JACS Library - Literature

JACS: Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons, and Significant Others

JACS LIBRARY - LITERATURE

JACS: A Jewish Response to Alcoholism

by Samuel Rothberg

[Samuel Rothberg was Assistant. Rabbi at Temple Beth El, Hollywood, Fl.]

About two years ago, a man came into the temple asking to see a rabbi. He introduced himself as Alan S. and he told me that he was 47 years old, though he appeared older. He explained that he wished to make a confession and ask for forgiveness. I told him that as Jews we normally confess only before God and not before another human being, and usually on Yom Kippur. He explained that he was aware of this but still felt it necessary to tell me about himself. With that he began his litany.

He had been a successful businessman, married with three children, but, because of his alcoholism, his business had failed and his children had lost all respect for him. He recounted every nuance and detail of his degradation, including the forcing of his wife into prostitution. Alan explained how he lied, cheated, and compromised everything and everyone around him.

When I asked him about his health and if he was still drinking, Alan told me that he was well and had been sober for three years, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. In response to another question, he explained that he was not living with his wife -- although he had contact with her on a regular basis. After I asked him a few more questions, I told him that he was forgiven. With that he stood up and shook my hand, thanked me for my time, and left the study. I never saw him again.

At that time, I had no idea why he had come to the temple and asked me for forgiveness. Then, last December, a young man named Ted stopped into my study. Also a recovered alcoholic, he had just received permission to use one of our classrooms once a month for a special group of alcoholics called J.A.C.S. -- Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons, and Significant Others Foundation, Inc. As Rabbi Malcolm Stern writes, "J.A.C.S. is no substitute for AA and the other agencies. It came into being to offer a Jewish component to treatment: to provide recovering Jewish addicts opportunities to gather under Jewish auspices, to offer insights from Jewish tradition, and to provide intellectual and spiritual support."

Until recently, Jews and non-Jews alike believed there were virtually no Jewish alcoholics or substance abusers, despite such notable cases as poet, Naphtali Herz Imber, author of "Hatikvah" who died of chronic alcoholism in 1909. The Jewish actress Lillian Roth achieved Broadway and Hollywood fame before the age of 20, and then endured sixteen years of alcoholic degradation before overcoming her illness, as chronicled in the 1954 film, "I'll Cry Tomorrow."

But why the need for our congregations to house J.A.C.S. and AA groups? Although the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous is non-denominational, many Jews feel uncomfortable going into a church for meetings.

"J.A.C.S. supplements and complements existing self-help programs and attempts to help addicted Jews, their families, and the community to integrate Jewish traditions and heritage into the recovery process." (JACS mission statement)

Of the hundreds of AA and Narcotics Anonymous groups meeting each and every day of the week in South Florida, only three of them occur in a synagogue or temple. Because of its non-participation, the Jewish community has abrogated its responsibility of the Jewish substance abuser. Just as the individual alcoholic denies his or her disease, so too do Jews, on a communal level, deny substance abuse.

Although AA does not endorse any particular religion, its program has a spiritual dimension that makes a church or synagogue an appropriate meeting place.

The first step is for alcoholics to admit that they have no power over alcohol and that they can no longer manage their lives. The second step begins a spiritual journey of recognition, in the words of the program, "that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." The third step -- that of "making a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood him," brings the recovering alcoholic face to face with his human limitations. "His defense must come from a higher power."

The steps of AA also mirror the repentance ritual of Yom Kippur. The fourth step, "making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves," is the act of - chesbon hanefesh - taking an accounting of the soul. This is the first step of repentance - the step that all of us, the non-alcoholic included, take with trepidation. "Admitting to God, to the self, and to others the exact nature of our wrongs" is the fifth step. This act of v'dui, confession, so prominent in the High Holy Day ritual, is one of the most difficult steps for an individual, alcoholic or not, to take. This was the step Alan S. took when he came to me in 1984.

The ninth step of the AA program is found in the Schulchan Aruch, which states that all the atonement in the world is ineffective if a person has harmed another, unless forgiveness by the victim of one's wrongdoing has been sought. All these steps, so confluent with the Jewish ritual of repentance, awaken within the individual a spiritual need that, for Jewish substance abusers, can be filled by J.A.C.S.

Part of the denial mechanism of the alcoholic is that alcoholics are only those people who inhabit skid row. Although a portion of alcoholics are on skid row, the vast majority are not. According to Rabbi Isaac Trainin of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, alcoholism affects Jews of every economic status and every level of observance. A New York survey indicated that 50% of Jewish alcoholics studied had an annual income of at least $50,000 per year.

Substance abuse can affect anyone, regardless of religion, age, or socio-economic background. The Jewish community, in general, and the synagogue, in particular, can enrich itself by opening its doors to the recovering substance abuser.

From Reform Judaism, a publication of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), Fall 1987 issue, Page 22