senseless hatred of another because of the color of their skin, the country they are from, the refuge they seek is the core of “the creeping bitterness” that has overtaken this country. How else would a grifter, a liar, a seditionist, a breaker of the Constitution,  a hater, a wannabe autocrat, be elected President if a plurality of voters were not suffering from “the creeping bitterness” brought on by hatred of another because we fear losing control, losing power and, most of all, we fear the people who we have treated so badly, those we have denigrated and enslaved will do the same to us. Rather than find ways to make amends, to engage in T’Shuvah with one another, we keep blaming “them” so we don’t have to look at ourselves. Without “divine grace” we will be unable to raise our spirits, we will reject the aid and assistance of Spiritual Counseling, we will continue to allow the “creeping bitterness” to fester and become so strong that we will knowingly and with malicious intent seek to destroy, enslave, and imprison ‘those people’ who are the source of our ‘bad conscience’. It is the only way to solve the problem unless We the People STAND UP and say NO to ourselves, NO to our rational minds that want to override our intuitive ones, NO to the lies and mendacious statements of Trump World, of MAGA and Project 2025 idolators and PAGANS. The first two sentences above our giving We the People our marching orders and the path to achieve them: “devotion, wisdom and divine grace” which we obtain thorough sticking to our guns and our knowing, continuing to learn and relearn the same spiritual truths the prophets were teaching us some 2500 years ago, finding deeper and different meanings and ways to live them and continuing to grow along spiritual lines by living in gratitude, wonder and radical amazement.

This is the way I have chosen to live, imperfectly as I do. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Anxiety vs despair, justice and love vs cruelty and hate - year 4 Day 130

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 130

“Surrender to despair is surrender to evil. It is important to feel anxiety, it is sinful to wallow in despair. What we need is a total mobilization of heart, intelligence, and wealth for the purpose of love and justice. God is in search of man, waiting, hoping for man to do His will.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.96)

The first sentence above is pretty strong and definite, there is no room for questioning what Rabbi Heschel is saying and many people will find it offensive and a denial of their experience. Yet, is there anything untrue about the first sentence? Despair means “down from hope” in the Latin and the definition used is “the complete loss or absence of hope”. If one is completely without hope, living so far down from any semblance of awareness of the miracles that abound, rejecting the outstretched hand and strength of another human being and of the spiritual force of the universe, isn’t that a “surrender to evil”? This is not a statement about an individual, it is not a pejorative against someone who is in despair, it is a truthful description of what total despair is, which doesn’t mean one cannot come back from it, just knowing the respective paths is important. Also, most people who suffer from despair seek help and want to raise themselves up so they already have some hope in order to seek help. This is not “surrender to despair”. The people who sat at home and wrung their hands while Ukraine was invaded, the people who hide their heads in the sand while Trump and his gang rape the country and applaud these PAGANS, these are people who have surrendered to despair, these are the people who have surrendered to evil because they do nothing to stop these grifters, they only moan and groan, yell and scream at the TV, they don’t donate to the causes fighting evil, they don’t march in the protests, they just give in and give up-this is surrender to evil and We the People must fight against this, we must infuse hope into the people who “wallow in despair” rather than “feel the anxiety” of the moment. Knowing how many people have surrendered to despair and were found to “surrender to evil” We the People have a clear choice in front of us-“feel anxiety” and fight the fight or “wallow in despair” and “surrender to evil” finding ourselves killing babies and women just because Herr Fuhrer tells us to!

We are in a time where the “total mobilization of heart, intelligence, and wealth” has been “for the purpose” of hatred, injustice, more wealth for the wealthy, and hatred towards anyone not ‘on our side’, and even, as we will see, for some of those ‘on our side’. Trump’s snub of Netanyahu is a clue for the Jews who support him and they will do nothing except explain him away because they are making MONEY with his insane tariffs etc. The cuts in Medicaid and other programs that the poorer MAGA crowd depends on will soon be apparent to them and, they will blame the libs, just like the people in Churches who call out their Pastors, Ministers, Priests, Rabbis for quoting the words of Jesus, of Torah, which sound like ‘weaklings talking’ not realizing the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels of Jesus give voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. God rails about injustice and no love, prophesies what will happen to a people who become so callous they let the most “underprivileged” suffer, they want people to “surrender to despair, surrender to evil”. The ending is never good, we will eat our own, we will destroy everything good, we will forsake the foundations of faith, of community, of truth, of justice found throughout the Bible, and we will be overtaken by our enemies. Yet, people still “surrender to despair” and people still are drawn to the PAGANS in the White House, the Grifters in our Congress, and the Haters in our streets. Hence, “surrender to despair is surrender to evil” because with hope We the People, will not allow the takeover, will “have a total mobilization of heart, Intelligence, and wealth for the purpose of love and justice”.

This is the challenge we are facing, it is the challenge every generation, every era faces, and how we respond will resonate for a long time. In the late 1930’s America figured out a way to help Britain and Europe, in the 40’s we fought the Germans and Japanese, since then we have promoted democracy throughout the world, not always well, sometimes foolishly supporting dictators, etc. and we never lost hope, we never went against, totally, the principles of “love and justice”. We the People are facing the moment when the elected officials are perverting justice, engaging in fucking rather than loving, and We the People cannot stand idly by the blood of our constitution, the blood of our free society! The call to arms is been/being sounded, be it by phone calls, postcards, donations, showing up at rallies, voting, voting, voting, demanding of the Democrats to stop their extremist bullshit, and get back to being a party that cares about the working person-which is most of us, cares about the principles of “freedom for all” rather than just for their ‘progressive groups agenda’. Stop making the wealthy the enemy, the ‘bad guy’ because this is what got Trump elected! We the People have to demand the Democrats tell us what they are FOR, not what they are against. What do they Stand For, what principles have they made a Covenant with. What can We the People trust them to do? Absent these commitments, We the People have to make a 3rd Party that includes center-right, center-left and centrists so we can see the entire picture without “despair”, we can engage all of our resources; material, mental, spiritual, to find the best solutions for the myriad of challenges we face each and every day. This is living into the promise of America, this is living into the words of our Declaration of Independence, this is how we live into the Constitution and this is how We the People promote love and justice.

I surrendered to evil in my teens because I was in such despair over the loss of my father. I didn’t realize the depth of despair I was in until much later in life and my recovery is about not falling back into despair again. I see how it can creep in and I keep mobilizing all my resources, especially my spiritual resources to not give into the despair around me and within me. It works most of the time, when I feel myself waning in this daily encounter, I start yelling in frustration because of my fear of where despair take me/us. I have been blessed to be with people who continually join with me and we have a “total mobilization of heart, intelligence, and wealth for the purpose of love and justice”. I also have mobilized everything to help another person experience the love, dignity and uniqueness that is them, help them find and live their purpose, so we all can be better human beings. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What is the path in which you educate your hearts, minds, spirit-one of Repentance, one of never being wrong and only being entitled?

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 129

“We have failed to use the avenues open to us to educate the hearts and minds of men, to identify ourselves with those who are underprivileged. But repentance is more than contrition and remorse for sins, for harms done. Repentance means a new insight, a new spirit. It also means a course of action. ( Insecurity of Freedom pg. 96)

On one hand it seem incomprehensible to me/to many that 62 years after these words were first spoken, 61 years after the passing of the Civil Rights Act, we are in a worse spiritual, moral space as a people, as a nation, as a human race. On the other hand, of course we would be in a space that is more corrupt morally, legally, spiritually because when the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, both extremes think they can go farther and farther in their ‘self-righteousness’.

In America, since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we have known and “failed to use the avenues open to us to educate the hearts and minds of men”. Since Moses first came down from Mount Sinai on Shavuot, which is coming upon us, Jews and Christians, Muslims have “failed to use the avenues open to us to educate the hearts and minds of me, to identify with those who are underprivileged.” While there have been many missionaries to “those who are underprivileged”, there have been many laws passed to give them some relief, “to identify” means, as I understand the word and the context above, is to realize my own “underprivileged” nature and status. It is to see an “underprivileged” person as my kin, knowing “there but for the grace of God go I” and joining with the person to help them raise up. The missionaries who wanted to ‘help the heathen’ only wanted converts and never converted themselves “to identify with those who are underprivileged”!

In religious schools and meetings, services and discussions, too little time is spent on educating “the hearts and minds of men” towards living into doing the next right thing and too much time is spent on dogma, doctrine, hating our neighbor, holding everyone else to standards we know are impossible to maintain, etc. Our religious life boils down to buying the dogma 100%, bastardizing the Holy Texts to meet our needs, ignoring the parts of Jesus’ life and teachings, the commandments of the Hebrew Bible that are ‘inconvenient’ and go against our own interests. Religion, in many churches, synagogues, mosques, has become nothing more than a place for people to spew hatred for another, suspect their neighbor, praise some idol for the pain inflicted upon “those who are underprivileged” and concentrate on the money, like Joel Osteen, Paula Cain-White, etc.

Adopting Jesus as one’s personal savior, becoming an Observant Jew, a devout Muslim does not mean we are forgiven, it doesn’t mean we can do what we want when we want to because we ‘love god’ and ‘god loves us’. While both of these things may be true for a person, without “repentance” “for harms done” under the guise of our ‘religious’ behaviorism, none of our ‘quick fixes’ will help/atone for our “sins”. This is the greatest lie we tell ourselves, “if we feel bad, do acts of contrition, we have made things right with God”. In Judaism, if one harms a human being, one harms God, so to make things right with God, one first has to make things right with the human being they have harmed. So all the “contrition and remorse” doesn’t mean anything without action! They are just tools people use to make themselves feel better, look caring and other bullshit agendas. Of course, now we not only have the Paula Cain-White’s in the White House, we have a Republican Party that is incapable of even admitting they were wrong, we have a President who believes in his core that everything he does is right, good, the best, the most beautiful, the smartest, shrewdest, etc. So there is not even “remorse” nor “contrition”! This is another example of how far the extreme right has taken the USA and the MAGA people who are loving it, will be in for a surprise when they find they grifters in charge, the PAGANS in the Government and on the Dais of the Churches, Mosques, Temples don’t care about them, will hurt them with their ideas and get richer quicker schemes, and end our “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” so they can have their “fourth reich”. Thank you Russell Vought, thank you John Roberts, thank you dumb Democrats, thank you to all of the MAGA people who think it is fun to not “educate the hearts and minds of men” with the spiritual and moral goodness of our Bibles.

We the People are wasting time with arguing with people who cannot/will not hear truth, cannot/will not consider any other point of view than that of Trump, accept the facts instead of the alternative ones given by Trump et al, believe they are more worthy and dignified than “those who are underprivileged”. It is way past time for We the People to once again pull on the “moral ark of the Universe” and bend it, once again towards justice. Justice, Justice, you shall pursue, or Righteousness, Righteousness you shall pursue comes from Deuteronomy and is Moses’ exhorting the people to not do everything happening right now. Be it here in America, in Israel, (of course in the autocracies), the perversion of Justice, the degradation of Righteousness is the Cancer that is spreading throughout all of these countries. This can only happen when We the People are willing co-conspirators with the powers who are trying to destroy us, either through inaction, indifference, stupidity, apathy, etc. We the People are being called once again to end this racism, stop the evil that is flourishing in our midst and put real roadblocks up so we never have to do this again, so we never have to face the spread of blaming ‘the other’ for the ills we have brought upon ourselves, so we never resort to “scapegoats” to assuage our guilt. We the People have to engage in honest and truthful repentance, we have to find the new insights that our errors give us, we have to find the new paths that will set us and those around us free and on the road to happy destiny.

This has been the thrust of my life and my Rabbinate in recovery. I work hard to “educate the hearts and minds of me, identify with those who are underprivileged”. I also engage in “repentance” as Rabbi Heschel describes it. My frustration is I don’t know if I succeed in my endeavors, I don’t know if people hear me or treat me like the flys, making noise and better ignored, or get out the spray to kill the noise and the fly. I just know that I have to keep moving forward, I have to keep doing my thing because this is the way I fight my own bias’ and your prejudices. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Selfish, self-centered world, prejudicial/judgmental world , or God's world -which do you live in? Year 4 Day 128

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 128

“The way we act, the way we fail to act is a disgrace which must not go on forever. This is not a white man’s world. This not a colored man’s world. It is God’s world. No man has a place in this world who tries to keep another man in his place.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 96)

Realizing these words were spoken in January of 1963, at a time when ‘white supremacy’ was being threatened James Meredith had entered Ole Miss, 6 months later George Wallace would lose a confrontation with the Kennedys over the integration of the University of Alabama, and we are still fighting the truth above to this day. Since Brown v Board of Education people are using unique ways to stop integration in schools, now we have the “vouchers” for private schools, including Religious Schools which will help indoctrinate young people to a certain ideology, teach them the “other” or “those” people are ‘not like us’ and need to be managed/controlled, as was the case prior to Brown, prior to the integration of colleges in the South.

This “is God’s world” is so hard for people to accept ever since Mount Sinai. While the people who left Egypt, including the non-descendants of Jacob, all said “we will do and then understand”, they never fully embraced nor lived into this agreement, this covenant. Yet, God has not, to this day, destroyed the world, there is still Oxygen in the atmosphere, no matter how much we fuck with the Ozone, there is water in the earth, no matter how much we try and contaminate our lands with nuclear waste, like what happened at Brandeis Bardin Institute in California, etc. Yet, Trump, Vought, Miller Lutnick, Kushner, still believe that this is “a white man’s world” even though the last 3 would not be considered “white” by the other 2 and their white supremacist cronies. These 5 and the multitude of their followers and adherents want to take us back to a time when it was ‘whitey’ who made the rules and the rest of YOU had to follow them, Jews were good for collecting and lending money, the poor were good for farming the land, doing menial work, the ‘darkies’ were good for slave work and screwing their women, etc, etc. This is not the way to live in “God’s world”!! It is so bad, some 62 years after this conference, after these words are written, that in Israel, Netanyahu was elected through his call to his people to stop the Arabs from voting him out! He used racist language and played on the fears of people in order to stay in power. For a Jew, how disgusting, what a display of Avodah Zarah, idolatry!

What makes it so hard for all of us to accept, embrace and live into the truth that “it is God’s world” we are living in? It comes from our need for power, control, and certainty being “out of proper measure”. Instead of our realization that we are powerless over people, places and things, that everyone is to be “free” and that God’s ways (plural) are ways of pleasantness and all of God’s paths are towards wholeness, we, especially men, even more precisely white men, continue to attempt to exert control over our surroundings, other people, and, under Trump, even other countries-which he is failing at, which we are laughing stocks because of his stupidity, his greed, his being Trump The CHUMP to the world leaders he is calling his ‘very good friends’. We know he has nothing but disdain for the Arab leaders he is ‘making deals with’ because he hates anyone who is NOT WHITE and these Arab leaders are making him look like an idiot as they take advantage of him, make deals with China to share the wealth of AI chips Trump the CHUMP is giving them, etc.

We the People are being called both by the words above and by the call of the universe to return to a way of being that is in concert with being a partner with God in creating the world. While the bones and structure were put into place, it is up to We the People to implement the myriad of ways to “love your neighbor as you love yourself”, to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all it’s inhabitants therein”, to “love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt”. The last commandment is an interesting one, Egyptians enslaved us, according to the Torah, yet we have to remember they took us in when there was a famine, because of them the descendants of Jacob grew and grew, it was only when we grew “fat” as Moses teaches in Deuteronomy, that we became enslaved. Our world today may be reflecting those times once again: “A new king arose who did not know Joseph”(Ex.1:8) and today, Trump “did not know” our allies and our enemies, he only knows the grift and the greed. This is NOT the way of God’s world! This is the way of the “white man’s world”, the “black man’s world”, in other words, this is the way of a world without the spirit of God in it, it is a world where the laws of how to live together and have respect for the dignity and worth of every person is missing. It is way past time for We the People to restore the ways of holiness code to our modality of life. It is way past time for We the People to demand of the supporters of Trump, of Netanyahu, of Putin, Orban MBS, etc to stand for GOD not PAGANS! The choice is truly this simple, not easy, and simple. Either We the People are going to finally heed the words of the Bible, of the Civil Rights movement, of the great Jewish thinkers past and present, of the great Christian theologians past and present, the Buddha and his adherents like the Dalai Lama, or We the People will continue to follow the Liars, the Deceivers, the PAGANS to our own enslavement and ruin, just as Jacob’s descendants did in Ancient Egypt.

I found myself facing this dilemma in 1986 when I was arrested again. My troubles were of my own making, no one else’s! I could blame a myriad of circumstances and the truth, that I had to face that day in December of 1986, sitting in a jail cell in Van Nuys California, was that I was where I was supposed to be because my choices led me to be locked up. It was on that day that I chose to live in God’s world, not mine and I have been moving forward in this quest each day, little by little. It is a hard road to travel, I have made many a wrong turn and detour along the way and I know I am closer to honoring more and more of God’s ways than my own. I am lean more to helping my neighbor, my friend, my family and even my enemy than not, I am more than 51% living under the ways God teaches us, loving the stranger, jettisoning cruelty, welcoming and accepting the T’Shuvah of another human being, being more aware of the things I need to do T’Shuvah for and accepting the denial of connection from those who choose not to accept my T’Shuvah. Each day, when I thank God for being alive, I remember and commit to being at least one grain of sand more into God’s world than mine. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Do we truly "hold these truths to be self-evident"? Year 4 Day 127

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 127

“The way we act, the way we fail to act is a disgrace which must not go on forever. This is not a white man’s world. This not a colored man’s world. It is God’s world. No man has a place in this world who tries to keep another man in his place.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 96)

In looking at our world in this moment, these words resonate within me, they assault my ears, they attack my conscience and they depict our plight right now. “The way we act” has been abysmal prior to and since this conference, prior to and since the founding of this country and we have been unable to change the hearts of white men who want to hold onto control. Just as in South Africa, white men are desperately afraid of what happens to them when/if they lose control, if/when their money is taxed at the same rate as everyone else, when/if they have to answer for their disgraces in public. This fear has stopped the progress of freedom every time it seems to get some momentum going. The need on the white man’s part for power and wealth drives them to “disgrace”.

What is the fear? I believe the white man fears that people of color will treat white people in the same ways as the white man has treated people of color. Just as with Jacob in the Bible who could not believe and trust that his brother Esau was genuinely elated to see him, that his brother whom he had fucked over more than once could actually want reconciliation and had forgiven him, the white man can not believe that people of color, Jews, Muslims would not “get even” with them in the same ways they have controlled the rest of us! How sad it is that the white man is so mistuned to the spirit and the faith of people of color, Jews, Muslims. How ridiculous it is that the white man is so afraid of his shadow that he can’t even vote for a white women to have power here in America!

How do we act? White men act with suspicion and greed, with hatred and from fear, from scarcity and hatred. We are witnessing the pinnacle of these ways in our country right now. Trump, Vought, Miller, et al keep doing more and more outrageous things to prove that the Constitution has no teeth in it, all the Republican and some Democrats in Congress are pussies, and the Courts have no power to enforce their rulings. The UnJustice Department is led by a blonde Lobbyist for Qatar, MBS who killed an American Journalist and dismembered him during Trump’s first term, is being hailed as his good friend, the Middle East is going to put up Trump Towers/Hotels so they are now “the favorites” and, this great ‘savior of the Jews and Christians’ is selling out Israel and Bibi, making peace with Iran, and insulting the Pope! What a wonderful way to act and to be a ‘man of the people’, to say ‘I am your retribution’, and so many other bullshit lines that his MAGA puppies swallowed up like candy!!

While it is true that I am singling out the white man, “the way we fail to act” applies to all of us, as does the “way we act” because there are people of color, Jews, Muslims who still buy the con and the grift of Trump, who still believe that Christ’s words are the words of radical liberals, who still think that this ‘whitey’ is going to be a friend to blacks, muslims, etc! Talk about oblivious, deaf, and blind!! Going along with the deception of another, being ‘nice’ and not wanting to “rock the boat” because we want to make a living, keep our position, not be a target, is one of the most disgraceful ways “we fail to act”. This is what the prophets railed against, it is what caused and causes the destruction of countries as it did in Ancient Israel, it is what gives power to the white man in charge. Our failure to stand for and with TRUTH, our failure to say NO to these PAGANS hiding behind the lies of the ‘prosperity gospels’, our failure to not call out their ‘fight’ against antisemitism which isn’t really a ‘fight’, because Trump, et al surround themselves with anti-semites who want ‘Christian nationalism’, always a good thing for Jews!!! Our failure to stop them from taking away of Medicaid from the people who need it most, our allowing them to dismantle the very agencies that help protect us from life-threatening diseases, civil rights, justice, mercy, aid to our fellow human beings around the globe, is atrocious!

We have a blueprint for “how we act” and “how we fail to act”, it is called the Bible, the New Testament and the Koran are also blueprints because they all lead to the same place, the dignity of the human being. We the People have failed and are failing to respect this dignity, we are failing and have failed to honor the infinite worth of every human being, we have failed and are failing to see the divine image in ourselves and in our neighbors, our friends, our enemies. We the People have allowed the white man to dishonor the words of the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”!! We the People have committed the worst of actions, our indifference to the suffering of another, our indifference to the bastardization of justice, our indifference to give the mercy to another that everyone deserves, our indifference to the evil being perpetrated by the ‘good jews, good christians, good muslims,’ who are running things in this country. These ‘good old boys’ are no better than the southerners who beat and thought they owned another human being, We the People are just as guilty because we have “fail to act” against these immoralities, these paths of evil, these desecrations of God’s name. When we fail to welcome and love the stranger, when we fail to love our neighbor as ourselves, when we fail to rebuke these assholes for the sins they are committing in our name as well as in theirs, We the People stand guilty and have to repent! Is it not time for We the People to say NO to ourselves in “the way we act” and in “the way we fail to act”?

I have wrestled with these two concepts forever, for the past 38 years I have been more afraid to “fail to act” than I have to take the next right action. I have been more terrified of the lie than the truth, I am more sensitive to the bullshit and will not allow it in my presence. I do my inventory each day to suss out the lies I tell myself and my own errors, do my T’Shuvah and reconnect where possible and accept where and with whom it is not possible. I live in truth and seek out people who will rebuke me when I am in error, who love me enough to speak truth and be kind, and do the same for all I meet. It doesn’t make me popular, as my friend and teacher Rabbi Ed Feinstein says, and it allows me to live with myself and have clarity as to my purpose and the meaning of my life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What voices are you hearing, which voices are you listening to? Year 4 Day 126

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 126

“The spirit is a still small voice, and the masters of vulgarity use loudspeakers. The voice has been stifled, and many of us have lost faith in the possibility of a new perceptiveness.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 23)

“And after the earthquake a fire and not in the fire was Adonai, and after the fire, a still small voice” (1Kings 19:12). This is the description of how Elijah heard the voice of God in his despair over being hunted and not heard by the Israelite people. His warnings and his call to return to God had gone pretty much unheeded and, in his running for his life, he was overwhelmed by “the still small voice”. Rabbi Heschel’s words above bring this experience to mind for many of us. Herein, of course, is the problem. How do we mature and nurture our spiritual life in such a manner to be able to hear “a still small voice” within us when the PAGANS are blowing out the speakers and amplifiers to spread their false gospels? This is the challenge for a person of faith, be it in themselves, their higher consciousness, in a power greater than themselves, whatever one has faith in; it is difficult to hear what one’s inner voice is saying when Trump is blaring his bullshit, when Cain-White is spreading her lies, when people in the Pews complain about the ‘liberal sermons’ of Priests and Ministers who are just quoting the Gospels and repeating Jesus’ words, when some Jews misread the Bible or take sentences, phrases out of context to prove their ‘righteousness’ though they transgress!

This is the challenge that has been before us since humankind came into existence! Hearing “a still small voice” that is either within us or within another human being is the first step and only the first step. It takes, as I said, a spiritual maturity and a willingness to learn the difference between what one’s soul/intuition/gut instinct is saying and the loving desire to engage in self-deception. “The masters of vulgarity” have PhD’s in self-deception and the deception of another(s) and perpetrate their lies and ‘slight of hand tricks’ onto all they meet. When they are in power, they keep people enthralled with their lies and are so good, they convince people to go against what they know to be true so the people can follow the PAGAN to hell and to ruination. History gives us the testimony of the witnesses to this truth from the Assyrians to Pharaoh, from the two Kingdoms of Judea and Israel to the fall of Greece and Rome, from Germany to America today, the PAGAN liars seem to convene enough of a plurality to gain power and then seize control of everything that could stop them like the courts, the press, the freedom to assemble, the freedom of speech to disagree, with the freedom to worship being next with ‘christian nationalistic’ prayers coming to the school near you, etc. It takes a minute to collect oneself and to be able to discern what is truth and what is bullshit, what is real and what is deception, what does our soul know and what rationalizations are we buying into so we are not ostracized and persecuted? All of these discernments are dependent upon our ability to hear the “still small voice” within us and within another human being. They are dependent upon our commitment to grow our spiritual life so we are able to Shema; to listen, hear and understand what “the still small voice” is saying.

The next step for We the People who desire to grow our spirits, who are compelled to hear the “still small voice” within each of us, is to then follow the call of “the still small voice” and not ignore it, not dismiss it, not seek the expedient rather than the demand of “the still small voice”. We are witnessing the “masters of vulgarity” scream and yell, scam and con, grift and steal what is the most precious ‘gift’ that humankind can obtain: Freedom! While a plurality of people elected Trump, gave permission to implement Project 2025, and a smaller plurality still support this bullshit, We the People need to hear, listen and understand that “the still small voice” within us, that is in the universe is calling out to us. These PAGANS who are claiming to represent ‘Jesus’ are promoting the worst idolatry possible, these PAGANS who are claiming to be ‘living a torah life’ are acting out the greatest sin; Avodah Zarah, IDOL WORSHIP. All of this talk about Bibi and Trump, about Trump’s Jewish Grandchildren, about Trump being ‘good for the Jews’, being a ‘great christian’ is just utter and complete POPPYCOCK. And this is what is blaring from the loudspeakers and assaulting our ears, confusing our minds and trying to silence “the still small voice” within us.

This is the greatest challenge facing We the People; growing our spiritual life through a regimen of spiritual practices-whatever works for you, the individual, and then have these principles infuse your daily living, no matter what vulgarities are blasting through the loudspeakers, or as we say in AA, ,no matter what KFUCK Radio is blaring in your head. We all need to have a discipline because the lies, the deceptions by another(s), our own self-deceptions and unhealthy desires are loud, proud and strong. We have seen many a person, many a community, many a country brought down because of their hubris and belief they didn’t need to engage in a spiritual practice. In the world of recovery, we say we are sober one day at a time based on our spiritual condition. We the People are free one day at a time based on our spiritual condition. Remember the descendants of Jacob willingly went into slavery though they were “more mighty and numerous than we” according to the Bible. Just as addiction is a “cunning, baffling, disease”, so too is self-deception and the power of “the masters of vulgarity”, speaking  through “loudspeakers”. Yet, though “sin couches at your door… you can master it” we learn in Genesis 4:7. The question we all need to face is will we “master it” by using the spiritual strength of “the still small voice” within us.

