Is our community drinking too much? One wife’s chilling story, a harsh reality

Sari had only been married a few months when she found herself standing outside the neighborhood liquor store, waiting for her husband. She recognized the couple coming toward her — the husband was in the same kollel as hers and she’d met the wife a few times.

While the other woman’s husband ducked into the store, Sari chatted with the wife, making the usual hollow small talk. After a moment’s lull, the woman turned to Sari, her eyes darkening, and whispered, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?” She nodded meaningfully toward the liquor store that had swallowed their spouses.

Sari felt her stomach drop, the question piercing through the fantasy she so carefully concocted every morning. She was struggling for an appropriate answer when her husband appeared with a bulging bag. Sari waved a quick goodbye, but the question remained hanging in the air like stale cigarette smoke. Why didn’t anyone tell us?

Uneasy Beginnings

Sari Freedlin* grew up in a bubble. Her father was a rosh kollel and her mother a beloved elementary school teacher.

“Insular doesn’t begin to describe my upbringing,” Sari explained to me over a Zoom interview. “I knew nothing from nothing. I went to the top Bais Yaakov in my area and I naturally gravitated toward the good girls. I had very little exposure to anything outside school, camp, friends, homework — my life was totally predictable.”

Even through the grainy screen, I can see that Sari’s piercing blue eyes have steel behind them; the girl she describes is long gone. In her place stands a survivor.

“I was a 23 when someone suggested Dovid. My older sisters had gotten married at a younger age and my family felt like I was being unnecessarily picky.” Though Sari’s parents heard glowing reports about this amazing bochur, they were sure Sari would find something wrong and end it after two dates.

This time, however, the research was on point: Sari saw something in Dovid she hadn’t seen in other boys she’d dated. He had storybook-perfect middos and an open ehrlich face and disposition. She was enamored. She agreed to another date, then another.

But beneath the surface, there was a niggling unease, something she couldn’t understand. Then, in a moment of honesty, Dovid brought up the fact that he’d struggled with addiction in the past. He’d attended a top high school, but wasn’t able to keep up. He confessed that his parents had “solved” his issues by sending him to yeshivah in Eretz Yisrael halfway through high school.

He bounced back and forth between Eretz Yisrael and home for a few years, and at one point attended rehab. At last, he settled down in Eretz Yisrael and saw some real success in his learning, making a name for himself as a genuine masmid. He quickly went on to explain that he’d been on the straight and narrow for many years.

Sari was in turmoil. She didn’t breathe a word to her parents, but paused the shidduch for a week to think things over. She decided to call an uncle who’d been involved in Dovid’s yeshivah in Eretz Yisrael for a long time, to do some more research. He got back to her with more glowing reports: “The past is the past; it was a long time ago and he’s doing amazingly well now.” He assured her there was no need to worry.

But Sari still had her reservations. Her brother, a confidant, suggested getting daas Torah from a big talmid chacham from Eretz Yisrael who happened to be visiting. With her brother by her side, Sari met with him, outlining the situation in detail. The talmid chacham listened carefully, then thought for a moment.

“Has he been sober for six years?”

Having done the research and spoken frankly with Dovid, Sari answered with a confident yes.

“Mazel tov,” the Rav answered. Then he repeated the mazel tov another three times. With her heart at ease, Sari got engaged soon afterward.

A few days after the vort, Dovid mentioned he was taking a small dose of Klonopin, a drug sometimes used to treat anxiety. Sari was taken aback — Dovid had assured her he wasn’t taking any medication. She didn’t want to involve her parents this late in the game and she wasn’t sure if they’d be able to handle the information or know what to do with it.

So she called the same uncle who’d helped her before and asked if she should call off the engagement. He recommended they go to a therapist together to discuss the dose of Klonopin and if it was safe. Dovid readily agreed.

The therapist met with the couple separately and then together. She reassured Sari that the dose Dovid was taking was minimal — just something to take the edge off — and that she shouldn’t worry about it. “You’re going to have an amazing marriage,” she proclaimed with confidence. Sari walked away feeling lighter, but still uneasy.

I interrupt her narrative with a question: If you had doubts, why did you move forward?

She sighs. “There were a lot of things I liked about Dovid. And I got advice from big people — rabbanim, therapists. They were all so reassuring and all insisted things would work out well. I let that guide me.”

The wedding came and went. Right after sheva brachos, the couple flew to Eretz Yisrael where they planned to start their marriage. There was the regular stress of unpacking and settling in, but from the beginning, Sari saw something wasn’t right. Dovid was missing days of yeshivah, sleeping late, and within a week of their arrival, he’d started drinking while still taking Klonopin — a combination that, unbeknown to Sari at the time, can be lethal.

“Here I was, temimusdig as it comes, up against something I didn’t understand at all. And the worst part was that I had no one to talk to about it. I didn’t want to breathe a word to anyone.” Sari wasn’t ready or able to face what she saw in Dovid, the quiet rearing of a beast that would grow to epic proportions over the next year, so she sealed her lips and put on her apron.

Dovid had a vast network of friends in Eretz Yisrael from many years of learning there, and Sari had plenty of connections of her own. She was an excellent cook, and despite her private internal turmoil, the Freedlin’s home quickly became known as “the place to go” for the best Shabbos seudah in town. Ten to fifteen bochurim streamed in every week, invited or uninvited.

“It was crazy,” Sari says. “I was working all day, then coming home to prepare supper, and making these lavish seudahs every Shabbos.” But the elaborate seudahs weren’t the problem. It was what came with them — the alcohol.

“I can’t even begin to describe it. Whisky, wine, scotch — the boys would bring their own alcohol and my husband would provide a bottle as well. By the end of the meal, everyone was gone. Everyone. Every week. No one could walk in a straight line; boys were collapsed out cold on the couch. My husband would go straight to the bathroom as soon as they left to throw up. It was Purim every Shabbos.” The binge drinking on Shabbos catapulted Dovid, who had a history of addiction, down a slippery slope.