Shlomo Pill: When a Rabbi Doctor Struggles With Addiction
18Forty Podcast - 18Forty
This episode of the 18Forty Podcast explores the often-overlooked struggle with addiction among high-achievers in the Orthodox Jewish community
Key takeaways
- Addiction can affect even the most accomplished individuals, challenging the stereotype that only struggling or marginalized people need teshuvah.
Main topics
- Addiction among religious high achievers
- The myth of perfection in Orthodox Jewish life
Notable quotes
"We need to develop a language of teshuva, both for those who are obviously struggling, but also for the ones in the front of the class whose struggles may be much more private."
Conclusion
The episode concludes by affirming that teshuvah is not reserved for those at society's margins but is essential for all,
Transcript preview
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They partner with the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF, as well as Israel's police and fire services. responding to every kind of emergency across the country. And here is something remarkable. 90 % of MDA's first responders are volunteers. They are yeshiva students, teenagers, soldiers between shifts, ordinary people who made an extraordinary decision that when the siren goes off, they run toward it. Not because they have to, because they choose to. On October 7th, MDA medics were in Kibbutz Be'eri. They were at the Nova Music Festival. They treated the wounded, identified the fallen, and kept working, even under fire. There Speaker 1 (1:41) is a Hebrew word that Speaker 2 (1:42) captures this spirit. Achrayut. Responsibility. Not the kind that weighs on you, the kind that defines you. The kind that says, I am the person who shows up. For 95 years, through wars, terror attacks, pandemics, and everything in between, the same question has always been asked. When something happens, who will be there? For Israel, the answer has long been the same. Muggin, david, adom. And I think that is worth understanding. They need our support, especially now. Please visit afmda.org slash give to donate now. Hi friends, David Bashevkin here. Before we get to today's episode, I want to briefly tell you about a new program I'm so excited about called Talmud Daily. Sometimes you go to an amusement park, you go on a vacation, and before you actually settle down and figure out what activity is, you want a tour to kind of look around and see what's available. Talmud Daily is a tour of the entire Talmud. We're going to take you through every single tractate, all the major concepts in just 10 minutes a day in easy English. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Each day we're going to focus on the concepts, the meaning. the daily practice, and of course the history behind all of the major ideas, debates, and concepts throughout the Talmud. And then on Friday, we will give you a long-form interview with some of the greatest Talmud educators in the world. Who is this for? This is for anyone who is curious about what the Talmud is all about, but has not yet taken a deep dive in the Talmud itself. Maybe it's because the language is too difficult. Maybe it's because you've never had a great introduction. There are so many reasons. But Talmud Daily is your key to opening up and familiarizing yourself with the entirety of the Talmud. Join us now at talmuddaily.org. The program begins on August 24th, and we're so excited for you to join. And for those already doing Dafyomi, the program throughout the world where Jews study a page of Talmud a day, maybe this program isn't for you, but you know what? I bet you... know somebody who it is for. Think about co-workers. Think about family. Think about somebody who's curious but does not yet have the key to understand the basis for all of Jewish life and Jewish thought. Give someone that key. Sign up now at talmadaily.org. Speaker 2 (4:19) Hi friends, and welcome to the 1840 Podcast, where each month we explore a different topic balancing modern sensibilities with traditional sensitivities to give you new approaches to timeless Jewish ideas. I'm your host, David Bishofkin, and today we are exploring our annual series on Teshuvah. Returning, Repenting Before God. Thank you so much to our series sponsors, our dearest friends over all these years, Daniel and Mira Stokar. We're so grateful for your friendship and support over all these years. This podcast is part of a larger exploration of those big, juicy Jewish ideas. So be sure to check out 1840.org, that's 1-8-F-O-R-T-Y.org, where you can also find videos, articles, weekly emails, and so much more. Speaker 2 (5:10) Today's episode is really remarkable and something that I'm so excited to share with you. And I think it really boils down to where our attention seems to go when we talk about teshuva. You know, the entire introduction to the concept of teshuva is usually bifurcated where we talk about the righteous and the unrighteous. And that develops certain ideas in our mind. If I were to almost tell you, You know, what do you associate with upwards? What do you associate with downwards? You say, you know, the righteous, you look upwards and the down, you look downwards. They're low, they're wrong. And very often when we talk about repentance itself, when we talk about teshuva, what ends up happening is we focus on the people who in our minds are at the bottom, the bottom of the class, the bottom. You know, sometimes we'll use the language, the bottom sheer, you know, the lowest class. They're not the honors track. They're not the high