Torah for Mental Health

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Afternoon everyone. Welcome, welcome.

[00:00:02]I'm going to let the Zoom room fill in.

[00:00:04]Apologies for our late start today. Um I had a brisk that was running just a little late. So I appreciate all of your patience. It will be worth it. I guarantee it. Um and uh it uh it's wonderful to see everybody and uh we are welcoming a uh special guest today uh to this month is mental health awareness month and I have had the privilege of listening to Rabbi Tal Cesler on numerous occasions uh on a number of podcasts where he teaches uh Torah of immense depth and meaning and that ties in real real in a profound way to uh issues around mental health. I mean I don't want to reduce Rabbi your Torah to Torah around mental health, but I know it's something that you uh speak a great deal about and you have a collection of dra to around this topic. Um, so it's just a real pleasure to welcome you uh to our community and um I'm going to turn it over to you or maybe to Suzanne just because I know we're running a little late and uh but we're good. We're good. We got plenty of time and thank you again for for joining us uh this afternoon.

[00:01:26]>> Thanks, Rabbi Zuckermanman. Um, and we'll turn it over to Rabbi Cesler in just a moment, but I just wanted to mention um, we're just asking that everyone if they ha if there are questions, we're excited to hear them, but asking that you hold them until the end um, after Rabbi Cesler finishes his presentation and then we'll have um, we'll have time for Q&A. Um, so going to turn it over to Rabbi Cesler now.

[00:01:53]>> Okay. Um, hello everyone. Good afternoon in the Smart Coast. It's good morning in the beautiful coast. I am in Los Angeles. And I want to thank Rabbi Zukerman for inviting me and Susan also, Patricia also for her work. Uh this is really exciting for me because my wife and I met at Park Avenue Synagogue.

[00:02:17]Um and uh it's nice to uh almost be there. I was a rabbitical school student and she was working at the library pursuing her PhD in psychology. In any event, uh here we are today through to the thanks to the wonders of technology and um this is a talk about torren mental health. That's a book I published. Um, it's being wellreceived, thank God.

[00:02:46]Actually, uh, Rachel Goldberg Poland just published, uh, her memoir, uh, When We See You Again, and she was kind enough to start her book with the quote, um, that I discussed with reference to the book, Words Are Redemptive, and and we will get to that. uh but before that as we speak about mental health I want to start um by mentioning the word that dare not speak its name to borrow from Oscar Wild the the great playwright and the word that dare not speak its name today is the dword it's depression um depression is an epidemic in the modern world and um there are about 30 million American Americans grappling with depression as we speak. Uh, one out of five Americans will experience a depression at some point in their lives.

[00:03:45]Um, I was blessed to be the last rabbi who invited Rabbi Jonathan Saxs of righteous memory to the United States.

[00:03:56]And uh in one of his last public talks before he passed away, he said that when he was young, he was very depressive.

[00:04:07]And I think it's interesting that he shared that when he knew that he was about to leave this world. It's not something you boast of. Um I'll tell you a story. I also invited the late Senator Joe Lieberman uh to Los Angeles once and he told me that he was very depressed after he and Al Gore lost the elections even though they won the popular vote. And I asked him, "How did you recover?" And he said that one uh morning he was reading the morning newspaper stating that the Supreme Court decided that he and Al Gore lost the election.

[00:04:47]And he was very glum and depressed about it. But his wife Hadasa should live and be well told him don't worry Joe. I promise you in this house you will always be vice president.

[00:04:59]And that's how he snapped out of his depression. Okay, that was a comic relief because it's a very heavy topic.

[00:05:06]Uh the topic of depression. Uh depression already appears in the Bible. So our first monarch was King Saul and King Saul uh the Bible says suffered from a which means a bad spirit um that would descend upon him. He he he he probably had what we call today a mood disorder and King David then David before he became King David would play the harp for him and that would soothe his soul and we know today that that music has an effect on our emotions. So, King Soul grappled with a depression or a mood disorder and King David would alleviate that depression for him by virtue of playing the harp. Um, a lot of people don't know that uh now that we are reading uh the book of Numbers in the Torah, the third Torah portion, Moses is having a bit of a breakdown too in the Torah. Uh Moses says to God, I am tired of carrying the Jewish people like a nanny carries uh an infant.

[00:06:22]And if this is how it's going to persist, the Torah says three words in Hebrew, which means kill me and I shall be killed. I've had enough of this life if that's how it's going to continue. So Moses had his moment, too. And then um two of our greatest prophets uh also had very profound depression.

