Rabbi Schweber and I attended an unusual performance last week at the Sid Jacobson JCC.
The performers are not professional actors but they all have two things in common. They are all recovering addicts. And they all participated in an unusual residential recovery program called Beit T'Shuvah. I say it’s unusual because Beit T'Shuvah, in addition to using psychotherapy, creative arts and 12-steps, also mines Jewish tradition as a source of therapeutic healing. Most recovery programs that have a religious bent are Christian, so this sets Beit T'Shuva apart.
The performance we saw is called Freedom Song. It features a split stage. On one side of the stage, a family is having a passover seder. One of the children, a young adult whose addiction caused pain to her family and was estranged from them for several years, walks in during the middle of the Seder.
On the other side of the stage, a 12-step meeting is taking place and tension emerges between a woman and her husband, whose addiction has caused severe strain on their marriage.
The performance explores the causes and effects of addiction, not just on the addicts themselves, but on their family and friends.
At the end of the performance, Rabbi Mark Borovitz, co-founder of Beit Teshuva, spoke to the audience and answered questions. A recovering addict himself, he said that one thing which addicts have in common with one another is that they have what he calls a “hole in the soul.” Something missing, or wounded, deep in the soul.
Addictive behaviors and substance abuse are complicated, involving emotional, chemical and social components. One key element, Rabbi Borovitz emphasized repeatedly, is the “hole in the soul,” a hole that addicts will try, unsuccessfully, to fill with behaviors and substances that are harmful.
I want to talk this morning about the hole in the soul. It’s a difficult topic. It’s easier to avoid than to face head on, but avoiding it comes at a great cost. Many people sense holes in their souls - not just addicts. In fact, I venture to say that just about everyone feels it at some point. A pain so raw that you don’t quite know what to do with it.
It can come from trauma. Or disappointment. Or abandonment. Or from an inchoate sense that life isn’t going the way you want. Or a variety of other places.
I want to spend a few minutes talking about Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, and I hope you’ll soon understand why. When last we were gathered here, we read about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God. Isaac says a few words while they’re walking to the site of the sacrifice. Abraham picks up the knife to slay his son. The angel stops him. Abraham sacrifices a ram instead. And then, as the Torah describes, Abraham walks back to his servants and they leave together.
The Torah doesn’t mention Isaac.
Next thing we are told, Sarah dies and Abraham finds a place to bury her. What she must have thought following the near sacrifice of her son becomes the subject of much speculation, but the Torah doesn’t say anything about her at this point other than the fact that she died and how many years she lived.
What about Isaac? Next thing we know, Abraham is trying to find a wife for Isaac. He sends his servant to find one and the story of this effort is told in great detail.
But where is Isaac all this time? What’s up with him? The Torah only mentions Abraham’s name in connection with the burial of Sarah, so we don’t know if Isaac attended the burial. And it’s curious that, unlike his father Abraham and his son Jacob, Isaac plays no role in finding his own wife.
Rabbi Shai Held, in his excellent new book, The Heart of Torah, offers an interesting insight into Isaac.
When Abraham’s servant comes back with Rebecca, Isaac finally reappears in the story.
We're told that he came from a place called באר לחי ראי be’er lehai ro’ee. Turns out, it’s not just any random place. This place is important to the family history. Years back, you may recall, Isaac’s mother, Sarah, told Abraham to banish Hagar, the servant, and Ishmael, the son whom Hagar had together with Abraham. Hagar, banished and thirsty, prayed to God and God appeared and offered Hagar comfort. She named the place, be’er lahai ro’ee, the place where God sees.
This is the place where Hagar experiences God seeing her, where she experiences God’s concern.
As Rabbi Held suggests, maybe Isaac went to that place looking to connect with Hagar because they both suffered trauma. Moreover, Isaac may well have wanted to go to a place associated with God’s kindness which, to say the least, is not the side of God he experienced when his father held up the knife.
To use Rabbi Borowitz’s expression, it’s not such a stretch to imagine that Isaac had a hole in his soul.
He needed a place to confront his wounds, to connect with someone else who might be able to relate to him, to find comfort after he had experienced sheer terror.
The hole in the soul is powerful. It cries out to be filled and it can be quite tempting to fill it with the wrong things. We know that people are more likely to act in harmful ways, to themselves and to others, when they feel emptiness of one kind or another.
We have, thankfully, begun to address addiction as a community. Recently, as many here know, a forum on opioid addiction and overdose was held in the Great Neck Library. It was sponsored by Great Neck UPTC (United Parent Teacher Council) Total Community Involvement committee, North Shore Action, and SHAI (Sephardic Heritage Alliance, Inc.) It featured a panel of experts in the fields of mental health and opioid addiction and was moderated by TIGN board member Jackie Harounian.
