Menachem Poznanski

so menachem thank you so much and welcome to the show thank you for joining for uh inviting me this is great this is really exciting i know you have you wrote a book tell us a little bit about your book and some of the work that you do okay so i actually were two books uh the first one is uh called stepping out of the abyss it's a jewish guide to the 12 steps um and the other one is called consciously which is a book on utilizing mindfulness and meditation practices to evolve and develop a vibrant conscious contact which is a recovery term for like a relationship with god um so the work that i do is i work with youth 18 to 35 who are emerging out of substance abuse treatment centers and they're trying to build a life and we try to help them with all the different aspects of that that includes you know spirituality as maybe we'll talk about has a big part of recovery and particularly in the 12-step approach but generally as well and therefore sometimes includes enhancing their spirituality and their connection to judaism and finding a place within judaism but also uh helping them you know get their lives the jobs whatever school life we have young couples that are part of our program uh helping navigate that all those kind of things so so talk to me a little about the spirituality piece because i think that's something that at least perk my ears as soon as you said it which is um and people we've heard this from different people to how spirituality plays a role spirituality plays a role so give us a little bit more as to what does spirituality do um during this process for somebody okay so to really kind of touch on the spirituality piece uh what's most effective is to kind of give you a little bit of a historical kind of context so obviously addiction affects a person psychologically but also um physically people become physically dependent on addiction but something that emerged in the early part of the 20th century was an idea that there was actually an existential or spiritual part of addiction that was driving people back into addictive patterns you know meaning you'd have treatment where someone would fall into addicted an addictive pattern they'd become addicted to alcohol or drugs or some other addiction and then they'd go for treatment and they'd be their addiction would be relieved they would be removed from their addiction and then they would fall back into that pattern again and again and again no one really understood for a very long time and then there was a kind of an event or a series of events that occurred in the early part of the 20th century that culminated ultimately in the development of the 12 steps through the alcoholics anonymous program which is the first 12-step program and now there's hundreds of 12-step programs but based on an idea that was put forward by carl jung right as the famous column was that the reason why addicts and alcoholics continue to fall into a pattern of addiction is because they're actually seeking in their addiction something other than relief from their dependency and even relief from their emotional problems and there's some kind of spiritual angle there was some kind of spiritual drive so that if they were to utilize spiritual practices and help a person evolve and create a healthy and vibrant spirituality it would act as a guard against um further relapse it would actually act as a support while somebody was seeking their initial recovery and it would give them a vibrant and meaningful life and help them to kind of lead a really meaningful existence so and the 12 steps really just developed out of that idea um the four bearers of the 12 steps the early members of alcoholics anonymous basically started to adapt different things that different people were doing in particular one group the oxford group but others as well which are spiritual practices um how a person can develop and evolve have a spiritual awakening that's a term that they use and then develop a very vibrant spiritual life and that's that whole movement is based on that so since this is the shabbat show and we are i guess sort of focused in on on jewish practice and jewish uh principles um being someone like yourself uh tell us if you can't have that sort of general spiritual focus is it in line with judaism is it something that is very much a part of jewish practice is it something that we've known already but we didn't really connect the dots until recently so one of the things that's interesting is that that carl young on his 80th birthday was interviewed and he said that if you want to know someone that um anticipated my entire psychology you will find it in uh redove bayer of mizrich the the great maggot of ms rich one of the leaders of the hasidic movement so carl jung said we can find rooted in judaism perhaps we could say at least in carl jung's report but more importantly the idea that there's multifarious kind of um um which lead us to kind of dark spaces is not something that's new in judaism and the fact that one of those drives is one that's spiritual and one that's rooted in are a lack of a relationship with god and a lack of a vibrant sense of meaning and purpose is not a new idea in judaism that's like fundamental to the entire idea of judaism but the idea that we could utilize and leverage a relationship with god to emerge out of the darkness of an abyss of uh of addiction is not something that's contrary to using the judaism at all it's in fact it's very very much related um one of the other things to keep in mind and and then perhaps we could focus on maybe some of the principles of recovery are that are obviously connected to judaism i kind of wrote some down uh i thought perhaps that might be useful is that the recovery programs and specific the 12-step programs really focused on what works so what they they weren't looking they weren't being driven by ideology they were working it was driven by trial and error so the fact this is something i say to jewish people all the time the fact that they came out with something that actually is totally in line with judaism is not surprising because the torah is true so it makes sense that what they did was true they weren't driven by a christian ideology or any other ideology they weren't driven even by a psychological ideology they just were trying things to figure out what would work and what would give them a vibrant relationship with god and what they ended up with is in fact very much connected to judaism my my first book stepping out of the abyss which i wrote with um arya book spav and rabbi yoni finer actually wrote a section on judaism and recovery highlights a lot of these things and and every abraham be remiss not to mention him at all he's the grandfather of jewish recovery has highlighted you know a hundred times a thousand times uh the the connectedness but some of the really meaningful principles that i kind of jotted down here was that first of all the entire basis of the recovery program and the process of incorporating spirituality into a recovery from addiction is based on the principle of acceptance right it's a very very powerful principle today it's become recognized as a powerful psychological principle but acceptance at least as especially as it's practiced through the 12 steps is really what we in judaism called emunah or be takon right which is faith and trust but specifically faith and trust that i'm exactly where i'm supposed to be that the challenges that i'm that i'm having are one that are so to be destined for and that god wants me to operate from here it's like uh the except there's a reading in the in the main text of alcoholics anonymous a story of a doctor who kind of came to the conclusion that and he said that acceptance was the key to his recovery from his alcoholism because he came to the conclusion he said i'm an alcoholic what am i going to do about it now so instead of kind of fighting against that um hide and trying to avoid that fact by accepting that fact that was a springboard towards moving forward and that's the foundation of step one but there's a spiritual side of that because it means i'm exactly where i'm supposed to be as long as a person feels like they're not where they're supposed to be they're always kind of feeling they should be somewhere else and the foundation of the recovery program and this is oftentimes a foundation in a munna it's like i am exactly where i'm supposed to be i'm in egypt i'm in the darkness i'm surrounded by servitude and slavery and what we call shibud and god can reach his hand in and help me as we did we did in literally in the story of egypt god he did not send an angel he did not send a messenger he himself came down that principle and that but that the suffering has meaningfulness and purposefulness is a very jewish idea another idea is that honesty is the key and we know that uh our our tradition tells us that the the the um the seal of god is truth and honesty and what they found in the recovery program is that the key to recovery from addiction is to learn how to be honest not only with other people but with ourselves right the foundation of the whole thing is to learn how to be honest with ourselves to be honest with god to be honest with others and that is the principle of the whole thing self-reflection in inventory is part of that honesty process a healthy process of self-reflection and inventory is a vital part of the recovery process and that is a vital part of judaism right we call um but not like a critical kind of destructive form of beating ourselves up but really a vibrant way of kind of looking at what reality is and what we can do better and then finally the really the linchpin of the whole recovery program is service crescent right that is the foundation of the whole thing and not only that but that facet is the main pathway to to invite god into our lives uh the key um in judaism the way that we put a prominence on kindness uh tikkun olam but also doing kindness but also charity uh charity is you know the jewish people are of the you know charity is like it's in our blood but the foundation is that when we make ourselves channels of goodness of charity it opens the door for us to recover from our most um pervasive challenges and that's at the core of the recovery process amazing thank you so much for joining us today and for all the work that you do for the community and for the world at large and thank you for shining your light on this world no thank you so much charlie it's an honor and a privilege to be here thanks for having me thank you thanks so much for watching for more content like and subscribe and be sure to tune in live every thursday at 8pm eastern at the shabbato.com or right here on youtube