I know this voice well, it constantly harangues me when I am screwing up and/or thinking of screwing up. This has been true since my youth and I fought against it from so many years, I am saddened to say. I realize that in my ‘previous life’ I was one of the “masters of vulgarity” and I am deeply remorseful for my actions. In my recovery, looking backwards through this lens, I see where I allowed some “masters of vulgarity” who were disguised as compatriots in hearing and acting on “the still small voice” to infiltrate my thinking and this led to not good results. Hindsight is 20/20 and my T’Shuvah for these errors is to continue to grow my spiritual life, to hear clearer, to discern better and to root out my deception receptors that keep me buying the bullshit and lies of another. Each day, through this writing, through practicing the principles of decency, justice, kindness, love, compassion, and truth I grow one grain of sand more in hearing and following the “still small voice” within. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"Sensitive to God's demands" or sensitive to your own? Year 4 Day 125

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 125

“Upon the grave of the specious we encounter the valid. Much grave digging had to be done. The most fatal trap into which religious thinking may fall is the equation of faith with expediency. The genuine task of our traditions is to educate a sense for the expedient, a sensitivity to God’s demand.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg.22)

In an age where the “specious” has become the norm, where the lie is so accepted that truth has lost all meaning, it is incumbent upon all of us to start to bury “the specious” in our daily living. Rabbi Heschel is imploring us to dig deep graves for “the specious” as he experienced first-hand the destruction that comes from not burying it, from engaging with it, from selling it to the masses, and from the myriad of graves never dug for decent, good people. He is harkening us to remember the manipulation of decency for the sake of power, the twisting of what is moral for the sake of scapegoating entire groups of people who were ‘not like us’, and the grift that went along with the supposed ‘taking our proper place of power’ that happened in Germany in the 1930’s. None of these “specious” arguments were valid, yet people believed them, went along with them, joined with them for their own safety?, for their own power?, for their own joy of prejudice and hatred??? How many more graves do we have to dig? When a power is rising that wants authority over all, when an autocrat engages in disrupting free and fair elections in a foreign country and one of the parties running is encouraging, soliciting, and welcoming this engagement, when the autocrat running for office in the US is telling us that he wants to be dictator and now is following through on his promise, when an outbreak of measles is killing people when it could be prevented as it has been for years, are we seeing enough graves to bury “the specious?

It seems as if the second sentence applies to all of us here. While Rabbi Heschel writes this sentence in the past tense, he is acutely aware that this is a task that needs constant vigilance and constant digging. We are seeing this need in full bloom in this moment where an autocrat who cares for nothing other than his own power and image is willing to make ‘deals with the devil’ so he can prevail, so he and his cronies can become wealthier and wealthier, on the backs and to the detriment of the majority of the people who, foolishly in my opinion, voted him back into office. He makes these grand proclamations and then follows them up with NOTHING. He is so proud of himself for making a ‘deal’ with China when he caused chaos and disruption to the people who depend on foreign trade the most, the small businesspeople. Rather than care for them, he made deals for the wealthy so they would not be hurt, he let people who he is transactional with and may need in the future know what he was going to do so they could make more money, and he fucked everyone else. This is “the specious” we all need to bury, this way of being has to be buried deeper and deeper because it keeps coming back to harm us, to harm our neighbors, to harm the stranger we are told to love, to harm the widows, the orphans, the poor and the needy whom Jesus loves and whom God cares for deeply according to the New Testament and the Bible. Do you have your shovels at the ready? Are you willing to bury your own “specious” ways? Lets start digging the graves for “the specious” we are being bombarded with today!

In the writing above, Rabbi Heschel is using “expediency” and “specious” to denote the terrible and horrific ways we have fallen into disrepute as human beings. Because we are so willing to go along with both the “specious” which means “plausible, but wrong” and the “expedient” which means “a means of attaining an end that is convenient but improper and immoral”. We the People have to demand of our Clergy that they cease and desist in their praise of the “specious” and the “expedient” because neither one leads us to Godliness, to Holiness, to Decency, to Doing the Next Right Thing! They lead us to cut the corners of the field that is supposed to be left for the poor, they lead us to make fun of people who have disabilities because we can. Both “expediency” and “specious” give us ‘permission’ to mistreat the stranger under the guise of ‘protecting our citizens’, they give us the ‘go ahead’ to treat women as 2nd Class citizens and put them in their place which is not in leadership! They allow us feed the most negative parts of ourselves by indulging in our prejudices, our biases, and rather than “righteousness, righteousness, you shall pursue” we see Grift, Lies, Power is the best pursuit! AND SOME CLERGY ARE PROMOTING THIS BULLSHIT!!

This is the “most unkindest cut of all”! That Clergy, people who purport to be engaged in doing “God’s Will” support and promote both “expediency” and “specious” arguments is appalling and disgusting. It is the worst of human nature and, in my opinion, breaking all of the last 5 of the 10 Commandments which these PAGANS want displayed in Courts, Schools, all over. It is a joke to think they want to let everyone know which Commandments they are breaking and believing that We the People are too stupid to notice. That the people in whom we are to have the utmost trust are nothing more than panhandlers, thief’s, scammers and cons is, ultimately, the greatest desecration of God’s name one can imagine. We the People have to say NO to these idolators, NO to the autocrats trying to enslave all of us in a nice warm manner, NO to the “specious” and “expedient” tendencies within us and YES to the fundamental moral behaviors that are in our souls, YES to the call and demands of the Universe to “do justly, love mercy” and respect and embrace the infinite worth and dignity of each and every soul. This is our job, this is our choice, this is our gift and this is our honor to live into the basic goodness of being that is, unfortunately, buried deep within some of us and it is incumbent upon We the People to bring it out in ourselves and in another(s).

I have spent the past 38+ years burying the “specious” and the “expedient” and each time I fail to do this, each time I give into these ways of being, I FUCK IT UP! Writing this morning has made all of my screw ups flash in front of me, which happens every day, and I see that at the core of these errors is “specious” and “expediency”, sometimes as a choice and most times unwittingly. This is the work Rabbi Heschel is speaking of, burying these two ways of being so deep, it is almost impossible for them to influence me so strongly again. I am sorry for my succumbing to them. My commitment is to see choices I make through this lens, is it “expedient”, “specious” and if so, walk away. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Burying your lies and unearthing the Truth - Year 4 Day 124

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 124

“God had to bury truth in order to create man. How does one ever encounter the truth? The truth is underground, hidden from the eye. Its nature and man’s condition are such that he can neither produce nor invent it. However, there is a way. If you bury the lies, truth will spring up.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 22)

Living in Trump’s “alternative facts” universe is the proof that “he can neither produce nor invent” truth. We are incapable of doing this, yet people throughout the millennia have tried and failed, leading to the wreck and ruin of civilizations, human beings, and progress. Think of the myriad of peoples, ideas and progressive ways of being that were shut down by being conquered by the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, etc. All of these conquerers believed that ‘might makes right’ and denied the truth of Zechariah’s prophecy: “not by might, not by power, but by My spirit”. Of course they also denied the “truth” of monotheism with their pantheon of gods and the stories about them.

It is a problem that has dogged humanity through today-“how can I make my lies into someone else’s truth” is a question that was most prevalent for Josef Goebbels so he set out to do exactly this. He was not the first nor the last and he was, however, one of the best  and his example has been followed and honed ever since. “Accuse another of that which you are guilty of” was his phrase and, as we can see with Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Vought, and especially Miller, this way of being is the modus operandi for the current administration and the chaos this brings is celebrated and enjoyed by these wannabe despots. While it is easy and important to point out the evil being perpetrated upon all of us by these grifters and deceivers, it is as important for all of us to look at how we try to “invent” the truth. Be it by denying things in our past, by refusing to make amends, by blaming another for that which we are guilty of, and so many other “truths” we attempt to “invent”. It is important, as we have only 19 days till Shavuot, 19 days until we receive “Truth” and commit to live in it, so it is a good idea to let go of the ‘truths we have invented’ and, like we did during Passover, get down to our basic truth of being human, of being a divine need and reminder. It is important to return to our position as being a partner with the universe, the Ineffable One, to finish creating a world where the practice of “freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein is lived into by everyone. It is crucial that we return to the “Truth” that the Torah brings to us, as I have said before, the Torah, the Bible, are books of eternal truth and wisdom, whether one wants to believe the stories actually happened or are told as examples.

