"You’ve got to get his family here ASAP and have them take achrayus"
Rabbi Feivel Goldstein, a sincere, energetic mashgiach in a small chassidishe Jerusalem baal teshuvah yeshivah, came to see me about one of his students — a South Korean convert named Avraham Kim who thought he was a bird and believed he’d sprouted feathers. It was quite obvious to me that this fellow had been suffering from schizophrenia long before his conversion, and that Rabbi Goldstein should step aside and adhere to professional recommendations. PART II
Rabbi Goldstein was clearly distraught when I hinted that Avraham Kim’s very conversion might be a question mark if he was indeed mentally unstable, and that the best thing for his talmid would be to send him back to his family, where he would get the ongoing support that he’d need through a difficult therapeutic process. And I got that: How could he conscionably send a frum bochur back to his non-Jewish family in the Far East?
But I explained to him how people with schizophrenia — the symptoms of which generally involve delusions and hallucinations — require lifelong treatment, and how the earlier the treatment, the better chances of getting symptoms under control and improving the long-term outlook before irreversible complications develop.
I agreed that this was an emotionally wrenching decision, but my job was to make sure that the young psychotic man sitting in my waiting room who thought he was a bird would get home safely and get the treatment he needed to hopefully become healthy again.
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