Re-Acquainting Ourselves: A Conversation With David Rosmarin, PhD

Geoff Mitelman: I’m Rabbi Geoff Mittleman, the founding director of Sinai and Synapses, and I’m very honored and excited to be sitting here with Dr. David Rosmarin, who is the author of the book that I will hold up – for those who can see it – The Connections Paradigm: Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Mental Health. It’s a book that’s published by the Templeton Press, and they put me in touch and they said, “This is somebody that you should talk to here.” So, Dr. Rosmarin, and thank you so much for taking some time to talk with us here this afternoon.

David Rosmarin: Thanks so much for having me on your show.

Geoff Mitelman: So I want to start by talking a little bit about this book. It’s a relatively new book, right? It just came out within the last year or so.

David Rosmarin: Yeah, last couple of months.

Geoff Mitelman: And it’s called The Connections Paradigm. It’s based on a Hebrew book that got translated through different rabbinic transmissions. And you were able to then really explore, with Rabbi Kellerman, some of these questions of what does it mean to be connected? And I’d love for you to share a little bit about: What is the Connections Paradigm? How do we understand it here?

 David Rosmarin: Sure. So, I’m trained as a clinical psychologist, and I live in Boston, and I trained here in Boston, also did a fellowship in acute psychiatry, actually, at McLean Hospital, where I still am now here 12 years later, after my fellowship stayed on. And in all of my training, I really, I was taught to conceptualize mental health, or rather mental illness or mental distress as something that, you know, we have to get rid of. We have to help people to feel less depressed, less anxious, to be able to control psychotic thoughts, to be able to be more in touch – more not in touch, actually, to be less distressed – but not how to thrive. That was never really part of the conversation, of how to live a life worth living, how to enhance the connection in our lives with ourselves, with others, and then also spiritually.

And I thought that that was really sorely missing from my training, because – well, for a couple of reasons. One, if you only help a person to get less depressed and you don’t help them out of build a life worth living, they’re going to get depressed again. And secondly, it’s also more of what people ask me about as a clinician. People say, “How do I enhance my relationships? How do I have more happiness? How do I thrive more? How do I flourish?” Those questions aren’t really addressed in clinical mental health training – in my discipline or any others. But Jewish Wisdom does – and that of many other faiths as well, frankly, does – address these age-old and very important questions. And I had some access to that, you know – pieces of that divine wisdom which I studied and put into this book form.

Geoff Mitelman: And you bring up a really important point which is there is this difference between mental illness and mental health. And that’s, there’s some work that I know that Martin Seligman has written – and there was actually a piece just in the New York Times a couple of months ago by Adam Grant, who said that we’re in this point right now, and at least with COVID, of sort of languishing, which is not necessarily defined as mental illness, but it’s not allowing us to thrive. And how do we find ways to not just not be sick or not be not depressed, but how do we find more joy and connection in the world?

David Rosmarin: That’s exactly what the connections paradigm is about. What’s interesting is that I’ve also used this in clinical work, with people who are clinically depressed, anxious – who are above the threshold of clinical, of having real diagnosable, insurance-reimbursable conditions. So, I think that part of the power of this paradigm is yes, to enhance and to look at the positive side and to learn how to flourish – but also, how to not languish. I think both of those dimensions in some ways do get addressed in the book, in many ways.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, and one of the things that’s come up that I always love – I say this when I work with wedding couples, for example, because I will ask them, “What are you looking for in your wedding?” And they’ll often say, I’m looking for fun. I’m like, “Fun is great, but I think greater than, more important than fun, is something that’s joyous.” So, a simcha is something that really actually brings people together, right? Simchat Torah isn’t just – I mean, it is fun, but it’s designed to be able to elevate joy and connection and connection with each other and connection to God and connection to Torah. And so that this idea of being able to link all these different parts of who we are, there’s an integration there, as opposed to a disintegration.

David Rosmarin: Very much so. And that definitely speaks in some ways to the heart of The Connections Paradigm – the importance of finding opportunities to have real relationships, not just to have a positive experience in the world, but to enhance our meaning and our connection with other people.

Geoff Mitelman: So, I’d love for you to share a little bit – because you talk about how there are three different levels of connection here, that one is the link between the body and the soul. Then there’s the link between other people, and then the link between ourselves and God. And there’s a pyramid that you talk about, that you’ve got to start on the base and then build up from there. I’d love for you to share a little bit about what are those three different levels look like? How do we build connection on all three of those levels?

David Rosmarin: Sure. I’ll just say, as a precursor to getting into that, I’m definitely not a rabbinic scholar by any stretch of the imagination. And I’m very much a clinician – a clinician scientist that has published academic work and done an extensive amount of clinical work. And, you know, the very limited knowledge I have of this extremely vast and deep, both broad and deep, wisdom is, the limit. It’s extremely limited. And I’ve sort of gleaned what I can, what I’ve been able to, from my teachers, who have, you know, received it from their teachers. And any errors or omissions are certainly more a reflection of my lack of understanding than any issues with the paradigm itself.

But, like you said, one of the most important fundamental concepts in The Connections Paradigm is the idea that these relationships are pyramidal. And what that means is that our relationship with ourselves – our body and soul – is a foundation upon which our relationship with others and our relationship with God are built. And this is critical, because we can have connections with other people, we can have friendships, but if we don’t have a relationship with our self (and I can explain a bit more what that means), but at this point, if our body and soul aren’t getting along, those relationships with others will not be sustained.

Similarly, if people have fractures in their relationships with other people, it’s impossible to sustain a spiritual relationship. You can’t be a jerk and then go to pray. It’s not the same effect. I mean, maybe on a random day you can do that, and then go back and fix up the situation beneath it. But that’s not sustainable. And it’s not sustainable for us. You know, in our society, we drive our bodies to the brink. I think Americans put a ton of pressure on themselves way too much. We don’t sleep enough, we don’t eat breakfast, we skip lunch. We don’t appreciate the needs of the body and our souls – if you will, abuse our bodies. And in many ways, our bodies ignore our souls. You know, what’s your purpose in our life? What are we looking for? Is there a higher meaning, a higher purpose, behind what we’re doing? The two are divorced. They’re not even connected. Sometimes they don’t even speak to each other. And that often makes it hard to connect to other people. How many relationships have I seen fall apart over the last year because the emotional health, or I should say emotional distress, of one or both parties just became too much for the relationship to bear?

Geoff Mitelman: Well, and you know the word nefesh, which is usually translated as “soul.” If you look at it in the Torah, I mean, nefesh is a very physical thing, in Vayikra, when they bring the korbanot – when they bring the sacrifices there. This separation of body and soul, I think, is much more of a Greek way of thinking than a Jewish way of thinking. I mean, that’s why there’s a professor of translation, [Lawrence A.] Hoffman, who’s talked about V’Ahavta – “b’chol l’vavch uvhol nafsch’cha uvchol m’odecha” in L’Ahavta – that the “l’vavch” is really all of the non-physical parts of ourselves and that “nafsch’cha” is the physical parts of yourselves. And so, when you’re saying you should love God, it’s with all of your physical part of yourself. We need both of those things, right?

David Rosmarin: Well, this might be above my pay grade, but from what I understand, there are different aspects. There’s a neshama or a higher soul, and a nefesh, which is a lower soul, which reflects actually like you said, the physicality – you know, again, I’m not a biblical scholar here, but there’s a prohibition on eating blood because the nefesh is in the blood, and that’s of an animal, which is not have doesn’t have a higher soul at all. It does not have a neshama. So clearly there’s aspects of the nefesh – like you said, that word refers to a lower nefesh habehamit, or the animal soul. But there is something higher called the neshama. And this, the connections paradigm is about the. At least the body and soul connection. The first level, if you will, is about our soul, our neshama and our physical body, which corresponds to the nefesh – those two getting along.