achievers. They're not the most ambitious. And there's a reason for that, because in any classroom where you focusing your attention, very often you are focusing your attention on those who are struggling the most and in an apparent and an obvious way. What unfortunately gets overlooked far too often. is the need for teshuva, not for the ones at the bottom, but really the ones at the top, the overachievers, the ones who are scoring great scores, great schools, competitive, smart, academic. Very often we kind of dismiss them and say, okay, you're handled. You're doing well in school. You have straight 95 average. You're doing fine. One of the things that I have learned since starting 1840 is how overlooked this segment of the population, the overachievers, the top of the class, the valedictorians, how often they are overlooked in conversations about transformation, vulnerability, personal change. You can go back, and I actually keep a private list. I'm not going to share it with you. of valedictorians of major mainstream schools who have gone on to struggle mightily in their lives. It shouldn't come as any surprise because valedictorians, as well as people at the bottom, life is life and people are going to struggle. But what I noticed is how we don't associate religious struggle with the front of the class and how it becomes associated with the back of the room. And I think that is a major, major oversight. We need to develop a language of teshuva, both for those who are obviously struggling, but also for the ones in the front of the class whose struggles may be much more private. They may be much more ashamed of what they're dealing with. And they may have to struggle in isolation because the fact that they're the valedictorian, the front of the class, the rabbi, doctor, whatever it is, why would I want to share that? It would ruin the entire image of who I am. And that is really what today's conversation is about. It is a story of Teshuvah and how the pain and the difficulty and the struggle slowly metastasizes inside of us and how we need to develop an ethic of repentance, of Teshuvah, of personal transformation, not just for the back of the room, but also for the people sitting in the front. And that is why I am so excited to share our conversation today. with an old childhood friend who has gone on to do incredible work, but has also had incredible struggles. And that is our conversation today with my dearest friend, Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Pill. It is a tremendous privilege to welcome Speaker 1 (9:02) Shlomo Pill to my home. Shlomo, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, David. It's been a while. Speaker 2 (9:07) So yeah, it has been a while. So you and I grew up around two blocks away from each other. We davened in the same shul. My best friend lived next door to your house. Speaker 1 (9:18) I've gotten a shout out once or twice about Yom Kippur davening at the table downstairs in Shari. And we sat at the same, Speaker 2 (9:25) we sat, Speaker 1 (9:25) we Speaker 2 (9:26) were literally at the same table, I believe so. Yeah, we were at Speaker 1 (9:27) Caddy Corner. I sat right next to your grandfather. Speaker 2 (9:30) Yeah, so we were really right next to each other. And I watched, we watched each other kind of like grow up. I saw you. You went to Turo, but then you got very into law. You did a PhD Speaker 1 (9:47) in Islamic studies. Is that correct? I did a doctorate in law in comparative Jewish, Islamic, and American legal philosophy. And we were just talking Speaker 2 (9:57) beforehand. It's so interesting because I looked at you and I was genuinely intimidated, not just intimidated, but I saw in you what I felt like I should have been. You went to law school. I feel like that a law school, you became a law, you were a professor, correct? I was, I am. Yeah, you are. You're a professor law. And you even did the program that I was thinking of doing. You did it in Emory. I had been in touch and I thought about it and I looked at you and like, you seemed like the most, and I don't mean to set it up this way, but it's really like, it's a, to me, it's a part of your story of how together. you seemed. You had an interest, I believe, in the writings of Rupshanth and Rafal Hirsch. Speaker 1 (10:45) I did. Yeah. I mean, I grew up with that, really, with my grandfather. My mother comes from a very yakish family. My grandfather was a big Hirschian, and I grew up with it. I was very, very into that. I spent much to the chagrin of some of the Hanhalla at Landers, where I was for college. I spent first Seder. one year writing a Sefer Ha'am Barashas based on a refresh. Like I was very. You were a Speaker 2 (11:11) publicist. I remember, I remember reading a lot of it. It was like, like you had essays, you had like, it was really, really good stuff. And I saw you as like a fully realized rabbi doctor, you know, like you can almost put like central casting. You were the quintessential rabbi doctor. You had a proper PhD and academic position and you were a rabbi. And as all of this was happening and unfolding, at some point, you became ensnared, enmeshed in the world of addiction. Speaker 1 (11:41) I did. I did. Not by happenstance. The two are very closely related to each other. Speaker 2 (11:47) So that's what I wanted to ask. From the seat I had, and as somebody who really grew up with a certain image of you, and we always have images of each other, but I feel like... especially images that we shape in our childhood of how we look at our childhood friends and our parents and all