Mark Schwartz: Remembering Rabbi Abraham Twerski — recounting just one miraculous deed
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I was a young Pittsburgh lawyer in the early 1980s, over my head in most things, let alone a no-win criminal case. For God knows what reason, a young man had been referred to me, facing a three-year mandatory minimum jail sentence for vehicular homicide while drunk.
When I eventually met the client, whom I’ll call Jerry, he was virtually unrecognizable given the burns that he had received from losing control of a car that careened into a telephone pole. Thanks to a fuel system similar to that of the ill-fated Ford Pinto, upon impact the car exploded, incinerating the occupants. His best friend and his sister were killed. First responders thought that Jerry was also dead, but as they put what they thought was his charred corpse into a body bag, his hand moved.
When we finally met after his first batch of dozens of surgeries, there were literally two sides to him, depending on your point of approach. One side looked normal, while the other was simply skeletal given all the skin and muscle that had burned away. I’ll never forget that small protrusion from his face that was once a nose.
Given what had happened, we were heading to criminal court. An individual in Pennsylvania with a blood alcohol level above the legal limit involved in an auto accident where death results faces a mandatory minimum 3-year jail sentence. No excuses. No exceptions. For Jerry, incarceration would result in a death sentence: No prison could accommodate his very complicated and unstable medical condition, given the degree of the burns all over his body. Given the inflexibility of it all, I was out of arguments and counted off the dreaded days until Jerry’s first court date.
It was then that someone recommended I contact Rabbi Abraham Twerski. Out of ignorance, I questioned what a rabbi could do for him. Religion struck me as, at best, being too little too late. I was wrong again as I then learned something about him, his approach to mankind and his substance abuse clinic that had then been around for almost a decade.
While I can only guess at the identity of who it was who referred me, with some 40-plus years having passed, I explicitly remember my one telephone call with Rabbi Twerski. Spent and nervous, I explained the situation. The response I received was a calming, “We’ll take care of him in our program.” My mind spun out a host of questions. The response was always the same: “We’ll take care of him.” There was no request for verification, medical records, a retainer or an expert witness fee for Rabbi Twerski. Finances were never discussed. As per his refrain, it was that simple.
When the court date took place, I argued that no jail could handle Jerry’s situation and that attempting to do so would expose the state to hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical costs. When asked by the court what the alternative was, I simply mentioned Rabbi Twerski and Gateway Rehabilitation. The court ordered my client’s diversion into the program without a day to be spent in jail, a diversion which proved to be successful. The self-effacing physician and rabbi, Abraham Twerski, did take care of him and countless others. For this I, and many others, are grateful.
Mark Schwartz is a Pittsburgh lawyer now resident in Bryn Mawr, Pa.