I’ll give you one more example. Sometimes our higher soul, our neshama, has a goal for ourselves. We might want to – it might be a physical goal, like running a marathon, or it might be a spiritual goal, like reading the entire Chumash or, you know, mastering the entire Babylonian Talmud – whatever it is that we set out for ourselves. And if the body goes out and starts along the way and then it hits a setback, how do we respond? Is it with self-criticism? Is it with self-deprecation? Is it with depriving ourselves? Or is it with a validation and an understanding and a tolerance of our idiosyncrasies of our body? And that’s also another critical aspect of our relationship with ourselves, which comes out in the book.

Geoff Mitelman: And, you know, it’s reminding me of some work from Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, of mindfulness-based stress reduction. And I think one thing that I remember, of meditation – that the goal of meditation, is not to be able to make you feel at peace and at one with the universe. The goal of meditation is to be able to notice how you’re feeling in your body, and that the body is giving you information, and to accept, “this is how I am feeling at this moment,” and then be able to respond to that as we see fit, but not to build up and create more anxiety. “Why am I not feeling at peace? Why am I not feeling restful?” This should be like, “Okay, this is how I’m feeling right now,” and listen to what the body is saying.

David Rosmarin: Right. The language in the book that I have is, “tolerating the body’s idiosyncrasies with love and patience.”

Geoff Mitelman: Right. And, yeah, I think that’s something that is sorely lacking. And it’s not saying “everything is fine.” It’s being able to say, “This is what it is. This is where it is right now.” And in the same way that I would try to be compassionate towards somebody else, then I need to be able to have compassion for myself here.

David Rosmarin: Right. Isn’t it the case that we’re usually kinder to other people when they fail than we are to ourselves? So, that’s definitely a piece. What’s interesting is that most of the corpus of Jewish law and thought has focused on the higher levels – our relationship with others, and our relationship with God. Talk about two levels of mitzvot, right? Bein adam lechavero and bein adam la’makom – our relationship with others, our relationship with God. The bein adam le’atzmo – our relationship with ourselves – doesn’t really get a lot of discussion. And I asked this question to Rabbi Kellerman when I was learning, and the answer that I gleaned was that it was understood that that was in place. People had relationships with themselves, nobody would dare ask themselves to do more than they would could be possibly capable of. I mean, and our body would, of course, listen to the spiritual guidance that we have within. But at this point in history, these kinds of things have to be actually made explicit and spoken about and written down.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, and one of my favorite quotes from the Talmud was, there’s a whole discussion of “Which is the greatest mitzvah in the Torah?” And one says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And the other says, “No, it’s actually Genesis 5. One of this is the generations of Adam completing it, because in the image of God, did God create humanity? And if we view “Love your neighbor as yourself” as the greatest commandment, well, if you don’t love yourself and you’re not able to love another person, but being able to say, “I am created in the image of God and just as everyone else is” – and you talk about this, I know, also, with the spiritual connection. But we all have this commonality – at least if this is your theology – of this commonality of being created in the image of God, and yet each of us having this unique spark within each of us, and being able to say you deserve a level of self-compassion as a creature created in the image of God.

David Rosmarin: Very well-put. That’s wonderful. That’s inspiring, actually.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, I’d love to move to the next level there, because we also talk about this idea of interpersonal relationships. So we start with – hopefully, we’re able to have a mitzvah, you know, mitzvah towards ourselves. But you also talk about the level of giving and receiving and how do we build more fulfilling relationships with other people. And I think this has been a particularly challenging time to build those kinds of relationships over the last few years.

David Rosmarin: Sure has. And The Connections Paradigm definitely deals with it. I guess I’ll just say one more piece about the contrast as a bridge, which is that our relationship with ourself is – in some ways, it is the most fundamental. It is the most fundamental of the three. But in some ways, it’s also the easiest, because we have total control over both entities, our soul and our body. Once we’re in touch with who those entities are and how they connect with each other, we have a lot more agency.

When you’re dealing with a relationship with somebody else, 50% of the agency goes out the window. You cannot control another human being. And I’m, you know, I’m a licensed and board-certified clinical psychologist – so, anybody can try to influence [another person], you know, that’s my whole job, is influencing other people’s decisions. And I know – very, very clearly –there’s only so much you can do. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can never make them drink. And when we deal with other people, a good chunk of maintaining relationships is tolerating people’s differences from us. In fact, you and I, before the show even started, we were chatting about the Yankees and the Red Sox (you live in New York and I’m here in Boston), and how people can really get not just petulant, but actually even violent over differences – whether it’s sports, and certainly when it comes to religion and certainly when it comes to other topics. And our relationships with others are so tenuous today because “You’re vaccinated and I’m not, or I’m vaccinated and you’re not.” And yes, they’re very serious issues, and they have public health implications, 100%. But to what extent do those make it impossible for us to have connections with others? That’s something that we have to think about the mental health impact of.

Geoff Mitelman: And what’s so challenging – and, I think, often overlooked – is that we have multiple different identities that we can have at any one moment. As we were talking too, if we started as a conversation of what’s different about us as a Red Sox fan versus a Yankees fan, and that’s, you know, my sole identity – then, then, then we’re not going to – the conversation’s going to end in the next 35 seconds.

But if we talk about, “Hey, we’re both interested in the interplay of Judaism and science. We both are looking to be able to enhance people’s lives,” now that part of our identity comes to the forefront. And I think what’s become so challenging is that elements of everyone’s identity have become almost calcified, right? “This is who I am, and I am nothing else in this conversation.” And that becomes probably very deeply destructive when you’re trying to talk with other people, when they’re in conversation and trying to enhance individuals and relationships, that if this person’s identity is calcified and that person’s identity is calcified, then they’re just going to break when they interact with each other.

David Rosmarin: I think what you’re trying to say is that if you don’t have a good relationship with yourself, it’s hard to have a relationship with other people.

Geoff Mitelman: It comes back to what we were just saying, right? If you’re not able to love yourself, you can’t love your neighbor.

David Rosmarin: Can’t love your neighbor. It’s impossible to. And if our entire identity is, you know, one aspect of politics or policy – or, you know, whatever it is – even if it’s an important piece – that’s not the entirety of who I am, or who you are. There are many facets. And can we find points at which to connect, which is exactly what you just said?

Geoff Mitelman: And also, you know, reminds me very much of obviously, Martin Buber, who says, you know, “When we’re in relationship, there’s not just an I-it relationship, but there’s an I thou relationship.”

David Rosmarin: Yes, very much so.

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah. And I’m curious, actually, as a psychologist – I mean, that’s got to be an interesting line to have to walk, because it’s how you get paid and put food on the table for your family, and they have a certain timeframe, and there’s value in that. And there’s also the relationship that you want your clients, and the people that you’re working with to thrive as well.

David Rosmarin: Yeah, it can definitely be tricky. But, you know, I think in some ways being a clinician really prepares me for that, because I understand that people are complicated, and we all have aspects of ourselves that need development, that are in progress – definitely myself included. And, you know, I just met you, but you’re a human being too, so I assume the same. And the question is, how do we maintain those relationships and find a path forward despite those limitations that we all bring to the table, to our connections?

Geoff Mitelman: Well, when you talk about the questions of giving and receiving, and the interplay there, that there’s value of simply doing that for its own sake. And there’s also value of doing it as, for lack of better word, an instrumental piece, right? So, if there is somebody where they need food for a Shiva or for a baby, there’s both the “I want to be able to show that I love you,” and “That person needs food right now,” right? There’s value in both elements of that.

David Rosmarin: Yeah. I was going to say there are other aspects of interpersonal connection. In addition to just tolerating other people, one of them is noticing other people’s needs. I don’t think it’s specific to the Jewish world, but I think in general, often people will jump to giving – they’ll jump to reaching into their pocket and, you know, handing over their credit card or a dollar, or doing something for someone without even recognizing what it is that that person needs. You know, there’s a stepwise process that Rabbi Kellerman introduced me to, which is in the book – which is simply the act of noticing that other people have needs around you. Not even doing anything about it, just getting outside of your own vision and your own self and your own experiences, and looking to see what the other person in front of you needs.

You know, in clinical work, we call this “assessment.” You do assessment before you do treatment. And it’s a very novice strategy to just say, like, “Oh, do this,” but you don’t really know what the person needs yet. So having a conversation with them, you know, that’s how it comes out in clinical work.

But in general, years ago, this connections paradigm – I had a group therapy program that I ran, in Manhattan, actually. And we had a group of young individuals who did, week by week, structured workshop or sessions, if you will. And we got to this session on getting outside of yourself. And I took them around Manhattan, around Midtown Manhattan – Macy’s, 34th Street, Empire State Building area. And they had one action – we had one assignment, which was to look at the people around them and notice the needs of other people. I actually gave them these counter things, where you would press the number of times – bouncers have them when you go into a bar – you know, like, how many. And they would count how many times they noticed. And they noticed a lady in the street who was out there with her son at like 8, 10pm and he’s going bananas. Or like, a hot dog vendor who looked down on his luck, or somebody struggling with their bags to go into a store, or somebody who had a dent on their car.

When they came back to the room, there was such a great energy because they got out of themselves. Most people are thinking about their own needs all day. And just for that 30 minutes of getting outside and looking at what other people need – it was so energizing.  That was an experience.

Geoff Mitelman: And I can’t, you know, I can’t remember who said this line – and I want to say it was Rabbi Israel Silanter, but it could have been, any number of rabbis from the 18th or 19th century, who said that “My neighbor’s physical needs are a spiritual question for me.”

David Rosmarin: Yes, I believe it was Israel Salanter.

Geoff Mitelman: It’s the kind of thing he would have said.

David Rosmarin: It’s, “Somebody else’s physical needs are my spiritual opportunity” – something to that effect.

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah. And I mean, that’s a wonderful idea of being able to both recognize what someone else needs, and to recognize that we’re moving away from that sort of solipsism that we have of, you know, “The world doesn’t revolve around me.”

David Rosmarin: Correct. It’s a way of getting outside of one’s own headspace. It’s transcending the barrier that blocks us from other people.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, what’s hard – and you mentioned this a couple of times in the book, and would love to expand on this a little bit – which is: There are some times when we don’t recognize our own needs, or, because of our cultural experience or where we’re from, we may not even be aware of the needs of somebody else, or they may not even be aware of their needs also. So how do we navigate that, where it’s both being able to recognize our needs and someone else’s needs without necessarily overstepping our bounds and swooping in to solve a problem that may not be that person’s problem?

David Rosmarin: That’s one of the hardest parts with ourselves. Firstly, in terms of recognizing our own needs, that would be the first-level. That would be our relationship with ourselves. And if we don’t recognize our own needs, well, you’re in trouble for your relationship with anyone else, I’ll tell you, and for many other things in terms of others.

Now, this is the tricky part – where you’re in a relationship with somebody else, you notice what they need, and they don’t notice it yet. They’re not aware of it yet. And there has to be a lot of patience along that way. That can be extraordinarily frustrating and challenging, and that is definitely a conundrum. But accepting that person’s limitations, understanding and knowing where that comes from, understanding that it’s not easy to receive from other people, and also working on ourselves – modeling that behavior, you know, I found that that can be helpful. If we show that person that it’s okay to ask things from them and rely on them, that can open them up sometimes to relying on us.

Geoff Mitelman: And probably, there’s an element, as well, of being able to recognize the body-soul connection in another person where it’s not conscious, but how that person’s body reacts, how the person’s eyes react. So, being able to notice that.