[00:06:47]One is Elijah who according to the tradition will usher in the messianic era. Elijah says uh the to the Bible says he he asked his soul to die. He was deeply depressed. That's Elijah the prophet. remember the the cup of wine on the seder night for Elijah. That's the same Elijah. And lastly, uh the prophet Jonah, whose book we read on the afternoon of Yumipur, uh at some point after he saves uh the people of Ninve from predition, he says three words in Hebrew, better that I should die than I should live. So we see that the first king of Israel uh had a depression. We saw that the greatest Jewish leader of all times, Moses, underwent a deep personal crisis.

[00:07:42]We see that Elijah and Jonah were deeply depressed. And also the person after whom we're named as a people, Jacob, Israel, also suffered uh deeply emotionally. Uh after his uh sons told him that his son Joseph was devoured by a wild animal, uh the Torah says he refused to be consoled and he was deeply depressed about it. Um today in the DSM which is kind of like the Bible of psychiatric conditions or psychological uh maladies if you like uh we have a thing called prolonged grief disorder when people really struggle with transitioning from a loss for a very long time. So you could say that Jacob after whom we're named as a nation Israel uh grappled with prolonged grief disorder. So we see that our ancestors, our founding ancestors, our founding fathers if you like, were no strangers to brokenheartedness and to mental anguish.

[00:08:53]And uh I really love um the way God is described as the first psychotherapists in the Torah in in in Jewish consciousness. So where is God described as a as a psychotherapist? to the first psychotherapist in the Bible. In Psalm 147, God is poetically and poignantly described as the healer of shattered hearts. Doesn't get more beautiful than that, right? The healer of shattered hearts who also bandages our sadnesses.

[00:09:28]That's how God is described. Um, so, um, I want to introduce us to a term that I'm kind of enamored with. I have a crush on this concept and um we all I think as a nation now following October 7th and the incredible and sorted rise of anti-semitism that we're seeing in the world right now. Um, we are suffering in the last 2 and 1/2 years or so since October 7th, which was the most deadly day in the history of our people since the Holocaust, were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a nation, PTSD, right? And people tend collective PTSD so to speak, and people tend to know what post-traumatic stress disorder is. However, there is a more novel term and that's the term I want to uh allude to here and that's post-traumatic growth, PTG.

[00:10:32]Post-traumatic growth is a very beautiful thing. You take your suffering, your loss, the devastation of your heart and you try to harness it to grow in soul and to um to take yourself to to the next level and become a blessing to others. Um how do you do that? How do you achieve post-traumatic growth? Right? It's a very powerful term. So I will share with you the most powerful story you will probably ever hear about post-traumatic growth and that's the story of the son's reb who was a kidic reb before the holocaust. His name was Rabbi Yehuda Yakutiel Halberstone. And Rabbi Halberstone lived in Romania before the Holocaust. And he was the rabbi of the Sephardic community in Romania.

[00:11:26]And when the Nazis came in, they sent him and his 11 children and his wife to Awitz. And he made a vow. He made an oath that should he survive uh the camps, he will dedicate his life to bringing more life to the world. And he did survive, thank God. Uh his wife did not survive and 10 of his children did not survive. And then his 11th child died from typhus in the displaced person's camp.

[00:11:59]Um, and then Rabbi Halberam started raising money for Torah funds in the United States and in Mexico and he moved to Israel and he established a kidic municipality called Kiraat Sons north of the coastal city of Natana north of Tel Aviv and then he built a hospital which exists to this day in Israel. It's called the Liato Hospital and in this hospital many many thousands of Jewish, Christian and Muslim uh children came into the world. So that's how he fulfilled his oath, his vow to bring more life to the world should he survive. And Rabbi Halberst remarried and he had six more children, three of whom became great rabbis of their own right. and he wrote, Rabbi Halberstone wrote a comprehensive commentary on the entire Torah um known as Sheffa aim which means the abundance of life.

[00:13:07]That's the name of his Torah commentary.

[00:13:10]So um Rabbi Halburstam the son's rabbi personifies post-traumatic growth, right? Um, so the idea of post-traumatic growth is that you take a calamity, a devastation, and you find a way to turn it into a blessing. Another example is uh a woman called Rona Ramon. Do you guys remember um about 24 years ago the Columbus Shadow shuttle uh was dismantled on its way back to the Earth from outer space.

[00:13:46]And on that shuttle was the first Israeli astronaut Elon Ramon.

[00:13:52]So his wife Rona Ramon uh was widowed because her husband was killed and then her son was killed as a pilot in the Israeli Defense Forces.

[00:14:05]Uh so she lost her husband and her son and uh she became a holistic therapist.

[00:14:14]And when they asked her why did you become a holistic therapist, she said well when something uh absolutely devastating happens you can ask two questions. One is the Hebrew question of llama. You can transliterate it into English as llama means why. Why did this happen to me?

