Think Outside
No Box Required
Gan students at the Stern Center with teacher Marlee Glustoff
COURTESY OF PERELMAN JEWISH DAY SCHOOL
“Even if it’s not in-person, face-to-face interaction,” said David
Rosenberg, JFCS senior vice president of programs and strategy, “that
telehealth allows us to check in with people and keep them connected
and let people know that we’re here and we care about them.”
In the fall, Courtney Owen, JFCS’ director of individual and family
services, said that demand for mental health services was high and rising.

Mental health organizations have had to change the way they oper-
ate as well.

Tikvah/Advocates for the Jewish Mentally Ill recently held its first online
gala. Executive Director Alana Hilsey was pleased with the final product.

“Of course, I want to be there in person and give someone a hug and
congratulate people in person and give them physical awards,” Hilsey
said. “That part is different. But I think like the sense of community, the
essence of Tikvah, that felt the same to me, honestly.”
Relationships One of the most frequently discussed casualties of the pandemic is
personal relationships.

Adults were separated from their elderly parents and grandparents.

Those elderly parents and grandparents were separated from everyone
for a year. Close friends were unable to see one another, and peripheral
friendships were put on hold.

Graduating college students found themselves back in their child-
hood bedrooms. Recent high school graduates put college off for a year
or gutted their way through a dessicated version. Parents who expected
to be empty nesters, like Jill Rosen, in Maple Glen, found themselves
back in an old role: doing laundry, cooking dinner and keeping house
for a whole brood.

“When your kids leave the house, you adjust to them being gone,”
Rosen said.

First-time parents had radically different experiences than they’d
expected. Rachel Keiser, who gave birth to her first child, Bradley, in September,
has juggled the emotional and physical demands of motherhood with
isolation from her friends and family, as well as more time at home with
her husband than anticipated.

“It made me love him more, how well he kept me safe and the baby
safe,” Keiser said of her husband, Harrison Keiser.

As for social life, some have enjoyed online gatherings as a welcome
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THE GUIDE 2021/2022
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