(upbeat music) good morning and welcome to mosaic. i am honored to be your host this morning. we want to invite you into an important conversation about mental illness. particularly in the jewish committee. a accepted statistical norm is 1-5 american families have a loved one diagnosed with mental illness. it means that nearly everything will one of

us across the country as a loved one who has a diagnosed mental illness. there are many ways in which this issue is responded to. in particular in the faith community the california association for mental illness have faith-based initiatives. there other synagogues, churches and group who deal with this issue in their own particular way. this morning we would like to invite you into this important conversation. rabbi stacy freeman and the mental health initiative program coordinator at the congregation. thank you so much for being here. >> thank you for having us. >> why don't we jump in and ask you why did you consider this particular issue so important to your particular synagogue and the je cttee a large? >> wh ore decided itas a real ne i ha

there already for about 20 years. increasingly in the months preceding that more and more people have come to talk to me about mental illness and mental health crises with them or family members. it happened more and more. that summer was the summer robin williams took his life. really for the first time that i had seen or our country had 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's time to discuss this publicly. we need to reduce the stigma. for me as a rabbi of the congregation, i wanted to create a committee wherein people could bring their mental illness for them or their families, in addition to physical illnesses. we could do what we could to destigmatize. that was the motivation . just a month or

two after it with our high holiday. i spoke about this issue. that is how it all began. >> can you talk a little bit about the transition from the privacy of your office to the public form at the congregation? >> at the sermon i spoke publicly about my own families experience with mental illness. we have a close family member who recently committed suicide and took his life. since then others have come and share their stories. with the help and support of the bay area jewish center, you and other rabbis of your staff we decided to put together a program and have a meeting. we were lucky enough that at that meeting there was a person from our committee who was truly inspired and wanted to help to support a program. we were able to hire joann , who is incredible. we opened up a meeting after the sermon. we

had 75-80 people who attended. we realized we were on to something and there was an incredible need. people started talking and sharing their own stories in various ways. >> so important for that element of just having a zone of safety for people to be relational in a way that moves beyond a sense of internal stigma or privacy about it. joann. let's just jump in and ask you to outline if you can what the program is . >> sure. as mentioned, i came in to run our mental health initiative. i am working with our congregation. we have created three different teams. we have put together a speaker series focus on mental health and mental illness. we are working in many different ways redthe isolation and

stigma of mental illness in our jewish committee and broader community. we are doing that in light of new, interesting and exciting ways. >> so wonderful. e ing toe qui

good morning and welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about mental illness in the jewish committee. we thank you for joining us . joann, we were talking a little bit about the program structure. i wonder if you can talk a little more about the details of how the program works, the activities that you do and maybe the kind of response that you are getting. >> as mentioned, at the initial town hall meeting people came together to brainstorm what they would like out of a mental health initiative. three teams focus on three different things and were formed at that time. i am a part of those teams. we are focusing on youth, a team focusing on education, educating both our community and the outside committee . also, a team that

is focused on connections to helping congregants connect with others who may have similar challenges. >> were these three the result of listening to what the committee wanted . those represent conversations from town hall meetings? >> they do. those teams have grown and are now making changes in our religious schools. our k -6 students now do a check in outside of sunday school every sunday, which is fantastic. our educational team put together a speaker series they just wrapped up recently. our connections team is working on creating what we are calling a buddy system to walk through congregants that might be starting down the path. for example having an adult child diagnosed with a mental illness. they might be able to connect with another congregant to talk with them and share.

the connections team is working on a support group as well. >> i know for folks that are concerned about this issue one of the things that typically comes up for people as they are thinking about what to do is the notion of infrastructure and management. rabbi, can you talk a little bit about how in your leadership structure you sort of thought about how does whatever we do get managed in the long term? >> all of it is always going back to the mission of the congregation. it is igniting the passion to connect to god, to others and our world. that connection comes in various forms. sometimes it is enabling people within the synagogue to open up and be their true selves. we always go back to our mission. i am involved, our board of directors is. we have wonderful coordinators like joann and others in the congregation who keep reaching out and expanding the program so that we are reaching as many

people as we can . >> it occurs to me part of the way in which in your culture you have broken the stigma is when you say everybody is capable of being ignited for a deeper relationship with god, themselves and the community, that includes everyone no matter their status in life, their physical or mental state. i think sometimes part of the stigma is we do not recognize some of the mental illness yearns for a deeper connection. if yearns for a deeper connection to committee. what you are doing is saying it is all of us. >> we had an earlier meeting with our steering committee and there was one person talking about a with a critical mental illness. she said and never occurred to me to call the synagogue. if i had surgery or a death in my family, i would've called the synagogue. here we were in crisis with our son. we didn't feel like we could talk about it with anyone

and it never occurred to me to call the clergy. we want to change that so that people who are experiencing at home a critical mental illness or issue with the diagnosis, they know that they can call the synagogue and this is something we accept and acknowledge. it is very common in our community just like physical illnesses. >> is always so important to understand for people in a concrete way why they feel welcome or want to come back. can you give lef plogramsthat s change or impact the community ? something that you see happening in the somebodies interaction with what you are doing. >> as we talked about the woman who said when i was faced with this issue the synagogue was the last place i thought of coming. that person is now working to create the system

so that other people when they first are faced with that kind of challenge have other people within the congregation that they can talk to . i think that is really beautiful. there are probably 50 different people on our three teams each working to do different things. a lot of the people who are on our youth team have children who have gone through e s maybe did or feel as connected as their parents would've hoped who are now working on making that a better place for the children now going through religious school. >> what beautiful examples of a may be kind of na÷ve miss or sense of self alienation to

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

welcome back to mosaic. i am honored to be your host. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about mental illness in the jewish committee. welcome back. there are so many people , and

perhaps this is a part of the cultural stigma, who think mental illness only belongs in the domain of the psychiatrist, people will not talk about being hospitalized for psychiatric episode or illness experience , or they think the issues belong only in the political round for advocating for policy. why the synagogue? >> one of the things that the synagogue uniquely offers is this is the place where the whole family resides spiritually and revise and spend their lives throughout the lifecycle. we see families cradle to grave and beyond. we see them for multi-generations. we see people at their lowest times and the most joyous. the fact that those people live their lives as a part of the congregation means they can bring their full cells. that is

important to us. somebody goes to a psychiatrist or counselor, we are not replicating any of those services. to just acknowledge we are there to support them in other ways. we are there to support their entire family. thre counyothinv support the family and also to be with them not only around crises or issues around mental illness, but they had a full life. someone experiencing a mental illness and goes to their therapist on thursday, friday there are going to go to services and pray. sunday they are going to come to sunday school, with a there going to come to the homeless shelter and food for people. we can be there to support the whole family, the whole person. >> you remind me of an important thread that i think we need to talk about but don't necessarily talk about, religion. whatever the religion

at its very base talks about a relationship to god and every sacred text talks about hearing god's voice. in traditions that have a strong perforated -- narrative there field with conversations with god and hearing god's voice. i think in the modern culture the notion of listening to god is relegated to somebody with a mental illness. therefore, it is put into a different category, but not a religious category. i am just wondering just in your thinking about that, what occurs to you about that? >> i find many who are experiencing darkness and pain feel alienated from god. i view part of my world as helping them to hear god's voice again or getting angry with god. being able to be in

relationship with god, whatever that looks like for them . >> i thinka thad we all need to develop to break down the stigma even further. joann, i know that the program initiatives you work with deals with congregants across the age spectrum. can you talk a little bit about what you have seen among both senior members as well as key members of the congregation? >> our youth team has just started to think about how we want to bring initiative programming to our teams. it is trickier than k -6. with k -6 we thought about it and implemented what we thought would make the most sense. with teens, we are being more careful and bringing our teens to our 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? why are they still coming to synagogue? many of them have had their bar mitzvah, but they still come. what makes our synagogue a place they want to come and what can we give them that can help them to feel as safe as possible? we are really listening 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. that is something we are working on. we are planning on doing the same with seniors. we are going to look at our senior community and asked potentially what do they need? at ca would elpful and useful at this time in their lives? >> that is wonderful. something that people ep. it can start in the teen years with one episode and go away or continue. the same thing with seniors on the other end of

the spectrum. it sounds like a wonderful way to embrace everybody on the issue. we are going to take a quick break and come back in just a moment.

good morning and 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. welcome back . we are going to end our conversation in just a little bit. i wanted to ask, rabbi, what you think

from the standpoint of a clergy whether you are a priest, a pastor, a mom, a rabbi, what are some of the things that you think clergy might consider to initiate and continue this conversation in their particular setting? >> i think that the answer is twofold. one, for us it is going back to our sacred text. for us it is the torah or the bible. to remind people that our ancestors, our leaders were not perfect and they struggled with darkness. i think it is important to be very explicit and show that none of us is immune from it. that everyone has their darkness and their pain. in our tradition we say there is nothing as hold as a broken heart, and to remind people that they can come present with a broken heart. i also believe it is important to be very explicit about the fact

that mental illness is something to not be ashamed of, but something we can share and makes us human. we have a prayer for healing. in it we speak about renewal of body and spirit. in our congregation we say if there is someone in your life who is experiencing a mental illness, please, mention their names and we will pray for them. we are really helping to break down the stigma. to be very explicit, and open has really helped. >> one of the elements is to what degree someone who exss ll in a short way you can talk about have you done that? how does it work? how did you get over the hump? >> that has made a very big difference for us. two ars ago we were able to start this initiative and some people have volunteered to tell their stories. on our high holy days

we have congregants tell their stories of spiritual journeys. for the past couple of years we have included stories of mental illness, journeys with mental illness. we had one woman tell her story of her struggle with addiction, her struggle to find healing. it was transformational . there was not a dry eye in the congregation. it was so noble and powerful, especially because it is so scary and not done in most places. it is a lot easier to stand up and talk about healing from a surgery or some illness. to speak about mental illness , it is not done in our committee. this person was very brave and e it me and >> we e the d of otime tetheangears little bi no learning without economic viability and vitality. there is not economic vitality and

liability without learning. with that context, this initiative and others like it, i know really rely on somebody different components to make it whole and among them is philanthropy. i am wondering if you can talk a little bit about what the philanthropic thread is for this particular initiative? i know other places do things in different ways. what is sure economic vitality? >> as mentioned, after the sermon we were approached by someone who this touched very much and we were offered a jury -- offered a generous grant. they are helping to support the work that we are doing. we have partnered with each mind matters, california's mental health movement. they have offered a small grant that has helped us to run some programming. you

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