Did any of us think that we would one day have to worry about alcohol and drugs in our midst? About our children behaving in ways we thought our society was immune to? That we would find ourselves scrambling for answers to the questions of how we lost our way and how we can return?
The problems are not new, perhaps, but have increasingly and menacingly surfaced in the last decade. Where did they come from? we wonder. Did they seep in from the outside, or do they signal something within ourselves that needs fixing? In this interview, Dr. Aviva Weisbord discusses addictions, a subject she has given deep thought to since her appointment, on June 1, as executive director of The Associated’s Jewish Big Brothers and Big Sisters League (JBBL), which includes Jewish Addiction Services.
Dr. Weisbord, affectionately known throughout the community simply as Aviva, is the first frum woman to head a constituent agency of The Associated, Baltimore’s Jewish federation. It’s a position for which her background, both personal and professional, has well prepared her. And now that it’s happened, she seems an obvious and inspired choice.
Aviva has been involved in community causes all her life. Wherever there is a need, she seems to be there, contributing her special blend of empathy, insight, and good judgment. She is a founder and president of Maalot Seminary, vice-president of Jews for Judaism, a speaker for AJOP, and teaches marriage and parenting classes for Bikur Cholim.
There have been countless other projects, large and small. Community leaders and educators in Baltimore and beyond regularly call on her expertise. She has written and lectured widely on marriage and family, parenting, workplace challenges, and personal relationships. Of course, readers of the Where What When know her through the “Growing Up” column, and often comment on the clarity and compassion of her approach to children and teen issues.
Dr. Weisbord attended Bais Yaakov of Baltimore and Yavne Teacher’s College in Cleveland. Her Ph.D. in psychology is from American University, and she took special training at Georgetown University’s department of psychiatry. Not insignificantly, her formal education is built on the ideal of community service as well as the wisdom bequeathed to her by her parents, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel, Harav Yaakov Weinberg, zt”l, and, tibadel lechaim, Rebbetzin Chana Weinberg.
Dr. Weisbord counseled individuals for 25 years, at a time when Baltimore had few Orthodox psychotherapists. Concurrently, she was vice-president of Optimum Performance, Inc., doing consulting to businesses and organizations in training, team building, and motivation. She served as a volunteer board member at JBBL for seven years, four as an officer.
The Associated’s president, Marc Terrill is excited about Dr. Weisbord’s “experience and commitment.” Others mention her “vision and passion.” For her part, Aviva loves the JBBL and the “extraordinary” people who work there: “It’s about people; it’s the ultimate chesed organization, a living example of how Jews reach out and take care of each other.”
Aviva’s new position at JBBL will enable her to apply the sum of her Jewish and professional accomplishments to the business of the agency and to bring the powerful capabilities of this top-notch organization to bear on the problems faced by Baltimore’s Jewish community, including the Orthodox community, of which she is such an integral part. We wish her every success!
Where What When: Dr. Weisbord, in the past, Jews were known not to be alcoholics. Is that true, or is it a myth?
Aviva Weisbord: Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, in his books, always points out the Yiddish saying “shikur is a goy – only non-Jews get drunk.” And certainly, non-Jews believe that’s true. In a recent video on alcoholism, a religious Catholic states, “The following applies to everyone but Jews, because Jews don’t drink.”
On the other hand, I read in Rabbi Chaim Shapiro’s book Once Upon a Shtetl about the village shikur. They had their town drunk! That makes me believe that it’s a myth that there was no such thing as a Jewish alcoholic.
WWW: One drunk in a town isn’t exactly a social problem.
AW: For every person who was visible, there were others who were sophisticated enough to cover it up, or had family to cover it up. However, it’s also true that, traditionally, Jews don’t turn to drink to relieve their problems. Caterers often mention that, as a rule, a Jewish crowd doesn’t require as much liquor as other groups. However, that doesn’t speak for the individuals who do have a problem with alcohol.
WWW: Didn’t the family and social support that the Jews of Europe had, especially in the small towns, mitigate against alcoholism?
AW: There was a lot of support, but people suffered there, too. We know there was domestic abuse in the shtetl, for example. So, I think that our supposed immunity to alcoholism is a myth, in all honesty.