One of the takeaways from the evening was the importance of recognizing and responding to signs of vulnerability in children and teens - including depression and anxiety - that could make them susceptible to addiction.
I’m heartened that our community is confronting these issues and recognizes that we need to be looking more carefully at the social and emotional well-being of the people around us.
In March, Rabbi Borovitz will be spending Shabbat with our congregation to speak with teens and adults about the social, psychological and spiritual aspects of addiction and the work that Beit T'Shuva does to address addiction through use of Jewish values and teachings.
The hole in the soul doesn’t just pertain to addicts. On Veterans Day, which we just commemorated, we offer our gratitude to those who have made great sacrifices serving our country in our armed forces. Many veterans went on to raise families and establish successful careers but most, if not all, were affected emotionally to one degree or another by their experiences in the military. And a significant portion of veterans, as we know, experienced serious emotional trauma including various manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In addition to expressing gratitude to those who have served, we should be prepared to offer emotional and financial support to those veterans who need it. We can’t neglect them.
There are many reasons why many people feel a hole in the soul, an ache inside that won’t easily go away
There are no easy answers. Since there isn’t just one cause, there isn’t just one cure.
If there’s a takeaway from the story of Isaac, from the stories of all who suffer quietly and painfully, it’s that “business as usual” is generally not helpful. “Find a partner.” “Settle down.” “Get over it.” Generally not helpful when there is a failure to address the pain.
Isaac’s psychic wounds don’t go away. They resurface in different ways as his life unfolds.
The holes in our souls remain deep, unless the people around us invite us to confront our pain and support us as we do so.
So the takeaway is - reach out. Ask your loved ones - partner, child, parent - to talk to you, or to talk to someone else that they’re more comfortable with, if they seem to be hurting. Better to ask and be told “buzz off” than to leave it to chance. Psychic pain doesn’t just disappear. It needs to be confronted.
When we do reach out, when we give our loved ones the encouragement and the resources to confront their pain, then we offer them a human manifestation of God’s loving concern. The place where that occurs becomes be’er lehai ro’ee, the place where God sees. The place where we see and are seen. The place where we don’t have to live quietly and privately with our pain. The place where the hole in our soul is named and can be confronted. The place where our soul, in fact, can begin to become whole.
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on November 11, 2017
The performers are not professional actors but they all have two things in common. They are all recovering addicts. And they all participated in an unusual residential recovery program called Beit T'Shuvah. I say it’s unusual because Beit T'Shuvah, in addition to using psychotherapy, creative arts and 12-steps, also mines Jewish tradition as a source of therapeutic healing. Most recovery programs that have a religious bent are Christian, so this sets Beit T'Shuva apart.
Scene from Freedom Song
The performance we saw is called Freedom Song. It features a split stage. On one side of the stage, a family is having a passover seder. One of the children, a young adult whose addiction caused pain to her family and was estranged from them for several years, walks in during the middle of the Seder.
On the other side of the stage, a 12-step meeting is taking place and tension emerges between a woman and her husband, whose addiction has caused severe strain on their marriage.
The performance explores the causes and effects of addiction, not just on the addicts themselves, but on their family and friends.
At the end of the performance, Rabbi Mark Borovitz, co-founder of Beit Teshuva, spoke to the audience and answered questions. A recovering addict himself, he said that one thing which addicts have in common with one another is that they have what he calls a “hole in the soul.” Something missing, or wounded, deep in the soul.
Addictive behaviors and substance abuse are complicated, involving emotional, chemical and social components. One key element, Rabbi Borovitz emphasized repeatedly, is the “hole in the soul,” a hole that addicts will try, unsuccessfully, to fill with behaviors and substances that are harmful.
I want to talk this morning about the hole in the soul. It’s a difficult topic. It’s easier to avoid than to face head on, but avoiding it comes at a great cost. Many people sense holes in their souls - not just addicts. In fact, I venture to say that just about everyone feels it at some point. A pain so raw that you don’t quite know what to do with it.
It can come from trauma. Or disappointment. Or abandonment. Or from an inchoate sense that life isn’t going the way you want. Or a variety of other places.
I want to spend a few minutes talking about Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, and I hope you’ll soon understand why. When last we were gathered here, we read about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God. Isaac says a few words while they’re walking to the site of the sacrifice. Abraham picks up the knife to slay his son. The angel stops him. Abraham sacrifices a ram instead. And then, as the Torah describes, Abraham walks back to his servants and they leave together.
The Torah doesn’t mention Isaac.
