My Uncle Shia by Yaakov Ganz

IN MEMORY My Uncle Shea

Remembering Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, zt”l

By Yaakov Ganz

Rabbi 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

was quite old and frail and I’m sure was still receiving constant emails and calls for help, he responded almost instantly. In his typical fashion his diagnosis was that my client suffered from low self-esteem, which made me laugh a little. But it was clear from his response that he had spent time reading my email carefully and his advice about how low self-esteem was affecting my client and what I could try to do to help him work through it was very particular to the case and not a boilerplate in any way.

When Rabbi Twerski’s first wife, my Aunt Goldie, a”h, was nifteres, he brought her to be buried in Eretz Yisroel. I was learning there at the time, and I came to the kevurah, as did many other people. Rabbi Twerski had grandchildren and relatives and talmidim and friends living in Eretz Yisroel and quite a large crowd came to pay their respects. I remember standing in that throng as the slight form of my un-

cle stood among us brokenhearted and consumed with his loss. He hugged every single person and thanked them for being there. I think there must have been over fifty of us. When he hugged me, I doubted if he even knew who I was and yet I felt like I was providing him some vital support. Of course, this could not have been the case. In a state of such pain and despair, barely being aware of his surroundings and acting,

I think, not even with real consciousness, he wanted each of us to feel that we were valuable, that our presence there was significant. The feeling I had after hugging him I saw mirrored on the faces of everyone else there when their turn came: “It’s a good thing I’m here for him!” I would lament that they don’t make his kind very much anymore, but I don’t think there were ever that many people like him. For

those of us who were fortunate to know him, to learn from him through his lectures, his books, or his teachings, we know what a singular soul he was. We know of his exceptional mind and his even bigger heart, a heart of insight and a heart of deep feeling. He believed in the greatness of all people.

In his memory, we can look at our friends and our neighbors, our family and community, all the people of the world we live in, and instead of seeing people we compete with or disagree with or are different than, we can see souls that are special and have something unique and valuable to contribute to the world and to us personally. This would be a great zechus for his neshama. (And more so for ours. I think we need it more than he does.)

I think part of the reason he was drawn to addicts is because, when you’ve lost everything, all that’s left is you.

Yaakov Ganz learned for many years in Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim. He has a marriage therapy practice in Queens and Long Island.