Dr. Tamar Perlman | LIVING AS WE ARE GRIEVING: Our Response as Jewish Women | CHAZAQ

[Music] presented by the Kaz organization mja and of course sh want to thank sh foring always partner on Amazing events and all the amazing peoplea and of course I want to thank Amud for all our life saving work of course um um speak myself sou or obviously Dr was very familiar with um and all the needs and life saving services for the community and um of course the organization which is um on the Forefront of public school Outreach programs with after school programs and Sunday school programs at 15 different locations of course the school year started recently if anyone El children of public school and they like to get a Jewish Education by either sending to yiva or our after school program for them and um tonight's sh is being dedicated for H as well for the of the of the of all the people who are cap who are captives right now and they should return to their house with health and amen amen and um no further Ado thank you so much thank you [Applause] thank you thank you kazak for the beautiful work that you do um I'm so grateful you do the work that you do I wish that I was more part of it but I'm like grateful that you do it and thank you amudim for being in the Forefront in many ways for mental health and for just being there for Humanity I have to tell you that like usually I have this excitement when I go to speak that's like oh I have what to share and I want to impart it and I definitely learned I had the to learn a lot of beautiful pieces in relation to this to the space that we're in right now but as I was driving here and as I Was preparing my regular excitement wasn't there and obviously it's reflective of what the title is and what the rabbi said is the idea of like living in the space while we're grieving you know when my husband and I were talking a few weeks ago and when all these all these organizations were coming out to ask us if we could speak like we were just sitting we're just sitting outside by we have a little fire in the back a fire pit in our backyard in our new home in West Hampstead and we were both saying like we have nothing to say like what are we going to say what's there to say and and I said and I said to him I said Ki I don't think it's about what we say I think it's just about being in this space together with our brothers and sisters and it's about figuring it out together so I'm here with you and I think that's that's the the most important part that I want to start with that I'm here with you that we here together we're grieving together last week one of my colleagues miam Handelman who is one of my favorite people in the world when my kids know when I'm talking to her she's like are you talking to Miriam to the is that you know we started off as I was her supervisor and then we became friends and now we're colleagues and friends she's doing beautiful work in the world and she's a beautiful person she said to me Tamar help me help me center help me Center I need to I'm running a group right now with with girls that have experienced trauma and they need a centering group help me Center and this was last week at the beginning of last week and I said to her Miriam usually we're past something and I hope you Center but we're still in it we can't find centering when we're in something so I want to talk about the psychological piece just a bit so to give it some language and to give it some framework welcome ladies and then I want to bring in some gorgeous pieace that I learned from rosha shapir over Shabbat and that have I've been sitting and thinking about for the past 48 hours sorry you know people right now in my practice I supervise a few therapists and the question is always like do we need to be informed on trauma do we need to be trauma informed do we need to know how to deal with trauma and this is what I tell my therapist and this is what I tell all therapists that you can't avoid trauma when you're working with people no one's going to give you a warning some people will give you a warning but usually you don't get a warning hi a trauma is coming up session four at 7 minutes and 30 seconds that in order to be able to work with people in this field you need to be able to know how to deal with trauma and as I was thinking about the space that we're in right now people are using this word anxiety and sadness but as I was sitting down to prepare for the talks that I've been doing the word that kept on coming up for me psychologically is trauma I think what we experienced isn't a normative event of stress but it's actually a traumatic event for cla a norm of event is like the stress of giving birth that's a normative stressful event yes it's stressful but it's normative a trauma is when something unexpected happens and when it it's something that not only is it unexpected but it actually shatters the known that you already have inside the trauma that we experienced as a CL shattered a bunch of our GES one is that humanity is capable of such acts the entire field of Psychology was born post World War II when they were trying to figure out how is it that a human being can dehumanize another human being to disagree what is a human being so the all Freud and kleene and all of these thinkers in winot they were thinking about humanity and what is it a human being can do that they could put down a human being to such a degree it made think about what is humanity what we experienced in our knowing we had teenagers at our table this Shabbat and one of them said I didn't think that humans could do such things she lived in a world two weeks ago where this reality didn't exist as part of her knowing and now it does another piece is is the trauma of the unknown and what's going to be and the lack of control that we feel and the and the and the anxiety around the future and the and the the vastness of what it could be is so large yes it's not just the normative unknowns it used to be that like at the beginning I have two sons that are learning an earth to STW right now thank God I have two nephews that are in the Army my husband say my husband sisters sons are in the Army right now and the things that I was thinking about in September are whether or not we're going to visit in January or should we visit in December those that was the that was the range of my unknown and whether or not I'd be able to switch my tickets without a high price tag but my range of unknown became much wider and it's falling into the Horizon into spaces that I don't even want to think about yes in Hebrew a trauma is a m m is a barrier a barrier where there is no blood flow when someone comes in with a trauma in their past that space where the trauma occurred and the things that happened from that traumatic experience is lifeless it has no life flow in it it doesn't have any blood flow in it so a trauma is when life stops flowing into a particular space because it is too much to handle it is too much to process it is too much to metabolize so the actual black and blue that you see is just a reaction the problem is the is the blockage of the blood flow it's a Mak it's a