JACS Library - Our Stories

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

JACS LIBRARY - OUR STORIES

What Goes Around Comes Around

A JACS member who wishes to remain anonymous was deeply moved by the response of JACS members and rabbis at the November retreat, when it was announced that Prime Minister Rabin, z"l, had been assassinated.

After she returned home, the anonymous member took counsel with a spiritual advisor, then wrote the following letter, addressed to the rabbis of the Chabad Center and the Conservative and Reform synagogues in her town:

"Dear Rabbis,
On the day of Itzhak Rabin's death, Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, Reform Jews, and unaffiliated Jews fell into each others' arms and wept. We wept the tears of our mother Rachel for her broken and divided children.
Then our rabbis, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform, stood before us. The rabbis told us that no matter what politics and passions may divide us, we are one people with one G-d. They reminded us that we have fallen before, but G-d has sustained us, again and again. An Orthodox rabbi and a Reform rabbi embraced.
People wept, this time with gratitude that if we must suffer, we need not suffer alone.
This is no fantasy. Everything I have just described, I saw, when the news of Prime Minister Rabin's assassination was announced last weekend at the JACS retreat, a gathering of alcoholics, addicts, family members, and rabbis from every denomination of American Jewry.
We first heard the news at the end of the third meal of Shabbat, where a big crowd was gathered. People instinctively turned to one another in their grief. At Havdalah, the rabbis spoke.
Only later did I realize that this dining room in the Pocono's was probably the only place on earth where the need for G-d and for other Jews transcended every boundary that divides us.
Is such transcendence possible only among Jews who have suffered the personal devastation of alcoholism and addiction? Or is the suffering of our people when Jew murders Jew enough to move us to reach out for G-d and for each other?
I would like to see in my town the miracle I saw at JACS. There are three synagogues in _______, representing three articulations of Jewish spirituality. Will you come forward as our rabbis and teach us that even in our differences, we are one?
At the end of the thirty days of mourning for Itzhak Rabin, there could be a gathering of our congregations, where you could appear together and teach us. I suggest that the theme of the gathering be the Shema, the announcement to G-d's people that G-d is one, the final affirmation of a Jew as she or he approaches death.
Please consider this invitation."

On the evening of December 6, 350 people attended the shloshim observance. Four rabbis taught from the Mishnah on Cain and Abel (Sanhedrin 4,5). It was the first time that all three congregations had joined together. Only the rabbis and the JACS member knew that the spark for this extraordinary event came from the light of recovery at the November JACS retreat.

After this event, one Rabbi said to me:

"We have been taught that the Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred between Jews (sinat chinam) and the damage can only be repaired by the opposite, unconditional love (ahavat chinam."