Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 96

Beginning on Thursday, which celebrates the new month of Elul, this blog will focus on preparing ourselves for Yom Kippur, a new and, hopefully improved version of my High Holy Day prep workshop

I awaken each morning excited for the day and dreading the news; what horrendous, idiotic, undemocratic action did Trump and the Republicans in Congress do yesterday, what idiotic and anti-semitic action did the Socialist Democrats do yesterday, knowing I have to live in the tension of this cognitive dissonance, excitement for what I will learn about me, about living well, about Harriet, and dreading the continued decimation of everything I grew up on, the tenets of democracy, as my 9th Grade Civics teacher, Ed Roach, of blessed memory, taught us, the Bill of Rights is also the Bill of Responsibility. The anti-semitism of both the left and the right, which I mention often, gives We the Jewish People much dread and fear, after all we have seen this movie before.

Today, I am shaking my head at the degradation that Bill Cassidy displayed on Friday as he voted for a man he knows is unqualified to be Attorney General by saying the next person would be worse. This kind of rationalization of the betrayal of one’s morals, one’s standards of decency and competency never work out well for the self-betrayer, Mr. Cassidy. I am also, as I write this, realize most of the people in the Senate betray their oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution, to represent ALL the people of their state, not just their party. The ugly, distasteful partisanship is the proof of their betrayal of their promise, their oath, their responsibility to “one nation” and their weaponizing their ‘christian nationalist supposed faith’, their bastardization of the words of Christ and the words of Moses, the warnings of the prophets and the wisdom of the Bible and New Testament is an ABHORRENCE, one that is worse than their misguided belief that homosexuality is an abhorrence. Idolatry, taking God’s Name in Vain, Misrepresenting God by bastardizing God’s words are violations of the 1st 3 commandments and these bastards don’t care! Oh how far the Jews who support Netanyahu and Trump have fallen as well, We the Jewish People who gave the world the Torah and the Bible, the 36 times of welcoming, loving, caring for the stranger and the poor, the needy and the widow and orphan, displaying such hatred, such violence, such acquiescence to bullshit and indifference to the evil they are participating in.

El-Sayed spoke with Obama and the Jews were not mentioned? El-Sayed’s disdain for ‘regular’ democrats wasn’t talked about? Bernie and his babies like El-Sayed have their heads so far up one another’s asses, as well as their own, they believe that We the Centrist Democrats should automatically yield to their power, to their beliefs, to their way of thinking or get the fuck out of their way. The arrogance and smarminess of El-Sayed comes through all the time, to me AND I don’t want Mike Rogers to win in Michigan, I do want to “take back the Senate”, “take back the House”, and I also know that doing it with people like El-Sayed who truly believe they are smarter and ‘more in touch with the people’ than the rest of us, is dangerous in itself.

Where does this leave the majority of We the People? It leaves us with the task of standing firm for our principles, it leaves us with the opportunity to speak to these ‘progressives’, who in many ways are as reactionary as the far right, and find compromises, not everything they speak about is bad and find the common ground as well. Reminding people of loyalty to allies is crucial in these times of ‘let me get mine’, reminding We the Jewish People of our loyalty to the Covenant made at Mount Sinai, loyalty to the Voice that continues to call from Sinai, loyalty to the principles of the Torah, loyalty to the knowing that learning never ends, none of us are the smartest in the room, there are many ways to see things and, while the majority rules, the minority’s voice is never forgotten and never denigrated.

I have found living in the sadness of “how far we have fallen” and the fear of the anti-semitic rage that is happening all over this country and the globe, is difficult at times. What is more confusing is that my personal life is not touched by the abhorrent behaviors, lunacy, and hatred that is overtaking our democracy, our world. I live in a bubble and in relative safety AND I know it could disappear in the blink of an eye. Only by knowing that there is a Power Greater than Myself, knowing God gives me guidance, knowing that the music of my soul, when I play it out loud(some would say too loudly) do I have the wherewithal to withstand the onslaught of violence against my principles, the assault on the Truth of God, the hatred being spewed by so many and Stand with God, Stand with Truth, Stand with the Stranger, Stand with my People whom I may disagree with and know that we are “kin under the skin”!
Action Step: Do something to lessen the assault, the violence in life

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 95

Todd Blanche gets confirmed to be the WORST, MOST CORRUPT Attorney General of the United States while Bill Cassidy whores himself, once again, to the wishes of Donald J. Trump who made sure he lost the primary for his Senate seat in Louisiana, talk about cognitive dissonance! John Thune ‘stands’ up to Trump by not passing his NON-VOTING RIGHTS bill and he succumbs on everything else, how do these Republican Senators live with themselves. The Democrats can’t decide if they support Israel, Jews, and the middle class or they hate Israel, Jews  and the middle class. Bernie never talks about the middle class, he only talks about the poor and the wealthy, he doesn’t talk about what it must feel like to have been under constant attack for 78 years as Israel has been nor is he and his ilk separating Israel from Netanyahu. By the standards of that swarmey Abdul El-Sayed, there is no difference which We the People know is bullshit. It is interestingly abhorrent to me that both the right and the left engage in mendacity, that truth has no bearing on their decisions, their policies, their morals. How do they live with themselves?

What is most concerning to me is that WAY TOO MANY of We the People are not asking ourselves this question: How do I live with myself when I am supporting mendacious candidates, lying movements, and ignoring my neighbors’ cry for decency, for being seen, for care, justice, compassion, kindness? Yet, since we the people are so intent on bastardizing, weaponizing the words of the Bible, the words of the prophets, the words of Jesus, why am I surprised that the country is in the state that it is in? The clergy who are preaching ‘fire and brimstone’, who are preaching all is fair after October 7th, who vilify the poor and the stranger, whether here ‘legally or illegally’, are Desecrating God’s Name-the worst sin because in doing so, they are creating a false image of God, they are taking the name of God in vain, they are bearing false witness, they are murdering the souls of so many, they are stealing from the poor to give to the rich, they covet what another has to the point of cheering the theft of “der fuhrer” Donald Trump.

We the people who continue to support the ICE raids, support the vilification of Israel, support the decimation of Iran’s civilian infrastructure, support the lies and mendacity of Hegseth, Bessent, Lutnick, El-Sayed, Bernie, AOC, the ‘squad’, et al, are creating/promoting the end of democracy in the United States, ignoring the truth that is in front of our eyes, Ghosting God, themselves, their constituents, and the rest of We the People. This ignorance of those of us who voted for them or are in their district is anathema to anything Christ said, no matter what Paula Cain-White says. This ignorance of the needs of the stranger and the poor is anathema to the core tenets of the Bible no matter what Ben G’Vir and Smotrich say. This ignorance by we the people on an individual basis and our claim of ‘loving our brothers and sisters’ while ignoring them and only seeing them as a ‘them’, an object to use for self is anathema to the very existence of the Bill of Rights! Yet, We the People continue to be both ignorant and ignoring-hence Donald Trump is in charge of tearing up the Constitution, the Country’s morals and ethics, and our sanity!

This question is front and center within me: How do I live with myself? This question has haunted me forever. I couldn’t stand being ignored so, at 3, I took a walk that ended up with me in a police station-was that an omen, a portend of my future or what? Since then, I have hated to be ignored, ghosted, etc and yet, I ghosted many people, ignored the cries and the pleas of the people who truly loved me so I could ‘do my own thing’ and wind up hurting everyone who cared and people who trusted me. Since my spiritual awakening, almost 40 years ago, I have been wrestling with these two forces; doing the next right thing so I can live with myself and not being ignored. The first I have control over and the second I am powerless over. It is so hard to be ignored, to be shunned, to be considered not relevant. This is the ultimate betrayal of the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” and I am guilty of this and have been the victim of this betrayal. It saddens me to think of how many times and people I have ignored truth, I have ignored people who were trying to help and/or hurt, ignored the cries of the poor and the needy, missed seeing the stranger much less loving her/him. And I know each day I am improving, each day I betray myself, God, and You the People a little less. I see my ignoring is through bridge, I ignore signals from the opponents and sometimes my partner because I am focused on my plan which results in bad scores! WOW, how subtle and far ranging ignorance is! Being ignored by people still hurts, bothers me and I am still bewildered by it; the difference today is I don’t have to chase being seen, I don’t have to chase being heard because I know who I am, I know my own worth, I know my strengths and the areas of weakness and I know I am one grain of sand better each day!

ACTION STEP: Make a list of the people, signals, inner calls you keep ignoring and see how this ignorance impacts your life

God Bless and Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 94

Rand Paul gets his revenge by referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ for exercising his constitutional rights, Trump goes after Birthright Citizenship again, El-Sayed is being pummeled by Islamaphobia, by AIPAC, Hegseth is being supported by Trump again, Cuba is being treated inhumanely by Rubio et al, hatred spews from the Republicans and the Socialist Democrats, and Max Miller, a horrific human being, still is running to keep his house seat! All the news that’s fit to print is the news that We the People continue to see, participate in, be indifferent, and/or be enraged by what is happening in our name by the idolators, charlatans, grifters in power.

El-Sayed needs to make his stand on Israel much clearer, he needs to explain his anti-semitic statements, because just as with the fascists on the right, those on the left should not be in power in America. We the People fended off the Fascist push by Coughlin, Ford and Lindbergh in the 1930’s/40’s and We the People are being called upon by the Voice from Sinai to fend off this latest onslaught of hatred, of prejudice, of power grabbing, of using the words of Christ, the words of the prophets, the words of Moses to weaponize their inhumanity towards human beings. It seems so clear to me and I am at a loss to understand how good people can still fall for the lies, the deceptions, opening up their beings to the “cancer of the soul” that is becoming an epidemic once again. We fought a Civil War when this cancer was at its worst epidemic proportions, we thought, and now we know this was just a resting time for the parasites who revel in spreading Cancer to We the People because they believe once we buy into the lies, once we experience this cancer, we will have to go to them for the cure which, according to them, is more hatred, more violence, more war, more profit for the few while the many suffer with no medical care, no insurance, no savings, and the cost of living keeps rising so Trump and his people can make more, more, more, as the song goes.

