Not long ago, I showed up for a Friday night Shabbat service at Beit T’Shuvah in Culver City. Over the years, I have counseled a number of congregants whose adult children were saved by this addiction recovery program, and I wanted to experience Beit T’Shuvah’s spiritual Shabbat service, which I had heard so much about.
This is not just a Jewish phenomenon, though a few thousand years of expecting to be scapegoated, persecuted, exiled or killed certainly contributes to the melancholic gene Jews are known for carrying, the optimism of a Ben-Gurion or Sandy Koufax notwithstanding.
The husband from hell. The uncle from hell. The comedian from hell. Richard Lewis is fully aware he has problems. And by the end of his set, his stand-up audiences know he has problems.
Sderot is far, by Israeli standards, from the country\’s more prosperous center. But in the last six years, it has found itself unwittingly on one of the front lines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its location, about two miles from the Gaza border, has made Sderot an easy target for terrorists\’ Qassam rockets. Before a surprise and partial truce went into effect about a week ago, fighting had escalated, especially in recent months, between the Israeli army and Palestinian terrorist groups.
This is how naive I am: I never understood why Primo Levi killed himself. I\’d long admired and devoured the works of the Italian chemist who wrote of his experiences surviving the Holocaust.
A lot of people my age feel pressure from their families to get married, but I think my not being married is the only thing keeping my grandmother alive. Bebe often tells me she just wants to live long enough to see my wedding. I\’ll say \”I do\” and then she\’ll immediately keel over. It\’s a lot to bear.
Bebe likes to pretend she\’s open-minded and doesn\’t care if I date non-Jewish women. I should point out that I am technically Jewish — both my parents were born Jews. I never went to Hebrew school but we did celebrate Chanukah — until the year we couldn\’t find the menorah. Then that was that: Bring on Christmas!
"I personally detest theater as therapy," Julianne Grossman said. "I don\’t want to see someone \’catharsis-izing\’ all over me in an attempt to heal themselves."
For elderly people, mild disappointments and grief can set off depression. According to estimates from the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly 750,000 older Californians suffer from depression each year. Put in another way, 50 percent of all seniors will endure a depression at some point in their later years.
Depression can affect the entire family — but the family can also help intervene.
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