Authors Posts by Shayna Herszage-Feldan

Shayna Herszage-Feldan

Shayna Herszage-Feldan
1 POSTS 0 COMMENTS
Shayna Herszage-Feldan (she/her) is a school psychology graduate student at Temple University with a prior graduate degree in psychology from Queens College. She previously attended Yeshiva University, where she studied English and psychology and served as editor-in-chief of The Breather and Kol Hamevaser and managing editor of The YU Observer. She has learned in Midreshet Nishmat’s Shana Ba’Aretz program, Yeshivat Hadar’s Summer Beit Midrash, and Yeshivat Maharat’s Va’Tichtov and Halakha-In-Action fellowships. She has previously been published in platforms such as The YU Observer, The Jewish Press, and V’Eilu, a zine she started which is focused on Orthodox Jewish voices and social justice. She lives in Washington Heights, NYC.

“Asthenes” as a Jewish Textual Reference to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

The classification of certain people as "athenes" receives wide expression in Talmudic stories and even practical halakhic application. Shayna Herszage-Feldan considers the varieties of asthenes descriptions in Talmudic texts, proposing that the category encompasses the condition that is today diagnosed as contamination-focused obsessive compulsive disorder.