Having visited Cuba on a cultural mission, I can attest to the amazing creativity, talent, kindness, and longing to be free of the Cuban people so Rubio’s efforts to hurt them, to make it more difficult for them to have food, etc is horrendous-all to make up for his parents leaving the Island rather than staying and fighting Castro? AIPAC getting so involved in political campaigns that it is causing more anti-semitism even among the people who also support the candidates they are supporting makes sense in what reality? That ‘fine christian nationalist gentleman’ Mike Johnson thinking it is a good thing that Max Miller is being accused of spousal abuse, hurting his child and is not kicking him out of the caucus because, I guess, Republicans don’t mind the macho-man, toxic masculinity, nor do they mind when a ‘woman is put in her place’? I am at a loss to understand this double standard, ha, ha!

The difference between reality, defined as what is happening right now, and TRUTH makes my head spin. The cognitive dissonance that happens when  putting these two real experiences together is mind-boggling, irrational and can only be reconciled through my soul. I, like so many, have to stop my constant movement, my mind from going a million miles a minute, and allow my soul to engage with my negative inclination, my baser self so I can discern what the next right action is, needs to be. It is hard when there are so many voices within me and outside of me clamoring to be heard, trying to drown out the “still small voice” of God, of knowing. It is hard to allow myself to do what “I know in my bones” is true and right because I can’t prove it to anyone, I can’t even prove it to myself and societal norms dismiss anything that can’t be “proven”, hence the non-reliance of God, on spiritual truth, on spiritual disciplines, relying solely on the weaponization of God’s words through Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, Mohammed, et al. Each day I wrestle with this dissonance and each day, just when I believe I have it reconciled, some new assault on Truth, on Freedom, on Decency, on Love, on Kindness, on Compassion happens and, I am back in the shit again.

The only solution that works for me is to live into the words of Habakkuk 3:19: “God is my strength… God guides me to high places”. When I allow God’s guidance, when I acknowledge that my strength comes from God and I am obliged to use this strength to serve God, to serve another(s), to rise up from my worst ways of being to being decent, life is wonderful, the dissonance recedes and I find ways of being okay with those I disagree with, I am at peace with those who shun me. It is a hard road to get here, I have worked hard over the years and I am realizing my own errors throughout my life, making amends that are overdue and I am just becoming aware of them, and not concerning myself with the response or non-response of those I have sent my T’Shuvah to.
ACTION STEPS:

How are you keeping God as your guide rather than your mind/another

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God Ghosting Self

Ghosting God Ghosting Self

Day 93

Each morning I sit down at my iPad and play different games to get my mind active and, at the same time thinking about what I want to write about. I do the NY Times Wordle, Mini Crossword and the Crossword, all to varying degrees of success. And my day begins when I awake and am grateful to God for another day, for “returning my soul to me with compassion” and cleaning it up overnight. My recognition of both gratitude for being alive and the compassion shown to me by God, by Harriet, by all of you, by my family is necessary for me to truly appreciate the gifts I receive daily-no matter what my bridge game score was the day before:)

All of this to say that without a spiritual program, too many of We the People fulfill Habakkuk’s words in chapter 2 verse 19: “Woe to him who says to the wood, Awake. To the dumb stone, Arise. Can it teach? It is overlaid with gold and silver and there is no breath at all in it.” Too many of We the People follow the will of these idolators, calling them gods, calling them genius’, calling them “master” instead of worshiping God, instead of knowing the truth of one’s inner life, instead of hearing the call of their souls, instead of hearing the pleas of the poor and the needy(which has no relation to economic status), instead of loving the stranger, etc. And knowing we are being ‘led by the nose’ by the Pharaoh’s courtiers gives me more awareness of how many of we the people are so indifferent, so unaware, so ridiculously stupid believing any of the people in power care about them, their plight AND these idiots keep voting against their self-interest, against what they know to be right and good, against the tenets of the ‘religion’ they claim to hold so dear, like Mike Johnson proclaims so loudly and proudly while Real Christians CRINGE at his actions!

Then, of course, there are the ‘brilliant ones’ on the far left who think Israel should not exist, that are as anti-Semitic as their counterparts on the far right, who want to blow everything up rather than repair the damages they, the far right and we centrists have made. We the People, all of us have bastardized the Declaration of Independence, done our best to fuck up the corrections to the Constitution that the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments have made, and continued the institutionalization of prejudice, it is just a matter of whom those ‘good white christian nationalists’, ‘fine upstanding ‘religious’ jews’, ‘caring about the underdog progressives’ and every other group that revels in bastardizing their faith, their ethnicity. Prejudice has no boundaries when it comes to whom practices it and this is the “cancer of the soul” that Rabbi Heschel speaks about and this “cancer” has spread throughout the United States, Israel and the globe. This cancer, as practiced by its proponents, is murdering the instructions of the Bible, the truth of Jesus’ words, the intuitive mind Einstein speaks of, and murdering the dictate to: “Proclaim Freedom throughout the land and to all its inhabitants therein” which is on the Liberty Bell on display in Philadelphia, Pa! Is it any wonder why the Prophets are so understudied? To study the prophets, to hear their call, to immerse ourselves in their wisdom, is to be forced to take action, beginning with our self.

I have lived at a level of outrage most of my life, I am coming to realize. I inherited from my father, my grandfathers and I have not been able to tame it so well as my brother Rabbi Neal Borovitz has. My outrage comes from the prophetic inheritance that I realize I have and have been using most of my life. Unfortunately some of the times I was using my inheritance from Jonah and running away from what God wanted, to the belly of the prison instead of the fish and in the belly of the prison is where I found God once again. For the rest of my life, I have been living  Robert Kennedy’s words: “Some men see things as they are are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not”. WHY NOT a) call a piece of wood a piece of wood rather than worship the callousness and the cruelty that piece of wood when fashioned into a tool of destruction, when added to a raging fire to give it more fuel; b) stop worshiping what is dead and gone, ie, m the good old days, and stop stoning people with the lies, the subterfuge, the deceptions on full display today; c) let go of the self-deceptions and bastardizations we the people are using to pat ourselves on the back for being ‘god-fearing people’?

This fight I have been having with the people who worship wood and stone is a long one, going back to childhood. My outrage has overflown and been misunderstood as egotistical anger and I have been unable to explain it until now. The Truth will Set You Free and it does, for me at least. I am not ashamed of me, I have made errors, big ones at times, and I keep coming back to worshiping God, not the idols, the lies that so many of we the people are worshiping today and throughout history. How can a descendant of the prophets, which we all are, NOT be outraged?

ACTION STEP: Discern personal anger from righteous indignation and stop worshiping everything but Truth and God

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 92

Why do I bring the political into the realm of spiritual, people ask me. “Leave the political to the politicians and you take care of the spiritual needs of the people, only”, I have been directed, told, ‘ordered’ to do when I was a Rabbi at an institution in Los Angeles, Ca. I did not listen, of course, partly because I am stubborn and mostly because, as Rabbi Heschel teaches, God was involved in the politics through the prophets, through the Torah, through the mitzvot. Everything political has a spiritual component, has a moral component, has to do with helping the poor and the needy, loving the stranger, practicing kindness, truth, compassion, love, justice, mercy in ALL OF OUR AFFAIRS!

Today, at this moment, I do not know the outcome of the Democratic Senate Race in Michigan. I do not know if the Anti-Semitic Socialist Democrat candidate won or not, I do not know if this hater of Israel, this human being who believes in Hamas, celebrates Oct 7th, thinks Israel should not exist, favors the underdog and is willfully blind to the fact that NO ARAB NATION has wanted to give comfort and shelter to the Palestinian People since they, the other ARAB NATIONS, told them to leave their homes while they, the other ARAB NATIONS, decimated Israel in 1948-AND THEN THEY DID NOT and gave nothing to their cousins will win in the general election. I do know that Bernie and his “Squad” want to see the ONLY democracy in the Middle East cease to exist. This, these ‘fine progressive folk’ who don’t believe in freedom for all, only freedom for ‘their people’ believe will make the world safer, democracy stronger as the Hamas continues to impose ridiculous fear on their ‘constituents’, the Palestinian Authority continues to be useless and weak, and the Koran or their interpretation of the Koran becomes the law of the land. This is deeply personal to God, this is deeply political to God, and so it should be to We the People.

Habakkuk 2:18 says: “What use is there in a carved idol whose maker has shaped it, a molten image, and a teacher of lies”. Both Bernie and his “Squad”, Trump and his thugs, fit this description in my opinion. AND, the News Media who fail to call out the anti-semitism because they are so appalled by Israel’s cruelty in Gaza and the West Bank, which is also true, also fit this description. The Carved Idol is ‘the poor Palestinians’ who turned down numerous opportunities to accept negotiations that gave them 95% of their requests-What say you about that El-Sayed, Bernie, AOC, et al? What do you know of the torment that Israelis have gone through for 78 years waiting for the next suicide bomber, the next bus stop bomb, the next …? AND Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben G’Vir et al are WRONG and despicable, they are NOT acting in the ways of the Bible, they are not hearing, listening, understanding God’s way and words, they do not love mercy, they are not acting justly, etc. AND NEITHER ARE YOUR BELOVED HAMAS, Bernie and his Babies!

Between Trump and Bernie, those of We the People who are seeking an authentic relationship with a power greater than ourselves, who are wrestling each and every day to keep our “rational minds the servant” and use our “intuitive minds (as) a gift”, who are dealing with how to be one grain of sand better each day, have no home, have no advocates, have no party that gives a shit! This is true for both Republicans and Democrats who are just tired of the same old bullshit and do not want the ‘new way’ that Trump has brought nor the hatred, anti-semitism, revenge of Bernie and his babies.

It is WAY PAST TIME to leave these “teachers of lies”, these teachers of hate, these teachers of grift, these teachers of ‘purity’, these teachers of chaos in both camps. It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to reassert the principles in the Declaration of Independence, to live into the Command to LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and Rebuke your neighbor, and NOT HATE YOUR BROTHER IN YOUR HEART! Of course none of these ways of being get people riled up, none of these ways of being get people out to vote, the conventional thinking goes. BULLSHIT! This is path that God has given us, be it through the Bible, the words of Christ, the New Testament, etc and We the People are being called in this moment, from the Voice on Sinai, to leave EGYPT once again, to realize the subtle ways we have turned back to the narrowness of one-way thinking, the blindness of either/or thinking and “Lift up our eyes and SEE! See the truth that surrounds us instead of the mendacity and self-deception that tries to blind us. See the mercy that we can provide rather than the cruelty we seem to enjoy. See the Love that we spread, that is so sorely needed rather than the hatred that is being spewed from both camps. See that God’s Camp is the only one worth being in.