blood it's a it's a block of the blood flow in fact the more someone has trauma in them that's not processed the heavier they are because spaces that are dead are heavier than spaces that have life things that don't have life are harder to carry are heavier so those that have a lot of trauma that is not doesn't have blood flow and life in it have a lot of heaviness to carry it's it's a hard way to live it's a lot of weight to carry it has because those parts don't have the flow of blood let's take this further the so what are some of the spots of trauma the the wound so we had the wound of the how can a human being do this we have the wound of the unknown and the stretching of the Horizon of the possibilities we have the trauma to dignity to human life the trauma to femininity the trauma to Sacred things like youth like parenting like the elderly like the sacred body these are all places that were wounded that were traumatized these were sacred places that were now given a real block of life These are places with the most blood flow and now these are the very places that have been wounded the most and the place of choice of people having choice of how to respond of choice being taken away and even the sacredness not only the sacredness of life but even the sacredness of death even the dead bodies that were not treated with dignity I'm not going to stay in the psychological piece for a long time I just want to give it framework because all of us are thinking this and I've been getting a lot of feedback from the talks and saying what was helpful for you to hear what was not helpful for you to hear so far I'm trying to share with you what people have said to me was helpful my my first real te I had many teachers in the in the field of psychology in grad school but my first supervisor that really taught me about trauma work Dr Trisha Tia um people lovly call her Trish um she's a loving and Brilliant woman and one of the first things she taught me about trauma work she said Tamar never assume the worst part you're going to want to assume the worst part but don't assume it these are words that have stayed with me like many of her words in trauma in trauma whenever somebody shares a traumatic experience there is a need to protect ourselves and that need is what in our brains we think what our worst part would be and then we right away go and save ourselves so to speak in our own minds right now after over a decade of doing trauma work I don't I don't even hear my own assumptions because I'm so much I so much know that the client has yet to teach me but what does that mean never assume the worst part there's a reason I'm telling you this for everyone a different wound is what is going to give them the most deepest reaction to trauma for some people it's the world's reaction and the feeling of aloneness and the feeling of oh everybody hates us for some people it's a particular undignified thing that happened to to to one of our own for some people it's something different so I'm telling you this for two reasons one is to have compassion to your own worst part this is not a competition of whose worst part is more right everyone you you have your own reaction to what's hardest for you and that is yours for whatever reason everyone will have a different in the past two weeks I don't think I had one session that didn't accept the one or two that were so triggered that they were in a complete state of dissociation and denial which I will talk about I don't think I had one session didn't start or didn't almost fully Encompass right now I've had two weeks in a row of work right that didn't fully Encompass the work somewhat halfway Encompass or fully Encompass this piece about what's happening with us and everybody has a different subtlety of the worst part part for them everybody it's this peace that they heard or this peace that they saw or this fear that they have the second thing besides having compassion towards ourselves is to have respect to other people's worst Parts you know in it's MIT there are four languages that are used for our outcry we screamed that we there were four languages of our bitterness and cry everyone cries in a different way some cry internally some cry quietly some are more loud so not only do we need to have compassion towards our own worst parts we need to have compassion and respect towards other people's experiences in this the maral says there something when it comes to galut and it comes to Gula there's something about it that we need to search we need to search for coping it's not doesn't just come naturally we need to look for it we need to act towards it this is most of what I'm going to talk about today but first I want to tell you about two fascinating studies on trauma do you know where most of trauma research comes from guess what country why enemies around because Israel is unfortunately a natural state of trauma research and we are curious enough and smart enough to want to study it there is unfortunately trauma amongst the youth and the soldiers um especially in specific spaces of where they live over we live and we have done a lot of research in fact we have a lot of research on the kibuts on attachment that's fascinating some of the best research on attachment and parent child attachment is from kibot studies they're called the kibo studies they're just natural environments where we drew information from based on basing on correlations and seeing what kinds of groups how do they do long term 20 years 30 years down the line but they have fascinating research on soldiers are Brothers they're so beautiful have you seen a face of a soldier that's not beautiful the research was done when in a unit and these units they seem like they form subfamilies you know I speak to my nephew Gabriel at his unit he responds to me I don't know what there's this protocol of when they have access to their phone they're not allowed to send out signals from a certain space too many times cuz and then attention comes to that space but every once in a while he surprises me with a text back most recently he said I'm so hot and I'm so dehydrated so hot here and I said to him Gabrielle you need to drink and he's like you're such a mother all of you all of the women are mothers back to the so he said there is this camaraderie it's like they are their own family you know there's the the BR the larger Group which is I think a few hundred and depends on the units depends on what they're doing and unfortunately where there's a fallen soldier I don't think they're going to give this option right now during war but in general when there's a fallen soldier they give the brothers they give the rest of the soldiers two options they gave one is to stay on the unit and to continue to get up the next day and to and to um they do come in sometimes for burial that's the only thing G real real has come back for is to bury two friends but they to go back and to go back to base and to go back to training or to go back to whatever they're doing or they gave another option which is to not be back in that same space in the same space where the death and the loss just