WWW: Is it worse now?
AW: It’s hard to know. I asked my zeidy, zt”l [Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman, Rosh Yeshiva and founder of Ner Israel] that question. He said he wasn’t sure if it was worse now, if we’re just more open about it, or if there are simply more of us. So, where you might have had one incident of alcoholism in a town of 50 families, in a city of 20,000 or 100,000, you have proportionately more. It would make a very interesting study, although I’m not sure how we would do it.
WWW: Is the proportion of people with addictions in the frum community more or less than that of the general Jewish community?
AW: The number of people with addictions in the Baltimore Jewish community is about one in nine or ten, the same as in the general American population. The Orthodox community comprises about 22 percent of the Baltimore Jewish community, and Orthodox clients we serve at Jewish Addiction Services make up about 22 percent of all our clients, mirroring their proportion in the Jewish population.
WWW: What is an addiction? And what addictions do you treat?
AW: I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the whole parsha since I’ve come here. I got a little bit of education about addictions during the seven years I was a board member, but actually being here, I’m getting a lot more. I think that, at their core, addictions are about having an unhealthy relationship with a substance or a behavior. It could be alcohol, drugs, smoking, gambling, internet, prescription drugs, or eating disorders – you name it, we deal with it. There is a whole range of these unhealthy relationships. Many of us have an unhealthy relationship to food, for example. It can take us to overeating or to eating disorders. You can have an unhealthy relationship to shopping! A shopping addiction doesn’t make the headlines, but it’s out there.
WWW: Eating and shopping are normal activities, though.
AW: They’re normal when they are within certain boundaries. When out of control, they are no longer in the healthy spectrum. And eating disorders can be deadly. In addition, addictions can be linked. Someone who has an unhealthy relationship to food may turn to some sort of chemical to provide what she needs. A doctor told me that girls in New York are on cocaine, because cocaine makes you lose weight, and the shadchanim are telling them they have to be a size two to get a shidduch. So there are terrible, terrible addictions now to cocaine. That’s crazy! So, I guess what I’ve been thinking about is how our values and what’s important and meaningful to us become intertwined with the addictions.
WWW: At what point does a person decide, “Okay I’m addicted; I need help”?
AW: Generally, you know you’re addicted when certain behaviors cause pain. So, if every time I drink I get thrown off the airplane at the next stop, I should say, “Aha, I have an unhealthy relationship to alcohol.” The problem is that the one who is addicted is usually the last to know.
WWW: Does everyone have the potential to become addicted? Is alcoholism really a disease? I know it is labeled as one today, but didn’t people used to consider it a moral failing?
AW: Some people are more prone to alcoholism. I know a person who lacks a certain enzyme; his body does not break down alcohol, so he cannot say kiddush over wine. Some people have a sensitivity to alcohol and learn that they can’t have it. This is called the disease model, and no one can know if he is affected until it happens to him.
But I think there’s another model of addiction. Someone may take a sleeping pill to help her fall asleep at night. After two weeks, it’s not working anymore, and her doctor says, okay take two. Well, two or three months down the road, she realizes that she can’t sleep without the pills. She has now entered the realm of being hooked on those pills.
It’s the same with alcohol. You take a little shnaps at a simcha because you want to be happy. Next time, you take a little more to feel a little better. Suddenly you realize, “I need five shots of bourbon to feel really happy.” Now you’ve got an unhealthy relationship with the stuff. There is a point along the way when moral choice comes in, but once the person needs the five shots of bourbon to feel better, that’s where the disease piece starts.
I’m struggling myself with the question of alcohol. After all, we mark a simcha with wine and shnaps.
WWW: Why do we? Especially with kids around.
AW: “Yayin yismach lev enosh.” Shlomo Hamelech said that wine makes a person happy. And it goes way back. We don’t have much history before Noach, and look what happened to him. As my husband was saying at the Shabbos table, the first thing Noach did when he came off the teiva (ark) was to plant a vineyard. Who more than Noach was entitled to drink and give thanks for surviving the destruction of the entire world?
WWW: I heard in a shiur that it was the opposite. Noach was very depressed at the destruction of the world, and that’s why he drank himself into a stupor.
