May 19, 2024|י"א אייר ה' אלפים תשפ"ד Finding inner peace: Navigating spiritual and mental wellness amidst rising antisemitism and the war against Hamas
Print ArticleThis past Wednesday, I read in one of my WhatsApp chats that there is a major incident that happened in Israel with possible significant IDF casualties. In response, every fifteen to twenty minutes over the next few hours, I found myself refreshing the Times of Israel website to see if there were any new developments. A few weeks ago, when I read that a hostage deal was in the works, I remember doing the same thing. The same thing at the height of the pro-Palestinian encampments. I remember refreshing my internet browser every fifteen to twenty minutes. This has happened to me a lot over the past seven months, where I have found myself stuck.
In 1949, Mental Health America, the nation’s leading national nonprofit, established May as Mental Health Awareness month. This is a time to raise awareness of those living with mental or behavioral issues and to help reduce the stigma that so many people experience. This morning, I want to address a mental health challenge that I think many of us are struggling with and have been struggling with for the past seven months. How we can navigate our spiritual and mental wellness amidst rising antisemitism and the war against Hamas?
I personally feel totally consumed by the war against Hamas. I feel totally consumed by the rising antisemitism in this country. I want to detach, but I don’t want to detach. I want to read every story, but I can’t read every story. I am hopeful, but I am pessimistic. I am uplifted, but I am saddened. I want to rise to the occasion and feel connected to our brothers and sisters in Israel, but I do not want to be so consumed that I am too paralyzed to do anything. How can we find some semblance of inner peace in this state of chaos?
Yael delivered a talk on this topic at the Young Israel of Woodmere on Thanksgiving, and in her talk, she identified five things that we can do that will help navigate our spiritual and mental wellness at this time: regulating our feelings, taking meaningful action, self-care, mindfulness and having hope. First, we need to regulate our feelings. We should view our feelings as vital signals that hopefully we can manage in a productive way. If we are angry, saying “Why doesn’t the world see what’s going on,” and we don’t name the feeling, then the anger will likely fester and lead to aggression. If we are suffering from anxiety, saying, “When is this going to end,” and we don’t name the feeling, then our excessive worry can lead to depression and paralysis. If we are guilty that we are not doing enough, then that could lead to feelings of worthlessness. By stating how we are feeling, we give that feeling space and we normalize that feeling. Then we can rationally think about what the best way to deal with that feeling is. For example, if we feel guilty that we are not doing enough, then we might respond by challenging that assumption by thinking about all that we have done, whether we have written letters to politicians, or given tzedakah, or davened for the chayalim and then we might realize that our feelings may not represent the facts and that we have actually done a lot and that we are doing the best we can to manage in this very difficult situation. But we can only do this if we actually spend time regulating our feelings.
Once we regulate our feelings, we can turn those feelings into action. This is often the best way to address feelings of no control and helplessness. We find some way to take action. We control that which we are able to control. As the great psychiatrist Viktor Frankl once wrote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Turning our feelings into action can be helpful and can be accomplished by doing something small. It doesn’t have to be big. Some of us are taking the name of a soldier and reciting Tehillim and learning or davening for that soldier. Some of us are becoming activists and lobbying politicians. A colleague of mine, Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb, pointed out that in Sefer Breishit, Yaakov Avinu’s name changes to Yisrael specifically when he fights, specifically when he takes action. After we regulate our feelings and take action, then we are ready to earn our name as being a member of the Bnei Yisrael, the descendants of the original Yisrael.
And we must also engage in self-care. We can become so obsessed with Hamas or the rising antisemitism in America that we neglect ourselves. We need to exercise, eat healthy meals and continue with our routine. And when we are feeling so down on ourselves and so down on the world around us, we need to engage in acts of kindness and expressions of gratitude for the purpose of self-care. The more that we give to others, the better we will feel. Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, internationally renowned teacher and author in the field of happiness, once said that the Hebrew word “natan,” or “give,” is a palindrome. It reads the same backward as forward. We get as much as we give. Additionally, when we express gratitude and thank people, then our expression of positive feelings puts us in a better mood. If we obsess reading every worry and disaster on social media or the internet, then we develop feelings of negativity. Therefore, we want to perform acts of kindness and express gratitude to maximize opportunities of positivity.
Next, mindfulness. Many of us have read about the value of mindfulness, about being present in the moment. This allows us to have more control of our thoughts and not get stuck in thinking about the past or the future. Mindfulness asks us to simply stop and notice and appreciate the moment as it exists.
Finally, hope. We must never give up hope and we have no reason to give up hope. After all, we are a resilient people and unfortunately, we have endured worse in our history. Yes, בכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותינו, in every generation we have faced trials, tribulations and numerous enemies, but we have always survived and even thrived under very difficult conditions. And we are currently living in a time when we have our own state and our own army. We are strong and we have every reason to hope.
Regulate our feelings, take action, engage in self-care, be mindful and hope – five methods to help navigate our mental and spiritual health at this very sensitive time in our history. This is a lot of work, but the truth is that we have so much opportunity each and every day to do this.
We read about the holidays in Parshat Emor, and, yes, we call some of them חגים, but they are all called מועדים. They are all called מועדי ה׳, which loosely translates as “fixed times for God.” Rav Hirsch, among others, points out that the root word of “מועד” is ו–ע–ד, which means “meeting.” The משכן is called an “אוהל מועד,” a tent of meeting, because that is a meeting with God in space. The holidays are called מועדים – fixed times because these are meetings with God in time. We feel God’s presence in both space and time.
But then the pasuk continues. מועדי ה׳ אשר תקראו אתם מקראי קדש. How do we translate אשר תקראו אתם מקראי קדש? That you call them holy? This is how Rav Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg translates this phrase in his 19th century commentary entitled, הכתב והקבלה. He writes מלשון מקרה אשר הוראתו הכנה והזמנה גם לדבר מיוחד וקבוע,. It’s a language of מקרה, which means to prepare and designate for something specific and fixed. God is telling us that we must designate and carve out time for each holiday because each holiday is a time to focus on a particular value. We carve out time on Pesach to reflect in a very deep and profound manner about the mission that we were given at the Exodus. We carve out time on Yom Kippur to reflect in a very deep and profound manner about the value of repentance. Even though we should think about the Exodus and repentance all year long, we carve out times throughout the year, מועדים, when we “meet God,” as it were, because we reflect on critical divine values during these days that provide us with meaning and fulfillment throughout the entire year.
And this is a model for life. We carve out time as מועדים to stop and reflect. And do you know where else we find the word, מועד? In Parshat Pinchas, God tells Moshe to bring the daily קרבן תמיד – להקריב לי במועדו – to offer it for me in its fixed time. The daily sacrifice is a מועד. And at the beginning of the second temple period, the אנשי כנסת הגדולה, the Men of the Great Assembly, modeled our prayers after the קרבן תמיד, because they understood that we need to carve out time each and every day to pray. Why?
Because when we are מתפלל, according to Rav Hirsch, we judge ourselves. The root of פ–ל–ל means to judge and מתפלל is a reflexive form of the word, to judge ourselves. And that is what prayer affords us, the opportunity to carve out time to reflect. Prayer is the opportune time to regulate our contradictory feelings of anxiety, of guilt, of frustration, of anger, of hope and of pride. Prayer is an opportunity to name those feelings and then to try to manage those feelings. Why am I so down on myself and how do I manage that feeling? Prayer is a wonderful opportunity to think about how to turn those feelings into action, to say that today I am going to call my relative in Israel and ask how she is doing or today I am going to give a little more צדקה as a merit for our soldiers. Prayer is an opportunity to practice self-care, to say, “Yes, it’s a very difficult situation. But for thousands of years, my ancestors picked themselves up when they were down, so I need to do the same! I need to take care of myself.” Prayer is a wonderful opportunity for mindfulness, on focusing on the present, which is right now, that I am having a מועד, a meeting with God, and that is a very holy endeavor, and that I am grateful for all the blessings that God has bestowed upon me. Finally, when we pray, we read about our shared story with the rest of the Jewish people, a story that has lasted for thousands of years. And we gain strength from that shared story. Each one of us is part of a chain that started long before us and will continue long after us. We are praying what our ancestors prayed for and we are praying what our children will pray for. When we reflect upon that very powerful truth, then we connect to something greater than ourselves and we are full of hope knowing that we are an עם הנצח, an eternal nation.
How do we navigate our spiritual and mental wellness amidst rising antisemitism and the war against Hamas? Pray better. This has nothing to do with decorum during davening. This has nothing to do with davening with a minyan, although I think we should have great decorum and daven with a minyan when we can. But on a very fundamental level, let our tefillot speak to us. When we pray for wisdom in שמונה עשרה, let us think about how much of the world is lacking in wisdom. When we pray for השיבה שופטינו, for the return of justice, let us think about how the International Court of Justice wants to put Israel on trial for war crimes. Tefilla has the potential to come alive for us. Listen, I personally struggle with tefilla. It is not easy for me. But I am trying to make it meaningful for me, to make it a מועד, to help me deal with my mental and spiritual struggles during this very challenging time, and I invite you to do the same.