Here I Am: Jewish Spiritual Wisdom for Becoming More Present, Centered, and Available for Life

From almost 30 years of private practice in Los Angeles as a psychologist dealing with thousands of clients, Felder (Seven Prayers That Can Change Your Life) has distilled lessons that he offers in this book. He asserts that individual human problems are largely due to stress and that Jewish spiritual sources offer a way to cope with these challenges, regardless of one’s religious identification or lack thereof. He presents eight “meditation and refocusing techniques” for dealing with stress in the eight chapters of his book, illustrating how to use them with examples drawn from his caseload. Felder deals at length with responding to tragedy and the Jewish spiritual notion that “even this could become for the good.” He cites others on the subject, including the influential rabbi Harold Kushner, and includes his own experience with pain and sadness. Rather unpersuasively, he concludes that “something good” can emerge. Although Felder invites his readers “to debate or respectfully disagree” with his approach, he refers to his techniques as “remedies” that can produce “huge benefits.” His popularity testifies primarily to the pervasiveness of popular psychology with its facile solutions to complex problems rather than to the effectiveness of his methods. (Sept.)