S2 Ep. 1: Trauma, Healing and Resilience

About this Episode

In this interview, Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg delves into her deep interest and growing expertise in the varieties of trauma and how trauma has informed Jewish experience on both the individual and the collective level. Equipped with this awareness, we then discuss ways to move beyond trauma and cultivate resilience, and how these approaches inform her development of Reset: Spiritual Practice for Social Justice Organizations.

Update: See the show links below to read Rabbi Rosenberg's new book, Introduction to Trauma, Healing and Resilience.

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This podcast is produced by Reconstructing Judaism. Visit us at ReconstructingJudaism.org.

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Episode Links

• "Introduction to Trauma, Healing & Resilience" by Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg — We are thrilled to make this accessible and groundbreaking work available to the public and hope that you will find it useful and will share it widely.
• Reset: Spiritual Practice for Social Justice Organizations
• Learning Network: Embodied Ritual for Trauma, Resilience and Healing — We will explore how trauma theory and the tools of Jewish ritual can help us to grieve and process hurts we’ve experienced, build resilience and power for surviving and thriving in oppressive conditions and experience joy, growth and celebration. We will explore how to acknowledge trauma in public ritual spaces safely, responsibly and accessibly. You will have the opportunity to design your own ritual(s) in a supportive and inclusive space. You will come away with the knowledge and practical tools to build healing rituals for yourself and your communities.
• Ritualwell: Rituals for Healing & Hard Times — Hard times are inevitable. But support and healing are available in many forms. Rituals — from mikveh to meditation — can help us move from darkness to light.
• Aurora Levins Morales - Historian as Curandera — Having a historical understanding of the present makes everything we do more effective. It allows us to see the local faces of large patterns of events and causes, and understand how our immediate experiences are connected to those of people who came before us or emerged out of different pasts than our own. History is also the story we tell about the past to explain the present and imagine the future, a job that can't be left to storytellers with a stake in exploitation. The Historian As Curandera talks about my vision of what an activist historian does and why it matters.
• The Historian as Curandera (PDF)
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Amazon link) — Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score exposes the tremendous power of our relationships both to hurt and to heal—and offers new hope for reclaiming lives.
• generative somatics | the center for somatic transformation — The mission of generative somatics is to grow a transformative social and environmental justice movement -- one that integrates personal and social transformation, creates compelling alternatives to the status quo and embodies the creativity and life affirming actions we need to forward systemic change.
• Trauma, Healing and Resilience Resources (PDF) — A few of our favorite trauma and healing books, podcasts, and websites, lightly sorted, though they all overlap and defy categorization.