Charles W. Brice: Twerski

We staff therapists at Gateway rehab center
gathered at one long table to have our lunch
and commune. Deep into conversations
about newborns on the way, houses for sale,
the long commute from Pittsburgh, or even
the political scene, no matter what we were
discussing, Abe Twerski, rabbi, psychiatrist,
and our medical director, would sit down,
yarmulke hair-pinned to his scalp, head and
payot bobbing, unwrap his kosher lunch from
its brown bag, slap the table and loudly
announce that he’d cured someone that day.
He looked like a fading postage stamp or the
portrait of a Hasidic ghost. It was like the last
supper. We’d stop talking and nod toward Abe
hoping to hear how he did it, but we never found
out. I don’t think he could tell us. We’d send him
the most intransigent patients, notorious drunks
that had no interest in sobriety, guys who’d burned
down their homes, ruined several families, lost their
jobs and were ready to do anything but stop drinking.
We’d send one of those to Abe, watch him walk into
Abe’s office and emerge, twenty minutes later, a
walking AA sloganeer: No more stinking thinking,
I’m taking it one day at a time. I’m gonna fake it
‘till I make it. I’m doing 90/90—ninety meetings
in ninety days. We could only guess how Twerski
did it—Old Testament compassion mixed with
righteousness? Burning bushes, talking donkeys,
parting waters? Or did Twerski and the patient
dance, as Hassids do—dance until exhausted by
ecstasy, until the intransigent one, worn out
by serenity, surrendered to sobriety?

~~~~

Charles W. Brice’s collections of poetry include The Ventriloquist (WordTech, 2022). He is a retired psychologist who lives in Pittsburgh.

Abraham Twerski (1930-2021) an Israeli-American Hasidic rabbi, a scion of the Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty, and a psychiatrist specializing in substance abuse. Rabbi Twerski’s medical career includes Gateway Rehabilitation Center, Pittsburgh, which he founded and served as medical director emeritus, clinical director of the Department of Psychiatry at St. Francis Hospital in Pittsburgh, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine, and founder of the Shaar Hatikvah rehabilitation center for prisoners in Israel. Much of his popular writing concerned self-improvement and ethical behavior. He merged mussar (Jewish ethics and morality movement) with the Twelve-Step Program and ideas from clinical psychology. (bio adapted from Wiki)