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You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist is a podcast for seekers, dreamers, and questioners that intimately explores the human experience. Your host, Stephanie Winn, distills years of wisdom gained from her practice as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She invites guests from a broad variety of disciplines and many walks of life, including researchers, writers, artists, healers, advocates, inventive outliers, and creative geniuses. Together, they investigate, illuminate, and inspire transformation - in the self, relationships, and society. Curious about many things, Stephanie’s uniquely interdisciplinary psychological lens tackles challenging social issues while encouraging personal and relational wellness. Join this journey through the inner wilderness.
Swell AI Transcript: 134. Malka Shaw.mp3
Malka Shaw:
The therapist will come in and they'll say, I'm nervous about anti-Semitism, and the therapist will make a comment, well, the Blacks have been dealing with it for a long time, or it's not really so bad because you're privileged, or you're not really a minority, so I don't know why you're complaining. Therapists are making all sorts of inappropriate remarks, calling clients in therapy session a white colonizer, calling clients that they support baby killers. The APA, the NASW, has made disparaging remarks against Jews and has been clearly anti-Semitic. It's just heartbreaking.
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today I'm speaking with Malka Shah. She is a licensed clinical social worker, a trauma therapist in private practice with over 25 years of experience focused primarily on women, relationships, and maternal health, as well as providing clinical supervision, consultation, and continuing education. Malka founded Kesher Shalom Projects following the devastating effects of October 7th. Kesher Shalom's mission is to provide education and professional development on mental health and antisemitism. Today we're going to learn about the psychology of antisemitism and its impact on society. Malka, great to have you. Thanks for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure. I realize I said effects of October 7th, I meant events, but I guess the long term downstream effects of that as well. So tell us about Kesher Shalom and how you got it started.
Malka Shaw: OK, thank you. So Kesher means connection. It's the Hebrew word for connection. And Shalom is the Hebrew word for peace, because that's really what our mission is about, is building bridges and connections and trying to create more peace in the world. It started by accident. I was on a WhatsApp chat for Jewish mental health professionals. And October 7th happened. And as you can imagine, the chat blew up because we're processing this information. And how could we also focus on our clients' needs and take care of our needs while we're processing the most devastating attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust? And we're listening to the deafening silence that was heard around the world as nobody came. It felt like nobody came to support us during this. So people on the chat had known about my background in acts of large scale trauma and know, and some of them may or may not be aware about, I also separately from my, before this, separately from my therapy world, I happen to have a very extensive Jewish education and background. And I was asked if I could do a Zoom and I asked, there was two other therapists that started it with me. And it really blew up. We really thought maybe 30 or 40 people from the chat were going to show up that night. And we thought it was going to be one and done. Over 300 people, we don't know how many showed up the first night because the Zoom room got locked. And we did it again and again and again. And so we got to the point that there is a need for this and nobody else is providing this. And one of the other therapists got the idea that we can maybe turn this into a continuing ed course. And that got turned around. quite fast, and the information keeps building and building. So I always say it was sort of an accidental project that it wasn't planned. But it's unfortunately, as it keeps, as we keep going, it's much more needed, and we're filling, we're seeing different needs, and it's kind of evolving as it's happening.
Stephanie Winn: And so what are what are the mission or the goals of the organization?
Malka Shaw: So obviously, as a therapy group, we're mission is to build resilience, and help support Jewish communities and help educate our non-Jewish allies. One of the holes that we've been seeing within mental health, there's other groups that have been rising to the occasion in terms of providing support for the Jewish communities, but nobody's really out there providing mental health education. And one of the core components of that is cultural accommodation and training people on how to work with Jewish clients And not just Jewish clients, but clients that are experiencing what we call active ongoing trauma. It's a little bit of a niche that's missing in a lot of the continuing ed courses. So we put together something called the guard system to really get hands on skills. And then we got the idea and it started to evolve that this doesn't have to stay with mental health professionals. This training can be broken down and we've spoken in a variety of different environments. I was speaking next week for the New Jersey Bar Association. So I'll be speaking to lawyers and I'll be counting towards their DEI requirements. I've spoken for medical doctors to try and help decrease the anti-Semitic bias and increase communications between people and build those gaps.
Stephanie Winn: It's concerning to hear that there would be an anti-Semitic bias in medical doctors.
Malka Shaw: There's a huge gap in medical doctors and in our field as well, which to me, as I call it, an extra level of the heartbreak. But we've seen it throughout history. We saw it in Nazi Germany, and we also saw it in the radicalization of Iran. Anytime a radical extreme wants to break down society, we've seen certain patterns. And believe it or not, most of the well-respected Nazis were not what you think. They were highly educated. They started in academia. And it started in the medical profession. And what we're seeing in the medical settings is almost scarier than what we're seeing in the college campuses, just the college campuses are getting more of the press. And there's a whole new organization that just also started since October 7th called AJMA, American Jewish Medical Association, really trying to combat anti-Semitism in the medical field. Medicine has been used as a weaponry throughout history. And it starts with indoctrination of medical students and nursing students.
Stephanie Winn: You're going to have to fill in some gaps here.
Malka Shaw: There's been times in different periods where different groups of people, not just Jewish, were deemed less worthy. And there was forced sterilization because they didn't want to continue that line of certain ethnicities. And these doctors believed that it's not just known to Germany, it's other times in history. These doctors were really believed that they were doing the right thing. They were taught they were doing the right thing for society by getting rid of a less pure line. So if we just sterilize them, this line won't continue and won't continue down.
Stephanie Winn: And how is it showing up today in the medical field?
Malka Shaw: It's showing up constantly in the medical field. First of all, how would you feel if you're sitting there and you're vulnerable? and you are in the little robe in the doctor's room and the doctor comes in and they're wearing a pin that clearly means I want to kill you. Or they're calling you, oh, are you a Zionist? And they're saying it in a very negative way. I'd love to clear up what Zionism actually means later on. Or they're saying anything, you know, saying derogatory terms about Israel. And they're assuming that you're also in line with Israel. You may or may not be just because you have a Jewish last name. So there's a lot of assumptions and you're sitting there and you're very vulnerable. One woman came to one of our trainings several months ago, and she was a nurse, not a mental health professional, she just saw it advertised. And she told me that another nurse in our facility who has been wearing certain garb and certain anti-Jewish, she's been spewing very anti-Semitic things, had a Jewish patient in the ER and replaced the IV several times to the point that the woman's arm was completely bruised.
