chapters of Genesis, and came to a place where I needed to discuss
"shame" in the Jewish culture. While searching the internet I came
across a great article by Michelle E. Friedman, M.D. It was published
in "The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine; Spirituality,
Religious Wisdom and the Care of the Patient." Below is an excerpt
from her paper:
"Shame, on the other hand, must be understood in the context of group
culture. Shame implies a failure to live up to internalized parental
and larger societal goals, i.e. what a person "should be like". The
shamed person experiences his/her failure as a lowering of personal
dignity in the eyes of the group and fears ridicule, contempt or
expulsion. . . From the first chapters of Genesis on, we see humankind
struggling to resolve interpersonal and intergroup conflict. These
meaning making narratives depict their characters wrestling with
powerful and sometimes contradictory impulses. . . Shame is a powerful
operative dynamic in Jewish tradition where individual personal and
religious destiny can only be truly fulfilled through membership in
the larger units of family, tribe, and nation. The concept of
individual salvation plays a much less dominant role in Judaism as
compared with Christianity. Shame relies on group context."
Read the complete article at --
http://yjhm.yale.edu/archives/spirit2004/shame/mfriedman.htm
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