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Do your deeds purify your evil inclinations or your good ones? Year 5 Day 39

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 39

“Left alone, the soul is subject to caprice. Yet there is power in the deed that purifies desires. It is the act, life itself, that educates the will. The good motive comes into being while doing the good.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 94)

“Caprice”, an unaccountable sudden change of mind based on a whim, a feeling, is the condition that We the People are suffering from in this very moment. While everyone knew who Donald J. Trump was/is, it did not seem to matter to the majority of Americans who voted in 2024-granted Kamala was not a great candidate and Tim was an even worse pick- yet a majority of Americans decided to put a person who’s middle name and way of being screams “capriciousness” in charge and saving democracy has become the #1 goal for many of we the people even ones who voted for Trump. Rather than allow “the deed that purifies desires” to impact him, his buddies, the Republican party, all of these entities stay away from any “deed that purifies” and, instead, engage in all of the actions possible which support their avarice, their greed, their hunger for absolute power, up to and including going along with a ridiculous ‘war’ with Pope Leo, accusing the Pope-a boy from Chicago- of not understanding Christ’s words and “deeds”!! WTF PEOPLE?!!

Immersing myself in the words above, I realize the absolute truth of the 2nd sentence: “the power in the deed that purifies desires” applies to the “good deed” and to the “evil deed”. When evil is pursued through deeds, like Bibi and Donny (and their band of thieves, cronies, ass-kissers, cult followers) are doing-they derive more and more power and their motives, desires become stronger, purer, and this is the reason they sound so convincing-because they have put themselves through the purification process that says evil is actually good, denying the Truth is the way of Jesus, Moses, Christianity and Judaism throughout the millennia! I ask again: WTF People?!?@*%$

We the People are being called to account by the words above, by the moment we are living in. The question that I hear coming from the words above and from the Voice on Sinai is: Od Matai-until when will we the people refuse to do God’s wll, to do justly, love mercy, love the stranger, help the poor and the needy, proclam freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to be Holy…? We the People have to seek out the spiritual counselor that can speak directly to the soul within us. We the People have to do an accounting of our soul and list the capricious moments we engage in and heal the wounds that make it okay to violate our covenant with God, betray our neighbors, friends, family. We the People have to make a list of the “deed that purifies desires” and have caused us to do the next right thing and how to enhance these “deeds”.

It is not an easy transition from avarice and capriciousness to doing the next right thing, I know. It took a jail cell to wake me up, it took my 6 year-old daughter’s letter of hate and love to solidify what I knew all along was the right way to live. Ever since, for the past 39 years, I have been on this journey of doing and then understanding, of taking an education and learning the beauty and the ugliness of the actions I engage in, and my life has been a classroom wherein I keep learning more and more how to live, what being a partner with the ineffable one means, how to be the husband Harriet needs, the father Heather needs, the grandfather Miles needs, the brother my siblings need, the uncle my nieces and nephews need, the Rabbi, person my communities need. IT AIN’T EASY AND it is so much more rewarding that the WTF People?!?!! activities I used to engage in! As the Bible teaches us: King David could admit his errors and be repentant and forgiven, the people who left Egypt could bitch and moan AND they never turned back towards Egypt, Moses reminds us that: t”he word is in your mouth, in your heart”. We the People are never to far away to turn back, never so lost we can’t read the map, never too evil to do T’Shuvah and return! The key is: allow the “good” to adjust our motives, to allow the “good” to “educate our will” so God’s will becomes our will.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Make a list of the triggers for your capriciousness

  2. Make a list of solutions to these triggers because they are not going away

  3. Make a daily inventory of ways your “deeds” purify your evil desires and help you hide from the Truth

  4. Make a daily inventory of  your “deeds” that purify you good desires and help you live into Truth

  5. Find and engage with a spiritual counselor, a spiritual friend in learning and educating your soul and your will to be in line with the divine.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Living into "ideal goals", "sacred deeds", "sacred goals" - Year 5 day 38

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 38

“Deeds set upon ideal goals, deeds performed not with careless ease and routine but in exertion and submission to their ends are stronger than the surprise and attack of caprice. Serving sacred goals may change mean motives.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 93)

We the People have come to misunderstand what “sacred deeds” are, I believe. When the word “sacred” is used, the dictionary and society automatically identify “sacred” as religious, having to do with God, etc. While a “sacred deed” is given to us by God, it is not a “religious” action as society defines “religious actions”. The use of “sacred” by Rabbi Heschel is, I believe, having to do with any and all actions that fall within the purview of the 248 “thou shall” and the 365 “don’t do” sayings, commandments, directives by God in the Bible. “Love the stranger” is a “sacred deed/goal”, as is “don’t make false idols”, “don’t go back to the narrow straits of Egypt”, “do justly”, “love mercy”, etc. I hear Rabbi Heschel calling out to us to let go of our adjustments to societal norms and continue to be maladjusted so we can “see”, “hear”, “understand” the freshness and newness of each and every action we take, not be bystanders in our lives. Rather, I hear the call of God to live life on and with purpose and not by accident!

The highest  of “ideal goals” is, of course, serve God, serve humanity, live the unique gift we have in the world and in the open for the purpose of serving not for self-serving. Hence, we the people who are living with careless ease and routine, with ‘what’s in it for me’, ‘how do I keep the power I have’, etc live in capriciousness. They live in and revel in “being guided by sudden, impulsive, or unpredictable changes in mood, behavior, or decisions, rather than reason or consistency”. Sound like anyone in power today?!? This way of being is not confined to Trump alone, Bibi does it, Vlad is guilty of doing this, as are many other leaders. This way of being is anathema to freedom, it is the opposite of the “deeds” in the Bible, the preachings of Christ, the actions of Christ, the ways of the prophets. Yet, we keep hearing from so-called ‘religious’ leaders that these are “good men”, who are ‘saving the Jews’, ‘loving Israel’, ‘keeping America first’, and other such bullshit! WTF PEOPLE???

The choice facing all of We the People is simple: accept the “yoke of heaven”, the call to engage in “sacred goals” and have a daily routine of “deeds” that re-enforces these goals or not. Yet, even in this simple choice, there are nuances. When we are engaged in a routine, it is imperative to NEVER DO IT ROUTINELY! As is stated above, we have to exert ourselves and submit ourselves to the ends that we are attempting to serve. Just as there is no ‘one and done’ in the spiritual life of service, there is no ‘easy way’ to perform the mitzvot, to fulfill a “sacred deed”, to serve a “sacred goal”. We the People are being called to be fully present and immersed in the experience we are in, to focus our attention, our actions in service of the “sacred deed” that presents itself in this moment. It AIN’T EASY! Hence, the need for “exertion and submission”. Every time we submit to the will of God, to the call to perform a “sacred deed”, we are strengthening our ability to surrender to a higher call, we are strengthening our staying power when many of we the people would quit.