ACTION STEP: What are the idols you have created, are you a teacher of lies, a student of liars?

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 91

Reading the newspaper, listening to the news, watching the pundits all leave me wanting. Wanting for TRUTH, for REAL, for decency, for kindness, for stopping our consistent “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” as Einstein teaches us the definition of Insanity. Yet, We the People find new, interesting, novel ways of living and promoting the insanity of staying stuck, staying the same.

Ghosting God, for those who are not aware of how I am using this phrase, is any and every time we the people turn our backs on doing the next right thing, every time, we the people refuse to “lift up our eyes and see”, every time we engage in handwringing rather than SEE the water, the path, the way to being free that is all around us, as what happened with Hagar. We the People Ghost God every time we the people go along with those who “have plundered many nations”, every time we go along with those “who gets evil gain for his house”, every time we join in the “shame” we bring onto ourselves by “cutting off many people”. We the People Ghost God every time we have “sinned against our souls” according to the prophet Habakkuk in the 2nd chapter of his book verses 8-10. Of course we the people have decided to not pay attention to the teachings of the prophets, the words God had them speak, the inner rot of We the People that was happening in Judea prior to the Destruction of the 1st Temple and the exile to Babylonia. Of course, we the people have determined that no matter how reminiscent the words being spoken now by our ‘fine christian nationalist friends’ on the right nor the assurances of ‘our equally fine progressive socialist friends’ on the left are of Nazi Germany, no matter the words of Spain in the 15th century seem to coming from the mouths of “Der Fuhrer”, Donald Trump, no matter how the actions of hating the stranger, making fun of the weak, the poor, the needy happens, THIS IS NOT THE SAME-according to many of we the people. Really, how foolish.

Of course, whenever and wherever we Ghost God,  we also Ghost our authentic Self. This is the issue that has faced humanity since the beginning, from the time Adam hid from God after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is the first recorded time that a human being Ghosted God and the Bible is replete with how often this has happened. The entire story of the prophets as a body of work is the story of human beings Ghosting God for their own supposed gain. Of course the truth is they did experience more wealth, more power, and more fealty. All of this at the cost of the dignity of we the people, all this at the cost of what would befall future generations. What relevance could those stories of antiquity have for us, many of we the people ask. This is how easy the descent into Insanity is: asking the most ridiculous, inane, and wrong questions, getting the ‘right’ answers to these ridiculous, wrong questions and then proceeding from this faulty foundation. The descent into believing the lies of the powerful, the mendacity of the false prophets who call themselves ‘servants of god’ in their ministries, in their pulpits, and-worse of all- believing our own self-deceptions so we can ‘get ours’.

The Chaos, the Insanity, the Cruelty of this moment cannot be solved, cannot be defeated by our rational minds! The only possible way to defeat these “Deadly Sins” is through a spiritual renewal, through an authentic connection with the Power Greater than Ourselves that some of us call God. Only by hearing the Call, by listening to the Voice, by understanding what is being demanded of We the People can we end the rottenness in the world today. Only through the work of Elul, the need to clean our houses, to make our amends, to change the narrative we tell ourselves, to let go of the lies and self-deceptions we use as warm blankets can We the People join with the dictates of the Bible, the words and deeds of Jesus and CELEBRATE God, REVERE God, WALK in God’s WAYS, LOVE MERCY, DO JUSTLY, etc. This is the challenge for all of We the People!I During this period, the end of Av, the month of Elul, the 10 days of Return, We the People are given an extra dose of Grace to accept with clarity the things we have done and those we haven’t on both sides of the ledger-good and not so good. The technology to right ourselves is found in our writing the truth to and about ourselves. The question, as always, is: How many of We the People will use this extra dose of Grace to change, to repair, to reconnect with God, with those we have harmed and give forgiveness to those who seek it and reconnect with them? I have been doing this for 38+years and I keep finding new ways to see old behaviors, to understand the impact on another(s), and to make things as right as possible. I also know the sadness of people who just don’t want anything to do with me, no matter how much I had helped them in the past. When we allow 1 “oh shit” to wipe our 1000 ‘atta boys’, we are Ghosting God, Ghosting Self.

ACTION STEP: Do an Inventory of how you “walk in God’s ways and you don’t

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 90

In 10 days Jews across the globe will begin the month of Elul, the month prior to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the month when We the People get to review our year(s) and see what harms we have brought to another(s), make our amends and change our patterns. Before there was psychology, there was/is T’Shuvah, there was/is Elul, there was/is the practice of prayer; looking inside oneself and seeing what we need to change, what we need to enhance and what we need to tame within us.

Last Shabbat we read from the Torah an immensely important verse that goes unnoticed, not heard, not listened to, not followed too often: “You shall  eat, be satisfied and bless God for the good land God has given you”(Deut.8:10). Of course, eating is not the problem, most everyone is more than happy to eat, blessing is not the issue either because many people are willing to give gratitude before and/or after a meal. The issue is the middle command: “be satisfied”. This is the greatest issue for humankind today as it has been in every age. The prophets spoke about it, King David was chastised for his inability to be satisfied and, as my friend and teacher, Rabbi Hazzan Danny Maseng says: “King David lost his connection to God after his sin of having Uriah killed so he could have Bathsheba for a time”. Wars are fought because We the People have been unable to “be satisfied”. Our world today is being run by idolators who claim they are “living according to Jesus’ words and deeds”, “living what the Bible teaches” and they are LIARS! They are unable to “be satisfied” with “the good God has given you”. They are insatiable, they want more, more, more and it is in direct violation of the Bible’s commandment above.

Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Xi, et al are NEVER satisfied, so we are in a war with Iran that is driving the world into both a financial and energy crisis, we are not supporting the Free Country of Ukraine because Trump has a man/homosexual(?) crush on Putin, taking over Venezuela’s gas business for his gain and the gain of his cronies, threatening to take over Cuba, etc are all examples of Trump’s inability to “be satisfied”. Kushner, that ‘fine orthodox jew’ is willing to sell out the United States for a pot of gold from the Saudis, the Qatari’s, the Emirates, etc because he, like his father, never has enough! And this is whom some of we the people have foolishly and proudly put in charge of our welfare-people who could not give a shit what happens to We the People because all they care about is “Getting Mine”! Yet, it is not just the assholes in charge who are unable to follow this simple commandment from God. Many of the most ‘God-fearing, ie Idol worshipping’ people are unable to follow this simple instruction. The erroneous thinking of most people is that if I am satisfied, I will not strive for anything more, I will settle for what is and not try to get/make more. THIS IS NOT WHAT THE COMMANDMENT IS SAYING! In fact it is saying the exact opposite!

Our insatiable needs are one of our traits that push We the People out of proper measure, out of the path of living well. Hence our daily T’Shuvah, our using the Month of Elul to prepare our souls, our bodies, our minds for the forgiveness we receive on Kol Nidre and the amends we have to make prior to Yom Kippur are the paths We the People need to take to tame the traits that push us away from God, away from another(s), and away from being our authentic self. What the Commandment is really saying, in my opinion/experience, is: You need to nourish your body and this is a good thing, you need to not overindulge in eating, drinking, or anything lest you become insatiable, and you need to remember to be grateful, to share your bounty with those in need, and to bless the people who help you be able to provide food, no matter how meager it may seem, and to bless God for giving you life. AND we eat 3-5 times a day, so this comes to teach us that satisfaction is short-lived and we have to keep reminding ourselves to be satisfied, to be grateful for what we have, to nourish our minds, bodies, spirits so we can stay connected to the Source of All. This is the great challenge We the People face, how to keep moving the ball forward, moving towards greater and stronger connection with our own authenticity, with our connection to God, our connection to one another and not fool ourselves into believing the lies of ‘more, more, more’, ‘smartest person in the room’, ‘the one with the gold rules’, ‘the one with the most toys wins’, and other such bullshit.

I bought the bullshit above for far too long and my dissatisfaction brought me to jails and prisons, to raping the trust of so many people including family, and I just can’t do it anymore. I am grateful for what I have, I am satisfied with my life, I do strive to be one grain of sand better, I am uncovering more and more of my authentic self and not being embarrassed by being me. This is the joy of this commandment and it is the way out of our current example of what ‘more, more, more’ does to We the People

ACTION STEP:

Keep an inventory of when you are satisfied and when you aren’t

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 89

There is an article in The Atlantic that is entitled: The End of Reading is Here. It is chronicling the demise of reading hardbound or paperback books and how this affects the ability of we the people to think critically, to soak in and up the wisdom of previous generations throughout the millennia, and to be able to fend off the onslaught of lies, subterfuge, and scams that are coming at us all the time on the Internet, through our phones, tablets, computers. It is a chilling article which I believe everyone should read.

I am thinking about outrage, still. It is a theme that has sparked a serious introspection within me and, the article above promotes my own inner outrage. This may be why I love the prophets so much, they channeled their outrage into words and actions that served God, served the community. Even though the people did not listen, even though they may have not used the best venues, the nicest wording, the prophets were dedicated to addressing the venal, mendacious, callous, cruelties of their time and this lineage has been passed down to all of We the People and it is apparent that most of us are not using our inheritance well. It is apparent that we the people have lost our ability to deal with the cognitive dissonance that arises as a result of understanding that “this” can be true and the exact opposite of “this” can also be true. The Talmud is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance to me, it has arguments covering the entire continuum of what a commandment means. The argument over what is meant by “an eye for an eye” is one that runs the gamut from everyone being blind to setting up the actuarial tables that are used today to determine the monetary value of an injury.

The prophets have shown me and We the People how to be obstructionists to the status quo, how to stand up to mendacity, how to shout truth from the rooftops, and how to serve our higher selves, our inner wisdom. Yet, too many of us continue to serve the money, to serve ‘the man’, to serve the cruelty that also lies within us. It is inconceivable to me that, after all we know, after all we have witnessed, we the people will continue to serve “the man” whom we know to be disloyal to everyone, whom we know to be a liar and a thief, whom we know his cruelty knows no boundaries. Yet, too many of we the people are still kissing his ass, kissing the asses of Johnson, Jordan, both Stephen and Max Miller, Lutnick, Vought, Vance, Rubio et al, as well as the asses of Bernie, AOC, Mandami, and the other “socialist democrats”, whom we know are anti-semitic, anti-everything that they don’t like. What both of these groups have in common is their inability to hold two truths in their minds, in their souls at the same time.

