Francisco jcc. She went to preschool there and i joined the board. I converted when i was eight months pregnant with my third child in 1982 and i was president of the jcc from 86 to a 89. During that time, i was fully in touch with the jewish life. It was amazing. At a conference, i met gary tobin who was then the director of the center for modern jewish studies at brandeis. With the emfa. Word modern there. He was very interested in how jewish life was moving forward and he was very we had a lot of synergy and our interests in life. He moved the center for modern jewish studies out to San Francisco and we became independent. Along the way, you got married . Yes, i did. We got married. Exactly. And what does the institute actually do . We are focused on identifying the most difficult questions facing the Jewish Community, the most pertinent questions and primarily those that dont essentially have the Data Available to answer these questions and we focus on identifying the right questio
mental issues in the context of her synagogue and the director of a jewish meditation center program, of the center for jewish people hood welcome. thank you very having us. i am thrilled i we should say we know each other because of the work of the bay area jewish healing center and we have at the healing center particular outreach on mental illness issues particularly a half day synagogue based conference. beth of you were the chairs and driving forces in your particular synagogues for those conferences and we have mud forward if and we have moved foreward from there. so why is mental illness such an important issue for us to look at in the jewish community in particular jewish care issues? i think mental illness, certainly in our synagogue is an item not talked about. people are very hesitant to share, reveal their personal situations with mental illness and frequently, it is so severe, the stigma, people leave synagogues or fade into the background as a result.