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.