David Rosmarin: Definitely. And yes, that is one of the hardest parts of our relationship with other people, like I said at the beginning, which is – we don’t have agency. It’s up to them whether they want to receive from us, whether they want to give to us, whether they want to be in connection or not, whether they want to choose disconnection (which is sad when it happens).

Geoff Mitelman: Right. And when I did clinical pastoral education, however many years ago, as part of my rabbinical training, they shared the story about the – if I’m remembering, of the person on the bridge holding a rope, and you’re walking by and they say, “Hey, can you hold this rope for me?”

And they ask you to keep holding onto this rope, and the person’s trying to come down off of it, trying to jump down off of the rope, and you’re trying to pull back, but they’re not helping you – and is your responsibility still to be pulling on that rope? Even if they are not looking for help, even if they’re being counterproductive, what is our responsibility as somebody who is a clergyperson, as a clinician, and being able to know what? What is in the scope of what we’re able to do and what is outside of the scope of what we’re able to do?

David Rosmarin: And sometimes it is outside of the scope – which I think is what they’re trying to say.

Geoff Mitelman: Yeah. And that you talk about this as the third level here, of being able to have a connection of God, of recognizing the limited scope of what we have. And it’s the line that some people have in their office of, “You are not responsible for absolutely everything that happens in the universe. That’s my job. Signed, God.”

David Rosmarin:  Right, right. Right along those lines. Yeah, definitely our relationship with ourselves prepares us for our relationship with others. And our relationship with others, in many ways, can prepare us for relationship with God. And one of the aspects is accepting the limits of our control.

You know, one of the things that I learned from Rabbi Kellerman is the extent to which our control is a façade, because we come into this world involuntarily. We’re born into a period of time that we have no determination over to parents who – well, I certainly don’t think any of us chose our parents, or which language we were going to speak.

There are all these different factors that have an indelible impact on the entire course of our lives –  our physical health as children, our neural development in utero, all of these. It’s unbelievable, when you start to actually think about it. It really almost takes your breath away about how little [control we have], yet, at the same time, we have an incredible responsibility and amazing control that we have over the small arba ammot, I guess – the four cubits that surround us that we can actually impact. So spiritual connection, in many ways, is about accepting our limited control, yet taking the immense responsibility that we have within that scope of control and giving it all we’ve got.

Geoff Mitelman: You know, I applied to rabbinical school right after 9/11. And I was actually living in Boston at the time. But this question of randomness of life, and what happens and what doesn’t happen – you can plan everything, and who knows what may happen at any given moment. And I was really inspired by a text from the Talmud from – I think it’s Nida 16b – where the text is that before a child is conceived, they take a drop of seminal fluid in front of God and ask, “Will this child be…” And the answer is “Rich or poor, strong or weak, wise or foolish,” but does not ask “Will this child be righteous or wicked?” Because everything is in the hands of heaven except the awe of heaven.”

And I think of that as we think of, particularly, physical strength and wisdom and wealth as ways that we try to gain more control over our lives. And we don’t have control over how much control we have.

David Rosmarin: Right. Anything can happen at any moment in time. That’s all beyond our scope of control, except for how we handle the situation that we’ve been given.

Geoff Mitelman: That’s exactly right. And I’m assuming that this is a hard thing for some of your clients and some of the people that you talk to, to really be able to accept, particularly for those of us have some level of anxiety. I think most people have at least some level of anxiety in their life, but anxiety is, I think, in many ways, a desire to try to control more things than they can actually be controlled.

David Rosmarin: Yeah, very much so. I think anxiety can kind of come on both sides of that. One is a failure to accept that things are beyond our scope of control – like, that is definitely the ability to tolerate uncertainty, to tolerate uncontrollability. We know from clinical science that those are key predictors of how anxious somebody will be, whether they will have an anxiety disorder or not – the extent to which they’ll be able to remit from anxiety over time. All sorts of different clear links over there.

