Published Bi-Weekly Since 1976
October 21 - November 3, 2005
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Telephone: 978-745-4111 Fax: 978-745-5333
Jewish Mediums Help Others Communicate With Spirit
Susan Jacobs
Jewish Journal Staff

Photo by Susan Jacobs Joanne Gerber of Marblehead is an evidential spirit medium who communicates with the spirits of those who have passed on. She is one of several local Jewish psychic mediums.

Joanne Gerber is a friendly Marblehead native who had a bat mitzvah at Temple Israel in Swampscott. Nancy Garber is a down-to-earth former teacher who enjoys playing poker. Rita Berkowitz is an accomplished painter who was raised as an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn. The three friends are also professional psychic mediums who make their livings communicating with the spirits of those who have passed on. Gerber and Garber do spirit readings, while Berkowitz sketches portraits of the people she communicates with.

“People are very skeptical about the work we do,” admits Gerber. “As a medium, I want validation and am always looking for proof.”

During readings, Gerber purposely tells clients not to volunteer information. “I don’t want to know anything in the beginning. The less I hear the better,” she says. She asks the spirit to provide evidence such as names, specific memories, dates, anniversaries, objects and articles, which she then transmits to the sitter. If the medium is good, people are often astonished by what they hear. Maria Rosen of Newton attended a group reading last October. She hoped to receive a message from her father, who had passed away a year earlier.

“Joanne was able to connect with him. As she gave a physical description of him, she said he was talking about Mary and Maria. Mary is my mother, and my name is Maria, which Joanne had no way of knowing. She then asked: ‘Can you understand Bolton?’ Bolton is where my parents went apple picking on many Sundays. We all went there as a family shortly before my father passed. I remember pushing him around in his wheelchair because he was too weak to walk. It brought back some nice memories, and to me, it was real proof that Joanne was really communicating with him,” she said.

Debbie Harary of Holliston had a reading in February with Garber, who lives in West Roxbury. “Prior to the reading, I didn’t tell Nancy anything about myself – not even my last name. She named names and accurately described physical characteristics of my mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, and my aunt Phyllis. She told me things that were so specific that I had no doubt that she was actually communicating with my relatives,” said Harary.

“One of the most interesting things she said was that a grandfather on the other side was showing her a knitted yarmulke and saying, ‘David should have the yarmulke.’ Nancy didn’t know that I was Jewish or that I have a son named David who at the time was planning for his bar mitzvah (which occurred this September at Temple Israel in Natick).

“After the reading, I asked my relatives if our grandfather had owned a knitted yarmulke. My sister, who lives in New York, remarked, ‘I don’t know about Grandpa, but I think Daddy had a knitted yarmulke in his tallis bag, which I have at home.’ Then suddenly I got it. My father, who was David’s grandfather, wanted him to wear the yarmulke on the occasion of his bar mitzvah!” Harary, who runs an in-home daycare center, says, “It gives you a sense that there’s more to life than what you see. During my reading, my family’s mannerisms, smells and basic essence washed over and enveloped me. I found it very comforting.”

Not all Jews are so comfortable with the concept (see sidebar). “My brother is quite Orthodox, and he disapproves of this,” admits Harary. “He believes that although it may be intriguing, it’s not something you’re supposed to play around with. It’s forbidden. Yet after my dad died in 1998, we were sitting shiva and I asked Rabbi Jeremiah Wohlberg from Merrick, N.Y., about life after death. He said, ‘Just like a fish can’t experience fire doesn’t mean that fire doesn’t exist.’ That always gave me hope.”

Medium Joanne Gerber believes that for the most part, the Jewish religion is tolerant of the paranormal. “The Catholic religion really frowns upon mediumship as devil worship, but the Jewish religion doesn’t really do that. Moses and Abraham were well-known mediums, and the Torah and Talmud are channeled works,” she states.

Although she was raised a Conservative Jew, the 42-year-old Gerber now attends services at the Swampscott Church of Spiritualism. “There is no conversion process,” she says. “I still believe in Judaism and study the Kabbalah. There is actually a large population of Jewish people who go to spiritualist churches. I am open-minded to the theory and philosophy of all religions. I believe that all religions lead to one source, which is God,” she says.

Rabbis Respond

Halachic Views of the Paranormal

The whole notion of ‘telling the future’ is profoundly un-Jewish. Even the Hebrew prophets did not tell the future. They were forthtellers, not foretellers; they delivered a message that contained the word ‘if.’ If you do not change your ways, bad things will happen (and they don’t give much specificity)...but if you do change, God will accept your repentance. This is Judaism’s repudiation of fatalism, predestination and determinism. We are free to change ourselves. I can change. We can change. We can begin again.

— Rabbi David Klatzker

Temple Ner Tamid, Peabody

Chair of the North Shore Rabbinic Association

There have always been Jewish psychics or seers. For example: Joseph’s interpretations of Pharaoh’s dreams foretold of a great famine and allowed Egypt to be spared its ravages. And psychics told Abraham and Sarah that Sarah (who thought she was barren) would bear a child. Judaism, like many other religions, has both a mystical and a rational stream. Reconstructionists follow a rational bent. We interpret events, like the miracles in the Torah, according to natural phenomena. We do not believe in the ‘paranormal.’ There are, however, streams of Judaism, most notably the Chassidim, who look at the world with a mystical view. To the extent that mysticism is ‘paranormal,’ I would agree that Judaism is not a stranger to paranormal phenomenon.

— Rabbi Judy Epstein

Keshet Yam, Manchester

I can’t speak as an authority on the halachic view of Judaism and the paranormal, as the paranormal can be interpreted and misinterpreted. But there are thousands of Chassidic stories about masters with mystical gifts who have given people blessings to, for example, have children or turn their businesses around. Their great holiness allowed them to access the esoteric element and act as an intermediary, as it were, to help these people realize what they were missing in their lives. It is important to understand that they were not gods or mediums.

I don’t know a lot about psychic mediums, but I know the Torah eschews the concept of conversations with the dead. To me, the idea of a medium sounds very secular and not connected to holiness.

Kabbalists exist in Judaism. Moses and Abraham were kabbalists, not mediums. I believe that a kabbalist connected to Torah can have access to that which is above nature after years and years of study. You can’t, however, go to school to study this. It is gifted to you after years of study and the development of righteousness.

I think Jews have a better route to resolving their problems than consulting with mediums. They can do it through religious observance and Torah study, and by discussion with those well-versed in Torah.

— Rabbi Nechemia Schusterman

Chabad of Peabody

Just like a fish can’t experience fire doesn’t mean that fire doesn’t exist.

— Rabbi Jeremiah Wohlberg

Merrick, NY

Before a reading, Gerber silently says the Sh’ma “because it is the highest prayer to bring you closer to God.” She also wears a pendant with the Sh’ma around her neck; a cherished gift from B’nai Brith to her mother, who died several years ago.

Nancy Garber was raised Jewish in Boston, but her family was not particularly religious. “I’ve always believed in God, but our family did not belong to a temple. Yet I believe that if you’re born Jewish, you’re always Jewish. The smell of matzah ball soup is always going to make you happy, and culturally you’re always connected. Now I consider myself a spiritualist. I go to “church,” but I use that word loosely for lack of a better one. It’s more like an uplifting meeting where healing is part of the service,” she says.

Some of Garber’s more religious relatives (including a cousin who is a Conservative rabbi) were initially skeptical about her ability to communicate with the dead. After experiencing personal readings, she says they are now more accepting of her and her work.

Psychic artist and psychological counselor Rita Berkowitz, 57, grew up Orthodox in Brooklyn. Today she is an ordained minister and pastor of the First Spiritualist Church in Quincy.

“As a child I went to synagogue, but I was not sent to Hebrew school because I was a girl,” says Berkowitz, who was not allowed to participate in many of the Orthodox rituals. “I enjoyed the philosophic conversations, but I needed to experience more than I was permitted to. I became active in the Spiritualist Church as a participator. To those who call me a traitor to the Jewish religion I say, ‘I bless you on your path; I hope you will do the same for me.’”

Before discovering she had the uncommon ability to see and accurately sketch spirits, Berkowitz was an accomplished artist with a studio in Boston’s South End who taught art at the college level. During readings, which can occur in person or over the phone, Berkowitz sketches a portrait of the person in charcoal or pastels. The results are so uncanny that Berkowitz has even surprised herself.

“About 21 years ago I was brought by a Jewish woman to hear a rabbi speak about healing. The spirit of my grandmother, Rachel Schneider from Poland, came to me. She died in the Holocaust — I had never met her. I sketched her, and when I uncovered an old photograph of her years later, it was profound. The picture matched exactly,” she said.

Yet Berkowitz did not initially embrace her new-found skills. “I was a reluctant prophet. All I wanted to do was paint. I was dragged into this, but when I realized I was helping people, I had to continue doing it. It’s emotional and stressful work. But every time I’ve tried to walk away, I get called back,” she says.

Garber and Gerber also feel drawn to their work. Nancy Garber was a former school teacher who had also worked as a counselor in a mental health unit at Newton Wellesley Hospital. Although psychic since she was a child, she never considered it as a career. As she perfected her art, however, she realized being a medium “felt like a shoe that fit.” She journeyed to England to train at Arthur Findlay College, a very respected “Harry Potter” type of school which she says “was more difficult than getting my master’s at Northeastern.”

Joanne Gerber holds a degree in Business Administration from Salem State College and is a former business owner. “I am college educated and could be working for a big company, but it would not be as fulfilling. I live for this work, and nothing else as a profession comes close,” she says.

The popularity of television shows such as Medium and Crossing Over, and the success of Hollywood movies like The Sixth Sense, suggest that mediums have moved into the mainstream. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people are more accepting of psychic phenomena.

“Sometimes I’ll be in line at Stop & Shop and really want to tell the lady in front of me that her mother’s spirit is standing behind her. I have to hold myself back because I know that not everyone is ready for this type of information,” remarks Joanne Gerber.

“But don’t be afraid to have a reading. You don’t have to believe in it, but just keep an open mind and open heart,” she suggests.

Published Bi-Weekly Since 1976
November 4- November 17, 2005
201 Washington Street Suite 14 Salem MA,01970, USA
Telephone: 978-745-4111 Fax: 978-745-5333

Jewish Mediums Care About Helping Others

I really liked the article on Jewish Mediums that appeared in the Journal (Oct. 21-Nov. 3.) I own a number of Rita Berkowitz’s books and I personally know Joanne Gerber. Both women are truly wonderful and care deeply about helping others, so it was nice to see them featured in that article. I was raised in a Jewish household, but I consider myself, like Joanne, more of a spiritualist. However, I do not deny my heritage, and I am drawn to human interest stories in my community about other Jews.
Emily Aarons
Co-owner of Body & Soul
Massage & Wellness Center
Salem