Focusing on what matters- the Commandments of God! Year 4 Day 177

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 177

“To the Jew, Sinai is at stake in every act of man, and the supreme issue is not good and evil, but God, and His commandment to love good and hate evil; not the sinfulness of ma but the commandment of God.” (God in Search of Man pg. 375)

The first phrase above is both true and forgotten by many a “Jew”. This is the tragedy of the Jewish people; “Sinai is at stake in every act of man” and we forget this, we twist this, we put ourselves, the truth, the good, the evil in pretzel machines come out with skewed attitudes, confused understandings, and promotion of evil rather than the good. This has happened over the millennia and, it seems to me, it is happening on steroids in our time. The State of Israel is a homeland for Jews and it was created with the intention that Jews and Arabs could share the land, live side by side. The Arab nations and the Arab people living in the original mark-up of the land by the UN in 1947/48 decided this was not okay, went to war with Israel as soon as Statehood was announced, gone to war a few times since and has never wanted to make a deal even when Arafat got over 90% of what he was asking for!! The wars were not of Israel’s making and, for a long time, going to war was done with a heavy heart because the loss of one life is too much-this is what “Sinai is at stake in every act of man” means even when it comes to going to war because one has to defend oneself, one’s country. It has been evil of the Palestinians to not want to make peace, not want to find ways to live in at least detente with Israelis, Hamas is evil, Hezbollah is evil as well because they do not fight for peace, they fight for hatred. Their claim of Allah Akbar, God is Great, is a hollow call when they continue to promote evil, to promote hatred, terrorism, holding hostages, etc. The Arab nations that continue to support Hamas and their leaders are also evil, they are perpetuating a wrong, the evil actions of Oct. 7, 2023 and they have never pressured the Palestinians to have a leader that can make peace/detente with Israel.

Israel, for its part has also been “evil”, forgetting “God and His commandment to love good and hate evil”! No matter how many ultra-orthodox Jews are in his cabinet, no matter how many ‘real jews’ supporters Netanyahu has, all of them are PAGANS, they do not “love good and hate evil” because they are perpetuating the evil of occupation for far too long. Their attitude that Arabs in the West Bank could be killed and it is not a crime is atrocious, the worst evil I can think of because it goes against the very essence of what the creation story teaches us about humanity! We all come from the mold of Adam, we, every human being, is created with infinite dignity, worth as we learn from Exodus 10:1 when God says to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh”, we don’t say “come” unless we are there so God was still within Pharaoh, just as God is within every human being alive! To say only Jews have infinite value and worth is denying that “Sinai is at stake in every act of man”! This is the evil being perpetrated upon all Jews and non-Jews by Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben G’Vir, et al in the Israeli government which has led to the continuing hostage drama and saga as well as throughout the Jewish world led by Chabad, AIPAC, and other ‘right-wing’ Jews. No where in any of the commandments is the command to be CRUEL, the command to hate another human being-in fact, we are told to LOVE THE STRANGER over and over again, we are told to “hate evil” not promote it, we are told to “rebuke your neighbor and don’t bear guilt because of them”.

It is time for We the People to live up to and into the demand and knowing that “Sinai is at stake in every act of man”. It is time for We the People to stop going along to get along, to stop kissing the asses of those in power here in America and there in Israel. It is time for We the People to demonstrate with our actions that “the supreme issue” is “the commandment of God” not the desires of the PAGANS, the LIARS, the IDOLATORS! We the People are being called to duty, We the People are being called to serve God, not humans, We the People are being called to jettison the lies and deceptions we have bought into, the ones in our minds and the ones another(s) tell us. We the People are being given the opportunity to do a complete T’Shuvah for Adam’s hiding in the Garden by “coming out” from the shadows, leaving the ‘safety’ of hiding under our beds, rising above our fears of being harmed by the ‘milita’ of these autocrats and PAGANS like Netanyahu, Trump, Miller, Osteen, Chabad, Ultra-Orthodox right-wingers and left-wingers and STAND AT SINAI once again and repeat the words that have kept Judaism alive: NA’ASEH V’NISHMA, WE WILL DO AND THEN UNDERSTAND! We the People have to “take a leap of action” as Rabbi Heschel reminds us.

As you can probably gather, the “fire” I wrote about yesterday is flashing through me today as well! I am so tired of living in the binary world of human beings who only seek to use it for power and control, be it on the left, be it on the right. Rather than seek to find the middle ground, the middle path which Maimonidies recommends, these assholes, these ‘self-righteous pricks’ have to have it their way or the highway. I guess this is why my “fire”, my prophetic inheritance gets ignited so easily and quickly-which I admit is not always a good thing! Yet, I live a life where “Sinai is at stake in every act” of Mark. I know the dangers of flirting with evil, with hanging out with the bad, because I did, got seduced, went against what I knew to be right and did wrong. This is the tragedy of the Jews on the extremes, they are not able to experience the seduction that has happened to them, they continue to wrap themselves in Torah, in the “good” and continue to miss the truth of their actions, the “sinfulness” and the “commandment of God”. This is the tragedy that I am railing against today. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

The Ability to Cope with Evil and using the Power of God's will to defeat it Year 4 Day 176

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 176

“Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam. The fact that we were given the knowledge of His will is a sign of some ability to cope with evil. The voice is more than a challenge. It is powerful enough to shake the wilderness of the soul, to strip the ego bare, to flash forth His will like fire.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374-5)

I have been thinking about the first sentence forever, in a way, and more specifically since Friday when I first copied it down. What was the failure of Adam? It certainly wasn’t the disobedience because the Garden story is a setup and since the Torah is Eternal Wisdom and Truth, I believe “the failure of Adam” was to hide, to deny, to blame rather than be responsible for his actions. “Sinai” is where there was no hiding, no one was left out, everyone had their own experience there, no two being the same according to the Torah, and everyone felt seen and saw something, everyone believed they were heard and heard something, everyone experienced being invited in and they knew they belonged. Everyone experienced the will of God, their higher/highest consciousness and ‘saw’ the possibilities of living free, living whole, living holy after years of being slaves to Pharaoh and slaves to their own immature inner life. What a gift in the face of the evil of Egypt, in the face of the fear of the unknown: to be known, belonging and supported by one’s ‘tribe’, one’s community, one’s higher power!

I’m hearing Rabbi Heschel remind us of our own power and to use it, our own voices and own them, our knowing of what is right and not right and choosing good, choosing what is right, choosing life!

Our “knowledge of His will is” the beginning. After Sinai we have no excuse for not carrying it out, for not using it to combat the evil that is within us and the evil that surrounds us. When the Minister of Defense of the State of Israel declares that killing a Palestinian in the West Bank is not a terrorist act, that it is ‘okay’, when IDF soldiers murder an entire family who had been guarded by Jewish volunteers the week before so they could pick the olives from their trees, and claim that this is god’s will, we know that Sinai had no effect on them, we know they are the idolators and false prophets Moses warned us about. We know that Anochi is not their God, their god is an idol and they are part of the PAGANS that have taken power across the globe. When we have the second tax cut for the rich at the expense of the poor, at the expense of medicaid, at the expense of so Pepfar the USA is being run by the same fascist cult that lived 100 years ago in Nazi Germany. When masked Latinos are arresting, beating, deporting other Latinos and won’t show their faces for fear of being recognized by their community, we know that Jesus’ words have no effect on them. When Miller, Holman, Cain-White, Bannon, Osteen, Hagee, all agree that Jesus is the LION, that Jesus doesn’t care about justice, mercy, or walking humbly with God, we know that Sinai, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection has no impact on them and the “knowledge of God’s will” is overtaken by the desires of their will, the call of power, cruelty, hatred, prejudice has become their raison d’être!

Yet, there is hope and the hope lies with We the People! Because we all stood at Sinai, according to the Jewish Tradition, and in Parasha Nitzavim, we are told that all of us from the heads of the tribes to the water-carrier stood and were a community at the edge of the Jordan river, we all hear, know, recognize “the voice” and “the voice” “is powerful enough to shake the wilderness of the soul, to strip the ego bare, to flash forth His will like fire.” We the People are being called to once again STAND AT SINAI and once again HEAR THE VOICE so our egos can be stripped bare, so our soul can find its way home to connection and maturity, so His will burns within us like fire and we fully claim our prophetic inheritance. This is the path for us every day, and it is especially important for this to be the path we follow in this moment when the powers that be are more interested in giving into their inner Pharaohs than their inner Moses’. When Netanyahu and Trump can join forces to exile the Palestinians, to think that building concentration camps like the one Bibi has proposed and Alligator Alcatraz Trump has built in Florida, Pharaoh reigns. When they can make the streets of Los Angeles look like the streets of Germany in the 1930’s, when they can kill children at hospitals seeking attention, when they are more concerned with power and staying out of jail, more concerned at never being held responsible for their actions, we are being led by FASCISTS and PAGANS, no matter what halos they put on their heads, no matter what Jewish stars they put on their bodies, no matter what pins they wear depicting the flags of either/both countries. We the People are being called to use “the knowledge of His will” to not just “cope with evil” we are being told we can defeat “evil” and it is up to us to join together as we did at the Red Sea, as we did at Sinai, as we did on the other side of the Jordan River to fight and defeat the evil within us and outside of us.

I ma watching in horror as the two places I always believed would put principles above personalities, would always seek to do the next right thing, would hold anyone accountable for their actions have caved into cravenness so quickly and easily. I know the power of seduction that evil has, I know the power of the rational mind to make evil seem like the good and I know that “Sinai” is the response to the “evil” within us. I have been blessed to have the “voice” “flash forth His will like fire” and, at times, flashed fire at another(s) and been told I am inappropriate. All of the ‘appropriate’ people and ways helped “evil” flourish and it is time for a “Fire” to burn the evil away so we can live in the good. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Dependence on self, on the nature of human beings or Dependence on Higher Consciousness, on God, on the Word from Sinai? Year 4 Day 175

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 175

“If the nature of man were all we had, then surely the outlook would be dim. But we also have the aid of God, the commandment, the mitsvah. The central Biblical fact is Sinai, the covenant, the word of God. Sinai was superimposed on the failure of Adam.” (God in Search of Man pg. 374

Immersing ourselves in these words, in these thoughts as we begin our day with a prayer of gratitude to God for returning our souls to us, with a gratitude list for the people around us, for the goodness we experience, raises our consciousness above our immature egos, above our rational, selfish, self-centered minds to a higher consciousness, to our intuitive minds, to serving something greater than ourselves.

Unfortunately, most of the people in power today do not immerse themselves in “the mitsvah”, they bastardize “the commandments” and “take the name of God in vain” when they proclaim that “god told me to be cruel” or “god wants only white people to rule America”, and other such bullshit. When the people in power can delay help from FEMA for three days to a red State like Texas, waiting for Kristy Noem to get her photo-op on while children and adults are dying and missing, is it any wonder that in blue States they have the National Guard and Marines terrorizing the cities? Is it any wonder that we are in the situations we are in because these ‘good christian nationalist folk’ believe their nature is god’s will? Where is our outrage? Where is our resistance? Where is our demand to make America a “more perfect union”? Union being the key word here; it comes from the Latin meaning “one, unity”. This doesn’t mean we all agree all the time, rather, we have one goal, as stated in our Declaration Of Independence: “all people are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness”, that we have one path: Freedom as laid out in the Bill of Rights. Without using these documents as our guides and standards here in America, we are giving the control to “the nature of man”…and “the surely the outlook (is) dim”!

Just as the Jewish People have “Sinai”, we Americans have Bunker Hill, we have “the midnight ride of Paul Revere”, we have John Hancock signing the Declaration so large, “King George won’t need his spectacles to read it”! Both traditions have assistance that goes beyond our narcissistic egos, that help us rise from the selfish and greedy individuals we are/have become, the power-hungry, prejudicial, judgmental assholes we have the tendency to be. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence were written by men of faith, they knew of “Sinai”, they had reverence for “the word of God” even though they did believe they had ‘the right’ to own slaves-which “Sinai” comes to say that slavery will, eventually, end. I watch in horror as these ‘good christian nationalist folks’ continue to proclaim their ‘love of Jesus’, their ‘devotion to the Bible’, and then act with cruelty, abandoning the stranger, pissing on the poor, imprisoning the needy and fucking over the widow and orphan. I watch in horror as ‘orthodox jews’ shout “death to the Palestinians”, as they “cheer the destruction in Gaza”, as they seek to dominate what is “jewish and what isn’t”, how they bastardize the Bible’s essence and constantly repeat the “failure of Adam” and deny the voice that blares from “Sinai”! Rather than hear  and adhere to “the word of God”, these PAGANS in their Tzitzis, Yamulka’s and beards, like their counterparts, ‘those good christian nationalists folks’, do more to encourage people to never here nor adhere to the word of God!

