Comment

What god do you follow/adhere to; your egotistical self, the god of the clergy who make it up or God of the Bible? Year 4 Day

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 266

“What is an idol? Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not you, is an idol. Faith in God is not simply an afterlife-insurance policy. Racial or religious bigotry must be recognized for what it is: satanism, blasphemy.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 51)

In this era of religious governing, as Mike Johnson likes to portray his style of government, we find that the “god” being worshipped is as described above. The idea that ‘my god loves me and not you’ is so foreign to the Bible and to Jesus’ words and ways, it boggles my mind how people who can read, understand, think critically buy into the lies,  the bigotry, the idolatry of their “god”. Yet, many people seem to be doing this, many people are claiming that Trump and his cruelty, his lack of taking responsibility, his tearing down of sacred spaces to American Democracy, has been sent by their “god”!! WTF!!??!!

The insanity of this moment cannot be lost on We the People. The people who worship their “god”, who are trying to refine “racial and religious bigotry”, are the ones who claim they are being discriminated against because of being white, being christian nationalists, accusing everyone who is not a White Anglo Saxon Christian Nationalist, of the very actions they are taking. Josef Goebbels has NOTHING on Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, JD Vance(or whatever his real name is) et al. When the ways of Goebbels is used to deflect responsibility, when the ways of the Anti-Semites is used to make a ‘common enemy’, when appealing to the lower angels of humanity is the goal, we are deep into the worship of “an idol” and it is time for We the People to realize what is happening, smell the fucking manure that is being shit on us daily and STAND THE FUCK UP!

The Mike Johnsons of our time are reminding their constituents, many of whom are people of true and deep faith, that following them, going along with the harshness and heartache that the policies of Project 2025 will bring to them is so their suffering will ‘be rewarded in heaven’, ‘they will dine with kings in the afterlife’ and other such bullshit. I am so enraged that the conmen, the grifters, the idolators are taking advantage of truly good Christian people who are absolutely believing in the goodness of the people who are lying to them, who are grifting them, who are abusing and enslaving them. This is what idolatry leads to, this is how easy it is to convince people to do the next wrong thing by invoking enough of “god” who loves me and you, but not those people!

We the People find ourselves at another inflection moment, facing another Pharaoh, engaging in a fight for democracy and freedom vis a vis authoritarianism and slavery. It begins and ends with the question: Are you going to worship the “idol” of your choosing or are you going to follow the “way of God” in the Bible? I am not talking about the ways of humans in the Bible necessarily, I am speaking about the ways of Adonai at Mount Sinai and throughout the Bible, God who stresses how to treat the stranger, the widow, the poor, the needy and the poor. God who reminds us in the beginning that we all are created in the Image of the Divine so no race is inherently better than another! God in the Bible who, through the prophets including Moses, reminds us of our need to do justice, to act with righteousness, to do TShuvah because everyone screws up, no one is perfect! This is God who is called by many names, Yud Hey Vav Hey, Adonai, the Ineffable One because there is no description, no name that can encompass all that is God, so We the People let us stop trying, let us stop comparing ‘my god’ to ‘your god’, and join together to learn how to live better with the guidance of the Ineffable One.

In this reoccurring moment of “racial and religious bigotry”, it is imperative for We the People to get off our asses and DO SOMETHING! We the People are being called to live into and up to the souls we are created to be, to live into and up to the call that is reverberating deep inside of all of us to BE FREE, to BE DECENT, to LOVE THE STRANGER, to BE LOVED FOR WHO WE ARE, TO LOVE OURSELVES SO WE CAN LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS! This is the angst that causes us to lash out, our knowing what we need to do to feed our souls, to repay the debt we owe to those entities and people who have helped us reach the place we are, and our rational egotistic denial of a debt, our rational and egotistical comparative nature which causes us to hate our neighbors, blame the stranger, live a narcissistic life. This is the war of binary thinking versus Both/And thinking, the war between living in Truth and living in mendacity, in living in the societal norms and living in radical amazement. It is the choice in front of us and we make our choice with both our actions and our inactions-which do you choose?

Having been an idolator in my earlier years, because I knew God existed and I ran away which is a subtle form of idolatry-I didn’t deny God, I just ignored the call which was screaming inside of me to do T’Shuvah, to change-I know the pain and sorrow of the slavery I willingly walked into with my eyes wide open and shut. These years of recovery have been a daily slog to keep my eyes open, to make sure that I stay out of the “racial and religious bigotry”  that is happening now. I watch in horror the “the satanism and blasphemy” that is passing for faith and I keep screaming, I keep protesting, I keep writing. My fear is that I am not being heard, I am not getting to the people who need to hear this message, that the study of the Prophets is dead and/or being bastardized and my grandson and his age group will not learn the beauty and power that the Biblical Revolution brought about. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Back to basics so we don't fall into the traps our ancestors have fallen into before us - Year 4 Day 265

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 265

“What is first at sake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs. Our possessions hold no less a problem than our other passions.  The primary task, therefore, is not how to deal the evil, but how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 51)

Rabbi Heschel’s premise in this section is fascinating! As I hear him this morning, I am realizing his premise could possibly be; if we take care of “the neutral”, “the needs”, than “the evil” will not have the opening and nourishment to grow and overcome us, overcome the world. If he is not saying this, then I am. Our challenge is to ask ourselves: how have possessions overtaken my life? How have I given in to the latest fashion, fad, status symbol? How does fulfilling my inauthentic needs help me hide from myself and from another? How do I lie to myself and to another(s) by saying there are “neutral acts”?

Sitting here and pondering these questions, realizing I may be way off base of what Rabbi Heschel was thinking, seeing the tearing down of everything I have held dear about Israel, about the United States, about democracy, about freedom, enrages me that We the People have not heeded this call to action of some 60+ years ago! I am sickened over the current state of affairs and while I want desperately to point my finger, I also know I have to look inside myself, my tribe of Kennedy liberals, and see how we fell asleep at the wheel and did not help the next generation on “how to deal with the neutral, how to deal with needs”! This is the great sin of my generation and points out the spiritual bankruptcy that is rampant in today’s world and has been growing and growing faster and more insidious than any of the financial sicknesses that have been and will continue to be. We are, and have been, ruled by “our passions” as well as by “our possessions”, by our “needs” and have lied to ourselves and one another that there are “neutral acts”. How can there be when each and every action we take either advances or retards society, advances or retards our holiness, our growing spiritually and emotionally, our journey to seeing the true, authentic self?

The “passions” of the far right bring out the “passions’ of the far left, the “passions” of the left bring our the “passions” of the right and We the People are bounced back and forth like a tennis ball by both extremes! There is nothing progressive about the abusive way of “cancel culture”, there is nothing conservative about the destruction of the U.S. Constitution and the shitting on the Declaration of Independence! There is nothing neutral about the misuse of Christ’s teachings and life’s work by ‘those good christian nationalist folks’. There is nothing neutral about bastardizing a commandment said 36 times in the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible: LOVE THE STRANGER by ‘those good religious jewish folk’! Reading, immersing oneself in the words above demands our rage at ourselves for allowing the evil of the neutral to flourish, for not standing securely in the middle and school both extremes that their ways lead to autocracy, to fascism, to communism, to a much less free way of life. Yet, We the People did not do this, we sat around making our money, becoming rich, comfortable and forgot to care for the stranger within us as well as the one outside of us. We the People have bankrupted our spiritual health by “getting ours” and forgetting our self, our inner life; by rationalizing our behaviors and those of ‘our tribe’ while abhorring the same actions we take when taken by another(s); by minimizing the danger posed by the Tea Party people, by the far right “religious” parties who practice everything other than the religious, spiritual, and moral principles of faith!

We the People have to take back our freedoms, our way of living well and our countries. We the People have to truly begin to deal with “our passions”, “our possessions”, “our neutral acts” and “our needs”. This does not mean not to engage with them, not to honor them, it means We the People have to realize the mendacity of “neutral acts”, we have to acknowledge what are authentic “needs” and what are inauthentic ones. We the People are being called to identify “our passions” and how to live them in proper measure for ourselves and for another(s), so “our passions” are not just personal, they are of service to another(s). We the People are being asked to see how “our possessions” may be making us less free because our desire for more, more, more has stopped us from the more important things in life: connections that are covenantal, seeing another person as an equally dignified, worthy individual rather than as a pawn for us to “get what we want”. We the People are needed in this moment to say NO to mendacity, NO to “the neutral”, YES to growing spiritually and morally, YES to dealing appropriately with “needs”, “passions”, “possessions”!

The subtlety of it all is amazing. I have a good golf cart that I use each day-the ride is a little rough and going to try and see why. Yet, for the past 6-8 months, I have seen newer, cooler, golf carts with more toys, bells and whistles riding around our development and, had GOLF CART ENVY! At any given moment, I can rationalize why I should have a new golf cart, it is almost my birthday so it would be a nice birthday present, etc. Harriet and I were going to go shopping for a new one on Sunday afternoon and Sunday morning on our way to meet some people, I told Harriet we were not going-she was surprised and I said it is not a “need” and reading the words above today, I know that inauthentic needs have the same kryptonite that inauthentic people who pass themselves off as ‘the good ones’ have for me. Both lead me down a bad road when I don’t deal with the truth of who and what I am and live into being a better and more authentic me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Dealing with our Emotional and Spiritual immaturity determines the freedom we have and the freedom we offer to another Year 4 Day 264

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 264

“The problem of living begins, in fact, in relation to our own selves, in the handling of our emotional functions, in the way we deal with envy, greed, and pride. What is at sake in the life of man is not the fact of sin, of the wrong and corrupt, but the neutral acts, the needs.” (Thunder in the Soul pgs. 50-51)

In the words above, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of the need to look beyond the material state of our living, not that it is not important, rather I hear, believe these words remind us of the true nature of the challenge that faces us: how do we be more human, how do we let go of the binary thinking, either/or mentality? Without a truthful, open relationship “to our own selves”, we will never be able to fulfill the demands of the Bible: “do justly, love mercy, walk in God’s ways” or “be a light unto the nations”, or “love your neighbor (who is) like yourself”. Yet, it seems as if our “relation to our own selves” is the last thing we cultivate, it only happens when one hits a ‘bottom’, a ‘brick wall’, when there is no where else to turn/blame, lash out at, etc.

Given the current state of affairs in the world, it is evident how poorly we, as a society, are dealing with “the problem of living”! One might say we are rapidly running to the worst of human behaviors, we are gleefully not dealing well with our “emotional functions”, we are giving in to the worst of our parts and running away from “our own selves” by hating another(s) just because “those people” are not white christian nationalists. While right now, it is only the ‘illegal’ aliens, which we know American Citizens are being caught up because of the color of their skin, how long until it is ___ fill in the blank?

“Envy” is fueling this current administration, the current President of the United States. He is envious of President Obama, of Joe Biden because they achieved more than he ever could, because Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize. Envy is running the hatred of Stephen Miller, Howard Lutnick, because they are not ‘in the club’ of the Christian Nationalists like Russel Vought because they are Jews and they, like Jews before them, are trying to bridge the gap between them and the Christian Nationalists by being more ruthless, more greedy, more cruel than their counterparts! The envy of men at the wisdom, the grit, leadership, and the kindness of women in Congress and in business drives these misogynists crazy so they have to put them down constantly and, if those women are women of color, if they are Muslim, Jewish, the Vought’s of the world go totally apeshit! Their pride cannot handle the success of another, they are so emotionally immature they don’t know how to be joyous for the achievements of another, sometimes even their families, their children, if it overshadows them.