The example of our moment is, in my estimation, the horrific actions of Hamas on Oct. 7th, 2023, before then and since then towards Israel, towards the border Kibbutz’ that strove to make a way of co-existence with the people of Gaza, and towards the people of Gaza themselves, as well as the horrific, in my opinion, over the top response of the Netanyahu government. Both of these things are true, yet one group only sees Israel as the victim and the other group only sees Gaza as the victim. Because most of us are no longer reading, no longer improving our cognitive skills and allowing AI to do the work, it is harder and harder for most of We the People to hold these two truths in our being, hence the rhetoric and the evil cruelty we see happening here, abroad, in the UN, in the world towards Israel and Jews, towards Muslims and Arabs, which has been going on for the most of the past 3500+ years.

What is needed is for We the People to become Outraged at what is being done in our names. What is needed is for We the People to read the prophets more and allow their wisdom to infuse our minds,  to use our inheritance from them to fuel our actions, and to STAND THE FUCK UP to the liars, the bullies, the cruel ones who purport to be doing their horrific actions in the name of Christ, Adonai, Allah while they are doing them for themselves ONLY!

I have fought this urge for cruelty within myself forever, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. I realize my thievery was cruel, my ignoring the needs of another to satisfy my own was cruel, and my going to prison twice abandoning my daughter, was the cruelest of all. I heard the Voice in that jail cell in Dec. of 1986 and have been working to make amends for the earlier cruelties and minimize doing more. I have been seeing the cruelty of my volcanic outbursts at what I perceive as injustice, immorality, etc and know the lava that flowed harmed some people and I am very sorry for this.
ACTION STEP

How are you holding two opposing truths in your being at the same time

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 88

After reading yesterday’s blog, which she does every morning with the coffee I bring her when she wakes up, Harriet commented that I sounded mad. I was taken aback by her comment and as we spoke about it, I realized how often we the people take the words of the prophets, the words of another(s) when rebuking us, which is a holy action according to the Holiness Code, when we are disagreeing and passionate about our point of view, when we are aghast at the myriad of ways the words of Christ, Moses, the authors/editors/translators of the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran are bastardized. There is a tremendous difference between ‘mad’ and outrage, between ‘mad’ and righteous indignation, between ‘mad’ and deep sadness, grief over the degradation of humanity that is so prevalent in so many areas of living, be it racism, anti-semitism, anti-Israel, anti-immigrant, anti-stranger, anti-anyone who is not a ‘fine white christian nationalist male or female’. This is the outrage of the prophets, this is the outrage of the Jews, this is the outrage of Black, Hispanics, Somalis, all immigrants, and white people who have not drank the juice of Trumpism, of the Republican Party, over the hatefulness of the government and ⅓ of the population of the U.S., over the cruelty being so blatantly displayed by ICE, by the people in power like Lutnick, Vance, Miller, Blanche, Vought, et al, over the disdain for human kindness that is so proudly displayed by Trump and so many of his followers, his sycophants.

“Mad’ has a connotation, at least to me, of it being a personal, egotistical wound whereas what I am outraged about is, while deeply personal, not egotistical, rather it is a deep wound in my heart, in my soul over the ways some of we the people continue to receive great joy from the cruelty being inflicted, continue to revel in the disabilities of another, experience warmth and power from using the vulnerabilities of another(s) against them. HOW CAN WE THE PEOPLE NOT BE OUTRAGED? This is the real question for all of us to respond to, I believe. And yet, most of we the people will not, whether we go to confession, to Church, to Synagogue, go to Temple for the High Holidays, TOO MANY of we the people refuse to be outraged, refuse to see the suffering, the cruelty, the hatefulness, the denigrating of the Image of God found in ‘those people’ and THIS is the tragedy of the moment. Rabbi Heschel teaches: “Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.” This is what is happening today, as it did in Rabbi Heschel’s lifetime and it has been happening throughout the millennia-no people has been immune to this phenomenon, no matter how often world history is studied, no often how many times the prophets are read in Temples and Churches across the globe, We the People remain indifferent to the evil surrounding us and have come to accept it as “this is just the way of the world”! BULLSHIT!

My capitalization is not to yell at you, well maybe a little, it is, however, more to emphasize the wrongness of the evil we the people remain indifferent to, emphasize the need to be outraged and serve God, serve one another, serve our souls, not some idiotic, cruel, hateful, societal norm. Making fun of people with disabilities, denying the truth of what is by creating a picture of what you want reality to be, making alliances with people who only want power to enrich themselves, to be able to inflict more cruelty upon us, is NOT the way of being faithful to God. We are told to not forget Amalek, not because we are supposed to get retribution, Donald Trump, rather because we are to never forget HOW NOT TO BE!  Remaining indifferent, not being outraged and “taking to the streets” in whatever way one can, is proof that not only have some of we the people forgotten Amalek, we have decided to BE Amalek! Just as the American Bund Party wanted us to be German prior to WWII, so too do today’s ‘leaders’ and their sycophantic followers want We the People to join them in being part of Amalek. This is true here in the U.S and it is true in Israel with Bibi, Smotrich, Ben G’vir and their thugs, it is true for Putin, Xi, MBS, Iran, Qatar, and many others-all ‘friends’ of Donald Trump! Get the point?

I have been accused of being ‘mad’ most of my life and, for a time, it was personal and egotistical. In my recovery, my outrage has been mistaken for ‘mad’ most of the time. While in recovery, I have had a few bouts with egotistical ‘mad’, I have been living in the outrage of the prophets, the pathos of the people being mistreated, the victim of anti-semitism, prejudice against the formerly incarcerated, the recovering person and my fighting this cruelty, this subtly cruelty is taken as egotistical ‘mad’-it is not. My fighting the indifference of people to not give to help another in need comes from outrage, my arguing with people because I see the souls they are, the ways they can live well is not egotistical ‘mad’, it is outrage for the evil we do under the influence of societal norms of indifference, getting ours.

ACTION STEP:
What, when and how are you practicing your indifference to evil

Can you discern between ‘mad’ and outrage

GOD BLESS, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 87

There is a Yiddish saying, “Sh’ver Tzu Zine a Yid”, it is hard to be a Jew. Many people take this saying in different ways, because of anti-semitism, not having a homeland for almost 1900 years, being “strangers in strange lands”, etc. I understand this phrase to remind all people of faith, real faith that it is hard to live into the dictates of our respective faiths, it is hard to be a Jew when so many people have bastardized the faith, the commandments for their own power, their own self-aggrandizement, their own dynastic ambitions. AND, we the people in our smallness, in our desire to ‘fit in’, go along with these autocrats, these ‘religious zealots’, these ‘fine christian nationalists, jewish nationalists, muslim nationalists’ as well as those ‘fine and upstanding despots’ like Putin, Bibi, Xi, Trump, Erdogan, etc. WTF?!?!!

One reason I believe it is hard to be a person of faith is because most people don’t read the Bible, the New Testament, the Koran through the lens of this document is Holy, it is divinely written, it is divinely inspired depending on one’s particular leanings. I fall into the category of divinely inspired, hence I can deal with the incongruences, the contradictory statements, stories and commandments, knowing there are more than two authors and at least two editors. I do KNOW that the Bible is a Holy document, I do know the prophets teach us how to live when we have gone astray, I do know the mitzvot are to help us live well, and I do know that following any of the spiritual paths laid out in the Bible brings me/we to wholeness, to happiness, to freedom, to justice, to mercy, to kindness, to TRUTH. As we say in our prayers when returning the Torah to the Ark, “its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.

The people who claim there is only one way are full of shit-plain and simple. Since there are “70 faces” to the Torah, since the words have multiple meanings depending on conjugation, context, since each of us is unique and understands in our own way, has our own task, there is NO WAY that the Bible, any Holy Document can be a ONE-WAY fits all. It is a One-Size fits all, because there is only 1 Bible, 1 New Testament, 1 Koran and it is up to We the People to discern the message, the path forward, the acts of justice, kindness, love, mercy, compassion, truth that we are being given and confronted with in this moment! What I know for sure is that the loud-mouth deceivers in the Temples, Churches, Mosques who support the cruelty of Trump, the inhumanity of the Ayatollah, the racism of Netanyahu, the lies of Hegseth, are NOT PEOPLE OF FAITH! They are PEOPLE OF THE LIE, as M.Scott Peck wrote about in his book of the same name.

The Bible is replete with liars and they never meet a good end, they do flourish in the moment and their end is never nice. Yet, here, today and for many yesterdays, we the people have rewarded lying with loyalty, with electing them to office, to filling their pockets with money, being deceived by them in joy and glee, and then we experience the CRASH of having “egg on our face” when we see how disloyal these liars are to we the people. This is a truth that bears out throughout history, we the people hate the truth tellers because they say things we don’t want to hear and we revere the bullshitters because they ‘soothe’ us, they ‘do what we want to do and are too afraid to do’, they give us a vicarious thrill in ‘getting away with murder, etc’ and then We the People see crude oil go to over $100/barrel, our grocery bills skyrocket, our everyday living expenses rise because of inflation, and the ORANGE MONKEY in the White House spend our hard-earned taxpayer money to pay out the Jan.6 Rioters, the assholes who broke the law in a myriad of ways and were convicted by a jury of their peers like Paul Vaughn who was convicted of blocking access to an abortion clinic and he ‘loves’ Donald Trump so Todd Blanche paid him a 7 figure settlement for BREAKING THE LAW, for DENYING FREEDOM OF CHOICE to people while proclaiming his FREEDOM TO DECIDE WHAT IS RIGHT FOR ANYONE AND EVERYONE! WHAT THE FUCK, PEOPLE?!???

I keep hearing the call of the prophets in my ears, in my mind, in my soul and I am OUTRAGED at the mealy-mouthed Democrats and Republicans who KNOW this is wrong, that what is happening is a Threat to our Constitution which they swore to uphold, that the cruelty being foisted upon We the People is being done by “enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC” and Congress, the Supreme Court are “standing idly by the blood of their neighbors”. BULLSHIT, I say to these ‘fine outstanding people of NO-faith’. It is up to We the People to STAND UP like our ancestors did, like the men and women who served and serve in our military, like the prophets of old did, like the Union Soldiers did, like Washington and his bands of merry men did, like John Lewis did. It is time for We the People to get into and make GOOD TROUBLE!
Action Step: What GOOD TROUBLE can you cause today?