My focus, however, is “there is a way. If you bury the lies, truth will spring up.” Since my recovery began, I have spent parts of each day looking at the lies I tell myself. I found it to be crucial to living well to jettison the lies I lived by for so long and to be careful about the ones I was making up, both wittingly and unwittingly. Human beings tell themselves lies all the time in order to cope with the realities of living. To overcome the dread and despair that we all will die, eventually, we deny that we are going to die today so we can carry on otherwise, we would either stay in bed or be so reckless we would take chances and risks that could kill us. This is a ‘good’ lie,  one that motivates us to live today. What Rabbi Heschel is speaking of, of course, are the insidious lies that human beings tell themselves. The lies of Goebbels and Trump, Vought and Eichmann, the lies that one human being by the ‘luck’ of their race is better than another human being of another race, that skin color determines worth, that Jews are inferior to Christians, Jews killed Christ, that God only loves ___(fill in the blank), that the wealthy and powerful actually know better and should be worshipped, and so many other bullshit stories that have been told and believed. Isn’t it time for all of us to let go of these lies, to stop believing the MAGA bullshit, the Aryan bullshit, the Putin/Orban bullshit?

Isn’t it time for We the People to build on what the Church as done by investing Pope Leo XIV? Isn’t it time for We the People to build on Rabbi Heschel’s teachings above, on the teachings of Buber, Rav Kook, the Baal Shem, the Ramban, and so many other Jewish philosophers through the ages? Isn’t it time for We the People to embrace the power of the upcoming holiday of Shavuot and invest ourselves seriously in the Tikkun L’Eil Shavuot, the repairing/fixing/rectifying ourselves before the evening before Shavuot. While it is usually done on the evening of Shavuot(remember Jewish days begin in the evening), it is something that the teaching above reminds us is important to do everyday. We will never be able to hear, read, see, live into “TRUTH” without first rectifying the lies we tell ourselves. We will never be able to receive Torah, receive Truth without first letting go of the lies we are telling ourselves. It took 49 days and a lot of complaining and getting clean for the former slaves to be able to receive Torah and what was their response: “we will do and then we will understand”, realizing that trying to discern what the meaning of a mitzvah is prior to engaging in it is impossible. This may be the biggest lie we tell ourselves: we have to understand something before we can do it. How ridiculous, can you truly explain to me the experience of watching a sunset, of being on the Ocean, of climbing the top of the mountain, of running a marathon, of love prior to engaging in it? OF COURSE NOT! Yet, we are willing to believe the lies we tell ourselves, we are willing to give our power over to Trump, Vought, Miller because we are buying into their lies and we have been willing to discriminate against another so we can feel better about ourselves. We will never be able to receive Torah, to live into the Biblical Wisdom while clothed in these and so many other Lies We Tell Ourselves!

I don’t understand the workings of the internet nor the computer I am writing on, so I just engage with them and what I need happens-this is not magic, it is seeking truth, seeking wisdom, seeking the humility to know I can never “know” everything nor do I need to. I do understand love because I engage in it, I do understand lies because I lived so many for so long and they brought  ruin to me and all around me. I do understand the power of truth, of T’Shuvah because I have engaged in them both for the past 38 years and found joy, passion and purpose. I know the power of the lies we tell about another in order to feel good about ourselves. I know the power of denying the opportunity for T’Shuvah while wrapping oneself in the garments of God, of ‘righteousness’, of doing good. I know the bullshit of the lies and everyday work to rid myself of the ones that are harming me and you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What is your relationship to/with "Truth"- is it your way to speak it or ignore it when inconvenient? Year 4 Day 123

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 123

“God had to bury truth in order to create man. How does one ever encounter the truth? The truth is underground, hidden from the eye. Its nature and man’s condition are such that he can neither produce nor invent it. However, there is a way. If you bury the lies, truth will spring up.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 22)

The first sentence above refers to a Midrash that talks about the ‘war’ that ‘raged in heaven’ between the Angels who wanted humans created and those that didn’t who all made their ‘case’ to God. The Angel of Truth was the most vehement against creating humanity because the Angel knew that humans would lie and bastardize the truth. So, the Midrash goes on to say that God buried “truth” in the one place humans would ‘never’ look-in their inner life, in their soul. This midrash speaks to the high value the Rabbis, the spiritual world places on “truth” and the reality that humans have, throughout the millennia, spat on “truth”, bastardized “truth”, misused “truth” and, most of all, ignored “truth” whenever “truth” becomes inconvenient to feed their greed and their avarice.

This problem, of how human beings can stand for, with, and in “truth” especially when in becomes inconvenient has been with us forever. We see this in the stories of Sarah and Hagar, of Jacob and Esau, of Rebekah and Isaac, in stories throughout the entire Bible. Rather than learn from their errors, the Rabbis, the leaders of the Church have canonized these stories and turned them into ‘good things’, lying to one’s husband becomes for the ‘sake of heaven’, abusing someone who did as you asked, bore a son for your husband, becomes ‘righteous’, tricking one’s brother and never reconciling with him is seen as a good, smart move-all leading to the lies that help to separate us one from another today. Maybe this is the reason that the fundamentalist practitioners of the different faiths have embraced the LIAR in Chief, Donald Trump, and his band of thieves, liars, and practitioners of visiting evil and cruelty upon human beings just because they can.

From Adam to King David and beyond in Jewish history, we have been stymied by our refusal to “encounter the truth”. Nathan the prophet, upon hearing King David’s outrage at the story he was telling him, pointed his finger at David and accused him of being the demon of the story. David immediately agreed and sought to reconnect with God. The Second Temple was destroyed because, according to the Rabbis, of senseless hatred amongst the Jews of the time. This senseless hatred has continued to this day and it hinders our ability to “encounter the truth”.

Senseless hatred is used as a political tool and no one has done more with it than the Republicans and Trump. These ‘good christian folk’ keep lying and lying, bastardizing the “truth” of Jesus’ teachings and the moral foundations of Christianity and calling everyone else liars, grifters, etc. They are following the Goebbels teaching:”accuse another of that which you are guilty of” to a whole new level. They are masters at this, Trump sells these lies like hotcakes, he is a great salesman to people who want to be deceived and lied to. We are in a time where self-deception is at an all time high, I think. We the People seem to have made a choice to stay willfully blind, to violate the “Holiness Code” found in  Leviticus 19:1-18 with reckless abandon. Rather than “honor your mother and father”, children are “divorcing” them, cutting them off and out. Rather than leave the corners of the fields for the poor, people are harvesting every inch, rather than rebuking someone when they are doing wrong, people are lauding Trump’s every act of sin, every act which makes fun of another, blames another, degrades another human being. Rather than pay a worker his wages every day, employers seek to find ways to exploit their workers, putting stumbling blocks up for the blind and cursing the deaf are everyday occurrences rather than NOT doing either of these actions. Suspect your neighbor is the way of the world instead of Love Your Neighbor in today’s world. This is the tragedy and trauma we are living in today, all because of our aversion to “truth”. All because we are unwilling to, feel incapable to “encounter the truth” each and every day.

Human hubris contributes greatly to our unwillingness and inability to “encounter the truth”, I believe. As the next sentence above says, “he can neither produce nor invent it” and this is too much for most humans to bear. We the People have to come to terms with our own limitations, with our own dependency upon our “intuitive mind”, our need to live in higher consciousness each and every day. We the People are being called by the writing today to reprioritize our thinking and our relationship with “truth”. We the People are being reminded that we are not as all-powerful and all-knowing as we think we are. We the People are being called to account in the words above for our hubris, for our using our rational mind to deny what “truth” is, to lie about the need and call of every human soul to live into “truth”, to enslave people with the lies and the subterfuge our elected officials are using to usurp the Constitution, to destroy the underpinnings of our democracy, to set up their new “1000 year fourth Reich” as some of Trump’s advisors, cronies are calling it. We the People know where this type of talk leads, We the Jewish People know what living under ‘christian nationalism’ is like and how demeaning, how dangerous it is for Jews, Muslims, etc. Yet, jews, muslims, christians, even some catholics, all are embracing Project 2025, loving what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza and the West Bank, believing that ‘might makes right’ even though the prophet Zechariah says: “Not by might, not by power, but by My spirit…”(Zechariah 4:6). I just keep wondering what Bible these ‘good religious folk’ are reading-certainly not the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament of Jesus’.

I am hyper aware of the subtle lies that swirl around in my head and from the mouths of another. Because I was a liar and a con, I am ultra-sensitive to them upon hearing them, perceiving them and I erupt like a volcano when people spout them. I can’t stand what passes for spiritual sustenance today, how Rabbis and Preachers, Priests and Ministers are willing to give comfort the comfortable and afflicted the afflicted with their words of encouragement rather than afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. In sermon after sermon, it seems the majority of clergy are content to ‘not rock the boat’ for fear of… FUCK FEAR! Speaking “Truth” is our only job, as clergy and as human beings. Silent acquiescence is the path to slavery and destruction-we have been there before. “Truth” no matter what is our path! God Bless sand stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Is your "spiritual guide" helping you hear "the Voice" or helping you hear their voice? Year 4 Day 122

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 122

“Tragic is the role of religion in contemporary society. The world is waiting to hear the Voice, and those who are called upon to utter the word are confused and weak in faith. “The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty” (Psalm 29:4). Where is its power? Where is its majesty?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 21)

“The Voice” is calling out from Mt. Sinai every hour of every day. We know this, not because it is part of the Midrash of Judaism, we know this because those of us who are attuned to the frequency of “the Voice” hear it daily. There is a lot of static at times because we humans have to be empty of our false egos, our self-deceptions to hear “the Voice” clearly, and even though it is static at times, we know it is “the Voice” that spoke to our ancestors at Sinai. The issue raised above is with the Clergy, once again. Since the days of the Talmud, of the Rabbis, the prophets have been used to prove the points they wanted to make, they have not been studied for the words and warnings they offered. The prophets heard “the Voice” and relayed it to the people, the royalty, the priests and the wealthy and guess what? They did not want to hear them nor did they heed them and Israel was lost and wandering for almost 1900 years. Jews have been persecuted and discriminated against for these 1900 years and scapegoated for all of the ills of the times since the times of Jesus till today. Yet, the Rabbis were more worried about their position, about the Judaism they were re-inventing, and felt the prophets would cause people to revolt against Rome and make Judaism disappear altogether. BULLSHIT!

