This video sequence is taking a brief break whereas Dr Moffic is away. For now, benefit from the rerun of this video with up to date commentary.
Final yr, on April 24, 2024, this video on “The Hardening of Hearts Over Passover: Then and Now” was posted. It was earlier than the election of President Trump however, like now, in the course of the Jewish 8 days of the Passover vacation, the story of the Jewish journey to freedom out of slavery in Egypt.
Within the Passover story, the Egyptian Pharaoh guarantees, then retracts, a number of instances on letting the Jewish folks depart. As a consequence, there are 10 plagues that Egypt and Egyptians endure. From a psychiatric standpoint, what I discover essentially the most is the hardening of his coronary heart after he’s regularly humiliated and blocked.
This yr for Passover, I had the privilege of rewriting the part on the plagues for an Interfaith seder. I added an eleventh plague on hatred:
“After every plague, Pharaoh refused to free the Israelites, and his coronary heart grew more durable—a stubbornness that may very well be seen as an eleventh plague, a plague of hatred.”
In society over the previous yr, evidently hatred has been growing, most clearly between the nation’s and peoples nonetheless at battle, but additionally within the political divisiveness in our nation and the obvious need to reverse what’s claimed to be prior flawed insurance policies.
Luckily, I’ve seen some softening of hearts amongst interfaith psychiatrist colleagues in listserv discussions and the manufacturing of the second version of the Islamophobia and Psychiatry ebook. Could we see extra this coming yr.
Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialised within the cultural and moral points of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a non-public professional bono group psychiatrist. A prolific author and speaker, he has completed a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Day by day Information” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” because the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to obtain the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Affiliation for Social Psychiatry. Beforehand, he obtained the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Affiliation, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Meeting of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the Nationwide Alliance for the Mentally Ailing in 1991. He introduced the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, Could 19, 2024. He’s an advocate and activist for psychological well being points associated to local weather instability, doctor burnout, and xenophobia. He’s now modifying the ultimate ebook in a 4-volume sequence on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Japanese Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Occasions.
