Editor's Notebook

Community Views

Using The Spirit
To Shelve The Spirits

Anniversaries
In The City Of Peace

RABBI LANE STEINGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR

Ten years ago I niece's house. He wore a long
was sitting in the black coat and had a thinning
front seat of my gray beard. He sang z'miros
friend's Subaru. (Shabbat songs) so beautifully.
We both had 2- He overheard a conversation I
year-old children at was having with someone about
the time. He had baseball. It's then I learned of his
driven nine hours work with drug addicts and their
to visit. We were addictions.
going to a bakery,
You've read, enough times to
to get the kids out of the house for make you numb, about pro ath-
a while.
letes disappearing for a while for
Before we got very far, the two drug or alcohol rehab. Chances
little children were out — asleep. are, they've been to Rabbi Twer-
It was in the middle of the after- ski. It's difficult to imagine a
noon.
million- dollar athlete with a mil-
I remember saying something lion- dollar attitude meeting with
typical like, "They should only this humble scholar. But Rabbi
sleep this soundly at night."
Twerski, who has authored many
Traffic was light. It was a gray important books combining
November day, the kind where Torah, self-image and a positive
the pre-winter chill shows up un- outlook on life, knows that ad-
invited. "Do you mind if I smoke diction is about so much more
a joint?"
than just working toward absti-
Yeah, that's what he, my nence.
friend, said. A Jewish guy,
successful, six-figure income,
someone I knew since college.
Before I picked myself up off
the figurative floor to reply,
he spoke again.
"I drove here stoned," he
quickly added. "It helps me
relax."
He reached over, popped
open the glove compartment
and pulled out an aspirin bot-
tle and showed me. There
were rolled joints in the bot-
tle. I looked behind us at the
two sleeping children.
"Yeah, I mind," I heard
myself say. "You drove here
stoned?" Nobody had said
anything like that to me in a
long time.
That was 10 years ago, Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski
and rm still wondering about
it when I think about what he
Rabbi Twerski spoke Monday
said. I'm no Pollyanna. I lived on night at the Maple-Drake JCC on
a floor in a university dorm where behalf of the Daniel Sobel Friend-
there was enough secondary pot ship Circle and Rabbi Levi Shem
smoke in the hallways to burn a Tov, a man who places volunteers
hole in your brain.
with families who need respite
The feeling in the car got kind help of some sort.
Rabbi Shem Tov is a story that
of tense. T mean, what do you talk
about after an announcement like needs to be told one day. He goes
that? I asked my friend if he ever places and visits people others
tried anything harder than mar- would soon forget. He's a famil-
ijuana. He told me that he first iar face in Michigan prisons, vis-
started using cocaine with a iting Jewish inmates. He works
woman he met on a train. He said in drug and alcohol rehab with
he was "almost addicted."
addicts. He's rescued more than
I told my friend that it took a his share of Jewish abusers, and
lot to shock me, but driving nine brought them home using the
hours stoned with a wife and tod- lessons of patience and love
dler in the car was right up there. taught by Rabbi Twerski.
It was OK, he said, because his
Rabbi Twerski, the director of
wife was high also. They shared the Gateway Center in Pitts-
the driving, by the way.
burgh, an internationally known
I did not approve of his habits. treatment center, talked of giv-
I told him that if he didn't care ing people a purpose, a sense of
about what he did to himself, he self-worth. With positive self-im-
should take a look in the back ages, he said, there would be less
seat of his car. He was silent.
need to turn to drugs.
After I met a man named Rab-
The rabbi attracted an inter-
bi Abraham J. Twerski, I decid- esting cross-section in his JCC au-
ed not to share in that silence. He dience. There were the most
was having Shabbat lunch at his observant to the most secular. He

is so well-thought of that his mes-
sage transcends any denomina-
tional or, for that matter, religious
differences.
He probably doesn't remember
it, but Rabbi Twerski was very
helpful to me in two instances.
First, it was in the mid-1980s
when journalists, attempting to
write stories in the Jewish press
about taboo subjects such as drug
and alcohol abuse, were discour-
aged from doing so by lay and re-
ligious leaders. It wasn't right,
we were told, to expose our "dirty
laundry," to show our "weak-
nesses to the 'goyim.' "
I called Rabbi Twerski and told
him about the story on drug ad-
diction in the Jewish communi-
ty that I wanted to do. I told him
of the doors being shut in my
face. Rabbi Twerski not only gave
me an interview, he talked to me
about Jews and drugs.
He told me a story of a re-
ligious Jew who would get
on a bus and go to a differ-
ent neighborhood several
times a week to drink him-
self into a stupor. He want-
ed Jewish drug abuse on the
record. He wanted the truth
to be told.
Yes, abuse in the Jewish
community is real and
needs to be reported, he
said. He was encouraging
and more than helpful.
I called Rabbi Twerski
another time to tell him
about the experience in the
Subaru. While I don't think
it changed much, he told me
that I did the right thing by
keeping the joint from being
lit in the car, and he taught
me how, by using the love I
had for my friend, to address the
issue with my friend in a con-
structive way.
Rabbi Twerski would tell all of
us not to hide the truth about
Jews who abuse drugs. But he
would also say that building an
individual environment within
our own homes where self-worth
and love is promoted is a key to
stemming an addiction.
What's important, he said, is
to recognize that addiction hap-
pens. Just because we're Jewish,
just because we might be of a cer-
tain socio-economic status, we're
not necessarily exempt from
needing help.
Yet, within the Jewish com-
munity, help is certainly there.
Whether we choose to believe it
or not, there are closet addicts
among us. The face of the addict
isn't necessarily cloaked in dark-
ness or crime. It sometimes
wears a kippah, it sometimes is
behind the wheel of a carpool, it
sometimes hides behind the title
of Dr.
And sometimes, it's your
friend.

❑

A couple of Sab-
baths ago, I cele-
brated not only
Shabbat but also
my 50th birthday
in Jerusalem.
I was among
friends and col-
leagues as a par-
ticipant in a
United Jewish Appeal Rabbinic
Cabinet Mission. The downside
of the occasion is that I was
away from my family. Nonethe-
less, I was once more in
Yerushalayim.
I fell in love with Jerusalem
on my first visit when I was
decades younger. Much has
changed there since then. The
somewhat quaint Middle East-
ern city has given way to a
bustling, cosmopolitan metrop-
olis with major-league traffic,
American-style shopping malls
and Western prices. Yet the
uniqueness and the spiritual
splendor still endure.

made the Jebusite town (which
already had been in existence
for at least 2 1/2 millennia) his
royal residence and adminis-
trative center. Thus the point of
the current commemoration and
celebration shouldn't be lost on
anyone: Jerusalem was, is, and
ever will be the capital of Israel.
It is that — and much, much
more. Because David brought
the Ark of the Covenant to
Yerushalayim, because his son
and successor Solomon con-
structed the Sacred Sanctuary
there, and because the returnees
from the Babylonian Exile re-
built the Beit Ha-Mikdash
there, Jerusalem came to be
called it Ha-Kodesh, the Holy
City.
The Hebrew prophets looked
to Jerusalem as the scene and
the site for future redemption.
Our tradition also teaches us
that the name "Yerushalayim"
itself means "ir Shalom, the City
of Peace."

I love Yerushalayim, and I
love to be there. It is a delight
for me in almost any weather to
meander the streets of the new-
er parts of the city or to wend my
way through the Old City. The
sights, the sounds and even the
smells of Jerusalem have cer-
tain universal qualities, but can-
not be duplicated anywhere else
on earth.
By most accounts, a 50th
birthday is a milestone; but
mine occurred in this most ex-
traordinary city during the ob-
servance of its 3,000th
anniversary as the capital of the
Land and the People Israel.
Circa 1000 BCE, King David

One has to believe that if ul-
tra-observant and secular Jews,
if Jews, Christians, and Mus-
lims, if Israelis and Palestini-
ans — all of whom reside in
Jerusalem today — can learn
to live together and to coexist
in Yerushalayim, then there is
great hope for Shalom — not
only in the City of Peace, but for
the entire region and for all the
world.
It is said that one's 50th
birthday is a landmark. How
much the more is this so for a
3,000th anniversary! May
Jerusalem's very special birth-
day be a turning point in the
quest for peace for the Jewish
state, for the Jewish people and
for all humankind. ❑

Lane Steinger is senior rabbi of
Temple Emanu-El.

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