Dennis Shulman
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Dennis G. Shulman, a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, author and ordained rabbi, is the Democratic Party nominee for the United States Congress in New Jersey’s Fifth Congressional District. He won the primary with 60% of the vote in a three-way race. Shulman is seeking to unseat Scott Garrett, the Republican incumbent, in 2008.[1] If elected, he will be the first rabbi in Congress.
[edit] Biography
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1950, the second of three children, Shulman began losing his sight at an early age. Yet, neither he nor his parents accepted that his disability would keep him from excelling at anything he set his mind to. He excelled in his studies and, midway through high school, he sought and won an unprecedented full scholarship to Worcester Academy. He graduated from the Academy third in his class.
By then totally blind, Shulman gained admission to Brandeis University, a liberal arts college in Waltham, Massachusetts. With the support of readers supplied by the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, whom he trained in the use of the university library, he managed a full course load. He graduated in the class of 1972 magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. That same year Shulman’s volunteer activities, primarily involving the developmentally disabled, earned him a Special White House Commendation for Outstanding Humanitarian Service and The David Aranow Award for Outstanding Achievement in Social Welfare.
Shulman next attended Harvard University where he began work toward a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice. Just two years into the program Shulman won a Training Fellowship from the National Institute for Mental Health and married his college sweetheart, medical student Pam Tropper. Also in that period, he began what has become an extended series of teaching positions, professional publications, postdoctoral studies and speaking engagements.
In 1979 Shulman opened his practice in psychoanalysis in New York City. Two years later, he moved to New Jersey, first Harrington Park and then Demarest, and received his license to practice in 1982. In 1990-91 he served as senior content designer and on-air lecturer in the PBS series The World of Abnormal Psychology.
In 1997 he was the founding director of the National Training Program in Contemporary Psychoanalysis at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies[2], at which he continues to serve. The National Training Program was Shulman’s creation. It is unique in the world of psychoanalytic training institutes, attracting students (psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers) from all over the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Meanwhile, in the mid 1990s Shulman began to explore the connections between psychology and religion, discovering wisdom in the Bible that can inform contemporary life—“Taking the Bible not literally, but seriously” he explains. Ultimately, Shulman felt a strong calling and took up study for the rabbinate. He was ordained in 2003, the same year that saw the publication of his book, The Genius of Genesis: A Psychoanalyst and Rabbi Examines the First Book of the Bible. He now serves as the Associate Rabbi of Chavurah Beth Shalom, a progressive synagogue in Alpine, New Jersey.
Shulman has lived in Demarest[3] for more than twenty years with Pam Tropper, his wife of 33 years, an Attending Physician at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. The couple has two daughters: Holly is press secretary for Global Trade Watch in Washington, D.C. and Juliana is in her Junior year at the University of Chicago.[1]
On June 3, 2008, Dennis Shulman defeated challengers Camille Abate and Roger Bacon in the New Jersey Fifth District Congressional Primary.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Shulman for Congress. Retrieved on 2007-10-06.
- ^ NIP National Training Program * Faculty
- ^ Carmiel, Oshrat. "Shulman to run against Garrett", The Record (Bergen County), February 29, 2008. Accessed March 6, 2008.