Being engaged in “sacred deeds” is the pathway out of the morass we the people find ourselves in. Believing a liar, thief, racist, rapist, felon who has never told the truth in his life and making him President? Supporting the myriad of men who, like Swallwell and Gonzales, use their positions of power to sexually assault women without any awareness of their incongruency because they also ‘believe the victims of Epstein, et al’! Living an either/or life when it comes to Israel and Bibi-being ostracized if one believes that Oct. 7th was horrific, Hamas is dangerous and what happened in Gaza has changed Hamas’ stranglehold nor is what the settlers/government doing in the West Bank kosher. Living into “sacred goals” is what my recovery is based on, what most peoples’ recovery is based on and what is desperately needed today!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Write down your routine of spiritual growing and practice-formalizing your pathway to growing into your authenticity

  2. Make a gratitude list and a list of “sacred actions” you are going to take this day.

  3. Mid-day take your spiritual and emotional temperature, are you present in your living, are you aware of the “sacred deeds” that are calling for your actions?

  4. Each evening go over your routine and make note of the ones you did routinely and the ones you were present for.

  5. Each evening write down how your “sacred actions” of today changed you.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Power of the Good Deed versus the Power of the EGO - Year 5 Day 37

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 37

“The good is carried out in acts, and there is an intense fascination that comes from a good deed couteracting the pressure and ardor of the ego. The ego is redeemed by the absorbing power and the inexorable provocativeness of a just task which we face.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 93)

70+ years ago, Rabbi Heschel is reminding we the people that all of our intentions, all of our ‘inner goodness’ means absolutely NOTHING if We the People are not STANDING UP and DOING GOOD! Oh, that we the people would have heeded these words and similar words of so many other people then! Since we didn’t then, in the words of Hillel the Elder, I ask IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

While it is true for every moment, this moment is especially in need of “the good”, we the people are in the throes of a society that is giving honor to the thieves, worshiping the golden calf, bowing down to power and greed, surrendering to “the pressure and ardor of the ego”. Every society throughout history has fallen for these exact reasons. From the Children of Israel splitting up into two nations because of Solomon’s greed to the Hasmoneans becoming more Greek-like than the Jews they fought against to gain power, we have watched this movie end with the destruction of the Temples, the destruction of the country, and we, Jews, think Bibi is Moses-like, think Bibi is the modern-day King David??? WTF, people? When we allow past victories to lull us into the false belief that we are invincible, that ‘we have a just cause’, that “never again” gives us the right to keep people in camps, treat another human being as if they are less than human… We the People are FUCKED!

Posting as if you are Jesus Christ or a ‘doctor’ and you heal people with your touch-PLEASE DONALD J TRUMP! Starting a war of words with the Pope, having your VP, that lackey JD Vance stand up for you against the leader of his faith, humiliating him at each and every turn, showing disdain for the Iranians by sending Vance and not Rubio, Kushner and not experienced diplomats, and then using your fuck-ups as an excuse to ‘flex your muscles’, which puts American heroic military people at risk just to prove “the pressure and ardor of your ego” can counteract any good deed that another human being does?! Where is the 25th Amendment? Where are the balls of the Republican White Men in Congress to bring Impeachment and get this lunatic away from the controls. Vance is not a great back-up and he is better than this lunatic! MAGA must RISE UP and SAY NO because as it is, We the People are FUCKED!

Making a habit of doing the next right thing, taking the next right action is not trying to be perfect, in fact it recognizes our fallibility by telling us that whatever we are doing now, may not be right and we have CHOICE! This is the greatest power of “the good”. In doing a “good act”, we become aware of our power over our choices, we find a new freedom, a liberation from “same shit different day” attitude. When We the People embrace how “a good deed (is) counteracting the pressure and ardor of the ego” there is an overwhelming sense of hope, of joy, of love, of connection with our spirituality, with a power greater than ourselves, with our community.

I have been engaged in “doing the next right thing” for the past 38+ years. It is not always easy nor does it always “feel good” in the moment. There are moments of “why do I have to do it when no one else is”, there are moments of “doing this loses me money”, there are moments of intense anger being directed towards me, there are moments of profound misunderstandings, there are moments of intense betrayal. All these experiences, while hurtful, while negative DO NOT come close to the joy, the wonder, the awe, the spiritual fulfillment that “a good deed counteracting the pressure and ardor of the ego” brings! Each and every “good deed” is a repayment to God for the gift of life, for the gifts life brings me, for the love I experience and for the joy I live in. This is what We the People need to do to counter-act the evil that is at the core of our current Government, the greed and avarice that runs throughout the government and people.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Write down the actions you take today that show your goodness

  2. Write down the actions you take today that show your not goodness

  3. Write down the reasons and the outcomes of the actions you take today, both the good ones and the not so good ones

  4. See what you were oblivious to this day, look at the lies you told yourself this day

  5. Do an ego check a few times a day to see if the pressure and ardor are rising to dangerous levels

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Living into being "descendants of the prophets" - Year 5 Day 36

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 36

“The prophets are forgotten. No one reades the prophets. They have not touched the mind of America. And this is why such statements come out. What is the greatest concern in the Bible? Injustice to one’s fellow man. What is the greatest dream of the prophets and of the Bible? Peace.” (Continuation of Rabbi Heschel’s intervew with Carl Stern for Eternal Light)

Given the defeat of Viktor Orban, the end of authoritarianism in Hungary, at least for the moment, one can hope that America, Israel will come to their senses and back to their roots. Of course, Hungary is a nascent democracy, remember the Shoe Memorial by the Danube where Hungarians were so eager to kill Jews they didn’t even want to wait for the transports at the end of the war, they shot them in the back of the head and kept their shoes! Israel is also a nascent democracy and both of these countries show us the danger of democracy: it can be used as a weapon by the authoritarian, by the fascist, by the people who have “forgotten” “the prophets”! In America, where we have more experience with democracy, the same is happening; Trump and his minions and handlers are destroying the basic tenets upon which our country was founded: Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom to vote, Freedom of Religion, Checks and balances of the SEPARATE branches of Government, etc.

While Trump and his ‘good christian nationalist folks’ continue to invoke the name of Jesus in all they do, We the People of faith like Pope Leo continue to speak out against the lies and the idolatry of these charlatans. We the People like Bishop William Barber continue to support and stand with the poor, the needy, the stranger. The resistance is here, the question is if we are going to have to wait years until Trump and his Gang of Thieves are gone? Or, are We the People going to stand up and throw the bums out right now? I ask the same question of the Israeli people who know that Bibi is killing the principles Israel was founded on, who know that he is a thief and a liar, who know…

Teaching the prophets is imperative for the health of a democracy, without this knowledge, without understanding We the People are the descendants of the prophets, the inheritors of the prophetic spirit, without opening our beings to hear the call from Sinai, the call from the burning bush, the call to wake up, to speak up, to save we the people from our small minds, our ego-driven desires, our hateful, spiteful actions, We the People are doomed to continue to repeat this cycle of freedom, authoritarianism, liberation, freedom, authoritarianism…

NOW is the moment for We the People to be like Hosea and see how we have WHORED ourselves for a pot of gold that is actually coal, how our naked desires and rampant rationalizations have spun a web of deceit that seems impossibel to break free of. NOW is the moment for We the People to be like Jerimiah and call out to one another the power of spirit, the desire of God to “heal our backsliding”, to “take us back in love”. NOW is the moment to hear the call of Isaiah to end our incessant subterfuge of rituals and bastardizations of God’s will and surrender to the spirit within each of us, to appreciate and use the Gift of our intuitve minds rather than worship the mendacity of our rational minds. NOW is the moment for We the People to say NO to the injustices that surround us. NO to the senseless hatred being sprewed and promoted by those ‘fearless leaders’, the wannabe ‘fuhrers’, the whores we the people elected to screw us over! The injustices being practiced in the name of we the people are disgusting, dismantling the fabric of our society, disfiguring the Image of God that is in each of us and deflecting the TRUTH of who We the People can be.

