Marc Margolius: Rabbi Yitz Greenberg says something to the effect that Judaism is about becoming a 15% better person than you are. It struck me because I thought, "15%?!" Deborah Waxman: That's not enough. Marc Margolius: That's not enough. Now, that I'm older and wiser, I think 15%, that's ridiculous. Give me 2% to 3% a year compounded annually — that would be fantastic. Deborah Waxman: I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu: Jewish resources for resilience. Today my guest is Rabbi Marc Margolius, my friend and my colleague. Marc is the Senior Program Director at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and he is the director of the Tikkun Middot program there. Marc also served for many years as a congregational rabbi, most recently for seven years as the rabbi of West End Synagogue, a vibrant Reconstructionist community on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Marc, thanks so much for being here. Marc Margolius: It's great to be here. Looking forward to it. Deborah Waxman: I've been thinking about this conversation since the beginning of Hashivenu. Some of that came out of a really powerful teaching that you did, wow, almost two years ago on middot. I wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about how you come to be a teacher of the middot. What's your understanding, and why is this a powerful pathway for you? Marc Margolius: It's a great question. For me, actually, the answer goes all the way back to my childhood growing up in a Reform synagogue in suburban New York in the late '60s, when for me, I think my Jewish identity really crystallized both around Judaism as a force for social change, and also for personal change. From the very beginning, I think, for me, the two were very strongly connected. That personal change, and I didn't have the language for this as a kid, but I definitely felt like Judaism was meant to help me be my best self and that it was meant to help society be the best version of itself and that the two were connected in some way. Marc Margolius: I always thought about and measured Jewish practice against, "Is this something that really helps me be a better person or in what way would this help me be a better person? What's the meaning of it in some way?" As I've grown and gotten older and wiser and stumbled plenty of times in my life, I've thought about, how does Judaism help us both forgive or be forgiven, forgive ourselves for those stumbles, and also be better prepared for the obstacles and stumbling blocks that are always in the way, and help us meet them in a way that's much wiser than we might normally? Marc Margolius: Middot, which -- the word "middot" literally means measures. And "middah" is the singular, it means "measure". It basically refers to a quantity of a particular quality of moral and spiritual -- in Jewish tradition -- of spiritual quality that has a moral or ethical component that's embedded in every human being. That also goes all the way back from me from the time I learned that Judaism represents the idea that we're all made in the image of God. And what does that mean as a Reconstructionist? Personally, as a Reconstructionist, if I understand God is imminent and part of me and operative within me, then I can really experience this, lmost on a visceral level, at this energy that is moving through me, that I understand as the divine, and through everyone and around us all has different facets, different aspects, which if I can access them and move the obstacles out of the way, they can manifest and show up in me, and they show up practically every day [in] the words I choose to speak and the actions I choose and the words I avoid and the actions I avoid. Marc Margolius: This is obviously a longer story that we'll talk about, but for me, it's really been about coming to the point of understanding Judaism as a set of practices, whether people want to call them spiritual practices or just practices, which is designed to help me be the person I am meant to be in the world, and that I am hopefully growing towards day by day, and moment by moment. Deborah Waxman: One of the things about being a rabbi is people say, why are we here? They'll ask these big questions. I'm so grateful, that's one of the reasons I became a rabbi is to be able to engage and have the discipline and the opportunity to engage in the big conversations and then translate them into a very practical way. I think when I look up religions and wisdom traditions writ large, I think that my answer to why are we here is that we are here to learn how to grow in wisdom, learn to love each other better, and to improve somehow on this world that we've inherited. Deborah Waxman: For sure, I am religious rather than just spiritual because it moves me into a conversation both across history and with contemporary people in how to do that. You just boiedl it down so succinctly. It's astonishing to me that you had that awareness from such a young age and that you carried it through in your adult vocation as understanding... For me as a kid, even as I spent a lot of time in synagogue, it was so much about being with people. It was not much more than that. It was deeply abiding and sustaining but I couldn't ... And there was a lot of menschlichkeit embedded within it, but I couldn't articulate it... Marc Margolius: Well, in fairness, neither could I. I think in retrospect, I'm seeing the connections. I certainly have evolved. This was probably tucked away in the recesses of my awareness. It definitely has moved completely to the forefront of my awareness, where I see all of this as a seamless part of what we're here to do. It doesn't mean it's easy, it just means for me it just means it's clear and it really is applicable, what I appreciate about it is that it's applicable across the board from the most adamantly secular/atheist Jew to the most devout or pious or observant Jew. It has to do with how does Jewish civilization provide us with guidance that that's not just aspirational -- because that's the other part of it, is that I feel like I've lost appetite for the expressions of aspirational Judaism, which are great. They sound great. But what I'm interested in is how does it work? Does it actually matter? Marc Margolius: I'll just throw in here that, I often use this anecdote, when I was a rabbinical student, I was an intern at CLAL and Rabbi, Yitz Greenberg was the director of CLAL then, and he said something, I don't remember exactly the context. But he said something that really hit me where he said, and I've checked this quote with him, actually, in the last couple of months, because I quoted him so often and realized, I have no idea if he actually said this or not. He didn't say this exactly, but he said something to the effect that Judaism is about becoming a 15% better person than you are. Marc Margolius: At the time when he said that, it struck me because I thought, "15%?!" Deborah Waxman: That's not enough. Marc Margolius: That's not enough. I thought it's about becoming 100%, 110%. I was taken aback by that and now whenever I cite that, I then follow it up by saying,"Now that I'm older and wiser, I think 15%, that's ridiculous. I would accept 2% to 3% a year compounded annually, that would be fantastic." Now, just to throw this in, I did call him two months ago at his home in Riverdale to say, "Did you say something like this?" He didn't say exactly that. But he said something to the effect as he was speaking to rabbinical students and he said, "You should not expect your congregants to be 15% 'better' or more involved and more engaged than they are. Because you shouldn't set the bar too high." Marc Margolius: He comes from a mussar background and so it all got conflated. The point remains that Judaism is about raising the bar for our behavior and our inner life. At the same time, it recognizes that we're flawed, limited, mortal human beings who are not capable of perfection. That realistically, a little bit of improvement can mean a lot. Marc Margolius: For anyone who has experienced the Jewish High Holidays year after year, and goes over the same list of shortcomings and says, "Oh, this year I'm going to be better," and then find yourself the next year saying, "Well, let's try it again this year." Which is really my point, that the intention and resolutions are great, but they do not account for the hidden obstacles that are waiting for us and laughing as we're making those resolutions and saying, "Oh, yeah, well, you better be prepared to deal with the fact that when, just to be practical about it, that you're going to not be able to resist making a snarky or nasty comment at someone's expense, and then immediately regret it. Or that you're going to not be as generous as you might have been in your tzedakah because you are either rationally or irrationally worried about having enough for yourself for your family. Marc Margolius: I could go on and on about ways in which we might do better than we do and there are reasons why we don't. I think that's my particular interest in that. I'm actually more interested in the obstacles than the aspirations. Deborah Waxman: Okay. We're talking about a deeply pragmatic approach for incrementally improving our behavior, maybe our character. Give me an example, what do we ... I love the overarching framework, and now let's move to the precise. Do you ever use this term, like "technology" or "strategy"? Marc Margolius: Yes. Okay. I mentioned, first of all, just to get the terminology straight, I was using the word "middot," which are these ethical/spiritual qualities which are hardwired into every human being. I believe that they're there within us. We all have the capacity to be unconditionally loving. We all have the capacity to set boundaries, to set wise boundaries. We all have the capacity to regulate our ego and not veer towards egotism or self-centeredness, or complete self-negation. We all have the capacity for the middah that is known as "zerizut," which means energetic response. To step on the accelerator, get on the gas and to move. We all have the capacity for gratitude. We all have the capacity to foster a sense of connection, and we all have the capacity for speaking wisely, and also knowing when not to speak. Marc Margolius: Do we do all those things? Sometimes. Do we do them? Sometimes we do, and sometimes on the simple level of that question, okay, which button do I push? Which button is it wise for me to push at this moment? Is this a moment for unconditional love? Is this a moment for setting a boundary? Any parent for example, or child for that matter