I have been on anti-depressants since my senior year of college. I know that’s a slightly jarring way to start a Dvar Torah. Sorry. 

That’s almost 20 years. That’s half my life. For half of my life, I’ve relied on medicine to make sure that I can function throughout the day. 

I’ve told the story of my anxiety diagnosis before, but I’ll tell it again quickly here this morning, because it’s important. 

My senior year of college, our choir was on an international tour in Italy. We had a day off in Sorrento, so a few friends and I rented some mopeds to cruise around the town and check out the incredible views of the Mediterranean. 

On our way back to return the mopeds, it started to rain and rush hour traffic was picking up. We had to stay with the flow of the other vehicles while also navigating some slick streets. We were almost back to the shop, when on a sharp corner I could feel the bike slipping out from under me. 

I went down and I slid with the bike. I knew there were cars behind me, and somehow in that way that everyone talks about in a near-death experience, everything kind of slowed down and I was able to think incredibly clearly. 

I knew that to avoid getting run over, I’d have to hold onto the bike and slide with it off the road. So that’s what I did, I held on as the bike and I skidded across the pavement, my helmet bouncing off the ground the whole way. 

And then I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was upright pushing the bike along the side of the road. I found out later that I had been unconscious for a while then I popped up and just started walking. 

The accident wasn’t too bad. I was very lucky. But what happened after, changed my life forever. 

I thought that the worst part of this whole thing would be the bad road rash down my leg and on my ankle. That turned out not to be the case. 

The worst part was the symptoms that I couldn’t figure out for months after my accident. 

I would be in a store or a restaurant — any place that was enclosed and had some people present — and my heart would start to race. I would start sweating uncontrollably and then my vision would get blurry and start fading. I would get dizzy and feel like I needed to vomit, or that I was going to pass out. 

And it happened over and over again, and I couldn’t figure it out. 

I went to a neurologist, who thought I might have had some vagal vagus nerve damage or maybe even some brain damage from the accident. 

But nothing from the neurological treatment did anything to help my symptoms. 

I saw doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist. But it wasn’t until my father convinced me to see a psychologist that I found any kind of explanation or help. 

Because when I saw a mental health professional, I understood that my symptoms were actually textbook generalized anxiety. And what I also learned was that though my accident probably hastened my development of these symptoms, they were probably going to show themselves at some point in my life regardless. 

Because my anxiety, my mental health issues, are not created from trauma. They are part of my genetic makeup. They are my inheritance. They are my birthright. I got my lovely wavy hair from my imma. I got the Dahlen nose from my abba, and I got a cocktail of messy mental health susceptibility from both sides. 

Depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, addiction … there’s quite a party going on in my DNA. 

However, and this is a very important, underlined three times HOWEVER … because of the resources I’ve had. And especially because of Jewish tradition and its way of speaking so profoundly to every individual in whatever moment of life they are in … I navigate my mental health not as a disability, but as just another element of who I am as God’s creation. Knowing that to be made b’tzelem Elohim, to be made in the Divine Image, is to be made with a beautiful complexity that isn’t always easy, but is always … ALWAYS … holy. 

May is Jewish Heritage Month. It is also, perhaps not so coincidentally, Mental Health Awareness Month. 

And I don’t mean that comment as a disparaging or mocking one, because I think there really is an incredible kesher, an incredible connection between Jewish heritage and mental health awareness. 

Our tradition, our heritage, our texts … they just get it. They aren’t afraid to confront and wrestle with the complexities of the human brain. 

The Torah is a book of laws, narratives, and foundational myths. It’s also a textbook of human psychology. It is an analysis of the human condition in all of its diversity.

From Adam and Chava we learn about embarrassment, fear, and shame. From Avraham and Sarah we learn about  jealousy, doubt, and despair. From Yitzchak and Yaakov we learn about loneliness, abandonment, and struggles of insecurity and ineptitude. And with Moshe we are offered a master class of identity crisis, self-depreciation, inadequacy and anxiety. 

And that’s just the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. When we get into the prophets and the wisdom literature we are shown the depression of Shaul ha’Melech, of King Saul, the psychosis of prophets and visionaries, and then we get into Rabbinic Literature, we see it all come to a powerful head with case law, legal theory, and communal morality and responsibility surrounding mental health. 

All of this is to say that Judaism has not only been abundantly aware of mental health issues throughout its history, but has openly invited mental health into the conversation of Jewish theology, philosophy, and ethics. 

I want us to take a second and think about just how amazing that is. In a world that has forever considered these words I’ve been using — anxiety, depression, addiction, psychosis, autism, neuro divergency, you name it — a world that has forever considered these words to be taboo, Judaism has considered them aspects of Creation. Creation with a capital C, as in the very fabric of God’s works.

It is crucial that we know that. It is crucial that we understand that and embrace that, because it is a treasure of Jewish tradition that we have the ability to speak about this with the openness and compassion and love that we do … or that we should.

And here’s why. I want to see if I’m right on this assumption. I might not be. But let’s see. If you or someone in your immediate family has struggled with mental health in any way, I want you to please stand up. 

... That’s why this is so important. That’s why we need to say it over and over again, so we can understand that we are here together navigating this beautiful journey of life together. And that, while we do it, we get this toolbox of Jewish wisdom and understanding that not everyone else gets. And that is something for which I am eternally grateful. 

I want to add one more part to my story. Some of you have heard this part too, but just humor me. I’ve been on anti-depressants for nearly 20 years, but it took me a long time to figure out how to get to a place of balance. 

It took four years of trying different medicines and different doses of those medicines to get my symptoms under control. It took years of breathing techniques, meditation, and talk therapy to get some control and ownership over my anxiety. 

And when I did … when I finally got to a place of balance, where I could be me – not emotionally numbed or helpless to symptoms — that day, that first day of really feeling good, I went to shul. And when I was davening the amidah, I came to the words in the second bracha, the gevurot: 

Somech noflim v’rofeh cholim, u’matir asurim — Praised are you HaShem, who lifts up the fallen, who heals the sick, who releases the bound. 

And when I read those words, I burst into sobs. And I’m going to do so again right now … because those words are nothing short of magic. Because I know that so many before me have read those words and have felt the same thing. That they have felt the gratitude of working through something really hard, and then having our tradition be there to hold them through it all. 

It’s magic. It is pure magic. 

May is Jewish Heritage Month. And May is Mental Health Awareness Month. May is Jewish Heritage Mental Health awareness month. It is a time to learn, a time to offer support and open arms and hearts. And it’s a time for gratitude, because we are lucky to have a tradition that doesn’t know from the word Taboo. We are blessed to be the People of the Book, the people who aren’t afraid to wrestle. The people who give thanks yom yom, that we are made in the image of the Divine, each and every single one of us. 

Baruch atah Adonai, eloheynu melech ha’olam, somech noflim, rofeh cholim, u’matir asurim. 

Amein.