What better day to think, speak, write about this subject than today, Yom HaShoah, the day of remembering the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto and it is a day of mourning. I remember when it was called Warsaw Ghetto day-honoring the uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto which lasted almost a month! When We the People arm ourselves with the words of the prophets, when We the People uncover the spirit of the prophets that is within each of us, when We the People believe in, fight for, and engage in paths of “peace”, miracles happen! This is the call of today, it is the call of the prophets.

ACTION STEPS:
1) Write down how you answer the call of the prophets each day for a week

2) Make notes of how you still want to believe the lies of your rational mind, 3) Make a list of the ways you whored yourself each day, asking yourself for forgiveness and changing your ways, your eyesight

4) Make a list of the ways you honored your prophetic spirit, doing justly, loving your neighbor and the stranger

5) Make a plan for this day to strengthen the prophetic voice within and follow it a little better.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Spiritual needs and politics, God and Social Issues-do they belong together? Year 5 Day 35

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 35

Question from Carl Stern: “Prospective jurors, one after another, were questioned…said they thought it was wrong for clergymen to be involved in politics, that their job is to administer to spiritual needs.” Response from Rabbi Heschel: “It is such a good statement that if the prophets were alive, they would already be sent to jail by these jurors. Because the prophets mixed into social-political issues. And, frankly, I would say that God seems to be a non-religious person, because, if you read the words of God in the Bible, He always mixes in politics and social issues.”

Sitting here at my computer, reading the news, was drawn to these words and this interview once again. The entire interview is powerful, uplifting, deeply disturbing, and motivating with the passage above speaking directly to our moment in time. Reading the words of Trump about Pope Leo is infuriating, enraging, head-shaking, and tragic. That this despicable human being-he is, after all, a human being without any humanity, without any empathy, compassion, truthfulness, love, spiritual maturity- can take credit for the assension of Pope Leo is IDIOTIC, LUNACY! Yet, he does. Calling Pope Leo “WEAK on crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” is such an affront to the spiritual, moral teachings and lessons the Pope is trying to pass on to Catholics, Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims. All of us owe our allegiance to God, Allah, Adonai, the ineffable One. And where are the Catholics in Congress, in the Republican Party, where are the Jews in Congress, in the Republican Party? SILENT as usual!! That this IDOLATOR, this FORNICATOR, can post a picture of himself as “having saint-like powers akin to those of Jesus Christ. Wearing a bilbical-style robe, Trump is seen laying hands on a bedridden man as light emanates from his fingers.”(Apple News 4/13) is an ABOMINATION! Where are the Jews, the Christians, the Catholics who support this ASSHOLE? SILENT! Maybe it is time for We the People to heed Rabbi Heschel’s words above, maybe it is time to go back to the Bible and READ, STUDY, HEAR, UNDERSTAND the words and actions of the prophets, of Jesus, of Adonai!! YA THINK?

In Israel, a land I have great kinship with, an idea that stems from the Biblical accounts of what should be, what could be if and when We the People become a “light unto the nations” (Isaiah 49:6), watching the destruction of the Declaration of Independence, the destruction of the rule of law, the destruction of humanity, the destruction of the ideals and morals the ‘rabbis’ are supposed to be teaching is beyond sad, it is tragic. The verse in Isaiah says that God is “Giving you to be a Light to the nations”, we are the gift, not the destroyer, we are the examples of humanity, of freedom, of liberation from slavery-NOT THE PHARAOH!! When there is condemnation of the policies of Bibi and friends, We the People who are following in the footsteps of the prophets, are labled as traitors by Rabbis who KNOW BETTER? When We the People are living in the both/and of the cruelty of Hamas, the constant pressure from the Arab countries around us to destroy us AND the cruelty of what has happened in Gaza, the ‘collateral damage’ of the strikes in Lebanon, in Iran(an unprovoked war by the way) and labeled as Anti-Semitic, Anti-Zionist by the very CROOKS WHO VIOLATE THE DEMANDS OF THE PROPHETS AND GOD?! This is the moment when We the People must rise up and live the deeds and words of the prophets, when We the People must “give ourselves to be a light to the peoples of the world through protest, through action!

I know I have gone on, I know my views are not always popular, I know that my soul is unable to keep silent, to be ‘political’, and I know that my colleagues are divided. What I don’t know is how anyone can be divided: holding two opposing thoughts, two opposing truths in one moment, in every moment is what it means to BE HUMAN! The Rabbis fear of the prophets is because the prophets would not be nice to them, anymore than they were nice to the Kings, to the priests, to the wealthy, to the people Israel, to the Judean people. FUCK NICE, FUCK going along to get along, FUCK whitewashing evil because it is being done by ‘our side’. FUCK Bibi, FUCK Donny, FUCK EVIL!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Do a self-examination of the incongruence between what you say are your principles, morals and the actions, the silence you practice

  2. Take a self-examination of when your principles, morals are congruent with the actions you take

  3. Study the Prophets, finding the words and actions that resonate most within you and find ways to incorporate them into your daily living

  4. Find places and people with whom you can engage with to effect change in the cruelty, to effect bringing the “law” of Jesus, of Moses, of Adonai more into the town square!

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Faith without works is DEAD! Are you one of the walking dead? Year 5 Day 34

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 34

“Indeed, the awareness of the weakness of the heart, the unreliability of human inwardness, may perhaps have been on the reasons that compleled Judaism to take recourse to actions instead of relying upon inward devotion. Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of the Rabbis’ counsel: one should always do the good, even though it is not done for its own sake, It is the act that teaches us the meaning of the act.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 92-93)

Having crossed the Red Sea and on this Day 10 of our counting of the Omer, the slaves who were liberated forgot their words, their commitments and were overcome with fear of ‘no water’. Rather than keep “their hearts in the right place”, we the people witness over and over again the “weakness of the heart” even though We the People had this amazing spiritual experience of God’s liberation! From the time of Adam and Eve, the human heart has proved over and over again to have “weakness”, that our “inwardness” is unreliable and everytime we pick ourselves up, we the people “scout after our heart and eyes to WHORE after them” even though the 3rd Prayer of the Shema tells us NOT to go after them! In Deuteronomy we find Moses telling the people to “love God with all your heart, your soul, your everything and walk in God’s ways, follow the commandments, Choose Life”. While loving God is a good thing, this alone will not lead to doing the next right action. In John 14:15 Jesus says: “If you love Me, keep my commandments” in 14:21: “He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me”, and in 14:24: “He who does not love Me does not keep My words: and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” Once again we learn the TRUTH: Love is NOT A FEELING, it is AN ACTION! Hence, “one should always do the good, even though it is not done for its own sake”!

