North Star Conversations Transcript: Comforting the Afflicted—Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein
Dr. Brandon Gimbel and Rabbi Steven Lowenstein discuss how therapy and faith share a moral center—compassion and responsibility—and how both must comfort those in pain and challenge those in comfort.
Brandon Gimbel (00:00)
There are roughly a million different types of therapy. experienced therapists end up, in my opinion, in the same general space: compassion, acceptance, being kind to ourselves and being kind to others. I see that in every experienced therapist that I have respected in my career. And I'm observing the similar wisdom from different faiths, from Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity. It's coming together in a mindfulness, in an awareness of the collective, in an awareness of the connection with G-d, in an awareness of compassion and kindness, the similar endpoint.
Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein (00:39)
I joke with my colleagues and my friends in the rabbinate that every year we write a sermon for the high holidays, but we're just finding a different way to say the same thing, whether it's managing your time better or being more involved or caring about what's happening in this world or our responsibility to fix the world. We're saying the same thing over and over and over again in everything that we do. As a rabbi, I get to invoke the biblical prophets. One of the interesting roles of the biblical prophets is that you have to comfort the afflicted, but you also have to afflict the comfortable. I'm there to comfort those who are in pain, but I'm also here to hold up a mirror and to remind people who are very comfortable that they also have a responsibility, that they also have to give back, and they also have to be vulnerable.
Brandon Gimbel (01:37)
You're talking about responsibility to the community, again, kindness, but kindness to others.