Verwandte Artikel zu Connecting to God: Ancient Kabbalah and Modern Psychology

Connecting to God: Ancient Kabbalah and Modern Psychology - Hardcover

Weiss, Abner

 
9781400083343: Connecting to God: Ancient Kabbalah and Modern Psychology
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1400083346 ISBN 13: 9781400083343
Verlag: HARMONY BOOK, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

A distinguished rabbi, psychologist, and therapist combines the mystic teachings of Kabbalah with modern psychology to create an effective new approach to the diagnosis and treatment of dysfunctional behavior, explaining how to transform the divine energy within us to rebalance the soul, heal emotional wounds, and reconnect with God. 15,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Abner Weiss is a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and a member of the American Psychological Association. He was senior rabbi of Durban, South Africa, the Riverdale Jewish Center in New York, Beth Jacob Congregation of Beverly Hills, and the Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London. He has held professorships in Jewish thought at the University of Natal, Yeshiva University, and London University and has served as chief judge of the Rabbinical Court (Beth Din) of Los Angeles, president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, and vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

Rabbi Weiss has studied Kabbalah since 1965 and given lectures on it in North America, South Africa, Australia, and England. He lives in Los Angeles and is rabbi of the Westwood Village Synagogue and copresident of Village Mental Health Associates.

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Chapter 1: PSYCHOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY: THE BRIDGE


THE FAILURE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

A century of clinical psychology has made therapy a household concept in the Western world. More people than ever before have experienced psychotherapy. More methods for achieving psychological well-being are available. Miracle drugs alleviate depression and relieve anxiety. Gadgets of every description make household chores and business administration less tedious and more efficient. More time is available for relaxation, entertainment, continuing education, and personal growth.

These advances should have produced a happier and more fulfilled generation. But people seem to be no less troubled and no more relaxed and fulfilled than they were prior to the psychological revolution. What has gone wrong?

What happened to Sheila, Jeremy, and their extended family helps answer this question.

SHEILA AND JEREMY’S STORY

Our synagogue was launching an ambitious outreach program. We thought that High Holy Day services for young adult “beginners,” with lots of explanations and opportunities for asking questions, might be a good way of attracting people who had been turned off or never turned on. In addition, we were offering home hospitality.

I received a call from a young man asking if he and his friend could spend the High Holy Days as my houseguests. This was the beginning of an experience that would prove to be transformative in more ways than I could imagine at the time.

Jeremy and Sheila arrived a few hours before the evening service. I learned that Jeremy was a professor at a local university, and that Sheila had been his student in another city. They had begun to talk about building a future together, and religion was the only issue that seriously troubled them.

Jeremy was Jewish by birth, but was an atheist. Both his parents were mental health professionals, and he had embraced their contempt for religion. His father was a professor of psychiatry with an international reputation for his research and clinical skills. His mother was a licensed clinical social worker who taught at the same university as her husband. Jeremy’s father had been trained in Vienna before the Second World War, and had been persuaded by Sigmund Freud’s The Future of an Illusion that religion was a collective neurosis. He was convinced that God did not exist and that the concept of the Divine was a human invention to serve social and psychological needs. Jeremy’s mother shared her husband’s beliefs. There were no Jewish observances or even Jewish symbols in their home. I was not surprised to learn that Jeremy had had no Jewish religious education.

Sheila, on the other hand, came from a religious home. Her parents were sincere believers and had given their children a solid Christian education, but Sheila had some reservations about religion. The threat of hellfire and damnation for religious noncompliance and the negative attitude to other faiths by the family pastor troubled her deeply. However, she knew that her life needed to be spiritually centered and wanted to find an alternative to the religious values and experiences she had encountered.

Jeremy had tried to persuade Sheila that her quest for spirituality made no sense, but she told him that it was a vital part of her being. She pointed out that Jeremy had never been exposed to religion and suggested that his rejection of something he had not experienced was unreasonable. Jeremy reluctantly agreed to give religion a try. Sheila thought that Unitarian Christianity might be less objectionable to Jeremy than the Christianity of her childhood. She hoped, too, that it would do something for her. So Jeremy and Sheila had attended services at a Unitarian church near the university, but left uninspired. Then she had suggested that they go to services at a Reform Jewish temple. The services in that ultraliberal synagogue did not seem very different from the disappointing worship experience in the Unitarian church. It was at that point that the couple had relocated to our city.

Jeremy and Sheila were moved by their High Holy Day experience and decided to attend the beginners’ service on a weekly basis. Sheila asked me for literature on Judaism. She was an avid reader and devoured every book I recommended. Jeremy spent many hours in the library reading up on Judaism and confided to me that he had discovered hidden hungers. After about six months, they came to see me about Sheila’s converting to Judaism. I told them that they would both need to take classes and become involved in the other spiritual activities of the community. They were ready to do so and enrolled in the conversion program. They continued to read voraciously, mastered Hebrew, and made changes in their lifestyle that reflected their growing religious commitment.

Shortly before Sheila’s conversion, I asked them about their wedding plans. They said that they wanted to marry as soon after the conversion as possible, but that their wedding plans had brought Jeremy into open conflict with his parents. His parents approved of Sheila, but resisted the couple’s request that their wedding be catered kosher. They felt it was a rejection of their beliefs and of the way they had brought up their son. They saw me as the villain responsible for undermining everything they had done to disabuse their son of religious superstition. To put it mildly, they detested me.

However, a kosher wedding was eventually held and Jeremy’s parents attended reluctantly. Over the next few years, Jeremy and Sheila had children and introduced them to the beauty of Jewish practice. I had no contact with them for several years. Then, one day, I received a phone call. “Rabbi,” a voice said tentatively, “do you remember me?” It was Jeremy. “I need to ask you a huge favor,” he said. “My dad has a brain tumor. He wants you to come and see him in the hospital.”

All kinds of thoughts raced through my head, mainly that the old psychiatrist was finally going to let me have it for ruining his son and his grandchildren. I thought it was one of the last issues he needed to tie up before he died. Somewhat nervously, I asked, “When would he like to see me?”

“How about tonight?” Jeremy replied.

That evening, prayer book clasped in hand (perhaps more to comfort me than him), I knocked on his father’s door. A German-accented voice invited me in. We were alone in the room. “You asked to see me,” I said.

He fixed his gaze on me. “Is it okay for an old man to say he’s been a fool?” he asked. I could not believe what I was hearing. What did he mean? He answered my question before I asked it. “You know who I am, what I teach, and what I have believed. I was trained in Vienna. In high school we used to mock the rabbi whose classes we had to attend later in the day.” He mimicked the rabbi’s eastern European accent. “Mi-she-bayrach, Mi-she-bayrach, Mi-she-bayrach. We thought this was a witch’s incantation. After all, everything Jewish was supposed to be crude and primitive. These feelings were reinforced at medical school and became central to my beliefs. That’s why I so bitterly resented your influence on my son.”

“What happened?” I asked. “What made you think you’ve been wrong all these years?”

“Spirituality did not fit any of the accepted categories of the life and mental health sciences,” he told me. “but I finally did discover spirituality at the Sabbath table in my son’s home. The prayers and hymns resonated with a part of my soul I had completely disowned, and the radiance in the faces of my...

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Verlag
HARMONY BOOK
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1400083346
ISBN 13 
9781400083343
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
316
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar