A Google search on “Jewish Ethnotherapy” yields two key names, black psychiatrist Price Cobb and Jewish psychologist Judith Weinstein Klein. Price Cobb coined the term “ethnotherapy” out of his experience with Afro-American patients and his working through issues with them around their ethnic identity. Judith Weinstein Klein adapted “ethnotherapy” in her focus on Jewish identity issues in therapy with her patients, and published findings in her “Jewish Identity and Self-esteem: Healing Wounds through Ethnotherapy” This study made available through the American Jewish Committee was a clinical presentation on her work which was unfortunately cut short by her untimely death at 48.
In the early 1970s as a recently ordained rabbi/educator at a congregation in Massachusetts, I was influenced also by Price Cobb/Judith Weinstein Klein’s “Ethnotherapy”. Having spent hundreds of hours experiencing group dynamics, sensitivity training leadership, gestalt therapy, psychodrama, family therapy, and other such endeavors, I developed an interesting perspective on congregational religious school and bar/bat mitzvah programs. Parents viewed their children as the “identified patient” requiring treatment to adapt to Jewish identity through their religious school studies and completion of the bar/bat mitzvah ritual. This required sacrifice of weekend and after-school hours, carpooling, and other parental duties.
My translation of “Ethnotherapy” for the treatment of these “identified patients” and their family systems became: “Jewish Ethnotherapy is a two-fold approach: That of assisting the individual Jew to develop a positive image of himself or herself as a member of the Jewish people, and that of providing the individual with specific knowledge of their resources within the historical experiences of our people that he or she might find as supportive tools toward further self -discovery”
We restructured the educational program into two tracks: The Hebrew program which was geared around the learning of the specific prayers to be conducted by the bar/bat mitzvah, a kind of ‘reality therapy’ with an even more significant aspect, classes organized around mastery levels achieved by the students. This meant disrupting carpool patterns but absolutely reduced behavior problems in the classroom sessions. The other track was the history/customs/bible studies program which became the ‘experience’ of Jewish community aspects of our school program. Teachers were trained in concepts and methods of fostering a positive community atmosphere.
Parallel to the two classroom tracks, over the year prior to the bar/bat mitzvah cycle, parents attended sessions dealing with family dynamics of the bar/bat mitzvah experience, i.e. “we are too young to have a 13-year-old” etc. Then about six months prior to the event, I met with the individual families to discuss the “success” experience for the bar/bat mitzvah.
This overall approach created an atmosphere of positive experience around this important transition in the life of the parents and their children. While not having any clinical measurements of this application of Ethnotherapy, anecdotal reporting can be told: As mentioned above, there was an absolutely reduced amount of behavior problems in the classroom sessions.
As a rabbi with the obligation to make the Jewish historical experience to Jews and even non-Jews, the understanding of Jewish Ethnotherapy needs to be transformed from clinical to proactive, thus: “Jewish Ethnotherapy is a two-fold approach: That of assisting the individual Jew to develop a positive image of himself or herself as a member of the Jewish people, and that of providing the individual with specific knowledge of their resources within the historical experiences of our people that he or she might find as supportive tools toward further self -discovery”
To actualize this proactive approach, I have been guided by those I consider the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of Jewish-born therapists: Viktor Frankl, Abraham Maslow, Kurt Lewin, and Fritz Perls.
Frankl and his Logotherapy brought us lessons from the Holocaust about the importance of achieving ‘meaning’ in life, and hence a guideline for the choice of Jewish content toward that goal. Abraham Maslow with his view of the self-actualizing individual suggests the notion of Judaic content toward a self-actualizing Jewish identity. Kurt Lewin’s contribution is the importance of group membership in establishing a positive ethnic identity. Fritz Perls, of Gestalt Therapy, taught many active techniques for achieving personal awareness, that among other influences have found their way into confluent education.
Elaboration of the contributions and guidelines from these four deserve much more detail, and examples of Jewish Ethnotherapy approaches in dealing with adult spirituality and reinventing challenges caused by retirement, relocation, loss of employment, or significant other(s) need to be dealt with in other contexts.
For now, the establishment of new programs dealing with Jewish identity and their funding should be evaluated in terms of their being proactive applications of Jewish Ethnotherapy: “Jewish Ethnotherapy is a two-fold approach: That of assisting the individual Jew to develop a positive image of himself or herself as a member of the Jewish people, and that of providing the individual with specific knowledge of their resources within the historical experiences of our people that he or she might find as supportive tools toward further self -discovery”