By Yaakov Ort/Chabad.org | February 03, 2021
Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, zt l, a chasidic rabbi; psychiatrist; prolific author of more than 60 popular books on Jewish spirituality and recovery from substance abuse; and founder and longtime head of the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburgh, one of America’s leading facilities for addiction treatment, passed away on January 31 in Jerusalem from complications from coronavirus. He was 90 years old.
Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Twerski was born in 1930 in Milwaukee to Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael and Devorah Twerski. His father was a scion of the Chernobler chasidic dynasty. In his autobiographical work, “Generation to Generation,” he wrote how his father moved to Wisconsin in 1927 and began with a nucleus of Ukrainian Jewish landsleit (countrymen), and gradually achieved a following among all segments of the community, serving as a counselor to countless individuals and families.
As Israel heads into its fourth elections in just two years, it can be easy to be fed up with.
Often, behind an inspirational success story lies a life trajectory whose protagonist never considered complacency or smug self-satisfaction an option. Steve Jobs (1955-2011), the legendary founder of Apple Inc., loathed formal education and famously dropped out of college after the first semester. But truthfully, that is not the whole story.
While it is certainly a fact that he was dismissive of academic impositions, even after he dropped out of college he still continued to attend the classes that interested him. Remarkably, one of those classes was calligraphy. He later revealed that had he not continued to attend this particular college course, “the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”