No. 1
I don't believe anymore, and I miss it
Candles in a stranger's window on Friday night, and my throat tightens.
Conversations in a crisis of spirit
Doubt, dread, a loss of meaning, or a question that won't let go. We talk through it, wherever it takes us.
Who it's for
What people bring
- We all wear masks, and there's nothing underneath. Then the lights go out, and we never even lived.
- God terrifies me.
- Why does God make us suffer so much? Does He enjoy our pain, our helplessness before Him?
- I haven't done anything with my life. Now it's ending, and I'm sad and scared.
- I think I had a spiritual experience, and I don't understand what it was.
- I lost my faith, and it feels so lonely and confusing.
If one of these is yours, you don't have to watch yourself break down from within. We can talk instead. Deep inside a faith, on your way out, at the door, or never in at all: a good place to begin.
Artists
When the crisis is part of the work
Musicians, writers, painters, actors. For many artists, a crisis of spirit is the raw material they create from. But sometimes it becomes too much: unspeakable, overwhelming, or too painful to work with.
I work with artists of all kinds. I have collaborated on songwriting, books and scripts, and worked through ideas together. Most of that work goes uncredited; it belongs to the artist. We can talk about the artistic work and the spiritual experiences. For most artists, they are the same.
Light · Matisyahu · 2009
Epic / JDub Records
Co-writer, Ephraim Rosenstein
- 2We Will Walk
- 4Escape
- 5So Hi So Lo
- 6I Will Be Light
- 8On Nature
No. 1 on the US Reggae Albums chart; No. 19 on the Billboard 200
What this is
A conversation, not a treatment
What happens here
- We talk, one to one, by video: once, or for as long as you need.
- The fear, the anger, the emptiness, the inner conflict and the paradox are taken seriously, not explained away.
- A crisis of spirit is open water, not a rail track. We look for direction from inside it, without deciding in advance where it should lead.
- When it helps, we bring in a passage or an idea from the sources.
What doesn't
- No therapy, diagnosis or treatment. This is not a clinical service.
- No pressure to believe, or to stop believing.
- No quick fixes.
- No packages or programs paid for in advance.
- No rulings on religious law and practice.
The sources
An old tradition that takes breaking seriously
When it helps, a passage or an idea from the Kabbalistic and Hasidic sources becomes the background for our conversation. We don't study the texts; we let them speak to what you are living through. This is not a religious reading. It is an existential conversation with them, from the inside. They argue with God, and describe the dark as well as the light, without hurrying through either. We can't hurry through our own lives. The texts are not dogma; they take you to the core. You don't need to know them beforehand, or agree with them. What matters is that you speak in your own voice.
- The Zohar
- The Ari
- Chabad
- Breslov
- The wider Hasidic tradition
In the Lurianic account of creation, a void opens, and the vessels made to hold the light break. The void and the breaking are part of creation, not a failure of it. And it is happening now, in every instant, made of letters and words. Spoken, those words begin to repair the shattered vessels. After Rabbi Isaac Luria, sixteenth-century Safed
The conversation
An old method that takes conversation seriously
For nearly two thousand years, since the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud, Jewish learning has happened in pairs: a shared effort of two people facing each other, each question sharpening the other's, until an understanding opens that neither would reach alone. These conversations borrow that way of thinking, not the study itself. They can be lively, or slow and deep. Two people, one question, and sometimes an idea from the sources between us. I am not here to teach you, and you are not here to agree with me. The goal is to think, to find words, to find a language.
Just as fire does not burn alone, so words of Torah do not endure in one person alone. Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 7a
How it works
Three phases
-
Write, then a first call
Send a few lines by email: your age, a little about your life now, what you'd like our work to focus on, where you are in the world (or at least your time zone), and when you're free to meet by video. You need to be 25 or older. I'll reply to arrange a time, and on the call we see whether this is the right kind of connection. If it isn't, I'll tell you what might be.
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Conversations
By video, paid one session at a time. One conversation may be all you need. If you want more, we agree on a rhythm: weekly, fortnightly or monthly, and it can change.
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Ending
The work lasts as long as you need it. There is no course to complete; we stop when you are ready.
About
Ephraim Rosenstein
For twenty-five years I have sat with people while they came apart. Often it was their faith that broke, and through the crack they saw the abyss: not the fear of what others would think, but the collapse of the world they had lived in. Meaning gave way, and life itself came unmoored, dissolving into something formless, or into a nightmare. I have learned not to rush back to shore. Come in too fast, and you hit the rocks.
Through facing my own shadows, meditating, and learning to read the texts as lived experience rather than metaphor, what I believe became simpler, plainer and more inward.
I am an existentialist psychotherapist and a practicing Jew. Besides the Jewish sources, I read philosophy, literature and other traditions, as a guest: I speak from inside one tradition, not from above them all.
I also work with executives whose biggest decisions rest on conviction and intuition rather than protocol.
My clinical practice is not taking new clients. Unmoored is separate from it, and open to people of any faith or none, because souls need to talk.
Essays
Night Oil
when it's getting dark
A monthly essay that starts from something people bring and stays with it, wherever it leads. No advice.
No. 2
Words thin as a blade
The old words ring hollow, and still they draw blood.
No. 3
The monopoly on truth
I know it all, and none of it means anything anymore.
No. 4
Spiritual claustrophobia
I keep searching for myself, and the walls are closing in.
One email a month: the essay, and nothing else. Your address is never sold or shared with third parties.
Questions
Ask a question
You don't need to book a conversation to ask something. Send a question about faith, doubt, the sources or one of the essays, and I may answer it here, for other readers as well.
My faith is the center of my life. If I talk to you, will you respect it, or try to change it?
I won't argue with what you believe; that isn't mine to judge. What I pay attention to is how you hold it. Faith can be held the way you hold a child, or the way you hold a whip, and that often decides whether it carries you or crushes you. Two people can share the same faith and still see this differently. Nobody owns the whole truth, including me.
Isn't it absurd to claim that the souls of the dead look down on us? And if they do, why would they still love the people who hurt them?
I'm not qualified to make scientific claims about souls. But my own practice and experience have led me to believe that souls come down for an allotted time, return home, and come back again, like a thread stitching being and non-being together. In deep meditation, and in some accounts of near-death experience, a person feels completely exposed, every weakness and secret on display, with nothing left to hide, and at the same time flooded with a love that forgives. I suspect that love is larger than the cold, punishing justice we so often live by down here.
My father is dying at home and can no longer speak or move. Is there any point in talking to him?
Hearing is thought to be the last sense to go. Very possibly people who are on the verge of leaving understand more than we think. Keep talking, without hurry: to put your own thoughts in order, and a little for your father and on his behalf. Soften, let go, make room for everything. At that door, there is nothing left to argue or prove. Parting from this world at home is harder on the family than parting in a hospital, but it can be a deep comfort to the one leaving. When the moment comes, they are not alone. That is the greatest kindness those who stay can give the one who goes.
Is it possible to experience time the way Rabbi Nachman did?
The short answer: I hope not. Rabbi Nachman said more than once that what he did in the world belonged to him alone. Only someone like him, with that intensity and that ability to handle broken vessels without getting cut, could enter the void, leave all the scaffolding behind and not dissolve completely; others would be lost there without a trace. I read him not to emulate him but to glean something of the language he invented for the soul, which is fascinating and difficult to read. I don't know whether he could be a guide to a well-tempered or spiritually satisfying life.
Aren't you dressing the Hasidic masters in your own imagination? Why not write a novel about an imaginary hero instead?
It's a fair question. If the masters were village people with big imaginations, they are a historical footnote. If they were angels in human dress, we can only admire them from a safe distance. Either way, there would be no conversation with them, and they would be left to disappear over the horizon, alone. My approach is phenomenological: no diagnoses, no templates, just the raw encounter with another person or a text, even when it unsettles my sense of self and the way I see reality and other people. And I am fairly confident that if the Hasidic masters could handle the Infinite, they can survive my small musings unperturbed, probably with a smile, or a smirk.
Send your own
- Everything sent here is for publication. If you want a private conversation, write to me instead.
- I am not a spiritual advisor or guide. An answer here is my personal perspective, and always brief: a pointer, not guidance, and not advice for your situation.
- Please phrase your question so that it doesn't identify you or anyone else. I publish questions without names, remove anything identifying that remains, and may shorten them.
- I can't answer every question.
- Your email address and anything you send are never sold or shared with third parties.
- If you are in crisis, please don't wait for an answer here. Contact your local emergency number or a crisis line now.
Sending a question doesn't subscribe you to anything. If you'd like to keep receiving Night Oil, you're welcome to subscribe.
One email a month: the essay, and nothing else. Your address is never sold or shared with third parties.
The full terms are on the terms page.
Begin
Write to me
Tell me in a few lines your age, a little about your life now, what you'd like our work to focus on, where you are in the world (or at least your time zone), and when you're free to meet. You need to be 25 or older. I'll reply to arrange a free 20-minute video call.
After the first call: $250 a 60-minute session, paid one session at a time. No packages, no minimum, open-ended.
Before we meet, please read the terms and consent and include the short confirmation in your email.