Just as the Rabbis were “confused and weak in faith”, so too have the Clergy of all faiths been. In the Bible, we are told how to live together, each group keeping their own ways and not treading on the ways of another, making Biblical paths so attractive that more and more people would adopt an ethical and moral foundation for living within their own community and with other peoples. Yet, because of competition, because of the need for power and the greediness of human beings, even the Priests, the Ministers, the Cardinals, the Bishops, the Rabbis, the Imams became seduced by the power of royalty and riches and confused their agendas and the agendas of their ‘benefactors’ with the agenda of God, the agenda of the Bible. This has caused “confusion” since the beginning and this “confusion” has made the Clergy of all faiths “weak in faith” until today!

We the People have to stop telling our Priests, Rabbis, and Imams what we want and demand of them to teach us all how to “hear the Voice” and how to put into action We the People demanding to know the logic behind the commandment, the action, it is time for our Clergy to stand up and remind us of the words We the People spoke at Mount Sinai: Na’Aseh V’Nishma, we will do and then we will understand. We the People have to demand of our clergy to stop listening to us, to stop worrying about keeping their job and call out to us and demand from us what “the Voice” tells us all each day from the top of Mount Sinai: “Love your Neighbor as Yourself”, “humanity is created in the Image of God, male and female both were created at the same time”, Love the stranger because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt”, “care for the needy, the poor, the widow and the orphan”, “do justly, love mercy, walk in the ways of God”, etc. Yet, the Clergy today are too interested in lining their own pockets like Paula Cain-White, Joel Osteen and the rest of the “prosperity gospels” LIARS and PAGANS!

Of course “the voice of the Lord is powerful”, “the voice of the Lord is full of majesty”, the questions Rabbi Heschel is asking is not because he doesn’t know it is because We the People have forgotten to hear the power and the majesty that “the voice of the Lord” bestows upon us. “The word is very near to you, in your mouth, in your heart that you may do it…I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse, CHOOSE LIFE.” (Deut. 30:11,19). It is the JOB of the Clergy to help us clear out the shmutz in our brains, the chatter of K-Fuck radio that is constantly playing in our heads and the confusion of our immature souls and inner life so We the People will hear what is truly in our mouth and in our souls, in our hearts and take the actions that promote our lives and the lives of those around us. It is incumbent on the Clergy to impart Good Orderly Direction to all of us, as we say in Alcoholics Anonymous. Yet, the PAGANS running some of the biggest Churches in the land are doing the opposite, some of the best-meaning Rabbis, Priests, Imams, are too afraid given the power-mad lay people who run some of the religious institutions in our country and across the globe. Even worse are the Rabbis and Jews like Ben G’vir, Smotrich, Netanyahu, who know better and bastardize the Bible for their own power, greed, wealth and narcissistic endeavors. The Rabbis who give Trump, Israel, Putin, Orban cover are the worst PAGANS of all because We the Jewish People were given the job of promoting “the majesty”, “the power” of “the VOICE” to the entire world and instead assholes like those mentioned above are promoting their voices and selling us on following in their idolatrous footsteps instead of listening to “the Voice” that is “in our mouths, in our hearts”.

I know “the Voice” when I hear it precisely because I ignored it for so many years during my ‘run’ of alcoholism, criminality, and loneliness. Because I felt so abandoned and alone, because I “wanted mine”, I wanted to “get even” for what I perceived society had done to me and my family with the death of my father, I blotted out “the Voice” and, at the same time, I kept being a part of the Shul I was raised at, I was the President of the Youth Group, I went to services, etc, so part of me knew “the Voice” was calling me and I, like Jonah, ran away. Once I had my “spiritual awakening” and began to study, I couldn’t stop hearing “the Voice” and the “power” and the “majesty” of it is too overwhelming for me to ignore and too motivating for me not to follow. This is the crux of my strength and my vulnerability; I can’t not hear “the Voice”, I can’t not share “the Voice”, I can’t stay silent and do the ‘expected’ and ‘expedient’ thing, I can’t listen to the people who believe the golden rule is: “the one with the gold rules”, and I have never been ‘politically correct’ in my life. As soon as I hear “the Voice”, I have to follow it, I have to share it, I have to stand in it, on it and wave it like a banner. I am compelled and, as a descendant of the prophets like we all are, I have little patience for the bullshit of those who want to promote LIES, alternative facts, and their own bullshit-calling it ‘god’s word’. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How do you view your Religious Leadership, helping you solve your spiritual maladies ore adding to them? Year 4 Day 121

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 121

“Tragic is the role of religion in contemporary society. The world is waiting to hear the Voice, and those who are called upon to utter the word are confused and weak in faith. “The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty” (Psalm 29:4). Where is its power? Where is its majesty?” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 21)

OY! Reading this today, knowing when these words were written and spoken for the first time is depressing. Religious leaders were warned of the impending danger of the cultish faux-religious groups sprouting and about to sprout up. By now, the National Prayer Breakfast had been started and those ‘christ is the lion’, ‘live like King David’ people were worming their way into government, foreign affairs, etc. The KKK was alive and well so ‘christ’, according to their theology, was a white supremacist, and Nixon’s lies, Falwell’s ‘moral majority’ (which was anything but moral), Gingrich, Tea Party, MAGA, Prosperity Gospels were yet to flourish, though they were beginning their climb to the ‘top of the heap’. Yet, our religious leadership, as great as they were, failed to inoculate the faithful against the hypocrisy, the idolatry, the PAGANS who were in our midst!

How could this have happened? Fear-full stop! Religious people were afraid to ‘be on the wrong side of…’, they did not support MLK and Civil Rights for a long, long time and some, especially white southerners, never have as we are witnessing a return to a Jim Crow type era. Religious leaders forgot that they serve God, they serve something greater than their paycheck and whenever they gave into to the “Board”, they lost their voices and their power-which comes from God. These Clergy people decided their livelihood was more important than serving their calling, their souls’ knowing and the greater good of humankind. How fucking sad!! It is enraging that the people who were to teach us the moral solution to the problems all humanity face, compromised themselves for the sake of a paycheck, for the sake of a job. All Pulpit Clergy should have been marching with John Lewis, Rev Martin Luther King, way before Selma and they didn’t because they didn’t want to upset the power structure of their congregations, the power structure of the white racists and they did not want to face their own inner racism. For Jews, many were happy that the Blacks were being discriminated against as the quotas on Jews in Graduate Schools had recently been lifted, the memory of Nazi Germany was fresh in their minds and, heaven forbid, they did not want to “rock the boat”!

How utterly disgusting for our Clergy to shrink in the face of their fears, of their prejudices, of their bastardizing of the moral foundation upon which every spiritual discipline stands! The more I think about what was happening, the more angry I am with what passed for ‘religious observance’. There are not enough “hail marys’, “our fathers”, “chest pounding” to redeem what We the People allowed and fostered to happen in our religious institutions. Yes, We the People are at the heart of this dangerous drama that has been playing out for the millennia since the times of antiquity, when humans were tools if they didn’t have power, since the times when the Priesthood in Ancient Israel was for sale and controlled by the King, since the times of the Prophets who railed against such behaviors, since the time of Christianity spreading hatred of the very people from whom Jesus came from, since the time of the Rabbis working hard to mitigate the rage and the abject despair of the prophets over the People’s wanton disregard for God’s pleas to return.

The tragedy we are part of today, in America, in Israel, across the Globe lies at the feet of the so-called ‘religious leaders’. These pagans, these mendacious masters, these PROSTITUTES have whored themselves and their religious institutions to suck the dick of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, in order to get them to do what they want, believing they are in control of everything. They forget the lessons of history, they forget the experiences of the people at Mount Sinai, with everyone having their own experience of God both there and at the Red Sea, with each individual being talked to in their own way-remember the commandments are in 2nd person singular. Smotrich, Ben G’Vir, Cain-White, Osteen are merely representatives of the ROT and DECAY that has infiltrated the ‘real jews, real christians, real muslims’ as these whores call themselves.

Yet, We the People, at least 40-45% of us still believe in the Grifter-In-Chief! More than 40% of the people still applaud the charlatans who are making money off of God’s name-isn’t this the ultimate breaking of the 3rd Commandment-“Do not take the Name of the Lord in Vain!! More than 40% of the people are seeking and supporting surrendering to Russia, becoming serfs to Trump and his WhoreMongers, spewing racial hatred and antisemitism throughout the land instead of Freedom! How is this possible? It goes back to the opening sentence above, it goes back to the clergy of the time not heeding Rabbi Heschel’s words. It goes back to We the People wanting to control the clergy, have power over the word of God and the works God commands us to fulfill. It goes back to the spiritual bankruptcy that We the People were suffering from and the lack of effort on the part of the Clergy to help us identify and heal our spiritual maladies so what we have today could not happen, so what we experience today would not have been given the ‘shade’ to grow in such darkness and overwhelm the light. Where the FUCK are the CLERGY of TODAY when Rev William Barber is arrested for praying in public to JESUS??

Having been raised in the 50’s and 60’s, knowing how much I really wanted to learn more than the Hebrew Alphabet and how to read the Torah for my Bar Mitzvah, and being thwarted by the ‘established’ modes of Hebrew School, I am grateful for the first sentence above because it describes my experience at that time and, in some ways, added to my disillusionment with the world after my father’s death. Spiritual needs were relegated to lifecycle events, and, while my shul did a good job of creating community, the deeper study and solutions to the issues facing us at the time communally as well as individually, were never addressed. Fast forward to my Rabbinic studies, spiritual counseling was not high on the priority list, “see someone twice and then refer them out” was what was being said. The tragedy continues.  God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Absurdity or Responsibility, which is your default way of living in? Year 4 Day 120

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 120

“Freedom is a burden that God has thrust upon man. Freedom is something we are responsible for. If we succeed, we will help in the redemption of the world; if we fail, we may be crushed by its abuse. Freedom as man’s unlimited lordship is the climax of absurdity, and the central issue we face is man’s false sense of sovereignty.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 21)

While Rabbi Heschel was not the only person to recognize the inherent dangers in what was going on in the late 1950’s, he is one of the few Jews to speak out so forcefully about what the government was doing, what the people were doing, what religion was doing to enhance and retard “freedom” in America and in the world. Because “freedom” has been treated as an entitlement by so many here, the idea of being responsible for it has not always been in our DNA as human beings. The stories of slavery, of bowing down to the King, the Autocrat, etc are far more numerous than those that depict serving God, serving “freedom”, which is what makes the Bible all the more a revolutionary document!

We are in a worse state than the late 1950’s today and, as we see everyday with the great CHAOS MACHINE called Trump and his lackeys, we are in grave danger of being “crushed by its abuse”. Being a witness to this “abuse” here in America and in Israel with the Ben G’vir, Smotrich, Netanyahu mendacious PAGANS living under the guise of ‘religious’, is enraging, heartbreaking, scary and We the People cannot stop fighting for our “freedom” and the “freedom” of our neighbors, the “stranger in our midst”, etc.

The main issue facing us and the root cause of the abuse of power is, as my friend and teacher Rabbi Danny Maseng puts it: “moral foundations”. Without living from a moral foundation, one is just evil and cruel. In fact, a lack of moral foundation is the prerequisite for being able to be cruel and evil. While many people, like Trump, Heinrich, Putin, Bibi, come off as nice, fun, charismatic, they are not moral and without a moral foundation, the people in power(elected or not) have to “abuse” “freedom” and are irresponsible with our rights, our minds, our spirits. For them, cruelty is the point so we are so focused on one area that is so outrageous we don’t notice the myriad of thefts, lies, abuses happening in every other area of our government and our living.

Having lived with these words for the past 3 days, it is embarrassing for me that I did not realize what Rabbi Heschel was saying the first few times I read this, I knew and I didn’t know how prescient he was in this instance. Witnessing “freedom” being considered “man’s unlimited lordship” on both ends of the continuum, far right and far left, is what has brought us to the doorstep of ending the democratic experiment of the past 240 years, of ending the cause and the spirit of Lexington and Concord some 250 years ago. It is not only “the climax of absurdity”, it is threatening the very underpinnings of Judaism; “proclaim freedom throughout the land..”, “love the stranger”, “love your neighbor”, “one law for the stranger and the citizen alike”, and all the rest of the morality that the Bible brought to the world which these ‘good christian folk’ like Trump, Cain-White, Osteen, Bondi, and the other cross-wearing hookers Trump has around him, ‘praise god’ for. The depth and breath of their hypocrisy is astounding and dangerous.

I keep wondering what it is that keeps their supporters so loyal to their own detriment and the only reason I can come up with is the age-old responses to an autocrat: fear and “drinking the kool-aid”. I have to believe that Lindsey Graham is afraid of something he doesn’t want people to know about him because one cannot be a loyal friend to John McCain, z”l, and to Donald Trump-it is impossible. There are many other elected officials who seem to be afraid to stand for “freedom” and, in their fear, are bringing the “absurdity” of Trump to bear on all of us. The people who have “drank the kool-aid” are going to have to experience a “dark night of the soul” and have an authentic “spiritual awakening” before they will see any light, hear and experience any truth and, come back to being responsible for their “freedom”.

Now is the time, America and Israel are the places for We the People to once again, as we did at Mount Sinai, pledge our allegiance to God, not human beings. Right here, right now is the time for We the People to be “responsible” to and for the moral foundations of the Bible, of democracy, of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and to fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence: “all people are created equal.. and endowed with certain unalienable rights; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. These promises, along with the ones in the Bible, are not in the minds nor actions of Osteen, Cain-White, Rubio, Hegseth, Vought, Lutnick, and the rest of the thugs around Trump. Their belief in their own sovereignty is so complete they mock the process to select a Pope-these ‘good christian folk’ and supported by the ‘best catholic of them all’ J D Vance! Who else but We the People can stop these mendacious, cruel, evil people. It is our responsibility to do everything we can to “redeem the captive”, to “ransom our kin, our people” from any and all forms of imprisonment and enslavement  and NOW is the time. Be it Bibi or Donny, both of whom think they are Mafioso’s, We the People are being called to “take to the streets” in non-violent protests and to support Rev Barber and everyone else who wants to Pray in the Capitol Rotunda, especially since these assholes want prayers in school which, will not include Jewish nor Muslim prayers. Yet, these PAGANS arrest Rev Barber because he prayed for the same people God tells us to care for and Jesus hung out with-DUH!!

I am deeply committed to being responsible for freedom and know the how it helps to redeem an individual. This has been my life’s work for the past 37+ years and the gratification of being able to look in the mirror, with all my flaws, and know I have brought about the ransoming of the captive and the redeeming of a human soul fills me with humility and awe. The beauty of living the words above is that no one can take the experience away, no matter how they lie, obfuscate, and run from the truth, there is no erasing the experiences of responsibility to “freedom” and the knowing of a job well-done. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Responsibility for our freedom means being watchful and wary of the promises of the Autocrats Year 4 Day 119

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 119

“Freedom is a burden that God has thrust upon man. Freedom is something we are responsible for. If we succeed, we will help in the redemption of the world; if we fail, we may be crushed by its abuse. Freedom as man’s unlimited lordship is the climax of absurdity, and the central issue we face is man’s false sense of sovereignty.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 21)

The second sentence above is what many of us learned in our Civics classes. I remember my 9th Grade Civics teacher, Mr. Ed Roach, drilling into our minds and spirits that freedom depends on how responsible we are to the Constitution, the laws of the land, and the Declaration of Independence. Each Christmas Holiday, he would take a bus load of 9th graders to Washington DC to visit the sites of freedom, the halls of justice and Congress, etc so we could learn to appreciate our hard-fought for freedom and the journey our ancestors took so we could live in America. Almost 60 years later, I can hear his voice, see his face, and feel his passion for freedom and for all of us being responsible for our own and everyone else’s freedom! 



Rabbi Heschel says: “In a free society, some are guilty all are responsible.” Yet, today, we are witnessing the irresponsibility of our elected officials, the blatant disregard for our Constitution and Declaration Of Independence, our democratic norms, checks and balances by a group of fascists who enjoy the cruelty, much like the Nazis who killed the Jews and then went home to be such good fathers and mothers, loving classical music, laughing and partying away! When absolute power is the goal, cruelty is just a means to the desired end and these PAGANS, operating under the guise of ‘christianity’ that has nothing to do with Christ or God, love to see the pain their cruelty inflicts on anyone and everyone. Stephen Miller, Tom Holman, J D Vance, Donald Trump, Hegseth, Noem, all have wet dreams every night over the pain, fear and horror they inflict on people-just like Himmler, Goring, Eichmann, Hitler, Goebbels, et al. These assholes are joining the autocrats club by imitating Putin, Orban, etc.

