Abraham J. Twerski

Abraham Joshua Twerski (Hebrew: אֲבְרָהָם יְהוֹשֻׁע טווערסקי‎; born October 6, 1930) is an American Hasidic rabbi, a scion of the Chernobil Hasidic dynasty, and a psychiatrist specializing in substance abuse.

Early life

Twerski was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is a son of Grand Rebbe Jacob Israel Twerski (1898–1973) of Hornosteipel of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Dvorah Leah Twerski (1900–1995).

Twerski was educated in Milwaukee Public Schools, and graduated from North Division High School in 1948. He then enrolled in the Hebrew Theological College of Chicago (now located in Skokie, Illinois) and was ordained a rabbi in 1951. In 1953 Twerski enrolled at Milwaukee's Marquette University, and subsequently graduated from its Medical School in 1960, after which he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Career

Medicine

Twerski's medical career includes Gateway Rehabilitation Center, Pittsburgh, which he founded and serves as medical director emeritus,[1] 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,[1][2] and founder of the Shaar Hatikvah rehabilitation center for prisoners in Israel.[3]

Rabbinic career

In his rabbinic career Twerski is a prolific writer of Jewish books and of shiurim Torah-themed lectures.[4][5] He was co-spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Jehudah with his father from ordination until 1959.[1] During this time he composed a melody for the Hebrew verse Psalms 28:9 "Hoshea es Amecha", which became popular in Jewish circles. Twerski had a major influence on the turn toward orthodoxy of several young men in Milwaukee, including most notably Meir Tzvi (Stanley Martin) Schuster, who later moved to Israel and founded the Heritage House in Jerusalem. (Schuster is known in Israel as "The Rabbi of the Wall" for his efforts to recruit Jewish students at the Western Wall.)

Twerski on Twelve Steps and Jewish ethics

Twerski's clinical career specializes in addiction, much of his popular writing concerns self-improvement and ethical behavior. He merges the Mussar Jewish ethics and morality movement with the Twelve-Step Program and with ideas from clinical psychology.[6]

Andrew Heinze explains Twerski's attraction to the Twelve Steps this way:[7]

The significance of the religious dynamic in Alcoholics Anonymous was captured in Abraham Twerski's comment that he discovered in AA meetings the kind of sincere and even selfless fellow-feeling that was often absent from synagogues. He was moved by the example of men and women who would willingly be awakened in the middle of the night to go out and help a fellow alcoholic. Recovering alcoholics, Twerski observed, "will often exhibit a sense of responsibility far superior to that of the non-alcoholic in relationship to their families, friends, and God."[8]

...

He was attracted as well by the pragmatism of the Twelve Steps.... [T]he AA system offered a practical non-analytic therapy that resonated with traditional Judaism much more than conventional psychoanalysis did. In treating addicts, Twerski discovered limitations of the psychoanalytic emphasis on understanding the origins of one's behavior. Patients would continue to drink while they inquired with their therapists into the possible reasons for their drinking. The Twelve Step program took the opposite approach, demanding that the person start his or her transformation by stopping the bad behavior. "There is an important similarity between the Torah approach to behavior and the Twelve Step program approach," Twerski realized.

One does not enter into a discussion or argument with the yetzer hara. Whatever reasons you can propose for one position, the yetzer hara will give several logical reasons to the contrary....[9]

Heinze gives the following example of how Twerski introduced Twelve Steps, a movement with Christian origins, to the Jewish audience, which according to Heinze perceived alcohol addiction as a non-Jewish problem:[10]

....Twerski cleverly presents the theme of alcoholism not as a modern American phenomenon but rather as part-and-parcel of rabbinic discourse. He refers to Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz, who cites Midrash Tanhuma on the drunken man whose family escorts him to witness an obviously drunk and degraded man. To his family's dismay, he bends over the fallen man and whispers in his ear, "My good man, where did you get such fine wine?"[11] To those who would claim that the problem of addictive behavior is secondary or even peripheral to the observant Jew, Twerski answers, "one cannot consider oneself to be truly observant if one neglects mussar." And for Twerski mussar entails dealing with "the psychological mechanism of denial [which] can blind a person to even the most obvious self-destructive behavior."[12]

Twerski's reinterpretation of mussar "depends fundamentally on psychological categories in spite of his rejection of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic tool."[13] Heinze writes:

Much as it is impossible for a psychologist to ignore or overlook obvious psychological problems, so Twerski's training in the biochemistry of the brain inevitably led him to abandon the strict and often austere moral economy of traditional mussar. He cannot simply exhort, in the ancestral way, about human laziness. If a person seems incapacitated by depression, Twerski must investigate the possibility of a biochemical problem before resorting to the conventional prescription of mussar---the performance of mitzvot.

And further:[13]

"In my earlier days of doing psychotherapy, treating persons with a negative self-image was most distressing," [Twerski] recalled---"I would become angry because it seemed to me that the patient preferred to wallow in the mire of his fantasied worthlessness...." ... "The trick in therapy," he concluded, using the English equivalent of the word mussar employed (tachbulah) to describe both the evil urge and methods to defeat it, "is to remove the distortion" of view that hindered psychological and moral growth.[14] Starting out with an old-fashioned moralism that emphasized the stubborn will as chief stumbling block to self-improvement, Twerski ended up with the premise that psychological blocks were essentially involuntary and therefore tantamount to physical disabilities, albeit ones subject to remedy.

Personal life

He married his first wife Golda before settling in Milwaukee. The couple had four children, Izhak Meir, Ben Zion, Sholomo, and Sarah. After the death of his wife Golda, he married Gail. The couple resides in Teaneck, New Jersey.

His brother Aaron Twerski was the Dean at Hofstra University[15] and was appointed by Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein to handle cases filed by workers who suffered respiratory illnesses from the World Trade Center site after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.[15] Aaron also represented class action plaintiffs in the automobile industry. His other brothers are Michel Twerski,[16] the Hornosteipler Rebbe of Milwaukee; the late Shloime Twerski, the previous Hornosteipler Rebbe of Denver; and the late Mordechai Dov Ber Twerski of New York.

See also

Works and publications

He has written over sixty books on Judaism and self-help topics, including several books with Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts comic strips used to illustrate human interaction and behavior.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Dr. Abraham Twerski". Gateway Rehabilitation Center. Archived from the original on 15 June 2012. Retrieved October 15, 2009. External link in |publisher= (help)
  2. ↑ "Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski". Torah in Motion. Archived from the original on 21 October 2009. Retrieved Oct 15, 2009. External link in |publisher= (help)
  3. ↑ Offenberg, Debbie (November 1, 1996). "Rabbi works with Israel’s prisons to aid drug addicts". J. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California. Retrieved Oct 15, 2009.
  4. ↑ "Shiurim from Rabbi Dr Avraham Twerski". TorahLectures.com. External link in |publisher= (help)
  5. ↑ "Audio and Video Shiurim by Dr. Twerski". Torahweb.org. External link in |publisher= (help)
  6. ↑ Heinze, Andrew R. (Fall 1999). "The Americanization of Mussar: Abraham Twerski's Twelve Steps". Judaism (The American Jewish Congress) 48 (172): 450–469.
  7. ↑ Heinze, pp. 455-456
  8. ↑ Twerski, Abraham (1984). Self-Discovery in Recovery. Hazelden Foundation. p. 118.
  9. ↑ Twerski, Self-Discovery, p. 94
  10. ↑ Heinze, pp. 456-457
  11. ↑ Twerski, Abraham (1995). Self-Improvement? I'm Jewish!. Shaar Press. p. 27.
  12. ↑ Twerski, Self Improvement?, p. 26
  13. 1 2 Heinze, p. 459
  14. ↑ Twerski, Abraham (1978). Like Yourself* (* And Others Will, Too). Prentice-Hall. pp. 25–26.
  15. 1 2 "Dean Aaron Twerski Named Special Master: Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein Appoints Dean Twerski as One of Two Special Masters to Oversee Thousands of Claims Filed by World Trade Center Workers" (Press release). Hofstra Law School. Dec 18, 2006. Retrieved 2011-01-06.
  16. ↑ "Rabbi Michel Twerski". Congregation Beth Jehudah. Retrieved Oct 15, 2009. External link in |publisher= (help)

External links

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