The Trauma of War: Mental Health Professionals in Israel

David Bashevkin: 
Hi friends. Welcome to another special episode of 18Forty. We’re going to be examining different aspects of what’s happening now in Israel. We’re obviously not a news organization. We’re not breaking any news, but we’re going to try to live up to our responsibility that I think we have to our community of providing a lens process, a lot of what’s taking place. I’m sure nearly all of our listeners, if not all of our listeners, have many news outlets where they can stay up-to-date. And what we’re trying to do here is provide, I wouldn’t call it a breather, but a lens, a window to process everything that people are taking in right now, speaking to experts in the field, having conversation, coming together as a community.

We have a few very special episodes coming out, really looking at different angles of what’s taking place. And I think today’s episode is incredibly important, really focusing on the mental health aspect of what’s happening in Israel. I remember I went to the rally in New York that was organized by the UJA alongside many other organizations. I was extraordinarily moved when New York City mayor Eric Adams got up and he said something really extraordinary.

Eric Adams: 
I am not going to be long. I’m going to give you four words. This morning on my briefing, my special counsel, Lisa Zornberg, said something that I want us all to acknowledge. We’ve been through some tough time, New Yorkers, we are tough people. We saw the center of our trade collapse. We saw some of the horrific actions that played out on the stage of our city and our country. But she says something that hits me to my soul. She stated to our team, we are not all right. We are not all right when we see young girls pulled from their home and dragged through the streets. We are not all right when we see grandmothers being pulled away from their homes and children shot in front of their families. We are not all right when right here in the city of New York, you have those who celebrate at the same time when the devastation is taking place in our city.

We are not all right when Hamas believes that they are fighting on behalf of something in their destructive, despicable action that carried out. We are not all right when we still have hostages who have not come home to their family. We are not all right. And we’re not going to say we have a stiff upper lip and act like everything is fine. Everything is not fine. Israel has a right to defend himself, and that’s the right that we know. Your fight is our fight. Your fight is our fight. Right here in New York, we have the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. This is the place that our voices must raise and cascade throughout the entire country. We will not be until every person responsible for this act is held accountable. We don’t have to pretend.

David Bashevkin: 
I was so moved by the way he focused on… Different people are focusing on different things, but he gave language to what I know that I have felt, and I know that so many other people have felt of we are not all right. There is a lot of inspiration, there’s a lot of unity that’s incredibly moving. But there is a part, maybe it’s in quiet, this angst, this sense of vulnerability, of exposure, of deep, deep existential uncertainty that we, I think all have gone through to different degrees depending where you are. But the Jewish people throughout the world really were confronted with an existential uncertainty that most people have not felt vis-a-vis the land of Israel in our lifetimes and that feeling of we are not all right. It was just such visceral, such honest language. It reminded me of the character, those who know know Marsellus Wallace who says taking out some of the expletives, “I’m pretty far from, okay, I’m pretty far from, okay.” One of the difficulties during these periods is small talk, small talk suffers, which I guess for people who don’t love small talk, I don’t love small talk.

But small talk becomes a lot harder when issues of urgency and pressing matters that are so big than those little exchanges of small talk that used to be so easy and so natural. “How’s it going?” “Everything’s great. Let’s catch up later.” Small talk begins to evaporate. I actually think that’s something very dangerous because the integrity of our lived lives can evaporate in an instant. We feel that, I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter how I’m doing, it doesn’t really matter how my day is going. I can’t really complain about anything given that we’re at war and that can easily descend and you have to be careful. It doesn’t descend into a nihilism or a lack of care that people express for themselves, for others. Not God forbid, no one’s descending into being malicious, it’s the exact opposite. There is a unity, there is a purpose. But what sometimes can get lost is the small talk, those little crevices of conversation of life, of just shooting the breeze, making jokes where all of that thing gets compressed by the weight and the urgency of the moment that we’re in.

Where all we’re left to say is, are you okay? Is no, we’re not all right and we’re pretty far from okay right now. And that’s why I thought it was really important to talk a little bit about some of the mental health implications of what’s happening right now. And that is why it is such a privilege to introduce our first guest today. This is someone who I assume most people have never heard of, though he really has a world renowned reputation. His name is Dr. Danny Brom. He’s a clinical psychologist and founder of Metiv, which is Herzog’s Israel Center for the Treatment of Psychotrauma. He has worked directly with the IDF treating post-traumatic stress disorder, published numerous articles on post-traumatic stress disorder, has been flown out to other countries, to the Ukraine, other war torn areas to train leaders in the field. He is really an internationally renowned expert on PTSD, on trauma, on communal resilience.

And I reached out to him and I was so moved. It was already the nighttime in Israel and I texted him, we had made up to speak. It was late, because he was in a hotel dealing with people who have been displaced from their homes in Israel, what you’ll hear about in a moment. And at the end of a very long day, and I’m always so hesitant to reach out to people, the most important thing for people with his expertise is not to come onto a podcast or be interviewed, is to help the people in front of him. And he finally got back at the end of the long day and he responded, “I am sorry. I am wiped from a whole day in a hotel with 1500 displaced people. Give me another 15 minutes.” That’s an incredible person. Somebody who has really stared the trauma and the difficulty of the moment that we are in directly in the face.

Somebody who has worked with soldiers in the IDF and really around the world, communities around the world helping people in the way that they process trauma, which is why it is truly a privilege to speak to a leader in the field. Here is our conversation with Dr. Danny Brom. I was wondering if you could begin by explaining a little bit what exactly is the nature of trauma that emerges from war. You have worked with the IDF, you’ve worked with former soldiers. What is unique about the trauma that emerges specifically from war? So

Danny Brom: 
So let me start by saying that, of course, Israel hasn’t only had one war. There is a multilayered traumatic background in most of the Israeli population. If it’s from the European background, where the Holocaust is part of our legacy and our history. And then there is the creation of the state of Israel, which went with a war. And then there is the other wars, which is in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2006. And then besides the official wars, there were lots of incursions and lots of military activities. So basically we’re not talking about one war. I’ll give you an example. I came on aliyah in 1988 from the Netherlands, and then in 1990 and ’91 there was the enormous influx of the Russian Jews. And I remember well that one of the nights there were a lot of flights coming in, thousands and thousands of people.

And I was working in a psychiatric outpatient clinic. I met the chief psychiatrist there who said to me, “Now we’ll never have to leave this country.” That was his reaction on the influx. So the existential anxiety that Israelis live. Another example I can give you that when one of my sons was 15 years old and was very interested in everything that happened, at some point he said to his parents, us, he said, “I think that the experiment that is called Israel will not exist in about 50 years. That as a context of what happened now in the past 10 days makes it maybe a bit understandable that we are not talking about a war or a terrorist attack. We’re talking about a long history of persecution, of existential fear. And then on top of that, building a new society, it’s only 75 years old with very little history or tradition in the political system. It’s a very complex situation.

David Bashevkin: 
That’s heartbreaking to hear somebody say, “Now we’re not going to have to run again to another country,” that baked into their arrival is can we finally feel a sense of security? And this is the first time I’m younger, there feels like there’s a threat to the existence, the continued existence of a Jewish homeland. What exactly is trauma, the trauma that you treat specifically among soldiers, how is that different than anxiety? How is that different than being nervous or being stressed out? What is the unique characteristic of trauma itself that you’ve seen and studied that emerges from war? If

Danny Brom: 
If we’re talking about soldiers, we are talking about how our system, basically, our bodily nervous system has the ability to go into survival mode. When you get into combat, then something else takes over. Your brain basically functions in a very different way. And many of the people we see say that I saw a soldier who has now been fighting in the past week and he said, “I was walking through the field where all these people were murdered and the cars were on fire and it was a very, very hellish something from you see in films, a battlefield.” And then at some point he had this very strong feeling of anxiety and that lasted and he was in a freeze. He couldn’t move for a minute or so, and then he got back to himself. And from that moment on, he could function very well. He stayed a bit afraid that that might happen again, but basically it didn’t.
He functioned and then after a week he got two days off and he was looking to speak with someone who might understand what he’s going through. And so we talked and it is very clear that what happened at that moment is, his nervous system got overwhelmed. And the nervous system then knows how to take care of it, you get into survival mode. Which is hardware, which is not software. The existential fear puts someone into a different mode of functioning. You do exactly what is necessary and you function and feelings are put aside. They’re not relevant for survival. So the challenge after any trauma is to get out of survival mode and integrate your experience into your life history.

