Tag Archives: Psychology

Jew of the Week: Abraham Maslow

Founder of Positive Psychology

Abraham Harold Maslow (1908-1970) was born in Brooklyn to Jewish-Russian immigrant parents from Kiev. Maslow grew up in poverty and faced a great deal of antisemitism. He wasn’t happy at home either, and spent most of his time at the library reading. In high school, he was the editor of the school’s Latin and physics magazines. Maslow went on to study at City College of New York, and then took up psychology at the University of Wisconsin, where he did experiments and studies on primate behaviour. He moved on to Columbia University, where he worked with Alfred Adler, then taught at Brooklyn College and later at Brandeis University. After World War II, distraught by the Holocaust and the ravages of war, he switched his focus to mental health and human potential, founding a new branch of psychology called humanistic psychology, or positive psychology. The core idea behind humanistic psychology is that every person has the innate ability to grow, heal, and attain happiness and self-actualization. The job of the therapist is only to remove the obstacles that are holding a person back from achieving those goals. As Maslow described it: “Freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half.” This inspired other psychologists and researchers like Carl Rogers, who pioneered client-centered therapy, and Martin Seligman, who coined “learned helplessness” and proposed Well-Being Theory. The most famous result of Maslow’s work was the Hierarchy of Needs, a pyramid that shows the five major necessities of a human being. At the bottom are the basic physiological needs which are most pressing, but provide the least happiness and satisfaction in the long term. At the top is self-actualization, living a harmonious life of purpose and meaning, which is the most difficult to attain but provides the highest degree of happiness and lasting satisfaction. In 1961, Maslow cofounded the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. His most popular book was The Psychology of Science, where he coined the well-known saying that “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Maslow was voted Humanist of the Year in 1967, and has been ranked among the top 10 greatest and most-cited psychologists of all time.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Words of the Week

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
– CS Lewis

Jew of the Week: Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh

“The Angel”

HaRav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Yitzchak Feivish Ginsburgh (b. 1944) was born in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. He was recognized as a math prodigy when still a child. While spending a year in Israel as a teenager, Ginsburgh began learning Torah and becoming more religiously observant. He went on to study philosophy and mathematics, and got a Master’s degree in the latter. He left his Ph.D studies to go yeshiva in Jerusalem instead, becoming a rabbi. After the Six-Day War, he was one of the first people to move into the newly-liberated Jewish Quarter. Around this time, he met the Lubavitcher Rebbe for the first time and became his disciple, eventually resettling in Kfar Chabad. During the Yom Kippur War, he served as the Rebbe’s emissary to the IDF, and even delivered a lulav and etrog to Ariel Sharon on the front line for Sukkot. After this, Ginsburgh founded the first Chabad House in the Sinai, which was later destroyed when Israel gave up the area in its peace treaty with Egypt. The rabbi went on to head the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva near Joseph’s Tomb. He has written over 120 books on a variety of subjects, in both Hebrew and English. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on Hasidism and Kabbalah, as well as gematria (Jewish numerology), Torah and science, Jewish psychology, and meditation. He is a pioneer of “Hasidic psychotherapy” and is the dean of the Torat Hanefesh School of Hasidic Psychology. Rabbi Ginsburgh is also an avid musician and has composed dozens of popular songs. He has met some controversy in the past for his passionate support of Jewish settlement across all of Israel’s ancestral lands, and for his opposition to government concessions to Israel’s enemies. Despite some of the negative press he has received from the mainstream media, Rabbi Ginsburgh is well-known for his humility, righteousness, profound wisdom, and gentle demeanour. Many refer to him as HaMalakh, “the angel”. Rabbi Ginsburgh has thousands of devoted students around the world, and still presides over a network of Jewish schools in Israel. He is undoubtedly among the greatest contemporary Jewish scholars and religious leaders. Today is his 77th birthday.

Words of the Week

Ours is the first generation in modern times to understand the truly universal human condition and to seek to bring all peoples of the earth together in peace and harmony.
– Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Jew of the Week: Bertha Pappenheim

A Jewish Heroine You Should Know About

Bertha Pappenheim

Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936) was born in Vienna to a wealthy and religious Jewish family of Austrian and German heritage. Her father was a cofounder of Vienna’s famous Schiff Shul, the city’s largest Orthodox synagogue (later destroyed during Kristallnacht). At 16, she left school to take care of her home and her ill father. Around this time, she started developing psychological and emotional issues and was treated by the Austrian physician Josef Breuer, together with his student Sigmund Freud. Her case (known as “Anna O”) would play an important role in the development of psychology and psychoanalysis. After Pappenheim recovered, she moved with her mother to Frankfurt and the two became big patrons of the arts and science in the city. They helped found Frankfurt University, and built a reputation as generous philanthropists. Pappenheim intensified her studies, started writing, and became involved in politics. She volunteered at a soup kitchen and at a Jewish orphanage. She eventually became director of the orphanage and transformed it into a place where Jewish girls could learn real skills and become independent. Pappenheim wrote extensively on women’s rights and worked diligently to combat the trafficking of women. She founded the Jewish Women’s Association (Jüdischer Frauenbund, or JFB) which quickly grew to some 50,000 members and became the largest Jewish charity organization in the world. Pappenheim also founded numerous kindergartens, orphanages, and refuges for women who had been trafficked or abused. These institutions were strictly kosher and Shabbat-observant, providing warm care, education, vocational training, and religious instruction. Pappenheim collaborated with (former Jews of the Week) Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah, and Sarah Schenirer, pioneer of the Beit Yakov movement of girls schools. She wrote several plays, books of poetry, novella, and children’s stories. She also translated parts of the Talmud, Midrash, and Tanakh for women, along with a handful of other important texts. In 1954, Germany issued a postage stamp featuring Pappenheim in their “Benefactors of Mankind” series.

Words of the Week

Oftentimes a man believes he ought to be a leader because he desires to benefit his fellows; this is untrue. He is in reality seeking self-honour, and hides his true intention under a mask of kindness.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810)