Are you denouncing the "perversion" of religion or going along with the perversion that is happening right now? Year 4 Day 299

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 299

“It was not the lack of religion but the perversion of it that the prophets of Israel denounced…The greater the man, the more his is exposed to sin. Piety is at times evil in disguise, an instrument in the pursuit of power.” ( Thunder in the Soul pg. 41)

Happy Chanukah! Tonight is the first night of Chanukah and, as I heard from a Rabbi yesterday, whether one is celebrating the impossible victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks, the myth of the oil, lighting the Chanukiah is important and special. AND, I pray that We the People do not use Chanukah as an excuse for “evil in disguise” as some of the ultra-orthodox in Israel and in America do. The fight of the Maccabees is, in many ways, our fight today. “All who are for God come with me” Mattathias  is supposed to have said and today, We the People are being called to be “for God” and the confusing, the “evil in disguise” is what ‘god’ are people standing for and with? Is it Adonai who calls out to us on Mount Sinai to not lie, cheat, steal, whore ourselves, covet what someone else has, honor parents, love the stranger, care for the needy and poor, love one another, etc or the God who says kill them all, women and children along with the men, who is xenophobic and narcissistic? The later is the God that Smotrich and Ben G’Vir, Cain-White, Osteen, Hagee, et al worship and are spewing the hatred of one another out like lava flowing from a volcano.

Yet, the Maccabees fought for Adonai, to not have the Temple defiled with Greek philosophy, Greek mythology and, then, when in power, they succumbed to the Hellenistic influence, succumbed to the lies of Rome, and eventually were partners, unwittingly, in the destruction of the 2nd Temple. This is how subtle “piety is … an instrument in the pursuit of power.” So, reading these words, listening to Rabbis proclaim that the only “separation” in Judaism today is “are you for Israel or are you against Israel”, denominations mean nothing and it is only Israel that matters, makes me, and I pray many of We the People yearn for a deeper study of the prophets, a more spiritually aware group of Rabbis and a T’Shuvah, a Return to following Adonai, who wants us to be decent, who calls for us to make our corner of the world a little better, who demands truth, justice, mercy, and walking in/on the path towards wholeness/holiness.

It is inconceivable to me that the prophets are so ignored by today’s clergy (truth be told by clergy throughout the modern era) and, when used, their words are taken out of context, to prove a specious argument of the Rabbis, the Priests, Ministers-not to hear “The Word” from Sinai, from Jerusalem, from Samaria! Like the Kings of the Northern Kingdom and of Judea, the people in power today, Trump, Bibi, Putin, Xi, have been exposed to so much sin they are bathing in it and, unfortunately, too spiritually immature, too spiritually and morally bankrupt to get out of the tub of sin they are in. In fact, to our great dismay and the dismantling of the values found in the 10 Sayings and in the Bible, they are luxuriating in the tub of sin they are in. While one can point to reasons these leaders are so corrupt, so full of shit, the real point of the words above are for We the People! WTF, People? How have We allowed our holy books to be so bastardized, what has propelled us to draw the bath water of sin these leaders, their minions and, by extension, We the People are swimming in? Is this really the call of our your souls? Is this really the path of holiness/wholeness that We the People believe in? NOT ME, NOT MANY OTHER PEOPLE, SO what are we to do?

The solution to this issue which has plagued us FOREVER, is to go back to the Prophets, Immerse ourselves in their wisdom, in their words, in their messages, Take the action of RETURNING to God, as the prayer we say when return the Torah to the Ark, Return us to You, Adonai and we will Return, our days will be like they used to be-when we were in living the covenantal relationship, doing our part as we promised at Sinai. This is what this moment, every moment calls for. It is especially crucial right now when there are a critical mass of people who are “running after  a majority(actually a plurality) to do evil”. We the People have to throw the LYING RABBIS, PRIESTS, MINISTERS who claim God hates the poor, God wants the annihilation of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, God wants the wanton killing of boats in the Caribbean, God wants to upend the drug cartel led by Maduro in Venezuela while praising and giving a pardon to Honduran ex-President Hernandez, etc. If this isn’t “piety is at times evil in disguise”, I do not know what is. Change will only come when We the People demand it, when We the People make spiritual progress, spiritual maturity, spiritual education a priority, rather than believing the lies of those ‘pious’ people who want to destroy the moral foundation of God, who want to destroy the beating for freedom, for democracy found in every soul. We the People have to stand against these liars, these charlatans, and do it NOW.

I have railed against this bullshit behavior forever, even as a kid. The difference between then and now is that I could be and was co-opted by the shiny pot of gold that was promised and I went down a horrific path to spiritual bankruptcy. Only through Chapter 11 as the prophets demanded I go through, have I been able to replenish the spiritual bank account and add much to it which is my both my/our birthright and obligation. I cannot be co-opted today, I can’t put up with the lies and the bullshit anymore. My voice has to speak, whether it is heard or not, is not up to me, it is up to you and We the People. I pray I speak in ways that can be heard, I pray that my repeating the messages of the prophets is helpful and I cannot stop calling out the evil that so many people are bathing in. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into the counterparts of our nature, of God’s Nature Year 4 Day 298

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 298

“No single attribute can convey the nature of God’s relationship to man. Since justice is His nature, love, which would disregard the evil deeds of man, our contradict His nature. Because of His concern for man, His justice is tempered with mercy. Divine anger is not the antithesis of love, but its counterpart, a help to justice as demanded by true love.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 40)

In these words above, Rabbi Heschel is explaining the ‘dual’ nature of God, the ‘dual’ nature of human beings. Yet, as I hear him saying, these are not ‘dual’ natures, these seemingly opposite attributes are “counterparts” and when we are not having one balance the other, one be the argued of the other, We the People are out of proper measure and, by being in this state, doing evil, doing wrong, and harming our souls, harming the people around us, and, of course harming God.

Accepting that our natures are not contradictory is a sign of spiritual and psychological maturity. It is an acceptance of truth at it’s most basic and deepest level. To know that our attributes have to work together so we can a) do our work; b) realize and learn more about our soul’s call; c) accept our imperfections as opportunities for growing; d) being part of a community that is engaged in spiritual, psychological growth in order to be more aware of and live into our higher consciousness more and more.

This is what I am hearing from Rabbi Heschel’s words today. It is one of the most important lessons for parenting, for teaching, for counseling, for living a whole life, a holy life. Unfortunately, our religious education doesn’t do this, it is more focused on believing, on rituals, on technical skills-all of which are also important and have their place- and not on the what these practices do for the soul, the mind of the individual. We the People have lost a generation or two/three because the Clergy preach and don’t relate the preaching and the Bible to what we are going through today for the majority of people. They dictate, they teach about the ugly parts of the Bible, they just don’t focus on the 10 Sayings, on the Mitzvot that teach about “God’s love” for the widow and the orphan, “God’s”commitment to obtain “justice” for the stranger, the poor, the needy. We the People have ignored the truth that the Bible gives us, the divine gift of how to be in any and all situations, the key to understanding “God’s attributes” not as arbitrary and based on whims, rather as a deep concern for humankind and an attempt(s) to bring We the People home to our spiritual nature, home to the love we receive when we are surrounded by people who KNOW us, home to the strength of belonging. This is the true “nature of God” as it is the true nature of human beings.

Yet, once again because of our arrogance, because of the narcissistic nature We the People seem to embrace more and more, because of the need for power and control that some of We the People can never satisfy-we are living in another time where INJUSTICE is being spoken of as if it is “Justice” according to Jesus, according to ‘god’ of the power-hungry’s making. We are in the throes of retribution that is anything but divine, it is a seeking by the few to have power over the many, it is a power-play to ensure White Christian Nationalists keep the power they have now and expand it even more. The Jews who join them, like the Young Republicans, the Kushner, Lutnick, Miller, Bessent, are in for a rude awakening when the KKK rises up from the ashes and kicks the kikes out once and for all. While these Jews ignore the Goebbels’ messaging, the Kristalnacht pattern of ICE’s attacks, the ‘good Christian folk’ in the bowels of government, in the heights of K Street, are planning for the 4th Reich or something akin to it.

That any of We the People would believe that these clergy spouting bullshit supporting Trump, Bibi, Putin, an Israel that is unrecognizable to many of us, an America that many of us, stupidly, believed had grown, is good, is holy is UNIMAGINABLE! It is the height of stupidity and, here we are. We the People are living in the “worst of times” because we are living in the stupidest of times. We the People are being called by the words above, by the moment we are in to stand up, to call on our own inner “divine anger”, to realize the practice of “divine love” also means saying NO to lies, NO to cruelty, NO to injustice, NO to bullies, NO to greed, NO to destroying the soul of America, the soul of Israel. We the People are being called to say YES to JUSTICE, YES to LOVE, YES to MERCY, YES to CREATING SOULS as Abraham and Sarah taught us in the Bible. THE QUESTION IS: IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

Once again, I am animated beyond the beyond by Rabbi Heschel’s words and my understanding of them. I know that I am over the top about this and I still am because I know the danger of not recognizing danger quickly enough, not knowing the soul needs of ourselves and finding the ‘filling station’ for them. Because of not heeding these dangers, because of my inability to hear and listen, I went down to the depths of hell and took no prisoners. Only through hearing God’s “anger”, only by experiencing God’s “concern” for me, only by experiencing “His justice tempered with mercy” have I been able to grow my spiritual life, be in the process of maturing my soul and live with the dignity and worth that I was endowed with at birth. There are no words to describe the blessing and gift that divine justice, divine mercy, divine anger and divine love have combined to help my life flourish. Living in the counterparts of our nature, of our attributes, has given me a life way beyond my deserving and I experience joy all the time. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What gives anyone the "right" to say God is Indifferent to the suffering of people? Year 4 Day 297

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 297

“Those of us to whom the crimes of the world are mere incidents, and the agony of the poor is one of the many facts of life, may be inclined to describe the God of the prophets as stern, arbitrary, inscrutable, even unaccountable. But the thought of God and indifference to other people’s suffering are mutually exclusive.” ( Thunder in the Soul pg. 39)

Being a member of We the People both as a Jew and an American, as a person of faith and a person in recovery, knowing the spiritual truths of the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Law, the Constitution, the thought of “indifference” by God, by me makes my soul tremble, my body shudder, and my entire being scream out at this lie. Throughout the Bible, the very essence of both theDeclaration of Independence and the Constitution the knowing of God’s caring about the suffering of the poor, the needy, the stranger, the widow, the orphan is abundantly clear!

So WTF, PEOPLE, what in the world is the basis for the cruelty, the meanness, the inflicting of suffering on ‘those’ people that is so rampant today? How does anyone explain away the attacks on Maduro as a leader of a drug cartel while PARDONING the Ex-Honduran President who was responsible for 500 million pounds of Cocaine coming into the U.S? How does one reconcile the treatment of women, calling them stupid, ‘piggy’, ‘low IQ’, etc when ‘christian’ values say that respect for women is so important, when Mike Pence consults ‘mother’ on everything and then these ‘fine christian men’ treat women with such disrespect.

In what world is a ClergyPerson who spouts hatred for their perceived ‘enemy’ and a ‘kill them all’ attitude going against so many commands in the Bible, hailed as a ‘man/woman’ of God- WHAT GOD are “THEY” talking about? Certainly not Adonai, certainly not God at Sinai who begins the explanation of the 10 sayings by detailing how to live with one another, how to be kind, decent, with and towards one another, the consequences when one isn’t and to “treat the stranger well because you were strangers in the land of EGYPT”! Everyone who lives here, with the exception of Native Americans, are/were strangers and the treatment of immigrants/strangers is abominable, it is Anti-Christian, it is Anti-Jewish and Clergy, people of both of these faiths are leading the parade to cause the stranger in our midst more “suffering” and calling it GODLY! OY!

