Is our community drinking its way to disaster?

It starts with a few shots at a kiddush club, and then a few more. Before long, it’s turned into a serious drinking problem. The conversation is not about alcoholism per se, but about the dangerous culture that is not only tarnishing the holiness of Shabbos but crushing the foundations of the Jewish family

ITwas Rosh Hashanah, just moments before the chazzan began Mussaf.

Shevy, a young newlywed married just a month to Yossi, peered into the men’s section with an uneasiness. Yossi’s seat was empty. She glanced around, but he didn’t seem to be inside the shul. Concerned, she closed her machzor and walked out of the ladies’ section. Several minutes later, she spotted him. Her husband was in a side room with several other men making Kiddush. She watched him take shot after shot of whiskey.

“I slowly walked back to my seat,” Shevy relates. “Here I was, a Bais Yaakov graduate with my fresh machzor. And my husband of four weeks was drunk in the middle of Rosh Hashanah davening. I covered my face with my machzor and cried and cried.”

During the walk home from shul, Shevy sensed that Yossi was not himself. “My usually gentle-mannered husband was a different person. He was talking loudly. We met a cousin on the street, who jokingly asked him, ‘So how’s married life treating you?’ My husband began spilling the beans and answered with a series of gripes about me that I had never heard before. I was so shocked that I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was just the beginning.”

L

akewood, two o’clock Shabbos afternoon. The streets were fairly quiet as Shua and Nechama Kleiner* walked out of a local assisted living facility where they had joined their grandmother for the seudah, when they noticed an obviously frum man staggering by. He couldn’t walk in a straight line, his shirt was untucked and stained, and his suit was rumpled. The sight was jarring, but the couple wasn’t sure what they could do except pray that he would make it home safely.

On Motzaei Shabbos, Shua got a phone call from Chaverim.

“A gutte voch, Reb Shua. We understand that you’re the manager of a building on Route Nine. A man went missing on Shabbos and we need to review the video footage in the area. It’s an emergency. Can you meet us right now?”

Within minutes Shua was in his office, pulling up the video footage. It was a delicate situation, they explained. They were trying to protect the family’s dignity because the missing man was a respectable, well-known businessman and baal tzedakah in the community. At the same time, sometimes the only way of finding a missing person is by spreading the word.

“Please show me a picture of him,” Shua said.

The Chaverim member pulled up the picture, and Shua’s heart stopped. “I saw him,” he said flatly.

“Where? When?”

“Today at two p.m. He was stone drunk.”

It was now eight hours later, and the footage didn’t provide any clues as to his whereabouts.

At 11:30 p.m. Shua got a text message from the Chaverim member. The missing man has been located. Thanks for your help.

But where was he between the hours of 2 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.? The details were not clear, but one thing was: His wife and children had spent their Shabbos waiting and waiting for their father to come home from shul.

But he never did.