knows that well, you don't push just the unconditional love button or the boundary button, but that you are actually fine tuning the knobs -- you've got regulatory knobs that help you let the flow of unconditional love and mix it with the flow of an energy that sets limits to it, that sets boundaries. Marc Margolius: Each moment, and each situation calls for, invites us to, a particular mixture of that. For example, how do you discipline your kid? How do you set a boundary for your kid even if you're really angry in a way that communicates, that doesn't shame them, that communicates love and respect, and a boundary at the same time? Or how do you deal with a colleague or a friend or anybody for that matter? That's an art. It's not a science. Deborah Waxman: That is a practice. Marc Margolius: It is completely a practice. I want to step back for a second and say that, I'm approaching this from the perspective of Jewish mindfulness, which is the core of what we do at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, is present Judaism through the lens of mindfulness. I personally think that that is deeply, authentically Jewish even though it overlaps or borrows from other religious traditions, but anyone who's familiar with the Hebrew term "hineni" in the Torah, which means literally "I'm here", but really as it's used in Torah and in the Bible, connotes, "I am fully present, I am fully open and receptive to what's happening in this moment. My vision is not clouded by preconception or judgment." I think that's also a key thing here, is that you're asking me for the practical approach. It begins with that. It begins with trying to cultivate a stance towards life or an awareness that is informed by hineni, I'm here, I'm open, I'm trying to look for the truth of what is happening right now. Marc Margolius: In order to do this, and this sounds definitely countercultural Jewishly, although I don't believe it is, is that in that moment, we turn off judgment. That the part that I think at one point in my life would have sounded deeply antithetical to Judaism. What do you mean "no judgment?" It doesn't mean- Deborah Waxman: When you say antithetical to Jewism, both culturally and also... Marc Margolius: Religiously. Deborah Waxman: Religiously in discernment, making distinctions of... Marc Margolius: Yes. I'm not denigrating that quality, we definitely need that. But the practice here is in starting not with that, not starting with that judgment, not jumping into judgment or discernment, but building a pause, even if it's a split second pause, to say, "am I seeing this right?" Because if we start with the discernment and judgment, our lens is totally informed and bounded by our preconceptions and assumptions. This is I think, something that's quite topical for today. About how do we live in a way with a wide open lens where we see all the possibilities as best we can in the moment, just for a split second before we begin to say, "Okay, and what should I do now? What does this moment invite me to do?" Marc Margolius: This hineni practice and especially as we see it in Jewish sacred texts, are these moments of these characters who are responding to a situation and opening their ears fully, opening their eyes fully and they don't have an answer yet. They just have a split second when they say, "What is happening right now and what am I supposed to do?" The first question is, what's happening? Marc Margolius: I practice Hineni. Just to bring this back just because it's on my mind right now, this question about how do you discipline your kid? I might say like, I'm so ... In a reactive mode, in a less aware mode, I might snap at my kid, I might say something nasty, snarky, denigrating, mean, and immediately regret it. But that's what's going to come out of my mouth when I'm not practicing this. But if I can breathe for a second and say, "Remember you love this kid. Remember this kid needs to remember that they're loved." What comes out of my mouth has to have the middah of kavod, which is respect and honor for my child. Marc Margolius: So, I want to honor them and at the same time, I want to set a limit. I want to practice gevurah, which is setting a boundary and doing that in a strong and clear and loving way. The loving part is hesed. I need to communicate, I am not disconnecting from you, even though what I'm about to say is going to make you want to run in your room and slam the door and never talk to me again, I am staying connected to you. If this is coming from love from you, not from my own anger or my own shame or my own disappointment or my own fear about me. All of that is going on in this moment. Deborah Waxman: It sounds like to me like middot gives you a conceptual vocabulary out of which you can compose ... There's a school of thought that says that everything we do is performance. We're constantly constituting ourselves and performing at our moments and ... middot gives you a conceptual vocabulary to compose a response that's appropriate to the moment and the next moment, where you want to be in the next moment. Marc Margolius: Yeah. Sometimes I'll use this -- for people who have seen that movie, Inside Out, which has characters representing different emotions. I've seen that -- ironically, it's in the head, in the control center, in