This is, I believe, the main reason people leave religious life, why the Synagogue and the Church lose members, why the teachings of Christ, of Moses, are ignored: because young people smell and detect bullshit and lies, mendacity and deceptions in the Clergy, in the so-called leaders of the institutions, and reject the lies, reject the cruelty. In this way, they are closer to God as the prophets experience God than the supposed ‘people of God’, the clergy who believe and justify cruelty, suffering, because ‘those’ people deserve it. Miller, Noem, Trump, Vance, Kushner: HOW IN THE HELL CAN YOU CONTINUE TO CAUSE THIS SUFFERING WHEN YOUR PEOPLE, YOUR ANCESTORS WERE STRANGERS, WERE PIMPS, WERE PERSECUTED? I am aghast at the actions that these elected and, mostly, non-elected officials are taking. It is a joke that the worst crimes being committed today are by the un-elected officials who are heading up different parts of the government supposedly run by THE SLEEPY DON, not the strong DON, not the smart DON, the SLEEPY DON who makes Joe Biden look virile and strong, with it and on top of everything!

God does not inflict suffering upon people! When the consequences of human behaviors are delineated in the Bible, by the prophets, it is not God’s choice to see the suffering people cause themselves and one another. God cries each night, according to the Talmud, because “my children are in exile”, while the prophets remind us over and over again that God wants our return, each day in the daily prayers, 3 times a day, we refer to God as “the One who desires our return”!

God doesn’t punish us, no matter what the Rabbi, Priest, Minister, Imam may lie to us about, no matter what our parents may have spewed to us. God gives us the path to wholeness, to peace, to creating a holy, kind, loving society and We the People choose to fuck it up, to become jealous, envious as Cain was towards Abel and, like Cain we seek to kill our brothers, literally and/or figuratively. Be it actual blood relatives or another human being of any gender. WE THE PEOPLE MUST STOP THE LIES, STOP THE BLEEDING AND STOP SAYING IT IS ‘god’s’ WILL. The God that these mendacious deceiving creeps portray is another IDOL, like BAAL in the Bible-these ‘good christian, jewish, muslim, folk’ are the Money-Changers in the Temple that Christ railed about, the whores that Hosea speaks about and for this carnage to end, WE THE PEOPLE must act NOW!

I am writing a new book, using the prophets and God’s call through them to help us live in this moment, in every moment. I know that God and “indifference to other people’s suffering are mutually exclusive” because I have been the beneficiary of God’s love, direction, connection for the past 38+ years, since I began my return. II continue to write this blog to help all of us gather the strength to serve God, to serve one another, to serve the call of our souls by STANDING UP AGAINST CRUELTY, CALLING CRUELTY WHAT IT IS: IDOLATRY and serving God by eliminating or at least diminishing the suffering around us. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What is preventing We The People from hearing the call of the Poor, the Stranger, The PROPHETS? Year 4 Day 296

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 296

Those of us to whom the crimes of the world are mere incidents, and the agony ”of the poor is one of the many facts of life, may be inclined to describe the God of the prophets as stern, arbitrary, inscrutable, even unaccountable. But the thought of God and indifference to other people’s suffering are mutually exclusive.” ( Thunder in the Soul pg. 39)

Reading these words, living in this moment, seeing what is and what could be, hearing the prophets words and deeds ringing in my ears, I am angry, bewildered, in disbelief, and wildly enraged at the lack of understanding by We the People of the demand of this moment. We are in an experience, a situation where the words above are the predominant way our Government is working, the path that the Israeli government is taking and way too many of we the people are still supporting, sitting on our hands, going along with the cruelty, the “crimes”, “the agony of the poor”!

What is it about humanity that we can’t seem to hear the call of kindness, compassion, truth, love, justice that abounds in the universe? What is about We the People that, after all of these years, we continue to allow, promote even our reptilian brain over and above our gift to make free-will moral choices? What is so compelling about the “crimes of the world” that We the People allow and call them “mere incidents”?

Immersing myself in the words above, the phrases “that’s just the way it is” and “this is the way the world works” are BULLSHIT! They are society’s way of trying to clean up what it knows is WRONG! Yet, who is society if not We the People? Blaming society like it is some separate entity from oneself also points out how full of shit we humans can be! There is no such thing as a crime being a “mere incident” or “the agony of the poor is one of the many facts of life” to and for a person of faith, a person who values their relationship with the Ineffable One, with the Holy texts of their spiritual discipline and the liars and deceivers who claim “it says it in the Bible” are only reading parts of the Bible, and choosing to ignore the conflicting ideas found in the Bible. As my friend and teacher, Rabbi Hazan Danny Maseng teaches there are conflicting ideas of how to treat the stranger-36 times it says to love, welcome, care for the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt and a few times it says kill them all. The reptilian brain of the ‘orthodox’ has them choose the later while the discerning spirit, the intuitive mind has many of We the People choose the later. Unfortunately, as we see today and throughout history-the reptilian brain people usually win out.

As a Jew, knowing the crimes that have been perpetrated against me, against my people for the millennia, how can I NOT love the prophets, how can I NOT hear and follow the call of God to justice, the call of the prophets to RETURN to a way of being that honors higher consciousness, that honors spiritual knowing? As a human beings who are descendants of people who came to America, came to Israel seeking a respite from the discrimination, the narrow place of their former home, how can We the People NOT revel in the call of the prophets who are telling We the People that God is NOT indifferent, God is caring, loving, always wanting our return?

Listening to Trump, Netanyahu, and their spooky minions is terrifying, their deliberate appeal to the reptilian brain of the masses is meant to get ‘their people’ onboard and defending the worst of their crimes and it works! OY VAVOY!! The ways in which they dismiss “the agony of the poor”, the amount of “crimes” they themselves commit and then seek to have themselves exonerated is atrocious. What is more atrocious, however, is that We the People  have allowed them to get away with their crimes, We the People have helped them promote their grift, their killing of innocents, their horrific treatment of the stranger within our midst! This is the crime, We the People stand guilty of, this is the type of crime the prophets and God railed against, asked and begged the people of Israel and Judah to turn away from and THEY DID NOT. The result was the destruction of the way of life as they knew it, the result was a wandering that lasted almost 1900 years, the result was the mistreatment of Jews, the mendacity about Jews, the scapegoating of Jews and, in this moment, we see it all again! It began with Trans people, moved to ‘those’ people (people of Hispanic descent), came to embrace antisemitism, and even the FUCKING JEWS in Trump’s cabinet are embracing the people who spout this hatred, embracing Putin who is a war criminal, embracing Bibi who is also a war criminal to his own people, a willing participant in the Oct. 7th attack as evidenced by his unwillingness to hold an inquiry which is always done-Bibi was either asleep at the wheel or looking for an excuse to go into Gaza and, like Trump, Putin, et al no one is holding him accountable. This is why we have to SHEMA-Hear, Listen, Understand the words of the prophets so We the People will save our selves, honor our spirituality and hold assholes accountable for their crimes and no longer sit idly by the “cries of the poor”!

I have been the asshole who didn’t care about my own actions and re-living those moments makes me ill! This is the reason I have not been able to turn away from the poor, the reason I have sought spiritual growth and guidance at all times, to ensure I NEVER go back to the callousness, the cruelty of my youth. Living into being responsible to and for the prophetic inheritance I/we receive is difficult, it is lonely at times, it is off-putting to many. Yet, I have no choice. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark.

Are you so stuck in the lies you tell yourself that only Severity can tame you? Year 4 Day 295

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 295

“Severity must tame those whom love cannot win.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 39)

I have taken this sentence from yesterday because it both bothers me and I know the truth of it. I want to cry and scream, I want to be the instrument of “severity” towards the assholes who are actively enjoying their role in perpetrating the cruelty we see happening. I am shuddering inside because I know that the “severity” necessary to “tame those whom love cannot win” is so severe, so dangerous, so cruel in and of itself that it cannot be delivered by another human being, it has to be a divine command, a divine intervention.

I am so saddened by the truth of the statement above; there are people in power who are in love with their power, who worship their power, who believe their power gives them “certain unalienable rights” to upend the “unalienable rights” of whomever they deem as their ‘enemy’, whomever they want to use as a scapegoat, to use as a deflection from their grift, their lies, their indecency, their continuous grab for more: more power, more money, more land, more business, more sex, more, more, more. It is so disgusting that We the People have ourselves to be back in this dilemma, that we have returned to the love of autocracy and fascism, that we are gleefully returning to a state of being that reveres a Hitler and reviles a Moses. How have we fallen so far, how have we forgotten what it was like?

The sentence above is proven in the Bible by the story of the exodus from Egypt. The fact that the Pharaoh could not learn, could not surrender, could not hear of God’s love for the descendants of Jacob, is an indictment of inherited power, an accusation against the immature souls that seek, grab, maintain power when they have not a clue of what it means to BE HUMAN! Pharaoh did not care what it took for a person to feed their family, what it took to build the pyramids, what it took to be a person of faith, what it took to be a ruler/leader who actually cares about the people who have been entrusted to her/him! When we are in such a state, when we the people have sunk so low that we come to love the dictator who doesn’t give a shit, who doesn’t care about the sufferings of the people, what else but plagues will wake us up? Kindness is taken as weakness, love is used to make us co-dependent, truth is manipulated and denied so the lies of the Pharaoh, the Fuhrer, the Autocrat, are accepted by the useful idiots who lap up his/her every word, and spiritual growth is called treason, living justly is grounds for imprisonment, loving mercy is laughed at and called stupid. All of the tools of love, all of the actions of decency, all the mitzvot of the Bible, are jettisoned out of the consciousness of ‘der fuhrer’ and her/his acolytes, and We the People are left to call it out or succumb to the insanity. When we succumb, we experience/suffer the same consequences of severity, when we call it out, we experience the consequences of the crazy person in charge, the cruelty of the Pharaoh, the meanness of Attila, the vileness of Hitler. And today, We the People are experiencing the craziness of Trump, the cruelty of Miller, the meanness of Vance, the vileness of Bondi, the greed of Lutnick, the desecration of God’s Name by Kushner. One can throw Bibi Netanyahu along with Ben-G’Vir and Smotrich in the mix here as well. Don’t forget the cruelty of MBS, the vileness of Hamas also.

The question that is rising within me: “Are We the People willing to seek, hear, listen and understand the Moses for today? Are We the People ready to do battle against the evils of the current leadership here and in Israel? Are We the People willing to be part of the revolution that was begun in Egypt some 3500+ years ago, be a soldier in the cause of goodness and truth that Moses gave us the path to? Are We the People ready to experience the severity needed to WAKE US UP, to TAME THE PHARAOH? Are We the People prepared to leave the burdens of the slavery of addiction to power, addiction to fear? Are We the People willing to surrender to a power greater than ourselves that is also a part of ourselves, i.e. God? This is what it will take to teach ourselves to love again, to train ourselves to to care for the stranger, the widow, the poor, the needy. Are We the People soldiers or slaves?

These are the questions that I never asked myself prior to recovery, Pharaoh and Egypt had no relevance for me except the wonderful times at the Passover Seders with my Grandfather. Looking back on it now, I realize that my Grandfather, Abe Borovitz, was trying to teach his grandchildren what it meant to be free, what it meant to be part of a revolution begun so long ago and to never forget how tenuous freedom is, how the Cossacks are not annihilated, they are still in the shadows. He didn’t do this to make us paranoid, he was passing on his wisdom, his experiences, and he wanted us to understand the exodus from Egypt is still happening, Pharaoh is still chasing us and he did it so sweetly that I missed this message until right this minute. Oh Grandpa, I am so sorry I didn’t’ realize what you were saying and the trouble I caused because my ignorance, the ways I lived and acted that were so antithetical to you, to your life. In recovery, I am compelled to ask and respond to the questions above with a loud, a strong YES. I am called to action by the very Voice from Sinai that I denied for 20 years, that I ignored for 20 years and I refuse to ignore nor deny the Voice again. I realize that the severity of prison, the severity of being shunned was to “tame” me because “love” couldn’t. It is what makes co-dependency so dangerous and life-taking. I pray for all of us to learn from the “severity” so we can, going forward, be “tamed by love”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Time to be accountable for the cruelty We The People continue to inflict on one another - Year 4 Day 294

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 294

“To our mind, the terrible threats of castigation bespeak a lack of moderation. Is it not because we are only dimly aware of the full gravity of human failure, of the sufferings inflicted by those who revile God’s demand for justice? There is a cruelty which pardons, just as there is a pity that punishes. Severity must tame those whom love cannot win.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 39)

What is it about human beings that, with all of our ‘higher intellect’, we seem to be unable to learn from the past, to do T’Shuvah for “the full gravity of human failure”, for “the sufferings inflicted by those who revile God’s demand for justice”? I am filled with trembling at reading these words, while people don’t like to compare what is happening now with the 1930’s, is Putin any different than Hitler, is the Ukraine any different than Poland, is Trump any different than Chamberlain?? Is this moment that different than the time of the prophets calling to both Israel and Judea to “return to God”, are we still so deaf and dumb that we cannot believe, understand, hear that “God will heal our backsliding and return us in love”? It seems to be so, hence the words of the prophets, the predictions of the prophets are based in the truth that human failure is so grave, We the People are so stuck, so overwhelmed by our own self-deception and the deception by another(s), so fearful of FOMO, so needy for certainty, We the People seem incapable of doing T’Shuvah, of learning from our past, of changing the ways in which we live and act so we serve God instead of being part of those who revel in “the sufferings inflicted by those (of us) who revile God’s demand for justice”!

Rather than call out the BULLSHIT so-called christianity of Trump, Vought, and the myriad of ‘christian’ nationalists like the KKK was, rather than call BULLSHIT on the false ‘catholicism’ of Vance, et al, rather than call LIAR to Kushner, Lutnick, Wytkoff, et al, their followers among We the People revere them, worship them, defend them because those of We the People who are doing this are JEALOUS that they can’t be this cruel, they can’t stick it to ‘those’ people, they can’t be as mean, as powerful, as protected as the assholes running the country, the courts, the business’ today.

The inability of We the People to see the parallels between today and 100 years ago, between today and the times of the prophets, between today and the Bible’s account of what happened in Egypt, is astounding! Get your heads out of your ASS PEOPLE!! Stop making excuses for the cruelty, stop absolving these desecrations of God’s name, these “sufferings” as ‘just what the other side did/does’. Even if this is true-IS THIS THE WAY OF JESUS?? NO, NO, NO, a thousand times NO! Yet, listening to Hegseth, Bondi, Vought, Vance, Jesus loved cruelty, loved hating the stranger, loved killing “those people” because there is not proof that the boats being attacked are bringing drugs to the U.S. IS THIS THE WAY OF THE HEBREW BIBLE? NO, NO, NO, a thousand times NO! Yet, if you watch Jared Kushner, the guy who had to get permission to ride on Shabbat so he could attend the Inaugural Balls( of course his Rabbi believed this was more important than the ‘laws of Shabbat) one might believe that the prophets, that Moses, that God wants to repudiate what is said 36 times in the Torah-Love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. One might think that autocracy and fascism is what Judaism is all about if you believe and watch Kushner, Lutnick, Bessent, Wytkoff while the Bible says: “Proclaim FREEDOM throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”!!

The cruelty that is coming, the experiences that We the People are going through right now are, hopefully, the precursors of a new day, a new way of being, a new recognition of the sanctity of human life, a renewed interest in and adherence to the words and deeds of the prophets, a renewed interest and explanation of what the Bible teaches us about how to live, a new understanding of how Judaism is not a ‘religion’, an ‘ethnicity’, Judaism is a way of being in this world that is compatible with our being a partner with God in its completion. The same is true of Christ’s teachings, of Mohammed’s wisdom, Buddha’s higher consciousness, the name, the path is immaterial because, as the Dalai Lama says: they all lead to justice, truth, kindness, love, mercy.

Unfortunately, the people in charge right now and their idiotic lapdogs will only understand “a power greater than themselves” in order to change, to surrender. Much like the Pharaoh in Egypt, We the People have yet to understand that “Israel is lost”, that “America is lost”, because We the People refuse, ignore, abstain from asking ourselves and the leaders “Until When (Ad Matai) will you refuse to humble yourself before God?, the words that Moses spoke to Pharaoh, the words that Pharaoh’s courtiers spoke to him and the words that fell on Pharaoh’s deaf ears, just as the words of the prophets, the words of Moses, Jesus, et al are falling on deaf ears today. WAKE THE FUCK UP PEOPLE!

Thinking of how stuck I was, how deaf I was, is excruciatingly painful to me. Not hearing my daughter, my sister, my family, my father’s words is something that I continue to regret-not morosely, rather the regret that keeps the memory close enough that I don’t repeat it again as badly. I know in my recovery, I have been deaf to the call of another, I have been deaf to the call of God, I know that it took catastrophic events to get my attention at times and I have resolved and followed through on being more aware, more attuned to what is happening around me, more aware of the “cards being played at the bridge table” literally and the ‘bridge table’ of life. I am grateful for the “severity” which “tames” me when “love” eludes me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Living into the Spiritual Grandeur of the moment or seeking spiritual comfort? Year 4 Day 293

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 293

“Our embarrassment in reading the harsh expressions of divine wrath is also due to the general disposition of modern man. We have no sense for spiritual grandeur. Spiritual to us means ethereal, calm, moderate, slight, imperceptible. We respond to beauty; grandeur is unbearable. We are moved by a soft religiosity, and would like to think that God is lovely, tender, and familiar, as if faith were a source of comfort, but not readiness for martyrdom.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 38-39)

The issue that begins today’s quote is one I hear often, regarding the prophets, the Bible, people have told me I am too loud, too brash, too sensitive, all of which are true. The prophets, the Bible, and I are very sensitive to evil, to the beginnings of evil, to the lies we tell ourselves and the ones another(s) tries to sell to us, to ‘the masses’. While people keep wanting to have religion be “a source of comfort”, the Bible’s only comfort comes when We the People find our connection to something greater than ourselves, when We the People make the decision to seek to do the next right thing, when We the People engage with one another and see the similarities, celebrate the differences and join together to move our corner of the world a little closer to being complete.

Rabbi Heschel’s use of the word “grandeur” here, I believe, is to describe a way of being that is so beyond whatever we think, an experience with our higher self, with the Ineffable One, with the divine, that lifts in holiness, in consciousness, in vision to places we never even dreamed of. It is not to a ‘grand’ place-I believe-it is to a place and sense of Oneness of the universe, a knowing of our being part of the Oneness of the Universe (as the Shema says), and a call to action that we are unable to not hear. While one may choose to ignore the call to action that being in grandeur sends out, it is impossible to not hear the call, if and when one is living in spiritual grandeur. Granted, for most of We the People spiritual grandeur is a place we may visit or be visited upon us and We the People may or may not be aware of the spiritual grandeur that is to be experienced in this moment, yet it is undeniably true that spiritual grandeur exists and is the ‘place’ when human beings and the divine meet, where higher consciousness explodes and changes us with or without our desire, approval, maybe even against our will.

“Grandeur is unbearable” because of the light that is shone upon us, because of the yoke of action that is placed on us, and because we are obligated to fulfill the mitzvot-not do as we please. “Grandeur is unbearable” because it forces us to give up the lies we have been telling ourselves and/or buying from another(s): “God doesn’t care”; “My God is loving and approving of me”; “My God is not like yours”, “Praying to My God comforts me and rocks me to sleep”;  and other such ridiculous statements. “Grandeur is unbearable” because the awe, the beauty, the radical amazement is so powerful, we have to look away after a few seconds otherwise it feels like we will burn up. AND, We the People are being called to visit spiritual grandeur more often. The words above, the words of the prophets demand that We the People end our love affair with the idolatry of a calm, moderate, ethereal way of living and get into the mud, wrestle with the lies and the evil being perpetrated against God, against another(s) human being(s), against the very nature of our souls. We the People are desperately needed in this moment to stand with God, to stand in the Grandeur that is being provided for us and to us each day, each hour by the prophets, by the Bible, by the universe.

We the People have, throughout history, found ways to reach the “grandeur” that gives us the courage, the strength, the will to fight off the evil of that time period. Whether it was the Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, King David, the Maccabees, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, Oliver Cromwell, Ben Franklin, Patrick Henry, Lincoln, Churchill, Niebuhr, King, RFK, Rabin, Pelosi, up until now We the People have had a leader to bring us into the light and power of “spiritual grandeur”. Who is our leader today? We the People have to stop depending on someone else to save us. It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to save ourselves and save one another. Each of us has a Moses and a Pharaoh within us, each of us has fear and awe within us. We the People are being called to let go of our hiding our heads in the sand, release ourselves from the cult of autocracy and the need for certainty-as Harriet Rossetto told me yesterday. We the People, following the direction of the prophets, can turn back to a way of life that utilizes our fears to stop us from buying the lies and bullshit of ‘der fuhrer’, of Trampy Trump, of barbarous Bibi. We the People have within us the ability to come out from under and help another(s) come out from under the inner burdens   of our self-deceptions, the knowing of freedom, the knowing of the path to Sinai and the ability to rise up to the higher consciousness this moment calls for. WILL YOU??

This is the question that has dogged me forever. I have risen up and fallen back, “spiritual grandeur is unbearable” because I can’t stay there, something brings me back down-the call of my false ego, the need to care for another person, the co-dependency I have for my family, my wife-not bad things, just daily living so I relish the moments of “spiritual grandeur” because they give me new insights, new ways to serve, and new ideas to write about. The moments of “spiritual grandeur” make me more accountable, bring me comfort in that I am able to see where I missed the mark and where I hit the mark, what I need to do today and never ‘rest on my laurels’ or ‘believe my own press’. “Spiritual grandeur” makes writing each day a call and a joy. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Being a Perpetual Concern of God, OH SHIT! Year 4 Day 292

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 292

“Man is not only an image of God; he is a perpetual concern of God. The idea of pathos adds a new dimension to human existence. Whatever man does affects not only his own life, but also the life of God insofar as it is directed to man. The import of man raises him beyond the level of mere creature. He is a consort, a partner, a factor in the life of God.” (Thunder in the Soul pg 38)

Once again, I am trembling at the insights I get from these words. It isn’t as if I haven’t read this sentiment before, it isn’t as if I am just realizing the place that I and every other human being is being called to report to, The trembling awe comes from the re-awareness of God’s concern for me, for you. It is an awareness that too many of We the People seem to ignore, that too many of the ‘prosperity gospel’ preachers, the ‘I have to study all day so I am not responsible’ ultra-orthodox rabbis, the ‘don’t you know who I think I am’ liars and cheats that are running the US Government, the Israeli government, WILLFULLY and GLEEFULLY IGNORE! I am outraged and cannot understand why more of We the People are not outraged! WTF, PEOPLE!!

I am aghast at the ways We the People are either acting or allowing our governments to act in our name! How in the HELL can any of us celebrate the wanton killing without proof going on in the Caribbean Ocean right now? What the FUCK is wrong with some of We the People who want to believe Pete Hegseth, a drunk, womanizing, thieving liar?? How can these ‘good religious folks’ continue to disrespect the “god” they claim to love and are serving? They serve this ‘god’ by having no concern for another human being while God in the Bible is concerned with all of humanity??!! They serve this ‘god’ by hating the stranger, scapegoating the stranger while God in the Bible tells us 36 times to love, welcome, care for the stranger??!! The ‘god’ of Trump, Vance, Kushner, Lutnick, Vought, Bondi, et al, is the ‘god’ that humans make up when they “scout after their hearts and their eyes and WHORE after them”(Numbers 15:39). God as experienced in the Bible, in our daily lives, is concerned with human beings, with our actions, with our decisions, with every aspect of our living. What a gift, what a responsibility, what an enormous burden and what an amazing gift of freedom!

God’s concern is a call to action for We the People and each day, when we awake, when we see the sunrise, when we see a rainbow, when we breathe the air, when we go to the bathroom, we experience God’s concern, we experience the “import of man” because all of these experiences, these gifts and necessities, are God-given, they are not because of anything we did, nothing that we merit, they are experiences of love, of concern, of hope, all gifts from God for We the People AND We the People keep squandering the gifts, keep “worshipping the servant” as Einstein says, and are willing to go along with the liars who tell us that “only I can fix this” “only I and my small group have been anointed by god to be a partner with him”, and other such BULLSHIT! I AM ENRAGED THAT THESE LIES ARE BEING PERPETRATED BY RABBIS AND PRIESTS, MINISTERS AND IMAMS-ALL PEOPLE WHO KNOW BETTER AND ARE THE FALSE PROPHETS THE BIBLE WARNS US ABOUT!.

I know I am yelling, I know that I am preaching to the choir, I know that maybe my voice is no longer heard anywhere in the ways it was 5+ years ago, AND it doesn’t matter, because I have to continue to speak truth, I have to continue to be “a consort” “in the life of God”. It is imperative for We the People to find our unique niche, the purpose we are created for, the passion that our souls are crying out to us to engage in because this is the antidote to the LIARS, this is the only way that, like the Maccabees, We the People can proclaim: “All who are for ADONAI, FOLLOW US”. Only when we accept the responsibility of being “a partner” with God, can we find the clarity, the serenity, the turning down of the volume of K-FUCK radio that is constantly telling us lies, constantly wanting us to be less than, better than, and all the other shit. “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today” says Dr. Paul in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Living in the acceptance of the words above, changes everything about the way We the People will live today, tomorrow, forever. Not change it permanently, not a one and done change, rather it is a transformation of our understanding of our place in this world, a transformation of our understanding of the place each and every other human being has in this world, a transformation of how we treat one another, a transformation of our experience of God, Godliness, Mitzvot, etc. This can only happen when We the People take our rightful place as “a factor in the life of God”!

This is not easy!! And it is exhilarating, exciting, filling me with trembling awe, with deep remorse when I fuck it up, making the stakes of life so much more knowing that God is concerned with me, that God’s concern is for me to do the next right thing-NO MATTER WHAT I feel or think. The “yoke” of free will that is calling me to serve God instead of my “heart and eyes” is so fragile at times and I know I have to keep it on, because slipping out of it, breaking it will lead me back to the days when I would use “god’s concern” to get me out of trouble, lead me to more and more irresponsibility, like Trump, Jared, Bibi, et al. Living as a “consort, a partner, a factor in the life of God” is more than just trembling awe, it is the purest and most complete experience of FREEDOM I have ever had. I truly have experienced a “new freedom”, I do proclaim FREEDOM from the rooftops to everyone who will hear me and, alas, most people can’t, won’t and this is sad. I do believe in continuing to do my part, however, and continue to show some ways to FREEDOM. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you aware of "God's stake in the human situation", do you honor it or not? Year 4 Day 291

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 291

The prophet does not see the human situation in and of itself. The predicament of man is the predicament of God, who has a stake in the human situation. Sin, guilt, suffering cannot be separated from the divine situation.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 37)

What is Rabbi Heschel saying here, what meaning do these words have? I am having an experience of “trembling awe” “Yirat HaShem” immersing myself in these sentences (truthfully, in most sentences re: the prophets and so much more of Rabbi Heschel’s). “The prophet does not see the human situation in and of itself” because it is IMPOSSIBLE to separate the prophet from God, and it is RIDICULOUS to separate human beings from God-YET WE CONTINUE TO DO IT! Hence, my “trembling awe”.

Since we are created in the Image of God, of course God “has a stake in the human situation” and we human beings keep ignoring this truth, keep being willfully ignorant and blind to this truth and keep living as if God has no “stake in the human situation”, We the People even go so far as to use the Holocaust, the illness of babies, the shootings that occur on a regular basis here in America as ‘proof’ that God doesn’t care, that God is not involved in the world. BULLSHIT!

Isn’t it time, isn’t it WAY PAST TIME, for We the People to acknowledge the truth of our existence, the truth of the Bible, the wisdom of the Bible without having to say everything in it happened? Isn’t it WAY PAST TIME that We the People end our incessant need to bow down to the latest and shiniest idol in front of us? Isn’t it WAY PAST TIME to stop kissing the assholes of the rich and famous, of the liars and cheats, grifters and deceivers, fascists and autocrats grabbing power throughout the world today?? OF COURSE IT IS!

Yet, who will be our Moses today? We killed JFK 62 years ago, we killed MLK Jr. and RFK 57 years ago, we have bought into the lies of Trump and Vought, project 2025 and Peter Thiel, JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner, Howard Lutnick et al and some of us, still believe they ‘will delivers us from evil’ while they perpetrate EVIL, LIES, GRIFT, SLAVERY, HATRED with every word that comes out of their mouths and every action they take-believing they will be able to con and out scheme all the rest of the liars, dictators, grifters they are dealing with. WTF People??

Our Moses is within each of us, we have a Pharaoh and a Moses inside as they are archetypes, and it is up to each and every human being to decide which one they are going to feed, which one they are going to promote, which one they are going to tame. We the People are being called by the words above, by the words and actions of the prophets to stop waiting for ‘daddy to save us’ and take the “bull by the horns” and join together to throw off the yoke of idolatry, break the yoke of slavery to bullshit and certainty, get out from under the yoke of mendacity and self-deception. It is not easy to do this, society has a plan to keep us “under the thumb” of the fascist, of the scam artist and it has worked off and on for the millennia!

TODAY, knowing and finally acknowledging that God CARES, that God is involved and if we are willing to access the divine power and strength of our souls, we can bring about a new day, we can once again be on the journey to the “Promised Land” knowing we will never “get there” and we can move closer to the world of goodness, community, covenant, etc. Using the power that is within us to be Moses, using the connection within us to another divine image, another human being, all human beings, we can truly “Proclaim Freedom throughout the Land and to ALL its Inhabitants therein” regardless of status, race, religion, color, ethnicity! Do you hear this your ‘fine christian fellow’ Russell Vought, Donald Trump, J D Vance? Do your hear this you ‘fine jewish fellow Bibi Netanyahu, Howard Lutnick, Jared Kushner, Steve Wytkoff?

These assholes are disgraces to the Biblical traditions they claim to follow. They are the exact people who go against Adonai and cause the suffering , the pain, the sin of humankind and relish it. They role around in sin and guilt like pigs in the mud because they believe they are exempt from God’s judgement, because they do not believe in ADONAI- they worship BAAL instead. It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to leave the warmth and comfort of our self-deceptions, of our need/desire to be deceived and stand for what is true and right, what is holy and needed, what is good and Godly.

I lived for almost 35 years in deception, denial, anger, self-pity, and kept asking God-WTF. Even as a kid, I knew I was different and my father knew it as well. He was torn, as I look back now, between supporting my uniqueness and wanting me not to suffer the same indignities he had. It was a real dilemma for him and, after he knew that he was going to die young because of his heart condition, he fully supported by uniqueness, kept giving me advice that I just did not comprehend at that age and he was desperate to impart it, hoping I would remember his support, his wisdom when I was older and he wasn’t around to go to. I think this is why I was and am comfortable going to the Cemetery to ‘visit’ him-telling him of his wisdom since my recovery rather than crying that he was dead, before my recovery. I am the prophet I need, I have joined with teachers, fellow learners, to create a community that saved lives from the scourge of addiction, I keep writing to sound the Shofar of alarm and the Shofar of solution. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Are you engaged in the Battle that is raging with the forces of good and not good within you and outside of you? Year 4 Day 290

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 290

“A battle is raging: man in his presumption undertakes to fashion history in disregard and defiance of God. The prophets witness the misery that man endures as well as man’s wickedness that God endures, and even tolerates. But God is wrestling with man.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 36-27)

I am sitting here at my computer, reading the words above and want to jump out of my skin! The first phrase: “a battle is raging” when combined with the last sentence above: “God is wrestling with man” says it all. I cannot contain myself in the beauty, the light of this truth. We have called descendants of Jacob: “God-wrestlers” and reading this maybe We the People have had it wrong. Jacob did not win the battle against the angel, the angel did not come to attack Jacob for Esau’s sake, it was God wrestling with Jacob to see the error of his ways towards his brother, his twin Esau. Maybe it was God wrestling with Jacob to make him understand that he needs the help and support of his brother, his twin, his Yetzer HaTov (good inclination) because his Yetzer HaRa (evil/earthly) inclination was so strong. As we see with Jacob, however, he never fully surrendered to God, he never allowed God to win the wrestling match completely, as Abraham did, as Moses did, as Judah did.

We are in such a horrific state right now that too many of We the People do not even realize their “presumption”  to “fashion history in disregard and defiance of God”!! Too many of We the People still laud Trump and Lutnick for selling out the United States, too many of We the People are clapping for Wytkoff and Kushner as they sell out to Vladimir Putin and fuck over Ukraine! Too many of We the People are still believing the lies of Blondie Bondi, Nasty Noem, and Meany Miller. The worst, however is that too many of We the People adhere to the words of Hateful Hegseth and not to the truth in front of their eyes! WTF!!??!!??

When I use the phrase “too many” I am not suggesting a majority of We the People believe, go along with, clap, adhere to any of these presumptive mendacious human beings, I am saying that any amount of We the People who give them the benefit of the doubt, who give them aid and comfort, is too many! We the People are in desperate need of hearing the call of the prophets to end our “disregard and defiance” of God’s direction. We the People are being welcomed into the embrace of God, the wrestling with the divine, the wrestling with our own inner conflicting voices and desires, so that we can bring to an end, or at least a beginning of the end of “man’s wickedness that God endures”. SO WHY DOES GOD ENDURE WICKEDNESS, one might ask and while the question is, in many ways, the wrong question to ask, the response is FREE WILL! Do We the People really want to be puppets? God has angels to do God’s bidding, humans are supposed to be partners, not marionettes. The response: “if God didn’t want me to do this, God would stop me” is another ridiculous excuse made by humans to cover up our “defiance”, our selfishness, our “disregard” for the words and deeds of the prophets, of the Biblical directions. In fact, we can see “God is wrestling with man” in the ways the editors of the Bible put contradictory statements into the Bible to satisfy their xenophobic, narcissistic ends. 36 times we are told to care for the powerless, the voiceless, the stranger, the widow, the poor, the needy, the orphan, the blind, the deaf, in the physical and spiritual realms. Nothing else is mentioned this many times so what do we see throughout history and on steroids right now from ‘these fine christian gentlemen’ like Vought, Vance, Trump, et al ‘these keepers of the flame of the Temple orthodox jews’ like Kushner, Wytkoff, et al? THE EXACT OPPOSITE! The “wickedness” of our leaders, of their followers among We the People is sickening, disgusting, and just plain wrong! It is time, way past time, for the majority of We the People who believe in “proclaim Freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants therein”, who adhere to the biblical and revolutionary claim of “all people are created with certain unalienable rights”, who are the descendants of immigrants to this land at any time since America was discovered in 1492 and honor that gift of “a new birth of freedom” that our ancestors gave us, to STAND UP, SAY NO TO THE FASCISTS, SAY YES TO GOD. IT IS WAY PAST TIME TO ALLOW GOD TO WIN THE WRESTLING MATCH AND SURRENDER TO LIVING WELL, LIVING IN AND WITH LOVE, LIVING IN TRUTH!

Sitting here this morning, understanding Jacob’s wrestling from God’s point of view, from the prophets’ teachings, fills me with remorse. Not the remorse that is self-flagellation, rather the remorse that teaches me how not to be in this moment, how not to keep fighting the wrestling matches that I have with people, with God, with myself. I am constantly ‘at unease’ with what is happening in the world, whenever I see injustice, especially whenever I commit injustice! I have been told that I should take a ‘chill pill’,  it’s not that big of a deal, I have told people the same lie and, my experience with the words above are shaking me to my core. I see the wickedness that God has endured from me and I am sorry, I am remorseful, I know I will do it again and I resolve to do it less often and less severely. I see the misery I have endured from another human being and the bile makes me throw up, yet I have to have compassion while condemning evil. I watch in horror at the “disregard and defiance” of God that I perpetrate and know that I do it much less each day. Watching the “disregard and defiance” that people around me perpetrate fills me with righteous anger that I have to dispense in ways that another can hear me, instead of raging like the prophets. Most of all, I am grateful that God still wrestles with me, that God still helps my inner life grow and my connections to the divine reminders around me makes me more and more aware of my need and calling to be a divine reminder myself. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Perpetuating Freedom or Slavery, Truth or Lies, the Prophets or the Idolators? Year 4 Day 289

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 289

“PROPHETIC REFLECTION BEGINS, we might say, with the abuse and consequent failure of freedom, with the irrationality of human conduct, and it points to God who stands above history.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 36)

WOW!! What a statement, what a bold, outrageous, truthful description of the emergence of “prophetic reflection” that has been with us forever, since the time of Abraham. Between the ‘conversations’ between God and Abram/Abraham, the declaration of Malki Tzedek, King of Shalem, (i.e. wholeness), the way of being declared by Moses in the name of God, up till today-there has always been “prophetic reflection” and We the People have bought the lies of the Rabbis and Priests, Popes and Muftis that the age of prophecy is over as if they are saying,  ‘the study of the prophets is okay, just don’t put too much energy in them, we will tell you the important things they say and how/what to understand their words’. BULLSHIT, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s words today-while he believed in the teachings of the Rabbis, he believed the lack of understanding, knowing, studying of the prophets led to the horrible ways Blacks were being treated in America, the inane and senseless killing of “innocent Vietnamese” and American soldiers. When called a prophet, he wanted only to be known as a “descendant of the prophets”.

We the People, as I have said often, are descendants of the prophets. We the People are in the midst of “the abuse” of freedom by the wannabe autocrats, the FASCISTS in our midst, the ‘good religious folk’ of all faiths who deny every principle of freedom, dignity, decency found in the Bible, who, in their fervor to serve their own image and idols, bastardize the “prophetic reflection” found in the Bible, revere and utilize the rhetoric of Josef Goebbels, and deny truth, goodness, kindness, and caring to all except the few they deem their ‘allies’. We the People are in the midst of a “failure of freedom” by our courts, our ‘so-called free’ press, and by We the People who seem to have lost our ability to discern truth from fiction, good from evil, right from wrong, faith in God from worshipping idols.

While many of us compare today to 100 years ago in Germany, We the People could also compare today to 2500 years ago in Jerusalem, to 2700 years ago in Samaria(Northern Kingdom of Israel), to 2000 years ago, again in Jerusalem. What today cannot be compared to is 250 years ago, when “Let Freedom Ring” became true in America, what today cannot be compared to is 3500 years ago when Moses led the slaves out of Egypt and the Torah was ‘given’ and accepted. There is no ‘golden age’ of freedom happening now, there is no spiritual revolution, no caring for the widow and orphan, no welcoming the stranger because We the People “were strangers in the land of Egypt” and in the land of America!! There is no love of one’s neighbor unless the neighbor agrees with der fuhrer, Donald Trump or his henchmen, Stephen Miller, Howard Lutnick, Steve Wytkoff, Jared Kushner, Russell Vought, J D Vance, Pam Bondi, et al. The fact that so many people who call themselves Jews, and in some cases claim to be ‘orthodox’ is appalling to me, it is an affront to the prophets, to “prophetic reflection”, an bastardization of most everything the Bible teaches. Yet, here we are.

Netanyahu asking for a pardon while admitting no guilt nor responsibility, Trump pardoning Drug Lords while wantonly killing people in boats he and his prop Hegseth claim to be bringing drugs into the U.S., Miller decrying immigrants and locking them up in ‘camps’ while being the descendant of Holocaust survivors, Vought claiming to be a ‘devoted follower of our lord and savior Jesus Christ’ while doing everything that JESUS RAILED AGAINST, while BEING THE MONEY-CHANGER IN THE TEMPLE that Jesus preached against, while being the Pontius Pilate of our days!!  We the People desperately need to re-evaluate ourselves, look in the mirror, do our T’Shuvah and return from “the irrationality of human conduct”. We the People have to call BULLSHIT and MENDACITY on the lies that are being spoken, spread on the internet, over the airwaves of Fox News and the ‘right-wing nut’ media. We the People are being called to recall the “prophetic reflections” of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Amos, etc and act our ways back into right thinking, exit our addiction to lies, our addiction to bastardizing goodness, our addiction to hatred, power, money, blame and shame! Only then will We the People be able to mitigate the “irrationality of human conduct”, only then will We the People be able to hear, listen, understand (Shema) the essence of the 10 Sayings from Mount Sinai, the laws of decent living found in the Bible right after receiving the 10 Sayings, the wisdom and plans the prophets give to us and how to carry them out.

It is not too tall an order! Those of us in recovery are living into the ways of the prophets each day, many believe Dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson were prophets of a sort, just like many believe Martin Luther King Jr. was a prophet, Rabbi Heschel was a prophet. At issue is our willingness to hear the “prophetic reflection” that is within us, that is being spoken to us and stand up for this rather than the lies and power-grab, the money seeking mendacity of people. I know both sides of this coin, I was an asshole who screwed anyone and everyone over to ‘get mine’. In recovery, I have done the opposite, I read and study  the prophets, I read and study the Bible, I am committed to doing the next right thing and make my amends when I don’t. I am far from perfect and one grain of sand better each day. I do not tolerate the lies and bullshit of clergy, the powerful, the stranger, the poor and the needy. I seek to live in truth and demand people help me and themselves to do the same. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Suggestions or Commandments, concern or going along to get along- what is your basic mode of living? Year 4 Day 288

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 288

“The divine commandments are not mere recommendations for man, but express divine concern, which, realized or repudiated, is of personal importance to Him. The reaction of the divine self, (Amos 6:8; Jer. 5:9; 51:14), its manifestations in the form of love, mercy, disappointment, or anger convey the profound intensity of the divine inwardness.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 36)

Continuing on the theme of GOD CARES, the words above are giving us another(s) example of “divine concern”. What I am hearing, however, is much more personal, much more inner driven. “The divine commandments” reminds us that the ways of treating the stranger, the ways of dealing with one another in truth and full transparency, the call to live authentically, the demand to “be holy”, and so many more of the ways to build free societies, to live into a democratic way of being, to have a separation of church and state because when there isn’t both become corrupted, all are not man-made! They are, instead, decreed from God, from higher consciousness, whatever word one uses to denote something greater than themselves. Living into this “divine concern” is an inside job and We the People are being called to account, called to engage in this word, not by God, not by an idol, rather we are being called to respond to them by our own inner voice, our own inner soul, our own inner desire to liberate our beingness from the petty and inane, from the blame and shame, from the either/or, from society’s bullshit and ‘rules’. This inner response is the proof-text for me that “the divine commandments are not mere recommendations for man”, they express not only God’s concern, they express our inner concerns, our inner need to connect and live in community, to see the worth and dignity of another in order to show the world our own dignity and worth.

We the People have allowed the P.T. Barnum’s of our time to tell us our inner voices are not good, they are just confused because Trump, Kushner, Wytkoff, dealing with the Russians, fucking over Ukraine, making a sham of NATO and screwing over our allies in Europe, is actually a good thing- they will make billions and, after all, when der fuhrer is happy, everyone should be happy. FUCK THIS SHIT!! Once again, the need for spiritual growth, the urgency for Spiritual Emergency Services is being shown to We the People and, it seems, we keep ignoring it. This is not a ‘socio-political’ issue, this is an issue of the soul, it is an issue of whether we are going to realize or repudiate “the divine commandments”, whether we are going to give air to our inner life and a megaphone to our inner dialogue. The great challenge as presented throughout the Bible is to listen to the voice that spoke after crossing the Red Sea-“this is my God” with everyone having a different and authentic experience of God; to listen to the voice that spoke after receiving the first “10 Sayings”, “Na’Aseh V’Nishmah” “We will DO and then Understand”.

Yet, We the People seem too afraid of being judged, being left out, being ‘out of the car’ to STAND UP and do the next right thing. We the People allow social media, our financial goals, etc to silence our inner voice, to block out the experiences of divine love, divine mercy because we are blocking out, walling off, trying to kill the divine voice, the divine call, the divine soul within us. We the People cannot live the life of a grifter, live the life of a hanger-on, live the life of a slave and hear the divine voice inside of us-we have to try and kill it in order to continue a life of crime-emotional, physical, spiritual-, to continue to do the next wrong things, to refuse to do TShuvah, to deny what is staring back at us in the mirror. We the People continue to invoke disappointment and anger within us because we refuse to hear our inner voice to do good, listen to the call of our souls to care for one another, understand the gift of living is to be able to serve, to help, to connect.

We the People have and know the solution-grow our inner lives, mature our souls, end our disdain and denial of what truly is, what is truly important, what is truly our proper place. When We the People live into the solution, then Putin is put in his place, Trump is put in jail for his grift along with his groupies like Kushner, decency, order, kindness, truth, love, compassion, become important again. Living into the solution gives every person “their fig leaf”, each person their “proper place”. Living into the solution is the path to leaving “the harsh labor of Egypt (the narrow places we have been living in), we are relieved of the heavy burdens of our inner slavery, we come to once again ‘know’ Godliness, and we no longer need to compare and compete because, as Ben Zoma says: we are rich because we rejoice in what we have instead of complaining about ‘those people’ or ‘what I want’.

This is very personal to me. I have been working to mature and grow my soul for the past 38+ years and I keep getting better-not perfect, not a linear progression- and I am closer to the goal this year than last. I know the anger and disappointment of my inner life, my soul when I fail, when I see someone else acting differently than we had agreed upon, when I see the mistreatment of the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow, the orphan. This still makes me CRAZY and my reactions are still not appropriate in force. I am too afraid of breaking a deal because I can’t engage in the next wrong thing without dire consequences to my soul-and my overreaction also have dire consequences to my soul. It is a conundrum that I have yet to solve:)! I know that We have the awesome opportunity of beginning anew today and I am going to use today to live better, to live into the “divine commandments” a little more and better. I pray you will also so we can defeat the enslavers, the grifters. God Bless and stay safe Rabbi Mark

Spiritual maturity and growth or staying stuck in being a spiritual infant ? Year 4 Day 287

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 287

“The style of legal, objective utterance is alien to the prophet. He dwells upon God’s inner motives, not only upon His historical decisions. He discloses a divine pathos, not just a divine judgement. The pages of the prophets are filled with echos of divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation. The God of Israel is never impersonal.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 35)

I have decided to spend another day on this writing of Rabbi Heschel. The words in bold above tell a story that many of We the People never learned, never heard of, never thought relevant to/for our daily lives. The prophets are quoted in snippets, the book of Ecclesiastes is read in full on Sukkot-a book that my friend and teacher, Rabbi Hazan Danny Maseng and I are having a difficult time with because it is Greek writing style and denies the words of the prophets, gives a wink and a nod to the ways that the prophets railed against, much like what is happening now in Churches, Mosques and Synagogues throughout the land and in Israel. What the prophets’ words and actions tell us is that GOD CARES! God is deeply involved in the doings of humanity because, We the People are created in the Image of God, We the People are divine reminders, divine messengers, divine representatives, partners in completing the creation begun oh so many billions of years ago. Yet, we continue to cease and desist from reading and immersing ourselves in “the pages of the prophets”. A lot of this has to do with the power-hungry misogynistic Rabbinic tradition that included Ecclesiastes and did not include The Wisdom of Ben Sira, the book of Judith, the Maccabees, all for their own political benefit, while having the Chutzpah to quote the prophets, often times out of context, to further their goals-not God’s goals, not the goals of the prophets, rather to further their stature, their power, their authority. We have been dealing with the bullshit of people like the “prosperity gospel” clergy for a long, long time and now is the time for We the People to revolt!

The “divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation” that are found in “the pages of the prophets” are meant to move We the People to have the same experience! Of course God loves humanity! This is not a parochial love, it is a love for all of humanity which is found throughout the Bible except where Ezra or whomever edited the Bible decided to become xenophobic and ‘wipe them all out’ bullshit which is antithetical to “love the stranger”, “feed your enemy”, care for the powerless and voiceless, slavery must end, etc. Because We the People are so spiritually immature, because no one goes to the “physician of the soul”, as Maimonidies describes the role of a Rabbi, teacher, We the People continue to live a stunted life, a life of “not substantial” as Kohelet describes. Rather than provide the necessary education to grow and mature the soul of an individual, a community, Clergy have forever wanted to use their ‘superior spirituality’ as a weapon, to keep power and control over the masses, for fear of losing their place, being found out to be full of shit when it comes to: the control they want to exercise, their false/narcissistic readings of the text, their need to make the people in power happy and go along to get along, all of which was happening in the times of the prophets and, eventually, led to the complete destruction of the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and the exile of Judea-twice-the last one spanning some 1900 years!

Do We the People care about “divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation”? Only when we can proclaim ‘our god’ always loves me and is disappointed in you (the other) and always shows me mercy and grace while is so indignant towards you (anyone who disagrees with me). “Divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation” is all encompassing not only in “the pages of the prophets” they are all encompassing in the Bible, in prayers, in the soul of each and every one of us. This is, in my opinion, the goal of spirituality; to experience, like the prophets, these 4 aspects of the universe, plus so many more, to live as mature spiritual beings instead of being infantilized by the Clergy we hear, the ‘god’ we worship. While it is wonderful and necessary to have a “personal relationship” with God-this doesn’t mean that God becomes proprietary, there is no ‘my god’ in “the pages of the prophets”, there is no ‘my god’ in the words of the prophets, there is only GOD-hence the Shema prayer, which Jews are to say 3 times a day declares our commitment to being a witness, testifying to the truth that God is ONE, and we are all part of the Oneness since we are created in the Image of God.

This moment, in America, in Israel, in the world calls for a REVOLUTION. The revolutionary document, the principles and ways of being we are REVOLTING TO, are to be found in “the pages of the prophets”. We the People have the duty, the obligation, the authentic need to return to the pages of the Bible, to the words and deeds of Moses and the Israelites, the prophets and King David, the Psalmist and grow the fuck up, mature our souls and BE THE PARTNER WITH GOD WE ARE CREATED TO BE! Yes, it is hard, it is daunting and, like the creation of the world, it this revolution begins with a big bang, a lot of chaos and darkness, and We the People joining with the Spirit of the universe to bring light, order, form to the chaos and find the light in the dark, know the dark that is in the light. IT IS POSSIBLE- Ask anyone in recovery, ask anyone who has had a spiritual awakening, ask yourself. These are the ways I helped people find their souls, grow their spiritual maturity and health, and live lives they are proud of, lives that give back and receive, lives that echo “the pages of the prophets. Will you join us? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Allowing the need for power and control to override the words and ways of the Prophets. Year 4 Day 286

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 286

“The style of legal, objective utterance is alien to the prophet. He dwells upon God’s inner motives, not only upon His historical decisions. He discloses a divine pathos, not just a divine judgement. The pages of the prophets are filled with echos of divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation. The God of Israel is never impersonal.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 35)

The first sentence above gives us a possible insight as to why the prophets are not taught more by the Rabbis, rather the words of the prophets are quoted in pieces so as to prove a Rabbinical point, not to be immersed in their thoughts, their ideas, their understanding of “God’s inner motives”. In the Talmud, we have an argument between Rabbi Eliezer and the rest of the Rabbis-with Rabbi Yehoshua being the antagonist. Rather than hear the law as it was meant, the Rabbis were more interested in asserting their dominion over this world. They told God to butt out by saying: “the Torah is not in heaven”, meaning the Torah was given at Sinai, we don’t pay attention to a heavenly voice”(Baba Metzia 59b)!

Immersing ourselves in these words and the Rabbis responses to the prophets can illuminate how we find ourselves in the predicaments we are in today. While many of We the People are off to shop the black Friday deals, many of We the People don’t have the income to shop, are afraid of losing their jobs to AI, to governmental whims of Vought, Noem, Trump, et al, and many of We the People are just trying to survive the tsunami of hatred, greed, grift that emanates from Washington DC and spreads from “California to the New York Islands” as the song goes. The ‘good christian nationalist preachers’, the wonderful ‘good christian evangelical prosperity gospel promoting clergy’, the ‘amazing orthodox and ultra-orthodox jews promoting hatred of Palestinians, welfare promoting for themselves and no one else Rabbis’ all claim to know “God’s inner motives” while going against everything the prophets tell us to do. Rather than realize, promote and experience “a divine pathos” these idolators, these grifters, these LIARS IN CHIEF really, promote and experience ways to raise their stature up and lower the stature of God in the eyes, thoughts and spirits of too many of We the People.

What is passing as religion today is a sham, it is bullshit in so many Temples, Churches, Mosques. Pope Leo is trying to recapture the essence of Christ’s teachings and ways, Rabbi Heschel is promoting the ways of the prophets, MLK promotes the equality and freedom that “divine love” brings to us all. Today, we have Bishop William Barber, John Pavlovitz, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, Rabbi Sharon Brous, and many others who are STANDING FOR AND WITH GOD. These are the people, We the People have to hear, listen to, and understand-not the bullshit ‘good cross-wearing blondes’ who worship Trump and not God, or the lying ‘good christian nationalist males’ who believe all the power is with the White Man. Thinking about what Thanksgiving is about, the myth of co-existence between the white man and the native Americans, what is happening today is an extension of the belief that “white is right”, the “peckerwood” mentality that is prevalent in our prison system. This is not the message of the prophets, this is not the path of “divine pathos”!

Yet, We the People, seem unable to read and understand the prophets, We the People have relinquished our spiritual and religious power to the clergy rather than remember that We the People are a HOLY PEOPLE, as it says in Exodus 22:30. We the People are all priestly, we are all able to hear, discern the “divine love” shown to us each day as the sun rises, as we wake up from our near-death experience of sleep. Yet, We the People have taken so much for granted we don’t even realize the “divine love” we receive in the moment. We the People have become so blind and deaf to the ways and words of the prophets that we are oblivious to the “divine pathos” we are given freely. Rather than receive the “mercy” that is prevalent at all times, too many of We the People would rather live in the “indignation” and “disappointment” of not getting their own way.

It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to return to the prophetic way of living. We the People are constantly being called to leave the confines of our thinking, our reasoning and, like the prophets of old and of today, join with the divine to ‘see’ what could be, to ‘see’ what is and the path to go from where we are to where we should be. It is an arduous journey, one that is fraught with landmines installed by the Rabbis, by St. Paul, etc and have been hidden and spread throughout the millennia. The journey from where we are to our proper place as partners with God has an army of people who want nothing more than to defeat We the People so these white supremacists men can continue to rule, to have the wealth and the control to enslave the rest of us. This is the fight that MLK and Rabbi Heschel engaged in, this is the fight that Bishop Barber, Rabbi Yanklowitz, Pope Leo are engaged in now and We the People are being called to support and be part of the Army that believes and lives the ways of the prophets.

I have been a yeller and a screamer for what is right and good, for the ways of the prophets for my entire recovery and before it as well. I gave up too soon as a teen-ager, hence my dissent into hell and I will not give up as an Adult! I am asking you to join the group in your area that is dedicated to “divine pathos”, divine love, divine mercy and fight like hell against the Trump/MAGA/white supremacy that is running rampant right now. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Happy Thanksgiving- Gratitude, Appreciation, Reciprocity are the key ingredients in Being Human- Year 4 Day 285

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 285

“The truth of being human is gratitude, the secret of existence is appreciation, its significance revealed in reciprocity. Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 26)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The words above reveal to us the ‘secret of a great life’-“gratitude, appreciation, reciprocity”. These three words hold the key to living well, to loving completely, to living authentically, to living in and with truth, to accepting all of life, the good, the not so good, the beautiful, the ugly. AND, these the authentic meaning and experience of these three words have been so bastardized by political and societal extremism, we have lost our ability to appreciate, reciprocate, and be grateful for what we have and for what we don’t have. Listening to the right wing nuts and the left wing crazies, not having what we want is a crime, it is a moral injury, it is a wrong that has to be righted by retribution and extremism. Look where it has gotten us, Trump, Netanyahu, and their opposites on the ‘left’. Neither ‘side’ is grateful for what they have, neither ‘side’ is seeking to exhibit and practice reciprocity, neither ‘side’ is overflowing with “appreciation” for being alive, for being able to serve, for being given the mantle of protecting freedom, the mantle of being an AM KADOSH, a Holy People. This is not just for Jews, it is for all people to “see ourselves as if holiness abides in our guts”. Yet, We the People are so busy looking to be slighted, seeking out the slightest hint of negativity, projecting onto another what we are thinking, We have lost our ability to see clearly, to love freely, to welcome the stranger within ourselves, to be grateful for what we have, to give back to another some of what we have been blessed with. THIS IS THE CRIME OF OUR CENTURY!

Today, as we celebrate this uniquely American Holy Day of Thanksgiving, with the false narrative of the pilgrims and the Indians, I believe we need to take the words above, written in 1958 to heart and into our souls. The false narrative about the pilgrims and the Indians is a narrative of hope, it is a narrative of what We the People want to see-a joining of peoples from all walks of life, from all religious backgrounds, from all ethnic heritages, devoted to the freedom and well-being of one another. While this has never happened in history, it doesn’t mean We the People should not strive to make this a reality-of course We will fall short-that is not the point! The point is to appreciate and be grateful for our efforts to move humanity forward by being MORE HUMAN each day. When We the People realize that “the truth of being human is gratitude”, We will be able to live into “being human”, We will lead our community, our family into the streets and give freely of time and effort to make those who have less a little more comfortable, a little more aware of people caring for them, about them, and being more and more aware of knowing the grace we experience for being who we are and having what we have-no matter how much nor how little.

“The secret of existence is appreciation”, reminds me of the Ben Zoma quote from Pirke Avot 4:1-“who is rich? One who is happy with his protion”, In other words, being rich is equated with wanting what one has, even our Tsuris, our troubles. This is such a rare experience in our time, and, truthfully, throughout time! Yet, We the People can STAND UP and implement this way of being into our culture, We the People can SPEAK UP and demand of our elected officials they DO THEIR JOB instead of grandstanding, taking so much vacation time, passing legislation that favors the rich and denigrates the poor, taking actions that revile the stranger rather than loving the stranger-forgetting they(their ancestors) were strangers in America at one time! WTF???

The fact that any lawmaker sits down at a Thanksgiving Table, goes to  Homeless Shelters and serves a meal and wants to be recognized for this act is Despicable and Ugly. That Trump is celebrating Thanksgiving as a free person, not in jail, and instead is persecuting anyone and everyone who he has a resentment against is UN-AMERICAN, A DESECRATION OF GOD’S NAME! Yet, these fine ‘good christian nationalists, good orthodox jews’ salute him, going against everything important to Christ, to Moses, to the prophets to God.

Hence, “mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation” I have lived the past 38+ years in appreciation and gratitude. I became grateful early on in my last incarceration which began in Dec 1986. It was around February, after meeting with Rabbi Mel Silverman, z”l, that the seeds of gratitude and appreciation took hold and I have been cultivating them ever since. I don’t like everything that I have experienced in these past 38+ years, I have been an asshole at times, AND I have and am grateful for every moment, every experience of being alive and engaged, every meeting of people who agree with me and who do not, every connection to people from all walks of life and every corner of the world. Each day I have a newfound appreciation for the love I am able to give out and, more importantly, the love I receive from people. Each day I am in awe of the beauty of the world, physically and spiritually, I receive from the Ineffable One a new sense of uplift, a new pair of glasses with which to see, a deeper dive into “being human”. I don’t know everything and I do appreciate what I have, what I don’t have, what I suffer with, and what I am blessed with - I am grateful to all of you who read my blogs, buy my books, buy Harriet Rossetto’s books, and engage with us. GOD BLESS and be safe, Rabbi Mark

Involving God and the Prophets in your daily decisions and actions - Year 4 Day 284

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 284

“God’s role is not spectatorship but involvement. He and man meet mysteriously in the human deed. The prophet cannot say Man without thinking God.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 35)

“So, where was God in the Holocaust” people continually ask as a way of denying the Presence. While it is, in my opinion, an inane question, a response can be found in the words above; God was in the “human deed”, the deed of kindness of the people who risked everything to save a Jew, a homosexual, a Gypsy, etc; God was in the “human deed” of the prisoners who could continue to show kindness and mercy to their fellow prisoners and, in many cases, even their tormentors. God was in “the human deed”, the deed of the Allies who went to stop the dictatorial reign of Hitler and his friends, God was in “the human deed” of the American(and other) servicemen who risked everything to fight against evil, many of them giving their last full measure to save democracy and fight autocracy. God is engaged whenever human beings choose to rise above themselves, whenever a human being can see beyond his/her own selfish desires and take the next right action, God is engaged in the Bible because the authors and editors knew that to have a free society, a fair society, the poorest and the people with the smallest voices and the least power had to be cared for, had to be respected, had to have their inherent dignity respected, otherwise chaos will reign. This truth is to be found in the Magna Carta, in the Declaration of Independence of both the USA and Israel, in the Constitution as well. Which is what makes what is happening in both countries so sad, so antithetical to the foundational underpinnings of both countries and provokes such frustration, sadness that is mistaken for anger when in reality we are arguing for the sake of Heaven.

The prophet is calling to us, not in anger, rather in the same frustration that the Black people in America felt and still feel because they are still being judged by the color of their skin and not the content of their character. The prophet is calling to us to wake up, drink the coffee, smell the roses and realize the STINK we have put on everything because many of We the People have deserted the foundational underpinnings of democracy, of freedom; because so many of We the People have abandoned God’s word, God’s call, God’s gift of how to live well that is found in the Bible; because so many of We the People have chosen to “follow our heart and eyes and WHORE after them, because of the prostitution of our elected officials at the feet (and other parts) of Donald Trump, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, Howard Lutnick, et al. I hear the prophet asking Lutnick, Wytkoff, Kushner, Miller: “Du bist a Yid, You are a Jew”? Because to a person who knows the prophets, who reveres the prophets, who learns from the prophets, who lives into the inheritance left to her/him by the prophets, to be a whore to these assholes, these Pharaoh wannabes, these hateful, power-loving, freedom taking humans is anathema to being Jewish, cannot be validated when seen through the lens of history, the lens of the Bible. These ‘good christian nationalists’ do not want anything to do with the actual teachings of Christ nor the Hebrew Bible, these ‘good jewish folk’ don’t want to be confronted by the teachings of Torah nor the prophets because in both cases to do so would mean having to admit their mendacity, admit their crimes, do T’Shuvah and experience the logical consequences of their behaviors. These assholes can’t do this because they are afraid to experience any consequences of their behaviors unless it means they get richer, they get away with their lies, etc. AND We the People have allowed them to achieve their goals!

It is imperative for We the People to find our way back to the prophets’, accept the spiritual awakenings that are all around us, each morning realizing and acknowledging the miracle of waking up, the beauty of the sunrise, the joy of connecting with nature, with our animals, with our significant people. Upon acceptance of our spiritual awakening, we then GET to make a plan to capitalize on it, to grow our spiritual awareness, to find our purpose and passion, to live into being the person our souls want us to be. This journey changes our focus, it allows us, GIVES us the gift of connection, the joy of wholeness, the power of the original light of Genesis Chapter 1. Being on this journey gives us “a new pair of glasses” as Chuck C teaches and we are able to see God when speaking to one another.

This is the quest I have been on forever. I sought a spiritual awakening through booze for a while because of my issues with the people at my Temple. Looking back, I realize I allowed society and individual people to separate me from God, to separate me from me. I went to ‘liquid courage’ to make myself impervious to the onslaught of the assholes and in the process, lost my spirit, using my intuitive mind to find ways to screw over other people, when in reality I was screwing over myself as well. My recovery has been a return to living into the spiritual awakenings of my youth, the knowing and the doing I was raised to find. It is a return to honoring the trust my father had in me, the dreams of my youth, the connections that died when I was so young. Writing this today calls me to realize that the loss of connection to so many people of my youth was because of my shame at being a criminal, a con, and disappointing myself so I could not face the people I knew and knew me. While it is sad, I also realize that my life today is filled with people who care for me and for whom I care, I also know that I am still an acquired taste because the prophet in me continues to yell, to argue, to demand I do better and that you do as well. This is the quest, the challenge, to see God in you, to see God in me, and to live together with respect and arguing for the sake of heaven, not ourselves. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Awareness of "what happens to God" in all of our actions is crucial to Spiritual Growth Year 4 Day 283

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 283

“Prophecy proclaims what happened to God as well as what will happen to the people. In judging human affairs, it unfolds a divine situation. Sin is not only the violation of a law, it is as if sin were as much a loss to God as to man. God’s role is not spectatorship but involvement.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 35)

STOP THE PRESSES!! NEWS FLASH!! GOD CARES! This is something that seems to be missing from most people’s realm of understanding. Many of We the People believe if God cares, where was God in the Holocaust, in the suffering we see everyday as excuses for their own bad behaviors, as reasons not to hear the cry of God each evening, the call of the Voice from Sinai each day. “What happened to God” is a minute by minute experience and, We the People determine both the joys and sorrows that God experiences. This is, after all, God who proclaims 36 times that We the People should love the stranger, take care of the poor, help the needy and protect the widow and orphan!

We the People seem to be unwilling to accept our larger role in both our lives and the life of God. We want to deny our responsibility, we want to bastardize the words of the Bible, the thoughts and prophecies of the various prophets, cleaning up the behavior of the Rabbis, of Ezra, of Joshua, inserting ridiculous commentaries to passages that are very clear and caring, truthful and just. We the People, or at least some of us throughout the ages, have taken the words of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, the Buddha and twisted them into pretzels to validate our wrong and ignorant behaviors. It is so interesting that We the People demand free will, fight for our own right to do whatever we want to, deny the same to another(s) who is ‘different’ than us, then demand that God should intervene when we are in trouble. Rather than realize every affair we are involved in is “ a divine situation”, that God is present within us and around us, that God is also present in the people around us and cares all of us, We the People want to make God into our ‘savior’ at the expense of “those people” who we want to annihilate. How sick and sad, how ridiculous and ignorant, how narcissistic and antithetical to everything the prophets teach us. Yet, We the People persist in our willful blindness, going so far as to call Trump, ‘the anointed one of Christ’!! WTF!?!?!?

I am struck by the use of the word “law” in the teaching above. In Judaism, “love your neighbor as yourself” is a “law”, “proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” is a “law”, “teach your children” is a “law”, “don’t scout out after your heart and eyes because you will whore yourselves after them” is a “law”. To disabuse any of We the People who want to pervert the word “law” above, I am offering this bit of wisdom and truth, justice and kindness, mercy and compassion. Just as God believes in T’Shuvah, just as God keeps sending prophets to remind us of our duty to do T’Shuvah every day, ie a 10th step in Alcoholics Anonymous, just as the Bible gives us the direction and pathway we need to live a richer and more meaningful life, We the People are being told that these “LAWS” are as important, if not more important, than what the priests are supposed to do, than what the correct interpretation of what is kosher food consists of, than hating Amalek, than the senseless hatred that has plagued humanity forever!

Yet, if one listens to many of those ‘good christian nationalist clergy’ these “laws” mean nothing. If one listens to that ‘defender of the Bible’, Donald J Trump, these “laws” mean less than nothing. If one listens to any of the Fox News, Right-wing NUTS on podcasts, these “laws” mean nothing. If one watches and listens to Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, We the People are well-aware of the lack of meaning God’s “laws” have. The irony is, of course, that while these ‘good christian, cross wearing, prosperity gospel’ charlatans are promoting how they live by the Bible, the “laws” of the Bible hold no real sway over Mike Johnson and his band of idolators in Congress. Lindsey Graham, that betrayer of everything his friend John McCain stood for, has no regard for the “laws” of the Bible-no matter how much he proclaims his allegiance to Jesus, he is the Anti-Christ in action. What is worse, however, is not these people in power who are like this, what is worse is that so many of We the People have disregarded the words of the prophets, disregarded the “laws” of God found in the Bible, so much that these people who are enslaving us, promoting “sin” in the marketplace, in our streets, in hating the stranger, in scapegoating the resident alien,  were put into power by WE THE PEOPLE!!

I am well-acquainted with the ‘prayer’ of people who have bastardized every “law” for their own benefit and then ‘prayed’ to God to save them. For example: when I was on my way to Prison for the first time, I prayed that God would tell the guards that they made a mistake and let me go! I hadn’t prayed to God for any guidance, for any direction, yet I wanted God to ‘save me’!! REALLY?!  I know how often people have questioned my faith because of terrible events that happen in personal lives and in the world in general. I hear the prophets and the words above reminding me that not only does God have a stake in what is happening, more importantly I have a stake in what is going on. I have to keep cleaning my internal house of shmutz so I can stand up for the poor, the needy, the stranger around me. I have to continue to see what I do well and where I miss the mark so I can call out the bullshit of another without being like a Donald Trump, et al. I have to continue to do TShuvah each day so I can face myself in the mirror each morning, I can see more clearly each day the love I have to give and the love I receive from so many, especially my wife. I am blessed to know that my “sin” is also a loss to God and my job is to minimize God’s losses! I pray you will join me in this quest! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

The Legacy of the Prophets, our Inheritance from the Prophets - Year 4 Day 282

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 282

“Indeed the main task of prophetic thinking is to bring the world into divine focus…The prophet is endowed with the insight that enables him to say, not I love or I condemn, but God loves or God condemns.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 34-35)

Yesterday I wrote on the first sentence above and today I want to engage with the second one. Rabbi Heschel’s description of “the prophet” confirms for me, at least, that we are truly descendants of the prophets, that we truly have available to us the inheritance from the prophets of “insight”. As human beings, we always have the choice between being selfish and egotistical, narcissistic and sociopathic and being able to see what is the next right thing to do, being generous with spirit and finances, seeing another human being as having equal and unique dignity and worth, knowing that seeing another human being is, as Jacob said to Esau: “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God” (Gen. 33:10) While Jacob was never fully capable of connecting to Esau, of accepting Esau’s forgiveness, of dealing with his own guilt, he is telling us, early on in the Bible what it is to look into the face of another, to truly SEE that another human being is, as Rabbi Heschel says often: a divine reminder.

At issue for We the People is not that the prophets existed, not even that the prophets had “the insight that enables him to say, not I love or I condemn, but God loves or God condemns”, at issue for us, is whether we are willing to leave the narcissism, exit the selfishness and connect to something greater than ourselves-call it the universe, God, Higher Power, Love, Truth, Higher Consciousness, whatever one wants to call it? We the People have been called to leave the loneliness of being egotistical and sociopathic and join with another human being to BE HUMAN! This is counter-intuitive to the ‘way of the world’, I know, it is counter-intuitive to the ways of AI, the ways of tech, the ways of Power, the ways of the wealthy and those who seek wealth. Yet, it is the inheritance we receive from the prophets, it is the key to sustaining our humanity as well as sustaining our planet. Every resource is limited except our Spirit, every road has an ending except the road to the Ineffable One, every creation is limited except those that come from our souls. This is the truth that the Clergy of today and yesterday, the power brokers, the ruling class never want We the People to know! And it is the TRUTH we have received from the prophets, it is the inheritance that has been passed down, both wittingly and unwittingly by the generation since the prophets ruled, it s the inheritance that has been lived by many heroes silent and loud throughout our history-Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Roosevelt, JFK, RFK, Liz Cheney all are examples of people of spirit and soul that lived the truth of their time and spoke out. The history of clergy is replete with people like St. Francis, Thomas Merton, MLK, the Baal Shem Tov, Reb Nachman, Rabbi Heschel, who also lived into their inheritance from the prophets. It is time for We the People to take up the mantle given to us by the prophets, wear it and live into their teachings.

