Jonah was in the belly of a fish for 3 days. Then he found the words to pray to God. He said, “Karati mitzarah li el-Adonai va’ya’ah’nei’ni; mibeten Sheol shivati, shamatah koli.” “I called out to Adonai in my distress, and God answered me; I cried out from the belly of the netherworld, and You heard my voice.”
You heard my voice. Jonah hasn’t spoken much in the text thus far. God told him to go to Nineveh. He didn’t. Instead he boarded a ship in an attempt to run away. Then in the lower deck of the vessel, when the sea starts to rage, the captain has to wake him up to ask if Jonah can help. The captain tells him to “K’ra el Eloheicha”--Cry to your God. He doesn’t. Jonah instructs them to hurl him into the sea. They did, the sea calmed down, and God then provides a fish to swallow Jonah. It then took 3 days before he spoke.
I suppose it is understandable that he didn’t speak while stuck in the belly of a shark--because let’s be honest, I’ve noticed that the text says Dag Gadol, a big fish, and a “whale” is not a fish. But I digress.
It would be understandable that he wasn’t feeling chatty. But I believe something much deeper is going on. Jonah, though sometimes seen as a comical character, is also someone who is hiding from responsibility, who asks multiple times to die, and who speaks clearly about feeling that he had hit the lowest point on earth. Sometimes when you’re that far down, it takes an incredible effort to call for help. And it really matters if someone hears your voice.
As many of you know, The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit recently launched a significant initiative to address mental health in our young adults, in which they aim to educate the community and agency professionals, decrease stigma associated with mental illness, and provide resources and support for those in need of help. The major message of the campaign is “We need to talk.” The Jewish News has published the voices of our young people, the campaign has set up a comprehensive website, and multiple community partners have joined the conversation. So today I am going to talk about mental illness, in part because I know what’s it’s like to hit bottom and not even know what to say.
Everyone knows that rabbis, and especially this rabbi, love to talk. We give sermons, we teach classes, we lead prayer, we name babies, we read berachot under a chuppah, and we give eulogies. But 12 years ago, while I was in rabbinical school, I had reached a point where I was without words. I had been severely depressed for months, had to go on a medical leave from school, and was starting to feel like Jonah. Jonah was in the depths, and thought he was going to die. So did I.
When I looked in the mirror one horrible night, I could not see myself at all. I was an empty shell with expressionless eyes, my skin so pale that it blended in to the white tile behind me, my heart so numb that all I could feel was the bottle of pills turning over and over in my hands. And my clouded, desperate mind whispered one question and one question alone—how many? How many pills would I have to take to make the pain go away? How many pills would I have to take to end the pain forever?
And then somehow, unable to think, unable to speak, I screamed. I screamed out of fear, and I screamed, I believe, because ultimately, I really wanted to live. My spouse came running from the other room, and soon had my doctor on the phone. I screamed, and I lived. “Karati mitzarah” I called in my distress, and someone heard my voice.
In other words, I was incredibly, unfairly lucky. In any given year, approximately 45,000 Americans will die by suicide, which means on average, someone dies by suicide every 12 minutes. By the time we sing El Malei, there will be at least one more beautiful soul beneath God’s wings. And I have no doubt there are people you are remembering today who died from a mental illness.
Their memories are a blessing. It has always seemed cruel to me that parashat Acharei Mot, which we read this morning, gives Aaron a strict manual for repentance and Temple worship acharei mot, after the death, of his sons.
But one of the redeeming messages of Acharei Mot is that we, as a community, are able to change, and in so doing, are able to save lives. In the memory of those who have died, we need to commit today to save lives.
So we need to talk about it. It turns out, rabbis have been talking about it for millenia. In the Tanakh, five named individuals die by suicide. However, despite the prohibition on desecrating the body, no punishment for suicide occurs in the Tanakh. Instead, a punishment appears for the first time in one of the minor tractates of the Talmud. In Semachot, chapter 2 (2:2), “He who -me’abed et atzmo b’da’at- destroys himself consciously, we do not engage ourselves in his funeral in any way.” The denial of burial rights is a cruel punishment. However, the Rabbis made it very difficult to classify a death as legally a suicide. Over time, the inclusion of b’da’at, consciously, came to require that the deceased were of sound mind at the time of death.
