3/29/2024 0 Comments Intergenerational trauma and jews![]() Firestone noted that Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev wrote, “I am a Jew, and there are scenes of the Holocaust that are indelibly etched in my mind, even though I was not alive at the time.”įirestone also outlined research conducted by Rachel Yehuda of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, which showed that the children of Holocaust survivors were three times more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms when exposed to traumatic events than the children of other Jews. The man survived the Holocaust and started a new life and family in the United States. ![]() He ran after the train, but never caught up and never saw his family again. When the mother heard her child’s story, she cried and asked in disbelief, “How could you possibly have known this?” It was the story of the child’s grandfather who, in the Second World War, found out belatedly that Jews in his town, including his young family, had been rounded up and deported by train. The man would run along the tracks yelling, “Stop! Stop!” The train would go on with the young man unable to catch it. The image in the young child’s mind was of an old wooden town where a man at the train station would jump from the platform to the train tracks. One night, she explained to her concerned mother why she would wake up crying so often. A young woman Firestone worked with, for example, became an activist, not knowing it ran in the family – her grandmother and great-aunt, neither of whom she had ever met, were rebels in their shtetl decades earlier.Īnother example involved a woman whose very first memories as a young child were nightmares. ![]() Ongoing patterns, whether ones of heroism and activism or depression and anxiety, are transmitted across generations. Or, as in a quote from Israeli psychologist Dan Bar-On, cited by Firestone: “Untold stories often pass on more powerfully from generation to generation than stories that can be recounted.” “And they create the patterns of who we are and who we are becoming.”Īlong these lines, the pain from trauma can be unspoken over the course of generations, yet becomes part of the individual nonetheless. The painful histories our ancestors endured, along with their warmth, resilience and all their good resources, are intertwined within us, both psycho-spiritually as well as physically and physiologically,” said Firestone. In other words, those who come after should experience life from a position of resilience and hopefulness.įirestone, who currently lives in Boulder, Colo., spoke about her own parents, who were deeply impacted by the Shoah – her mother as a German survivor and her father as an American soldier stationed in Germany. Firestone’s goal is to help current generations “metabolize life better” so that the damaging psychological effects of trauma are not extended to future generations. “Nor did I ever fathom when I wrote Wounds into Wisdom that it would be so very painfully relevant today in the midst of historical traumas in the making.”Īn objective of the January talk was to address traumas experienced by one’s ancestors that get transmitted onto future generations in the form of fears, anxieties and hopelessness. “When I was first approached by Kolot Mayim last year to present this talk, nobody had any idea of the life-changing events that we would be experiencing,” Firestone began, acknowledging the geopolitical developments on and after Oct. Firestone, the author of the award-winning 2019 book Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, is a Jungian psychotherapist and a leader in the Jewish Renewal movement. ![]() Tirzah Firestone unraveled intergenerational trauma, and offered solutions to help remedy it, in a Zoom webinar hosted by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple on Jan. Tirzah Firestone spoke in a Zoom webinar hosted by Victoria’s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple on Jan.
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