who we are:

We are a Jewish community for people in addiction recovery and those who love them. We envision a world where Jewish spiritual tradition can offer framing, sustenance, and a modality for healing for people in recovery and those who love them. We want to live in a space in which recovery and Jewish experiences are not bifurcated, but rather deepen, illuminate, and enhance each other.

14Y Selah is a program of the 14th Street Y, a vibrant Jewish Community Center located in downtown New York City. Each year, tens of thousands of New Yorkers of all ages, races, and ethnicities come to 14Y as members, visitors, or partners to experience our high quality and varied programs centered around arts and culture, early childhood education, summer camps, fitness and aquatics, Jewish life, and older adult services. 

The 14th Street Y is a part of the Educational Alliance and a proud partner of UJA-Federation of New York.

Our team:

  • Associate Director of 14Y Selah, Programs

    Jeremy is a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor with 12,000 clinical hours, recovery coach, speaker, and author. Jeremy was the Alternative Sentencing Drug and Alcohol Counselor at Beit T’shuvah, a long-term residential treatment facility in Los Angeles. Jeremy has a certificate in Nonprofit Leadership and Executive Management from the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College in partnership with the New York Community Trust. In this role, Jeremy is able to utilize his own lived experience in recovery and professional training to build our community. You can reach Jeremy here.

  • Associate Director of 14Y Selah, Operations

    Benjamin is a musician, artist, & graphic designer. He was the Chief Creative Officer at the T’shuvah Center in New York City, where he directed the brand vision, group programming, and live events. He manages the Emergency Project and is a multi-instrumentalist playing in a variety of genres. Ben holds a Bachelors in Music Composition from the University of California, Santa Cruz. After almost a decade of commitment toward serving his community, Ben will bring his recovery experience to inform and shape how he serves others with inspiration, hope, and joy so that they may find their own life of healing. You can reach Ben here.

  • Director of 14Y Selah

    Ariel is a business and operations professional who loves solving complex problems and bringing big ideas to life. He’s spent the past ten years working across Jewish nonprofits, media, and education, always with a focus on building community, driving impact, and keeping things human. Ariel directs Selah at the 14th Street Y, where he leads the integration of spiritual recovery programs into a larger institutional setting, combining ritual, inclusion, and innovation. He is helping to strengthen organizational visibility and reach through partnership-building across the Jewish and recovery communities. He’s also worked in development, led community programs, and produced segments for The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Ariel holds an MBA from Tel Aviv University, and a BA from the University of Michigan. He’s passionate about meaningful work, good storytelling, and finding humor in the everyday. You can reach Ariel here.

  • Marketing and Design Associate

    Vivian is a student, artist, and mental health advocate who believes in the quiet power of meeting people exactly where they are. She recently graduated from Brandeis University with a double major in Psychology and Studio Art, and is exploring a future in social work rooted in the intersections of healing, creativity, and care. Vivian is passionate about creating spaces where people feel safe, seen, and never alone.

    As a Mexican Syrian Jew raised in Brooklyn, New York, Vivian brings a deep love for tradition, storytelling, and inclusive spiritual spaces. At 14Y Selah, she supports programming, design, and outreach, helping shape the way the community shows up both online and in person. She believes in the power of ritual, softness, and belonging, and in walking alongside others through the complexity of being human. You can reach Vivian here.

Founding team:

Benjamin Litchman

Rabbi Arielle Krule

Jeremy Pool

Founding story:

Selah was co-founded by Jeremy Pool, Ben Litchman, and Rabbi Arielle Krule, each bringing experience with addiction, recovery, and the long work of building a meaningful life. Their journeys taught them not only what recovery requires, but also what is often missing from spiritual and communal spaces intended to support it. 

Jeremy and Ben were shaped by their time in the deeply formative Jewish recovery community at Beit T’shuvah in Los Angeles, where they witnessed what becomes possible when recovery and Judaism are fully integrated. That community did more than support sobriety; it demonstrated how Jewish ritual, values, and belonging can serve as a foundation for living with honesty, responsibility, and purpose. 
It also made something clear: there should be more communities like this – authentic Jewish recovery communities that meet people where they are. That insight became Selah’s DNA. 

The name Selah, drawn from the Book of Psalms, signals a pause and a moment of reflection within the text. Selah seeks to embody that pause by creating space for shared experience rooted in Jewish tradition. It is a place where people in recovery, and those who love them, can show up as they are, with dignity and without explanation. 

At its core, Selah was created because its founders believe deeply in the power of Judaism as an ancient access point to both individual and collective healing. Recovery, they believe, belongs not at the margins of Jewish life, but at its center, woven into ritual, community, and meaning-making itself.

FAQS

It’s likely you have a whole bunch of questions that you’ve tried to Google, thought about, or not said out loud. Here are some.

  • Jewish tradition offers that the concept of teshuvah - renewal and repair - existed prior to creation of the earth and humanity. We read this to mean that going through hard things and growing through them is so core to the human experience that it even existed before us. Core to this experience is the idea of having fellow travelers - people who are deep in the work with you.

    14Y Selah is a community of people on recovery journeys who celebrate the Jewish calendar, explore big questions, and participate in service of the greater world together. Our model takes the wisdom from Jewish tradition to ensure that once addiction is treated, everyone has the access to be in a community that helps them to continue to flourish while sober.

    Judaism has an ancient and strong spiritual infrastructure that can build accountable, supportive, and purpose-driven communities. We believe that everyone has the access to be in a community that helps them to continue to flourish while sober.

  • We understand recovery is as a process of reflection, attunement, and growth into the healthiest, most authentic version of ourselves.

  • Addiction is a chronic (lifelong) condition that involves compulsive seeking and taking of a substance or performing an activity despite the harm it causes.Generally, addiction is designated into two categories - behavioral and substance. We believe that the contributing factors to addiction are multi-faceted - they are spiritual, emotional, and physical underpinnings.

    Behavioral addiction happens when a behavior produces a short-term reward that may engender persistent continued behavior despite knowledge of adverse consequences. Examples of these behaviors include: food, binge eating disorder, gambling, sex, internet use, shopping, video games.

    Substance addiction is characterized by the inability to control the use of a legal or illegal drug or medicine. Examples include: alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, opiates, hallucinogens, inhalants, and prescription drugs.

    Growing evidence suggests that behavioral addictions resemble substance addictions in many domains, including natural history, phenomenology, tolerance, comorbidity, overlapping genetic contribution, neurobiological mechanisms, and response to treatment.

  • According to the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 40.3 million Americans, aged 12 or older, had a substance use disorder (SUD) in the past year. According to the 2021 UJA-Federation COVID-19 Impact Study report on substance abuse in the Jewish community, 10% of adults in Jewish households indicated they have a substance abuse problem. In Brooklyn, those numbers hover close to 15%, higher than the overall rate in NY state (12%).

  • If you have identified as experiencing an addiction, you are welcome here. We’ll make sure you get connected to the right community of people who see you.

    Recent research indicates that one of the most important and helpful parts of maintaining sobriety and/or health comes from participation in an ongoing holistic community of belonging. That goes for any type of addiction.

  • Addiction is a chronic condition that can affect many aspects of your life, including your physical and mental health, relationships and career. While an individual conversation is needed to answer this question, research generally suggests that addition exists when a person continues a behavior or substance use despite adverse consequences.

  • In our community, we prefer terms that describe behaviors, not all-encompassing nouns for people. We use the term addiction and recovery to describe states of being. Someone who is experiencing addiction is just that - experiencing an addition.

  • We know this can feel like a tricky situation. We’re happy to walk you through what we have found most helpful and we will connect you with curated mental health professionals that will support you.

  • We like to say that recovery is for everyone. Especially after the past 3 years, who isn’t recovering from some tough experience?

    If you are in support of building a space where people can bring their whole broken selves - and learn and synthesize the unique wisdom of their experiences, we want you here.

  • We’d love to answer them! Contact Jeremy at Jpool@14streety.org