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 86

“Just be who you are and speak from your guts and heart-it’s all a man has.” This quote from Hubert Humphrey from the book Touchstones, was the topic of a men’s meeting I go to each Tuesday. It stirred up in me so many thoughts, ideas, errors, and joys. Juxtaposing this quote with the funeral services of Lindsey Graham,, my own inner wrestling with “what’s next” I see the correlation to how subtle and easy it is to Ghost God, Ghost our authentic Self. Writing this last sentence sent trembling awe throughout my body and it reconfirms the TRUTH of Hubert Humphrey’s words above.

Lindsey Graham was a good man who was very flawed, just like the rest of us humans. Lindsey Graham’s fatal flaw, however, was he could not “be who you are”. He was tied to some code within him that made him hide and betray his basic goodness of being, he was ‘friends with’ a person who denigrated a war hero, a U.S. Senator who only served his country, who was loyal to his oath to the Constitution from his days in the Military to his dying day, Lindsey’s friend, John McCain. How could this happen, he knew who Trump was/is, yet his need for power, his fragile ego would not, could not allow him to be an elder statesman like Ted Kennedy, like John McCain. While all of We the People are flawed; loyalty to principles rather than people, faithfulness to one’s inner knowing rather than to self-aggrandizement, being loving and kind to “all God’s Children” rather than feed the “cancer of the soul” called prejudice/racism/anti-semitism, etc are all ways of being that are in our “guts and heart”. The crime of Lindsey Graham was giving up “all a man has” to be near power, to sit at the right hand of the Pharaoh.

This is the main issue facing the United States and Israel today: what will it take to “just be who you are”! Not the ego-driven asshole like Trump, Netanyahu, not the false prophet and lying ‘servant’ of some idol you choose to call god, some authority you claim comes from Jesus, Moses, the Bible, the New Testament, rather the authentic Image of God you and me are created in, the Soul we are created, called to be! It is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to stop our self-deception, to end our belief in the lies we tell ourselves, to “lift up our eyes and see”! It is our “gut instinct” that gives us the words to speak truth to power, the first power being our rational mind that wants to take over from our intuitive mind, that believes it should not be a servant, rather it should be THE BOSS-forgetting about God’s Will and instead of making God’s Will our Will, these people are convincing WAY TOO MANY of we the people that their will is actually God’s Will, don’t believe the lies of the New Testament that speak of Christ’s generosity, grace, love, kindness, justice, truth, radical kinship with all people, don’t believe the Bible’s teachings of loving the stranger, caring for the needy, remembering we were “strangers in the land of Egypt”, not stand idly by the blood of your brother/sister, BE HOLY!

I am distraught at the News Media, who are supposed to be the prophets of our time as they were during the Vietnam War, that they keep dumbing down what is going on in the Middle East, that they decry the awful destruction of Gaza and DO NOT DECRY THE MASSACRE OF INNOCENT ISRAELIS BY HAMAS! All to keep on the good side of “socialist democrats”, aka keep their ratings, keep their bona fides pure for those radical extremists on the left who ‘love’ the underdog of the moment and have no loyalty to principles like Justice, Compassion, Truth, Kindness, Listening, Love for anyone nor anything that does not fall in lockstep with them. ISRAEL did the wrong thing in Gaza, in my opinion-not rooting out Hamas, doing it indiscriminately. The world did the wrong thing in Gaza by not demanding the release of the Hostages and forcing the hands of the supporters of Hamas in the Arab world and across the globe because the world showed their disdain, their hatred of Jews by their inaction. BOTH ARE TRUE and until We the People know ourselves well enough to hold two opposing ideas in our being at the same time-there is no hope for “a man to be who he is”!

I drank because being who I am was never good enough, never listened to and drinking became my way of escape.  ALL LIES and in the jail cell in Dec. 1986, I began to listen to the Call of God, I began to listen to my “guts and heart”, I began to grow into the “man I am”, the soul I was created to be, into the authentic Mark Borovitz. I have been listened to by many and together we have created great lives with meaning and purpose after living the opposite for years, I have been speaking from my heart and guts, sometimes at the ‘wrong moment’ and in ‘wrong ways’, and it has been used against me, I gave them bullets and they shot me-my bad-or is it. I can live knowing I have not compromised “my guts and my heart”, that I live “who I am” and this is my path to Holiness.

ACTION STEP: How and when do you give up “the person you are”

When  do you speak and live from your guts and heart

GOD BLESS, STOP GHOSTING GOD, GHOSTING SELF, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 85

Habakkuk 2:4 says: “behold his soul is puffed up, it is not upright in him; and the righteous will live in their faith.” Given the world today, as it has always been if we are going to be real with ourselves, these words capture our times perfectly. This verse is not just about the leaders, the people we like to pick on-no matter where one is on the political continuum, rather, I hear the prophet calling out to We the People more than to the leadership. The people in charge, as we have witnessed throughout history, rarely do their own T’Shuvah, rarely own up to their mistakes in a serious manner. Look at the Pharaoh in Egypt, who would make one of his infamous “I’m sorry, relieve us of the plague” and then go back to being an asshole. King David, the King of Nineveh are the only two I believe actually said “oops I made a mistake”. Ergo: Habakkuk’s words are meant for we the people and it is us that keep being deaf to this call.

How many times do we have to be show the vision of God, the ways of being decent, the path of holiness, the roadmap to salvation, the highway to lovingkindness, the route 66 of truth, only to spit on it? The problem is not Trump, Project 2025, and the rest of the cruel people in charge. The problem is that We the People elected him the first time and then the second time-knowing full well who he is, who his people are, what he was going to do and now that he is doing it, we are in disbelief? When a person tells you who they are, believe them. Yet, we don’t!

Throughout my life, I have witnessed people whose “soul is puffed up” overwhelm and override “the righteous (who) live in their faith”. It is something I railed against throughout my life, even when I was guilty of the same thing-talk about cognitive dissonance! We are witnessing this phenomenon in the ways PAC’s have become like people, according to the Supreme Court Jesters, I mean Justices. We are witnessing this wretched display of non-faith in the business leaders being more concerned about their shareholders than the safety and well-being of we the consuming people. At issue, of course, as always, is the inability of society to admire, respect, extol those of us who have erred and returned, who have done our amends and restitution and are looked at through the eyes of “a leopard doesn’t change it’s spots”. It is true that a “leopard doesn’t change it’s spots” and We the People are not Leopards!

This is the call of Habakkuk, I believe, especially in this moment, at this time of year in the Jewish Calendar: let go of “the soul is puffed up” way of being and return to “the righteous live in faith” part of our nature. It ain’t easy! And it is more than doable. Rather than needing to be the smartest in the room, rather than needing to ‘be in charge’, rather than worrying about being ‘found out’, rather than hide from our humanity, our foibles, our vulnerabilities, STAND UP AND BE YOU!

It is not enough to just look at another(s) who are living in their puffed up soul, it is not enough to be critical and angry about it, it is not enough to rail against the rich and the powerful, it is not enough to go to the opposite end of the continuum to ‘fight the bad guys’, etc. What is “enough” is to remember that 4 months ago, we went back to basics so we could leave the narrow places that trap us, we jettisoned the leavening agents that made us fat and blind, we proclaimed “this is My God”, acknowledging a personal relationship, a covenantal relationship with a power greater than ourselves. What is “enough” is to continue to grow in our commitment to live freer from Passover, to continue to grow along spiritual lines, to take care of the needy and the poor, to love the stranger, to stay right-sized.

Of course there are more ways to practice “enough”, like “eat, be satisfied, bless” regarding food and just about everything else in life. Ben Zoma asks: “Who is Rich, one who rejoices in what one has”(Pirke 4:1) and it is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to live into this teaching, it is WAY PAST TIME for We the People to live faithfully and authentically according to our Soul’s script, not the script of another soul, not the script of a “soul (that) is puffed up”. We can only do this when we take this time to see the whole picture of our SELF, the entirety in which we are living, the impact of our actions and the lies we tell ourselves. We only experience “enough” when we let go of our need to be right, our need to be powerful, our need to destroy another, our need to not feel a debt of gratitude to another human being, to God, our need to deny that we ever needed help, etc. I have slowly let go of these false needs and live a life of joy, of wholeness, of service, of love, of kindness, of justice, of truth. It is a much better way to live than the ways of those who continue to live with “a soul (that) is puffed up.
Action Step:

Look at, remember the narrow place/slavery you left on Passover-how is the journey looking now?
    GOD BLESS, STOP GHOSTING GOD, GHOSTING SELF, Rabbi mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self - Day 84

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 84

Each day there is a new assault on truth, on justice, on kindness, on compassion and each day I rebel against watching too much news because I just can’t take it. The level of acceptance of the status quo causes a volcanic reaction within me and I work hard each day to temper myself, to live the Serenity prayer: being grateful for the Grace to take in with Clarity, the things I am powerless over and the things I am not powerless over, the things I cannot change and those I should change, as well as the discernment to know the difference. Part of what makes me so volcanic are words from Habakkuk 1:4 “Therefore the Torah is slacked and justice never goes forth; for the wicked surrounds the righteous, therefore justice is perverted”. These words spoken before the destruction of the 1st Temple, before the Babylonians decimated Jerusalem, captured the Judeans and brought some back to Babylon, are as relevant today as they were then and We the People still refuse to hear them, to understand them to return Torah/the Teachings to their proper place in the hearts, minds and souls of all people and to restore Justice, Righteousness, Truth, Kindness, Compassion as the foundation of our lives, the foundation upon which the USA was built, the foundation of God’s world, of Jesus’ calling out to us, of the antidote to the selfishness, deception, indifference of humanity.

While politicians give us much to work with in terms of faults, in terms of their assault on decency, on being human, etc; it is We the People who are responsible for what is happening here at home and across the globe. Brexit happened because enough of the British people believed the lies of those who wanted power, Bibi is elected over and over because enough of the Israeli people support his racist, egotistical, grifting, megalomaniac vision, Trump was re-elected because enough of the American people would rather have a racist, megalomaniac in the White House who is stealing us blind, who is destroying everything that our democracy has stood for since 1776, and many of those people are still clapping for this evil individual!

The question I keep coming back to is: What is wrong with people that, since the days of “a new Pharaoh who did not know Joseph”, when the choice between “Freedom throughout the Land and to all its inhabitants therein” and following the new Pharaoh, going back to Egypt, the land of enslavement; choose the new Pharaoh!! It is not a problem of the mind, it is not a problem of our emotions, though both are big parts of the equation, at issue is our spiritual health, our spiritual maturity.

At the core of choosing Trump, Bibi, Brexit, Putin, etc is the spiritual malady of human beings. This spiritual malady stems from our being “slack”in Torah, being slack in Jesus’ words and deeds! Our slackness allows Justice to be perverted, kindness assaulted, Truth denied, Compassion seen as weakness, hating the stranger so we the people can have an outside enemy to focus on-which the Arab Countries have done for years, using Israel as the bugaboo so their people will not rise up against the tyranny and theft that Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah, Saudi Arabia, et al have inflicted upon them. We the People forever have run away, like Jonah, from the call of God, to be A MENSCH! When the stranger becomes someone to be feared instead of loved, when “the one with the gold rules”, when the rich have a different justice system than the rest of us, when retribution becomes a human ‘virtue’, when Truth is discarded in favor of “alternative facts”, when righteousness is seen as stupid, when narcissism, racism, anti-semitism, autocracy, “socialist democrats”, white supremacy, christian nationalism become the ways of the lands, Humanity is in the same type of Spiritual Crisis as before the Flood, before the Destruction of the two Temples, the fall of the Greeks, the Romans, and all of the other Nation-states who have been the powers in the world.

The solution that I believe works best for We the People is the solution I took: I went “back to basics” and rediscovered the soul I was created to be, found the morality I was brought up, and began to live into the Bible and its teachings instead of ignoring them. In these past almost 40 years since my Spiritual Awakening, I continue to grow my immersion in the Bible, my dedication to Justice, my search for Truth, the openness of my heart and soul to have more compassion for another(s), to forgive more easily, to stand against the lies and thefts by another(s), to engage with people on a soul-to-soul level rather than a role-to-role one. IEveryone I see I search for their divine image and if they choose to be slack in Torah, I choose to not engage. I respect their divinity and I don’t join in their desecration, their ignoring of said divinity. I no longer have to prove anything, which I re-learned on Thursday at the Bridge Club when in trying to prove I belong with “the big people”, I STANK IT UP BADLY! I could laugh at myself by Friday though, progress not perfection! Action Step is to see how you are “slack in Torah”, perverting Justice in the way you live.

God Bless and Stop Ghosting God, Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 83

Trump speaks at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Friday, what a sign of the times! Rather than extoll Freedom of the Press, especially when it holds him and his administration to account, Trump defames, negates, lies about, tries to intimidate, sues the press for speaking truth to the public, tries to “lock them up” when they reveal his incompetence and grift, etc. And these IDIOTS invite him to a dinner honoring everything Trump is against, honoring colleagues who speak truth to power while Trump and his autocratic regime try so hard and, at times, succeed in pulling the wool over the eyes of the public? WTF?

In Obadiah 1:3, he declares when speaking about Edom(which I think is a change from the original which has him speaking to Judea) says: “The pride of your heart deceives you”! Yet, for all of their studying of the Bible, for all of their proclaiming of the truth of the Bible, for all of Mike Johnson’s declaring that the Bible is his thinking-sad to think he has no powers of discernment and can’t see the 70 faces of the Bible-, NONE of these ‘fine white non-Christian nationalists nor religious zealots in the Orthodox movement of a Judaism that is not found in the Bible, hear, listen and do what Obadiah is warning against. In fact, they are the very people that Obadiah is speaking to! We the People are being asked about “the pride of our heart”  and demanded to be responsible to more than our desires, to more than our seeking of riches and power, to more than our greeds, our lusts and even our safety. While we are not told to put ourselves in harms way unnecessarily, we are told to honor God, to honor the divine image within us and in everyone, to not succumb to the slyness of the “new Pharaoh who did not know” to proclaim freedom throughout the land, “who did not know” to honor and value the dignity and worth of every human being, “who did not know” their “pride of their heart” will lead to death, destruction and being overthrown.

What has gotten lost, it seems to me, is that Freedom of the Press is crucial, it was in 1789 and it is today. The Press, at their finest, are the prophets of today or at least handmaids to the prophets of today. What are prophets, really? They are people who see what is, know where continuing the status quo will lead us to, and speak loudly and with authority to We the People as a warning, as a call to turn away from the glitter of gold, to remember the midrash that Moses’ hand was pushed to the coal in order for him to live. The thought that the President, his/her cabinet, his/her appointees can restrict the Press, can stop the prophets from speaking, can intimidate the Press/media to doing her/his bidding is ANATHEMA to the ways of Christ, the ways of the prophets, the ways of the Bible, the way of Abraham confronting God! Yet, Johnson and his crew of White Christian Nationalists, White Supremacists, along with Ben G’Vir and Bibi’s crew of ‘find Orthodox Jews”, both idol worshipping groups defy the words and deeds of Abraham, Moses, Judah, Joseph, King David, the prophets, Jesus, the Apostles, the Bible, and the New Testament and call themselves the REAL Christians, the REAL Jews! What bullshit and why any of We the People buy into these deceptions is beyond me.

What are We the People who see the truth, who are watching the Press capitulate in subtle and overt ways to do? We must rid our White House, our Congress, our state and local governments of these Anti-Freedom Riders! We must vote them out of power, we must remove them from their appointments over the Press, the Health departments, the Defense departments, the Intelligence departments, etc. HOWEVER, We the People   must first rid ourselves of the deceptions of self that seem to rule over us. We are in desperate need of an inner house cleaning, of a true picture of the person in the glass we see staring at us each and every day. We are being called to heed the words of Obadiah, to clean our hearts of oversized pride, of the lies we keep telling ourselves, the deceptions of another(s) that we keep buying into.

The only way to do this is by using the Jewish Calendar and begin our process of looking at our past year, our past years and see when and where we have hit the mark of being decent, human beings and when and where we have missed the mark of being decent human beings. Doing this every year keeps us updated, our operating system is cleaner and more user friendly, and our standard of living becomes elevated and we live into the soul we are created to be a little more each year. Having done this for the past 38 and this being the 39th year, I can attest to the strength, the uplift, the joy, the power, the connection that this process brings. It keeps me from being one of the charlatans, one of the people who profess loyalty and are actually Brutus. It ain’t easy to look at yourself, admit your truth, have it used against you and then watch the liars get the leg up and it is better than being one of those pathetic people who are unable to be grateful and loyal to those who helped them up the ladder.

God Bless and Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mar

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 82

Turning back to the Book of Jonah, I find it fascinating that more time is not spent on this important book, more time is not spent on immersing ourselves in the text and its teachings for us right here, right now. In the final chapter of the book, a small book by the way, only 4 chapters, God asks Jonah if he is upset that the plant God caused to rise up, give him shade, and then die and Jonah responds: I do well to be so angry even to death”. God then tells Jonah that since his concern for something he had no hand in creating, growing, was so great, should God not have compassion and concern for “Nineveh, that great city where… and they cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?”

Here we are, on Yom Kippur afternoon, in the home stretch, just prior to the “closing of the gates”, and we are reading but not really talking about the lack of concern that humanity, we the people have for what God has wrought, what God’s words brought into reality, into being-including We the People! This message of being more upset over ‘things’ especially ‘things’ we did not create, that we may have improved upon, and since “there is nothing new under the sun”, even our wealth is earned, sometimes, and yet not really material to the survival of the world, of our humanity, of our dignity. Yet, we cry often about not having enough, where’s mine, and other such bullshit. We believe we are owed something, that fucking over the immigrant, legal or not, screwing the stranger, suspecting our neighbor, proclaiming freedom for only ‘those fine christian nationalist and Jewish white men’ are all GOOD THINGS!

Rather than hear God’s concern for Nineveh, that evil city, many of we the people would agree with Jonah and be pissed off that their T’Shuvah was accepted by a merciful, slow to anger God who should be ‘getting even with those MF’s’. Rather than having compassion for people who just do not know how to discern right from left, good from not good, holy from profane, too many of we the people are like Jonah-wanting to see “those guys” punished for doing what we ourselves are doing. Rather than hearing Jesus’ words on the cross, “forgive them father, they know not what they do”, these ‘fine christian nationalist white men’ persecute anyone and everyone who is NOT LIKE THEM-in other words, senseless hatred for those of We the People who believe in decency, who are painfully aware of our own foibles, who do our T’Shuvah daily, weekly, monthly, even yearly. Rather than honor God’s creations-human beings- some of we the people believe the only people worth honoring are themselves, their sycophants, their true believers are being used they steal from them, they lie to them, which is the ultimate of spiritual rape because Trump, et al, promised to care for and about them and, as we can see right before our eyes, Trump and all of his cronies and puppet masters care only about THEMSELVES! Like good narcissists, they are always right, they are the only ones whom matter, and if you don’t kiss the ring, then you deserve to be locked up or die-they keep it really simple.

Since human beings are created in the Image of God and We the People have free-will, each day, each moment, each experience gives us the opportunity to choose whether we are going to live down to our lowest common denominator or whether We are going to live up to our highest self- our divine image. This stark difference between these two choices is being played out in this last chapter of the Book of Jonah very powerfully to me, and I hope you. Jonah is pissed off that God, after Nineveh repents, saves the city and the people. Jonah then gets reprieve from the heat when God creates the plant to give him shade and then when the plant dies, Jonah is more upset about that than the idea that 100,000’s of people would die if Nineveh were destroyed! Can you imaging that someone, anyone, would be more upset over material loss than over the death of 100,000’s of people? Can you believe that there are some among we the people who would agree with Jonah, kill the bastards and save the money, who cares about “those people” when I can be served by something I need?

This is one of the messages of the Book of Jonah. The Rabbis were courageous in including this book that has nothing to do with the Jewish people and it has everything to do with the Jewish people. Unlike Israel and Judea, Nineveh listens to the prophets, Nineveh is saved. Jonah, the reluctant prophet, the miserable SOB, the hateful individual is the savior of Nineveh, talk about God working in mysterious ways! Like Amos, I am a fiery messenger of God’s. Unlike Jonah, I cried, cry over the death of ‘those who do not know how to discern right from left’, like the prophets, I have no idea if my words mean anything to anyone, I know this is the call for me now to keep writing to keep doing what I can to help We the People stop ghosting God, ghosting Self.

