אראל שליט

1950 – 2018

נולד בשבדיה ב-1950, ועלה ארצה בגיל 18. אחרי הצבא חזר לשבדיה ללימודי הפסיכולוגיה והיה לפסיכולוג הצעיר ביותר שקיבל תואר דוקטור בשבדיה.
בארץ ניהל מרפאה קהילתית לבריאות הנפש ע"ש שמאי דוידסון.
היה נשיא החברה הישראלית לפסיכולוגיה אנליטית.
הקים וניהל את לימודי ההמשך של פסיכותרפיה יונגיאנית באוניברסיטת  בר אילן.
נודע בעולם היונגיאני הבינלאומי בזכות הספרים הרבים שהוציא לאור וההרצאות שנתן במקומות רבים.
 

and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Robin B. Zeiger

There are important individuals in our lives that touch us in moments. For me, Erel was one such unique individual.  The moments he touched me transformed my second half of life heroine’s journey.  At the age of 50, I immigrated to Israel as a clinical psychologist with a longing for newness born in deep meaning.  As a stranger in a strange land, Erel, himself a fellow immigrant from Sweden, took me under his wings and escorted me to a world of colleagues and mentors.  Because of him, I began training in Jungian psychotherapy in Hebrew (no easy task).  Erel was there for me at key junctions in the journey, as a supportive ear when I suddenly learned of the death of my former Jungian analyst in America, as encouragement to train as an analyst, as a guide to finding my excellent training analyst, and as a sounding board for my own writing.  I learned of Erel’s gift as a lecturer, teacher, writer, and analyst.  Erel told the story of someone who told him he would never be an analyst.

Yet the moments of meaning continued after Erel’s untimely passing from this life.  Erel’s funeral was one of the most spiritual and unusual funerals I ever attended.  In the midst of the deep suffering, Erel found strength to plan for his funeral with his family and soul-mate Nancy Furlotti.  His daughters recited and transformed traditional Jewish blessings of life to complete the cycle.  Erel recording his own message to be played.

But perhaps what touched me was a poem Nancy read, In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver.  The poem opens beckoning with a beautiful image of life and hope.

Look, the trees are turning

their own bodies into pillars

of light.

are giving off the rich fragrance of

cinnamon and fulfillment…

This poem, one of Erel’s favorites, was chosen prior to his death.  Yet unknown at the time was the synchronicity.  Erel died on the Jewish holiday of Tubeshvat, the New Year of the Trees. Jewish tradition is rich with connection to trees, comparing humankind to trees of the field, blessing the first blossoms of fruit trees each year, and a Biblical commandment to protect fruit trees in times of war.  Nancy in her deep grief read the first piece of the poem and realized she had forgotten the second half at home. I was so touched that I pursued the last half.  The last few lines reached even deeper to frame the moment.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Erel’s casket was accompanied to the grave with the refrain of the Beatles: “You say good-bye. I say hello.” Here the tears of hope and mourning flowed freely. Sometimes we must let go. Yet, the letting go and mourning bears the seeds of potential to take the gifts of relatedness deep inside our heart and soul. Erel left a rich legacy of teachings, writings, and of relationship to family, friends, colleagues, and analysands.

In his memory

Nancy Swift Furlotti

Erel Shalit was my very special soul mate and partner. I miss him profoundly, as many others do, too. Yet, hIs shadow soul remains with us–  as it moves from place to place, leaving memory reminders of himself and whispered suggestions for us for the questions we need answered. These are the synchronicities that keep us close. We can see a bit of who he was not only from his books, but also from his poems and of course dreams that helped to direct his fate and his destiny to his death–  his peaceful passing from here into his imageless existence. Death is not something we frequently discuss, although it is ever-present in our individuation process. The constant little psychological deaths prepare us for our final birth out of this life. We all struggle to make sense of it. We have a lot to learn from those who have gone before us along with the spiritual traditions that prepare us for this final voyage–  many of which have been forgotten, leaving us on our own. Erel leaves us with a precious example of how life prepares us for death.

            I would like to offer three poems Erel wrote years before his death that show the burden he carried with him in his life that ultimately helped prepare him for his end.

My Father’s House

When I was very young indeed

In my father’s house, I bent low

Under the yoke of the Fathers

When I was somewhatyoung, in deed

I sailed the waters of truth, valor and concern

Capsizing in the universalizability of Asch’s peaceful sea of forgetfulness

And when older still, I turned Lucretius’s plastered mask inside out

To see now who I am when looking through the eyes in the mirror

Bewildered, unable to free myself from the dread and gods;

Between spoken fate and chosen destiny

Imprisoned by the spirit of Europe’s bitter-sweet soil

Fury and embrace, lamb and lion cannot dwell together, I thought

& so as seasons pass, I found myself alive

Wearing garments of equality

Freedom and fraternity

Yet stained by concentrated stripes

To hear the newborn who had yet to cry,

& the young whose pain screams up to heaven,

And the elderly who can no longer weep.

To the Chamber

On a cold winter’s day I stood there freezing

In Majdanek’s chamber

There died motherhood

In that very chamber

Before I was born

By creation’s reversal

They had turned substance into nothing

Deleted the frame and emptied the vessel

And I froze and knew that fifty-five years before

I would not even have made my way in the cold through the frozen snow

To the chamber

 

Untitled Poem

The very large page

In the yellow brown book

Has to be repaired

Slowly, With great patience
Thread by thread Fiber by fiber

Horizontally and virtually

Until the black letters of the aleph-beth

One by one falls into place

So that all the previous pages in the thinthick book

Might fall into place

And the picture comes together

Perhaps at the very end

Obituary and Fair Goodbye to Erel Shalit, Ph.D

Nancy Swift Furlotti

As part of a later interest of his, he edited and introduced Jacob and Esau: On the Collective Symbolism of the Brother Motif by Erich Neumann through Recollections, LLC, a company that publishes first generation Jungian material. Turbulent Times, Creative Minds was a compilation of lectures given at a conference he organized at Kibbutz Shefayhim in Israel in 2015, considered one of the most memorable Jungian conferences, in celebration of the publication of the Jung-Neumann Correspondencewhich he was instrumental in getting published. And his work will continue to be published. 

He was general editor of the up-coming two-volume work by Erich Neumann, The Roots of Jewish Consciousness, edited by Ann Lammers, which will be published by Routledge in 2019.

 He has left two slightly unfinished manuscripts, The Soul Lost in Translation at the Dawn of a new Era, and A Story of Dreams, Fate and Destiny (Zurich Lecture Series, 2020)which will be finished and published in the near future.

But most importantly, Dr. Shalit, left behind his two beloved daughters: Ilayah and Noa Shalit along with their husbands, Dan Dan Matiuk and Gal Sasson and their five beautiful little boys. He loved his family dearly and was their strong, steady, compassionate and brilliant father and grandfather. As my life partner he was my best friend and the joy of my life. He will be deeply missed by all who were fortunate enough to have known him.

The funeral will take place January 31, 2018 at 11:00am at Menuhat-Olam, Benny W. Reich St. in Netanya. The mourning period (shivah) will take place at Shai Agnon, 34, 2nd Floor Tel Aviv from 10am-1pm and 5pm-9pm.

It is with great sadness that my partner and dear friend, Erel, has passed away today, peacefully and surrounded by me and his loving family. He was 67 years old and suffered from cancer, which he struggled with valiantly for two and a half years. During that time he remained his compassionate, strong, productive and thoughtful self to the end and departed as the special soul he was, in perfect peace.

He was born and raised in Sweden and moved to Israel at 18, the country he loved with great devotion. He returned to Sweden to study for his doctorate in psychology at Uppsala University where he was the youngest psychologist to be granted a Ph.D. in Sweden. With that in hand, he returned to Israel where he joined the army as a psychologist running a mental health clinic on the front lines, helping soldiers avoid the development of PTSD. He continued his reserve duty until 50, and as a member of the Council for Peace and Security, he maintained his hope for a future of peace.

Erel was a Jungian psychoanalyst in Tel Aviv and worked as a training and supervising analyst. He was a past president of the Israel Society of Analytical Psychology and founder and past director of the Jungian Analytical Psychotherapy Program at Bar Ilan University. Earlier in his career he was the director of the Shamai Davidson Community Mental Health Clinic. As part of his professional affiliation, he served as honorary secretary of the Ethics Committee of the International Association of Analytical Psychology (IAAP) and was its liaison with the Bulgarian Jung Society. He loved training young therapists.

He lectured internationally and was a prolific writer. For Erel writing was a passion and a form of poetry, which is clearly evident in his many books, including, The Cycle of Life: Themes and Tales of the Journey, Requiem: A tale of Exile and Return, Enemy, Cripple, and Beggar, The Complex: Paths of transformation from Archetype to Ego. He co-edited, with me, The Dream and its Amplification.

 

העולם הפרטי הזה שאליו אראל הלך, מעניין ביותר. לא יכול להיות אחרת.

לאה אבשלום

אומר מילים קצרות על חברנו אראל שמת קצת למעלה מחודש, רק קצרות כי החלטנו בישיבת אנליטיקאים להקדיש לו את מפגש מעגן השנה שיתקיים ב-16/17 לנובמבר 2018 , ושם בוודאי נדבר עליו ארוכות.

אומר גם כמה מילים על מוות.
אראל עבר את ההכשרה היונגיאנית בקבוצה איתי, ואתם יודעים כמה חשובה הקבוצה בהכשרה שלנו. במובן מסוים, כאילו היינו אחים. הוא בלט בקבוצה באינטלקט שלו מלכתחילה. נכנס לדיונים תיאורטיים עם המורים שלנו כאשר אנו לא העזנו לפצות פה ( תזכרו שזו היתה הכשרה באגודה הגדולה..). בנסיעות שלנו לשיעורים הוא אמר לא פעם שהוא מתכוון לכתוב ספרים בפסיכולוגיה אנליטית, דבר שהדהים אותי כיצד הוא יודע מה יעשה כ"שיהיה גדול".ואכן כתב ספרים לא מעטים ותפס מקום מכובד ביותר בעולם היונגיאני, כפי שאתם יודעים.

בקבוצה שלנו גמרנו ללמוד חמישה, ומהם הלכו לעולמם כבר שלושה-נחי פרי, ינינה ואראל. כמה עצוב וכואב. אתם יודעים, חשבתי על האמרה  "הלך לעולמו"- כאילו לכל אחד מאיתנו יש עולם מיוחד ואישי שהוא רק שלו לאחר מותו, עולם שהולך אליו ושייך רק לו – "הלך לעולמו". אני בטוחה שהעולם הפרטי הזה של אראל שאליו הוא הלך, מעניין ביותר. לא יכול להיות אחרת.

ותמיד חשבתי שאנו עושים אידיאליזציה של האדם לאחר מותו ומדברים עליו רק טובות, מתוך צורך נפשי שלנו, אך זה לא העניין. אני חושבת שלכל אחד מאיתנו בני האדם, יש הילה מיוחדת מעל ראשו שאינה נראית כל עוד הוא בחיים. הילה שנראית מיד אחר מותו, הילה שיש בה הצד המואר של האדם, עם קדושה אם תרצו, שזוהרת עם מותו.. כך אני מרגישה עם כל האנשים היקרים שמתו לאחרונה, גם בחיי האישיים.

 
חבל שאנו לא רואים ולו מעט מהילה זו עוד כשאדם בחיים, ולא אומרים לו מספיק דברים טובים לאדם בחייו…לא מראים לו מספיק אהבה.

אוליבר סאקס כתב שכל אדם שמת מותיר אחריו חור שלא ניתן למלא. אף אחד לא יוכל למלא את החור שהשאיר אראל לאחר מותו. בוודאי לא נשכח אותך אראל.

 
לבסוף רוצה לספר לכם על ההלוויה המיוחדת של אראל, מכיון שהרבה מכם לא הצליחו להיות נוכחים בה. ההלוויה נערכה לפי הוראות מדויקות של אראל, עם הרבה מוסיקה והיתה מאוד מרגשת. אם בחייו הופיע לפנינו אראל בעיקר עם האינטלקט שלו, אחרי מותו הופיע בעיקר עם הרגש.  אולי כאשר עומדים מול המוות, מה שחשוב באמת הוא הרגש..

אראל נקבר בבית קברות אלטרנטיבי, יפה ומטופח בשולי נתניה. ננסי אשתו פתחה בכמה מילים. שתי בנותיו אמרו קדיש והקריאו עוד טקסטים אחרים. שמענו הקלטה של אראל בקול חלש וצרוד מודה לאנשים שונים. כולם ליוו אותו לקברו עם מוסיקה של הביטלס, וגם מוסיקה ישראלית. אנשים רבים כיסו בעפר את קברו, כל אחד בתורו. על יד הקבר היתה קערה עם אבנים קטנות לבנות וכד עם שושנים אדומות. כל אחד לקח אבן ושושנה ושם על התל שעל קברו.
 
עד כאן, וכל השאר עוד ידובר עליו במפגש מעגן השנה…
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