|
|
May 28, 1999/13 Sivan 5759, Vol. 51, No.35
Psychiatrist, writer, healer combines Jewish with Native American rituals
TAMI BICKLEY
Staff Writer
Carl Hammerschlag
|
On Shabbat and Jewish holidays, you won't find Carl Hammerschlag praying in a synagogue. Instead, he heads to either a teepee on an Arizona Indian reservation or the sweat lodge in his Phoenix home. Then he covers his shoulders with his late father's prayer shawl and performs a combination of Jewish and Native American rituals.
"This is the easiest way I have found to pray," Hammerschlag explains of his unique approach to practicing Judaism. "We need to increase the nature of our participation in rituals, and Jews have beautiful genuine rituals that can be improved upon."
For some 30 years, Hammerschlag has pieced aspects of Native American beliefs and rituals into his life, both as a psychiatrist and a Jew. His says his spirituality transformed him from a general practitioner and conventional psychiatrist into a lecturer, author and healer.
This weekend and later this year, Hammerschlag will speak at a variety of events in Arizona about healing, peacemaking and other aspects of Native American culture.
It was 1965 when Hammerschlag first was exposed to American Indians, when he accepted a job as a general practitioner at the U.S. Public Health Service Indian Hospital in Santa Fe, N.M.
"I was seeing things I had not been exposed to in my training," he says of his initial encounters with Native American patients. "What I learned in Indian country was other ways of touching people and (alternative) ways of healing."
The power of spiritual and physical healing that Hammerschlag's patients demonstrated left an indelible impression on him. Soon, the New York City native turned to ancient healing techniques, instead of medicine, to treat some of his patients.
He continued to study conventional psychiatry, as well. From 1967-1970 he studied at Yale University. Later in 1970, he moved to Phoenix to take over as chief of psychiatry at Phoenix Indian Medical Center. In 1986, he left the center to open a private psychiatric practice. In addition, he began lecturing.
He speaks mostly to medical professionals, he says, and his biggest concern is explaining clearly that "most physicians would do reasonably well if (they'd) let the body take care of itself because there are all sorts of complications from medicine."
He also teaches an old Native American theory called psychoimmunology (PNI) - that the mind, body and spirit are interrelated and therefore impact one another.
However, he adds, while he promotes alternative ways of healing, he does not advocate limiting medication for serious conditions, such as infectious disease and trauma.
"There is a difference between healing and curing," he explains. "You can be healed without being cured." For example, a person with cancer could "heal relationships with others, God and the universe, even if the disease ultimately kills (him)."
Hammerschlag also has spread his message on healing by writing and publishing three books on the subject, most notably "The Dancing Healers," (Harper & Row, 1988), which discusses why people should consider alternative ways of healing for physical and mental illnesses.
In this book, he manages to weave in Judaism. For example, he recounts the first time he attended a meeting of the Native American Church (a peyote-based religion) in New Mexico in 1965. As he sat in a teepee and sang Jewish songs - again, wearing his father's prayer shawl - he also drank peyote-laced tea (which later made him violently ill) that was passed among his Native American friends.
Recently, Hammerschlag has been talking also about social issues, such as crime and the difficulties teenagers face. He incorporates these concerns into his lectures, and has used them as a basis for his two published children's books, "The Go-Away Doll" (Turtle Island Press, 1998), and the newly published "Sika and the Raven" (Turtle Island, 1999), which deals with the issue of teen pregnancy in a way that even young children can understand and learn, he says.
"My stories are a compilation of my own life experiences," he says. His life experiences stem from his parents, German Holocaust survivors who raised Hammerschlag in a traditional Jewish home.
Today, now that his five daughters are grown, he and his wife of 39 years, Elaine, weave that sense of traditionalism into their everyday lives, especially on Jewish holidays. On Passover, for instance, the Hammerschlags hold a sweat-lodge ceremony in their home with several guests - an interpretation of a traditional seder.
"I attribute who it is I am to the nature of my experiences," he says, "and also to the traditions that have been (passed down) to me since the beginning (as a Jew), and the essence of that spirit with my experience in Indian country."
|
