O n a recent working visit back in the States I happened to bump into Rabbi Ezra when we both wound up davening in the same Minchah-Maariv minyan (not his regular one and not mine). We’d been meaning to catch up for a while and clearly Hashem has a way of making shidduchim and so between Minchah and Maariv I winked at him and gestured that I was hoping to schmooze post-davening. We hadn’t been in touch in over a year since I made aliyah and after sharing a few pleasantries we found ourselves saying simultaneously “We’ve got to discuss Mordy.”
Mordy was a young man with bipolar disorder who had been in treatment with me for several years and was doing amazingly well faithfully sticking to his treatment protocol. While we’d never really been able to extinguish his manic fire it was a controlled flame these days and the challenges of medication non-adherence 911 calls and emergency hospitalizations were becoming distant memories. Sure Mordy still had manic urges to pack his clothes and fly across the ocean back to the Arizal’s mikveh in Tzfas. During such moments he’d be ready to ditch his job home and family support but with ongoing treatment and the truly exceptional mentorship of Rabbi Ezra he’s succeeded in staying on track.
Rabbi Ezra had been Mordy’s rebbi and mentor for the past seven years. They had met on campus back when Rabbi Ezra was running a kiruv program for college students. Mordy had become a regular at his shiurim and after graduating Rabbi Ezra helped him to find a yeshivah program in Tzfas where Mordy had been very successful — that was prior to experiencing his first manic episode. When Mordy stopped sleeping and started spending 24 hours a day at the Arizal’s mikveh there were those who couldn’t believe what a tzaddik he’d become and cheered him on for his tremendous piousness and elevated spiritual strivings while others simply looked away because they didn’t know how to address the extreme behavior. Only Rabbi Ezra was able to convince him to return home.
Upon his return to the States Mordy — who had lost any sort of grounding equilibrium — didn’t understand what all the fuss was about and refused to begin treatment. While some doubted the necessity of medications and others tried to force Mordy into treatment against his will only Rabbi Ezra was able to reach Mordy through countless hours of thoughtful listening and loving discussions. In the end it was Rabbi Ezra’s clear psak on Erev Succos that convinced Mordy to adhere to a regimen of medication in order to avoid hospitalization. While Mordy protested the need for meds he was able to understand that refusing them would have resulted in an involuntary psychiatric hospitalization forcing him to spend Succos in a psych ward. Baruch Hashem from that day on it had been one remarkable success after another.
