Greg Marcus - American Mussar

Mussar Practice For Work Life Balance

August 11, 2017 By Greg Marcus Leave a Comment

It is no secret that I am a recovering workaholic. At my low point, I worked 90 hours a week, which was destroying my health, relationships, and my career. I brought balance to my life, but it took me a long time. Mussar helped me understand the root cause of my overwork. Here, I’ll share with you a mussar practice for work life balance.

Lets be clear: Work itself is not the issue. Pirkei Avot teaches us to “Love work” [1:10]. After all, the covenant gave us six days to work, and one day to rest (Avos D’Rebbi Nosson 11:1). The Talmud, too, teaches that labor is honorable, even in the house of study [Babylonian Talmud Nedarim 49b]. According to Rabbi Chaim David Halevy, “Work is sacred—it is building and creating a partnership with God in the work of creation” [Aseh L’cha Rav 2:6].

As practitioners of Mussar, we find the spiritual in everyday activities. Yes, our job is to assist God in the work of creation. (Or if you are unsure of the Divinity, think of it as helping the Universe.) Yet at the same time, our mission is to repair the world, to repair ourselves, and to elevate our spirit to a higher place. Excessive work—the true issue—is inherently unbalanced because it takes away from these other sacred obligations.

Think of your own life – when you are working too much, there isn’t enough time for sleep, friends, family, or fun. An excessive workload brings the soul trait of Moderation out of balance. To establish a Mussar practice for work life balance, we must first recognize the arguments we use to justify our excess.

Three Common Arguments That Rationalize Overwork

Fear: Some people blame their employer for “forcing them to work all the time.” For example, they are afraid that they will be fired if they do not promptly respond to email.
Love: Others work all the time out of a sense of mission and devotion. For example, many rabbis flirt with burnout because they love the congregation and service to God.
Happiness. People in this category say, “Yes, I work all the time, but it makes me happy. What’s wrong with that?”

Each of these rationalizations points to a soul trait out of balance. For example, feelings of happiness and love of the mission can mask the pursuit of Honor. The workplace is filled with opportunities to acquire Honor, from a pat on the head to a plaque for being employee of the month. I once saw someone recognized at a company meeting for canceling a family vacation to visit a customer. He glowed with pride, and was happy. I doubt his wife and kids were.

Attachment to work is emotional. Mussar teaches that a strong emotion cannot be changed simply by resolving to change. Similarly, an unbalanced life is not going to change by resolving to work fewer hours. Rather, we must passionately choose to walk on the middle path. Remember, we are presented with choice points (tests) every day. The key is to devise a strategy to pass the tests when they come up. See this post for more on choice points.

I have found that saying no to work was not helpful because my attachment to work was too strong. In addition, too many messages from my employer pushed me to work more. But, when I decided to prioritize my health and my family with passion, my work hours started to drop rapidly.

The key to work-life balance, like all Mussar practice, is to start where you are and take one small step towards balance. We need to cut back little by little, by saying Yes to things that are more important than work. For example, I chose to stop working at 9 pm in order to have time to wind down and sleep well. Then I stopped working at 8 to have more time with my wife, and then at 7 to have more time with my kids. Within a year, I had cut my hours by a third without changing jobs, and no one in the office even noticed! Yet my family life became a joy, and my health improved rapidly. And my career improved as well, in part because I was no longer a strung-out, exhausted wreck!

Three Soul Traits To Help You Establish a Mussar Practice For Work Life Balance

Enthusiasm. Excess work may indicate excess Enthusiasm for the wrong things. Rather than trying to work less, refocus Enthusiasm. Make health, family, and/or community a higher priority. Work is still important, but is it as important as your health? Of course not.
Trust. Attachment to work is emotional, and change can be laced with fear. Invest in trusting that God has your back, and that whatever happens, you will be ok. If you are unsure about the Divinity, remember that most things turn out ok. Make a few small, exploratory steps to build confidence and overcome the fear.
Order. Strictly rank your work projects, and focus on the top three. Get your manager to agree to the order, and agree that the other things are a lower priority. Next, do not accept any meetings or last minute requests that are not part of the top three. Offer kind alternatives – 5 minutes on the phone instead of a 30 minute meeting, or offer to meet the following week.

What soul trait would you practice to bring better balance to your life?

Want to learn more about yourself? Click Here to take the Soul Trait Profile Quiz to see which Soul Traits might be contributing to your overwork.

An earlier version of this post called Through a Mussar Lens: Striving for Balance was published in Yashar on MARCH 2015. Click here to see it.

Spiritual Responsibility: I Am Responsible For The Health Care Vote

July 27, 2017 By Greg Marcus Leave a Comment

When there is a public catastrophe, who has spiritual responsibility? It is hard to think of the votes to repeal Obamacare as anything but a catastrophe in the making. In Judaism, we place the highest value on human life. And make no mistake, if these bills become law, tens of millions of people will lose their health insurance. And without health insurance, many of these people will die prematurely. As it says in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 4:5) “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

It is so easy to blame others. I would like nothing better than to get on Facebook and Twitter to rage against the people who voted for this bill. I’d love to lash out at the people who voted for the politicians who supported this bill. I could write volumes, accusing various politicians and their supporters of being terrible people, and point to various verses in Torah to support my position. But that is not a spiritual answer to this crisis.

In his book “This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared,” Rabbi Alan Lew writes that when it comes to a catastrophe, “the only question worth asking about any recurring catastrophe, is this: what is my responsibility for it? How am I complicit in it? How can I prevent it from happening again?”

Therefore, while I did not vote for anyone responsible for the Obamacare rollback, I need to take personal responsibility. Thus, spiritual responsibility is very different than the types of leadership and personal responsibility that we usually talk about. I take responsibility for this situation in the following two ways.

Spiritual Responsibility for the Electoral College

I have never spoken out against the Electoral College. If we had a different system of government, in which the person who gets the most votes becomes President, we would not be in this situation. As a people, we made a vow of Never Again after the Holocaust. But after the 2000 election, when Al Gore won the popular vote, he was denied the Presidency because the supreme court stopped a recount. As a result, George Bush became President, invaded Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of people died. I never demanded an end to the Electoral College after Bush. As a result, we once again have a President who is not supported by the majority of Americans, and who is putting lives at risk.

Spiritual Responsibility for the gerrymandering

I have never taken a stand against gerrymandering, the process of setting up congressional districts to favor one political party over another. The problem is acute, and largely underreported. For example, according to the New York Times, in 2012, 1.5 million more people voted for Democrats in Congress, but the outcome was a 234 to 201 Republican majority. More recently, AP reported that in 2016, gerrymandering resulted in a comfortable Republican majority instead of a narrow one in the House. This fall the Supreme Court will look at whether Wisconsin’s redistricting plan is constitutional. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has called this case the most important one the Supreme court will hear next term. And, Rabbi Michael Knopf argues that gerrymandering is against Jewish law. He explains that we are all descended from one person, and therefore all have equal value (Sanhedrin 4:5).

Spiritual Responsibility & Mussar Practice

Judaism and Mussar practice in particular, teaches that it is not enough to do no harm; rather we must proactively do good. When it comes to decisions like going to war, or removing healthcare from tens of millions of people, we need a system that awards power to the person with the most votes.

I don’t know if Obamacare will be repealed or not. It doesn’t matter, because as long as the Electoral College and gerrymandering are supported by rule of law, we remain at risk for a continued assault on the values we hold most dear. While the Republican Party is benefitting today from gerrymandering and the Electoral College, that could change in the future. If California and New York were to gerrymander the way Wisconsin and Pennsylvania did, our system would be worse, the the power would shift. We don’t want to live in that world. The Soul Trait of Truth teaches us to distance ourselves from a false matter, and the more we have gerrymandering, the farther we are from the truth.

As a Mussar community, we need to stand against this injustice, and demand an end to gerrymandering and the electoral college. I am firmly convinced that if our President and legislatures are more reflective of public opinion, we will have a government that works for the people instead of putting their lives at risk.

Ok, this is how I am taking spiritual responsibility for this situation. But Mussar, like all spiritual practices, is individual. How will you take spiritual responsibility? Please comment below.

Slabadka Mussar Practice: Three Key Principles According to Rabbi Avi Fertig

June 18, 2017 By Greg Marcus 1 Comment

Recently, I watched a delightful webinar by Rabbi Avi Fertig about the Slabodka Mussar Practice. Rabbi Fertig is the Associate Dean of the Mussar Institute, and this webinar was a members only event, so I cannot share a link to it here. Background: Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the founder of the 19th Century Mussar Movement, had three key disciples, each of whom started their own school of Mussar. Slabodka was started by Rabbi Nosson Zvi Finkel, who was known as the Alter of Slabodka.

I absolutely loved learning about the teachings of this flavor of Mussar because they so closely align with the principles of American Mussar. Here are the three key principles of Slabodka Mussar practice.

Slabodka Mussar Practice Principle #1: Pleasure

Rabbi Nosson Zvi Finkel, the Alter of Slabodka wanted people to study Mussar because it was good, and pleasurable. As a proof text he sited Psalms 34:9. Taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed are those who take shelter in Him. He wanted pleasure seekers as students in his Yeshivot, and to direct their pleasure towards the spiritual realm. He taught that are so used to physical pleasures, we do not appreciate them. This is a core teaching of the soul trait of Gratitude.

Slabodka Mussar Practice Principle #2: Individuality

The Alter of Slabodka taught that each student is different, and needs to be dealt with in his/her unique way. His proof text was from Talmud Pesachim 118a,”God punishes each person based on his means.” Slabodka schools demanded individuality of each student. One can’t imitate others, and we each need to go our own way. This was not a one size fits all approach to parenting and education, which was radial in its day. He wanted his students to think and rethink, as a way of building the individual world of each student. Thus, he demanded that students think for themselves and think deeply.

Slabodka Mussar Practice Principle #3: The Greatness of Human Beings

Finally, Rabbi Finkel stressed that each person is created in the likeness of God. This is a huge contrast to Rabbi Salanter’s approach of focusing on deficiencies. Finkel stressed that each of us has great potential. We are great and amazing right now. Because of that, we have enormous capacity to bring good into the world. Here in the webinar, Rabbi Fertig shared that he is the product of a Slabodka Yeshiva. As a student, he felt special and unique. He was taught that when you look at another human being, realize you are seeing God’s presence in the world.

The Alter of Slabodka hired a tailor to be at the yeshiva, so students would feel like the image of God. Seeing one’s own greatness is a catapult towards greatness. Dressing well is a reminder to perfect yourself because that is your true form.

I particularly love this last teaching. We all have a Divine Spark occluded by our baggage. Mussar helps us move the bags, and let the light shine through.

Three Tips To Practice Mussar Equanimity

June 13, 2017 By Greg Marcus Leave a Comment

Many people starting their Mussar journey jump to the chapter on Equanimity. I remember doing exactly that, and then being confused. In this post, I’ll explain why this soul trait is hard, and offer you some ways to practice Mussar Equanimity. As you may recall, Equanimity translates directly from Hebrew as “calmness of the soul.” Equanimity in balance means that, we have the ability to keep our head, to not get too high when things are going well, and not too low in a setback.

Right now, my own Equanimity is being challenged. You have been sending me lots of feedback on what to write about, and I have to battle not to get too excited – part of me wants to just keep working to learn everything I can, and turn that info around in blog posts and new offerings. That voice is my Evil Inclination, trying to get me off the workaholic bandwagon. I know that path, and the outcome for me isn’t good.

My Equanimity was challenged in the opposite direction, this past weekend. I was talking to a friend from my corporate days, who mentioned that he ran into someone who I used to work with. I was surprised at how overcome I was with negative feelings. Yes, I have reason to dislike this person, because they directly caused me “harm” and made some decisions that in my opinion set back the company in a big way. I “watched” in amazement as my Equanimity was thrown off. I became upset – my blood pressure went up, and I started bad mouthing the person. The latter is a real Mussar no no, and I knew it. Yet the words just tumbled out of my mouth.

WOW. This is exactly why Mussar is a practice. We need to keep working to gradually over time heal and bring these soul traits towards balance. I’ll frame the remainder of the story around three paths to help you practice Mussar Equanimity.

1. Practice Mussar Equanimity Directly

I think of Equanimity as being what Eckhart Tolle calls “the watcher,” which is our higher consciousness that exists independently of, and behind the thinking mind. When we are the watcher, we are mindfully present, and better able to access our free will. In the story above, I was being the watcher as my ego bad mouthed this person. Because I was mindfully present, I said less than I might have otherwise, and limited myself to a factual recitation of the things the person had done. I kept judging thoughts out of my mouth. For example, I did not use words like “evil” or “poisonous.”

It is very hard to directly build Equanimity. It required a practice like mediation to learn how to both observe and quiet thoughts as they come into the head. Tolle’s book The Power of Now is the best I have read on the direct approach to Equanimity.

2. Practice Mussar Equanimity Indirectly

There is a reason that I put the chapter on Equanimity late in my Mussar book. It is hard to just do, especially because our Equanimity is often thrown off by other underlying soul traits that are out of balance. I can look within, and see many other soul traits that contributed to my Equanimity imbalance. For example, my Honor was activated because today I was judging this person based on something they did 10 years ago; Humility because I think I know better than this person who was much more senior than I was; Silence because I could not keep quiet; and of course Forgiveness. I am a grudge holder. Rabbi Micha Berger has an interesting suggestion on how not to hold a grudge in this article. Part of the answer is to remember a teaching from Alan Morinis – often when things go wrong, they only seem wrong to us, which is a gift because we are being shown a part of our spiritual curriculum, and thus an opportunity for growth.

By committing to our Mussar practice, we begin to heal the various soul traits that disturb our Equanimity.

