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Addressing Ourselves

Tony Schwartz , the Responsive Chord,

page 24.

“The critical task is to design our package of stimuli so that it resonates with information already stored within an individual and thereby induces the desired learning or behavioral effect. Resonance takes place when the stimuli put into our communication evoke meaning in a listener or viewer “

page 25 “A listener or viewer brings far more information to the communication event than a communicator can put into his program, commercial or message. The communicators problem, then, is not to get stimuli across, or even to package his stimuli so they can be understood and absorbed. Rather, he must deeply understand the kinds of information and experience stored in his audience, the patterning of this information, and the interactive resonance process whereby stimuli evoke this stored information. I

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The Purpose of Prayer – to Shock

Abraham Heschel wrote, “We have lost our ability to be shocked…the human soul is too limited to experience dismay in proportion to what happened at Auschwitz, in Hiroshima….” (”0n Prayer”, reprinted in Petuchowski, Understanding Jewish Prayer)

It is the purpose of prayer to shock the human soul into the awareness of the meaning of his or her existence…”Prayer should be an act of catharsis, of purgation of emotions as well as a process of self-clarification, of examining priorities, of elucidating responsibility ….”

“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”

Prayer is not automatic, instant – the worshipper cannot be simply plugged in or “turned on.” Heschel writes, “Prayer will not come about by default. It requires education, training, reflection, contemplation. It is not enough to join others; it is necessary to build a sanctuary within, brick by brick, instances of, meditation, moments of devotion,” (op cit.)

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Determining your inscription in the Book of Life ! – Clues from the Midrash of Leonard Cohen and the Reluctance of the Prophet Jonah


The Jewish troubadour who gave us “Hallelujah” and the prophet who tried to run away from God’s mission both have much to teach us about preparing for the High Holidays.Spoiler alert, Cohen’s Hallelujah urges us to greet the new year with Joy and openness, and through Jonah we learn that there is hope for “Teshuvah” or our owning up to our sacred possibilities in the new year. But Oh my friends, getting there with both Cohen and Jonah is a rich and rewarding experience.

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Prayer therapy – Kaddish for ourselves

The Kaddish for ourselves in response to Covid-19 Losses

As I have struggled to find meaning and sanity in this pandemic, a sense of tremendous loss hit me with sadness and the need for hope. I felt a urge to say the words we describe as the mourner’s prayer “yitgadal ve yitkadash” – “Exalted and hallowed be God’s Name.” But had anyone I knew died or even contracted the virus?

No it was my sense of loss: of security, my ability to hug friends, my seeing faces, to travel and learn first-hand about other cultures, the casual restaurant meals with friends. While not traditional, in our family we often reference saying”kaddish” for broken treasured possessions, torn favorite clothing, lost opportunities.

So, why not say the traditional kaddish for our losses during this pandemic? After all the Kaddish is a prayer of hope and expectations of better conditions from the source of creativity, and secondly the Kaddish is deeply rooted in Jewish history reflecting a sense of continuity of a life affirming people. A third twist is the nuance of the holy, which speaks to the uniqueness of each of us in the universe.

The proposal is not only for Jews who might say the actual words, but even for non-Jews who might only make reference to saying the kaddish.

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Could Judaism be Ethno Therapy for Future Shock?


“The Synagogue is the sanctuary of Israel, born of Israel’s longing for God. Throughout our wanderings it has endured as a stronghold of hope and inspiration, teaching us the holiness of life and inspiring in us a love of all humanity” (1) Such is the liturgical expression of the function of the synagogue in our people’s past.

As we look toward the Jewish future, it would be appropriate to view the synagogue in more futuristic terms.

Future Shock

The synagogue in essence is to serve the Jewish people as the absorber of “future shock” by providing an environment for its members to experience a stability which at the same time supports change. Alvin Toffler popularized “future shock” as a means of putting a handle on the ‘phenomena of coping with increasingly rapid technological, social and personal change.

Toffler defines “future shock” as “the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism’s physical adaptive systems and its decision-making process,”(2) or in simpler terms, “Future shock is the human response to overstimulation.”(3]

Toffler’s “future shock” concept may be approached from two perspectives. Firstly, recent studies conducted point to the likelihood of sickness following an individual’s undergoing a great deal of stress due to changes in one’s life. It is now “possible to show in dramatic form that the rate of change in a person’s life – his pace of life – is closely tied to the state of his health.” |1|) Secondly, culture shock is that “profound disorientation suffered by the traveler who has plunged without adequate preparation into an alien culture “(5) in which he is “forced to grapple with unfamiliar and unpredictable events, relationships and objects. His habitual ways of accomplishing things…are no longer appropriate… in this setting fatigue arrives more quickly than usual.”(6)

Toffler’s thesis is that the speeding up of the rate of change in our society is bringing with it increased stress with concomitant illness and fatigue. What culture shock is to the traveler, future shock is to those who stay at home!

The synagogue is the Jewish institution that is best able to provide support for its people to deal with future shock. The synagogue historically provided the Jewish people with important antidotes to the phenomena of culture shock and the crises of personal and seasonal change.

synagogue as growth center following Toffler’s Future Shock textDownload

Link to Ethnotherapy Revisited

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/jewish-ethnotherapy-revisited-nicolas-behrmann-rabbi-pmp/

Link to Ethnotherapy Framework

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/therapy-framework-jewish-ethnotherapy-nicolas-behrmann-rabbi-pmp/

Link to Rabbi as Ethnotherapist https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rabbi-ethnotherapist-nicolas-behrmann-rabbi-pmp/

Jewish Religious Education as Ethnotherapy – an early 1970’s approach

JewishEDEthnoDownload

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