A world-renowned forensic psychiatrist and geriatric abuse expert, Dr. Bennett Blum is not your typical rabbinical student. But since SaddleBrooke's Institute for Judaic Services and Studies is not your typical congregation, it seems fitting that when the group sought a student rabbi to lead its High Holiday services last year, it found Blum. 

The 43-year-old student rabbi attends the transdenominational Academy for Jewish Religion in Los Angeles on a part time basis. When he's not attending class, Blum might be lecturing at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he teaches forensic psychiatry; flying all over the world to deliver talks; or testifying in legal proceedings. He recently testified at The Hague at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia. Several years ago he spoke at a hearing on "Fraud: Targeting America's Seniors," held before the U.S. Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Blum, a member of Congregations Anshei Israel and Bet Shalom, says he already was performing some rabbinical duties around Tucson when the Institute learned, through word-of-mouth, that he might be available to lead the group's first High Holiday services last year as well as its monthly Friday services. Both Blum and the Institute's Dan Fischler deem the match a success.

"Dr. Blum is a wonderful speaker," Fischler said, noting that as word spread around the SaddleBrooke community, more people began showing up for services. Blum describes his SaddleBrooke experience as "very rewarding," adding that many participants had not attended services in decades but found "the heimish atmosphere very satisfying."

 "Even those who came reluctantly (at the urging of a spouse) would tell me how much they enjoyed the services," he said.

Blum's journey from psychiatrist to rabbinical student resulted from a mixture of serendipitous events coupled with childhood predilections. As a student at the Phoenix Hebrew Academy, Blum says he loved studying the Talmud and Jewish law. Decades later, his legal penchant came to the fore when he became involved with several psychiatric cases that had legal ramifications.

Blum's first appearance on the witness stand was in a high profile Los Angeles case where he was subpoenaed and required to testify on the mental condition of a former policewoman who, as a result of torture, had become psychotic, lost her job, and began stalking a local celebrity, Blum said. 

Although his court appearance was the result of accidental circumstances -- he happened to be the first mental health expert to see the woman when she was brought in to a Los Angeles hospital -- he says he enjoyed the legal process of testifying so much that he entered a fellowship program in forensic psychiatry at UCLA. Prior to that time, he had earned his medical degree from the University of Arizona in 1990, then completed UCLA's psychiatry program in 1994. During his forensic fellowship, Blum worked with Dr. Park Dietz on several highly publicized cases including the civil trial against O.J. Simpson and the cases of Susan Smith and the Andrea Yates (both convicted of drowning their children).

Blum defines forensic psychiatry as the "overlap between medical and legal issues." He's worked with homicide investigations and taught seminars on personality disorders, witness testimony, sexual disorders in rape cases and serial murders.
Although these days he occasionally works in a forensic capacity, most of his work has shifted to crimes against the elderly. His interest in geriatric abuse sprang from "personal experience and exposure to events," he said.

During the course of his professional training, Blum said, he encountered a situation where an elderly man was discharged from a hospital to discover his bank account emptied and apartment stripped of its contents by a "new friend." Social workers told him they had encountered similar situations before.

Blum's own grandfather experienced the threat of elder abuse when, after breaking a hip and being assigned a home care nurse, the nurse threatened to withhold care unless the elderly man gave her cash and jewelry.
By now Blum realized these types of abuse were "more common than people realized," but when he approached professionals at UCLA, he was told there was nothing that could be done, nor was there any available body of knowledge on the issue.
Unsatisfied with that answer, Blum began looking elsewhere and found professionals who had also witnessed elder abuse. Coming from banking, legal, real estate and police backgrounds, the ad hoc group formed the Fiduciary Abuse Specialists Team in 1995. This group "saw the problem and realized things could get done if we talked to the right person," he said.

Ultimately, Blum developed two methods for addressing elder abuse prevention and investigation. The methods, now used throughout the United States and most of the Western hemisphere, as well as being taught in major psychiatry programs, Blum said, involve "behavioral ways of assessing someone's mental capacity, and determining and preventing undue influence."

Another watershed event in Blum's life finally led him to the rabbinate when the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles asked him to help in the prosecution of a Hasidic rabbi who had been charged with attempting to molest a woman during a flight from Australia to California.

The rabbi was making a "cultural defense," that is, according to Blum, an assertion that he came from a long line of respected rabbis. Thus, if the prosecutors understood his background, they'd understand the alleged behavior was impossible. "His defense was ridiculous," said Blum, explaining that prosecutors asked him to help create questions in response to the rabbi's defense.

Blum remembered his Talmudic studies from his Academy days and he spent the next couple of months devising questions. "The U.S. government hired me to study Talmud. It really sparked my interest again," he said, an interest that "had been buried all these years."

Blum moved to Tucson in 1998 and after a couple of years of reading on his own, began formal rabbinical studies. 

The student rabbi's experience at SaddleBrooke has reinforced his idea that Judaism "need not be officious, distant or sterile," he said. "Treat congregants like knowledgeable adults rather than give them 'religious pablum' and people respond."