What (If Anything) Makes Therapy Jewish?
Notes on the relationship between a clinician's tradition and the universal work of the therapy room.
I'm sometimes asked whether I do "Jewish therapy." The honest answer is: not exactly, and also yes.
I work with clients of every background, and I don't import religious content into sessions unless a client brings it. The clinical frame is psychodynamic and process-oriented, not theological. What I'm trained in, and what I'm offering, is a way of looking at the mind that works regardless of whether anyone in the room keeps Shabbat.
And yet, my own tradition shapes how I sit in the room. Judaism takes language seriously, and so do I. It is wary of premature resolution, and so am I. It assumes that the past is alive in the present, that questions can be more important than answers, that human beings are obligated to each other in ways that don't fit neatly into modern categories. Those instincts find their way into the work.
For Jewish clients who want to think about what they're carrying through the lens of their tradition, that's available. For clients who don't, it stays in the background — informing the work without ever needing to show its face.