AW: Well, listen, that’s enough to throw anybody! But, either way, wine was the answer. I have my own personal theory about Yiddishkeit – that everything that’s not good is in it to a small extent. So, we don’t steal, but on Pesach we steal the afikomen. We don’t intend teaching our children to steal. It’s fun; it’s within the context of the whole seder. Similarly, we don’t drink, but to say kiddush or make a chasana, we drink. Maybe the message is that there’s a way to do it right, and we have to be careful with anything else.
WWW: Should we tell our children not to drink at a kiddush? At what age should we tell them?
AW: Start talking about it young! You don’t talk about alcohol at age five. When they’re little, you talk about “choices.” The decisions we make every day give us lots of opportunities to teach. For example, instead of just telling them to look both ways when crossing the street, you can add the concept of choice to your instructions: “When you cross the street, you make a choice to take care of yourself. You look to the right and to the left, because you want to cross safely and get to the other side.”
Have the conversations! Explain that “We go to a kiddush for a reason.” Let the kids see that it is very important to hear kiddush, take a sip, and have your mezonos, while making it clear that “We don’t go to the Kiddush Club.” Give them a value. Again, we’re not condemning the people; we’re condemning the behavior.
WWW: Do these kinds of conversations carry over to other substances that they might encounter later, like drugs?
AW: We like to think that our children really don’t know about drugs. But somehow, even our very sheltered children do know. As the child gets older, in addition to continuing the conversation about choices, you can encourage “healthy behaviors.” “In our family, we want healthy behaviors. We don’t eat potato chips for supper every night, do we? (Not as the main course, anyway!) We think about what we do to our bodies.”
You can talk about stress and pressure. When the child comes home from school, instead of insisting that they do their homework immediately, we can encourage them to take a break with a cup of cocoa, running outside, jumping up and down, playing a game with us or with siblings, even deep breathing or relaxation techniques. They will return to their work refreshed, and they will get the idea there are ways to deal with pressure and stress.
If we start the conversations when they’re young, it’s natural to talk about these things, and when they’re ready to go to yeshiva, it fits into the whole package to say, “You might see guys getting trashed, and they think it’s wonderful and fun. It’s not. Let’s talk about it.” When there’s an ongoing conversation and the child feels respected and he is a part of that conversation, you have an opening to reach him.
WWW: What if the child says, “I want to be like everyone else”?
AW: Then we, as parents, can say, “I certainly understand that you don’t want to stand out. At the same time, do you want to pay the price that many of them are paying? What would it take to stay shtark (strong) when you’re in Eretz Yisrael and all your friends have started smoking? How could you say to yourself, ‘It’s not worth it. My lungs mean more to me.’”
As my son-in-law, who had leukemia as a child, says when someone offers him a smoke, “No thanks, I had cancer already.” It makes you think.
WWW: Some children, even if you don’t have the conversations, you know they will not do it; they’re just not the type.
AW: There’s no such thing any more. We all need to have the conversations. All kids today are kids at risk.
WWW: That’s a very frightening thought for parents. It’s as though it doesn’t matter what you do. You never know how your children will turn out.
AW: The secret is to stay connected with our children, to give love and warmth and to talk with them. We also have to daven very hard and realize that not everything is under our control.
By the way, there are parents who are really solid, wonderful people. They do a great job parenting yet end up with a child who veers off the path they have so beautifully paved – towards drugs or other risky behavior. Obviously, they feel terrible; they feel like failures. The message I want to send to them is this: You are good parents! Now that this is happening, you have to shift your approach in parenting. You need to deal with this child differently. It may be counterintuitive for these parents, but there are ways to deal with it.
WWW: What should they do?
AW: Call in here and get some direction; I’m really serious. Because what usually happens is the parents are afraid to come down too hard on their teen; they’re afraid to set limits, to state their values very, very definitively. They need to learn to do that.
WWW: What if parents know that their child will most likely not be able to stand up to peer pressure? Should they not send him to away to yeshiva or to Eretz Yisrael?
AW: You need to look at each individual situation. Sometimes, it’s better not to send them yet. At other times, the parents might have to take the chance and let the child grow – depending on the environment. Make sure it’s a good environment. There are ways parents can work behind the scenes. They can have an older chavrusa, a buddy, to look after him, or they can tell a rebbe they’re concerned and ask him to keep tabs. With boys, it is worth evaluating whether the young man should wait a year or two post-high school and gain a little more maturity before going to Eretz Yisrael.
WWW: Do you think we should get away from sending our kids away so young, for instance sending boys out of town in ninth grade?
AW: I think we’re always dealing with tradeoffs. It’s not for every child. What I’d really like to see is that we accept the idea of doing whatever is best for a particular child – as opposed to “everyone has to.” I think that might be happening with seminary. It used to be that every girl had to go to Eretz Yisrael. Now, some of those girls are going elsewhere, not just to Eretz Yisrael. Of course, that might be an economic decision; it’s a $20,000 investment for the year, and parents are saying, no, we can’t do it.
WWW: It seems as though many problems in our society are connected. If you could pick out one factor that is at the heart of all these intertwined problems, what would it be?
AW: I’ve been discussing this a lot with my husband. The way he puts it, we’re not living “real” lives. We’re trying to be what we’re not. And because it doesn’t work, and we’re not “for real,” people turn for comfort elsewhere.
WWW: What do you mean by we’re not living “real lives”?
AW: This is going to sound really philosophical, but our generation suffers from the problem of being born after Word War II – because we know that before WW II, everyone was perfect and a tzadik or tzadekes. That may not be accurate, of course, but certainly it was a generation that was qualitatively different from our generation.
In Europe, the typical shtetl Yid – I’m not talking about the elite who went to the yeshivos – was very simple and largely ignorant, but he was frum from the “inside.” People lived their Yiddishkeit. Someone told me that when she was a child, the women sat on the floor on Tisha B’Av listening to Eicha and actually wept bitterly over the destruction of the Bais Hamikdash. Today, most of our high school students have more book knowledge than the pre-War generation did, but in the shtetl, Yiddishkeit was so much part of them that it was more real.
WWW: Aren’t we also very frum?
AW: We are, yet we are missing some of that internal spirituality that they had, so we try to “do” our Yiddishkeit: Let me do a little more, or stop doing something, or take on another chumra. The message we end up giving our next generation is this: If it feels good, it’s probably not kosher. If it’s really tough, that’s being frum. It’s the old saying, shver tzu zein a Yid (it’s hard to be a Jew). And we are giving these messages.
One person told me that she told her children, if we don’t swim in the Nine Days, let’s not swim for the whole Three Weeks. I said, “What are you trying to tell them? That the more restrictions we put on ourselves, the more frum we are? That’s not what it’s about. But we’ve lost our moorings a little bit, and I think that’s impeded our ability to be real.
This is a generation that isn’t trained to think or to have reflective time. Look outside and see what people are doing when they take a walk. They’re listening to a tape or talking on their cell phone. Chas veshalom that a person should ever be without background noise or distraction! I believe that the Torah really wants us to think – to think about who we are and what we do. Before Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, we try to think a little bit. We know we’re supposed to use that time to think about our relationship to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, but we’re all so terrified that we don’t think, not really.
WWW: So, thinking would make us more real?
AW: Thinking – and feeling: that is, acknowledging our feelings. I find myself talking about this topic again and again. It’s kind of my theme song. We have loads and loads of feelings. The Torah doesn’t say never feel hateful, never feel vengeful, never feel angry. Hashem couldn’t expect that from us, because we have feelings. The Torah does say once you feel that way – think about the feelings. There is a thought process we could have about feelings. We haven’t caught on to that distinction. In other words, somebody slaps me. The natural instinct is to want to slap back. The Torah doesn’t say you shouldn’t allow yourself to feel like hitting back. I’m not a horrible person for having that feeling. It’s just a natural response. It’s only once I have the feeling that I can plug into my intellect and think about that feeling and, within a split second, say to myself, “I feel like slapping this person, but I will not do it.” That’s what I’m talking about.
WWW: Isn’t it hard to teach self-control in our fast-paced world?
AW: We can do a lot of teaching. Let’s at least start thinking about how to get kids to think – because we live in a world where we can push a button and things happen. This is an immediate gratification generation. Look how furious we get when we turn the key and the car doesn’t turn on right away. What kind of business is this! It’s supposed to work. We want what we want and we want it now. When I feel pain, I want relief; if I’m confused, I want to be unconfused; if it’s chilly in the house, I put it up a few notches.
WWW: How can parents counteract that trend – assuming the parents themselves are able to delay gratification!
AW: That’s really no joke. If children see that the parent has a little headache and says, “Oh, I’ll take four Advils,” they learn that all pain has to be resolved immediately. It’s a mindset of let’s fix it. (I’m not saying not to take an aspirin. I’m just saying it doesn’t have to be at the drop of a hat.)
WWW: If you are a parent who herself has an unhealthy relationship with, say, food, how can you tell your child not to have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol or cigarettes? You are not setting a good example.
AW: You can use your conversation to talk about it: “You know, I’m not happy that food means so much to me, and I’m working on it.” And share that you’re working on it – not to look gorgeous, necessarily, but to have a healthy relationship with food. Then they’ll see that it doesn’t have to happen, there are choices; there’s a mental process involved. That’s why the conversation about smoking or drinking or whatever else goes on during the teen years should take place before they become issues.
By the way, we do have to be a little careful how we talk in front of the children. If the mother is always saying, “Oh, I’m so fat; I hate me; I’m so fat; I can’t wear anything,” (well, I guess we all do that sometimes) then the daughter will naturally say, “Okay, being fat means you’re disgusting and you hate yourself. Therefore, I will do anything not to be fat.” The trouble is, her definition of fat is anything above size four!
WWW: Our community has very strong norms. Thinking for ourselves might mean doing something a little different, like not sending a girl to seminary in Eretz Yisrael or acknowledging that a son shouldn’t stay in yeshiva until marriage. Should we be trying to change those norms?
AW: As parents, we have to face the fact that we’re not changing society by tomorrow. We work within our family to teach our children the values that we want them to have. A very important one is that we accept all human beings – because how did we get to the point of being afraid to do something different? It happens when I feel, inside me, that if I don’t live up to the standards of society, I don’t accept myself. And that’s a ticket to trouble.
We’ve presented a picture of perfection, and we all think we’re supposed to be living up to it: “I should be on that madrega (spiritual level); I should be able to daven with more kavana.” The answer is, I should – but hey, I’m davening! I think the kids don’t get that message of acceptance for themselves and within themselves. And that becomes a problem.
One example is the biographies of gedolim that we read, which set very high standards. We don’t read about the conflicts of that gadol – the fact that maybe he used to fight with his sister or brother. So children don’t see the process, the fact that somebody grew and grew in yiras Shamayim.
WWW: How is thinking for ourselves related to daas Torah, that special wisdom that comes from knowing Torah? Aren’t we taught that we should listen to our rabbis and our gedolim?
AW: Daas Torah doesn’t mean that now I stop thinking. If we’re not thinking, we’re not fully alive! We want and need daas Torah for hadracha: guidance, direction, input. Certainly we go to our rabbanim with our important questions regarding situations in our lives or knowing what to work on, like our middos. We are not objective about ourselves. Daas Torah sets a path for us. But once we have that, then it’s our job to think each step of the way along the path. In my day-to-day living, I have to take responsibility for my life. Daas Torah is also great to teach us how to think. In fact, we have to think just in order to know what to ask. The rav is not a navi (prophet). Going to a rav requires some preparation – some thinking!
WWW: Someone told me that a very large percentage of kids who use drugs were victims of molestation. Is that true?
AW: There is a definite connection between childhood trauma and drug abuse. (We are sponsoring a conference on that on December 7, with Lisa Ferentz.) And there is a mounting body of evidence showing a connection between molestation and addictions. We don’t know what percentage of kids in the frum community experience this kind of trauma, but it’s more than we think. There is a group doing a study on that now: the Shofar coalition of the Sidran Institute.
WWW: Why are you bringing Rabbi Dr. Twerski to Baltimore?
AW: Jewish Addiction Services has invited Rabbi Dr. Twerski to Baltimore. He will be speaking with different groups, including students and rabbanim, and he will be giving a community awareness lecture on Monday, December 18, at the Gordon Center. We’ve invited him because, as a world-renowned expert, he can help our community become aware of substance abuse – that it does exist and that it can be helped. We’ve asked him to help ease the stigma and encourage people to get help, whether they are family members or abusing drugs or alcohol themselves. And we want the Jewish community to know that Jew addiction services is here to help with education, prevention programs, information, treatment, and referrals.
WWW: People probably avoid coming to the agency because they are ashamed.
AW: We hope that the program with Rabbi Dr. Twerski will take away some of the shame of addictions. While there may be points of choice along the road that involve ethics and morals, once someone is hooked on any substance, we have to look at it as a disease called addiction and deal with it as a disease. We’re not ashamed to get help when someone has a strange growth. We know that cancer is a disease. Someone asked me recently, well, what about diabetes? Is there shame to that? I said, yes, there is some, because diabetes is associated to some extent with obesity. Yet people today are not ashamed to say, “I have diabetes; I take my insulin, I follow my doctor’s orders, and I’m living my life.” I wouldn’t want it to be that easy to say, “I am addicted,” but we have so much denial and shame surrounding these things that it’s difficult for people to get the help they need.
WWW: Is it the same in the non-frum community?
AW: They’re a little bit ahead of us. Here at Jewish Addiction Services, we go into all the synagogue schools, the camps, the public schools with large Jewish populations. We do a lot of preventive work: teaching the kids about risky behaviors and choices.
So, I’m not sure we’re behind in the problem, but we are behind in recognizing and owning up to it. It’s comfortable in denial. When we hear of a kid dying of an overdose, it’s easier to say to ourselves, it’s an isolated incident.
While we don’t have huge numbers of addicts, baruch Hashem, the percentages are there, and they’re increasing. If we are willing to give up peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches in an entire school just to protect one life, maybe we should really work on some of this prevention stuff and save not just one life but many? It’s physical life, emotional life, the life of the whole family – because for every person addicted, many more are affected by his addiction.
WWW: Let’s say a teen cannot go to his parents. Who should he go to?
AW: Call our number! I’m serious. Teens – and anyone – can call and get a confidential and anonymous discussion. The phone call is free, and there’s a sliding scale; they can pay as little as five dollars.
WWW: If a teenager comes to you, are you obligated by law to inform the parents?
AW: We are not obligated to call the parents. It is totally confidential (unless their life is in danger).
WWW: I believe there are some community members out on the street, helping teens.
AW: What does it say about us that we have so many kids on the street that such people are out there trying to help them? It’s not a wonderful testament to how we’re dealing with this. I want to mention the Mitchell David Teen Center near Staples. It’s open late weekend hours, and it’s used – a lot! The nice thing about Mitchell David is that the counselors and mentors who work there give the kids their cell phone numbers. If a kid is struggling – they know they shouldn’t take a drink or take a pill – they can call the counselors even at 2 a.m. and know that the counselor will answer the phone.
WWW: That’s wonderful.
AW: It is. It’s very sad that we need it; it’s very good that it’s there. But there are tons of other prevention things we could do. I think we’re making a little bit of progress. There’s Oneg Place, which has been going a couple of years now.
A man in one community couldn’t bear it when he saw kids falling through the cracks. He fixed up his basement, put in a pool table, and told kids they could come. The only rules are no smoking, drinking, or taking stuff. He set certain standards of behavior, and if you keep those standards, you’re welcome, anytime. It’s a kosher hangout place. No one disapproves of them. It’s what I was talking about before: Often, particularly with teens, we reject the person, not just the behavior. But when they a find a place where they’re accepted as people, they feel good. We reject the behavior for sure, but we love you. You’re a wonderful person. You got stuck; we’ll help you out. It’s the easiest, oldest secret in the world.
WWW: It sounds like love.
AW: Yes. That’s it precisely, and unfortunately, we’re not into love. We’re into “Did you do your homework?” and “You have to get into the best seminary, the best yeshiva, and get the best shidduch.” We’re not curing that mindset overnight. That’s us. Yet each of us can try to become a more loving, accepting person. Each of us can create a loving, accepting atmosphere in our family. We can’t cure all of society, much as we would like to. But we can work on ourselves.
WWW: Thank you for this inspiring conversation.