We the People are in another moment in time where Truth is being pummeled by deceivers and these grifters and liars, where even the White House had to issue a directive for its staffers to NOT bet on the Iran War in the polymarkets! This assualt is coming from Trump which is not new because Donald Trump never told the truth-in business, in personal, in political realms. He learned to lie at his father’s feet, he learned to hate from his father’s actions, he learned to be cruel as his father’s right-hand man. TRUMP IS NOT THE PROBLEM! The problem is the myriad of clergy, beginning with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, et al who have defied Christ’s words as related by John in the Gospel! The problem is all the Christian Nationalist Clergy who support the lies of Hegseth, the grift and graft of Rubio, the cruelty of Vought loudly and proudly while calling themselves followers of Christ! Can you imagine what Jesus is saying? Can you imagine how, Jesus the immigrant is experiencing the Detention Centers these ‘fine christian folk’ are setting up, running and supporting? Lest you think that Jews are so much better: Kushner, Lutnick, Bessent, Miller all proclaim loyalty to Judaism and love Israel, while going against the very commandments that Moses gave to us. Rather than believe that God is God, they and the right-wing in Israel believe they know what the Bible is ‘really saying’ and the rest of We the People ‘just don’t understand’. While they peddle these lies, the text says: LOVE THE STRANGER- NOT BE CRUEL TO THE STRANGER, the text says: ONE LAW FOR THE CITIZEN AND STRANGER ALIKE-NOT ONE LAW FOR THE RICH AND ANOTHER FOR THE REST OF WE THE PEOPLE! So, to these ‘good jews’ I say BULLSHIT- READ THE BIBLE, HEAR, LISTEN UNDERSTAND AND DO the words of Moses, the words of the Prophets-not the bastardizations of people throughout the millennia.

At Mount Sinai, We the People committed to DO and THEN UNDERSTAND! No mention is made of our motivation, no mention is made of how we ‘feel’ about it- the only two emotions that are prevelant in the Bible are loving God, the strangter, our neighbor, ourselves, and hating evil, cruelty, lying, greed, murder, coveting! Ergo: It is imperative for We the People to TAKE THE NEXT RIGHT ACTION, to “always do the good”, no matter how we think or feel. More on this tomorrow

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Make a list of the good you could have done in the past and didn’t because you didn’t “feel like it”

  2. Read Numbers 15:38-40 each morning and evening; in the am make a list of the traps of your heart and your eyes and in the evening-which ones did you fall into, which ones you did not and what new ones did you fall into

  3. List the Loving Actions you took today and the non-loving ones as well

  4. Write down your plan to repair the non-loving ones and enhance the loving one

  5. Live life congruent with the principles you hold dear and in concert with the Biblical mandates

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Going beyond the mind, going beyond the mystery.... Year 5 Day 33

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 33

“Israel was taught how to accost Him who is beyond the mystery. Beyond the mind is the mystery, but beyond the mystery is mercy. Out of the darkness comes a voice disclosing that the ultimate mystery is not an enigma but the God of mercy; that the Creator of all is teh “Father in Heaven.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 92)

We the People have lost our ability “to accost Him who is beyond mystery” because we have to solve any and every mystery. In our hubris, we the people have decided that we are god, no matter how much we pray to Jesus, Allah, Adonai-our actions disprove our words, we the people, or at least a plurality of us cannot conceive that anything is “beyond the mind”, if we only apply ourselves enough! Not only is this hubris, it is STUPID! I have yet to meet a human being who can make the sky turn its myriad of colors, I have yet to meet a human being who can make mountains grow, who can create ex nihlo fruit bearing trees, etc. While one of the new ‘frontiers’ is creating life by cloning, making Robots have human emotions, no one that I have heard of has created a human being ex-nihlo. Sure, it may happen, and it will not be the same!

“but beyond the mystery is mercy” is the issue. No matter how often we the people create something wonderful, meaningful, helpful, there are always those who seek to exploit these creations for their power and wealth, who seek to destroy these creations for the sake of cruelty. We are in the throes of these power-hungry, never enough money grubbing, cruelty-loving assholes right now and they have the unmitigating GALL to proclaim they are doing all of this in the NAME OF JESUS, because it is what ADONAI WANTS! And do not refute them with the facts of what Jesus says nor with the 36 times the Torah demands we love the stranger, etc; because they will tell their sycophantic followers, their cult members and we who confront them that ‘you don’t understand what it is REALLY saying’. HOW INFURIATING!!


That Good Christian Men and Women, Good Jewish Men and Women in the Republican Party do not STAND THE FUCK UP and say NO, that they do not DEFEND the TRUTH, DEFEND these wanton attacks on ADONAI, on JESUS is beyond me! That We the People have not thrown these idolators, these despots, these lying BASTARDS out of office is also beyond me. It is beyond me to understand how any of the people who have the power to go “beyond the mind” and “beyond the mystery” and be “mercy”.

I do understand living in the darkness, as anyone and everyone who has had a “dark night of the soul”, a spiritual awakening, a crisis of conscience, an experience with one’s own higher consciousness can also understand. This, however, is the key. All of these sycophants KNOW better, they have done the next right action before, they know of Goldwater telling Nixon to leave, they know of booting Gingrich out of power, they know what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and they ignore the TRUTH! When one ignores the truth, the darkness completely enwraps one. Truth is the light at the end of the tunnel and the refusal to engage in it is the downfall of every society. It is Biblical; both Temples were destroyed, the kingdom of Israel was scattered about by the Assyrians, because we the people in our hubris, in our stupidity, in our ignorance, in our self-importance believed we were ‘safe’, ‘it couldn’t happen here’, etc. WRONG!!

And We the People who are sounding the Alarm, We the People who continue to speak out, We the People who keep protesting and voting against these liars, who are cheering Pope Leo, who are resisting the societal pull to “go along to get along”, who are risking being ostracized because we won’t say ‘Israel is right’, ‘America is right’ no matter what are living the certainty that “out of the darkeness comes a voice disclosing that the ultimate mystery is not an enigma, but the God of mercy”. My constant and consistent ranting and raving about Truth, about the need to STOP THE CRUELTY is because I experience the “God of mercy” every day and I need to spread the truth that this is the “ultimate mystery”!

ACTION STEPS:
1) Write about your experiences when you “accost Him who is beyond the mystery”.

2) Do an inventory of how you stopped yourself from going “beyond your mind” because of the lie that there is nothing you can’t figure out

3) Do an inventory of how you went “beyond the mind” and experienced “the mystery”

4) What have you learned from your “dark night of the soul”, from your spirirtual awakening

5) How has the “God of mercy” changed you and how have you been more merciful in your living

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Living in the Both/And or living in Either/Or - what do your actions testify to? Year 5 Day 32

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 32

“Human life is a point where mind and mystery meet. This is why man cannot live by his reason alone, nor can he thrive on mystery alone. To surrender to the mystery is fatalism to withdraw into reason is solipsism. Man is driven to commune with that which is beyond the mystery.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 92)

“Fatalism”, selfishness, why bother, what’s in it for me; all common modes of living for some of we the people in our smallness, in our pettiness, and so abhorrent to those of We the People who live with faith, with courage, with a sense of what is the next right action to take. The “mystic” who cannot live in the real world is not doing “God’s work” no matter what lies they tell themselves, the rationalist who says “prove it” all the time lives in such a tiny, narrow box, neither one are capable of BEING HUMAN! This is the great conundrum that We the People face: are we going to BE HUMAN or exist as homo-sapiens?

