4/11/2024 0 Comments Intergenerational trauma and jewsHer interviews with parents who have lost children and have still become capable of moving beyond the psychological and spiritual consequences of their loss, show that it is possible to become free of the legacy of trauma. In this context Israeli hypervigilance against its Palestinian neighbors, and the alarming tendency of Israeli military to over-react and brutally traumatize Palestinians, is still reprehensible, but understandable as an example of the repetitive aspect of unhealed social trauma, just as victims of sexual abuse may be more likely to sexually abuse others.īut the powerful message of Firestone’s book, and one that goes beyond the Jewish experience to the universal human experience, is that these aspects of intergenerational trauma need not be inevitable. This unmitigated intergenerational trauma, Firestone shows, has created in Israel, and in much of contemporary Jewish consciousness, a culture in which catastrophe has become the “unconscious organizing principle” (“Never Again will this happen to us!”), and a culture in which social victimhood, fear of continued persecution, feeling weak even with a mighty military and hi tech armamentarium, gives its bearers “hardened hearts”, leaving them unable to see “others” as sharing common humanity. One of the important points she makes here, drawing on the new science of epigenetics, is that trauma and its sequelae (dissociation, hyperarousal, isolation/shame, and repetition) are felt not only by those who directly experience trauma, but are passed on to their children, and grandchildren. This experience includes primarily the Holocaust, but also the anti-Israeli attacks, with resultant military and civilian deaths, as well as what seem to be rising acts of anti-Semitism worldwide. The subtitle of the book, Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, refers to the particular Jewish experience of trauma in the 20 th century. This book is then both a labor of love as well as an intellectual tour de force. It was Shulamith’s death that brought to her younger sister, Tirzah, the “terrible gift” which became the impetus to further investigate the inner workings of the legacy of trauma in herself and others. This legacy of trauma also led to the subsequent deaths of her two older siblings, Danny, from suicide, and Shulamith, author of the feminist book, The Dialectic of Sex (1970), from the ravages of mental illness. Her parent’s traumatic experience was transmitted to, and psychologically internalized by, their children. Her mother was a Holocaust survivor, and her father became fanatically Orthodox after witnessing the horror of the concentration camps as an American soldier at the end of World War II. This is not a mere self-help book, although it will be extremely helpful to those who have suffered traumatic events, but more importantly it leads all of us to consider the ways in which we and others are affected by trauma, and what this may mean for healing the world, for tikkun olam.įirestone makes her case through the use of stories, interviews with people, and honest and open revelations of the trauma in her own family. Through the lens of her own compassion and empathy she sees real people, not as passive products of their traumatic circumstances, but as active agents of their own healing from trauma. But Tirzah Firestone’s book is unique in the way she looks at the meaning of traumatic experience. Rabbi Firestone’s book is a beautiful tribute to that wonder and complexity, just as it is a comprehensive look at what is now known as traumatology-a field of social research that has evolved because of the ubiquity of trauma, tragedy, and catastrophe characterizing human experience over the past century. When I finished reading this illuminating new book, Wounds into Wisdom, by rabbi and psychotherapist Tirzah Firestone, I was struck by what incredibly complex and wondrous beings we humans are. Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma
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