On May 22, the New York City Department of Health announced the beginning of their new “I Saved a Life” awareness campaign. The purpose of the campaign is to educate the public on how to administer naloxone, a potentially lifesaving medicine that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
While the provision of naloxone is beneficial to the city as a whole, it’s particularly important for one community in particular: the Hasidic community in Brooklyn, which as only recently begun to publicly confront its problems with drug abuse and addiction.
Today, there are several Jewish organizations in Brooklyn that are licensed to train volunteers to administer naloxone. One such organization is Amudim, a non-profit dedicated to helping Jews in crisis. Zvi Gluck, director of Amudim, claims that the organization’s naloxone training sessions serve the additional purpose of spreading much-needed awareness about what can happen to Hasidic Jews in their own communities.
“We advertise the event to promote awareness, and then we administer the training at the actual event,” says Gluck.
Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, program director at Operation Survival, a drug abuse prevention program created by the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education, says that the community’s struggle with drug addiction, in and of itself, is not unique. Addiction, he says, has been a problem for the community for as long as it’s been a problem for New York as a whole; the Hasidic community is simply vulnerable to the same problems that all other communities are.
“Drug abuse is happening across the country, and it’s trickling down into every community,” says Behrman. “We’re struggling with the solution, as is the rest of the country.”
Furthermore, Crown Heights is a multicultural neighborhood. Rabbi Moishe Feiglin, founder of the Aliya Institute, a Crown Heights-based Chabad House that offers spiritual and emotional counseling to at-risk youth, says that despite its reputation as an insular, homogenous community, Lubavitch Crown Heights is still susceptible to influences from neighboring groups.
“There’s many other cultures that live here,” says Feiglin. “You walk down the street today, you smell marijuana in the air. It’s all around us.”
But while struggles with substance abuse aren’t unique to the Hasidic community per se, there are some factors that make it more difficult for substance abusers in Orthodox neighborhoods to come forward about their problems.
Gluck notes that the Hasidic families he’s worked with have frequently been reluctant to confront the truth that one of their own could become addicted. The inherent shame that comes with having a user in the family is exacerbated by the conservative nature of Hasidic culture, which is still largely based around matchmaking and arranged marriages.
“There’s always a fear that if someone in your family is an addict, nobody will want to marry into it,” says Gluck.
On a similar note, Rabbi Shea Hecht, chairman of the board for the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education, points out that an addiction in a Hasidic family has the potential to cause more damage than an addiction in a secular family. The Hasidic family unit is both large and close-knit, due to their tendency to marry young and have multiple children.
“In Orthodox communities,” says Hecht, “you’re dealing with a smaller percentage of people who are addicted; but ultimately, it affects a lot more people. Brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, and frequently great-grandparents who are still alive.”
As a result, Behrman’s wisdom isn’t shared by everyone in his neighborhood. In Lubavitch Crown Heights, there are still some adults who either don’t know or don’t want to admit that even well-trained Yeshivah students can fall victim to opiate addiction.
Regardless, the environment has changed significantly in the past few decades. With the increasing number of deaths resulting from drug overdoses, combined with the advent of social media, addiction in Hasidic neighborhoods is no longer a problem that can be ignored or suppressed.
Gluck notes that since January of this year, 71 deaths by overdose in Hasidic communities have been reported to Amudim.
“I don’t know any family today that can say they don’t have anyone in their family or their community who is affected by addiction,” says Gluck. “Everyone knows someone, whether it’s someone in their family, or someone in their synagogue, or someone they used to go to school with.”
Moshe, 32, a Crown Heights resident who formerly struggled with alcohol and marijuana addiction for 10 years, claims that he’s seen the problem get worse with his own eyes.
“The thing that really changes it is that you have people overdosing,” says Moshe. “Before you had people getting arrested, going to psychiatric wards, things like that. Now you have heroin and opiates that are killing these kids. It’s more in-your-face now.”
But Behrman notes that the Hasidic community in Crown Heights is far more open about its troubles with substance abuse than it used to be. On Jan. 8 of this year, Operation Survival lead a drug awareness and prevention event, which was attended by 650 people.
Rabbi Feiglin of the ALIYA Institute has made the same observation. In the 15 years since the institute was founded, he’s noticed a significant change in the way the community treats the subject of substance abuse.
“It’s definitely a lot more talked about now,” says Feiglin. “The community’s a lot more aware.”
Gluck agrees that the community has come a long way when it comes to acknowledging its problems with substance abuse, but maintains that they still have a long way to go.
“We’re light years ahead of where we were, but there’s still the stigma,” says Gluck. “When we reach out to people with drug problems, they ask us, ‘Who’s gonna know? If I go to a meeting, will I see people I know there?’”
That, says Behrman, is part of the reason the Health Department’s new campaign could prove to be so beneficial. By spreading awareness about naloxone, the campaign could call attention to the several Jewish organizations in Crown Heights – including his own – that are licensed to administer the medicine.
“Since we started the naloxone program, we’ve had tremendous support from within the community,” says Behrman. “From rabbis, from leaders, from community members. People are volunteering to get involved.”
This, in effect, will let the people of Lubavitch Crown Heights know that there are people in their community who are willing to help them at a moment’s notice, and that they can, and should, come forward about their addiction.
Most of all, says Behrman, it lets the community know that there’s no magical barrier protecting Lubavitch Crown Heights from the ills of the secular world. They’re susceptible to all the same problems that plague Bed-Stuy, East New York and Bensonhurst, and it’s vital that everyone in the neighborhood acknowledges that.
“Addiction doesn’t discriminate,” says Behrman. “We are human. There will always be people who struggle with addiction.”
