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The Miracle Worker


Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski

It's the unlikeliest of hugs.

One set of arms extends from an elderly Hasidic rabbi with a sugar-spun beard, clad in a frock coat and velvet yarmulke. His appearance is more reminiscent of prewar Eastern Europe than modern-day Western Pennsylvania.

Completing the embrace is a young addict, with pained, tired eyes that belie his age. We don't know his name or his demon of choice.

It could be alcohol or heroin or pain-killers or something else. The particular substance doesn't matter. Not really, anyway.

What matters is that like the hundreds of patients here at Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Center Township, Beaver County, the man has been given another chance at sobriety, another chance at life.

"That was the first time I heard you speak," the man tells the rabbi, tugging on his baggy jeans and subconsciously checking to make sure his stubbed-out cigarette is still tucked behind his ear. "Thank you so much," he says, softly but without shame.

Hugs for Dr. Abraham Twerski come by the dozens here during his monthly visits to the nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment center he founded in 1972.

They come in the security line at the airport and in the aisles of the grocery store. They come from strangers in the streets of countries as far away as Japan, Finland and Brazil. They come from recovered addicts in all walks of life -- surgeons, politicians, journalists and construction workers.

Even women have found a way to hug Twerski without violating the religious principle that forbids him from having co-ed physical contact with anyone other than his wife and daughters.

"Abe!" shouts a heavyset black woman dressed in pink hospital scrubs in the Gateway lobby, where a portrait of Twerski hangs in the corner he refers to sarcastically as "the shrine." She clasps her arms across her chest and sways side-to-side as Twerski does the same, standing a few feet away.

"You never have to worry about me getting in trouble because I don't have any anonymity," Twerski says.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

More than 30 years after entering the wrenching field of chemical dependency, it's the human contact that sustains Twerski, and in turn, has improved the lives of thousands of people on the brink of self-destruction.

By now, it's a familiar, but no less remarkable story. No matter how many times you hear it, though, it still sounds more like a fable than reality.

It's the story of a rabbi -- descended from the 18th-century Baal Shem Tov, Master of the Good Name, the mystic founder of the Hasidic movement -- who became a psychiatrist specializing in drug and alcohol addiction.

Twerski, 74, is a world-renowned expert on substance abuse, religious scholar and beloved spiritual guru.

In addition to establishing Gateway, which has been named as one of the 12 best treatment centers in the country by Forbes magazine, he served for 20 years as the clinical head of psychiatry at St. Francis Hospital.

"Dr. Twerski is the person you would go to talk to in tough situations," says Dr. Ben Taitelbaum, 66, of Squirrel Hill, Twerski's childhood friend who worked alongside him at the now-defunct Lawrenceville hospital. "Not only was there medical and psychiatric expertise, but there was a certain wisdom there that made him a great resource."

Twerski has recorded this wisdom in 50 books, some translated into several languages, with titles like "Getting up when you're down," "Living each day," and "When do good things start?" a collaborative effort with Peanuts comic strip creator and friend Charles Schulz. His latest book -- "From pulpit ... to couch ..." -- will be released this month.

His lectures on stress, self-esteem and faith still draw standing-room-only crowds. He appears in eight videotapes and publishes a weekly advice column called "Dear Rabbi" in a Jewish newspaper.

But Twerski's real accomplishment is the nearly 45,000 people he estimates that he has helped to usher from the dark, desperate depths of addiction to sobriety. To illustrate this point, he pulls out a file folder stuffed with thank-you letters, some yellow and creased, others more recent, from former patients.

"It's been over seven months since my last drink and you know I feel great," one woman writes.

Card after card bears the same basic message of recovery and overwhelming gratitude.

Twerski closes the folder and removes his lunch from the refrigerator.

Because he follows strict kosher dietary laws, he prepared the cholent -- a Jewish stew of meat, beans and potatoes -- at home in New York and carried it with him on the airplane for his brief stay in Pittsburgh. He heats his meal in the microwave, pours himself a cup of water from his Thermos and reclines in his desk chair.

