Does It Matter What Your Therapist Thinks About Israel?
| zarathustra | 10/04/25 | | Ass Sunstein | 10/04/25 | | internet phenotype | 10/04/25 | | Author; | 10/04/25 |
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Date: October 4th, 2025 8:55 AM Author: zarathustra
In the two years since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and the beginning of the brutal war in Gaza, the American Jewish community has ruptured. In New York City, which has the largest population of Jewish people in the U.S., hostile factions have formed between friends and colleagues, family members and fellow congregants. Fraught relationships, guilt, loneliness, anger, anguish — those are precisely the types of feelings often best explored in the confidentiality of a therapist’s office. And yet, when Israel or Gaza comes up, it doesn’t take much to shatter the trust between a therapist and their patient.
“I’ve seen people who said their therapist said ‘genocide’ and they freaked out, and then I’ve had people who themselves said ‘genocide’ and their therapist freaked out,” says Yael, a Jewish therapist who works with both Zionist and anti-Zionist patients in the city.
The contentiousness has extended beyond therapists’ offices: It has ripped apart the listservs and referral groups that therapists rely on to treat their patients, and created disputes in therapists’ professional organizing bodies over which topics can be discussed at conferences or which official statements should be published. In an era of desperate social-media posts for like-minded practitioners (“Finding a Jewish therapist who isn’t anti-Israel?” “Is my therapist a Zionist extremist?” “Any other Jewish therapists feeling really alone?”), many are coming to the sinking realization that some subjects are too sensitive for the therapist’s office.
https://x.com/NYMag/status/1974450432945656272
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5782945&forum_id=2Ã#49324183) |
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