occurred so they could process it so they tell them go away go away for I don't remember I don't know I didn't I'm trying to actually access research very hard to access Israel research I need to get to an academic I'm not going to bother the government about this right now excuse me can I please gather some of your research on soldiers but I need to get through AC Academia cuz I can't get it um just through the internet but to go away for a couple of nights to aot or to T aiv to the Dead Sea to get away and to you know be in a comfortable space then they F then they noticed that the rates of depression and suicidality were much higher in one of the groups much higher so this is part of the research that they did what's your instinct which group had higher rates of suicidality and depression the group that stayed with the unit or the group that went away to a lot so it's fascinating to me it's really usually split often when I ask a question because there is reasons that you can understand that both could be helpful is that true but ladies this is the core this is the core of what I want to tell you we're here together right now none of us have gone away we're sitting here we're talking about our people we're talking about ourselves we're in it the group that stayed did much better than the group that went away the ones that stayed in the pain the ones that stayed in the feeling of what was happening the ones that went away felt the guilt of separateness it didn't soothe them being with their brothers gave them more healing than being without this is the psychological piece and I'm gonna I'm gonna move it towards the spiritual piece which is which is parallel because everything stems from a spiritual reality and then it just goes into the lower world so to speak but letting yourself feel the pain that you feel is you staying in the unit with our brothers and sisters so the pain that you feel and the fear that you feel and the tears that are on your face I call them holy tears these are your ways these are these are your connection to your brothers and sisters that are not even in front of us right now this is you staying on the unit this is you saying I'm getting up and I'm I'm doing the fight with you the next day even though I don't see you I don't even know you I don't even know your name I'm here with you I'm staying connected with you so staying in connection keeps you connected to the people that we're grieving and to the people that are suffering but it also keeps you connected to something else then a sh there's five levels of a of a human soul the and are the highest two not that I know much about the other three but I definitely don't know much about and but the other three I study I try to study and there are I talk about these three bled my talks the are our thoughts our brain the r our emotions and the nees is our reaction our our our body our most primitive selves our instincts when you your Ru is the bridge between your n and your neish your body The More Alive your Ru is guess what the r is what what is it thought body or emotion which one is the it's the emotion The More Alive your emotion is the more connected you are to all your parts your mind and your body are connected to each other that's why the the less connected you are to your emotions most of the time somatic symptoms like in the body like anxiety like the heartbeating fast sweating the feeling of faint the feeling of shakiness tingle these things when they're not neurologically based they're most of the time because the ru is not alive enough we're not connected to the r most of the time when I see a client presenting with those symptoms I know we need to help her connect to her feelings and then the feelings and then help her feelings connect to her brain to give words to what her feelings are so your connection to your pain of what's Happening not only is it holy pain that helps you connect Ed to the soldiers to the capture to the brothers and sisters it helps you connect be connected to yourself and that that brings blood flow into those spaces that have been traumatized I want to give you one more study and then I'm going to tell you the piece that I learned that has been blowing my mind I don't I I got to hear Rak from Lita this Shabbat I had an instinct I'm being honest with you because there's so much of what I learned that I needed to understand more of going over to him and asking him can you just tell me more about this piece and this piece and this piece another study from 911 911 there was a lot of trauma studies as well my husband and I actually recently in September or maybe it was August I feel like anything passed two weeks ago it feels like ages ago now um we actually went to the 9/11 Center and there was a special uh Memorial and there was a special room where they said the images here are hard to bear and I felt a conflict whether or not to go near it and then I read this St and then I was talking to my sister-in-law Dr Sarah Asher and we were we were remembering the study from 911 and the study was that those that those that saw more and more images of the details of the horrors of what occurred had longer lasting PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder years after the trauma so this sounds kind of contradictory CU I was just saying staying connected to the feeling of the pain staying with our brothers and sisters being in it is not only our way is not only holy it's also healing and helps us be more whole so what is this piece about the more details than what happens why is there more trauma than with more details the reason why is because at some point while we are connected to the pain which is the holy pain which is that Ava and that healing pain at some point there's some things are so hard for us to process that it doesn't lead to more Ru it doesn't lead to more emotion it leads to one of two things either numbness or desensitization or overload it's like we cannot metabolize the information we can't process it and it doesn't add to our compassion it decreases it desensitizes it could desensitize our compassion it could and it actually decreases our capacity to function so there is this line you know that's why people are saying stay away from the there is a reason for that and the question is what's the line I'm not the one thing I'm not good at is telling you about lines I can tell you that you probably know what your line is trust your own instincts about it now even wanting some people that have the desire to see the images they're psychological reasons for that too sometimes I think it could stem from a piece of empathy this feeling of like almost like not leaving the victim alone of this fantasy of being together with the victim it's an illusion of control of having some kind of command over the experience cuz then you can become a hero in the story in some way even just emotionally there's a sense of curiosity of human curiosity there's the sense of needing to know the worst thing but I just want you to be mindful psychologically there's such a thing as too much to process it's like antibiotics if you take it to it's you need it but if you take it too many times it stops have its potency or it could actually become toxic to the system so here we're talking about this idea of trauma that trauma is a it's a barrier and it's a barrier of blood flow to the places that were sacred and so much of the Sacred that was defiled so much of the Sacred that was impacted of dignity of known of Youth of elderly of connection of of of celebration of sim of of the Holiness of a body and that your pain of what you feel towards our brothers and sisters towards the ones that are hurting or the ones that have lost someone or the ones that are afraid for all of us that pain is is that Holy pain it's like you're a soldier that's staying on the unit when you let yourself feel you're saying I'm here I'm here I'm not going away I don't want to go to a lot right now I want to stay right here with you in the pain in the in the loss but there's such a thing as being mindful of of seeing that which will help you feel more and not feel less both in the capacity to function but also in the capacity to have compassion let's take this further one of my favorite writers I quote her book very often I have a really really judgmental approach to books ever since I started to really learn inside and I have a really hard time appreciating any any most secular reads it just gets so frustrated with them it just makes me want to learn the source in Torah Source I I've lost patience for I've I've and and to some degree it's it's a bit I wish sometimes that I could still have that like easy enjoyment but there is nothing like the enjoyment of learning something in a piece of Torah that just resonates with me from like all parts of me and and it's and I'm not I'm not so learned I try to learn I'm not so learn it but I think the reason why I have the the to understand is because I work with so many humans holy people and each one is a whole world and because I get to know these worlds they teach me realities that I wouldn't otherwise know and I recognize them in the Torah I see I know this I've seen it before she's taught it to me they've taught it to me so I recognize these truths and then they're captured these pieces of of Torah that it's once I've tasted this I just can't read secular books anymore it's hard for me to even refer back to some of my academic books I still sometimes do that because there's a lot of H but anyway one book that is La haval but is satisfying is Dr Edith Edgar's the choice she is a she's a psychologist she is a holocaust Survivor and she wrote A Memoir of her own healing and also the process and parallel process of working with healing with others she's a remarkable woman I I I chewed up her book I chewed it it's and I think and it it it gives me Comfort to such degree I couldn't find it and we only have my husband and I have thing God we're blessed with a library that we we just blessed with our library and it's years of collecting and learning um but there's only two books we don't lend out they're out of print we don't lend them out but most of everything else we lend out and we like forget who has it the choice was like highlighted and and had notes in it and then I was like who did I lend it to I need it back cuz I was I wanting to refer back to to it for the talks that I've been preparing in the past two weeks and then I was thinking who has it and then I had this Comfort I'm like oh I think my son took it to herrell I think he has it with him and of course then I'm like Oh my boys in ER toell may hasem protect all the boys and girls in ell so she writes stress is the body's response to the need to change we are all stressed and whenever people ask me I actually have have them change the title like how to cope with the anxiety and it's like this is a time of stress and stress is purposeful this isn't a time to make it go away we need to cope which is hard cuz we need to live but we need to respond we don't need to quiet we need to respond so what's our response who are we supposed to come through this trying to stay the same after a trauma is what creates trauma that's why going to a lot is not helpful because it's like oh let's pretend I'm okay I'm not okay we're not okay nothing is okay what happened is not okay and what's still happening now is not okay so how can we be okay when things are not okay so what are we what's our response what are we supposed to do with our response I tried I recently got into learning some of the Torah from ra ra Arya Kap and it's very hard to understand one of the pieces that he's been reading he's been writing a lot is the highest level of of the sa the highest level is the will is our choice is having is one our choice and that's one of the hardest parts of trauma is when our choice is taken away so the repair is to give give back that which was taken away so if Choice was taken away then where do we find the choice where do we look for it ladies I was reading and this happens to I say this all almost every lecture that I I learned something and I just shared with you my my in loveness with work with learning and I always find when I'm looking for something Hashem helps me find it and very often like my kids will see me like crying on the couch cuz I learned something that resonates now they're used to seeing me crying on the couch not only when I'm learning there have been a lot of Tears in our home of the morning of what of amist but as I was reading this piece from rosha Shapiro on parat Noah I really had this Eerie feeling is he is he writing in our times is I if you had read what he wrote I'm I'm really being honest with you if you had read what he wrote you would have thought he wrote it yesterday to all of us us I couldn't believe I was the to prepare for my sisters that I had the to learn this piece and I hope Hashem gives me the to give it over to you in the way that it was meant to be listen to this quote he was quoting this in parat Noah which is the par was learning but he was quoting Aid a rashan midbar arise Hashem your enemies should scatter his and your haters shall flee from your presence so he's quoting this concept of enemies scattering and haters fleeing disappearing from his presence then he writes I'm not making this up I almost brought the book with me but it's very dense and it's a lot of pages he writes enemies are different than haters he said enemies are only bothered when we're in proximity they're only bothered because there's actually a competition that's an enemy but he said a hater a Sonet is something different he writes a Sonet pursues just because you exist it's not enough for a Sonet to disperse to not be near you he will still dis he will still hates you and he will still come after you because he hates you so it's not enough that he's not near you he hates you your very being makes him upset as long as you exist he hates you he's upset with you enemies you just need to separate they just can't coexist so if you're under the radar the enemy is fine just don't make noise but a hater will pursue you they cannot bear the existence of the other they look for the good in you so they can use it against you to pursue you