Milwaukee native was unique counselor
Abraham J. Twerski often told people he treated for addictions that they had souls like diamonds.
Some scoffed at that, given the state of their lives. Twerski responded that when diamonds are mined, they look dirty and unattractive. It is only when they reach the potential they had all along that people see their beauty.
Twerski was a diamond miner, willing to work with people in tough situations to help them reach the point where they could be seen as jewels.
He was an unusual — in fact, almost certainly unique — figure in the world of addiction treatment. The descendant of generations of luminaries in the Jewish Hasidic world, he never compromised in his religious practices or beliefs, including the way he dressed and looked – a long black coat, a black hat, a long beard, sidelocks. He was an ordained rabbi, a psychiatrist, a widely respected author with a gentle, almost ethereal demeanor — and you could find him often at 12 Step meetings with people who were totally different than him.
He was one of Milwaukee’s most striking exports, except that, in important ways, he never left.
He grew up in Milwaukee and went to Milwaukee public schools until his teenage years when he attended religious schools out of town. He returned to get an undergraduate degree from Marquette University and earn an MD from the old Marquette Medical School. For a brief time, he was the assistant rabbi of Congregation Beth Jehudah on the west side, which was headed then by his father, Rabbi Jacob Twerski.
Around 1960, he went to Pittsburgh
for training as a psychiatrist and ended up making a career there, including founding a nationally respected treatment center for addiction.
By the time he died at 90 in Jerusalem on Jan. 31, he had authored more than 80 books, treated thousands of people, and broken ground in advocating for treating gambling as an addiction and calling for Orthodox Jewish communities to face up to domestic abuse problems many wanted to ignore.
He was a great storyteller, a great motivational speaker, and, in short, a legend in the eyes of many people.
I am one of those people.
The Twerski congregation and community, now led by Abraham Twerski’s brother, Rabbi Michel Twerski, continues to be strong. Abraham Twerski kept strong ties to Milwaukee, visiting at least twice a year for many years. I and my family are close with the Twerskis and we had a rapport with Abraham Twerski.
Many of the books Twerski wrote focused on Jewish themes, including Biblical lessons, observances and personal moral development. He also wrote many books dealing with subjects for general audiences, including several in which he collaborated with Charles Schulz, using some of Schulz’ famous “Peanuts” cartoons as starting points for life lessons and advice.
But whatever book he was writing, you could count on it to be accessible to readers of a wide range of backgrounds. He was a great scholar, but his writing style was down to earth. One popular book he wrote is almost entirely filled with stories from his Milwaukee childhood. Another focuses on the relationship he had with nuns who were involved in the treatment center he headed in Pittsburgh. It’s titled “The Rabbi and the Nuns.”
To him, stories and books were ways to motivate and help people, not just amusements. One of his books of stories is titled, “Not Just Stories.”
He said often that he had written only one book in his life, but he had written it dozens of times. What was the book? It was on the importance of self-esteem – which he said he struggled with himself — and making yourself into the best person you could be.
Twerski joked that if he had an addiction himself, it was to writing books. About a dozen years ago, I saw him sitting outside the home of one of his nephews, who is a neighbor of ours. He was waiting for someone to return and let him in. I invited him to wait at our house. He came in, sat down, and immediately started writing (by hand — that’s how he wrote books, even in the computer era).
I asked him what the new book was about. Actually, he said, he was working on three books. As I recall, one was religious commentary, one was a collection of stories, and, at a time when recession had cost millions of people their jobs, one was on the importance of not attaching your sense of self-worth too strongly to a job. You had a diamond for a soul, even if you had been laid off.
A few days after his brother’s death, Rabbi Michel Twerski offered his thoughts by a webcast that attracted about 3,000 connections from around the world.
Rabbi Michel described his brother’s talents, including little known ones such as a mastery of how to slaughter a chicken in a kosher manner. He said his brother didn’t take himself too seriously, but he took his talents seriously. That, Rabbi Michel said, was something everyone can do, because we all have talents.
He said one lesson from his brother’s life was that “we need to look into ourselves and say: There are things I can do, there are things I can become, there are talents that I can explore.”
“My brother was a consummate giver,” he said. “His entire life was basically focused on finding ways that he could give to others, enrich others, heal others, inspire others .... Everyone, to him, was this diamond waiting to be polished and someone who was precious.”
Pretty much every week, this column is about education. This week may seem different. Or maybe it’s not, if people embrace a few lessons from a diamond miner.
Alan J. Borsuk is a senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.