May 20, 2013 | 10:49 am

Finding G-d in the Little Places

Posted by Beit T'shuvah

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By Matt Shapiro

In the series finale for The Office, there were a number of moments that touched me (yes, I am someone who cries easily at movies and TV). The one I found most moving featured the resident office weirdo, Creed Bratton, toward the very end of the episode. He commented that, “no matter how you get there or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home.” He was talking about his office, but truthfully, he could have been talking about any office, or any place at all where people consistently gather over time. Every place we come together is a place where a home, where community can be built. Whether it’s a workplace, an apartment, a place of worship or a rehab, any location holds the possibility for feeling connected to others and a sense of belonging.

One of the many, many names for God in the Jewish tradition is makom, frequently translated as “place.” On first glance, this seems to be an odd name for the preeminent spiritual being in the universe; why would we call God “location?" I believe the wacky Mr. Bratton spells it out pretty clearly. Each location in which we find ourselves offers the possibility for a relationship with something bigger than us, even if it’s not readily apparent. The workplace in The Office is mundane, inane and, occasionally, insane, but rarely does it seem spiritual. And yet, seemingly each character in the final episode remarks on how their time at work has transformed their life for the better and deepened their experience of the world.

The narrative device here is important as well. The whole premise for this TV series has been the filming of a documentary about this paper company, and the final episode depicts their reactions to the documentary itself after it has aired. Now that the characters have had time to reflect on this project, their reactions are uniformly positive, full of gratitude for the opportunity to see how they have grown over the years and how they have formed deeper connections with each other than they may have initially thought. As most of us, thankfully, aren’t the subject of reality TV shows, we have to find our own moments to take a step back and reflect on our relationships and community, wherever it may be. Only then can we see if we’re truly open to the ways in which we can deepen our time at the places we spend each day, lest the weeks, months, or nine years go by before we’ve noticed whether or not we’ve really built something that’s meaningful, even holy.

Bonus thought, based on a narrative spoiler (if you haven’t seen the finale, and are planning to, don’t read this yet): Unfortunately, I think the main surprising plot development in the last episode goes counter to this whole concept and, in many ways, the main theme of the series. Pam, who had previously been reluctant to go along with her husband Jim’s plans to move into a different, riskier, higher profile job, sells their family’s house without him knowing to leap together into the great unknown. But if there is indeed “a lot of beauty in everyday things,” as she says in the final lines of the show, then why do they need to go anywhere but where they already find themselves? It’s a more dramatic turn of events, but it’s a betrayal of the simplicity and acceptance that are at the core of what’s allegedly being communicated. Jim says just a few minutes earlier, “everything I have, I owe to this job.” So why leave that makom behind in search of something else?

May 17, 2013 | 1:29 pm

The Purpose of Religion

Posted by Beit T'shuvah

By Rabbi Mark Borovitz

My daughter, Heather, recommended a book to me and I have started to read it. It is called Manuscript Found in Accra by Paulo Coelho and Margaret Jull Costa. As I have begun to read it, I found these two lines that struck me. “They don’t understand that religion was created in order to share the mystery and worship, not to oppress or convert others. The greatest manifestation of the miracle of God is life.”

Wow, what a mouthful. Simple, yet so difficult for most of us to do, which bothers me to no end! Last week, I was able to participate in the Valley Beth Shalom honoring of my friend and teacher, Rabbi Ed Feinstein. Ed has spent the last 20 years sharing the mystery and worship of God with all of us in Los Angeles. He has honored life and truly sees the reflection of God in each and every person. So, what stops the rest of us from doing this better?

Because we think that money, power and prestige are all that matters. Because we think that narcissism is natural and right. Because we believe that oppressing/blaming someone else will make the truth we know about our own shortcomings and errors go away! Because we believe that without converting others to “our way” we must be wrong. Because we don’t believe in anything really, so we must make another believe in “our way.”

I suggest that we follow Rabbi Ed’s example. He reaches out to the poor and gives them a meal, not a thrashing. He welcomes the stranger and gets to know them, again over a meal, without trying to convert them. He cares for the sick, the orphan and widow with words of comfort and love, not blame and disdain. Rabbi Ed is a master teacher. Yet, his actions speak so much louder than his words.

I don’t want to oppress you or convert you. I do want you to join me in being addicted to redemption. Why? So that all of us can appreciate the Miracle of God, life, a little bit more. So that all of us can share the mystery of life and God with each other and everyone else. So that all of us can join together to find the path to worship through caring for each other. So that each us can live lives of meaning, purpose and passion. Your way is good, Her way is good, and my way is good if we all are on the way to worshiping, enlarging, sharing and enjoying LIFE a little more each day.

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May 16, 2013 | 10:56 am

What I Learned From Shavuot All-Night Study

Posted by Beit T'shuvah

By Inga Roizman

I loved it. Two nights ago I was honored to see my coworkers, our residents, and other members of the community speak about what they need to learn most. I was struck by the vulnerability that each of them granted us with their lesson.

Some discussions were impassioned and animated, some were simply a gentle acknowledgement of shared understanding.  All of it was amazing to learn together. I want to thank everyone that took their time to share with us.

Today, I’m still exhausted but inspired to learn MORE. I have the tendency to go way off into the philosophical and ethereal and I have to remember what is right in front of me.  I have to be present and take care of the next right thing.  This is the fundamental state I need to remain in, the present.

I think that’s the deal. It’s a practice.

There are some things I just don’t want to be mindful about yet. I still smoke although it’s not in alignment with the truth that it can kill me.  That’s a space where I am not mindful and it’s filled with unconscious and conscious shame.

I suppose I’m in the contemplation stage.

The recovery culture simply propagates social cigarette smoking but, it is my responsibility to change what I do, I have a choice!  Ugh, It’s so much easier to dismiss this whole notion of quitting and go on stinking like an ashtray.

Being present means looking at the truth.

I’ve made some changes that are more in alignment. I do not drink or take drugs. I don’t eat sugar. I’m working on extreme mindfulness with my finances.

Wow, I think I learned something.

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May 13, 2013 | 5:45 pm

The Best Way to Enact Change

Posted by Beit T'shuvah

By Matt Shapiro

I often want to reorganize.  Instead of being willing to work within a system, I’m frequently trying to find the ways that it could be better. This tendency has its positive aspects, but more frequently it leads to a pattern of me being dissatisfied with what currently is and too overwhelmed to change things, while also not focusing on how I can work better within the system as it currently exists.

For example: much of the work I do at Beit T’Shuvah is under the heading of “spiritual counseling.” What is spiritual counseling? In short, we, as spiritual counselors are the advocates for the soul of the resident, utilizing Jewish texts, spiritual resources and our own experiences in order to help the resident along the path of their own recovery. Naturally, I want to find ways to make this more systematic, both to make it more efficient and, of course, to make it in my own image (places of ego run rampant and need transparency). Based on a conversation I had last week, overnight I came up with a completely different model for spiritual counseling, involving group text learning, specialized individual sessions and department-wide consultations about texts and group dynamics. Excited, I shared this with Shira, one of my fellow spiritual counselors the next day; she looked at me, as only she can, and said simply, “Well, that sounds pretty complicated. I don’t think that would work for me, but if it works for you, go for it.”

Of course, she was right. My own desire to do better at my own job and discomfort with how to manage my own workload doesn’t need to cause an entire stylistic shift in the department. Furthermore, her point leaves the advancement of my idea squarely on my shoulders, rather than moving it to a group responsibility, so I can later huff and puff about how my great idea isn’t moving forward.

In reflecting on this, I’m beginning to realize that, though there is an earnestness and a will to improve in my “reworking reflex,” there’s also an equal amount of procrastination and avoidance. Why focus on what’s in front of me when it could be different and, of course, better? I need to find the ways to balance my brainstorming and hopes to innovate, with a willingness to be present in the reality of my situation and the patience to see things through one day at a time, instead of radically reconfiguring them at the drop of a hat.

There’s a famous teaching from Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, that is usually translated as “it is not your responsibility to complete the work, neither are you free to ignore it.” It’s not my job to come up with the ideal systems or organizational structures for my department, let alone all of Beit T’Shuvah, and I also have the responsibility of engaging with the questions of “what’s the best way to do this?” Where I really need to apply that inquisitiveness, though, is in my own life. It’s not my job to find all of the ways I need to improve my own tendencies, behaviors and actions right away, but I’m also not free to ignore that responsibility…and certainly not free to tell someone else the best way they should do their job. The ways in which we hide from ourselves can be toxic, and, at the same time, tremendously freeing once they (and we) are found.

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May 10, 2013 | 11:11 am

Have the Courage to Stand Up For Others

Posted by Beit T'shuvah

By Rabbi Mark Borovitz

As I sit at the computer this morning to write my weekly blog, I am unable to understand the swirl of thoughts that are going through my head. I am thinking about the women in Cleveland. I am thinking about a speaker we had at Beit T’Shuvah on Wednesday night, David Sheff. I am thinking about my late father. I am just a bunch of thoughts with no one theme, it seems. As I am writing this, I get why all of these people come together for me.