It is way past time for We the People to retake our power. It is way past time for We the People to honor the prophetic inheritance we have received. It is way past time for We the People to repay the debt we owe our ancestors for coming to America so we could be born in a FREE COUNTRY, whether they came here ‘legally’ or ‘illegally’. The fact that, unlike in during WWII, people who serve in the military are not automatically granted citizenship is disgusting. The fact that people born here have to worry about CRUEL ASSHOLES like Kristy Noem, Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, Donald DRUMPH, denying them the rights guaranteed by our Constitution is abhorrent. We the People have enjoyed the “certain unalienable rights” and if we are so foolish to believe that when these “unalienable rights” are taken from one person, one group they will not be take from us, then we will go down the path of Hungry, of Israel, and walk willingly into autocracy, fascism, and senseless hatred, which are the ingredients for the destruction of our way of living, as they have been throughout history. We the People are being called, there is a demand that comes through each and every day from “Sinai”, the call of God, the call of conscience, the call of higher consciousness, the call of our intuitive mind to RISE UP and do the next right thing. These voices are demanding we Love the Stranger, Love our Neighbor, that we DO NOT stand idly be the bloods of our neighbors, etc. They are calling us to acknowledge our fear of taking action and being subjected to the same cruelty that ‘those people’ are and then DO IT ANYWAY. This is the way of God, this is the path of the heroes of the Bible-not perfect beings in any way, shape or form and what makes them heroes is Judah standing up for his brother Benjamin after he didn’t for Joseph, Abraham standing up for Sodom even though he didn’t for Isaac, the prophets standing against the powers that be at the cost of life, liberty. This is the inheritance We the People must honor and use.

I use my inheritance every day and have since December of 1986, not always well, not always hearing “The Voice”, and listening for it to the best of my ability. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you "standing idly by the blood of your neighbor" or are you "doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with God"? Year 4 Day 174

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 174

“Does not goodness tend to turn impotent in the face of temptation? Crime, vice, sin offer us rewards; while virtue demands self-restraint, self-denial. Sin is thrilling and full of excitement. Is virtue thrilling? (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

I awoke earlier than usual this morning and my mind would not leave me alone. I was thinking about what is happening in the world, in my country, in Israel, in Ukraine and bewildered as to how this is happening less than 100 years since Nazi Germany. I cannot wrap my head around the idea that Israel is going to ‘set up an area’ for Palestinians who want to ‘stay in Gaza’ can live, those who do not want to self-deport to, I don’t know, South Sudan! I am enraged beyond, beyond that masked men are scooping up Latino men, women, and children under the assumption that they are “illegal criminals” and these goons, these storm-troopers (National Guard/Marines) believe have the right to come into any city they want, yet we don’t see them in Texas or in Florida-DUH!! And this is all being done in the name of god, because this is what ‘Jesus’ wants, because we didn’t do this October 7th happened as god’s punishment to the Jews for not having Gaza, West Bank!! What utter and complete BULLSHIT, this is the essence of Idolatry. It describes how “goodness tend(s) to turn impotent in the face of temptation”.

I know there are verses to point to in the Bible, in the New Testament, in the Koran that can validate these extremest views, I also know there are many more verses that INVALIDATE these idiotic, inhumane ways of being. Hillel the Elder says: “In a place where there is no humanity, be human.” We are living in a time where the criminals are running the show, be it Putin, Bibi, Orban, Trump, Vance, Smotrich, Vought, Miller, Ben G’Vir, Erdogan, MBS, Xi, etc. These criminals have convinced at least of plurality of their people that “crime, vice, sin” is actually goodness in disguise-‘cause, you see Mark, you just don’t understand and are not spiritually fit enough to realize the ‘hand of god’ in what we are doing’. AND too many people are still buying these lies, this bullshit, and giving these criminals free rein-Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Amy Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Alito!! Rather than exhibiting “self-restraint, self-denial” these criminals and their cohorts, their enablers and ass-kissers are running amok and wild in their pursuit of cruelty, money, power, control and We the People are not doing enough to stop them.

The Republican majority in Congress have violated the Oath they took upon the start of this Congress- to defend and protect the Constitution against enemies, foreign and domestic. Domestic enemies, domestic terrorists are running our country right now and I am ashamed, embarrassed and don’t know how to contain my outrage-not only at them, my outrage is overwhelmingly towards those of We the People who continue to support such “crime, vice, sin” and believe the “rewards” from these activities benefit ‘all of us’. To act in these ways and say the Bible tells me so-AVODAH ZARAH- IDOLATRY IN ACTION!!

My outrage towards Netanyahu and what is happening in Israel is no less and, possibly, more than towards Trump and what is happening in the U.S.A. We the Jews were given one mission by God-spread the word! “You shall be a blessing” Abraham is told (Gen.12:2) and, by extension, his descendants are to “be a blessing” also-that is us, my fellow Jews. No matter how much Ben G’Vir, Smotrich, and others of their ilk try to put a tuxedo on a pig-it is still a pig, just as their lies, no matter how they couch them in ‘text’, are still lies. That Jews would even think about displacing people is anathema to our very existence-that Jews, who have been displaced from every land we have lived on/in-remember the “land that I will show you”(Gen.12:1) threw us out because, according to the Rabbis that these ‘real jews’ follow, we defiled it, we turned our backs on the poor, the needy, we encouraged senseless hatred and we failed to be in truth with ourselves, with God, with one another. We the Jews, of that time, could not bring ourselves to admit our mistakes, We the Jews, of that time, would not do our T’Shuvah and, instead, railed against the prophets who came with a message from God to get our shit together or we would lose our place. Well, BIBI, well, Smotrich, well Settlers- the Prophets are screaming at you right now and, once again, true to your nature and the inheritance of those you proclaim to be ‘the real jews’, you ignore the call, the demand, the insistence to be human that is coming from Mount Sinai, that is in the words and deeds of so many Israelis and Jews around the globe!

Rabbi Heschel says in his interview with Carl Stern: “how can I pray when I am co-responsible for the deaths of 1000’s of innocent Vietnamese?”. I ask: how can we act as if everything is normal when we are co-responsible for the cruelty being perpetrated upon so many innocent strangers here in America; how can we act as if “crime, vice, sin” is good when perpetrated upon those “non-human Palestinians” as the Right-Wing in Israel believes? WTF!! As a former practitioner of evil, of knowing that crime pays more than virtue in the short run, knowing the “rush” of the score, the euphoria of the “win”, I can say with certainty that Trump, Bibi and their gangs(no matter who is pulling the strings), are criminals and gangsters. They are not ‘good christian folk’, good and real jews’. They are PAGANS who are hellbent on bastardizing what is good and virtuous. It is up to us to stop them and we must! Our grandchildren are counting on us! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Ego-the driving force that can promote "the good" and can defeat "the good" - Year 4 Day 173

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 173

“The ego is a powerful rival of the good. When coupled with gain, when virtue pays, the good has a chance to prevail. When the good is to be realized at a loss, with no reward, it is easily defeated. Now, since the good it is of the essence of virtue that the good is not to be done for the sake of a reward, what is the change of the good ever to prevail over the interests of the ego?” (God in Search of Man pg. 374)

Once again, Rabbi Heschel touches on what is happening in our time as it has in every time. While I maintain the ego is a gift from God, that it has an important function within human beings, I also maintain it has caused the greatest problems throughout history and within individual communities, families and within ourselves. Thomas Edison had an ego which kept him trying to invent the light bulb over 6000+ attempts, every great scientific discovery comes from people with egos who will not give up, maybe it is stubbornness, maybe it is a calling, it does, in the end, have to do with ego. Ego also has produced the great tragedies of human history: Genghis Khan, Pharaoh, Roman Empire, Babylonia, The various wars throughout Europe over the centuries, Spanish Inquisition, Anti-Semitism, racism, slavery, Nazi Germany, Newt Gingrich, MAGA, Stalin, Netanyahu, Trump, Putin, etc.

My question is: how did “the good” and “ego” become such rivals? As I read the Bible, I am struck by the warnings against allowing these two important and powerful forces to become enemies. “Choose Life”, here is “a pathway to a richer and more meaningful life”, “love your neighbor”, help your enemy if they are thirsty or hungry, “love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt”, etc. Within the Bible are all the ways these two forces become rivals and how to make them friends, yet we seem to have lost the wisdom of the Bible and we are intent on having our “ego” serve our rational minds and our ‘heart’s desires’. Hence the warning in our daily prayers, in the third paragraph of the Shema, from Numbers 15:39; “do not explore/scout after your heart and your eyes because you will whore after them.” This warning, which is not recited out loud in most congregations and is overlooked by most people, is so explicit and so condemning of our willful and unwitting blindness as well as our willful acts of an egotistical nature, goes unnoticed by the likes of both MAGA and the “progressives”, as well as many in the ‘middle’. Human beings have ignored the warnings, the stories, the consequences of an “ego” out of proper measure and we all suffer from the actions of a few, of the many. It is so important for We the People to be on guard and watch ourselves so we do not let the “ego” get out of proper measure that we are told “do not run after the majority to do evil”!

What happened in Ancient Israel if not the consequences from “the ego is a powerful rival of the good”. King Solomon got too full of himself, ignored the warnings to not go back to Egypt, to not have too many wives, to not have too many… and the people rebelled once he died. He held Israel together by fear, not by love, by might, not by shared vision and mission, so once he was dead there was no one who had his charisma, his power and the nation fell apart. Be it Torquemada, Titus, King George, Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, they all allowed/are allowing their “egos” to “be a powerful rival of the good” and we are the collateral damage in their march of narcissistic sociopathy, in their search for more and more ‘bad guys’, in their incessant need for having their asses kissed, being glorified, winning at any and all costs.

What will it take for We the People to both realize and demand our elected officials obligate themselves as we are obligating ourselves that “the good” is always “coupled with gain” and has “to prevail” over our oversized, out of proportion “egos”? When we live into the Bible, not the BULLSHIT Trump/Cain-White, Kushner, Osteen, Hagee “American Bible”, the REAL BIBLE, we see prior to not “scouting after our heart and our eyes”, we are told “one law for the you and the stranger as well”, “one Torah and one justice for you and the stranger as well”(Numbers 15:15-16). The “good” always has a reward, in Rabbinic lore the reward is the opportunity to another “good”/right action, in the spiritual realm, the reward for doing “good”, doing the next right thing, is being able to live within one’s skin more comfortably. It is being able to sleep without as much anxiety and worry, it is doing one’s inventory each day, doing one’s T’Shuvah each day and cleaning up messes sooner and learning how to do one grain of sand better tomorrow. Rather than “scout out after one’s heart and eyes”, when we have our “egos” in proper measure, we are in acceptance of what is, we live in radical amazement, every day is a new adventure and we seek more knowledge of how to live well in this moment, in this time and we refuse to lower ourselves to the baser level of “scouting after our heart and eyes”. We the People need to reject the principles of Bibi and Donny, of Vought and Bondi that  the “good” has “no reward” and is “easily defeated” by appealing to people’s fears and greed. We the People are being called to re-establish democratic principles in our government, throw out the autocrats, and demand “the good” from our elected officials. For far too long, they have allowed their “egos” to rule both them and, by extension, us. We the People have to say NO and stop this destructive pattern and path that leads to ruin, exile, wandering.

Having lived in both realms, I know “the good” pays more dividends than the “ego” that is out of proper measure. My recovery is all about staying “right-sized” and serving you, God, family, and then self. My spiritual awakening taught me this truth and the dividends of “the good” last a lot longer than the short-term gains of the out of measure “ego”! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Is Justice an obligation like any other or is something to pursue with passion and purpose? Year 4 Day 172

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 172

“Justice has always appeared as obligatory, but for a long time it was an obligation like other obligations. It met, like the others, a social need; and it was the pressure of society on the individual which made justice obligatory. This being so, an injustice was neither more nor less shocking that any other breach of the rules.(Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion) (God in Search of Man pg. 373)

“What does God want of you: only to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God”. These words of the prophet Micah as Abraham’s question to God: “Shall not the judge of all the earth do justly, portray the central theme of being Jewish, of having a relationship with God, with living into one’s higher consciousness. Far above “a social need”, “justice” is part of the fabric of the inner structure of the world and embedded in each and every human being. The prophets did everything they could to arise the inner sense of justice and mercy, kindness and truth in the powers that be, in the wealthy, in the priestly, in the people, to no avail, so we lost Israel, lost our homeland, lost our place in the world figuratively and literally, for almost 1900 years! And, as Netanyahu and his right-wing, ultra-religious governing partners keep showing us, they still haven’t learned the lesson of the prophets, of the Bible, of the exile. How sad and devastating the consequences may be, for Israel, for Jewish people, for the world.