As I hear Rabbi Heschel this morning, after a day at the ER for my Afib, I know he is speaking to the necessity to live in BOTH mind and mystery, he is reaching out to us and reminding us that to “meet” God, to commune with the ineffable, We the People have to use both our capacity for rational thinking and our ability to go into and through the mystery. In reading about the mind in his writings, I understand him to be saying here and there; our reason will take us to the horizon of the mystery, it is our ability to go beyond the horizon that will bring us to wholeness, to understanding, to meeting the highest self we can be.

Yet, we the people continue to confound and disappoint the ineffable, confound and disappoint one another, confound and disappoint our self. We continue to put  supreme importance on our rationalizations, on our selfishness, at the cost of seeking the mystery. Some of we the people continue to put supreme importance on the mystery at the cost of what is reasonable and rational. Once again, Rabbi Heschel is telling us what the Bible, what Jesus, what every spiritual discipline tells us: THERE IS NO ONE WAY TO BE! We the People are being called, once again, to live in the both/and. This passage comes from Rabbi Heschel’s book, God in Search of Man, which I infer to mean that without the both/and, God will never find us nor will we find God!

While every generation can point to a man-made catastrophe which it believes is the end of the world, there are some moments where humanity could be on the brink of bringing its own destruction. This feels like such a moment; the unnecessary war with Iran, the insanity of the oil crisis(was this war begun so Russia, Iran, Oil billionaires, Saudi Arabia could make more money?), the disdain for the poor and the stranger, the bastardization of Christ’s words and deeds, the disrespecting/threatening of Pope Leo, the drunkness of Hegseth, the power-hunger of Trump, the “get rich schemes” of Kushner, Wytkoff, Lutnick, the hatred of Miller, the Christian nationalism of Vought; all coming together in ways that I am not sure we the people have seen before. Todd Blanche saying the ‘duty’ of the Justice Department is to go after the enemies of Trump, the lies of the Republicans in Congress, the sycophantic behaviors of the Cabinet, the kissing of Russia’s ass, the support of Orban, the con job of Bibi Netanyahu, etc are all ingredients in a soup of disaster, if not for humanity, certainly for the freedoms We the People have cherished, for which our ancestors fought and died for. WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE!!

We the People are being called upon to STAND UP, to FIGHT ON, to SAY NO to the lies and deceptions we are being fed daily. We the People have to attune our “mystery” to the call from Sinai and our “mind” to the ways of the Bible to carry out this call. What is the call? Well, there are many-granted-yet the ones that stand out are: Be Holy, Proclaim Freedom to all, Love the Stranger, Love your neighbor, Don’t stand idly by the blood of your neighbor, CHOOSE LIFE! This is the call I heard over 39 years ago and I continue to live into this call, I continue to grow my mind and mystery and reach beyond the mystery to ‘meet’ the ineffable. It doesn’t always work and I am a better human being each day for the effort. This is the challenge for all of We the People and I pray you will take it up, do better than you did yesterday and, together, make this corner of the world a little better!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Indulge your “mystery” seeing where you can go, what you can see

  2. Write down what you mind says is possible and how to reach the mystery you are seeing

  3. Each day, write down how you lived in the both/and of life

  4. Each day, make a note of the experiences with the ineffable that you had this day

  5. Each day, write down how you stood for the Holy, for Freedom, for Love, for Life this day.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Repaying God for the gifts you receive or repaying the idol you have made into God? Year 5 Day 31

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 31

““How can I repay unto the Lord all His bountiful dealings with me?”(Ps. 116.12) How to answer the mystery that surrounds us, the ineffable that calls on our souls? This is, indeed, the universal theme of religion.” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 91)

I am a loud, outspoken brash, audacious human being. I say what is in my soul, on my heart and, usually, completely unfiltered. This has gotten me to live well, to reach people thought unreachable and caused great angst, anger, and retribution on the part of many people. I am called ‘not a real rabbi’, a ‘niche rabbi’, a ‘rabbi for those people’ and it is ALL GOOD! While I have regrets for some of my outbursts, reading the words above, I know that the outbursts that have been hurtful to my family, my friends, my colleagues, my community are NOT GOOD, I also know stifling them is part of what led me to my addictions to crime, to booze, to mendacity, to self-deception. In answering “the ineffable that calls on our souls”, I and We the People have to learn to monitor and discern time, way and place to be loud, to be silent, to be persuasive, and to be prophetic.

“Repay unto the Lord” being “the universal theme of religion” is exactly what is NOT HAPPENING right now in the circles of power in America nor in Israel! What IS HAPPENING is people calling themselves ‘religious’ are bastardizing the very tenets, ways, morals, deeds that Christ called upon us to do, that the Bible exhorts us to live, and calling it Judaism, Christianity! IT IS INFURIATING, thank God for Pope Leo! He is speaking the truth to power, he is following in the footsteps of Christ, of the prophets and We the People have to listen to him, follow his lead and TAKE BACK WHAT RELIGION STANDS FOR!!  I know I am yelling, I know how indignant I am being, I know that it is not always easy to hear me, to experience this type of anger, AND I know that this is the way of the prophets, this is my inheritance from them, my inheritance from my father, z”l.


The ways Donny boy and Bibi man believe “to answer the mystery that surrounds us” is to exploit the fears, the inner need to ‘beat the bastards’, the spiritual void that allows us to hate our neighbors in our hearts rather than love them, that allows us to have one law for the citizen and another for the stranger, that gives us permission to practice racism, anti-semitism, islamaphobia, with reckless abandon and call it “white pride”, call it discrimination against white men, etc. Backed by their gangs of THUG FALSE PROPHETS, these two men have caused chaos, taken no responsibility for their failures, their fuck-ups, their lies and their cruelty and there are still parts of we the people who clap for them like trained seals! WTF???

We the People are being called upon during this season of the counting of the Omer, on this 6th day of Passover when the liberated slaves were at the edge of the Red Sea, trying to choose certain death by the advancing Egyptians or repaying “Lord for His bountiful dealings” by liberating us from the physical slavery of Egypt. It is a moment, a “dark night of the soul”, as St. John of the Cross wrote about; it is a moment We the People all experience and the question is: will we face it, will we go through it, will we realize the message and the deed that “the ineffable” is calling upon us to perform? In this “Season of Freedom” as We the People count the days until the Holy Day of Shavuot, when We the People remember and engage in once again, receiving the Torah, the Bible, the “universal theme of religion” our response to the “the mystery that surrounds us, the ineffable that callus on our souls” has to be TRUTH! We the People are being called upon to RISE UP, to exercise our PROPHETIC VOICES, to go through our fears and trepidations and VOTE the assholes, the IDOLATORS, the MENDACIOUS IDIOTS OUT OF OFFICE and IMPEACH TRUMP, VANCE, and the rest of their ilk, their sycophants, their enablers. In Israel, it is time to try Bibi for the HIGH CRIMES he as committed as a THIEF, as ASLEEP at the WHEEL on OCTOBER 7, and as a LIAR IN CHIEF! This moment is calling upon We the People to take these

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Each morning make a list of “all His bountiful dealings toward me” acknowledging the truth, kindness, goodness, charity extended to us by another(s)

  2. Each evening make a list of all the kindness, truth, goodness, charity, we extended to another(s) during the day

  3. Each day stand for the principles that present themselves and do not waver, do not allow the deceivers to convince you that you do not know what you know

  4. Each evening review your day, making note of when you “repay unto the Lord” and when you STEAL from God.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Sacred Moments, Sacred Deeds, Sacrificial Deeds are all around us! Year 5 Day 30

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 30

“God is One, and His glory is One. And oneness means wholeness, indivisibility. His glory is not partly here and partly there; it is all here and all there But here and now, in this world, the glory is concealed. It becomes revealed in a sacred deed, in a sacred moment, in a sacrificial deed.” ( Thunder in the Soul pg. 91)

Continuing from yesterday, given this is the 5th day of Passover, the slaves leaving Egypt are at the edge of the Red Sea, according to some, or just about there as tomorrow night, the crossing of the Red Sea begins. This is the first “sacred deed” the people who left Egypt partake in. While many were afraid, while many complained, while Moses promised God would do for them and all they had to do is watch, the “sacred deed” in this “sacred moment” was “go forward” as God told Moses and the people. There is a midrash/parable that speaks of Nachshon Ben Amidav, who jumped into the Red Sea(or the Sea of Reeds depending on who is telling the story) and kept going until it covered his nose and then the Sea split so the former slaves could pass on dry land. This is an example of a “sacrificial deed” and, God knows, we the people need to create more of these. We the People have to notice and engage in the “sacred deed” which is always present and available much more often. We the People are being called upon to “lift up our eyes” and see this moment as “a sacred moment”, accepting the truth that each and every moment presents We the People for opportunities to “declare God’s glory” through our “deeds”!

Yet, we the people continually miss the moment, pass on the opportunity, are more interested in serving our selfish desires that we have lied to ourselves about, telling ourselves and everyone else that these narcissistic desires are actually NEEDS, authentic needs, which then we foolishly believe, absolve us of any responsibility to follow in the footsteps of our ancestors. It is especially present for those of We the People who are commemorating the Exodus from Egypt, acknowledging the resurrection of Jesus, to take off our blinders, to uncover our eyes, to open our ears, to smell the Red Sea and know the crossing of it is a “sacred moment” and it is a gift that we have to cherish and We the People are obliged to honor this “sacred moment” with a “sacrificial deed”. In Hebrew the word for “sacrificial” has the same root as “to draw near”, ergo: “a sacrificial deed” is a gift that allows We the People to “draw near” to our authentic self, to the neighbor next door, to the enemy across town. In the “drawing near”, in this and every “sacred moment”, We the People GET the opportunity to engage with our higher consciousness, with our souls and wrestle with our inclinations so that the Good Inclination transforms the energy of the “evil” one to do more “sacred deeds”, reveal more “sacred moments” and rejoice in our “sacrificial deeds”.

This is the goal, this is the message I am hearing this morning from Rabbi Heschel, and it is the goal, message and marching orders from God for this moment of chaos, of potential slavery, the killing of innocent people who’s only crime is they live in a certain area, they are part of an ethnic group which is being targeted, just like we Jews have been for centuries. When Hegseth prays to Jesus for victory, when Hegseth declares the Iran war is a “holy war” that Christ will deliver our enemies to us, We the People  have to stand the fuck up and join with Pope Leo and say NO to this charlatan, NO to this liar. We the People are being called upon to say NO to Trump and his lies, his need for dominance, his desire to be King/Pharaoh. We the People are being given a “sacred moment” to “draw near” to God, to one another by rejecting the lies, the subterfuge, the hatred, the cruelty that is running rampant in both Israel and the United States! Whereas Trump had dinner with Kanye West, the Prime Minister of England has rejected a concert’s desire to feature him for 3 days and Pepsi, the major sponsor of the event has pulled out. This is a prime example of “a sacred deed”. While politics right now is in the forefront, We the People cannot forget about the personal, the local. I have been engaging in “sacred moments” with intention since 1987, I have been engaging in “sacrificial deeds” since then as well-not perfectly and “declare God’s glory” in this moment, in this deed; making them both sacred is my goal and hitting this mark is pure JOY

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Ask yourself if you have left this year’s slavery behind or are still carrying it

  2. What are you willing to do to cross the Red Sea and get “cleansed” of the shit that is sticking to you from your being a slave, spiritually, mentally

  3. “Lift up your eyes and SEE” this moment as an opportunity to perform a “sacred deed”

  4. Accept that each moment is precious and different, an opportunity to “draw near” to your self, another human being, the Ineffable One through “sacrificial deeds”.

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Concealing or revealing God's Glory: what is the story you ACTIONS tell? Year 5 Day 29

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 29

“God is One, and His glory is One. And oneness means wholeness, indivisibility. His glory is not partly here and partly there; it is all here and all there But here and now, in this world, the glory is concealed. It becomes revealed in a sacred deed, in a sacred moment, in a sacrificial deed.” ( Thunder in the Soul pg. 91)

This is the 4th day of Passover, it is Easter Sunday and we the people are still unable to notice, recognize, reveal “God’s glory” because of our misguided belief that “God is on our Side” as Bob Dylan sings about, because in our hubris, we the people believe that there is “my god” and “your god” and “your god” is not as good, strong, real, etc as mine, ergo: I have to kill you and “your god” to prove it! Hegseth not allowing Catholic Mass at the Pentagon and JD Vance, that “good Catholic convert”-just ask him and his new book- saying NOTHING!! Jews like Kushner who think they and their Rabbis know it all and there is no other interpretation than theirs which could be correct because “only I know what god wants”. I am putting God in small letters because, as we can see from the quote above, anyone who bifurcates God, anyone who claims “only I know” cannot be correct because God is “all here and all there”, God is “unknowable” and therefore any claim to pigeonhole God, any lie that says “Christ/God wants us to kill”, any claim of “those people deserve death” has to be A LIE! Being a person of faith, being connected to something greater than oneself and listening to the rhetoric, the bullshit, the deception of these ‘good religious folk’ like Kushner, Vance, Hegseth, Ben G’Vir, et al makes We the People of faith, We the People who are searching for Truth, We the People who want God to find us and continue to, in our imperfect ways, try to reveal “God’s Glory”, WANT TO PUKE!

When cruelty is celebrated, when war is waged for the particular good of Oil Companies, of politicians, to deflect from the truth, to conceal the rot at the top, how far has our society progressed from the time of Jesus, from the times of the Prophets, from the destruction of the 2 Temples??!! NOT MUCH! Yet, we the people in our idiocy, in our willful blindness, in our desire to be fit in, to ‘get ours’, go along with this cruelty; “stand idly by the blood of our neighbor; make “one law for the citizen” and another for the stranger; “hate our brother, our enemy in our heart”, “scout after our heart and eyes whoring after them”. All of this in direct opposition to the commandments of the Bible, to the words and deeds of Christ and we the people then try and proclaim our allegiance to a god that is not in the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran. So, we the people who is Full of Shit? Not We the People that are calling out this bullshit like Pope Leo, not those of We the People that are proclaiming NO KINGS, not those of We the People who can hold that Iran is a bad actor and Trump, Hegseth, Rubio went to war to get Epstein files off the front page, Bibi went to war to get away from being held responsible for Oct. 7th and the aftermath. Yet, these are the people who declare they are doing this for “the Glory of God” when in reality, they are doing what they do for the Glory of SELF! This is the worst idolatry of all: making oneself synonymous with God, selling the LIE that, with their ‘spiritual advisors like Paula Cain White, compares Trump’s trials and tribulations to Jesus’!! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!

How can God’s glory be revealed when only god, the idol, is being revealed and God stays concealed, irrelevant, and wholly bastardized? It can’t until We the People stand up and engage in teaching our children that God is everywhere, “all here and all there”, the immanence and transcendence of God is as real as the nose on one’s face. Teaching our children so We the People re-learn the truth of God’s “glory” that is revealed every time We engage in a sacred action-like welcoming and loving the stranger, because as Passover teaches, “we were strangers in a strange land” and Egypt-at least at first-took us in. The “all here” of God is revealed every time we “love our neighbor as we love our self”, every time we “proclaim freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein”! The call for Freedom was known so long ago by Moses, by the prophets, by Jesus, and we the people still buy the LIES of the autocrat, the dictator,’ like the people of prejudice have done throughout the millennia to Jews, to Christians, to Muslims, to anyone they thought they could overpower and be lord and master to? WHEN WILL WE THE PEOPLE stop this way of being?

ACTION STEPS:
1) During your morning meditation, make a plan of the “sacred deeds” you will carry out this day

2) Seek out ways to draw near to another human being and God through an act of service(aka sacrificial deed)

3) Make a list of the ways you desecrate God’s Name by separating ‘your god’ from God

4) Make a list of the ways you brought Oneness into your life and the life of another(s)

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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Living nobly in an animal environment or living like an animal in a noble environment? Year 5 Day 28

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 28

“The problem of the soul is how to live nobly in an animal environment; how to persuade and train the tongue and the sense to behave in agreement with the insights of the soul.” (Thunder of the Soul pg. 89)

Happy First Day of the Omer, the first day of the countdown to Shavuot, where according to Jewish lore, the 10 Sayings were delivered to the People and the Tablets of Torah were delivered to Moses. I pray we all engage in our own personal liberation from the slavery we are in, the Egypt/narrow place we find ourselves stuck in -either a new one or an old one that keeps revisiting, trapping us anew.

Passover is the action step We the People are blessed to participate in as the solution to the “problem” stated above. Leaving the narrow place of EGO, of SELF-DECEPTION, of GREED, of … allows us to realize that We the People are more than our animal environment, our animal instinct, our animal urges. This is not a judgement on the part of us that is ‘earthly, animal’, it is a statement of fact. We the People need our “animal instinct” to get along in the world, to be safe from the dangers of nature, of another animal, from the dangers another human being can present to we the people. The proper use of our “animal instinct” is what can and will allow us “to live nobly in an animal environment” and, please God, teach another person, another group of people how to do the same. This is, after all, what the journey to and the experience of Sinai is all about. The Bible from the crossing of the Red Sea/Sea of Reeds till now is about this very topic-“how to live nobly in an animal environment”.

Today is Good Friday and I wish peace and love to the Christian Communities who celebrate it, who are readying themselves for Easter Sunday. I also know the words above are in line with the thoughts and actions of Christ. It is very important, in my opinion, for Christians, Jews, Catholics, Muslims to find the common ground of the finding the solution to “the problem of the soul is how to live nobly in an animal environment”. While the different spiritual traditions including the Eastern Ones, have different paths, different languages, all of them are in search for the solution to this ‘sticky wicket’. All spiritual disciplines are engaged in living “nobly in an animal environment” and it is time for us to join together, to acknowledge our common goal, respect our different pathways, and bring about the renaissance, the promises of God, of Jesus, of Islam, etc: living “nobly in an animal environment” and, going beyond this to change the “animal environment” to an “elevated environment”, from ‘dog eat dog’ to feed the hungry, help the poor, love the stranger, have one law for citizen and stranger alike, proclaim FREEDOM throughout the land and to ALL its inhabitants therein, love our self so we can truly love our neighbor, etc.

IT AIN’T EASY!! And it is possible and doable to “live nobly in an animal environment” as millions of recovering people attest to each and every day through our actions. It is possible and doable as tens of millions of unsung heroes attest to each day by the kindness’ they show, the truth they speak, and their reaching out to those less fortunate. It takes a willingness to learn, a leaving of the EGYPT we find ourselves in by taking one small wrong turn and not self-correcting quick enough. Redemption is, unfortunately, not a one and done, it is something we have to be hyper-aware of and avoid the traps that our “animal instinct” and “animal environment” lay out for us. Their disguise, their being “societal norms” only help to fill us and lull we the people into a false sense of security. Hence the need to review where we are  and what we are doing at Passover and 6 months later at Yom Kippur. This is a time for elation at being liberated and acceptance of the hard work to stay out “going back to Egypt” and/or finding a new Egypt. I know the difficulty, I fall back, get out, fall back, and get out again-which is the ‘victory’-never staying in the Egypt of our choosing, our being trapped in and continuing to find ways to “live nobly in an animal environment”.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Identify the Egypt you are going to leave this year, not the ones you would like to, the ONE you will, the ONE you are capable of leaving

  2. Make a plan to “get out”, taking with you your bare essentials, your authentic self, which includes your “animal instincts”.

  3. Make a path to follow that helps you use your “animal instinct” in the most positive of ways, helping you navigate the insanity of the world, the cruelty of another(s) and redeeming the souls you can.

  4. Tell the story of your ‘slavery’ and your ‘liberation’ to another(s) and ask for their help in staying out of your Egypt, their help in seeing the traps that you are still blind to.

  5. Count the days of the Omer and see how you ready for the surrender of Sinai, the acceptance of the authority of God, you have become!


GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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"Perfect Purity" is a LIE and paves the way to cruelty - Year 5 Day 27

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 27

“Perfect purity is something we rarely know how to obtain or how to retain. No one can claim to have purged all the dross even from his finest desire. The self is finite, but selfishness is infinite.”

These words, this teaching stirs up my entire being. It is so infuriating to listen to the myriad of people who claim to have “purity” of thought, of heart, of faith, ad nauseam! The truth is those who proclaim their “purity” are usually the MOST impure, they do have “infinite” “selfishness” and their claims of purity are the proof of this. No one who has attained “perfect purity” in anything has to brag about it, they are in awe of those moments and continue to seek out ways to have more of them. Those who brag about it, like Hegseth, usually have ONLY “selfishness” and Pope Leo is a hero for smacking his lies down and speaking the Truth of Christ’s teachings, actions, and beliefs.

