My Nonprofit Reviews

How can we survive or maybe flourish in this crazy world? G-d gave us life, but are we loosing the battle to remain spiritually alive? That's what I thought reading FB's plans to offer virtual spaces where people could "mingle," remotely and "get to know one another." (I am so old that I was an adult before "screens" stopped meaning movie theater. In those days, airplane passengers had actual conversations with strangers seated beside them.
Today? What Covid failed to accomplish in isolating us, may be completed by techno geniuses. Yet even the science tells us that devices are not a substitute for other people and there is an epidemic of loneliness.
Thousands of years of civilizations across the world instruct us that humans need each other to become more fully human, in their own cultural path. Some technologies we embrace or are forced upon us are subtracting from who we are and diminishing the nuance of human response to joystick options.
After years of practicing psychiatry, Bais Chana workshops and retreats exposed me to Torah teachings. Unlike Science, Torah teaches we have Souls. Unlike Social Media, Torah teaches our Body is not how we appear to others, but a garment for our Soul. On earth, our Soul is woven into our Body to grant us the choice to rise to the best of our thoughts and and actions. Only then can we elevate ourselves and others to lives worthy of this Creation. Making it to the moon is not a substitute for elevating our Souls.
I learned this at Bais Chana. At first these were words and concepts. Then they took root in me because I was taught and learned in a community of like-minded women who already lived them. True learning is one that shapes who we are while also teaching us to become our own sculptors. Our challenges are Biblical . How can we navigate this life and raise children in a world mostly purged of humanity and humility?
As a psychiatrist, it sickens me that we have purged what's spiritual from medicine and most other arenas where we live and our children play.
There is no "I" solution, here, but one that involves "We." I found that at Bais Chana.
Peggy Finston MD