To make “justice” “an obligation like other obligations” is like saying truth is malleable, reality is what I decide it should be, and the handiwork of the autocratic, narcissistic, psychopathic wannabe king who is in power at the moment. We have seen this scenario play out forever-be it King Saul and his injustice towards David, King David with Uriah and his subsequent being called on it by Nathan the prophet, the Greeks, the Romans, the Pharaoh, the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea, England, France, Russia, China, Iran, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc; all of the nations have, at one time or another, committed the same folly as the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the people of antiquity-making “justice” and “obligation like other obligations” and were consumed, destroyed, overtaken and changed into a lessor power because of it! When “justice” is not revered and held as a Holy Action, as a Mitzvah, it becomes trite, it becomes a tool for the autocrat, for the fascist as we saw 100 years ago, as we see today. Listening to Pam Bondi and thinking about the great Attorneys General we have had makes one want to VOMIT! Elliot Richardson resigned rather than follow an immoral and unjust request from Nixon. Bobby Kennedy stood up to the racists and the bigots in Alabama and to the racketeering labor union chief Jimmy Hoffa. Up until recently, U.S. Attorneys General believed in the rule of law, believed in the sanctity of “justice” and the holiness of “justice”. Yet, today, under Pam Bondi’s leadership, everyone knows “justice” is not only not an obligation, not only is not “a social need”, “justice” is for sale, it is weaponized and it is trashed and bastardized by this bitch, her boss, and her cohorts. That people are going along with this bullshit, with this “injustice” reminds us of David’s words upon hearing of King Saul and Jonathan’s deaths: “Oh how the strong (the mighty, the heroes) have fallen”(2 Samuel:1:19).

We the People are being called by the words above, by the times we are in to STAND UP for Justice, to remember the words of Deuteronomy 16:20: “Justice, Justice (Righteousness, Righteousness) you shall pursue”, and to say NO to the lies and the deceptions that Trump, Netanyahu, their co-conspirators are perpetrating on us, We the People have to be the keepers of the flame of “justice”. We the People are descendants of the prophets to whom each ‘minor injustice, little white lie’ is a major catastrophe! We the People have to rekindle our outrage and channel it into making a change in the way things are. We the People have to stop being so afraid of the ‘bogeyman’ that we forget we are standing before God, that we have to deal with our own higher consciousness, and we have to face “the man in the glass”. “Know before whom you stand” is a teaching in the Talmud (Berakhot 28b), and while it is about when one is praying, since prayer is about an action-taking the action to respond to the call of the oppressed is one way to repay the debt we owe to our ancestors for giving us an opportunity to be free, to live in a ‘free’ country and to honor their journey from an oppressive government to a democratic one. We the People cannot go back on the inheritance of freedom that our ancestors left for us! We the People cannot see an “injustice” and not be “shocked” by it because we know and come from the prophetic tradition of faith! We the People have to do whatever is we can to add to freedom, to add to justice, to add to truth and stop buying the bullshit, the lies, the deceptions of these narcissistic, autocratic, unjust PAGANS!

Having been one who perpetrated “injustice” upon family, friends, strangers, I know of what Henri Bergson speaks. These writings, the current times have made me review my past, once again, and I see the power of “injustice”, the power of lies and deceptions. As a youth, I believed in calling out lies and injustice, while lying and stealing candy from the candy store, and I lost this desire to really be just, even though my father, my grandfathers, some Aunts and Uncles were honest to ‘a fault’. My father would not declare bankruptcy because he was embarrassed his business failed. I know that my spirit was crushed by the world I was in, by the loneliness I experienced and I allowed it to rule me. This is the difference today-“Justice” rules, Truth rules and the rest is bullshit. I am not interested in being politically correct nor have I been in my recovery. I only care about truth, justice, righteousness. God Bless and Stay safe, RabbI Mark

Distinctions between "Good and Evil" is what makes us human Year 4 Day 171

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day171

“Good and evil are not values among other values. Good is life, and evil is death. ‘See I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil…choose life(Deut. 30:15,19)… The distinction between good and evil counts as much as the distinction between life and death.” (God in Search of Man pg 373)

Because of people’s indifference to evil, because we are, once again in a lifestyle of it is ‘those’ people “getting what they deserve”, we have come to blur what is good and what is evil and, more importantly as Rabbi Heschel’s words above warn us; we have come to consider “good and evil” as “values among other values”. Herein lies the tragedy and the danger in rational thinking. When our conscience, our sense of what is right and what is wrong can be overridden by petty jealousies, fearful prejudices, the deception by another(s), and our own self-deception, then humanity is losing its humanness and we have turned to our “animal nature” and joined the animal kingdom. What makes us human is our ability to make choices, free-will moral choices according to Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, because without making moral choices, what good is our ability to think, to consider, etc? Since we are told to do T’Shuvah one day before we die so we never leave any business unfinished, how could one ever believe that “good and evil” are “values among values”?

Doing the “good” promotes life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness; it causes justice to be done without fear nor favor, it opens up our eyes to see the similarities between people, it aids us in respecting the dignity, worth, equality and uniqueness of every single person we encounter and those we hear about and can aid and serve. Knowing and living “good is life” gives us the opportunity to enhance this world, to find our unique gift and live them out loud, to love another person, raise a healthy family, to have a life rooted in spiritual principles and engaged in the “Four Freedoms”: “freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear” as articulated by FDR in his 1941 State of the Union speech. This is one of the reasons,  I believe learn “the reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah” to remind us that doing the “good” is a like being on a train and each stop brings us closer to our destination. While we humans will never “arrive”, we keep the journey to the “the kingship of God” going when we are engaged in the “good”. It is not an ethereal issue, it is not a philosophical debate, it is right here, right now, if one wants to LIVE, DO “GOOD”.

The other side of this is that “evil” leads to death. While many will point to how long evil people live, how each person does some evil in their lives and both are true, “evil” gets defeated for at least a minute throughout our history, and it leads to the death of one’s humanity, one’s integrity, and it does take a toll on one’s physical health. “Death” is the price one pays for engaging in “evil”. These “deaths” include the death of the freedoms mentioned above, the death of the morality of an individual, the death of a spiritual corpus colosseum, the death of covenantal life, the death of love, truth, justice, kindness, mercy, compassion, the death of serving another for the sake of another. “Evil” will always have a lure to it, it is inbred in us, as we all have an “evil inclination” from God, what the “good” does is transform the energy from “evil” to “good” and uses the evil inclination’s energy to serve, love, be in truth, practice justice, show kindness, compassion, mercy.

To treat these as “values among values” cheapens them and cheapens the human experience as well as each individual human. Hence the goal of the Fascist, the preaching of the PAGAN is towards “evil” and towards making “good and evil” just “values among values” so no one notices them picking their pockets, subjecting them to rules/laws that enslave rather than free them, feed their self-deception, their bias, their victimhood, and their need for a bad guy along with their desire to “get even”. As we can see in America and in Israel, this shit works! Death of democracy is not a big deal to John Roberts and the ‘conservative’ majority; I guess Clarence Thomas doesn’t realize that when they overturn the Loving Decision, he and his wife Ginny will be considered law breakers; it is to be praised and ‘sent by god’ according to Mike Johnson and the Republicans in the House and the Senate, and many of We the People have come to accept their lies and become oblivious to the hatred, the prejudice, the fascism that is overtaking our country.

To not make the “distinction” that these are the primary values we have to engage in, to not realize the importance of “Choose Life”, is to deny our humanity, to deny the dignity of another human being, to deny our conscience, to deny our spiritual truths and our inner life’s call. This is what makes a person a criminal, whether they are breaking a law or not. I say this from a deep review of my younger life when I was choosing life and was laughed at(by my peers and at school), when I had no one to validate my choices and be my cheerleader (after my father died), I just “gave in to the ways of the world” and even though I wasn’t a criminal yet, once I made no distinction between “good and evil” and any other value, I was on my descent into the gates of indifference and the hell of evil/death. Spiritually, I was empty and while I felt love for my sister, then my daughter, I could not show it, so visited my evil on them and everyone else was denied some of their freedoms when around me-siblings, wife, girlfriends, friends, family and I still regret these actions. In recovery, the distinctions between “good and evil” and knowing these are THE values to concentrate on are #1 for me each day. I practice “good” be living a spiritual program of freedom for me and for you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Is your vision, experience of the Universe in concert with God's? Year 4 Day 170

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 170

“If an artist were to find a word describing how the universe looked to God at the dawn of its existence, the word be sublime or beautiful. But the word the  Bible has is good. Indeed, when looking through a telescope into the stellar space, the word that comes to our mind is grandeur, mystery, splendor. But the God of Israel is not impressed with splendor; He is impressed with goodness.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

The artist would not be wrong in describing the universe as “sublime or beautiful”, nor are we in error when we marvel at the “grandeur, mystery, splendor” of the universe and its vast expanse. The error, the act of wrongdoing is, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel this morning, is to stop at these descriptions, to think that all we have to do is: marvel at existence, contemplate the splendor, solve the mystery, enjoy the beauty. All of these activities are great, they are fine, and they are not enough. I know many of us have been told we are not good enough forever and hearing ‘not enough’ can trigger some bad memories, and the truth is just admiring, enjoying, marveling, contemplating, seeking answers is not enough for the world to continue as a place of freedom, a place of spiritual growth and health, a place where loving the stranger becomes commonplace. To co-create with God, to honor our Higher Consciousness, we have to nurture the world and teach our children to “love your neighbor as yourself”, to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants there in”, to “if your enemy is hungry, feed them, if your enemy is thirsty, give them drink”, then we have to engage in what God “is impressed with goodness”!

“Goodness” is not the same as being nice! Nice doesn’t have to have truth, justice, mercy as components and “goodness” must have these three. “Goodness” is not just about doing something good, it is also about not doing something evil. “Goodness” is not about perfection nor about denial, it is also about admitting one’s mistakes, making T’Shuvah for them and growing in wisdom, kindness, mercy, justice, love, and truth each time/day. “Goodness” is standing up like Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, the Adams boys, Ben Franklin, Daniel Webster, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Clara Barton, John Lewis, et al, the soldiers who have received the Congressional Medal of Honor, people who have stood up when there was something on the line, their lives, their livelihood, their standing, and did the next right thing, no matter what. “Good” is the response of God to each day of creation, except the 2nd when God had to wrestle with evil, maybe with the Angels who did not want humans created, so we have “it was good” twice on the 3rd day! We also have “good” twice on the 6th day, once with the animals and “very good” when human beings are created, “male and female God created them both”. This is the first challenge given to human beings as I am understanding anew the first Chapter of Genesis in light of the words above: be good, do good! Isn’t it time We the People live into this challenge and end our love affair with bullying, with cruelty, with evil, with grifting, with self-deception, with lying and with bastardizing the “Good” that the Bible, that God, that our higher consciousness demands of us?

Having a UFC fight to celebrate 250 years since the Declaration of Independence doesn’t seem “good” to me! Spewing his hatred of people who don’t bend the knee in front of him by saying “I hate Democrats” is not “good” in the view of the Bible, Donald Drumpf, JD(Vance. It is not “the Christian way” as Christ lived life in the Gospels, it is certainly not the Jewish way, Misters Lutnick, Wytkoff, Miller! Running the con, shoveling the bullshit, bearing false witness is not Holy, FOX UNNEWS! No matter how many cars and planes you have, Mr. Osteen, you can’t hide your evil from all of the people all of the time and certainly not from God, maybe from the idols you worship you can hide-just not from people, entities that are engaging in speaking truth, which is the first step, prerequisite for being “good”. Ignoring the person on the street, not saying hello to people when you are at the Cash Register, believing Facebook friends are real (the ones you don’t actually know in real life), thinking that “likes” on Instagram, X, etc are what is important, are all subtle reminders of how not good we have become. Fearing the stranger, instead of loving them is a direct repudiation of not just the Bible, it is a direct slap in the face to the experience of our ancestors who came here as an escape from terrible conditions, from prejudice, hatred, fear of being conscripted to die, fear of or experience of rape, beatings, etc. Why was America ‘supposed to be open and welcoming” for our ancestors and not for people suffering today? How many of our ancestors were considered criminals in their country of origin? How many began life in America doing some type of criminal act-like owning a Whore House like Trumps Grandfather!!

Being “good” is the North Star for me and for the people in my circle, it is the only way to be in recovery, it is the only way to be able to look in the mirror without hiding, without being disgusted by one’s deeds. I know this because I spent almost 20 years being disgusted, hiding. Being “good” allows me to fall and pick myself up, it causes me to admit my errors, learn from them and blame others much less. It forces me to be responsible for my actions and to take action when I see wrong being committed. Hence this blog, these words are to get all of us riled up enough to recall the challenges I mentioned at the beginning: BE GOOD, welcome and love the stranger, don’t mistreat anyone, speak truth, be just, act with mercy, care for the poor, the needy, the spiritually ill as well as the medically ill, don’t take bribes, etc. When I fall short, which I do often, I make my amends and grow a little each time-progress not perfection. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Cruelty, Unjust, unloving of the stranger, the poor, the needy or empathetic with boundaries and consequences? Year 4 Day 169

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 169

“The power to make distinctions is a primary operation of intelligence. We distinguish between white and black, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, gain and loss, good and evil, right and wrong. The fate of mankind depends upon the realization that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong is superior to all other distinctions. As long as such realization is lacking, pleasantness in alliance with evil will be preferred to unpleasantness in alliance with good. To teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

Happy July 4th!? Was July 4, 2024 the last truly Independence Day we will celebrate in the United States? It could be unless, as Rabbi Heschel says above, “to teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message”. All of these LYING PAGANS like Mike Johnson who has made Donald Trump into a god, an idol that he worships, who has made wealth and power his other gods, would like you to believe that there is no distinction between right and wrong, good and evil except their version of what is right and good and what is bad and evil. The former being anything they do no matter how cruel, unjust, unloving of the stranger, poor, needy and the later being anything that says NO to their idol worship, NO to their indecency, NO to their deliberate deceptions and mendacity!

Elon Musk says what is wrong with the United States is too much empathy and Hannah Arendt says the end of empathy is the beginning of Fascism. Can both be true, maybe but doubtful. Having empathy means to be “in feeling” with another, it doesn’t mean condoning the evil, wrong actions of another, it means that one can relate to the experiences that drive people to do the next wrong thing, like feeling separate, feeling desperate, seeking a land/place where “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” as the Bible and the Liberty Bell proclaim. As I understand/experience empathy, it means that all of us can relate to feelings of uncertainty and insecurity, experiences of trauma and inadequacy, being in situations where we feel completely lost, out of our depth. It doesn’t mean that one condones, one excuses bad behaviors, it just means that We the People can use our empathy to mitigate our anger and desire to punish another who has done evil, done wrong while still stopping them from continuing. Without this way of being, fascism makes sense and cruelty reigns, which is what we are witnessing, experiencing, facing in our country today. When we are more concerned with building up ICE than with caring for our citizens, when we are more focused on finding a common enemy that being the “melting pot” we have been, when we are more concerned with masked men beating up on unsuspecting people here legally and illegally, with no criminal record at all, we have lost our empathy as a nation. The fact that at least 1/3rd of We the People cheer these thugs on, that the Republicans in Congress, both the House and the Senate, passed a bill that they admitted did not pass the smell test, that they acknowledged will hurt the ‘little guy’, and they are cheering this bill and intimating that god gave them their right to do this, we have lost our empathy!

We the People, the other 2/3rds, have to set out to re-teach or teach for the first time the other 1/3rd about empathy. We have to have divine pathos for them, being able to say a hard NO to their cruelty and, at the same time, know that they are pathetic, they are so stuck in their lies and deceptions that they have been unable to see truth and hear God, to immerse themselves in what the Bible actually says, not what they are being lied to by their ‘good christian nationalist, money-grubbing, clergy’ or their ‘good jewish ultra-orthodox anti-loving the stranger or our neighbor clergy’, or their ‘good muslim terrorist-provoking, hate mongering clergy’! Unfortunately, the reason that the distinction between good and evil, between right and wrong is not being taught, is not seen as the demarcation line between freedom and tyranny, is because the people who are supposed to be delivering the messages of the Bible, the people who are the ‘learned’ ones are the very PAGANS in charge!! OY, OY!

I have been thinking about this for a while, since my recovery began: what happened to me that a boy who was raised to be moral, a boy who went to shul and loved praying/davening, could lose enough empathy to do criminal actions. It is too much to fully explain here and I am still learning more about the deceptions, lies, blurring of distinctions that led to my behaviors and I am fully and totally responsible for all of my actions-FULL STOP. What I do know is that I always felt different, I wet the bed, I had different ideas, I became a clown, I was ignored when my father was gone, I was blamed for many things, being the youngest of three boys:), but most of all, I knew I was different from my brothers, from the people around me and I tried to “fit in” because I never belonged anywhere except with my father and his death destroyed my moorings and I was adrift. People tried to talk to me and I could not/would not hear. I saw the lies and deceptions of the world in a new light-rather than being wrong and evil, they were the ones getting ahead so why not join them cause as a 14-15 year-old, I certainly wasn’t going to beat them.

These past 38+ years have been spent fighting them, knowing I belong and both living into and delivering the “primacy of that distinction is of the essence of the Biblical message”. It is essential to not just the message, it is essential to our living well, to our being human. This is the call of July 4th this year, this is the call of the United States, this is the Call from Sinai. This is what being a Jew, Christian, Muslim means. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Alliance with Evil, Alliance with Good, which do you find more pleasant-be truthful! Year 4 Day 168

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 168

“The power to make distinctions is a primary operation of intelligence. We distinguish between white and black, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, gain and loss, good and evil, right and wrong. The fate of mankind depends upon the realization that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong is superior to all other distinctions. As long as such realization is lacking, pleasantness in alliance with evil will be preferred to unpleasantness in alliance with good. To teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

The italicized and underlined sentences above are, on their very face, a DUH! Yet, we continue to watch, some of us in horror, the constant and consistent refusal by human beings to become aware that “the realization that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong is superior to all other distinctions”. From Cain until now, the inability of humanity to, a) make these distinctions and b) live into them has been fraught with mistakes and errors. The main issue, it always seems, is humanity’s need to be in control, humanity’s narcissism and search for certainty, power, fame, fortune, etc. Yes, we are told that we have within us an “evil inclination”, yes we are told that “sin desires us much” and we are also told that we can master our own negativity, we can transform the energy of our evil inclination to serve the good and the right. The question that looms so large in our lives, which often goes unasked, is: will we?

Our willful blindness and our unwillingness to make these distinctions make it almost impossible to ask ourselves the questions: “is this good or evil”, “is this the next right thing to do”. Without asking ourselves these questions, in each experience, in each moment, we will continue to not distinguish between the distinction of gain and loss and the distinction of good and evil; hence the situation we find ourselves in is the result of blindness, unwillingness, ignorance, narcissism, and power-seeking. Trump is the leader of this band and he is also just a prop. The real power is in the FOX UNNEWS people who keep spreading the lies and command ‘their viewers’ to be numb to facts, numb to the truth of the Biblical teachings of the prophets, the wanderings in the desert, to the ways of Jesus. The real power is also in the hands of the PAGAN CLERGY who continue to bastardize the teachings of the Bible, the New Testament. Be they Jewish or Christian, these PAGANS promote a way of being that is xenophobic, racist, homophobic, and cruel. Nowhere in the words of Jesus that I have read, nowhere in the Bible are we told to be cruel-there are parts of the Bible which can be read this way and, when we are told that a court who executed one person in 70 years is called a murderous court, we can understand the Bible’s overriding belief in CHOOSE LIFE!

We the People are responsible to listen to the call of our souls, to read the texts for ourselves, to study with serious people and argue with our spiritual friends as to how to live the values in our everyday life. We the People are called upon by Proverbs to treat our enemies as human beings, not put them in ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ! We the People are responsible for what our governments do, just as the Judeans were responsible for not heeding the prophets no matter what the Priests, Wealthy, and Royals did. We the People are being called to account in the words above, we are being called to account in how we respond to the “BIG UGLY BILL” that promotes more cruelty, more violence by ICE, more hatred of immigrants, more power to deport American Citizens, more power and money to the wealthy, more cruelty to the working poor and the middle class, more cruelty to Rural Hospitals, more cruelty to elder citizens, more breaking of promises that We the People have come to rely on. All of this in the name of “Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior” according to Joanie Ernst!! All of this for a few crumbs according to Lisa Murkowski! WTF??? Are We the People really this small, are We the People really this ignorant, are We the People really this cruel, are We the People really this hateful of what the Bible, Jesus actually teach us???

Of course we are as long as “such realization is lacking” so that “pleasantness in alliance with evil will be preferred to unpleasantness in alliance with good”! We the People have to awaken from the sleep-walking We have engaged in and stop seeking happiness, fun, likes on social media, fame, wealth, etc. We the People are in desperate need of being slapped and cajoled, shaken and having our blinders taken off, taking the cotton out of our ears and put it in our mouths so we stop our bullshit, our lies, our specious arguments. We the People are constantly being called by the Voice that was at Sinai, the Voice that was in the Garden: AYECHA-Where are you? How can any of us be cheering when we are “standing idly by the blood of our neighbor”, when we are engaged in senseless hatred, when prejudice and racism, hatred and cruelty are being extolled as good? WHERE ARE YOU? This is the question we all have to answer each and every day; judging by the way our government, which is an extension of We the People, are behaving, it seems as if We the People are in favor of everything that is unholy, everything that is “pleasantness in alliance with evil”!

This is a way of being that I am intimately familiar with, as I lived “in alliance with evil” for many years, this is not to say I did not do good things, because I did and I have to be accountable for this alliance as well. This is why I am so sensitive to bullshit and lies, evil and subterfuge, why I become bombastic because the other side of my “alliance with evil” is my prophetic voices which is loud, arrogant, urgent, and powerful. For the people who don’t like it, oh well. It is who I am and I know I won’t change this. I am too aware of the subtle power of not making distinctions and getting in bed with “the pleasantness in alliance with evil”! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

The Power of Distinction is to be used for Good, not as a weapon for evil and/or cruelty! Year 4 Day 167

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 167

“The power to make distinctions is a primary operation of intelligence. We distinguish between white and black, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, gain and loss, good and evil, right and wrong. The fate of mankind depends upon the realization that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong is superior to all other distinctions. As long as such realization is lacking, pleasantness in alliance with evil will be preferred to unpleasantness in alliance with good. To teach humanity the primacy of that distinction is of the essence to the Biblical message.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)

I am jumping out of my skin reading and rereading the words above and witnessing what is happening in our world today. “The power to make distinctions” has been usurped and co-opted by Trump, Bibi, Miller, Vought, Vance, et al. They have offered a ‘different’ set of distinctions to ‘their people’, calling evil ‘good’, projecting theft as ‘just’, promoting cruelty as ‘kindness’ etc. and We the People are buying it!!! INSANE and true. When a United States Senator, Lisa Murkowski, gives an interview where she calls the ‘big ugly bill’, she just voted for because she got concessions for ‘her people of Alaska’ while people in the other 49 States will suffer, we see the “fate of mankind” going down the drain because these ‘good christian folk’, these ‘lovers of Jesus’, are using their “power to make distinctions” for their own gain, for the purpose of cruelty, for the advancement of evil with their eyes wide open. Unlike people who are unaware, unsophisticated, just plain honest so they can’t imagine someone lying to them, people who follow the Golden Rule and do unto others so they can’t comprehend someone abusing their kindness, these Republican Senators and Congresspeople fucked We the People with their eyes wide open and with joy in their hearts! Just ask JD Vance.

We the People are in the throes of Tyranny and watching “Hannah Arendt-Facing Tyranny” on PBS last night shook both Harriet and me to our core. Substitute ‘illegal aliens’, ‘criminals’ ‘non-white’ ‘non-christian nationalist’ for Jews and the similarities are chilling! While many people are unwilling to speak truth to power, staying willfully blind to what is happening, refusing to say “history repeats itself”, the fact that we are in the throes of a fascist takeover, that Russell Vought is leading the charge to ‘remake’ America in the image of the early 19th Century, that he wants “Christianity” to influence government, just not the “Christianity” of Christ in the Gospels, instead he wants, as the ‘big ugly bill’ proves to pay homage to the “money-changers in the Temple”, the biggest one of course is Trump who keeps benefitting off of the Presidency, emoluments be damned! The fake and phony slight of hand is not even good! The grift is in the open, the hatred and cruelty are being praised by these ‘good christian, jewish, muslim’ folks as ‘light, spiritual, beautiful, pleasant, a gain for ‘god’, as well as being promoted as good and righteous! WTF!!?? How can We the People buy this bullshit? How can We the People go along with this cruelty and call ourselves a ‘christian nation’? How can We the People watch masked thugs beat people up in our cities and towns, be threatened with deportation even if we are citizens because we oppose DRUMPH, and not remember the history lesson of the 1930’s here with “America First”, “The Bund”, “Father Coughlin”, “The Protocols of Zion” as well as what happened in Europe?

We the People are being called to account and to take action by Rabbi Heschel’s words of 70 years ago and by the happenings in our Country today. Being against Bibi is not Anti-Israel just being against DRUMPH, Miller, Vought, Lutnick, Vance, et al is not being anti-United States!  Being against both of these fascists regimes is being FOR GOD, being FOR FREEDOM, being FOR A SPIRITUAL SOLUTION to the ills of today. The time for changing the narrative is growing shorter and shorter, We the People cannot complain that no one is doing this because it is up to We the People to invoke our prophetic voice, our dedication to justice, to mercy, to kindness, to truth, to love right here and right now. We the People have to call out the lies of Osteen, Hagee, Cain-White, and promote the Truth of Bishop Barber, Father Greg Boyle, John Pavlovitz, Mark Whitlock and other Christian Faith leaders who follow Christ’s teachings. We the People have to promote the words of Pope Leo who welcomes the stranger, the poor, the needy. We the People have to take the “leap of action” that all Jews are commanded to do and follow the ways of Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Rabbi David Saperstein, Rabbi Harold Shulweis, z”l, Jihad Turk, et al. We the People have to take the blinders off, have to call out the liars and PAGANS, the spiritually ill people that Maimonidies describes in “the Eight Chapters”, people who think black is white, evil is good, wrong is right, ugly is beautiful, etc. The time is now, the place is here, this is how we repay our ancestors for coming here so we could be born in freedom, this is how we repay the dead who “gave their last full measure” in the various wars so we can enjoy freedom.

I am so enraged by the goings on and, while I can’t change anything on my own, I have to do my part. This blog is one action, showing up at the protests is another, donating to the causes that are dear to my heart is another. Being kind and loving towards even my enemies, as Proverbs teaches us, is another. Knowing what it is like to be scapegoated and hated keeps me from doing the same to anyone else. Calling out truth and lies, distinguishing between good and evil continue to be my daily task and the path to a richer and more meaningful life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Fighting against the Narcissism, the cruelty, the selfishness that is within us - Year 4 Day 166

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 166

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions, is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg.372)

The words in bold above are the words that should be haunting all of us! We the People have been and still are willfully blind that “this is precisely our task”. We the People have, instead, made our task: selfishness, narcissism, cruelty. In listening to Thom Tillis, the Senator from North Carolina decry the ‘big ugly bill’ and then announce he is not running for re-election because of angering ‘der fuhrer’, ‘the don’, is what happens in modern-day America when one goes against the grain “to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence” and does not follow lock-step and goose-step with those ‘fine christian-nationalism folks’. For this to be happening under the guise of ‘religion’, with the ‘blessings’ of Jesus Imposters, the ‘kosher stamp’ of Moses Imposters, is revolting, disgusting, and makes those of us who truly believe in the love, goodness, justice, truth, mercy, and kindness the Bible teaches, want to vomit. Trump and his acolytes have truly succeeded in dressing a PAGAN in the clothing of a Saint and fooled many of We the People for a while-we will see how many feel the pain of this ‘big, ugly bill’ when it passes.

The questions that reverberate within people of faith-not the PAGANS who fake their religious faith- is: How do I stop this onslaught of deceptions and lies?  What can I do to reawaken “the rare cravings of the spirit”? When am I hearing the “eternal voice of God” and what are the ways I respond to “the demands of religion”? These questions haunt us daily, before Trumpism, during Trumpism, and after Trumpism they will haunt us. Yet, it seems as if we are slow to respond, we are afraid of the backlash from Paula White-Cain, Joel Osteen, John Hagee, et al. We the People have become afraid to express the “rare cravings of the spirit” for fear of reprisals and becoming targets. Yes, there are protests daily about a myriad of issues, yes, Indivisible is a rallying center for these protests, and it is not enough! Until We the People realize and respond to “the urgencies” of our times as we learn in the Bible our ancestors responded to “the urgencies” of their times, we will continue to flounder and flap our jaws while Freedom, Justice, Mercy, Love, Truth, Kindness (the foundations of every spiritual tradition, according to the Dalai Lama) will not survive and the autocrats will win! This is the challenge, the call, the demand of “religion”, this is “a matter of life and death”. We are told in Deuteronomy: “CHOOSE LIFE” and our times ask the question: Will we choose to be a blessing and choose life or will we continue to go along with the cursers and choose death?

We the People have to take off our blinders, remove the cataracts in our vision, “circumcise the foreskin of our hearts” in order to live into the faith, the call, the demands, the actions of the Bible. We the People need to stop arguing about who is right, who is the ‘most religious’, who is the ‘real Jew’, the ‘authentic disciple of Christ’, and join together to “recall the urgencies” and respond to “the perpetual emergencies of human existence”. It is not enough to go to Temple, to Church and pray for God to intervene, this is a cop-out! Rather, like the Israelites at the Red Sea, we have to take the next right action and step into the waters. We the People have to “Lech L’Cha”, like Abraham we have to Go to Yourself/Go for Yourself to the place where we belong and cease and desist from our endless search to “fit in”. The prophets did not “fit in” because they knew they did not want to “fit in” with any group that excluded anyone else. The idea of an exclusive ‘club’ was anathema to the prophets, to Abraham because they knew they belonged to God, hence they belonged in every place they were in. They knew this truth because of the promise God made to the descendants of Jacob in Egypt-you will have a place to call your own.

One reason belonging is so crucial to living our faith is when we belong we are unafraid to live our lives out loud, we are not worried about whose ass we have to kiss so we can get some crumbs of the pie, we no longer settle for the table scraps like dogs. Belonging gives us the knowing in our souls that we can respond to “the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence” without fear or favor. We the People, when we belong know these “urgencies” and “emergencies” will always be with us, as the Bible teaches, and what is important is whether we react selfishly or respond with love and solutions. Belonging gives us the courage to immerse ourselves in the “cravings of the spirit” that surrounds us and is within us so they are no longer “rare”. When “cravings of the spirit” become more acknowledged and known, our way of being transforms from selfishness, cruelty, narcissism, to Joy, Love, Truth, Just, Merciful, Kind; we welcome the stranger and love one another. Hence the reason the Charlatans, the PAGANS don’t want us to know what “religion” really teaches.

I have been preaching belonging, responsibility, change, doing the best I could/can to respond to the “urgencies” and “emergencies” of self and another(s). I also am able to know and respond to the “cravings of the spirit” within me and another(s) much better. I believe in the triumph of the Spirit and that evil will be defeated each time it raises its head. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Rejecting Pedantry, externalization, superstition and dogma while embracing the demands and visions of Religion - Year 4 Day 165

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 165

“Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions, is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg.372)

These words are a call to We the People who have a spiritual life to stand up for what is real and true. “Religion” is not just a ‘comfort’, nor is it something to fear. God is not an indulgent parent nor a co-dependent, nor is God going to ‘save us’ unless we engage in saving ourselves. Hence, “religion, therefore, with its demands and visions” is the only way to truly engage in being “religious” as I am reading and hearing Rabbi Heschel today. We the People are being called upon to stand up and say FUCK YOU to to the idolators, the charlatans, the PAGANS that are controlling and/or trying to control “religious teachings”. The demands of these “prosperity gospel” deceivers like Paula White-Cain, Joel Osteen, et al, the mendacious visions of Ultra-Orthodox assholes like Ben G’Vir, Smotrich, the Rabbis who support them, the cruelty of the call of “death to the infidels”’ by Muslim Clerics like the Ayatollah, are BULLSHIT and not the “demands and visions” of “religion” as one can tell from the Bible’s “demands” to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”-not in front of God, not follow God, rather to “walk humbly with God”.

These words along with the fact that after receiving the 10 Commandments at Mount Sinai, we first learn the laws of Mishpatim, the ways to live together and the first lesson is to never be so dependent upon a person, never be so lazy to do our own thing and make our own contribution to our world that we willingly and completely buy the bullshit that we ‘deserve’, or ‘need’ to be a slave to another human being! We are also taught that harming a slave, in any way like knocking out their tooth, is reason to free them. Slavery in any of its forms, incarnations, is not the norm, it is not the way of Godliness, it goes against the “demands and visions” of “religion”! Jesus fed people, lived amongst the strangers, the lepers, the hookers, people that Rome thought were ‘outlaws’ and ‘illegals’. The Bible commands us to “love the stranger”, to feed the poor, to care for the needy, to set aside the corners of our fields, aka a portion of our earnings, for the poor and the needy to harvest themselves. Can you say you are doing this??

Of course not because We the People have turned the education of our children over to the care of these deceivers, people who are best described by: “true, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition.” This is not the fault of “religion”, it is the fault of We the People who have gotten so lazy, so spiritually bankrupt, so dependent upon our “rational mind”, that we have abdicated our “intuitive mind”, we have forgotten the lessons of our ancestors and spent the moral capital of our inheritance. The pedantry done by the Rabbis who wanted to forget the prophetic inspiration for fear of becoming extinct and assimilated, who wanted to establish themselves as the power and the controllers of “religious life” has been bastardized by later generations because they have misused the Talmudic way of including the minority opinions, the knowing of our own limitations and imperfections, and the allowance of our majority to have it wrong. Yet, the ‘rabbis’ who do say “we are the only true Jews” are the real IDOLATORS, the actual PHARAOHS of today’s world-caring nothing for the spiritual health and well-being of We the People, instead caring only for their power, control and ability to gain wealth-forgetting that “justice, kindness, mercy, love, truth” are the foundational principles of the Bible!

Again, however, We the People have to look at ourselves, not just at “them”. While we have been victims of their bullshit and lies, We, the People have not taught our children the Bible, not encouraged our spouses to have a voice and be our Ezer K’Negdo, our spiritual partner who helps us when we are doing well and grinds against us when we are off the rails. We the People have outsourced the spiritual health and well-being of our children and of ourselves to people who have no idea of our spiritual, moral, emotional needs. We the People have rejected the entirety of “religion” because of the “externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition” of the ones who call themselves “religious” and are, in fact, not! Yet, because of our susceptibility to deception and our desire to engage in self-deception, because of our laziness and our willful blindness, We the People find ourselves in a country that is being run by ‘Christian Nationalists’ who believe that Christ hated black, brown, people and hated Jews, even though he himself was Jewish and practiced Judaism his way, and White Power is the only solution to the ills of the world. We the People have to take back the ways of God, the words of the Bible and the “Path of the Just” and do it now!

I have lived the death of not engaging in and with the Bible. It was horrible for me and for everyone around me because I was the antithesis of everything holy and good. I still have regrets that I lived this way, when I knew better in my gut and didn’t have the wherewithal to withstand the onslaught of my negative inner voice. This is what my recovery, my “return to the path” as the prophets call out to us to do, has been all about. Making living amends, changing my ways and using “religion” to enhance life rather than bastardize it to bring about death. I don’t follow all the demands, I do not have the same visions as the Rabbis, rather, I have used the demands to question what I am doing each day, I use them as the yardstick for my actions, I ask myself is it moral, is it right, is it what is necessary for this moment and if I can say yes, I take the action, no matter what the result may be. This is not to say I am always right, there are times when my ego got/gets the better of me, and much more often than not, I find the solution in the “demands and visions” of “religion”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Seeking Real solutions to the problems of today- not simplistic, easy answers - Year 4 Day 164

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 164

“Let us labor under no illusions There are no easy solutions for problems that are at the same time intensely personal and universal, urgent and eternal.Technological progress creates more problems than it solves. Efficiency experts or social engineering will not redeem humanity. Important as their contributions may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem.” ( God in Search of Man pg. 372)

Since these words were written, “technological progress” has skyrocketed and exponentially made life more difficult and ‘easier’, more connected and disconnected, more aware and more mendacious. When whomever said “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on” in the 1910’s, imagine how prolific it is now. This is one of the great issues of our time: the loss of truth as a value and a moral imperative. When Trump, Putin, Orban, Netanyahu use social media to promote lies and deceptions that touch the “victimhood” of people, when they and their minions use their ‘bully pulpits’ to deny what is front of people’s eyes and continue with their assault on the truth through social media, through misuse of the Justice System, through the PAGANISM of the ‘religious’ establishment, We the People are at a grave disadvantage and herein lies the demise of not just democracy but freedom, and the spiritual and moral corpus colosseum that makes us human!

Our “efficiency experts” and “social engineering” have been hailed over the years by the educational elites and scientists as the “end all, be all” and they have failed us. Just as the ‘prosperity gospel’ idolators have failed us, so too have the progressive far left have failed by their going too far. Losing our ability to discern truth from lie, fact from fiction, has made us to change the Golden Rule from “do unto others as you would want them to do unto you” to, as Rabbi Heschel says in his interview with Carl Stern, “suspect your neighbor as your neighbor suspects you”! This epidemic of suspicion has infiltrated the halls of government, the halls of Justice, the Temples, Churches, Mosques around the globe and the result is the Chaos, the Authoritarianism, the PAGANISM we witness and experience all around us. We the People have been inundated with so many lies and so much chaos we feel impotent in their presentations. We the People have become so overwhelmed with trying to rationally prove the falsehoods of the autocrats and theocrats, we have lost our own sense of grounding and being blind to the trap laid for us by responding to the individual chaos of the moment rather than asserting the TRUTH of what truly is. Because We the People refused to seriously live into Einstein’s “intuitive mind” and fell for worshiping the “rational mind”, we are ill-equipped to stand up for truth, to stand against the lies, idol worship, and cruelty that is being perpetrated in this moment. Rather than “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” we are instead experiencing the “proclaim lies and subterfuge throughout the land, proclaim ‘the other’ as the enemy of the people throughout the land and to  all its inhabitants therein”. The reason this works so well is that our “social engineering” and our “efficiency experts” set the stage for us to be like guppies, to live into our prejudices and our fears, our bias’ and need to blame rather than help us be responsible for our part and do our T’Shuvah, our inventory, so we can repent, return, and have new responses to what used to baffle us.

True, the ways the PAGANS have used “social engineering” and the wisdom of “efficiency experts” is a bastardization of what they were trying to accomplish, true, the “technological progress” has resulted in the saving of millions of lives. Yet, because they were promoted as ‘the path forward’ without realizing that “the greatest hinderance to knowledge is the adjustment to conventional notions and mental cliches” as Rabbi Heschel says, the spiritual maturity needed has been lacking and/or non-existent. Which makes the hijacking of good, the hijacking of truth, the hijacking of morality, the hijacking of humane deeds so very easy by people who are grifters, cons, and cruel at their core.

We the People are being called to account in this moment. There is a demand being put upon us. The voice from Sinai is reminding us that we are more than our basest feelings and impulses, that like Cain, “sin desires us much and we can master it”. Rather than continue to have “the bloods of your brother cry out to me”, our souls are being spoken to, touched and motivated to stop “standing idly by the blood of our neighbor”, to end our obliviousness to the harms being perpetrated upon the stranger and “love the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt”. The voice from Sinai is railing against our inaction, our indifference, and our compliance, We the People are in desperate need of lifting one another up from the pit of adjustment, from the pit of ‘going along to get along’ and the pit of prejudice and injustice. This can only happen when We the People see how much more in common we have than our smaller differences, when We the People become willing to use our ability to nurture and enhance the spiritual growth of ourselves and one another, when We the People become “maladjusted to notions and ideas” so we can “have an authentic awareness of that which is” as Rabbi Heschel teaches. We the People have to awaken from our slumber and our fear, from our obtuseness and our indifference, from our acceptance of lies and our self-deceptions right now, otherwise we may repeat what happened in Egypt when “a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph” because we have new Pharaoh’s who do not know Jesus, the Prophets, God.

I have had an inner war between what my mind, my emotions tell me and what I know in my kishkas, my gut intuition for as long as I can remember. This war is never-ending and for a while I just gave up wrestling and engaging in this inner struggle which led to harming people, harming myself, prison, etc. Since that day in December of 1986, I have engaged in this inner battle, not always winning the moment and making BIG errors and always engaging, hearing all the disparate voices and making the ‘best’ decision in the moment-‘best’ meaning doing the best I could given all the circumstances and NOT having to be right, being able to admit my errors, and make my amends/T’Shuvah for them. Much more often than not, however, my “spiritual knowing” won out and I have been able to be of service to another(s) and to self in ways I would have never dreamed possible. My way is not ‘efficient’, it is not ‘politically correct’ and it is deeply personal, caring, seeking truth and fighting for what is right, good, just, etc. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What "illusions" are you laboring under re: evil in our midst, in ourselves? Year 4 Day 163

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 163

“Let us labor under no illusions There are no easy solutions for problems that are at the same time intensely personal and universal, urgent and eternal. Technological progress creates more problems than it solves. Efficiency experts or social engineering will not redeem humanity. Important as their contributions may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem.” ( God in Search of Man pg. 372)

The “problems” are what to do with the evil that is in the good and the good that is in the evil, I believe, as well as what to do with the human beings that purport to care and love in order to ‘get theirs’ and then, when in power-be it in business, politics, communal institutions, families-they revert to their insatiable desires for power, wealth, cruelty, etc. These “problems” have to be both “intensely personal and universal” otherwise there is no avenue for solutions because if it is just “intensely personal” then most other people will not care. If it is just “universal”, it becomes too big for an individual to handle so leave it to “them” to handle it. Both the “personal and universal” have to be present in our being for us to be forced to find a solution with another(s).

Which brings us to the problems of laboring “under” “illusions”, a major flaw in the character of humanity. Throughout history we have seen good people enhance the evil done by Kings, autocrats, despots, dictators, Pharaohs because they are laboring “under” the “illusions” that these are ‘good christian folk’, ‘good jewish people’, ‘serious muslim adherents’ rather that see the evil that radiates from their aura, the cruelty that brings smiles to their faces, the ‘all I care about is me’ policies they follow and invoke-from Trump to Bibi, from Bezos to Miller, from Lutnick to Ben G’vir. Yet, when one buys into the lie “there are good people on both sides”, the illusion becomes the reality that people buy into and life is lived through the prism of smoke and mirrors. Once that happens, which I fear it is both here and in Israel, everyone is tainted and more easily corrupted.

This way of being that humanity has practiced for the millennia may be what is meant in the 6th Chapter of Genesis, verses 5-6: “God saw the evil of man was great in the land and all of thoughts of his heart was evil continually. God regretted that God made man”. This is later refined in Genesis 8:21: “I will not curse the ground anymore for man’s sake, for the thoughts of man are evil from his youth; nor will I destroy every living thing as I have”. Evil is not something which comes natural to us, is how I understand these verses. It is something that WE LEARN! Babies are dependent and need touch and love, so too do we all as we grow. It is not inherent to our nature to do evil, love cruelty. Yes, we have within us the “evil inclination” and we are taught: “the good inclination is good and the evil inclination is very good” As it says in the midrash: “were it not for the evil inclination a man would never build a house, get married, have kids, engage in commerce, etc”. So to ‘blame’ God for installing the “evil inclination” in human beings is another subterfuge and controlling activity by people who want to, enjoy and relish in creating and reveling in evil ways. This is what makes these “problems” “eternal”. They have been with us forever and our ‘job’, the call to our souls, the demand of our intuitive minds is to be engaged in the solution for the evil that exists and procreates seemingly on its own. To be sure, however, it procreates through human beings who are either indifferent to “evil”; take things for granted and say why bother; people who engage in cruelty because it gives them the “warm blanket effect”; people who are oblivious to an authentic awareness of that which is because they go along with societal norms and mental clichés. Is so past time for We the People to wake up; to hear the 4-alarm fire happening to us, because of us and with our permission; to stop being enamored by the fires that we have set to burn up “those people” because ‘Jesus’ told me so or ‘Moses’ teaches us this in the Bible and other such POPPYCOCK, aka BULLSHIT.

We are in a time of great evil, as Harold Hill says in The Music Man: “we got trouble, right here in” our cities, our states, our communities, our homes, our country, our world. “Trouble with a Capital T which rhymes with” E, which stands for EVIL. It is in our mouths, in our news, in our streets with ICE and the military being stationed in our cities, it is in the White House and the Halls of Congress, it is in the voting in of ‘progressives’ who are as regressive as the ‘conservatives’ who want to deny equal rights to all, who want to have one law for the citizen and another for the stranger, who want to abolish the Constitution so “retribution” can rule. How much more urgent can it get??

It is not just outside of us that “evil” is personal, universal, urgent and eternal. It is the inside untreated, immature inner life that contains this “evil” and the transformation of our “evil inclination” is urgent and eternal, personal and universal because without doing this, we add to the “evil” rather than subtract from it. We the People are the great hope of God to turn things around. We the People are the great hope of the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan, the stranger to fight our inner “evil” urge to dominate and instead practice random acts of kindness, infuse spiritual wisdom in the powerless and hear their wisdom, give voice to the concerns of the voiceless and give them a platform. We the People are being called by the Voice on Sinai to “To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe… to right the unrightable wrong.” These lyrics from the song “the Impossible Dream”, are examples of what is so urgent and universal, how the “problems” of “evil” manifest and, as Rabbi Tarfon says in Pirke Avot, 2:16: “it is not your duty to finish the work and neither are you free to neglect it”.

I have been dealing with these problems my entire life. As a youth, I pointed my fingers at everyone else, I was a victim. So, as is wont to happen, I became a victimizer, I was not going to be anyone’s fool so I became my own fool. While I paid a price, I know other human beings paid as great, if not greater, price. This is what my recovery is all about; repaying the debt I owe because of my past behaviors. It is not living in the past, it is recognizing the “urgent and universal” struggle to transform my “evil inclination”, it is knowing the “intensely personal and universal” consequences of the outcome of my inner and outer wrestling. It is being immersed in “wrestling with humans and God” when “evil” is happening and knowing when to obey and when to disobey. It is hard, it is exhilarating and I would not want it any other way. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Awareness of what are actions say about us-faithful or perversion of the principles of Bible, decency, morality, justice - Year 4 Day 162

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 162

“It was not a lack of religion but the perversion of it that the prophets of Israel denounced. “Many an altar Ephraim raised, altars that only serve for sin”(Hosea 8:11)…The greater the man, the more he is exposed to sin(Sukkah 52b).” (God in Search of Man pg 369/70)

The words above have never truly been taken to heart by We the People which is what leads to the constant return and strengthening of cruelty, of the horrors of evil, of our indifference to evil, etc. Because of the ways ‘religious’ people have bastardized what “religion” is truly meant to be, it has become irrelevant, a joke to many and a new fanaticisms for some. Rather than live into the teachings of the Bible, rather than accept our “duty to disobey” which Rabbi Harold Shulweis wrote a book about, these ‘religious’ leaders have made deception, mendacity and disobedience to truth, to principles, to holiness ‘the way of Jesus, the way of Moses, the way of Mohammed’ and We the People are suffering greatly for these perversions.

Granted, as stated above, this is not a new phenomenon, “the prophets of Israel denounced” these charlatans 2500 years ago! We read the prophets in the Bible and we forget to marvel that their words and actions have been preserved! They should have been killed and their words forgotten because they did not ‘win the day’. They were the assholes running around with their ‘pants on fire’, screaming at the rich, the powerful, the royalty, the priests that they were idolators and practicing mendacity, not Judaism, not the word of God. They were accusing these PAGANS of crimes against humanity and told them their fate if they refused to change. Yet, We the People went along with the rich, powerful, priestly class in rejecting the words of the prophets, rejecting the teachings found in the Bible, and we suffered for it in 586 BCE, 70 AD, and ever since. Maybe one of the reasons Jews are universally hated is because we preserved the words of the Prophets and these words are a thorn in the side of the PAGANS who claim to be ‘religious’ in every faith!

We the People are witnessing a new incarnation of “the perversion” of religion and the consequences of which are monumental. “The perversion” is so great, as the prophets must have felt in their time, that we are in danger of losing the remaining strands of humanity left in our society. While Ron Reagan may say he is “not afraid to burn in hell”, he fails to realize the “humanistic” ways come from the Bible! He fails to realize that rejecting “religion” is a sure fire way to bring HELL here now. As do We the People fail to realize the idolatry we are practicing and calling it faith is sure to be our downfall and ruin. When we have to ask “who is that Masked Man” and realize it is not the “Lone Ranger” of early television but rather the fascists of the Trump Era, the Nazis of Kristy Noem, the SS of Herr Stephen Miller, We the People need to wake up and realize what we are smelling is the burning flesh of decency, “the perversion” of our moral values, the descent into sinfulness. All of this in order to support a liar and cheat, a grifter and criminal??

Really it is to ‘get mine’ in all of the grift going on, we are watching “the bagman” bring the money right to the White House front door and be divided amongst the ‘faithful’. These ‘faithful’, seeing how easy it is to fleece the poor, the needy, the stranger, (all of whom we are told to love, care for, protect, be just with), they just couldn’t pass up the opportunity. While this behavior has been going on for a long time, it is reaching new peaks and heights, the violation of the 3rd Commandment is so gross and great, one can feel the disdain and sadness of God, one can feel the shift in the spiritual energy of the universe and one can witness these changes and sadness in the ways of the people who are protesting daily against cruelty, mendacity, grift and senseless wars.

The last line above, from Sukkah, a tractate in the Talmud, is a cautionary line for all of the “great” men and women. It is a warning that goes unheeded so often because of the “greatness” people feel, the egocentric belief in themselves, and the surety that they are the “smartest people in the room” causes them to be blinded to their own narcissism, their own propensity to “sin”. We the People have seen over and over that our “heroes” have clay feet, from Noah to Moses, from Joshua to King David, from Solomon to the Maccabees. We the People have witnessed the downfall of the great empires of antiquity and their no longer even having remnants remaining while the Jews keep schlepping along-not because we are so wonderful mind you, rather because the Bible has kept us seeking to be one grain of sand better-hence the revulsion at the ways of Netanyahu and his ‘coalition’ of thugs and ‘perverts of religious beliefs’. We the People have seen the clay feel of Jefferson and Washington, of Lincoln and both Roosevelts, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon! We have watched in horror at the incongruence of Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, Biden and known that they were human beings who cared and erred, who were decent men who were exposed to the “sins” and the self-deception of those whom they trusted and their trust in their people made them more exposed to their sins as well as their own propensity to follow their own “evil inclinations”. Trump is a different animal, however. Trump is the one who exposes the rest of us to sin! This is the greatest sin of all- to lead others to sinning, to be the pied piper of mendacity, indifference, and have the power to enslave so many to be his “taskmasters”, his henchmen/women, his private army. We the People have to end this reign of SIN, stop the spread of this terribly contagious and infections way of being and RETURN to living in our “religion” and ending the “perversion of it”.

I know both sides of this coin-I perverted religious teachings by holding other people accountable for them and not myself. I engaged in the perversion of the teachings I was taught so I could con people to get what I wanted/needed. I know the dangers of exposing people to sin because this was my modus operandi-if I could get another to engage in their own larceny, I would win. How sick is this!! All of this prior to my recovery, in fact this is what I am really in recovery from-the way of living was my real perversion and disease. Only through engaging in “religion” truthfully and with a desire to connect to the spiritual source of the universe have I been able to live a “richer and more meaningful life” and “be the change I want to see”. I still have those other parts within me, as Jung says: “the brighter the light, the darker the shadow”, and I work to keep them in proper measure each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you aware of the callousness, brutality, horror being practiced in your name right now? Year 4 Day 161

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 161

“Modern man may be characterized as a being who is callous to catastrophes. A victim of enforced brutalization, his sensibility is being increasingly reduced; his sense of horror is on the wane. The distinction between right and wrong is becoming blurred. All that is left to us is our being horrified at the loss of our sense of horror.” (God in Search of Man pg. 369)

One has to, or needs to, be shaking one’s head at reading, re-reading these words from 1955! 70 years ago Rabbi Heschel and many other philosophers, historians, clergy were bemoaning the callousness of human beings, not just the Germans who helped, participated in, or were willfully blind to what the Nazis were doing. The callousness of Europe to not stand up “for the Jews”, the callousness of Cornell Hull in denying entry to the St. Louis when it was refused entry to Cuba, because of Hull’s lobbying Cuba to refuse entry! The callousness of the “America First” campaign that Lindbergh, Father Coughlin, Henry Ford and Senator Hamilton Fish and others waged against “going to war to save Jews”, not wanting to help England in their fight against Hitler’s Nazi Regime. The callousness of Neville Chamberlain in ‘giving’ Hitler what he wanted in his ‘peace’ deal with him, not caring about the freedom of another country, the sovereignty of another people-just wanting to appease an insatiable person. Re-reading these words today, when we have Putin, Orban, Erdogan, Bibi, Ayatollah, Kim, Xi, MBS, Trump, Miller, Lutnick, Holman, Noem, Bondi, to name a few and watch the people genuflect in front of them or when their names are mentioned makes some of us, (especially me) want to throw up!

How has this come to be our state of affairs, how has cruelty, hatred, callousness infected the American Public so intensely that goons are being sent to beat people up who may or may not be here illegally, who have not committed any felonies and they are rounded up like Jews were in Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s and put into “detention centers” with them being sent to God knows where, not their country of origin, maybe the Sudan, maybe El Salvador to languish in the worst possible conditions. Some of those rounded up are American Citizens who are being kept incommunicado and ‘lost’ in the system. This is being done by the Country that has as its welcoming Lady Liberty the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”! WTF?!?!

Are we really so callous? Have these thugs been so victimized by “enforced brutalization” that their “sensibility is being increasingly reduced”? Are We the People so blind to the horrors of these policies, the brutality being practiced by our government in our name? Are We the People so unwilling to realize the “catastrophes” of what is happening and what has been happening to the soul of our nation, to the souls of our neighbors, to our own souls? Are We the People so immune to “evil” that we think these are good practices, “they deserve this way of being treated” as Stephen Miller, Tom Holman, JD Vance, Trump believe? Are We the People, as Jews here and in Israel really willing to call the Palestinian people sub-human as Ben G’vir, Smotrich, the Likud Cabinet and Netanyahu do? Are We the People willing to go along with MBS because he gives money to Kushner and Trump so we forget his brutality in the matter of Khashoggi and others who he has killed, jailed so he could consolidate his power grab? Are We the People willing to be ‘good germans’ and march lockstep with ‘Der Fuhrer? The answer, of course, seems to be yes, unfortunately. Rather than follow the Bible’s dictates that evil begets evil, that we should Choose Life not death, we should Be a Blessing not a Curse, We the People have a history of hearing and following those who want chaos, callousness, hatred, brutality, to be the way of our world! Unbelievable and True!!

HOW DID WE GET HERE? We the People find ourselves in this position 70+ years after Rabbi Heschel wrote and spoke the words above because we are “stiff-necked” and we are envious as Cain was, we are worried about “not getting ours” as Joseph’s brothers were, we are scared when things don’t happen in our time frame like the Israelites did with the Golden Calf, we think our shit doesn’t stink and we can take anything we want like King David took Bathsheba. These ways of being, though frowned upon in our Bible, though not permitted by our Mitzvot, seem to have a longer shelf life in our subconscious, a louder voice in our inner life than the stories of what happens when we are “stiff-necked”, we lose everything even the Temple, even our homeland.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? We the People have forgotten the arduous journey of our ancestors, grandparents, parents to get here, the “brutalization” they were victims of ‘in the old country’, the rape of the women, the beating of the men, the forced labor of the children and inscription into the Armies of these nations only to be brutalized more. We the People have become so entitled that Howard Lutnick seems to have forgotten that his ancestors came from the Ukraine, Poland? Stephen Miller seems to have forgotten that his Great Grandfather came here from Belarus and his Grandfather would have been conscripted into the Army if the family had not left ‘without papers’! We the People who are applauding the THUGS and “brutalizations” happening in the streets of Los Angeles and other cities are being willfully blind to the journey of our ancestors so we could “breathe free” and no longer be “tempest-tost”!

HOW DID WE GET HERE? We the People have become so “entitled” and so spiritually bankrupt that we need someone to “blame” for our inadequacies, for our inabilities to make a better life than our parents had, to take the responsibilities of our “missing the mark” off of us so we put them on “those people”. We the People are in this place of “callousness” precisely because we are spiritually bankrupt because the truth of our Biblical Wisdom has been co-opted by ‘those good christian/jewish/muslim” PAGANS!

This is my life-long quest; to speak truth to the souls of another human being, to help myself and you stay in the wrestling match for the goodness of our being to prevail, “to do and then understand”, and to live a life which is compatible with “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Either/or living or Both/And living; how are you tinging holy with wicked, mixing evil with good?

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 160

“Even more frustrating than the fact that evil is real, mighty, and tempting is the fact that it thrives so well in the disguise of the good, that it can draw its nutriment from the life of the holy. In this world, it seems, the holy and unholy do not exist apart, but are mixed, interrelated and confounded. It is a world where idols may be rich in beauty, and where the worship of God may be tinged with wickedness.” ( God in Search of Man pg. 369)

“In this world, it seems, the holy and unholy do not exist apart, but are mixed, interrelated, and confounded” is the great conundrum we all face. It is the essence of living in the both/and rather than the either/or. We the People are very quick to see every experience in a binary way-it is either good or bad, winning or losing, right or wrong and the words above come to pour cold water on us so we can see what really is, that life is not so binary, that every decision and action is mixed with “the holy and unholy” and we have to tease out what is good and right and what is egocentric, wrong and not right. We are being challenged by Rabbi Heschel’s words and by current events, by our allegiances to country, to democracy, to the rule of law, and by familial duties and obligations.

Trump and Bibi will be hailed as heroes for making the Iranian truce-which may or may not be and hold, since Bibi has never had a cease-fire that hasn’t been violated by the other side, be it Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians in the West Bank, etc. Trump did a good thing with his bombing run-full stop, Iran is a BAD ACTOR, this however, doesn’t make Trump a paragon of virtue, nor does it prove Bibi’s way of being is good for Israel nor does it prove either one is moral and decent. These two are prime examples of “evil” being “mixed, interrelated, and confounded” with “the holy and unholy”. While what happens in the Middle East has a profound effect on our lives, what happens with the Military ‘taking the streets back’ from We the People, from the peaceful protestors; what happens with “masked men” pulling people out of cars, off the streets and locking them up whether they are citizens or not, whether they are criminals or not has an even greater effect on our lives! Whether the Orthodox rule the various governmental offices in Israel, whether Bibi and his gang of thugs can decimate the legal system in Israel as Trump is trying to do here in America, has profound effects on the lives of Israelis as it does on the lives of Americans.

When the Constitution is seen as a document to bastardize and break with both the letter and spirit of it, “the holy and unholy do not exist apart”. When the Declaration of Independence holds no power over officials in the governments here and in Israel, “evil” becomes “mixed, interrelated and confounded” with the good. When We the People go along because Bibi, Trump did something great with Iran, and we forget the rest of their agenda that is so demeaning and destabilizing to our democratic foundations, We the People have “mixed, interrelated, and confounded” truth, goodness, love, with deception, cruelty and hatred, and this could be the “missing the mark” that spells the end of “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. While it has endured for 249 years in fits and starts, it has moved towards and away from the spirit of both of our founding documents, today we are facing a threat that wants to send us back to the King George days with Donald Trump as king - God Forbid, tuy, tuy, as my Grandmother would say:) We the People need to do the work of discernment, not paint everyone with the same brush, not make ‘good guys and bad guys’, not deny that evil people can do good things-if it seems in their best interest, like Trump’s bombing of Iran so he can get the Nobel Peace Prize, so he can brag about how strong he is, and Bibi can chortle as to how he played Trump to do his bidding-fine men they are!