David Bashevkin: 
That’s so profound to integrate your experiences into your life history because it sounds in many ways the Jewish people are not foreign to trauma as you know, and figuring out ways to integrate our collective trauma into our individual stories. How do you treat someone who has acute trauma? What do you do? You just talk about what happened. What are the treatments that allow someone to process trauma?

Danny Brom: 
So I think we know more and more about what it takes and of course there are many methods and actually there’s not one method that has been proven to be better than any other. Some methods are a bit more humane than others. Some methods might be a bit more natural and easier for people to go with. What we know now is what you need is first of all, you need to regulate your emotions and your arousal. Because when you think about the most horrific things that happen to you, your body starts to play up and you might feel your heart rate go up, you might feel some difficulty to breathe, you might feel some stomach aches or headaches or all these kinds of symptoms. And so the first thing in therapy is basically to help people regulate themselves. If they get over aroused, processing is not possible. There is a sort of window of tolerance as we call it, window of tolerance of the arousal in your body. When it gets too high or too low, then you can’t really process.

David Bashevkin: 
So how do you teach someone to regulate? What are the practical ways to teach somebody to regulate their emotions?

Danny Brom: 
One thing is techniques, and I’ll say something about that, but nowadays there is way too much emphasis on techniques. What regulates people is another person. When you are together with someone you really trust, that helps. When you get a safe hug from someone who is really interested and curious to hear you, that is something that regulates.

David Bashevkin: 
I don’t mean to interrupt, I just want to let you know that I’m welling up a little bit emotionally, even hearing that the most effective way where you began and to hear that the greatest technique for a person is another person who you trust, a hug that sparked something in me, it’s hard not to feel that now. That’s extraordinarily moving.

Danny Brom: 
So at this moment here in Israel, there’s almost a frenzy, a lot of my colleagues who say, “We need to do interventions, we need to teach techniques, we need to do, do, do, do do.” Which is very understandable, because also as therapists we don’t want to feel helpless and to be honest, we are helpless in the face of these horrific things. So then there is almost too much doing and too little just being with each other and giving someone the feeling that, “Whatever you went through, I hate it, but I’m able to hear it and I’m with you.” That is the basis of all therapy. So yeah, this frenzy of techniques and of treatment, we are not past the trauma, we’re still in the middle. And then thinking that you can treat is not realistic. The first condition for effective trauma treatment is that the trauma is over and the trauma is not over.

We still have unidentified people, we still have more than 200 people that were kidnapped and are in Gaza and seeing how they have slaughtered people week and a half ago, of course everyone is very, very afraid of what will happen to these people. And then there are the big words of the leadership, “We will win and we will be strong.” And to be honest, the leadership in Israel more or less crashed. And that is one of the most difficult things for people to experience because they need leadership. They need leaders that in a reliable way can tell us what happened, take responsibility, be with whatever happened, and then take us further. And not only these words of, “We will show them and Hamas will never exist again.” And of course that plays into the very strong feelings of revenge and insult and of how horrified we are.

But what we will need is a leadership that can lead us to create a feeling of trust in our leadership. I just came back from visiting one of the hotels near the Dead Sea where in one hotel, 1500 people from the city of Sderot are being housed at this moment. And you would think that Israel would know how to do this. And not only how to house it, but give people some security of how long are you there and are you going to get all meals? Do you have to pay for it? What is happening? And it’s so unclear.

David Bashevkin: 
Can I ask you something? You were in a hotel, you have 1500 people from Sderot who are displaced right now. They were affected quite heinously from the massacre Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. If you’re meeting with an individual, so what are you doing in that moment? What are you saying? Is that where you go to techniques? What does that meeting look like when you meet with a family who are in that place of vulnerability?

Danny Brom: 
We actually went there now to see if there is a basis for interventions and for being with these people. And I’m not sure there is, because people are being told maybe on Sunday you’ll have to move back to Sderot and people are scared and if there’s no clarity of what is going to happen, there’s little we can do to give people a way to process. But what we will do actually is first do a needs assessment. That is what we need to do, 1500 people. What we are planning is a needs assessment not by, who comes to you, but reaching out to every person, every adult, every parent and every child to see how are you doing? And it’s simple questions that we need to know before we can understand what we need to do.

David Bashevkin: 
This is a generation, like you said, like so many generations in Israel where young children are being exposed to the hostility and the vulnerability and even some of the images that have been shared particularly on social media that previous generations were not exposed this closely to the horrors of terrorism, to the horrors and tragedies that have been perpetuated in Israel. And I’m curious, when it comes to children, is treating trauma different among children? Does it have a stronger effect or are children more resilient? How does the issue of trauma play out either differently or similarly when it relates specifically to young children who are being exposed to things that are so horrific?

Danny Brom: 
Yeah, trauma in general basically attacks the system in our bodies that helps us regulate ourselves. Now for adults that can be temporary and then you get back to yourself. In soldiers, that is not a one-time thing, that is three years of being in a combat unit. So it really becomes part of who you are. And you’re in survival mode all the time for three years. And actually no one tells you how to get out of it. You’re being wired for war, your brain is wired for war and no one unwires you. That is part of what we are doing in our soldiers program for people also not with PTSD, but just to help people get out of survival mode. Now, about children, children are of course even more sensitive to that attack on their regulation. We know that and what you see is children get dysregulated.

We know that a lot of children in Israel are being diagnosed with ADHD or ADD, and actually they’re dysregulated because of the enormous tensions that we live with. So there’s a lot of misdiagnosis there. Now the good thing about children is that in a way it’s easier to work with them. They’re more flexible and more open to change. And we actually have developed for many years now a program to teach children emotion regulation. And that is a program that we were supposed to start this month or next month in Ukraine. Well, that is now not exactly what we will be able to do, but we will have to strengthen the application of that program here in Israel. Yeah, it’s enormous, enormous task to basically protect the development of our children from the influences of all these things.

David Bashevkin: 
I was wondering if you could speak for a moment, I’m in the states right now, but I feel very uneasy as does all American Jew and all the friends of Israel throughout the world. But there also is a great sense of unity and there’s this feeling of we want to preserve this unity that we have right now. And I’m curious from your research, what is the healthiest communal messaging that we should be having now? And as it relates to communal resilience. We see there’s been mobilized efforts throughout the world. People are being more unified and friendlier and nicer and more uplifted. You see this change and people want to hang onto it. I don’t know how realistic that is necessarily, but it’s definitely a moving sentiment. And I’m curious, if you could just share a little bit almost generally about communal resilience. How do you ensure that Jewish people throughout the world are able to have the resilience and the strength and capacity to respond and for the long term to these times of difficulty?

Danny Brom: 
I’m going back again. I hope you don’t find me a one track mind, but survival mode also has an effect on how close people get with each other. When you are in survival mode, you attach, when you see brothers in arms, in these units in the army, when they’ve been in combat, they get bonded so strongly and that is helpful. That is what helps people be less anxious. And now in Israel, Israel for the past few years has been terribly divided and people have been warning that this is really dangerous for the state of Israel to be so divided. Now this happened and everyone is helping each other. The level of volunteering at this moment is way out of context. Well, I mean it’s understandable when there is a war, but I think also the Jewish people outside of Israel feel involved. Let me just say a few words more about what we do with combat soldiers after they’re out of the army.

