"It’s just he has this thing with birds... uh, sometimes he thinks he has feathers"

I was walking back to my office from my chavrusa in the Old City of Jerusalem.

As I exited Jaffa Gate, I nearly crashed into an energetic chassidishe fellow in a long coat with big blonde peyos racing in the opposite direction.

“Dr. Freedman!”

“Rabbi Goldstein!” We both said at the same time. Rabbi Feivel Goldstein was mashgiach in a small yeshivah near the Machaneh Yehudah shuk, geared for new baalei teshuvah who wanted to learn chassidus as well as Gemara. We’d consulted in the past, and I was always impressed by his warmth and accepting, embracing nature of all types of young men who’ve found their way to his yeshivah.

“Wow, this is unbelievable Hashgachah, Dr. Freedman!” he said. “I know you learn in the mornings, and I was going to call you mamesh this afternoon!”

“Great to see you again, Rabbi Goldstein,” I said, “but davka today, my afternoon is packed. What’s up? Maybe walk me back and we can talk on the way — unless you’re headed to Minchah.”

“Dr. Freedman, I’ll take you up on your offer and catch a later Minchah. I think I have a pikuach nefesh thing on my hands, and it’s way out of my league.”

From our previous encounters, I’ve known Reb Feivel to be an astute mechanech, and although the young men in his yeshivah come from varied backgrounds with a slew of life experiences and occasionally even some idiosyncrasies, I trusted him to hone in on potentially-problematic issues.

“What kind of thing, Reb Feivel? Is he violent? Suicidal? Using drugs?”

Reb Feivel shook his head. “No, Dr. Freedman, he’s actually a very pleasant young man, and extremely intelligent — I would even call him a genius. It’s just he has this thing with birds... uh, sometimes he thinks he has feathers.”

I raised an eyebrow in curiosity and sought clarification. “You have a student at your yeshivah who thinks he has feathers? How long has this been going on?”

“Well, apparently he’s been having these thoughts since he arrived, it’s just that he’s only now been sharing them with some of the other guys. At first, they didn’t think much of it.  They thought maybe it was a cultural thing. The bochur is a ger from Korea. They thought maybe it was a Korean thing.”

“So how do you know when you need a psychiatrist, Reb Feivel?” I asked as we reached my office.

“When Hashem sends you one on your way to the Kosel?” he chuckled.

“That’s a good one, Reb Feivel, but I had a different answer in mind. The moment you think you need a psychiatrist is the exact moment that you know you need a psychiatrist. I have a lawyer friend who always says, ‘By the time they’re saying you have the right to remain silent, it’s already too late to call your lawyer.’  If this kid has been talking about being a bird for a few months already, a visit to a doctor is long overdue.”

“Are you saying it’s too late to help him?”

“No, but I am saying it’s going to be a challenge. It sounds like whatever is going on has been going on for a long time, which always makes the healing process harder.”

Reb Feivel made an appointment to come in with his student, Avraham Kim, for later in the week.

Avraham was a slight fellow in his early twenties, dressed in a chassidishe suit and hat. He had East-Asian features and sported straight black peyos with a wispy mustache and beard. I found him in the waiting room shuckeling rhythmically over a Gemara and humming to himself. Avraham seemed to be in his own world and only looked at me after Reb Feivel patted him on the shoulder.

“Good to meet you Avraham,” I smiled. “I’m honored to meet you and to be helpful if I can.”

But from the outset, it was clear that Avraham was not particularly interested in becoming my new patient.

“Nice to meet you too,” Avraham said politely, “but you know, I don’t need a doctor and I definitely don’t need a psychiatrist,” he laughed as if I’d just told my best joke about hot cholent on a cold day.

“What do you need, Avraham?” I asked openly.

“A mekubal.”

“What question are you hoping a mekubal will answer for you, tzaddik?”

“I need to know why so many bright lights come out of the Gemara when I learn it.”

“They come out of the pages?”

“They jump right out,” he told me as matter-of-factly as if I’d asked him how to spell his last name.

Avraham proceeded to tell me about how the lights would enter his body and make it change into the shapes of fantastic winged creatures. He said this had been happening for a few years already — long before he arrived at Reb Feivel’s yeshivah nine months ago, maybe around the time he’d first started going to Chabad in his hometown of Seoul, South Korea.

“Angels?” I asked.

“Sometimes. Other times it’s birds that I used to be in previous reincarnations. You see that this is way too complicated for a doctor and is going to need a true mekubal,” he responded, and then looked at Reb Feivel.  “This is why I told you we need a tzaddik and not a psychiatrist.”

A minute later he rolled up his sleeve and was showing me the “feathers” that were growing out of his hair follicles.

Reb Feivel was clearly uncomfortable. For my part, I silently prayed that Hashem put the right words into my mouth.

“Avraham, is there anything I can do to help you?  I mean, there must be something I can do to help, otherwise you wouldn’t have shlepped all the way out of the beis medrash just to sit here.”

He thought for a moment or two. “Well, I do love my rebbi here, and I wish you could tell him that I’m fine so we can go back to shteiging instead of wasting our time here.”

“I agree it seems like bittul Torah, but we really need to help you focus more on your learning and less on the kabbalistic images. At least until you’re 40.”

Avraham mulled over my words, letting me know he would politely refuse anything like Ritalin.

“I’m not recommending Ritalin, but I’d like to offer you something else to help you be as effective as possible. And I bet your rebbi supports it too.”

“Well, if Rebbi supports it, then I do too. He’s like a father to me.”

It seemed as though Avraham might be willing to play ball, and he didn’t even mind that I asked him to wait outside for a few moments. He was happy to get back to his Gemara.

“Reb Feivel,” I said, “I know you had no way of knowing, but it seems this young man has been psychotic since before he converted. We need to get him to take an antipsychotic medication, and to get him back home to South Korea.

Rabbi Goldstein looked like he wanted to agree with me but was clearly perplexed.

“Reb Feivel, you know he needs treatment, and you also know that these kids do best by their families. It’s a huge achrayus to take care of an acutely psychotic kid during his first episode of schizophrenia, and he’ll need monitoring that you most likely don’t have the kochos for, no matter how much you care about him.”

“But Dr. Freedman, his family are goyim, and there isn’t much Yiddishkeit in Seoul beyond the Chabad House and a few military families.”

“If he was mentally unstable during his conversion process, we might need to clarify if he’s even halachically Jewish. We have to check out his background, contact his family. Reb Feivel, don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of it, G-d-willing.”

Reb Feivel looked like he needed a drink of water. “This is a big balagan, Dr. Freedman, a big balagan!”

To be continued…

Identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of patients, their families, and all other parties.

Jacob L. Freedman is a psychiatrist and business consultant based in Israel. When he’s not busy with his patients, Dr. Freedman, whose new book Off the Couch has just been released in collaboration with Menucha Publishers, can be found learning Torah in the Old City or hiking the hills around Jerusalem. Dr. Freedman can be reached most easily through his website www.drjacoblfreedman.com.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 900)