Mitzvah and Teshuvah within the New York Criminal Court System: A case for authentic personal responsibility in treatment. -Dmitri Oster, LCSW

I had client who was referred to me on more than one occasion, for more than one criminal offense. This client was also involved with more than one criminal justice agency, on both the state and federal levels. This client also has open court cases in more than one state, although his residence was within New York.

This was a client with a higher-than-average intelligence, and with middot (character traits) that you can sense wanted correction and healing. The client was, however, seemingly mired in an unending spiral of contact with negative people, places, and things. His relationships were highly toxic and not appropriate for him, or the wants of his true self. His business and transactional dealings were all marred by aspects of illegality and deceit. He was barely existing as he went from day to day with no sense of satisfaction, higher purpose or attachment to anything truly worthwhile.

Much of his personal history was unfortunately marked by individuals and organizations exploiting him, and thus created an illusion in his mind that this is just the order of things. He therefore followed suit, and began to structure many of his activities of daily living also around being manipulative and dishonest with others in his social and vocational networks. Eventually this way of living caught up with him, and he was arrested – for the third time. This client also had an unresolved immigration status, which only complicated his standing in the free world after he was released from corrections.

When this client came back to me, I instantly knew that things cannot continue as they have been in his life. There was too much on the line for the client, and he himself was too aware of the incompatibility between his lifestyle choices and his true self.

In thinking about his needs in treatment and conceptualizing various interventions to help him attain his treatment goals, I remembered a teaching from our Sages that one mitzvah leads to another. The inverse is also true, that one sin can easily lead to another.  This client had a chain of sins and transgressions behind him that I knew he needed to free himself of. I do not think the client himself was aware of how much his chain-reaction of sinning (his accustomed “way of being” to use a western psychological term) had become habitual and sedimented in his psyche.

I began where the client “was”. However, we did not stay in that place for long, as that would only be a disservice to him. I quickly realized that due to his complicated case and involvement with various criminal justice entities, it would have been all-too-easy and convenient for the client to attempt to evade his responsibilities by claiming his treatment expectations were too stringent and demanding. This line of defense was his “yetzer hara”, his personal inclination to avoid moving toward a responsible behavioral repertoire rooted in personal accountability. It was also this same evil inclination that directly led the client to his most recent offense where he believed he could commit a serious and dangerous criminal act and escape from its consequences.

I used this understanding to immediately orient the client toward his various sets of responsibility in treatment vis-à-vis his multiple legal demands. I helped the client begin to understand how setting priorities in his life around his current legal demands will be a “fence”, or guideposts, for an improved life. The client rather quickly began to perceive and understand this reality-based intervention. The client’s ego was very much in need of repair and with guidance on how to more substantially guide his way in the world. Moreover, his soul was yearning for a correction - and perhaps a cleaning. I stepped into this arena with him.

Prior to this time, the client was only used to lying and deceiving other authority-figures as he did not have a true “corrective emotional experience” around his interactions with the legal system. The client and I were both cognizant of this fact. As the client began to attend to his legal matters, with my initial encouragement, and gradually began to learn of their beneficial impact in his life, he was actually enacting a Mitzvah. It is one of the negative commandments of the total 613 Torah-based commandments, but with only positive effects in the client’s life. The commandment of “Not to act deceitfully in judgement, as [Leviticus 19:15] states: “Do not pervert justice.”

As the client began tending to his various legal demands within the treatment framework, I would explore his emotional and cognitive responses to his enactment of this particular mitzvah of not engaging in deceit with legal authorities, but only tending to his affairs with an open heart, and now an open conscience free from the sins of knowing he was engaging in any deception.

The client started to feel an authentic sense of personhood from these interactions and for the first time in a while, began to feel hopeful about his present reality. One mitzvah leads to another mitzvah. The client became personally invested in responsibly coordinating amongst his various case-managers, lawyers, and criminal justice personnel so that no details would be lost in the mix of his case-processing. The client was no longer abdicating his responsibility nor falsely decrying the “unjust” nature of his mandates.

The client would not allow himself to fall victim to his previous tendency of taking the easy way out, and subsequently blaming others for his misery. This was a case of true treatment success as the client’s life was concurrently improving in his social, relational, vocational, and peer-based domains. The client began to feel hopeful about his still uncertain future, and displayed a true sense of resiliency in the face of his many challenges.

I did not communicate to the client that he was fulfilling a mitzvah. I was speaking to him in the “language of man” – a language based on his own conceptual understanding. Nonetheless, this client was feeling increasingly connected to his improved way of being in the world as he began to experience the fruits of leading a pro-social life rooted in personal accountability for one’s own actions.

In writing about the holy ways and practices of Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Reinman writes: “When a person performs a mitzvah …with the right intentions , he rises to a higher level at which he is inspired to perform even more mitzvos” (2011, p.183).

Personal accountability (a favored phrase among substance misuse and other behavioral health treatment providers and programs) is a cornerstone of effective and ethical treatment.

In my own growth as a practicing psychotherapist and wishful Torah scholar, I cannot help but to see the parallel with the Jewish practice of Teshuvah. Personal accountability in treatment without an explicit plan and set of intentions to not repeat the same mistakes that brought one into treatment is wrong. That is why this client, and almost all others that I work with, will only begin to depart from active treatment when they have a relapse-prevention plan in place for themselves, connected to a sincere commitment in leading a life of personal improvement, repentance, and an authentic coming back to their more pure and refined selves.

The holy road of mitzvah-making has proved to be an elixir for this one particular client. As many mitzvot as there are, are as many pathways to personal and societal redemption.

Dmitri Oster, LCSW