COURAGE- this is the theme and the connection. The courage of a man to respond to cries for help. The courage of a woman to cry for help. The courage of three women to stay alive and not give up hope. The courage of David Sheff to write about the great tragedy of addiction. The courage of my father to treat every person as a human being regardless of race, color, religion, ethnicity, sexual preference, etc.

I sit here at the computer and wonder, why is courage in such short supply? Why are NIMBY and NMB so prevalent in our country today? I think that courage is in great supply today; we just don’t recognize it. I see courage every day when I watch the struggle of people striving to live well. I see courage in our donors who are not afraid to honor the dignity of another human being, no matter who they are. I see courage each day in Avia Rosen who fights the cancer that tried to take over her body. I see courage each day in the staff who come to work, knowing they are in a life and death struggle. I see courage each day in people from all walks of life who wrestle to make their corner of the world a little better each day. I ask myself, do I admire and emulate this courage or do I hide?

NIMBY, short for not in my backyard, is a place to hide in plain site. It allows me to be prejudiced and cowardly while “standing up for myself.” It is a lie and a sham. Who are any of us to say NIMBY unless we are saying NIMBY to injustice, hatred, prejudice, poverty, etc. We are all immigrants and all resident aliens. It is God who helped us get to where we are, other people helped us get here, yet we forget and say NIMBY! How arrogant can we get?

NMB is short for not my business. Have you noticed how many people don’t get involved because they say NMB? How often have you read about something and said, NMB? Yet we get mad when Corporations and Government say NMB. We get angry when the Supreme Court refuses to hear our plea because they say NMB. Yet, we can say it at will and without rhyme or reason. What is wrong with us? Do we forget the words inscribed on a wall in the National Holocaust Museum, when they came for me, there was no one to help?

This week, let us recommit to be courageous and honor the courage of others. Our Sages say, in a place where there is no human, be human. Please God, please all of us, let us live this teaching a little more this week.

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May 8, 2013 | 7:47 pm

DSM vs. Soul

Posted by Beit T'shuvah

By Inga Roizman

The manual in which to diagnose mental illness is the DSM. If you don’t know, DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. New “illnesses” are added every 10ish years as the culture’s atmosphere fluctuates.  While many of the diagnoses found in the text can be valid, the new DSM V is doing more harm than good. This book does it’s best to dissect the human condition and reduce personality traits and moods to numerical codes which are used to bill insurance.

One of the newest “illnesses” that doctors can now prescribe treatment for is grieving.  That’s right grieving is now considered a clinical disorder.  What?  Are they really trying to diagnose the human condition?

Now, I realize I sound a little chippy. And I am. And I just made up the word chippy, but it seems to describe how I’m feeling about the new DSM V.

Yes, grieving is painful, isn’t that what makes us human?  Imagine you lost someone you love.  Maybe your child suffered from an incurable disease.  Grieving over that loved one is part of the process that the living must go through.  Will medicating your feelings away bring back that person from death?  No, yet here we are.

Recently, the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health published a blog outlining what research the U.S. government would fund. The NIMH has decided to no longer rely on the DSM, a text that has long been seen as a holy document in the realm of psychology…this is a huge deal.

Now let me introduce the RDoC, NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria.  It’s another book. It’s the one the drug companies will have to use to get funding for research in bipolar, schizophrenia, autism.  These guys want to look for biological causes.  I’m not against that.

I am against attaching a label, a code number that insurance companies can know them by when the human condition is ever changing, full of movement and growth and comes with many parts. 

G-d knows I’m not against drugs, but the soul of the human being is so often forgotten.

This hoopla is what has drawn me into the Positive Psychology movement, a model in which depression is treated with happiness. Where optimism is cultivated and hope is instilled through gratitude. 

The soul must find nourishment or it turns on itself. I believe it’s the job of anyone in the psychology field to help people find purpose and connection.  That’s the ideal we should all strive toward.

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May 6, 2013 | 3:05 pm

Sports and Spirituality

Posted by Beit T'shuvah

By Matt Shapiro

 

Despite living in Southern California for the better part of a decade, I still consider myself to be a Chicagoan. This is most clearly reflected in the sports teams I root for: Bears, White Sox and Bulls. I was thrilled that over the weekend, the Bulls defeated the Brooklyn Nets in the deciding game of their first-round playoff series to move on to face the defending champion Miami Heat, both because of my own personal rooting interests and, if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief, deeper spiritual reasons as well. In this game, the Bulls were missing two different players who were in the starting lineup at the beginning of the series. On top of these key absences, all season long the Bulls have been without Derrick Rose, one of the best players in the league, who has been out since the playoffs last spring after tearing his ACL. So what?, you ask. Any team can win short-handed once in a while. What makes this situation notable in my eyes is the underlying philosophy of the Bulls’ coach, Tom Thibodeau.

