Wednesday February 2, 2022
7pm PST
The Mystical Exodus in Jungian Perspective explores the soul loss that results from personal, collective, and transgenerational trauma and the healing that unfolds through reconnection with the sacred. The book is based on original research with individuals in the Aquarian Minyan and other Bay Area Jewish Renewal communities, whose engagement with Jewish feminism and an egalitarian approach to Jewish mysticism enabled a lasting and meaningful relationship with the tradition that is both psychologically healing and spiritually transformative.
The book explores the rich psychological meaning of the archetypal journey of the Exodus story, a vessel into which sages over millennia distilled mystical wisdom. Their wisdom enabled Jews to remain connected to our collective memory in the wake of devastating losses. We find that this timeless story is also the story of our own time, offering profound insight for healing from personal and transgenerational trauma following the cataclysmic upheavals of our recent collective history.
Understanding exile as disconnection from the sacred, we follow Moses, keeper of the spiritual fire, and Serach bat Asher, preserver of ancestral memory. We encounter the depths with Joseph, touch collective grief with Lilith, experience the Red Sea crossing and Miriam’s well as psychological rebirth and Sinai as the repatterning of traumatized consciousness. Tracing the reawakening of the qualities of eros and relatedness on the journey out of exile, the book demonstrates how restoring and deepening relationship with the Sacred Feminine helps us to transform collective trauma.
Insights drawn from Jewish Renewal and Reconstructing Judaism teachers, kabbalah and midrash, the Sacred Feminine, and Jungian psychology guide our understanding of the profoundly healing experience of rediscovering the deep wellsprings of Jewish mythic imagination.
Shoshana Fershtman, JD, PhD, is a Jungian analyst and psychologist in Sonoma County, California. She is a member analyst and teaches at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She served as core faculty at the Sonoma State University and Meridian University graduate psychology programs, and has offered workshops on Jewish mysticism, transgenerational trauma, and the Divine Feminine. She studied Jewish mysticism for several decades with teachers from Jewish Renewal and Reconstructing Judaism and serves on the spiritual leadership team at Congregation Ner Shalom in Cotati. She spent decades as an attorney advocate for environmental, social justice and indigenous rights.
More information about the book is available here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Mystical-Exodus-in-Jungian-Perspective-Transforming-Trauma-and-the/Fershtman/p/book/9780367537135
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