Next thing we are told, Sarah dies and Abraham finds a place to bury her. What she must have thought following the near sacrifice of her son becomes the subject of much speculation, but the Torah doesn’t say anything about her at this point other than the fact that she died and how many years she lived.
What about Isaac? Next thing we know, Abraham is trying to find a wife for Isaac. He sends his servant to find one and the story of this effort is told in great detail.
But where is Isaac all this time? What’s up with him? The Torah only mentions Abraham’s name in connection with the burial of Sarah, so we don’t know if Isaac attended the burial. And it’s curious that, unlike his father Abraham and his son Jacob, Isaac plays no role in finding his own wife.
Rabbi Shai Held, in his excellent new book, The Heart of Torah, offers an interesting insight into Isaac.
When Abraham’s servant comes back with Rebecca, Isaac finally reappears in the story.
We're told that he came from a place called באר לחי ראי be’er lehai ro’ee. Turns out, it’s not just any random place. This place is important to the family history. Years back, you may recall, Isaac’s mother, Sarah, told Abraham to banish Hagar, the servant, and Ishmael, the son whom Hagar had together with Abraham. Hagar, banished and thirsty, prayed to God and God appeared and offered Hagar comfort. She named the place, be’er lahai ro’ee, the place where God sees.
This is the place where Hagar experiences God seeing her, where she experiences God’s concern.
As Rabbi Held suggests, maybe Isaac went to that place looking to connect with Hagar because they both suffered trauma. Moreover, Isaac may well have wanted to go to a place associated with God’s kindness which, to say the least, is not the side of God he experienced when his father held up the knife.
To use Rabbi Borowitz’s expression, it’s not such a stretch to imagine that Isaac had a hole in his soul.
He needed a place to confront his wounds, to connect with someone else who might be able to relate to him, to find comfort after he had experienced sheer terror.
The hole in the soul is powerful. It cries out to be filled and it can be quite tempting to fill it with the wrong things. We know that people are more likely to act in harmful ways, to themselves and to others, when they feel emptiness of one kind or another.
We have, thankfully, begun to address addiction as a community. Recently, as many here know, a forum on opioid addiction and overdose was held in the Great Neck Library. It was sponsored by Great Neck UPTC (United Parent Teacher Council) Total Community Involvement committee, North Shore Action, and SHAI (Sephardic Heritage Alliance, Inc.) It featured a panel of experts in the fields of mental health and opioid addiction and was moderated by TIGN board member Jackie Harounian.
One of the takeaways from the evening was the importance of recognizing and responding to signs of vulnerability in children and teens - including depression and anxiety - that could make them susceptible to addiction.
I’m heartened that our community is confronting these issues and recognizes that we need to be looking more carefully at the social and emotional well-being of the people around us.
In March, Rabbi Borovitz will be spending Shabbat with our congregation to speak with teens and adults about the social, psychological and spiritual aspects of addiction and the work that Beit T'Shuva does to address addiction through use of Jewish values and teachings.
The hole in the soul doesn’t just pertain to addicts. On Veterans Day, which we just commemorated, we offer our gratitude to those who have made great sacrifices serving our country in our armed forces. Many veterans went on to raise families and establish successful careers but most, if not all, were affected emotionally to one degree or another by their experiences in the military. And a significant portion of veterans, as we know, experienced serious emotional trauma including various manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In addition to expressing gratitude to those who have served, we should be prepared to offer emotional and financial support to those veterans who need it. We can’t neglect them.
There are many reasons why many people feel a hole in the soul, an ache inside that won’t easily go away
There are no easy answers. Since there isn’t just one cause, there isn’t just one cure.
If there’s a takeaway from the story of Isaac, from the stories of all who suffer quietly and painfully, it’s that “business as usual” is generally not helpful. “Find a partner.” “Settle down.” “Get over it.” Generally not helpful when there is a failure to address the pain.
Isaac’s psychic wounds don’t go away. They resurface in different ways as his life unfolds.
The holes in our souls remain deep, unless the people around us invite us to confront our pain and support us as we do so.
So the takeaway is - reach out. Ask your loved ones - partner, child, parent - to talk to you, or to talk to someone else that they’re more comfortable with, if they seem to be hurting. Better to ask and be told “buzz off” than to leave it to chance. Psychic pain doesn’t just disappear. It needs to be confronted.
When we do reach out, when we give our loved ones the encouragement and the resources to confront their pain, then we offer them a human manifestation of God’s loving concern. The place where that occurs becomes be’er lehai ro’ee, the place where God sees. The place where we see and are seen. The place where we don’t have to live quietly and privately with our pain. The place where the hole in our soul is named and can be confronted. The place where our soul, in fact, can begin to become whole.
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on November 11, 2017
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