[00:14:37]There is no human answer to the question why do things like this happen? But then if you just change one vowel, the word llama becomes the word lema. L E m a which means what for?

[00:14:53]So when we ask what for? What can I do with this? Then we're in the business of post-traumatic growth. I remember when I was a rabbi in New Jersey, there was a woman who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She was a chain smoker. So for the time she had left, she made it her business to give talks to high school students about not smoking, right? That's the idea of post-traumatic growth. Um I remember I was in the city of Hope, which is a huge cancer center here outside the lake. There was a man showing us around and um he told us that his wife passed away and now he is serving others who are there coming to the hospital. So the idea of post-traumatic growth is you reconceptualize your life. You think about okay how can I grow from this spiritually?

[00:15:52]How can I take what happened to me and actually take myself to the next level and also be a blessing to others? Uh I want to talk about another psychological term um that comes from a psychological theory or modality known as CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, which basically means the way you think and act affects your emotions.

[00:16:20]And the name of that concept is reframing.

[00:16:23]What does reframing mean? Imagine a painting like the Mona Lisa and it has a golden frame. Now imagine you would take out the golden frame of the Mona Lisa and put on it a purple frame. It would look completely different, right? It would look kind of funky, not so classical anymore. But the thing is the painting never changed.

[00:16:45]The facts inside never changed. It's just the outlook, the framework that is now different and seems more bright and upbeat. Similarly, we can reframe things that happen to us in a way that's more conducive to our well-being. And I'll give you hopefully a cool example of that. Uh there was a woman in um the Israeli city of of Fakim um during October 7th and she and her husband were home and kamas terrorists I think three or four of them entered her home and took her and her husband hostage. Seems like a pretty um hopeless situation, right? But what did her name is Rachel Edri? So what did Rachel do?

[00:17:32]She reframed her situation. She said to herself, "Rachel, these are not terrorists. These are guests from another culture. So you talk to them in your broken Arabic. You make them cookies. You serve them cookies. You make them coffee." She even bandaged one of them who had an injury. These are guests from another culture. Just host them now. Right. And what happened is that when Israeli special forces stormed into the house, they didn't murder her and her husband because they came to humanize her. She was like a soothing mother to them. So they didn't murder her. And what what saved her life was reframing the situation in her head. She told herself a different story about what's happening. There was a great Scottish philosopher called Alistister McIntyre and he said that we humans are the storytelling animal.

[00:18:33]We tell ourselves stories. We tell ourselves stories as individuals and we tell ourselves stories as nations and these stories determine our outlook in life. They're actually critical to our psychological and emotional well-being.

[00:18:53]So we the Jewish people all have a PhD in reframing hopeless situations.

[00:19:02]So for example, the Jews were kicked out of Spain in the year 1492, the same year that Columbus came to America. 1492 we were kicked out of Spain which was a huge calamity. It's kind of like imagine Jews being expelled from North America today, right? Terrible thing. So um so what did the cobalists, the Jewish mystics do? They say there is a purpose to why we're kicked around from one country to another. The reason is we need to collect the divine sparks in every place in the globe. We have a cosmic mission to redeem God's presence in the world.

[00:19:46]The shina. So wherever we go and we perform a mitzvah, we are spiritually redeeming that part of the world. That's why it's happening to us cuz God loves us and God wants us to bring blessings to the entire globe.

[00:20:03]Right? What a way to think. What a way to reframe uh a disaster.

[00:20:09]Another thing um another thing that's absolutely critical to emotional and mental well-being and today positive psychology is very attentive to that. What is positive psychology? Traditional psychology is about sicknesses and pathologies and illnesses. So let's say I have a lot of anxiety.

[00:20:33]So I am min -10 in anxiety and traditional psychology wants to get me to a zero of anxiety right from minus 10 to zero from a deficit to a place of no deficit. But positive psychology wants to take me to the next level. It wants to take me to a plus 10 instead of a zero. Positive psychology is about harnessing what Martin Seligman, the Jewish American founder of positive psychology, calls our signature strengths, our gifts and talents, right? and and and research shows that people who lead meaningful lives, lives who are externally oriented to being of service to other people report higher degrees of joy and mental and emotional well-being. And that's why a great Christian thinker Kirkagard is quoted by Victor Franco um the founder of existential psychotherapy. What does he say? He says happiness is a door that opens outward.

[00:21:45]Happiness is a door that opens outward.

[00:21:47]We're told by the dominant culture today, accumulate stuff, become a celebrity, be good-looking, and your life will be all rosy.

[00:21:59]But what the Jewish tradition is telling us is shift from being inner focused to outer focused. That's the counterintuitive secret for a sense of inner nourishment and fulfillment. And you can do that as a grandparent, you can do that as a parent, you can do that as a community member, you can do it as a volunteer. Happiness is a door that opens outward. Another thing uh that positive psychology is really big on is gratitude.

[00:22:32]We know research tells us that people who cultivate gratitude on a daily basis report higher levels of happiness and joy. And our sages of antiquity were attuned to that. That's why we have the early morning gratitude. We we say thank God for opening my eyes. Thank God for the clothes I can wear. Thank God if I'm able to take steps for the very fundamental things of life that sometimes we seem to take for granted until we have a health challenge.

[00:23:04]So we have a thing we are hardwired as a species to have negativity bias which means we focus on what's broken. So I have here a nice shirt I'm wearing and I have a cup of coffee. So, imagine I would drip a little bit of my coffee on my shirt and there would be a stain this big on my shirt. I would be upset and distracted. I would say, "Oh, shoot. I got this stain. That's really annoying.

[00:23:34]It's such a nice shirt." But think about it. 99% of the shirt is still great, but I'm going to be focused on this one stain. That's how we are hardwired to think about what's missing, what's broken.

[00:23:48]And we need to balance the equilibrium through gratitude.

[00:23:54]So the first word that a Jew is summoned to say traditionally upon waking up is the word mod, which is Hebrew for grateful.

[00:24:05]Grateful am I. So think about the genius of our sages. They're saying wake up first thing. Say grateful. I'm here for another day. I'm grateful. Right? And then the tom says you should say blessings ideally a 100 times a day.

[00:24:23]Before you drink a glass of water, before you have a cup of coffee, before you take a snack bar, lunch, breakfast, dinner, always take it as an opportunity to say a quick grace, a quick act of what people call today mindfulness and appreciation.

[00:24:41]Um so gratitude is very connected to mental and emotional health. Going back to um October 7th um I don't know if you guys remember there was a time when the IDF in one day miraculously rescued four hostages. One of them was Noah Argammani the the young woman and three other guys. And one of the guys was a Russian guy. I think he only lived in Israel for like 18 months before he was taken captive. His Hebrew is not even that good. So he kept a journal in captivity and every day he would write one line in Russian in his journal. He would say, "Today is a gift, right?" And there was another guy in captivity called Ellie Sharabi. He's my hero. I really admire this guy. He wrote a book called Captive that was also in the New York Times best-selling list and Ellie Sharby would and when he came out of captivity he looked like he came out of a concentration camp in terms of his weight. Um so he said that he would uh motivate the fellow hostages in those dark caves deep under the ground they were buried alive. says, "Every night, let's do a gratitude prayer." And when he said that on a TV interview, uh the interviewer almost asked him, "Well, what have you been smoking? What are you talking about? You're buried alive in a dark tunnel. What is there to be grateful for?" So, he said, "Well, we would find things to be grateful for.

[00:26:20]Thank you that there is enough oxygen that we can survive in the tunnel. Thank you that we got another quarter of a pita bread today. Thank you that I wasn't beaten up today. Thank you that in a week's time I'll get a bucket of water so I can shower. Thank you that the most um abusive captor uh was uh substituted by someone else today. He would always encourage them to find gratitude for something and that's um that's Ellie Sharby personifies what I call radical gratitude.

[00:26:58]When he came out, he found out that his wife and and two daughters were murdered. He didn't know that all the time that he was in captivity. You know, when they interviewed him, the kamas terrorists in their dubious ceremonies of release, he said to the terrorist into the mic, "I can't wait to see my wife and children." And then he gave an interview to Channel 12 in Israel and he said, "I am fortunate."

[00:27:25]Why are you fortunate? Well, I was I found true love and I had it for many decades. I survived the camps. He said, "People don't understand what it means to open a fridge, to be able to take out a vegetable, to be able to take out a fruit, to choose an egg. People don't understand what that means."

[00:27:47]Right? So, radical gratitude and again post-traumatic growth.

[00:27:54]Post-traumatic growth, right? his ability. They asked him, "What do you want to do? Where do you see yourself in five, 10 years?" And he says, "I see myself with a family married with children." And now he has a spouse, right? And he goes all around the world talking about his experience, the hell that he went through. What could be worse, right? his two beautiful teenage daughters murdered, the love of his life murdered, going through a holocaust in a kamas tunnel. He's a holocaust survivor of our time.

[00:28:33]He comes out, he affirms life. He's gratitude. He's grateful and he's a servant of humanity.

[00:28:41]He goes all around the world encouraging people to embrace hope and to give and to serve and to find joy. So I like to say, you know, my rabbi of righteous memory, Rabbi Jonathan Sax, used to say that the Holocaust survivors are are mentors and teachers in the 20th century. Today, the released hostages are our mentors and teachers in the 21st century. Right. Um, so that's um, another thing. Um, as I said, Rachel Goldberg Polland was kind enough to start off her book that just was a New York Times bestseller um, quoting one of my teachings about mental health.

[00:29:28]And um, Rachel Goldberg Pollen, her son Hirsh was murdered in those tunnels, right? But when he was alive, he kept everyone going. How did he keep everyone going? He quoted Victor Franco. Victor Franco was a psychiatrist Holocaust survivor who invented a new kind of psychology called logootherapy, which is a psychology of meaning.

[00:29:57]And Victor Frankle lost his wife and his parents in the camps. And he had a manuscript he was working on and he lost it in the camp too. And Victor Frankle in his book Men's Search for Meaning, one of the most important books of the 20th century, his memoir for surviving the camp, he's quoting the great German philosopher Nichze. Nietze said he who has a why to live anybody who has a reason to live will overcome any how to live. So Frankle said, you know who were the most staunch survivors in the concentration camps? It wasn't the bodybuilders, right? The people who were most physically robust. It was the communist who wanted to participate in the revolution. It was the pious Jew who wanted to serve God. It was the woman who had a daughter in America that she wanted to see again after the war. It was a scientist working on a book.

[00:31:04]Anyone who has a why to live will overcome anyhow. And that's why that's how Hirs Goldberg Poland kept the other guys in the tunnel. He would say to them, what's your why? Why are you why do you want to stay alive? Right? Um so that's another thing. Now, you know, we're talking about Judaism and psychology today. And one of the cool things is that psychoanalysis, which is classical modern-day psychology, is actually a Jewish endeavor almost entirely. So when the Nazis had their book burnings in Berlin in May of 1933, they burnt 20,000 books at the Oprah Opera Square in Berlin, and they burnt all of Ziggman Freud's writings.

[00:31:56]By the way, Freud's full name was Ziggmund Schlommo Freud, right? Schlommo is Hebrew for Solomon. And and and why did the Nazis uh burn all of Freud's writings? They said it's a udes and shaft. It's a it's a Jewish science.

[00:32:14]Psychoanalysis is a Jewish science. And they were on to something because Freud was Jewish and Freud's teacher Joseph Buer was also Jewish and another prominent psychoanalyst of the time Adler was also Jewish and other uh prominent psychologist like Aaron Beck who invented CBT is also Jewish and Albert Ellis who invented rational emotional behavioral therapy is also Jewish and Pearls from Gestalt is also Jewish. and Kohhat from self- psychology is also Jewish and Victor Franco we said is also Jewish and Abraham Maslo in social psychology is also Jewish and Martin Seligman of positive psychology was also Jewish the only one who wasn't Jewish was Carl Young but then again if you're not Jewish who needs psychoanalysis that's a Rabbi Sax joke it's not my joke so um what is this thing about Jews and psychology ology. Jews were less than 1% of the population in Germany. What what's going on here? Um, so the thing is that Jewish culture and Jewish sages were attuned from the very beginning to the fact that, and this is where Rachel Goldberg Poland opens her book with my quote, that words are redemptive.

[00:33:44]that through articulating words, we heal ourselves, right? You go to your therapist and the words that you say create a catharsis, an emotional release, un unloading a burden. And also, if you really pay attention to your choice words, you can go to your unconscious and find hidden and concealed meanings.

[00:34:08]The same thing in Judaism with the way we we we understand the Torah. We look at every word. We scan every letter and we find underlying concealed meanings.

[00:34:18]So that centrality of the word as the vessel for truth and redemption is germanine for both Judaism and traditional psychology and psychoanalysis.

[00:34:31]Right? The sages say that God created the world through articulated speech, divine utterances. Uh the book of Job says, "I will speak and find comfort."

[00:34:46]Freud's first patient was a woman nicknamed Anna O. Her real name was Berta Papenheim. She was a Jewish woman.

[00:34:54]And later on after she was healed from her psychosis, she became a trailblazing social worker in Germany. And you know what she called her sessions with Freud?

[00:35:05]The talking cure. The talking cure.

[00:35:10]So um so um both Judaism and psychology have an underlying presupposition an a priori assumption. And what is that assumption? A belief in changeability that we can change and grow and heal for the good. You know there are a lot of very respectful people today and there have always been throughout history like the Sephardic Jew Spininoza many others who said that people don't really have free choice right if you're a serial killer you don't have a choice if you're a Mahatma Gandhi you don't have choice everything is predetermined people actually believe that stuff right if you believe that then nobody should condemn a white supremacist and nobody should hail a saint It's complete moral anarchy, right? But some people believe in determinism. But Judaism believes believes in our our ability to to be agents of our own lives that we can actually achieve change and growth and healing for the good. And one of my favorite Torah verses uh is actually read always in the Shabbat before Roshashana parat.

[00:36:23]What does it say? It's very beautiful.

[00:36:25]It says, "Behold," God is saying to the Jewish people and to all of humanity, "Behold, I have given before you today life and death and a blessing and a curse, and you shall choose life so that you and your descendants shall live."

[00:36:41]Right? That's that's the idea of of changeability.

[00:36:45]So, I want to leave some time for questions. So, I'm going to conclude uh with the final teaching. Um, one of the most beautiful teachings that are very dear and precious to my heart uh was by the Katskar Rebe who was actually a bit of a gloomy reclusive solopscistic scholar but uh the Katskar Rebe said there is nothing more complete than a broken heart there is nothing more complete than a broken heart and I think that what he meant by that is that when the heart is shattered into pieces we're actually receptive to change.

[00:37:27]We don't like to change. People only grow through discomfort and adversity.

[00:37:34]Otherwise, we stick to the familiar.

[00:37:37]Right. So, there is nothing more complete than a broken and shattered heart. And um I really like Japanese art. Yeah, I also like sushi. It's true.

[00:37:48]But I like Japanese art. And in Japanese arts, there is a thing called kinugi.

[00:37:54]Kinsugi is you take a vase, a vase for example, and you shatter it, and then you stick it back together. You glue it back together, and you platter this the um the the fragments that were shattered with gold.

[00:38:14]And it's exquisite and beautiful and uplifting and glorious, right?

[00:38:20]And that's the idea of post-traumatic growth.

[00:38:24]And there is a legend that how was kinugi invented this exquisite art form.

[00:38:31]There was a Japanese emperor who had a very precious vessel that was broken.

[00:38:36]And he was very saddened by it. And a great artist came and invented kinsugi.

[00:38:44]He put it back together and plattered it with gold. And the king, the emperor was overjoyed.

[00:38:52]So you think you can think about the emperor as god.

[00:38:56]And when we stitch our things together and platter it with gold, we give great um spiritual pleasure to God. And there is a parallel of that Japanese legend of the emperor who whose favorite art piece was shattered and then it was splattered with gold. There's actually a Jewish midrash, a rabbitic teaching that's very analogous to it. Rabbi Alexandre says in in the midrash in the rabbitic teaching in a book called Vikra Rabba, which is a commentary on uh the book rabbitic commentary in the book of Leviticus, he says the blessed one, holy be he, God.

[00:39:38]God's vessels are broken.

[00:39:41]And who are God's vessels? That's us.

[00:39:44]We're all broken. We're all bleeding.

[00:39:49]We all struggle. We put on this facade that we're all together. We put on what Carl Jung called a persona, which means a mask when we're in the public domain.

[00:40:02]But we all have inner brokenness.

[00:40:05]So I want to conclude with one of the favorite quotes that I came across in the last four years of my life since I started my own healing journey and I became immersed in the psychological cannon and wrote a book about Judaism and mental health and now I work both as a rabbi and a writer and a psychotherapist providing psychotherapy uh pursuing lensure. So um so who what is this quote? is from Ernest Hemingway who suffered from a mood disorder his whole life and from alcohol addiction.

[00:40:40]Um Heming Ernest Hemingway writes in his book about World War I, A Farewell to Arms the following uh sentence. He says, "The world breaks everyone and some of us are strong in the broken places."

[00:40:59]The world breaks every one of us. But some of us are strong in the broken places. And how do we become strong in the broken places? By serving others. By being grateful. By doing inner work in therapy. By finding meaning of our in our lives through spirituality and family and community and friends and service and by fostering a sense of belonging. The two great spiritual deficits of secular modernity are meaning and belonging.

[00:41:37]People feel like I'm just a cog in the global economy.

[00:41:42]What is this life? I watch reality TV and go on vacation twice a year. But what does it mean? Right? We are purposeoriented creatures.

[00:41:52]So there's a crisis of meaning in today's world with the demise of traditional communities.

[00:41:59]And there is a crisis of belonging. We used to have these tight-knit extended families.

[00:42:06]Now we kind of exist as isolated atoms.

[00:42:10]Right? So meaning and belonging.

[00:42:14]And to conclude again with Hemingway, the world breaks all of us but we can become strong in the broken places. So thank you again for inviting me and I look forward to hearing from you guys.

[00:42:28]So, please take it away, Susan. Do you want to spearhead this or >> notes? Yeah. Thank you so much. That was such a beautiful discussion. I wrote down so many of my own notes. Um but um I turned the chat back on just a couple minutes ago so that people can submit questions. Um you can also raise your hand if you'd like to verbally um ask a question. Um, and then I have a couple of other questions that were submitted ahead of time um that maybe I can maybe start with um while we're waiting for other people to submit. Um, so one question that um we received uh is I am a clinical psychologist with extensive experience treating depression and PTSD.

[00:43:15]How can I help Israelis suffering from the impact of constant war?

[00:43:22]So that's a question.

[00:43:23]>> Yeah.

[00:43:25]>> First of all, as an emerging therapist, I believe that the relationship is the core of the healing. We speak in psychology about having a corrective emotional experience. Something was broken in my life. And that intimate rapport with my therapist is already can be healing in and of itself intrinsically.

[00:43:50]One of my favorite contemporary psychotherapists, Irvin Yalum, who is about 95 years old, lives in Northern California.

[00:43:59]Um, he says that the therapist is a fellow fellow traveler on life's journey.

[00:44:06]So, traditionally in Freud's time, um, the therapist was this omnisient oracle.

[00:44:13]He's sitting there pokerfaced, not saying anything, not sharing anything. And um Yalam's idea that the therapist is not an all knowing sage, but somebody who has psychological knowhow, but is a present, attuned, empathic presence.

[00:44:37]I think that's the core of it. And there has been extensive research. What are the factors that bring about true psychological healing? And professional psychologists think, well, should I do this kind of therapy or that kind of therapy? But the truth is that what matters is the therapeutic alliance, the soulful bond between patient and therapist, client and therapist.

[00:45:03]and the and the belief in changeability that the client the patient actually believes that healing is possible, right? So, uh there is no magic formula, right? Because psychology is not an exact science cuz the human soul is intricate, complex, and mysterious. But I really work in the here and now of the therapeutic encounter.

[00:45:30]Um, so that's what I have. Yeah.

[00:45:35]>> Beautiful. Thank you. Um, another question. Um, how from the chat, how does Judaism balance personal dignity with a loss?

[00:45:46]>> Personal dignity with a loss. Um, well, what I would say is that part of the genius of our tradition has to do with our morning rights and rituals. Uh, I once heard somebody say, "Nobody does death better than the Jews."

[00:46:04]So, I mean, for me, I I have to say a little bluntly, it's unfathomable that in in different cultures that we all esteem and revere and respect, there's no such thing as shiva.

[00:46:19]People go to the funeral, they bury their loved ones, there is a little meal or something, and then it's and then it's over.

[00:46:28]And what happens in our tradition is that we envelop the mourner in a gradually expanding cocoon of seven days of mourning and then the 30 days and then the entire year leading up to the memorial the y site. So um there is a time for mourning for sadness for brokenheartedness.

[00:46:53]Um there there is a lot to be said about that. We make room in our tradition following loss for what psychology calls negative emotions, anger, sadness, depression to dwell with them. In fact, we can even be angry with God after a loss. Rabbi Zukman of course knows well that in a mourner's house um there's a part of the cottage that we skip. We say in Aramaic on the which means may our prayers be in and the prayers of all Jews be accepted on high may our prayers be accepted on high we skip in a mourner's home cuz we wanted that place to that person maybe to survive the illness so we skip that line merge be accepted on high also a person is exempt from a lot of the mitzvah when they before the funeral when they're completely devastated by at a loss. So for example, uh if I'm about to bury an immediate relative, a parent or or a spouse or a sibling or god forbid a child, then I am not allowed to put on filling.

[00:48:10]I am not allowed to say a blessing before I eat and drink. It's almost like the tradition is telling us now you can be angry with God. You don't need to thank God right now. You need to immerse yourself in your pain right now.

[00:48:24]So that's part of my answer to this question.

[00:48:28]>> Thank you. Um the person expanded a bit um asking about specific and this actually ties to another question that we received about um how do we balance dignity and loss of personal of mental capacity when someone uh when memory and cogn cognition uh changes when someone no longer recognizes a loved one. um as is can be the case with dementia or psychosis. Um, how does I guess the question is how how to sort of reconcile that. How do we sort of understand that that change um within it sounds like a a a diad a family member and someone who's experiencing dementia or psychosis, >> right? you know, um, some of the greatest Jewish sages, uh, suffered from that condition, including the greatest, uh, one of the greatest the greatest modern Orthodox rabbi of the 20th century, Rabbi Joseph Solivetic of righteous memory, suffered from a condition like that. Um, my my basic answer is I don't know.

[00:49:43]But my grandmother had dementia. And what I can tell you is that when she was in her dementia, a significant part of my grandfather died with her, his voice sounded like the vocal embodiment of mourning and brokenheartedness, and he was absolutely shattered.

[00:50:05]Um, I think the only thing that comes to mind is more of a moral code than a psychological healing, which is the reverence towards the elders.

[00:50:22]You know, we have a cult of youth in our culture. I live in LA, you know, so you can imagine how people are obsessed with their visage looking young, right? Um, but we need to learn. I was the rabbi of the Sephardic uh synagogue of Los Angeles for almost a decade and I was really uh impressed in awe with the way the Sephardic community and the Persian community, the reverence that they have for the elderly.

[00:50:59]Um, you know, the parent is almost like a demigod, you know. Um, and I think that if we can replicate that awe and that admiration for a mother and father and grandparent, that would lend itself to a lot of dignity.

[00:51:22]Um, but it's a shattering situation. I I don't have a better answer.

[00:51:30]Thank you. Um, one maybe last question. Um, what do you recommend for grappling with untimely deaths of people who were observant, philanthropic, and acted with integrity?

[00:51:44]Um, and sort of along those lines, someone asked about um whether you believe in Cleveland Ross' stages of grief.

[00:51:55]>> Okay. Um I won't focus on the psychological theory and gradations of grief if that's okay but I will say um that uh do you want to repeat the first part of the question for me again please?

[00:52:11]>> Sure. Um what do you recommend for grappling with untimely deaths of people who were observant, philanthropic and acted with integrity?

[00:52:20]>> Right. So um there is a Jewish sport, a religious sport, not only Jewish. It's called theodyssey. Theodysy is grappling with the questions, why do we live in a world where these kinds of things happen?

[00:52:39]Why do we live in a world in which there is genocide and unspeakable poverty and debilitating depression and and all those terrible afflictions and calamities?

[00:52:52]Um I don't think there's a human answer to it. And when Aaron, Moses's brother, loses both his sons in one stroke in the Bible, it says the verse says, "And Aaron was silent."

[00:53:09]Um, I don't think there is a human answer.

[00:53:13]We cannot answer that question. I think that faith is an affirmation of life.

[00:53:20]Belief in God is an affirmation of life.

[00:53:23]It's an affirmation that ultimately there's more to celebrate than to denigrate in the human condition. As Albert Kamu on whom I wrote my doctorate beautifully stated.

[00:53:36]And I think that as Rabbi Sax said, faith gives us to the courage to live with uncertainty.

[00:53:46]But um faith is not an insurance policy from God because if it were, it wouldn't be faith. It would be something that everyone subscribes to because it's an insurance policy from uh bad things happening to me. Um I think that um that would be uh a big part of my answer. And just to conclude what Rona Ramon, who lost her husband in outer space and her son in the Israeli army and then became a holistic therapist, her answer is my favorite answer. Don't ask why llama, ask lema what for.

[00:54:32]Right? Uh and and and that's what we're seeing. You know, we started with Rachel Goldberg Poland, whose book has been in the best-selling book now, and she was very kind that some of her work in the book was informed by my book. So, that's what she did. You know, now she's an ambassador of hope and she's a she's a person of profound faith in God, profound faith in God.

[00:54:59]and she harnesses her pain for what we learn today is post-traumatic growth, for bringing healing and hope and sustenance to others, right? And people are in awe of her. So, I think um to be more like her would be part of my answer.

[00:55:18]>> Thank you. Thank you so much. um to sort of just close us out. Uh thank you so much, Rabbi Cesler, for this really meaningful and and uh thoughtprovoking discussion. Um I really appreciated you just sharing these sort of stories of resiliency and also these tools that we can consider when we're confronted with these challenging circumstances. And um you know thinking about mental health awareness month just I really appreciated the idea that mental health is not this binary thing you know either um ill or healthy but rather when challenging things happen in our lives when we have a loss when we have a disappointing professional setback right uh a calamity it's normal for our mental health to suffer and the hope of course like you sort of delineated is that we with support and with time we can integrate these experiences and make meaning and recover and help other people um which you know is a is a a beautiful idea. So um I just wanted to thank you again um and uh just mention two plug for the Jewish Community Mental Health Initiative which is a great organization who spoke for us back in uh December. They offer a really wonderful inclusive space um and free clinicianled support groups. Um so just a great resource. Um I'm also here as a resource at the synagogue um to meet and uh support you talk about you know whatever stressors you're encountering and help connect you to resources. So um thank you again Rabbi Cesler. Thank you Rabbi Zookerman for allowing us to use your class time. Um, thank you to Patricia for coordinating all of this um, for this and to all of you for being here and for the thoughtful questions and discussion and we um, we hope to see you next time.

[00:57:18]>> Thank you.

[00:57:19]>> Thank you, Suzanne. Thank you for all you do. Rabbi Cesler, thank you.

[00:57:23]>> What a what a beautiful hour of Torah.

[00:57:26]Really, >> thank you all very much for inviting me.

[00:57:30]>> Have a good day, everybody.

[00:57:32]>> Thank you.

[00:57:32]>> Thank you. Bye.

[00:57:34]>> Bye.

[00:57:34]>> Bye.