Focus on Twerski's deeply etched face and the ancient aroma of his meal and you could be in a rabbi's study in turn-of-the-century Poland.

Indeed, Twerski set out to model himself after his father, a Hasidic rabbi who immigrated from Russia to escape persecution in the 1920s and landed in Milwaukee. Hasidism is one of the most staunchly traditional, insular sects of Orthodox Judaism that stresses the mercy of God and encourages joyous religious expression through music and dance.

The middle child of five boys, Twerski watched people flow in and out of his father's study for counseling at all hours of the day.

"Our house became Grand Central Station for people with problems," he says, pulling at his wispy sidelocks and pushing his yarmulke back on his balding head. "Even judges would sometimes tell their litigants, 'Take the case to Twerski.' That's what I was modeling myself after."

Twerski was chosen by his father to take over the pulpit. But the meteoric rise of clinical psychiatry and psychology after World War II meant fewer people were turning to their clergymen for counseling.

"I spent my first three years as a rabbi presiding over weddings, bar mitzvahs and funerals," Twerski says. "That's not what I wanted to do. I did not want to go through life being a performer of rituals. It seemed nobody wanted what I had to offer."

So the natural-born counselor opted to attend medical school at Marquette University School of Medicine and became a psychiatrist to do what he had wanted to do as a rabbi.

A 1959 Time article described how Twerski juggled his religious obligations in the secular world of medicine. For example, he had to wear a "snood-like surgical mask" to cover his beard, which posed "a sanitary problem" and wore a cotton prayer shawl instead of the customary wool to avoid setting off a static spark that could ignite the anesthetic in the operating room, the magazine recounts.

While completing his residency at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Western Psychiatric Institute, he met a woman named Isabelle who piqued his interest in alcoholism. The daughter of an Episcopal priest, Isabelle was an alcoholic who had been rejected by her family and turned to prostitution. She had been through detoxification more than 90 times before committing herself to a state hospital for a year.

"I wondered what would motivate this woman to make this drastic change," Twerski says. "I had never heard anything about alcoholism. They didn't teach it in medical school or psychiatry."

Isabelle came out of the hospital sober and stayed that way with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12-step process of recovery, which emphasizes taking a moral inventory, admitting wrongs, accepting the will of God.

Her story intrigued Twerski so much he decided to attend an AA meeting. He was amazed by the sense of parity and interdependence among recovering alcoholics he couldn't find anywhere else, even in religion.

"Once you walk through the doors, who you are and what you have doesn't make a difference," Twerski says. "For the first time, I saw a place with real equality, and I was impressed."

Twerski's only experience with chemical dependence was the narcotic Demerol he took for a few days 20 years ago while recovering from an intestinal infection, yet he continues to go to Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous meetings. The 12 steps can do more than help people beat addiction -- they provide the tools for character and spiritual development that we all could benefit from, he says.

"Everybody has character defects, but only people in AA and NA have to face those defects and make amends," Twerski says.

Twerski finishes his lunch with a cup of coffee with kosher milk powder and a few pieces of rugelach. He slips on his black hat, recites the grace after meals in Hebrew and then sets out across the Gateway campus to talk to a group of men -- most of them in their 20s and 30s -- from the Tom Rutter House, one of the center's residential halfway houses.

With his almost otherworldly presence, Twerski commands the attention of the room, finding a way to relate to these recovering addicts.

"Whatever I do, I do it one day at time," he begins his lecture, reciting the basic tenet of the 12-step program.

The topic today, like most days, is self-esteem.

Twerski talks for about 45 minutes without the help of notes and almost without pause. He segues effortlessly from anecdote to affirmation to inside joke. He peppers his talk with surprising colloquialisms like "ain't" and "damn." He shares advice with the men about how to beat their addictions and tells them, above all, to believe in themselves.

"Do you know what a raw, uncut diamond looks like when it comes out of a mine?" Twerski asks.

