Comment

Reclaiming our Inheritance left to us by the Prophets - Year 4 Day 279

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 279

“THE PROPHET IS A WATCHMAN (Hos. 9:8), a servant (Amos 3”37. Jer. 25:4. 26:5), a messenger of God (Hag. 1:13), an assayer and tester of the people’s ways (Jer. 6:27)…The prophet’s eye is directed to the contemporary scene; the society and its conduct are the main theme of his speeches.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.31-32)

I admit that I am a little (?) obsessed with the prophets! The words above, this description of their ways, their vision, their courage, their insights, their ability to converse(?) with God in such intimate ways is the goal that We the People strive for, whether we believe in God or not! One of the beautiful things about the prophets is their words, their calls, their demands are for the benefit of society, for the benefit of the individual, for all of We the People being able to live with ourselves and with one another in a healthier, more productive, kinder fashion.

The challenge/demand of the prophets for us, their inheritors, is for all of We the People be watchers; all of us look at the world we live in and see if it is living up to the standards of kindness, justice, truth, love, compassion. We the People are being called to account for the ways in which we “treat the stranger”, “care for the poor, the needy”, do business and live life in a “kosher” manner, ie in a way that is fitting and proper, “do justly, love mercy” and walk in the ways of the Ineffable One, in the ways our souls tell us is the right path.

What we are seeing right now is that We the People have FAILED in our jobs as watch people. We have allowed the fox in the hen house and we are at a loss as to how to stop the killing, the abusing, the stealing, the cruelty, be it here in America or in Israel, or anywhere in the world where the autocrats, conservative and/or progressive, are in charge. YET, IT IS NOT TOO LATE! We the People, like the prophets before us, both in Biblical times and throughout history, can stand up and say NO to tyranny, NO to cruelty, NO to xenophobia, NO to the bastardization of Moses’ teachings, of Christ’s teachings and ways, to the Voice on Sinai that keeps broadcasting truth and love which has been turned into hate and falsehoods by the Idolators at our gates, just like the priests did for the ruling class in the times of the prophets. We the People, can and, I would add, must do differently than our ancestor; heed the words of the prophets of the Bible and their descendants here (aka all of us) and take the actions they provide for us, follow Justice, Love, Truth, Kindness and Mercy all the days of our lives and demand the same from our communities, from our elected officials and never give up our freedoms again, like we did in Egypt!

When We the People truly come to grips with the Spiritual Malady that has infected society, our daily living, and our treatment of both one another AND the ways we treat ourselves, our inner lives, then We will seek out the “physicians of the soul” as Maimonidies calls spiritual counselors. It is imperative for the Clergy of today to do their own TShuvah, their own Chesbon HaNefesh so they can quality for the task ahead-heal the spiritual bankruptcy of We the People. It is a big job, a huge task and the only one that truly matters to any and all clergy who know, like the prophets, that being a member of the Clergy is a privilege, a calling, a purpose and a passion. It is knowing that our employer is not the Board of Directors, not the Bishop, not the Pope, our employer is God, our job is to care for the souls and the conduct of God’s ‘children’-it is not to advance the political agenda of MAGA, it is not to promote a political agenda of hate, prejudice, etc. This is another of the challenges of this moment.

Thank God we have the “servants” who want to fulfill this role for the rest of We the People! Reading and listening to the amount of people who are declaring the  current practices to be UnAmerican, to be autocratic, to be enslaving, to be unjust is heartening, it keeps growing. The issue facing We the People is how to grow our souls so that when these assholes are out of office/power, how do We the People not repeat the ways of autocracy that have been unique to the left? SPIRITUAL HEALING is the only response. For us to immerse ourselves in the inheritance the prophets gifted us, We the People have to heal our inner lives, We get to develop our hearing so our souls’ voice is louder, or at least overrides, the noise in our rational minds. We the People are being called by this moment to develop faith in what we “know in our guts/kishkas” and live into this knowing rather than the rationalizations of our mind, the whims of our false egos. Without this education, without this healing, then, how long will it be until We the People realize we have willingly walked into hell?

I have been engaged in spiritual counseling for myself and being a spiritual counselor for another for the past 38 years. I also was blessed to have my father speak to my soul as a youth. I know the importance of this work, I am angry that my colleagues are not doing more of this work, I am outraged that the Seminaries are not promoting this work as a basic function of the ‘job’. I am also in disbelief that Boards of Directors think they know what constitutes a ‘Jewish’ institution. Especially when they are all about the money and ‘the optics’. I truly believe in Spiritual Counseling, I truly believe we have more to learn from the prophets than is being taught precisely because their disgust at the ways We the People were/are acting is too much for the people in power to deal with-the reflection back from the mirror of the prophets is not one they want to see! YET, I still minister to people, I write each day hoping someone hears and a spark is lit. I am powerless over the results and powerful to do my part. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Do you "suffer with" those who experience injustice, are you a perpetrator of injustice for you own gain? Year 4 Day 278

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 278

“The prophet disdains those for whom God’s presence is comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand. God is compassion, not compromise; justice, though not inclemency. The prophet’s predictions can always be proved wrong by a change in man’s conduct, but never the certainty that God is full of compassion.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 31)

I have continued with this passage because I concentrated on only the first sentence yesterday. The difference between compassion and compromise is great and important. To have compassion, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel this morning, is to “suffer with”, to feel the burden that another person is carrying, since the root of the word for compassion in Hebrew also means womb. To compromise, one needs to give up on a principle, on a belief, to make concessions that may not be holy, good, or right. While compromise is important and good and holy and right at times, it is not a substitute for compassion and it is certainly not what God’s compassion in all about. Divine Pathos, divine compassion is the goal for We the People to strive for, it is embedded in each and every mitzvah, it is the centerpiece of T’Shuvah, it is the acknowledgement of our human imperfections and frailties.

The prophets are prime examples of divine compassion! This just occurred to me as what is more compassionate than telling all of us that We the People are better than our worst mistakes, that We the People do not have to be defined by our past errors, no matter what society says. What can be more compassionate that calling from the rooftops that God wants us back, that God will heal our shortcomings, that God loves us with all of our flaws and errors, that God keeps the gates of T’Shuvah open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year! What can be more compassionate than taking up the cause of the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy? What can be more compassionate than speaking truth to power? What can be more compassionate than NOT standing idly by the blood of our neighbors? What can be more compassionate than rebuking us so we can change, rebuking us because of the faith that We the People can do better and are better than cruelty, grifting, murdering the soul of another(s), putting stumbling blocks before the blind and cursing the deaf! While the prophets’ language is considered harsh at times, isn’t it compassionate to speak to people in the ways they can hear? Isn’t it compassionate to love humankind so much that one is willing to take the wrath of We the People when speaking truth to them? Isn’t it divine pathos and compassion to love God so much that one is willing to go to jail for spreading the Word? I am aware that this is a radical thought.

“Justice, though not inclemency” is another wonderful phrase. It describes perfectly one of the main themes of the Bible. God believes in and practices “justice”, teaches human beings what justice is and how to administer it AND, it is not to be harsh, it is not to be inclement. Hence, arguing with Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah, Jethro telling Moses to find “God-fearing men, men of truth” to be judges over the people, “Do not pervert justice, don’t take a bribe, don’t favor someone you know, add righteousness/charity in to make a righteous judgement”. Justice is not to be harsh nor cruel, in fact, even though the Rabbis want to use the Bible as a weapon at times, thanks to Ezra and some of the editors who put the Bible together(as my friend and teacher Rabbi Danny Maseng has taught me)! Justice is not to be pursued to hurt another human being, it is not to be perverted as it is now, and probably always has been. Justice is not to be used as “retribution” as Trump is proclaiming and Bondi-Patel are carrying out. Justice can never be achieved behind a mask and by manhandling people, it can never be lauded for targeted prosecution because of the color of a person’s skin, the license plates on their cars(as has happened to a few Canadians here), or for any other reason.

We the People are descendants of the prophets, we are their heirs and it is WAY past time for us to live into their teachings, their ways, and find our own unique modus operandi to spread the word. It is not their words we need to spread, it is not our own words we need to spread, rather it is the WORDS that are continually coming from Sinai, the words and deeds in the Bible that teach us how to live together in harmony, in respect, with dignity for self and for every human being. We the People are being called to “tear down the wall” between callousness and compassion, between inclemency and justice, between compromise and divine pathos. We the People have to demand of ourselves, the elected officials, the people whitewashing Hamas and the Arabs like Linda Sarsour, TRUTH, JUSTICE, COMPASSION not the bullshit lies and grifts being promoted by both extremes. We the People are being called to hear the prophets words, heed them and live into them so America will continue to be a democracy and Israel will live the promise of their Declaration of Independence.

I look at myself and see when I was not compassionate, not just, not kind and it hurts me. My spiritual awakening did not cure me of never doing these ugly actions. It has made me think more before I am about to do something, it helps me realize when I am compassionate, just and kind, when I am in truth and when I am not. Divine Pathos is a path I follow, compassion, justice, truth, kindness has allowed me to not have any resentments, to do my T’Shuvah without any expectations and be sad when I see people who are still stuck in their shit. I continue to live into the prophets words and ways and my gratitude for being alive shows in my compassion, my engagement/fight for justice and living in truth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Comfort, security or Challenge, incessant demand: how do you experience God's Presence? Year 4 Day 277

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 277

“The prophet disdains those for whom God’s presence is comfort and security; to him it is a challenge, an incessant demand. God is compassion, not compromise; justice, though not inclemency. The prophet’s predictions can always be proved wrong by a change in man’s conduct, but never the certainty that God is full of compassion.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 31)

In a world filled with so many versions and conflicting visions of God, these words above can come to remind all of us that God is NOT HUMAN! God is the wind, the spirit, the Ineffable and to define God is humanity’s way of trying to control people. God’s spirit, presence is throughout the Bible and in our lives today-the difference between King David and today’s oligarchs and MAGA’s, Bibi and Putin is King David knew God’s presence, knew God’s compassion, knew God’s “incessant demand” for justice, kindness, compassion, truth, and love. The aforementioned people seemingly do not! Listening to the Fire and Brimstone Preachers, the Prosperity Gospel Preachers, the “it is written” Rabbis, and every other fundamentalist can bring We the People to an erroneous conclusion, image of God. Their vision of God is one of either ‘just have faith and your actions don’t matter as much cause you are going to heaven’ or ‘you are born in sin and you live in sin and you will die in sin and go to hell’ or ‘it is written in the Torah and we have to do everything that is written, so I have to do nothing but study and you have to pay my expenses so I can study and tell you how to live’! In other words- We the People have been fed so much bullshit by ‘those righteous people’ that we have come to rely on someone else to tell us what God is saying, what we are to do, think, feel about God and about how to live-BULLSHIT!

“God’s presence” is both “a challenge, an incessant demand” and “comfort and security” to those of us who seek to respond to the “challenge, the demand”. Without experiencing “God’s presence”, those of us who ‘know’, would be lost and wandering, ready to assimilate and give up, become like the “lost tribes of Israel”, roaming the earth looking for the place where we belong. The prophet’s “disdain” is because the Bible is replete with stories of arguing with God, wrestling with God, with the growth of our relationship with God and God’s relationship with human beings. Living with “God’s presence” is never easy, nor comforting in the ‘it’s okay baby’ way. The comfort comes from knowing one belongs in one’s skin, one is capable of living a life compatible with being a partner with God, with experiencing one’s purpose and passion, meaning and unique talent/gift. And, this “comfort” is the cause of great consternation, great distress when we shirk our responsibility to live our authentic life rather than the one that is expedient. It is distressing when a human being witnesses another so lost that they believe the lie is the truth, the evil is the good, cruelty is kindness, slavery is freedom, etc. When Ron DiSantis claims slavery was good for Black people and this should be taught in Florida’s schools and claims to be a ‘good christian’ who ‘reads his bible daily’, we know how far down the rabbit hole he has fallen and, so have all the people who support him, who agree with him and who give him power. The same is true of good old Mike Johnson who makes false claims about the Bible daily and has no compunction about lying, cheating, stealing, treating the stranger, the poor, the needy with disdain, hatred, cruelty-which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what the Bible teaches.

The prophets spoke truth to power in their day and it is high time for We the People to do the same in our time. We the People, are being challenged, not by God, by the idolators, the autocrats, the Pharaohs of our moment to stand up for what is true and good or to sit down, take the shit they are throwing at us and hope for some scraps, some hand-me-downs from their grift, their theft. We the People have to say NO to this bullshit, We the People have to clean out our clogged ears, clear out our noisy mind that is listening to the bullshit and believing it, do angioplasty on our spiritual arteries so our soul’s voice comes through and SHEMA, listen, hear, and understand the “incessant demand” of the Voice from Sinai. The Rabbis were afraid of the prophets, even though they quoted them, sort of taught them, they were afraid if the prophets were taken seriously, the people would revolt against them, would reject the dogma they were pushing and have their own experiences of “God’s presence” and follow their calling rather than the calling of the Rabbis, rather than the calling of the people who wanted power. The same is true of Christianity and Islam-it is the people who fucked up the beauty, the truth, the knowing of the Bible and their faiths, not religion itself. We the People have to take back the spirit of the Bible, the visions of the prophets and the Word of God in our own unique fashion, like the Israelites did after crossing the Red Sea and at Mount Sinai. If we are to survive this crisis of idolatry being perpetrated in the US, in Israel, across the globe, We the People have to live into our inheritance from the prophets.

I ran from the “challenge”, the “incessant demand” and had to drink myself into oblivion to be able to ‘rationalize’ my evil ways, my turning my back on truth, justice, etc. I know how incessant the Voice from Sinai is and it took me 20 years to finally surrender to it, to allow “God’s presence” to envelop me, to change me, to point me in the direction I was meant to go in. Since that moment in Dec. 1986, I have lived with an “incessant demand” within me to seek truth, to speak truth to power and to do so without fear nor favor. I have not always been right and I have waded into areas blindly because injustice, mendacity, bullshit drive me nuts. I no longer need to seek solace in booze, I find joy, meaning, love, connection and belonging in the presence of God and those whom I share life with, friends, family, fellow learners, community. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Indifferent to the "monstrosity of inequality" is the downfall of freedom - Year 4 Day 276

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 276

“That equality is a good thing, a fine goal, may be generally accepted. What is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of inequality. Seen from the perspective of prophetic faith, the predicament of justice is the predicament of God.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 54)

8 Democratic Senators caved into the whims of Donald Trump and proved his message; “the Democrats are weak” to be true. While it is also true that playing “chicken” with a group who want to crash the car, the system is a losing game, these 8 Senators got nothing in return except some bullshit promise they could get a vote on renewing the ACA subsidies sometime and maybe the House of Representatives will take it up. These 8 Senators are the proof-text of what is written above: they lack “a sense of the monstrosity of inequality”! The current administration revels in “the monstrosity of inequality” and We the People voted them in!!! WTF???

What is it in our upbringing, in our faith traditions, in our schooling that gives rise to this seemingly robust love affair with “inequality”? I believe it begins at home and at our synagogues, churches, mosques, temples. When young people hear about the ways we have been victimized because of our skin color, our religion, our socio-economic status, etc they usually decide either: “why bother” or “I am gonna get mine”. What is missing is the dinner table discussions about the rule of law, the mitzvot that teach us how to be more human each day, the 365 actions we are taught not to take and the 248 actions we are taught to take. Rather than speak about the need for Justice, the need for Righteousness, the need for seeking to live the Holy, dinner table discussions are about how someone screwed me over, or how I ‘jewed’ them down, or  they will get theirs, and other such thoughts. Rather than seek out Truth, we are fed ‘alternative facts’, rather than believe what we are seeing, we believe the words of the “leader”, “der fuhrer”. Rather than accept that we are all responsible and, in this case, guilty of accepting “the monstrosity of inequality” as normal and okay.

The fact that more of We the People are not outraged at “the monstrosity of inequality” being perpetrated upon all of us, bewilders me, upsets me, and I wonder where the Clergy who have pulpits, who have congregants, who have followers are  and what they are doing to call this situation out, to stand up and say NO to this evil, to stop being indifferent to “the monstrosity of inequality” that we are seeing every single day of this current administration, and, in full disclosure, that has been present since the founding of our Country. This moment, this administration is making “the monstrosity of inequality” their goal, their modus operandi and reveling in it. This is the difference and some 30+% of We the People are applauding and going along with it, not realizing we are the ones who will experience “the monstrosity of inequality” next and, maybe, harder than those whom this part of We the People call our enemies.

Plaques commemorating African American soldiers fighting against Nazi Germany in Europe have been removed from a U.S. military cemetery in the Netherlands is the latest headline to validate the war on equality being waged by Trump et al. Worse is that these are “good god-fearing christians” just like the Klan were and they bastardize Christ, Moses, the entire Biblical narrative and teachings to carry out their “monstrosity of inequality”, not accepting that the righteous justice is a command from God, that justice denied to one is justice denied to all, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. We the People can no longer claim our commitment to freedom, our belief in God, our faithfulness to a higher power, our following our higher consciousness and allow for “the monstrosity of inequality” to continue to grow and flourish. We the People are being called not just by the words above, rather we are being called to STAND THE FUCK UP for Godliness, for Holiness, for Decency, for Freedom, for the Souls of ourselves and another(s). Isn’t it time for We the People to finally STAND WITH GOD rather than with the autocrat, STAND WITH JUSTICE rather than reveling in injustice, STAND with TRUTH rather than continue to live in mendacity?!?

I believe this is the moment for “all good people to come to the aid of their country”, otherwise we will not have a country that is a little better to leave to our children. We will be leaving them a country and a way of living that they will have to rebel against, that they will have to break the yoke of slavery and hatred, inequality and mendacity, they will have to do TShuvah for our wanton display of whoring ourselves after the newest, shiniest, god. This is not the legacy my father’s generation left to me, they left me with a lot of shit and they left me with the legacy of fighting injustice in Germany and Poland, in Mississippi and in Cleveland, Ohio. While my father saw “the monstrosity of inequality” first hand when he was in the Army and growing up a proud Jew, he fought against it when he made sure the pay of the Black men of the business he had just bought was equal to the pay of the white men-which when he took over it wasn’t! The white men quit and no white man would work for the N——-lover! My father stood up against “the monstrosity of inequality” and raised his boys to see the content of character that a person possessed, not their skin color. This was the way he treated not only people of color, this is the way he did business, always in a ‘kosher way’. This is the legacy he left for us, his sons and his daughter. My siblings have continue to live this way, and, while I was late to this party, I live fighting against “the monstrosity of inequality” each and every day. I stand in solidarity with the “predicament of God”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

What does your community allow vis a vis cruelty, suffering, falsehoods? Year 4 Day 275

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 275

“In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 54)

Continuing yesterday’s theme regarding the responsibility of the community vis a vis the crimes of an individual, the sentence above and those of yesterday encapsulate our situation today and our history in America and the world as well. Be it the Jew, the Gypsy, the Black, the Hispanic, the Asian, the LGBTQ+, individual, the white society has always had a ‘bad guy’ for the poor and the downtrodden to blame for their fate and to look down upon no matter how ‘low’ they felt. Lyndon Johnson said it so well: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”!! Yet, We the People continue to ignore the truth that LBJ spoke, the truth that history teaches us about “racial discrimination” and the truth of the words above. Adolf Hitler was able to convince an erudite population, a cosmopolitan country, an bastion of truth seeking, intelligence, into a country of Jew-Hatred, Gay-Hatred, Gypsy-Hatred, etc. So too has Donald Trump turned “give me your tired, your poor, your yearning to breathe free…” into a country where some people cheer when a person of color is beaten senseless, locked up without due process, cheer to ‘lock her up’, believe the lies of ‘Der Fuhrer’ and his minions. WTF??

One could ask: How could this happen in the USA? And the answer would be simple. We the People did not, in sufficient numbers, demand, create, maintain “a community not indifferent to suffering”. This is part of the responsibility all of We the People bear. While it is convenient and gratifying to blame ‘those people’, the rest of We the People have to acknowledge our responsibility in not maintaining a community “not indifferent to suffering”. Like it or not, when the ‘progressives’ were in charge, when the intellectual elite thought they knew what was best, when ‘political correctness’ was the rage, etc-they were “indifferent to the suffering” of the people who were bewildered by new technology, by this ‘new’ way of having to be, by people who disagreed with them, felt them going too far, people not concerned with optics, people who were concerned with providing food, clothing, shelter, and time for their families.

Rabbi Heschel is speaking about the “racial discrimination” of the 50’s/60’s as well as before and We the People have to look at the “racial discrimination” and all other forms of discrimination that We the People have either promoted or been indifferent to! This is at the core of the Chesbon HaNefesh, the accounting of the soul for the community we belong to, the community we live in. Whether it is in Israel or America, We the People have not had sufficient numbers of protests and attendees to change the course of our nations, to make the current administrations change their evil ways, to make Trump, Bibi and their fellow experts in cruelty stop. WAKE UP We the People! It is time for us to acknowledge, repair and change our ways of being “indifferent to the suffering” to confess the myriad of ways we have not been “uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood”, the ways we have promoted the “suffering” of ‘those people’, the methods of falsehoods and cruelty we have engaged in against ‘those people’ and made it to seem like We the People were “fighting the good fight”. This is the challenge: will We the People continue to grow our “No Kings” protests days? Will We the People acknowledge both our guilt and responsibility for allowing the USA, allowing Israel to fall into such disrepair and become countries antithetical to our founding principles? Will We the People open up our eyes and see? Will We the People immerse ourselves in Numbers 15:39, “don’t go out after your heart and your eyes because you will whore yourself after them”?

We the People are being called by our souls, by the Voice from Sinai, by the people who are being harmed the most - the poor, the needy, the stranger- and whom the Bible tells us 36 times to CARE FOR!! Will We the People truly answer the call, will We the People rise up and demand that our communities become “not indifferent to the suffering” of anyone? Will We the People demand of ourselves and our fellow community members an end to being patient “with cruelty and falsehood”? WE CAN DO THIS, it is what a spiritual life is all about. Living life in concert with the tenets of any spiritual discipline requires: Justice, Mercy, Kindness, Truth, Love. None of these can be present when cruelty, falsehood, suffering seize power and are the currency of the community. It is way past time for We the People to return to lessons and teachings of the Bible in how to be kind, loving, truthful, merciful and just!


I know the experience from both sides, I have been the perpetrator of cruelty, falsehood and suffering of my family and the stranger whom I used when I was a criminal and a drunk. I have been the victim of same when I was a teen and in my recovery. The difference today and for the past 38 years is I DON’T BACK AWAY from calling out indifference, I don’t SILENCE MYSELF FOR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS when cruelty, falsehood and suffering are present-no matter who is perpetrating these evil ways. It gets me into trouble, and as John Lewis says, it is GOOOOOD TROUBLE! I can’t do any different, my soul won’t let me anymore, I have learned from my teachers, maturing my soul, and today there is no going back to the ‘other guy’. The pain of rejection is the price I pay for the joy of living truth, of living into the Biblical teachings, of living a life of meaning and purpose. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Responsibility for society's corruptions and moral disease belongs to everyone - Year 4 Day 274

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 274

“However, an honest estimation of the moral state of our society will disclose: Some are guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the public climate of opinion, an individual’s crime discloses society’s corruption.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 54)

These words written and spoken at various events in the 1960’s were dealing with discrimination, which we will see in tomorrow’s quote. AND, they apply to every aspect of living. “The moral state of our society” is always what drives communities to doing good or doing evil, respecting the infinite worth and dignity of every human being or weaponizing religion, the law, Congress, the military to do the bidding of the autocrat, of the “wolves” as David Brooks writes about in yesterday’s NY Times OP-ED section. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that We the People are just as responsible for the hatred and evil as the perpetrators! An outlandish statement and a truthful one. “But its not my fault, I am powerless, I didn’t vote for them, etc” are the outcries from many of We the People, and they are lame excuses for the “moral state of our society” that we have allowed to flourish.

Tevye says it in Fiddler on the Roof: “If I were a rich man…they think you really know”. Society’s obsession with wealth and power for the sake of wealth and power has been going on for the millennia and We the People have fed into it. Anti-Semitism has been around forever, the precursor to all other forms of racial, ethnic discrimination, to the hatred of foreigners, etc. Knowing this has not stopped “the South” from their “rise again”, knowing the spiritual and moral destruction that slavery, that racism, that anti-semitism brings to a community and country has not stopped some of We the People from voting into office the most hateful, power-seeking, money-grabbing administration in American History. Why would people not steal and rob when the “grifter-in chief” is President and has never been held accountable for his myriad of thefts, lies, treatment of his workers and sub-contractors? What is really insane is that if you don’t steal enough, if you are not brazen enough, then Trump and his cronies label you a thief, a criminal; if it is big enough and another administration put you in prison or convicted you, then a Pardon, Clemency, etc are in order from this administration! This is the way We the People have chosen to “disclose society’s corruption” without any shame apparently. How tragic, how sad.

The people committing the crimes are absolutely guilty and responsible and should be held to answer for their crimes-trust me I know this. The society in which these behaviors flourish, as in America, also has to be held accountable and realize their guilt in creating, allowing, not stopping “the moral state of our society” to become so rotten, so immoral, so tilted to power, wealth, status that anything goes as long as you get one of those three. Yet, the MAGA crowd doesn’t do this, the Far Left crowd doesn’t do this, the Republicans don’t and the Democrats, too often, just admit their errors and quit. We the People are being called to FIGHT THE BLIGHT of our society, to END THE CORRUPTION of our society, to hear the call of the Voice on Sinai calling us to “righteousness, righteousness you will pursue” Though it is in the future tense, it is an action that has begun and We the People need to participate and then today is one of the days leading to us healing our societal corruptions, our societal immoralities, our societal crimes.

Immersing myself in these words and this thought, I am brought back to the days of my youth, when rich people were revered in public and denigrated in private. When the words of Tevye were so prevalent (as they are now) and all that mattered was how much wealth you had, how great your business was doing. When asked “Vus Machs Du”, Yiddish for What are you doing, the response was “Macht a Leiben”, making a living which was a slight bastardization of the Yiddish, it really means doing life. We the People have been so confused and corrupted by our ancestors that we no longer understand the difference between living life and making a ‘living’, between being decent and being a bully, between doing the next right thing and doing the next expedient action that serves the self, etc. We the People need to revolt against the Clergy who preach a Christian, Jewish, Muslim Nationalism, who seek to denigrate those ‘not our kind’, who use the Jews, people of color, ‘those people’ as their scapegoats, who seek “the rapture” the destruction of the world because they refuse to do their own Accounting of their souls, they refuse to do an Accounting of the Societal Soul - hence their blame of everyone else. We the People can and must say NO to this way of being and YES to the pursuit of righteousness.

This idea is dear to me because it is what happened to me, not blaming anyone else for my actions and I am acknowledging “society’s corruption” played a role in my descent into a criminal lifestyle. I was always loud and argumentative, I was always fearful of not being accepted for who I was/am, and when I found that stealing made me feel okay, that money in my pocket gained me some respect, I got “hooked” on it. When I could be appreciated by my mother for helping out, when I knew my brother depended on my financial support, I felt like a big-shot and this added to my engagement with “society’s corruption” and my moral state, which my father tried so hard to mold and shape into a strong morality, fell into disrepair and I fell into despair. I am not proud of buying the lies, of rebelling against the societal structure that spread the disease of wealth means power, rightness, and I did. The past 38 years have been about healing myself and another(s) from this disease and returning to the morality of the Bible, of my father, my grandfathers. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

How does thinking of God in the past make life easier for you and harder for freedom to prevail? Year 4 Day 273

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 273

“We think of God in the past tense and refuse to realize that God is always present and never, never past; that God may be more intimately present in slums than in mansions, with those who are smarting under the abuse of the callous.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 54)

The first phrase above moves one to think of how We the People, as individuals and as a society relate to God, “think of God”, and what that means vis a vis the ways in which we conduct ourselves. When one uses the phrase “God of the Bible”, is this a way of thinking of God in the past? When one asks “where was God in the Holocaust”, is this a way of thinking of God in the past? When one asks “where is God when I need him”, is this thinking of God in the present? I am intrigued by this thought.

Whenever we glorify the past, use it as a club or a weapon, as a reason to not believe, to not hear the Voice from Sinai, we are guilty of thinking of God in the past tense. Whenever we are confounded by life’s many crossroads and we refuse to seek divine guidance, help from another, we are guilty of thinking of God in the past. And, what is the point to “think of God in the past tense”? As I was writing this question, it dawned on me: to “think of God in the past tense”, in all the different nuanced ways of doing this, means one doesn’t have to be responsible to God in the present, one doesn’t have to ask oneself ‘what is the next right action’, one no longer is burdened with being a divine reminder and a sheliach, a messenger carrying their unique word of God and bringing their word, their passion, their “acorn” as James Hillman says, into the world. Whenever “we think of God in the past tense”, we are absolving ourselves of the responsibilities of the world, we are seeking to enjoy what we can, we are making all the wrong things right, all the right things ‘for suckers’, etc. Whenever cruelty prevails, whenever autocracy is the goal, whenever mendacity and indecency are the ‘winning strategies’, and God’s name is used to validate these horrific ways, it is because “we think of God in the past tense.” Our refusal “to realize that God is always present” comes from our spiritual immaturity, from our adherence to societal norms and ways, from our adaptation of Greek thinking/philosophy. It is society’s path to holding onto to its power, holding onto its control, holding its knee to the neck of freedom, of holiness, of truth!

Hence, the second half of the sentence above. I know that God is intimately “present in the slums…, with those smarting under the abuse of the callous” because I witness this phenomenon daily. While God is “present in mansions” also, just not as often, not in as many, and, not necessarily heard nor listened to when the self-interest of the owner of the mansion is at stake:)! While we hear the preaching and the praying of those ‘fine christian, jewish, muslim folk’ who call for God to reign down ‘fire and brimstone’ on those “terrible democrats”, those unholy Jews calling for We the People to “love the stranger”, to “care for the poor and the needy”, We the People have to stand up and say WE WILL NOT GO BACK TO EGYPT!! Remembering that without God there is no freedom, without God being present in this moment, in this day, the road to Egypt is a slippery one and a lightning fast one. Living into the truth that “God is always present” keeps us out of slavery, prevents We the People from living once again under the thumb of the taskmaster, from being beaten for resisting, from falling for the lies of the ruling class because we are so exhausted and fatigued from doing their bidding, from being conned and grifted, from the pain of realizing the beliefs and trust we put into those charlatans was unwarranted. Finding out that the people “in mansions” don’t believe in adhering to the word of God emanating from Mount Sinai, speaking to us from the pages of the Bible today as God spoke to the people in Biblical times, devastates many of We the People who earnestly and desperately believed the people “in mansions” would make life better, not worse.

It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to stand up and bring God into this moment, to re-read, re-learn, re-encounter the prophets, Moses, King David, Judah and Joseph, Jacob and Esau, Samuel and Saul, Psalms, Proverbs, etc. Not as a ‘historical retelling’ of events rather our new encounter is a spiritual awakening, a spiritual healing, a spiritual counseling session that buoys our spirit and our resolve to NEVER GO BACK TO EGYPT!  This is one of the commands of the Bible which Solomon violated and the kingdom was split in two, again. It is the reason the Pilgrims came to America, to escape the Egypt that was England because of their religious beliefs and Trump, the Evangelicals, the Fundamentalists of all faiths are violating this basic tenet of the United States’ founding documents. This is the challenge for We the People in this moment, it is the tikkun, the repair, of the choice of the Israelites to stay asleep while the Pharaoh lulled them into slavery in the Bible. We the People, by knowing that “God is present and never, never past”, can stop these wannabe Pharaoh’s in their tracks, can call BULLSHIT on Russel Vought’s ‘good christianity’, stand up for God against the onslaught of lies from Orthodoxy/fundamentalists of all faiths, block the cruelty of Stephen Miller, of Kristi Noem, of Donald Trump and hold the billionaires who support this way of being, who refuse to stand up to these Pharaohs, accountable.

It is hard, I know from my experience, to do this. It is dangerous to ‘buck the system’, yet, the far right and the far left both use fascist techniques, no free speech, adherence to dogma, and bastardizing of God. I found God in a jail cell and have never let go of that experience so I can find God in the here and now. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Dogma or Love, what do your actions say about which is more important to you? Year 4 Day 272

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 272

“Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and the sacred. We worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love. (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53-54)

The sentence that I have emboldened above is so apt a description of the history of humankind and, of course, what we are in the throes of right now, it took me two days to begin to digest it. “Dogma" is defined as “a set of principles laid down by an authority as inconvertibly true”, yet it comes from the Greek meaning “seems good” or “opinion”! “Integrity” is defined as “the state of being whole” “internal consistency”, “moral uprightness” and comes from the Latin meaning “intact”.

The sentence above could read: we worry more about the purity of following the principles laid down by an authority than about the intactness of our love for one another. It could also read: we worry more about opinions of another(s) than we do about keeping our love for one another, for God intact. In either of these three readings of this sentence, I hear Rabbi Heschel asking us to wake up and see how our dogmas are ruining our love, how following the leader is trashing our consistent and persistent reach for being loved and being loving. I hear his call to We the People to end our need to look good, to ‘follow the rules’ that are cruel and mean, that are societal norms and not prophetic rebellions, and to realize that their is only ONE GOD and no human is it!

While one can make the case that “dogma” is needed, the issue is that “dogma” becomes what is worshiped and adored, not God, not love, not humanity, just the “dogma” of our tribe, our cult, our religion, etc. This is the great problem facing human beings today and for all times. How to use principles to bring us closer to the Ineffable One without falling into the trap of worshiping the principles, how to use our rational minds as servants and not worship our intellect and reason as Einstein warns us, are questions that this idea brings up and, as we can see from the MAGA crowd and the Progressive Crowd, no one is searching for a solution to these questions, rather both extremes are pointing the fingers at one another and those of We the People who seek to find middle ground, who embrace the Ineffable One and know life is not binary, not either/or are left adrift. While many people are dissecting the elections and what they foretell about the next election, We the People, especially those in the middle, are being cautioned by the teaching above to watch and see which is more important to the Democrats, to the Republicans, to the Mandami and his constituency, to the two women who won Governorships and their followers-do they care more about keeping love for all, freedom for all, intact or are they more concerned about hewing to their dogmatic beliefs, to their own prejudices and biases? Politicians have, historically, hewed to their dogmatic belief that getting re-elected is most important, that satisfying the needs and wants of their big donors/the leader(s) of their party, holding firm on ‘core’ issues no matter how it affects the people they represent (think Mike Johnson) rather than kept intact, had/have integrity with their constituents, the people who elected them, the people they are supposed to represent and love! Is this new breed of politicians any different-only time will tell.

The same way of being is true in the lives, personal and professional, of We the People. We are always at the crossroads of serving our agendas or keeping the love we have, or are commanded to have, for the stranger, our neighbor, our spouses, our children. Do we keep our moral standards when to violate them ‘just a little only this once’ will allow us to buy something needed for a loved one, will make it possible for us to stop living paycheck to paycheck, will help with the medical bills and treatments our loved one needs? The “Heinz dilemma” addresses this so well and is not taught early on in Middle School or High School. It needs to be. We the People are constantly wrestling with what the next right action to take is except when we are worrying about “the purity of our dogma”, when we are more concerned with what Trump/Netanyahu/Putin, et al think of how we ‘carry out their orders’ than with keeping the love for our humanity, for God intact. Isn’t it time for We the People to immerse ourselves in the Bible and learn what love is? Isn’t it time for We the People to realize that the “dogma” spouted by der fuhrer using Biblical Verses, the ‘christian nationalism’ that is not found in the New Testament are just bastardizations of holy scriptures for the sake of misogynists to have control over everyone else?

This is the dilemma we find ourselves in ONCE AGAIN, as We the People have throughout human existence; hence our need to fall back, re-read the prophets, learn from their words about “the integrity of love” and take their Good Orderly Direction and find our way out of extremism and back to God.

I have been more concerned with living an integrated life than with “dogma”. I am more concerned with seeking truth and knowing my fallibility will continue to dog me throughout my life than with hewing to some arbitrary way of being that ‘The Man/Men’ came up with or that ‘this sect’ comes up with . I am good at taking direction and not good at following the ‘party line’. I am good at immersing myself in the Bible, in the prophets words, thoughts and deeds and I am not good at ‘do it because I say so’ from another human being. I continue to monitor my dogmatic ways, I continue to be engaged in keeping my love of people, my concern for another, my ability to smell bullshit when I hear it, intact, so I do not get caught up in trying to prove my “dogma” is more pure than yours. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Pledging Allegiance means living in the BOTH/AND, not the Either/Or of tribalism, party, etc. Year 4 Day 271

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 271

“Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and the sacred. We worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love. (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53-54)

Congratulations to the winners of yesterday’s elections, it was a Red Letter Day, a day that democracy was in action, a day of choice and the will of the people. While one may or may not agree with the decisions reached, their candidate might not have won, we all have to accept the outcome, we all have to do what we can to ensure free and fair elections continue, including fighting against those who want to gerrymander states so they can always have a majority!

Our democracy supports a separation between church and state, mainly because the Founding Fathers knew how bad it was to live under the thumb of one religion and the people, ie rulers, clergy, who misinterpret the words of the Bible, who deliberately bastardize, cherry pick words and/or phrases to validate their cruelty, their power grab, etc. This does not mean, however, that spiritual principles are not valid and necessary for a democracy to flourish! It does not mean that God is segregated to one group, to one area of living. In fact, we are “One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all”. OY, if we only acted this way in all our affairs.

This is the challenge of the words above: living the Pledge of Allegiance-which the Republican Christian Nationalists/autocrats want to be done in our schools and not denying God, no longer engaging in the segregation of God from our day to day living. What an order!! What chutzpah (cheeky nerve) I have demanding that these ‘good christian nationalist folk’ practice Godliness in all their affairs, practice “liberty and justice for all” every day and ensure these concepts in their governing coalition. Rabbi Heschel is calling out the people who spout religious wisdom and don’t live it, calling out the charlatans who speak so lovingly of their god while practicing idolatry. Even our Founding Fathers knew one could not have a “bifurcation of the secular and the sacred” and have a democracy. It takes “God” to have a democracy because God is the originator of “proclaim Freedom thought out the land and to all its inhabitants therein”, God is the originator of “love the stranger”, “love your neighbor because s/he is like you”, etc. How, then can we ensure “liberty and justice for all” without a higher authority than our bastardizations, our mendacities, our greed and thirst for power?

My friend and teacher, Dr. Harry Hartounian writes: “their is a vast difference between knowing the path and walking the path…To live the program means to embody its principles in every aspect of our lives”. This way of being a recovering human being is essential for long-term recovery, the same is true for our freedoms and our democracy! This is the reason I added the Pledge of Allegiance. While our Founding Fathers were certainly imperfect, they left us a road map and a legacy of struggling with doing the next right things, with the goal of “liberty and justice for all”, with the mandate to be one grain of sand better each day than they were so we can “trudge the road of happy destiny” together, with all of our disagreements. “One nation, indivisible” doesn’t mean we all agree, we speak with one voice, it means, I believe, the exact opposite! We do not speak with one voice and because we create such a cacophony of sound and ideas, we are stronger and more whole for our differences, for our wrestling to find the next best action to take, for our safeguarding of the sacredness of freedom and democracy.

It is a nuanced way of living, putting together the sacred and the secular. Yet, it seems simple. Whether your “golden rule” is “do unto others as you have them do unto you” or “what is hateful to you do not do to another”; being decent, being kind, being just, being merciful, being able to admit one’s errors, being able to accept the amends of another, being able to accept being forgiven and being able to forgive another, and so much more stems from a strong, robust, maturing spiritual core-not our servants-our rational minds! We the People are being called to let go of our binary thinking, to engage in the ways of Biblical thinking and doing, to use the prophets as our guides in dealing with our inner lives and our outer ones. We are being told to stop with our rationalizations and our greed, let go of our need to be right and optics uber alles. We the People are stuck in a vicious cycle that the Founding Fathers might have foreseen and tried to inoculate us from, however We the People gave into being stupid and simplistic, letting go of our God-given gift of discernment and distinguishing, which is the reason the 2nd sentence above is so crucial to living Godly, to not compound the tragedy of “the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and the sacred”. I will write on this sentence tomorrow.

I have combined the “secular and the sacred” every day of my recovery-I could not have any recovery without doing this. Sure I could maybe not drink, I would be a dry drunk. The key to keeping my recovery growing, to keeping my freedom intact, to safeguarding my connection to God is immersing myself in the BOTH/AND- the sacred and the secular together in one moment, in every moment. Just as “the prophet is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times” as Rabbi Heschel teaches, so too do I have to do this, I have to hold the secular and the sacred, the person who loves me and the one who hates me together with God, to see their Divine Image, and it is HARD TO DO!! Yet, I keep making this my daily goal, I keep finding new ways to accept my progress and lack thereof-depending on the moment. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Are you more concerned with the "blights of society" or with "getting yours, no matter what the cost"? Year 4 Day 270

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 270

“A white preacher declared: “The job of a minister is to lead the souls of men to God, not bring about confusion by getting tangled up in transitory social problems.” In contrast to this definition, the prophets passionately proclaim that God himself is concerned with “the transitory social problems”, with the blights of society, with the affairs of the marketplace.”(Thunder in the Soul pg. 53)

The quote above was during the Civil Rights protests because of being denied constitutional rights because of racism and it is eerily appropriate in this moment!With the ICE Raids on people of color, especially Hispanic people, with the anti-semitism being spewed and welcomed by the Far Right and Far Left-which may not be so ‘far’ anymore, and the silence of so many of those “good christian folk and clergy’ who keep proclaiming their cruelty is “in the Name of Jesus”, our country is at a crossroads, our freedoms are being attacked and decimated and We the People can no longer depend on anyone but We the People to save us, to save our democracy, to save the freedoms that our ancestors, parents, fought for and died for.

Who are these “white preachers” to tell We the People that God doesn’t care about the marketplace when we are commanded to do business ethically and morally, when we are commanded to use true weights and measures, when, rather than the “buyer beware”, the Jewish tradition teaches: “the seller must disclose”! There are over 100 laws regarding “kosher” (fitting and proper) ways to do business. The prophets railed against the priests who, like the “white preachers” mentioned above and those of today, bastardized the words of God, the teachings of the Bible. Aren’t these “transitory social problems” exactly what Jesus was speaking about, preaching about and working to change?

This is the calamity of our moment, of our generation: we have forgotten the words and deeds of the prophets, we have not immersed ourselves in their stories and the stories of the times they lived in-seeing it only as myth and not relevant to our lives, to helping us make more money to buy more stuff, to be more distracted, etc. The prophets are our hope and our “pathway to a richer and more meaningful life”, they are the messengers from God that keep speaking to us, that keep calling us to account and keep shouting from the rooftops that We the People Can Be Better; that We the People Can Make Changes and, in turn, change the trajectory of our individual and our communal living. This may be the greatest message of all from the prophets: We the People are not stuck in the quicksand of needs and desires, We the People are not stuck in the self-obsessive, narcissism of the Kings of Israel after King David, We the People are not stuck in the cruelty of Cain, the need to hate and kill our brothers/neighbors.

The question for We the People, of course is: What will it take for us to heed the call of the prophets, to hear the Voice on Sinai that is calling us back, that is begging for us to return to the Covenant of love, justice, truth, kindness, compassion? Every one of the Prophets, while being pissed off mightily, all remind We the People that God wants us back, God will “heal our backsliding and take us back in love” (Jeremiah 3:22). The Prophet Hosea speaks about Israel (We the People) being adulterers and whores AND, God will still take us back, love us, heal us, and support us. Yet, We the People continue to ignore these words, ignore the call, blind ourselves to the natural consequences of our behaviors, of our lack of returning, of our need to blame, of our need to be cruel to ‘those people’ and We the People will pay the price that our inattention to the prophets brought about 2500+ years ago, 2000 years ago and many times since-the destruction of freedom, of democracy, the initiation of slavery, the takeover by autocrats, grifters, liars. Sound familiar anyone???!!

We the People have the solution to the issue facing us right here, right now: The Mitzvot; taking the next right action, immersing ourselves in the ideas, ideals, ways of the Bible, following the examples of Jesus, living the life the prophets give us the blueprint for. Living by the laws of Kosher Business, living by the laws of decency towards one another, living by the laws of holiness, of caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the needy and the poor, living a life of meaning and purpose, living as the Japanese say: your ikigai. When We the People are immersed in the Bible, when we are dedicated to the Mitzvot, when we follow the steps of Jesus behaviors, not just the steps he walked, We the People are connected to the source of freedom, justice, mercy, kindness and truth which propels us forward even more. We the People have a conviction like the people of the Civil Rights Era had and We the People will not be stopped, We the People will not give up our freedoms, We the People will vanquish the autocrat at our door, at least for this moment. Then, We the People must commit to study the prophets, immerse ourselves in the Bible and find the similarities and the needs we have for those who ‘are not like us’ and love them because they are like ourselves.

This is a passion I have dealt with for a long time. My father was a firebrand when it came to justice, to racial equality, to the “affairs of the marketplace”. He did not live to see his beliefs come to fruition, he did instill in his sons and daughter a passion for ethical behavior, a demand to do the next right thing, a need to look inside of ourselves. While I was later to the party than my siblings, these ways have been and continue to be my guiding light, my north star, my home base. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Being a Citizen and not a Bystander, Being Human and not Cruel - Year 4 Day 269

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 269

“The prophet is a person who suffers the harms done to others…All prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53)

Rabbi Heschel’s words above remind us that God’s relationship with humanity is personal. It is not ethereal, it is not too far away, it is not about reward and punishment, it is all about connection. When human beings engage in evil, when human beings harm another human being, especially for sport, God ‘suffers’. What is more important, to me as I immerse myself in the words above: We the People, being descendants of the prophets, need to “suffer the harms done to others” and we are not! This is the tragedy of our time, of every era where cruelty and power went unchecked, unchallenged, whenever slavery was seen as good, and serving the power structure was more important than serving God, serving Truth, serving Kindness.

Throughout the Bible, we learn that “God is not indifferent to evil”, what we have failed to put into practice is the command to We the People that We cannot be “indifferent to evil” either since we are divine reminders, fulfilling a divine need, a spiritual being connecting with the spiritual force of the universe. Yet, we continue to give in to the baser parts of our nature, rather than learn from the incident of Cain and Abel, we continue to find reasons to “hate our brother in our heart” going against the commandment in the Holiness Code. Rather than understand the despicable ways Rebecca and Jacob treated Esau, rather than admonish Jacob’s inability to connect with his twin, with his sons, with his wives, even Rachel, we laud Jacob as some kind of hero-when the Bible tells us that he gave up the gift of prophecy when it was needed most, on his deathbed, in order to admonish all of his sons except Joseph and Judah and continue to favor Joseph by giving him the double portion. The Biblical stories point out both the good and the not good in human behavior and We the People are charged with seeing both and doing good! Jacob never made the full transition from con-man to leader, from thief to citizen, from being like Laban to being more like Isaac and this is sad, not something to be celebrated, IMO.

The Bible tells the story of the evil of slavery and then continues to make the Exodus story central to Jewish thinking and, hopefully, in the minds of all people. Our job as Jews is to remind people that the Exodus story comes to announce that SLAVERY, CRUELTY, MENDACITY is EVIL-FULL STOP! Yet, as we see in both Israel and the United States, Jews in power positions both in Government and Business are worshiping at the feet of cruel people, rejoicing in the cruelty done to another, agreeing with the Christian Nationalist Preachers who proclaim God loves cruelty done in the name of KEEPING WHITE PEOPLE IN CHARGE! WTF Bibi, WTF Lutnick, WTF Kushner, WTF We the People?!?!?!?

Rabbi Heschel teaches elsewhere that God created humanity in God’s Image so we would be the representatives of goodness, truth, kindness, love, compassion/pathos here on earth. We the People have FAILED miserably. I am using capital letters because I am enraged with the current situation which is reminiscent of other times in history and We the People fail miserably to learn from our previous errors. It is time for We the People to live into the ethical will left to us by the prophets, to live into and act upon their words and deeds, to stop hiding from our souls, from our truths, from the call to action that the Voice from Sinai emanates each day. It is time for We the People to engage with one another as human beings, not as objects to conquer. It is time for We the People to say NO to those who promote cruelty and hatred, racism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia as ways to get people to ‘be on our side, the white race’s side’. The fact that even people of color, even people of the marginalized groups join with the cruelty and hatred people is beyond my comprehension and it shows the depths of our separation from what God demands, what the Bible teaches us, and our rejection of decency, truth, love, kindness as the pillars upon which a good life is built.

Yet, we still have people today who care, who are able to emulate the Pathos of God, who revel in being concerned about the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow and orphan, who demand justice for all, equal justice under the law, who believe that dogma alone will enslave us much like Pharaoh did, and are, like the prophets, affected by what humans do to another human being. This is the call of today’s situation in the world, in our country, in our cities and in our homes. It is time for truth to win out, it is time for compassion to be in the forefront, it is time for We the People to remember that our family history is replete with immigrants who came here legally and illegally to find a better life for themselves and for us. It is time for We the People to end the tyranny of Christian Nationalism, Trumpism, Maga-ism, and every other ism and “Proclaim Freedom throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein”(Lev 25:10) which is the ultimate goal of God and the prophets!

I cannot believe “how the mighty have fallen” and how so many of us allowed the fall from grace to happen. I look at the numerous warnings given and the ways the warnings of myself and colleagues from all faiths were silenced by “political correctness”, by worrying more about “optics” than truth, by ignoring the calls of the prophets for the call of quiet, of nice, of binary thinking. I am saddened by the current state of affairs and angry that we got here. I have hope that We the People will wake up soon and I will keep reminding us to! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Are you aware of how/when you are "decent and sinister, pious and sinful"? Year 4 Day 268

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 268

“The prophets’ great contribution to humanity was the discover of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful. (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53)

The “evil of indifference”, in my opinion, can be traced back to Cain’s statement/question: “Am I my brother’s keeper”. It was the prophets who called it out, who named it, yet throughout the Bible we are taught about the consequences from committing “the evil of indifference” and they are never good! In the time of the prophets it led to the disappearance of the Kingdom of Israel and “the lost tribes”, while in Judea it led to the destruction of the 1st and 2nd Temples and exile of which the 2nd exile lasted almost 1900 years. “The evil of indifference” is a powerful force and one that seems to defy logic, defy learning from, defy the myriad of attempts by Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, and the spiritually religious leaders who followed them to be aware of this evil and to combat it! No matter how hard people like Buber, Einstein, Merton, Rohr, Rabbi Heschel, Reverend King have tried, We the People seem to find our way back to this most terrible of evils.

Listening to the “religious” zealots on both ends of the continuum because their voices are so loud, their tactic is to drown out any other voice, to cause chaos and proclaim their ‘allegiance’ to their god, which is the ‘real god’, is the pathway to “indifference”. It is too hard to decipher what they mean because they never mean what they say. It is too confusing to be bombarded with “what the Bible says” by people who are not quoting the spiritual message of the Bible, of the New Testament, of the Koran, rather they are spouting verses out of context to support their agenda. The ‘religious’ leaders in the government in Israel like Smotrich and Ben G’Vir are perfect examples of “pious and sinful” because rather than call out “the evil of indifference” , they revel in it, they promote it, they rally their followers to do ‘what is written’ as long as one doesn’t read verses like “love the stranger”, “love your neighbor”, “one law for the citizen and stranger alike”, etc. Their piety is real, what they are pious about is not Godly, it is their grab and grasp of human power which they want so they can become like the Taskmasters in Egypt. This is the power and the evil that the indifference of We the People can lead to!

Here in America, listening to some of the Clergy who preach hatred of ‘the other’, who extol the cruelty of ICE, who applaud the injustice being perpetrated upon Trump’s enemies, who dance every time there is a Supreme Court decision limiting the freedoms of ‘this group or that group’, I am appalled and enraged. Who the hell are these charlatans, these idolators who claim to be talking about ‘the good book’ while preaching from the dictators, the authoritarians play book? More importantly, how have We the People fallen for their lies, what is overriding our soul’s call, how has the Voice from Sinai been shouted down by these liars and by our own fears, false needs?

I believe because We the People have accepted and lived into an inauthentic lifestyle for far too long! The Exodus story, whether it can be proved or not, is the story of leaving the narrowness of our indifference for the wide open spaces of holiness, of Godliness, of spiritual health and of letting go of our inauthenticity, our mendacity, and our blurred eyesight. When we are living according to societal norms, democracy can only last 250 years before it disintegrates, yet living according to “love the stranger, love your neighbor, redeem the captive, redeem your neighbor”, than the proclamation of “freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” lasts forever, in word and in deed. When we live into the “radical amazement”, which Rabbi Heschel calls the only path to an authentic awareness of what is, We the People no longer can be indifferent, We can no longer keep the blinders on, We can no longer repeat the words nor the sentiment of Cain. We the People will be leading rather than following, we will end our rationalizations of “but I am a good person”, “everyone else does it”, “I don’t want to be a chump”, and so many other ones that lead us to rolling around in and immersed in “the evil of indifference”! The need that so many of We the People have to enslave another, to do whatever it takes to gain and hold power, to lie, cheat and steal to have wealth, to screw over the very people who have helped us and, in the case of our elected officials, whom we have trusted to have our best interests at heart  is the essence of the issue: What makes We the People live and support another(s) who is “decent and sinister, pious and sinful”?

The response I can give is, based on my personal experience, FOMO, fear of missing out, fear of being laughed at, fear of being under the control of an asshole so I became the asshole instead, I became the President of my youth group and a thief, I went to shul and hustled hot merchandise, I tried to live in two worlds and the split kept getting wider and wider and, while I was aware of my indifference to the evil I saw and was perpetrating, I was incapable of change-until I wasn’t, until I heard the Voice from Sinai, in a jail cell, until I began studying and immersing myself in the Bible, in Rabbi Heschel, in the practice of T’Shuvah, etc. Since that fateful day, almost 39 years ago, I do not engage in “the evil of indifference”, I call it out, I rail against it, I am unable “to stand idly by the blood of my neighbor” even when my neighbor doesn’t want me around. I am accused of bringing chaos to situations and I wear this accusation as a badge of honor because the chaos I bring is in the spirit of the prophets, it is calling out the decent who are sinister, the pious who are sinful and I refuse to stop. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

"The Evil of Indifference" is always with/within us - Year 4 Day 268

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 268

“The prophets’ greatest contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 53)

I believe that one of “the prophets’ greatest contribution to humanity” is to name and call out “the evil of indifference”, without fear nor favor. The prophets were not professionals at their craft, there was/is no training for the ‘job’, precisely because being a prophet is not a job, it is not something one learns in school, it is a calling that comes from the depths of our being, ie, our souls, and is, as Jeremiah reports, a fire in the belly that cannot be put out. The story of Jonah and ‘the big fish’ shows how impossible it is to ignore, run away from, and not heed the call that may or may not emanate from outside of us and certainly gnaws at our insides until we answer and act on this calling. We the People are descendants of the prophets, We the People get the same gnawing inside of us, We the People find ourselves face to face with injustice, with a lack of mercy, with mendacity, just as the prophets did. The difference being; We the People have settled into, accepted, and are willingly participating in “the evil of indifference”! How sad and tragic, how devastating and despicable, how We the People have twisted ourselves into pretzels and become caricatures of what a human being is so we can ‘go along to get along’.

I hold our clergy, our politicians, our wealthy most responsible while still calling out the co-signing and lying We the People are doing. We have had 2000 years to refine our prophetic voices, 2000 years to make the changes the prophets called for in how we treat one another, 2000 years to improve our “conscious contact with God” and 2000 years to imbue the call from Mount Sinai and We the People have failed miserably! It is inconceivable to me, on one hand, that we have fallen so far back as to be in the same situation as the one the prophets saw 2000-2300 years ago AND, it is totally understandable to me that We the People have refused to act upon the call of the Bible to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God” because it may not ‘get us to the top of the heap’! We the People have become more and more engaged with our egos, with how things look than with the call of our inner life. We the People are indifferent to the suffering of another(s) because it means there is more for us. We the People are so willfully blind, we cannot see that the people in charge; the clergy, the wealthy, the politicians are lying to us, do not care a lick about us and will screw us the first chance they get because power is all they are after. With power, they have wealth, with wealth and power they can refine their mendacious skills and ways for their own benefit, and as we see from the times of the prophets, the lies they tell themselves leads to their destruction and to ours! Yet, We the People continue to engage in the evil of indifference and applaud the indifference these ‘good religious folks’ lead us to.

“How is this possible” many people ask and I know engagement with the evil of indifference” begins at home, at the kitchen, dinner tables, at our mother’s tits and our father’s hands. Because We the People have bought the lies of society, the bullshit of the ‘preacher man’ and the belief stated in Fiddler on the Roof-“when you’re rich they think you really know”. The fear of failure, the fear of looking stupid, the fear of not being perfect and beaten up because of our mistakes, the fear of … has led parents and children to ignore the teachings of the prophets, to ignore the words of the Bible-no matter how much they “quote the Good Book”! We the People are being called to come home to our essence, being called to return to our core so our backsliding can be healed, being called to remember we are loved, we are worthy, we have infinite dignity and we are unique! This is the call that is emanating from Sinai, this is the teachings of the prophets, this is the way home!

We the People need to immerse ourselves in the words of the prophets rather than just skim them or even study them-immersion in their words is the process of taking in the moment they are in, seeing the moment we are in and using their wisdom, their call, their demands, their actions in our daily living, adapting and adopting their wisdom to the moment we are in. Yet, most families, if they talk at all at the dinner table ask about school, work, blah, blah, blah. Is it any wonder the words and deeds of the prophets are lost? Is it any wonder that the Clergy, the Wealthy, the Politicians belief so fiercely and completely that they only have to show their decency and piousness for We the People to allow, not notice, ignore, be indifferent to their sinisterness and their sinfulness?? It is time to take off our blinders, to end the evil of indifference from flourishing and to HEAR, LISTEN AND UNDERSTAND that the CALL from Sinai is as loud as it was 3500 years ago, the wisdom of the prophets as meaningful and needed to day as it was 2300 years ago and We the People have to answer these calls.

Knowing the power of “the evil of indifference” didn’t stop me, from age 15-37 from engaging with it, capitalizing on it as people are today and this is the sin I continue to make living amends for today. I know the call of my soul, I feel the fire in my belly and I am unable to not be loud, annoying, some would say obnoxious, and unwavering in my calling out to you, to me, to the communities I am in and to the larger community what I see, what my soul is telling me and how to live into the words and ways of the prophets, of the Bible, learning from the errors of our ancestors and improving on their ‘success’. This is the way I immerse myself, this is the way I become one grain of sand better each day, this is the way I walk my talk. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

Comment

Are you aware of when, why and how you practice the "evil of Indifference"? Year 4 Day 267

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 267

“There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.52)

In 1999 Elie Wiesel spoke to then President Clinton et al about “indifference”. He defined it as “no difference”, calling it “a strange and unnatural state”. Mr Wiesel was a friend of Rabbi Heschel’s, they would walk together on Shabbat after services he related to me when I had the opportunity to meet him. In his White House speech, he railed agains the “indifference” he saw in the moment and throughout the history of the 20th Century, in his own unique manner and, yet, his words, like Rabbi Heschel’s words above, are not being heeded in this moment! When we have law firms, Supreme Court Justices, Members of Congress all shirking their oaths to justice, to the Constitution, to the Bill of Rights, because they are afraid of the bully in the White House and his cruel minions, we are seeing “indifference” in full color and the crumbling of our freedoms right before our eyes. When We the People keep allowing boats to be “shot out of the water” on suspicion rather than fact, on propaganda rather than truth, and do nothing, we are guilty of “indifference”.

When “we remain neutral, impartial, not easily moved by the wrongs” being done to Hispanics right now-you notice there are no white people who are here illegally:Bullshit-are under attack and many of We the People justify and rationalize the cruel and unusual punishment by ICE and this administration as it is against ‘those people’. When the President of the United States avers he “hates my enemies”, and no one says anything, when this language is cheered, we aer witnessing the the “more contagious, more dangerous” aspect of “indifference”. When We the People are unable to say hello to a person in the street, when we are unable to acknowledge the cashier in the store, when we cut people off the road because we are ‘in a hurry’ without noticing their need to get where they are going, we are practicing and living into our own “indifference”. When We the People stay silent in the face of prejudice and bigotry, when we turn our eyes away from the suffering of people who are not us, when we proclaim that only ‘our god is the king’, or ‘I follow the Bible(the one that no one has ever seen because the actions of the people who say this are not the actions of Christ), and point our fingers at “those people”, “the vermin poisoning the blood of our children” as Trump et al like to say, we are in the throes of “indifference” and the slippery slope has gotten more slippery.

“Indifference to evil” seems to have reached a high point in our time. Donald Trump is the prime example of how New York society allowed him to create a persona out of lies, how NBC TV pushed his cruelty and were “indifferent” to how he treated people, especially women of color, on The Apprentice and even used the cruelty as a selling point. They improved on the false self that Trump created in New York, they were “indifferent” to the lies and cruelty of Trump’s real business dealings, and We the People just lapped it up! When he falsely accused President Obama of not being a US citizen, people were indifferent to the bullshit and lies of an attention seeker. When he spoke about “rapists, criminals, etc, calling them vermin, saying, in essence, he was the ‘great white hope’, We the People were indifferent to his way of being, we allowed him to steal an election and then, knowing full well his promises to “get retribution”, to “help the wealthy”, We the People elected him again-this is a prime example of “makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted”.

This is our conundrum, how to ‘put the genie back in the bottle’. What will it take for We the People to leave our state of “indifference”? First of all, We have to recognize that we are in it. We are being called by the moment to end our rationalizations, end our hiding our heads in the sand, end our fear of being singled out and caught up in the morass that people like Jim Comey, Leticia James, etc are in, and say NO to these liars and idolators, NO to these haters and evil doers, NO to the wrecking ball that is coming at all of our freedoms, NO to the battering ram that is tearing down the Constitution of the United States, NO to the arsonists attempting to burn the Declaration of Independence, NO to the renewed Klu Klux Klan that is spreading disinformation re: Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims while recruiting members of these minorities to do their bidding! This is how insidious our “indifference” has become-the cruel taskmasters get their targets to perpetrate evil onto their own ‘tribe’, people. WTF??!! We the People have to wake up, We have to read Elie Wiesel’s speech again, We have to remember the Pharaoh in Egypt who “did not know Joseph” and We have to stop giving in to the evil of “indifference”.


I know this place, I know how terrible it is to engage in “indifference” and, more so, how devastating it is to be on the receiving end of “indifference”. As a former criminal, the discriminations I faced were pretty harsh, both the outward ones and, even more so, the subtle quiet ones-like “indifference” to my ability to turn my life around and make a living, not hold my actions against my family, and not turn away from me in disgust. Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, turned towards me and this became my role model, Harriet Rossetto turned towards all inmates and this became the model for Beit T’Shuvah, which has saved 1000’s of lives and families. “Indifference” is a place I haven’t visited since I left prison in 1988 and I refuse to go back there. I pray you wake up to your own and leave this “insidious” and “contagious” way of being. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Comment

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