It’s a process called peace of mind where we take soldiers, whole units, for a period of processing their experience. And in the middle of that process, we take them for a week to a Jewish community somewhere in the world. A lot in New York, in Miami, in Boston, in Los Angeles, in London, in Toronto. And the soldiers then two by two live in the homes of people and they do the hard work in that week of about 40 to 50 hours of sitting in a group with their friends that they fought with for three years and then process their experiences and get out of survival mode, understanding how deeply they still are in survival mode. And what I’ve seen is that this also gives an enormous important role for Jewish people outside of Israel to really understand what needs to happen for these, I’m saying kids, for our kids that give three years of their lives, but actually it is not three years.

It is very often a year after where they just need to get away, where they just need to unload. And many stay in partial survival mode for many years until they go into one of those programs of peace of mind and say, “Finally, wow, I now know what I want to do in life. I now know that I don’t just want to survive, I want to live. I want to be creative.” So there is a role and it’s not a traditional role of giving money. It is a role of being involved, having people in your home, seeing how they change in a week, what kind of work can be done. It’s a tremendous privilege both for us as organizers and therapists who come with the group and for the guys or not only guys, there’s also women and for the Jewish community who basically give a communal hug to the group of people.

So it is something we can do together and what we already know now is, there will be such an enormous need after what we are going through now and it seems that we’re really not over it. It will become worse if we really go into Gaza and who knows what will happen in the north. It’s tragic.

David Bashevkin: 
It’s scary times. Our listeners are all voracious readers. If you could share a little bit, what are the book recommendations? Are there any specific English books that you recommend to soldiers to help them better understand how to process their trauma?

Danny Brom: 
That book still has to be written. The need is for warm human interaction and giving an example of, you’re able to lean back, you’re able to look someone in the eyes, you’re able to cry, you’re able to be anxious, you’re able to love, you’re able to be intimate if you dare to break that anxiety. Israeli men have great difficulties to be intimate and we hear that from their wives. Because the softer way of interaction can be frightening and people carry a lot when you have seen death so close and we have lost your friends. And now it’s all not only soldiers, but all those people who have lost these kids who were in a party. How can you ever do a party again?

David Bashevkin: 
I didn’t ask any biographical details. I was so much more interested in your actual scholarship and work, but I’m wondering, could you share with me, what brought you specifically to this work of post-traumatic work specifically with soldiers?

Danny Brom: 
I’ll give you a very short version, and that is that my father was a musician living in Switzerland. During the war, my mother who was born in England happened to be in Switzerland and couldn’t go back and they found each other. And then immediately after the war, there were organizations looking for young people to work with children who came out of the camp, so out of hiding during the Holocaust. And my parents then moved to Belgium to lead a orphanage and they worked with children and my brother and sister were born there. And then later my father was asked to lead an orphanage in the Netherlands. And so it is as if the children went into the business of my father. My brother and sister both are social workers and worked with Holocaust survivors and I became a psychologist and work in the field of trauma. So yeah, that is cross generational interest.

David Bashevkin: 
And those generations that have animated your work should continue to provide the communal hug and allow us to hear the music, your father’s original profession. It seems like to be able to go back and hear that music and have that sense of trust and intimacy with our own lives and those closest with us, I can’t thank you from the bottom of my heart taking a time out, helping so many of our brothers and sisters in Israel, we are sending our love, our tefilos, our prayers to you and Amcha Yisroel. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today, Dr. Brom.

Danny Brom: 
Thank you for having me.

David Bashevkin: 
One of the things that I found so comforting and moving about the conversation with Dr. Brom was almost the tone of his voice, the way that he spoke. He had obviously a harrowing day with who he was dealing with, where he was dealing with them, and there were definitely frustrations that he shared, but the calmness with which he shares and the way he’s able to keep a stasis even in the face of such difficulty is really something remarkable. It just pulls me back to his original response to me, give me another 15 minutes, let me collect myself. And this was somebody who was deeply collected and somebody who really, that intergenerational stability that I think is the greatest anchor of the Jewish people. The fact that we are connected to generations past. This is not our first time confronting horror, this is not our first time rising from difficulty confronting pain.

We are a nation who knows and has lived the verse, we have planted with tears and we have generation after generation reaped with joy. And somebody who has seen people plant with those tears and has helped transform them into experiences of joy and allow people to find that stasis in their lives, to leave that world of survival and enter a world of thriving and living and being a part of society. I found it very, very moving to speak with him. And I think most of all what I found so deeply moving was his own story, which I almost asked him in passing at the end, but that his story of trauma really begins with his own father who began his career as a musician of taking all of the different notes of life and being able to transform them into music is something that I think we are seeing before our eyes and I think that’s a beautiful way to introduce our next guests.

Mike Meyerheim is the COO of KeepOlim, which helps people who have just recently made aliyah and Susan Cohen directs the mental health program of their work, people who have recently made aliyah and they work a great deal with lone soldiers in the state of Israel. And I thought now was an important time to talk to people who are really doing the work in helping ensure that the spirits of the Jewish people and people who have made that incredible decision, that heroic decision to build lives in the land of Israel, to build Jewish lives in the land of Israel and provide them the framework and the services to do that, it is our absolute pleasure to introduce our conversation with Susan Cohen and Mike Meyerheim. Tell us a little bit about the work that you do in general.

Mike Meyerheim: 
KeepOlim has been in existence for about eight or nine years now. The goal behind the organization is to help Olim from all over the world with any issues that they have. One of the segments of our organization, there are a couple of segments. I oversee the part that deals with soldiers, lone soldiers, families of soldiers, people who have made aliyah and have been only a few years in Israel and have children that are preparing to draft him to the army, but they haven’t yet quite adjusted to language, society and I help them before, during and after the service in the Army to go through the process correctly, pick preferred units for the character of the person, make sure they stay alive the whole way through.

David Bashevkin: 
That is definitely holy work. Maybe you could just tell our listeners very briefly, people use the term a lot and I am suspicious that not everybody knows what the term means. What is a lone soldier? I remember the first time I heard the term, I just thought it was a soldier who like, I don’t know, is lonely or sad. What is a lone soldier?

Mike Meyerheim: 
You’re asking a great question. Currently today there are approximately 7,200 lone soldiers in Israel. Lone soldiers are broken into a couple of categories. There are lone soldiers, which are people that come from around the world to serve in the Israeli army. The largest number comes from North America, meaning United States and Canada. The second-largest community that comes to Israel and makes aliyah and goes to the army are the Russian speaking. They could be the Ukraine, it could be Russia proper. And then from there broken down into smaller groups like South America, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and those that come from outside the country do not have parents in Israel. So they identify as lone soldiers because they do not have any parental guidance in the country. So that comes out to 58% of the lone soldiers are from outside of Israel.

48% are Israeli lone children, the lone soldiers where parents can’t afford to financially help them anymore. Or the phenomenon now is that they come from religious families who do not want their children to go to the army and they’ve decided to go to the army and as a result the parents have cast them aside.

David Bashevkin: 
That is incredibly important work. And if you’ll allow me, Mike, I wanted to turn it a little bit to Susan. Susan, if I am correct, you serve as a therapist specifically helping with the mental health issues that Olim struggle with. Let’s start with your work in general and then we’ll get to the specific moment that we are in. What generally are you focused on in your practice?

Susan Cohen: 
I’m here in two capacities, but the main capacity that I’m here is that Mike and I work together on a voluntary basis for KeepOlim. I am the director of KeepOlim’s mental health program. It’s quite unique in the fact that all our therapists are all in Harashim themselves.

David Bashevkin: 
Wow.

Susan Cohen: 
We have therapists that give their time to us from all over the world. And between us we speak a variety of languages so we’re able to work with Olim from a variety of countries. We fill a niche for low cost therapy. Therapy can be extremely expensive and it can cause problems for Olim who are on low wages. We like to think that everybody comes to live in Israel with positive and good mental health. Unfortunately, we find that it’s very much the opposite way around. People come to live in Israel and suddenly any issues that they had in the countries of origin, which they’re hoping to wipe the slate clean because of making aliyah and because of the difficulties of all the things that go alongside that, they actually, their mental health starts to break down and that’s why we fill that niche.

David Bashevkin: 
What are some of the general struggles that people have in making aliyah? You move your home and I guess you move into a new city, it’s about getting acclimated, there’s a new language and a new culture. What are the specific trends that you find which exacerbate that transition? I mean transitions in general are hard, whether or not you’re moving to a new country, but what do you find are the telltale signs and the most common symptoms that you find with people when they make aliyah?

Susan Cohen: 
So I think you’ve already answered part of that question and that is transition itself. Moving from a country where life is relatively easy and comfortable. Coming to Israel where it’s the most beautiful country in the world, we all want to be here, but people sometimes have difficulty with the bureaucracy with moving into the wrong neighborhoods probably, so they’re not feeling welcome in their communities. So they’re becoming isolated and lonely. Some people find it hard to find employment, so that affects their income, which then affects their mental wellbeing. So look, there are plenty of people that come to Israel and have a very, very positive transition, but then we seem to pick up the people that sometimes really struggle with that transition because maybe they’re making aliyah on their own and maybe they have no family here, we fill that kind of gap.

But then we have other kinds of issues as well. But we deal with anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, all the common factors. And then we work with, interestingly, we work with the gay community, we work with transgender community. We are an umbrella for all kinds of Olim. We don’t pick and choose our all them. We work with anybody that wants to come into our organization. So

David Bashevkin: 
Tell me a little bit about the interventions that are needed for someone who is struggling with a transition. Is there a common form of therapy or common coping mechanisms that you offer to help people make that transition a little bit more digestible?

Susan Cohen: 
I suppose it depends where that client is when they get to us, that’s a very important part. But generally it’s listening to them, it’s supporting them and being able through our organization to assist them with certain aspects. So if they’ve got a contract for a rental apartment for argument’s sake, then I can offer the services within our unit, because we have a lawyer that checks those free of charge. So that can immediately take away a lot of stress from people. It’s a big new world out there, the bureaucracy, we have people on our board that can help with bureaucratic issues, which we do on many occasions, manage to help them with things like that.

It’s the fact that we are an organization that in some way offers a complete package. So we’re able to signpost into different areas of our organization. For argument’s sake, there is a section where we have a program which helps all in if they’ve got no money for Shabbat. So we have a feed Olim program, which actually is very relevant now because I’m now beginning to take calls in from clients who haven’t been able to work for 10 days. Who have rent to pay, only one member of their family is working and suddenly they’re finding that they are not got enough money for food to be able to pay their rent. So those are the things that are impacting starting now, that’s without the soldiers and their families.

David Bashevkin: 
Tell me a little bit about what’s happening on the ground right now that you’re seeing with new Olim, people who came to Israel right now. Is their experience different? Are you in touch specifically with lone soldiers during the war? What are you hearing from people within your orbit that is happening right now?

Mike Meyerheim: 
So with the lone soldiers that I’m working with, first of all, they’re coming from around the world. Each demographic area has their difficulty, non difficulty. A lot of kids right now, for example, who are coming from the United States, and I don’t like sounding biased, but a lot of the kids that are coming from the United States come to Israel to join the army, thinking that the army is almost like a summer camp and it is not. You have to understand that the Israeli army is one of the toughest armies of the world. So when they’re thinking, “I’m going to be a paratrooper or I’m going to be in any one of the combat units, it’s a piece of cake.” And it’s nuts because they go through eight months of very intense training and some of them didn’t realize that it would be so hard. And that’s where they call me, “Mike, help me. What do I do now? I don’t want to do this anymore or it’s too difficult, or I’m arguing with my commanders, I’m not getting along with them. I need help.”

Or on occasion you have a lone soldier because their family is outside of the country where there’s a medical crisis at home, where somebody passes away, somebody becomes ill and we need to work out away with the army to get them time to go and visit their family during their personal crisis and make sure they’re okay.

David Bashevkin: 
Susan, can you share with me a little bit, are you working directly with lone soldiers now? Someone who’s going out to war, families who are saying goodbye, they just came to Israel and they’re watching a child go off during an active military period. What words could you even say? What can you even share to help provide some comfort or give some semblance of stability to soldiers and their families? And a lot of them aren’t even able to be present for therapy. So what exactly can the mental health service do right now? What are you mobilizing in a situation where these soldiers are not present, they’re not able, and they just made this choice, they’re new Olim, everything is really fully upside down. What exactly can you do to address the mental health of soldiers and their families?

Susan Cohen: 
So that’s a very interesting question because in our program and the section of the KeepOlim program that we do is tick that, which is our mental health program. We offer free therapy to lone soldiers before they draft, join their service and for one year after they’ve left the army. They’re in therapy with us, we have over 250 lone soldiers in therapy with us on a weekly basis in our organization. At this moment in time, the only thing that I have personally been able to do and my team have personally been able to do is send messages to our lone soldiers to check that they are safe and ask them to check in with us. None of them at this moment in time, they’ve canceled their sessions because they’re on active duty and it’s just a matter of supporting them when they need us. Like, last night I got a text from one of my soldiers that I’d been working with for about eight months, who moved back to America and came back, but wasn’t expecting to come back for war.

And he texted me last night and said, “Susan, I really need some help. I really need some support, but I don’t know when I’m free.” So I said, “I’m open 24/7, just call me.” I’m not going to say to somebody, you can only call me during these hours. That’s not the case. How we’re doing it now is we are starting a support line, which is going to be called Tikva Line, which is hoping to go live in the next couple of days, and that is a support line for Olim, hopefully in various languages, but predominantly at the moment to start with in English. One thing I must say to you is that there has been an outpouring of absolute chesed from therapists all over the world volunteering their time to us.

I can’t begin to tell you the number of therapists that say, “We want to help, we want to support you. How can we do that?” And because of their kindness, because of their chesed, we’re able now to get this helpline off the ground and that will be 24/7 for parents of lone soldiers, for lone soldiers, for anybody in Israel that is in oleh can contact us and they’ll have a friendly, safe space, a space where they’re able to talk and express how they’re feeling to somebody who is going to listen and validate their feelings. So it’s not therapy, it’s a support group. We are starting a support group this week for the parents of lone and Olim soldiers that’s going to be live on Thursday and that will be a series of support groups that we’ve got going. So we are mobilizing different things within our organization to meet the needs of what is now, because the needs of what is now is not therapy. It’s supporting people and validating people and being there for them.

Our country is totally in shock. We’re all numb. None of us can actually believe, and I live in Netanya, Mike lives near Rehovot. His experience of the war is different to mine. He’ll say to me, “I’ve got to go. I’m in a siren, bye.” Where I am, I’m quite protected from that. But today my kids rang me, they checked in on the Family WhatsApp group, “Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?” Why? Because all three of them experienced a siren at the same time. So I’ve got it from all angles at the moment. But yeah, so we are falling in with what we feel is necessary for the times that we’re in at the moment, but preparing for the outfall of what this war is going to bring here in Israel and it’s going to bring a lot of trauma. Our soldiers, our Olim, our Israeli community are going to be facing a lot of trauma as a result of this war and we are building for the future, and that’s what our team is doing now.

David Bashevkin: 
Tell me a little bit about how you run a support group. How does that work? Is there an opening question? Just take me inside the experience of a support group for soldiers. What exactly happens, who is in the room? I’m curious about even details like how you organize the chairs. It’s in a circle, I assume so people can share, but how do you run a support group and what are people sharing in a support group?

Susan Cohen: 
So the support group we have done in the past, we used to do them live before COVID and then we moved all our support groups online when we will have COVID. And we were running something like 52 support groups, join COVID. Our support group now is again going online because the support group for the parents of lone and Olim soldiers is going to be open up to parents in different countries because they’re going to need to be able to connect to each other. So it will be over Zoom. The same with we do one for the lone soldiers, again, it will be over Zoom because they’re all over the place. I can’t say to you, “Let’s do an in Tel Aviv.” Because the soldiers are based all over the country, so they need to access something that’s simple and easy, and Zoom is the best way for that for us.

All the people to the support group will be invited to come to the support group to start with. Okay, so the invitations will go out, we will invite them via Zoom. There’s a team of three therapists that are doing the introduction to the support group. Each one of those therapists is highly trained, and we will explain to the group the basis of what a support group is, which is a safe environment in which to be able to express yourself openly without being judged, without harassment in a way that you feel that is good for you. Each person is given a specific time to be able to speak, let’s say five minutes in a space where nobody’s allowed to interrupt. Okay, so that’s free space held and important. Each one will have a turn, and then at the end of that, we’ll come together as a group and see how that felt.

And people then can express if they gained anything from that sharing what their experience is. From this initial meeting, we will then offer support groups on a weekly basis and those people then will group up with the therapists and that will be their support group. So it’s that kind of a space where they’re held. And if you know what? They want to sit there and cry. That’s also valuable. If they want to sit there in silence, that’s also valuable. It’s just allowing people in an empathic way, in a nonjudgmental way to express what they need to express.

David Bashevkin: 
That is incredible work. And the work that you are doing on behalf of Knesses Yisroel, the Jewish people, really is so vital and so important. What are you doing now to take care of your own experience, your own emotional and mental health needs? You are running an organization that obviously has incredible needs. There’s incredible stress and urgency right now. So what are you doing to take care of Mike?

Mike Meyerheim: 
That’s a great question, and I’ll tell you, Susan and I speak several times during the day and we touch base with each other on how we’re doing. How did this morning go? How did this afternoon go? What did you hear? What did that make you feel? And how are you dealing with it?

David Bashevkin: 
Susan, I know Mike mentioned that you’re checking with one another. I was wondering if you could weigh in, given your background in mental health as a mental health professional, you’re carrying the weight of all the people you’re in touch with in the organization, what exactly are you doing to ensure that you have the capacity to rise to all of the needs and the urgency of this moment?

Susan Cohen: 
That’s a very good question. Apart from speaking to Mike three or four or five or six times a day, I have my own supervision. I have the most amazing supervisor who I check in with on a weekly basis, biweekly basis. I can offload onto him exactly what I’m feeling. He’s absolutely superb. And then I have a team of therapists who are 49 therapists in a group. So I keep checking in with them, are you all all right? Just humor me and text me to say you are safe, and they will check in with me, and that gives me chizuk as well. So yeah, talking, expressing, helping others helps me actually. For the last four days, excluding Shabbat, but for the last four days, I don’t think I’ve left my office and starting work at 6:00 AM and finishing perhaps at 12 1:00 AM in the morning.

David Bashevkin: 
We’re speaking now, just so our listeners know, it’s past 10 o’clock in Israel right now, and I offered you the eight o’clock slot. You said, no, I’d rather speak at 10.

Susan Cohen: 
And I have some people to speak to after you and I have finished. Yet that actually is helping me cope, the fact that I’m working with a purpose to help other people, to help them get through this situation, and that gives me a lot of meaning in my life. So I am looking after my own mental wellbeing through others.

David Bashevkin: 
Susan and Mike, I can’t thank you both for joining and all of your work. On behalf of the Jewish people, continued prayers, continued love, continued success in helping Amcha Yisroel b’Eretz Yisroel, I cannot thank you enough for joining me today.

Susan Cohen: 
Thank you. Take care. Be safe.

Mike Meyerheim: 
Just remember we’re all in this together, and that’s how it’s going to be.

David Bashevkin: 
I reached out to another psychologist who is working with soldiers in Israel directly with soldiers in Israel. Her name is Dr. Ayala Dayan, and the good friend who connected me is Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb. I’m so grateful to him and his friendship over the years and sending our love and philos to him. Dr. Ayala Dayan works directly with soldiers, and she was kind enough after speaking with her to send me actual voice notes that she sends to soldiers, just the techniques and exercises to help keep them grounded in the field to help them integrate and process the intensity and urgency of the experiences that they are in. I was very moved by it, and I thought to have that experience, to hear what they’re hearing, to hear that grounding exercise. Who knows, maybe some of our listeners may need it themselves. Here are the messages that Dr. Ayala Dayan is sending to Israeli soldiers in the field in Israel.

Ayala Dayan: 
So one of the most powerful techniques that can be used for reducing stress and anxiety in the moment is a technique called a grounding technique. And before we get into that though, I’d like to go through how breathing exercises can help us to reduce our stress and tension, and they’ll be the breathing exercises that you’ll use as part of the grounding technique. So the first thing to know about breathing exercises is that we produce a compound called nitrous oxide in our nose when we breathe in, and that’s the same compound that’s used in the dentist’s office to help us relax. So we always want to breathe in through our nose. We breathe in for four seconds and we hold for seven, and we exhale through our mouths for eight seconds. And the reason we do that is so that we don’t blow back out the nitrous oxide that we just created.

So the grounding technique works by first you start by sitting in a comfortable position with your legs and your arms uncrossed. Then you breathe in deeply and slowly using the 4, 7, 8 technique, and you do three breaths in this way. Then you look around you and you start by naming five non-distressing objects that you can see. You see the floor, you see the sky, you see your shoes, you see the ground around you, whatever it is. Anything that you can see, you start by naming five specific things that are around you that you can see that don’t cause distress. Then once you do that, you go back and you do three more breaths using the same four in hold for seven out for eight. And then you go on and you name five non-distressing sounds that you can hear around you.

You hear people talking. You hear birds chirping. You hear people in the background making noise, getting their own shoes on, whatever. It’s five things that don’t cause you distress. And then again, you go back to your breathing and you do it for three breaths. And then the final thing that you do is you look for five non-distressing things that you can feel. You can feel the breeze on your skin. You can feel the sun, you can feel yourself breathing. You can feel your shirt. Anything that you can feel, you find five things that don’t cause you distress and you name them. And then you go on and you do three breathing activities. Again, three breaths in and out, and you can do this grounding activity as often as needed. One of the most important aspects of dealing with stress and anxiety and trauma in a very, very stressful situation is to keep yourself focused on the present.

And the grounding technique will help you stay focused on the present, especially when your thoughts or your feelings or physically you’re feeling everything running out of your control. Maybe your thoughts are running out of your control, maybe you’re feeling very anxious and you’re starting to breathe quickly, or you’re feeling panicky and sweaty, or you’re starting to have very catastrophic thinking. This is something that you can use right in the moment to help bring yourself back. The next step is to really focus on what are your immediate needs and concerns? And keep it focused on that. Really, what are your concerns about and what do you need? And what then can be done about those? To create a practical plan to address those issues. That’s very, very important for staying grounded in the moment. It’s also important to recognize that we’re not going to get through any of this without support.

And so to figure out who your support network is, who you can turn to, there’s people all around you. There’s lots and lots of people. Everybody wants to help. Everyone’s on your side, and whatever we can do, everyone will be doing what they can to help. All we need is for people to reach out and ask us and to tell us what we can do to help, and we will be there. And this goes not only for me obviously, but for every single one of your friends and family and loved ones. There’s always someone to turn to, whether it’s a beloved teacher that you had in school, a friend, a colleague at work when you worked in some other job, somebody in your unit. Make sure that you have somebody that you feel that you can turn to.

And it’s also important to be able to be somebody that others can turn to and to model calm. And when you’re in those moments of calm, to be able to reach out to someone you see struggling and when somebody else is struggling, that they know that they can reach out and that you can reach out as well when you’re struggling. So that’s one of the most important things that we can do to help ourselves and our units. And we also have to further recognize that there are people in our units that have gone through traumatic experiences, whether in their time in the army or in their lives. And there can be triggers as we go through with these experiences, whether they’re sights or sounds or even smells can be triggers. And the more we are very aware of what is going on with ourselves and we start to realize that we’re being triggered, the more important it is to use that grounding technique. There’s also lots of information on progressive muscular relaxation that can be used or guided visual imagery that can be used.

There’s lots of ways in which people can have relaxation text that can be used in the field, not necessarily using technology or requiring technology. The other last thing that I would say, in addition to seeking friends and looking to support others and use your own support network and creating a specific plan to address your immediate concerns and needs, and breaking those down into manageable steps is to really take care of yourself, to know what your strengths are, to believe in yourself, to know that you’re strong and that you can cope. And that it’s hard for all of us, and we all have waves of up and down that’s very natural and normal, but that you can cope and you can succeed and you are strong. And to think about when you have felt like that in past experiences and to use those experiences and bring them now, when you’re feeling really challenged.

Whether it’s by fear or anxiety, it’s really important to know yourself and to give yourself credit and strength and to ask those around you to continue to encourage you and to give you strength. But on the flip side, sometimes things get really difficult to the point where people react very strongly and they feel like the only answer is to either hurt themselves or to hurt someone else. And if you are feeling like this or one of your colleagues is feeling like this, then please reach out. There’s always people to help, and it’s never the answer to hurt yourself. And sometimes extreme feelings of guilt or shame where people are struggling with what they feel they should have done in a moment or didn’t do, can really work their way into our minds. And it’s really important that we understand that, this is our mind playing with us and trying to find ways to hurt us and that the reality is that we did the best that we could in the moment and we have to give ourselves credit for that and to not allow ourselves to sink into a lot of negative thoughts.

David Bashevkin: 
There are some people who have incredible capacity to organize, to build community, and one of those people who is our next guest is doing something really incredible in the land of Israel. I’m sure many of you have heard of him. His name is Rabbi Reuven Taragin. He’s the dean of overseas students at Yeshivat Hakotel, Rosh Beit Midrash at Camp Moshava, and educational director of Mizrachi, and I really know him because he is like the mayor of every rabbinic WhatsApp group that I am in. Anytime that there is a need, an issue, boom, there will be a WhatsApp group that is filled with leaders throughout the world, within the Jewish community, 100s of them all mobilized through the work of Rabbi Reuven Taragin. Among many his many, many responsibilities and he’s doing so much on the ground right now in Eretz Yisrael.

One of the things that he’s doing that I wanted to highlight because I was really moved by it and I wanted to invite him on to 18Forty to really share the importance of this program, and it’s called Worldwide Jewish Unity. It is about building a sense of unity and achdusamong the Jewish people. You can of course find out more about this initiative and there are coordinators really throughout the world, but the website is acheinu.world. Acheinu is spelled A-C-H-E-I-N-U.world, W-O-R-L-D, acheinu.world. And Rabbi Reuven Taragin was gracious enough to come on to 18Forty, talk a little bit about why this program right now was so important. I found it very practical, very moving, and in many ways it builds upon what we heard from Dr. Daniel Brom that the importance of being with one another. It’s not so much about techniques or breathing methods or this being with people and that sense of unity is something that I find a great deal of comfort, just being with people. Being with people, and building bridges with people. And that’s everything that this program is. Here is our conversation with Rabbi Reuven Taragin.

You have started an initiative that I really think is a part of the collective mental health of the Jewish people. Right now we’re seeing an outpouring of focus, of mobilizing, of packing. We have soldiers, cousins, sisters, brothers, children on the front lines, and there is this outpouring of unity and you are rolling out a program called Worldwide Acheinu. Tell me a little bit about what this is and why was this the program that you felt we needed as the Jewish people in this very moment?

Reuven Taragin: 
Rev. David, it’s great to be with you. And obviously we’re all dealing with a lot right now. I personally am dealing with helping my talmidimand their parents. I’m dealing with helping our chayalim in many, many different ways. But we have to think beyond just dealing with the situation. We have to think about what the message is for us and how we need to come out of this stronger and better as a people. And I think beyond strengthening the soldiers and ourselves and all the critical emergency work we need to do, we need to think about how we come out of this a more unified people. And obviously there’s a lot, as you mentioned, a lot of care being shown, a lot of local achdut initiatives. I think we need to think about how we’re one people across the world.

And what that means is we’re different and obviously we live differently and it’s fine to disagree and it’s fine to say that this is the right way to live, there’s the wrong way to live. We have to have this, we have to know the difference between right and wrong. But within a family, we’re a family, brother and a sister and that’s what we need to emphasize right now.

David Bashevkin: 
I just want to say one thing of why I loved it so much and why I felt so strong that I wanted to have you on. Again, this is called the Acheinu Worldwide Jewish Unity Initiative. And I loved it because it wasn’t about just talking about unity or just, I don’t know, where a button. Your first thing that you say, the first thing is really, really remarkable. I want to read directly from what the campaign wrote, because I really did find it moving. This is a time to resolve whatever issues you have with other people, families, neighbors, associates, past friends, appreciate the importance of our people’s unity and be the one to reach out to bury the hatchet. Meaning, you didn’t just say, “Let’s take a moment to look at a nice video of soldiers singing. Take a moment to think about the expansiveness of the Jewish people.” Reach out to someone in your life, somebody who you know, you’ve had issues with, tension with, and bury the hatchet, connect with somebody. Was that deliberate that that’s the first step you wanted in this campaign?

Reuven Taragin: 
Reb Dovid, I think you said it perfectly. When people think about achdus, they think about some kind of broad, nice, warm, conceptual idea of Jews in general, achdus begins on the one on one. And I think this has to be done on three levels, the personal level, the communal level, and the international level. On the personal level, as you said, we have to resolve disputes. We have to think about people we have relationships with who we need to have stronger ones with, and we have to think about the people who live next door across the street, down the block, who we interact with at work, on social media, who are Jewish and we should have a relationship with, but we don’t. That’s I think the first step. Just to continue from there communally when we’re getting together to pray, not any official program of the Jewish community, just to pray, to pray together, to think about how we can do that, to learn together.

Not a rabbi, rabbi statements, no statements, just personal Reb Yisroel, Reb Yisroel. And obviously each community has to think about how to do this. One of the first people I spoke to is Rav Hershel Schachter who sent a beautiful video encouraging people to take part, I said, “Rav Schachter, I want each community to come to you to tell us how far we can go and how to do it. But right now we have to figure out how far can we go in bringing people together. And the one thing I’ll add is what this program offers is I’m not aware of anyone else offering the international unity. We’re working right now with 50, 60 countries. There should be an emblem that expresses this that’s across the world and that can bring Jewish people together. I spoke to one of the chief rabbis of one of the countries and he said, “There’s so many achdus movements right now.”

I said to him, if you can tell me a movement right now to bring together world Jewry in a way that they identify with each other, I’ll go back to my day job and throw my support behind it. He hasn’t told me anything yet. And again, it’s not for Orthodox Jews, but Orthodox Jews, it’s for anyone who’s we’re not talking about you are right, you’re wrong. Legitimizing, not legitimizing. That’s a different conversation. We’re talking about coming together as a family and I believe that’s what Hashem is calling us upon us to do right now.

David Bashevkin: 
I find the work that you do incredibly moving, particularly in this moment. You have an incredible knack and ability to get people mobilized online. I think it’s because you’re situated in the heart of the world, in Yeshivat Hakotel in Jerusalem, in the Old City and able to serve as the pumping heart to get all of the veins and all of the circulatory system of the Jewish people passioned involved in a project of bringing people together. And it starts, as you mentioned on the individual level and really on a personal level, if I could say, even being here with you, it feels like the beginning of that. It feels like the beginning of connection of bringing people together. And I’m so grateful for you, not only for the work that you’ve done up until this point, but in this moment, galvanizing Amcha Yisroel to come together. Thank you so much for all of your efforts. Your message and our continued tefilos are with you, your family, the community, and of course Amcha Yisroel.

Reuven Taragin: 
Rev. David, thank you very much for the kind words. We’re all doing our best at this moment and shkoyach your work and let’s hopefully together Am Yisrael come out this, like I said in the beginning, stronger than we went in and in which way from the difficulty will come something sweeter and we’ll hear what Hashem wants from us and hopefully come closer to the moshiach because we’re people who deserves it.

David Bashevkin: 
Amen. Finally, I wanted to share a student led initiative that I got wind of that I found very moving. It’s a demographic that is often overlooked. It’s hard to focus on anything but people who are on the literal front lines of war, the soldiers who are really risking everything and it’s such an important focus. But very often there are kind of like other demographics around who are really doing incredible work. And one of the things that I was wondering about is that there is a, I don’t want to call it a custom, it’s basically become a custom right now, to spend a gap year in Israel after high school. It’s become pretty well accepted, certainly in the modern orthodox community, in the Yeshivat community, sometimes they do this after two years of learning in beis medrash. After high school they’ll do it in their third year or their fourth year in American Orthodox high schools and Modern Orthodox high schools really around the world.

In England, Australia, they spend a year in Israel in yeshivah or seminary, men and women. After 12th grade, they spend a year studying Torah. These are people who don’t necessarily plan on living in Israel, but they have decided to spend their year in Israel. And this year they just begun this year, the end of August, usually the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul, and now they’re getting their year started, they got interrupted with all of the Yom Tovim and the holidays and now they have this year with this cloud of war hovering overhead. And I know for many people the first instinct is this is not going to be our year. Let’s go home. Let’s try it next year. And honestly, my point is, not God forbid to criticize anybody who is making that calculation for themselves or for their families, not to criticize any families or parents who that is their first instinct.

But I do want to highlight, this is student led, that there’s a group of students in Israel who are making a push to remind one another that, “We are not going anywhere. We should stay for the duration of our year in Israel, even under the circumstances, even with all of the vulnerability and risk. We committed to spend a year studying Torah in yeshivah and seminaries. This is our year and we are not going anywhere.” And I was very moved by this and it really comes back to that foundational principle from Dr. Brom of being with one another. “Let’s stay here together. Let’s find a way to build that resilience, not to flee from this moment, but to embrace, to look squarely at this moment and find a way to build life even amid this difficulty. It is my great privilege to introduce three students, a quick conversation about students who have taken on the initiative. We’re not going home, we’re not going anywhere. We are staying here in Israel.

One demographic that is really incredible right now are the students, American students who traditionally spend a year in Israel, in seminaries and Yeshivats coming from across the United States, Canada, really across the world to spend a year of study often after their 12th grade, a gap year. And there’s definitely a lot of anxiety for students of like, “Maybe we should go home. Maybe it’s too dangerous, it’s too risky. We should all get on airplanes and go home.” And there is a student run initiative of students who are spending their year in Israel right now who say, “Hashtag, we are not going anywhere. We are here. We are not leaving Israel. Even in a time of danger, even in a time of chaos, we are here to stay. I want to first hear from a student, Dovid Weintraub, a little bit about why this is so important, Dovid. Tell me a little bit about this initiative.

Dovid Weintraub: 
Well, many talmidim and talmidot have left Israel. Many people abroad are afraid. Those who are here know there’s nothing to be afraid of, but fear is contagious. This is a time for us to stand up and say that we are not going anywhere. We are standing firm with our people at their time of need. We’ll not give into Hamas a moral victory. We are confident and proud to be able to be here now. We are strengthening ourselves and supporting our people every way we can, first and foremost, by being here with them at their time of need, we are staying here, staying strong, staying with our people, staying in Israel. We will grow through this experience. We’ll be able to tell our children and grandchildren that we stood firm when we needed to and inspire them if they ever need to. Let’s stand united and announce proudly to the world in any way we can, WhatsApp, social media, et cetera, that we are not going anywhere nice and reward our staying power, faith and support of our people by blessing us and our people with peace and strong.

David Bashevkin: 
Not going anywhere. JoBe, tell me a little bit, why are you choosing to stay in Israel right now?

JoBe Silver: 
I think from the moment that we all heard the sirens and we found out the news, initially it was very scary, but once we finally moved a little farther, we realized that in Israel, it’s really the best place to be. We have our learning setup where we can learn Torah for everyone. The chesed opportunities in Israel as opposed to other places are far greater because this is actually where everything is going on. And I think that’s why it’d be better to stay here as opposed to going home to where we don’t have our yeshivos in place, we don’t have these organizations running for chayalim who are a couple hours drive away. So I really think this is an incredible opportunity for us to stay here and not go home.

David Bashevkin: 
Really, really incredible, remarkable. And it’s so inspiring for someone to see a moment of crisis. There’s always a feeling to turn the other way and run this fight or flight and you’ve decided to stay. There are a lot of places that you can learn, but there’s a special quality of the Torah of Eretz Yisrael. I want to allow one other student to speak. Eitan Laub, can you share with me briefly what is animating your conviction to stay in Eretz Yisrael? You came for a year to study. In the yeshiva, you could always defer and come back next year. Why are you staying in Israel for your gap year right now?

Eitan Laub: 
I think similar to what JoBe was saying, that meaning we have the structure here, the Yeshivat is here. I chose to come to Israel for the year to learn here in Israel. I didn’t choose to come here so I could leave and then go learn somewhere else in America. I think it’s the most productive for me to be doing that and learning here. And I think also that most of the yeshivos are in very safe places and very safe environments. So okay, we might need to go down every couple of days. Point is, but thank God we’re doing pretty well. I’d honestly rather be here with the rest of Klal Yisroel being actually able to experience what it’s like when Klal Yisroel comes together, be with everyone, be able to support people who are on the front lines actively. I’m right there to support them as opposed to from afar. Now I’m with you, I support you, but that the Tehillim here for the chayalim is very different than the Tehillim 6,000 miles away.

David Bashevkin: 
There’s something really remarkable and I’m so inspired by each of you, Dovid, JoBe and Eitan really speaking out. And I think this initiative is very important. There’s a lot of fear, there’s a lot of anxiety, and rightfully so. You’ve really made a choice to get behind the campaign to remind Americans, international students who are spending a gap year in Israel, now is the time to stay. Now is the time when we choose Eretz Yisrael. It’s not because it’s easy, it’s not because it’s the most serene, but because it is the land of the Jewish people, it is the land of Amcha Yisroel b’Eretz Yisroel. And I thank you both, all of you, Eitan, JoBe and Dovid for your conviction to the land of Israel, to the Jewish people and getting behind this project. Thank you so much each of you for joining me today.

Eitan Laub: 
Thank you for having us.

Dovid Weintraub: 
Thank you.

David Bashevkin: 
I wanted to leave our listeners with a brief conversation that I had with just an incredible person, somebody who I wish we had a longer time to speak with under different circumstances because, really right away even texting him back and forth, sometimes you can tell that this is going to be a joyous conversation. One of the telltale signs always is when somebody asks me when I reach out for an interview and they say, “Oh, it’s going to be on video?” Everybody asks, “It’d be on video?” And I say, “No, we just need the audio.” And the way people respond to that, it always tells you a little bit about them. His response of course was, “Yay, I can do this in my pajamas.” Which just like for a Harvard educated psychiatrist is not what I was expecting. But Dr. Jacob Freedman is not anything that you would ever expect and really such an incredible person.

He’s a psychiatrist in private practice in Jerusalem, and he did his residency training for psychiatry at Harvard’s Longwood Psychiatric Residency. He’s a longtime columnist like myself in Mishpacha Magazine where he wrote a very popular column called Off the Couch. Really an incredible person, a joyous person, and a person who I found really uplifting. Here is our conversation with Dr. Jacob Freedman.

I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about what you are seeing on the ground now as a mental health professional. How should people be gauging their own mental health inside of a crisis like this? We’re

Jacob Freedman: 
We’re all a bit, frankly discombobulated to some degree based on the chaos that we have been experiencing here on the ground. If you live anywhere in this country, you have heard sirens, heard the explosions of rockets falling of the Iron Dome. It is a very, very frightening experience to be here if you are experiencing fear, if you are experiencing sorrow over the lives, lost in the tragedy, if you are experiencing a deep rage and anger, these are all normal emotions. And if you’re experiencing none of them, that’s probably because you’re shutting down, dissociating and having another sort of severe traumatic response to the stress and de-stress of the situation. So when you ask what’s happening here? The answer is, we are all hurting so hard as a nation here in Eretz Yisrael, in many ways the same way that all Jews across the world are hurting. I say that it’s really, this is the biggest tragedy that has befallen Klal Yisroel, the Jewish people, certainly in my short life. I can think of nothing that’s comparable to the sadness, to the fear, to the rage that we all have right now.

In the same sense though, I have to be very honest that I couldn’t be more grateful to be an Eretz Yisrael because, for all of the Jews who are overseas, the news that they see is traumatic. There’s no other word for it. The information that is sent out to the world is so horrific. There’s no words period to describe it. But when you’re hearing Eretz Yisrael, the brotherhood, the unity, the ahavat chinam, the selfless love that we feel for each other on the streets, people who look totally different, people who never talk to each other in their lives are running, giving hugs, not just the stories of ordering pizza and of offering to bring clothes or of all the young people in the community who are opening up summer camp for people whose fathers have gone off to war or all of the young boys and girls that are playing a guitar in the streets and setting up flash dances of Am Yisrael, the amount of positivity and the brotherhood and unity here, which is not shared in the news and which is not seen by people who are not living here, mamish, with their feet on the ground in Eretz Yisrael, I am grateful for that.

I could not be more grateful for that. I could not imagine how scary it would be to be outside of Eretz Yisrael. So I really want to share that perspective with you. And again, when you read the news about all of the terrible things that have happened, it is traumatic. And when you start to dig deeper and go down the rabbit hole of all the terrible things that Qatar and Iran and Syria are doing and all of the other nations that are wavering in their support of our brave country, it gets more and more scary, more and more confusing. And when you’re here on the ground and you see guys with big kippahs, guys with little kippahs, guys with no kippahs, guys with baseball hats, guys with cowboy hats running around, hugging each other like they were best friends getting together for their 30th high school reunion and they don’t even know each other, you are filled with such inspiration.

And it’s the kind of positive emotions, positive feelings, the optimism. The Martin Seligman positive psychology 101, when you see it, when you live it here, that’s really what’s happening on the streets right now more than anything else in the face of all these rockets. We are a resilient people fundamentally and yes, this is a once in a lifetime tragedy, but we are not victims. The Jewish people have never been victims, we are survivors. And frankly, when people ask me what are some of the things that I can do to process what’s happened? Whether they were on the front lines, whether they were at the rave where so many people were cut down or whether they’re just at home abroad, watching the news and experiencing the trauma, secondhand.

Cognitive restructuring, the power of positive thinking, specifically viewing oneself as a survivor, as a person who will grow from these experiences as opposed to somebody who’s been horribly victimized. That perspective allows personal growth in a way that I have no words to possibly describe other than that I’m grateful to witness it and to be a part of it. And if I wasn’t inspired on a moment to moment basis by everything that I see on the streets, I couldn’t even believe it.

David Bashevkin: 
Are there any specific Jewish texts that you have found comfort in over this period or even non-Jewish texts, like a book that you could recommend to our audience?

Jacob Freedman: 
Tuesdays with Morrie, everybody should read Tuesdays with Morrie. They should know it.

David Bashevkin: 
You should know it by heart.

Jacob Freedman: 
You should know it by heart. Tuesdays with Maury is an incredible book as far as Jewish books out there. Specifically during these stressful times, my dear buddy Rabbi, Dr. Benjy Epstein, wrote a fantastic book about Jewish meditation, Dr. Feiner’s book on Jewish mindfulness and meditation is also a very good one.

David Bashevkin: 
Yoni Feiner and Benjy Epstein are both dear friends. And I hope your writing, which can be found on the Mishpacha website still, have you published a book?

Jacob Freedman: 
Yeah, I have a book of the stories and my own story of making aliyah called Off the Couch, which is out there. I wrote a book at the recommendation of Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, about mental health for kids. And I have a new book coming out in about a month or so on my experience, again as a psychiatrist and many of the loving discussions I’ve had with my patients.

David Bashevkin: 
Dr. Jacob Freedman, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to speak with us today, sending all of our love and continued philos to you, your entire family and the collective Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. And I hope next time that we speak, it’s accompanied with a hug in person and connecting and showing appreciation. There is a famous dialogue that was said in a film by a character named Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade. You can look that up if you don’t know what I’m referring to. It’s fairly famous, but there’s one line in there that I’ve been thinking about a lot where this colonel, who clearly has experience and in on this character is played by Al Pacino, has experienced a great deal of trauma. He’s blind from war and has clearly seen a lot as he says, “There was a time these eyes could see.” And he gets up to defend his caretaker named Charlie.

And there’s one line in this very famous cinematic speech where he says, “There’s nothing like the sign of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that. There is no prosthetic for an amputated spirit.” And that’s a line that I’ve been thinking about a lot because I am looking around and as much as we are not all right, as much as we are not okay, as much as we are far from, okay, I have seen and we have all seen a great deal of resolve, of determination, of really seeing the embodiment before our eyes of “Netzach Yisrael lo yishaker.” the eternity of the Jewish people is on full display in this very moment. And for all of the trauma and for all of the difficulty that people are experiencing and in different ways throughout the world, I think everyone can say that have the dignity of language to be able to say, “I am struggling with this. I don’t feel comfortable saying it because maybe I’m not a soldier. Maybe I’m not having the same risk,” but giving someone the dignity of language to be able to say I’m not okay.

But even with all of that, I think collectively what I find so moving is that, as difficult as it is, we are not an amputated spirit. As much suffering and as much pain as we have our resolve, our focus, our spirit and our passion is intact. And seeing that and witnessing that in this generation for all of the pain that we’ve experienced is something that I find incredibly uplifting. But as I remind all of my students, I really do hope people are taking care of themselves, giving themselves time to breathe or to veg out. I’m not going to give you suggestions now on how to do that or how I’ve been doing that. But giving yourself a moment to take deep breaths, to feel that sense of place, to feel that sense that we are anchored in something beyond ourselves, that we’re not living constantly in survival mode, but having a moment to really see and embrace appreciation, to feel that collective hug of the Jewish people of Amcha Yisrael, wherever you may be.

I hope that we’re all giving ourselves that opportunity or whatever coping mechanisms each of us may need, I hope that we are affording ourselves those opportunities, and there really has not been a time in my lifetime where that sense of pride, that sense of passion, of being a part of Amcha Yisrael, of this collective unfolding story of the Jewish people any more than right now. So thank you all so much for listening. Again, this is a very special episode of 18Forty. We have a few more plans, some really interesting angles, highlights, lenses to discuss everything that is transpiring and unfolding in Israel as we speak. If you want to learn more about 18Forty, you can of course visit 18forty.org. That’s one eight F-O-R-T-Y.org. And I also want to remind all of our listeners about the new weekly initiative, the partnership that we have with the All Parsha app run by the OU download the app.

There are some great resources for studying Chumash. I have a weekly series called Reading Jewish History in the Parsha. You can also subscribe, I have a weekly writeup of that audio. Each of them are a little bit different, there’s always some bonus material and a lot of extra links in the substack. The substack is reading Jewish History in the parsha.substack.com. You can check that out. Link to our emails, sign up for our emails on 18forty.org. Thank you all so much for listening and stay curious and stay safe, my friends.

(Singing).