Wounds into Wisdom:
Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma
2020 Nautilus Book Award: Gold in Psychology
2020 Book Award from the Jewish Women’s Caucus
of the Association for Women in Psychology
FOREWORD REVIEWS 2019 Book of the Year Awards Finalist
in both the Religion and Self-Help Categories
New Paperback Edition released November 2022
with forward by Gabor Maté and new Readers Guide
The lasting effects of individual trauma are now widely recognized. But what of the consequences of extreme trauma on an entire ethnic group? New research in neuroscience and clinical psychology demonstrates that even when they are hidden, trauma histories—from persecution and deportation to the horrors of the Holocaust—leave imprints on the minds and bodies of future generations.
Wounds into Wisdom makes a compelling case that trauma legacies can be transformed and healed. Fusing contemporary neuroscience, psychology, and ancient Jewish wisdom and values, this work provides a roadmap for Jews, and all individuals and groups with trauma history, who wish to seize the power to change their lives. Gripping case studies and interviews with trauma survivors and their descendants—from Berlin to Shanghai, Cairo to Colorado—demonstrate what Viktor Frankl called, “the uniquely human potential to transform personal tragedy into triumph.”
As a rabbi and psychotherapist who has studied and counseled hundreds of Jewish families and individuals for over 30 years, Tirzah Firestone brings to life these real people who have surmounted their tragedies. From them we learn the many ways that past trauma shapes the present—from the timid young woman who discovers she has been repeating her lost grandmother’s exact words, to the Israeli war hero who has endured decades of terrifying nightmares.
From these moving testimonies, Firestone distills seven principles, rich in Jewish wisdom, that mark the way to new freedom. Building on the work of acclaimed traumatologists such as Drs. Rachel Yehuda, Bessel van der Kolk, and Yael Danieli, Firestone shows how people can transform the residual effects of their families’ painful pasts and change their long-term futures. The brave characters in Wounds into Wisdom remind us of our own human capacity to rise up after devastation and reclaim our innate wisdom and inner freedom.
Wounds into Wisdom also awakens us to the impact of collective trauma in the world today, as entire populations are being dislocated by war, poverty, and climatic changes. The book provides a template for people everywhere to emerge from the wreckage of their tragedies and reshape their destinies. Relevant not only to the tragic past, but to the world of turmoil and displacement we live in today, Wounds into Wisdom is an essential book for our times.
Available at your favorite bookseller
“Wounds into Wisdom is for anyone who has suffered trauma, either directly or in a family whose generational trauma is buried. It helps readers uncover suffering and use it to help others, the final stage of healing.”
— Gloria Steinem
“In this illuminating and inspiring book, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone interweaves deeply touching personal stories including her own with keen psychological insights to guide us on a journey of awakening and healing our traumas. Highly recommended!”
— William Ury, co-author of Getting to Yes and author of Getting to Yes with Yourself
“In Wounds into Wisdom, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone melds her skills as a psychotherapist with the spiritual insights of the rabbinic tradition she is steeped in. The result is a work characterized by wisdom, insight, and compassion, all brought to bear on what is surely one of the most painful subjects in modern history: Jewish trauma and its intergenerational reverberations.”
— Gabor Maté, MD
A letter from
Rabbi Tirzah…
Dear Friends and Students,
Wounds into Wisdom was written to spark conversations and ignite a change in the narrative.
A family’s trauma experience rumbles through history like a train, depositing its load, car after car into newborn skin. Most of us are unconscious of our ancestral inheritance. But at any moment, we can wake up and stop the trauma train. We need one another to do this momentous work.
It took me half my life to connect the dots between my ancestral history and the tragedies that were befalling me and my siblings: a brother’s suicide, a sister’s psychosis, the callous cutting of ties between parents and siblings, siblings and each other. What made us so volatile, so unloving? I finally woke up to the understanding that the past wasn’t past, that my family’s traumatic history, as well as that of my people, was still alive within us.
Tragedies may befall us, but they do not define us. An aware community of friends can help us wake up to the effect of the traumas that lie in our past—our own and those of our parents and ancestors before them. We can do a lot of growing on our own, but we need support from awakened others who can witness, mirror, and love us. We need others who are oriented to the light of healing to remind us: You can change the narrative of your life.
In this sense, my book Wounds into Wisdom is not an end unto itself, but rather—and here’s my deepest prayer—a live spark that will ignite a larger conversation about the impact of intergenerational trauma and how we can transform the narrative of our lives. I believe that it’s in healthy, awake communities—book groups, chat groups, meetups, affinity circles, and retreats— that the deep work can be done.
With love and care,
Rabbi Tirzah
What people are saying about Wounds into Wisdom
“An explosion of suffering, death and trauma has overtaken humanity during the past century and shows no signs of abating. Rabbi Tirzah Firestone speaks on every page of this deeply moving book with her heart and mind and from the deepest wellsprings of Jewish tradition to find sources of solace to transform wounds into wisdom. Her book spills over with empathy and compassion, forging a uniquely spiritual voice that heals and lifts our souls.”
— Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
“Tirzah Firestone’s Wounds into Wisdom offers hope to those whose lives have been shattered by trauma. The question at the heart of this book is this: Can you emerge from tragedy wiser and more free? Her answer eloquently stated and illustrated by powerful stories and profound insight, is yes you can. If tragedy haunts your life or the lives of those who love—read this book; it has the potential to change everything.”
— Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author of Minyan, and Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent
“A very important book. Rabbi Tirzah is a wounded healer. She uses the tale her own trauma in a Holocaust survivor family as a stepping-stone toward understanding survivor stories told by a wide variety of Jews, including many Israelis. But she then broadens the lens, showing how these very particularistic tales of personal struggle and healing may help people of many cultures to deal with legacies of exile and loss. A narrative of deep empathy and much wisdom.”
— Professor Art Green, Founding Dean of Hebrew College, Boston and author of Judaism’s Ten Best Ideas, Radical Judaism, and numerous additional titles
“Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone is written with empathy, combining research, Jewish teachings, psychological insights, her own family’s stories and those of other Holocaust survivor families.”
— NY Jewish Weekly