JAMI – STL Update

Jewish Attention to
Mental Illness – St. Louis


The Place of Mental Health in St. Louis Jewish Community
A series of “nexts.”

 

Symposium on Community and Invididual Responses

to Mental Health and Illness Was a Big Success

Sunday, May 23, 1-3 PM, registration at 12:30, at the Kopolow Bldg., Jewish Federation, on the JCC Campus. Featured speakers were Lesley Levin, LCSW, Dr. Luis Giuffra, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine, and Rabbi James Goodman.

The focus of the symposium was on treatment, recovery, and hope.

N.B. The symposium was excellent, well attended and well presented. Special thanks to Lesley Levin and Dr. Luis Giuffra, presentors.

 

Falling Through the Cracks

Next Steering Committee Meeting

Wednesday, July 14, 7 PM @ Neve Shalom

Convened by Rabbi James Stone Goodman, Falling Through the Cracks has met in two previous community forums at Congregation Neve Shalom with the expressed purpose to secure mental health and problems occasioned by mental illness in the center of the Jewish community agenda, thinking, and communal creativity, through a series of “nexts” --- strategies created from the bottom up, so to speak, that can be readily accomplished with the human creativity and commitment already in place.

Our community forums are reviews of accomplishment and a thinking into the next phase which is our strategy.

Here is a list of the activities we have planned and implemented so far:

1) Planning another half-day community wide symposium to take place in October of 2010 on mental health and illness.

2) Seeking representation to our Monday Forum from sympathetic organizations and caring committees/social action groups throughout our community. The Rabbinical Association has taken on sponsorship of our program, presently called JAMI STL, Jewish Attention to Mental Illness, St. Louis.

3) Upcoming coverage in The Jewish Light.

4) Research into similar groups who are doing this kind of effort elsewhere.

5) A spiritual family support group, based on the Shalvah Model that meets at the Staenberg Complex JCC the third Tuesday of every month, led by Rabbi James Stone Goodman. Caring for carers. Next: Tuesday, July 20.

6) Achraiyut [responsibility] is now meeting the first Monday of the month at Neve Shalom, support for consumers. Next: Monday, August 2nd, @ 7:15 PM.

For more information, you may refer to the Congregation Neve Shalom website, www.neveshalom.org, look for JAMI STL under Programs, or call Neve Shalom at 314-863-4366.

 

Give ear O heavens
And I will speak
Listen earth
To the words of my mouth

I stood on a rock
With You
You were wrapped
In a tallit of light
And there I was given

Everything for all of us
When I came down the mountain
My face was fire
And on that fire
A mask

If we believe in justice
It is a double course justice
If we believe compassion
There is no stranger
Or we are all strangers
Not just then
But always

If we believe in good
Then there is good
And only good

If we choose life
Then we take each day
With the intention of joy

You are endlessly forgiving
Compassionate
When will You abandon us –


Never