This can only be done through study and wrestling with the texts. It is not a top-down education process because the words of the prophets, like much of the Bible, need to be digested, discussed, argued over and then put into action. It is not a top-down education process no matter what the ‘teachers’, the ‘rabbis’ say; it is take the action the words say to take and then understand their meaning, the exact opposite of what I just said because BOTH WAYS ARE TRUE and GOOD! Whatever way you engage with the prophets is good-just ENGAGE with them.

This is the issue of our time, when the so-called religious right is telling us that the words of the prophets mean the opposite of what the prophets are saying, when the so-called religious right is telling us that Jesus loved the rich and famous, the powerful and the mighty, that God loves the rich and the poor are being punished, that God wants the Arabs to be driven from their land and killed, that calling ‘those people’ vermin, not human, blood poisoners, WE THE PEOPLE have to, like the prophets in their time, STAND UP AND SAY NO! We are living in a precarious time because we have not stood up to the Tea Party hatred, the war-mongering of Gingrich, the hatefulness of Nixon, the lies of the KKK, the need for ‘the south to rise again’, the toying with fascism like in the 1930’s here in America, the desire of some to return to being like Egypt and having slaves do the bidding of the rich white folk. This is what We the People have wrought by our inattention to the words and the ways of the prophets, by our unwillingness to say “God loves or God condemns”.

I know the trap my immature ego set for me, both when it told me I was the Shit and when it told me I was a piece of shit. I knew of my inheritance as a young man and I squandered it, I used it for all the wrong reasons and in all the wrong ways. I still regret this, I am still acutely aware of these errors so that I don’t repeat them. I also know that in my recovery, I have lived into the inheritance I receive from the prophets, I live into the call for: justice and truth; for caring and concern of another human being; for speaking to people in the way they can hear; for spreading love and kindness. Most of all I live into the inheritance of calling out the whoring of self and the rest of us, the rebuking of myself and my neighbor, the no-holds barred battle/war with the mendacity and self-deception by someone else as well as my own, because T’Shuvah is the response God wants and the response that will save myself and humanity. “For one person’s TShuvah, the whole world endures” says Reb Meir in Yoma 86b. Will you join me in being that person? God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Have you had your "divine focus" eyesight checked recently? Year 4 Day 281

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 281

“Indeed the main task of prophetic thinking is to bring the world into divine focus…The prophet is endowed with the insight that enables him to say, not I love or I condemn, but God loves or God condemns.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 34-35)

According to my understanding of the first sentence above, seeing the world through God’s ‘eyes’ is the gift bestowed upon the prophets and, if we are willing to ‘see’ beyond our desires and self-sabotaging lies, we have inherited. In fact, I would argue that this was the gift given Adam and Eve, the knowledge of good and evil gives us the ‘eyesight’ of the divine and we have abused it, used it for our own selfishness instead of being a prophet in our own time.

This strikes me as a very radical thought, We the People are endowed not only with “certain unalienable rights”, we are also endowed with certain immutable responsibilities which begin with seeing the world through the lens of the divine! The blaming of God for the tragedies of the world, the questioning of “where was God when…” is all an excuse for We the People to soothe our knowing that we have the ability to ‘see’ what God ‘sees’, to take the action necessary so justice, love, mercy, kindness, truth prevail and We the People make this road the “Road Less Traveled” and indulge in the blame game instead.

Extrapolating Rabbi Heschel’s words and thoughts, knowing we are descendants of the prophets, realizing the prophets were everyday people, they were not of the priestly class, not the rich and famous, just ‘average joes’ makes us either seek to improve our eyesight or run away from the divine focus that is available to us. These two ways of encountering the world are on the continuum and most people live in both realities-the choice that I hear from Rabbi Heschel’s first sentence above is: where do you/I stand on this continuum, which direction are we headed towards? This is the question being put before us each day; upon waking up and saying the prayer of gratitude that we are alive do We the People ‘see’ the divine focus needed for this day, ‘see’ the responsibility we get to fulfill this day? If not, are we aware of the choice we are making to stay willfully blind to what truly is, to be ignorant of the ways we are degrading another human being(s)?

Of course, We the People have all the ready-made excuses for not living in “divine focus”, ‘we have to make a living’, ‘there are no more prophets’ , ‘the Rabbi/Priest/Minister is supposed to do this for me’, and other such bullshit. “Life is hard and then you die”, the fatalistic viewpoint gives us another excuse, the denial of God because of the ways religion has bastardized God’s teachings, because of all the wars fought ‘in God’s Name’, and other reasons people have left their religion is another reason/excuse for people not living in divine focus-although they will tell you they are moral people, they are good people and, while this may be true, they forget where the scales of morality and goodness come from: The Bible! So, even the people who proclaim God is dead, who say God is a man-made invention, and act in accordance with justice, love, truth, kindness and mercy are exercising their “divine focus”!

That the ‘un-christian christian nationalists’, the ‘un-orthodox orthodox jews’, the anti-islam muslims’ all proclaim their allegiance and descent from the prophets is, to me, the greatest bastardization of “divine focus” the world has seen for at least 100 years! What is happening now in America, in Israel is not democracy, is not justice, is not truth, is not moral, is not goodness, is not kind, is not merciful, is not loving-it is the opposite of these ‘divine principles’. We the People are being called by the words above to stand up and reclaim our “divine focus”! We the People need to get “a new pair of glasses” as Chuck C writes about people in recovery, and ‘see’ what God is ‘thinking’, ‘see’ what God is ‘calling us to do’, ‘see’ the divine truth in front of our faces and take the next right action to fulfill God’s ‘desire’ for the betterment of humanity and of ourselves.

Every time We the People live in and act from our “divine focus”, We experience a joy that is beyond the beyond. We have the experience of connection to the divine, to something greater than ourselves and to the soul of another human being, to the souls of all human beings. It is an exhilarating experience that feeds upon itself and is so overwhelming, such a ‘high’ that We become ‘addicted’ to seeking more of these experiences. I know this to be true because this is the story of my recovery, it is the story of how joyful my life is and has been. There was/is a person who would fight with me because when asked how I was/am I said/say GREAT! “How can you be great all the time”, she asked and I responded that living in recovery, living in line with “divine focus”, living the best I can each day is so overwhelmingly exquisite, how can I be anything other than GREAT?

Living in “divine focus” does not bring about happiness all the time and it does help me live in joy. That I can feel sad, that I can experience the ups and downs of living in the world, that I no longer deny what is true and real, that I stand up and speak out for the sake of God, for the sake of the stranger, the poor, etc doesn’t make me happy-it gives me the knowing I am living my purpose and this is the purest form of joy I experience. That another(s) put me down, want to silence me, use my foibles against me is of no matter because I get to live into the “divine focus” I have been gifted with. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Taking the Prophets Seriously and living into their words - Year 4 Day 280

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 280

“The words the prophet utters are not offered as souvenirs. His speech to the people is not a reminiscence, a report, heresy. The prophet not only conveys; he reveals.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 33)

In 1972, in his conversation with Carl Stern, Rabbi Heschel gives me the impression that one of the great tragedies of our time is that no one studies the prophets, takes in their words and their essence, etc. Look what has happened in the ensuing 53 years! The stranger is hated and used as a scapegoat, the poor are exploited even more than they have been, racism is off the charts, white supremacy is ‘in vogue’, young white men want to identify with Nazi-loving autocrats, white women vote for a misogynist, rapist, Black and Latino men vote for a bully rather than a woman, and the country is in shambles. Exactly the opposite of the message of the prophets who the so-called clergy of these white self proclaimed “christian” nationalists are delivering and the exact opposite of Mike Johnson and Russell Vought’s claim to “love their Bible”!

Reading the words of the prophets’ today is not a luxury, it is not a moment to engage in critical analysis of whether they existed, it is not to debate their ideas. Immersing ourselves in the life, the times, the words of the prophet is to immerse ourselves in this very moment, to be aware of the times we are living in, and to hear the call of the divine, to wake up to the spirit of the laws given to us at Sinai, to understand that “do not steal” has so many meanings and nuances to it, that the words at Sinai, like the experience of Sinai, was/is experienced by each person differently and uniquely. We need everyone’s authentic experience of the Voice that comes from Sinai today as well as the authentic experience of We the People when reading the Biblical recounting of this experience.

The words of the prophets are also experiences of the Voice from Sinai speaking to a new generation-OURS- calling out to us to “return” to the ways given to us, to “return” to our covenant with the ineffable One and with one another. The prophet is giving us the gift of revelation and We the People continue to ignore it! How utterly ridiculous, egotistical, and ignorant of We the People, hence we find ourselves in a world where lying is celebrated, graft and grift are deemed good, smart qualities, where reneging on the promise of America is glorified, where Israel has become a blight unto the nations instead of a light. This is the result of years and years of ignoring the speech of the prophets, of shunting them to the side by the Rabbis and Sages, of fearing them by Clergy of all stripes.

Hearing and understanding, listening and guarding the words of the prophet is the closest We the People can come to the experience at Sinai! Their words and thoughts, actions and truth are, for We the People an authentic experience of what is rattling around in our souls, the essence of our inner life that we keep ignoring, clouding up with our rational minds (which is supposed to be a servant to our soul), and using criticism rather than critical thinking to hide from the truth of who we are, what our mission is, and living into it.

Why have We the People ignored the call of the prophets, the Word from Sinai? Because we are more interested in our place in society than we are in our place in our lives, in the world. We have become obsessed to the extremes of narcissism, of egotism, of cruelty, of unkindness, of mendacity, so that we can exert our power absolutely- the words of Samuel come to mind and ring so true. Looking into the mirror, seeing the reflection of our souls, experiencing the words of the prophets, allowing their revelations to open our eyes and our spirits to the truth that lies within each one of We the People is the solution to the situation we face today.

80 years ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower told his people to film what they were seeing at the Concentration Camps they were liberating because “years from now people will deny this happened”. The prophets called out the wealthy, the priests, the kings, so that We the People would be brought out of the slavery of autocracy, the cruelty of Solomon, the hatred between the sons of Jacob and their words, their stories, like all of the words and stories in the Bible are the “film”  for We the People to prevent the denial of goodness, to prevent the spread and worship of evil as good, to stop the horrific treatment of the stranger, the poor, the needy from happening again. We the People have failed in our mission to be “a light unto the nations”, we have failed in hearing the call of the prophets ie the call from the divine. AND, We the People are given the solution from the prophets: TSHUVAH! When We return, we are welcomed back, when we return we are healed, when we return, we get another opportunity to hear, listen, understand that freedom, justice, kindness, truth, love are our God-given rights!

In my almost 39 years of studying the prophets, I can attest to their veracity, to their understanding of return, to their words and deeds helping to keep me free, not totally as my ego, my traits that are still out of proper measure, still win the day at times, just a lot less of the time! I am in line with the prophets words and direction about 90% of my days now and it is an experience of supreme JOY and devastating ANGUISH. Seeing how the world is, watching in horror the cruelty that abounds from Jew and Gentile alike causes me grief, sorrow and anguish. Experiencing the goodness of people, the simple acts of kindnesses, participating in same gifts me with JOY, LOVE, and BELONGING! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

P.S. I am taking next week off from writing-visiting my grandson and daughter for his Birthday week! See you next Sunday!