We the People have to start with ourselves, however. Beginning with our own confusion of “holy and unholy”, our own unique ways of mixing, interrelating, and confounding “evil” with good. Be it in the ways we parent, the ways we are bosses or employees, the ways we are in the grocery store, or walking on the way, We the People have to be aware and on guard because mixing shit up is normal, it is easy, it seems natural and “self-deception is a major disease” as Rabbi Heschel says in his 1972 Interview with Carl Stern. We the People are being called to account for the ways we have  dressed “idols” so they “may be rich in beauty and where the worship of God may be tinged with wickedness”. We the People have allowed this to happen, We the People have helped this to happen, and We the People have created these ‘beautiful’ “idols” and encouraged, supported the people who lead us to “worship God” with a tinge of “wickedness”. Be it Paula White-Cain, Joel Osteen, the Rabbis who support the cruelty of Trump because ‘he is good for the Jews’ while he has rabid anti-semites around him, be it anyone who is following these idolators, these charlatans who have only their self-interest at heart rather than the interests of God, of Spiritual wholeness, of living a life of spiritual principles and separating the “holy and unholy” from the terrible confounding and confusion we are in now. When the spin is called truth, when FOX is determining who is running the Government, who is ‘camera-ready’ for leading a governmental agency, when a 22 year-old punk is the head of Homeland Security’s top anti-terrorism person, We the People are guilty of abdicating our responsibility, our call, our spiritual and moral truths, and ‘missing the mark’ with God. It is Way Past Time for We the People to get our own house in order and end our fascination and our narcissistic love of confusing and confounding the GOOD with “evil”, the HOLY with “the unholy”.

I have been fighting for the “good” for a long time. In fact this fight led me down the wrong path when I was younger. I was so frustrated by the bullshit and lies and my inability to fight them, I was alone and lonely without my father’s guidance and encouragement, so I gave up and gave in. I have been dedicated to separating “the holy and unholy” ever since 1987. It is hard and I fail at times, less that I used to and less each day, however. It is possible to hold two opposing thoughts in my mind at the same time-like Bibi and Trump being bad guys who did a good thing! In my daily T’Shuvah, I keep looking for any “wickedness” and “idols” that I still fall into and, again, it is less and less each day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

How do you disguise "evil" in the good you are doing? How are you feeding your "evil inclination" through "holy actions"? Year 4 Day 159

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 159

“Even more frustrating than the fact that evil is real, mighty, and tempting is the fact that it thrives so well in the disguise of the good, that it can draw its nutriment from the life of the holy. In this world, it seems, the holy and unholy do not exist apart, but are mixed, interrelated and confounded. It is a world where idols may be rich in beauty, and where the worship of God may be tinged with wickedness.” ( God in Search of Man pg. 369)

Reading the first sentence above, knowing it is as true today as it was 70 years ago, as it was 2000 years ago, 2500 years ago, is sad and hopeful. It is sad because We the People seem incapable of learning the lessons of the prophets, the lessons of the Bible, the lessons of what “evil”, when it is “in the disguise of the good” does to the inner life of human beings and the horrific deeds we perpetrate upon one another, ‘in the name of god’, not in the Name of God, rather in the name of one’s self-interest, one’s narcissistic needs, in the name of power, prestige and wealth. Because this way of lying and deceiving has been around since the days before the 1st Temple, many people believe that religion is full of shit and just a meaningless way for ‘them’ to control the rest of us. This point is not without merit-most of the dogmatic followers, the evangelicalism in all faiths are in it for control and for themselves, no matter what they say and this is a prime example of “evil” “in the disguise of the good”.

We witness this with the bombing of Iranian Nuclear sites by the United States; Iran is a Bad Actor and can no more be believed than Trump or Bibi or any of the other autocrats in the world. Yet, there is a hint of “evil” here because for both Bibi and Trump, this action and the actions of Israel’s strikes on Iran also got the heat off of both for not bringing the hostages home and the continued destruction of Gaza(Bibi) and the National Guard and Marines coming into LA and other Democratic led cities and States(Trump) as well as ‘the big beautiful bill’ which will inflict more pain on We the People along with the tariffs. J D Vance claims it wasn’t an attack on Iran, only on Iran Nuclear Facilities, I am sure he would feel that way if someone attacked one of our naval shipyards saying it was only an attack on the U.S. Naval facility! When pure bullshit is dressed up like a pig in a tuxedo, We the People have to see the pig, not the tuxedo and the bullshit, not the deception.

Another example of “evil” thriving “so well in the disguise of the good” is how many “holy rollers” of religious acclaim keep asking for more money because ‘god’ wants them to be prosperous and if one can’t be prosperous than one should make sure their clergy is! What bullshit is being spread by Osteen, White-Cain, et al - do preachers really need many homes, cars, private Jets, all the while bastardizing Jesus’ words and deeds?? This is an example of “evil” being able to “draw its nutriment from the life of the holy”. It is true for people like Ben G’Vir and Smotrich and the other ‘orthodox’ Jews who demand total allegiance to dogma and no allegiance to the words of the Bible that remind us to “love the stranger”, “there shall be one law for the stranger and the citizen alike”, “care for the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy”. The issue for We the People, is when are we going to demand truth and goodness be our motto and our goal, when are we going to demand from ourselves and one another that we be the “good people” who take action instead of letting “evil flourish” as the saying goes? When are We the People going to ingest the words of Martin Niemoller who reminds us of our obligation to stand for and with Truth, Love, Kindness, and against Evil, Mendacity and Deception-both self and buying the deceptions of another.

This is the great challenge for We the People. The words above, which I will elaborate more on tomorrow, call us to look inside of ourselves before we point our fingers, it demands of us a truthful, fearless, and painstakingly inventory of our actions, our thoughts, our ways of being - coming to terms with the ways we “miss the mark” of decency and the holy, the ways we surrender to the “evil” that is “real, mighty and tempting”, the ways we have used “the life of the holy” to supply “nutriment” to the evil that resides within us. We the People have to discern between “evil” and our own “evil inclination”. While both come from God, (in Judaism we don’t have a devil on the same level as God) the “evil inclination” is part of the Or HaGanuze, the hidden light that was present on the first day of creation and then hidden within each human being to help settle the Tohu V’Vohu, the chaotic void that also exists in every person, while “evil” is the abdication of wrestling with one’s disparate parts. Not fighting, but focusing as a friend spoke to me about yesterday. Focus on what the task at hand is and in every opportunity the main task is not to finish the task, not to ‘win the day’, but to separate the “evil” from the good and not have our “holy” actions give food, shelter to “evil”.

Most of us are oblivious to how we mix “evil” with “good”, how we feed our own “evil inclinations” with “the holy” and then perpetrate “evil” and “choose death/curse” as Moses cautions us against doing at the end of Deuteronomy. Most of us are oblivious to the truth that we have within us the wherewithal to Choose Life, to Be a Blessing. We are oblivious to the spiritual messages of our intuitive mind, our soul’s speaking to us and this is the reason that the truthful, fearless, painstakingly inventory is so crucial to our well-being. With the ability to destroy the world comes the responsibility to save it, no matter what those ‘good christian folks’ who are dying for Armageddon want! We the People have to take off our blinders, we have to put on “a new pair of glasses”, and we have to “lift up our eyes and see” what is true, what is good, what is holy and what is false, what is wrong, what is “evil”. This is the separation, the discernment that has to go into every action we take, no matter what our self-interest, our narcissism, our indifference are screaming at us!

It is a hard way of living, just as Malcolm X. He was right, an examined life is difficult and it is the only way to live well. The exploring of “evil” that is “in the disguise of the good” has been my life’s work since 1987 and it is an ongoing, unfinished work. I keep looking for when my interest conflicts with God’s, when my actions give “nutriment” to “evil”, when I have been willfully blind to the truth because I believed in “my rightness”. There are at least a few times this has been true in the past 38 years:) ha ha!!. And I am constantly reviewing my life and making the T’Shuvah necessary. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What are we doing to make evil grow and what are we doing to make it not possible to grow? Year 4 Day 158

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 158

“The experience of the easy and endless opportunities for evil and the awareness of the dreadful danger, threatens to outweigh all delight of living…This essential predicament of man has assumed a peculiar urgency in our time, living as we do in a civilization where factories were established in order to exterminate millions of men, women, and children; where soap was made of human flesh. What have we done to make such crimes possible? What are we doing to make such crimes impossible? (God in Search of Man pg. 369)

The last two questions above are haunting me and I hope you as well. In this moment of cruelty and hatred, of lies and deceptions, of grift, graft, and taking advantage of the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow and the orphan, have we considered these questions that Rabbi Heschel posed some 70 years ago? We have the attack on Iran by the U.S. against our own intelligence and Iran is a BAD ACTOR-full stop, we have the Marines patrolling the streets of Los Angeles and soon to be other cities where Democrats are mayors, governors, because there are no illegal immigrants in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, etc!! We have the cruelty of dismantling USAID, which brought many people to be allies of democracy and the U.S., we have the assault on Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare by the Republicans, and the tearing up of the Constitution by both Trumpism, MAGAworld, and, sadly, the Roberts Supreme Court. John Roberts is distinguishing himself as the first Chief Justice of The Supreme Court to destroy the Constitutional Rights of Article 1, the Bill of Rights, the rest of the Amendments. All of these horrors are being done in the name of Jesus?? All of this cruelty is done because ‘the Bible tells me so’ according to Mike Johnson. In Israel, Bibi is telling the Israelis-‘see I told you I am the only one who knows how to handle the Americans to get what I/Israel wants’. What he says in English and what he says in Hebrew are two different things, and his Hebrew speeches are full of ‘hidden’ messages that English speakers would not catch!

“What have we done to make such crimes possible”, We the People have been asleep at the wheel, We the People have been so whipsawed from one extreme to the other, We the People have allowed hatred, racism, to grow within our neighbors and ourselves, We the People have lived in comparison and competition, We the People have sought fame, fortune, power for their own sakes, not for the sake of a greater purpose and We the People have continued to live in a binary world of either/or. We the People have worshiped at the Golden Calf of money and power, We the People have abused the great works of the Bible, New Testament, Socrates, and forgotten the repeated experiences of what happens when people refuse to learn from the errors of another. We the People have accepted and bowed down to the “conventional norms and mental cliches” which, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, is “the greatest hinderance to knowledge”. “But Jerusalem grew fat and kicked. You grew fat, gross and coarse” is Moses’ prophecy to the Israelites in his last speech (Deut. 32:15) and this happened in 586 BCE and 70AD to the Jews and throughout history to all of the ‘powerful’ dynasties. Yet, We the People, through our self-deception, our lies, our inauthentic desires, continue to repeat this behavior and it didn’t work out so well for Germany, it hasn’t worked out so well for the Russian People, nor any other people.

“What are we doing to make such crimes impossible” is a soul question that We the People seem to be unable to respond to. “Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country” is the sentence I learned to type at the beginning of learning how to type. As my fingers fly over the keyboard, I am sad that We the People have failed in this task so badly. There is hope, however, in the “No Kings Protests”, in the protests against what these GOONS and THUGS of ICE are doing to our cities and our neighbors, in the actions of some, unfortunately not enough, of our elected officials. What we need to be doing is to improve our spiritual maladies that are listed above. We the People need a program of recovery, a spiritual discipline that restores our “basic goodness of being”  and puts our rational mind back in its place as a servant to our intuitive mind, as Einstein teaches. It is time for We the People to engage in a study of our Holy Texts, be it Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Philosophical, and follow the promise of the people who left Egypt: “Na’Aseh V’Nishma” , we will do it and then understand it. Rather than sit around and argue over what something means, rather than waiting till we understand something to take action, follow the wisdom and the actions of our ancestors who came to America for a better life, who came here for religious freedom, for freedom to speak their minds, for freedom of the press, for freedom from being locked up on TRUMPED up charges, for a way of being and living that was different than having to listen to the ramblings of King George, the mad king, and his bi-polar whims(sound familiar)??!! We the People are being called to step up, stand up and show up for our selves, for our children, for the next generations to come so that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth”. This was the promise of Abraham Lincoln, the promise of the Statue of Liberty: “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, and to ensure that the divine promise as manifested in the Exodus from Egypt- tyranny will not endure forever; becomes our new reality.

Each day, as I see how We the People are going against our inner truths, acting in concert with evil actively, passively, indifferently, I wonder what has happened to the soul of America, to the soul of the individual. I know what it is like to be spiritually bankrupt, I know what it is like to go against what I know to be the next right action, I have a PhD in this-even at times in recovery. I also know that living into the spiritual power of the universe, clearing away the schmutz and lies, the obliviousness and the inauthentic desires gives me the opportunity to see the world through the “maladjusted” lens of radical amazement which puts on me the obligation to live decently, to live with passion and purpose, to know that my destiny is to serve, my joy comes from wanting what I have rather than being in the low-grade misery of wanting what I don’t have. I am writing every day, I have 2 books waiting to be published, I enjoy a life beyond my deserving with the wonderful Harriet Rossetto, my daughter Heather and grandson Miles are joys, I have the love of my siblings and family as well as friends. To pay it forward, I have to honor the spiritual truths I know and seek to uncover the ones I am still hiding from. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark