Q & A with… Rabbi Andrew Hechtman
Rabbi Andrew Hechtman
Jewish Family Service of Connecticut (JFS) recently added alternative divorce mediation to its programming. As social-service providers, other JFS branches in the state also offer divorce counseling. What’s unusual in this case is that the JFS in Bridgeport has hired Rabbi Andrew Hechtman, the only practicing clergy-member in Connecticut currently qualified as a practitioner-member of the Connecticut Council for Divorce Mediation and Collaborative Practice.
JFS leadership decided to develop the program as a way to allow divorcing couples to maintain control of their life decisions, says JFS president Harvey Paris. “Divorce is more than just a legal matter; it involves basic spiritual and emotional challenges such as facing promises not kept, failed commitments, and the need for healing,” he says.
Rabbi Hechtman is spiritual leader of Kol Ami in Cheshire. He spoke with the Ledger about combining Jewish wisdom with divorce counseling.
What is the alternative divorce resolution (ADR) program?
A: The ADR program is intended to facilitate people taking ownership of their decisions. Every one of us knows people who have gone through divorce and yet very few of us know people who have gone through divorce and reflect it to have been a positive life experience for them or their children.
ADR is all about helping people process the experience, and by allowing them to take ownership of the experience, to promote healing in the process. We have all heard of people who, despite all the years that have passed since their divorce, can’t walk their grown child to the chuppah together because they’re still so angry at one another. The nature of divorce is about broken promises, disillusionment; the feeling of “this person hasn’t turned out to be the person I thought they were.”
Our legal system is intrinsically adversarial. You take two people who are already in pain and put them into such a process and of course, you’re adding fuel to the fire. It’s not unreasonable that, if you take two people who are already disillusioned and upset and the life they expected isn’t the one they’re getting, and put them into an adversarial situation, there are no winners and losers – there are only losers. And if there are children involved, as we say in Hebrew, “Al achat kama v’chama” – all the more so.
As adults, we make the decision to marry; as adults, we make the decision to get divorced. We have to do this in a way that’s in our legal best interest, by having the help of attorneys as review counsel to ensure that the agreement makes sense and is also in the parties’ legal best interests. But, given that the vast majority of divorces don’t go to court, then it becomes a matter of who will negotiate and make decisions. ADR is about helping empower people to own the process themselves – instead relying on third parties – whether attorneys of judges to control the process.
It’s so expensive to get divorced. In 2005, Money Magazine reported average divorce costs to be about $10,000 for divorce mediation, $16,000 for collaborative, $35,000 for traditional attorney-to-attorney negotiation, and a minimum of $20,000 to $50,000 for trial. So many people empty their savings accounts and 401k fighting. Those resources could often be much better utilized if people can own their decisions.
How did you develop an interest in ADR training, and what did it entail?
A: The immediate past president of my shul is a clinical psychologist who does this work and had been urging me to do the training. The man who had trained him, Dr. Carl Schneider from Bethesda, Md., is a master trainer. I called him and explained, “I’m a rabbi” and he laughed and said that he had started his professional career as a minister.
Page 1 of 3 | Next page