Celebrating, acknowledging the reality of "Spiritual Events" - Year 4 Day 330

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 330

“This is the premise of faith: Spiritual events are real. Ultimately, all creative events are caused by spiritual acts.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 65)

On this day celebrating Rev. Martin Luther King, a dear friend of Rabbi Heschel’s, what could be a better topic than “the premise of faith”? Dr. King was considered a radical by the white (supremacist) establishment and a moderate by some Black people (Black Panthers, etc). Even those white people who did not consider themselves KKK members held a prejudice against Black people, people of color, Jews, etc in the 1950’s, 1960’s some 100 years after the Emancipation Declaration, 160+ years after the Bill of Rights was ratified! What Dr. King had going for him, for the cause of freedom, of equality, of knowing that every human being was equally worthy and dignified, was FAITH! He, like Rabbi Heschel, and so many other Christian, Jewish, Muslim Clergy lived their faith, lived the principles and the ethics, morals, of their respective Bibles, could not perceive of sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing. There were then, as there are today, Christian, Jewish, Muslim Clergy who promote the lies of the bigots, the prejudices of the white christian nationalists, the radical muslims, the xenophobic jews and even support one another more than they live into the precepts of their respective Bibles-using the names of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed to validate cruelty, hatred, theft, etc. Hence, the problems we face today are caused by a lack of “faith”, a mistrust of “faith”,  a disbelief that “spiritual events are real”!

The first spiritual event in the Bible is the creation of “heaven and earth” which was “unformed and chaotic”, with “darkness” and “the Spirit of God” hovering over the “darkness”. God spoke and the world lit up, so too it is with the history of the world, someone speaks and the world is either lit up or darkened, when it is a “spiritual event”, it is usually the former, when it is a rational event, it is far too often the latter. This is our conundrum, honoring the spiritual and making the rational subservient to it, using our rational minds to follow through on, bring to fruition the creativity that comes from our “spiritual events”. This was the genius of Dr. King, of so many of the great luminaries of history; their ability to use their rational minds as servants to God, to their spiritual events, to their creative thoughts and bring their creations to life, to help another(s), to change the ways of the world.

This is what We the People are missing today: the follow through on the creativity that our “spiritual events” present to us; the blocking out of the deafening lies and bastardizations of the modern day lackeys of wanna be slave owners, ie clergy of all colors and faiths who preach any type of blanket hatred. What we are lacking is the hearing aids needed to truly SHEMA, Hear, Listen, Understand, the words of Dr. King, of Rabbi Heschel, of The Baal Shem Tov and the originators of Hasidism, the Catholics like the current Pope, the Christians faithful to Christ’s words and deeds like John Pavlovitz, Jim Palmer, etc. We the People are being called by the words above, by the times we live in, by the commentaries on the Torah, the Bible, the teachings of Rabbi Harold Shulweis to DISOBEY IMMORAL LAWS, IMMORAL REQUESTS, IMMORAL/CRUEL ACTIONS-no matter where they are to be found. After all, would not DISOBEYING have been an early-on solution to Hitler’s hateful rhetoric before he destroyed Germany, Europe, 6Million Jews, estimates of 20-39 million people died in Europe alone! There were people who had “spiritual events”, who knew how to end this madman’s rule with creativity and truth and they were killed, silenced, put in prison, etc because We the People did not SHEMA!

In a world where technology, science, “measurable objectives”, “evidence-based practices” are considered the ‘holy grail’, the ONLY way to bring something to fruition, to the market place, the words of Rabbi Heschel often seem trite, often seem naive, airy-fairy, woo-woo. Yet, I would submit that all technology came from a “spiritual event” the inventor had, Einstein’s theory of relativity came from a “spiritual event”, what is EUREKA, if not the proclamation of a “spiritual event”? What is recognizing the infinite worth, the commonality of spirit we all share if not a “spiritual event”? What is love if not a “spiritual event”, what is intercourse if not a “spiritual event”, think of the words we use to describe “climax, coming, OMG, etc” even when believing it is just fucking! Birth, childrearing, caring for parents, joining the group that believes in the dictates of the Bible to “Love Your Neighbor”, and the most often dictate: “Welcome, love, care for the STRANGER because YOU WERE STRANGERS IN THE LAND OF EGYPT”!!

I know that when We the People welcome the stranger, love the stranger, care for the stranger, we are acknowledging our commonality, our belonging to the same Creator, belonging to the same kind-human kind. I know without doing this, we separate, berate, blame, shame and screw over the stranger, who then becomes defined as “anyone not like me/us”! Trump’s grandfather came here from Germany and was a pimp, Miller’s grandparents are survivors of the Shoah, Lutnick is a Jew who knows history, Vance is a made-up empty shell, Vought is a true-believer in power, glory, cruelty for the sake of some doctrine that is Anti-Christ. I know the “spiritual events” of me and you can overcome these haters, this moment and turn it into the best of what Dr. King preached-we will judge each other on the content of our character, not on the color of our skin, not of the country we came from. Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Prinz, John Lewis, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, et al had a “spiritual event” and the “creative event” that followed has changed the world. Let’s all of us create a society of love and change the world today. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

The need for "proof" can lead us to false beliefs and horrific actions - Year 4 Day 329

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 329

“In modern society, he who refuses to accept the equation of the real and the physical is considered a mystic. However, since God is not an object of a physical experience, the equation implies the impossibility of His existence. Either God is but a word not designating anything real or He is at least as real as the man I see in front of me.”

WOW, sitting here reading these words send shivers down my spine. As I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning, I realize the lunacy of our dependence on “proof” for everything and our dependence upon finding a reason whether true or not for every thing that happens. “There must be a reason” is a phrase often used and usually meant to ask/tell another person of their errors when something “doesn’t come out right”, just as Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, et al. While looking at our actions is important and good, being judgmental that something “didn't work out” may not be. Because things “don’t go my way” doesn’t mean that they are not working out. In fact, one of my favorite sayings and deep beliefs is “everything works” because the ‘result’ will teach us something, will help us grow our spiritual, emotional, educational selves, and will show us a path that we may never have considered!

Equating “real” with “physical” is one of the grave errors of humanity. I am not a “mystic”, you are not a “mystic” because we know that not everything that is real can be felt, touched, smelled, in the physical world. Or, maybe we haven’t given ourselves enough credit for our mysticism! It is a trap, however, to equate these two terms and we see the danger in this right here, right now. Is someone who has been paying taxes, living a decent life, raising good children who serve in our Armed Forces, for over 20 years really “an illegal alien”? That they don’t have the “physical” papers to show they came here legally, that they have lived somewhat under the radars, does this mean they are not really committed to the United States of America, does this mean their children who are serving in the Army, etc are not proud to be in America? I think not!

We have become so out of touch with what is “real” we have allowed the ‘physical’ lies of Trump to be considered “real” because he shows us “physical” proof. Proof that has been doctored, proof that has be redacted all to hell or not given, like the Epstein Files. Because we have become so dependent upon proof, we have proven ourselves to be unable to discern truth from fiction, believing the bullshit provided by the liars, the grifters, the Mike Johnson’s who don’t know about anything, according to his statements, because they know how to doctor a document, know how to “sell ice to the Eskimos”, know how to make murder in the Caribbean look like a patriotic duty! This is the dangerous place we the people find ourselves in and, without God, without looking in the mirror, seeing the divine image being reflected back to us, without knowing the truth of the Bible, the truth of the New Testament, this is where we find ourselves!

In the beginning of this blog, I spoke about proof, seeking a reason, things working out and the situation We the People are living in is “working out”! Not for the thugs of ICE, not for the Liars like Noem, not for the meanness of a Stephen Miller, who’s grandparents are survivors of the Holocaust, not for the profit of Donald Trump, even though all of these ‘results’ are happening. What is ‘working out’ is the uprising of We the People taking place across the land, the protests, the admittance of the depravity of the apartheid being pursued by the Government, the despicable use of Christ’s Name to do the work of the Anti-Christ, the desecration of God’s Name by the Jews purporting they are doing God’s work by hating, killing, supporting the segregation of ‘those people’! For the Jew in the Pew, there is a lot of awakening that this bullshit is not ‘good for the Jews’, for the Christian in the Pew, there is a lot of people waking up to the truth of Christ’s words and the defamation of Christ’s name, words, actions, by these ‘fine christian white supremacists’.

The challenge in front of us today and every day is: “Either God is word not designating anything real or He is at least as real as the man I see in front of me”what say you to this challenge of Rabbi Heschel’s? It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to come to the rescue of God’s Name, God’s Truth, God’s ethereal beingness. We the People are being called to stand up for what we believe in with our actions, our words, and by being witness’ to the power of God, to the realness of God, to the truth of God. The question I pose to all of us this morning: ARE YOU COMING TO RESCUE THE TRUTH OF GOD TODAY?

I know the “real” of God and I do my best to show this reality in my daily doings, how I live my life, how I speak truth to power, how I put my self out to show people a different way, how I continue to show up for people without needing their reciprocity. I show up because I know “THE CALL” when I hear it and the call that I show up for/to is “THE CALL” from the Ineffable One, the call from the universe and I have no way to live with myself if/when I ignore “THE CALL”. This has been the truth for longer than I realized. Even in my addicted, criminal time, I showed up for “THE CALL”. That I didn’t equate hearing THE CALL with changing my lifestyle is a mystery to me and, I know, because I could hear “THE CALL” in my ‘other life’, the knowing of “THE CALL” in that jail cell in Van Nuys, CA. in December of 1986 so “real”. God is as real as the man in the glass, the “man in I see in front of me” and responding to “THE CALL” makes my life richer and more meaningful each and every day. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What is the question this (any and all) experience is the answer for? Year 4 Day 328

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 328

“Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these”(Isa. 40:26). There is a higher form of seeing. We must learn how to lift up our eyes on high in order to see that the world is more a question than an answer… The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the grandeur is God.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 63)

The words I have bolded above cannot be re-iterated enough! “Learn to lift up our eyes on high” is crucial if we are to have a society built upon justice, mercy, kindness, love, truth, compassion, etc. It is not “an impossible dream” as some say and many others believe, it is an achievable goal, or at least we can take the baton from our ancestors who began the journey of learning “how to lift up our eyes” and move further down the road to “see” as Abraham is commanded, as we are commanded, as Isaiah is pleading with us to do. There are certain phrases which keep coming up again and again in my mind and one of them is Einstein’s “the intuitive mind is a gift and the rational mind a servant, we have forgotten the gift and worship the servant.” We the People cannot “learn how to lift up our eyes on high in order to see that the world is more a question than an answer” without our “intuitive mind”. It is just impossible and too many of us are trying to do just that, or even more scary, too many of us are either attempting to deny the statement/truth above, abuse it and use the world as “their oyster” and/or are indifferent to the evil being perpetrated by those in power who only worship power, who worship the “rational mind” that can and does figure out how to gain and retain power using cruelty, mendacity as their main tools. HOW CAN We the People BE INDIFFERENT TO THIS IDOICY, THIS INSANITY, THIS MENDACITY??

As one can see, I am passionate about this because I know where we are headed, I know the horrific road we have traveled down so far with the current world leadership of Trump, Putin, paper tigers who are really bullies and liars, using the tools of the authoritarians of old, reminding us of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia under Hitler and Stalin of the 20th Century. Here in the United States, we see the rise of the worst of the underbelly of the Revolutionary Period-white supremacy. The current administrations ICE ‘soldiers’ are not any different that the white ‘law-abiding citizens’ who hung black people from trees, who banned Billie Holiday from singing “Strange Fruit”, who killed Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in Mississippi and the limp-dick Republicans in Congress are just going along with the tide of evil that they are sword to stop! These ‘good christian folk’ betray their oath to Jesus, to the Constitution, to their own constituents to kiss Trump’s ass for ???  It is way past time for we the people to rise above the smallness we have adopted and adapted to and stand up as The People who are Partners with God in advancing creation!

We the People do this by learning the truth about living a decent moral life, we do this by living a life filled with study, with good spiritual counseling, the maturing of our souls and reversing Einstein’s statement. When “we…learn how to lift up our eyes on high”, we see the world from a different perspective, we realize that our view is limited and we need the input of another(s) to see more of the picture, to be able to gain more insight as to the next right action to take, to check ourselves and our action to make sure they are ‘in line with the divine’. Engaging in a spiritual practice, engaging in spiritual, moral, ethical learning leads us to the uncovering of our eyes, it is a cataract surgery for our souls, and then we are able to discover “the question this experience is the answer for” instead of always seeing the experience as a problem to solve. Flipping the script in this way gives We the People the insight, the realization, the question to meet this moment and the next. It is the solution to all of our issues today-finding the right question so we can have a response that is worthy of our partnership with God, that is worthy of our status as human beings, that increases our ability to be human.

“The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the grandeur is God” comes to remind us of our innate ability to see beyond the surface, to go deeper into what truly is and not get caught up with the shiny things, to keep digging into our selves, our souls, our inner life so we can “see” “beyond the grandeur” and, like Moses, meet God “face to face”. We the People have this opportunity every day, all it takes is learning and practicing how to “lift up our eyes on high”, all it takes is to hear and respond to God’s call of “Ayecha, where are you”. All it takes is not an easy task and it is simple, it is a 2% shift from 49% yearning to “see” to 51% learning and willing to “see”, a 2% shift from 51% needing to be right and have the answer to 51% being a student, a learner, person who belongs only to a community of seekers, of nomads, of wanderers searching for truth, decency, justice, mercy, love.

I began making this 2% shift in December of 1986, I knew I was firmly rooted in 51% when I acknowledged my alcoholism, let go of my need to be right, jettisoned my greed and belief in net worth=self worth. Since then, I keep growing in my ability to “see on high” and keep searching for the questions this experience is the answer for, and grow my response to injustice, to disrespect, to mistreatment of people, all peoples, animals, nature because I cannot access God, I cannot access the best of me when I am not engaged in striving to be a better human. I know the importance to my spiritual health that living a congruent life, using my voice, loud as it is, as uncomfortable as it makes people, even those who love me, and not allowing my sight to become clouded like it was before the spiritual cataract surgery God performed on me in that jail cell. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Higher and lower forms of seeing Year 4 Day 327

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 327

“Lift up your eyes on high and see who created these”(Isa. 40:26). There is a higher form of seeing. We must learn how to lift up our eyes on high in order to see that the world is more a question than an answer… The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the grandeur is God.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 63)

I am going to comment on this passage for two days. This passage from Isaiah is preceded by “comfort my people, comfort my them” (Isa. 40:1) which gives me the sense that to “lift up your eyes on high and see who created these” is to uplift the people, to lift us up and know that not only does God comfort us, God supports us when we do right, as we learn in the fourth chapter of Genesis, when God tells Cain that “negativity couches at your door, it desires you much and you can master it”. We the People can “master” the negativity that is within us, aka the evil inclination, and use it to attain “a higher form of seeing”. This is the GOOD NEWS of the Bible, the GOOD NEWS of the Torah, and the NEWS that is ignored, bastardized, abused, and misused by the charlatans, the idolators, the people in power both in Isaiah’s time, in the times of all the prophets, and in our time as well. Using the words of the Bible, the insights and teachings of the prophets for their own gain has been a theme of ‘religious’ people throughout the millennia and it is on the upswing right now!

We the people have become so small-minded, so small-seeing that we have fallen for the lies and the bullshit of the autocrat, the insanity of the judgmental, the cruelty of those in power, the horror of white supremacy in action. It is so antithetical to everything the Bible stands for and on, everything Jesus taught, everything the Constitution has within it to protect us from what is happening right now and we the, small-minded, afraid of our own shadows, people just wring our hands and/or even worse, cheer the hatred, the killing, the denial of humane treatment that is happening in America today. In our small-mindedness, we the people are unable to see the truth of pardoning the former president of Honduras who was responsible for 500 MILLION POUNDS OF COCAINE coming into this country and kidnap, arrest the president of Venezuela(a bad dude) and take the oil that belongs to the PEOPLE of Venezuela and call ourselves wonderful liberators!!??? WHAT THE FUCK?

Rather than leaning into the words of Isaiah, rather than hearing the words, the ways Rabbi Heschel lived his life, rather than living the words of Torah, of Hasidic teachings, of the Sermon on the Mount,  we the people would rather kiss the ass of the rich and powerful, sit like trained seals waiting for some leftovers of their food, of their businesses, etc so we can eat! Rather than reaching for “a higher form of seeing”, we the, small-minded, stunted vision, bastardizers of faith, people like looking down, especially if we can look down on another human being. This is what brought about Donald Trump’s success at the ballot box, the ‘good progressives, those people who are always on the “right” side of the argument” looking down upon the “deplorable”,  looking down on those of us who are not so erudite, so smart, lifting up their noses to avoid the ‘stench’ of those of us who are so impatient with bullshit, with pat answers, with being told ‘you just don’t understand, it is too above your ability to understand’ and instead respond/react with loudness, with truth, with rage at the injustices these so-called ‘nice people’, these progressives engage in and their inability to admit their own errors.

“Lift up your eyes on high” is the call to Abraham as well, it is the call to all of us each and every day-to “lift up your eyes” and open up our ears to the Voice that broadcasts from Mount Sinai on the Ultra High Frequency of our soul’s language, our soul’s knowing. This is the way We the People get right-sized! We the People are not meant to be small-minded, afraid of our own shadows, stunted vision, bastardizers of faith! We the People are created in the IMAGE OF THE DIVINE, We the People “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”! There is no place for autocracy in the American Constitution, in the American Revolution, in the Jewish world of Torah, of Bible. King David is held to account and can admit his guilt and the ASSHOLES in charge today cannot-this should tell us something! King David is willing to listen to women and follow their direction and the progressives can only wrap themselves in their platitudes and never surrender to the truth of the harms they have wrought upon us.

“Lift up your eyes on high” and engage in “a higher form of seeing” has been the mantra of my recovery, my ability to change, my eagerness to learn, my willingness to do T’Shuvah, my impatience with mendacity and need to rebuke those who are mean and cruel, those who are, wittingly and/or unwittingly, making errors in real time. It is the call of Isaiah and it is the call of God who gave Isaiah the words to speak, the spark of light to “see”, the opening of his soul, and ours, to hear. I am asking all of us to, once again, do a daily Chesbon HaNefesh and ‘see’ where we are keeping faith with this “higher form of seeing”, where we are acting with gratitude and humility when we “see who created these” and where/when we are not. This is the greatest call for and to We the People this call to “Lift up your eyes on high and see” because all of the ills we have experienced throughout history comes from looking down, not looking up, comes from looking in our pockets, our banks, for more, more, more and not looking up, gaining sight and vision to “SEE” the person next to us, in front of us, behind us who needs our help. This has been the true shift in my being in these 38+years of recovery, I continue to grow my practice of engaging in “a higher form of seeing” so I can continue to serve We the People, serve God, serve my better angels. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

The need for power, order, control, and certainty can lead to being inhumane - Year 4 Day 326

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 326

“Modern man dwells upon the order and power of nature; the prophets dwell upon the grandeur and creation of nature. The former directs his attention to the manageable and intelligible aspect of the universe; the latter to its mystery and marvel.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 63)

“Modern man dwells upon the order and power of nature” because it gives one a sense of control, a sense of certainty that the sun will rise each morning, the moon will be able to be seen in the evening, snow in the winter, rain in the spring, etc. The need of human beings for order, power, certainty and control is so great in some of us that this need overshadows all other concerns, all other demands of God, even the belief in God gets overshadowed by our needs for these things. These needs place humans before God, as if God doesn’t really have a say in our lives, as if God is meaningless to us because satisfying our needs for control, order, power, and certainty are greater than anything else. We the People are addicted to these needs and will do anything and everything to have them fulfilled, just look at the ways in which so many people have given their vote, their power, their future over to the likes of Trump, Vance, Netanyahu, Ben G’Vir, Putin et al!

History will record this time as a depression, as a retardation of God’s Will and ways. It will write chapter and verse on “man’s inhumanity to man” after only 90 years since the last experience of it. It will speak to future generations of the inhumanity done by the ‘bad’ people and by the ‘good’ people. When we the people are so small minded, so spiritually stunted that we need a ‘bad guy’ in order to feel good, we the people are engaging our evil inclination, and this happens on “both sides of the aisle! When we the people are so small in our own esteem that we need to deny the infinite worth and dignity of another human being so we can value our self, our narcissism is alive, well and running the show and, again, this happens on “both sides of the aisle”. When we the people cannot give one another our due, cannot be happy for the joys and success’ of another human being, when our agendas, our dogmas overshadow our kindness, our humanity, our call to be generous of spirit and loving, we are focusing on our need for “order”, “power”, certainty, and control. This is true of the progressive and the conservative, their surety in their own ‘rightness’ propels them to acting inhumane and their denial of their inhumanity only serves to make them more and more inhumane. The denial of the rights of a person because of their race, creed, religion is as abhorrent as the denial of the rights of a person who doesn’t want to do business with people of a ‘certain kind’ because in a free society if someone doesn’t want my business- I go someplace else. The same is true for places of worship; we have many synagogues, churches, temples, because we the people don’t like some and like another. Like we say in AA- all it take to start a new meeting is “a coffee pot and a good resentment”! Yet, the need for “order, power”, control and certainty causes the denial of rights, the theft of the dignity of an individual, and validates the inhumanity shown by one person to another in their minds.

The prophets, however, give us a different way to see “nature”, to live in the world: dwelling upon the mystery and marvel of life, of “nature”, of the awesomeness of being a partner with God in perfecting creation-knowing it will never happen in our lifetime and we engage in the work anyway, as Rabbi Tarfon teaches. The prophets left with us, as an inheritance, the ability to gaze upon the sunrise with awe and amazement, knowing the “Tifferet”; the beauty, the combination of all our needs and powers coming together in praise and joy, beauty and wonder! WE THE PEOPLE are being called by the Voice on Mount Sinai each and every day to use our inheritance to make the world better, to let go of our unrelenting needs for control, power, order, certainty and live into the power of the universe, live in the spirit of the world of nature and protect it, nourish it, grow it so the spirit within each one of us grows as well. Protecting, nourishing nature leads us to protecting and nourishing one another which leads to the uplift in our spirituality and our way of living life as a being that is compatible to be a partner with the Ineffable One! The prophets, with all their doom and gloom, had great belief and faith in We the People! Otherwise, why waste their breath and since they were ‘sent’ by God, God has great faith in We the People! ISN’T IT WAY PAST TIME FOR US TO HONOR THIS BELIEF AND FAITH? Isn’t it way past time for us to let go of our joy and rapture at the inhumanity we can do to one another? Isn’t it time for We the People to hold the people responsible for the deaths, the torture, the imprisonment of people that ICE is doing in our name?

Living the inheritance the prophets left for me is a difficult life! As both Socrates and Malcolm X said: “the unexamined life is not worth living” and “the examined life is painful”! 60 years ago today, I buried my father and listened to the asinine comments of people telling me “I know how you feel” when their fathers were still alive!! This is an example of inhumanity because by trying to feel better themselves, they lied, they took away my feelings, my experience, my dignity-isn’t this the definition of inhumanity? I engaged in being inhumane to another(s) and I still experience the regret and I shudder inside from it. Hence, my commitment to the legacy, the inheritance of my father, Jerry Borovitz, z”l, the legacy, the inheritance of the prophets and to being human in every situation-not always making it and sure as hell trying to. I bristle and speak out when someone is being inhumane to another and get in trouble for it sometimes, so what! Seeing what is ‘behind the curtain’ makes me dangerous and not wanted in some circles-oh well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Hearing, Reasoning, Perceiving, using the ears, the mind can lead us astray! Year 4 Day 325

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 325

“And yet, what the ear fails to perceive, what reason fails to conceive, the Bible makes clear to our souls. It is a higher truth, to be grasped by the spirit.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.63)

Ah, the hubris of humanity is stated in the words above. We the People have been told by societal norms that our hearing is excellent, that our reason is uber alles the holy grail of living and none of this is true! Yet, no matter how often these ideas, these “conventional notions” are disproven, humanity comes back to them over and over, ignoring the consequences, the hatred, the murdering, the deaths by suicide, the myriad of ways to escape when our reasoning fails us, when we are deaf to what is really happening. This may be, the greatest tragedy of a human life; not accepting that our ears and our reason will get us only so far and, to be human, to be in joy, to be decent, to be kind, to engage in a reciprocity of generosity, “a higher truth” has “to be grasped by the spirit.”

We are so full of ourselves, also so full of shit, that there are people like Donny- the Boy and Bibi-the denier, Vlad-the pouter, Vance-the made-up man, Miller-the hater, Lutnick-the quintessential picture of the Shylock, Hegseth-the face, Bondi-the blonde whore, etc who claim to be the ONLY purveyors of Truth. These people and their cronies like RFK Jr claim to have the corner on the truth and ‘those’ people who disagree with ‘us’ are your enemies, they are the liars, they are the false prophets, it is only ‘we’ that follow Jesus, it is only ‘we’ who care about the poor, the stranger, the …. AND We the People bought this bullshit enough to elect Bibi, Donny, Vlad, more than once!! WTF!!???! Since there is more than “the ear” can “perceive” and “reason” can “conceive”, what possible excuse can We the People have for shrinking our soul’s knowing, for keeping our soul’s at an immature level? We have the record of a higher hearing, a higher consciousness at the Red Sea, at Mount Sinai. We know the experience of Moses upon seeing the “back of God’s presence” and the glow he had after that. We have the record of Samuel’s being called, of David praising God in the Psalms and being able to hear another person’s advice, even a woman’s!

Yet, we the people have gotten so small-spirited, so small-minded, so unreasonable, so deaf that only hatred, only blame, only retribution make sense any more. Our attention span has become so short as evidenced by the ways the DRUMPF has taken the Epstein Files off our radar, he has essentially gone to war to cover up, to ignore his role in the doings and goings on of Jeffery Epstein. He has sent his Goon Squad, his SS Storm Troopers into American Cities to kill American Citizens in order to hide the fact that Melania was an Epstein Girl, that he partook in the Epstein Parties, we know he desired Ivanka as a girl.

Yet, we the people are so short-sighted, so inept spiritually to stand up for the truth that goes beyond the mendacity, the bullshit being shoveled our way. We the people have forgotten the words of the prophets, we have misread the Bible, the New Testament, history itself. It doesn’t belong to the winners, it isn’t the strongest that win/survive. Jesus tells us “the meek shall inherit the earth”, the Bible is the story and written by the JEWS who were displaced from their land, who wandered for almost 1900 years!

We the People must wake the fuck up! We the People are being called by the words above, by the situation of today to go beyond our hearing and our perceiving, to rise above what “the ear fails to perceive” and “reason fails to conceive”. We the People are being given the opportunity to repair the damage we have done by electing the charlatans, the idolators to office. We the People are being given the power to be a blessing, as Abraham was given, by standing for what is good and holy, decent and kind, by rising above the mundane murmurings of society. We the People have within us the ability to be “maladjusted to” societal norms and our mental cliches, to climb up Mount Sinai and meet the One who IS, the One who WAS, the One who WILL BE. We the People are able to grow our spiritual life so We can “grasp” the “higher truth” with our “souls’. To do this, We the People have to rise above the pettiness and pride we seem to always fall into. We have to let go of our need to be right, our need to blame and shame, our need to demean in order to feel stronger, to rise up, to stop needing to step on someone else in order to “climb the ladder of success”. We the People are being asked to take the cotton out of our ears, to stop acting on the first thought and wait for the second one, to see with our ‘third eye’ and allow our souls’ to guide us instead of false ego, false pride, etc being our motivator.

While this seems hard for most of us, I have found it possible to live into the Spirit that guided the Israelites in the Desert, the Spirit that has guided me into recovery and continues to be the guidance I need. I know the draw of false ego, the relief of being able to blame another for my errors, the false claim of ‘not my responsibility’, etc. they’re the tools I used in my life prior to recovery. What I have recovered is ME, the authentic Mark Borovitz, the son my father raised, the soul God created me to be. I engage in higher consciousness every day and ‘see’ things that most people don’t, “hear” things that are unintelligible to many and preach them loud and louder. I experience the sadness of being left out, the sadness of loneliness that the prophets experienced throughout our time, the sadness of disappointment in not being known by those I trust. AND, I experience the joy of speaking truth to power, the joy of continuing to have the energy and staying power to keep preaching the gospel according to my soul, to what God tells me and the joy of being known by so many. It is truly a both/and. The Bible sets my soul free. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"Sense for the Sublime", growing the "inward greatness of the human soul" or becoming "flat and the soul a vacuum" Year 4 Day 324

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 324

“The sense for the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the human soul and something which is potentially given to all people, is now a rare gift. Yet without it, the world becomes flat and the soul a vacuum.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 62)

Reminding ourselves that “sublime” is defined as elevated, grand, heroic from the Hebrew, these words are making me shudder, helping me to wake up and use my 5 senses to appreciate, live into, and respond to the “sublime” that is surrounding me at all times.  At stake right now, as it has been in the past, is “the inward greatness of the human soul”, the living into the potential we are all created with by having the our souls blown into us by God, as the 2nd chapter of Genesis teaches. This is the challenge for all of us!

We the People are being bombarded by bullshit and mendacity, by subterfuge and cons, by Ponzi schemes and brazenness at the top of our ‘food chain’, our Federal Government from the President on down the line. There is no one in this Administration that believes in the Constitution, that believes in the Oaths they have taken, and, by extension, they help to promote a “the world that becomes flat and the soul a vacuum”! When the President of the United States says about   The Civil Rights Act that “White people did very badly…and they were not invited to go into a university or college”. “So, I would say in that way, I think was unfair in certain cases.” WHAT THE FUCK!! The Civil Rights Act was a path to right the WRONGNESS of the UNFAIR TREATMENT of Black people for 200+ years here in the “land of the FREE”! Rather than acknowledge the “inward greatness of the human soul” of people of color, of Jews for a time, of every ethnic group that came here to escape persecution or poverty, these ‘POOR WHITE FOLK’ like Donald J. Trump, JD Vance, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner need to only acknowledge “their kind” as having any greatness, as having the right to do as they please. These words have to enrage We the People because they deny the truth, they skirt the issue, they use subterfuge to cover the ways the Civil Rights Act sought to elevate the plight of the Black Person, sought to end the SENSELESS HANGINGS of those ‘fine white southern christian KKK members’ that Trump thinks are “good people”.

I am railing about this because if I don’t We the People may become immune to the lies, immune to the hatred being spewed and confused because there is a grain of truth in what President DRUMPF(his real name) said; namely the universities and colleges started to admit more people of color, the job market opened up to more people of color, the wages of people doing the same job became the same for people of color as they were for white people-these are all terrible things for a Free Society to do, right!!??

We the People have to regain our “sense for the sublime” in every thing we do, this is the core aspect of the Mitzvah, the basic tenet of Christ’s teaching as I understand it. We say a prayer before we eat to express gratitude, to acknowledge that on our own, we could not have prepared “this meal”, “this bread”. Then, as Jews, we say a prayer after eating to express satisfaction, to express joy, to remember to Whom we owe our gratitude. With each action we take,  from waking up through going to sleep, we say some prayer acknowledging the action, reminding myself of the obligation, and growing our“inward greatness of the human soul” within us. Each prayer, each mitzvah, each action either retards my march to growing and living at an “elevated” state, to living into the “grandness” of our being, to being an example of “heroic” to our children, family, community. This is the challenge of the words above, are we going to buy into the mendacity, approve of the grift, the graft, the theft of money, of people, of property this government is engaged in or are we going to STAND THE FUCK UP FOR THE TRUTH, THE CONSTITUTION, LOVE, KINDNESS, ETC? Are we going to STAND AGAINST THE MENDACITY, THE HATRED, THE AUTOCRACY these people who are “flat” and whose souls have become “a vacuum?

These are a few of the questions facing We the People in this moment. I have seen this movie before, I have hear the testimonies of people who survived a moment like this in the past, I can give testimony to what it was like for a black man to be dehumanized by having to be paid less than a white man for the same work because I heard it directly from the black men who worked for my father and who praised him for raising their wages to be equal when he took over the business! I can testify to the dehumanization of a Jew in Hungary when the Nazis came and the Hungarian government was so happy to fulfill the call for more Jews to be gassed, for Jews to be shot in the back of the head and fall into the Danube after their shoes were taken from them because I heard the testimony from survivors. I can attest to the discrimination against Jews in the Armed Services during WWII, and in America as well because my father was subjected to it and he stood tall, he would not give in to changing his name. I can attest to the emptiness of life when my “soul” was “a vacuum” and I was a flat two-dimensional being. I refuse to live this way, I refuse to be ignored, I refuse to stop my goal of reaching you and me so we can grow our “sense of the sublime”, so we can live an “elevated, grand” life. This is the heroic task that we are presented with in this moment, to fight these autocrats, the senseless hatred being spewed by this government and to say YES to the teachings of Christ, YES to the teachings of Moses, YES to the Call from Sinai. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Weighing, Measuring, Wonder and Awe; ingredients for a healthy life - Year 4 Day 323

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 323

“We teach the children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 62)

I am not quite sure what happens when I read these words, and others of course, from Rabbi Heschel and from the Bible, from commentators, except to say I experience an inner body aliveness, an immediate response to the brilliance, or in some cases the stupidity, of the words and the multitude of meanings, ideas, etc they gift me to confront and consider. The words above, while simple and straightforward, are causing me to erupt in a technicolor shower of light, vision, ideas. Teaching our “children how to measure, how to weigh” is an essential part of their education, their upbringing. In the Bible we learn that we are not to use false weights or measures lest we cheat someone, take advantage of the uninformed, put a stumbling block before the blind, curse the deaf, etc. Ergo, learning “how to measure, how to weigh” is a core lesson for our children.

The issue that is confronting all of us in today’s world, as I am sure it happened in the past as well, is what we are weighing and measuring, for what purpose are we weighing and measuring, how are we weighing and measuring our actions, our goals, our ways of being, one another? Teaching pounds and ounces to our children is fine, teaching them to put their emphasis on what is in it for them is not so fine. Helping our children discern what is real and what is not is crucial, teaching them to put their emphasis on measuring the amount of shit they can get away with is not so crucial. Making weighing and measuring a purely mathematic equation steals an essential ingredient  that needs to be present in all decisions: being human, bringing our self, our soul, into the equation. When this happens, there is no “false weights” being used, there is no question as to the integrity of the measurements. There is ‘oh well, let's just jam this in to fit’. Without the soul, every measurement is void of at least some of its meaning, all of our measuring becomes so rote, an error is more likely to occur.

When teaching our children to weigh and measure, We the People must teach them differently that has been the custom and path for far too many. Rather than teaching them to measure the amount of money they will make by going along with the fascist, the autocrat, the thief, the grifter; rather than teach them how to weigh the chances of ‘getting caught’ doing the wrong thing, cheating on taxes, making the rich richer on the backs of the poor, shooting and killing people just because we can; We the People have to become the Adults in the Room, we are being called upon by the words above to “teach our children” as we are taught in Deuteronomy 6:7. Without the ability to “sense wonder and awe”, the human being loses one of our core features that makes us human, that gives us the ability to ‘have rule and dominion”, that is at the heart of our “God-Image” because God gifts us “wonder and awe” every day; looking at the sunrise, sunset, the mountains, the valleys, the sky, the oceans, etc show us what awe is and the idea of wonder being our ability to stay “maladjusted” to conventional notions and mental cliches keeps it fresh and new each day.

This is what we have failed to teach our children, this is the tragedy of humanity and, I believe, the main reason we are in the state of chaos, hatred, meanness, inhumanity towards one another in which we find ourselves. That Jews, Christians, Muslims who all proclaim their ‘undying loyalty’ to God, to Jesus, to Allah are leading the charge of this failure, that these ‘good folk’ are using false weights and measures and calling them true, that they are using the Name of God to lie, cheat, steal, is abominable, it is blasphemous, it is idolatry. Yet, there are people who claim to be Jewish who hate the stranger, want to deport the stranger even though their ancestors were allowed in as refugees from Hitler’s Germany or NOT, there are Christians who think that health care is a privilege and the poor don’t deserve it, even though Christ ministered to those who were sick and to the poor.

Religion has become a tool for power, for control rather than a place and way of sensing the “wonder and awe” of life. Rather than religious education focus on “how to sense wonder and awe”, how to acknowledge without worry of being laughed at, religious education is about dogma, about tribalism. If I hear one more time: Am Yisrael Chai-the people of Israel live- as a rallying cry that all of us should everything Israel does as right and good; I will become volcanic at the mendacity. If I hear one more time: “is it good for the Jews” as a way of weighing and measuring a decision, an ethical question, a spiritual concern; I will explode with righteous indignation. I am calling all of the people who go along with anyone and everyone who fosters hatred, who deny the individual dignity and worth of another, who ghost people just because, who put on the front of ‘being nice’ while actually being totally caught up in and with themselves. I am calling out the ‘good clergy folk’ who are afraid to speak truth to power, who believe what the powerful are doing to fuck over the rest of us, who are more concerned with their well-being than the proper weighing and measuring of ideas, of food, and the ability to “sense wonder and awe” in our waking up, our cup of coffee, our ability to think, to work, to care for one another, to be kind, to be loving, to be in truth or at least keep seeking truth, to reject mendacity, to stop only caring about “what’s in it for me” and to Teach Your Children Well, as the song goes! This is the challenge of the words above, this is the challenge We the People face each day; so far the Anti-God people, the ANTI DECENCY people seem to be winning and our job is to hold the line, fight for the change we know is needed, weigh and measure properly and “sense the wonder and awe” in living this way. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"Grandeur", "Sublime", "exploitation of the power aspect of reality"-the choice is yours. Year 4 Day 322

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 322

“The awareness of grandeur and the sublime is all but gone from the modern mind. Our systems of education stress the importance of enabling the student to exploit the power aspect of reality. To some degree, they try to develop his ability to appreciate beauty. But there is no education for the sublime.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 62)

“Grandeur” in Hebrew is the root of word “Tifferet” in Hebrew which denotes magnificence, glory, splendor, and is one of the ‘worlds’ on the chart of Kabbalah, often times associated with the heart. The Kabbalah believes that “grandeur” is in and at the heart of every human being and, as Rabbi Heschel says in the first sentence, “is all but gone from the modern mind”. Is it any wonder then how we have ended up in the state we are in today? Is it any wonder that a liar and cheat, a blamer and a fascist, an idolator and a blasphemer would be in charge of our Nation’s most important assets-FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY? Precisely because, We the People have abdicated our “awareness of grandeur and the sublime” do we find ourselves having to listen to the lies of Kristi Noem, Marco Rubio, Russell Vought, Stephen Miller, Howard Lutnick, et al. Another person, this time a young woman, a mother of two, was killed by the GESTAPO called ICE agents and the people responsible shirk their responsibility, blame the victim (an old trick in the Goebbels book of tricks), and wrap themselves in some bullshit ‘save America from ‘those’ people. It is disgusting, it is despicable, it is illegal, it is enslaving, it is sacrilegious, it is against God, Jesus, and is being sold by the very people who claim to speak in the name of God and really use Jesus, God, Moses, to further their own agendas to “exploit the power aspect of reality”.

“The sublime”, in Hebrew, is the word “nisgav” -grand, heroic- and the word “na-aleh” -elevated, lofty. What passes for “heroic and grand” in America and in Israel right now is anything but “sublime”, it is the antithesis of “the sublime” it is bad, inferior and all together horrific what Netanyahu, Trump, their minions, their ‘families’ are doing to our respective countries and to the world. Yet, We the People are sitting around and, to quote that great humanitarian JD Vance (or whatever the hell his name is) we are “clutching our pearls” instead of, as many a Baseball fan has said and heard; “THROW THE BUMS OUT!!” The exploitation of both “sublime” and “grandeur” by the people listed above, by society in general in this moment rivals the worst of societal bastardization of these words, rivals the worst of idolatry and exploitation of God and Spirit throughout the history of the world and WE THE FUCKING PEOPLE are allowing it, some of us are supporting it actively, and we are not demanding our legislative branches, our judicial branch of government stand up and do their jobs, awaken their hearts to the need for their truthful, covenantal actions, do the heroic actions that we ask our people in our Armed Forces to do and rise up to the elevated, lofty place that we are told to live in by God in the first chapter of Genesis! The people who fought in Venezuela, whether they should have been put in harms way or not, are more heroic that the entire Republican Caucuses in the Senate and House! One of the people in the IDF are more elevated than the entire Netanyahu Coalition!

“THROW THE BUMS OUT” is an impossible ask when We the People keep believing the lies of societal norms, when we the people continue to become “adjusted” to the lies and bullshit of Trump, Netanyahu, et al. It is impossible for We the People to live into “the sublime” that our souls call us to rise up to, unrealistic to believe we have “the heart of a lion” when we are “adjusted” to the cliches and norms of exploitation of “the power aspect of reality”. Only through “RADICAL AMAZEMENT” can we hope to change the world, change our reality, change our ways. Only by being “maladjusted” to the lies and notions, cliches and usual ways of doing business, can we the People make any inroads against the cruelty, the dictatorial ways of the current people in charge, stand up and be heroic and elevated against the Idolatry of Bibi, Donny, the ‘christian nationalists’, the ‘good orthodox jews’ who support them. The biggest adversary is, of course, the people like Trump and Netanyahu-the opportunists who have no real beliefs, no sense of “grandeur”, no interest in “the sublime” and only care for getting whatever they can, from whomever they can, however they can. This is the enemy within, this is the definition of a Spiritual Malady and every human being has this piece within us! Hence, the need for a spiritual practice, the need for spiritual counseling, the need for a community of people who will reflect one’s soul back to her/him, who will “rebuke their neighbor” so they can improve, and engage in loving the stranger, the poor, the needy, the neighbor, God.

Tonight, in some 13 hours, will mark the exact time 60 years ago that my father died! With his death, I lost my sense of grandeur, I lost my interest in “the sublime” and, while I fought for a bit, lost my way in the world. I remember the moment of finding him dead on our couch, the scream of my mother, the calls to my family, to the Rabbi, the Cantor, meeting my aunt and uncle outside the door so I could prepare them for coming in when my father’s body was still on the floor from the paramedics trying to revive him, the Doctor saying he would sign the death certificate so no autopsy had to be performed, the family gathering. All these moments could have, should have enhanced my sense of “grandeur”, my appreciation for “the sublime” and instead I lost them, I rejected both ideas and adopted the ‘way of the world’, attempting to “exploit the power aspect” and, because I am the son of Jerry Borovitz, I could never commit fully to this way and, after the long journey of 20+ years, I found my way back to living from my “heart” (Tifferet) place and “elevating” my daily ways of living to meet “the sublime” in you and in the world. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Power, Greed, Grift, Graft, all are paths to worshipping a Golden Calf! Year 4 Day 321

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 321

“If the world is only power to us and we are all absorbed in a gold rush, then the only god we may come upon is the golden calf.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.61)

OMG! Here we are again!! These words written/spoken some 50-70 years ago are as true if not truer today than when Rabbi Heschel wrote/spoke them. We are witnessing, once again the belief that all that matters in this world is “power” and the way to “power” is through money, because of “gold” one possesses. The “Golden Rule” for these ‘good christian nationalist folk’ is “the one with the gold rules”. Because money is “power” and “power” is all that matters, how one gets one’s money is immaterial, how one screws people over to ‘get to the top’ is of no consequence, and holding a Trump, Trump-like, Trump loyalist to account is ridiculous!

And, this is so much bigger than Trump and his accolades, it is a way of being that has its roots in Ancient Egypt and a through-line from Alexander’s Greece to Trump’s America. That the Jan 6 rioters, those ‘fine patriots’ who attacked and tried to kill Capital Police and DC Metro Police were pardoned is a disgrace, that Trump arrests Maduro on Narco trafficking charges and pardons Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, the ex-President of Honduras who was responsible for 500 MILLION POUNDS OF COCAINE entering the United Sates is BEYOND THE BEYOND! Yes, I am screaming, yes, I am enraged, yes, I am bereft and so should everyone else. We the People need some anger and disgust for the ways God’s Name is being desecrated by the people running the country. We the People need to hear the SHEMA being blasted from Mount Sinai as you read this and I write these words. We the People are being called to respond differently than we have been to what we see happening before our very eyes.

For far too long, we the people have gone along with the societal norms and mental cliches that money is power and power is what life is all about. Facing the truth of our powerlessness is too much for most people, knowing that uncertainty is one of the main facets of living, that we are dependent on another(s) from birth through death is an undeniable truth; all of these are too much for the Greeks to bear and Trump’s America is in strong denial of these basic truths from the Bible. “Until when” will We the People not bow down to the Truth of life? “Until when” will We the People not realize that democracy is hanging by a thread and the thread is being cut as we speak? “Until when” will We the People continue to put the cotton in our ears so we don’t hear the Call from Sinai? “Until when” will we the People not be like the Egyptians and not bow down to greed and grift, graft and bribery, Lutnick and Kushner, Trump and Miller, et al? “Until when” is the question Moses asked Pharaoh, and his courtiers asked him with no response. And we all know how that story ends!!

While it is easy to ‘blame’ Trump-the truth is much harder for most of us to bear. “In a free society some are guilty, all are responsible” is a major teaching of Rabbi Heschel and I say to We the People before you point your fingers, ms liberal, mr. Progressive, mrs conservative, pastor christian nationalist, rabbi xenophobic, imam radicalism, LOOK AT YOURSELF! How did the overstepping of ‘freedom’ lead to the backlash that brought Trump to office in the first place and returned him after his CRIMINAL ACTIONS? How have the “progressives”, the “good people on the right side of an issue” stifled any and all opposition to ‘their ways’ because ‘right is on their side’? If this is not worshiping “the golden calf” what is? These same progressives feel the same way about their money as the conservatives they rail against. From King Solomon till now the ruling class’ obsession with wealth and equating wealth with power has only grown! “The one with the most toys wins” is not just a vapid cliche, it is doctrine for many people, on both sides of the aisle. That the conservatives, far right promote the “prosperity gospels” is a wonderful example of worshipping at “the golden calf”, bastardizing Jesus’ words and deeds, not learning from the Israelites who were newly freed, and all together a horrific attitude towards their brothers and sisters, all of us “children of God”.

As I have stated many times, the only path forward, the only way to honor the truth of where we are going, the only road that takes us from where we are, slaves to the almighty dollar, servants of the quest for power, is the inner journey to our core, to our soul’s mission, to the connection and covenant with something greater than ourselves. Addiction is a Spiritual Malady! Extremism is a Spiritual Malady! Obsession with Money is a Spiritual Malady! Mendacity about whom/what we are worshipping is a Spiritual Malady! LETS GET OFF THE COUCHES and INTO THE PEWS! LETS GET THE CLERGY TO GET OUT OF THEIR DOGMAS AND PREJUDICES AND TEACH, PREACH the PROPHETS, JESUS, AND LOVE THE STRANGER, LOVE ADONAI, LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR! This will only happen when the Clergy and We the People come together to seek relief from the lies we tell ourselves, when we become “maladjusted to notions and cliches” so we wake up every day grateful and dedicated to living in “radical amazement” as Rabbi Heschel did and teaches us to.

This is the journey I have been on for the past 39+years, no longer worshipping the Golden Calf and serving God. No longer denying the lies I tell myself, being aware of them so I don’t fall down the rabbit hole AGAIN, and speak truth to power-no matter the consequences. Sometimes I live in exile because of I won’t bow down to the Golden Calfs’ and that is okay because to bow down would mean I am in exile from myself. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What is the state of "wretchedness and monstrous conceit" in your actions? Year 4 Day 320

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 320

“The flood of wretchedness is sweeping away our monstrous conceit… Indeed, out of a system of ideas where knowledge is power, where values are a synonym for needs, where the pyramid of being is turned upside down - it is hard to find a way to an awareness of God.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.61)

Unfortunately “the flood of wretchedness is sweeping away our monstrous conceit” has not happened yet! Rather, because of the system Rabbi Heschel describes above, “wretchedness” and “monstrous conceit” are on the rise and in power as we see across the globe, especially here in America and, to my great pain, in Israel. Reb Nachman is quoted as saying forgetfulness is a great gift and I understand the need to forget our errors that we have done Tshuvah for, that we have made our amends and emended our ways of living. It is not a gift to forget these errors and repeat the same harms that we have already done T’Shuvah for! What it means when this happens is that our T’Shuvah was more about saying ‘I’m sorry’ to get the heat off, to fool those around us into trusting us again so we can fuck them over once more. This is the way of the con, the way of the grifter, the way of the Republican Party leadership and Congressional people. The “flood of wretchedness” that comes out of the mouth of Mike Johnson is never ending and to use “god” as his motivator in being so wretched is abominable! Lindsey Graham, that ‘good old boy’ who has some dark secrets, who is a betrayer of his friend John McCain’s legacy, laughing at Trump telling us that he wants Greenland and it belongs to the United States is another example of “the flood of wretchedness”.

“Monstrous conceit” is on display each and every day from Trump, Miller, Rubio, Hegseth, Bondi, Noem, Vought, Thune, et al. Their display of hatred towards we the people is atrocious, despicable, and demeaning. Is it not time for We the People to stand up and say NO to these conceited BASTARDS?? Isn’t it time for We the People to demand a reckoning with truth, a return to our constitutional order, a moving forward in the spirit of the Civil War to re-establish a “government of the people, by the people, for the people will not perish from this earth”! It is in danger of perishing, we are in danger of losing not just the soul of America as one of Jon Meacham’s books is titled, we are in danger of losing our own souls, our sense of kindness, love, concern, truth, mercy, compassion, is at stake right now and We the People are being called to respond to the cruelty and “wretchedness”, the “conceit” and enriching of the few with “a strong hand and an outstretched arm.” We the People are being called to smash the mendacious beliefs of those in power that their ‘knowing’ is their power and they can abuse anyone and everyone because they believe they ‘are the smartest person in the room’. Trump’s belief that he is a “stable genius” would be laughable if he wasn’t in power and wielding his power for his own gain, for the enrichment of his family, friends, and, of course, his pal Vladimir Putin!

That ‘good christian folk’ espouse his theories as gospel, speak of him and what is happening as ‘Jesus’ desire’, that ‘good jewish people’ can say he is following the Bible is RIDICULOUS! These idolators, these charlatans are proving “when’re values are a synonym for needs, where the pyramid of being is being turned upside down - it is hard to find a way to an awareness of God.” What is most difficult for many of us to understand is how We the People are going along with these lies, with these ruses, with this “flood of wretchedness” with this “monstrous conceit”!?!? Yet, it seems as if we are. Yes there are protests each day, yes there is organizing going on, yes there is hope in the midterms, AND the wretchedness that has become so ingrained in America is not going to be rooted out nor healed quickly, it is not just Trump who is the perpetrator, it is the system which allows the Republican lawmakers to go along while they hold their noses, which allows them to be puppets rather than human beings, which allows them to proclaim the “Oneness of God”, their loyalty to “Jesus Christ, my personal savior”, their adherence to “the laws of Moses and the Torah” while violating every sense of decency, morality, kindness, love, holiness found in the ways of Jesus, the words of Jesus and the Hebrew Bible! WTF!!!

I have been on both ends of “the flood of wretchedness”, being a perpetrator prior to my recovery-constantly saying “I’m Sorry” to get the heat off and continuing to lie, cheat, steal-it makes me shudder just writing these words. I have been on the receiving end of this “flood of wretchedness” as well, being betrayed by people I trusted, being shunned by people I have helped, being exiled for being who I am, granted not politically correct, not always appropriate, and always me. I have suffered from my own “monstrous conceit”, especially when I was ‘out there’. I truly believed I was invincible, even so far as to believe they would realize they made a mistake and let me out of prison upon my arrival the first time! Witnessing the “monstrous conceit” of another has forced me to look at my self and do my own inventory before just accusing another of that which I have been guilty of. In recovery, I still am guilty of conceit, just not as monstrous as before my TShuvah! I also have received the whipping of people who believe the lies they tell themselves about how smart, how progressive, how religious, how wonderful, how they are always on the ‘right side’ and it has shown me the damage “monstrous conceit” does. I have, to the best of my ability, tried to engage with another prior to making decisions and adjusted my beliefs upon being shown a better path. It is hard to look at ourselves this way and it is imperative if we are to end the reign of terror, the reign of “wretchedness” we are in. It is up to all of us to smash the “monstrous conceit” that is rampant within ourselves and within another(s). God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

The ways in which we use our Power and our Powerlessness - Year 4 Day 319

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 319

“What have we done with our power? What have we done to the world? The flood of wretchedness is sweeping away our monstrous conceit. Who is the Lord?” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 61)

These words once again send shudders up my spine and, hopefully, yours as well. “What have we done with our power” is the question that hangs in the air in every moment, every experience. It seems, if the events of this moment are the barometer, that we are using our power to destroy another and build up our own wealth, power, our own Pharaoh-likeness, and make those whom we have designated as ‘enemies’, ie anyone who wants to stop us, anyone who still believes in freedom, government of the people, by the people, for the people, suffer as our slaves.

That this behavior, this abuse of power, this denigration of another human being, the need to make another group our ‘subjects’ is being done by and with the support of Jews is infuriating to me. It is antithetical to everything we know as Jews, everything our founding myth is based on - being brought out of Egypt by “a strong hand and an outstretched arm”! “Like the ways in Egypt where you dwelt, do not do”(Lev.18:3) seems to have escaped Bibi and his boys, Donny and his thugs like Lutnick, Kushner, Wytkoff, Miller, et al.

While I could go on and on for days about this question regarding these supposed pillars of democracy, of freedom for all, and other lies they tell themselves and too many of we the people still believe, I know it is more important to ask each individual “what have you done with your power”? The only reason a Hitler, a Stalin, a Putin, a Ghengis Khan, a Trump could come to power is because of the acquiescence of we the people. It is so hard for most people to realize and use properly our individual power, our ability to choose to do the next right action, to rise above dogma of any and all groups, faiths, politics. Instead, those who feel powerless and ‘go along to get along’, often use their power to abuse anyone and everyone they deem ‘lower’ than them-be it spouses, children,  underlings at work, the stranger, the resident alien, the poor, the needy, the blind, the deaf, etc. Hence we are told, in the Holiness Code: “don’t put a stumbling block before the blind”, “don’t curse the deaf” to remind us what it is like to be caught blindsided and fall into a hole that we can’t crawl out of, to be constantly told one thing and then find out something else was meant, all because we have become slaves to ‘the man’!

We the People don’t have to stand for this bullshit anymore! We the People need to do an inventory of our own based on how we have used, abused, forgotten: our personal power; our ability to discern fact from fiction; our enslaving and/or being slaves to mendacity and evil, our indifference/fight against being indifferent to evil; our desecration of and lifting up of God’s name with our actions/inactions; and our treatment of, caring for the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the needy.

Doing our own Chesbon HaNefesh, accounting of our souls, allows us to see where we have hit the mark and where we have missed it, allowing us to build on our success and repair the damage so we can respond to the 2nd question above: “what have we done to the world”-we are fixing it, we are repairing it, we are honoring the dignity of every human being, we are NOT taking over lands and countries based on our whims, our desire for control and power, we are NOT trumping up charges against one dictator while pardoning another who was MUCH worse and truly added 500 million pounds of Cocaine to the US market.

What are we doing “with our power”? Are we the people taking it back from the Millers, the Voughts, the Trumps, the Kushners, the Lutnicks, the Noems, the Bondis, the Hegseths,  the Patels? Are we the people using our power to lift up our kids, our neighbors, our schools, our universities to being places of discord and debate, being places of ethics and obligations, are we championing rights and responsibilities as twins? Are we the people making sure the stranger is comforted, that we are NOT doing what was done in Egypt nor what was done in Canaan, as Leviticus tells us? These are some of the questions that these two sentences bring up for me. “WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO THE WORLD” is not just about politics, about nations, it is about how we the people treat another human being, as a likeness of Adonai, or do we not see the individual and only see either a helper in our climb to the top or a barrier to our climb to the top? When our vision is focused on the latter, we enslave, we become Pharaoh, when it is focused on the former, we rise up to our humanness and make the world a little better for having been here. YOUR CHOICE!

I made this choice some 39 years ago and have been recommitting to it each day. It has to be a conscious choice, I have learned because without consciousness of choosing to be committed to the covenant, being responsible for the mitzvot, live into the holiness code, etc, I found it too easy to fool myself, to fall backwards into either the slavery of another or being the Pharaoh to someone else. I am disgusted by these behaviors because I know the harms they bring and this is why I am committed to using my power for good. Each morning, I am grateful to be alive and know that I have to be compassionate and faithful to God, to my commitments. I also know that I have to help someone else ‘come back to life’ so I have dedicated myself to “restoring the lost souls” who come to me and I am grateful and honored to do so. For the people who need to use their power against me-God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

"Cruelty and Crime" twin pillars of authoritarianism, control, Pharaoh, Egypt! Year 4 Day 318

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 318

“Our proud Western Civilization has not withstood the stream of cruelty and crime that burst forth out of the undercurrents in the human soul.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 61)

Rabbi Heschel is speaking in the shadows of the Second World War, in the memory of the Shoah, in the vision of Germanic cruelty, Russian Cruelty, Polish Cruelty, and American Cruelty. He is, in his own unique manner, issuing an indictment of “Western Civilization” that he is a part of and, at the same time, apart from. It must have been difficult for Rabbi Heschel, for Rev. King, and so many others who lived in the moment they were in, were a part of the civilization and era they were part of AND living in and being a part of Biblical civilization, living into and being immersed in the prophets, the words and deeds of our ancestors from Abraham through Jesus, the Buddha and Confucius.

Their ability to live in both worlds, to be a part of today and yesterday with an eye on tomorrow, is the path for we the people to rise above the “stream of cruelty and crime that burst forth” out of Putin’s takeover of Russia, the rise from the ashes of Netanyahu, the celebration, originally, of Orban’s takeover of Hungary, and, of course, the Trump takeover of our democracy. All of this done right in front of our eyes, all of these cruel criminals did it without firing a shot, without any blood because we the people allowed them to. Because, we the people have “not withstood the stream of cruelty and crime that burst forth out of the undercurrents in the human soul”!

This is, needs to be, the focus of our existence; how to deal with the “cruelty and crime” that is so ever-present, so just beneath the surface in people, waiting to come out, seeking a rationale for expressing itself by ‘the good people’ on both ends of the spectrum. I am realizing the issue for those of us in the middle, we are too afraid of the “cruelty and crime” in our souls to engage in the same practices; “fight fire with fire” doesn’t work out well because the one fighting the fire with fire cannot just turn off the “cruelty and crime” any more than the dictators, wannabe dictators, can-hence the German defeat that was so devastating and complete, the stain of shame heaped upon the U.S. after Vietnam, Afghanistan. We were not able to tame the “cruelty and crime” in the souls of our leaders so many of our young people were sent to their death with reckless abandon.

Today, in the wake of Trump’s takeover of Venezuela, it is for Trump and his oil buddies, his Wall Street buddies, that this happened-he could care less if people are dying from OD’s, we see the unleashing of “cruelty and crime” once again, actually continuing since 1/20/2025. What is the worst about this latest overreach, this latest breaking of our Constitutional law, is we the people seem to be celebrating a military state with joy and happiness, we the people seem to be incapable of realizing Trump PARDONED the former President of Honduras who was responsible for bringing 500 Million pounds of Cocaine into the United States-how much does he care about drug trafficking??!!

There is only one way for We the People to take back our power, to rise above this onslaught of “cruelty and crime”: A Spiritual Awakening and a Spiritual Revolution! It is time for all of us to “groan” as the Children of Israel did after the death of one Pharaoh and the rise of another one who was more cruel, more criminal, more despicable. Trump is crueler, more grifting, more despicable, more reckless, more criminal than in his first term, he and his gang are raping our country of resources, of our good name, of our leadership of the Free World and making us into another fascist country with a megalomaniac at the helm.

This is the moment we the people are most in need of a reconnection with the Ineffable One, a power greater than ourselves, our higher consciousness. Not only a reconnection, a rededication to the principles of the Bible, to the words from Mount Sinai, from the commands to love, to care for, to uphold, to be just, to   not take bribes because bribes blind the eyes of the righteous. “Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country” and themselves. Now is the moment for We the People to stop our erroneous belief we are powerless to effect change, to end our incessant lying to ourselves, to see the reflection of the divine in the mirror, in the face of another human being, to know the danger and face it with a plan, to be a witness to the “cruelty and crime” and not get seduced by it. This is the challenge of this moment, this is the challenge the prophets called out to us and their solution is still the best solution: “Do T’Shuvah, return to God” and our backsliding will be healed, we are loved, we can be and will be forgiven.

I am a product of this solution! I know how cruel I was to the people who loved me and I am forever regretful for this stain, this wound I inflicted. I also know no amount of money, things, therapy saved me from myself, because, like Western civilization, my immature soul could not “withstand the cruelty and crime”. Only with the ‘help’ of God, with the reconnection to the power within me, to my spirit and to the souls/spirits of so many people over these years have I been able to rise above the urge to “fight fire with fire”, the impulse to “get even and get mine”. I have made and continue to err in my quest from spiritual maturity and, as Harriet was relating to a couple yesterday: “we have never used the vulnerabilities of our partner against them.” This is the definition of evil, cruel by M.Scott Peck and it is what passes for using all the weapons at our disposal to “Win at all costs” in “Western civilization”. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Awareness of what our "appetites" promote us to do - Year 4 Day 317

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 317

“Comfort, luxuries, success continually bait our appetite, impairing our vision of that which is required but now always desired. They make it easy for us to grow blind to values. Interest are the value-blind man’s dog, his pathfinder and his guide.”

These words, this sentiment, this prophecy is anywhere from 70-50 years old. Reading them in this moment, one needs to be wondering what reason society had/has for not hearing them, not wresting with them, not heeding them. The reason, of course is in the first phrase: “comfort, luxuries, success continually bait our appetite”. Rather than ‘put a lid’ on our desires, on our “appetites”, we seem to be ever-expanding our waistline and, for the rich, the famous, the people in power, ‘eating’ more and more money, resources, for the few and practicing more and more injustice here at home and in the world. What is also happening is the joining of a new “axis of power”, not Italy, Germany, Japan this time. Now we have three groups who are using one another to gain power, to feed their “appetites” making them more and more hungry for “comfort, luxuries, success”. The first group is horrific, to the hearts, minds, souls of Americans who still believe in a nation “of the people, by the people, for the people, and is made up of Putin, Xi and Trump with MBS, Netanyahu, Orban, Erdogan their understudies. They believe that taking anything, anyone’s sovereign nation for their own uses is right and good. They believe they are entitled to anything and everything that they can forcibly take, (Venezuela, Ukraine, Taiwan), they can con one out of with false promises (abuse of contractors, workers, gaining allies with false promises), and they can use Goebbels’ “accuse someone else of that which you are guilty of”! These traitors to God, to their constituents are the epitome of a Kakistocracy.

The second group is an even more insidious group, the billionaires, the wannabe billionaires, etc. These money-seeking, soul sucking individuals have convinced themselves of the lie of “trickle down economics” from the Reagan years when the only people they probably truly admire are those from the “Gilded Age”, the Robber Barons. They agree with J.D. Rockefeller when he was asked “how much money is enough” and he responded: “a little more than I have now” and he never had enough. These people have used and abused the people they are supposedly serving, the people who buy their products, use their services to “continually bait our appetites” and to bring to fruition their wet-dreams of more “comfort, luxuries, success” they are willing to set up a way of being that promotes the “most unscrupulous behaviors in government”, promotes, supports the Kakistocracy of Trump, Putin, Xi, and the rest of those mentioned above. There is no God here, only the ‘almighty dollar’, only the “top of the world ma” goals to worship.

The third group is, to me, the most disgusting. This is the group of ‘christian’ nationalists, ‘jewish’ nationalists, ‘muslim’ nationalists who continue to lie about what the Bible means and what it says, taking verses out of context to prove their xenophobic viewpoints, their need for power and control dating back to the early days of the Priests and Rabbis, of Paul, of Mohammed’s followers. Rather than immerse themselves in what Christ was doing and teaching these Anti-Christers are saying and doing the exact opposite! “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is bastardized to “I am throwing stones at anyone who can see, testify to my sins”; feeding the hungry as Christ did is ‘corrected’ to “feed me you poor people for I am your salvation, I am your retribution” and so many other holy teachings and actions of Christ are being bastardized. In case you are wondering the Desecrators of God’s name who call themselves ‘jews’ are experts at bastardizing the teaching of the Holiness Code-they don’t rebuke themselves nor one another because of the lies, the thefts, the murdering of souls they partake in. They have no desire to “welcome and love the stranger because they were strangers in the land of Egypt”, “do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor”, “if your enemy is hungry feed them”, “proclaim freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants therein! Alas, these ‘good christian, good jewish’ folk are NOTHING BUT IDOLATORS! They desecrate God’s will, they rape the souls of people who are seeking a greater connection to the Ineffable One, they murder the souls of people who seek and speak Truth, Justice, Mercy, Love!

When will We the People say ENOUGH! DAYENU! Each year we gather at a Passover table and retell the story of the Exodus from the land of Egypt and each year this ritual is treated just like a ritual instead of as a call to action. Each year we read the Bible, Hebrew and New Testament, and this too is treated as a ritual and a way of checking another “have to” off the To-Do list. Each year we partake in the different Holy Days as obligatory events or as excuses to go to excess and extravagance. All of these ways of ignoring the Call of God, the Voice on Sinai that broadcasts each and every day, 24 hours a day, have promoted the belief that “comfort, luxuries, success” are the only things we need to satisfy and, if we give back to the unholy Temples, Synagogues, Churches, we have fulfilled our duty. BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT!

As a practitioner of “comfort, luxuries, success” as my god, I know the only solution is a spiritual awakening. The only path back to the Oneness of humanity, the Oneness of God is through our souls, through a spiritual revolution that discerns the words of Adonai and the words of the authors/editors who wanted power and used Elohim to enact justice they were incapable of living up to. I know living a double life, living into a double standard, I did it from age 15-35 and it was horrible and the ‘crimes’ I committed the most were the ones I committed against God, against people who trusted and loved me. We all have to stand up against the groups above! Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark

Whose needs are you serving-your own, the needs of the 'leader', the needs of God? Year 4 Day 316

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 316

“Dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the intellect in science and technique, we have not only become convinced that we are masters of the earth; we have become convinced that our needs and interests are the ultimate standard of what is right and wrong.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 59)

In his article in the January edition of The Atlantic, David Brooks writes about the NeoCons, the originals, not the ones that came later. They were a group who saw that moral and spiritual tenors were paramount for a free society, as I understand his article. They were thinkers and politicians, people of all faiths and their question of “how can we create a civilization to be proud of” should be ringing in our ears and shaking our souls! Yet, it doesn’t seem to be and this is the tragedy of our moment in time. How is it possible that this question, being spoken from Mt. Sinai to Jerusalem, from New York to the California Coast, not be heard? Because “we have..become convinced we are masters of the earth”! This idea, this belief is so ingrained in human beings that only a spiritual solution will help, which the original NeoCons knew and promoted. Granted, many of their ideas and policies wound up not working, not because they were bad rather because of implementation, because the spiritual immaturity of both government and the people did not rise to the level of going beyond one’s own interests and needs, as I am understanding Mr. Brooks’ article.

The challenge of living into the Biblical demand/command to “subdue the earth” and be the “master of it” while knowing that we are NOT “masters of the earth” is great and, unfortunately, human beings constantly fail to meet the challenge, we take the easy way out and live into being “masters of the earth”, creating wars, environmental damages, senseless hatred, mistreatment of the widow, the orphan, the poor and the needy, being fearful towards the stranger and unwelcoming them, finding ‘those’ people whom we can blame for our woes, etc. What is Project 2025, MAGA, Trumpism if not the acting out of the false beliefs: “we are masters of the earth” and “our needs and interests are the ultimate standard of what is right and wrong”. These ‘good christian folk’, these ‘real jews’, are going against what Christ taught and did and much of what the Hebrew Bible tells us to do. When treating the stranger well because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt is mentioned 36 times in the first 5 Books of the Bible, it must be an important concept! Duh!! Yet, both here and in Israel, both the MAGA’s and the Far Right here and in Israel turn away from the demands of how to live well and treat each person with dignity and value because, like themselves, another human being is created in the Image of God also!!

Instead, we have a society that is being led by the most outrageous, despicable human being ever to hold the office of the Presidency. Trump is making the Tea Pot Dome scandal seem like it was legal! Trump, his allies like Lutnick, Vought, Noem, Patel, Netanyahu and his thugs in Israel are only looking to get whatever they can steal from the American/Israeli Public, they truly believe that “our needs and interests are the ultimate standard of what is right and wrong”. The clergy who are sucking up to them, who are kissing their asses, who are promoting their cruelty as Godly, who are calling for their followers to ‘rejoice’ in the screwing over they are getting from these ‘fine christian and jewish men’!

I say BULLSHIT! We the People have to continue the protests that began in Israel and in America in the past few years. We the People have to stand up to Trump, to Vance, to Vought, to Johnson, to Thune, to Jeffries, to Schumer and demand their doing T’Shuvah! We the People are being called upon by the words above to stand up for God, to stand up for what is right according to the Bible, to stand against the mendacity and spiritual immaturity being preached in the churches and synagogues, the mosques and the temples. The rot and the ugliness, the cruelty and the narcissism is on display daily in our government and when a young woman, Tatiana Schlossberg, JFK’s granddaughter dies and all Trump can do is repost negative comments about the Kennedys, about the Kennedy Center which ‘he is saving’ in a despicable, arrogant, cruel and inhumane response to a tragic death of a 35 year old mother of 2.

It is so crucial for all of us to stand up-this is not a political issue, this is an issue of freedom, of decency, of morality, of spirituality. The world we live in is in great disrepair and, as David Brooks writes: “if you want to improve the character of a nation, you have to change its culture so that it nurtures basic decency”. This is the challenge for us a community, as a country, in Israel, as families, as individuals.

This is how I lost my way, I convinced myself that because I did some good things, I could do bad things and have the best of both worlds-WRONG! The rot always takes over, the negativity overwhelms the good and “the still small voice” gets more still and smaller. Only upon the gift of imprisonment could I regain my hearing, recapture my sense of “basic dignity” and begin to grow and mature my spiritual health. I hear the call of the prophets so loudly right now, I hear them in the words of Rabbi Heschel and the words of David Brooks, I hear them in the street and in the Synagogues, Churches, etc-the issue is the Clergy, the “jew in the pew”, the people attending are NOT hearing them, so Trump gets elected with people knowing he is going to screw them and steal from them! I believe the Spiritual Revolution has begun, I pray people like Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg attract more people to join this revolution and restore decency and LET FREEDOM RING once more! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

What dazzles you, what convinces you to go along to get along? Year 4 Day 315

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 315

“Dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the intellect in science and technique, we have not only become convinced that we are masters of the earth; we have become convinced that our needs and interests are the ultimate standard of what is right and wrong.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 59)

Each new year, each new season, each renewed gathering of family and friends has within it a hope, a prayer, that this year, this season, this gathering will be a little better than the last, a little more productive than the last, a little friendlier, loving, joyous than the last. Except for the people who are stuck in the muck and mire of being “dazzled by the brilliant achievements of the intellect”, which are not the end all/be all that We the People are led to believe they are. Today, the first day of 2026 is pregnant with promise, with hope, with fear, with danger, with joy, with sadness, with love, with hate, and the key to which way the pendulum swings is WE THE PEOPLE!

There is a television series we are streaming called “Burden of Truth”, it is an interesting show, at least to me, however what caught my interest is the tittle. WOW, I thought and still think: being in truth, telling the truth, living in truth is a burden, it is difficult, it is a responsibility, it is an obligation, it is the essence of living  a life of meaning, purpose, goodness, holiness, connection, justice, mercy, kindness, etc. AND humanity seems to delight in jettisoning this burden, this call to Truth, for the ‘joy’ of being “dazzled”. Society has placed supreme meaning and purpose on our “brilliant achievements” and this has distorted our standards of living, our ability to discern truth from lies, fact from fiction and, ultimately, has led to Trump’s ‘alternative facts’, his ‘retribution tour’, his hatred of anyone not white, his disdain for anyone not rich, his misogynistic treatment of women, and has led to him being surrounded by like-minded people, by people who are, in some cases and ways, worse than him. Putin, Netanyahu, Erdogan, MBS, Trump, Xi, Orban, Kushner, Ben G’Vir, Lutnick, Vought, are the symbols of success for our children. Of course there is Zuckerberg, Ellison, Cook, Musk, and the rest of the tech billionaires, there are the other “masters of the earth” in any particular field that are being worshipped in today’s society  to further erode the Truth, further the mendacious belief “that we are masters of the earth”!

Sitting here, on the first day of 2026, I am invigorated with hope, with passion, with the spiritual inheritance of the prophets, of the Bible, of the connection I have with something greater than the “I”. I invigorated with the “WE”. The “WE” that is me and God, the “WE” that is me and Harriet, the “WE” that is me and family, the “WE” that is me and community(especially the bridge club community here in the desert), the “WE” that is me and my colleagues in Clergy and Faith, the “WE” that is my AA family and friends, the “WE” that is me and the Jews who are still seeking Truth rather than those who think they know the truth, the “WE” that is me and We the People who believe in the Constitution, who are willing to protest, vote and fight for the “Unalienable Rights” of EVERY HUMAN BEING!

To make this hope, this passion, grow to more fruition than it is today, I am asking for your help; let go of the lies society has been telling us, jettison the belief of the Greeks that “everything is solvable”, stop buying the false flags of the haters, the fascists in charge of the US right now, demand the TRUTH rather than settle for the bullshit and pap. I am asking you to join me is enriching the spiritual life of oneself, one’s family, one’s neighbors, one’s country through engaging in raucous debate over what the Bible is teaching us, deep holy arguments over the contradictions in the text, and learning the holy texts of another’s faith to find the similarities and deepen our respect for the separate yet equal paths of one another as we travel the road to THE TRUTH. Knowing we will never get there completely, knowing we are flawed and will make errors by the dozens is not a reason to quit, it is the reason to keep going so we can learn from our successes and from our flaws, usually more from the flaws than the successes.

My passion and hope is also fueled by a sense, a belief, a hope that We the People are on the precipice of another SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION, like the one at Sinai, like the one that brought us out of our last “narrow place”, ie Egypt. How many times are we going to be free only to go back to a ‘new’ narrow place that is really the same as the old one: “we have become convinced that our needs and interests are the ultimate standard of what is right and wrong”! This is the challenge for all good people, once we are out of Egypt, stop relapsing and going back. People ask why an addict can’t just make up their mind to stop using and that is that; I ask these same people why can’t they just accept that the Egypts they have been released from don’t need to be revisited, yet they do! WTF???

I am hopeful and passionate because of the people who fight the fight against mendacity, who read Rabbi Heschel, the Bible, the words of Jesus, the Koran, with the passion for TRUTH, with the spirit of the prophets, with the joy of the people who left Egypt and sang the “Song of the Sea” after coming through the Red Sea. I have not gone back to Egypt either in my alcoholism, my criminality, my greed. I have expanded my horizons to include the things I don’t know. I am passionate about truth and kindness and eschew, scream at the mendacity, cruelty, unkindness, injustice that is abounding, even by the ‘right’ people! None of us are exempt and I continue to look at me to see my flaws and errors, correct them and take my proper seat at the bridge table, the family table, the table of life. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Decision making- is it based on a calculation, an inauthentic need or....? Year 4 Day 314

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 314

“He feels, acts, and thinks as if the sole purpose of the universe were to satisfy his needs. To the modern man everything seems calculable; everything reducible to a figure.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 58)

In speaking about human beings some 50-70 years ago, Rabbi Heschel captures the issue we have faced from time immemorial; how to end our narcissistic beliefs that our needs come from first, last always! It seems as if our religious institutions have done a piss-poor job of helping us, our secular education institutions have seemed to promote our narcissism, and at the family dinner table(if there is family dinner time) these issues are, seemingly, not deeply discussed. Hence the proliferation of people and ways to get “the universe” to “satisfy his needs”. Nowhere is this on display more than here in the United States under Donald J. Trump and his ‘family’ of crooks and power-hungry fascists and in Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben G’Vir, Smotrich and the rest of their thugs. Both of these leaders who just met again, play the game of calculation, how much do I have to give to get what I want-Trump wants recognition, adoring fans, idolized behaviors, and Netanyahu gives it to him. He doesn’t contradict him in public, he breaks Israeli policy in giving Trump the Israel Prize so Trump feels important and wanted, loved. Trump, in return, gives Netanyahu wiggle room in dealing with Gaza, the West Bank, the Palestinian statehood question, etc.

To people of faith, like myself, these calculations, the satisfaction of needs uber alles is anathema and, that they are being fortified and supported by the phony clergy of christianity and judaism is infuriating! While these phony clergy have obtained ordination from mostly legitimate schools, people, I call them phony because they are not wrestling with the contradictions in the Bible, they are not listening to the Voice from Sinai who says DO JUSTLY, LOVE MERCY, WALK IN THE WAYS OF GOD-rather they have decided to PERVERT JUSTICE, BE UNMERCIFUL, WALK IN THE WAYS OF THEIR NEEDS, not God’s. And they call themselves and their followers “true christians”, “the only real Jews left”, “keepers of the flame” etc, when in reality they are putting out the light that was the first word of God, they are returning to the chaos and emptiness of the beginning of Genesis and all they want is to be Masters of their Universe.

Rather than learn that the “Elohim”, the giants, the “men of renown” shitted up the world so badly God sent the Flood, these Hookers, have become these same “men of renown” and unlike Nathan, Elijah, Amos, the rest of the prophets these idolators preach pap to the people in power, going along with their grifting, their treasuring needs over deeds, their satisfaction over God’s calling, and holding their hands out for their cut of the action. This is NOT the markings of truly religious people, this is NOT the path of the righteous, this is NOT the way to “BE HOLY”! This is the ROT we are facing and it ain’t getting any better, these people who are described in Deuteronomy as those who “say in their hearts” they can give lip service to the Bible and then go do what they want will bring the house down, as we have seen throughout history and throughout the Bible!

We the People need to examine, re-examine our “needs” and see which are authentic and which are false ego driven. Food, clothing, shelter are authentic needs; connection and covenantal love are authentic needs; transactional relationships are authentic needs as long as they are reciprocal. Billionaire status and no taxes are inauthentic needs; power over people, ie being Pharaoh or her taskmasters, is inauthentic; needing a bad guy to blame is one of the sins of Adam and Eve in the Garden- not authentic; hating/fearing the stranger is inauthentic; hiding from God, from another person(s) is inauthentic;

We the People are being given a new beginning both in terms of the calendar year changing and the fact that today is a new day, it is the “day God has made for us to rejoice in it” and rejoicing comes from doing the next right thing, rejoicing is synonymous with serving something greater than our inauthentic needs, our narcissistic wounds. Rejoicing comes about when we can look in the face of another and see our soul’s reflection, rejoicing happens when we can look in the mirror and not hide from ourselves. Rejoicing becomes the through line of our lives when we are dedicated to loving the stranger, loving God, loving our selves, loving our neighbors, engaging in righteous justice, eschewing slavery, hearing, listening and understanding the unique call of each of our soul’s and living into our call.

It is not easy to do this, I know. Yet, it is the most satisfying way to live. AS the Bible teaches not hiding, not living in secret, not living in the either/or of societal norms will bring us to joy. As Ben Zoma says in Pirke Avot 4:1: “who is rich”, one who wants what he has; not to say we don’t learn and grow into more-rather to say we have to want what we have, we have to experience the satisfaction of where we are and what is happening in our lives before we can grow, it is not about settling, it is about rejoicing.  I have to wrestle each day with this concept, I have to see the “question this experience is the answer for” and be joyous that I can see, I can hear, I can learn, I can grow, especially when it isn’t going my way.

Today is the last day of 2025 and marks the end of my 5th year of writing a daily blog, first using the prophets and now almost 4 years using Rabbi Heschel. I mention this to put into context the immense joy I receive from writing these blogs, the powerful learning/relearning I receive from the quotations I use, and the gratitude I have for all of you who read these missives daily, weekly, periodically. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Why do you learn, what does learning do for you? Year 4 Day 313

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 313

“The Greeks learned in order to comprehend. The Hebrews learned in order to revere. The modern man learns in order to use. To Bacon we owe the formulation, “Knowledge is power”…We do not know anymore how to justify any value except in terms of expediency.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 58)

It is increasingly more difficult for me to contain the trembling I experience each day when hearing about the latest disregard of God’s ways and trampling on the rights, the freedoms of the ‘group of the moment to discriminate against’ that seems to be the way of our President and his thugs and he is, of course, joined by the Prime Minister of Israel in this endeavor. The way America is living at this moment, the popularity of Trumpism, of progressive left, of hatred, of prejudice, of racism, anti-semitism on both the right and the left leads me to know “the modern man learns in order to use” is alive, present, front and center in this moment!

What is happening on College Campuses is horrific, it is a denial of what learning, what ‘higher education’ is about. College has become, for some time, a place that is a trade school where people go to learn whatever so they can land the job that will make them rich, a place to espouse some extreme bullshit that is called ‘conservative’, ‘progressive’, ‘liberal’ principles and are really just an indoctrination into some radical form of lies and deceptions. Rather than being a safe place to find oneself, to learn about what it is that we are meant to be and do in the world, rather than learn for the sake of discovery, College has become another battlefield in the war to capture soldiers for ‘my side’, the ‘right side’ of the civil war that is quietly and not so quietly happening in America right now.

Trump is not the first or the worst example of “the modern man learns in order to use”, he is a master at the sleight of hand, he has turned a losing real estate business into a Presidency that is making him BILLIONS OF DOLLARS personally-so lets not call him stupid. He has people kissing his ring, he has become ‘the Don’ that he always wanted to be, he is doing his KKK-membership father proud in heaven!

Bibi Netanyahu is the epitome of Hillul HaShem, in my opinion. Rather than be a Hebrew, be an Israelite, be a Jew, he has chosen to be “the modern man” as described above. Caring nothing for reverence and everything for his own skin, craving money, power, fame rather than seeking to serve Adonai, Bibi shows us what it means to sell one’s soul to the modernity, to whore oneself out to anyone for the sake of power and wealth, to uphold lies and deceptions that you yourself don’t believe in-I doubt that Bibi studies Torah each day nor prays 3 times a day!

Listening to the two of them briefly before their meeting yesterday is an example of “expediency”. Joe Biden went to Israel and gave Israel the weaponry they needed and asked for right after Oct. 7th-Trump pulled the weaponry needed by Ukraine in their war against the AGGRESSOR RUSSIA! Trump wouldn’t go to an American Cemetery for WWII soldiers who died in battle, Biden went to Kyiv, to Jerusalem. Bibi praises Trump as the “greatest friend Israel has ever had” forgetting that it was Harry Truman who supported Statehood for Israel!

When expediency, use are the guiding principles of living; deception, cruelty, graft, grift, unholy alliances, betrayals abound. What is so hard for We the People to have learned this TRUTH already? Even the Greeks would comprehend this truth, these lessons in the futility of following expediency, use to their logical ends-ruin, destruction, slavery, hatred. Yet, this way of being seems to be the way of the world. When “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is the watchwords and belief system of people what is happening now is the logical result. Do we really want to live under this type of system again? Hasn’t history taught us the perils of succumbing to these lies and to the loss of freedoms?

Hence the importance of “the Hebrews learned in order to revere”. “Revere” comes from the Latin meaning “to stand in awe of”. It is hard to hate, to lie, to deceive, to enslave, to cheat, to admire liars, to worship power when one is “to stand in awe of” which is what makes the goings on of today so horrific! Be one a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a follower of Eastern philosophy, we are all called upon by God, by Adonai, by Allah, by Jesus, by higher consciousness “to stand in awe of” one another, of the beauty of the world, of love, of truth. We are called “to stand in awe of” with kindness, compassion, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, giving strength to the weary, visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, administering righteous justice, proclaiming freedom throughout the land and to everyone in it, to “BE HOLY”!

This is the way of “the Hebrews” and this is the way of Jesus, Mohammed, so it is to be the way of We the People! Yet, it isn’t and hasn’t. King David could proclaim his guilt and Bibi, Donny, and so many of us are unable to. I am guilty of expediency and use, this was the main highway I travelled prior to my recovery. Since then I have certainly been on it at times and, upon realizing or being told I am, I take the 1st Exit to get off. I have been vilified by people for my loudness, my inability to accept “the way of the world” from right and left and I welcome it. I have also been praised for standing up to the bullies and giving voice to the voiceless. I know my deep reverence for human beings, I know I “stand in awe of” so many humane giants, I sit at before them through books, through encounters and learn their ways, their thoughts and then how to put them into action in my life and the lives of those who seek me out, the lives of family and friends. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Power, utilization of resources seems to "be the chief purpose" of human beings - Year 4 Day 312

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 312

“Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power, the utilization of its resources is taken to be the chief purpose of man in God’s creation. Man has indeed become primarily a tool-making animal and the world is not a gigantic toolbox for the satisfaction of his needs.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 58)

These words have so much to do with who we, as human beings, are that I am going to spend a few days taking my time with these thoughts. In the words bolded above, we find the truth of what is happening in our world today. It is not, as we can see, a new story and it is one that seems to be on steroids right now. “The attainment of power” being “the chief purpose of man in God’s creation” is on full display in the United States, in Russia, in Israel, in China and in other parts of the globe. Interestingly, Europe, which has been the scene of some of the greatest examples of this truth, is trying to bring us all back from the brink and, alas, Trump and his cronies in other countries just don’t want to hear it.

The smaller the person, the more immature the spiritual health of a person, the weaker the morality, the more fragile the ego of a human being seems to make “the attainment of power” necessary for one’s survival. As Lyndon Johnson said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Whether it is racism, xenophobia, religious dominance, just plain old greed, the need for a human being to be so caught up in “net worth = self worth” is devastating our country, our independence, our interdependence, our freedom.

This is not an issue that is a right-wing issue, this is a human condition that must be addressed before it  completely destroys us. Yet, we are reluctant to address the evil of this “chief purpose of man in God’s creation” as we saw with Merritt Garland not taking on the Trump crimes sooner, as we see with the Supreme Court not curbing the power grab of Trump, Vought, Miller, et al, as we see with the American People who are getting screwed by Trump’s grift and his getting into bed with anyone who says nice things to him and does business with him/his sons/Jared Kushner. It is an issue in Israel with the people who are protecting the fascist Prime Minister from any inquiry on QatarGate, on October 7, 2023 failure, on the devastation in Gaza, on the horrific ways of the settlers in the West Bank. AND We the People are standing idly by the blood of our neighbors, we are silent as the hatred of the stranger grows unabated and we call ourselves ‘religious people’ , ‘good christians, good jews’ who go against basic tenets found in the Bible, foundational principles found in the 10 Sayings at Sinai, not responding to the daily call of “where are you” by God.

It is so past time for WE THE PEOPLE to stand up and take back our freedoms, to sit down with the people we don’t know, ie the stranger, the poor, the rich, the person of color, the white person, the Jew, the Christian, the Muslim, the practitioners of Eastern philosophies, and find our commonality in being human. We are being called to end our assault on truth, on our environment, on our healthcare, on vaccines, on our children by their devices and ‘big brother’ listening to everything we are saying. It is way past time for us to say NO to the onslaught of technology that is killing our humanity, robbing us of our freedom to think, do, to be free rather than worry about what will be taken out of context and used against us. Now is the time for WE THE PEOPLE to stand up against the bullying of Trump and his thugs, the hatred of people towards Hispanics, Blacks, Jews, etc-you notice that no white people who are undocumented are being rounded up- and call this facade what it is-fascist racism. Hitler used the Jews, the ‘christian’ nationalists today use Hispanics, Blacks and Jews because they don’t want to be seen as prejudiced!!

America deserting our allies in favor of Putin, in favor of MBS, Qatar, etc is despicable and depressing. What is more despicable and depressing is that we are allowing it to happen. What is more depressing is that the ‘progressive’ left has their own prejudices and hatreds. All because of a spiritual immaturity, a denial of the Oneness of the Ineffable One, the idiotic bullshit that ‘god only loves my kind’, the lying and rabble-rousing of Clergy from all faiths. PEOPLE it is way past time for us to demand a spiritual renewal, a study of the prophets and a return to a path of being human and holy!

I am well aware of the ways of power-seekers, of making power “the chief purpose” of my life because I always felt so powerless. I was hellbent on proving my power, proving my worth, proving, proving and never realized that what I was trying to prove and to whom I was trying to prove it was bullshit and wrong. I came to this realization in prison the 2nd time. I have nurtured this truth and grown my joy at being powerless to do God’s job, to be God, to prove to someone who needs to be right at all costs, to make someone bend to my will. Instead, I have learned and keep learning how to speak to people in ways that God would have me speak, to use my voice to stand up for the widow, the orphan, the stranger and the needy. I have learned and keep learning how to make changes within me, to stand for truth, to stand for what is right, to stand against cruelty, to stand for decency, being one grain of sand more holy each day, to admit my errors, and to no longer be dictated to nor accept the judgmental nature of another. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark

Usefulness, power, winning are societal ploys to keep us from connecting with self and another - Year 4 Day 311

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 4 Day 311

“Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power, the utilization of its resources is taken to be the chief purpose of man in God’s creation. Man has indeed become primarily a tool-making animal and the world is not a gigantic toolbox for the satisfaction of his needs.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 58)

These words, written over 50 years ago, are proof of Rabbi Heschel’s prophetic nature, to me. What is a prophet if not a person who has the ability to see what is, see the rot and ruin that is festering, growing with the human being and society and speak out about it with warnings, with solutions? Hence, one of the reasons I love Rabbi Heschel so much and one of the reasons I study him daily!

The idea of “usefulness” has only grown in “our age”, it is not just the world of nature where it has grown, “usefulness” is the “chief merit of human nature” is the end/all be/all of “our age”. I am overcome with a familiar realization that the “usefulness” which has “merit” is the antithesis to covenantal relationships. Humanity is not going to ever have a lack of “usefulness”, since the Caveman we have found the tools, the food, the ways to sustain our physical existence; humanity is, however, in a state of covenantal bankruptcy, our very existence is dependent on being needed and needing another human being for connection. We learn in the 2nd Chapter of Genesis that “it is not good that humans are alone” and ever since the first marriage, it seems as if humanity continues to ‘go it alone’. The war between societal bullshit and authentic human needs for connection is only growing greater and the chasm is getting larger and larger. With the advent of AI, who knows where we will be in another 50+ years.

There is nothing wrong with seeking out the “usefulness” of “nature”, the “usefulness” that a human being can provide as both help all of us live better. The “usefulness” of nature cannot be used at the expense of nature as humanity has done, putting holes in the Ozone is not “taking care of the earth” as we are commanded in Genesis Chapter 1. So too, the “usefulness” of a human being cannot kill the soul, the spirit of the person and this is the issue we face today, as we have in the past. Today, the issue seems to be on steroids and, maybe every generation felt that way-certainly the prophets did. Marriage is a covenantal relationship that seems to have lost its purpose, when one partner or the other is no longer “useful”, divorce happens (useful in the broadest sense of the word); when an employee no longer is “useful”, they get fired no matter their previous value, no matter that they are “useful” in another area-if they are no longer ‘serving the man’, fire them. When an employer, who has taught us our trade, given us numerous opportunities for growth, can’t/won’t pay us what we think we are worth, we go elsewhere because loyalty means nothing, previous assistance means even less, just look at the Free Agent markets in sports, the insanity in College Football today. In relationships, friendships, when it isn’t serving, it isn’t convenient to ‘be seen’ with this person-we lose them! This begins in grade school and begins to flourish in middle/high school.

We the People have lost our sense of covenantal relationships with one another, with truth, with justice, with God. This is the problem the prophets spoke about, it is the issue that Jesus railed about, this is the situation we find ourselves in throughout history bringing us to today. The MAGA movement, the far right ‘conservative’ movement does not want to ‘conserve’ anything except utilitarianism, they only want to ‘conserve’ the power of the white man, the only ‘right’ there is in their world is what their leader spouts (think Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany), and there are no rights for ‘those people’ like Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics who don’t join them, Asians, Muslims, etc.

What is the solution? Rabbi Heschel would say to re-awaken, re-learn how to have a sense of wonder. I believe he is correct and I believe the solution begins with spiritual education from a young age-no longer is learning the Aleph-Bet (the Hebrew alphabet) enough when children are young-their spiritual education, maturity has to begin at that moment as well. Young people have a sense of something greater and it is we adults who tell them “that’s not the way the world works” and we systematically begin to kill the sense of wonder, of awe, of spiritual audacity and moral grandeur within our children, our teens and then we wonder why they are going more and more inward, spending more and more time on their ‘devices’, being lured by faux connections. Just as it is impossible to remove the “evil drive” from a human being, so too is it impossible to remove the “spiritual longing” within a human being. Unfortunately, when the “evil drive” is attacked it gets stronger, when the “spiritual longing” is attacked it gets smaller and smaller as an act of protection.

I have wrestled with the issue of transactional and covenantal relationships all my life, even when I didn’t know it. I realize this was what I lost when my father died and I did not regain a sense of covenant for over 20 years. I was certainly part of the problem re: “usefulness” as the “chief purpose”, so in my recovery, my being of service is what I lead with-to the best of my ability- and I search out covenantal relationships and, at times, fooled by another, fooled by my need to be in covenant with another. What I know, what I keep learning over and over again, the #1 covenantal relationship in my life is with God, with me, and only when I am true and loving, just and merciful in my relationship with self and God can I really have the same with my family, with Harriet, with you. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark