Beit T'Shuvah Congregation Members (Singing and Clapping): Shabbat Shalom! Shabbat Shalom! Shabbat Shalom! Shabbat Shalom! Shabbat Shalom!
SAUL GONZALEZ: On an early Friday evening, a group of Los Angeles Jews is attending Sabbath services. Although the music and singing create a festive mood, most people here are in the fight of their lives, struggling with drug and alcohol addictions.BRIAN (Congregation Member, Beit T'Shuvah) (Speaking Before Group): Hello, I'm Brian, a grateful resident of the house and a recovering alcoholic.
GONZALEZ: Later in the services, they share stories with one another about successes and setbacks in the battle to stay clean and sober. Glen Cohen is fighting a crack cocaine habit.
GLEN COHEN (Congregation Member, Beit T'Shuvah) (Speaking Before Group): Today, I really felt like using. I mean, that obsession -- all the addicts here know what I'm talking about -- just hit me harder than it has since I got sober six months ago. I just had to come here and get centered again. You know, it was either that or hit the pipe.
GONZALEZ: These addicts and their families are members of a congregation at the crossroads of Judaism and substance abuse -- a congregation that makes its home at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.Called Beit T'Shuvah, Hebrew for "House of Return," the center is an addiction treatment facility grounded in Jewish spirituality.
Rabbi MARK BOROVITZ (Spiritual Leader, Beit T'Shuvah) (Speaking at Service): The worst crime that anyone can commit is to rob a human being of their dignity.
GONZALEZ: Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Beit T'Shuvah's spiritual leader, has committed his life to using Jewish faith to save Jewish addicts.
Rabbi BOROVITZ: Addiction is a malady of the body, it is a malady of the mind, and it's a malady of the soul. So we take the language of the soul of Jewish people. We go back, we help them return to the language that their soul understands and to knowledge that they have. And we bring it together, and we bring a community together.GONZALEZ: It's not only the addicts at Beit T'Shuvah who know how hard it can be to break a drug or alcohol habit. Rabbi Borovitz himself has firsthand knowledge of addiction and the dark places it can lead a person.
Rabbi BOROVITZ: I'm 16-and-a-half years sober and 16-and-a-half years out of prison. GONZALEZ: Long before Rabbi Borovitz became a man of God, he was an alcoholic, con man, and thief.
Rabbi BOROVITZ: I was a bad guy.
GONZALEZ: You were a bad guy? You were a thug.
Rabbi BOROVITZ: I was a bad guy. There were times when I carried a gun. There were times when I was hanging out with Mafia people. I just -- I was -- I was a bad guy. I was a nightmare.GONZALEZ: Rabbi Borovitz wasn't forced into a life of vice. He was born into a stable, middle-class, religious family in Cleveland. Yet at a young age he decided to take another path.
Rabbi BOROVITZ: When I got into high school, I was getting stolen merchandise on credit, you know, on consignment actually.
GONZALEZ: You fenced goods?
Rabbi BOROVITZ: Yeah. Whatever somebody wanted I would get. I was the guy who could get you anything.
GONZALEZ: After moving to California in 1980, Borovitz moved on to insurance fraud, check kiting, even armed robbery. Many of his crimes involved preying on the vulnerable.
Rabbi BOROVITZ: I was a really good con man. So I could convince somebody that I was just helping out, and I'm just this nice guy and all of this kind of stuff. And then all of a sudden -- I'm stealing. And you're, like, "What happened? I thought this was my friend."
Rabbi BOROVITZ: My kind of guy! So what happens? I see that he could change because he has this wrestling with his soul. And now his name changes to Israel, one who wrestles with God. And at that moment I knew that change was possible.
HARRIET ROSETTO (Founder and Director, Beit T'Shuvah): He needed a job, and I hired him. I hired him first to run our thrift store. And then I hired him as my secretary. And then I noticed that he'd begun teaching Torah to the guys and that he was getting some real attention from them.
STAN COLEITE (Congregation Member, Beit T'Shuvah): One of the things that this place has shown me is that by reconnecting to my religion, I can reconnect to myself. I can be a whole person. I can be with others who understand me, who know me. And that means a lot to me. That isolation, that separation that addiction puts all of us into is upended.
Rabbi BOROVITZ: I'm still a hustler. I'm using all of those skills. It's what we call in Judaism "tikkun." What you used for negativity, you use to repair. So I use all of those skills, to listen to people and to convince and to manipulate and to cajole and to move. And all this stuff, all those tools -- I use them right now. I am in action all of the time. I love it! I love it! And I am using everything that I have in me. And instead of hustling and using it for myself, I am using it to serve God. That's freedom. That's really action.