All of We the People have “dross” that is never going to be “purged” completely and acceptance of this truth is one of the keys to making progress, to making a change in our ways of living, to lessening the “selfishness” that is “couching at our door, it desires us much”, as God speaks to Cain in the Bible. Immersing ourselves in the words above can help us to appreciate, to apprehend God’s next words: “You can control/rule over it”.

When We the People apprehend, comprehend, and appreciate the truth of the words above; there is no “perfect purity” nor can we the people as human beings expect to be perfect; We the People can begin to see one another as the flawed human beings we are, seeking some kindness, some support, some love in order to know that we are accepted as we are, not for some facade we put up, that our flaws do not make us unloveable, that our “dross” is not a reason to be rejected. Rather, when we live into the words above, the teachings of the Bible, We the People accept our limitations as growth opportunities, become aware of the talents and gifts of another human being that wants to and does help us with the task they are gifted and talented to perform, asking them to be of service which is also, according to some in the Jewish Faith, a mitzvah, a good deed, in and of itself.

The current situation we find ourselves in, the war in Iran, the insanity of Trump, the degrading by Hegseth, the cruelty by Miller, the lies of Wytkoff, the greed of Kushner, the arrogance of Lutnick, the ass-kissing of Graham and the cowardice of the Republicans in Congress are prime examples of “selfishness is infinite” and their claims for “perfect purity” and proclamations of same want most of We the People to VOMIT! This is whom we the people, in a moment that we thought ‘he is selfish like me and he will take care of me’ elected and put into office to FUCK US, to TAKE FREEDOMS guaranteed by the Constitution, defended by the military often, and agreed by the majority are important, away from all of us dumb schmucks whom they despise! The same, however, is true for the far left, they demand a “perfect purity” and their insistence on “identity politics” helped to get Trumpism to have the plurality to get elected!! The far left also wanted to TAKE FREEDOMS away from people who didn’t think they way they did; who didn’t want to serve people whose lifestyles they disagreed with-SO WHAT! It is a free country, supposedly, and to not want to do business with someone is NOT A CRIME! To accuse one of racism, etc because they don’t want to make a wedding cake for a gay couple because their Christian faith has told them same-sex marriage is an abomination, is also ridiculous. They have a belief based on their faith-as misguided as it may seem to some of us, is our “purity” so “perfect” that we should deny their right to their beliefs?

What is so infuriating is watching people pontificate and preach the ‘gospel according to Trump’ and call it CHRISTIANITY! To listen to the spokespeople for my country, who are supposed to represent ALL the PEOPLE, speak lies, talk about ballrooms, brag about their deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize for starting a war in Iran, abducting the head of state of Venezuela, abandoning Ukraine, screwing over the allies we have depended on for 80+years is FUCKING NUTS!! We the People have to get our selfishness under control, it will always be with us, and STOP THE STEAL OF the values and principles of freedom, of the Bible, of the USA!

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Make a list of the selfish actions you took today

  2. Make a list of the acts of kindness you took today

3) Examine both and discern the kindness in the selfish and the selfish in the kindness, making a plan for lessening the selfishness that is harmful to another and increase the selfishness and kindness that helps another.

4) Let go of your need for purity of anything, in anything and BE HUMAN

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE

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Fooling oneself into self-righteousness by giving God your 'heart' and not your actions? Year 5 Day 26

Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 5 Day 26

“Man’s power of action is less vague than his power of intention. And an action has intrinsic meaning; its value to the world is independent of what it means to the person performing it. The act of giving food to a helpless child is meaningful regardless of whether or not the moral intention is present. God asks for the heart, and we must spell our answer in terms of deeds” (Thunder in the Soul pg. 88)

These sentences lay out a great conundrum humanity has wrestled with forever. What one does says much more than what one intends, what one says, what one believes. Yet, society continues to want to listen to what they say and be surprised by their actions. Case in point: Trump was a liar, a cheat, a thief, a grifter his ENTIRE LIFE, yet, a majority of we the people believed his words, his bullshit, over what they saw with their own eyes; CRUELTY, HATRED, PREJUDICE, GREED, LUST, etc. Hence, we are in a war of Trump’s choice, a war that is dangerous for the American Soldiers, a war that is costing We the People over a billion dollars a day, a war depleting our weaponry, a war that 62% of America DOES NOT WANT, a war that is costing all of us our savings, our affordability,… Yet, Trump keeps saying his lies, his cabinet keeps Kissing His Ass, and many of the people who voted for him are suffering and/or going to suffer the most! WTF People??

I begin with this diatribe because while Rabbi Heschel gives an example of something good, feeding “a helpless child”, I believe We the People have to see, hear, understand what our negative actions do as well. When people with disabilities are mocked and derided, the cruelty shown affects the person being made fun of, it also affects the people witnessing this spiritual crime, it affects the family members of the person with the disability, it affects all the families of people with challenges, as well as the people themselves. YET, good old boy, Lindsey Graham don’t care, that paragon of virtue, Tom Holman don’t care, Kristi Noem don’t care, Howard Lutnick don’t care, their motto, like Trump’s, is FUCK EVERYONE YOU CAN as often as you can.

The intrinsic meaning of the actions taken by Gingrich, the Tea Party, Trump and his MAGA crowd is to deny the foundation of what America was created to be: a democratic state where people argued, people fought, and, with the exception of the Civil War, it was, is, and, please God, will be: We the People, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.!

THIS HAS TO BE STOPPED BY WE THE PEOPLE! We did it with King George, with England when they were so powerful and We the People can certainly do it with Trump and his buffoons-as powerful as they are, We the People Shall Overcome!

“God asks for the heart, and we must spell our answer in terms of deeds” is crucial for change, for T’Shuvah which is what We the People of America and Israel must engage in RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Bibi and Donny do not represent what God asks for nor what God wants, Iranian leadership and Hamas do not represent what God asks for nor what God wants, Putin and Orban, et al do not represent what God asks for nor what God wants! We the People have to rise above our pettiness, pride, fear and self-deception to BE LIBERATED this Passover. We the People are being called to account for what our “deeds” say, for the ramifications of our negative, indifferent actions and the ledger is NOT in the BLACK!! We the People can change the accounting right now, using this Passover to, like the Rabbis in B’nei Brak, plot our liberation from the negativity that has poisoned our souls, overtaken our minds and closed our hearts. We the People are in need of circumcising our hearts once again and continue to monitor the openness and welcoming of the stranger, of God into our hearts. This is the path I have been on for the past 39+ years and while it gets narrower, it also gets bigger, more rewarding and joyous.

ACTION STEPS:

  1. Separate your intentions from your actions

  2. End your incessant need to explain your bad actions away because of intentions, thinking, etc

  3. Stand up and fight for the hard-fought liberation our ancestors provided us with

  4. DO NOT SURRENDER to the self-deception and the lies of another.

  5. Be part of a group that plots ACTION STEPS for liberation from indifference, etc

GOD BLESS and STAY SAFE, Rabbi Mark

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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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