Jewish Junkies: Gateways Beit T'Shuvah, a Recovery Program for Those of the Jewish Faith

Robert Gilson is a Jewish junkie and every day, he says, "the monkey starts talking." The monkey he speaks of is a 20-year drug addiction that almost killed him. The monkey is a crushed leg following a cocaine-fueled dash across a Los Angeles freeway. The monkey is back alley scores and months of living in his car.

At 41, Gilson is four years sober. He learned to take control of his life at Gateways Beit T'Shuvah, a Jewish-faith based rehabilitation program and synagogue in Los Angeles. It means in Hebrew the "House of Return." Harriet Rosette founded the program in 1986 while working as a social worker for a Jewish social services agency. She earned the name the "Jewish Jail Lady" because she worked with Jewish ex-cons and addicts behind bars. However, she became frustrated with the repeated relapses of those she counseled and the lack of services available to help them once they left jail.

Beit T'Shuvah claims to be the only recovery program nationwide that integrates the teachings of the Torah with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Under Spiritual Director Rabbi Mark Borovitz, residents receive individual, group and family psychotherapy, daily 12-step meetings and studies of the Torah and Jewish ethics. Residents apply the teachings of the Torah to their own struggles with drugs, alcohol, sex and gambling addictions.

"We deal with lost souls," Borovitz says. "Addiction is a malady of the body and a malady of the mind and the soul."
The program attracts people from all over the country and one does not have to be Jewish to attend. The average stay is anywhere from six months to two years. The standard stay in most rehabilitation programs ranges from 28 days. Borovitz claims a 70 percent sobriety rate among the residents after five years. Alcoholics Anonymous reports a 14 percent rate within a five-to 10-years span, according to its 2004 membership survey.

"When someone does not succeed, I cry," Borovitz says. "I know the world is less...I hate to see it."

No one is more qualified to speak to the trials of addiction than Borovitz, a former Jewish gangster and ex-con. His unusual life story commands respect and offers hope to the residents in recovery at Beit T'Shuvah. A big bull of a man, Borovitz is a father, confidant, teacher, friend, brother and caregiver. He speaks their language and they listen.
At 55, Borovitz is quick to say that he, too, is a recovering alcoholic - one who drank a gallon of whiskey a day. He led a life of crime. As a sophomore, he fenced stolen goods out of his locker at Cleveland Heights High School in Ohio. For years, he conned the old, the young and even street hustlers with names like Elvis and Toothpick. His crimes included insurance fraud and grand theft. He floated bad checks and carried a gun. But when Borovitz began hustling the wrong people, he found himself with a $10,000 price on his head. In February, he left town. Three days later, Los Angeles became his new home.

Despite this scare, he continued to break the law and drink. His crimes landed him in Chino State Prison twice in the 1980s, where he spent more than four years behind bars.

During his second imprisonment, Borovitz met the Jewish Chaplain of the prison and began studying the Torah. These studies sparked him to take a critical look at his life. He met Rossetto while behind bars when she came as a social worker for the program. After his release, she hired him to run the Beit T'Shuvah's thrift shop. He then became her assistant. A romance followed and they married two years later. He then studied to be a rabbi and was ordained in 2000.

While Borovitz faced his addictions head on, many in the Jewish community refuse to recognize any addiction problems among Jews. After all, many grew up believing Jews do not drink, do drugs or commit crimes. Those who sought help were reluctant to take part in Alcoholics Anonymous, as they believed the program to be inherently Christian. Even nonreligious Jews balked at attending AA meetings in church basements or social halls where sessions ended with the Lord's Prayer.

"Someone had to shake the Jewish community into realizing, Jews are alcoholics and drug addicts and the Jewish community had a responsibility to them," says Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, the executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute in New York.

Visiting Beit T'Shuvah is like walking into a train station at rush hour: The place is so full of people it can be difficult to maneuver down a corridor. Inside staff offices, books and papers clutter desks, phones ring constantly and scores of visitors come and go. Borovitz types on his computer, juggles phone calls and reads piles of mail. At the same time, he engages scores of folks who drop in to chat. Rossetto is almost too busy to talk, several people stand in the hall waiting to see her. The place crackles with energy and warmth. For Gilson, the kinship of belonging helped him heal.

"It wasn't the Judaism for me, it was the community, the support and the fact that I could stay for as long as I needed to," he said.

Nevertheless, the mission to help people get control of their lives is serious business. Counselors hear all sorts of tales; however, similarities abound among the 122 residents living in apartments on the campus grounds. Most grew up in upper middle-class homes, attended schools with Jewish student bodies and studied the Torah for their Bat and Bar Mitzvahs. They celebrated Jewish holidays with families and socialized with their Jewish friends. Overtime, they began feeling like outcasts in a community that stressed success and high achievement. They drank and smoked pot at an early age, some as young as 12. Many showed up on the synagogue's doorsteps after months of living in their cars, with no money, their belongings wrapped in garbage bags.

Family members also come through the synagogue's door, desperate and unable to cope because a loved ones life is out of control.

"It was a big shock. Your life stops," says 76-year-old Peter Fuchs, the father of James, a 39-year-old recovering heroin addict and Beit T'Shuvah's musical director. "It was like a demon came in."

To control those demons, Maggie Felmann plunged herself into her Torah studies, counseling and 12-step meetings. Felman is a 21-year-old who grew up in Cheviot Hills. At 5 foot 2 and 110 pounds, Felmann looks 16 in her frayed jeans and T-shirt. She attended Hamilton Music Academy, where she studied dance and singing. Her talents landed her on the Disney show "The Great Pretenders" and "Totally in Tune," a high school reality show. Felmann's friends looked up to her as a leader. At home, her parents lavished their attentions on their son, Mathew, causing Felmann to feel like a shadow in her own home.

"I was always trying to do everything to perfection," Felman says. "My parents praised my older brother so much more that I did not feel like I was worth anything."

At 12, Feldmann began smoking pot, she says. At 14, she partied on ecstasy and speed. Her home was party central, she says. However, the parties and the plums of popularity failed to fill a growing void in her life.
"I was getting bad grades and did not get along with my dad," Felmann says. "My mom was working all the time. I used to be the most popular person. Then nobody wanted to be my friend anymore because I was getting them in trouble. I just felt like I wanted to die."

Felmann wasted away to 70 pounds by binging and purging. Cutting herself all over her body was a way "to feel something." Then her 22-year-old brother, Mathew, died in a car accident. Smoking crack helped to deaden the loss. Periodic blackouts occurred, including one where Felman says she woke up in Hollywood in the hot sun missing a shoe. This touched off another cycle of psychiatric hospitals and rehabilitation programs, including Promises and a sober living home.

"I drank the minute I got out of Promises and I was using in Sober Living."

She went to Beit T'Shuvah twice, but relapsed. However, following an eight-day stint in a psychiatric hospital, she decided to give herself another chance and committed to change. A tight schedule of counseling, 12-step meetings, Torah studies and chores helped Felmann stay on track. She is now five months sober.

For Felman, the teachings of the Torah helped her to learn how to make positive choices, the ties and responsibilities she has to others and how to be a decent human being.

"I was not doing anything to better myself," she says. "Every story in the Torah has a lesson that I can apply to my life," she says. "I've made a commitment and I feel so much better about myself."