A new drug rehabilitation treatment center has opened in the Jewish community of Borough Park, following a long line of drug-related deaths that has left the close knit community reeling.
According to the New York Daily News, the new center, called Journeys, opened earlier this month and has more than 10 rooms for counseling and group therapy.
The rehabilitation center aims to address the growing phenomenon of drug-related deaths in the Orthodox community.
The insular Jewish enclave in Brooklyn was rocked by the death of Malka Klein this past June. Klein, 20, belonged to a prominent family, and the news of her heroin overdose shook the community.
Klein's demise followed two more high profile cases of drug drug overdose in the American haredi world, and experts say that the Orthodox community is dealing with a serious substance abuse problem.
Yaakov Berman, who runs the Crown Heights drug prevention group 'Operation Survival', told the New York Post that “We’re definitely losing more people to drugs — there’s no question. It’s getting worse in the United States, it’s getting worse in the world, and it’s affecting our community.”
Zvi Gluck, who works at the 'Amudim' counseling center in Manhattan, told the newspaper that he can count 60 overdoses in the Jewish world in 2017 alone.