The Rabbis argued that the seeming suicide of King Saul, who fell on his own sword after witnessing the murder of his children, was not “b’da’at”—it was not due to a thoughtful choice made with a sound mind. Rather, it was the result of great stress. Eventually, “anus ke’Shaul,” stress like Saul, could also include fear, anxiety, grief, or although they did not yet use the term, mental illness.
In 1185, Moses Maimonides, a rabbi and physician whose name is on the wall of this sanctuary, lost his brother. He wrote to his friend: “I remained for almost a year…bedridden, with fever, confusion and I was on the verge of destruction.” He recognized in himself the apathy, confusion and danger of suicide that a depression can cause.
This led him to expand the definition of mental illness that was given in the Babylonian Talmud (Hagigah 3b). The shoteh, or insane person, it says, is someone who a) goes out alone at night, b) spends the night in a cemetery, and/or c) tears his clothes. Naturally, these criteria were debated and amended. Maimonides, however, concluded that mental illness required a new definition.
Maimonides’ definition of mental illness in Hilchot Edut (9:9-10) includes “anyone whose mind has become disturbed so that his thinking is consistently confused in some domain.” He even suggested there may be a biological element to the functioning of the brain, differentiating between sadness and mental illness.
A little over 600 years later, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav also struggled. His disciple, Rabbi Natan, said of his teacher:
“No act in the service of God came easily to him; everything came only as a result of great and oft-repeated struggle. He rose and fell thousands and thousands of times, really beyond all counting… He would enter into worship for a certain number of days; then again he would experience a fall… even within a single day he could fall several times and have to begin all over again.”
Many modern scholars, including Rabbi Art Green in his biography of Rabbi Nachman, have described how the Rebbe had an illness, undiagnosed at the time, which vividly included the symptoms of bipolar disorder, including cycles of manic symptoms, such as sleeplessness, rapid talking, and even euphoric energy, alternating with depressive symptoms, such as fatigue, guilt, and sadness.
So by now I’ve either confirmed for you that all Rabbis are crazy, or have at least demonstrated that historically Jewish leaders have been talking about mental illness. Because of course it’s not just rabbis that suffer. We all know people in our professions, our communities, and our families, who have struggled with mental illness. The 2018 Jewish Population study in Detroit, which just came out, reported that not only does about 14% of our adult population currently need access to personal, marital, or family therapy, a full 31% of households with children stated that they needed mental health services for their children.
And Detroit is not unique--or at least not uniquely in need of mental health services. The CDC has reported that in any given year, 1 in 5 Americans will experience a mental illness--whether manifested as an eating disorder, substance use disorder, anxiety disorder, psychotic disorder, or mood disorder such as depression. That’s in any given year. When you expand that to over the course of our lifetimes, that percentage jumps significantly, to estimates that between 25%-50% of us will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder.
And yet somehow, we feel like we can’t talk about it. Even though the Federation and many other organizations are working to fight the stigma, it still exists. So we’re going to address that right now. Please raise your hand and keep it raised if someone in your extended family has suffered from mental illness. If a friend, neighbor, or colleague has suffered from mental illness, please raise your hand and keep it raised. If a rabbi you know (ahem!) has suffered from mental illness, please raise your hand and keep it raised. Now, I invite you to keep your hand raised if you are willing to fight the stigma of mental illness. That may just mean you will be there to listen if someone you know tells you they are suffering from mental illness, and you will help them find help. Thank you.
And thank you to each of you who is currently actively supporting someone who needs you. Supporting people with mental illness is not easy. I need to say thank you to my family, my doctors, my friends, my rabbis, who helped me to heal. Without them, I would not be standing here today. I am now healthy and strong and I am living a life that I could not even imagine 12 years ago. And although I can’t promise that everyone with mental illness will heal, I can tell you that many people do. And when we listen to one another and help each other find help when we need it, impossible dreams really can come true.
If someone comes to you and you are not sure where they can go for professional help, the Federation’s Jhelp website, jhelpdetroit.org, has great local resources. As I was exploring the webiste, I watched one of the videos called “One Thing I Wish You Knew.” It features brave teenagers who tell their stories of struggles with mental illness.
Everyone knows that rabbis, and especially this rabbi, love to talk. But here is the One Thing I Wish You Knew. More than anything, rabbis, and especially this rabbi, love to listen. So no matter how low you feel you have sunk, even if you’ve been in the belly of a fish for 3 days, please cry out. Please cry out to therapists and to doctors, to clergy, and to family and friends. Please cry out until they, until we, hear your voice.