the head. But I'd love to make a movie with all the middot up there as well as characters vying for attention and at the control board we say, "Okay Anger, this is your turn." But temper it with, play a little hesed here. It's almost like you can also do it musically. What's the harmony or chorus that you're looking for in this moment? But it is exactly what you said, Deborah. It's a vocabulary which is ... In my experience and the experience of the people that I've done this with, extremely helpful, whether or not people do it. In other words, whether or not people actually ... let's say this, "You know what, this is a moment that calls for shemirat halashon. This is a moment that calls for me for mindful speech. You know what, I don't care I'm going to blow right through that red light and say this. Because I can't stop myself." Marc Margolius: I'm running a light. I see it's turning yellow, but I'm too close to the light, I'm going to take my chances. We all do that. We do that over and over. We see, no, no, no, don't do that, and then you go ahead and do it anyway. Having the vocabulary that we can step back and say, "Okay, here it comes. Oh, I can see that light, it's going to turn." Deborah Waxman: I was thinking this is a practice and pathway towards teshuvah. There's a pathway forward. It's a guide, but then also, as you said, the inevitable failings, the stumbling over the inevitable obstacles, and understanding of both -- maybe why or how that happened, and an opportunity to try it again. Marc Margolius: It is completely a teshuvah practice because it recognizes that as human beings, we are imperfect channels for the flow of these qualities out into the world. We get in the way. So, this is actually a good segue into that question of the obstacles and the teshuvah part. Because what happens when we say like, "Oh, you should say this." And then you say it. Or you say, "Don't put your kid down." And then you put your kid down because it feels good for some reason in the moment, or satisfying to vent your anger or your disappointment or your fear. And then you have to go in and say, "I'm really sorry I said it that way. I didn't mean that, I love you and I believe in you, blah, blah, blah." Marc Margolius: It is a teshuvah practice. As much as it's about trying to catch ourselves and practice it in our daily lives. As much as it is that, it's just as much about after the fact, learning from and saying, I see what happened there, and I'm going to reset my intention and go back to the drawing board. That's what Judaism is. It assumes we're going to quote, unquote "fail." Marc Margolius: The segue for me is to say, okay, because it's more than a set of terms or a vocabulary, although it is that. It's also an awareness, it's also growing in self-awareness so that we notice those obstacles as much as we notice these qualities and middot within us, we also notice what we might describe as the shadow side of those qualities in us as well, the things that get in the way. You might say that this is the manifestation of the yetzer ha-ra, the "evil inclination", which is usually seen as the demonic force within us where [inaudible]. The opposite of Jiminy Cricket, the other voice. Jiminy Cricket's on one shoulder, and his demonic partner's on the other shoulder vying for our attention, and we're between this endless war between good and bad, it's very binary. Marc Margolius: Our approach is actually non-dualistic in that way. That is to say that we do practice the middot, but they also have shadow sides. The shadow side is not the "bad part" of ourselves. We don't have a bad part of ourselves. But we have a part of ourselves that because we're human, we are capable of exaggerated fear, exaggerated craving, or desire, all of which is I think, a response to our mortality. We want more and more and more. We're greedy, or we're afraid and we are ultimately concerned for our survival. So, we want to protect ourselves and we're hardwired to do that. That doesn't mean we're bad people to be afraid. It means that we're people, we're human beings. Deborah Waxman: We're human. Marc Margolius: We're constructed to be afraid for the purpose of evolving and survival. That's a good thing. However, we can overreact. Here's a personal example. When I was leading a group, often this is done in small groups of people who commit to doing this as a practice and supporting each other as a practice. They have a hevruta or partner that they check in once a week, and they swap stories ... They study text, or they swap stories about here's how it's working out for me this week. Marc Margolius: I had to lead a group that that month happened to process how we were doing on the practice of hesed, of love and kindness or interconnectedness. I was just failing miserably in my mind. I live in New York City. On every street corner, on every subway car there's somebody -- a homeless person or an pan handler extending their hand and asking for help. I found myself, and this was in the middle of the winter. I found myself ... Trying to make this story brief. I found myself instead of being more generous, more expansive, more connected, more open handed with them, just the opposite, I found myself curling up, constricting, tightening my fist, judging them and not being generous