The mental wellbeing
of every one of us
is the responsibility of all of us.
The COVID Pandemic has only highlighted the already existing inadequacies in our response to the ever more profound mental health needs of our communities. Nafshenu Alenu (Spirits United), in partnership with the Marion & Aaron Gural JCC, is a community-wide initiative to promote mental wellbeing and empower our communities to address our ever-growing and increasingly more complicated and critical mental health needs.
From November 2022 through March 2023 at various synagogues and at the Gural JCC in the 5 Towns of Long Island , you will have the opportunity to engage intimately with acclaimed Torah leaders, professionals, and advocates with expertise in mental health. Topics will include healthy approaches toward: (1) self; (2) relationships; (3) security; (4) stress; (5) food; (6) substances; (7) sexuality; (8) identity; and (9) death. The program will also feature 3-4 keynote addresses by celebrity survivors with lived experience facing their struggles.
The goals of the initiative will be:
- Initial education regarding healthy living in these broad realms
- Practical guidance on supporting one another toward greater mental wellbeing
- Learning to recognize urgent mental health demands in others and ourselves as they arise
- Reducing stigma in addressing those demands.
Please join this thought-provoking, practical, and exhilarating first step in building a stronger, healthier, more vibrant tomorrow for ourselves, our families, and our community.
Delay is not an option.
The time must be today.
What makes Nafshenu Alenu unique
What makes this new program unique is the way it embeds mental wellbeing into communal and spiritual wellbeing. The goal of this educational encounter is to approach mental wellbeing from a positive and completely non-othering stance.
No longer is mental health a euphemism for mental illness.
Mental health actually means mental health.