Earlier this month, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, a pioneer in trauma research, led indignation when he led a workshop on trauma to the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, a retreat center in Rhinebeck, Ny, in which Israelis Israelis compares “Truehodox” and the Orthodoxe.
Weeks later, the Fallout will still reflect in the Jewish, health care and trauma communities, whereby the Omega Institute apologizes to the participants for the “inappropriate and anti-Semitic comments” of Van der Kolk, who shared for the sliding center for Laads Antisemitic Shars.
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This story would just be an inappropriate Saga of an academic fall of grace, but it is much more. It is a warning story about how even the most celebrated voices in the psychology and healing fields can be imprisoned ideologically and blind spots can wear so deeply that they leave the Jewish trauma invisible, incorrectly or invalidable in moments of the greatest vulnerability.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk speaks at a press conference with supporters of the campaign “Yes on 4” for the Staatshuis of Massachusetts. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images) (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe)
Known worldwide for writing the best-selling 2014 book of the New York Times, “The Body Keeps The Score”, and for his groundbreaking PTSS research with psychiatrist Judith Herman, Van der Kolk is long considered the authority in the field of trauma studies, which means that our understanding of the impact of trauma is out of battlefights. I have known him for decades personally, taught his work on psychology students on Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles, where I was a professor, and organized him in Los Angeles, where he prepared parts of his bestsellerbook at my dining table.
Van der Kolk must know how to dissect the trauma that Jews wear. He grew up in Nazi-occupied Netherlands, where the Dutch Establishment quickly met Nazi-Bevelen that sent 75% of Dutch Jews to their death, the highest in Western Europe.
Fast-Forward until the beginning of August when Van der Kolk and his wife, Licia Sky, led a workshop on “Trauma, Memory and the Restoration of Self”, at the Omega Institute.
According to a social media post of 7 August that went viral, “Traumatized by the trauma expert”, Alysa Portnoy, a trauma recovery coach and participant in the workshop, said that Van der Kolk Israelis compared to “Nazis”, saying: “What Israel does in Gaza is what the Nazis did.”
Ironically, in an OP-ED published by last year BU TodayVan der Kolk and psychologist Jessica Stern wrote that “both parties mentioned the other” Nazis “,” and noted that it was “dehumanized language”.
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Portnoy said that Van der Kolk also discredited orthodox Jews and said they prioritized “their tribe” about “truth.” She quoted him that he, for Orthodox Jews, is more important to be part of their tribe [than to] Tell the truth about what is happening in the community. “
By August 13 the post went viral, strengthened By an Instagram report, doctors against anti -Semitism, who published an apology from Van der Kolk and acknowledged that the comparison of Israelis with Nazis was a “free, offensive, inaccurate and completely unnecessary comment.”
The Omega Institute an apology published, Saying that Van der Kolk would not invite back to teach one of his workshops because of “inappropriate and anti -Semitic comments”.
A few days ago I wrote to Van der Kolk and I was disappointed to hear that the spirit of his apology was short -lived. He shared e -mails his wife, Sky, and he had sent to an Omega Institute officer, with a note for me: “Feel free to share.”
In the chain of three e-mails, unveiled here for the first time, Sky Karen Horneffer-Ginner, Senior Director Programming at the Omega Institute, sent an e-mail on 15 August, which had the apology of the Omega Institute’s apology and called it “Slander”.
She concluded a threat: “This comes down to defamation and we will have to resort to legal steps if this statement is not remedied.”
Minutes later Van der Kolk replied and said, “Yes, indeed. This is defamatory and outrageous. To which anti -Semitic explanation do you refer?”
He asked: “shall we refer this to our lawyers or do you want to negotiate a corrective statement?”
After a while, Van der Kolk doubled his non-apology and sent Horneffer filter a new statement from him to publish, and said that his “short remark” about Israel was tailored to the statements of world leaders “strongly condemned the Israeli actions.”
He asked, “Are all those people anti -Semites?”
I wish I was surprised by Van der Kolk’s contemptuous comments to Israeli Jews, and by the way his defense and his subsequent apology fell apart, but I am not.
At the end of 2023, when I launched a non -profit, the Israel Healing initiativeTo treat survivors of Hamas Massacre on October 7, I contacted colleagues for support. Van der Kolk replied with a sarcastic note: “I like to help. What do you do for the families of the 27,000 people in Gaza who were killed …?”
We have an anti -Semitism problem in the so -called healing community.
The message was clear: he would not support me and the ethics of helping Israelis questioned if I didn’t help Palestinians at the same time. Ironically, I had treated the Palestinians for trauma long before October 7, although never crossing Van der Kolk once.
We have an anti -Semitism problem in the so -called healing community. Earlier this year, 3,625 professionals in mental health care – under the banner -psychologists against anti -Semitism – sent a open letter Leaders of the American Psychological Association, or APA, demanding action against anti -Semitic posts, offensive remarks of division heads and organizational silence about the attacks of 7 October and the record number of anti -Semitism with which Jews are confronted. Their call was not for a special treatment, but for recognition that Bias within Traumapal undermines both ethical standards and the healing process itself. Rep. Ritchie Torres, DN.Y., reverse The signatories of the open letter, warning that the legitimacy of the APA was at stake as a scientific institution.
Leading figures such as Gabor Maté, a trauma doctor of celebrities and best-selling author of five books, have worsened this climate of anti-Semitism by denying the proof of systematic sexual violence on October 7 by Hamas terrorists, a dismissal that he has never withdrawn. His claim was later refuted by the Dinah project, An independent team of international lawyers and experts in the field of gender violence who have led the most comprehensive investigation to date to sexual violence in the attacks of 7 October and concluded that the rapes were systematic and intentional. In a promotion Video for the AJ+ Platform run by Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV channel, Maté said that accusations of anti -Semitism are often a “full cynical use of Jewish trauma to justify Palestinian trauma”, a framework that he has characterized as a armoring Jewish trauma to silence criticism.
In Texas, around 700 therapists signed one open letter Against anti -Semitism after Jewish colleagues had reported bias in training programs and peer groups. In Chicago there were therapists with Jewish -sounding names blacklist From reference lists under the suspicion, they must be Zionists who activate an examination of the state of ethics.
Van der Kolk’s comments emphasize a deeper shift in the field: the politicization of trauma care. Trauma is increasingly filtered by ideological lenses, with suffering weighed against political loyalty. Jewish trauma is steadily devalued within this hierarchy.
Imagine that Van der Kolk had told black patients that they left therapy because it was “more important to be part of their tribe [than to] Tell the truth about what is happening in the community. “Or if he had stood for Chinese students and had stated without nuance that the Chinese are” Nazis “. The protest would be immediately and overwhelming.
But when the same logic is applied to Jews, it is tolerated – even in professional workshops where people heal. That failure to recognize the wound that he has inflicted is not a small decline. It exposes how ideological frameworks have been cheeked through in traumaprare, even blinding the most accomplished practitioners and deepening the injuries they claim.
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Van der Kolk’s comments reveal more than a personal bias. They reveal how even leaders in trauma -care can absorb dehuman stories that are tackling Israelis and erase Jewish suffering. As a groundbreaking psychiatrist who has entrusted others to the treatment of trauma, his failure to recognize this distortion is more than disappointing. It undermines his credibility as a healer.
When ideology replaces the clinical clarity, the framework that is intended to validate survivors and cure a tool for damage, so that the Jewish trauma of the same war remains unheard of and non -addressed.
As a Judy Leventhal, a psychotherapist and the daughter of a survivor of the Holocaust, recalledAfter the traumatizing workshop that Van der Kolk had led on trauma: “My body kept the score.”
