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mosaic. i am honored to be your host this morning. we want to invite you into an important conversation about mental illness. in particular, about mental illness in the jewish community. an accepted statistical norm is that one in five families has a loved one diagnosed with mental illness. and because of that, it means that nearly every single one of us across the country has a loved one who has a diagnosed mental illness. there are many ways in which this issue is responded to but in particular in the faith community, the national association of mental illness have faith based initiatives. there are other synagogues and churches and faith-based groups who deal with this issue in their own particular way. this morning would like you to come and join us in the series and important

conversation with senior rabbi stacy friedman and the mental health initiative program coordinator at the congregation. thank you so much for being here. rabbi friedman, why don't we jump in and ask you, why did you consider this particular issue to be so important to your particular synagogue and the jewish community at large? >> thank you for asking. when this program began and we decided it was a real need i had been at the congregation for about 20 years and increasingly in the months preceding, more and more people had come to me to talk to me about mental illness and the mental health prices with them personally or family members. and it just happened more and more. that summer was the somber -- summer that robin williams took his life. and suddenly and really for the first time that i had seen and

our country has seen, the issue of suicide and mental illness was the top issue in the news. news programs were talking about it, television, people were having this conversation. at that moment i said it is time to discuss this publicly and we need to reduce the stigma. and for me as a rabbi of the congregation, i wanted to create a community where people could bring their mental illness for them or their families in addition to their physical illnesses and we could do what we could to destigmatize it. that was really the motivation. a month or two after that it was yom kippur and i spoke about this issue. that is how it all began. >> sense that particular sermon can you talk a little about the transition from essentially the privacy of your office to the pulpit and the public forum at the congregation. >> at the sermon i spoke publicly about my own family's

experience with mental illness. we have a close family member who recently committed suicide and since then others have common shared their story and with the help and support of the bay area jewish healing center and you and other wonderful rabbis and members of your staff, we decided to put together and have a meeting and we were lucky enough at that meeting we had a person from the community that was truly inspired and wanted to help support a program. so we were able to hire joanne, and we will talk a little bit more about that. we opened up a meaning -- meeting after the sermon and we had about 80 people attend. and we realized we were onto something. people at the congregation started talking about it and sharing their own stories in various ways >> so important for that element of just having a zone

of safety so people can be relational on the topic that goes beyond a sense of internal stigma or privacy about it. joanne, we are going to take a break but let me ask you, just outline what the program is. >> i came in to rent the mental health initiative. and i am working with the congregation and we have created three different teams and we are working and put together a speaker series focused on mental health and mental illness. we are working in many different ways to reduce the isolation and stigma of mental illness in the jewish community and our broader community and we are doing that and lots of new, interesting and exciting ways >> we are going to take a quick break and continue this

conversation in just a moment. please return to us here on mosaic.

good morning and welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about mental illness in the jewish community. we thank you for rejoining us about this very

important conversation. we were talking a little bit about the program structure at congregation rodef sholom. i wonder if you could talk a little more about the detail about how the program works, the activities and be the kind of response you are getting so far. >> as rabbi friedman mentioned, at that initial meeting people came together and brainstormed what they would like out of a mental health initiative and three teams focused on three different things. those teams, i am a part of them, and we are focusing on youth, a team focusing on education, educating both our community and the outside community and a team that is focused on connection. helping congregants connect with other congregants who may have similar challenges. >> were these three teams the results of listening to what the community wanted? so they

represented themes of conversation? >> they do. and they have grown. the youth team is focused on making changes in our religious school, the k-6 children now do a check in at the beginning of sunday school every sunday which is fantastic. our education team put together a wonderful four-part speaker series that just wrapped up recently and the connections team is working on creating what we are calling a buddy system to connect congregants who may have walked through a challenge with congregants who may be starting down that path. for example, having an adult child diagnosed with the mental illness, they may be able to connect with another congregant who has had that experience and talk with them and share. and they are working on creating a support group as well. >> folks that are out there and are concerned, one of the things that typically comes up for people as they are thinking

