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| Image for illustrative purposes (Matzav) |
Thankfully this is not happening among our own.. We are of a different culture. A different breed. A different mindset. Our highs are not artificial. We do not need drugs to make us feel high. We are high on God. We are high on the Torah. A Frum (observant Jewish) lifestyle makes it highly unlikely that anyone among us will seek the artificial high that illicit drugs provide.
Orthodox Jews shun drugs! Those among us that do resort to drugs are not really Frum anyway. Even if they pretend to be. Those that do are no better than those in the general public that do and are probably OTD!
If only all of that were true. If only it was true that religious Jews are spared this malady because of the values we live. But the plain fact is that as much as we would like or expect it to be the case - it isn’t. It is a myth. It is one thing to have values that rejects rebellious behavior. But the problem is not always about rebellion.
The truth is that the observant Jewish community is much like the rest of society with respect to a wide variety of problems. Whether it is in the area of sex crimes, financial crimes, or drug use. There is a Yiddish expression that describes this phenomenon: Azoi Vie es Christeilts Zich – Yiddelts Zich. Which basically means that Jews (even religious ones) will pick up much of the culture in which they live.
And yet there are those among us are not only in a state of denial, theyconsider it a Chilul HaShem to even talk about it. They believe that talking about it impugns the entire religious community. And by implication it impugns the Torah values we are taught to live by. So they reject it outright as impossible. But they are wrong.
The Orthodox Jewish community has a drug problem. We obviously do not have the same numbers. Orthodox Jews are an almost infinitesimal percentage of the US population. Nor do we have the same percentages. But Orthodox Jews across the entire religious spectrum are overdosing in significant numbers. Denying the problem will not make it go away. Thank God there are people that recognize this and trying to do something about it. Rabbi Tzvi Gluck is one of the Charedi heroes that is trying to do something about it. He is determined to set the record straight. From Matzav:
For those of you who have been spared the pain that has devastated klal yisroel since mid-June, let me fill you in on what has been taking place in Jewish communities all over the United States. Over a three week period, drug overdoses killed nine of our own, with six more remaining in comas as I write these words. Another 17 overdoses had more positive outcomes, baruch Hashem, with Narcan successfully reviving those victims, but without proper treatment I can’t honestly tell you that any of those individuals are really out of the woods…
I’m willing to bet that you’d be surprised if you knew who the people who came to us were. For the most part, people assume that those who are struggling with drug addictions are the kind of individuals that make you want to cross the street when you see them coming down the block, or angry teenagers with chips on their shoulders, but that is far from true.
I can’t even begin to count how many clients have come to us, hooked on painkillers that were legally prescribed to them after a medical procedure, or students who abused their prescription ADHD meds to get through a grueling finals schedule. Others are individuals who experienced some kind of trauma who are just looking to numb the pain so that they can get through life; I promise you the list goes on and on.
The fact remains that addiction is a disease, one that doesn’t discriminate between men and women, kids or grown ups, marrieds or singles and the nine people we just lost ranged in age from 16 to 64 – they were mothers and fathers, singles brimming with potential and yes, even grandparents. We need to face the reality that drug addiction is a far reaching plague.
Need I say more? This is yet another issue that seems to be ignored. I wonder just how many cases have been swept under the rug for fear it would make the observant Jewish community look bad. I wonder as well how many needless deaths could have been prevented because of that.
Unlike some of the other problems in the observant community that some of us are in denial about, this one is a mostly medical problem. The stigma of the old stereotypical drug addict needs to be abandoned. What is needed instead is a compassionate approach to those suffering from these addiction problems. One that will guide them into getting the right kind of treatment.
We need to look at the drug problem in an entirely new way and de-stigmatize it so that families with these problems will not be embarrassed to come forward and seek help. This will not eliminate the other problems. And it may not entirely eliminate the drug problem. But it will surely reduce the number of deaths caused by ignoring it.