Resource Library

Explore the connections between Judaism and mental health with our educational resources! Below you will find articles, downloadable activity sheets, videos and podcasts, and more about Jewish holidays and concepts, and the ways Judaism addresses mental illness. (Library disclaimer)

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How to Spot Anxiety Disorders in Kids, Tweens and Teens

Written with In the City Camps | Kids, tweens, teens and even adults all experience fears and worries. But when they become frequent and interfere with the person’s ability to fully live their life, it has crossed the line into an anxiety disorder. Let’s discuss the different types of anxiety disorders and how to spot them.
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Mental Health College Toolkit

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide college students with a comprehensive explanation of common mental health disorders, resources, definitions, and so much more. Not many college students know or understand the topic, which makes it difficult for them to seek help when they are experiencing mental health challenges. I hope this toolkit gives college students an understanding of mental health that’s basic enough to help them recognize their own mood, behavior, or experiences and potentially connect them to one of the mental health disorders. Knowing that one feeling is not just being crazy, lazy, or weird but rather is a true mental health disorder can work to reduce the stigma associated with mental health and make more college students feel comfortable seeking treatment.
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Ladder of Emotional Regulation

We have a variety of strategies and skills available to manage and/or “regulate” ourselves when we feel overwhelmed. Their effectiveness depends on the person as well as the type and intensity of the distress they are experiencing in that particular moment. Several types of tools address the different aspects of the emotional experience, and we can address our needs from all sides. We can manage unhelpful thinking, employ sensory strategies to calm our bodies, use social support to validate our feelings and get help when we need it.
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Brachot (Blessings) and Intuitive Eating

Jewish rituals surrounding food can be a fantastic tool for developing mindful eating practices and strengthening our ability to eat intuitively. According to Jewish tradition, before and after eating any food, a blessing should be said. However, the blessing recited before eating is not a generalized prayer of gratitude. Rather, each blessing is specific to the kind of food you are eating.
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Immersive Experience Staff Journal

We know staff mental health needs are important, and we hope this resource offers an opportunity to better support the staff’s mental health over the summer. The Blue Dove Foundation is proud to partner with BeWell, an initiative of Jewish Federations of North America, and Foundation for Jewish Camp in the creation of this meaningful resource.
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Summer Camp Staff Journal

We know staff mental health needs are important, and we hope this resource offers an opportunity to better support the staff’s mental health over the summer. The Blue Dove Foundation is proud to partner with BeWell, an initiative of Jewish Federations of North America, and Foundation for Jewish Camp in the creation meaningful resource.
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Passover: Four Cups Toward Freedom – Exploration of Liberation and How to Reclaim the Passover Seder for Ourselves with the T’Shuvah Center

Leaving Egypt is not just about our story and journey on the road to freedom. It is a foundational roadmap to liberation, both for a community and individuals and offers us a story of recovery. Each year, we retell it as a reminder to leave behind constrictions and slavery, and instead choose freedom and sovereignty. Jewish tradition commands us, as we are telling the story, to see ourselves as if we have left Egypt. Egypt is not just a country, an ancient place, or a space. It is not just the setting of the enslavement that we’ve endured. It is also an edict about how we leave Egypt internally.
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The #QuietingTheSilence Haggadah

Telling stories of people living with mental illness helps de-stigmatize conversations about mental illness and helps others feel less alone in their mental health journeys. This Haggadah is an attempt at creating an experience that helps participants feel a sense of freedom from their own challenges or at least helps them start to talk about them and #QuietTheSilence surrounding mental illness.
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Accordion Content

The Blue Dove Foundation resource library is constantly growing as we create and collect meaningful content to share. As you are engaging with our resource library, please let us know if you see anything that is out of date or that needs to be updated, whether it regards mental health information or Jewish content. 

Blue Dove both serves and works with members of all kinds of Jewish communities, from the ultra-Orthodox to the unaffiliated. To be as inclusive as possible and respectful of different communities and traditions, we have decided to spell God as such — with no hyphen in place of the “o.” And much like we avoid using “him” or “her” to describe a person (opting for “them” instead), we agreed to treat God as a gender-neutral term. When quoting a resource or text directly, however, we keep the original terms used by the author.

We hope our resources can be used in a variety of settings with different audiences. We invite you to adapt resources in whichever way meets the needs of the group you are working with. To explore how to adapt our resources, please view our webinar with the Jewish Education Project, where we explore adapting our resources: Through the Portal: Exploring the Connections between Judaism and Mental Health with the Blue Dove Foundation.

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