Jeffrey Bloom on Faith and America’s Addiction Crisis

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2017

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

America is in the throes of an addiction crisis. The ravages of the opioid epidemic can be seen across the country, as it claims ever more lives. And there are other addictions—less severe, but no less real—to video games, smartphones, pornography. What can be done to assist those struggling with addiction? Are the tools of medicine and social science sufficient remedies? Or, necessary as science is, must we also tap into the spiritual resources of religion to help those on the journey down the road to recovery?

In “God, Religion, and America’s Addiction Crisis,” published in Mosaic Magazine, Jeffrey Bloom explores how Judaism’s ancient wisdom can address the underlying spiritual ills at the root of substance abuse and related pathologies. In this podcast, Bloom joins Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver to discuss his essay. They examine what medical and behavioral remedies can and cannot offer recovering addicts and explore the soul-sickness at the heart of addiction. In doing so, they help illustrate how the struggles of the addict reflect the human condition writ large.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble, as well as Ich Grolle Nicht, by Ron Meixsell and Wahneta Meixsell.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tikva podcast and great Jewish essays and ideas.
0:11.1	I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
0:12.6	If you like listening to our podcast, please subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher and leave us a rating and a review.
0:17.9	If you'd like to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website, TikvaFund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. America is suffering
0:26.3	from an acute crisis of addiction. There's the opiate epidemic whose story has been told
0:31.3	by writers like Sam Kinyonis and Christopher Caldwell, and that epidemic has now claimed more
0:36.3	American lives than crack cocaine
0:38.0	in the 1990s or heroin in the 1970s. Addiction in this form is responsible for the most severe
0:43.7	public health emergency in the United States today. Then there are other addictions. To work, to our
0:49.7	smartphones, to pornography. Addiction is one of the most desperate perils of this cultural
0:55.0	moment, but also when you think about it, the capacity for addiction reveals something
0:59.6	fundamental about the human condition. It shows us that we're not fully masters of ourselves,
1:05.5	and no one understands the natural limitations of the human will more than the attic.
1:10.0	Does that visceral awareness of human
1:11.5	limits open them up to something beyond human horizons? Do the dark sufferings of addiction
1:16.8	orient the soul to God? Or can addiction be solved through scientific, medical, and even
1:21.7	economic means? When does addiction call for policy reform? And when does it call in religious
1:26.7	leaders to embrace their
1:27.9	neighbors and begin to heal with God's help? For all of its public urgency, addiction raises
1:33.7	profound theological and philosophical questions. We're going to discuss some of those
1:38.9	questions today with Jeffrey Bloom, author of God, Religion, and America's Addiction Crisis, published as the featured
1:45.2	monthly essay in Mosaic. Jeffrey, welcome to the Tikva podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
	...

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