|
The profession of psychiatry is a very powerful profession. They label what’s normal and what’s not normal. They can offer comfort to clients who seek out their help and support.
They also have their own Torah - it’s called the DSM: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. That "Manual" is now in its fifth edition, and each addition typically makes really significant changes in what counts as a “mental disorder.” In some cases, an assignment of a mental disorder is dropped. In 1973, the DSM-3, after much contentious debate, dropped ‘homosexuality’ as a mental disorder. More recently, the DSM-5 has added a mental disorder. This decision was also very controversial, with some hailing it as an important step in recognizing a genuine human condition, while others have argued that the addition will now make something normal into something pathological. I hope that, by now, I have your interest. What is this new mental disorder added to the DSM? It's called PGD: Prolonged Grief Disorder. In the case of prolonged grief disorder, a person is unable psychologically to move beyond the death of a loved one - this is typically a spouse or, even more often, a child. Dr. Kenneth Kendler has called this decision “the bar mitzvah of diagnosis,” meaning that the diagnosis now officially blesses this disorder, a kind of welcoming into the tribe. Apparently, about 10% of people dealing with grief suffer from the inability to get past it. You might be asking “at what point in time does grief become prolonged?” The answer, according to the DSM, is one year. Maybe you agree, or perhaps you think it’s not enough time to grieve. Or you may think that it’s situational - that it depends on your closeness to the person, the age at which they died, and perhaps even how they died. I read one story about a woman whose five-year-old daughter died from strep, and this mother couldn’t even enter her child’s bedroom until a year after she died. After three years, she was able not only to enter the room but also to go through her daughter’s toys and clothing and sort them in order to give them away. That mother would qualify as having prolonged grief disorder. A line from our Lecha Dodi, Friday night’s consummate prayer, reads, “Too long have you dwelled in the valley of tears.” You might also be asking “why does it matter?” OR: “who cares whether what’s wrong with me is listed in some psychiatric bible?” Well, the answer is that, if the DSM lists your disorder - if it makes it ‘official’ - then medical insurance will pay for your treatment. So, there could potentially be a lot at stake. Unfortunately, almost all of us have had reason to grieve in our lives. How long did you grieve? How long did it take you to ‘move on’? I won’t say ‘get over it,’ because that’s insulting. And I’m not sure anyone truly gets over a deep loss. Perhaps you had friends and other family members who urged you to move on with your life, and perhaps you found that advice helpful, perhaps you resented it as lacking in compassion and understanding. But, when I heard about this new diagnosis, I couldn’t help but think about this week’s parsha, Parshat Shemini. And I couldn’t help but wonder whether there’s such a thing as an “inadequate grief response.” Is it possible for someone to mourn too little? Of course, I’m thinking here about Aaron and the deaths of his two sons. There are all sorts of interpretations and suggestions as to the reason of their of their fatal punishment from God. Aaron is silent in the face of what must have been a catastrophic loss. Those issues are not what I want to focus on here. Instead, I want to ask the question whether expressing grief is a sign of mental health, and whether the DSM should add yet another mental condition, maybe something called failure to grieve. Maybe Aaron’s problem is gender-related. I know that, for many men, expressing grief might look like a sign of weakness. Or men like Aaron might believe that they have to carry on so as to be a role model to others. Failure to grieve might also be connected to deep trauma - perhaps the experience has been so devastating that we shut down, afraid that if we let in the sadness, we will never be able to recover from it. There’s also the possibility that grief gets masked as anger; how could God have done this to me? How could God have let this happen? Rabbi Yissocher Frand tells the story of a Rabbi Hollander, who spoke with hundreds of Jews after they had survived the Holocaust. These survivors felt there was no reason to go on. They felt there was no point in living any longer and there was certainly no point to being a Jew. They had lost any sense of purpose, any reason to live. Rabbi Hollander uses this week’s parsha, Shemini, to give them hope. He quotes the words of Moshe: “This is what God spoke when saying ‘through those who are near to Me I will be sanctified’ (B’Krovai E’Kadesh).” Moshe is urging Aaron to recognize that, no matter what one is facing or has faced, being near to God can always give on meaning. Even in the midst of grief, we can be - we need to be - close to God. We have seen that grief can also occur as the result of other kinds of losses - we might grieve, for example, the loss of a job. Or we might grieve a divorce, or a life-changing mistake we’ve made. There is no one who has not experienced tragedy in their lives. There is no one who is exempt from grief. Judaism teaches us that it is kiddush hashem to continue to worship God, even in the face of losses that we have experienced. Or, perhaps, especially in the face of losses that we have experienced. Judaism also teaches us that balance is so vital to a life well lived. Too much grief holds us back, and keeps us from God; too little grief stunts us and denies us the ability to grow from our experiences. I could never tell you what that balance is - it’s not anything we can know in advance, and it probably varies from person to person. But I do know that we can find it, with God’s help. I pray that we do.
0 Comments
I want to draw your attention to one passage in Parsha Tzav, the portion assigned to this coming Shabbat.
It’s verse 21. It’s not even the entire verse. Moses has just slaughtered a ram for the sacrifice, and has washed the entrails and is creating a burnt offering. The next line in verse 21 reads: “THAT WAS A BURNT OFFERING FOR A PLEASING ODOR, A GIFT TO THE LORD—AS THE LORD HAD COMMANDED MOSES.” OK. I’m sure the smells at the Holy Temple were pretty powerful. All the sacrifices of all the animals. The oils and the incense and the blood. An earlier pasuk in Tzav even mentions DUNG. So maybe it was a mix of smells. Or perhaps the smells varied, depending on what animal was being slaughtered. We all know that cooked brisket smells a lot different from roasted chicken. But what kind of smell is "pleasing to the Lord"? There is much in the Torah that endows God with senses, right? God SEES what we do. God HEARS our prayers. But here we are told that God is also SMELLING our sacrifices. We don’t usually think of God as a God who smells odors, pleasing or not. And when we endow God with those senses, does that mean that we are dangerously close to ANTHROPOMORPHIZING God? Everyone knows what that mouthful means? To anthropomorphize means to attribute human qualities to God. But the Torah does that all the time. God allows Moshe to see his BACK, for example.
We may never have the answers to any of these questions, but it’s the questions that truly matter. If I were to ask you: what are the important concepts we are to learn from the imminent festival of Pesach, you might respond, “The importance of freedom and liberty, the equality of mankind”, “human rights”, “social justice”, and “compassion.”
And yes, the holiday message has a bit of all that and more. But listen to these words from my teacher, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik: “The essence of the Seder and hence that of telling the story of the exodus from Egypt, is the expression of gratitude to the Almighty on the great liberation and miracles that He brought for us in Egypt". As the Rambam - Maimonides - states in his Book of Commandments, “We are commanded to tell the story at the beginning of the 15th of Nisan and we are commanded to thank Him for all the goodness He has bestowed upon us.” We can concentrate on these two words - THANK YOU - because there is nothing more important to talk about on Pesach, especially as we move through the end of Pesach. The theme of Thanksgiving is a central, perhaps THE CENTRAL, part of Pesach. On the Seder night, at the climax of Maggid, we say: "Therefore we are obligated to thank and praise … exalt and revere Him who performed all those miracles and for us.” The fact is, in countless ways, our sages read the story of our Egyptian experience as containing lessons in Thanksgiving. For example... What was Moshe’s name? You say Moses, or Moshe in Hebrew. Not really! That name was given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter. As a child, to escape the Egyptian persecution he was placed in a basket, floated down the river and discovered by the daughter of Pharaoh and was called Moshe – “Ki min ha-mayim mshisuhu” – because I drew him out of the water. But what was the name given to him at birth by his parents? It’s not clearly stated in the Torah … he is always called by this name “Moshe,” given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter. Why? Say our sages: “Mikan attah lomaid s’choron shel gomlei chasidim” – “from here we see the reward given to the righteous.” Because Pharaoh’s daughter was good enough to save his life, as an act of gratitude and appreciation, we and God himself, only referred to Moshe by the name given to him by the daughter of Pharaoh. In Hebrew we call this “hakorat hatov – recognition of the good.” In English it is the two words: THANK YOU. Another example... God appears to Moshe in the burning bush, appoints him as a leader of the Jewish people and tells him to return to Egypt. Does Moshe comply? Not right away! First, he goes back to Yitro – his father-in-law. The Midrash points out that Moshe said to God, “Yitro took me in when nobody else would. I can’t just walk out on him … I first have to go and ask his permission and say thank you for all he has done.” That’s gratitude. Still later Moshe helps bring the plagues on Egypt, but not the first two. Those are brought by his brother, Aaron. Why? Because the first two, blood and frogs, came from water … the very same water that had once saved Moshe’s life. Think about that. It would have been the height of ingratitude for him to bring plagues from the very same water that had helped save his life. Even the water deserves a debt of gratitude. Moshe Rabbeinu – Moshe our teacher. Indeed, his name, Moshe, teaches us to say THANK YOU. May we all recognize the gifts that are ours this Pesach and express gratitude for them all. Our parsha Pekudei tells us...
“And Moshe did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. It came to pass in the first month, in the second year, on the first day of the month, that the Mishkan was set up.” And the Talmud tells us: “When (the month of) Adar enters we increase in joy!” So, there is clearly a connection between the building of the Mishkan, the moveable sanctuary, and the month of Adar, which includes the joyous holiday of Purim. What is so significant about building the Mishkan that it takes up so much space in the Torah? We have about 4½ chunky Torah portions packed with detailed descriptions of what was commanded and how it was executed with precision. And every year we revisit this account of what was essentially a singular event in history for the plan for a Temple that we’ll never replicate. And, throughout the rest of the year, we confront so many places in the Torah where the halachot are not clear, and the narratives of our ancestors are thin and full of missing details.
A Jewish comedian (is that redundant?) once went to the airport to pick up his mother in-law. On the way home, he asked her, “How long are you staying?” She replied, “As long as you want.” He responded in amazement: “You’re not even coming in for a cup of coffee!?” And here’s the other: When the Kotzker rebbe was a precocious child of three, his rabbi asked him, “Where can God be found?” The child answered: “Everywhere!” His Rebbe shook his head and made clear that that answer was incorrect. So, he asked the child again, only to get the same response. Finally, the Rabbi told him the RIGHT answer: “God can be found only where He is invited to enter.” Here we are at the end of Exodus, and after so many parshiyot devoted to details, it’s easy to miss the big picture, to confuse the forest and the trees. Here, at the end of Pekudei, we witness the completion of the Temple, and we see the manifestation of God’s presence in cloud and fire, a presence that it meant to protect us throughout the rest of our journey. But, even as we travel, and we need to travel, we have a building, a home, a sanctuary, a sacred space where we invite God into our lives. Where we became a true people. The name of the month ADAR in Hebrew is ALEPH-DALET-REISH! ALEPH stands for God, Adonai, Who is one. The first time ALEPH is used at the beginning of a word in Torah is ELOCHIM. DALET- REISH spells DAR, to reside. HASHEM finds residence with us in ADAR. It’s not just when we enter the time zone of Adar that we increase in joy but rather when ADAR enters and penetrates us, to that extent joy is multiplied. Purim is packed with eating and drinking with gusto. Yet, in just such a setting, we joyously welcome God into our very midst, in complete fulfillment of the destiny of the Jews. And we look forward to the Festival of Liberation, of Spring, Pesach! Strangely, this D'Var begins and ends with two parables that involve crying men.
In last week’s parsha we read of the building of the Temple, of the creation of the golden calf, and of the tablets that Moshe destroys in anger. In the midst of all this drama, we also see God’s insistence of the importance of Shabbat. “Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord.” And Moshe is instructed that even the building of the Holy Temple must cease on Shabbat. Years ago, I attended a lecture that Rabbi Harold Kushner gave about the three world-changing contributions that the Jews gave to humanity. I don’t know what you might think they are, and we could certainly debate some of these points. But, for Kushner, they are: DIETARY RULES (kashrut); MONOTHEISM; and Shabbat, the holiness of a day of rest. A day that separates the mundane work week from the spiritual day that defines us as a people. There is something revolutionary about demanding a day of rest. However hard life must have been, however much the demands of the world call out to us, we are enjoined to observe/to keep the Sabbath. As God tells Moshe, it “shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel.”
A day or so later, a friend visited the man. They were reminiscing about their childhoods, and they began to remember their experiences of Shabbat. They talked about the food they loved, the prayers they chanted, the aromas that they savored as they entered their homes. They reminisced about the songs that they would sing on Shabbat, and they began to sing some of those prayers. The young man began to cry. His memories of Shabbat made him remember that he was a Jew, and how vital that was to his sense of his own identity. He did not abandon his Judaism. I don’t know if that story is true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is. I am sure that we all have different Shabbat rituals, and I would guess that we can’t always commit as fully as we might like to Shabbat observance. Some people, for example, have no choice but to work on Shabbat. And I have NO DOUBT that we all reject the mandate that God gives Moshe in Ki Tissa that we should be killed if we violate Shabbat. Even with all that, though, I do think that we all know - or, better, we all FEEL - the intense significance of this weekly day of rest. Of Shabbat. This was indeed a gift that the Jews gave to civilization, and it is a gift - a blessing - that we give to ourselves. |
Archived Blogs |
RSS Feed
OFFICE HoursTu/Wed/Thur
10am - 2pm |
Telephone(781) 925-0091
|
|