Torah rehab

The Ma’alot study center for religious psychiatric patients offers employment training and a beit midrash.

By MIRIAM KRESH
Yitai Timsit (photo credit: Miriam Kresh)
Yitai Timsit
(photo credit: Miriam Kresh)
A branch of the Ma’alot batei midrash (religious study hall) sits in an old building on a Bnei Brak side street. The worn front door opens to a large, light room. A group of men are listening intently to a gray-bearded rabbi vigorously expound upon a lesson. There’s a feeling of ease, although the only luxury is the sunshine flooding through the many windows. Every student is a psychiatric patient.
Gedalia (not his real name), a soft-spoken older man, agrees to speak to us. He is a retired teacher who suffers from major depressive disorder.
“I have trouble concentrating. I wanted to study Torah in an environment where others have similar problems. I feel a definite improvement in my mood. I can absorb more information than before. The lessons aren’t so long that I get tired out. They’re also varied often enough so that you’re not in one situation or studying one subject too long.
“ We learn how to deal with psychiatric problems through the Torah. I myself don’t have a problem dealing with anger, but some do. We’re taught to reduce negative impulses a little at a time, not try to overcome them all at once. We learn to think positively, in small steps, until it’s a habit.”
The Ma’alot network of rehabilitative batei midrash addresses a long-ignored need in the religious community: the reintegration of psychiatric patients into normal society. At the Ma’alot batei midrash, men set adrift in the religious community are offered the tools to reenter society.
In a society where Torah study is the way of life, the psychiatric patient sits by himself in the yeshiva, basically abandoned. His medication’s side effects may include poor concentration, difficulty remembering the material, and tiredness, making him an undesirable study partner. He deteriorates, alone in his inner world. Ma’alot offers the first professional rehabilitative program for religious psychiatric patients.
Yitai Timsit, a clinical and organizational psychologist and manager of Ma’a lot’s central region offices, explains how the organization works. “A student enters one of three streams. One is focused on work – getting employment in a normal setting, for normal wages. The second is a program where students eventually move on to normal yeshivot. The third is reintegration into the community through a religious framework. We have a network of rehabilitative study centers, in Bnei Brak, Rehovot and Jerusalem.
We plan to set others up in Safed and Ashdod,” he says.
The program is highly goal-oriented. “We don’t ask, what is your psychiatric diagnosis? We ask: What do you want? What are your goals? Then we ask: What’s your community? Rehabilitation is all about reintegrating people in the community,” says Timsit.
Three rabbis teach the classes. Social workers note whether students understand the lessons, if any need support in specific areas, and what each particularly enjoys studying. Even a student’s ability to arrive on time is noted. This is more serious than it seems: some newcomers have never learned how to organize their time. Every staff member is a former yeshiva student himself. “A secular social worker wouldn’t understand what’s going on here,” e x p l a i n s Timsit.
“We establish concrete successes that become habits and carry over to daily life. We want our students t o become self-reliant. In other words, we’re here to help open the way, but it’s up to each one to walk it.”
Timsit told of a newcomer who said, “I get to the yeshiva late, study for two hours, and then I’m exhausted. I get confused and can’t make sense of the texts. I’m 23-years-old and have no friends, no study partner. Help me.”
The young man recently left Ma’alot after an intensive year and a half. He now knows how to organize his time, retains new information, and has made friends in the beit midrash. “That is success,” says Timsit with satisfaction. “We want our students to come in and say, ‘thanks, I don’t need you anymore.’” Students arrive at Ma’alot via recommendations from social workers, hospitals and psychiatric clinics.
Reaching out to people in the religious communities around the center of the country, Ma’alot sends social workers to Emanuel, Elad, Beit Shemesh, Kiryat Sefer and other towns. Sometimes a family member has heard of the program through word of mouth, or has picked up a flyer left in a synagogue.
We asked what sort of patient applies to study at Ma’alot.
“All kinds,” says Timsit. “Some come for a while, let’s say after a crisis of some sort. They quickly move out of our beit midrash into twice-weekly classes at normal yeshivot and from there, reintegrate into the community. Others, with lower rehabilitative potential, simply stay here.”
Students’ ages fall between 18 and 40, although there are older men. Most have 40-percent disability.
Asked what the most important rehabilitation tool is, Timsit says, “No doubt about it: daily contact with other people.
A person who stays inside himself remains there with his own thoughts. How many people do you meet with every day? There are some people who see only one other person a day. Isolation brings on depression.
But when a person goes out, sees people smiling at him, talks to them, it’s like food for the soul.
“We even use the tools of marriage therapy, helping study partners to learn how to get along. All these things carry over to the student’s home and larger environment.
“Rehabilitation is based on participation in society.
For example, we’re going on a bus trip to Safed tomorrow. We have students who have never gone on a trip before they came here. ”The second tool Ma’a lot uses is coaching. “We teach students how to get things done, get them to take responsibility,” explains Timsit. “Each student has a journal that he shares with his social worker; that’s one method we use to keep track of his progress.
A very important tool in Ma’a lot ‘s success – and it has tripled the number of students in one year – is good management, says Timsit. The beit midrash was originally located in Ramat Gan and relocated to a building in Bnei Brak which is accessible from all around via Geha junction. “We renovated the rooms and toilets. Our staff has full office equipment.
Students have a coffee corner for light refreshment.
Without good management, even good ideas fall through,” he says.
Asked if Ma’alot, which is funded by the Health Ministry’s rehabilitation basket and private donations, has a program for religious women, Timsit said, “Certainly. In Jerusalem alone, we have over 100 women employed in normal jobs. In Jerusalem, we work with the general public and also with the Arab community, not only with haredim.”
Gedaliah sums up his experience at Ma’alot: “It’s a helpful, effective and healthy place for people like me.”