Today they’re household names, but it started with a leap of faith:“When you’re able to give them words for their pain and help them heal, you’re fulfilling the mitzvah of hashavas aveidah, because you’re restoring their souls"
n 1975, after I had learned in Torah Vodaath for some years, I chose to complete my PhD at the University of Pennsylvania because the program there allowed doctoral students to do certain electives in the medical school. Dr. Aaron Beck, the father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), was lecturing there at the time, and I was determined to attend his courses and learn how to treat depression and anxiety from the master.
When I approached the dean of the medical school to get his permission to attend those lectures, he laughed off my request. “Absolutely not! We don’t have any room in any of Dr. Beck’s classes.”
It was devastating to hear that after I had moved from New York to Philadelphia solely in order to study CBT from Dr. Beck, there was no possibility that I would get to do so. The dean saw I was upset and offered me something else. “I’ll tell you what I can do for you. For the first time, we’re offering a course on child abuse in the pediatrics department of the medical school. I think I can get you into that.” I had no interest in child abuse; I wanted to learn how to treat depression, but I very reluctantly agreed.
It was a brand-new field, and in the end, I did my dissertation on child abuse. As I studied and researched, it became very clear to me that we had this problem in the Jewish community, and that no one was aware of it or dealing with it. When I came back to New York, I wasn’t just another guy treating anxiety and depression. My specialty in the nascent field took me to an excellent job in a prestigious hospital. Through that, I was able to serve the community immediately, working to raise awareness of child abuse.
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