When Moshe Winograd first embarked on his doctoral studies in psychology in 2012, he felt lost trying to balance his identities as a doctoral student and an Orthodox Jew. He reached out to a colleague, Avigail Margolis, who had also recently begun her doctoral studies at Long Island University. Together they contacted other Orthodox Jewish doctoral students in their network. One evening, as they all met around Avigail’s dining room table to discuss their shared unique position, they started brainstorming how to support each other during this time period, and the idea of creating a group dedicated to bringing together Orthodox Jewish psychology students was born.
During the first few years, the group held several events with leading Orthodox Jewish psychologists, psychiatrists, and rabbis, including Dr. David Pelcovitz, Dr. Isaac Shechter, Dr. Nachum Klafter, and Rabbi Mordechai Willig. The group also held social events and meet-ups to provide safe spaces for these students to share experiences and advice. During one of these events in 2015, Moshe Moeller presented an idea to Moshe W. and Avigail to begin a peer process/support group. Together with Yosef Reich, Alyssa Singer-Schwartz, and Aliza Jacob, the six of them created their own small group which met in-person every other week as they completed their doctoral studies to provide support to each other and also engage in a peer-led interpersonal process group. Toward their graduation years, they discussed the lack of an organizing structure for Orthodox Jewish psychologists and students and decided to create an organization to serve this need.
The first step was to create a point of connection and communal space for Orthodox Jewish psychology students, and to that end, Moshe W. and Avigail started a WhatsApp group in 2017 open to all Orthodox psychology doctoral students. The group started with the name “JPsychDocs” and it grew quickly within the first several months. During this time, the six founding members discussed how to further develop the group into an organization and to incorporate early career psychologists as members began graduating from their programs and embarking on their careers. They assessed the needs of the active participants and held several meetings and brainstorming sessions with the greater group to collaborate on how to proceed. Eventually, the greater group voted on the name of the organization, the Association of Orthodox Jewish Psychologists (AOJP). Subsequently, specific committees such as Clinical and Professional Development were formed and new members started taking on leadership responsibilities. At present, AOJP offers a digital group space, social/networking events, sub-groups for specialties like assessment and early career psychologists, peer supervision groups, didactic presentations, clinical panels, and more. Further projects are also constantly in development. AOJP now boasts over 300 members that include Orthodox Jewish psychology students, early career psychologists, and senior psychologists, and we continue to grow.
The Development of AOJP