Action Step: Write down when cruelty overrides decency and visa versa

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 81

Every morning I wake with gratitude for being alive! I realize that much of longevity is due to God’s Grace and I have to honor the Grace shown to me by giving the same Grace to another. I call it Divine Pathos, the ability to have compassion for another(s) when what I want to do is scream and yell at them to wake them up! During my prison stints, it was more bravado and fear than it was any sense of pathos, confidence, or… In my recovery, my yelling and screaming was the frustration that I have felt when I get something, it seems so simple to me and another(s) person(s) are oblivious. The fact that I was oblivious for so long and I wanted to spare another person from suffering the same consequences as I did for staying in oblivion for so long factored in greatly. Over the years, my yelling and screaming became a ‘part of the shtick’ and I indulged it and this was wrong! Most of the people I was interacting with needed to hear things in the way I was presenting them and some did not. For this I am sorry. Most of the people I was dealing with knew my dedication to their recovery, to them living well and some did not. For this I am also sorry. I opened myself up to criticism and scorn by my way of being and, while I am deeply remorseful to those who feel I harmed them, I do not apologize for being who I am! I am starting today’s blog off in this manner because it is Tisha B’Av, the day we recall the destructions that happened to Jews, supposedly just because we are Jews, and for me I have to remember the destructions I caused to Jew and non-Jew alike. I have to recall, amend, restore the dignity to the people who believe I destroyed a part of them. I am making this amend now, not to people who want to use my vulnerabilities against me, to the people who were actually harmed by my actions, to those who did not see, to whom I did not make clear my motives, my goals, and to those whom I did not hear how to speak to them-I am sorry.

In order to Stop Ghosting God, Stop Ghosting Self, we the people, as individuals and as groups are being called upon to remember the destructions we have caused, the dignities we have stolen, the devaluing of another human being(s) we have participated in, engendered. It is crucial for We the People to come to grips with the Donald J Trump inside of us, the liar and the grifter, the deceiver and the irresponsible parts of ourselves and ensure that they do not run us AT ALL! We the People have to see how we are to combat the Hegseth’s, the Lutnick’s, the Voughts, the Ben G’Vir’s around us and within us. It is no longer okay(it never was) to stand on the sidelines and complain, it is not okay now nor has it ever been to “stand idly by the blood of your neighbor”. It is not okay nor has it ever been to treat the stranger as a criminal, as a slave, “because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt” and they took us in at our lowest state-famine, death were staring Jacob and the boys in the face! The people in charge are the descendants of immigrants, of STRANGERS-instead of being grateful that “as a stranger in a strange land” they were given an opportunity to grow and flourish rather than be conscripted, enslaved, be subject to the whims of the king!

Saudi Arabia is getting nuclear power, maybe it is a quid pro quo for helping Jerrod Kushner-who knows. Iran is still shooting missiles and being bombed mercilessly-there are no good guys in this fight. Trump is lying about elections, Rubio is lying about Cuba, Hegseth is lying about the war in Iran, Miller is lying about the ‘immigrant’ problem, and the Republicans in Congress are kissing Trump’s ass, what else is new. The Democrats response is to support the fascist wing of their party instead of having solutions that respect the dignity and worth of all people, not just their ‘underdog of the month’. AND, none of these factions nor their clergy, their churches, their synagogues are calling them to account. Hence WE THE PEOPLE must!

We the People can call another to account only after we hold ourselves to account. What better day than today-Tisha B’Av? While the month of Elul doesn’t begin for another 21 days, getting a jump on the T’Shuvah’s, the amends we have to make is not a bad idea. Once we look at the destructions we have caused, dealt with them internally, have a plan for the amend/restitution, and a plan how not to keep repeating these ways, it is much easier to live with the Divine Pathos I mentioned earlier. It becomes a ‘natural state’ for many of us. This is the challenge, this is the cure, this is where the fountain of strength, youth, wisdom, kindness, truth, love, justice emerges from. Will you drink from this fountain or keep drinking the kool-aid of Trump, Vought, Hegseth, Lutnick, and the rest of those ‘good male white christian nationalists’?
Action Step:

Write down the destructions you have caused and how to make an amend

Write down the destructions you have been victim to and how they can no longer run your life

GOD BLESS, STOP GHOSTING GOD, GHOSTING SELF, Rabbi mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 80

On August 24th Harriet and I will be doing a workshop for Desert Outreach Synagogue on “preparing for the High Holy Days”, which will include thoughts and actions surrounding T’Shuvah, Celebration, Prayer, and Gratitude. Many of the thoughts I am expressing now relate to these ideas, there is no “political commentary” to be found in the workshop nor, as I see it, in these blogs. The Ghosting of God, the Ghosting of Self, is a spiritual malady, it is a moral failure, a response to what is happening in the world and in our own lives that is antithetical to what the Bible teaches us about living a kosher, aka, fitting and proper life. The commandments are not political, they are about spiritual health, being spiritually, ethically, and morally fit.

To paraphrase what the Ramban is saying in his commentary on “You shall be Holy” in the beginning of Leviticus 19: It is possible to be a scoundrel within the bounds of the Law-DON’T DO THIS! Yet, we see this happening all the time. When people are elected to serve in the government, they are “but trusted servants” as we say in AA. However, throughout history, these “trusted servants” have raped and pillaged the very people they are supposed to represent. The ways of “taxation without representation” are being subtly engaged in is HORRENDOUS! Yet, people, especially MAGA people, will call out anyone who stands up for We the People ‘socialists, communists, anti-america’ etc. These same people will use the Bible to pass laws, take actions that are antithetical to the love, kindness, justice, mercy, truth the Bible calls for and say “this is what Christ said to do”!!?? While there are many who are calling out these lies, many Clergy, both Jewish and Christian, promote the lies of these ‘religious’ people who’s only religion is to promote the dogma of hate, the dogma of power, the dogma of Pharaoh! If this isn’t Ghosting God, what is? If this isn’t Ghosting our authentic Self, our living in a way that is compatible with being a partner of God, what is?

Tonight begins the Fast day of Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av which is, according to our lore, the day on which we commemorate the destructions of both Temples in Jerusalem and other tragedies which have befallen the Jewish People. People will sit on the floor or on stools as a sign of their being mourners, they will not put on T’fillin in the morning, they will not eat all day, they will wail for the rebuilding of a 3rd Temple, and they will NOT pay any attention to their own actions that are mirrors of the actions of the both Ancient Israel and Judea. They will not heed the calls of the prophets to RETURN to being partners with God, they will not heed the demands of the prophets to listen, to put on sackcloth and sit in ashes for actual change, not for show as is the custom now and has been for a while.

Tisha B’Av is a day of reflection on the destructions We the People are causing right now, right here, not just wailing for the crimes of the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Romans. It is a day for We the Jewish People to recognize, repent for, and make plans to change the idiotic, repetitive ways of living that: go against the Commandments; that stop the spread the Spiritual Malady infecting the world and so many people; that will turn us into spiritual healers instead of spiritual rapists; that will help us return again to being “trusted servants” who serve God and We the People who have entrusted us to do the next right thing. Is this Political, I think not, it is about decency, about love, about truth, about kindness, about justice, about mercy, about compassion, about grace-all spiritual principles.

It is time for We the People to end our need to be in “senseless hatred” of one another and begin to be deliberate in our hating of prejudice, our hating of power-mongering, our hating of the evil ways some of we the people use lies to promote themselves and more lies, our hating of those of we the people who use deceptions to gain more and more wealth, our hating of using the vulnerabilities of another(s) against them, our hating of the ways strangers are being treated as criminals and enemies, the ways the poor and the needy are being thrown bread crumbs sometimes, the ways of bastardizing the Bible, Jesus’s words and the actions of decency and holiness that God is demanding. This is the PATH OF RECOVERY that is being provided for We the People through reclaiming our authentic self, by reclaiming our real connection to God, through living into the Commandments, by hearing and following the Prophets calls to us, by following the example of the people of Nineveh instead of the people of Ancient Israel! This is the path I follow to grow in my recovery and I pray you choose to join the millions of people who live a life of recovery and return.
ACTION STEP:

Make a plan of recovery based on spiritual principles

Read the Prophets and “return again to the land of your soul

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 79

Jonah is so, so upset that he asks God to kill him rather than face the ‘shame’ of his words helping to change the people of Nineveh. Rather than see himself as a redeemer, in the shadow of Moses, Jonah sees himself as a failure because Nineveh didn’t “get what was coming to them”. Rather than see himself as a life-saver, he is so pissed off that God is “full of compassion, graciousness, slow to anger, great in kindness and repents evil” for Nineveh, while at the same time, he prayed for all of these attributes for himself in the belly of the fish! Jonah wants “strict justice” for those he considers enemies, evil, etc and wants “great compassion and grace” for himself! He is so, so upset that he reminds God, this is why he did not want to come to Nineveh, this is why he fled to Tarshish, so he would not have to watch the people repent, he would not have to see the people redeemed. Rather than rejoice in a “mission accomplished” moment, he is angry, depressed, suicidal that people repent and live-WTF

This is, unfortunately, a very human response. Too many of we the people are upset when people are given a “second, third, fourth” chance to make amends, to ‘get it right’, to live up to their divine nature and not stay stuck in our animal nature. This same segment of we the people, however, believe they are entitled to these multiple chances, believe they should not be punished for their errors, because they are not really wrong-the rest of us just don’t understand, etc. This segment of we the people are as two-faced, as incongruent, as evil acting as Jonah. I use the word evil because when what is hateful to you, you do to another, when you use the vulnerabilities of another against them, this is an evil action. AND the rest of us, the Clergy, the ‘good people’, the progressive fascists, perpetrate the evil we hate upon “those” people! Rather than put an end to discrimination, to prejudice, many of these so-called “freedom fighting supporters of Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7, 2023”, haters of Israel/Jews, attackers of Jews on Campus, in our Houses of Worship, promote more and more prejudices, more and more Cancers of the Soul upon themselves, their followers and the rest of us.

Be it the “manosphere” or the “Bernie crowd”, both of these insane factions one with concern about testosterone levels, how they look, power to the White Christian Nationalists ONLY, the other with concern only for the current underdog, hating the rich, ignoring the crimes of ‘their underdog’, wanting to allow the Arabs in the Middle East to decimate Israel as they have tried to in 48, 56, 67, 73, the intifadas, and all of these Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi attacks. Israel is not wearing Lilly-white gloves here by any means, yet this ‘fine progressive, socialist democrats’ look the other way when it comes to the ‘poor Palestinians’ and their crimes, not wanting to admit their responsibility for their plight because they would not say YES to a deal that gave them 95% of what they asked for! Again, I DO NOT agree with Netanyahu and the Israeli government, AND I have to see both sides. Just as Jonah could only see his desires, his wants, his need for revenge and destruction, so too, the right and the left can only see life from their narrow viewpoint, with their blinders on. Isn’t this the root of prejudice-seeing only what you want to see-, isn’t this the manifestation of the cancer of the soul these two extremes have grown within themselves and their followers so they are blinded by their desires, isn’t this the epitome of rejecting the cure for this cancer of the soul-spiritual maturity, spiritual counseling? Of course it is and I am holding all of us responsible! Rather than shutting down the Bernies and the Manospherers, we the people either ignored them or supported them, either we actively helped them grow because some of what they are saying we could go along with-unwittingly helping their agenda and being blind and deaf to their motives and end goals, or we passively helped them grow because we ‘could not be bothered’ to discern truth from fiction, bought the lies because we the people are more like Jonah that like God. How sad, how criminal!

AND We the People still have time to say NO to these haters, to these ‘flavor of the month’ causes, to these fascists who want control, who want to steal from the rich and give to whom-AOC seems to have a lot of money for a girl who claims to be so poor, just saying. We the People have the opportunity during this period of time, from Tisha B’Av to Yom Kippur to clean up our acts, to tame the Jonah-hatred part of us and enhance the Jonah-messenger part of us. I have been honing the Jonah, the prophet in me for 39+ years and I am a much better human being for it-not great, not perfect, just many grains of sand better from the guy in the Jail Cell who was caught again, from the guy who denied his father’s wishes to be a decent human being. This is the joy of being human, the gift of “You are forgiven as you have spoken”, the essence of Yom Kippur.
ACTION STEP:

Do a deep dive into the prejudices you still hold, the ways you deny forgiveness to another(s) and want it for yourself

God Bless, Stop Ghosting God, Ghosting Self, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 78

I am stuck on Jonah for a minute, as you can tell. I want to address a part of Jonah’s character that many of we the people share: wanting someone who is a better human being, who knows the next right action, who speaks truth to power to fail, to “get theirs”, to stop throwing it in our face how low we can go, how small we are, how God wants our return, loves us graciously, and takes us back. This is something that began with Cain and Abel, where jealousy got the better of Cain so badly that he killed his brother, asking “Am I my brother’s keeper?” While that question is not directly answered in the text between Cain and God-he is, after all, only thinking about his consequences, it is implied that We the People are indeed our “brother’s keeper” and it goes on to explicitly tell us this in the Holiness Code.

One of the interesting pieces of the Book of Jonah to me is our lack of understanding how it applies to We the People, how we seem to ignore the myriad of ways our resentments are talked about, the amount of jealousies we harbor and our secret longing to be free of the inner judgements of ourselves, especially when we compare our self, our actions to those of decent people who have no guile, who just mind their own business, who “get ahead” by being moral, ethical and loving, open to TShuvah and doing their own. This makes me think of my Grandfather, Abe Borovitz, who never said a bad, mean word about anyone in his entire life! He wasn’t a monetarily rich man, he fathered no children, adopted one and took in 5 of his wife’s sisters children to raise during the depression. Unlike Jonah, he heard a call within him that he followed, his moral compass was so strong he would not let anyone talk bad about people in his presence, a trait that was not passed down so much. He is the gold standard in our family and maybe that way of being will pass down to my grandson, to my nieces and nephews. It certainly is still not valued in the ‘real world’-just look at how far Trump, et al, have gotten by hating the goodness of another, making fun and fodder of good people, and killing those who are seeking a better life. It is ironic that Trump of all people talks about “illegal” when he is the person who deals illegally with everyone!

When white men would not work for my father in his business because he raised the pay of Black men to be the same as white men for the same work(he was an equal opportunity employer way before it was talked about), my brothers and I were called N____ lovers! In Cleveland, Ohio, on the other side of town from his business-word of fairness, of treating all human beings with dignity travelled fast and, like with Jonah, was looked down upon. Some of the people who went to the Temple we went to, some of the people who were ‘pillars of the community’, participated in this name calling-my father was a poor man, he was a man who loved his family and it was painful for him to see his children being called such disgusting names AND, he explained to me that doing the right thing sometimes has a cost to it and it is a far less cost than doing the wrong thing in order to go along with the ‘status quo’.

My issue with the Book of Jonah is not what it talks about, not what it is showing us, my issue is with:

1) the ways in which it is explained or not explained,

2) the ways in which the Rabbis then and especially now ignore the inconvenient truths spoken about

3) Admiring the prose and not getting lost in the flowery words and the beautiful Hebrew

4) Praising of God’s ability to return and not acknowledging that Nineveh, aka, non-Jews, could hear the call to return and take action to return while the Israelites and the Judeans 20+ years later and up through 70AD, could not!

It is time for We the People to get off our high horses, to stop seeing ourselves as “the chosen people” conferring some special status on us, granting us immunity for our wrong doings. It is time for We the People to take the Book of Jonah seriously and stop HATING THOSE WHO DO GOOD, THOSE WHO ARE NOT WILLING TO FOLLOW THE MAJORITY TO DO EVIL! It is time for We the People to throw Bibi and his thugs, Trump and his thugs out of power, to end their reign of terror upon decent people, end their desecration of the teachings of Jonah, of the Bible, of Christ! It is time for We the People to realize the myriad of spiritual awakenings we have had and continue to have and STOP IGNORING THEM! It is time for We the People to realize the only way to “get ahead” is through being moral, through being decent, through “Return Again” as Reb Shlomo Carlebach sings to us.

ACTION STEP:

Look at the ways you are more like Jonah than you want to admit, admit this truth and return again to being more decent

GOD BLESS, STOP GHOSTING GOD, GHOSTING SELF, Rabbi Mark

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Ghosting God, Ghosting Self

Day 77

“And this displeased Jonah greatly and he was ANGRY!” (Jonah 4:1) Can you imagine, the granting of a pardon would “displease” the prophet who warned them of their fate and the people hearing him, waking up to the truth of their situation, the truth of the damage they have done, repenting and changing their ways? WTF?? Isn’t this the real mission of the prophet? Doesn’t every other prophet want the “word of God” to be heard, to awaken the souls of the people who need to hear “the word of God”, and to do T’Shuvah? Of course they do, so what is Jonah’s problem?  I believe it is the problem most of We the People suffer from, engage in, revel in. The problem is our love of watching those we disagree with, those we don’t like, those we are afraid of, those who are better human beings than we are: GET WHAT WE THINK/WANT WHAT’S COMING TO THEM!

Jonah is so intent upon exacting the revenge he thinks is necessary and appropriate, he cannot fathom God not doing this. He is angry  with God and he complains that he knew this would happen. “Is this not what I said in my own land? I fled to Tarshish because I know you are grant grace and compassion, slow to anger, loving kindness,…Now, take my life, God because it is better I die than live!”(Jonah 4:2-3) Jonah knows God is able to accept the repentance of people and this drives him CRAZY!! Weird, isn’t it? Yet, how true for so many of We the People! God, on the other hand, sees accepting repentance, allowing for T’Shuvah as part of the covenant God made with Human Beings, as far back as Adam and Eve, Cain, etc.

I do believe Jonah is being a touch melodramatic, here; to ask that he die because the people listened to his words and believed he was sent by God?! To ask that he die because the people repented and God accepted their T’Shuvah?!! To ask that he die because God “gives grace and compassion, is full of loving kindness, slow to anger, and cleans the evil from people when they repent”?!!? Isn’t this what we pray for each day, certainly each Yom Kippur? Isn’t this what we are told God is in Exodus after the Golden Calf debacle? Yet, Jonah, doesn’t want it to be true for the people of Nineveh. I am sure, he wants it to be true for himself and the people he likes, though! And, I think that Jonah represents a lot more of We the People than most of us think. I think Jonah represents the “white christian nationalists” who believe that people of color, that muslims, Jews, even Catholics, do not deserve to be redeemed, to not deserve to have their repentance accepted and, to them, Jesus is a merciless Judge, not a merciful one. Jesus is, to them, a lion who will destroy their enemies, not a lover of people, not full of loving kindness. To them, Jesus is a warrior god, not a God of caring for the stranger, protecting the blind and the deaf, loving neighbors, etc. This is how far from truth being vengeful like Jonah can take us!

This love of seeing someone “get theirs”, “receive what is coming to them” is a sick way to live, it is the way of those who think “life should be fair”, except when they screw up. It is the way of people who are unwilling, afraid, unknowing how to face themselves, to face their own foibles, to make T’Shuvah for their errors and, as has been true since before Jonah, want to blame someone else, complain their punishment is too great, even though Cain killed his brother! It is rampant in our world today and it causes the downfall of the nation and the individual, it causes the enslavement of another(s) who we the people deem different, ie not worthy, those we are in fear of; and the finding of a common enemy from outside of our circle so we can keep power, keep from being called to account, etc.

All of this ends, however, on Yom Kippur. This is the day of Accounting, this is the day where either we accept God’s forgiveness so we can then truly admit to our errors, to our evil ways, to our being seduced by our rational minds, self-deceptions, deceptions of another(s) and turn away from those ways and turn back to God’s ways OR we keep believing we never have to be accountable because no one has ever been able to make anything stick-the Teflon Donny Trump, J D Vance, etc. These people, who are running our country, along with their compatriots like Bibi and Ben G’Vir, Hegseth and Rubio, Lutnick, Miller, Bessent, Vought, truly are “afraid to meet their maker” because they KNOW they are full of shit, they KNOW they are going against God’s will, they KNOW they are like Jonah, vengeful, spiteful, angry, etc.

In 4 days, we will commemorate the destruction of the Temples and other horrific experiences of the Jewish people, the questions We the People have to answer are: Will we continue to demand compassion, forgiveness for ourselves, for our people while granting none to ‘our enemies’? Will we continue to hide from ourselves the truth about our actions and not repent?

GOD BLESS, STOP GHOSTING GOD, GHOSTING SELF, Rabbi mark