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Recovery in the News
Recovering Jewish Addicts/Alcoholics, 12 Steps and Rosh Hashana
Phil Jacobs
The Baltimore Jewish Times
September 3, 2010
It’s a Friday evening at the Jewish Recovery Houses’ House of Hope. Shabbat candles are kindled. Kiddush, the prayer over wine — in this case, grape juice — is said.
Rabbi Aryeh Goetz and his wife, Bracha, are there to lead residents of the house and guests from the women’s Tova House in a festive Shabbat meal.
Following dinner, a 12-step meeting is held.
Outside, men in black hats and dark suits walk swiftly by, holding the hands of children or pushing strollers on their way to services. Yet, in this living room well inside the Jewish “neighborhood,” recovery finds a home in the space of spirituality. Jewish men and women support one another, hear one another.
Next Wednesday night begins the 10 days we call the Days of Awe.
It is the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the time when spiritually the Book of Life is open. During the days leading into Yom Kippur, which begins Shabbat night Sept. 17, we wish for one another that our names are inscribed and then sealed into the Book of Life.
In our Jewish lives, there are some who look with scorn at those they call “twice-a-year Jews,” those who attend synagogue services only during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Then there are those who attend services throughout the year most or many days if not all days.
There is a group of Jews who don’t count on one particular service or two particular days to suddenly become introspective and spiritual. They carry with them the idea of a higher power on a daily basis, an hourly basis, a moment-by-moment basis.
Their teshuva, repentance, is called recovery.
If they don’t work their recovery constantly, recognizing a higher power and taking inventory of themselves, then the chances of being sealed in the Book of Life decrease substantially. For addicts in recovery, life and death are not just concepts; they are realities.
On Rosh Hashanah, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, people with gambling problems and other issues will step forward and face God.
They might be more familiar with their Higher Power than many of us who live clean lives and know the davening by rote.
Jen
When the shofar sounds this year, Jen will hear it differently. Rosh Hashanah marks her third year clean from cocaine. She came to Tova House from New Jersey.
“I can remember my first years in recovery during the Jewish holidays,” she said on a warm Sunday afternoon. “I remember feeling that I wasn’t alone, that there were other Jewish people here with me.”
In her mid-30s with a full-time job and, now, her own apartment, Jen said that coming to Tova House helped her recovery and cleared her mind.
“I would dread to go to services,” she said of her past. “Now I was listening to the sermons from the rabbis differently. It made me reflect on what I had done with my life, and what I had put my family through.”
Tova House, she said, was a fortunate experience in her life, because it kept her life, her addiction, from getting worse. It had been heading that way.
Jen started drinking in high school, she said, and then smoking weed in college, which led to cocaine. She was in danger of losing contact, she said, with her family. Indeed, her brother threatened to cut off her relationship from her nieces and nephews. There was the reality of becoming homeless.
“I wonder every day still why I don’t use, even though I’m three years clean,” she said. “That’s how difficult all of this is.”
God? A higher power?
“I’m still working on that,” she said. Then she says with a recognizable sense of irony, “By the Grace of God, I am clean. I don’t pray as much as everyone says I should. I think God is looking out for me. Rosh Hashanah is a big day for me.”
Michael
He attended the Talmudical Academy. He got high with TA classmates and girls from Bais Yaakov.
Michael is spending his last days after almost a year-and-a-half at the House of Hope. He’s clean and sober for 16 months, has a job and now has an apartment.
“Teshuva and recovery are two sides of the same coin,” he said. “Recovery is working to return to one’s self.”
He talks about Yom Kippur and when we hit our chests and say “al chait, for the sin of.”
“It means we are missing the mark, that we’re not on target with who we are. When I stand before God, there’s no greater teshuva than me being who I am with no excuses. I hadn’t been me for 20 years since I’d been doing drugs,” he said.
“There’s guilt and there’s shame,” he continued. “Guilt is when you feel something about what you have done. Shame is a terrible thing. It’s feeling bad about yourself.”
He calls the House of Hope a “wonderful place. There would be no chance that I’d be clean and sober if it wasn’t for this place.”
Michael entered the cycle of addiction at age 16. He started drinking at yeshiva with “guys in the beis midrash [study hall]. That led to harder alcohol and eventually crack cocaine.
“I was able to get sober,” he said. “I was able to learn better who I am. The House of Hope and the people I’ve met here have helped with that. I’m proud of who I am.”
Working the 12 steps, Michael says that a person in recovery in a sense lives through the definitions of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah every day. He said that if the prayers in the machzor or siddur don’t work for a person, it’s still important to create a “dialogue with God.”
“God wants us as Jews to have that conversation with him,” he said. “I take everything and I give it to God. We talk about that conscious contact.
But it’s not like it used to be, you know, when Tevya would talk to God.” But, he said, it should be that way.
On the upcoming holidays, he said he doesn’t plan to “beat myself up. I look at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as days to be happy.” And, Michael said, “to look forward.”
The Rabbi
Aryeh Goetz is the spiritual leader for the Jewish Recovery Houses, a position he does on a volunteer basis.
Last year in preparation for Rosh Hashanah, he taught the following four-step process to Jewish Recovery House residents.
He taught them to “Stop” the mistaken behavior. “Regret” and feel the pain of the mistake. “Verbalize” and express the mistake to the person who was impacted or hurt, then to God; if there was no person impacted, then just to God. Finally, “Plan” to have a strategy in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Rabbi Goetz lives so close to the Tova House that he and his wife, Bracha, have made sure that Shabbos meals are available as much as possible.
“I felt as if I could be of some service to help people in a Jewish context,” he said. “I started a Jewish spirituality group at the house. We talk about God and we talk about Torah.”
Rabbi Goetz said that the residents come with a wide range of Jewish backgrounds. Some have come from full backgrounds, including day school educations. Many have a minimal Jewish background.
“People who come to the Jewish Recovery Houses want to learn about Jewish perspectives of recovery,” said Rabbi Goetz. “The Torah has a lot of tools for recovery. Every Jew, whether they are religious or not, needs a relationship with HaShem. Many of the residents haven’t had it, but their lives depend on it. Each person needs to work on their relationship with a higher power to become a complete person.
“At Rosh Hashanah, the shofar is a wake-up call,” said Rabbi Goetz. “Teshuva is returning to a relationship with God. We talk about spiritual space a lot. We can practice listening to our soul’s needs and how that works with the needs and desires of our body.”
Like Michael, Rabbi Goetz talked about how residents learn the difference between religion and spirituality.
“We open up to each other as people,” he said. “We commit to God, community, kindness and discipline. We have people living together, and we ask the question, ‘How are we going to help each other recover?’ ”
The meetings they have include discussions of relationships with God or the Higher Power, relationships with family and friends, and with one’s self.
Rabbi Goetz even teaches breathing exercises.
“God breathed life into man,” he said.
“Look, Rosh Hashanah fits right in,” he said. “We are trying to merge an understanding of recovery with what the Torah teaches the Jewish people. Some of the residents say ‘I never had a bar mitzvah.’ But this is being Jewish from the inside out, from the mind and the heart. You can’t recover unless you connect with your neshamah. That lack of connection is where the void is in an addict’s life.
“But like a shofar blow, I think that our residents are committed to recovery,” Rabbi Goetz said. “They are an example to the community. They’ve made a commitment not to escape.”
Brett Goldenberg
He’s the program director of these houses.
Brett Goldenberg sees the High Holidays as a higher spiritual level for the residents to reach.
“If you are working on your recovery, that has a significance of its own,” said Mr. Goldenberg, whose eyes are focused with an intensity suggesting he wishes he could almost will his residents to recovery success. But he’s walked the walk, so he knows how difficult even the talk can be.
“The High Holidays help me focus even more and help me set more goals,” he said. “For a Jewish person in recovery, it’s about an even higher level.”
In the houses, he said, the residents learn skills to be part of society.
“The holiday brings acceptance to the residents of who they are,” he said. “The High Holidays add another source: the need to change. The High Holidays encompass everything. It’s what the 12 steps are all about.
“I think a person in recovery has deeper demons to look at then a normal person,” he said. “I think it is a little more painful, this time of year. It could mean somehow that I’m not alone; there’s a purpose here for me. I might have a chance now to do something good.”
Mr. Goldenberg was himself a House of Hope resident.
“I realized I didn’t know how to live,” he said, “that I couldn’t do things my way anymore.”
He’s 30 years old and five years clean. He’s a husband and dad to two small children.
“The most important thing is that we’re aligning our will with God’s will,” he said of recovery. “And that will includes goodness and righteousness.”
Martha Meehan, executive director
“It’s not difficult,” she said. “God has a plan for everyone. There is always hope. We give people a path and a chance to live. There can be a lot of pain along the way, but there are also a lot of miracles. We do an inventory at the end of each day. And if you look hard enough, you can find those miracles.”
Bob Manekin, board chair
If anyone can give over a feeling of accomplishment over the Jewish Recovery House, it’s Bob Manekin, who loves these houses and what they do.
He totally gets the role the houses play in the spiritual development of its residents’ recovery.
“The High Holidays are a time for contemplation and self-reflection and a process where someone gets written in the Book of Life for another year. Successful recovery is that on a day-to-day basis. Everyone in the recovery community will tell you that it’s one day at a time.”
Mr. Manekin says that while it’s good to reflect and pause on the human condition during the High Holidays, the feelings one gets are probably as close as some people will ever get to understanding recovery.
Mr. Manekin called his chairmanship an act of serendipity. He was asked to head a task force for the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, on addiction and recovery. When that task force recommended the importance of a separate and independent agency, he was asked to head up the agency.
“From a personal perspective, there are members in my extended family who are in and not in recovery,” he said. “From a family perspective, I’ve had to deal with success and failure with addiction and recovery.
“The senior population,” he added, “has the greatest increase in addiction. People are living alone and are looking to cope with certain situations. Some people are prescribed pills that they become addicted to.
“This is about one of every five parents in the Jewish community. This is about picking up their children at 2 a.m. in a lockup.
“What Jewish Recovery Houses has done has expanded group counseling, offering houses that are staffed. We have people like Rabbi Goetz who provide spiritual direction. We offer job counseling, we help with transportation issues.
“When the first of your 12 steps starts with surrender,” he added, “with the recognition that you were powerless and you surrender to a power greater than yourselves, I don’t know of anything more consistent or powerful with teshuva. When you admit that you are powerless, and you make that decision to give the power to God, that’s an incredible parallel to teshuva. The fourth step is the Days of Awe in a nutshell, to make an inventory of ourselves.”
Mr. Manekin said that Rabbi Goetz teaches the residents that the 12 steps are like Yom Kippur each and every day. What is important is that the 12 steps work for people in recovery on a daily basis, not an annual basis.
The men’s House of Hope has 16 residents and a waiting list. The Tova House has seven residents and also a waiting list. The women will soon be moving to a new facility so that more residents can find a home there. The current women’s house will be turned into a transitional or 3/4 house for men.
“Addiction is still in a place of incredible denial in the Jewish community. I feel there is enormous guilt and shame associated with this issue. The more I get involved with all aspects of our Jewish community from Orthodox to unaffiliated, it cuts across the board, the problem and the denial. In Baltimore’s Jewish community, one in 10 have an addiction. There is a ripple effect to the people who have to deal with it, meaning 25 percent of our community is affected.
“These are landsmen with a disease. If I have a message for the Jewish community, please understand that when you talk about people who are alcoholics or drug addicts in our community, you are talking about someone’s brother, sister, father or mother, or cousin. This is about a teacher who is hooked on painkillers. These are kids adjusting with life and dealing with it through escaping. These are parents who, because of economic pressures, found escape in alcohol. These are people we see every day in our lives.
“This is our family. And when your family is sick you get them help.”
Dr. Mort and Toby Mower
This dynamic couple founded Tova House. They didn’t just see a need, they worked to take care of that urgency.
“I think for a person new in recovery to approach these holidays is very difficult,” said Mrs. Mower. “It is hard because many of them have given up on God and could be very angry and blame Hashem for their addiction. As time goes on, they begin to find a God of their understanding, not necesessarily a religious God but a spiritual God.”
Dr. Mower said that the houses are “therapeutic communities, where the group dynamic fosters a sense of personal responsibility to other clients and from them to the individual.
“Anything that increases the effectiveness of the therapeutic community increases the chances of a good outcome,” he added. “In our case, the clientele is homogeneous, they are all Jews. They share a nascent `tribal memory’ fostering empathy and acceptance. We don’t think a house necessarily needs to be Jewish to effective. There’s a feeling of safety in being with ‘your own.’ Who can best be empathetic with another Jew?
About Jewish Recovery Houses
The House of Hope and the Tova House are non-profit recovery houses for Jewish men and women who are in the early stages of recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. “We provide a structured environment where residents can grow in their recovery, while re-establishing a normal life in our community.”
The House of Hope was founded as a home for recovering men in 1996 by Jon and Ina Singer. The Tova House was established in 2002 by Dr. Morton and Toby Mower as a home for recovering Jewish women.
Both houses admit residents over age 18. More information can be found at Jewishrecoveryhouses.org, and Jewish Recovery Houses can be found on Facebook as well.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of characters.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
— The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous