I Knew Him As Shea Twerski and It Was No Disrespect

By Rabbi Shimon Posner – Director of Chabad of Rancho Mirage, California 

He was easy to spot and hard to forget. A classmate in eighth-grade described his face as “not handsome when you look at each feature but a hadras ponim (resplendent) when taken together.”

His garb was Galician Hasidic, with a flowing beard, a long, dark coat and, on Shabbos, a heavily-laced silver tallis. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized that his dress and his Midwestern accent were incongruous to many.

Before leading the Amida he would adjust the silver of his talis, turn to the man standing next to him and ask “What’d the Pirates do last night?” This was the sports-enthused Orthodox community of Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill and he was very much a part of it.

In that community I was a welcomed newcomer, away at school living with my grandparents and, at times, with my aunt and uncle. I had friends, and lived with people who loved me, and shy but not a loner. I was about thirteen. My history teacher from that time who now lives locally, described me then as a precocious brat. But, he clarified, you have to understand what the name Posner meant in Pittsburgh – you were nobility.

The Twerskis were making a wedding. It was a big deal. Illustrious personages were flying in, a crew was filming the evening for an upcoming mini-series and the locale was top drawer. A week before the wedding, my Aunt Kenny told me that Rabbi Dr. Avraham J. Twerski had called. He apologized that he had addressed the envelope ‘Rabbi & Mrs. C. Deren & Family’ and had not specified that I was included in the ‘& Family’.

He asked if I could please accept the clarification, and if I did, he and his wife would appreciate if I and my friends would serve as ushers, helping guests find their tables. I was happy to hear but didn’t give it much thought until much later. Those who’ve been to school away from home describe it as a pit in the stomach that you don’t know is there. A never quite belonging and a permanent sense of displacement, “nobility” notwithstanding. Most out of town kids learn camouflage early and well. Well enough, at times, to fool themselves. Shea Twersky saw through all that. Straight through all that.

Don’t feel that my calling him by first name is a sign of disrespect. He invited familiarity and relished in it. My friend would take Rabbi Twerski’s straimel off his head to try it on and Shea just kept on in the convo he was having.

Years later, when I first began to notice just how traumatic being away from home is for a child, I thought of Shea Twerski. Of how with the who’s-who attendees, the extensive coverage, the convergence of the full spectrum of a microcosm of the Jewish world upon his door he remembered a child. A child that most didn’t realize was lonely. Who didn’t realize himself that he was so lonely. But if all of my friends would have gone to the wedding and I wouldn’t have been invited I would have been the Cinderella.

More so, he not only remembered the easily overlooked; he knew how to remember them. He gave me a job. He needed me. I was needed. I was doing him a favor by coming – if I would be gracious enough to agree to come.

Like the Almighty Himself, who endows in His creations meaning and asks us to do things, not because He needs them and without us He’s lost but because He knows that we need to be needed. We need meaning. We need purpose. And this is how He connects with us. By investing our movement with meaning. With mitzvah.

By lineage he was more or less destined to be a Chassidic Grand Rabbi. By temperament and learning he would have fit the role. But he didn’t. Instead, he spent his life with drunks and dopeheads. I was lucky enough to join him once for a weekend of Jewish men and women in various stages of recovery. He was the star of the show and did he ever shine. His talks were engaging, breathtaking really. He smiled exuberantly and hugged tightly the teenager whom others would see as a “case”. And when a newbie was tongue-tied he grabbed his hand in his, “Tell it like it was and tell it like it is, baby!”

Rabbi Faivish Vogel of England once mentioned in passing that society is a wedding cake: to lift it you must reach below the bottom. Otherwise you’ll ruin the entire cake as it crashes down. Perhaps intuitively, Shea recognized that if Torah and the Baal Shem Tov are true than they must resonate in the darkest of alleys.

I never got a chance to thank him. For years I didn’t even realize he had done something special for me, something extraordinary. Something Shea. Thank you, Shea.