Skip to main content

tv   Mosaic  CBS  October 23, 2022 5:30am-6:00am PDT

5:30 am
going in the future. get started at keeps.com/tv. keep streaming cbs news bay area. good morning. and welcome to "mosaic." i'm rabbi eric and i'm happy to be your host this morning. we want to invite you to an important conversation about mental illness. and in particular, mental illness in the jewish community. one in five american families has a loved one who has been diagnosed with mental illness. and because of that statistic, of course, it means that nearly every single one of us, across the country, has a loved one
5:31 am
who has a diagnosed mental illness. there are many, many ways in which this issue was responded to, but in particular in the faith community. the association for mental illness. and cami have faith-based initiatives. there are other synagogues and other churches and other faith-based groups who deal with this issue in their own particular way. this morning, we'd like to invite you into this serious and important conversation, with members of congregation roto sholom. in particular, senior rabbi stacy freedman and joann foreman who is at congregation shalom. thank you so much rabbi and joanne for being here. >> thank you for having us. >> rabbi freedman. 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 to the jewish community at large? >> thank you for asking. when this program began, or when we decided that it was a real
5:32 am
need, i had been at the congregation for about 20 years. and increasingly in the months preceding that, more and more people had come to me to talk to me about their mental illness, about their mental health crises, with them or family members. and it just happened more and more. that was in the spring. and then that summer was the summer that robin williams took his life. and suddenly, and really for the first time that i had seen, that our country had seen, the issue of suicide and mental illness was the top issue in the news. news programs were talking about it. the newspaper. television. people were having this conversation. and at that moment, i said, it's 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 wherein, people could bring their mental
5:33 am
illness and we could do what we could do destigmatize it. so that was really the motivation. and just a month or two after that, it was our high holidays on yom kippur, i spoke about this issue. and so that's really how it all began. >> wonderful. and since that particular sermon, can you talk a little bit about the transition from essentially the privacy of your own office to the pulpit? to the public forum at the congregation? >> sure. at this sermon. i mean, at yom kippur at this sermon, i spoke about my own family's experience with mental illness. we had a young person who recently committed suicide, took his own life. and since then, others have come and shared their story. and with the help of the bay area jewish healing center and you and wonderful members, rabbis of your staff, we decided to put together a program and have a meeting. and we were lucky enough that at that meeting, there was a person from our community who was truly inspired at the
5:34 am
holidays, who was inspired and wanted to help support a program. and so we were able to hire joanne foreman, who is incredible. and we'll talk a little bit about that. we opened up a meeting after the sermon. and we had 75, 80 people, who attended. and we realize would we were onto something and there was an incredible need. so people in our congregation started talking. they started sharing their own stories in various ways. >> so important for that element of having a zone of safety, for people who be relational on a topic in a way that moves beyond a sense of internal stigma or privacy about it. joanne, we're going to take a break in just a moment. but let's just jump in and ask you to outline what the program is. >> sure. so as rabbi -- stacy mentioned, i came in to run our mental health initiative. and so i am working with our congregation. we have created
5:35 am
lei-led teams. three different teams. we are working and have put together a speaker series, focused on mental health and mental illness. so we are working on reducing the isolation. and we're doing it in lots of new and interesting and exciting ways. >> so wonderful. we're going to take a quick break and continue this conversation with rabbi freedman and joann foreman in a moment. please return to us here on "mosaic."
5:36 am
5:37 am
good morning. and welcome back to "mosaic." i'm rabbi eric wisen. we thank you for rejoining us with this very important conversation. joann, we were talking a little bit about the program structure at congregation. i want to know if you can talk a little more in detail about the activities you do. and maybe kind the of response that you're getting so far. >> sure. as rabbi freedman mentioned at that initial town hall meeting, people tame came together to think about and brainstorm what they would like out of a mental health initiative. and three teams were formed at that time. so those teams are lei-led. i'm
5:38 am
a part of those teams. but we are focusing on -- we have a team focusing on youth. we have a team focusing on education. educating both our community and the outside community. and also a team that is focused on connections. so helping congregants connect with other cong congregants who may have other challenges. >> is this the result of listening to what the community wanted? those represent themes of town hall conversations? >> they do. and those teams have grown. the youth team is now focused on making changes in our religious school. our k through 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 series that just wrapped up recently. and our connections team is working on creating what we're
5:39 am
calling a buddy system to connect congregants who might be starting down that path. for example, having an adult child diagnosis the with a mental illness. they might be willing to talk with them and share. and the connections team is also working on creating a lay-led focus group as well. >> i know for folks who are are wanting to do something. one of the things that people do is the notion of infrastructure and management. so rabbi -- freedman, can you talk a little bit about how in your leadership structure, you thought about how does whatever we do get managed in the long term? >> well, part of it is always going back to the mission of our congregation. and our mission is igniting the passion to connect, to god, to others and to our world. and that connection comes in various
5:40 am
forms. sometimes that connection is reaching out beyond the synagogue. and sometimes it's enable people in the synagogue to open up and be their true selves. so what we do is go back to our mission. i'm involved with that. our board of directors. and most of all, we have a wonderful coordinator in joann and others in the congregation, who keep reaching out and expanding the program. so that we're reaching as many people in our community. >> it occurs to me. that part of the way, in which you've broken the stigma. when you say everybody is capable of being ignited for a deeper relationship with god, themselves and the community. >> that's right. but that includes everybody, no matter their status in life. no matter their physical state, no matter their mental state. and i think that sometimes part of the stigma on mental illness is that we don't recognize that mental illness yet yearns for a
5:41 am
spiritual connection, yet yearns for deeper connection to themselves, to community. what you're saying is really, it's all of us. >> it's all of us. and really, earlier, we had a meeting in the steering committee. there was one person in the committee who was talking about a son with a critical mental illness. she said, it never occurred me to call the synagogue. if i had a surgery, physical ailment. i would have called the synagogue. but here we were having crisis and it didn't occur to me to call the synagogue. we want to change that. so people facing a critical mental illness or issue with diagnosis, that they don't have to be isolated. they know they can call the synagogue. and this is okay. this is something we accept and acknowledge as very common in our community. just like physical illnesses. >> joanne, it's always so
5:42 am
important to understand for people in a very concrete way, why they feel welcomed. can you give just a couple of examples from your experience so far with program of, let's say change in somebody or impact on the community, something that you see happens really because of somebody's interaction with what you're doing. >> sure. >> well, i was thinking about, as rabbi freedman was talking about, the woman who said when i was faced with this issue, the synagogue was the last place that i thought of coming. and that person is now working to help create the system so that other people, when they first are faced with that kind of a challenge, have other people, not just the rabbi. but other people within the congregation that they can talk to. so that, i think, is really beautiful. there are probably 50 different people on our three teams who are each working to do different things. and a lot of the people who are on our youth team have
5:43 am
children who have gone through the religious school who maybe didn't have the best experience in religious school who didn't feel as connected as their parents would have hoped, who are now working on making that a better place for the children who are now going through religious school. >> wow. what beautiful examples of ally a kind of maybe naiveness. we're going to come back to mosaic in just a moment continue to important conversation about mental illness. please join us back here on "mosaic" in just a moment.
5:44 am
5:45 am
welcome back to "mosaic." i'm honored to be your host. we're in the middle of a in the jewish rsation about
5:46 am
community with rabbi stacy freedman and joann foreman. welcome back joann and rabbi. >> there's so many people i think that, and perhaps this is part of the cultural stigma that think that mental illness only belong to the demand of the psychiatrist and certainly in a private matter. people won't talk about being hospitalized for psychiatric episode or illness and think that mental illness belong only in the political realm for advocating for public policy. so why the synagogue? >> it's 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 life cycle. so that we see families cradle-to-grave and beyond. we see them for multigenerations.
5:47 am
we see people at their lowest times and at their most joyous times. and the fact that most people live their lives as part of the congregation, mean that they can bring their full selves. somebody goes to a psychologist or psychiatrist or counselor. we're not representing any of those services that they can get elsewhere. but to acknowledge that we're there to support them in other ways. we know that mental illness affects the entire family or community beyond the individual. so we're there to support the family. and also to be with them, not only around crisis or issues around the mental illness. but also, they have a full life. so somebody experiencing a mental illness and goes to their therapist thursday, friday, they're going to come to services and pray. and sunday, they're going to come with their child to sunday school. and wednesday, they're going to come to homeless shelter and make food for people. so we can be there for the whole family and whole
5:48 am
person. >> you remind me of i think, a subtle potent thread to all of this. that i think we need to talk about. but we don't necessarily talk about. religion, whatever the religion is, at its very base, talks about a relationship to god. and every sacred text, whether it's the bible or a different sacred narrative, talks about hearing god's voice. and traditions that have a very strong prophetic thread to them. those prophetic 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'm just wondering, sort of in your thinking about that, what occurs to you about -- about that? >> it's interesting. what i find is that many people who
5:49 am
are experiencing darkness and pain, psychological 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 to god. whatever that looks like to them. to support that for them. and i think maybe that's a thread we all need to develop to sort of break down the stigma even further in the issue. joanne, i know the program and issues you work with, also deals with all the congregants across the age spectrum. can you talk a little bit about what you've seen among both senior members of the congregation, as well as team members of the congregation? >> sure. our youth team has just started thinking about how we want to bring initiative programming to our teams. which is trickier than k through 6. we thought about it as a youth team. and then implemented. with teens, we're being more careful. we
5:50 am
are bringing our teams to meetings. asking them what they would like, how they would like to receive information about mental health and mental illness? what are they not getting from their other areas of live, school or parents, what makes -- why o sygogu ny them ve had th bar/bat mitzvah. but they still come. and what can that as safe as education. we're listening to them and hearing what they have to say, and working on giving them what they need in a way that will make the most sense for them. so that's something that we're working on. and we're planning on doing the same with seniors. i agree, we're going to look at our senior community in a way, and ask them potentially, what do they need? and what can we -- what can we give them that would be helpful
5:51 am
and useful tothem at this time in their lives. >> that's wonderful. i think something also that people don't necessarily understand is that mintal illness can be both a lifelong experience. but also be episodic. it can start in the teen years, with one episode and go away. or continue. and the same thing for seniors on the other end of the spectrum. >> yes remember. >> sounds like a wonderful way to sort of embrace everybody on the issue. we're going to take a quick break and come back to mosaic in just a moment. [ music ] [ music ] [ music ]
5:52 am
5:53 am
good morning. and welcome back to "mosaic." thank you for staying with us are if this really important conversation about mental illness in the jewish community and at large. we're with rabbi stacy freedman and joann foreman. the program's health and wellness coordinator. thank you, joann. we're going to end our conversation for this moment in just a little bit. but i wanted to ask you, rabbi. what do you think from the standpoint of a clergy, whether you're a priest, a minister, a pastor, an imam, rabbi. what are some of the things that you think clergy might consider to initiate, continue this conversation, in their particular setting? >> right. well, i think -- i think the answer is two-fold.
5:54 am
many fold. but i'll start with two things. many things, for us, it's going back to our sacred text. for us, the sacred text is the torah or the bible. and to remind that our ancestors or leaders struggled with darkness. i think it's important to show that none of us is immune from it. that everyone has their darkness and pain. in our tradition, we say there's nothing as whole as a broken heart. and to remind people, that they and come present with their broken heart. and secondly, i think it's important to be explicit about the fact that mental illness is something not to be ashamed of, but something that we can share and that makes us human. for example, we have a prayer for healing. and in it, we speak about renewal of body and spirit. and in our congregation, we say, if there is someone in your life, who
5:55 am
iexperiencing an illness or mental illness, please mention their names and we'll pray for them. and by doing so, we'll hope to break down that stigma. to be open and explicit. >> to what degree somebody who experienced mental illness is willing to be public and tell their story. and i'm wondering if you can sort of, just in a short way, talk about -- have you done that? how has it worked? how did you kind of get over that hump? >> that's made a very big difference for us. you know, since two years ago, when we were able to start this initiative, we've invited some people, or some people have volunteered to tell their stories. so on shabat, or our high holy days, we have congregants tell of their spiritual journeys or life stories. since then, we've included stories of mental illness. we had one woman tell her story of her struggle with addiction. ander had
5:56 am
struggle to find healing. and it was transformational. there was not a dry eye in the congregation. and it was so vulnerable and so poignant and so powerful, especially because it's so scary. and it's not done in most places. it's a lot easier to stand up and talk about, you know, healing from a surgery, or some illness but to speak about mental illness in our community is not done. this person is doing it. >> believe it or not, we're coming to the end of our time together. but i want to say, in our jewish tradition, we have this notion that there is no learning without economic viability and vitality. and there isn't economic viability and vitality without learning. in that context. this initiative others rely on so many different components to make it whole. among them,
5:57 am
philanthropy. i wonder if you can talk about what the philanthropic thread is for this initiative. i know other places do things in different ways. but what is your economic sort of vitality attached to this learning? >> right. so as rabbi -- stacy mentioned after her sermon, we were approached by somebody who this touched very much. and were offered a really generous grant from the lazlo and talber foundation. with each mind matters. california'smental health movement. they've offered a mini grant. so you're right. the financials are important as well. >> thank you so much. joann foreman, rabbi stacy freedman. thank you so much for being with us this morning. and thank you for joining us here
5:58 am
on "mosaic" for this vital conversation about mental illness. we encourage you to please keep talking about this issue. thank you.
5:59 am
6:00 am
life from the cbs bay area studios, this is kpix 5 news. >> thieves target bay area construction workers, taking expensive tools, what are the police recommending they do to safeguard their belongings? the gubernatorial debate happens today with election a more than 2 1/2 weeks away. we will let you know about the deadline to register. boldly going where few have gone before and you do not even need to leave the ground. a new look inside the international space station experience. >> it feels so real, that you'r in there with them. >>

51 Views

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on