ERIK TISCHLER: People are so beautiful and surprising. And there's a Hasidic teaching that if you look at somebody and you look at how beautiful they are, they'll start to be beautiful. They will physically, spiritually, mentally change to become beautiful. Just because I'm looking at somebody who's one way right now doesn't mean they're going to be this way forever. So it's kind of telling me that anybody can change and anybody can change very drastically.

I didn't grow up religious and I definitely didn't grow up in a closed, one-way kind of place. I grew up in lower Manhattan with every kind of person out my door. I started really searching for who I am among all these different kinds of people. Who am I? And where do I belong and where do I fit in? And what's my purpose for being here?

One of the things that drove me to spiritual Judaism is the training of having an open heart. And the belief that an open heart can bring out somebody else's heart to be open. I work in the emergency room and the floors in the psych unit of two hospitals in the Bon Secours system. People come to me with all kinds of things and they need help.

So I'm a helper. Most of all, I'm a helper. I just believe in people. And part of my spiritual growth and part of my personal growth and part of my professional growth is to see reality, where everybody is very beautiful and very special and needed in the world. I think that the greatest thing I bring is the real respect that I have for every human being.