Mensch·Marks: Table of Contents


Introduction: Mensch•Marks

Part One: Work and Worship
Mensch•Mark 1 A Young Rabbi: Are Exuberance and Wisdom the Product of One’s Age?
Mensch•Mark 2  Gentleman’s Agreement: How I Learned to Afflict the Comfortable and Comfort the Afflicted
Mensch•Mark 3  The Santa Suit: Do the Clothes Make the Rabbi?
Mensch•Mark 4  Rising Above the Hate: How Being a Rabbi Has Helped Me to Become a Far More Loving, Far More Forgiving Human Being
Mensch•Mark 5  Saturday Morning Fever: Touching Souls in a Germophobic Age
Mensch•Mark 6  Mentioning the Unmentionable: Smashing Taboos and Sacred Cows
Mensch•Mark 7  Dancing Sheva: Flowing with the Rhythms of Sacred Time
Mensch•Mark 8  Superrabbi, the Flawed Model: Taking Myself off the Pedestal
Mensch•Mark 9  Shedding the Baggage: Baring My Soul Before God

Part Two: Loving and Letting Go
Mensch•Mark 10  Fathers and Sons: The Power of Parental Presence
Mensch•Mark 11  The Dangling Knife: The Parent as Sculptor, Mentor, and Shield
Mensch•Mark 12  Hugging, Blessing, Letting Go: With Every Embrace There Must Be a Release
Mensch•Mark 13 Leaping with Angels: My Sick Child, My Dying Congregant, and Salvation from an Unexpected Source
Mensch•Mark 14  My Brother’s Keeper: On Disability and Destiny
Mensch•Mark 15  The Peter Panning of America: Can the Past Remain Ever-Present?

Part Three: The Nobility of Normalcy
Mensch•Mark 16  Living on the Back Pages: Holiness Lies in the Sacred Pulse of Daily Life
Mensch•Mark 17  The Forbidden Oreo: We Are What We Eat
Mensch•Mark 18  The Invisible Fence: Setting Behavioral Boundaries
Mensch•Mark 19 The Power Grid: Recognizing the Limits and Potential of One’s Power
Mensch•Mark 20  Paradise in a Sandbox: Recovering the Pure Faith of a Child

Part Four: Pain and Perseverance
Mensch•Mark 21  The Other Side of the Bed: Healer as Patient
Mensch•Mark 22 Numb and Numb-er: My Task Is Not to Numb the Pain but to Highlight the Inherent Beauty of Life
Mensch•Mark 23  Goodness and Mercy: My Sudden Realization of Being “the Rabbi”
Mensch•Mark 24  Over and Out: The Ultimate Test of Trust
Mensch•Mark 25  The Vale of Tears: A Condolence Call to a Place of Unspeakable Suffering
Mensch•Mark 26  The Towers: Having the Chutzpah to Reach for the Sky

Part Five: Belonging and Becoming
Mensch•Mark 27  The Yarmulke Bin: An Unassuming Beanie Became a Souvenir from Sinai
Mensch•Mark 28  Bar Mitzvah Nation: “They Like Us! They Really Like Us.”
Mensch•Mark 29  My Father’s Huppah: A Catholic Tevye and the Brave New World of Assimilation
Mensch•Mark 30  Jews of the Jungle: Lessons from the Cruel and Supremely Tranquil Savannah
Mensch•Mark 31  The Wall and the Mall: Where Is God Truly Found? What Makes a Place “Holy”?
Mensch•Mark 32 Where Spring Forever Dwells: Discovering That the Promised Land Is Right Here
Mensch•Mark 33  Kosher Pigs: Hypocrisy Can Be a Good Thing

Part Six: Failure, Forgiveness, Justice, and Kindness
Mensch•Mark 34  Crisis: My Greatest Test of Faith
Mensch•Mark 35  Championing Civility: It’s Impossible to Avoid Gossip but Essential to Try
Mensch•Mark 36  “Do You Think I’m Evil?”: The Stain of Hatred on the Human Soul
Mensch•Mark 37  Piercing the Heavens: The Purest Form of Prayer
Mensch•Mark 38  Marching for Our Lives, Riding on Shabbat: Sometimes Fulfilling God’s Command Can Only Be Done by Violating It
Mensch•Mark 39  Going, Going Gone: Overcoming Tribal Loyalties for the Voice of the Yankees
Mensch•Mark 40  Should Jews Turn the Other Cheek? Looking Evil in the Eye
Mensch•Mark 41  Getting from “I” to “Wii”: Overcoming Selfishness as a Key to Happiness
Mensch•Mark 42  The God of Love: Inheriting a Family Legacy of Unconditional Love