But another piece of it, though, is if we have faith, if you will – that there’s a spiritual entity which I call God above us, who we can connect with and we have a relationship with, and we have a dream – if we consider that we’re here for a purpose, that we’re here to do something and we really surge towards that – well, that can really be very helpful, I think, for dealing with anxiety, that maintaining that faith – on the one hand, there’s relinquishing our control, but on the other hand, it’s actually focusing our efforts.

And I think in clinical science we often forget about the latter. We talk about getting rid of our anxiety by accepting, which is true. But there’s another piece of it, which is “What do we build with the tools that we have?” And, you know, climbing up that mountain with faith in mind, that we’re on the right track, even though it seems really stormy or dark or dangerous or whatever it is – that can be an exhilarating, life-altering experience that can really help us to flourish.

Geoff Mitelman: And that’s something that I think in America is often forgotten, because we think, “I am going to be happy when I get whatever,” like, “This is my goal and when I reach that level of success, then I’m going to be happy,” when in fact, the flourishing and the thriving is in the process. And actually, it’s the question of flow, of, “How do I get into a place where the challenges are going to be meaningful, and help me extend my abilities and feel fulfilled, as opposed to feeling beaten down and that it doesn’t matter anymore very much?” So, simply moving beyond our comfort zone and pursuing a higher order goal, in of itself, is potentially an exhilarating process.

Geoff Mitelman: And it’s a question – I think it’s very subtle that you bring up – but it’s a question of, I would say, “meaning with a capital M” – of like, “I have had a preordained plan that God has written for me, and so this is all part of God’s plan” – and so this is what this Means, “with a capital M,” versus this is something that is “meaningful” with a lowercase M. And it’s the process of “How do I figure out who am I? How do I contribute to this world? How do I find joy and thriving? How do I have healthy relationships? How do I take care of myself physically and spiritually?” And that process, in and of itself, has meaning to it. There is value there. And that’s, at least for my theology, a lot of where I find God, not necessarily in from bolt from the heavens saying, “Okay, here’s what your plan is going to be,” but figuring it out as we’re going along with the help and the assistance of wherever we’re able to find that.

David Rosmarin: Sure. I mean, maybe I wasn’t clear, but in The Connections Paradigm, in that third section on our relationship with God, the simple act of trying to identify our Meaning with a capital M – the act of trying to do that – is what creates Meaning with the capital M. That act in of itself is very much a higher-order process of pushing ourselves beyond our limits, to try to achieve something which we think, you know, is a divine service.

Geoff Mitelman: I think we’re very much in agreement here. I mean, that’s this question, of the process of being able to do it. And you talk about being able to recognize that there are going to be setbacks, and there are going to be – it’s not necessarily going to be an easy journey. Life generally is not easy. And so, how do we find those moments of being able to feel larger than ourselves – feel more, and feel more connected to something greater than ourselves? And there is something very deeply meaningful there.

David Rosmarin: Very much so.

Geoff Mitelman: I think it’s a question of – if somebody were to say, “What is the Meaning of life with a capital M?” That’s going to be different for different people. And you talk about this as well, of what is a universal element, and what is an individual element. What are the things that everybody is able to connect with, and what’s each individual person’s journey here? These are big questions.

David Rosmarin: One other thing that comes up in the final section on our relationship with God, which is sort of more implicit than explicit in the book – that’s the extent to which people who seek mental health services want to speak about God, and want to speak about spiritual matters and treatment. And these kinds of topics have been historically ignored by the field of psychiatry, to the detriment of many patients.

Here at McLean Hospital in the Boston area, I’ve been doing research on the issue of spirituality and mental health – actual empirical clinical science research on it. And we found that the majority of our patients, more than 50%, wish to discuss spiritual matters – in Belmont, Massachusetts, which is not exactly, you know, Mississippi or Alabama. That spiritual matters really can have a huge impact on the way that we perceive the world; the way that we interface and react to adversity; the way that we perceive our mission in this world; the faith that we have that we bring to whatever it is that we’re doing.