this is a hater this is I'm quoting him his proximity is not the issue it's your being that's your issue even when not oppressed a hater opposes the very object of his hate listen I'm going to take this further then he keeps on writing this I have to read his Torah even in English I'm just being honest with you sometimes three or four times to understand it CU he makes assumptions about us knowing things that at least about me of knowing things that I don't know so I have to read it over and over again it's like I have to understand the rhythm of it and see in between the lines to understand him then he kept on writing the line and I'm going to tell you and I processed this with um one of my colleagues that when I Was preparing for the talk tonight he says when one Rises the other one Falls kept them saying this when one Rises the other one Falls only about haters not enemies let's take this further only hatred necess necessitates this there alone the very tilting of the balance toward the existent of one side Tils the balance towards the non-existent of the other this is what he leaves us with and then he takes us to to to where this all started so he's saying that an enemy we just have to separate from a hater we have to rise above and that's the only way that he will not exist if we tilt our existence above his let's take this further this was fascinating to me you know how we learned about a getting the braa after after he passed the test with its His Highest Point that he got the Braha that he will we will multiply like the you know you know this piece like the stars and like the sand like the uh Colonels of the sand and we will be above beyond our enemies our enemies will serve us right it's fascinating this is in increase Offspring Stars send what's enemies does it say haters no he only got a Braha to be beyond the enemies not beyond the haters we didn't have it yet we did not have the power to be Beyond a hater with abam we did not have this power to be Beyond a hater with Yak guess who brought in the knowledge of being of have of the Braha above a hater something with yakob and Asaf let's let me tell you this I didn't know this I promise you I didn't know this a hater was added later to the equation more was needed but there was only one person that recognized this ladies I'm going to take this to a smaller much smaller tinier scale I think because I miss them and I worry about them and I'm proud of them cuz they chose to stay N St to learn and they said to me mommy our brothers are risking their bodies and you want us to come back home this is the place where we belong when my my kids have this thing I don't know if like it's like a rebellion against me as like my sity motherhood but they have this thing that they don't travel with food my boys my girls will but my boys won't so they go on this long and they like traveling to her to tral through like these stops where they like explore it's no longer funny but literally I had to convince my son to not stop in Egypt is one of his explorations no I don't think this will any longer for now be something he'll ask for but and they go on these long trips with their stops and they refuse to take with them it's like a thing but I have learned how to trick them how but I get them it's not really a trick I have learned how to work with them that I take very sealed packages of very confined specific foods that in case they're literally Starving in Greece they will just have something to eat cuz there's nothing Kosher for 24 hours it's like this feeling of you will need this I know you will need this and and if you won't just throw it out but like this feeling of I know you will need it ladies this is what happened with one of our imot Rifka recognized that the Braha that we got was not enough she was the one that got the braa the hater was added to the equation and it was brought down by the recognition of Rifka you will need this she said do her her advice which we're going to get to she is the one with Yakov you know when she asked Yakov to switch the braa for yak's blessing to switch with asov yakob ended up getting the Braha instead of Asaf when Rifka went to marry Yak in it says may your Offspring conquer what is son haters she is the one that brought down the blessing of and and think about the eie of the words conquer the gates of the haters like the places where they can come through so until Rifka we weren't given the blessing of conquering ha ERS so let's take this further what does this mean to rise above to rise above the hater because I think that we're all on the same page that what we're dealing with right now is not just enemies we have those two I feel like the Puri I'm not want to Define haters and enemies but definitely what we're working with right now are the haters right so I wanted to I was thinking about this I was thinking about this all both both these weeks and I had this thought that like our boys are risking their lives and they're going to the borders yes and so many of us just living in arral is like living on a border in a way it's like saying like this is our land this is where we are and so many so many families that are living on the edges to keep our borders ours and I was thinking like where can I go past my border where can I go past my own Comfort where is it that I am crossing the line doing something a bit different doing something a bit more Brave a bit bigger we can't be the same we can't respond to such a place of pain without a bigness inside us you know two weeks ago I was in so much pain that I was afraid the pain would consume me and there was a moment last week where I started to feel that the pain was less intense and it's scared me more than the pain itself and I said Hashem do not let go of my pain until I do everything I need with it how can I let go of the pain when we're still hurting so part of the way that I don't usually do this I don't usually impart advice who am I to tell others what to do but I thought that perhaps as a calling to respond to the pain that we're in to respond to respond to what Hashem is asking of us I thought that maybe I would talk about four ways that we can respond and the last one is a piece that raos Shapiro brought in the fourth one which is his definition of what it means to rise above but this is not an exclusion of this but not other things it's just my sharing it might be useful to you a way to bring healing that connection isn't just you know people say like let's do things so when you do things not just do them but connect it directly to the pain to The Compassion to the pain of what's of of what's inside your heart link it so that the very place that has the wound the very place that has no blood flow will now have not only blood flow but will be rich with blood will be rich with life so I broke it down into four places and the last place is the space that Ramos shapir discusses the first three I'm not going to get into the details of it but I will put it into spaces one of the places that have been horrifying that are really hard to wrap our head about around is the loss of innocence and youth it is just a different type of loss AEM took these lives he could have taken the lives of the same amount of of adults but there were babies that were also taken it's very hard to wrap our head around such a place of pain of complete innocence of just complete future and and use and beauty and I think that's is a big place of that trauma of that wound of how could a human do this but also what do we do about it you know how many fantasies I that people have had that have spoken to me about like bringing formula to the babies that are captured like these are the things that we want to do people are literally these are the things that We're Dreaming of we want to nurture we want to take care of but ladies we don't have we have the formula but we don't have access to them but we have access to something else and one of myot said to hasem like you took these carbon you took these innocent carbon is there a way that we can give an offering a carban and if if a thousand of us give gives their own carbon maybe one of the babies can be released these are I I didn't I made up these numbers what I'm saying is linking our linking our actions into the particular pain so what could be a carban so what is about a baby there's a reaction to a baby because there is no reason to not love a baby when a child gets older even a child can havea so you can have feelings of being responded to by a child that can make you feel small that can make you feel degraded and of course an adult you can have reasons not to love an adult because an adult can hurt you but there is almost it's impossible to almost think of a reason to not love a child a baby is that true a baby captures within it the whole concept of unconditional love it is completely unconditional is completely selfless it has nothing to do with who the baby is it's just because the baby is yes it's not because of his character or because he's smart or because he's this or because he's that it's just cuz it's a baby it's an innocent life it has no reason for us not to love [Applause] it so I would say that anytime we exercise an act of unconditional love where we love another just because it's like our kurban especially when it's hard for us it's like us saying Hashem we're giving you this and you give us that back that's our way of our carban to Hashem I can think of three ways of that it's uncondition it's love when it's hard for us to love you know a few lectures ago I was talking about this concept I was embarrassed of myself I know I gave these talks on rashash around rashash yum kipur about this concept of loving people that are hard to love something that I've been thinking about recently I really hasm gave me a capacity to love I'm very blessed I really love and I love to love and then something I've been thinking about lately a lot is what about loving people that are hard to love and it's been my prayer to love people that are hard to love people that push push push me away or people that say that it's it's not you know whether it's in a clinical sense or in a in a in a personal sense people that are just hard to love because they elist things that are hard for me to see Within Myself and then when this happened and I was saying yeah hasem it hurts to sometimes love someone that's hard to love but then I was thinking it hurts so much more not to look what happens to us when we don't love yes it hurts sometimes to love but it hurts so much more not to so with say as a carban for the babies it's the kban of loving when it's hard to love it's finding that unconditional space within us for our own children when it's hard for us to do it and I relate to this for myself because I'm such a connector I'm such a person that loves people and information and Analysis I Have Become come sickened by the idea of speaking anything negative about another human being even in supervision it's like I'm uncomfortable it hurts me it hurts me that every ounce of Lon har that we don't say is like our kurban this is our unconditional love Hashem will avenge the blood of the babies but we can use the pain to bring more sacredness into the world number two another piece that's been hard that's been another trauma another wound and this is one of the places that I wasn't sure if I should go there but a place that's been that's been something that's come up thematically I think it came up three times three three times over the past two weeks where women were telling me that it's hard for them to enjoy anything in their life and I used to think you know you know this language of like don't let them take that away from you but I changed it I changed it we can't enjoy because we are in mourning we are in pain and it's hard to enjoy when we are in pain and one of the things that the women have been telling me that's hard for them to enjoy is that anything that has to do with connection and especially within marriage and especially in context of one of the other ways of lack of dignity that has occurred to our sisters it has haunted me I no longer say Thea of for those that need that I say the of because some of what we had heard of the of the pain that our sisters have endured would require bringing back to life that's how much pain they had endured the idea of Hashem can he willing give them back life so I was thinking about how we can bring more of that sacredness how can we use our pain for our sisters for what they endured to bring more sacredness into the world so I was thinking about interpersonally or between us and Hashem anything that has to do with making your marriage more sacred is like bringing light into that place where Darkness was created so any anything that a woman does that has to do with her choice to live in a Sanctified way in a relationship that's holy in a relationship that's chosen in a relationship that's Honorable in a relationship that has connection anytime a woman chooses to invest in her relationship with her spouse or in anything that has makes that relationship more sacred that's her that's us bringing more sacredness into that place that was traumatized that's bringing blood flow into that place that was hurt so not only you should go into that space and dip into that place and enter that Covenant you should do it with Hashem I'm bringing healing I'm choosing to do this with you I'm choosing to to do this in this context I'm bringing healing and sacredness into a place that was defiled number three one of the ways that Rifka communicated to Yakov that asav will hate him and that she that he should get Thea to be able to overcome the enemy she brought the energy she brought the blessing she is the carrier of the blessing for us that are are the hated will be overcome she said a few times shaki listen to my voicei our voices women's voices of I'll never forget one time told me there's nothing like like the tears of a mother just like Gabrielle my nephew said to me we're all mothers here we're all mothers to the soldiers that are going out to to Gaza or to or anywhere else and they all need they need our tears there's nothing like the tears of a mother the age kodes the P Nets now wrote even when a steel wall separates us from you Hashem the heavens will open at the cries of babies for sure the heavens are open for our cries if the babies haven't cried now one have they cried for sure the heavens are open for aot you know during this time where each one of us feels like our identity it's not about our identity you know my my husband pointed out to me he said every soldier leaves his family his his his wife his children his house and he goes in and he's a soldier he's not a last name he's not even a first name he's just a soldier you he leaves his identity and he walks into battle as a soldier and nothing else and in this time where each one of us are soldiers we could forget our power our individual power rosha Weinberger spoke a number of times about power of and the power of our voice we had coined the whole idea ofab uh when she was praying she went from depression to P She had a whole different face when she came to this place of I'm going to do something about my pain of not having children and she she she brought it through through prayer she reacted to some pain inside her when she was just in her pain she her face was depressed but when she got up she was still bitter she was still hurting but she did something P She had a different face our voice matters every voice everything that we say matters sometimes when I feel defeated by the bigness what I'm praying for I I don't know if this is correct but you take this if it works for you I pray for an five minutes of peaceful feelings for someone that's captured I feel like I'm not a big enough person to ask for something bigger or I prayed that maybe those that are captured can start to find Hashem in their Dark Places and they won't feel alone and they can find the most important companion in those spaces or for a mother to be able to fall asleep a little bit longer one night when she's worried but I don't think you need to make youra smaller I'm just sharing with you things I do in case it's helpful to you cuz I don't think that Fila has any borders our love is Limitless and so is Art and number four I try to understand this piece and I went over it and over it and over it what did our mean when he said rise above the en rise above the hated ma rise above he kept on saying this and and he ended with something remarkable which I will read to you I wrote his quotes down directly so I could just read it to you directly you know I'm very into particulars the book that I am theoretically writing that I'm uh that I have my material prepared for I already have a title for it and the title is the space between you and I because I love the idea of spaces of the energy between people this is how I do my coup's work is the idea of what's happening in the space between them or this idea of this idea of us and the Synergy between us I love the particulars they get me excited the idea of respecting the other of Das which is the idea of seeing the other separate from you and seeing them not just as a as a as a extension of you but a separate from you I enjoy this work I like thinking about it and I love the idea of Ava of connection the idea of connection and the idea of separateness but I naturally connect to the idea of respect much more there is something that I've been thinking about the past two weeks it's a particular feeling Miriam Handelman called it something I'll tell you and then rosha Shapiro captured it in this piece of Rise Above these are stories you heard I'm just going to tell you one or two but first I'm going to tell you this is when I think people ask me when did you decide to be a therapist it's it's like my husband says it's not a decision it's a calling but I tell you that and I like to argue with that with myself hood and say no I decided but I could tell you that one of the most biggest Impressions that a story had on me I was in high school some of you may have heard the story already and but it's such a precious story and a an American Soldier a veteran came to speak to us I went to hater uh right here around the corner in the neighborhood and an American Soldier came to us around I think it was Yamahas it was Holocaust Remembrance Day and he shared a story he was one of the guys that gave out soup to the children so something remarkably painful about trauma that the body can take healing only a step at a time it can be all at once and even when a body is starving for food food it can only take some a little bit at a time cuz otherwise it'll get overwhelmed it won't be able to process it that's why when God forbid someone struggles with an eating disorder when if they come to a place when it when it comes like I would never work with someone with an eating disorder without someone else that is physically on the case as well because when it comes to the actual nutrition in the body even when the body is starving in and is literally eating at its organs for energy when given food it can't consume all the food it needs it can be it needs to be given in very specific amounts just enough to survive but not too much to to overwhelm the body with process so he said that the he was in the children's Liberation camp and the children were emaciated and hungry but they had such low energy and they could only eat very little so they had broth they had soup and it was just a little broth and they only gave a tiny bit to each kid tiny bit and there was a long line of kids getting soup and he said that he stood there and all he did was just scoop out one soup after another uh Spoonful and another Spoonful and the kids stood there he said he was there a full day and then he got tired and a different Soldier took over and he sat on like a side cuz he was tired and he was resting and while he was resting one of the kids that had already finished eating the soup sat down next to him and he put his hand around this kid just a little kid and he he's like I he just sat next to me he finished his soup and I put my hand around him I have this image in my head ladies this is the image that I think made me a therapist and there was another kid and this kid also sat on the other side and he put his other hand around him and another kid came and sat on his lap he said within a few minutes the soup line moved over to the hug line no one wanted the soup everyone just wanted his hug then in a place of such where the kids had encountered they weren't just starved in their bodies they were starved in humanity they wanted to remember the human touch more than they needed to feed the body this is the spirit of the human being ladies how many Soldier stories did you hear of hugs to each other in this chaos and this Darkness one after the other were all soldiers giving each other hugs this was one story from a Liberation Soldier but my son tells me about how they made sandwiches for Kim and they wrote their phone numbers in it and the Kim are calling them back hey thanks so much please next time add more ketchup to my sandwich literally I sew piles of sandwiches it's like it's hard to see but it's like delicious to see but these boys these 18-year- old boys just pile in humus and piling and they're just making one Sage of and they wrote their phone numbers in it and these stories of and these stories of love and of connection and it used to be used to be last week when someone would tell me yeah but I don't think I can get my nails done it just doesn't feel right and I'm not talking about getting nails done I was thinking of getting them done today so don't it's not about the specific I'd be like no but you have to live but then I'm thinking it's not just that we are connected there is something different there's a different feeling here Miriam Handelman called it the am isal feeling it's beyond love it's beyond connection it's beyond belonging it's amist feeling then I wanted to know what is this amist feeling it's something Beyond we can't describe it and then I was thinking on it and there I remember one day where I had a really hard time it was a day that I spoke to one of my favorite people in the world who is a warrior who has encountered her own personal Holocaust and has overcome it a survivor of childhood abuse who moved to Earth destroy I love her I'll send her a kiss because I she I'll probably send her the video and she was saying to me by Dr prit she she moved Tera to she's living in Earth right now she has a beautiful family a striving thriving leadership of a family she's the holiest people in the universe and she says but you I had I had a talk with her that day and it was a heavy day for me it was a heavy day and and in the midst I I it was actually one of the days that was I was feeling overwhelmed by the pain it was hard for me to move and in a place of like a it's like Hashem like what is this pain it's it's beyond love it's beyond connection it's beyond belonging what is it and then Aros Shapiro captures it here he says that that the resurrection of the Dead will come from the losing bone I don't know much about it I'm taking questions on everything except on this I read this over and over again but I can tell you what I understood and then I was like what is the loose bone the loose bone is a part of our body and he wrote these words he said a man can be destroyed very easily he even said the words a man can be cut up into pieces with the slightest of tools this was in this par he wrote it in the book but there is a part of him that's Untouchable he cannot be destroyed in this place and it's the place from which he will be rebuilt it's the place from which we will be rebuilt as a nation it's a place from we will individually be rebuilt he said this is a place where the haters they can they can destroy us and other parts of us very easily but he says in the greater pressure that will apply to our lose bone which we I will get to describing what that is the greater pressure is going to go back to them cuz it can't be destroyed so the energy of the pressure will just go back to the hater and the hatred themselves will kill the haters that the more it's like the hammer will break and they're going to want to hit it harder but they won't be able to break it because the loose bone is UN indestructible it's Untouchable the rest of men can be broken without many much sophisticated tools this what he wrote and then he writes what is the loose bone and he breaks it into two things he said Israel is loose bone he writes the word Israel it our nation our Oneness so the feeling isn't just belonging it's not just that I'm connected is that I'm one I am one with the one that's suffering I am one with her I'm one with the one in the fields I'm one with the one in Gaza so how can I be enjoying when one what a part of me is there it's beyond connection it's Oneness it's it's the amist feeling I think is the feeling of Oneness there's like something here that we are separate from each other right we can Define we have borders this is me and that's you but we're also literally one we belong to something all of us belong to something together and we make up that entity together and we make up the entity with every single Jewish soul so that guilt of pleasure I call that the holy shame it's because we are it's the it's the guilt of Oneness it's the guilt of connection because we're one we're invested in Oneness and then there's a second piece to it this is what he says another person that I spoke to this week she she had such a fascinating perspective she said she said yeah I'd bother me the haters they bother me I had I was so moved by this piece she taught me so much she said I'm just so blessed I just want you to notice it's the only reason I'm able to give to you what I can is because I'm just so blessed to learn from so many holy women in my life one more holier than the other the Holiness and the strength that's in our nation I stand up to every one of the women that walk into my office and when they walk out I spend up to them even more cuz I get glimpses of the Holiness inside them so one of such holy women said she said actually she's a daughter of a holocaust Survivor of two Holocaust Survivors both her parents have already she was raised by them but they have passed away from from from being elderly and Hashem took their lives she said but even when I have when we have people that come out and they're like you know they're nice to us the nice ones she said it doesn't suit well with me and it made me curious and I'm like why doesn't it like appease the part where the haters like you know ignite and she said no it means nothing to me and it bothers me that it means so much to some of us because she said that's not where our Salvation will come from it creat this illusion that oh if we liked enough then we will win she like it has nothing to do with them it's such an illusion who cares what they think she believed that it came from her gut she's lived through this through the amuna of her parents soos says hasem he says our task is to engage in fulfilling when one rises in becoming more is and becoming more with Hashem andad with each other he said the other false is not our concern it will be brought only by the Creator your enemies will scatter and your hatred will disappear as if they were never there all we need to do do is Rise Above these were the words in this week par from Moshe so ladies the words speak for themselves all I can share with you that it are working with the pain that we have using the pain that we have not escaping the using our holy pain to directed into healing not only ourselves but bringing healing and sacredness into the world and find finding our own way to rise above and leaning we each other in our Oneness Rising above and getting in touch with our Essence as a nation getting in touch with that loose bone and our individuals and then Hashem he is the one that will he is the one that's going to the Hammer is going to break their own hatred as they hit against our Essence as they hit against our love for each other our our Holiness with Hashem our our Our Risen selves they will themselves break we don't have to worry about them we just need to rise above I give us a collective Braha that we should celebrate with as much and even more energy as the pain that we feel right now and Hashem should bring Salvation to all of thank you ladies thank you thank you yeah