at all. Marc Margolius: The more I noticed that and the more I knew you're supposed to be practicing hesed here, the worse it got. Until a day, actually just a couple of days ago here in New York when it was bitter, bitter cold. It was I think, literally two degrees. I got out of the subway and there was a guy on the street and I walked up to him and for whatever reason, in that moment, the extremity of the situation caused me to walk up to him, take out my wallet, and I look at my wallet and all I have are $20 bills. My first thought is, I can't give him a $20 bill, that's too much money. My second thought is, well, you cannot give it to him. You're standing right in front of him with your wallet out. Marc Margolius: I noticed my mind began to calculate how many Starbucks and coffees I will forego to make up the $19 that is more than what I intended to give. The next thought is to think that is crazy, irrational thinking. This is not going to matter to me one bit if I give this man this bill. You're just afraid, I thought. Afraid if I do this, I won't have enough. I saw that that was not true in the moment. So, I gave it to him. I also gave it to him and... I would say there might be situations where I would walk away thinking what a wonderful person I am. Who would do such a thing? I can hear my mother saying, "Oh, my son. What a mensch." Marc Margolius: I didn't have that. I didn't have that. For me, it was an example of experiencing hesed, that is, I was responding to this person in distress and my ego was not in it, either in terms of what I gave, or in terms of what I was afraid of. Marc Margolius: The point is that I was constricted, because I had a lot of people at that point in my life who were looking to me for help. And having a panhandler -- every block, having another person with an outstretched hand was intolerable for me. Here's the upshot of the story is that being able to see clearly what's going on to say, "Oh Marc, you're afraid. You're afraid you're not going to have enough. You're not going to have enough money. You're not going to have enough time. You're not going to have enough time to take care of yourself." I could then not judge myself for thinking, "You're so stingy, you're supposed to model hesed, you're a rabbi." That only made matters worse. That's where I said, the judgment is counterproductive. In this case, the answer is compassionate recognition of the fear that's involved, and compassion towards myself for that, which melted the fear enough for me to open my hand. Marc Margolius: All of the "shadow sides" of these middot, I think, generally stem from fear, exaggerated fear. When we can see our fears, and discern how much of them are rooted in reality, and how much of them are exaggerated -- they are rooted in reality. I thought I shouldn't be afraid that I'm not going to have enough. I should be afraid I'm not going to have enough or in fact, won't have enough. I can't afford to give away everything. Marc Margolius: But I also, I'm much more afraid that I need to be about that. If I can see, oh, you're just a scared human being like everyone else, and I can accept myself for that, actually, it helps then generosity and kindness and connection flow more naturally out of me. Deborah Waxman: That's a beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's beautiful. We have to actually wind down, but I want to make a reference, we had a wonderful convention in November 2018 where we gathered together 700 Reconstructionists -- it was really amazing. I had the honor of moderating a panel on food justice. We had Mike Dahl as one of the speakers who runs a really extraordinary project in Philadelphia called the Broad Street Ministry -- it back on to the story you just told about the homeless man living in extremis in New York City. They aim to provide a whole range of services including food and shelter with a lot of dignity to homeless people in Philadelphia. Deborah Waxman: In response to some question, I can't remember precisely what it was, Mike said, "Compassion is always the answer. I don't care what the question is, compassion is always the answer." I had never really thought ... Having this conversation, thinking back to that one, when I meditate on what does it mean to be hineni, what does it mean to be fully present? That story and that phrase that he just said of compassion for the other person and toward ourselves, I never thought of that as an interpretive translation of "hineni." But that's part of what sparks up for me: what gets opened up with that kind of mindful awareness, openheartedness to all entities. It just seems to me that the hesed and compassion is so integrally essential to showing up in the world the way we want to. Marc Margolius: Yeah, I would say that. Actually, I think that's a quality that distinguishes the way that we present this middot overlay, distinguishes us say from contemporary mussar approaches. It's a nuanced difference, but I think that ours really emphasizes exactly what you were just saying. It's interesting, because, hesed, the word hesed gets translated sometimes as lovingkindness and sometimes as compassion. I actually think about it as, it's linked to compassion but that's emotional state in a way, compassion. It's empathy, being with somebody and their