By Dikla Tuchman, JTNews Correspondent
People in recovery typically don’t associate the Twelve-Step program with Judaism. Rabbi Rami Shapiro would argue otherwise.
Shapiro has spent decades working with the concepts of Judaism and spirituality and their applications to our daily lives. While also a practicing spiritual leader, he brings his workshops, retreats and conversations to multiple religious communities worldwide.
From May 18 to 20, Shapiro was invited to Seattle’s Bet Alef Meditative Congregation to participate in several events that focused on Jewish learning and healing.
“When I travel I talk about spiritual practice, that’s my primary focus as well as “˜God realization’ — the divine is the essence of everything,” Shapiro told JTNews. “Our purpose on the planet is to realize that and to relate it to all of our relationships in the world.”
On May 20, Shapiro engaged a diverse cross section of the community in an all-day workshop held at Hillel at the University of Washington, sponsored by Bet Alef and Jewish Family Service. The workshop focused on the principles laid out in his book, “Recovery — the Sacred Art: The Twelve Steps as Spiritual Practice (Art of Spiritual Living).”
The workshop brought more than 130 attendees from all walks of life to discuss the benefits of the 12 Steps, though not as a way of dealing with specific addictions. Instead, they tackled the bigger picture.
“The 12 Steps also speaks to the ultimate addiction, the addiction to control the ego and the ego’s need to control our lives and the lives of everyone else,” Shapiro said. “What we need to do is be surrendered to the Divine and live through that state of surrender.”
While perhaps 40 to 50 percent of attendees at Sunday’s workshop were members of Bet Alef, there were “a lot of people who were outside of our specific community; all sorts of denominations were represented,” said Rabbi Olivier BenHaim of Bet Alef. “People who were not Jewish and people in recovery” were present, as well as “a good number of professionals in attendance, which was great because they were able to take what was done in the workshop and apply it to the 12-Step programs they do.”
Overall, he said, the crowd was very diverse, “which was exactly what we wanted.”
As BenHaim pointed out, most people who are not in recovery have preconceived notions about this subject — “that 12-Steps is more of a Christian thing, not so much a Jewish thing.” Questions addressed at the workshop included, “How is this relevant to my practice? How is this relevant to the spiritual journey I am on?”
“Because he knew the audience was going to be diverse, he brought in teachings from all sorts of places. But most of his teaching — 70 to 80 percent — was drawn from Jewish traditions,” Benhaim said. “It was very, very helpful for many of us who are not connected to the 12-Step program, but are connected with Jewish traditions.”
Shapiro laid the foundation for the 12-Step program itself and then spent time answering people’s questions and addressing concerns for how to apply the steps and Jewish teaching to each individual’s circumstances.
“He is able to derive a lot of what he shares with people from his own experience,” BenHaim said.
Through the use of diagrams and real-life examples, participants were able to fully relate to Shapiro’s teachings.
As co-sponsors of Shapiro’s workshop, representatives of Jewish Family Service evaluated and gleaned some of the tactics Shapiro used. Having worked one-on-one with people in recovery from all types of addiction, Diane Burnett, director of JFS’s Alternatives to Addiciton program, looked at Shapiro’s methodology through a different lens. While many who attended the Sunday workshop were at more advanced stages in their recovery process, most of the patients Burnett sees are dealing with the very “nuts-and-bolts stage of recovery,” she said, “whereas being able to deal with the spiritual aspect of recovery comes further along in the process.”
For Burnett, the most important message to send through workshops such as Shapiro’s and JFS’s presence in the community is that “Jews have a place where they can come and start to work on [recovery] wherever they are in the struggle,” she said. “It’s important that Jews know that they have somewhere they can go, and they don’t have to feel shame or fear of the community knowing that they are struggling.”
BenHaim agreed. He said his own congregants can benefit from Shapiro’s lessons.
“It’s a big part of our community. It’s been something that has been present for some time,” he said.