I'm a frum therapist (LCSW, CSAT) with 25 years treating sexual addiction. I earned my BA at Yale, my MS at Columbia, founded the New York Sexual Addiction Center in 2010, and work with men and women worldwide, many of them Orthodox Jewish.
Confronting a porn addiction or sex addiction is often a shocking and humbling experience for frum men. How did I get here? How did this happen to me? And what can I do about this now?
You already know the pattern. You promised yourself this was the last time. You put on another filter. You made another kabbalah. Then two in the morning came, and the phone was still in reach.
If that is where you are, you are not alone, and you are not broken beyond repair. You need treatment that understands both the addiction and the world you live in.
What Rabbi Twerski saw coming
Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, zt"l, put it plainly:
"I doubt that at any time in our history has there been as grave a threat to the morality of our people and to the morality of the Jewish family as the plague of addiction to Internet pornography."
He was right. Access used to take effort, money, and risk. The internet removed those hurdles. Accessibility, affordability, and anonymity made it easy for a man who never would have gone looking in the “old world”, pre-smartphone, to drown in forbidden images at home.
Sex addiction, in the work I do, means repeated unwanted sexual behavior. You decided to stop. Online or offline, you could not. The acting out can look like internet pornography, escorts, massage parlors, strip clubs, anonymous encounters, or affairs. The common thread is that you keep going back after you swore you were done.
It ruins marriages. It ruins careers. It ruins a man's sense of himself. Frum homes are not immune. Businessmen, professionals, kollel yungeleit, mechanchim, and rabbanim have all sat in my office with the same secret.
Why group work helps
Shame thrives in silence. A private, strictly confidential recovery group for frum men breaks that silence without putting your name on a bulletin board.
In a good group, you hear another man describe the exact midnight you thought was yours alone. The shame drops a notch. You get accountability between sessions. You practice telling the truth out loud, which is the skill that keeps recovery alive when the urge hits on a Thursday night after a hard day.
I run small, private, single-sex recovery groups online using a variety of tools including task-based materials, following the model of Dr. Patrick Carnes, who first popularized the idea of sex addiction in the 1980s. Groups are often part of an intensive. They are never the whole program. The core of the work is still individual: an honest history, your triggers, practical safeguards, and what sits underneath the behavior.
If you need more than one hour a week, I build intensives from scratch. Online intensives usually run three to six months. In-person intensives in Ramat Beit Shemesh run one to four weeks. Either way, I personally plan, coordinate, and supervise your care.
Why a frum setting matters
Going for help is already hard. Doing it with someone who does not understand Shabbos, shmiras einayim, your rav, or what people in shul would say makes it harder.
I am frum. My own week runs on davening, learning, and Shabbos, like yours. I have worked with clients across the Orthodox Jewish spectrum. You do not have to translate your life into secular terms before we can start. Your values belong in the room. I define sobriety with you clearly: no porn or inappropriate imagery of any kind, and no sex outside the marriage once you are married. I do not leave it vague.
I'm not a rabbi, and I don't try to play that role. Having a rav is an important part of being a frum Jew. He handles halacha and teshuvah. I bring the clinical side. My work complements that spiritual work but does not replace it.
Guard Your Eyes has helped thousands of frum men and families. If GYE is holding for you, wonderful. If the struggle keeps coming back anyway, treatment adds the structure and accountability alongside it.
How I work with you
Most men start with weekly online therapy. Many come twice a week for the first stretch, because one hour next to 167 hours of ordinary life is a thin margin. Your wife may join the first session if that's appropriate. That is welcome but not required. After we begin, most clients complete a comprehensive assessment so we are working from facts, not guesses.
I trained with Dr. Patrick Carnes through IITAP, the program that awards the CSAT credential. Sex addiction, porn addiction, compulsive shmiras einayim struggles, infidelity, and betrayal are what I treat. You can read more about how I work with Orthodox Jewish clients, about intensives, and about the Israel intensive.
I founded the New York Sexual Addiction Center on West 34th Street in Monsey and Midtown Manhattan in 2010. Today the work is online and, for intensives, in person where that fits. The double life does not need a zip code to end.
Start where you are
You do not have to wait until you get caught. You do not have to wait until the marriage is on the line. A free, confidential call is enough to begin. Tell me what has been happening, what you have already tried, and what you want to change. Ask anything about how I work. Then decide.
Contact me or book your free call.