3. Take a Walk in Nature.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook once wrote the following: “The song of the birds as they perch in the trees… the sweet smells of lilies and the fruit of God’s garden…return one’s mind to it’s natural state.” (With Heart in Mind by Alan Morinis chapter 12). Kook’s advice to seek nature to restore tranquility is supported by modern science – numerous studies have shown that being in nature lowers blood pressure, and improves depression.

Sorry, there are no magic bullets. But that good news is that a Mussar practice can be conducted in about 5 minutes a day. They are five minutes that can and will transform your life.

Want to figure out which soul traits are disturbing your equanimity? Take the Soul Trait Profile Quiz.

Mussar Practice Can Heal the Political Divide Within the Jewish Community

May 19, 2017 By Greg Marcus Leave a Comment

Whoever you voted for in the last Presidential election, I think we can all agree that we are living in dangerous times for the US, Israel, and the American Jewish community. We are seeing an uptake in anti-sematic acts like the burning of the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol synagogue in New York that is suspected to be caused by arson, and the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. In my area in San Francisco Bay Area, some synagogues are hiring on site security people for the first time to allay the fears of parents about dropping their kids off. To deal with this time of danger, we need to recognize that Mussar practice can heal the political divide within the Jewish community.

Jane Eisner’s editorial in the Forward “Enough After Israel Intelligence Betrayal?” makes the argument that President Trump’s recent actions have exacerbated the danger to Jews and Israel. Eisner highlights many of the actions Trump has or his administration have taken, such as failure to keep his promises to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem, and to cancel the Iran Deal. In addition, Trump berated an Orthodox Jewish reporter, stood by when someone in his administration said that the Kotel is not part of Israel, and now has endangered Israeli intelligence assets by improperly communicating info to Russia. She gives each example to build a case why Jewish (mostly Orthodox) Trump supporters should reconsider their support for the President.

While I agree with many of Eisner’s points, the article has an accusatory tone, with a subtext of “how can you still be so stupid to stand by Trump.” I’m sorry, but rubbing Trump voters’ noses in the poo will not change anyone’s mind, and certainly won’t help heal the divide plaguing this country.

Right now we are in the period of the Omer, when we remember the 24,000 disciples of Rabbi Akiva who died because they did not have Kavod (Honor/Respect) for one another. The deep divisions within American, and within the Jewish community concern me, and make me wonder if we are setting ourselves up for another great tragedy. There is no way Trump would have been elected were it not for a reservoir of pain, frustration, and alienation for him to exploit.

The Jewish Spiritual Practice of Mussar offers each of us an alternative. We can practice the soul trait of Honor by listening, questioning, and inviting the Other into relationship. Rather than ask, “have you had enough yet?” we can ask, “Is this what you were expecting?” You voted based on one set of information. As new information comes to the fore, is this a President you can still support? Where do we have common ground? We may disagree on the Egalitarian space at the Wall, but we all agree that it is an inseparable and integral part of Israel.

Mussar is a Jewish spiritual practice that can help each and every one of us become a mensch. The first step is to stop salivating on the non-menchy behavior or mistakes of others. Pirkei Avot (1:6) teaches that we should give all individuals the benefit of the doubt. Let’s be clear – I am not advocating giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, not given the pattern of behavior we have seen these last months in office. But the people who voted for them, how about we show them the benefit of the doubt?

Now more important than ever. We must resist the urge to say “I told you so”, or to characterize supporters on the other side as evil, racist, weak, stupid, or corrupt. To be frank, the last election no longer matters, nor does the next one. What matters is healing our community to stand together against a common threat. We saw a great example of this recently when Jewish students from across the political spectrum came together at Northwestern to protest a convicted Palestinian terrorist who was speaking.

The split between the Orthodox and the rest of the Jewish community is not a secret. If we can model menchy behavior, respectful speech, healing, and coming together towards a common position on the political crisis, imagine the example we could set for the rest of the world. For as it says in Proverbs 18:19 “It is harder to win an offended brother than a strong city.” And when we do, we shall be a “light to the nations— so that all the world may be saved.” Isaiah 49:6.

This is not a job you can outsource to someone else. Mussar practice offers a path in which we take responsibility for our own actions. As a first step, elevate your conduct on the internet, by replacing shaming and accusatory language with questioning, listening, and inviting another’s opinion into your worldview. As it says in Proverbs “To answer someone before hearing him out is both stupid and embarrassing.”

The good news is that we don’t need to model consensus or universal agreement. We just need to model how to disagree and remain in community. And when we do, the areas of common interest will rise to the fore.

Who will you reach out to today?

Looking for a Mussar book that focuses on social action? Check out Changing the World from the Inside Out: A Jewish Approach to Personal and Social Change by Rabbi David Jaffe on our Mussar Books page.