Stephanie Winn: You said there are patients in medical settings encountering doctors wearing pins that indicate they want to kill them. It sounds very hyperbolic. So what do you mean when you say a pin?
Malka Shaw: The red hands. The red hands. The red bloody hands. The red bloody hands. So it was all over the Academy Awards. A lot of the actors wore it. The red bloody hands literally is from when they murdered two or three kids in Rafa. so it really means like I want and they murdered them with their hands they didn't it wasn't just a gunshot like as savage and brutal as you can imagine so the red hands mean that we want to do that to you like and that we were to see literally means that they want to wipe out the entire Jewish people okay I'm looking this up now um so people
Stephanie Winn: People wear pins with a red bloody handprint. And this means, if you could summarize what this pin means in a sentence, what does it mean?
Malka Shaw: It means they're proud of the murder, the savage murder of these boys. I don't remember the exact date. And they want to continue this savage murder. Antifata now means they want to just, antifata is all about violence. and wanting to do it in a very savage and barbaric way.
Stephanie Winn: And you're saying that there are doctors wearing these pins on their scrubs? Really?
Malka Shaw: And it happened in corporate America. My husband works in corporate America. They saw this on somebody's cubicle, so he didn't want to get into a conflict. It was not somebody in his apartment, so one of his co-workers went to HR, and the next day it was taken down. I don't know if the person was penalized, but it's hate speech. So if you, how do you, or how would you feel if you had to have surgery with somebody and then you saw that doctor's social media posting all sorts of things that were anti-Semitic and now you have to be on the surgery table. If you follow Instagram, there's a Instagram trend called Physicians Against Anti-Semitism and they call out all the different, whether it's mental health or physical health, medical health, They call out all the different providers that are completely posting anti-Semitic and horrible things online, and they're getting called out on that. And there are groups trying to do some advocacy, but it's very uncomfortable. Since I started Kesher Shalom, I get, I don't even know, hundreds or thousands of emails from people who say the therapy room is no longer safe. Jewish therapists are getting attacked for being Jewish therapists. As I mentioned, I've been kicked out of therapy groups, The Free Press broke out the story. There was doxing of Zionist or Jewish therapists in Chicago. It's happening in Montreal and in Ontario. I'm in the New York area, so it's a little bit more open-minded, I suppose, in the New York area. But I did have some very… I get a lot of things on my social media that are not nice. I get attacked on a regular basis. And, you know, people are saying, I'm not going to go to a Jewish therapist. It seems like the 1930s all over again.
Stephanie Winn: Let's talk about this from the standpoint of a Jewish therapist and also a Jewish patient in need of therapy. You're saying that patients in need of therapy who are Jewish are increasingly feeling therapy is not a safe place for them. Could you give some examples of what's contributing to this?
Malka Shaw: Therapists are not being validating. So people will come in and maybe they even and what's more devastating is let's say they had a long term relationship A therapist has helped them suit through some kind of crisis in their life. The therapist will come in and they'll say, I'm nervous about anti-Semitism. And the therapist will make a comment, well, the Blacks have been dealing with it for a long time, or it's not really so bad because you're privileged, or you're not really a minority. So I don't know why you're complaining. It is never the therapist's role to unvalidate our client's concern. One of my favorite examples that I like to give is a long time ago, I had a client. who, from our perspective, may not look like they were struggling, lives in a very wealthy area with a multimillion-dollar home, full-time help in the house, and everything overwhelmed her, like just coordinating carpool or even going grocery shopping overwhelmed her. So if you could imagine, if I was her therapist and I said to her, like, wait, you have full-time help, why are you complaining about carpool? That would be soul-crushing to that client that comes to me. In fact, we have to have empathy. This poor woman cannot function in life. And maybe she needs to have all this money and full-time help in the house because she can't even manage going grocery shopping without getting overwhelmed. So it's our job to validate. And if we can't handle the case, and if we don't feel like we're the appropriate therapist, then we need to step down from the case. But therapists are making all sorts of inappropriate remarks. calling clients in therapy session, a white colonizer, calling clients that they support baby killers. Nevermind that none of this is true, but making all sorts of assumptions. It's been the APA, the NASW has made disparaging remarks against Jews and has been clearly anti-Semitic. So it's just heartbreaking.
Stephanie Winn: I feel like you said so many different things there. I want to kind of slow it down because I agree about certain places where we need to draw the line. At the same time, I want to push back because I'm hearing what strikes me as a bit of a false dichotomy, and maybe this is where we can disagree. Before we start recording, we talked about how we might disagree because that's actually something I really value on this podcast, and you were telling me that openly disagreeing is actually part of Jewish culture, and it's part of how Jewish culture advances its intellectual and moral understanding of the world. So, I want to kind of push back here, you know, as a colleague, right? When we talk about, is a therapist's job to validate or not? And I think you painted two, what I would call extremes, as I heard them, right? So, one extreme being, what the hell is your problem? Don't you realize how privileged you are? Look at you sitting there, you know, in your multi-million dollar house, paying people to do things for you. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get the hell out of there and stop feeling sorry for yourself. So that would be something that most people would say is too aggressive to say, for a therapist to say to a patient. But I'm not sure that I personally agree with you that, and I'm not sure that this is how you meant it either, that we should that our job should always be to validate, right? And I think on this podcast, we criticize the edge cases where I would say therapists go too far with empathy and validation.
