R' Shmuel Luger: I Accidentally Became Rosh Yeshiva after Fighting My Addictions
Inspiration for the Nation with Yaakov Langer
Living Lchaim
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2025
⏱️ 93 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Inspiration for the Nation is the weekly Jewish podcast from Living Lchaim, hosted by Yaakov Langer.
Shmuel Luger started drinking at nine and spiraled into addiction and emptiness.
One trip to Israel changed everything. Today he’s a Rosh Yeshiva helping guys who don’t fit the system rebuild their lives.
His Yeshiva: https://veshachanti.com/
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:08 Rabbi Luger’s Childhood
03:30 Starting to Drink at a Young Age
05:30 Getting Kicked Out of School
06:50 Going to Israel
08:48 When Things Started to Fall Apart
14:34 Drinking Becoming a Huge Part of His Life
15:52 Going Completely Off the Derech
20:24 Starting the Recovery Process
24:50 Going Back to the Party Life
26:02 A Dollar a Day with Ohr Naava
27:14 WheelsToLease
28:03 BitBean
28:57 Losing His Mother
32:40 Deciding Not to Go To LA
34:36 Going Back to Israel
38:26 Choosing the Simple Life and Making Aliyah
39:33 Getting Married
44:02 How Rabbi Luger Started His Yeshiva
47:03 PZ Deals
47:45 Adir Press and Feldheim Books
49:35 Giving His Younger Self Advice
54:02 What Values Really Make You Happy?
1:02:38 Living Life With Addiction
1:10:28 The Amazing Work His School is Doing
1:22:31 Holding a Person to the Standards of Their Dreams
1:30:24 Where to Reach Out to Rabbi Luger
1:32:07 Outro
✬ IN MEMORY OF ✬
This episode is in memory of:
• Shimon Dovid ben Yaakov Shloima
• Miriam Sarah bas Yaakov Moshe
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When I was nine, I basically had my first drink, like my first real drink, and it was just |
| 0:06.6 | an amazing feeling and made me feel a lot more confident with who I was and what was happening, |
| 0:12.4 | just life around me, you guess, to some extent, felt overwhelming. |
| 0:16.1 | I got prescribed medication, and that just took it to the next level. Once you start with something like that, |
| 0:24.4 | then the door kind of opens up, especially if you have an addicted personality. So if one is good, |
| 0:31.6 | two is better. A hundred is even better. But there's never a number that's like, and that's what's good. |
| 0:38.2 | And I was just like, look, I'm good with what i'm doing like i actually really am enjoying what i'm doing but if there's |
| 0:44.6 | something more like i need to understand that before i just continue doing this like this is cool now |
| 0:50.6 | but like if i'm supposed to be somewhere at like 50, I don't want to sit and wait |
| 0:55.7 | till I'm 45. |
| 0:57.3 | Like, let's work on this thing now. |
| 0:59.5 | What does it even mean to go off the dark, to leave the fate that you grew up with? |
| 1:03.2 | Can someone go so off that they can never return? |
| 1:05.7 | Alcohol addiction, hard drug addiction, tattoos, can these push someone so away from Orthodox Judaism? |
| 1:12.2 | Our guests may have experienced all of those. |
| 1:15.5 | Rev Lugar's journey from the streets to being a tremendous Hamukhacham will leave you speechless. |
| 1:19.7 | Watch the full story and I want to hear from you. |
| 1:21.8 | Now podcast listeners, I have one favorite to ask you. |
| 1:24.6 | We've noticed that 80% of you are not subscribed. |
| 1:28.4 | And when you subscribe, it literally helps us, which means we get better guests, create more content, and really |
| 1:32.4 | focus on ideas that you want to hear. So please take one second to hit that subscribe button |
| 1:37.3 | and join the Inspiration Family. Huge thanks to this week's sponsors, or NAVA and their |
... |
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