But it’s hard to generalize about the progress across the Jewish community, or even denominations.

She described the positive shift change she’s seen in the Jewish community’s approach to suicide and mental health just two months ago, she worked with an Orthodox family whose son died by suicide they sat shiva and the community was very supportive, she said. I think that’s what people need to understand you just don’t know what people are going through.” He doesn’t fit the mold of someone who is going through depression and suicidal ideation. “I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions, people think, oh, he’s going to Harvard Law School and people love him. “You would never ever know he was going through such a tough time, and I think that’s what’s so heartbreaking,” said Miriam Arment, founder of No Shame on U, a Jewish nonprofit which advocates for normalizing discussion of mental illness. This is why the congressman’s open and loving declaration of his son’s struggles was so moving for many in the Jewish community, as was his unambiguous description of Tommy’s depression as an illness, a “relentless torture of the brain,” instead of something shameful. Thankfully, there are also rulings decreeing that suicide “by compulsion,” which includes mental illnesses, should be mourned fully today, that category includes the vast majority of deaths by suicide. Suicide was seen as knowingly taking a life, which removes God’s power to decree life and death, and a violation against the exhortation to preserve life, pikuach nefesh. Historically, Judaism took a hard-line stance against suicide, forbidding mourners from sitting shiva and sectioning the graves off from the rest of the graveyard. This outpouring of support is a sign of how far the discourse around mental health and suicide has come in Jewish circles. “May his memory be a blessing,” resounded around Twitter as the eulogy was shared widely.

The heartbreaking tribute by Raskin and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, hit a nerve. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, wrote in a statement published on Medium that his son “hated cliques and social snobbery, never had a negative word for anyone but tyrants and despots, and opposed all malicious gossip, stopping all such gossipers with a trademark Tommy line - ‘forgive me, but it’s hard to be a human.’” On New Year’s Eve, it became too hard Tommy Raskin died by suicide.

Tommy Raskin was, by all accounts, a deeply empathetic individual, whether fighting on behalf of humans or animals.

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