God of Our Understanding: Jewish Spirituality and Recovery from Addiction

by Shais Taub

Armed with this information, Rowland set out to effect a radical spiritual change within himself. He found eventual success toward this end by joining the Oxford Group, a popular religious movement of the day that stressed rigorously honest self-reflection, prayer, and meditation. The story continues. In 1934, Ebby Thacher, son of a prominent New York family, was about to be locked up because of his alcoholism. The presiding judge in the case had a son who was a member of the same Oxford Group and a friend of Rowland. The judge’s son, along with Rowland and another Oxford Group member, convinced the judge to release Ebby to their care, whereupon they prevailed upon him to seek a spiritual solution to his drinking problem as Rowland had done. Ebby pursued their path and found the results to be astonishingly effective. This same Ebby was a childhood friend of a man named Bill Wilson who was also a chronic drunk. Bill was out of work, depressed, and in dangerously bad health. One day, Ebby appeared in Bill’s Brooklyn home and transmitted to him the spiritual principles upon which he was managing to stay happily sober. Bill was put off by what he perceived to be his friend’s religious zeal, but Ebby assured him that he was not seeking to convert him. Ebby told Bill that theology and dogma were not necessary. All he needed to do in order to begin was to be willing to have a relationship with God and to live according to some basic spiritual principles. What’s more, all this cou...

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