Review by Philip K. Jason
Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Trauma, by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Ph.D. Monkfish Book Publishing / Adam Kadmon Books. 240 pages. Hardcover $26.95.
Here is one of the most valuable new books for 2019. Though it seems at first that it is aimed at health professionals and religious leaders, particularly of the Jewish faith, it has a much wider application. Someone in your family needs this book to help come to terms with the residual effects of complex trauma – trauma that is transmitted, sometimes within a particular ethnic group from generation to generation. 
Others need this book to understand the seemingly strange and often self-destructive behavior of loved ones, close friends, co-workers, and other victims of psychological trauma who suffer without even knowing why.
Rabbi Firestone’s book is intellectually challenging, spiritually rich, infinitely patient, and filled with healing optimism. It offers understanding, strategies for overcoming trauma, and accessible case histories of a varied group of trauma survivors whose paths and personalities will encourage all who seek recovery and renewal.
The peculiar history of Jewish populations – a history weighted with pogroms, genocide, exclusion, and endless epochs of plain old anti-Semitism – receives startling, illuminating attention. Rabbi Firestone knows of what she speaks. Her discussions include slices of her own family history.
Significant here, beyond but yet entangled with the family dynamics, is the author’s withdrawal from Jewish life and identity and – some time later – her reconnection. Her discovery of the wisdom in Judaism’s fundamental texts opened channels of learning that eventually led to her studies and work as a psychotherapist and her emergence as an influential rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement.
Firestone
However, the value of this study is not limited to Jewish sufferers or Jewish families and communities.
One theme of the book is that we have, or can develop, the insights and tools to make our lives whole again if they were fractured by trauma. Another theme is that “intergenerational trauma” is a genuine, verifiable medical condition, and that it even has a significant physical dimension. Yet another theme is that such a condition must be attended to – it will not cure itself.
Rabbi Firestone’s exploration of this condition includes the introduction of recognizable behaviors (warning signs) and the professional vocabulary that assists in the understanding of trauma-induced or trauma-prolonged behaviors.
Other provocative explorations in this book include a productive revisioning of the stigmatizing label that the Jews are a “chosen people.” Similarly refreshing is Rabbi Firestone’s perspective on the troublesome biblical pronouncement about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children for generations. The understandings she suggests are a fine capstone to her tonic presentation exploring “intergenerational trauma.”
Of immense practical value is her construction of the seven “principles of Jewish cultural healing.”
A lively mind, a caring heart, and a love of Judaism’s profound soul make this a must have contribution to the literature of healing.
About the Author:
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Ph.D., is an author, Jungian psychotherapist, and founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh in Boulder, Colorado. Ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in 1992, she is a leader in the international Jewish Renewal Movement and has served as co-chair of Rabbis for Human Rights, North America, which is now known as T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. She holds a doctorate in depth psychology from the Pacific Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California. She has written several other books, including With Roots in Heaven: One Woman’s Passionate Journey into the Heart of Her Faith.
This review appears in the June 2019 issues of Federation Star (Jewish Federation of Greater Naples), L’Chayim (Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties) and The Jewish News (Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee).
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