Pride and envy go hand in hand, of course and both are served, promoted and have a reciprocal relationship to “greed”! We are witnessing some of the greediest leaders the world has seen since the Middle Ages, they are putting the Nazis like Goring, Hitler, et al to shame with their greed and their grift! AND they are so proud of themselves, they flaunt their lawlessness, they laugh at those who call them out, they send the army to stop citizens from exercising their freedoms and they indict those who are unafraid to stand up and say BULLSHIT on them. The words above were a cautionary tale at a time when We the People thought the tide was turning, and it did for a minute, and Rabbi Heschel saw the darkness in the souls of Americans when Nixon was elected, warning us and We the People, once again failed to heed the warnings, the demands, the calls of the prophets, of their descendants, of people who serve something higher than themselves!

We the People, are being called to action, to getting our own emotional and spiritual house in order. We the People cannot respond to the avalanche of “envy, greed, and pride” being foisted upon us without having a true core of spirituality within us. We the People have shown ourselves to be so inept at dealing with our “emotional functions”, with our “envy, greed, and pride”, with our spiritual immaturity and spiritual bankruptcy. We know this because we have raised one-two generations of children who believe the lies, who embrace the grift and the con, who are entitled, selfish, narcissistic blaming binary thinkers and doers! This was not learned just at school, online, they saw it in their homes, they heard it at family dinners, they watched their parents ‘keep up with the jones’ while their spiritual hunger and needs were unmet, laughed at, told to ‘grow up and face the real world’. Well, We the People, they have done that and now we have King Baby in the White House stealing from everything he can from the American People, up to and including our freedoms! We the People have to DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW to stem this tide, to preserve our freedoms and it begins with maturing our spiritual and emotional lives so we can have a good relationship with our “envy, greed, and pride” and stop believing the lies of those who need to hate and grift like a baby needs it’s mother’s milk!

I know what happens when one is not able to handle “our emotional functions” and it was not, is not pretty! I also know it is hard to stand up to the bullies who sound ‘reasonable’, who stay calm while I get bombastic because I know the lie and see everyone else buy into it. I know not wanting another rejection, another time being laughed at. I know all of this because I experience them to this day. I also know that I cannot allow these ‘results’ stop me from doing what is in front of me, from doing the next indicated action and, at times I have. My commitment is to deal with the fears, the sadness at being rejected and the lies of the people who spread them better each day and not let anything stop me from being in the solution! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

"Silent Atrocities, Secret Scandals" are the bane of our existence - Year 4 Day 263

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 263

“The prophets tried to overcome the isolationism of religion. It is the prophets who teach us that the problem of living does not arise with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes. The problem of living begins with the realization of how we all blunder in dealing with our fellow men. The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent, are the true seat of moral infection.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 50)

Given the recent decline and fall of the democratic nation called the United States of America, I am writing about the last sentence that is in bold above. While there is much fodder in the ways of Trump, Trumpism, what Netanyahu is trying to do, with some success, in Israel, I am going to focus on We the People. Blame should not be laid upon Trump, his cronies, his thugs alone nor is what is happening in Israel on Netanyahu alone, just as what is going on in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, etc the fault of the dictators, royalty, autocrats alone. We the People have to take responsibility for our part in both creating these entitled assholes and for allowing them, encouraging them to be as cruel as they are. We the People have to see how our enabling of these petty little men has created the monsters we now face. The only way to do this is, of course, to look inside of ourselves.

The “silent atrocities, the secret scandals” are not just the purview of the far right nor the far left. In fact, I would offer that those of us who are always believing we are ‘on the right side of things’ have hidden, run away from the “silent atrocities, secret scandals” we have created and participated in-which only compounds the problems. We the People are being asked by the words above, by the prophets call to us to look at our own “moral infection”, the infection of our mendacious belief that “we are the ones in the right” and we have no responsibility for the bad results that have happened. It is like we are telling our children as we spank them-“this is going to hurt me worse than it hurts you”, rather than engaging and seeing what led to the inappropriate action, what we have done to give our children the wrong message like: “do as I say not as I do” and other such bullshit.  In our “good people” we find they hide from their errors, from their sins, and the blame they lay on another(s) is tremendous, all the while claiming their ‘moral superiority’, which is, in fact, a moral infection. When We the People refuse to look inside of ourselves, see and admit the “silent atrocities, the secret scandals” we have committed as individuals and gone along with as a part of group, as a member of society, the “moral infection” grows and grows and makes the moment ripe for an audacious, mendacious, autocrat like we see in the United States, Israel and so many other places which used to be democratic in action as well as name!

There is a solution!! It beings with each one of us dropping the lies we have been telling another(s) about ourselves. Our “silent atrocities, secret scandals” are not lies we tell ourselves because we are aware of them and our refusal to meet them, deal with them, make the amends for them, and change our inner life so we don’t do it again, ie doing TShuvah! Rather, we lie to another(s) so we can continue to look good, so we can keep our credentials as part of the ‘resistance’, the ‘good people’, so we can fit in with the MAGA crowd, hold onto our position of relevance and power in either group. This is how far we have gotten from the words, the messages, the demands of the prophets! This is how far We the People have strayed from the call of God to each of us as individuals and to the body I call We the People. Hence it is imperative for We the People do earnestly engage in the spiritual practice of TShuvah, the spiritual practice of gratitude, the spiritual practice of asking for forgiveness, the spiritual practice of lifting ourselves up from the ruts we have made for ourselves in our brains, in our inner life, and in our outer life. The people most in need of these spiritual practices are, of course, the ones who proclaim their spirituality, their religion guides their every move, that their moral compass is strong and they follow it to such a degree that they could never really do anything wrong, they would never betray the people who have helped them, they would never blame another with out sufficient cause, etc. The people who declare their imperfections while believing they always do the next right thing, they have committed and continue to commit “silent atrocities, secret scandals” as much as those who rejoice in the cruelty they can bring- both are cruel and unusual punishment being foisted upon We the People! It will not end until We the People end it in ourselves and demand that our families, communities, countries end them as well. This is how we Jews can and must be “a light unto the nations”, a “holy nation” and the time is NOW!

My inability to acknowledge the “silent atrocities, the secret scandals” I was committing locked me up in a prison of addiction and criminality, a prison of irresponsibility and blame, a prison of self-hatred and suspicion of everyone else. I still feel the sting of those years, I still am making living TShuvah for those years. I don’t hide from myself so much anymore, in fact when I am most unsettled, what I do is turn inside and see what am I trying to hide from those around me, what I am I seeing that is driving me? Most of the time, nowadays, I can see what it is rather quickly and most unsettling and reoccurring is the nightmare I see in front of me and my inability to have my voice heard. I get frustrated that the ‘good people’ I write about above, still control who gets hear and who doesn’t-talk about the fox guarding the hen house!! I keep coming back to doing the next right thing, making sure I am keeping my side of the street clean and engaging in the work necessary to speak truth to power, speak truth to myself, and heed the words of the prophets and emulate their ways of living. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

How do you define "the problem of living" in this moment for yourself and society? Year 4 Day 262

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 262

“The prophets tried to overcome the isolationism of religion. It is the prophets who teach us that the problem of living does not arise with the question of how to take care of the rascals, of how to prevent delinquency or hideous crimes. The problem of living begins with the realization of how we all blunder in dealing with our fellow men. The silent atrocities, the secret scandals, which no law can prevent, are the true seat of moral infection.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 50)

The first sentence above is, to some, blasphemy! How can Rabbi Heschel, a man of deep faith and commitment to the mitzvot, accuse religion of isolationism? Precisely because of his credentials, his background, his ability to see what is and know what should be. Rev Mark Luther King Jr., Bobby, Kennedy, Rabbi Heschel and many more people saw what is and did not ask why, they saw what isn’t/what could be and asked why not. This is what comes to me when I read the first sentence above, the prophets showing us the way to asking the questions, demanding we see what isn’t and what should/could be and ask why not.

Given the world we live in and, truthfully, the way the world has always been, these statements about the prophets show us exactly why they are read and not absorbed, heard and not listened to, quoted and not understood. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s we heard all about “the rascals”, the “delinquency”, the “hideous crimes” of ‘those people’. These issues were used to win elections, put in draconian laws, be racist under the guise of law and order, and blame the ‘little guy’, the ‘other’ so as to keep whiteness supreme. This is true of both Republicans and Democrats, with the Republicans taking this way of being to an extreme level with great success. We the People and the leaders we elect have been unable, unwilling to see clearly “the problem of living” as Rabbi Heschel describes it above. This is how we have reached this point in our history as a nation and how we have reached this bottom as individuals. While I would love to believe this is our bottom and we are having a “spiritual awakening” that will bring us to recovery, to recovering our truth, our “realization”, I firmly believe We the People and the current administration, Congress, Supreme Court will continue to dig the grave of Freedom, of Democracy deeper and deeper.

When one looks at life today, we see a definite split between the people who know they owe a debt to something greater than themselves and those who believe they are entitled to whatever they can get by any means with which they get it. Trump and Netanyahu are no different that the person who decides they want to be estranged from their parents because they are ‘toxic’ and they are forgetting all the good, all the help, all the life-giving aid they received from them, like RFK Jr. Miller and Lutnick are no different than the people who, having achieved some measure of success, forget the people who helped them along the way, believing they were rungs on the ladder of their success that could and should be stepped on. Johnson and the Republicans, Ben G’Vir and the Israeli far fight are no different than the people who were saved believing they have the right and the duty to step on the legacy of those who saved them, who believe they have the obligation to obliterate their memory, likening them to Amalek. Ebenezer Baptist Church knows and lives into the debt they owe because they were blessed to have Martin Luther King Jr. as their Pastor. B’Nai  Jeshurun Congregation in New York knows and lives into the teachings of Rabbi Heschel because he so influenced the Rabbi Marshall Meyer, the leader of a new path for BJ, and Rabbi Roly Matalon. Bishop Barber know he owes a great debt to MLK Jr and he is repaying it, I could name so many others as well.

It is way past time for We the People to come to “the realization of how we all blunder in dealing with our fellow men.” It is way past time for We the People to come to grips with the debt we owe to God and the universe for the gift of life, the debt we, who live in democracies as fragile as they are,  owe to our ancestors for them making the arduous trek so their children, grandchildren can have a better life. It is way past time for We the People to stop blaming everyone else for our troubles, admit our blunders, acknowledging the “silent atrocities” that are being done in our name as well as those we are committing ourselves, stop hiding from the “secret scandals” of ‘our side’, ‘our people’ ourselves and bring into the open what we are so intent on hiding so the light can heal our scandals and our secrets. It is way past time for We the People to live into the spirit of the law as well as the letter, to heal the “moral infection” that has plagued society from the beginning. The message of the prophets, the message of the Bible, the message of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, et al is We the People can heal the moral infection that has grown and festered, that is mutating and becoming more infectious.

I know this message to be true, the moral infection, the secret scandals, the silent atrocities, being a rascal and a delinquent, committing the most hideous of crimes-abandoning the principles my father taught me and abandoning my daughter to go off to jail and prison can be healed. I am no longer that person, I have dedicated my life to healing rather than hurting, to repaying the debt rather than being entitled, to experiencing the betrayal by another(s) rather than betray them, admitting my errors upon realization of them, knowing the reciprocity of generosity principle is how I live and not expecting another to live that way. Loyalty to the people who have helped me and to the principles we share. Knowing that my moral infection is like Shingles, it lives inside of me and only through the spiritual maintenance I do each day do I keep it in it’s place. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Feeling fiercely and hearing deeply lead to ??? in your life - Year 4 Day 261

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 261

“Tranquility is unknown to the soul of a prophet. The miseries of the world give him no rest. While others are callous, and even callous to their callousness and unaware of their insensitivity, the prophets remain examples of supreme impatience with evil, distracted by neither might nor applause, by neither success nor beauty. Their intense sensitivity to right and wrong is due to their intense sensitivity to God’s concern for right and wrong. They feel fiercely because they hear deeply.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 49)

While I try hard to not repeat/use the same quotes more than two days in a row, the one above has so much in it, I have to take a third day with it.

In this time of self-described ‘people of faith’ enjoying perpetrating cruelty onto their fellow human beings, in this moment of these ‘good christian, jewish, muslim folk’ supporting autocracy, mendacity, grifting, coveting, dishonoring the dignity afforded each human being, whoring themselves to be ‘in’ with der fuhrer, the bolded words above come to remind We the People, including and especially these self-identified ‘people of faith’ of what is truly important and what we need to do to change our inner lives and restore dignity, freedom, truth, justice and mercy as the foundational pillars of our country and our individual way of being.

One of the reasons it is so important to read and immerse ourselves in the prophets words and actions is to remember the gifts and the burdens they have bequeathed us: truth, justice, standing up for what is Godly, what is holy and not standing idly by the blood of our brothers and sisters who are committing adultery, serving other gods like ego, greed, power. Each day a new affront to God, a new affront to the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights comes out of this administration. Their inability/unwillingness to read the Bible, to hear the words of Jesus, of Moses, of what is truly God’s will makes it imperative for the prophets of our time, the inheritors of the prophetic “intense sensitivity to right and wrong” speak out and We the People support and broadcast their words and follow their deeds. This is NOT the time for We the People to give into the fear that the current idolators are attempting to put into us. Now is NOT the moment to put cotton in our ears, to rationalize irrational behaviors, and to believe it is “every man for himself” because as Ben Franklin says: “we must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Now is the moment for each of us to go into our inner life, to reach down to our souls, listen for the “intense sensitivity” of “God’s concern for right and wrong” and take the next indicated action. We the People are being called, not tested, to take the actions necessary to ensure that We the People do not return to Egypt, that we stop the backward march to living under Pharaoh’s rule and We the People not subject ourselves and our children to a life of slavery and misery. We the People are the ones who have to make God’s promises of freedom from bondage, freedom from our inner slaveries, acceptance of a higher, transcendent power, our being redeemed, and the unique place each of We the People fill.

It is a tremendous burden to “hear deeply”. It is an even more tremendous burden to “feel fiercely”. When one does both, life is almost unbearable, like it is in this moment. When the United States is backing dictators over democracy, when our Congressional leaders are more interested in hiding than in legislating, when the abuse of our Federal workers is seen as a ‘ho-hum’ experience, when Air Traffic is becoming more and more dangerous because of the incompetence at the FAA, when ICE is more cruel each day because of the intense cruelty of Kristi Noem, when the Justice Department under Trump’s BIMBO BONDI practices injustice, we are witnessing the exact opposite of what the prophets bequeathed We the People! What is being played out by these ‘good christian, jewish, muslim folk’ is blasphemy, is a Hillul HaShem, the desecration of God’s Name-the ultimate sin in Judaism as it is seen as idolatry. We the People have to take the fucking cotton out of our ears so we “hear deeply” once again and find our way back to the covenant we made at Sinai, to remember to hear the cry of the poor, the call of the needy and to love the stranger, care for the widow and orphan, to remember “you shall be holy” so we stop being “a scoundrel in the boundary of Torah”. Because we have within us, the ability to “hear deeply” and the call to “feel fiercely”, We the People can respond to the ways of these “scoundrels” and refute their supposed ‘biblical ways’ that validate their cruelties. This is the path for each of We the People to find and follow: how can I redeem myself and another(s) from the slavery of the Pharaoh, the harsh burdens of the Pharaoh’s taskmasters, and hear the call of the Redeemer-God?

This is the my story- I was deaf, dumb and blind or at least pretended to be for 20 years and then I experience “hear deeply” the voice that called out to me that I have to learn what God is saying to me and live into it. That was in December of 1986 and I still “hear deeply” and because I do, I also “feel fiercely”. I am not a quiet person, I am not someone who can ‘hold his mud’ when I see injustice, cruelty, mendacity, etc. I speak out and I speak loudly-I am not coy nor do I hide my agenda. I learned the lessons of the prophets in prison and I am too afraid of the lure of mendacity and idol-worship to be more ‘political’ and/or ‘demure’. I do scream from the rooftop, I have ringing in my ears, tinnitus, which is a result of “hear deeply” and then translating this hearing into “feel fiercely” and take the actions that both of these sensitivities to “God’s concern” lead me to. It is a tough job, to look inside me and see where  I have been a redeemer and a slave, a champion of Freedom and an unwitting ally to the taskmasters of Pharaoh. I find it, however, the most freeing activity. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

What distracts you from the message of the Prophets? Year 4 Day 260

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 260

“Tranquility is unknown to the soul of a prophet. The miseries of the world give him no rest. While others are callous, and even callous to their callousness and unaware of their insensitivity, the prophets remain examples of supreme impatience with evil, distracted by neither might nor applause, by neither success nor beauty. Their intense sensitivity to right and wrong is due to their intense sensitivity to God’s concern for right and wrong. They feel fiercely because they hear deeply.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 49)

As some of you know, I began my blogging ‘career’ with the Prophets because I can relate and know they are needed today more than ever. We the People are in the throes of evil, in the throes of grand theft, in the throes of losing our freedoms, in the throes of an authoritarian takeover of the United States by a group of white male ‘christian nationalist’ group -yes, I have learned that Jews can be ‘christian nationalists and people of color can be part of white christian nationalism, much to my chagrin. The Republican Congresspeople, the Republican Senators do not resemble Lincoln, Reagan, Bush I or Bush II at all and they have become the lackeys and rubber stamps for the Trump administration. The Democratic Congresspeople and Senators are not doing much better- like Israel, their PR and messaging STINKS along with the fact that their message is not so strong, they are more concerned with philosophical ideas than on the ground solutions to the “kitchen table issues” facing most of America-no matter the color of one’s skin, the religion one practices, the party alignment one has.

We the People seem to have forgotten our roots, we are descendants of Abraham who was unafraid to ask God: “should not the Judge of the world do justly?” We the People are the inheritors of Amos and Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah, Malachi and Hosea, all men who stood up to power and spoke truth, all men who stood at the Temple and accused the priests of their wrongdoing, their catering to the powers that be rather than serving the interests of God nor the interests of the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan, and/or the stranger. While the “American Way” of freedom and decency, kindness and welcoming is being wrecked with a wrecking ball and sledge hammers, much like the East Wing of the White House, We the People seem paralyzed to do much. Yes, the NO KINGS protest was a rousing success, now what is next? Where are the people who are going to stand up and speak truth, who are going to know they will be indicted for speaking truth in a world where mendacity is trying to once again hold court and have to speak what is in their souls anyway? While the prophet we need today is important, what is more important is what and how We the People will join them, will support them, unlike the Israelites and Judeans of antiquity.

We the People have to remember our inheritance from the prophets and no longer be “clutching our pearls” as JD Vance says, rather we need to be in his face and speak truth and uncover the evil he and his boss and their cronies are doing! When Healthcare for so many is going to go to costing people who can ill afford it 20-25% of their gross income, this is EVIL! How can people who claim “if you want to know my policies, read the Bible”, like Mike Johnson not know that Christ catered to “those people” he is targeting, that the Bible is replete with the teaching to “care for” the widow, the poor, the orphan, the needy and the stranger? We the People are being called to let go of the distractions of power and flattery, the distractions of “beauty” and “success” in the face of the cost of these distractions-“following the majority to do evil”, ruining our souls, turning our back on freedom, on justice, on truth, on kindness. Is this really the way We the People want to live?!? We the People have to dig deep into our beingness, reunite with our “better angels” and commit to being the prophet needed in this moment. We the People are being called by the moment to show up in all our splendor and glory, in our sackcloth and ashes, in our fear and our strength, in our weakness and our commitment to the Covenant we made at Sinai. We the People need to be more “impatient with evil” than the people of Israel and Judea were. We the People need to find ways to express our outrage and indignation at the EVIL in America and in Israel, in Russia and in Turkey, in Qatar and in Saudi Arabia, ie all over the world that have impact and meaning. We the People carry within us the demand to CHOOSE GOOD, CHOOSE LIFE and we seem to frittering this demand away, we seem to be forgetting what is good and what is life-this is the spiritual malady We the People are suffering and what Spiritual Counselors have to address!

My outrage, hopefully, is coming through, I am impatient with evil, I am impatient with the errors I make when I know better, I am impatient with people who are not impatient! Not necessarily one of my better traits, according to some, and the one that has propelled me to write books, to help 1000’s of people recover from their spiritual maladies whether they were/are addicts or ‘normies’. I refuse to ‘calm down’ in the face the evil we see, I refuse to be ‘a good German, I mean American’ and go along to get along. FUCK FASCISM! FUCK THE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS OF THE FASCIST AND THE PROGRESSIVE. I am dedicated to seeing the good and knowing what is evil both within me, in you and in the world. I don’t care what the ‘right’ thing to say is, I care and promote truth as the only right way to speak and be. I promote freedom to learn, to grow, to be who one is meant to be as the greatest good and denial of these freedoms to be the greatest evil! I am not popular nor do I care, I live into truth each day and I am grateful. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Inner prophetic voice or outer power voice- which do you adhere to most? Year 4 Day 259

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 259

“Tranquility is unknown to the soul of a prophet. The miseries of the world give him no rest. While others are callous, and even callous to their callousness and unaware of their insensitivity, the prophets remain examples of supreme impatience with evil, distracted by neither might nor applause, by neither success nor beauty. Their intense sensitivity to right and wrong is due to their intense sensitivity to God’s concern for right and wrong. They feel fiercely because they hear deeply.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 49)

This is a lot to take in and I am going to digest this in 2 days. “Tranquility” is defined as “the state of being tranquil” and tranquil is defined as “free from disturbance”. Callous comes from the Latin meaning “hard-skinned”. “The soul of a prophet” can never be “free from disturbance” and, as descendants of the prophets, the question for We the People is: how can we seek “tranquility” in a world full of so much misery and evil? How can We the People stay silent in the face of so much hatred, racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, etc? How can We the People be undisturbed by the treatment of the widow, the orphan, the needy, the poor and the stranger that is happening in countries across the globe and especially here in America and in Israel? The definition of all people who are freed from whatever enslavement they have been in is in Exodus, 19:6: “And you shall be for me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation/people”. SO, FOLKS- WTF??

How is it possible for us to seek “tranquility” in a world full of misery, hatred, cruelty? If we are in truth with ourselves, when We the People get honest with the person staring back at us in the mirror; there can be no rest for any of us while the hatred, bigotry, xenophobia, is so rampant in our world. When the President of the United States releases an AI video of him shitting on 7 million people who are living into the freedoms promised by our founding fathers, the freedoms embedded in the Constitution and the rest of the Republican Party applauds, when Mike Johnson refuses to seat a duly elected Congressperson and calls the lawful protest marches of last Saturday ‘hate America’ gatherings, when Karoline Leavitt, the Press Secretary for the President, calls Democrats “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals” how can We the People not be enraged at the “callousness” and “insensitivity” that is the norm for this country’s leadership today? Rather than being President for all the people, Trump and his money-grabbing, back-stabbing, sycophants are in it for themselves only and We the People have to accept the inheritance from the prophets, we have to guard and do the work of “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation/people”. The time is at hand, the work is hard and We the People have the examples of the prophets to work from, the success, no matter how fleeting, of Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Berrigan Brothers, Bobby Kennedy, et al to buoy us, to hold us and to inspire us. This is the call of the moment: stop seeking “tranquility” equanimity, political maneuvering and posturing so as to keep donors and people who can ‘help’ us placated. STAND UP and FIGHT for what is right and good, STAND UP and FIGHT the cruelty, callousness, insensitivity, the misery that is the norm these days.

We the People have been shown that the current regime is not “unaware of their insensitivity”, they are fully aware and rejoice in it! We the People have to confront ourselves and ask when and where are we “insensitive” to what is going on around us, when and for what reason are we hiding our heads in the sand? We the People need to see the “miseries of the world” as our own, We are being called to see our own inner miseries, the desire for “tranquility”, the fatigue of fighting the fight for freedom, living into being one of the priests of this moment, honoring our place as a holy person in a holy nation. It is hard, it seems impossible and, as we learn from the prophets, the result is not what matters, we have no control over what another human being does if we are to live freely. Yet, we have the ability to change an individual’s thinking, their actions through conversations, through our protests, through our speaking truth to power, helping the needy, poor, orphan, widow and loving the stranger. By living into the example of our founding fathers who sought refuge here in the “new world” from persecution for their religious beliefs, who revolted when “taxation without representation” became their motto, who fought a far greater and stronger force than they were and won because they believed they were fighting a holy fight, they wanted us to become a place of holiness and, with what is happening now, We the People are being called to continue the fight, to know we will win and lose battles in this fight AND we are must carry on with it because the horrors of the “callousness” and “insensitivity” are too great!

I have always been enraged at cruelty and callousness, when I was the instrument of both, I had to keep drinking so I could bridge the gap between what I knew to be right and the wrong I was doing. My split was so great, I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t completely commit to being a good criminal. Int he past 38+ years I have learned how to bring my parts together, to not live as a callous human being, to not be insensitive to the cruelty and horrific actions that are happening around me. I write this blog to help people see themselves in their entirety- the good and the not so good, to help people use the examples of people around us and those who have fought these fights in prior generations. I am committed to not being tranquil, to not accepting these “miseries” as just the way the world works. I commit to be a little more holy today, a little more sensitive. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Meeting God - living into the words and ways of the Prophets - Year 4 Day 258

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 258

“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man, no human voce can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form a living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophets’ words…” (Thunder in the Soul pg.49)

Too often “prophecy” is assumed to mean the telling of the future, what will happen in “the end of days”, I understand and experience “prophecy” in the Bible to be about a message from God, from a higher consciousness than our reptilian brain. In reading the embolden words above, I hear the power of God, of a higher consciousness at work in the words and deeds of the prophets. I hear the call for We the People to be “the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world”! Yet, we seem to be unable to sustain this “voice” that we are gifted with, that we have examples of, that we inherited from the prophets because of fear, of jealousy, of binary living. We are watching the reptilian brain play out in our lives everyday, from Washington DC to Jerusalem, Israel, from the marketplace to our dinner tables. Whenever we have an ‘us versus them’ mentality, we are in reptilian brain, ie friend or foe. Whenever we need to ‘make a killing’, we need to ‘beat their pants off’, ‘kill off the competition’, etc we are living in our reptilian brain. The issue is not that this part of our brain is bad, it helps us see real danger, the problem is that we have not matured nor grown this part of our brain since Cavemen/women days so we are unable to discern friend from foe, we have sunk into a ‘with me/agin me’ way of understanding and living in the world, which has brought us to today-an ignoramus authoritarian in the White House who is being used and we are being abused by Lutnick, Miller, Vought, Bondi, et al.

When are these ‘good christian folk’,  who wear their crosses prominently, who ‘truly believe in the Bible’, who, like Mike Johnson says, if you want to know my politics, read the Bible, going to read the prophets?? When and how will these wanna be gangsters and real life thugs hear “the voice that God has lent to the silent agony”? What will have to happen for these idolators and charlatans, these grifters and thieves to hear the “voice” and tend to “the plundered poor” instead of being the plunderers of the poor? PROBABLY NEVER!

This is the reason these words are so important, the prophets left us not only their words, they left us a legacy of speaking truth to power, of rising up against those causing the agony, saying NO to the people who plunder the poor by raising their health insurance costs by 20-30% for the middle class while giving bigger tax cuts to the wealthiest people. This is how “riches of the world” get “profaned”. Being rich is not a crime in the Bible, it is not a bad thing, it is not necessary to denigrate the wealthy. What is a crime is when the rich don’t give their fair share to Tzedakah, what is a bad thing is when the rich don’t pay a living wage, when they cheat their laborers, when they don’t loan money to those in need, when they get drunk on their own wealth and seek the power to do whatever they want so they get more and more-THIS IS PROFANE- not the riches, the ways we get rich and the things we do once we are.

When one reads the prophets, when one immerses oneself in the prophets, the demand to take an action is obvious. The issue for most of We the People is that we don’t read, immerse, discuss the prophets at home, in school, in religious schools even. The Rabbis of old were afraid of the prophets, they believed the prophets were too demanding and unrealistic as to the capabilities of the human being, maybe. I disagree! We the People are more than capable of living into the prophets call for JUSTICE, their haranguing of us to CARE FOR THE POOR AND NEEDY and their demand to LOVE THE STRANGER.  We the People know the silent agony that God lend “a voice” to, we are living in it as I write, We the People are well aware of how the poor have been used and abused, how the poor and the needy in material and especially in spirit have been plundered to provide riches, glory, cult worship of all the things that the prophets, and by extension God, rail against in the Bible. Isn’t it time for We the People to keep the pressure on those in government who want to take away our freedoms? Isn’t it time for We the People to rise up as We the People did on Saturday and declare NO KINGS IN AMERICA day everyday? Isn’t it time for Mike Johnson to shed his lies and his idolatry, isn’t it time for those cross-wearing women like Bondi and Leavitt to stop hiding behind the symbol of truth, goodness, love while they practice hatred, indecency, and mendacity? Isn’t it time We the People demand a new government, a new Supreme Court, that We the People demand that the Constitution be abided by, that the grifting end, and that those who still want slavery to be ‘legal’, those who are insisting that Lincoln had it wrong-there should be no “government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth”. They believe that only the rich shall govern and the rest of us be enslaved.

I get so inspired by the prophets, I get so outraged by the lack of attention given to them, precisely because I did not pay attention to them for 20 years. I gave into the prevailing winds some 60 years ago and I am fanatical about not doing this again. So, I rant, I rave, I keep speaking truth and I am welcomed and unwelcome, I am appreciated and I am unappreciated, I am loved and I am unloved. It used to hurt and now I see it as a validation of me, of my devotion to God’s “voice”. I live life as a descendant of the prophets and with meaning and purpose. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

How are you living with the "agony" of our times, how do you deal with the new terror each day brings? Year 4 Day 257

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 257

“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man, no human voce can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form a living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophets’ words…” (Thunder in the Soul pg.49)

To paraphrase Pete Seeger; where have all the prophets gone? Where has the study and living into the words and actions of prophets gone? How has our hearing gone so deaf that we do not hear their words screaming at us through the Bible, that we do not hear “God is raging” daily in his words from Mount Sinai, that we do not hear the agony in our own souls at what we are doing and what is happening in the world?

As I have said many times, We the People are descendants of the Prophets, we have within us the prophetic spirit, the prophetic ear, the ability to bear the “burden upon” our soul that God has “thrust upon” us. Many of We the People are “bowed and stunned” at this moment in history, in our lives which are being terrorized by the ‘love of Hitler’ by the Young Republicans, by the hatred of anyone who is not a ‘white christian nationalist’, by the “fierce greed” of the billionaires, of Trump, his family, the ‘good jewish boy’ Jared Kushner, Lutnick, Bessent, Bondi, et al! As we learn in typing class: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country”! Have We the People become so “bowed and stunned” that we are paralyzed to take the next right action? Have We the People become so overcome with the “agony” of this moment that we have forgotten the words and deeds of the prophets, of our ancestors’ teachings and the ethical wills they have given us?

The word “agony” comes from the Greek meaning “contest”, which I am hearing this morning as meaning when “agony” strikes us, we need to “contest” with the source of it, not run away from it; when we witness the “agony” of another human being, we have to “contest” with the source of their agony as well. Many times the “agony” we suffer from is rooted in our spirit, be it the crushing of our spirit by the “fierce greed” of another, especially autocratic, fascist leaders, or the crushing of our spirit by our own “fierce greed”. It is incumbent upon We the People to hear the “full terror” that the prophets describe, that God is trying to convey to us. Yet, We the People so often ignore the call, promote the terror, and dismiss the “agony” of another and even ourselves at times saying ‘grow up’, ‘this is the way of the world’, etc. IT IS NOT THE WAY OF THE WORLD! At least not the world envisioned by the Bible in Genesis’ first two chapters, not the way of the world envisioned by the prophets, not the way of the world that the Bible teaches us. It is the way of the world that greed dictates, that anger employs, that fascism, autocracy demands.

We the People are being given a choice, again and always: which path are we going to follow-holy and hard, unholy and easy. While I don’t like to either/or too many things, I see the choice this clearly today. We the People can and, I think must, understand the call of the prophets, is the call of Sinai, the call of the 10 Sayings, the call to “love the stranger”, to help one’s enemy’s ass, to love your neighbor, to rebuke people because we are all capable of change, to not mixup what is life giving and life taking, to take care of the blind and the deaf, the poor and the needy, the voiceless and the powerless. These are our inheritances, these ways of BEING HUMAN, especially in times like these where being human is laughed at, ridiculed, demeaned by the people in power, by the Stephen Millers, Kristi Noem’s, Kash Patel’s, Mike Johnson’s of our country and world. BEING HUMAN has lost its value to Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben G’Vir, et al as well. ERGO: it is imperative for We the People to practice being human even to those who are not willing to be human towards us, it is imperative for We the People to use any and every means possible to help those who believe that inhumane treatment is humane, that evil is good, etc to “hit a bottom”, We the People need to do an intervention upon them and send them to a spiritual rehabilitation facility so they can relearn what Christ really taught, what the Bible stresses more than xenophobia: All people have infinitely equal and unique dignity and that everyone matters!

As I write this, I am overwhelmed with the “terror” that prophets witnessed and felt in their souls. I am so proud of the millions of people who went to the No Kings Day protests on Oct. 18, 2025. I am so grateful to have been at one here in the Desert and witness not only the 2 City blocks of fellow protestors, to witness how many people had signs in their cars, how many cars honked and how many people were grateful we were there when they could not be.

The “fierce greed” is, of course, not only for money, it is for control and power as well. I know this “fierce greed” because as one who felt powerless and voiceless, I did everything I could to ‘be on top’, to ‘have a seat at the table’ and I failed miserably because I was not doing anything for the sake of anyone but me and I wasn’t that good at selfishness as I kept getting caught! In recovery, however, my mission was to help those who had nothing, to never make money the deciding factor as to helping someone or not, both at Beit T’Shuvah and in my personal counseling. Pay what you can has always kept my “fierce greed” in check and living into the words and deeds of the prophets is/has always been my goal and pathway in my recovery. It is hard, I screw up at times, and it is rewarding, it is invigorating and it is spiritually healing and maturing. It is the better way to be! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Sensitivity to this moment, responsibility for society - is this your Modus Operandi? Year 4 Day 256

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 256

“They are moved by a responsibility for society, by a sensitivity to what the moment demands…It is more accurate to see them as proclaimers of God’s pathos, speaking not for the idea of justice, but for the God of justice, for God’s concern for justice.”

Rabbi Heschel is speaking about the prophets in the words above and his description/definition of what makes a prophet gives rise to the idea that prophets did not end with Malachi - a blasphemous idea to many and yet, when we consider some of the great ‘seers’ of the Common Era, maybe not so much. The Rabbis of the Talmudic period were afraid of the prophets and, for many of my colleagues, still are today. A prophet is unruly, not cautious, doesn’t ‘read the room’, is not able to be bought off, in other words, a prophet truly sees himself as on a mission from God and no human can deter them from delivering their message. What is truly amazing is that prophets are not killed by the powerful and the priests whom they oppose, at least until they have delivered the main theme of their message. Be it St. Frances, Thomas Merton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Baal Shem Tov, Buber, Rev. Martin Luther King, Rabbi Heschel, et al I am calling modern day prophets, spoke truth to power, were “moved by a responsibility for society, by a sensitivity to what the moment demands” and did so without fear nor favor, really without concern for their own safety, as we see in the case of the Archbishop, MLK, and so many others.

A prophet’s role is not so much to tell us the future as it seems to be to tell us what our erroneous behavior is in the present and how to return to decency, justice, kindness, truth, love, etc. Yet, We the People throughout the ages, whether we killed, exiled, or just shunned these messengers from God have not heard, listened, nor understood their simple message found in Deuteronomy 16:20, spoken by the first of the prophets, Moses: “Righteousness, Righteousness you shall pursue” (some translate as Justice, Justice, you shall pursue). This is the greatest error We the People continue to make, over and over again throughout the millennia-not living into the SHEMA that is being broadcast 24/7 from Mount Sinai, it is at a higher megahertz than normal speech, it does need to be heard by one’s soul, one’s higher consciousness, and it is discernible whenever we turn to hear it, make a decision to listen and engage in understanding what the next right action is in this moment. We the People seem to constantly forget, ignore that debt that we owe to the universe for being alive, life is not an entitlement, it is a demand, a gift, a debt and when we live in this manner, hearing the Voice from Sinai is as natural as getting out of bed in the morning, as powerful as saying our gratitude prayer for being alive, and caring about, following the commandments of “the God of justice” rather than trying to make “justice” bend to our will.

We the People, once again, are being asked, called, pleaded with to SHEMA the message of “justice” and live into it. We the People need to hear the Voice from Sinai lovingly call us back to living from the inside out, transforming our negativity into a force for good, using the energy of our Yetzer HaRa to enhance and fuel our Yetzer HaTov. We the People are being asked to embrace “God’s concern for justice” as our own, whether we feel it or not. We the People are descendants of the prophets and, being  sensitive “to what this moment demands” means We the People are being called to speak to those in power who are not concerned with “justice”, who do not care about the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the needy and call themselves ‘good christian folk’. “Sensitivity to what this moment demands” is calling upon We the People to forgoe our selfishness and greediness, to live into being a “light unto the nations”, to remember our ancestor Abraham-from whom all three major Western religions come from- who called God out when he said: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly” (Gen. 18:25)! We the People, when we SHEMA, we know in our souls that our job is to stop going along to get along, it is to end this madness with the hatred of the stranger and the alien because We the People were “strangers in a strange land”, in Midian, in Canaan, in Egypt, and, at least in the beginning, we were treated with kindness and, life-saving measures. These ‘good christian folk’ must be reading a different Bible than the rest of us because Jesus loved the stranger and the needy, in the 1st 5 Books of the Hebrew Bible, loving and caring for these powerless and voiceless human beings is mentioned at least 36 times, so their hatred of the stranger, their sending troops into American Cities to shoot and kill, to get training in warfare, shouts their not being interested in what the Voice from Sinai has to say and We the People have to stop them NOW!

I am so knowing the plight of the prophets, I know the alignment with divine pathos, with “the God of justice”. I know the pain of this alignment as well as the deep wound that “sensitivity to what this moment demands” causes. I know the fear that is caused by being so “responsible for society” and I know how the shouting from the rooftops, the calling out of the powerful and the rich, cause so much trouble for a prophet. I am in simpatico with the prophets because I live like them, I see what is and what could be, my prior unjust behaviors make me super-sensitive to injustice before many other people can even see what is coming down the pike. Knowing the Jews are aiding and abetting the mistreatment of the stranger here in the U.S. and in Israel enrages me and I will not stop speaking out, I will not be silenced even if no one is listening. This is the call, the demand I hear and, while it gets me into trouble because I have no filter, I have to do this because otherwise I could not get out of bed in the morning. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

What are you preoccupied with- personal goals, wants or justice, truth, kindness? Year 4 Day 255

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 255

“The preoccupation with justice, the passion with which the prophets condemn injustice is rooted in their sympathy with divine pathos…They are moved by a responsibility for society, a sensitivity to what the moment demands.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 48)

Reading these words, immersing oneself in them begs the question for most people: where are the prophets today? This is a valid question if one is ignorant and asleep! It is a valid question if one is lazy and entitled! It is the wrong question to ask because as human beings, we are not to give into to ignorance, nor willful blindness, we are not to be lazy and entitled, we are to be engaged in this world, we are to SHEMA! Hear O Israel is not a prayer, it is a declaration, it is not just for Jews, it is for all people, it is not a one time saying, it is constantly being broadcast from the Universe, and We the People have to take the cotton out of our ears and Hear, Listen, and Understand the meaning, the purpose, the joy, the gift that being alive brings upon us. If I sound angry, well I am, if I sound passionate, well, I am, if I sound like a lunatic, well I am in regards to injustice, I am crazy about justice and divine pathos as well as human pathos. Pathos comes from the Greek meaning “suffering” and in the English language we have turned it into “pity, sympathy”. When We the People learn of the group chats of the Young Republicans and are not OUTRAGED, when We the People buy the bullshit of J.D. Vance that this is just “boys being boys” and he is talking about grown-ass men, when the Republican establishment says NOTHING about the racism, homophobia, misogyny, and anti-semitism along with the worship of a murderous dictator(Hitler), how can We the People not be outraged? How can we entrust the future of our country to these HATERS, these Wanna-Be dictators?

How can We the People ignore the suffering of God, the suffering of Jesus, the suffering of Moses when people in power, people next to those in power, believe and ‘joke’ about these horrific ways of treating the stranger terribly instead of loving the stranger? How can We the People stay silent when people in power decide to send troops to the cities and states they don’t like? How can We the People not be passionate in our condemnation of the terrible treatment of the stranger among us that is happening on our streets daily? How can We the People, especially Jews, not be apoplectic about the rampant injustice going on from the Department of INJUSTICE headed by Pam I LOVE POWER Bondi? When RFK Jr. is condemning circumcision as a cause of Autism, and the Jewish Communal leaders stay silent? WTF???

This is the importance of study, be it the Bible, the New Testament, Buddhism, the Talmud, the later scholars of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. Without study, too many of us keep the blinders on. Without learning we will stay ignorant of what is expected of us. Yes, there are expectations of human beings and they are laid out in the Bible and the other books mentioned above. We the People are divine needs, created in the “image of the divine” and everyone matters! Yet, without study, without wrestling with contradictory texts, without wrestling with the war within between rational mind, selfish concerns and the intuitive mind, our soul’s knowing, we will be sheep led to the slaughter by the idolators of today.

I am including Clergy who say nothing out of fear of losing their jobs and/or losing donations for taking a STAND FOR JUSTICE. These spiritual leaders are cowards, they buy into the lie of “Am Yisrael Chai”, the Jewish People Live, to mean we have to go along with whatever Israel does, we have to agree with the worst traits of people because they are ‘members of the tribe’ and this is BULLSHIT! We the Jewish People are direct descendants of the prophets, as are everyone else. We the Jewish People are direct descendants of Abraham, as are everyone else in the Western Religions. Ergo: We the People have to be preoccupied with justice, passionate about injustice and at one with the suffering of the universe and those directly affected by the injustice, racism, hatred, anti-semitism, homophobia being carried out yesterday, today, tomorrow by the ANTI-CHRIST people running the Government today, by the Desecrators of God’s Name running the Government in Israel today.

I am so outraged in this moment, I almost cannot type. I am in concert with the divine pathos that is overwhelming the spiritual world. I hear the prophets muttering WTF, we already told them how this story ends, we gave them the history, the disease, and the cure; what is wrong with these ignoramus’? I have no answer for them, my only response is to cry, to get angry for the sake of heaven, for the sake of all human beings, no matter their skin color, the religion, their creed. I am off the charts bewildered how anyone with the ability to think, with a soul, can spout the lies about ‘christian nationalism’ being the fulfillment of Christ’s way much less buy into it. I am beyond the beyond that anyone would buy the bullshit that Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza are ‘not human’, that God wants the destruction of children! I know the power of lies, I know the powerless of those of us who come up against the hardened hearts of those who wrap themselves in these lies and I know that We the People and especially the Clergy are called to speak truth to power, called to warn the people, called to help everyone grow their spiritual core and heal the spiritual sickness that, like the plague, keeps coming back! I pray my colleagues get busy with their flock as I am busy with mine. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Breath, Righteousness, and Justice- do they live together and are equally important to you? Year 4 Day 254

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 254

“People think that to be just is a virtue, deserving honor and rewards; that in doing righteousness one confers a favor on society. No one expects to receive a reward for the habit of breathing. Justice is as much a necessity as breathing is, and a constant occupation.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.47-48)

Reading this for the first time in today’s context I immediately think of all the ‘rewards’ given to kids in schools today for not anything extraordinary, unless one believes kindness, service, decency is extraordinary! I have to say the far left which wants everyone to feel special (except maybe those who oppose them) did us no favors because, while each of us is special and unique as the Talmud teaches, feeling special for doing the next right thing is a slippery and dangerous slope-as we have come to experience. It also points out the terrible binary thinking that Mark Edmundson points out in a NYTimes op-ed piece from October  13. The far right is no better, conveying sainthood status on Charlie Kirk who was anti-semitic while supporting Israel, anti-LGBTQ+, he was a White ‘Christian’ Nationalist (I put Christian in quotes because the people who use both Christian and Nationalist in the same sentence are neither-in my opinion). What Rabbi Heschel is saying in the first sentence is not revelatory, it is not some new idea in Jewish thinking, it is a restatement of an old Jewish way of being: “Do Justly, love mercy, walk in the ways of Adonai” we are told by Moses in Deuteronomy and in giving the way of living to the people who left Egypt, and Micah, the prophet, so maybe We the People need to stop patting ourselves on the back for our supposed “virtue” and ask ourselves if we are truly doing justly, truly being righteous in our daily affairs!

Justice and righteousness are commandments, not optional. They are two of the ways we pay it forward, we make a dent on the principle of our debt to God for being alive, the path to fulfilling the divine need we are created/born to fill and two of the greatest expressions of “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. Being just and righteous in all our affairs doesn’t mean we are not held responsible for our errors nor does it mean we don’t hold another(s) responsible for theirs. It means, in my opinion, that we are not judgmental, we let go of the prejudices we have when we meet this moment, not forgetting the past, not being naive, rather, we are open to a new experience and by being just, we are discerning and distinguishing-much like God did in the first chapter of Genesis: L’Havdil in Hebrew means “to distinguish” not to separate.  What is happening in the world now is very threatening to those of We the People who believe in the truth of the Biblical wisdom tradition, it is a time when good people are hailing the deaths of 1000’s of innocent Gazans, praising Putin’s destruction of Ukraine, blaming the Jews for all sorts of things, hating people of color and not distinguishing between good and evil, truth and fiction, and following the charismatic leadership of assholes who believe in neither justice nor righteousness! When circumcision is being blamed for autism by the Federal Government, we Jews are in trouble no matter how much we think Trump loves us, no matter that Donny has Jewish grandchildren, so hailing him as the savior of the Jews, the savior of Israel is another dangerous and slippery slope because of his bastardization of justice and righteousness.

The last two sentences are the solution to all of our problems today! Not seeking a reward for breathing is a challenge today, however. Trump thinks the fact he woke up he deserves a medal, as does Vance, Vought, Miller, Noem, Bondi, Lutnick et al. Yet, the words of Rabbi Heschel above put everything into perspective for We the People. An unjust world is not worth living in, justice being on the same level as breathing comes to tell us this. It is our responsibility to pursue righteousness, to put guards at all our gates, and to not take bribes in re: justice because bribes blind the eyes of the wise. We the People are being called to STAND UP and DO JUSTLY in this moment and in every moment, We the People are witnessing the destruction of decency, of Godliness, of holiness, of truth, of righteousness, of justice precisely because enough of We the People did not STAND UP against the lies, the injustices of Trump’s first term. We the People are being called by both the words above and the situation on the ground today to demand Justice, to live Righteously, and to rebuke the people who are not, put those deceivers and criminals(I call anyone who revels in injustice and hates righteousness criminals) in the Camp outside the Camp. They are sick people, their souls are in deep crisis and they hide behind their so-called christianity to make themselves feel good, while doing the opposite of what Christ did!

The words above are the best way to distinguish my years as a criminal and drunk and my years in recovery. My sense of justice and injustice is so critical to my recovery and, because I know the power of injustice and the power of the lies I told myself, when I see injustice it fans the fire within me like a bellows fans a fire for a blacksmith! I burn at a temperature than could melt steel and, much to the chagrin of many people, I am loud, in your face and unrelenting. While I have been wrong at times, most of the time I have uncovered deep incongruence in another person and they are not happy about it, especially if they don’t want to have ‘their covers pulled’. Justice and breathing are necessities for me, I can’t do one without the other, I don’t understand the people who can-except to know they are as sick as I used to be and this is sad. I don’t hate the people who are unable to know injustice when they see it, who are not willing to admit their own foibles and acts of injustice, who need to blame me for my obnoxious way of calling shit out, I have compassion for them because this is how I practice righteousness in all my affairs. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Living with the demand of a transcendent force for Justice - Year 4 Day 253

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 253

“Justice is not an ancient custom, a human convention, a value, but a transcendent demand, freighted with divine concern. It is not only a relationship between man and man, it is an act involving God, a divine need.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 47)

The first sentence above has a couple of words that I looked up in the Dictionary: “transcendent” means “surpassing the ordinary” and “not subject to and existing outside of the material universe”; “freighted with” means “burdened with, charged with”. As I use these definitions, the first sentence reads to me: “Justice is not an ancient custom, a human convention, a value, but a extraordinary/outside the material/usual worldly demand, charged with divine concern”. As I write this, I am overwhelmed with the power and call of this piece of teaching from Rabbi Heschel, looking at the Injustices that have been going on for the millennia, experiencing the lawlessness of Trump and his cronies, both here and abroad. Hearing the lies and bullshit of those ‘good christian nationalists’ like Mike Johnson and the mendacity and bastardization of Biblical principles by  those ‘good jewish nationalists’ like Howard Lutnick, Steve Wytkoff, Jared Kushner, is infuriating-especially since they all used the system they are destroying to gain power, money, and prestige and now have decided no one else should have what they have. Good jews, good christians all act this way, Rabbi-you just don’t understand the ‘word of god’ I have been told and I say FU, I forgive you your stupidity, I forgive you your narcissism, I do not forgive you your bad actions and your terrible crimes until you come to a spiritual awakening and do TShuvah-Mr.’s Lutnick, Kushner, Johnson, and the rest of the MAGA crowd like Kristi, Pam, Steve, etc.

When “justice” is seen as retribution rather than repair, when “justice” is used as a club rather than a trauma relief center, when “justice” is dependent upon one’s political persuasion, one’s gender identity, one’s ethnic makeup, then “justice” is denied and as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”! When We the People SHEMA, hear, listen, and understand the voice on Sinai, we will realize “justice” is meant to be a burden, laden upon us by a force that is so much more powerful and greater than any of us. When We the People come to join the covenant with this power greater than ourselves, come to join with one another to form a “more perfect union”, than we will hear the charge of “justice” that is delivered each and every day. When We the People engage with our inner life, then we will hear that “justice”, like rebuke, like tzedakah, tshuvah, helps us see our own authenticity, it causes us to find our truth, do the next right thing, and live into “surpassing the ordinary” and we will no longer be “subject to” the societal norms that have made injustice so prevalent, that continue to reward retribution rather than justice, that cause unsuspecting people to believe that lies are truth, that evil is good, that wrong is right, “greed is good”, and autocracy is freedom! OY, how the mighty United States has fallen!

The relationship between one another has to have God in it, as we have seen throughout history-otherwise we have transactional experiences where today you are my ‘friend’, my ‘ally’ and tomorrow I have to kill you, destroy you. Today I will use you to get ahead and tomorrow I will forget the debt I owe you. This is the breeding ground of injustice, this is the breeding ground of a ‘rugged individual’ type society that teaches I gotta get mine and if screwing you over is the path-oh well! It is the breeding ground of forgetting those who have saved my life. The Chafetz Chaim, an authority on LaShon Hara, evil speech, says: “if a person doesn’t recognize the kindness of his fellow, how will he recognize the kindness of the Creator”, Rambam says: a person should not be cruel and ungrateful…but must remember the good that others have done for them and speak of it”. Today, we see over and over again a lack of gratitude, a disdain for those who have helped us “climb the ladder”, and the practice of injustice has become so normal that some of We the People have become unable to discern truth from lies, justice from injustice and become blind to the divine image in every human being and the stake that God has in justice being delivered, that God has in the act of being just and true. We the People are being called to REBEL towards Justice, Truth, Kindness, Compassion, and Love and until we do, the injustices we are witnessing will continue to grow and grow and, even those who believe they are ‘protected’ by ‘their people’ will come to find themselves either in the Gulag, the torture chamber or the plantation.

SHEMA is the key action, mitzvah for me in living well. I have to “hear, listen, and understand” the wrestling, boxing match that goes on inside of me is to help me obtain the truth of what is just and right for this moment, for this experience-remembering that the experience is the answer and I have to find the right question for this experience in this moment. I am constantly being called to hear, listen and understand what someone else is saying, especially those close to me. I am constantly having to listen, hear and understand what my inner life is saying. It is hard, it is work and it is never easy nor clear/clean. My inner life is messy and disorganized, it is loud and forceful, I don’t know any other way-I just can’t “sit idly by the blood of my neighbor”, I cannot watch quietly the “perversion of justice” nor can I watch demurely the shitting up of the Temples, the Churches, the Mosques that is happening by those ‘good jewish, christian, muslim nationalists’. I know that the demand for justice that I hear and experience is way beyond anything this world knows, I am aware that the burden of “justice” puts upon you and me AND I welcome this charge because the burden of injustice, the burden of lies and the burden of ingratitude is so much heavier to carry and we all have to ‘pay the piper’ at some point. God Bless and stay safe,Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Are you aware of God's and Humanity's NEED for "mercy, righteousness"? Year 4 Day 252

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 252

“The world is full of iniquity, injustice, idolatry. The people offer animals; the priests offer incense. But God needs mercy, righteousness; His needs cannot be satisfied in Temples, in space…” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 47)

THANK GOD ALL THE LIVING HOSTAGES ARE FREE!!

While some, maybe even many, people think Rabbi Heschel is railing against human beings, I believe, in the way of the prophet, Rabbi Heschel is demonstrating his deep belief in and love for human beings. Much like it says ‘in the good book’: “You shall rebuke your people(neighbor) and not put on yourself ‘missing the mark’”, Rabbi Heschel is reminding us of what it is we are doing and how much we can rise above our worst impulses and actions, that we do not have to be defined by our greatest “iniquity”, there is more to us than our sin, our injustices, our practices of idolatry and he is trying, again in the way of the prophet, to wake We the People up.

Of course “the world is full of iniquity, injustice and idolatry”, we see it all around us, we engage in it ourselves-especially when we believe we can gain from these ways of being. We the People are born with two opposing forces; the ‘good’ inclination and the ‘evil’ inclination and our job for our entire time here is to transform the ‘evil’ inclination into a force for ‘good’, not annihilate it, not allow it to run rampant, to bring it to serve the ‘good’ inclination much like our rational mind is supposed to serve our intuitive one. Unfortunately, as Rabbi Heschel is pointing out, We the People have done a terrible job at raising our souls, at educating our children and ourselves of the ‘how to’ transform the ‘evil’ inclination’s energy to serve the good, to use our competitive nature to give us an edge and insight rather than the need to “win at any and all costs”. This way of being could be the root of our “idolatry”, our “injustice”, and the source of our greatest “iniquity”.

What are We the People doing? What is the need for the ‘good religious folk’, those ‘bible thumping’ ‘everything I do serves god/idol’ to continue to abuse their souls and the souls of so many of We the People with their lies, their deceptions, both of self and another(s)? How do we end our practice of offering animals-which today takes the form of AK-47’s as hunting rifles, using the vulnerabilities of another to make oneself look and feel better, stepping on the backs of people to ‘climb the ladder of success’, etc. How do we tell the priests to stop with their offerings of “incense” and admit their own foibles and iniquities, their own idolatry and practicing of injustices? Rather than just opt out, which is what many of We the People have done and, for many of those who haven’t opted out all together, we don’t pay attention and are there only for show or because we go on holy days. As I am immersing myself more and more in the words above, I am heartbroken at the numerous opportunities We the People have had to tell the priests to start living the principles of our faith(whatever one it is), to teach our children about how to grow and mature their souls, and to be the physician of the soul they are called to be.

We the People also have to speak to one another, We the People have to remind one another of our purpose, of our calling, of the demand put upon us: fulfilling  God’s need for mercy, for righteousness. These actions, ways of being, along with many others, cannot be fulfilled in the ‘sacred space’ of our Temples, our Churches, Mosques. They can only be fulfilled when We the People live the principles of “mercy, righteousness” in our daily actions, when We the People acknowledge our inner need to treat another with righteousness, to extend mercy to another who has fallen and engaged in “iniquity” even against us and has asked for forgiveness, has done TShuvah. We the People have to be merciful towards ourselves as well. We the People are being called to end our incessant need to rationalize our bad behaviors, make false accusations against ourselves and treat ourselves with righteousness also.


To combat “iniquity, injustice, idolatry”, We the People get to look at ourselves, look at the outside world and deny the lies we have been telling ourselves, call out the ridiculous “adjustment to societal norms and mental cliches” that have been ruling us and the world for far too long. To live into “mercy, righteousness” We the People have to stay “maladjusted” to these norms, to these cliches so we can be present in this moment. We the People can change the “iniquity, injustice, idolatry” into holiness, justice and service with a small almost unperceptive change of the way we live: do the next right thing, treat our selves and our neighbors with love, with rebuke, with kindness, with truth, with mercy and in righteousness. We the People do this at least once a day with at least one person in our lives-the call of the words above is to expand this action into more of our affairs with the goal of living these principles in all our affairs!

I have been combating these deadly sins for my entire life, taking a hiatus for about 20 years and even then I fought some injustice and had no use for Judaism because of the idolatry I saw from the so-called people in charge, the ‘pious ones’. I cannot stand to see injustice, idolatry, iniquity abound in the world and in our homes as it is happening today. I am at a loss and all I can do is look inside myself, see my frustrations and how I take them out on the wrong people, how I become obsessed with things I cannot control and have to win because I am so enraged in my inner life with the happenings of today, the loss of freedom, decency, the grift that is beyond the beyond, the lies and deceptions that are rampant and that the left and the right are both practitioners of these ways. It is sad and we will weather this storm, I pray. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

How are you shaping the Clay that is your life, according to God's Will or your own? Year 4 Day 251

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 251

“Life is clay, and righteousness the mold in which God wants history to be shaped. But human beings, instead of fashioning the clay, deform the shape.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 47)

Please God, the Hostages are returned today! Please God both sides continue to talk and resolve this war! Please God, Qatar doesn’t have an Air Force Base in the United States! Please God the Jewish world realizes Bibi’s role in all of this destruction! Please God the world realizes Qatar, Saudi Arabia, et al role in funding Hamas and supporting them all these years!

Reading these words sends shivers up and down my spine, gives me a pain in my heart, causes me to deny this truth in my mind and causes my soul to cry. On Kol Nidre we read the prayer, Ki Hinei KaHomer, We are like Clay in Your hands and we keep asking God to heed the covenant, not give us the decree we have earned with our actions which “deform the shape”! We read this, there are beautiful melodies this prayer is sung to and We the People refuse to SHEMA, to hear, to listen, to understand the predicament We the People are  in!

We the People have the ability to make our lives whatever we want them to be, even though we may be limited by birth order, where and to whom we are born, how we are raised, socio-economic status, etc. Given all of these, We the People still have free-will choice, the predominant trait of what makes us human beings, as Rabbi Abraham Twerski teaches. We the People, for far too long, have used different factors to rationalize, normalize, and defend the fact that we “deform the shape”, that we refuse to be “clay” in the ‘hands’ of God, that We the People reject and continually try to break the “mold in which God wants history to be shaped”, that “righteousness” is not in vogue. This is true for all people, not just the ‘unchurched’, it is especially true for so many of the ‘good christians, good jews, good muslims’ who continue to preach hatred and xenophobia, continue to make someone else ‘the other’ and call them vermin, blame them for “poisoning the blood of the citizens”, and other such lies and vitriols.

“When will we ever learn” is a refrain from Pete Seeger’s “Where have all the flowers gone” and I find myself asking this question again and again. “When we ever learn” that “righteousness the mold in which God wants history to be shaped” is a gift to every human being, is the only way we will “long endure” as a species, as nations, as divine reminders and as instruments of Godliness. This is our inheritance and We the People continue to squander it, We continue to bankrupt our spiritual and moral bank accounts that have been left to us by our ancestors, the deposits of which have cost lives in wars to maintain freedom, which have cost headache and poverty when doing the next right thing is not only not rewarded, it is used as cudgel against those of We the People who believe that being molded by God to be righteous is the path to wholeness and a good life. We the People are not a monolith, of course, and what is constantly perplexing and not understandable to many of us is, how the loudest voices get the attention and, if the lies are spouted long enough and loud enough, even the people who believe in the Biblical Demand to: “Love the stranger”, to “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, to “love your neighbor as yourself”, to “rebuke your neighbor and not bear guilt because of them” etc, fall for the loud consistent lies we are being fed!!

What are We the People to do? It seems just too much for us to overcome, to fight against, since there has never been a time when “human beings” have never stopped our pull/drive to “deform the clay”. There is a solution and it is to be found when We the People realize our spiritual bankruptcy AND our need to live from our values and morality, from the inside out, from our souls and not our rationalizations. As it states in Deuteronomy 30:14: “But the word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it!(bold is mine). We the People are being called each and every day to SHEMA, to hear, listen and understand that living into the “mold” of “righteousness” is not too hard, it is not going to deprive us, it is not going to make us a fool. Rather, living into the “mold” of “righteousness” is the path to living life to its fullest, being okay with our missing the marks, learning from our errors, finding ways to honor, if not love, the stranger, learning to love our true self and not the false one we/society has created, welcoming the rebuke of another(s) as a show of deep faith in us that we are not a ‘lost cause’ and we can grow, and replenish the withdrawals from our spiritual bank accounts with these deposits of morality, goodness, justice, love, and righteousness!  This is the way, this is the path and it is available to all of us, we have to allow ourselves to return to “righteousness” and the “mold in which God” wants us to live into.

I know this way of being, I know how badly I deformed the “clay” of my life and I know I had to reach a bottom in order to come face to face with righteousness and how far I had strayed from the “mold”, how distant I had become from the lessons of my father, grandfathers, relatives who believed in “righteousness” even when they missed the mark. Once this became so apparent I could no longer resist the truth, my recovery began. I didn’t stop drinking then and I began to recover my humanity, I came to realize that I had to fill up my spiritual bank account and have an inheritance for Heather to be able to draw on. I pray that there is enough for my grandson Miles to draw upon as well. It is simple and not easy to live in the “mold” of “righteousness” and each day I do the best I can knowing it is never perfect and being on the journey will just have to do for now.. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Rebelling against the societal norms of 'getting mine' no matter what I have to do - Year 4 Day 250

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 250

“People act as they please, doing what is vile, abusing the weak, not realizing they are fighting God, affronting the divine, or that the oppression of man is a humiliation of God. He who oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, He who is kind to the needy honors Him.(Psalms 14.31) (Thunder in the Soul pg. 46)

Yesterday I looked at these words from a global, national, communal level. Today, on this Shabbat of Sukkot, when a Hostage Deal and Ceasefire has been accomplished in the Middle East, I am delving into these ideas on a personal level.

It is a conundrum we face on a daily basis: on one hand we have individuals doing “as they please” in the name of freedom when in actuality they are living in the liberty stage of life. Just as we learn in Exodus, we go from under the thumb of Pharaoh to the liberty that happens after we cross the Red Sea to the freedom we attain when we accept the Torah from Sinai. Each of us has a Pharaoh, be it the voice inside that bedevils us, that lies to us, that controls our good urges and supplants them with the spiritual malady of thinking good is bad and bad is good; be it the taskmaster that is our parent who refuses to see who we are and speak to us in ways we can understand, who denies our uniqueness in an effort to ‘keep up with the Jones’ and ‘not be embarrassed by their children’; be it the boss who keeps us down, the ‘friends’ who indulge the darkness within both of us; be it the President of the country who is dismantling our freedoms, looting the national treasury and treasures, etc; we all have a Pharaoh that is inside and outside of us.

Our job, our call, the demand put upon us is to Shema, hear the words of King David, take in and allow these words of Psalm 14 above to penetrate “the foreskin of our hearts”, know that we are not alone in our fight against the inner Pharaoh nor are we the first to engage in this battle, this is the battle that has been raging inside every human being since Adam and Eve hid from God in the Garden of Eden! After all, do we really gain a good life by “doing what is vile, “abusing the weak”, “fighting God”, doing what is “a humiliation of God” and a refutation of God’s will like these ‘good christian nationalists are doing? Yes, people gain money, power, prestige, fame, celebrity, etc from doing these actions, is this what a good life is? This is the most important distinction one can make-distinguishing between what is a good life and what isn’t. As King David says in his lament over the death of King Saul and his dear friend whom he loved, Jonathan: “Oh how the mighty have fallen” so too have all of these ‘mighty’ people who enjoy engaging in “the oppression of man” and “a humiliation of God” fall-maybe not in ways we can see and they fall into their self-deception, their hatred and these ways of being eat them up from the inside out. All of the great despots eventually go too far, they make themselves into caricatures and, either during their lives or after their deaths, they are seen for the small, cruel people they were/are.

We the People are being asked to look inside of ourselves and see how and when we revel in the misfortune of another, friend and foe alike. We the People are being called to be accountable and responsible for the abuses of “the weak” that we have and still are committing. We the People are being given the opportunity to see the vileness of our vindictive behaviors, the doing what we want when we want rather than serving the person in front of us. We the People get to see how we have fighting God, humiliating God and ignoring the God-Image of another human being in they myriad of ways we denigrate another human being a denigrate ourselves. We the People are given a choice to live into the holiness that is inherent in our being, live into the decency that the commandments bestow upon us, live into our authentic self, enjoying freedom rather than partaking in liberty, doing what is good, right, and needed in this moment rather than indulging in our whims and fantasies.

We the People live into the good, the right, the meaning and purpose of our life by letting go of our need to be vile, our need to forget the goodness and the assistance of those who have helped us in years prior and whom we no longer ‘have any use for’. We the People live into the connection we crave with God, Higher Consciousness by being “kind to the needy” which in turn “honors Him”. We the People live into the meaning and purpose of our life through spiritual growth, not material gain. We the People are getting the opportunity to stand with the poor, the needy, the stranger, and love them as the Bible teaches, appreciate the divine image in them and grow into sharing our talents, gifts, love, kindness to the 1000th generation, as the 13 Attributes teach us to do, it is one of the best ways to imitate God and truly be God’s voice, hands right here, right now.

I have, of course, acted in the ways listed above and I have been “kind to the needy” much more often in these past 38 years. Even when I was stealing and being a no-goodnik, I rarely took advantage of those who had less than me. I have spent my recovery repairing the damage from my past, I engage in living amends, I release the resentments I once carried, I don’t need anyone to thank me for the good I have done because I have the knowing my deeds bring me closer and closer to being the fully authentic Mark I was created to be. I am still bewildered by those who engage in cruelty and vileness for its own sake. I pray for the individuals who carry out these ICE raids, I pray for the military who are going against the Oath they took, I pray for the IDF soldiers who committed horrific deeds, I pray for all of us to live into the 2nd half of the quote from Psalms. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Until When will We The People continue to affront the divine within self and another? Year 4 Day 249

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 249

“People act as they please, doing what is vile, abusing the weak, not realizing they are fighting God, affronting the divine, or that the oppression of man is a humiliation of God. He who oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, He who is kind to the needy honors Him.(Psalms 14.31) (Thunder in the Soul pg. 46)

Please let the deal for the hostages go through!! Please let there be an end to the hatred and mistrust in the Middle East. Please let there be a functioning government in the United States. Please let these ‘god-fearing good christian nationalists’ end their reign of terror and slavery. This is the 1st of 2 on these words.

Reading the words above from Rabbi Heschel, I am struck by the inability of We the People to learn from our past mistakes, learn from our history, both personal and global, and continue to find new ways to do the same old shit- “doing what is vile, abusing the weak”, etc. It is an amazing fact that the same person who seems to be doing something good in the Middle East, Trump, can be so vile and abusive here at home and with our allies. He is bullying everyone in the Middle East not realizing they have long memories, they have been fighting the same war for a millennium, at least, and Trump touts his “eternal peace”. Yet, in the spirit of both/and, he is doing something no one else has been able to do-move Netanyahu to rescue the hostages! AND, this does not mean he isn’t vile and abusive, it doesn’t mean he is not “fighting God”, or “affronting the divine”! He is and so are his thugs like Russell Vought, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Stephen Miller, Tom Holman, et al.

In fairness to all of these abusers and liars, these practitioners of vile and oppressive ways, they get support from some of the Churches and Synagogues, they are being fed bullshit from their clergy and, while one can find certain passages in the Bible to support vile, abusive actions, when anyone decides to ignore Yud Hey Vav Hey, God who is merciful, kind, truthful, forgiving and wiping the slate clean when we repent, We the People find ourselves in the midst of autocracy and hatred, abusive and vile actions which will not stop until We the People say ENOUGH! This is our challenge today, not just because of Trump and the rest of the assholes running the world today, it is our challenge because some 3000 years ago, when King David lived, the words from Psalms were written! This is not a new phenomenon, being vile and abusive, believing we can “act as they please” is as old as humanity and, I believe, God is in Search of Man who will end this madness that We the People keep engaging in. Society has not changed much, the norms of “doing what is vile, abusing the weak” still exist and are rewarded with money and power, just like Jesus saw in the Temple and, remember, he was killed for telling the truth, murdered for speaking truth to power-just like Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther Kings Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, etc.

What is truly mind-boggling to me and to many of the people I know is the level of self-deception that We the People sink into. Once we begin to deceive ourselves, it is like we have walked into quicksand and there is no way out except by asking for help. Writing this reminds me of the Psalm 121, “I lift my eyes to the mountains, where will my help come from? It will come from Adonai, maker of heaven and earth.”. Yet, when We the People continue to be “fighting with God, affronting the divine”, how can we seek the help the Psalmist is crying out for? The issue for We the People seems to be how to let go of the mendacity that has defined us since the Psalmist wrote the words about oppressing “a poor man” and before. It continue to seem out of the grasp of humanity to come to terms with their self-deception and the incessant, constant need to deceive another(s) so they end this madness, this “vile” and “abusive” behavior. Listening to Pam Bondi at the recent Senate hearing not answer the questions asked, treating the United States Senate as a fly to flick off her shoulders, lying and hiding while the Republican Senators stayed silent, allowed her (and supported her through their silence) to denigrate the Senate body and what it stands for, or used to stand for, in our progress towards “a more perfect union”.

In this moment, “oppress the poor” is seen as joyous and in service of the god of christian nationalism, Trumpism, Project 2025, and these priests and ministers who Christ railed against and Moses warned us about-false prophets. In this moment, these ‘good god-fearing christian nationalists’ are violating the first 3 commandments because they have made god in their image and the rest of We the People are suffering. It is WAY PAST TIME for those of us who believe in and know in our bones that God is waiting for us to redeem our world, that the “word is not far away… it is in our mouth and in our heart” as Deuteronomy teaches us. It is WAY PASt TIME for We the People to stop the abuse, the vileness, the cruelty, the fight with God, the affront to the divine.

I have been supporting Indivisible, John Pavlovitz, and others who are in the fight, who are leading some charges to stop the madness. I also know that the madness has to stop inside of me and this is the ‘flash of insight’ this week. I am not slowing down enough to do what is in front of me, take my time in Bridge, Golf, Ceramics, because I am in such turmoil inside from the vile, abusive ways of the world. I am saddened that my grandson, Miles Garrett, is being raised in a world that is so much angrier, sadder, scarier than I was raised in. I pray each day for the welfare of the stranger, the poor, the needy and that someone, somewhere will lead us out of this quicksand we are sinking further and further into. God Bless and Stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Recognizing God's stake in human life, our life . Year 4 Day 248

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 248

“Righteousness is not just a value; it is God’s part of human life, God’s stake in human history. Perhaps it is because the suffering of man is a blot upon God’s conscience; because it is in relations between man and man that God is at stake.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 46)

What an outrageous statement: “righteousness is God’s part of human life, God’s stake in human history”! And how this changes what religion is really all about! Rather than God-centered, it is human-centered, rather than rituals to ‘please the gods’, religion, certainly Judaism according to the Bible, is about taking actions that honor the dignity and humanity of each individual, that recognizes the Tzelem, the divine image, in everyone, including oneself! Oh Shit! I can’t get away with just checking the Mitzvah Boxes? I can’t be considered good because I went to services today, I am sleeping in the Sukkah tonight? I have to be righteous?!?!!

This idea, this teaching gives, or should give, We the People pause, it stops, needs to stop, We the People from having allies and enemies, from seeking power for the sake of power, from lying about ‘being anointed’, from practicing cruelty just because we can and covering it up with subterfuge and mendacity, from hating another human being in our heart and using their vulnerabilities against them! YET IT DOESN’T!!

Because religion has been used and abused for xenophobic superiority, because it is used and abused by cruel autocrats and their servants-clergy who have no idea  of what a relationship with God is- religion has been rejected by so many people, almost 30% of Americans, and those who do identify, a majority have no idea what their Holy Texts actually say-they get their information from the ‘spiritual leader’ of their Church, Mosque, Synagogue; investing so much power and control into people who are spiritually and morally suspect in many cases, for whom power corrupts them, they are merely puppets of their teachers from their respective seminaries, etc. We the People have allowed ourselves to become dependent upon people who are doing a job rather than demand our clergy, our spiritual leaders and teachers know they are called to service, to serve the individual and the group as a way of serving God. Not the anthropomorphic vision that people use and believe that their is ‘a guy in the sky’ who decides stuff. Rather, as Judaism knows, God is incorporeal, no shape, no image and any reference to “hands, eyes” etc is used to speak to humanity in ways they can understand. The truth is God in the Hebrew Bible is more concerned with how we treat one another than how many times we stand up, sit down, how many times we pray each day, etc. These rituals are to bring us more in touch with “righteousness” so we honor and welcome “God’s stake in human life”, so we live Godliness in our everyday actions by being righteous, by being kind, by being truthful, by Choosing LIFE!

We the People are being reminded that the suffering of a human being causes God to suffer, the suffering of another person causes, or needs to cause, within each of us a nagging of our conscience and bring us to the God-consciousness/Higher consciousness called for by the Bible, by Jesus, by Mohammed, by the Eastern traditions. We the People are being called to account for the suffering we cause and proclaim this is what ‘god’ wants! When “righteousness” is “God’s part of human life” to say that God wants ‘those people’ who ‘are not like us’ to suffer is utter and complete BULLSHIT! Yet, We the People, at least some of us, almost 40%, believe/believed the mendacity of the Clergy who supported Trump and Project 2025, who supported Bibi and his inordinate bombing of Gaza, who want the US to own Greenland and Canada, who want Israel to own Gaza and the West Bank. We the People, rather than remember our humble beginnings, rather than use the Holy Days of Sukkot to get back in touch with the “righteousness” that is our birthright, renew the covenant with God by welcoming and caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy; seem to be heading for the crash of both the stock market and our morality!

Paraphrasing a thought of Rabbi Heschel’s regarding the Vietnam War; How can I pray being co-responsible for the death of 1000’s of innocent Vietnamese-is a question We the People need to be asking ourselves: How can any of us pray, live a conscious, authentic life when we are co-responsible for the suffering of so many innocent people around the globe? How can we sit on our hands while people are being kidnapped by masked ‘agents’ of the government, when “God’s stake in human history” is being abused and usurped by the liars and idolators in the White House, in our neighbors’ houses, in the streets and in our houses of worship? WE THE PEOPLE MUST STAND UP AGAINST THESE LIES!! We the People are being called to stand with God, to practice Godliness in all our affairs, to not cause more suffering and to heal/stop the suffering that is currently occurring. There is no freedom for all when the freedom of the stranger, the welfare of the poor and needy are being restricted and denied!!

I know the “blot upon God’s conscience” that suffering brings because I was a cause of suffering to many in the days prior to my recovery and even since-after all none of us are perfect. The difference is I know any suffering I cause restricts  me from prayer, from learning, from connecting and the suffering I cause rebounds back to me and I become bereft until I do my T’Shuvah and repair the damage. This is what I am hearing from Rabbi Heschel today-we will all cause suffering, it is a human trait, the difference between being a person of faith or not is whether one does T’Shuvah, takes responsibility, repairs the damage or not. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

When do you "mind your own business" and when do you get involved? Year 4 Day 247

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 247

“remonstrating about wrongs inflicted on other people, meddling in affairs which were seemingly neither their concern nor responsibility…The prophet is a person who is not tolerant of the wrongs done to others, who resents other people’s injuries.” (Thunder in the Soul pgs.45-6)

Here we are on the first day of Sukkot, exactly two years since October 7th, the day of horror that Israel had never experienced, and rather than focus on the joy of Sukkot-we say “season of joy” as a greeting to one another, or focus on the tragedy, I am continuing yesterday’s theme about the prophets.

“Remonstrating about wrongs inflicted on other people, meddling in affairs which were seemingly neither their concern nor responsibility” is at the core of what the prophets teach us about God, about spirit, about what is at the core of every human being-justice, righteousness, concern, love, kindness, dignity. Why else would our prophets go to such lengths, put their very lives on the line to speak truth to power, to teach the people what is already “very near to you, in your mouth, in your heart, that you may do it”(Deut.30:14)? The idea that one would/should be “meddling in affairs which were seemingly neither their concern nor responsibility” seems ridiculous to so many people; “mind your own business” is a common refrain, “stay in your lane” is spoken about in AA, in recovery, and while both have their place and, in the right moments, are good advice-the prophets and, by extension, God are advising us to be citizens, to be involved, immersed in the happenings around us and “righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue(some say Justice, Justice)” from Deuteronomy 16:20. Yet, too many of us are still sitting on the sidelines, watching the world disintegrate, eyeing the doorway to ‘safety’, not realizing there is no safe haven when evil is reigning, there is no place to hide and bury one’s head in the sand when justice is being perverted ‘over there’ ‘to those people’! History has shown us this over and over again, yet, We the People continue to seek ‘our savior’, continue to buy the lies of the idolators, the charlatans who purport to speak in the name of Christ, in the name of Moses, in the name of Mohammed. We the People know, deep down in our beingness, that this avenue is wrong and we are afraid to exhibit the courage, the calling to stand with the oppressed, to scream from the rooftops about the “wrongs inflicted on other people”. This is what will be the end of freedom, the destruction of democracy; We the People being more afraid of living into our prophetic inheritance than into our descent to slavery; do we really have to repeat the experience in Egypt again?!?

We the People in this moment, with the weight of October 7th on us, with the weight of the response to it on us, with the holiday of Sukkot which demands we engage in joy on us, have a choice to make: do we fall, falter, give up under the weight of the tragedy, the horror of both the despicable attacks by Hamas and the inhumane response of Israel, do we stand tall, speak truth to power, tell Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Orban, et al, to “Let My People Go”? Are we going to accept the inheritance the Bible gives us? Are we going to revel in the spiritual inheritance that Moses, Deborah, Ruth(the Moabite), King David, the prophets have passed down to us? YES WE ARE!!

We the People are not sitting idly by in many cases; we are fighting the wrongs in Court, we are fighting the power grabs in states where freedom is more important than legal fictions, we are screaming and demonstrating against the abuses of power by ICE, by the National Guard, by the Military who want to stage a coup in the streets of cities that Trump doesn’t like because We the People in these cities and states are not kissing the ring nor his ass like the Republicans in other states and in Congress are. We the People are not being ”tolerant of the wrongs done to others”, We the People are showing how much we “resent other people’s injuries” by our constant demonstrations, our calling Congress, our going to court! We the People are doing what we can to stop the tide of hate, the rushing rapids of autocracy, the avalanche of despicable actions by the government that has been entrusted to the worst of humankind-small people who seek big power. The prophet Amos teaches us: “hate evil, love good, establish justice in the gate”(5:15) and goes on to demand of us: “justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream”. This is our inheritance, this is the call of AYECHA which God sends out 24/7 to us, the partners chosen to help make the world a little better each day, this is what We the People get to engage in, what We the People are called to  and what we GET to do.

This is the call I have heard forever and, as I said yesterday, got so jaded, so hurt, so distraught that I lost my way for a while.. The lack in my Jewish Education is tragic and, while I want to blame the teachers I had, the Rabbi, the truth is I don’t know if they tried to teach us and I just didn’t listen because the noise in my head, the psychic pain in my inner life was blocking it out. I do know that nothing is more important than justice to me in this moment and has been for a long time. Justice is not about the letter of the law to me, justice is about what is right, what is true, what is decent, what is loyal to values and oaths to God, what is the next right action… I don’t always get it right, I am still hard on myself, I still get upset when I do dumb mistakes at Bridge, at Ceramics, at Golf, at home and on the way. I continue to improve and take two steps forward and then one (or more) backwards. Yet, justice, truth, freedom, kindness, are first and foremost in my mind, heart, mouth. I speak a truth that many don’t want to hear, I speak of actions that many don’t want to take, and I won’t stop! This is the inheritance I get from the prophets-continue on no matter what anyone else thinks and this is my jam, my way. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment