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the Lies of Good Intentions, the Truth of our Deeds - Year 5 Day 25

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 25

“The world needs more than the secret holiness of individual inwardness. It needs more than sacred sentiments and good intentions. God asks for the heart because He needs the lives. It is by lives that the world will be redeemed, by lives that beat in concordance with God, by deeds that outbeat the finite charity of the human heart.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 88)

In a country that seems dominated by SELF-SEEKING by the “rugged individual” myth, by the bastardization of Jesus’ words, the ways of the Jewish Tradition, these words are a not-so-gentle rebuke of Pete Hegseth’s prayer for war, prayer for cruelty, belief in some radicalized re-interpretation of the New Testament and the forgetfulness by all ‘religious zealots’ of the words and deeds of the prophets! Yet, We the People are not doing enough to effect change, we the people are continuing to live in our “secret holiness”, our “good intentions” while the country and the world spirals deeper and deeper into chaos, authoritarianism, hatred and war.

Abusing Christ’s ways and words as we are in the season of Lent, praying for Jesus to help kill more innocent people in Iran by the mendacious Hegseth, was totally rebuked by Pope Leo at his Palm Sunday Service, but then again, as JD Vance has said before, what does Pope Leo really know about Jesus!! Forgetting, rejecting the words and deeds of the prophets by the ‘religious Jews’, believing all is good if it is in the name of Israel, engenders many to leave the faith. Yet, these ‘good religious folk’ keep proclaiming, like Mike Johnson: “I live by what God tells me”. I am sure he and his cronies believe this-the question is: What god are they listening to? It sure is not  God of the Bible,  God of the New Testament. In both Sacred Texts, what is asked for is “the heart”. Since the beating heart is what keeps us living, since “the heart” is so crucial in our actions that in Numbers we are reminded to “not scout out after your heart and eyes because you whore after them”, which we recite 3 times a day when we say the Shema prayer, morning, evening, at bedtime. These ASSHOLES like Johnson, Hegseth, Vance, using Jesus to justify the cruelty and violence they are perpetrating in Iran, in Venezuela, in Cuba, on the streets of America is SO INFURIATING to those of We the People who believe in God, who respond to the Voice on Sinai’s call of “Where are You” with the only proper response: Hineni-Here I am.

This is the key for We the People, to keep responding Hineni, to keep finding new and deeper ways to live our lives “in concordance with God”, to ensure that our “deeds exceed our wisdom” as we learn in Pirke Avot. It takes great humility to live “lives that beat in concordance with God”, it takes a more that “good intentions”, because as one of the “good books” says: the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak(Matthew 26:41). What We the People are being called upon to DO, is to live into the divine image we are created in, to rise above the selfishness, the mendacious attitude of our own ‘smartness’ and live into the intuitive mind that KNOWS what it KNOWS and KNOWS what it DOESN’T KNOW! This is a crucial aspect of how to BE HUMAN, how to live a life compatible with being a partner of God in making the world a one grain of sand better each day.

When We the People rise above our base instincts, when we end our ridiculous belief that our rational mind knows all, we begin to use our intuitive mind to SEE what truly is, to HEAR the lies of those around us, to SMELL the shit these idolators are trying to sell us and to FEEL the pain and the cruelty being done to another(s). Using our intuitive minds allows We the People to know and understand the “deed” that is necessary to be performed in this moment, reminds us of “the finite charity of the human heart”. It is not that we the people are not charitable, at least most of we the people, it is that without the intuitive mind running the show, without hearing the call of the Voice on Sinai through our souls, without making real the stirrings of our hearts, “charity” remains finite. Only through “lives” will “the world be redeemed”, only  through our actions that are in “concordance with God” can we “live” and not merely exist as selfish, stupid individuals. Only through “concordance with God” and our “deeds” can we create the communities that promote Exodus from Egypt(narrow places) and the trek to Sinai and the Promised Land-aka FREEDOM!
ACTION STEPS:

  1. write down the self-seeking in your actions today-knowing that purity of heart is not the goal

  2. Estimate if your self-seeking is more than 50% of you taking any particular action

  3. Meditate, pray, engage in ways to access your higher consciousness to rise above the self-seeking that is more than 50%

  4. DO T’SHUVAH to God, self and those you harmed by your self-seeking, making a plan to avoid the  over 50%self-seeking part of a good deed

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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How will this Passover be DIFFERENT than the "usual" Ones? Year 5 Day 24

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 24

“Judaism is averse to generalities, averse to looking for meaning in life detached from doing, as if the meaning were a separate entity. Its tendency is to make ideas convertible into deeds, to interpret metaphysical insights as patterns for action, to endow the most sublime principles with bearing upon everyday conduct.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 87)

I am writing on these ways of being that, Rabbi Heschel anyway believes, Judaism is based on again. When we the people are afraid to stand up for the principles that all religious life, all spiritual disciplines call for, are based on, it is imperative that We return to the foundational text of all major Western religions, the Bible. Without this return, without our T’Shuvah, we the people are stuck in a body and mind that is so much less than who we are, such a ridiculous caricature of whom we are created to be, an inauthentic replica of the soul, the heart, the wisdom, the knowing that is within each and every one of us.

As the HolyDay of Passover approaches, rather than prepare by asking our neighbors to join us, asking ourselves the question: “what am I a slave to”, preparing our souls, our minds, our hearts for liberation-which the slaves in Egypt also did not do, we the people are worried about the second set of dishes, which ‘normal’ products have become “kosher for Passover”, and the Rabbis make a fortune for their ‘supervision’ of the “kashering” of the companies that make the food, the homes of their congregants, and “how long can I make the Seder last so I can say how much I added to it”. Rather than use this moment to truly prepare our selves for this moment of liberation, this small taste of freedom, making the “idea” of liberation/freedom “convertible into deeds” that will impact our willingness to be in truth about our slavery, that will improve our ability to see the inner slavery of societal norms that has kept us from being who we truly are, we the people continue to stay small, continue to believe in ‘der fuhrer’, continue to seek an outside enemy so we never have to look within and the ‘fuhrer’ doesn’t have to worry about being seen as a liar, a cheat, a fraud, a grifter, etc.

While many of the people will give lavish interpretations of the Haggadah, expound on the different commentaries that the Sages have written, what seems to escape We the People is these ‘insights’, these beautiful mystical insights, have not been accepted in our hearts, even though they are in our mouths! Rather than “interpret metaphysical insights as patterns of action”, we the people are content and thrilled to expound on them and NEVER TAKE THE ACTION they DEMAND OF US!

This is what infuriates me, makes me shake with righteous indignation, makes we want to scream and yell until the whole world hears the CALL OF THE PROPHETS! It is not my insights, it is not my words nor deeds, that are not being heard, it is the words of the prophets, the deeds of our ancestors that we can learn from, both what to do and what not to do, the call of the Voice on Sinai, the Declaration of Responsibility the Rabbis put into the Haggadah: “Every person is obligated to see her/himself as if he/she was brought out of Egypt! This “most sublime principle” must have “bearing upon (our) everyday conduct” or we the people have to admit how FULL OF SHIT we are; once again saying one thing and doing another-just like the grifter, just like Levi and Simeon when they murdered the people of Shechem using guile and false promises! “Ideas”, “metaphysical insights”, “sublime principles” are at the foundation of the Bible’s way of living, at the very core of our beingness and we the people continue to deny this truth so we “get ours”, “be in control”, and, deny one of the messages of Passover: Slavery will (must) end. Instead, we the people (some of the white christian people, jewish people, muslim people)  have decided to make slavery popular again, railing against DEI while promoting white men in our military, denying the right to vote for women who changed their name when they got married, denying the equality of people of color, and promoting anti-semitism while decrying it, islamaphobia while ‘promoting’ religious freedom while demonizing Islam. WHAT THE FUCK?

ACTION STEPS:
1) What ideas are you holding onto that are worthy of becoming deeds according to human decency and the call of your higher consciousness

2) How are you making your personal return to the ways of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, as they LIVED THEM, not the ways their words and deeds have been bastardized

3) Are you willing to “circumcise the foreskin of your heart” so you can hear and know the ways to BE HUMAN

4) When will you ask yourself the question: What am I a slave to?

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Letting God in, keeping God out-how do principles, ideas, insights help you be a better human, a worse human? - Year 5 Day 23

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 23

“Judaism is averse to generalities, averse to looking for meaning in life detached from doing, as if the meaning were a separate entity. Its tendency is to make ideas convertible into deeds, to interpret metaphysical insights as patterns for action, to endow the most sublime principles with bearing upon everyday conduct.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 87)

The first thought I have upon reading these words is of the Kotzker Rebbe who asked his disciples: “Where do you find God” and he answered his own question with: “Wherever/whenever you let God in”. I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call out to us, once again, to “let God in”! That the essence of Judaism, the way of Yiddishkeit is to “let God in”. And, as it says in Parasha Nitzavim, “it is not far off from you, it is in your mouth, in your heart”. Immersing ourselves in this idea to “let God in” brings up the brilliance of the title of the book this comes from: God in Search of Man. God keeps searching for we the people and knocks on the doors of our souls, our intuitive minds and, in our hubris, we the people keep rejecting the call, keep shutting the doors of our hearts, of our souls, of our minds. What a Desecration of God’s Name being perpetrated by Jews in all sects denominations, from the secular to the ultra-religious. WAKE UP PEOPLE- LET GOD IN!!

Kushner, Wytkoff, Lutnick, Netanyahu, et al keep listening and giving homage to the lying Trump and call themselves “the keepers of Jewish living”. They believe the lies they have been telling themselves and care nothing for how they debase themselves, desecrate God’s name, make a mockery of what Judaism truly is! They are making their “ideas convertible into deeds” that are self-centered, egotistical, power-grabbing-not the ideas that Rabbi Heschel is speaking about above. No matter what anyone wants to say-the Prophets come to teach us what God desires, what God wants and it is not to kill the Palestinians in the West Bank, it is not to decimate Gaza so it is uninhabitable, it is not to send ICE and HATE THE STRANGER, it is not to Falsely accuse your neighbor, your enemy, it is not to kill citizens for exercising their right to assembly and our right to protest!! So, as all of these ‘good jews’ extol the cruelty, the breaking of another country’s sovereignty, while decrying the consequences they face for their actions as ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, it is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to STAND THE FUCK UP AND DEMAND JUSTICE, DEMAND KINDNESS, DEMAND TRUTH!

As we enter the final few days prior to Passover, I believe We the People have to rise above our pettiness and pride, envy and enmity, to leave the prisons these ways of being have put us into, to remove the shackles of resentments, willful blindness, greed, and fear that continue to silence we the people and to “see” this Passover as a “metaphysical insights as patterns for action”. At the Seder tables, rather than wonder ‘when do we eat’, rather than go on and on with all of the flourishes of what this Rabbi says about that and that Rabbi says about this; let us “add to the story” by talking about the “sublime principles” that we commit to have “bearing upon everyday actions”?

Each Passover I take the idea of liberation from slavery and make a vow to help myself out of the slavery I am currently in AND to help another human being out of the slavery they are in. Each year, each day, I work very diligently and deliberately to convert the ideas of Judaism into deeds, making sure to “BE HOLY”, to “CHOOSE LIFE”, to “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to ALL its inhabitants therein”! This year, it is all about the inner life and the outer life being more congruent, holding myself and people in general to account for the deeds we all do, for the good and for the lies, for the not good and for the truths we speak and KNOW. This is the challenge of Passover, this is the challenge of the words above-“Shvr Tzu Tzin a Yid”- it is hard to be a Jew because of the obligation to turn “ideas into deeds”, “metaphysical insights into patterns of living”, and “sublime principles bear upon our everyday conduct”! And, it is doable, it is joyous, it is FREEDOM!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. The ideas you “convert into deeds” are they helping you be a better human being or just more ”successful”?

  2. The “metaphysical insights" you receive: are you using them to better your corner of the world or just your pocketbook and status?

  3. How are you using the “sublime principles” in your daily living to enhance the goodness, the holiness of your life?

  4. How are you making sure to “let God in” and allow God to find you?

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Aversion to Generalities, aversion to making meaning separate from doing - Year 5 Day 22

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 22

“Judaism is averse to generalities, averse to looking for meaning in life detached from doing, as if the meaning were a separate entity. Its tendency is to make ideas convertible into deeds, to interpret metaphysical insights as patterns for action, to endow the most sublime principles with bearing upon everyday conduct.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 87)

This is the great conundrum that has human beings run into all the time, do we live in the generalities, do we live in the societal norms, do we use “the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak” as a constant and consistent excuse for our not doing? “What’s it all about Alfie” is a title of a song from a 1966 movie about a London man who is a womanizer, a self-centered, entitled asshole who finally realizes the vapidness of his living. We the People are in the same situation right now, with white men trying to control women, people of color, gain more wealth through the ugliest of ways, killing innocents here and abroad, while having NO moral core, NO spiritual corpus colosseum that stops most of We the People in our tracks. Yet, when “meaning in life is detached from doing” this way of being gives rise to the ‘righteousness’ of the grifter, to the ‘justice’ by the criminal, to the ‘retribution’ by the idolator, all under the guise of serving god?! What is, of course, worse is that these behaviors, ONCE AGAIN, are being supported by clergy and ‘religious’ people of all stripes around the world, be it here in the U.S., in Israel, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, etc! And for Jews to behave in this manner, given what Rabbi Heschel writes above is a Desecration of God’s Name not seen since the time of the destruction of the two Temples! Lutnick, Kushner, Bessent, Miller, Netanyahu, et al are doing exactly what Rabbi Heschel is saying “Judaism is averse to” and NO ONE IS CALLING THEM OUT? WTF?!!

36+ years ago I learned from Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man, z”l, that a most appropriate response to each and every experience is: “what is the question this experience is the answer to”. What a mind-bending, counter-intuitive way of being and experiencing living and one that has brought me and many people to new ways of living. Asking ourselves this question is one of the best ways to NOT act “as if meaning were a separate entity”, to reject the need and societal norms that promote this mendacious way of being because it leads to being totally susceptible to the lies and deceptions of another(s), falling into the trap of autocracy because “I will be your retribution” feels so good, ie daddy is going to beat up my enemy; our own self-deception is triggered so we are unable to see that everything the false prophet is saying goes against the very principles that faith reveres, that morality demands. Yet, when we the people are not “averse to generalities”, not “averse to looking for meaning in life detached from doing”, the autocrat makes sense, the trap looks like salvation, the mendacity sounds like truth. This is HOW FUCKED UP We the People are! This is how lost we the people have become, this is the spiritual malady we are suffering from now and one that has been with us forever.

Hence the need for the Bible, not as a history book, not as a book of historical facts, rather as a history of the human struggle to get out of our own way. The Bible is a book of eternal wisdom and knowing, a path of spiritual growing that serves each and every individual, each and every community, and God. The PERFECT TRIFECTA!! Yet, no one is betting on this outcome when it is possible to make obscene amounts of money by betting on actions that one has inside info on, like when is the price of oil going to go up, go down, based on what Trump says-someone makes billions of dollars by ‘a lucky guess’? PLEASE!!

As Passover approaches, I believe it is imperative for We the People to taste the bitterness, the Marror, of not being “averse to generalities, averse to looking for meaning in life detached from doing,”. It is way past time for We the People to honor the commitment made so long ago at Mount Sinai, Na’Aseh V’Nishma, we will do and then we will understand. The doing has to come before the understanding, hence letting go of old ideas that have not served us and returning, as the prophets begged the people so long ago, to God, to the deed, to the authenticity of one’s soul, to the truthfulness of living the principles implanted within us and laid out in the Bible.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Make a list of the “generalities” you keep using to avoid engaging in the spiritual work you need to be doing

  2. Make a list of the ways you have honored the commitment to “do and then understand”

  3. Each evening, write down your responses to “what are the questions today’s experiences are the answers for”

  4. Each morning, make a list of the mendacious traps and a plan to avoid them.

  5. GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Finding the "work of Art" that is within you- Year 5 Day 21

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 21

“Right living is like a work of art, the product of a vision and of wrestling with concrete situations.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 87)

I am thinking of Michelangelo’s statement: “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” Since it is true for the greatest sculpture we have known, since most artists will tell you similar stories, it is probably true that We the People have a vision that is compatible with our higher angels, our higher consciousness, aka intuitive mind, as well as the vision most of we the people are very familiar with, from our lower, baser, consciousness,  aka rational mind.

Hence our daily dilemma: which mind, which consciousness is going to prevail in any given situation. While the intuitive mind has vision, brilliance, and, in the best of times in any individual’s life, sets the course; it is the rational mind that has to carry out the duties to move closer to the vision, to ‘do the dirty work’ and to live into the “concrete situations” Rabbi Heschel is speaking about.

Just like the David was already in the Marble, Moses’ rays of light from God, were in the Marble, the Virgin Mary holding her son, Jesus, after his crucifixion, with the love and pain was already in the Marble, so too is our purpose and passion already within We the People! Our job is to chisel away the bullshit and the schmutz that keeps covering up our essence and our connection, our wisdom and the brilliance of the light within us that is “yearning to breathe free”!

Yet, we the people continually miss our opportunity to chisel away at the lies we tell ourselves, the armor we believe is necessary to ‘meet the day’, and, our deep-seated belief that when the truth is inconvenient, don’t say it! The degree of self-deception that we the people engage in to avoid truth, freedom, finding the authentic human being we are beneath the trappings of poverty, of wealth, of egomania, of low self-esteem, of power, of powerlessness, is stunning when we consider and immerse ourselves in the sentence above! Yet, we the people continue to engage in our self-deceptive ways so we do not ever have to come “face to face” with our true self and this is the reason we are in the situation we are in right now!

Donald Trump is not the problem, even though he is a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM, the real problem is that we the people refuse to leave the warmth and comfort of the Marble that surrounds us, eschewing each and every opportunity to chisel away at what hides us, not picking up the hacksaw to saw our way out of the prison bars we have erected, and absolutely refusing to allow anyone else to be our Michelangelo, our sculpture. Being seen for who we truly are is just too frightening and too many of we the people continue to go to great lengths to avoid this. The reason being, of course, that too many of we the people do not want to be held accountable, do not want to be obligated, do not believe in the Bible’s they read, the tenets of the faith they proclaim to love and the way of being that is in the Bible, in Jesus’ words, in Mohammed’s way, in the Buddha’s vision. It is not only sad, I would posit it leads to the greatest crime of all: spiritual rape of another, bastardization of the Truth, the Word, the Voice on Sinai.

We the People who have allowed someone else to wield the chisel, who have chipped away at the crap that keeps us hidden and inauthentic, are aghast at the level of hiding, the mendacity, the trained seal behavior of so many of we the people. Beit T’Shuvah’s tagline, thought up by Avi Reichental and Harriet Rossetto was/is: “Recover your passion, discover your purpose” . One cannot do either without “going under the knife” of a skilled spiritual surgeon, the Spiritual guide, the spiritual friend who will keep reflecting the authentic you back to you, giving suggestions as to how to let the marble that no longer serves you fall away, stop holding onto the ‘comfort’ of your prison, the ‘joy’ of your hiding. I know the difficulty of doing this, I know the blessing of having spiritual guides and friends to help remover the schmutz, and I know the joy of bursting out of prison, out from behind the ‘walls’ I cultivated for so long. There is nothing like it and wrestling with “concrete situations” is a privilege and an honor, because it leads to my “work of art” that I call life, being brighter, better and lovely.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Find a Spiritual guide, engage with a spiritual friend in a spiritual discipline that chisels away at the lies, the marble, the prison you have created/kept

  2. See another person for who they truly are and tell them what you see

  3. Continue to look in the mirror and search for the authentic you.

  4. Each night write down what you did because your “intuitive mind” told you to and what you did to hide, to go along to get along, to have power.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Acknowledging the thought processes that move us to actions both good and not good - Year 5 Day 20

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 20

“And life is indivisible. The inner sphere is never isolated from outward activities. Deed and thought are bound into one. All a person thinks and feels enters everything he does, and all he does is involved in everything he thinks and feels.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.87)

The quest for “right living” begins and ends right here, I believe. That we the people in our ridiculous belief that someone can be a ‘ruthless business person’ and a ‘wonderful father and husband’ and other such split descriptions is insane, as I immerse myself both in these words and my own experience. When we the people elected Donald Trump and now say, “I didn’t think/want him to do this…” it is a complete denial of the truth of their ignorance, their stupidity, their willful blindness. Teach an animal to kill and then expect it not to kill you? DUH!!

When one wants to believe a liar, a grifter, an autocrat because they say some things that one was thinking, and don’t realize the rest of the story, it is not the liar who is at fault, it is we the people who are both GUILTY and RESPONSIBLE! What is happening in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, the Caribbean, in the USA is not being done by ‘those people’, it is being done because enough of we the people thought it was cool to use Nazi rhetoric about immigrants, because enough of we the people cheered on the cruelty towards people with disabilities, people of color, and because enough of we the people believed a ‘smart businessman’ would increase their 401k’s, their money. HA HA HA, the yolk is on we the people! All Trump is concerned about is Trump, all he cares about is his money and his power. He told everyone this in his first campaign, he said it in his second and third as well, yet, enough of we the people decided to jettison the cognitive dissonance we experienced and believe we could isolate “the inner sphere” from “outward activities”, how is Trump, how is Kushner, how is Lutnick, Bessent, et al doing? How are you doing in this separation?

The issue rising to the surface this morning is our denial of what is true and what the Bible, what the New Testament, what history has long ago proven. “What is on the heart should be on the lips” Maimonidies teaches and, we have seen over and over again, despots follow this teaching. They speak the rhetoric of the day and appeal to the “hate in our hearts” and our need for certainty, our need to ‘win’. Rather than “circumcise the foreskins of our hearts”, we the people relish in having our prejudices, our fears stoked and fed, erroneously believing the ‘hero’ of our story will not turn against us-HA HA!

Be it Kushner’s being bribed by the Saudis, by Qatar, Bessent getting whatever he gets, Lutnick practicing the same cruelty he showed at Cantor-Fitzgerald, Vought promoting Christian Nationalism, the priests the Bible, the prophets warned us about laying hands on Donald Trump, Vance being led by Peter Thiel, Stephen Miller living out his cruelest fantasy, Trump using his very own militia that is called ICE to spread fear, hatred, throughout the land, We the People are being called to RISE UP and say NO to these split personalities. It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to let go of our prejudices, our inner hatreds, our hardened hearts, and remember we were strangers in the land of Egypt, we were strangers in the land of America, none of the people running shit are home grown because we are all immigrants except the Indigenous People who we the white people put onto ‘reservations’ and treated them a little better than Black people but not much. All the time extolling our “good christian values”!

The issue is for we the people to come to grips with our own ‘lower angels’. It is imperative if we are going to ‘make our corner of the world a little better’ for We the People to heal our inner splits, to heal the prejudices, the egocentric lies we continue to tell ourselves, the ways of being that belie what we know to be true, etc. It takes a lot of soul searching, it takes a lot of spiritual growth, it takes a commitment to something greater than oneself. I am bewildered at the ignorance, the willful blindness, the self-centeredness of we the people! I know it firsthand because I was lying to myself and giving excuses of the worst kind, I told myself that “I deserved it”, “if I could steal it then it was meant to be mine”, “I have to help my family”, and other such bullshit stories. Living in the cognitive dissonance drove me to drink, because that was the only way to calm the psychic pain I experienced both from the trauma of my childhood and the ugliness of my own actions. I knew right and did wrong, I loved being immersed in prayer and the Bible and went against so many of the ways I was learning. Hence when I had my spiritual awakening, I engaged in my spiritual growth with the same passion and intensity that I had in hiding from it! If we the people are going to become We the People it is necessary for us to take some:
ACTION STEPS:

  1. Do a daily journal of the thoughts that went along with the deeds we performed this day-good and not good

  2. Do a daily journal of the thoughts that opposed the deeds we performed this day-good and not good

  3. Engage with a spiritual counselor, spiritual friend to discuss and discover the lies, the societal norms that are running your life, consciously and unconsciously

  4. Begin to clear out the lies, the societal norms that impede your intuitive mind, your soul from being the arbiter of your actions.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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"What is right living" according to your actions-does it align with the Biblical way? Year 5 Day 19

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 19

The dichotomy of faith and words which presented such an important problem in Christian theology was never a problem in Judaism. To us, the basic problem is neither what is the right action nor what is the right intention. The basic problem is: What is right living?” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 87)

Many of we the Jewish people have lost this truth! We have gotten so caught up in theology, philosophy, letter of the law, etc that too many of We the Jewish People have lost our way, straying from the path that “What is right living” keeps us on. It is, as I have experienced personally and in my work, “the basic problem is: What is right living” that keeps We the People striving to be one grain of sand better, never resting on our laurels, always ready to do battle with our inner demos as well as the outer ones. The trap here, of course, is to battle, make war with our outer demons, those who genuinely want to harm us, in order to ignore the battle within. Especially as we are 2+ weeks away from Passover and Jews around the world are cleaning out their Chametz from their homes, getting ready to cook lavish meals, prepare long explanations for the Haggadah, get down the Kosher for Passover Dishes, etc AND ignoring the war within, being oblivious and/or willfully blind to the inner battle and taking the frustrations of our inner conflicts out on our outer enemies.

We the People see this in our politics, in our workplace, in our families; one person, one group, one idea, one concept is singled out for ridicule and scorn so the masses don’t look at the people running shit, be it in a company, a family where the parents believe “do as I say, not as I do”, and in our government where the Prime Minister of Israel sends messages of support and his own son to a CPAC conference in Hungary for Viktor Orban and the far right, Anti-Semitic groups from Germany and Austria, both are fringe groups, yet Netanyahu just gave them legitimacy, while extolling his concern for the Jewish People, spouting and not believing: ‘only I can save the Jewish people from Anti-Semitism, from Iran, etc’! WHAT THE FUCK, PEOPLE?!?

In America, there are some of we the people who want to take the right to vote away from women, from people of color, from everyone EXCEPT White Males-whom they believe should run the world. Depicting Jesus as a white man when he was certainly the same skin color as Israelis and/or Arabs, is another way of obfuscating Truth, making outside enemies to ignore the internal battle white people have with their feelings of inferiority, with egos so small and fragile that only by having power, lording it over another, can they feel good. This is NOT RIGHT LIVING, Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Trump, Mr. Kushner, Mr. Wytkoff, et al!

Another example of this obfuscation is the Iran war; by keeping this in the news, ICE can go along without as much scrutiny, the cruelty of higher prices, much limited health care, the Epstein scandal, the plight of the poor, the needy, the stranger is pushed aside, is less newsworthy, less important? WTF? The takeover of the media by Trump ‘friends’, the threat of the FCC pulling licenses, the capitulation of business leaders, the extolling of Putin and Russia while denigrating our friends and allies of over 75 years is FUCKED UP and only We the People can stop this WRONG LIVING!

“What is right living” is a very simple question that has a myriad of responses with, in my opinion all of them boiling down to the messages of the prophets: “Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God” Do T’Shuvah every day, “love the stranger”, “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to ALL its inhabitants therein”, care for the poor, the needy among you, make a connection with your inner life, your soul you so God can dwell among each one of us, individually and collectively, BE HUMAN, disdain cruelty, jettison lying about another and/or self, don’t whore yourself, your principles for some temporal gain, want what you have and give your unique gifts and talents to the world. This is the path of “right living” as I have come to understand and experience life. As one who knowingly took the path of WRONG living, who relished in all the wrong ways of being, who was a drunk, a thief, a no-goodnik, I know the choices we face and the pressures we the people are under, all of which makes the self-deceptions we engage in more palatable, more powerful and more deadly. Having done all I could to kill the noise, ignore, deflect the inner battle for my soul, for my decency, for my humanity, I was Blessed with an awakening that I could not, would not ignore and I have been building on this awakening for 39+years. My ways are rough and tumble, my senses are keenly aware of bullshit and I, learning from the prophets, have no time for bullshit, and I am unafraid to be accountable nor hold another to account. I also know that my ways of being, my insistence on learning and truth, my uncompromising belief in justice, mercy, love, has pushed people away, losing connection with some people that I thought were ‘forever’ people and I am sad about it and in acceptance. I am not always in “right living” and I am always open to growing and changing.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Write down the ways you ignore your inner battles, your soul’s calling

  2. Write down the outer battles you fight with the intention of ignoring the inner ones

  3. Each day make a plan to engage in “right living” a little more than the day before

  4. Each night, do an inventory on how you were in “right living” and how you were not.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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How are you using the ways of God to promote goodness, kindness, cruelty and strife? Year 5 Day 18

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 18

“The cause of nearly all failures in human relations is this - that while we admire and extol the tasks, we fail to acquire the tools. Neither the naked hand nor the soul left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments that work is done…The meaningful of the mitzvoth(commandments) consists in their being vehicles by which we advance on the road to spiritual ends.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 86)

Continuing on from Friday’s writing about these sentences; the crucial insight, which while obvious to some of We the People, some of we the people stay willfully blind and oblivious to these truths. Without “instruments” we the people are left to our own devices, left to the banishment of our intuitive mind by the rational, reptilian mind. Our intuitive mind is NOT all good and our rational mind is NOT all bad-the issue is using both in proper measure, as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz teaches in his book Thirteen Petalled Rose. The only way to use both “sides” of our brain is by using the correct “instruments” properly. The intuitive mind doesn’t know that 2+2=4 and the rational mind cannot see the meaning, the power, the truth of; Choose Life!, Be a Blessing, etc.

Humanity will not fail itself nor God for want of more money, more power, more scientific breakthroughs, more buildings, more, more, more. Humanity will fail itself and God for want of “spiritual ends”. A case in point: when the President of the United States celebrates the death of a war hero, a trusted public servant who devoted everything to truth, dignity, honor, decency and NO REPUBLICAN CONGRESS PEOPLE condemn him, this is a failure of humanity! When money is the goal of the ‘negotiator’ in the Middle East conflict, when the prejudice is for the grift and the graft rather than being biased for what is good for the American People, the people of the world, this is a failure of humanity! When the sanctions are lifted on Russian oil, Iranian oil so Trump can get the gas prices down, which it probably won’t, and claims that “I thought it would be worse” and Rubio, Vance, Hegseth are like trained seals applauding him, when our allies are being asked to intervene without ever being briefed before this war began, this is a failure of humanity! When cruelty is the point, when prejudice is the path, when only “White Men” should have power, we have a failure of humanity! When the goal is power, prestige, saving face, hiding one’s “dirty laundry”, making “deals with the devil” and doing everything to protect image, facade, and falseness, we have a failure of humanity!

These failures and so many more occur because we the people have ourselves jettisoned learning how to use the “instruments” correctly and, instead, found the myriad ways to bastardize them while claiming, feigning innocence, all the while knowing what is right and good, what is holy and Godlike. Yet, we the people into our stupidity, our willful blindness, our fears, our ‘wanting in on the action’, allow these failures to continue, to tear at the fabric that is the Bible, that is the New Testament, that is the basis for living well. We the People are being called upon to, again, STAND UP and be counted among those of us who claim to be descendants of the prophets, who know we are to serve something greater than ourselves, who realize our lack of knowledge as to how to use the “instruments” at our disposal. This is a constant theme of Rabbi Heschel’s, a constant call of God’s in the Bible, a main thrust of Jesus’ teachings.

You Matter is not just a signature I end every email with, nor is it just a saying on a coin I give out, You Matter is a way for We the People to be responsible to learn how to be on the “road to spiritual ends”. It is a reminder of how meaningful each and every action we take is, how the “mitzvoth” are the navigators for living with passion and purpose, with finding our Ikigai, our unique talent and fulfilling a divine need that only each of us as individuals can fill. It is the essence, in my opinion, of what the Call from Sinai is, what the 10 sayings encapsulate. Why would God ‘waste God’s time’ with us if we are not important? This is not about oversized ego, this is not about undersized ego, You Matter reminds us to live right-sized, knowing what we do well and what we need help with, what is ours to do and what is not, reaching out to the stranger with LOVE, because we were strangers in Egypt. Caring for the poor in the material and the spiritual, relieving the unnecessary suffering that we the people fall into. You Matter is reminiscent of the prophets’ call for us to “return” and know that God “takes us back in love” and will “heal our backsliding”.

This is the ‘secret to my success’ as a human being these past 38+ years, growing one grain of sand a day:) I am not perfect, I keep learning more and realizing my errors more each day. I continue to engage with the “mitzvoth” in new ways, using my insight, combining my intuitive and rational minds in my actions and I know I have to “keep on keeping on” as my way of serving!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Write down the many ways you are willfully blind to what your intuitive mind calls for

  2. Write down the mendacious self-deceptions you use to continue to promote the “failure of humanity” that is so prevalent today

  3. How did you engage in using the “instruments” wisely and well to be a better human being.

  4. Take stock each day of your progression on the “road to spiritual ends”

  5. Make YOU MATTER a way of being that impacts all of your actions.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Recognizing and preventing the Ego-maniac within from ruining your life - Year 5 Day 17

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 17

“The cause of nearly all failures in human relations is this - that while we admire and extol the tasks, we fail to acquire the tools. Neither the naked hand nor the soul left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments that work is done…The meaningful of the mitzvoth(commandments) consists in their being vehicles by which we advance on the road to spiritual ends.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 86)

The purpose of immersing ourselves in Torah each year is not to memorize it, not to pick it apart in my humble (or not so humble) opinion. The purpose is to see anew what we thought we understood from past years and to understand old phrases, old paths, old ways in completely new ways. The same is true for me with Rabbi Heschel’s writings. Today’s opening sentence is a case in point. While I have read Chapter 29 of God in Search of Man, where this is taken from, this sentence in the context of today’s world, today’s “failures in human relations” takes on new, different meanings.

We the People find ourselves in a stranglehold of conflicting emotions, a yearning for ‘the good old days’ and an excitement for ‘what’s next’, wanting preserve what we have and roll the dice to ‘get more’. We are constantly speaking fondly of the words of Christ, the laws of the Torah, bastardizing both!! We quote the prophets and the psalmists, and neither DO nor UNDERSTAND EITHER! We seek holiness and wholeness while ‘suspecting our neighbor’ instead of “loving our neighbor”, rather than “BE HOLY”, we engage in optics and subterfuge. We praise the truth, while telling, believing, and retelling the LIES that suit our vision, our wants, our desires, our inauthenticity! I am a little riled up by this first sentence, for sure:)

How could this happen, we ask ourselves and one another. It happens for the exact reason given above-“we fail to acquire the tools”! Rather than learn from history, we the people in our hubris, in our outlandish egocentric way of being, ignore the lessons, the hints, the actions of what “the cause of nearly all failures in human relations” are! AND we the people are so arrogant as to think we are so much ahead of ‘those’ people from antiquity, from our parents, from past generations. WTF PEOPLE!!!

In his book, “Lonely Man of Faith”, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, reminds us of our duality as human beings-BY DESIGN! In Chapter 1 of Genesis, the utilitarian-Adam is created, “male and female God created them both” and in Chapter 2 of Genesis, the connected-Adam. One is outer centered/focused and the second is inner centered/focused. “Adam 1” as Rabbi Soloveitchik calls them, doesn’t need another, doesn’t really care about another, until they do for their utilitarian purpose, even helping another, coming up with cures for illnesses is done to satisfy the individual’s needs to have “dominion and rule” over … “Adam 2” is concerned with connection, hence the need to split the side of Adam so that male and female could come together face to face. Just as Jacob tells Esau that “seeing you is seeing the face of God”, so too when male Adam meets female Adam they see the “face of God” in one another and are connected.

We the People seem to have no desire to teach our children nor remember ourselves our need for connection, for caring about one another, for loving our neighbors and the stranger, for growing and maturing our inner life, for hearing and heeding the Voice on Sinai, for following our intuitive mind, our higher consciousness. It is as if we the people only care about our utilitarian self, only growing our wealth, our power, our prestige and/or be with the “in crowd” who have power, wealth, prestige and it is “the cause of nearly all failures in human relations”, with the weapons available to the “bad actors”, the egocentric autocrats, the wannabe Mafia Bosses running the world today, we the people find ourselves facing another Mid-East Crisis, a Global Energy crisis, a Global warming crisis, a Global economic crisis, AND we the STUPID people believe it won’t affect us- at least those with the money and at the helms of power know they won’t be affected so they don’t care and will use this and every other crisis to their benefit!

We the People who are aware, who are connected, who have brought together their “2 Adams”, need to say NO! We are being called to “Be In The Solution” and spread “the word” of hope, love, etc. More next time.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Do an inventory of the “failed” human relations in your life

  2. Find your part in the failure and seek out the tools to both repair the damage and fix the ‘flaw’

  3. Do an inventory of successful human relationships in your life.

  4. Find your part in the success and seek to enhance these tools so you do less damage.

  5. Find ways to bring your “2 Adams” together

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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How have your skills supplanted your sense of mystery? Year 5 Day 16

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 16

“Giving birth to one chld is a mystery; bringing death to millions is but a skill. It is not quite within the power of the human will to generate life; it is quite wihtin the power of the will to destroy life.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 84)

This book, Thunder in the Soul is a compilation of Rabbi Heschel’s earlier books, ergo, there is no new writings, no ‘new’ information. The editor, Robert Erlewine, however, as compiled the disperate writings beautifully, in my opinion. He offers no commentary, just leaves the understanding to We the People.

Reading, understanding, hearing the words above gives me the shuddering awesomeness of responsibility and humility. Who the hell do we the people think we are? We hold ourselves in some lofty esteem, believing we are so hotsy-totsy, so brilliant, and it is impossible still for human beings to “generate life”, albeit we the people keep trying! Isn’t it WAY PAST TIME for we the people to rise above these baser instincts, to transform our “yetzer hara”, to serve something greater than ourselves? OH YEAH, I forgot; to far too many of we the people there is nothing greater than ourselves! Herein is the problem, the solution, the challenge and the response: The hubris of humanity is so powerful and strong that we the people forget who we truly are!

We, up till now, have been unable to create “complex life” from nothing as is possible because of how we are created. Yet, as history records and survivor records testify to, we the people are very adept at “bringing death to millions”. In fact, in this moment, as in every moment in the past, the chest-pounding by leaders of governments as to ‘my army is better than yours’ is once again crescendoing. Be it a drunken Pete Hegseth who whether he is actually drinking, his intoxication with himself, with his power, with his booze, is on full display, or be it Donald Trump, who is so drunk with his ability to manipulate, to deceive the public, to enrich himself, to be a bully and have so many people who shunned him bend their knee, kiss his ring, his ass, or any of the other maniacs running our government in this moment, We the People are being called by the words above, by historical experiences, by the Prophets, by Jesus to STAND THE FUCK UP AND SAY NO! NO! NO! Yet, we the people in our fear, in our self-deception, in our wanting to be part of the ‘in crowd’, DO NOT STAND UP! Susan Collins, John Thune, Mitch McConnell et al know the dangers of what is happening, know the incredible risk Trump is taking for democracy, are, seemingly, fine with allowing what has stood for 250 years crumble, what began as a revolution with the firing of a musket, is dying without even a whimper from these ‘fine upstanding christian LIARS, IDOLATORS!

The problem is our ability to destory life with such reckless abandon. The solution is to follow the words of the prophets, of Jesus: “return to God”, “God will heal us”, live life with a passion for our unique purpose, remember there is one law for the stranger and the citizen alike, “See yourself as if YOU had been brought out of Egypt”, etc. The challenge for We the People is to rise from the smallness, the arrogance, the hubris we the people seem to revel in, puff out our chests from, and become We the People by acknowledging a force, a higher consciousness, a spirit, an energy, that is beyond anyting we could imagine. It is this force that gave human beings the power to co-create a life, to save one soul, to live our unique path and purpose.

This challenge was brought to me some 41 years ago during my first stint in the State Prison system of California, and then again, 39 years ago during my 2nd stint in the joint. Needless to say, the 1st time I was blind, deaf and DUMB! Since the 2nd experience of hearing the challenge, being given the solution, I have stayed the course, finding out the nuances that work and don’t, the path that is right for me and not right for another(s), no longer needing to prove I am right, a surrender to God that reaches into the 90% percentile at times and hovers in the 80%’s. It is a life that brings joy and meaning, connection and love, sadness and disappointment, bewilderment and clarity of knowing what I know. Each day I am hurt by people who ghost me, overwhelmed by people who recognize me, and continue to live the next right action to the best of my ability!
ACTION STEPS:

  1. How are you killing people by not recognizing their humanity, by shaming them for their foibles, by taking advantage of them just because you can

  2. Until when, “Odd Matai”, will you stop refusing to acknowledge your hubris and inhumanity towards another(s) human

  3. What will it take and/or how do/will you meet the challenge presented today?

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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How are you balancing the "razors edge" between using your power for good and using it to 'get yours'? - Year 5 Day 15

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 15

“By will alone man becomes the most destructive of all beings. This is our predicament: our power may become our undoing. We stand on a razors edge. It is to easy to hurt, to destroy, to insult, to kill.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 84)

The Latin root of the word “predicament” is “predicare”, in English, “predicate” and this means “make known beforehand”. I am experiencing this sentence as this is what we know beforehand and have ignored: “our power may become our undoing”! AIN’T THIS THE TRUTH! Isn’t this what we are going through right now? Isn’t this the issue that has faced human beings since the beginning of time, when Cavemen wanted to take from one another so they would just kill their neighbor to get what he had? I would posit this is precisely what the Bible comes to rectify, this is what God ‘saw’ happening with the ‘men of reknown’ taking any virgin they wanted to and treating them like whores, when God ‘saw’ the violence that was abounding on earth, when God ‘saw’ that Adam and Eve were hiding, when God ‘saw’ when Cain denied killing his brother, Abel, etc. The Bible comes to tell us: Yes, you have the power, yes, you have free will to make your own choices AND here is the path that will lead you to joy, to fulfilling your passion and completing your purpose, here are ‘the steps’ to take as we slog on this chaotically, joyous journey called our lives.

Throughout human history, these words have come to both light and fruition, almost. From the Assyrians, to the Egyptians, to the Greeks, to the Romans, to all of the rest of the countries of the world, their “power” did “become our undoing” and, I fear, we are beginning to see the same in the United States today. Rather than heed the prophets, rather than live Jesus’ teachings and ways, today’s ‘good christian nationalists, good christian prosperity gospel people, good ‘torah jews’ are doing the exact opposite and their mendacity, their abilty to deceive so many of we the people is undoing an experiment begun 250 years ago. Whether or not they will succeed is still unknown and the outcome will be decided by either we the people, in our smallness or by We the People by taking our rightful place as divine reminders, fulfilling the divine need we are created to fulfill, and living with the passion and purpose that resides in our souls. This is the challenge we the people, We the People face: are we living the LIE of smallness and powerlessness over self and caring for the stranger, the poor, the needy, the widow and orphan and being the poor small victims and crying about being we the people or are We going to say HELL NO to the ASSHOLES who are using their power to hurt, destroy, insult and kill We the People of this country and, evidently, other countries as well?

This is the choice and We the People are more than capable and have the power, the strength, the awareness, the spiritual maturity to make the choice that hears, understands and does: CHOOSE LIFE! We the People do not engage in hurting, destroying, insulting, killing the souls, the spirits, the bodies of another human being(s), it is only we the people the smallminded asshole we have the ability to fall back to. This is why Spiritual Counseling, a Spiritual discipline, immersing oneself in the REAL teachings of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran - not the lies we are being and have been fed for so long, is crucial for We the People and is the antidote to “our power may be our undoing”!

My divine image is in complete sympathy with God, I am experiencing the pain and sadness that is described in the Bible when we the people go away and whore ourselves, I am immersed in the cries God makes between the 2nd and 3rd watch at night as described in the Talmud because “My children are in exile”. I know the experience of exile, I know the experieince of being enslaved to my (ir)rational mind, my emotions, and they lead to jails, institutions, and death. I am beyond grateful that I heeded the call from God when I was in the jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca. in December of 1986! I have been dedicating myself to being the Change God wants to see, to being the best Mark Borovitz I can in this moment. I have made the mistakes Rabbi Heschel warns us of and I continue to do my T’Shuvah and improve at least one grain of sand each day. It is a hard way to live and the most joyous life experience-knowing God’s cries, hearing my own, hearing yours, makes me a better person in this moment.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Examine the ways you have used your power each day-letting go of the lie that you are powerless and a victim. While you may have been victimized, you don’t have to wear the label.

  2. Make a list of the ways you engaged in the misuse of power

  3. Do an inventory on how you found it “so easy to hurt, destroy, insult and kill” today, remembering the ease with which murdering a soul happens.

  4. Write down the changes you are committed to so your power stays in check more and the negativity of it lessens

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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"Until When" will we the people continue to revel in our power rather than our compassion, become slaves to power rather than free people enjoying life?

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 14

“By will alone man becomes the most destructive of all beings. This is our predicament: our power may become our undoing. We stand on a razors edge. It is do easy to hurt, to destroy, to insult, to kill.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 84)

Is it possible to read these words, hear their call, understand the plea that Rabbi Heschel is directing towards us and NOT BE in righteous anger, prophetic indignation at how we the people have stayed so small-minded, so spiritually stunted and ignorant as to allow, ONCE AGAIN, “our power may become our undoing” to be so prominent in our lives AGAIN?!!

As you might surmise, I am in full prophetic indignation, full of regret at the missed opportunities we the people have squandered to grow along spritual lines, to recover our authentic selves, to engage in life-affirming actions, to live the dictates of the Bible, to say NO to the liars, the charlatons, the autocrats, the assholes who use our vulnerabilities against us, AND WE HAVE NOT DONE THIS! Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, are not aberations; they are the reflection of a society that has abandoned its roots-the Bible-, squandered its inheritance- the prophetic knowing-, and embraced the strong heartedness of Pharaoh with a zeal and passion that rivals Ancient Egypt.

We the People are responsible and guilty for the senseless destruction and death that is occuring right this moment. We the People are guilty and responsible for the denial of a deal with Iran, We the People are guilty, once again, of trying to change the regime of a sovereign nation, We the People are responsible for the talk of doing the same with Cuba as we have done in Venezuala and Iran. We the People are guilty and responsible for the unexplicable slavery people in other countries are suffering and the unexusable slavery and poverty, despair and financial insecurity people in this country are expereincing on a daily basis! While Tucker Carlson, James Fishback, Nick Fuentes, et al would like to blame the Jews, others would like to blame Trump, Rubio, Hegseth, the TRUTH is We the People gave these ASSHOLES the POWER, the Supreme Court bestowed upon Trump the Immunity, and all he is doing, along with his sons, his son-in-law, his ‘buddies’, is “getting mine”. One of the saddest truths is we the people empowered them to be their most destructive selves!

I come back to Chapter 10 Verse 3 of Genesis: “Odd Matai, Until when will you refuse to heed Adonai, God?” I keep wondering “until when” will we the people rise above our inflated egos, our need to ‘get even’, our desire to ‘get ours’, our self-deceptions belieiving the rich and powerful care about the ‘little guy’, our deisre to be deceived? “Until when” will we the people refuse to hear the truth of the Biblical Call at Sinai: DON’T Murder your soul or the soul of another(s), DON’T Whore yourselves, your children, your neighbors, DON’T Steal from self nor one another(s), DON’T Bear False Witness against another(s) nor against yourself-i e-STOP LYING TO SELF ABOUT SELF and ABOUT ANOTHER(s), and finally; DON’T Covet anything of your neighbors, not their wife/husband, their wife/husband’s ass, nor anything-i e-WANT WHAT YOU HAVE RATHER THAN CRYING FOR WHAT YOU DON’T!

At issue for we the people is our ability and/or inability to tame our “will”, to let go of, to surrender our drive to “be the most destructive of all beings”. What we the people do to one another is exponentially greater than what the ‘king of the jungle’ does to its prey, the Lion is only interested in food, we the people seem to Greatly Intersested in CRUELTY! There is one solution that is “in our mouth, in our hearts” and that is becoming spiritually mature human beings, growing our soul’s knowing and following what we KNOW IN OUR GUTS, rather than following the SERVANT RATIONAL BRAIN! It is important to be able to synthesize information, it is important to have a mature emotional intelligence, it is ALSO as important, if not more, to have a Spiritual Maturity and Intelligence that We the People allow to run the show. Only through our “intuitive mind” will We the People stay out of the slavery of Egypt, the grip of the Pharaoh, and the self-deception of Nazi Germany! At stake is: Freedom, Democracy, and Truth, how will you, as one of We the People respond? I am saying NO to PHARAOH and NO to the Returning to Egypt!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Do a Spiritual Inventory, seeing where and when you acted in accord with your “intuitive mind” and where and when you allowed your servant mind to run the show

  2. Examine the places you see that are spiritually immature, seeking out a spiritual counselor, an advocate for your soul to help you grow along spiritual lines

  3. Make today the last day anyone asks you “Until When” and bring a new spirit and attitude to this day and every other one

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Do your actions reflect your belief that you are a King, a Pirate, or a Servant? Year 5 Day 13

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 13

“We are endowed with the ability to conquer and to control the forces of nature. In exercising power, we submit to our will a world that we did not create, invading realms that do not belong to us. Are we the kings of the universe or mere pirates? (Thunder in the Soul pg. 83/83)

Some 3470 (approximately) years after the exodus from Sinai, some 2500+ years after the first “formal” reading of the Torah by Ezra, 2026 years after the birth of Christ and we the people do not even think about the questions these sentences engender! In this moment, in every moment, we the people have to decide whether we are going to stay small-minded, slow-thinking, shallow-spirited or if We the People are going to take our proper places as partners with God in making this world a little better for all its inhabitants therein! This is the great conundrum that we/We face each and every day expressly because “we are endowed with the ability to conquer” not just “the forces of nature” but another human(s) and another country.

In 16 days, Jews around the globe will celebrate the Exodus with a Passover Seder, a time to reflect on how “puffed up” we the people have gotten and how far from realizing the awesome responsibility that BEING HUMAN calls for, we are! While many people praise themselves on how long they can expound on different parts of the Haggadah, the book we use to tell the story, there are not many who take the time to immerse themselves in the mandate to “see ourselves as if we too had been liberated from Egypt”. The Seder is NOT a time for extolling the greatness of the different parts of the Haggadah, it is not even a time for extolling God, in my humble opinion. The Seder and every day after it and prior to it is to remember we are “invading realms that do not belong to us” and, to be good guests in the palace that is the earth, the place where God “dwells among, in, with We the People!

In today’s world, as in past times, being endowed brings privilege and privilege brings entitlement, and entitlement brings out the worst in human beings. Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Iran’s current Ayatollah, and their cronies all believe their positions endow them with privilege, entitles them to do whatever the fuck they want to do. They are the quintessential examples of the words above, the response to the question: “do I have the right to exploit for my own gain my position, my power, my mendacity?” Unfortunately, in this moment, as in the past, the responses to these questions by the people in power is YES, HELL YES! Hence the call to stand up to these bullies, to stop making moral equivilance, end our need to defend the wars Bibi engages in to save his political power and not go to Jail! Hence the call to stand up to these bullies, to stop making the stock market, our 401k’s, our prejudices, our need to identify with the oppressor, revel in ‘the retribution’ for perceived slights, support Trump, Kushner, Vought, Vance, Thiel, Lutnick, Miller in their cruelty, their grift, their graft and their total disregard for what the Exodus from Egypt represents. That Jews like Kushner, Lutnick, who have been honored by the New York Jewish Community, who are praised by those ‘good orthodox jews’, are denying the essence of the Exodus experience, who, like Pharaoh, cannot hear the question, “until when will you refuse to heed the word of God”, and engaging in this disgusting behavior.

“Are we the kings of the universe or mere pirates” is the question we have to respond to each and every day. There is a 3rd choice, however, that of trusted servant, an adherent of God’s words and teachings and We the People are beng called to decide who we are going to be today and every day-false king, deceiving pirate, servant of the Ineffable One. Avinu, Malkeinu is a prayer we read on fast days, on the High Holy Days to remind us we are subjects to the Sovereign AND we are Children of the Sovereign. Being royalty forces us to choose, entitlement or service and the fate of our country, our family, our living depends on which we choose-ask the Prophets!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Take the next two weeks to examine your “puffed up” places

  2. Do a Daily Inventory on how you are exercising your power

  3. Write down your entitlement issues

  4. Write your reasons for “invading realms that do not belong” to you

  5. Each day write down how you acted like a King, a Pirate, a Servant

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Where do your "oughts" come from: society, ethics, religion and how do they shape your living? Year 5 Day 12

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 12

“What ought we to do? How ought we to conduct our lives? These are basic questions of ethics. They are also questions of religion…To ethics, these are man’s questions, necessitated by the nature of human existence. To religion, these are God’s questions, and our answer to them concerns not only man but God.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.83)

“What ought we to do” is a much different question from “what can we do” and herein lies one of the major issues facing humanity. We the People have to demand of ourselves a higher standard of living than “what can I do” both as a light bulb for self-satisfaction and as a lament for doing nothing when there is stress, trouble, need, etc in our world, with our neighbor, when the powerless and voiceless, the stranger and the needy present themselves and we the people only shrug our shoulders and say “what can I do, I am only one person” and other such mendacious statements. I am, once again, sitting at my computer and shuddering at the elegant simplicity of these words and the depth of meaning they have for all of We the People and how many of we the people are too small-minded, too self-centered, too spiritually immature to engage in these “oughts”!

“What can I do” is a statement that comes from not having a connection to the “questions of religion” and a bastardization of the “questions of ethics”. It is a question that the narcissistic, self-centered individual asks both as to “how can I get mine, how can I win AND, I can’t make him/her do anything so why bother”. Yet, “what can I do” is asked much more often than “what ought I do”; “what can I do” is a societal norm and mental cliche that many of we the people use to abdicate responsibility, to validate our inaction, to allow our greed, our resentment, our retribution, our lust, our anger towards another human being(s), towards humanity as a whole AND gives many of we the people the impetus to lie, to deceive another(s) and self, to steal, to make war, to beat her/his chest like Tarzan, believing we are still IN THE JUNGLE instead of being a part of society, a responsible member of the human race, a being that can and must serve more than our basest thoughts, our lower angels.

Unfortunately, as history has proven over and over again, ethics will not save us from ourselves, it could and it hasn’t. By the same token, religion has not saved us from ourselves either. One reason is the same: the bastardization of both and the willingness of we the people to deceive and be deceived. As we know; Self-deception is a MAJOR PROBLEM! Another reason is very different: ethics can change depending on the time, the place, etc. What was ‘ethical’ by human standards in the 1700’s is not in the 2000’s-no matter what Trump and the MAGA crowd want to promote. The “oughts” of religion have not changed; the  248 ‘I should do” remain the same, with a deeper understanding of the subtleties, of course, and the 365 “I should not do” are better illuminated for us now AND still the same. Neither of these “oughts” are subject to the whim of the individual to change at will, no matter what the Rabbis, Priests, Pastors preach and teach! This is the difference between “ethics” and “religion” as I am experiencing this teaching this day-“ethics” is subject to “the nature of human existence” and “religion” knows these are “God’s questions” and they “concern” both “man and God”. Accountability is everything and when we are only accountable to ourselves, humanity has proven, ad nauseam, that self-deception, bastardization, etc prevail more that the Ethical Path of our ancestors. “Ethics” in the hands of the deceivers and mendacious bastardized and immunized our sense of good and evil so badly that there are those among we the people who are horrified by the attack on a Synagogue in Detroit where school children were sitting in their classrooms and say NOTHING about the horror of dropping a Tomahawk Missle on a School in Iran where children were murdered by it! WTF?!

I have found that the “oughts” of religion have freed me from the chains of self-deception, from the prison of societal norms and mental cliches. In fact, it is the only path upon which I found true freedom, the freedom to be who I am without needing to “please everyone else” and the freedom to speak the truth of my soul and to live with passion the purpose I have been gifted with.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Write out what your “oughts” are: “ought to do and ought not to do”

  2. Ask yourself where these “oughts” come from: ethics, societal norms, religion

  3. Make a daily list of the “oughts” you have fulfilled and the ones you have not

  4. Write out, each day,  what deeper truths you have learned from living your “oughts” and which ones need to change

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Indifference or Awareness of the "endless set of effects" "a single deed generates" Year 5 Day 11

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 11

“Even a single deed generates an endless set of effects, initiating more than the most powerful man is able to master or to predict. A single deed may place the lives of countless people in the chains of its unpredictable effects.” ( Thunder in the Soul pg. 82)

What is so infuriating to me, in this moment and in almost every moment of my life is that nothing in the words above is new. This is not some new discovery by Rabbi Heschel, not some brilliant new understanding of a piece of Torah, of the Talmud, of the prophets. Rather, it is, as Deuteronomy 30:14 teaches us: “the word is near to you, abundantly in your mouth and in your heart”.  I knew this as a child and ignored it, I knew it as a teen-ager and didn’t care, I knew this as father and was too caught up in my fears, my internal disgust at myself, my false belief that my net worth=my self worth, that alcohol was the only soother, the only way I could get through the day and the night. I am not proud of this truth AND I cannot deny it.

What is it that We the People have made ourselves so small that we are unwilling to immerse ourselves in the words of Deuteronomy? What is that makes we the people forget that we are partners with God in perfecting creation, in growing freedom “throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”?? What is the problem we the people experience that prevents us from SEEING the divine image in ourselves and another human being(s), from HONORING the infinite worth and dignity of ourself and another human being(s), from REJOICING in the uniqueness of ourselves and another human being(s)? It is the denial of the first sentence above!

In our hubris, in our denial of truth, in our attachment and adjustment to societal norms and mental cliches, We the People have become STUPID!! Not to insult anyone, of course, the stupidity is that We the People think so much of ourselves that we believe the lies we tell ourselves, the lies of the Greeks, the Romans, et al who tell us of our power of perfection, our power of strength and might, our power of intellect so we can think and make something happen, that we have control over our destiny, and other such mental pap!

We are witness’ to the TRUTH of these sentences right here, right now and too many of WE THE PEOPLE are still keeping our mouths shut and fearful of not being liked by “DADDY DONNY”! I am speaking to the Republicans in Congress who have co-signed this WAR WITH IRAN for no truthful reason. Of course Iran is a bad actor-GUESS WHAT - SO IS THE UNITED STATES and ISRAEL RIGHT NOW!! Because Bibi doesn’t want to be put on trial and found guilty, because Donny doesn’t want the world to know about his penchant for teen-age girls like his buddy Jeffrey Epstein, We the People are suffering from “the chains of (their) unpredictable effects”!  These assholes, the Republicans in Congress, the Supreme Court Justices who have ceded all power to Trump and his gang of thieves and thugs, have the gall and audacity to proclaim that Trump and Netanyahu are able to “master (and) predict” the “endless set of effects” that are occuring. Look at Gas prices, look at supply chains, look at the GREED of so many companies to USE THIS CRISIS for their BOTTOM LINE- not to help we the people, rather to fuck us once again with the blessing of Bibi and Donny. WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE?!?!?

I said I am infuriated because We the People do know better and we are being indifferent to the truth, indifferent to our power to stand up and demand change, indifferent to the evil in our midst and to the people promoting this evil - be it ICE, Hegseth, Miller, Kushner, Vought, Trump, Netanyahu, Ben G’Vir, Smotrich and their band of thieves and thugs or the person next to you who supports these fascists, or the part of you that identifies with some part of the evil that is being purportrated and cheers it on. Hence our need for Spiritual Growth, our need for a Spiritual Awakening, our need for a Spiritual Discipline that speaks to us, motivates us, and moves us forward. This is the challenge facing We the People in this moment and in every moment. We have the path…

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Do an inventory of the effects of your deeds today and how much control you have over them.

  2. Write down the actions, ideas, paths, evils you have become indifferent to and what you need to do to WAKE THE FUCK UP

  3. Make a plan to STAND UP FOR TRUTH, JUSTICE, LOVE, MERCY as Micah the prophet teaches.

  4. Find a teacher to help you articulate the unique word of God that  “is in your mouth and in your heart”.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Awareness of the Darkness that hovers over all we do and not succumbing to it - Year 5 Day 10

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 10

“The deed is the test, the trial, the risk. What we perform may seem slight, but the aftermath is immense. An individual’s misdeed can be the beginning of a nation’s disaster. The sun goes down, but the deeds go on. Darkness is over all we have done.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.82)

We the People are witnessing the quintessential example of “an individual’s misdeed can be the beginning of a nation’s disaster” in living color, in our living rooms, at the gas pumps, the grocery stores, etc. Between the bullshit tariffs that no one knows where the money is and when it will be returned, the Iran war, the stealing of the sovereignty of Venezuela, the ass-kissing of Putin and Russia, the betrayal of the Ukraine, the ICE raids, the United States under the “Family” led by Donald Trump is at the precipice of “disaster” and it is time for We the People to stand up, rise up, and say NO to this betrayal of the oaths these liars took, NO to the grift they are taking, NO to the rape of our cities, our elections, our Constitution, our ideals, our morals, our foundational principles that we have not always lived up to and still kept!

The assault on TRUTH is the first battle to wage. What has happened to the TRUTH beginning with the Tea Party, the Birther bullshit, and then the ‘golden stairway walk’ by Trump is horrendous. That there are so many so-called ‘people of god’ willing to ‘lay hands’ on this prick, this anti-Christ, is one of the prime examples of this assault! That the wealthiest in our nation are willing to kiss the ass of Trump and Lutnick, Miller and Vance, Hegseth and Rubio, knowing their tactics can come back to bite them is another example of the assault on Truth as these rich bastards take over the media and the law firms capitulate to join with MAGA to “Make America GO AWAY”! As is said above, “the sun goes down, but the deeds go on” this assault is a 24/367 endeavor by these assholes, these TRAITORS, these mendacious pricks wrapping themselves in Christ, in Moses, in the Bible?!?  WTF, PEOPLE?!? It is WAY PAST TIME to put an end to this assault, this war on TRUTH, on FREEDOM, on God, on Spiritual Principles! We the People are being called upon to end our addiction to the LIE, our obsession with the material, our indifference to evil, our willful blindness to the rape of children and adults, physically, materially, emotionally, and spiritually!

As you might be able to see, I am PISSED OFF with what is happening. I know this playbook, I lived this playbook-not even close to the perfection and extent Trump et al are doing- as a criminal and an alcoholic mendacity was all I knew to do because the TRUTH was too scary, it was too harsh, it was facing me all the time and I drank to blur it, to be willfully blind to it. It got so bad, I was having such a hard time hiding from the TRUTH, that, at the end of my drinking I was pouring a glass of Vodka before I went into the shower because I couldn’t even face myself under the water! What I did to my family, my friends, the stranger, was horrific, it was the worst crime next to physical murder. I stole their trust, used their vulnerabilities against them and made them question what they knew to be TRUE and go along with my lies. This spiritual rape of people around me is something I have continued to do T’Shuvah for, it is my way of  stopping “the deeds go on”! This is the power of T’Shuvah, it puts the past where it belongs, in the past; I restore the dignity to the people I hurt so badly, so they don’t have to continue to live with trauma because they knew me. My T’Shuvah is the return the prophets speak about and I am bearing TESTIMONY to the TRUTH that God took me back in LOVE and HEALED my backsliding. While nowhere near perfect, I have never returned to the Mark Borovitz who committed these crimes.

This is the PATH to breaking up the “darkness is over all we have done”. T’Shuvah smashes the darkness because, like at the beginning of Creation, the Spirit of God hovers over the deep and when we RETURN, we engage with this power to fulfill the command of God: LET THERE BE LIGHT. This is the great fear of Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, et al: LIGHT! LIGHT brings TRUTH back to the forefront and TRUTH restores DIGNITY, WORTH, UNIQUENESS back to WE THE PEOPLE and the END to the disaster, the end to the complete and utter darkness we are living under today.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Put on a “new pair of glasses” so you SEE the darkness that surrounds you as an individual and we as a nation

  2. Smash the idols, “as Abraham did” of indifference, wealth, blindness

  3. Do you T’Shuvah and restore the dignity you have robbed from another with your greed, your mendacity

  4. Make a list of those who have harmed you in the same ways and find ways to let go of the resentment, heal the trauma without needing them to do their T’Shuvah-not forgiveness, just letting go of resentment

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Awareness of what IS, not what you want it to be and responding in kind - Year 5 Day 9

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 9

“The deed is the test, the trial, the risk. What we perform may seem slight, but the aftermath is immense. An individual’s misdeed can be the beginning a nation’s disaster. The sun goes down, but the deeds go on. Darkness is over all we have done.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.82)

I am taking my time with this passage because it is so important for We the People to end our obliviousness to what is in front of our faces, to end our mendacity towards ourselves and another(s). Can it really be ‘true’ that we the people are SO SMALL that we are unable to SEE, to HEAR, to UNDERSTAND the “aftermath” of our “deeds”, the “immense” cruelty of what is happening in our country, in Netanyahu’s Israel, in Putin’s Russian invasion of Ukraine, et al??? Is it within the realm of possibility that we the people are SO INCLINED TO WORSHIP IDOLS that we are unable to hold to account people like Jeffrey Epstein and his cronies, that we are so spiritually bankrupt, so spiritually immature, so morally compromised as to allow the rich and powerful to treat the stranger with hatred, to suspect their ‘fellow man’, to believe “the one with the gold rules”, to treat the poor and needy as if they are criminals??

Now, I understand that one may think I am engaging in hyperbole, yet I think not! While no one, except for Trump, Goebbels-oops I mean Miller, Lutnick, Vance, Johnson, Thune, the Republican Party and some Democrats, actually speak this way, and most of We the People have some of these thoughts, some of these beliefs, have engaged in some of these actions without thinking, with malice of forethought, and to go along to get along. Our Bridge Teacher, Randy Bissett, says: “every card says something” and in our context: every action says something about our character, about our beliefs, about our congruency, about our authenticity. I would like to state for the record-our congruency and authenticity need some shoring up, we the people need to GROW UP! I am so enraged, I understand the words of the prophets so clearly, so intensely and I am bewildered that we the people would buy into the bullshit about Iran, the bullshit about Trump’s ‘innocence’ with the Epstein affair, the bullshit about Lutnick’s goodness, the bullshit that Miller spews, the hidden agenda of Rubio, the absolute FALSENESS of everything Vance purports to be. YET We the People DO! WTF??

Is it at all possible that we the people have become so blind, so indifferent to how “the aftermath is immense”? Are we truly unable to Shema, hear, listen and understand, the call of the innocent immigrants being locked up in facilities that rival the ‘work camps’ of Poland and Germany? Are we really that inauthentic that we can stand idly by the blood of innocent Iranians like the school girls who were killed? Are we so self-deceptive as to believe the mendacity of Trump, Netanyahu, Kushner, Hegseth, et al? The “misdeeds” of Trump and his gang of thieves, and zealots and Netanyahu and his gang of thieves and zealots are “the beginning of nation’s disaster” and We the People are NEEDED TO WAKE UP to what is, not what we hear, not what we want to believe, not the deception by these assholes, nor the self-deception of “well it doesn’t affect me”! OF COURSE it affects everyone, hence “the individual’s misdeeds can be the beginning of a nation’s disaster”!

There are, of course, many ways to engage in the solution to this issue, politically, morally, and spiritually. I want to focus on the latter two: We the People are being called upon to regain and recalibrate our moral compass. It is no longer okay to turn a blind eye to what is happening, it is no longer acceptable to not rebuke our neighbors when they are engaging in misdeeds and saying ‘what’s the big deal?’ It is all a big deal because like Nero in Rome, we the people are fiddling around while our country is burning with a hatred that has not been seen since the days prior to the Civil War and the world is burning with a hatred that hasn’t been seen since the 1930’s. AND We the People can turn it around, can speak truth to power and not settle for the lies and bullshit! This is why T’Shuvah was put into the world before the world was created.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Take an inventory of the ways you think what you do is ‘not a big deal’

  2. Using this inventory, write down the aftermath of these actions

  3. Find the ways to repair the damage you have caused with “no big deal”

  4. Make your amends to the people you have betrayed, especially those who have helped you and you used their vulnerabilities against them.

  5. Make a plan to be more aware of the ‘everyday’ things you do and raise them up to a level of awareness that allows you to see the aftermath sooner and make the appropriate repairs or enhancements.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Standing "trial" for the "deeds" we have done, the risks we have taken and not taken - Year 5 Day 8

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 8

“The deed is the test, the trial, the risk. What we perform may seem slight, but the aftermath is immense. An individual’s misdeed can be the beginning a nation’s disaster. The sun goes down, but the deeds go on. Darkness is over all we have done.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.82)

These words were published over 50 years ago, in the shadow of the Holocaust, in the sunlight of what was happening in America and in the world, and they are as relevant for We the People today as they were then. AND, we the people seem to incapable, unwilling, too intractable to learn, to change, to improve on what was done before us. How PATHETIC, SAD, CRIMINAL! It is easy to point the finger at Trump, Lutnick, Miller, et al, at Bibi, Ben G’Vir, Putin, et al, the difficulty, the demand of these words as I hear it today, is to ask the question our grandchildren will ask: what did you do in ‘the war’ grandpa, grandma? We are in a war, make no mistake about it, the war is for the soul of each of us as individuals, for the country we live in, for the world we GET to inhabit.

“The deed is the test, the trial, the risk” is so pregnant with meaning, I am trembling, shuddering, and in wonder over how to understand the totality of what is being said here. God doesn’t “test” us as I hear, listen and understand the Bible, the Voice that calls out each day from Mount Sinai, the inner voice of my soul. Rather, “the test” is an internal and societal one: are We the People, as individual human beings, going to choose the moral “deeds” to perform in any and every given situation? Are we the people as small self-centered individuals going to choose the immoral “deeds” so we ‘can get ours, get ahead’? This is a “test” We the People take every day, many times a day, and most of us are willfully blind to this “test”, we go along with the societal call for ‘likes’, for wealth, for power, for idolatry. In doing the moral “deed”, the “deed” our soul is calling us to, we can understand how doing the next right thing, enhances our inner life, gives us passion and purpose to move forward, and, quite often, enhances our ability to make a living.