Coach Thibs, as he’s known (saving me from having to type that more than once), espouses a coaching philosophy of hard work and hustle, always pushing his players to the limit of their talent and energy. Over the past two weeks, each time he was asked about the key players the Bulls were missing, Thibs has said simply, “We have more than enough to win.” Instead of coming up with excuses in advance or finding half-hearted ways of explaining how his team might still have a chance, he answered confidently and without hesitation in support of his team. The effort of his players reflected the faith of their coach, keeping their season alive.

To be sure, there are people in our world who are needy, missing things they sorely need, in which lack of success is not merely a case of lack of effort. At the same time, there are also many of us who have everything we need, and either cannot see it (because of our own blindness) or choose not to see it (so that we can always have either 1. an excuse, for when things don’t go our way, or 2. something superficial to be striving for). I’m blessed each day to have more than enough, and when I remember that, not only am I in a place where I’m more able to see accurately what’s right in front of me, but I’m happier too.

It calls to mind the well-known song many of us sang a few weeks ago at our Seders, Dayenu, in which we recount all of the different things God has provided for us, listing them all and reciting after each, “dayenu,” it would have been enough to just have this. Having it, whatever it is, isn’t a guarantee of success, but noticing that it’s present deepens what’s possible. It’s easy for me to lose sight of how much I have, and I’m humbled when I remember to notice those gifts. I’m so used to the presence of my wife and child that I have to make a point to remember how lucky I am to have them and how grateful I am; without them, I wouldn’t have nearly enough to contend, let alone win, but because they’re fixtures in my life, I can lose sight of that. Another example: it would have been enough for the Bulls to just make it past the first round of the playoffs after everything that happened…dayenu! But, man, it will really be great if we could take down the Heat…

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May 3, 2013 | 1:55 pm

The Interests of Others Have to be Our Concerns

Posted by Beit T'shuvah

By Rabbi Mark Borovitz

I just read an article in New York Magazine and I am terribly distressed. This article goes against everything that I believe Judaism stands for and is, a Hillul HaShem! The article talks about the Hassidic Communities of Western Rockland County, New York and the way that the Hassidic Communities have created/recreated the Shtetl experience of Eastern Europe. I am in awe of the communal aspect that has happened and the care/tzedakah that is lived by the Hassidim!

Yet, the way they treat the other people, also poor, in their midst is a Shanda! He Hassidim voted in a majority on the School Board. They have since gutted the school system, they have taken advantage of Special Education, using it only for them, and they have fired educators and made it impossible for students to get a high school education in 4 years. What is going on???

Who is being hurt the most? Other immigrants. Other poor people, what are we doing? Judaism teaches us to care for the widow, stranger, poor and orphan because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Yet, we are not doing this.

Is there anti-Semitism? Of course! So, does this give us the right to do the same treatment to others? Should we use the tactics of haters and despots to ruin the lives of others? What is going on ??

This is not a diatribe against the Hassidim because they don’t recognize my Smicha. Many of my own colleagues in all denominations don’t recognize my Smicha. In fact, I have heard people comment that I could only be a Rabbi for Recovering Addicts because no self-respecting Shul would give “him”(me) a job. This is not a diatribe against Hassidim because they practice Judaism different than me. No, this is a diatribe against using other’s vulnerabilities against them. This is a diatribe against using power to harm others as one has felt harm from others in power. This is a diatribe against using Religious Practice as an excuse to harm others well-being and rights to an education and basic human services/needs.

We have to give voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. This is our heritage, this is our history, this is our Command from God! Be a light unto the nations the Prophets tell us. What would Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos, Nathan, etc. say to the Hassidim in power? What would they say to us in the way we treat the poor, widow, orphan and stranger? Can you face God and/or the Prophets with the way you give power to the powerless and voice to the voiceless? Have you hugged an addict today? Have you helped a stranger today? Have you noticed the world around you and made it better today? Have you used the “law of the land” to care for yourself and yours to the detriment of others?

Jews care for all, even our enemies. We have to act as God’s representatives and not from self-interest alone. Rabbi Heschel, a descendant of the Apter Rav, says the interests of others have to be our concerns. Are they?

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