San Diego (special) -- In the High Holy Day liturgy, the powerful Unetaneh Tokef prayer envisions God decreeing on Rosh Hashanah "who shall live and who shall die." The prayer goes on to proclaim that by teshuvah (repentance), tefilah (prayer) and tzedakah (deeds of kindness), one can temper the severe decree.

In the many High Holy Day services that he attended at Congregation Beth Israel during his lifetime, Scott Silverman probably didn't realize that teshuvah, tefilah and tzedakah would become central themes of his every day life.

Today Silverman is the executive director of Second Chance, a program which provides temporary living quarters and work experience for homeless people and helps them to find a job and a permanent place to live. 

Most of the people who go through the program, based at the Workman Hotel at 14th and J Streets in downtown San Diego, are recovering alcoholics or drug abusers. Like Silverman, they are people who have realized that only by keeping clean and sober do they have a chance of "averting the severe decree" and getting on with their lives. The authors of Unetaneh Tokef ('We Proclaim') speak of "who shall perish by fire and who by water, who by sword and who by a wild beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning, who shall rest and who shall wander: who shall be

WORKMAN HOTEL--Scott Silverman  stands outside the workman Hotel, one of two  facilites where homeless people find temporary  housing under auspices of Second Chance.

serene and who disturbed, who shall be at ease and who afflicted; who shall be impoverished and who enriched, who shall be humbled and who exalted."

For drug users and alcohol abusers, in Silverman's view, life's possible outcomes are far less varied: "Jails, institutions or death."

This social worker did not come to his knowledge via a textbook. After 13 years of continuous abuse of alcohol and drugs, he said he once felt so trapped that he actively considered suicide.

It happened in 1984 while Silverman was in New York City on a buying trip for Marsi's and Lion Clothing Co., two family-owned retail clothing stores.

"I literally and physically had four blackouts that last week," he related during an interview at the Second Chance office. "Six nights I was there, and the last night, I had passed out on the street at three in the morning, in a nice three-piece suit and my London Fog jacket on. I couldn't find my way to the hotel, so I sat down to catch my breath, and I passed out."

"The only reason I know that was that I woke up in my bed a few hours later and I called down to hotel security, because I had lost my airline tickets and travelers checks -- and they put them in the safe the night before," he recounted. 

"I found out that the police had picked me up and brought me back to the hotel. Knock on wood, I didn't go to jail. The reason was, I used to carry a badge of the Loss Prevention Corporation -- and it was silver and gold. There was a convention in town of vice officers from across the country, and because silver and gold always has been their badge, they just assumed, without looking closely, that I was one of the boys."

The following morning, still reeking of alcohol, Silverman went to meet a clothing business contact in a 44th floor office. "The window was open - it was a hot day-and I went to the ledge, and I was sitting there and all I wanted to do was jump out and put myself out of my misery, and not be an embarrassment to my wife and family anymore," Silverman said. 

"At that point someone came into the office and said, 'What are you doing? You are going to fall out the window!' and I said, 'Oh I was just getting some air,' and they walked away and I thought I really don't want to live anymore, I was 'sick and tired of being sick and tired' which is the phrase we use, and I put my foot up right there at the window and the guy comes back and he says, 'I told you, you are going to fall out the window!' so I got off.

"I thought, you know, this must be Divine intervention. I said, 'I've got to make a phone call, I'll be right back to the meeting,' and I made a phone call to Michelle (his wife), and I said ... I am ready to do whatever I need to."

Silverman flew home, resisting the impulse to purchase a drink on the plane, and had an emotional meeting with his wife, parents Maggie & Sid Silverman, and other members of the family to tell them he now recognized he had a drinking and substance abuse problem and planned to check himself in to Sharp Cabrillo Hospital for detoxification and rehabilitation.

Besides getting over the physical urge to drink, "part of the program is where you actually go back and make amends to the people you hurt, and businesses you did things to, and people you maybe talked ill of," Silverman said. 

Teshuvah...

"I did a lot of that; it is part of the process of recovery: taking an inventory and then making amends and moving forward in your life by basically getting rid of the wreckage of your past," he said. 

"It is an ongoing process because we all carry wreckage around or resentments, or desires to see other people suffer so you can feel better," Silverman continued. "I am a firm believer that we are only as sick as our secrets. God knows Jews are some of the best secret-keepers."

While at Sharp-Cabrillo, Silverman received many visitors, including a rabbi who told him that "Jews normally don't have drinking problems" and that "God is within us as Jews, and you have gotten God drunk." 

The rabbi was both right and wrong, Silverman said. Perhaps Jews don't become alcoholics in the same percentages as other groups. "But back in the 80s, Jews were on the rise as the highest using cocaine users anywhere in the world. The mood altering substances may have been substituted perhaps because we grew up with wine on Shabbat occasions, but it is an issue." 

During his recovery, Silverman enrolled in the 12-step program pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous. He had to come to terms with what appeared to be AA's Christian orientation. 

"One thing that was suggested was that to make your connection with the higher power, you really need to get on your knees and pray, which was difficult because I had never done that as a Jew," he recalled.

"That was a very difficult part for me, and it was finally suggested by someone to me 'just put your cigarettes underneath the bed and when you wake up in the morning and get your first cigarette, you'll find yourself on your knees, and just thank your higher power for getting you through another day.'"

"I thought: 'I don't want to become a Christian to stay sober,' but it was explained this is a spiritual program not a religious one," Silverman said. 

While he prayed, Silverman tried to recall the Jewish forms he had learned in religious school, Sunday school, bar mitzvah and confirmation classes at Beth Israel, but eventually began to focus back "when I was in Arizona when I was 15 years old; sitting alone on a rock, and a breeze came, and I was praying, and I felt God was there with me..."

"And when I got there, I felt like I made a connection," Silverman said. "It took a few months: I wasn't sure if I should call it my Jewish God, higher power, or spiritual leader. I didn't want to put a label on it, because I just wanted to make a connection, so I tried to make it non-sectarian: a power greater than myself, which I called God."

With such an image in mind, Silverman wrote notes each day and put them into his "God box" which was a "safe place, a secure place, to write anything I wanted to : good, bad or indifferent; sad, happy, mad or glad, and I did that daily for about four years: I put little messages in there, and I addressed them, 'Dear God.'"

"To me a big part of spirituality is getting out of one's self and allowing a power greater than myself to come in and pass through me," Silverman said. On a daily basis, on his knees, he prayed to God to express "gratitude for the day before, for keeping me sober," and asking for "strength to move through the day in front of me, and to allow me to do Your will, not mine."

Teshuvah. Tefilah....

So far, Silverman has not had a drink since before his plane ride home from New York. After going through detoxification, Silverman took time off from the family business (which his parents eventually decided to sell) and worked as a volunteer at Sharp-Cabrillo talking to other families about his battle with alcohol and drugs, and the kinds of things that may be happening with the abuser in their family.

He told them not to give any credibility to anything an abuser ever tells them. "If their lips are moving, don't even assume, be clear in your own mind's eye, that they are lying," Silverman would tell them. "Because people who drink, or use and abuse, and who want to stay loaded most of their waking hours have to lie about what they are doing because who is going to support them? 

"So if you go on that basis, not only can you deal with your own denial but theirs. Not only can you start the process of recovery for you and the family and them, but you are also going to be more objective when you make decisions over the next few weeks..."

Besides in the retail clothing industry, Silverman had experience in rehabilitating houses. He said he had become particularly adept at persuading drug dealers to sell their "crack houses" and move away from certain neighborhoods so that developers could rehabilitate the homes. In such a way, Silverman supported himself while volunteering at Sharp Cabrillo. He also added a new role to his life. He became a volunteer with Beth Israel's Hunger Project.

Each Sunday, volunteers from the Reform congregation go to the St. Vincent de Paul kitchen facility to prepare and serve meals to the homeless. "Every week there is a new family that comes out and volunteers," he enthused. "Kids get involved in their confirmation class and bar mitzvah class and it is great. Kids talk about their experiences there, and it is very positive."

Sharp-Cabrillo hired Silverman to serve as an "alumni coordinator," a position which he kept and enjoyed for a year before hospital reorganization phased out the program.. Undaunted, Silverman decided to start up Second Chance, seeing a need for a transitional work experience for people who had used up their time in the shelters, and had maintained sobriety.

Initially, he and a partner purchased the Workman Hotel, but Silverman later sold back his interest to devote full time to his role as executive director of the non profit agency.

People who are accepted into the Second Chance program are given lodgings and a job by the agency while efforts are made to place them in more permanent jobs and housing. 

After being assigned a bed (two to a room) at the Workman Hotel or at the nearby E Street House, the clients are expected to work for pay in any of three businesses operated by Second Chance: manufacturing wax candles, manufacturing buttons, or rehabilitating buildings. In addition, they also are expected to give 10 hours of volunteer work to a variety of approved causes as a way of "paying back" for their rooms.

Over the years, a variety of people and causes have purchased buttons from Second Chance, among them the San Diego Padres, the 1996 Republican National Convention, Mayor Susan Golding, the San Diego Chargers, and Congregation Beth Israel. One button which Second Chance participants made for themselves carries the legend "We Really Do 
Work For Food."

Approximately 3,000 people have gone through the Second Chance program in its nearly five years of existence (Oct. 17 is its anniversary). Silverman said about 60 percent of the people have successfully reached the next step of either a new job, or a more permanent place to live, or both. The rest have fallen by the way side -- many of them because they were not yet willing to participate in their own recovery.

Rules for staying in the program are explicit. People must keep their rooms clean and themselves sober; they must diligently work at their temporary jobs; complete all the forms and paperwork necessary to apply for permanent jobs, show up for the interview, and so forth. Silverman does not tolerate hangers-on. They either make progress toward their recovery or they are asked to leave the program.

The agency has a budget of $400,000. Its funding is from a variety of sources. Government grants. Private foundations. Individual contributors. Earnings from the businesses which Silverman, drawing on his family experience, helps to keep profitable.

"We are a social, entrepreneurial agency, building human capital," Silverman says.

Teshuvah. Tefilah. Tzedakah.