about what to do is the notion of infrastructure, so can you talk a little bit about how in your leadership structure you have thought about, how does whatever we do get managed in the long-term? >> part of it is always going back to the mission of the congregation. and it is igniting the passion to connect to god, to others and to our world. and it comes in various forms. sometimes it is reaching out beyond the synagogue and sometimes it is enabling people within the synagogue to really open up and be their true selves. mostly, we have a wonderful coordinator in joanne and others in the congregation who keep reaching out and expanding the program so we are reaching as many people as we can in our community. >> it occurs to me that part of

the way in which it seems you have broken the stigma is that when you say, everybody is capable of being ignited for a deeper relationship with god, themselves and the community, that includes everybody no matter their status in life, their physical state or mental state. and sometimes part of the stigma on mental illness is that we don't recognize some of the mental illness and yet it yearns for deeper connection to themselves and community. so what you're really doing is saying, it is all of us. >> we had an earlier meeting with our steering committee and they were talking about a son with the critical mental illness and said, it never occurred to me to call the synagogue . if i had a physical ailment i would have called, if

i had a death, i would have called the synagogue. here we were in crisis in our family with our son and we didn't feel like we could talk about it with anybody and it never occurred to me to call the clergy, my synagogue, and we want to change that. so people who are experiencing at home, themselves or a family member, a critical diagnosis, they don't have to be isolated. they can call the synagogue and this is okay and it is something we accept and acknowledge as very common in our community just like physical illness. >> joanne, it is always people to understand in a concrete way why they feel welcomed and come back and can you just give a couple of examples of your experience with the program of say, change with somebody or impact on the community. something that you see happens because of somebody's interaction with what you are doing. >> as rabbi friedman was talking, when i was faced with this issue, the synagogue was the last place i thought of

coming, that person is now working to help create the system so that other people, when they are first base with that kind of a challenge, they have other people within the congregation that they can talk to. that i think is really beautiful. there are probably 50 different people on our three teams that are working to do different things. and a lot of the people on our youth team have children who have gone through the religious school who may be didn't have the best experience in religious school, didn't feel as connected as their parents would have hoped and are now working on making that a better place for the children who are now going through religious school. >> what beautiful examples of maybe a sense of self alienation to inclusion, to

helping to build. we are going to come back in just a moment to continue this important conversation, please join us back here on mosaic in just a moment.

welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about mental illness in the jewish community with the senior rabbi from congregation rodef sholom. and we are with the mental health initiative program coordinator. there are so many people, and perhaps this is part of the cultural stigma, that think mental illness only belongs in the domain of a psychiatrist in a personal matter. people will not talk about being hospitalized for a psychiatric episode and we think -- they think that it only belong in the political realm for advocating for public

policy. so why the synagogue? >> that is a great question. one of the things that the synagogue uniquely offers is that this is the place where the whole family resides spiritually and resides and spends their lives there throughout the lifecycle so that we see families cradle-to-grave and beyond, we see multi-generations, we see people at their lowest times and their most joyous times. and the fact that they live their lives as part of the congregation means that they can bring there's full selves and that is so important to us. so if someone goes to a psychologist or counselor, we are not replicating any of those services, but just to acknowledge that we are there to support them in other ways. we are there to support their entire family. we know that

mental illness affects the entire family and community beyond the individual so we are there to support the family and also be with them not only around crisis or issues around mental illness but also, they have a full life. so someone who is experiencing mental illness and goes to their therapist on thursday, friday they will come to services and pray, sunday they will go to sunday school and wednesday they will go to the homeless shelter and make food for people. so we want to support the whole family and the whole person. >> it reminds me of a really subtle but potent thread to all of this. religion, whatever the religion is at its very base talks about our relationship to god and every sacred text whether it is the bible or different sacred narrative, talks about hearing god's voice. and traditions that have a very strong prophetic thread, those narratives are filled with conversations with god and

hearing god's voice. and yet, i think in the modern culture the notion of listening to god gets relegated to somebody with a mental illness and therefore is put into a different category, but not a religious category and i am just wondering, in your thinking about that, what occurs to you about that? >> what i find is that many people who are experiencing darkness and pain feel alienated from god. so i view part of my role as helping them to hear god's voice again or getting angry at god. being able to be in relationship with god, whatever that looks like. >> i think that is a thread that we all need to develop to break down the stigma even further. joanne, i know that the programs you work with also deals with all the arrogance

across the age spectrum. can you talk about what you've seen from senior members as well as team members? >> our youth team has just started thinking about how we want to bring initiative programming to our teams, it is trickier than it was with k-6. we implemented what we thought would make the most sense with them. with teens, we are being more careful, we are bringing them to meetings and asking them what they want, what they need, how they would like to receive information about mental health and mental illness. what are they not getting from other areas of their lives from school or their parents and why are they still coming to synagogue. many have already had their bat mitzvah but they are still coming. what makes this a place

that they want to still come to and what can we give them to help them deal as safe as possible. so we are really listening to them and working on giving them what they need in a way that will make the most sense for them. that is something we are working on. and we are planning on doing the same with seniors. we will look at our senior community and ask them potentially, what do they need and what can we give them that would be helpful and useful at this time in their lives. >> that is wonderful. and i think something that people don't always necessarily understand is that mental illness can be a lifelong experience or it could be episodic. they could have one episode and go away and the same thing for seniors on the other end of the spectrum. seems like a wonderful way to serve. embrace everybody on the

issue. we will take a quick break and come back in just a moment.

welcome back to mosaic. thank you for staying with us with this really important conversation about mental illness in the jewish community and at large. we are with the senior rabbi of congregation rodef sholom and joanne, the mental health initiative program coordinator. we are going to end our conversation

for this moment in just a little bit but i wanted to ask you, what do you think from the standpoint from a clergy, whether you are priest, minister or pastor, what are some of the things that you think clergy might consider to initiate and continue this conversation in their particular setting? >> i think the answer is twofold. one, for us, going back to our sacred test, the torah or the bible and to remind people that our ancestors, our leaders in the bible were not perfect and they struggled with darkness. it is important to be very explicit and show that . none of us is immune from it and everyone has their darkness and pain. in our tradition we say that there is nothing as whole is the broken heart and remind people of

that, they can come present with their broken heart . and i also believe it is important to be very explicit about the fact that mental illness is something not to be ashamed of, but something that we can share and makes us human. we have her prayer for healing and in it we speak of renewal of body and spirit. in our congregation we say, if there is someone in your life who is experiencing an illness or mental illness, please mention their names and we will pray for them. and we are really hoping to break down the stigma. to be really explicit, open and accepting has really helped >> one of the elements is to what degree somebody who has experienced mental illness is willing to be public and tell their story. i'm wondering if you can in a short way talk about, have you done that, how does it work and how did you get over that hump? >> it has made a very big

difference for us since two years ago when we were able to start this initiative. we have invited some people and some have volunteered to tell their stories. on shabbat or our high holy days we have congregants tell stories of their life journeys. and we have included stories of mental illness. we had one woman tell her story of her struggle with addiction and her struggle to find healing. and it was transformational. there was not a dry eye in the congregation. it was so vulnerable and pointing and powerful, especially because it is so scary and is not done in most places. it is easier to stand up and talk about healing from a surgery or some illness but to speak about mental illness, it is not really done. so this person was very brave and we are doing it or and

more. >> we are coming to the end of our time together but i do want to say, changing gears a little bit, in our jewish tradition we have this notion that there is no learning without economic viability and vitality and there is not economic vitality and viability without learning. in that context, this kind of initiative and others like it really rely on so many different components to make it whole number among them, philanthropy. i'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about about what the philanthropic thread is. i know other laces do it in different ways but what is your economic vitality attached this learning? >> as rabbi stacy mentioned, after holiday sermon we were approached by somebody who this touched very much and were offered a really generous grand and they are helping to support

the work we are doing and we have also partnered with each mind matters, or california and they offered us a small mini grant that has helped us run some programming as well. so the financials are important as well. >> thank you so much, joanne and stacy from congregation rodef sholom, thank you for being with us and thank you for joining us about this vital conversation about mental illness. we encourage you to keep talking about this issue. thank you. - lift the clouds off of...

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