Dr. David Pelcovitz On Happiness

Dr David Pelkovitz spoke at YU today, and I live nearby, so I went. He spoke about happiness. Here's my reconstruction.

Two Stories

Victor Frankel was called over by a dying woman in a concentration camp. And she points through a slat to a tree outside and tells him, "before I was here I never appreciated the beauty of life. But now I have learned to appreciate each moment." Right before she died, she told him, "this is the happiest moment of my life."

A man at a weekend for parents with children (rachmana lizlan – G-d should save) with cancer said that on Yom Kippur he had a moment in his prayers of great happiness. (And this resonated for many of the people there in similar situations.)

Most Peoples Answer

When asked what would make you happy, most people say money. But this is not the case. As Shlomo HaMelech put it, one who loves money will never have enough money. But there’s another angle too. There is a concept of relative deprivation.
A man came to Dr. P. in the 1990’s very depressed. He had just received a bonus of half a million dollars. But his co-worker who did the same job had received three quarters of a million. The man was not happy.

The healthy approach to happiness includes things other than money.

Friends (Community)

Statistics show overwhelmingly that people are actually healthier if they lead more social lives. People who move from states in the US that are considered less social to ones that are more social actually improve in their health and happiness.

A co-worker/psychiatrist at Dr. P’s hospital married off a child. He was a "frum" man and it was a typical large, frum wedding. Also invited were a few psychiatrists who were not Jewish. (Dr. P. noted that there are many frum psychiatrists and the most recent past head of the PSA was frum.) To Dr. P. it was nice, but just another of many such weddings. But his colleagues were affected by the experience and felt compelled to tell him about it. They were struck by the sense of connection and community. One Itallian Dr. told him that he thought such a sense of community had stopped existing many years ago in Sisily. And he told Dr, P. to appreciate how blessed he is, because most people in America today don’t have this.

Family

Pesach is one example of family, and the beauty of it. The support, etc, even if it sometimes feels like a bit much. Statistics show that married people are healthier and happier. If a man’s wife (rachmana litzlan) dies, whether or not he remarries is very much connected to how happy, and yes – how healthy he will be. (For some reason the statistics don’t show that women are as radically affected.) Dr. P. said that the statistic bandied about regarding an over 50% divorce rate are bogus (I don’t know how he knows/can prove that.) And he says that most people develop a relationship, despite the difficulties of the differences between men and women, in which they feel their spouse is their best friend. (He mentioned that the Hebrew word for marriage – Nessuin – means to carry, and that there is a responsibility carried of making things work between man and a woman who are naturally different.)

Faith

Having a connection to G-d makes a person happier. This combined with the other pieces made the man on Yom Kippur happy. This combined with the other parts forms what we should always keep in nind to stay happy in life.

He ended with the story about Rabbi Klomomus Kalaman Shapiro (the Pieszesner Rebbe, Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto.) A doctor that Dr. P. knows told him this story about his (the doctor’s) own father. He was in Rabbi Shapiro’s yeshiva and was learning in the study hall very late at night and went to sleep on a bench. In the middle of the night he woke up and felt the Rebbe moving the bench over to the side and kindly tucking him in. Later when this young boy was on line in a concentration camp, he realized that his colleagues were being sent to the left, which meant death. He began to feel resigned to death, but then an image popped into his mind. He remembered the Rebbe’s concern for him, remembered being tucked in. He took strength from that memory. Suddenly a soldier announced that people on the line who were carpenters should come forward. With the image in mind of feeling himself to be of value, worth staying alive, he said that he was a carpenter. He was chosen, and his fellow Jews protected and covered for him, allowing him the task of sweeping the floor. But it was that sense of being of value that came from that gesture of the Rebbe that initially and continuously inspired him towards life.