We were all awaiting the call from our clinic director

to see who our new patients were going to be. As the senior residents graduated and headed on the to the next stage of their careers, we new third-year residents were suddenly inheriting a host of patients in our psychiatric clinic.

“I hope I don’t get stuck with a bunch of addicts,” said one resident.

“I really love treating anxiety but I don’t want any patients with serious mental illness,” said another. “Schizophrenia is soooo much work.”

As I tend to do when things are out of my control, I opened a sefer Tehillim and said a few kapitlach. Not about which patients I’d be working with — they were all good and it would be a zechus no matter what — but rather that I shouldn’t get tested by taking on folks who had been previously mismanaged by Dr. Stacey Wright, the weakest graduating resident. Dr. Wright was known to dispense massive doses of medication instead of really dealing with the patient’s condition.

The Tehillim definitely helped — Hashem obviously wanted to test me with her entire roster of patients.

“I know you can handle it,” said clinic director Dr. Fishbein, giving me a hearty slap on the back.

And then I met Walt Howard.

Born and raised in the backwoods of Arkansas, Walt was a towering man of close to seven feet. When he initially came to Dr. Wright for what seemed like panic attacks earlier that year, she’d started him on benzodiazepines at doses that slowly escalated to dangerous levels, rather than steer him in the right direction toward cognitive behavioral therapy.

And then, the month before she graduated, Dr. Wright told Walt that she’d be cutting him off from benzodiazepines. He got so angry that he threw a chair at her when she threatened to send him to a detox facility.

According to Dr. Fishbein, Dr. Wright had been reprimanded for the manner in which she handled Walt’s medication. He also heard that Walt was excited to finally be able to work with a “real psychiatrist” for a change.

When I met Walt for the first time, I felt my hand sink into the bear paw that was his enormous hand.

“Now here’s a real doctor!” Walt exclaimed as he shook my hand vigorously, practically ripping my arm out of its socket. “Freedman! This is FAN-tastic! Praise G-d I finally got me a Jewish doc! Captain Freedman! Good L-rd, here I come SAL-vation!”

“Uh, I hope I can live up to these big expectations, Mr. Howard,” I said, a bit taken aback.

“You bet you can! A real Jew! Not a fake Jew with only a name, but a real Jew with a beard and a beanie!”

While such comments might have ordinarily made me feel a bit uncomfortable, I saw Walt’s excitement as a reflection of where he’d come from and who he was: a simple G-d-fearing fellow who’d been plucked from the hills and thrown into a football locker room at a local college. But a knee injury meant he’d lost his scholarship and any chance of finishing college, so instead he took a job as the college janitor. I assumed he’d never met a frum Jew before, and I didn’t want to disappoint him.

Walt was resistant to cutting down the dose of his medicine, but somehow I engendered his trust. “You’re Jewish so that means I can trust you, not like all those other cowards who tried to kill me. You’re blessed and you can give me a blessing too — then I’d even write a book about you!”

The more time I spent listening to him talk, the clearer it became that Walt was psychotic and that his paranoia had been misdiagnosed as anxiety attacks. No wonder he’d been taking increasing doses of benzodiazepines without any relief from his symptoms.

As I shared my discovery with my clinic director, Dr. Fishbein congratulated me. “Keep up the good work, Freedman! Just remember that even if he thinks you’re a Jewish superhero, you’re just a psychiatry trainee.”

Walt was moving onto the right track though, and was willing to trust me when I offered to switch him to a better medication for his symptoms.

“Whatever the doctor orders. I know you can read my mind. You’re the Chosen One!” Walt exclaimed as he took the prescription for an antipsychotic and nearly snapped my spine with a bear hug in the process.

And as Walt’s paranoia improved, his devotion to me only increased.

“I tell you, Doc, you’re a true Jew. True as can be, saving lives, fixing the world. That’s why I done brought you this quail my cousin and I hunted last week,” he said as he dropped a plastic bag onto my desk.

I quickly recovered from my initial shock. “I’ve never had anyone bring me something they’ve killed as a gift, Mr. Howard. I’m truly honored.”

Walt continued to improve and decided to connect with family members that he’d shut out of his life during the past few years of paranoia. His meds were certainly helping him to be more flexible, and as he prepared to attend his first family reunion in a decade, he offered me a personal invitation to drive home with him for the event.

When I politely declined, Walt was more understanding than I would have expected. “I understand, Dr. Freedman. You probably gotta go pray or something. But I just want the world to know how special my real Jewish doctor is. I want my family to meet the man G-d sent to save my life and help me get back to who I am. It’s the power of a Jew!”

I was actually moved by his words and decided to share them with Dr. Fishbein, a fellow member of the tribe.

“He’s still psychotic,” my supervisor correctly noted.

“Of course I know that, Dr. Fishbein. He offered to give me advice on how to stop the KGB from monitoring my e-mails right after I declined to go back to Arkansas with him.”

“Well, he definitely has some reverse paranoia about you being from the Chosen People,” Dr. Fishbein responded.

I certainly agreed that Walt wasn’t 100 percent. And yet I also felt I had to say something about my supervisor’s attitude.

“Forgive my chutzpah, Dr. Fishbein, but is there really something wrong with that? I mean, with all of the shmutz out there in the world, what’s so bad about fulfilling a positive aspect of a stereotype?”

Dr. Fishbein thought for a few moments and then answered, “I guess it’s not all bad — whether you’re fulfilling biblical prophecy or your mother’s hopes and dreams. Maybe you can even share some of that quail with me.”

“Come on, Dr. Fishbein, don’t tell me Walt didn’t give you a little zap of pride in being a good Jewish doctor too. And by the way, I would never give that kind of treif to a fellow Jew. I’ve already forwarded it on to Dr. Wright.”

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

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 746. Jacob L. Freedman is a psychiatrist and business consultant based in Israel. When he’s not busy with his patients, Dr. Freedman can be found learning Torah in The Old City or hiking the hills outside of Jerusalem.  Dr. Freedman can be reached most easily through his website www.drjacoblfreedman.com.