feelings. Marc Margolius: I really understand hesed, I've come to understand hesed as "awareness of interconnectedness". In other words, I went up to this man on the street because I felt connected to him. That hesed was activated in me even though, in a completely automatic way, that's how "God was operating in me." Brought me face to face with this person. Marc Margolius: But also, even in the people I walked past with disdain or judgment, I was in connection with them too. My judgments reflected -- they evoked a reaction in me. The point I want to make is that I'd love to be openhearted and generous-hearted all the time. I just can't be. As a human being, I am going to be closed handed, I am going to be hard-hearted. The question, the most important question is, can I be compassionate towards myself? Can I be accepting of that and not compound the closed handedness and the tight heartedness by judging it? Actually, the story of Pharaoh which we just are getting through in the Torah cycle, where in the first five plagues in Egypt, he hardens his own heart or his heart is hardened, but in the last five plagues, the Torah describes God is hardening his heart. I really see that, I understand that as a natural part of the practice. That is, we are hard wired also to be hardhearted. Marc Margolius: But the purpose of becoming hardhearted is that it leads us back into openheartedness. The question is when we're in the hardhearted cycle, can we not have our hearts become sclerotic, or frozen, or concrete, but can we move through the natural cycle of constriction and expansion and promote expansion as we notice and ... I know the overall theme of this is resilience. Deborah Waxman: That's what I was just thinking about. Right, exactly. Marc Margolius: To me, that is the definition of resilience, its ability to be with the tightness and the constriction and the weight that we carry. Can we do that with grace, with compassion and acceptance of "this is hard." This is hard, and to the question of, is this an individual thing or collective thing? I think that's where the collective comes in. Because, for example, we might say, I might say, you know what, especially let's take the current political climate and situation, I might say, this is just so hard. I just can't keep this up. Marc Margolius: My instinct there to recognize that I'm at my end. I just can't watch or read one more thing, I can't go to one more march, is I can say, "You know what, I don't have to do this all by myself." That middah within me, the resilience, the conglomeration of middot that we might describe as leading to the capacity for resilience, leads me to say, "Oh, I don't have to do this by myself. Look, my friend is marching next week. Look, my friend is doing this. They're holding it for me for a moment." I have to sit and rest for a minute here. I need to recuperate. I need to get my bearings. I can let somebody else carry the ball for a little while and then get back in the game. That's all part of resilience. One person cannot do it. It's too much. Deborah Waxman: That's right. Marc Margolius: But we fall prey to the illusion that we have to do it ourselves. Deborah Waxman: Right. And then we [inaudible] rather than deeply interconnected. Marc Margolius: Yeah. That's the shadow side is to realize that, oh, oh, I'm falling into the illusion that I have to do it myself. That's why I feel so exhausted. So, paradoxically, that wakes me up, like what happened with the man on the street: that's crazy thinking. Of course, I cannot do this by myself. I think I have to save the world. I can't save the world. But *we* can. That awareness, that awareness alone lightens the load, and I say, "Oh, I can get up. I don't have to do it myself. I'm back in the game." Marc Margolius: If it isn't like, "What's the matter with you? You can't afford to sit on the sideline right now!" -- that's not going to help. I mean, some people that might help, but it's not a prescription I think for long term resilience. Short term, that might work -- long term, it's a prescription for total burnout. Deborah Waxman: This is a great place for us to wrap up. But I think that that's part of why the lens of resilience, it seems like such a great way to think about Judaism and Jewish life is because the Jewish people have been creating and recreating the Jewish civilization for millennia. So, there is some long view here, there's deep wisdom that has enabled both this amazing civilization and more to the point, the people who are part of it to persevere, to be resilient in the face of incredible joy and wonderful things and in the face of incredible challenge. Deborah Waxman: Thank you so much for this really, really rich conversation. I know we can keep going. We've only scratched the surface. But I'm so grateful for this conversation and for our friendship. I look forward to continuing it. And I want to thank you. Marc Margolius: Thanks Deborah, I really enjoyed this. Deborah Waxman: For more information you can find some of the resources that we've talked about on hashivenu.fireside.fm. You can also find additional resources on reconstructingjudaism.org and on ritualwell.org. I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman and you've been listening to Hashivenu: Jewish Teachings On Resilience.