Several men lean forward. Others nod their heads.

"It looks like a piece of dirty glass," he says, answering his own question.

Inside everybody is a diamond, Twerski says.

"You may be telling yourself: 'I don't look like a diamond. I don't feel like a diamond," he tells his audience. "But you know what this place is? It's a diamond-polishing center. If you stay with us, we'll show you how to work the 12 steps to find the beauty inside the rock."

After his talk, he is surrounded by men eager to introduce themselves. Every handshake becomes a hug.

Twerski considers Gateway to be a monument to Isabelle -- a lasting testimony to the basic good he sees inside of everyone.

He opened the center in the quiet woods of Beaver County almost 35 years ago to fill the void he saw in the region for substance abuse treatment. St. Francis had a program for detoxification and in-hospital AA meetings, but no facility existed to provide alcoholics with the guidance they needed to stay sober.

"It was pretty revolutionary in this area to start a rehabilitation center when he did," said Sharon Eakes, former vice president of treatment at Gateway, who worked at the center for 25 years.

Eakes describes Twerski as tough, but not judgmental; brilliant, but unfailingly human.

"Abe has touched a lot of lives," Eakes said. "He is both deeply spiritual and deeply in this world, and that's a rare mix."

Gateway weathered the financial storm created by the onset of managed care and now has a network of 20 program locations spread across Allegheny, Beaver, Erie and Westmoreland counties, as well as eastern Ohio. The center's reach even has extended overseas to Jerusalem, where Twerski helped to establish a rehab center for drug-related convicts.

Gateway offers detoxification, inpatient and outpatient services for teenagers and adults. On any given day, the center is in contact with about 1,800 in need of help.

Clearly, not every patient can be a success story. Some relapse and return before they become sober. Others fail altogether.

The center's latest study found that 42 percent of 249 randomly selected patients reported being continuously abstinent for three years after treatment.

"The hardest part of my job is when you lose someone," Twerski says, rubbing his heavy-lidded eyes. "To me, it's like somehow or other I wasn't good enough, that I let him down."

Twerski now lives in Monsey, N.Y., with his second wife, Dr. Gail Bessler-Twerski, whom he met at a convention of Orthodox Jewish psychotherapists. They also have a home in Efrat, Israel. His first wife of 43 years, Goldie, died of breast cancer in 1995, making sure to leave behind notes in their house that encouraged her husband to remarry.

Their daughter, Sarah, is a transplant nurse at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Oakland. All three sons live in Brooklyn, N.Y. Isaac is a metallurgic engineer; Ben is a psychologist; and Shlomo is a tax attorney.

Although he no longer makes his home in Pittsburgh, Twerski still returns to Gateway a couple days every month to lecture and encourage patients, staying at a hotel near the airport when he visits.

"This is a place you can't run away from," Twerski says.

Retirement is just a figure of speech for the rabbi-cum-psychiatrist who spends his days answering e-mail requests for help -- typing methodically with two fingers at a time -- and drafting his newspaper column and books. His "Sober Thought For The Day" appears daily on the Gateway Web site. He still lectures about five times a year and travels extensively.

Every morning, Twerski attends religious services and studies the Talmud, the collection of ancient rabbinic writings on Jewish law and tradition.

When he isn't learning or writing, he enjoys cooking, watching an inning or two of baseball and spending time with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. If you ask him how many children there are, he will answer "not enough" to put the kibosh on the evil eye.

But aside from family, religion and the occasional leisure distraction, Twerski remains wholly dedicated to his role as a healer -- although some may call him a miracle worker.

Indeed, Twerski says miracles happen every day at Gateway.

"There's just a limit to how many things can be coincidence," he says, although to him, it is God's hand, not his own, that is creating the miracles.

Twerski may not see himself as blessed with extraordinary powers, but he understands the magnitude and nature of his legacy.

"I want to be remembered like the guy who discovered the diamonds in the uncut stones," he says. "That's what makes it all worthwhile."

http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/health/s_348847.html