Loved

Looking at him today, one would never guess where he has been. Diagnosed with a host of mental-health problems, Michael was sent to a special school in Utah at just twelve years old. He was an angry and deviant youngster suffering from oppositional defiant disorder, childhood depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

But his problems were only beginning.When he returned from Utah, he was placed in a group home. That’s where he met gang members and drug addicts. And that’s where he spiraled completely out of control. Addicted to drugs, he broke into his mother’s home and stole her laptop. “I had robbed my own house. I stole from my own mother to support my addiction,” he explains.
Charged with 1st degree residential burglary for a home invasion, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison. Once there, he faced constant harassment and attacks from other inmates. “I was jumped for my kosher meals…a lot of hate is expressed towards Jews in jail.” After putting on t’fillin one day, inmates beat him severely. He lay in a medical holding tank with bruises, broken ribs and stiches to his eye. “I was awaiting my fate to go right back to the same dorm cell that I had already been beaten up in.”

And that’s when he saw him. “I remember sitting in that medical tank, and I saw a rabbi coming down from the elevator, and I yelled out ‘Baruch Hashem.’” The rabbi looked around, eager to find the voice calling out. When he saw Michael, he went to him. The pair talked about Michael’s case, prayed and said the Shema together. “He told me, ‘don’t worry. With Hashem’s help, we’re going to get you to safer housing, a better place. You’re going to be okay.’”

Michael was quickly moved to a part of the jail that was not only safer—it was near other Jews who were able to join, daven and say Parshas together regularly. Behind the scenes, Aleph advocated for a more effective and humane option to Michael’s incarceration. They hired an attorney, found a spot for him in a drug rehab facility, and won court-approval to place him at the Chabad Residential Treatment Center.

“Aleph never gave up on me…even when I gave up on myself.”

In rehab, Michael received professional care and began a remarkable recovery. When he noticed that most of the other patients at the facility did not graduate from high school, he began a GED Program. “We started at a 4th grade reading level, and now we’re all the way into cellular biology. It’s been an amazing experience,” he said.

Today, Michael remains sober, goes to school, and continues to help recovering addicts at the Chabad Center attain high-school equivalency degrees. “Aleph saved my life,” he says, adding that when the rabbi answered his cry of Baruch Hashem in jail, it was “the first time in 20 years that I felt loved.”