Rabbi Mordechai Abraham: Treating - And Saving - Jewish Drug Users

00:03 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wolak, and this is Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. One day in 1998, Chabad emissary Rabbi Mordechai Abraham was in his car near Johannesburg, South Africa.

00:49 Speaker 2 I got a call while driving from the wife of the CEO of a hedge fund, and she asked me whether I would go visit someone in the hospital who was a CFO of this fund.

01:01 Speaker 1 She knew that something was terribly wrong and that Rabbi Abraham would help. Abraham soon visited the man he refers to now only as Steven, and learned that the chief financial officer was addicted to a synthetic opiate.

01:16 Speaker 2 Pethidine, the prescription drug, but he was getting it illicitly on the streets. So he was injecting that.

01:23 Speaker 1 The caller knew of Rabbi Abraham's reputation for helping people struggling with addiction, because in 1998 he had been doing that for five years. The Lubavitcher Rebbe sent Mordechai Abraham to Johannesburg in 1983 to teach Talmud and Jewish law at Torah Academy.

01:47 Speaker 2 But just about everyone that gets sent on shlichus finds a niche.

01:51 Speaker 1 Rabbi Abraham began to find his niche around 1993, when he was asked by one of his student's fathers to visit someone in a local hospital. He started visiting on a regular basis and began meeting people dealing with addiction, which led to getting involved with helping them.

02:08 Speaker 2 It, it took off 'cause nobody else was doing it.

02:10 Speaker 1 For the next few years, Rabbi Abraham visited hospitals and prisons, ran meetings, and placed people struggling with addiction in public and private rehab facilities all over the country. He often paid for their care out of his own pocket, and owned and ran a halfway house. He says he did this without any institutional help and almost no outside financing. But back to Steven. When Rabbi Abraham met him in 1998, he was in bad shape, but Abraham saw positive qualities in him.

02:48 Speaker 2 He would be every Jewish mother's dream for their daughter. Tall, handsome, smart, humble, well-educated, capable, a dream. And he's humble. He's really humble, and he has a good feel for Yiddishkeit. So we met, I put on tefillin with him, we talked, we connected, and we hit it off right away.

03:08 Speaker 1 Rabbi Abraham says that Steven was from what he describes as a troubled family. Steven's father was an extremely successful South African businessman, but-

03:19 Speaker 2 His father had divorced his mother when she got ill. She had a brain tumor

03:24 Speaker 1 ... to which she succumbed

03:26 Speaker 2 And that upset him, and the father remarried to a non-Jewish woman. That very much upset him, and he was caught illicitly buying drugs, prescription drugs, so he was in jail.

03:37 Speaker 1 When Steven got out of jail, he had no home and almost no possessions.

03:44 Speaker 2 This was a guy who was a CFO for a big company, who drove fancy cars, wore designer suits. He lost his job, and now he had nothing. He had no food, just the clothes he's wearing, and they weren't clean. Okay?

03:59 Speaker 1 Steven's father told him he was no longer welcome in his home.

04:03 Speaker 2 He was on the streets. He had nowhere to go. Then I took him in and I called his father, and his father said, "Don't help him." His father not only had wanted nothing to do with him, he didn't want me to help his son.

04:16 Speaker 1 What did he tell you?

04:18 Speaker 2 Told me, "Don't help him. Leave him."

04:21 Speaker 1 What reason did the father give for not wanting you to treat him?

04:24 Speaker 2 His father didn't tell me, and his father wanted to have nothing to do with him. And I think he was just fed up.

04:33 Speaker 1 This is the point that Rabbi Abraham calls rock bottom for Steven.

04:38 Speaker 2 So rock bottom is when it's worse to use than not to use. You just can't do it anymore, just too terrible. So in my opinion, Steven had hit rock bottom and was ready to come right.

04:50 Speaker 1 Steven was still using, so Rabbi Abraham couldn't place him in his halfway house.

04:56 Speaker 2 And, uh, ultimately I took him into my house with my own family.

04:59 Speaker 1 Most people would decline to accept someone using drugs into their own home, but Rabbi Abraham did so willingly. He says that was a turning point for Steven.

05:10 Speaker 2 He was just so grateful, so humble. He befriended my kids. My kids befriended him. At that time, I probably had something like eight, nine, 10 kids in the house, and became the best friends. They would play games. This is how bright he is. My kids would race him with a calculator. Give him some multiplication to do, and he would race them, and they were astounded. And they just, to this day, they're so fond of him. He just took to the Yiddishkeit 'cause he's in my house. He kept kashrus, he kept Shabbos, he kept everything.

05:45 Speaker 1 Around the same time, Rabbi Abraham brought Steven to a doctor.

05:49 Speaker 2 We got a prescription for what's called methadone in America. It's called biceptine here, and the plan was to wean him off until he was able to manage without any sort of crutch

06:01 Speaker 1 With the proper medical care, support, and love from Rabbi Abraham and family, Steven's treatment ended. He counted his first clean day on Passover in Abraham's home.

06:13 Speaker 2 And he's been counting ever since all his clean days.

06:16 Speaker 1 So Rabbi Abraham was finally able to accept Steven into his halfway house.

06:21 Speaker 2 Subsequent to that, I got him a job with a friend of mine that had a big company, and he did well, and there was no looking back. There was no looking back. There's no going back.

06:33 Speaker 1 These days, Steven is working in London for a big international company.

06:38 Speaker 2 He runs an office where two, about two thousand people work under him, and he just keeps getting promoted and promoted and promoted. And, um, he met a nice South African girl working in the same office, and they got married. And at the wedding, I met his father just before the chuppah, and his father said to me, "Do you remember the last thing we discussed?" I said, "No, remind me." He says, "I told you not to help my son." So I asked him, "Who was right?" He didn't answer me, but it was obvious what the answer is.

07:11 Speaker 1 Rabbi Abraham says he speaks to Steven often.

07:14 Speaker 2 Keeps telling me, says, "Rabbi, I don't know why you took me in. I wouldn't have taken me in."

07:19 Speaker 1 Abraham estimates he's helped hundreds over the last twenty-eight or so years, though he's never kept count. He prefers to focus on the individual, like Brandon.

07:30 Speaker 3 Brandon Z is generally, uh, the name I go by in recovery circles.

07:36 Speaker 1 In the mid-'90s, Brandon was addicted to heroin and out of control.

07:40 Speaker 3 You know, partying, having a good time, and, uh, eventually, you know, addiction just gets progressively worse. And, uh, I wasn't particularly concerned, but my family was. And I think my mom heard about Rabbi Abraham on the radio about the work he does, and she decided, uh, it would be a good idea if I went to see him.

08:05 Speaker 1 Brandon listened to his mom, and they met Rabbi Abraham at the yeshiva.

08:10 Speaker 3 And we met very formally in his office. And I was, uh... I don't know how I remember it. I mean, I was obviously stoned.

08:19 Speaker 1 But Brandon still remembers his first impression of Rabbi Abraham.

08:23 Speaker 3 He was deeply concerned. I could see, uh, the sadness in his eyes looking at me and, and knowing what I was going through, knowing that I was so deep in denial. But I do remember Rabbi Abraham exuding lots of empathy and, and love towards me, which was, yeah, striking. I mean, I... At the time, I saw no reason whatsoever to accept or even listen to any help that he was offering.

09:00 Speaker 1 At the end of the meeting-

09:02 Speaker 3 I thanked him, and I walked out of there, and I thought, "Wow, that really has nothing to do with me. Like, it's, it's, you know, I won't be back."

09:10 Speaker 1 But he did come back, repeatedly. Brandon says that was because he remembers how concerned Abraham was when they first met. Over the course of five years, Brandon entered rehab several times under the guidance of Rabbi Abraham. But Brandon ran away from various treatment centers 12 times. Remember the concept of rock bottom? This was Brandon's version of it, but he says there's a place that's even lower than that.

09:42 Speaker 3 I mean, there's a, there's a joke in, in the recovery circles about hitting rock bottom and then starting to dig further.

09:52 Speaker 1 Brandon, I don't understand. What does it mean to dig further?

09:55 Speaker 3 There was always a solution, and that was to use more drugs. So no matter how painful it, it became, the solution always was more drugs.

10:08 Speaker 1 Brandon doesn't remember all of his many ups and downs, but he does remember this one.

10:14 Speaker 3 So there was a, a critical period of a few weeks where I was in real bad shape, and my mom was desperate, and I was literally hanging on for my life. And there was a conversation happened between my mother and the rabbi, and the rabbi phoned the house. And my mom said, "The rabbi's on the phone. He wants to talk to you." So I answered, and he said to me the amazing words I'll never forget. He said, "Right. Brandon, there is a bed for you at this treatment center, but you need to go now." But I need to promise him that I will not run away. And I could hear my voice saying, "Okay, Rabbi. I promise you, I won't, I won't run away this time." It was as if someone else was speaking. I could hear myself saying the words, and the rabbi said, "Fantastic, Brandon. Get your stuff together. They're waiting for you." And he put down the phone, and I put down the phone, and I was in shock. I said, "What did I just do? Did I just promise Rabbi Abraham that I would check into rehab and not run away? How could I make such a promise?"

11:34 Speaker 1 But Brandon really knew the answer.

11:37 Speaker 3 A promise to Rabbi Abraham I would never break. I checked in. It was excruciating.

11:44 Speaker 1 Brandon stuck with six weeks of very difficult treatment. He almost did get kicked out.

11:50 Speaker 3 But I didn't run away.

11:52 Speaker 1 He says that's because he remembered his promise to Rabbi Abraham. Brandon Z completed a rehab program for the first time and was clean. He entered a halfway house, which he left in 2001.

12:06 Speaker 3 In a few months' time, praise God, I'll be 20 years clean.

12:10 Speaker 1 Brandon says that for the last two decades, Rabbi Abraham has called him about every six weeks.

12:16 Speaker 3 And I answer And he'll say, "Brandon, what's up? What's going on?" And like, I just know how deeply he cares about me, and I mean, that's an amazing thing. He is such a busy man. He's helping so many people all day, and every day, from early morning till like late evening every single day except Shabbos, and he still finds the time to just keep checking in on me.

12:49 Speaker 1 Since Brandon Z kicked his heroin habit, he's seen a picture of himself that was taken on the day he attended his first group rehab meeting with Rabbi Abraham. He says it was hard to look at.

13:01 Speaker 3 And over the years, at least 10 people who were in that meeting with the rabbi have said to me that they didn't think I was going to survive that meeting because I looked so much on the brink of death.

13:17 Speaker 1 Where do you think you'd be right now if you hadn't met Rabbi Abraham?

13:22 Speaker 3 I think I'd be dead.

13:25 Speaker 1 These days, Brandon is living in Israel's Golan Heights.

13:28 Speaker 3 Baruch Hashem, everything is just extraordinary. I'm a woodworker and a wood artist by profession. It's wonderful. Addiction is just ridiculous. It, it's just, it makes no sense. It just is so destructive, and it, and it makes no sense.

13:54 Speaker 1 So those are two of Rabbi Mordechai Abraham's success stories. At this point, you might be asking yourself, as I did, what's in it for the rabbi? Here's his response.

14:04 Speaker 2 I help a lot of people, and I'm, I'm happy just to do the mitzvah.

14:08 Speaker 1 And how do you earn a living doing this, or do you earn a living at it?

14:12 Speaker 2 I don't squeeze a living out. This has already cost me fortunes. I teach private, I give private shiurim, intensive shiurim in Gemara, in Halacha, Jewish law, and people are, are happy to pay me, and I've had very good results. And it allows me to do my community work without having to charge anybody.

14:31 Speaker 1 There's one more question I had for Rabbi Abraham. Is he doing this sort of work simply to get more recovering addicts to do more mitzvahs?

14:40 Speaker 2 The Yiddishkeit is not my agenda. My agenda is to save lives. I don't want people to mistake my agenda. I'm not doing it to make them Frum. I'm doing it to save their lives. And where I feel it'll work and it'll help their recovery, then I gently suggest tefillin, Torah, Shabbos, kashrus, but my agenda is to save their lives. I'm happy if they live.

15:07 Speaker 1 Rabbi Abraham says his approach is based on how Maimonides, or the Rambam, viewed teshuva, a view he says is shared by the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

15:16 Speaker 2 People just are tired on the path they're on and want to change radically. If an addict comes to me and he wants to stay the same person, just stop using, it doesn't work. You have to want to become a different person, like a baal teshuva becomes a different person. And if I may say, it's like, like a gir process, like a conversion process. Difference, and you can see that happening. This is what keeps me going too. I get such naches.

15:45 Speaker 1 Rabbi Mordechai Abraham hopes more young, energetic people will step in to do the work he pioneered in South Africa for nearly three decades. In the meantime, the 66-year-old rabbi tends to his own health and fitness by walking to shul and back to his home, a round trip of nearly eight miles.

16:05 Speaker 2 And on top of everything, I manage to go on my treadmill an hour a day, and, uh, I think I have an ideal life.

16:14 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wollek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast@L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.