Yehuda Fine authors book on counseling youths in crisis

Originally published in Yeshiva University Today, written by Bruce S. Bobbins

Yehudah Fine has been dubbed the “Times Square Rabbi” for his quarter century of outreach to adolescents and young adults besieged by personal crises on NYC streets.

“Day after day, year after year, I keep encountering the same great lesson: Crisis can produce profound transformation,” declares the rabbi, educator, and family therapist who has been a guidance counselor at Yeshiva University for nine years.

“As dangerous as the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual emergency is-whether it is homelessness or HIV, whether it is drug addiction or domestic violence-I’ve witnessed how an individual can create a new life filled with hope and meaning, with love, goodness, and compassion,” says Fine. “I have been privileged to see this over and over again-not only in the lives of runaways, addicts, and kids in crisis I’ve worked with, but also in the lives of their families.”

Fine is founder and director of the Jewish Family Institute, an organization working with young people and families in crisis. He holds advanced degrees and certification in counseling and education, and is an ordained rabbi.

Maintaining that the keys to profound transformation are spirituality, introspection, and volunteerism, Fine dramatically illuminates his conviction in Times Square Rabbi: Finding the Hope in Lost Kids’ Lives. Just released by Hazelden Publishing and Education, a division of the renowned Hazelden Foundation, the book comprises eight stories. Each one is a composite sketch reflecting the lives and experiences of some of the hundreds of imperiled juveniles haunting the city’s streets with whom Fine has come in contact and illustrating the pertinent principle of the author’s eight-step program for self-discovery and renewal.

The steps are: Hurling Out the Pain, Recognizing That You’ve Changed, Standing Up for Yourself, Moving Forward with Life, Straightening Out Personal Business, Confessing Your Actions in Public, Living Your Forgiveness, and Falling in Love with Life.

They are based on the teachings of the legendary 12th century Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides, whose Hilchos Teshuvah-freely translated as the Path to Meaning and Hope-”I find to be as an enormously powerful and relevant guide to spiritual reawakening as has been written,” says Fine.

The text of this guide, from Maimonides’ 14-volume Mishnah Torah, “focuses on helping us face our stumblings, pain, personal failure, and self-diminution and shows us how to turn inward to discover that contained within each of us are the keys to inspiration, hope, and the ability to change,” Fine explains.

The book is culled from “the principles I learned from all my life experiences” and offers a “timely message against the messages of despair that seem to be overwhelming us today,” he said.
In fact, while the book is geared towards young people, Fine looks to touch anyone who is struggling and wants to make sense out of life’s difficulties. “These [the book’s subjects] are real people with real stories of struggles and breakthroughs. I’m striving to inject a powerful and positive state of encouragement, to remind people that there’s always a reason to hope, to be hopeful,” he asserts. “Just as I’ve been inspired by what I’ve learned and what I’ve seen, I want to inspire others.”