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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
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My Uncle Shea Remembering Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, zt”l By Yaakov Ganz
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abbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, or Uncle Shea as he was known in the family, was an unusual person. This is not news to anyone. The rabbi doctor part is less uncommon than it sounds. Every community has its handful of dual discipline Torah scholar/professionals. I always thought of him in my own mind as my Modern Orthodox chassidishe uncle. I think he would have liked that. I think that reflects something more unusual about him than his diverse erudition. He wore a shtreimel, a beard and peyos, but he saw himself and the world around him with a subtlety and depth that greatly transcended such superficialities as uniforms, materials of head coverings, traditions of study or prayer, minhagim, and the like. He was not greatly impressed by titles or club memberships. He saw each person really as a tayereh neshama and a chelek Elokim mimaal. What else could matter? This went for old and young, men and women, the learned and the pedestrian, Jews and nonJews. He is probably the only person in the world who, besides for other singularities, had a close personal relationship with the Steipler Gaon, zt”l, and with a bishop of the Catholic church.
He talked to children with respect. This is not a platitude. When we spoke, I always felt like he thought I had something genuinely useful to say, and I would rack my brain for the bright thing he seemed to be expecting. In retrospect, I think this is simply the way he saw everybody. He was very smart and knew many things, but his mind was always hungry for new learning, for new experiences, for knowledge or understanding that could come from anywhere or anyone. He wore techeilis in his tzitzis because it was presented to him and it made sense. He wasn’t concerned with who else was or wasn’t wearing them. I worked with him for a time at a drug rehabilitation facility in Long Island, and he told me this story:
I was standing outside of my house in Pittsburgh one morning, and I was feeling very depressed. I can’t remember anymore what it was that had gotten me down that day. In any case, some people from the hospital were walking by, and they were on their way to a meeting. They said, “Good morning” to me and they could tell that I was out of it and one of them said, “Hey, Twerski” [in his stories his interlocuters were always calling him by his last name only, though I never myself heard anyone address him that way]. “Twerski, you look lousy. Come with us to the meeting.” So I thought, OK, why not? I went with them, and this fellow gets up
at the meeting and says, “When I came here, I had lost everything in my life. My job, my family, my money, my home, my friends, my health. Everything. Some days I feel like I just can’t go on. But then I think, ‘G-d brought me this far. He’s not going to leave me here now.” And then my uncle turned to me and, with a certain bashful self-deprecation, said, “That really picked me up.” You cannot imagine the respect and admiration Rabbi Twerski had for the people our society considers to be its least respectful and admirable members. I think part of the reason he was drawn to addicts is because, when you’ve lost everything, all that’s left is you. The real you. No pretensions, no airs,
no pursuit of prestige or recognition or other material things. Your existence becomes quite a bit more spiritual, essentially by default. He wanted to connect to real people. He wanted to touch your soul and be touched by your soul. That was something in which he found indescribable value. More than anything, I think he was a baal chessed. He consulted and counseled and, when there was nothing else, listened and empathized with the pain of a near constant stream of people who sought his help from all over the world. I was not a little aware of the celebrity of my famous uncle, and I took some pride in dropping his name when the opportunity presented itself. I said hello to him at family simchas like any of the dozens of other nieces and nephews and relatives and friends and students who would gather around him when he walked into a room, but still, he hardly knew me. But when I once asked him to introduce me to a certain prestigious person with whom he was acquainted, I got an email from this person I think around five minutes after I asked my uncle to make the introduction. When I emailed him a question about a client I was struggling with just a few months ago, at which time, confined to a wheelchair, he
