Alcohol and Drug Usage in Our Community - Rabbi Benzion Klatzko

uh at this time it's our honor and privilege to call upon a man like i said we need no introduction i've been seeing pastor all the way for months he does so much for paulie straw is aware of this uh topic very very much being with the work that he does with all me the college campuses all over the world without further ado let's give a round of applause good evening ladies and gentlemen i'm going to give you words of introduction i'm not going to be giving you an entire uh speech as it were uh i think if we open our eyes we look around the community uh we should be startled we should be shaken to our core in our home we have a basement and the basement was finished it was finished at great expense and the the in the basement there's a plaque and the plaque is named after a young man who was somebody with tremendous medos a somebody who loved hashem loved torah and he shouldn't have left this world so quickly except that on friday night he together with his friends made lachaime's and they made a few a few more and a few more and unfortunately this young man did not wake up and we dedicated our basement and an agnosis arkham to this young man and the the the baltastras the waste of shama of the potential of a person who could have raised the family and children and grandchildren just to go to sleep friday night and not wake up what led what what led to that what leads to our community thinking that part and parcel of being jewish or a firm jew or a modern kashmaka leviticus from jew involves the ingestion of substances what how did we get to where we are today it's a longer question than i can answer right now but it does go back at least a few hundred years things like basam and qataris and they had all sorts of holy names for things that today we understand we know are are are hallucinogenics they are things that are addictive there are substances that we make part of our yiddish kite and it never had to be this way years ago my brother loves shalom his name was gavriel he had a shul in johannesburg and he proposed something quite novel it was simcha's torah and he said i'd like to have a dry simchas torah and this is a more of a balchuva shul it's called the sunny road synagogue a lot of people were not born religious and they were going to celebrate of his torah so he said i'd like to practice doing a dry summer let's celebrate the torah for the sake of the torah and sure enough the people in his shul were respectful and they did not bring the vodka they did not bring the substances and they danced and they sang except that there was a group of kashmaka guys that were baking from another shule near by in the neighborhood and those bakum were shoe hopping and they ended up in his shule with their bottles of booze and once they brought the bottles people began to drink and other people got drunk after the dancing after music there was a communal meal and my brother loved hashem said we're so happy that you came it's such a honor that each of you came to our semiconductor but next time i'm going to ask you please don't bring your friends and everyone's looking around i shouldn't bring my friends what do you mean i shouldn't bring my friend so no i'm asking you please don't bring your friends which friends do i mean you don't have to bring jack and you don't have to bring johnny next time don't bring jack and johnny we don't need jack daniels we don't need johnny walker we should be able to be masamayak with our own yiddish kite without needing the substances that's the struggle and today and i'm going to give you a little bit of the evolution unfortunately we are living through a lot of difficult challenges and one of them is that there are people who unfortunately have gone off the dark kids at risk people have gone off to derek even people who came from very religious or even hasidic homes they've left torah mitzvahs however many of them end up coming back but when they come back they want to refashion recreate their judaism the austere the strict the stern the very exacting they felt repelled them so instead there's a new version and the new version could involve the simcha al-khalbach or comes it's a knight a barbecue and it's a much more mellow version of yiddish kite and there's what to be said for people feeling comfortable and happy within judaism but somehow what what glammed on to this kind of judaism this kind of wonderful warm loving open mellowness became the heter the permissibility maybe even the encouragement of things like alecheim or smoking up or feeling good so we'll share pills amongst ourselves and having lived in a from community now for many years i used to live in ucla campus and we sort of expected that on a campus but in the from community you would expect us to be able to find meaning within yiddish kite without needing these substances ishayan navi speaks about this way back when he already said that there will be a time this is the times the first place where hashem says i did not need you i didn't need your bombos i didn't need you to come to ramos katseroy i didn't need that because you came with a holiness you came with the simcha that was not the mitzvah but it turned out to be the simcha of other things it was too much we know when the iron kodash was brought back to push them they couldn't take the iron kodash that stolen it and then they have to give it back because there was a big mageifa there was a big my gafa so it was brought back to bajamesh and what happened there was this kind of simcha which ended up in disaster and i gave them for the eden why they were sober somehow they got their iron but there's a way of being basimka without the external stimuli and unfortunately the external stimuli has become part of judaism today it's become it's become not just permitted but it's become part of what we do so if you have a kiddush or you have a kiddish club or a kiddush afterwards you've got to have bottles and bottles of tequila and vodka and unfortunately our children are watching and they see and they're learning what makes tati or abba happy and then when they're 13 they're 14 they're 15 they try it themselves and if not that then they're chugging down cans of beer and eventually in our own community which is supposed to be kadoshan to you perusian to you to be able to separate what is worthwhile from what isn't from what is the crotch what is the external stimuli eventually the lines become blurred there's a halacha and the is shisui a philosopher who draw who who is drunk us early spiral can't darwin and if he darwin's his fila is called to eva it's disgusting and you would think why the opposite you know you've heard the rabbi say the best speech i give is after a nice cup of tequila a nice cup of vodka best speech that i give you see singers all the time even in the jewish world before they come on stage they or sometimes on stage they'll bring the cup to stage they'll look at everyone they say like i am and they chug down an entire cup of vodka and then they begin mashiach messiah and the message becomes clear the message is that you're not good enough you're not comfortable in your own skin you feel full of anxiety and the best way for you to escape you is to bathe your brain with other substances so that i don't have to think anymore and unfortunately unfortunately it's called addiction for a reason and there are certain there are certain substances that are emotionally addictive certain that are chemically addictive certain certain that are both but an addiction means i am doing something that is not good for me and ultimately i'm it's going to stop me from functioning properly i can't function unless i have the following pills in my system so i'm a i can't be myself unless i have my cups of wine in the morning some housewife that takes the cups of wine in the morning just to feel normal one of the beautiful things that the torah gives us is a sense of value even when we're not feeling our best we're allowed to say i'm not feeling great today we're allowed to say you know what yeah my head is not the sharpest i'm not having the best kavanah but i'm going to battle i'm going to do muhammad it doesn't say anywhere no you're mcguived to feel your best always and therefore if you need help here's your help here's the help because you've got to be at your best could you imagine if a rebbe says i have to be on every day so i'll take a cup of wine before i teach second grade i'll take a cup of vodka before i give my best measures here but it's become normal and i would say that that's the most dangerous thing and unfortunately in our community come out a week does not go by nearly a week does not go by when we don't hear of another person who has overdosed another person who is who has died of alcohol poisoning another person who is addicted and they've become psychotic and it is it's more than ever and the anxiety and the depression and the lack of feeling good in our own skin so what do we do about this how do we put a halt to what's become a normalized epidemic in our community how do we say no this is not okay how do we not understand that if we let this go it will get worse and not better so the first thing is you have to understand that if somebody is already taking these things they are a cola they're ill an addiction creates an illness and i know the older generation didn't like to hear this but i mean you caused yourself your own illness it is an illness unfortunately and it has to be treated with a certain degree of rahmanus it has to be treated with very delicate hands that's that's one of the reasons why even today we're we're backtracking from just throwing people in jail because they have a their substance addictions but there are places to get treatment and we have to understand that because fascists that's involved if we don't get these people treatment if we don't get our children treatment only only bad things can happen eventually unfortunately their lives will go to pot it will destroy them and some of it can be in the name of the uterus kite and it still is very destructive so there are experts out there in the field and there are organizations like amudim that deserve our support because what they're doing is unique they're speaking about it they're getting the help the therapy that's needed they're they're finding homes for people who are struggling they're helping them wean off of substances we're not immune to it the opposite it is infiltrated much quicker than anyone thought it would years ago when it was time for me to move to muncie someone said careful this is starting and this is many this is 15 years ago i said it's and i said i can't be and yet i can tell you every week even in my own house people come in of course we don't let it but in my own house people come in it's okay if i smoke weed here is it okay if i take this do you have extra adderall do you have extra this you have extra debt can i take i need something to call me i need something to pick me up without a crisis without understanding what are we using it for how are we using it was it prescribed does we don't need it for our yiddish kite we need to get the help and we can't close our eyes and say our our community you know it's it's not part of us it's here it's not coming it's here it exists it's almost in the category of in chamese there's no home where there's at least someone if not a sibling if not a child then a relative then a friend somebody that we know that has struggled with this and is currently struggling and unfortunately it's killing our children it's killing them i cut a spark who wants us to be in control right because spark wants us to be able to control our yetzara and when we've fallen we have the resources now to pick ourselves up so i asked frankel to come and give us the resources thank you isis let me repeat what you're saying because they can't hear from the mic so i'm going to repeat we have somebody here who works in a funeral home and what's your name if you saul and saul says one of the one of the worst things that we're doing in our community is that when there's somebody who passes away maybe even particularly a young person were told to keep quiet that it was from an overdose and because of that we don't hear and of course the family feels embarrassed they feel ashamed they don't want no one wants to blame the nifter because the the old attitude was that you know who told you to to start with this stuff in the first place so therefore you're the cause of your own death what an embarrassment what a shame so let's let's keep it quiet but by keeping it quiet what happens we think the problem doesn't exist or we think it's much smaller than it actually is today we're being more progressive when it comes to addiction we understand that our children are much much more exposed to this stuff than we ever were growing up i did not know what we looked like i didn't i had no idea i didn't never never occurred to me like it was like so off the radar now it seems like every child at the age of 15 16 has a question should i smoke weed or not like it became something and and and then the pills are being prescribed as a go-to instead of as a backup or instead of as a later resort let's start with this because otherwise it's hard work and and the the the pharmacy companies that we as we know they're being sued for this but the the the the the psychiatrist they're they're incentivized to offer this to their patients so they're incentivized the patients aren't getting it the parents are happy because the kids seem to be acting normal the kids not only feel normal if they have this stuff in their system and the more they have they say if i could feel normal if i take this amount i'll feel much more normal if i could do if i can get b's on a test then i can get a's on the test if i take more and then they get older and they need larger doses and then they're told okay you know what they i've i have uh i have a quick metabolism so i got to take more of them so you know my quick metabolism so let's take more let's take more so now i'll take three a day i'll take four day quick metabolism let's up the dose and then you you i mean i can go on and on and this is not even my area i'm just just from hearing the the what happens then unfortunately more more kids die from this than from car accidents and it and hits our community and what do we do about it we like you said like saul is saying it's it's it's it's it's hush-hush it's it's quiet why is it quiet because we're ashamed so maybe like you said with other issues that our communities has had we have to stand up and agree that yes we have torah but i kara sparkle also made us flesh and blood and we have the same tives and the internet is still floating out there and the messages are floating out there and this has hit our kids in a big way it's hit them and we we we have to we have to pull on the brakes right now okay so having said that we're going to learn how to do that we have one more last question is we want we want real solutions so tell me your first name again stephen i'm of course a member of chris murray uh so um i i want to put into words what stephen's saying uh and then we could end with this i mean it's it's such a simple point today i'm again we're we've we've drifted into alcohol versus drugs so you'll get us on track but um today alcohol has become a status symbol it's a status symbol and the stupidity if i can say this is is that the whole thing is is nonsense and if people come to my house oh i have an 18 year old word if i have a 21 year old thing i and so and i went oh wow you got this part of that bottle and the truth is a most people don't know the difference c by raising it up and putting it on a pedestal we make it a thing we make it a thing so even people who can't stand the taste they just drink because it's time to drink everyone's drinking so the peer pressure makes me want to drink believe it or not most people don't enjoy alcohol that's the truth i'm just saying saying it right here thank you most people don't enjoy al you know why because it burns and it tastes disgusting okay this is i'm just you know sorry i hate to be honest but uh most people don't like alcohol so why do we drink it if it tastes terrible and it burns well i like to get dizzy okay now i'll be like that high but you know what it is a pressure to do it there's a pressure everyone's making a little time do you ever see when i people over for shabbos come on rabbi i make a kind with us and i think rabbi you didn't make all kind with us says the pressure to flip another cup i'm not liking the taste i'm not liking the feeling it's making me feel out of control why what for and there's this pressure and people are hiding bottles but under the table and that they're taking it out you've seen that they hide the bottles under the table and they take it out like you don't even trust the host whoever the host is they'll have enough alcohol i got to bring my own bottle because i want to make sure i'm drunk tonight you're all laughing but you know what i'm saying is the truth we got to make sure that we get drunk so i'm going to have my bottles under the table and this became a standard symbol alco became a status symbol and that's what the kids are getting the kids are not suddenly enjoying the taste of the alcohol it tastes like a taste to them like it tastes to us but what they're getting is it's cool it's a status thing thing to drink it and mozart shabbas that's what you do is you drink aroshaves you take your irish habits like and before you know it you have your arab shabazzle where everyone makes the before minika which is a big question where the kadavan afterwards and then afterwards you have your little uh maybe you'll climb for kiddush then if you'll climb after the fish then you have lekheim at the table and soon you're a drunkard and soon you're doing it every week that's when your kids are watching and they're becoming drunkens and it's become an epidemic there's no question my father with this tremendous wisdom we get a lot of bottles uh because we're a lot of guests so a lot of guests bring bottles it's wonderful if you're watching that's fine thank you we appreciate it and i usually keep the bottles in like a little nice container like this like a little wine cellar uh by my table so you look nice you put the bottle in put the bottle on and my father in his wisdom one day said you know can i make a suggestion get rid of all of it put it in your room don't make it a thing if it becomes a thing where the bottles you got this fancy bottom that bottle and you take it out and you look at it wow this is an old bottle it's an old wine and then everyone's got to drink in the field status and then soon you've glorified alcohol so let's just let's call this spade a spade now let's get some real wisdom rabbi uh