this. I'm curious when you realized or what you attribute the first cracks to form of when you noticed that even with all of your accomplishments and even the fact that for so many people you had You had arrived. You were there. You were the modern Orthodox fever dream of so many people, rabbi, doctor, in a serious way, serious stuff. And now you find yourself the first cracks of addiction. When did you first notice that something was not all right? Speaker 1 (12:42) So, I mean, in retrospect, the story is like very different from, you know, during the time, you know, you realize afterwards that the roots of this stuff are way deeper and way earlier than you realized. Speaker 1 (12:58) You know, I think really the roots or the, I didn't realize it at the time, but the beginnings of it really began when I Speaker 2 (13:08) started facing a lot of professional, not Speaker 1 (13:11) professional, educational, professional sort of career track disappointments, which I had not encountered before. Like I was always growing up, I was an A minus student without trying. um sort of right so and because i was an a minus student without trying i never really tried you know why there were there were very few things that i had to work hard um at um academically um i i worked hard in high school at torah um because it was important to me and and that did not come so naturally to me i worked hard at it and and i got somewhere um i i was telling someone recently you know i spent I spent three years of high school just sitting with a Gemara and an art scroll Gemara. And we were both in Rabbi Pressman's class. And right, were we? We sure were. Not the same time. So writing translations into my... Just to explain, Rabbi Speaker 2 (14:02) Pressman, we both went to South Shore. We love South Shore. This is like the honorary South Shore podcast. Well, I don't want to embarrass anybody from South Shore, but... But we've had a lot of South Shore shout-outs here. And we had the same eighth grade rabbi, Rabbi Pressman, who would literally, you wrote out. He trained us. He Speaker 1 (14:19) had Speaker 2 (14:19) us Speaker 1 (14:20) do a dictator. We would have to speak the translation into a tape recorder. Could be that. I don't remember. What I do remember is he trained, I don't know if it was the whole class or it was something I picked up on. He trained us. He's going to read the Gemara and you write in your Gemara the translation of every single word you need to. And I literally, I would write the translation of everything. Gemara Rashitosa in between the two lines. I have very good handwriting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I Speaker 2 (14:43) can Speaker 1 (14:43) write very small. Speaker 2 (14:44) A little Speaker 1 (14:44) handwriting, sure. And you opened my Gemaras back then and it was like black and blue, like lines of black and blue because I would write in blue in between the lines of black letters. And I sat for three years of high school in Yeshiva for Akwe doing this. And I plowed through mesachdas like this. And I learned how to learn. Like it was, I was very, very devoted. I worked hard at it. I was devoted to it. It did not come easy, but everything else kind of came very easy. And from there, I went to yeshiva and I went to, I went to exactly the yeshiva I wanted to. And, and I excelled in college and so on and so forth. And by that point, you know, I, I, I spent my yeshiva time in, in college, sort of not going to shiur. doing my own learning and then just taking the final at the end of the semester and like acing it. You know, it was easy. And then came time to start applying for law schools. And like, it's funny that you say, you know, I was the picture of the rabbi doctor. Like, I didn't see myself that way. I actually saw myself mostly as a failure in that path, always settling second best. Um, or third best or fourth best, even, uh, level of school level of school. I didn't get into, I got into, you know, when you apply to law school, you have your reach schools and you have your safe schools and then you have your settled schools. Um, and I, I did not get into my reach, any of my reach schools, um, which is where I thought I deserved to go and should go and where I would excel. And, and really like I'm a, I was a scholarly academic person that was on a scholarly academic track. They should want me. Um, but I was rejected from them one after the other, after the other, after the other. Um, my own fault in retrospect, you know, I took the LSAT. I did well on the LSAT. I didn't do excellent on the LSAT, right? A minus without trying. And I didn't try for the A or the A plus. So, so, so I was stuck with the A minus grade. So I didn't go where I, I didn't, I didn't go to the place I thought I deserved to go. Gotcha. And that was one round of disappointment. And then when I got to law school at a safe school that, you know, was the, you know, relatively the bottom of what I, of what, where I, you know, was willing to go. um there too i sort of didn't i i i did well without working hard sort of um and i worked at the things i enjoyed doing but like the hard work of the things you don't enjoy i didn't really put in that effort the way i could have if Speaker 2 (17:02) i paused your life at this point and i would have asked you like caught up with you and we sat for you know just me and you, we wouldn't lie to each other and ask you. Oh, I Speaker 1 (17:12) totally would have lied to you. Absolutely. But Speaker 2 (17:14) would it have been a lie? Would you have not, meaning if I asked you, how are you doing? Everything's great. Everything's moving along. Did you feel depressed? Did you feel? Speaker 1 (17:23) I felt, I felt failure, but I wasn't in touch with my feelings enough to know that I felt failure. It was there. It was eating me. That's where addiction comes from. At the end of the day, there's a hole that's eating at you. when you're not addressing the whole and you don't know how to deal with the whole. And so you end up dealing with the whole in very unhealthy ways to make it go away or pretend it's not there or, you know, avoid it a little bit. So I would not have been able to tell you, you know, I feel like a failure or I'm depressed or I'm not succeeding. I would have thought, you know, it just is. I couldn't have described it at all, really. I would have, you know, I would have gladly taken the, oh. you're a rabbi doctor. Fantastic. Good for you. I'm like, yeah, yes, I am. But inside that wasn't really what was going on for me at all. Speaker 2 (18:11) And at what point do you have like a memory of like, I think I, I think I have an addiction problem. I think I, this needs to be resolved. Is it, is it being like, I feel like there are different models or somebody who like. it's the suffering becomes so immense. Other people like they're discovered and relationships get challenged to others. Like what was the moment for you that you realize I am dealing with something that is beyond kind of like the rotten ups and downs of professional life? Speaker 1 (18:44) Yeah. So, um, Much, much, much later, years later, years later. I mean, really years later. For me, it went the second way. I never really could acknowledge that I didn't have this under control. Speaker 1 (19:00) I can get this under control if I want to. This is just a fun. And I was high funk, right? Yeah. Again, it didn't start that early way back then. But again, I was in law school. I was like finishing. I was learning for and finishing Smicha between 4 and 7 a.m. every morning and then going to law school. And then after I finished. Speaker 2 (19:23) Sessing Speaker 1 (19:23) me out now. We'll get to sleep patterns later. And then. And then I went from, I finished law school and then that was another disappointment. I finished law school. And, and again, I did well, not top, top, top of my class, but I did fairly, I went, I graduated fairly high in my class. And I, and, and I think I'm pretty smart. Now, of course, I got some bad advice from a professor during my first year of law school, who sort of said, you seem really scholarly, treat law school like graduate school, and then you'll study for the bar afterwards. And that's what I did. So I took. I spent law school taking academic classes as opposed to practical law classes, which, no surprise, in a bad law job market, which was, this was post, soon after the 2008 financial crisis for a massive recession, laws crashing all over the place. I couldn't find a job. And I was graduating with no prospects of a job. And this was like another after interviewing and barely getting interviews and my interviews didn't go anywhere. Um, and then, uh, I, I got an offer to, I got called up out of, out of the blue, offered a spot at Emory, um, to do a doctorate. Um, and at the same time to join a, a Dionyskolo that was starting in Atlanta as well at the same time. And, and that was like a big boost. Like, oh, you know, someone, someone sees like, someone sees what I really I'm good at, right? Like I'm good at halacha. Like when I was, I was always bad in yeshiva. I like never like. Alamdus never like spoke to me. Yeshiva learning never really spoke to me. And then I started learning, you know, I spent a year, again, I spent a year in college writing this, writing on Rav Hirsch. I spent the next two years of college learning Tur Bais Yosef, right? Like halacha, right? A hardcore. And I was just, I loved it. Everything opened up for me learning wise in big ways. And I had an intuition for it. I have an intuition for law. I had an intuition for that in an academic kind of, you know, intellectual sense. And so, oh, someone's, you know, someone. gets it, right? It was like the perfect spot for you. It was perfect. Dayanus, and you're doing a PhD Speaker 2 (21:28) in Speaker 1 (21:29) interdisciplinary. I Speaker 2 (21:31) was doing a PhD Speaker 1 (21:31) in law and religion. I was going to do halacha. I was going to work on halacha as academically and Jewishly and traditionally. And it was going to be fantastic. And then I got there and it didn't quite pan out in every way that I had expected. I think once I was there, I sort of, Speaker 1 (21:55) I was now in bigger leagues than I had been in the past. And so, you know, I ended up feeling sort of like I'm struggling to keep up. I don't know what's going on. I don't really know why I'm even doing this. It doesn't really do anything. It's not feeding me the way I needed to be fed, I think. And so that, while I was doing that doctorate, that's when the addiction became really active. But I didn't think of it as... something other than just, yeah, we all have problems and we all have, you know, we all have faults and we all have things we struggle Speaker 2 (22:31) with. So, you know, Speaker 1 (22:32) I'll deal with it. I'll deal with it. And I can always deal with it. And as long as I, you know, work harder to keep up the facade of everything is good, it's fine. It's all good. And I was good at that. I, again, I finished my doctorate. I was teaching after I finished my doctorate. There were some disappointments trying to find a job, but in the end. I ended