by Rabbi David Bauman
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
Analysis of a Narrative related to Cultural Resiliency using a Framework for evaluating Personal Narrative
Rabbi Steven Ballaban, PhD and Rabbi David Bauman, DHL
This article was published internally by the Pentagon’s Committee of Interest on Pastoral Counseling. Please note that the personal viewpoints expressed by this article and discussion guide are the authors’ alone and not necessarily the viewpoint of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or Navy Chaplain Corps.
Abstract:
Strong religious beliefs contribute to resiliency, and provide structure in the creation of a personal narrative that gives meaning in times of stress. Cultural narratives (widely shared narratives that help to distinguish one culture or community from others) and religious narratives (narratives that are considered core elements of particular faith traditions) can help to make those who incorporate those narratives into their identity more resilient. By examining these narratives in four dimensions, chaplains can help those in need shape their own personal narratives in a way that provides greater resiliency in the face of trauma.
Clinical studies indicate that some individuals with religious beliefs experience greater degrees of resilience and post-traumatic growth than those without such beliefs (Park, 2005). In particular, “the contention of Terror Management Theory” posits that “cultural beliefs have beneficial effects on well being in the face of adversity” and fosters post-traumatic growth (Laufer 2010). Laufer cites several studies that support the conclusion that there is a positive correlation between resilience, religious beliefs and practices, and post-traumatic growth.
Such conclusions should not be surprising. Religion is about the making of meaning (Park, 2005). Trauma represents a discontinuity between prior experience and the meanings constructed from them, and events that contradict those constructed meanings (Park, 2005). To the extent that certain religious beliefs can provide context and structure to “hold” traumatic experiences, or can be reframed and expanded to encompass the traumatic experience, they can foster posttraumatic growth.
Over the past three decades, an extensive body of research has emerged exploring the connection of experience, the making of meaning, and narrative (Avdi 2007, Laufer 2010). Within this approach, it is understood that individuals construct their own unique narrative based upon past cultural influences, select experiences and imposed meanings. All of these come together in a narrative in which the person telling the story becomes the central character in that story (Ganzevoort 1993). In particular, Ganzevoort identifies four dimensions to each narrative: plot, setting, character and tone (Ganzevoort 1993). These are summarized as follows:
As seen through the lens of Ganzevoort, a traumatic event is one in which there is a discontinuity of plot (“this wasn’t supposed to happen to me”), of setting (“I am part of a group that does not have such things happen to us”), character (“How could God let this happen to me?”) or tone (“my life has no meaning now”), or a combination of these elements. The pastoral counselor is uniquely qualified to engage in the process of narrative inquiry that accompanies the experience of trauma. By training, most clergy are exposed to hermeneutic investigation of texts and traditions, and the application of a body of cultural narratives to particular human experiences and conditions.
Anton Boisen was the first to explore the nexus of classical hermeneutic training in religious texts and the emerging field of psychology. In his work, he coined the term, “living human documents” to describe bringing the hermeneutic process to the life-stories and narratives of those suffering from life-altering psychological, spiritual and physical crises (Asquith 1982). From his work, the field of Clinical Pastoral Counseling emerged, and the role of the clinical chaplain, and pastoral counseling developed.
The role of a counselor is not only to listen to personal narratives and explore them with those who seek help. It is also to help reexamine those personal narratives and assist in rewriting them to allow growth and integrate painful experiences (Ganzevoort 1993, Mullet 2013). Personal narratives do not arise in a vacuum. They are informed by cultural influences, which are often religious in nature (Ganzevoort 1993). Religious influences in particular have been found to be positively associated with post-traumatic growth (Laufer 2010, Kim 2011, Bormann 2012). While the mechanism for such positive influence has not been identified with certainty, and is still subject to clinical research, the fact that there is a mechanism that exists has been described.
Ganzevoort describes the “setting” aspect of narrative as grounded in a social experience. The construction of the personal narrative takes place within a social and cultural context (Wilbers 2012), is influenced by the outside – often religious – narratives of the community of listeners with whom the individual narrative is shared (Buse 2013), and is constructed for the purpose of connecting the individual to a larger community of listeners, real or theoretical (Wilbers 2012). One impact of a traumatic experience is to place the “victim” outside of that prior social and cultural context. The victim perceives loss of place within that larger social group, and experiences disequilibrium as their personal narrative has diverged from the group narrative.
A great deal of focus has been placed upon personal narrative and its role in shaping identity, providing resiliency, and fostering post-traumatic growth. By comparison, little emphasis has been placed on the influence that such narratives have in fostering resiliency across a community sharing that narrative. Specifically, the question of how specific cultures that have proven resilient following repeated trauma (and the narratives developed by such cultures to examine and interpret those experiences), compare to cultures that experience trauma and either fail to recover or disappear entirely has not received the same attention in the literature.
Jewish Theology, History and Resilience
As a culture, the Israelite and later Jewish cultures have proved extremely resilient. Beginning with the Assyrian conquest of Northern Israel ca. 740 BCE, Israelite history is replete with national disasters. The conquest itself came at the conclusion of a series of civil wars lasting almost 200 years. The southern Kingdom was destroyed in 586 BCE by the Babylonian empire. After a brief period of captivity lasting approximately two generations, the Israelites began a period of restoration spanning three centuries. At the conclusion of the restoration, a series of civil wars resulted in the Roman domination of the province of Judea which culminated in the destruction of the Second Temple and the Jewish diaspora in 70 CE. That diaspora continued for almost 2000 years, punctuated by periodic spikes in oppression, discrimination, and second class citizenship. This lengthy series of persecutions ultimately culminated in the Holocaust. Throughout the history of the diaspora, there were numerous instances of local traumas (i.e. riots, murders and expulsions) as well as more global traumas (i.e. the Crusades and destruction of Jewish populations in Germany, Constantinople and Israel along the route of the Crusaders, the forced conversion of Jews culminating in the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian peninsula in the fifteenth century, etc.). Throughout this lengthy period of history, Jewish culture flourished, with advances in religious areas such as canon law, religious poetry and music, as well as in the secular areas of science, medicine, mathematics, as well as examples of economic success.
In spite of tragedies, Jewish culture has persisted. In fact, in many cases it appears to have thrived because of these traumas. While individual Jews succumbed to depression, disease, and pressure to abandon Judaism and assimilate into the dominant culture, Judaism as a culture with a cohesive structure and ideology persisted. The study of Jewish history has been characterized by Salo W. Baron as “Lachrymose history,” comprising an unending series of tragedies, traumas and disasters. Even Baron, who rejected this summation of Jewish history, concluded that “suffering is part of the destiny [of the Jews], but so is repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption”(Steinfels 1989).
There are many possible explanations for this resilience. Certainly many theories have been advanced over the past two millennia. Some of these theories include the theological (protection by God, alliance with Satan), demographic (higher birthrates), medical (handwashing as a religious ritual preventing the spread of disease, protecting against perinatal death of mother and infant), sociological (forced community cohesion as a result of outside discrimination and persecution). However, these explanations alone may not account for the persistence of Jewish culture.
One cultural influence that remained constant from the earliest periods of Israelite history through the modern period has been a cohesive cultural narrative. That cultural narrative includes major elements featuring the concept of “chosenness,” a sense of “destiny” in which great things were promised at the end of a period of tribulation, strict religious rituals and rites which united individual Jews with other Jews and created a sense of family and shared destiny and which were given by God to Israel, and a sense of ongoing history in which the individual played a small but significant role.
Prominent within this narrative was a religious doctrine that helped to contextualize trauma. The doctrine is known in Hebrew as “Yissurin shel ahava” – “Suffering out of love.” In brief, this is a theological belief that communal and individual trauma are an expression not of God’s absence from history or human affairs, but rather are an expression of God’s love for Israel and desire to purify them through suffering. The central source document in which this theology is found is the Babylonian Talmud (ca. 600 CE), tractate Brachot (“Blessings”) pages 5a-b:
Rava [fl. ca. 320 CE] (some say, Rabbi Hisda [fl ca. 250 CE]) says: If a man sees that painful sufferings visit him, let him examine his conduct… If he examines, and finds nothing, let him ascribe it to the neglect of the study of Torah… If he did attribute it [to this] and still found nothing, let him be certain that these are the sufferings of love, for it is said (Proverbs 3:12) “For whom the Lord loves, he corrects.”
It seems certain that the doctrine itself predates the codification of the Talmud. The sages to whom the saying is attributed taught centuries prior to the date of its inclusion in the Talmud. This doctrine underwent a complex history of interpretation and reinterpretation over the centuries(Harris 2016-2017). It has been understood variously as an explanation for both deserved and undeserved suffering. Throughout Jewish history, suffering has been seen as beneficial and redemptive rather than punitive.
“Suffering out of love” teaches that the innocent suffer in order to earn merit. This merit may be for the individual in the afterlife, or to redeem the corporate “Israel” and ease their punishment for straying from God. One late piece of liturgical literature that features prominently is the martyrology of the ten great sages during the persecutions of Hadrian (138-138 CE). This literary work became incorporated into the liturgy for Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement), as part of the afternoon worship service. It describes in explicit detail the various tortures and gruesome deaths inflicted on ten great scholars by the Romans. Included in the work is the story of one of the great sages, Rabbi Yishmael. He ascends to Heaven, and witnesses the sacrifices performed in the Heavenly Temple which are an analogue to those performed in the earthly Temple in Jerusalem. Below is the description of that Temple ritual:
He walked this way and that in Heaven until he found an altar near the throne of Glory. He asked Gavriel, “What is that?” Gavriel replied, “It is an altar”. “And what do you offer on it each day?” asked Rabbi Yishmael, “Do you have bulls and sacrifces in Heaven?” Gavriel answered “We offer the souls of the righteous on it every day”. “Who performs the sacrifces?” asked Rabbi Yishmael. “Michael the great angel” answered Gavriel. (Sedley)
In this account, the souls of the righteous are burned completely on the altar of God by the Archangel Michael. The righteous who are physically martyred in this world are spiritually martyred in the next, in service to God. This narrative became popularized in the ritual of the European Jewish communities following the attacks by the Crusaders along the Rhine Valley in 1096 and 1097. This narrative helped to provide a context for the suffering and trauma experienced during the mass slaughter of that period, and reinterpreted it as a sacred offering rather than a senseless trauma.
The final, and perhaps most interesting, aspect of this doctrine is the notion that suffering is inflicted by God in order to purify the righteous and bring them even closer. Put in psychological rather than theological terms, post-traumatic growth is the desired end-state for human beings, and trauma is the means for reaching this desired end-state. Suffering is the path human beings must travel to reach the ultimate close and intimate relationship with the Divine. This closeness is the fulfillment of the purpose for which humanity was created. The Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel), as cited in Harris, wrote:
And they are called afflictions of love because God loves him [the sufferer] and wishes to draw that person close to Him so that he may cleave to Him, but the person has something preventing him which is not fit to cleave to Him. Therefore, God brings suffering upon him to purge him so that he is fit to cleave, and therefore they are called afflictions of love. The [correct interpretation] is not that because of love he inflicts suffering on him, which would certainly be inappropriate, but that God loves and desires him and therefore wishes to bring him close to Him, but the person has not attained this level, and so God purges the material blemish in him so that he is fit to cleave [to God].
Put this way, it appears that cultural narratives that recount individual and communal suffering as an expression of God’s favor and as a path towards a closer relationship with God serve as a protective factor when confronting suffering or trauma. Analyzed using Ganzevoort’s four dimensions of narrative we see the following:
Plot: The election of Abraham, redemption of Israel from Egypt, through a series of calamities but ending with national salvation. “Suffering is part of the destiny [of the Jews], but so is repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption”(Steinfels 1989)
Setting: Suffering is seen within the context of a covenantal community, for the sake of strengthening the bonds of the community of believers, and between God and that chosen community.
Character: The main actors in narratives of suffering are Israel (or the sages or righteous men and women of Israel), the collective People of Israel, and the God of Israel.
Tone: The tone of these narratives of suffering include the horrific details of torture, abuse, even dismemberment and disfigurement. The more grotesque and horrific the details, the greater the reward and the higher the elevation of the sufferer in the sight of God and the community. The sufferer becomes heroic, and one to be revered as a champion rather than an innocent victim who is powerless. Victimization is the ultimate empowerment.
Conclusion
It is possible, and useful, to examine the cultural setting and narratives that influence personal narratives when unpacking a personal narrative. This may require investigating the cultural framework of assumptions prior to the trauma. It may also require research by either the individual or the pastoral counselor into the cultural narratives, looking for ways to integrate the traumatic experience into the cultural narrative, and not simply reinterpreting or reauthoring the personal narrative. This could lessen the feeling of alienation from the individual’s cultural setting, and once again connect the personal narrative with the intended audience.
Bibliography
Asquith, Glenn. H. Jr. (1982). “Anton T. Boisen and the Study of “Living Human Documents”.” Journal of Presbyterian History (1962-1985) 60(3): 244-265.
Avdi, Evrinomy and Eugenie, Georgaca. (2007). “Narrative Research in Psychotherapy: A Critical Review.” Psychology and Psychotherapy: Tehroy, Research and Practice 80(2007): 407-419.
Bormann, Jill. E.; Lieu, Lin; Thorp, Steven R. and Lang, Ariel J. (2012). “Spritual Wellbeing Mediates PTSD Change in Veterans with Military-Related PTSD.” International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 2012(19): 496-502.
Buse, Natalie. A; Burker, Eileen J. and Bernacchio, Charles (2013). “Cultural Variation in Resilience as a Response to Traumatic Experience.” Journal of Rehabilitation 79(2): 15-23.
Ganzevoort, R. Ruard. (1993). “Investigating Life-Stories: Personal Narrtives in Pastoral Psychology.” Journal of Psychology and Theology 21(4): 277-287.
Harris, Michael J. (2016-2017). ““But Now My Eye Has Seen You”: Yissurin Shel Ahavah as Divine Intimacy Theodicy.” The Torah u-Madda Journal 17: 64-92.
Kim, Sangwon and Esquivel, Giselle (2011). “Adolescent Spirituality and Resilience: Theory, Research and Educational Practices.” Psychology in the Schools 48(7): 755-765.
Laufer, Avital; Solomon, Zahava and Levine, Stephen Z. (2010). “Elaboration on posttraumatic growth in youth exposed to terror: the role of religiosity and political ideology.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 45: 647-653.
Mullet, Judy H.; Akerson, Nels M. K. and Turman, Allison (2013). “Healing the Past Through Story.” Adult Learning(May): 72-78.
Park, Crysal L. (2005). “Religion as a Meaning -Making Framework in Coping with Life Stress.” Journal of Social Issues 61(4): 707-729.
Sedley, David, trans. Elah Ezkerah: The Midrash of the Ten Martyrs. Israel, TorahLab.
Steinfels, Peter. (1989). “Salo W. Baron, 94, Scholar of Jewish History, Dies.” New York Times CXXXIX(48,066): 44.
Wilbers, Linda; Deuker, Lorena; Fell, Juergen and Axmacher, Nikolai (2012). “Are Autobiographical Memories Inherently Social? Evidence from an fMRI Study.” PLOS ONE 7(9): 1-8.
LESSON PLAN – Area Wide Training
Goal: Chaplains will share their own cultural narratives that are meaningful and model resilience, and will then analyze them in the four dimensions of Plot, Setting, Character and Tone. They will be able to offer an example of a time when that cultural or religious story assisted them and enhanced resiliency.
End-state: Chaplains are able to support others in accessing cultural narratives that are sources of strength. Chaplains are able to assist others in aligning their personal narratives with cultural narratives that offer strength and assist in resiliency.
Objectives:
Activities:
Note: It will be helpful to have either a large screen projector connected to a laptop to take notes, or a large whiteboard with a scribe, or large notepads on which notes can be recorded.
Conclusion:
This is an activity that can be replicated in leadership development settings in individual counseling sessions, or in small group settings. (i.e. Does our command or unit have a resiliency story that we can share in order to foster unit cohesion and make everyone more resilient).
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Rabbi David S. Bauman received Yoreh-Yoreh Semikah (rabbinic ordination) from the world renowned Talmudic Scholar Rabbi David Weiss-Halivni and from Rabbi Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, head of Jerusalem’s Supreme Court. He also holds a Master’s degree in Jewish Studies from The Jewish Theological Seminary, a Master’s degree in Education Administration and Counseling Psychology from New York University, and a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from The University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky. His undergraduate work was completed at The American University in Washington, DC with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology, Education, and Jewish Studies. Rabbi Bauman is currently in the finial stages of his dissertation for a Doctor of Hebrew Literature degree in Jewish Ethics at Spertus Institute of Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.
Rabbi Bauman was commissioned in April 2011 as a reserve officer in the United States Navy Chaplain Corps - From April 2011 to January 2014; Chaplain Bauman served at Marine Base Headquarters – MEFREL 106 in Quantico, VA and as the Command Chaplain at Naval Operation Support Center, Farmingdale, NY. From February 2014 to July 2014 Rabbi Bauman served as the Battalion Chaplain to the 4th Marine Division, 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines in Garden City, NY. Chaplain Bauman superseded to active duty on July 28, 2014 and was assigned to Naval Station Great Lakes – Recruit Training Command as a staff chaplain, breaking out from among his peers to serve as the Recruit Memorial Chapel’s Division Officer and Atlantic Fleet Supervising Chaplain. Chaplain Bauman is the first officer at Naval Station Great Lakes to earn the US Navy’s Master Training Specialist certification. September of 2016 Chaplain Bauman reported to the 3rd Marine Logistics Group to serve as battalion chaplain for the 9 th Engineer Support Battalion in Okinawa, Japan. He has deployed multiple times to Korea and the Philippines.
Prior to his work in the Navy Rabbi Bauman served congregations in Long Beach, NY; Overland Park, KS; and Toronto, Ontario. In addition to his congregational work he taught Mishnah, Talmud, and Halakah (Jewish Law) at the Robbin’s Hebrew Academy for three years and a lectured in Jewish Ethics for the Melton Mini-School. He created and directed the M’Choschek L’Ohr Jewish Teen Heritage Bus Tours and served as an active member of the Toronto Board of Rabbis, the Rabbinical Association of Greater Kansas City, and United Jewish Communities/ Federation. Rabbi Bauman served on the Board of Governors and the Executive Committee of the Union of Traditional Judaism. Currently Rabbi Bauman is a member of the International Rabbinic Fellowship and Torat Chayim.
Rabbi Bauman and his wife Elly are blessed with two children, Matan and Ori; and his beloved dog Hadas Pugman. Rabbi Bauman along with Rabbi Steven Ballaban recently published an article for the Pentagon’s Committee of Interest in Pastoral Counseling entitled, “Analysis of a Narrative Related to Cultural Resiliency using a Framework for Evaluating Personal Narrative”. His personal awards include The Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and The Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. His service awards include: National Defense Medal, Global War on Terrorism Medal, Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal, Recruit Training Command Ribbon, Korea Defense Service Medal, and the Overseas Service Ribbon.