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JTA

For Jewish Addicts ‘Dry’ Seders are a Life-Saver

It’s rare that an Orthodox rabbi chooses to omit an important Jewish ritual in his holiday celebrations. But in the spring of 2000, Rabbi Yosef Lipsker cleared his living room of furniture, set up three large dining tables and invited dozens of people to a special seder that included all the standard Passover observances — except for one.

“When it comes to seders, everybody thinks of the four cups of wine drunk during the service,” said Lipsker, a consultant at the Caron Treatment Center for Substance Abuse and Chemical Addiction in Reading, Pa. “But we said, ‘Listen, we’re going to have you at the seder, but you’re going to have four cups of grape juice instead.’”

Lipsker’s guests all were recovering alcoholics and drug addicts and their families, and his seder was devoid of wine. Lipsker is not the only rabbi organizing sober seders — a dry version of the standard Passover evening ritual. In the late 1990s, several Chabad rabbis across the country, unbeknownst to one other, were organizing sober seders geared toward recovering Jewish alcoholics.

In a little more than a decade, the practice has spread far and wide. This year, sober seders will be held in Miami, Montreal, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles and London. Hundreds of recovering addicts are expected to attend, raising a glass of grape juice in celebration not only of the liberation of the Jewish people from bondage in ancient Egypt, but of their own sobriety.

Participants in sober seders say the absence of wine not only doesn’t detract from their enjoyment of the event, but can even enhance it. They connect the struggles of recovering from addiction to Passover’s theme of breaking free from servitude.

“It was great,” said Ricky, a 56-year-old recovering addict from Montreal, referring to his first sober seder. “I sat at a table with the rabbi’s wife, kids and other addicts in recovery, and I felt great, like I had a real a sense of belonging.”

Ricky credits Rabbi Benyamin Bresinger, who with his wife runs a Chabad addiction clinic in Montreal, with saving his life. He points to the 2008 seder as a life-altering event and continues to attend sober seders each year.

“Before and after the seder we sit around and talk,” he said. “Many of us know each others’ stories by now. For the newcomer coming to the sober seder, there’s a belonging. It’s a celebration rather than a regular AA meeting.”

The sacramental consumption of wine is commonplace in Judaism, used to mark the beginning of nearly every major holiday and the weekly Sabbath dinner. On seder night, tradition calls for the drinking of four glasses as a sign of liberation. Wine also figures in other seder-night rituals: Many Jews have the tradition of removing drops of wine from their cup for each of the plagues visited upon the Egyptians, and a cup of wine traditionally is set aside for Elijah.

Naturally, the ubiquity of drink poses problems for alcoholics and addicts of other substances.

“Jewish law says everyone has to drink wine during the seder,” says Rabbi Yisrael Pinson, who runs the Jewish Recovery Center in Detroit. “But for an alcoholic, it’s a danger of death.”

Pinson cited “pikuach nefesh,” the Jewish principle that saving a life takes precedence over other religious strictures, in skipping the wine-drinking in Jewish rituals. He noted that Rabbi Abraham Twerski, a prominent psychiatrist specializing in addiction, sanctions abstinence for Jewish addicts as a life-saving measure.

Pinson also hosts a sober seder.

“We ask people who attend the seder, ‘What is your personal story of freedom? How did you break free from the shackles of addiction?’” Pinson said. “Obviously, we read the Haggadah. But we also talk about where we are in life. It’s fresh on their minds. They feel the wounds.”

For Greg, 24, from New York, seders used to be an opportunity to binge. “Every Pesach, by the third Chad Gadyah we were singing it backwards,” he told JTA.

The son of a haredi Orthodox rabbi, Greg’s family moved around a lot when he was growing up. The first time he got drunk was on Purim at age 10. It was a sign of things to come. By the time Greg met Lipsker in his early 20s, he had become addicted to painkillers and cocaine. With the rabbi’s help, Greg said he managed to overcome his demons.

“For the first time in 23 years, I could be at a seder, feel real liberation and not be finished by the end of it,” he said of his first sober seder with Lipsker.

Greg’s life is now back on track. He has a job working in finance in Manhattan and says he has found value in his Jewish identity. On weekends, he often drives out to see Lipsker, who lives a two-hour drive away. He said Lipsker is saving him a seat at this year’s seder.

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11 Comments

  • Leah

    This is wonderful to read. Recently our son entered into a recovery program and although his “drug” of choice is not alcohol,I am now rethinking the drinking of wine. Many of our guests prefer grape juice anyway.
    Barcuh Hashem,addiction is finally coming out of the Jewish closet.

    • Milhouse

      If your son’s problem were with alcohol, that might be a good reason not to have any on the table, even for other people. But you say it isn’t, so why banish the wine? Grape juice is not lechatchila. It’s only for when wine is not an option.

      For instance, see the Rebbe’s response to the offer of grape juice for kiddush after his heart attack on Shmini Atzeres.

    • Anon

      Good for you.

      Alcohol can be a gateway for relapse even if it isn’t the drug of choice. People who are not addicts do not understand these things.

  • mom

    Most women have had many ‘dry’ sedorim….. think of all the years we spent pregnant and nursing. there is NOTHING wrong with grape juice.

    • Milhouse

      There is certainly something wrong with grape juice. The mitzvah is on wine, and grape juice is a second-best alternative when there’s a good reason not to use wine.

      There’s also no reason why a nursing woman should not drink alcohol. And even a pregnant woman will not harm herself or her baby by the *occasional* glass of wine. Even at the seder, if a pregnant woman uses a small cup (86 ml, or 3 fl oz) and drinks only the majority of it each time, it should be safe to use wine rather than grape juice. Nobody ever gave her baby Foetal Alcohol Syndrome by drinking half a bottle of wine (eight times 50 ml), once during her pregnancy, over the course of two days.

    • Milhouse

      Exactly. When alcohol is used only in the context of a mitzvah, it’s separated from the context of abuse, and elevated. Alcohol is a gift from Hashem, and we should be very reluctant to reject it.

      So-called experts often ignore the important role context plays in addiction.

  • DB

    Under Jewish law,grape juice is considered wine and can be used in nearly all sacramental services.To suggest that drinking grape juice at the Seder is a loophole and veers from Jewish ritual,is utter ignorance.
    In fact, if grape juice was not considered wine,then alcoholics would not be able do use it as a substitute at the Seder, unless it was a matter of life and death,which in most cases it is not.
    This article is another case of people getting mixed up between Jewish law and Hiddurim.

    • Milhouse

      DB, you are not the spokesman for “Jewish law”. The kashrus of grape juice for kiddush, havdoloh, and the four cups is not as clear as you imagine. The Tzeilemer Rov held so, but he was hardly the only posek in the world, and to pretend that his opinion was universally accepted is, to use your words, “utter ignorance”. There were many poskim who were vehemently against the use of grape juice, and who is to say the halacha is not like them?

      It seems that the Rebbe did not accept the Tzeilemer’s opinion completely, since he insisted on using wine even when he was sick, and dismissed the idea of grape juice as something that could not even be considered.