Dor L’Dor: An Intergenerational Model of Jewish Resilience for Mental and Brain Health Across the Lifespan

This webinar is presented by Dr. Rachel Goodman
Date: Wednesday, June 24, 2026 
Time: 4pm PT / 5pm MT / 6pm CT / 7pm ET 

Webinar length is approx 90 mins, ZOOM link will be sent in a registration confirmation email, and will be emailed directly to you a few days before the event.

This webinar introduces Dor L’Dor - “from generation to generation” as a culturally grounded, intergenerational framework for understanding resilience, mental health, and brain health across the lifespan. Integrating contemporary research on cognitive reserve and dementia prevention with core structures of Jewish life, the model reframes mental and brain health as a developmental and relational process shaped through daily practices, meaning, and community. The webinar will focus on how this lens can inform clinical thinking, formulation, and prevention-oriented care.

Learning Objectives

1. Introduce the Dor L’Dor model as a clinical lens for understanding mental and brain health as a lifespan and relational process.
2. Explore how intergenerational patterns - particularly in stress, coping, and meaning-making - shape vulnerability and resilience across the lifespan.
3. Bridge contemporary research on cognitive reserve and dementia prevention with lived, culturally embedded practices, highlighting how these processes operate within everyday Jewish life.

Apply an intergenerational and culturally grounded perspective to clinical formulation, expanding beyond symptom-focused models toward identity, role, and continuity across generations.

Dr. Rachel Goodman is a clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience specializing in anxiety, depression, trauma and PTSD, neurocognitive disorders, and caregiver stress, with a focus on memory wellness and healthy aging. She completed her doctoral training at St. John’s University in New York and began her career at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where she worked in geriatric psychiatry, memory enhancement, and trauma treatment programs. She was a member of the Consortium for the Treatment of Trauma following 9/11 and served as a clinical supervisor in the inaugural Pastoral Counseling Program at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah.

Dr. Goodman has extensive experience working with trauma survivors, especially Holocaust survivors and their families, beginning with Dr. Rachel Yehuda in the Specialized Treatment Program for Holocaust Survivors and their Families, where her work included both clinical care and program development, followed by ongoing clinical work in this area.

She is the former co-Associate Director of the Alzheimer’s Risk Assessment Clinic (ARAC) at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and speaks widely on brain health, dementia prevention, and healthy aging in professional, community and media settings.

She maintains a private practice in Montreal, where she provides cognitive behavioral therapy and conducts neuropsychological and clinical evaluations, with an emphasis on prevention, resilience, and brain health across the lifespan. She has specialized training in working with older adults, menopause and mental health, and diabetes.

The daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors - including a mother who was hidden in Belgium during the war - Dr. Goodman’s personal history has informed her longstanding clinical and professional commitment to trauma, resilience, and intergenerational transmission, as well as a deep appreciation for the moral courage of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Dr. Goodman is co-founder of the Annual Mental Health Shabbat initiative across North America. She has participated in professional mental health initiatives in Israel in response to recent trauma-related needs and has contributed to the dissemination of trauma-related narratives, including initiating and overseeing the English translation of a work by Lilach Kipnis, an art therapist who was killed on October 7, 2023. She is a member of the Ordre des Psychologues du Québec, the College of Psychologists of New Brunswick, the College of Alberta Psychologists, the Canadian Psychological Association and the National Register of Health Service Psychologists.