What causes me and many of We the People trembling awe is “the trial”. Each day, each year, we are called to the Heavenly Court, the Holy Tribunal to respond to the charges, the indictment our “deeds” have carved onto the stone tablets of the day, the year. This is not ‘God’s indictment’, it is ours and only we, as an individual and as a community, can stand up and respond to the charges. I tremble at the reading of this indictment each year, each day because I know better, I am better than my worst action, I am not the piece of shit, the lunatic, the chaos maker I am accused of being. I also know that my ways upset people, are at times chaotic, and I know the misdeeds I make better than anyone else because I have to live with them. Standing trial before the Heavenly Tribunal is not as scary as people like to think. God does not want to punish us! Both Jeremiah and Hosea speak of God’s love for us, God’s desire to “heal our backsliding”, to take us back in love even though we have been unfaithful and whored ourselves. My experience with the Heavenly Tribunal has been one of relief, one of being taught, one of being forgiven, one of being loved by an unending love and I do the best I can to pass that along. Every time someone has come to me to make an amend, to do a T’Shuvah, I accept and hug them, I want to help them and I want to stay connected to them. This is the example of the Heavenly Tribunal and, please God, the rest of We the People can live into this example. “The trial” is awesome, it can make one tremble, and it is freedom, growth, connection and joy!

“The risk” of course is societal, not spiritual. It is a “risk” to do the next right “deed” because society laughs at us, society tells us “get mine” rather than the spiritual message of the Bible, of Jesus-“how can I help?” I am thinking about the Bridge Club where the director of the games, whenever called over to a table, asks; “How can I help”, not what’s the problem, why are you bothering me-“How can I help”! There is always a “risk” in doing the next right thing, someone might take advantage of you, someone might use you to take advantage of another human being, someone may get ahead on your back-stepping on you to ‘get to the top’. Society laughs at people like the prophets because they are willing to “risk” their very lives to deliver a message from the Voice on Sinai. Yet, without taking this “risk”, there is no advancement in medicine, in morality, in spirituality, in kindness, in love, in joy, in caring for the widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy, the stranger. And since we all have these archetypes within us, not taking this “risk” impoverishes our internal life and our external one as well.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Do a daily journal of the moral and immoral “Deeds” you perform

  2. Do a daily writing on the outcome of the “trial” for yesterday’s “deeds”

  3. Do a daily writing on how often you take the “risk” to better self and your corner of the world

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mar

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How do you excuse your own "evil deeds" because they are not your 'intentions'? Year 5 Day 7

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 7

“It is in the employment of his will, not in reflection, that he meets his own self as it is; not as he should like it to be. In his deeds man exposes his immanent as well as his suppressed desires, spelling even that which he cannot apprehend. What he may not dare to think, he often utters in deeds. The heart is revealed in deeds.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.82)

There is a saying in Alcoholics Anonymous, “how do you know an addict/alcoholic is lying? When their lips are moving!” These last two sentences above brought this to my mind as every Recovering Alcoholic/Addict will tell you: “I don’t know how I could have done those things” in regards to their past fucked-up “deeds”. I said it, many people in recovery have said it, some of the people who go to Yom Kippur Services say it and mean it, some who go to confession say this and mean it, and some who go to either say it to get the heat off, repeatedly say “I am sorry if I hurt you”, or “I didn’t know you would feel this way”, or “that was not my intention” as if any of these lame, bullshit excuses take responsibility for the “deeds” they committed, as if any this “how do I get the heat off of me” responses acknowledge the harm, the spiritual rape one does to another! While way too many of We the People continually proclaim our goodness, continually feign ignorance regarding the impact of our “deeds”, We the People also know that we would never admit to our joy at having screwed someone over, at having “gotten back” for any and all perceived and/or real harms, because it isn’t ‘nice’ to do or think in ‘polite society’.

Over and over again we see people like Trump, Lutnick, Epstein, Netanyahu, be hailed and honored for their ‘amazing humanness’ all the while they are fucking little girls, know that someone is, screwing over the very people they have taken an oath to serve and protect, bastardizing the Holy Bibles of both Christianity and Judaism, and lying right to our faces! AND WE THE PEOPLE are going along with this BULLSHIT! While they are evil, while their actions reveal the depths of depravity, what is MORE CONCERNING is: We the People give them power, elect them, ask them for favors, stand idly by the bloods of human beings, fail to rebuke them, fail to love our neighbor as ourselves, fail to call out the false prophets they claim to be and the false prophecy they are spewing!

The issue we the people are facing and responding to VERY poorly is: what in our nature is so twisted, so spiritually immature and bankrupt that we the people allow such people to be Priests and Rabbis, be Presidents and Congresspeople, Senators and Governors, leaders of industry, leaders of institutions, etc? It is bad enough when they are fathers and mothers, to give these people whose “deeds” are so heinous, so despicable more and more power is bewildering, especially when co-signed by those ‘good christian, jewish people’!

We the People are being called upon to take a deep dive into our hearts. The call, the demand above is to: begin anew with the truth of what goes on inside of us, the war between the servant rational mind and the gift of our intuitive mind, the struggles of our good inclination to harness the power and the energy of our evil inclination and not succumb to the darkness that surrounds the light within the darkness, that tries to cover up the Godliness of our evil inclination. Rabbi Harold Kushner, z”l, taught me to use “earthly inclination” and “divine inclination” which I believe is a better description. Evil is in the world, Isaiah tells us this and there is light fashioned from the darkness and the evil-We the People have to do the fashioning, We the People are gifted with the ability to imitate God, to walk with God and change our actions, change our thoughts, change our “hearts’ desires”. When we the people only want to point the finger at an Epstein-who deserves it-we are forgetting all of those who enabled him, all of we the people who enable the other fascists, despicable people who are ‘in charge’ of our government and doing everything they can to CRUSH WE THE PEOPLE! Seeing our own “deeds” in the light of the choices we have made, forces us to “dare to think” of what our “deeds” have done and seek to repair the damage and not repeat the same missing the mark!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Admit the ‘joy’, the ‘reward’, the ‘rush’ you receive from doing “what you dare not think, and often utter in deeds”

  2. Each evening, do your inventory of how you grew spiritually, morally from your “deeds” of that day

  3. Each morning, do an inventory of what “deeds” you need to repair because they were morally and spiritually evil

  4. Join the resistance to the evil happening around us. No longer believe what someone says; watch what they do

  5. Each day, see how your “divine inclination” is harnessing your “earthly inclination” one grain of sand more

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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What thoughts do you suppress that 'leak' out in your actions? Year 5 Day 6

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 6

“It is in the employment of his will, not in reflection, that he meets his own self as it is; not as he should like it to be. In his deeds man exposes his immanent as well as his suppressed desires, spelling even that which he cannot apprehend. What he may not dare to think, he often utters in deeds. The heart is revealed in deeds.” (Thunder in the Soul pg.82)

The word “immanent” comes from the Latin meaning “in remain” or “remain in”, the word “suppressed” comes from the Latin meaning “to press down”, and the word “apprehend” comes from the Latin meaning “towards, to lay hold of”. I hear Rabbi Heschel warning us, cajoling us, demanding of us to “lift up our eyes and see!”, as Abraham was told, as Moses was told, as the Children of Israel did at both the shore of the Sea of Reeds after they crossed it and at Mount Sinai, when they heard God’s utterances. It is the same message that Jesus was preaching to the Priests and the people, the same that the prophets spoke to the power structure and the poor. Yet, even in this moment, we the people, in our smallness, seem unable to hear, listen, understand and DO this simple action. Rather, We the People, from our false egos, from our self-deceptions, believe We know what God wants, We put words in the mouths of Jesus, Moses, etc, and We ignore the call of the poor, the widow, the stranger, not believing the history of the destruction of the Temples, the promise of the Universe that these injustices will have consequences. “In his deeds man exposes his immanent/what remains inside of him, as well as his “pressed down” desires.” It certainly is being played out on the larger world stage just as it is in the personal, familiar, institutional stages.

While Rabbi Heschel was never afraid to speak truth to power, in fact as I understand him, as I hear him through his words, he was as compelled to doing this as the prophets of the Bible, he also cared deeply about the individual souls he encountered, the students he knew would impact generations of human beings, as he taught at Union Theological Seminary as well as at JTS. In this realm, I find his words even more haunting and daunting than in the worldly realm. Rabbinic Judaism follows the dictates of the Bible in promoting “the deed”, believing “deeds” can move us to right thinking and believing, and if the believing never comes, who cares! It is only through our “deeds” that we can meet ourselves, meet with another, and “expose our immanent as well as our suppressed desires”. Hence, we the people have to testify to the smallness we engage in, the pettiness and pride, envy and enmity we practice in our home life, our work life, our institutional life. When parents cajole a headmaster or principal for grades their children did not earn by threatening to withhold financial support, when donors make unreasonable asks because they feel entitled to them, when kids pay no attention to the teachings and morals of their parents, grandparents, teachers, We the People are engaging in our “remaining desires and our “pressed down” wishes. Isn’t it WAY PAST TIME for WE THE PEOPLE to be aware of what TRUTH is, of what SERVICE is, of what BEING HUMAN entails?

Because we seem unable to “apprehend, to lay hold of these inner desires of our “evil inclination”, we the people continue to believe we are right, believe we have ‘no choice’, believe this compulsion to ‘be known’, to ‘have the most likes’, to feed our false egos, to promote the lies we have told ourselves and society has fed us, to engage in cruelty and evil while calling these actions good and holy! Whether it is the government like Trump’s or Netanyahu’s, the institutions that have caved to the pressure like Columbia University, the law firms who decided to kiss his ass rather than stand up for what is right, or the businesses like Warner Bros who succumbed to the pressure, or the families who have stopped speaking to one another because of the actions that were “suppressed”, that were not “apprehended” by the actor, We the People are being called to be AWARE of WHAT THE FUCK WE ARE DOING!! I hear in these words, a call to STAND UP for what is right, to STOP HIDING from OURSELVES, to give voice to our “immanent”, “suppressed” desires and have a spiritual practice that guides us to what we “apprehend” so our unconscious rises to the level of our consciousness and we have the POWER OF CHOICE, once again. ALL OF WE THE PEOPLE are both guilty of these crimes and responsible for one another’s crimes as well.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Write down what we were oblivious to this day(a daily exercise)

  2. Admit and address the pettiness and pride we engaged in today

  3. Examine the smallness and the subtleties we used to screw someone else over and to harm our souls

  4. Write down when you stood for what is right and your deeds exposed an immanent desire you had suppressed and now are addressing.

  5. Make a list of how you hid today and how you did not-no matter what the action was, good or not good

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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