Mussar and Collective Belonging

By Dan Gelbtuch

Image description: Blog image with a photo of a wheat field at sunset. On top of the image is text that reads: Sivan 5785 by Rabbi Dan Gelbtuch.

“The truth of belonging is one of the most inherent and powerful facets of each human being's human nature. The truth that we belong. Interwoven, inextricably from the All. But belonging is also one of the most vulnerable aspects of a human's sense of themself. For the wounding of, the splintering of, the complete absence of, that sense of belonging is one of the most potent expressions/imprints of inherited legacies of trauma.” 

-Transmitted by Jo Kent Katz, May 28th, 2024

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with belonging. I started my community organizing career in 2007 as a youth organizer at Dorchester Bay Youth Force in Uphams Corner, Dorchester, and it was an incredible experience. After struggling for three years as a high school teacher, I had discovered my vocation. Myself and the teens I organized with built a deep sense of community, and I had the enormous privilege of supporting their growth and development as organizers as we built real power. I can still remember the sense of joy I felt after weeks of strategizing and role playing: the teens would sit across the table from their state representatives and demand more funding for youth jobs in the state of Massachusetts budget. This was only one side of the story, though.

My time as a youth organizer was also a time of painful self-doubt and feeling like I did not belong, like I was taking up too much space, like I was causing harm instead of doing good. As a white person organizing in a community of color, some of the questions and feelings I was dealing with were appropriate, but oftentimes they tipped over into shame and manifested as unresolvable conflict. In my quest to feel belonging, I became overly dogmatic as I needed to feel correct, I needed to prove myself to belong, my work had to be the best, and I had to earn my place in the youth organizing community.

Mussar—which I started to study and practice in 2017—has been a balm. I remember when I first started studying Anavah/humility with my teacher (and eventual Kirva co-founder), Rabbi David Jaffe. He taught me that Anavah was the spiritual practice of “right-sizedness,” and this wisdom was contextual. The journey of Anavah was a journey of figuring out in the present moment how much space to take up. As someone who would often move wildly from taking up too much space, motivated by a need to prove myself, and completely shrinking myself, often motivated by shame, this was a revelation. Could Mussar wisdom and practices be used to help heal my wounds around feelings of not belonging? Could it be used to heal our collective wounds?

To explore this connection, I partnered with Diane Kim and Sara Wernick Schownwald, who both have many years of experience as healers in their communities, and who have also been involved with Kirva for many years. Together, we developed a new three-session curriculum called Mussar and Collective Belonging, which brought core Mussar practices such as Cheshbon Hanefesh (soul accounting through journaling) and the focus phrase practice, as well as key Mussar Soul Traits such as Bitachon (trust) and Emet (truth) into dialogue with healing modalities such as Internal Family Systems therapy and Somatics.

Last month, we wrapped up the pilot of this program, which brought together an incredible group of Jewish therapists and healers. We began the experience by exploring our collective wound around not belonging, and then spent each session applying Mussar to help heal that wound.

While most Mussar practice focuses on an individual’s soul curriculum, this va’ad brought us into a collective practice. As facilitators and designers of this pilot, we built from the question: What would be possible if we, as U.S. American Jews, were even 7% more healed around our collective wound of not belonging?

As we explored in the first session of the Va’ad, the wound of not belonging has become core to many of our experiences as Jews. We used Jo Kent Katz’s map to launch an interactive activity where participants reflected on their feelings of not belonging and where they stemmed from (this map is part of a project Jo developed called Transcending Jewish Trauma). Folks explored the role of economic instability, instability of place, feelings of not being authentically part of a group, and other themes around not belonging. This exploration of the wound formed the basis for how we came to understand the medicine of Mussar, supporting us to return to a feeling of individual and collective belonging.

We explored the middot of Bitachon and Emet through direct teachings, guided somatic practices, and embodied “parts” work. We felt into our own bodies’ experiences of those middot as well as the collective energy field around those middot. For each middah, we asked: what is the medicine that this middah has to offer around our collective wound of not belonging?

The experience of the Va’ad was truly transformational. Even though it only lasted three sessions and was a pilot, we built a container that allowed for vulnerability and healing. Participants reflected on the ways that the Va’ad supported them to both feel belonging during the Va’ad itself and to bring a lens of belonging into their lives and work in the world.  Others shared about the ways that this experience with Mussar felt more embodied and soulful than previous experiences they had with Mussar.

This pilot was just the beginning, and we have already learned a lot from the participants' feedback. We’re excited to continue the messy, imperfect work of weaving a web of collective embodied Jewish spiritual practice to meet our inherited wounding and transmute it into something closer to liberation.

Chodesh tov, Dan Gelbtuch, with support from Sara Wernick Schonwald