Malka Shaw: So maybe that wasn't the best example, but it is my job to validate and to push her through her boundaries and help her get to where she needs to go and to see. And part of the job is to slowly through is through really kind of breaking things down, is letting her see and have appreciation for what she does have. But imagine if she walked, I'm talking about that first minute, imagine if she walked in that first minute and they said, what's the matter with you? You're a spoiled rat. I can't afford a multi-million dollar house. So we're talking about the equivalent. Yes, at a certain point, you do need to push your clients into the way where they need to go and help them see their reality. Having a therapist tell a Jewish client, well, you're not really a minority, which is actually not the truth. I could pull up the statistics very quickly for you. We're literally 2.5% of the population in the United States. So that's the minority of the minority. Or say, too bad, you know, you're still privileged or you're white passing, you can't possibly be a minority. is not really holding the client's pain, and it's actually invalidating it. We actually create more pain for the client.
Stephanie Winn: Yeah, it's very dismissive. And I wonder to what extent you think that, I mean, I haven't really, we haven't really gotten into your definitions of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, these terms. And I do want to hear you describe the core concepts. But just a thought for now, to what extent do you think that the sort of anti-white bias that's so prevalent in American culture right now, where, you know, white people are the one racial group that it's okay for everyone to, you know, have open animosity towards. Does that feed into anti-Semitism in the sense that most Jewish people are, as you said, white passing?
Malka Shaw: So I want to correct you on two things. Most Jewish people are not white passing. Most Jewish people in America are white passing. Most Jewish people in the world. So we have different kinds of Jews. We have Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Bukharian, Ethiopian. So most Jews in the entire world, if we were to go to Israel or other parts of the world, I'm in the minority, but especially in the New York area. So I'm just going to correct you on that. We're not necessarily and we're not necessarily white because we really came from the Middle East.
Stephanie Winn: Sure. And for what it's worth, I'll just add my own personal closest Jewish friend is black.
Malka Shaw: I think that's one of the things that when I teach my class, people are like, really? I'm like, yes, we're a multi-ethnic culture, people, religion. And I think that's also complicated. It's a religion, it's a culture, it's a peoplehood, it's a nationhood. It's a little bit harder to define. So let's even take a step back. It's a little bit harder to define what is a Jew. It's not just necessarily a religion. And this concept of religion and ethnicity The idea of Judaism predates these, these are like modern concepts. We don't understand, I don't think we can ever really fathom what the world was like 4,000 years ago. I know I can't, so I can imagine most people can't really understand what a world looked like 4,000 years ago, but these are predated concepts. These are more modern concepts. So that's number one is we, you know, the idea of, but there's the idea of intersectionality plays a huge role in modern day antisemitism. trying to adapt this black-white oppressor, the good people versus the black people, to what's actually happening in the Middle East. It's apples and oranges. You cannot compare it. Now, I'm also going to say a few things. It's going to be hard because I don't have as much time, but even if we're going to take away what's going on in the Middle East out of this, which is hard to do, What does a Jewish kid on campus here, like an 18-year-old kid, have to do with the war in Israel? Why is it okay to beat up a Jewish kid for being Jewish? Why is it okay to form a chain that the Jewish kids can't go across the quad or enter the library? And why are the administrators not standing up? I mean, why did Congress have to take the president of the quote-unquote most elite universities to court, to congressional hearings. I'll say it and I'll say it again. Even if right now, today, you could tell me that we know for a fact that COVID started in Wuhan, China, which we don't know. And even if there were totally evil people in Wuhan, China, why does that give anybody the right to beat up a poor Chinese man on the subway in New York City? Why? Even if you want to disagree with things in the Middle East, why does that give people rights to destroy property? 67% of the hate crimes in the United States of America since October 7th of 2020, not to say of 2023, because we're past the year anniversary, have been targeted at either Jewish people, businesses, or institutions. So if you think about it, we're 2.5 and 66% of hate crimes are targeted at us. It's almost mind blowing to think of it. and when using government like that.
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Malka Shaw: Let's take a step back and just define anti-Semitism. Yes, please. So obviously there is a new thing that got passed in Congress, which is like many pages of the HIRA. But from a clinical basic definition, we're just going to call it a form of racism targeted at Jewish people. Any type of hostility, prejudice, discrimination against Jewish people or institutions based on the fact that they're a Jew. Period. And what that's just a very simple definition, but it includes having double standards. It includes the idea of not having the same, not holding Jews to different standards. And it includes pointing at Jews because every single group, and I'm gonna call, I'm gonna say purple people so I don't get misquoted. Every single group will have, purple people will have some bad people in their group, right? Every group will have, there are some bad Jews. I think most of them are great, but there are some bad Jews. But you can't point, that's why I like the Wuhan China. Like even if you wanna say there were some few scientists that created COVID, It doesn't mean we're supposed to hate every Chinese or in any way spread to every Asian. I think in New York City, like a Korean got beat up and it's just mind boggling. So you cannot apply one person to the other. So with that said, it's this paradoxical dupli-, like a dupli-, like a, like there's a paradox, like a duplexity dot paradox. It's both. It's a punching up and it's the punching down. It's like Jews are dirty Jews. you're less than, you're inferior. In Nazi culture, we weren't white enough, our genes weren't pure enough. And then there's like, but the Jews wrote, you know, there's conspiracy theories, but we have all the money, and we have all the power. So there's a punching up, and there's a punching down. Then there's the paradox, also is within lies, us as Jews, of like, we didn't always want to see ourselves as a minority, you know, or a marginalized population. So we have this paradoxal piece that kind of goes on and it's very hard to describe it. I call it a virus, like a moving virus that keeps mutating because it's the same things and they just change the way, like there's, you know, different tropes just keep changing over and over again. Like the money trope or the blood libel trope, it just keeps changing and shifting throughout history. But it's really, one of the best lines is from one of the best quotes is from a Russian journalist, Vasily, and he basically says, I want to make sure I quote it right. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of and I will tell you what you are guilty of. So anti-Semitism, the way it works, is whatever people feel the most guilty about or think is the most evil in society at that period of time, they point their fingers at the Jews. The Jews are the easiest scapegoat around.
Stephanie Winn: How did Jews become the universal scapegoat. I've heard from what little I know, because I think this is where you're going. I've heard that Jews are kind of the canary in the coal mine that that when people start targeting the Jews, again, which has happened to many times throughout history, that for years, yeah, like a warning of things to come. They're they're the scapegoat. That's the canary in the coal mine. You talk about the role of projection here.
Malka Shaw: We have an expression, right? What starts with the Jews doesn't end with the Jews. And I think it's a very powerful statement. When anti-Semitism starts to rise, that's really one of the first signs that society is on its way down. And we've seen this time and time with the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, the Babylonians, Prussia. We've seen this over and over and again in history. One of my other favorite people to quote, who I love, is Douglas Murray. Have you ever read any of his work? He's not a therapist. I've watched some interviews with him. He's so good, right? He's so good. So he talks about, you know, he has a whole book on how they're trying to attack the West. And I do. But the next piece is I think it starts with the Jews that they are trying to take down, because ultimately it's trying to take down democracy and create like a radical society. If all these different boundaries kind of come down. One of his best quotes is something to the effect of one of the most fascinating things about anti-Semitism. is that the surest way that you can test the health of society is if the society is able to inoculate itself against antisemitism. If it's able to inoculate itself, it's a sign that the society is doing well. But if a society starts to indulge in antisemitism, you can pretty much tell that everything else has gotten rotten. Because one of the core components of antisemitism is the lack of tolerance of differences. the lack of tolerance of critical thinking and of holding two opinions at the same time. And if you believe in democracy, if you believe in your individual freedoms, this should scare everybody listening to the podcast, because, again, it starts with the Jews. It doesn't end with the Jews. But if you want to do a check of your moral compass, check your moral compass. If you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, how do I know I wouldn't have went along with the Nazi party? So we know now, have you supported your Jewish friends? Have you stood up on social media? Have you gone along with all of what's going on? Because it's trendy now, especially with the very left, very woke population to be, for some reason, anti-Semitism is very trendy with the woke population. It always used to come from the alt-right. Now it's coming from the extreme left. And when you get to extremes, it's like a horseshoe and they're almost so you know, intolerable that it becomes almost the same thing on two different ends.
Stephanie Winn: Why Jews? What is it about the Jewish people, their beliefs and way of life that makes them an easy target? And what narratives does the Jewish community have about their own history of scapegoating and oppression?
Malka Shaw: So I'm going to give some of the clinical answers. There is definitely spiritual answers. Like if you were going to interview a rabbi, there's definitely spiritual answers. We have been told that they will always come in every generation. They're always going to rise above against us. And I guess I grew up in the golden age of not having that in my childhood. The 80s, the 90s, the early 2000s were sort of like the golden age for American Jews or diaspora Jews. I've kind of made it into like five or six categories of what makes Jews a factor, a target. And one is that no matter what, being kicked out of our land over and over again, and even in a foreign land, we still have managed to have a deep sense of our Jewish identity and a sense of holding on to who we are, even in a modern world that distorts the truth and reality. And the fact that we have this external tradition that gets handed down, we literally have the same language, prayers, blessings for thousands and thousands of years. So I think those are some of the pieces that really invoke jealousy. I think the fact that we are, as Jordan Peterson talks about, we are considered a successful minority. We are this minority that we, you know, we're not, we're not trying to, something horrible happened to us only in a couple of generations ago. And we have a very strong level of resilience. We're not holding on to that. We're not saying, well, three generations ago, this happened to me, so now you owe me reparations. We're like, OK, it happened. We're going to get stronger. We're going to move on from it. And then the other parts of our culture are really about the value of education, the strong work ethic that gets passed on, That's what I think contributed to the being a successful minority. And then the concept of a chosen people, I think from a non-Jewish point of view, I think that that's kind of got misconfigured and twisted throughout the ages of like, oh, they think they're better than us because, I don't know, let me ask you, when you hear the chosen people, what do you think it is? And then I can kind of fill it in.
Stephanie Winn: I feel kind of apolitical about that statement. I feel like that statement is contained within a particular religious worldview. So I don't really know what it means. I'm half Jewish ethnically, but I'm not a practicing Jew because I wasn't raised in that tradition. So my own feelings for the Jewish community are like there's like a vague, faint nostalgia for the ancestral connection, but there's not a whole lot of you know, cultural literacy, there's a tad bit there. So when I hear a phrase like the cultural, excuse me, like God's chosen people or the chosen people, I think I would need to know what that means to someone before it would mean very much.
Malka Shaw: Well, I think that the way you're approaching the world is amazing and perfect. You want to know what it really means before jumping to conclusions. So some of the things that I do sometimes in my training is little exercises to kind of prove that we all either have our own bias, like little also breaks up the dryness of a two or three hour lecture, or that we all kind of make jump to conclusions. The chosen people simply mean, from a religious point of view, that the Jews were chosen for a special relationship with God. It's not about being superior, but it's about having certain responsibilities in this world, and the responsibilities are to improve the world, to be an advocate for social justice and standing up for the little guy. So we were sort of tasked with this mission to kind of provide this like moral and ethical example and having to follow the rules. And in return, we were promised a certain land and that we'd always be protected no matter, that our peoplehood would never die even if horrible things happened to us. without getting into theology, but I think we've all seen that our people haven't died, even despite the fact that we're still here is almost a miracle. Even if you want to be atheist, it doesn't, it predates the logical piece of it. It doesn't make logic. But this idea that we're the chosen people, I think it's twisted. It's more of like, well, Stephanie, I chose you, but I chose you to be the janitor. You have this responsibility. Well, why would I be jealous of that? We were chosen. We were also known that we were going to be the, you know, we were going to be the scapegoats of society. It's not something it's, you know, there is a little kid song when the Torah was given at Mount Sinai. He asked the other nations and the kids and the other nations said, no, no, no, no. Because it comes with a lot of responsibility. It's, it's not an easy life. If you're going to be followed, especially if you're going to be a traditional Jew, there's different eating rituals, we observe the Sabbath, it's not always going to be easy. And the people that follow it feel that they are following it because it gives them a sense of grounding, it gives them a sense of purpose and meaning into their lives in a way that is hard to express. But for some people, if you don't choose it, that's fine too. It doesn't mean that we're better and it Judaism certainly recognizes that everyone has their own unique relationship to whatever you consider the divine or spirituality, and we recognize different paths. Judaism is one of the only major large religions that doesn't go out and proselytize. Think about all the wars that were started because people wanted to convert people to their religion. We're literally the religion that says, you do you, we do me, let's just be friends.
Stephanie Winn: we learn about human psychology, group dynamics, scapegoating, all that good stuff, or bad stuff, as it were? What can we learn about these facets of our human psychology through looking at the legacy of the Jewish people?
Malka Shaw: Okay, these are really good questions. The research that I just want to say, because this is a therapy podcast, the research that I'm doing is based on three theories, the social identity theory, intergroup threat theory, and the us versus them dynamic. What we are learning is how easy it is to persuade humankind in what I call the process of moral disengagement. When people like to mislabel it and call it cognitive dissonance, but cognitive dissonance means that you're still sort of struggling, meaning like, oh, I love this politician, but this politician doesn't agree with everything that I agree with. And I think that's something that the Jews are really facing at this point in time, because traditionally, the majority of Jews have always been liberal and democratic. And it seems to be that right now in Congress, the Republicans are the most supportive and the most combat, seems to be, appears, I don't want to get that political, But that's the idea of cognitive dissonance. It's like there's two different truths that we're struggling with. What we're seeing in the correct clinical terminology is cognitive dissonance reduction and how the process of reducing the cognitive dissonance will now allow people to justify their moral disengagement. And the process of cognitive dissonance reduction is the process of changing your beliefs so that you can rationalize your behavior. De-individualizing, so reducing your personal accountability. We see the clean room for the Nazis as, well, I was just following orders. It wasn't really my fault. Denying your responsibility. That's the university president saying, well, it depends on the context. Or saying that they really just kind of deserved it. These are sort of these things that we have to, if we don't have a sense a strong sense of our identity and a strong sense of purpose, we're going to be much more susceptible to moral disengagement. And that's the whole process of convincing oneself that ethical standards do not apply to a specific context or group of people so that you can justify your behavior. You know, it's that I did it for the greater good, a little bit Machiavellian, you know, this wasn't torture, it was just enhanced interrogation. I was, you know, that's not really that big of a deal or they deserve what happened to them. They have too much power. And we need, I think we as a society need to be really aware and scared because again, once somebody is morally disengaged, it could spread to every single place. We have done some research and found that there's certain personality traits that are a little bit more susceptible And we have done some research into finding out what some of the psychological techniques are. But really, what they're after is critical thinking. They're after intolerance of differences. And if you don't agree with everything that I agree with, then you're a horrible, terrible person. And you must be, and then fill in the blank of every terrible word.
Stephanie Winn: I have an example that was coming to mind as you were describing this reduction of cognitive dissonance of a time that I experienced anti-semitism. This was back in 2020 when I was still active on Facebook and learning a lot that was transforming my worldview and, uh, started posting, you know, just thought provoking questions from my Facebook friends at the time. And one of them was, uh, is Brett Weinstein racist? Um, and because I was learning about the events of what happened at Evergreen in 2017. And I don't know if you're familiar with that story. Why don't you use more of a sentence for our listeners? OK. So I've talked about this on this podcast before. In 2020, I learned about the events that happened at Evergreen in 2017. And if anybody's not familiar with that story, I'd certainly recommend familiarizing yourself. I know Benjamin Boyce did a whole series on it on his YouTube channel. And I've interviewed Heather Hying here before, but not specifically about that. Brett's wife. So basically, what happened in 2017 on Evergreen is that there had historically been this day where students who identified as people of color would voluntarily absent themselves to raise awareness about their presence on campus. And that was viewed as a matter of free speech. You want to personally skip class to raise awareness about whatever issue, go for it. But then this one year, they decided some of the activists on campus wanted to turn it around and ask white people to voluntarily absent themselves. And the message was basically, if you don't do this, then you're a racist. You're not acting in solidarity with our anti-racist cause. And Brett, on moral and intellectual grounds, said no. No, this is not how we do things. You don't ask a group to eradicate themselves based on demographics. If you want to absent yourself, that is your free speech choice. You don't get to ask me to leave based on the color of my skin and then tell me I'm a racist if I don't want to participate. For standing up to that, there was basically a witch hunt, angry mob, full-blown hostage situation showdown on campus that lasted days. Basically, Brett and Heather were chased out of town. The whole thing is just a really crazy story. Learning what happened was really eye-opening for me. around wokeness and critical thinking and all this kind of stuff. So as I was learning about the story, I posted on Facebook just for whoever else might even know who I was talking about. Do you think Brett Weinstein is racist? And a person who was a friend of mine at the time, a mixed race guy, and I just say this just because this is about race, so maybe his race matters, I don't know, chimed in, I don't know who that is, but since his last name is Jewish, yes.
Malka Shaw: Ooh, that's anti-Semitic within the statement.
Stephanie Winn: So I was like, I was just so shocked, I was like, Did you hear yourself? I mean, OK, you didn't say that out loud. You typed that. But do you see yourself right now? Read that again.
Malka Shaw: I don't know. OK, so there's a few different pieces that we have to talk about. We have to talk about how gaslighting and how macro gaslighting works. Because the macro gaslighting is the beginning of the moral disengagement. If we're doing a training, we're going out of water because it's more of a conversation. But once you've kind of hit that level of falling for the maximum, it's macro gaslighting, what we're saying, once you've hit that macro gaslighting, it's also, so I talk a lot about trauma reactions, you know, from the Jewish point of view, like how anti-Semitism could trigger trauma. But once we reach moral disengagement, there's a rush of dopamine and serotonin that is going into the brain. And once that happens, I have really good slides that really explain out what happens in the brain, but once we see what happens in the brain, the brain literally shuts down the prefrontal cortex, and it won't allow itself to have other kind of reasoning. It will weaken that level of moral conflict, and it diminishes the person's ability to have empathy. They've now changed their neurological effects because they've been so indoctrinated and they've allowed the moral disengagement to manipulate them and really it will actually heighten the amygdala. And when the amygdala isn't heightened like that, it can also reduce responses that make individuals more susceptible to these extremist ideologies.
Stephanie Winn: Let me jump in here. You said that you have slides. Do you want to share them on your screen? Because we can work that into the YouTube version.
Malka Shaw: What happens is the gaslighting isn't just not OK for the Jewish person. It's also, here, let me go back a little bit. I wasn't really prepared to do the slides. But as therapists, we should all be aware what gaslighting is and what's underneath gaslighting, the power and control and how it really affects people. But then we get really into, so on a one-on-one basis with emotional abuse, we get these internal messages like, I don't matter, I'm not worth caring for. But on a macro-gaslighting level, we get, they're not worth it, they're incompetent, she's the problem. So now we have sort of this finger-pointing mentality because they've been told that this is the right thing to do. And that's why it's really scary because everybody is sort of like a pawn in this whole system of kind of where antisemitism is the beginning part of it. It's something that we all need to be alert to. Yes, we should be alert to it because you should care about Jews. We should care about all human beings. But when you really understand where it's going to go from here, it's it's pretty pretty scary to look at. So once we've kind of been indoctrinated and we've seen all that we've we fell for the propaganda we've been going through the propaganda and it really can affect what's going on in your brain and it could shape the way you are now even able to understand critical thinking. There's got to be a lot of intervention that happens to sort of bring somebody back So I have worked a lot personally with women who have been in emotionally abusive domestic violence or narcissistic abusive relationships. But I also took the research from people who are experts in the fields of cults. And I feel like if you put those two pieces of research together, it really kind of lets us see what this looks like on a macro level and what it really does for society. So there's certain personality pieces to be aware of. And then I think you're going to find this really kind of freaky. Eventually, it becomes a domino effect for society because we're now attacking critical thinking. We're fostering people to feel vulnerable. It's encouraging submissive behaviors. It promotes noncompliance. You see that on the college campuses now. There's specific rules and they're not following them and they're not getting any consequences. Why should I follow the laws of society? And it discredits the authority, and eventually we're going to see a society of radicalization. Pretty crazy. There's more slides, but I can't go through all of them.
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Malka Shaw: Okay, so let's define Zionism. Let's do the basic definition of Zionism. We are seeing today this whole idea of like, I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm just anti-Zionist, but really there's no difference. Okay, 90% of the Jews around the world identify as Zionism. Let me explain what Zionism really means. And again, this is part of the propaganda and the indoctrination because changing the definition of Zionism is really dangerous because now it really allows people to be a target, and it dehumanizes them. If Zionism is bad, again, remember the moral disengagement, then they must deserve this behavior. So the basic definition of Zionism, very simple. It's just the movement for the self-determinations for the statehood of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, period. It does not mean that you have to support every single policy from the modern government of Israel. And I would like to challenge everybody listening to this. Have you actually agreed with everything in your particular country? I'm assuming most people are American, your audience. If you could say you agree with every single thing with your country, no, we are allowed to disagree with the modern state of Israel. And it doesn't mean that they're the only people that can live in the modern state of Israel. We're happy. It's happily shared with anybody who would like to live peacefully with the Jewish people. And there are many Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Armenians that live in Israel as full-on citizens, just as equal. So it's really just this idea that the Jewish people have a shared history, language, and values that make them one people, and that they have the right to continue to identify themselves as a people. And that's really it. It's just the idea. And again, when we talked about the double standards, it's like, are you giving Israel the same standards that you would give another country? And most often it's not, they're not. And when you're saying that Israel doesn't have the right to exist, the one Jewish state that is really, that exists in the entire world, where you have, I think, 30 something, 40 something Arab states, hundreds of Christian states and so forth, there's that double standard and that hypocrisy. And Israel, for most Jewish people, represents this idea of safety. This modern state of Israel was created after the Holocaust to protect Jews so that a genocide wouldn't happen again, so they would have somewhere to go. The idea of living in Israel has been there for 4,000 years. It's in our prayers, it's in our blessings. It's said at the end of something called the Passover Seder, next year we should be in Jerusalem. The word Zion literally means Jerusalem. The Jews were there 2,000 years before Christianity exists. And then 1,000 years later, Muslim Islam was created. So it just means that we have the right to live in our land, period. It doesn't mean that we're white colonizers, genocidal. This is the propaganda. That's not true. So when you say you're anti-Zionist, you're really saying, I don't believe you have the right to be safe. I don't believe that you have the right to a homeland or defend your homeland. And for many Jewish people, the majority of Jewish people, it's going to trigger a trauma response.
Stephanie Winn: It's so interesting that that sentiment is coming from people who claim to be anti-colonizer, because this is really talking about a degree of indigeneity. And I also appreciate your clarification. Who agrees with the every action of any government? I'm an American citizen. I disagree with a lot of what my government does. But I recently discovered the value of patriotism because patriotism is not about endorsing every action your government takes. It's about having a sense of loyalty and responsibility to making the country that you're from the best place that it can possibly be.
Malka Shaw: One hundred percent. And every country has some dirty secrets, including America. Every country has some things that are not pretty in its history. But it doesn't mean we want to dissolve the country or like hate America.
Stephanie Winn: Yeah. And if someone were to ask me, you know, if someone were to contest my, let's say, interview with you on the basis of, well, you know, do you condone this or that action of Israel? I would say, well, you know, do you have the money to pay me to study the issue for 10 years so I can get back to you with a thoughtful answer? Right. Because I'm not an expert on Middle Eastern politics, but I do understand that there are people who don't want Jews to be able to live in their ancestral homeland.
Malka Shaw: I mean, and that's right. Let's stay away from the politics and keep it clinical. But that's really what it is, is people are changing what you are. As I said to you earlier, imagine I started this whole propaganda where I said women with blue eyes. And if you're just listening, Stephanie has beautiful blue eyes and beautiful brown hair. And I made a whole thing that blue eyed women are evil baby killers, this and that. Now, all of a sudden, people are saying, I don't want you in my coffee shop because you're a blue eyed woman. But it's not true. So, you know, and we also have to realize that Israel is held to different standards than other countries. Any other country that was attacked the way that it was would go on full force. And Israel has the ability to demolish. Gaza and the West Bank if it wanted to. It doesn't want to. It wants to preserve life because that's, again, another Jewish value. War is horrible. Any death on any side is horrible. Nobody wants any of this. But when somebody attacks you, if I were to come into your house in the middle of the night and start stabbing you with a knife and you had a gun, you would have every right to shoot me with a gun because I came into your house and started attacking you. And both things should never happen. You know what I mean? Like these are horrible things. Nobody should ever want to have that. But what we're looking at is this sort of like hypocrisy or holding one country to a different standard than another country held. but telling somebody that they're not allowed to be in a coffee shop or telling a Jewish student at a college campus that they can't just use the library that they're paying false tuition to use because they want to, they believe in the self-determination of their people. Who gives you the right to do that? And where is your moral compass? I don't have the right to stop you from going to the library, I mean, or a public library. We're not in school, thank God, anymore. We're past writing papers. But, you know, what? Like kind of like how you look at the Holocaust, like we're not going to do that anymore, but we're doing it again and we're doing it in 2024.
Stephanie Winn: You know, I just want to bring attention to one other thing you said about that. And when it comes to Zionism, it's not it's not a requirement for a country that is 100 percent Jewish, it's it's Jewish people happy to share their land with anyone who wants to peacefully coexist with them. And you said that there are people who, you know, there are Arabs from neighboring regions who would like to peacefully coexist with Jews in the Middle East. And that's a side of the story that's not being told. And I just want to raise awareness for those who haven't listened to my interview with Maya Poet. I don't know if you heard that, that one, Malka? No, but now I want to, really. Yeah, Maya was, so she was a young person involved in youth culture in Israel when, like, right, basically right before October 7th. She was very fortunate. She narrowly escaped the event. She was almost going to be at the festival, because that was basically like her people who were having that festival. And there was this thriving youth culture of, you know, Jewish and Arab people who wanted to live together in peace. And that was a side of the story that I'd never heard told until I spoke with Maya before.
Malka Shaw: No, that's the story. OK, so let's be clear. When Israel was created in 1948, The United Nations said, let's have two states. And Palestine said, if we can't have it all, we're not going to be a part of it. They were offered two states over in several different points in history. Israel left Gaza alone in 2005. It's an independent, I don't know if it's called a country, but it's an independent province that Israel completely withdrew from. So this idea that it's a prison, it's an open air prison, it's just not true. for them and it's right, people don't realize it was like right out, it's like beachfront property. Like it could be this beautiful Singapore. Gaza's like on the beach. They left it with full farms, irrigation systems. They should have been, but instead of spending the money, they built tunnels, but that's all like, so that is a hundred percent not true. Basically, if you want to live in peace and you want to follow the laws of the land, they are full citizens. Now their laws are hard, you know, Most kids at 18 serve in the army. That's a very different lifestyle than you and I grew up with being Americans. But if they're willing to just follow the laws, live in peace, they have equal citizenship. And after you get to the army, which is hard for me to imagine, their education is free. They can go to a university. They can get trained in a specific vocation. It's all part of the country. So it's not about that. And I think when people twist what Zionism means, it's very hurtful because you're changing who I am, you know, and that's not who I am. And now you're calling me names that are just not true. And you're also saying that I don't have the right to safety. Trauma is all about safety, perceived or real safety and not feeling in control. That's like what triggers a trauma reaction. If most of the people are listening are therapists, I hope you know that basic piece of trauma. And if not, please come to my classes to be trained on trauma training. So I think just clearing up what Zionism means, clearing up what chosen people means, I think that will just change the conversation. But what's really disheartening are the amount of people that won't sit and have a conversation. If you want to go on Instagram, I can tell you which accounts to look for. There are people going around on the rallies and they're asking them, well, what is Zionism? Why do you hate Zionism? Why do you this? And they don't have the answers. They're just following. They're just going along with the majority. They don't even know what we were to see their mark. They're talking about and they're wearing masks.
Stephanie Winn: Well, I will ask you to send me that list of Instagram accounts that you would recommend people to follow. Any other resources, we can go ahead and add those to the show notes that people can just go ahead and click. But let's bring it back to therapy. I know we talked a little bit about earlier Jewish patients not feeling safe in therapy because of some of the dismissive and condescending and woke sounding things that have been increasingly likely to come out of therapists' mouths in today's politicized climate. I don't know if there was more that you wanted to say about the experiences of Jewish patients or if you want to talk about the experiences of Jewish therapists.
Malka Shaw: They're both really disheartening. So there are therapists now today that write on their website, I will not see a Zionist patient. So aka, I will not take a Jewish patient. So substitute the word Zionist or Jewish for anything else. And they shouldn't really be, if I said I don't want to see a blank patient, I'm going to say purple people so nobody could miss. I'm always afraid, especially if this is going to be on the internet, that somebody could edit it in the wrong way. So if I say I'm not going to see a purple patient, why am I a therapist? That's a horrible thing to say.
Stephanie Winn: Well, this has been going on for a while. I talked with Leslie Elliott so many episodes ago about the therapists teaching in graduate school other therapists that you can't work with a Trump supporter, for example.
Malka Shaw: But why don't you have a conversation and ask them why? What is it? The real question is, like, what is it that you value about Trump? Maybe they have a point. But again, it's that idea of learning to disagree. You know, in my day, liberal meant being open minded. But this liberalism is not open minded because they don't want to hear another side to the coin. Having intellectual conversations and disagreements is how we grow. So I'm going to go back to the therapist, but that is literally how Torah and Talmud has been taught generation to generation. If you walk into a very religious, they call it base Midrash, place of learning, you're going to see them. It sounds like they're arguing and fighting each other, but they're fighting over the text and they're still holding the opinions. And not only do they learn the holy text, they learn all the different opinions, just like you keep all the different opinions of the Supreme Court around. They listen, they keep all the different opinions there because each opinion has a value, even if you don't agree to it. And I think as therapists, we also have to hear that like each opinion has a value. We don't have to necessarily agree with it, but different opinions have a value and we need to understand where they're coming from. The experience of Jewish therapists afraid to when I have Jewish therapists coming on my cultural competency classes, I have seen people cry in CEU classes. They never felt so validated and heard and seen in the therapy world. I have seen non-Jewish therapists come to my classes. I think we estimate there's been over 3,000 or 3,500 therapists since I started doing the classes. And I don't do them like every week, you know? So we that are like, oh, I never thought of it this way, or thank you for pointing this out. are now able to look at the world a little bit more open-minded. It's almost like, you know, those optical illusions, like the old lady and the young lady, until you look at it. They were only looking at one of the ladies, and now I showed them that there's two ladies on the picture. So there was a lot of these aha moments of really having this place of understanding. The Jewish therapists, a lot of them are afraid to speak up and stand up. You know, I've been, the amount of letters I get for being brave, I don't think I'm being brave. I think I'm just being me. And I, you know, I'm not going to be quiet. Like I am who I am and I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud of just as I'm proud of my being a therapist and the work I've done to become a therapist. I'm very much proud of my Jewish identity. And I live that identity and I raise my kids with that identity. So I'm not going to hide it. But to be afraid that you're not going to get referrals, to be afraid to be told in clinical supervision that you're your opinion doesn't matter because if you're a Zionist, once you're a Zionist, nothing you say is valuable. Can you imagine a colleague saying, Stephanie, you have blue eyes. So every time you talk, I can't hear you because you have blue eyes. I'm just picking on your blue eyes. I think you're jealous of my blue eyes. They're gorgeous. But if you could just imagine what that feels like and imagine clients not knowing where it's safe Like, can I trust this therapist? Is this therapist going to post things on social media that are demeaning my people? So Casual Shalom has partnered up. There's another thing similar to psychology today, but for Jewish clients to go and call to OKClarity.com, I could put it in the show notes, because people are afraid. How do I know this therapist is going to be safe? How do I know this therapist? Well, I'll start opening up and being vulnerable about my marriage, and then they're going to just invalidate me because of my religion, or my ethnicity, or tell me I'm not a minority. You know, I wasn't able to post my continuing ed classes on one of the therapist groups. They have like a one day a week where it's like for BIPOC, minority, and anti-racism, but they won't let me post anti-Semitism classes. Why? Isn't anti-Semitism another form of racism? So I just think the message that we want to bring to people is to have empathy for every people, because it's happening to the Jews, but it's happening in many other cultures and religions. I think that if you don't understand something, that's okay. But ask with curiosity and kindness, not with judgment and wanting to put somebody down. And whether you're a therapist or just a human being, I think that's just life advice that I hope most people have. And that's how we keep our moral compass.
Stephanie Winn: So anything you want to add to that about the moral compass in Judaism or the the value of intellectual conversations and learning to disagree as part of the Jewish culture?
Malka Shaw: Yeah, it's a major part of our Jewish culture. So we some of our so what people don't realize is a lot of is the effects of Judaism and Jewish culture on modern day society and how much we the Jewish value system is actually imprinted on Jewish society. One of my favorite slides to show to therapists is actually the Jewish thought in modern day psychology and therapy. Most of the leaders, not just Freud, but all the way down. I mean, the slide is a very dizzy slide. Almost everything you're doing right now with your clients was based on a Jew who came up with that theory. So when you think about that, it's kind of mind boggling that even modern day psychology was so heavily influenced by Jewish thought. And I always like to say that it was actually heavily influenced by people who were experiencing extreme anti-Semitism. If you look historically on the facts, these people lived in very harsh times where they were very much discriminated. And part of them became psychologists because it wasn't seen as like a great profession to go to. It was like one of the few professions that they could go to and they thrive. Jewish values is very much about this thing called tikkun olam. fixing the world, the obligation to do social justice, communal and our communal responsibility, not just within the Jewish community, but for other communities. Time and time again, you will see that the majority, like when Martin Luther King marched on Washington, the second ethnicity that marched with him was Jews. So this idea of communal responsibility, the idea of always educating and growing and personal growth, These are inherently Jewish values and they then were adopted into Christian values and, you know, like American values. But all these things did not happen before Jewish thought kind of came into the world.
Stephanie Winn: That feels like a good place to end. Does it feel like a good place to end to you?
Malka Shaw: It does. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a really interesting and enlightening conversation.
Stephanie Winn: Of course. So tell us about where people can find Kesher Shalom, all the continuing education that you mentioned. Also, good opportunity to tell people where you're licensed, if you're taking patients, anything you want to promote.
Malka Shaw: I have maybe one or two slots left. So my private practice is MalkaShah.com. I'd like you to find Kesher on KesherShalom.com. K-E-S-H-E-R-S-H-A-L-O-M.com. I am licensed in New Jersey, New York, and Florida. So I see people two days a week in person in New Jersey, and the other days are virtual for the other states, and people in the other end of New Jersey. Kesher Shalom has continuing ed classes. In December, we're going to be having something called The Guard, which is a system that I came up with. Each letter represents a different thing to do, and each of it is based on a different clinical orientation and how we put the different clinical orientations together because my trauma philosophy is to be trained not just in somatic or not just in CBT, but to have that kind of holistic way of looking at somebody and specifically in the act of trauma. We will be having the fractured identity class in January, which will talk about more of the global issues of antisemitism. And then there's the navigating Jewish trauma, which is Jewish cultural competency. It is our belief very strongly that one of the basic ways that we can combat anti-Semitism is through cultural competency. As we know, research has stated over and over again that to be motivated to help somebody is if you get to know them and understand them. And how do we do that? As therapists, it's through cultural competency. And so we do have a moral obligation and many states require cultural competency. We were the first most places are not going to offer Jewish cultural competency. If we're not the only, then we're basically one of the few that can offer that. And that really only came out of 10-7. We do offer support groups for Jews, different categories of support groups, and we do offer different kinds of workshops as they arise. And one of the most interesting things we did is something called Rise Above, right before the anniversary of 10-7, where we took the lessons of the holiday that was coming up. So the lessons of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and put it into therapy terms. And we plan on doing another workshop in December before Hanukkah to talk about the lessons from Hanukkah and put it into therapy terms for clients. which is a whole new thing that I've never done.
Stephanie Winn: Beautiful. So we'll make sure to include all those links and everything in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit sometherapist.com. or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at sometherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.