And those kinds of issues can have huge effects on depression, anxiety, and other concerns of people – substance abuse, other concerns that people come for treatment with. So, it’s a bit of a pain point for me, how much we ignore it.

Geoff Mitelman: And I think what’s also probably surprising about that is that I think that it would help hospitals, right? A lot of hospitals are trying to think of bottom line, and “How do we make sure that the patients follow the outcomes and do what they need to do to take care of themselves if they’re out of the hospital?” And there could be tremendous value in the healthcare system to be able to explore those questions. And I think it’s absolutely to the detriment of both the individual patients and the healthcare system as a whole.

David Rosmarin: I fully agree.

Geoff Mitelman: So, I’d love to end – as you talk about these ideas of doing heroic acts for God, it sounds very intimidating, but it’s not as scary as it sounds when you talk about that. What do you mean by these ideas of “heroic acts for God,” and what that would look like for individual people here?

David Rosmarin: That’s great. Yeah. I believe that anybody can be a hero. The question is, in which domain? Ultimately, we all have amazing capabilities and something to offer this world that nobody else can. There are strengths that you have I will never be able to catch you on. And there are aspects of me that it’s going to be tough to beat me around the track in. You know, that’s just the way we are built – what we bring to the table.

And the question is, when we find something – anything that’s within our wheelhouse – can we really exploit it and go out on a limb and risk a lot, as much as we sort of have the risk tolerance to be able to handle? To push ourselves forward in order to make the world a better place – whether that’s, you know, a surgeon inventing a new technique that will save thousands of lives –you know, arguably higher impact. Or whether that’s a financial planner who really takes his job seriously or her job seriously, and looks at the clients that come in and says, “You know what? This person’s nest egg – I’m going to really be thinking about this.” Or whether it’s anybody – whether it’s somebody works in sanitation saying, “You know what? Let’s think about ways that I can enhance the lives of other people and manage waste more effectively.” Or literally, there are so many ways that we can make the world a better place and bring out that divine wisdom which is within us.

The ordinary hero gets missed in America today, right? So that’s what this is about. How can we exploit and use those God-given strengths and capabilities that we have to make the world a better place in the limited sphere that we operate in?

Geoff Mitelman: And I think that what’s so interesting about Judaism, and one reason that I identify so strongly there that I became a rabbi on it – which is that so many of the discussions in Judaism are very tachlis, practical questions, right? You can read wonderful, great Christian theology and philosophy and it, you know, can blow your mind. But so many of the questions in Judaism are, “How do I live on a day-to-day basis to make my life better, my community better, my world better? What’s the ethical thing to be able to do? How do I treat my fellow human beings more kindly? How do I connect with who I am as a creature of God?” And that’s one of the things that I love so deeply about Judaism, because there is so much wonderful ancient wisdom to be able to draw on that still resonates for us right now.

David Rosmarin: We need it now more than ever.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, Dr. Rosmarin, I want to thank you for taking the time here to be able to share some of your wisdom and the insights that you’ve brought here. And I highly recommend that people get the book here, The Connections Paradigm: Ancient Jewish Wisdom for Modern Mental Health. It’s just an absolutely brilliant and inspiring and deeply important book to be able to have right now. So thank you for your time and for the wisdom that you’re bringing to the world here.

David Rosmarin:: Thank you. Thank you very much. I’m honored to be on the show.

Geoff Mitelman: Well, we hope that you’ll join us next week on August 3rd. We’ll be talking with Dr. Grace Wolf-Chase, who directs the Zooniverse project, which does work on citizen science. How can we get average ordinary citizens to be involved in ultimately peer-reviewed scientific journals, and to be able to advance the knowledge that we have and need in this world? So, we hope you will join us. You can follow Dr. Rosmarin on Twitter. I believe you are @dhrosmarin.

David Rosmarin: That’s me.

Geoff Mitelman: That’s you. So you can find him there. You can find me on Twitter. I’m @RabbiMitelman. You can also find us at @Sinai Synapses. And we hope you will join us again next time for this conversation, and thank you all for joining.