Demanding accountability is only the beginning, however. We the People must continue to take to the streets and protest against this irresponsible behavior towards our “freedoms”! We the People are being called to be responsible especially when the powers that be are not. Just as the founding fathers revolted against the authoritarian King George, so to do We the People have to revolt against the wannabe King Donald. Just as the Justice Department, with people like Andrew Weissmann, decimated the Italian Mafia, so to do We the People have to decimate and take down “Don the wannabe Mafioso”. It is not enough to wring our hands, it is not enough to make speeches, it is not enough to donate money. We the People have to put our actions where our mouth is, We the People, who are physically able, must block the doors to our institutions which protect us from the lying, idol-worshiping Republicans who are sucking “Don the wannabe Mafioso’s” you know what!! It is getting tiresome for these Pagan Republicans waving the flag as if they love America when they are really waving the white flag of surrender. It is really boring to hear of their ‘love of god’ when they only ‘love’ power and corruption. It is nauseating to hear them pontificate on their love of people and how much they care for their constituents when they won’t even show up for town hall meetings, they won’t take remedial actions for the errors they have committed by approving Hegseth, Kennedy Jr., Noem, etc. The PAGANS running both houses are incapable of “taking a thorough and fearless inventory” much less admitting their powerlessness over their addiction to ass-kissing and how it makes their life unmanageable-the first step in change, the first step in doing TShuvah.

What baffles many of us is how Trump still enjoys any support, much less 39-45% support! What are the supporters seeing that we are not? What are they staying willfully blind to? Are they like Martin Neimoller, and hiding their heads in the sand because these PAGANS are not coming for them, right now? Do they think that Medicaid will be cut only for ‘blue states’ or only for the ‘democrats’ in their states? Do they believe that not having the tried and true vaccines for the Flu, Measles, Polio, Covid-19, etc will make us healthier? Are they so caught up in the ether they believe the tariffs, the chaos, the private militia of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, will be good for their bottom line? Are they so blind as to realize when there were no regulations, we had the Triangle Shirt Factory fire, the enslavement of Black people, the lack of a living wage, the cruelty of mine collapses, the belching of smoke from the kilns of steel making plants, etc? Yet, this minority keeps loving Trump, loving cruelty and this is how they see being responsible for freedom works!!

We the People have to change things, have to stand up and say NO. It is incumbent upon each one of us to live our inheritance from the Prophets, to live the examples of our founding fathers, of Lincoln, of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Washington, FDR, LBJ, Reagan, the Bush’s, and speak truth to power and listen to truth being spoken to us. It is no longer an option that We the People close our ears to truth, it is no longer okay to buy the bullshit of our own self-deception. It is way past time to think that someone will save us. We the People need to remember that the Messiah comes when we are ready for the Messiah, be it the second coming or the first is of no matter. The Talmud relates many instances of Elijah the Prophet being among the poor and the needy, waiting for some human kindness and then the messiah will be here. It is up to We the People to “assume the person next to us is the messiah and weigh our words, watch our hands and if they choose to nor reveal him/herself, it will not matter” as Danny Siegel teaches in his “A Rebbe’sProverb (from the Yiddish)”. We the People have to assume responsibility for Freedom precisely because our elected leaders are not! We the People are capable, resourceful, and spiritually capable to do this vital job.

My years from 15-36 were defined by my irresponsibility towards freedom and everything else. Looking at living through this lens allows me to see how freedom frames my world. When I am responsible for my freedom, I don’t drink, steal, fuck around in the ways I have before. It just doesn’t have the same appeal, when I follow the teaching of Ed Roach, the teachings of the Bible. I know I have helped others realize this profound truth that seems so obvious and, at least 39-45% of us are oblivious to! OY, praying that We the People help everyone wake up and be responsible. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

We have been here before, are we going to prevent another take-over, another Civil War? Year 4 Day 118

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 118

“Freedom is a burden that God has thrust upon man. Freedom is something we are responsible for. If we succeed, we will help in the redemption of the world; if we fail, we may be crushed by its abuse. Freedom as man’s unlimited lordship is the climax of absurdity, and the central issue we face is man’s false sense of sovereignty.”(Insecurity of Freedom pg. 21)

Reading any and all of Rabbi Heschel’s writings, as with other scholars, the phrase from Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun” comes to mind often. It both reaffirms what we already know and, for me, it enrages me that we have failed to learn from our past errors, we have failed to make a “complete” T’Shuvah, we continue down a path of cruelty, power-seeking, scapegoating, and bastardizing the teachings of morality and ethical behaviors that the Bible and every other Spiritual text of every Spiritual discipline teach!

In 4 weeks we will celebrate the Holy Day of Shavuot, which is both a harvest festival and, the Rabbis decided, the day we received the Torah at Mount Sinai. For many of us Jews, this is the day of “freedom” began. Prior to Mount Sinai, we were either slaves of the Pharaoh or ‘on our own’ listening to Moses, sort of, etc. I call this period ‘liberty’, when one is at the mercy of their own thoughts, desires, whims and will give lip service to going along with things that the leader says if they don’t think it will serve them. “Freedom”, however, according to Bible, involves God and our relationship with God(substitute Higher Consciousness if you need to). What is the first act of ‘meeting’ God at Mount Sinai according to the Biblical account? It is being given a set of commandments by which to live as individuals and within a community. The first act of Freedom bestowed upon the ragtag group of individuals who left Egypt together, who may or may not have been related, who included people who were not descendants of Jacob, was to command a new sense of morality and demand they live an ethical life! This is the “burden that God has thrust upon man” and we seem to failing in carrying this burden and, as we are told in Leviticus 25:10: “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”.

We are witnessing the undoing of everything the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, Buddha’s teachings stand for and are wringing our hands instead of fighting back. Trump, Cain-White, Osteen, Rubio, Vought, Graham, Greene, all proclaim their ‘love of Jesus’ and do everything that Jesus railed against. They all want to ‘fight’ antisemitism while supporting anti-semites in their midst. They want to make this a ‘christian nation’ while taking the most unchristian actions possible. They refuse to “welcome the stranger, care for the stranger, love the stranger,” even thought this is commanded by God 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible! They refuse to have one law for the stranger and the citizen as the Bible calls for, hell they have separate laws for themselves and everyone else and call this constitutional! This has to be stopped by We the People and the way we stop this is by calling our their lies and their bullshit every time, every day and building the support needed to KICK THEIR ASSES out of our Government and restore “freedom” as it was originally given to us as the path of our country and demand we all learn to deal with “freedom as a burden that God has thrust upon man” instead of some entitlement for the rich, the cruel and the autocrats. All of these so-called ‘good christian folk’ like Vought, Osteen, Cain-White, Greene, Rubio, and now Trump, are actually PAGANS, as defined by David Brooks in his Op-Ed last week in the New York Times on May 1.

In 4 weeks, Jews around the world will be asked again to receive the Bible and accept its teachings and commandments as their path of living. While for years we have been saying yes, it has been a hollow yes for most. All of the descendants of the slaves who left Egypt-and we don’t know all of them so lets assume we all are-are being called to both receive and accept the Bible this year, this day anew! We the People, all of us, are being called to account on the night of Shavuot and we have the opportunity to ‘Tikkun L’Eil Shavuot’ repair the evening before receiving the Bible. We the People are being given the opportunity to study the Bible, to reacquaint ourselves with the ethics and morals of living in “freedom”, the burdens and denials it takes to live in “freedom”, the joy and blessings we get by living in “freedom” for ourselves and ensuring that “all its inhabitants therein” enjoy and carry the “burden God has thrust upon man”. The all night study is to get us prepared to respond as the newly freed slaves did, “Na’Aseh V’Nishma, we will do and then we will understand” this is acting our way into right thinking, which may be the greatest “burden God has thrust upon man”. Rather than thinking our way into action, “freedom” involves doing and then understanding, it means we take the next right action no matter how we think, feel, desire. This is the greatest “burden God has thrust upon man”, to go against the rational mind and rise up to our intuitive mind, to let go of our ‘stinking thinking’ and allow our intrinsic ethical nature to guide us.

This is so important in this moment precisely because the people in power are into cruelty, into money, into power and not into God, not into “freedom”, as Curtis Yarvin, the ‘advisor to J D Vance says: “America has to get over its dictator phobia”! Trump believes he is the ‘anointed one’ and the ‘messiah’, he truly thinks he is in control of the world and his ‘good christian’ advisors applaud him for this. Lindsey Graham, who spoke at the funeral of a true “freedom” loving human being, John McCain, has his nose so far up Trump’s ass that he will need a proctologist to remove it soon and has denied the “burden God has thrust upon man” while dishonoring his friend, who not only accepted the “burden”, he fought for everyone to relish and enjoy “freedom”. Just as Moses called “heaven and earth” to be witnesses, Rev Barber, Rabbi Heschel, Rev King, et al are calling “heaven and earth” to be witnesses to our response to the call being sent out to defend “freedom”, to receive the Bible this Shavuot, to repair our inner lives so we live into the ethical and moral actions we take regardless of how we feel or thing, to carry the “burden God has thrust upon” us for ourselves, our neighbors, the poor and the needy, the generations to come.

I accepted the burden some 38 years ago in a prison yard with Rabbi Mel Silverman and have carried it ever since, imperfectly and I have not abandoned it. This is the call, to carry the burden and we all can do this. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark