Kasher in the Rye

Moshe Kasher's memoir recounts his chaotic childhood and adolescence in Oakland, California, tracing his descent into drug addiction, crime, and psychiatric institutions, and his eventual path to sobriety.

Kasher was born in 1979 to two deaf parents in Queens, New York. His mother, Bea, never heard his first cry, a detail he frames as symbolically significant for their relationship. From infancy, Kasher was wildly uncontrollable, prone to convulsions of rage. At four, a therapist declared him too angry for therapy to work. Bea kept young Kasher on a child leash, which he chewed through one day, bolting toward traffic before his mother's piercing deaf scream stopped him. As Bea's hearing child, Kasher grew up interpreting for her in public and navigating their visible difference.

Kasher's father, Steven, was a charismatic deaf artist from Brooklyn. He met Bea at the 1967 World Games for the Deaf in Berkeley, California. Their marriage was volatile; Bea describes Steven as physically abusive. In 1980, when Kasher was almost one, Bea took the boys on a supposed two-week vacation to California and never returned. In Oakland, they moved in with Bea's mother and went on welfare. Bea poisoned Kasher's view of his father by telling him Steven loved his older brother David more. David thrived academically and socially, establishing a contrast that persists throughout the memoir.

After the separation, Steven remarried a deaf woman from the Satmar community, a strict Hasidic Jewish sect in Brooklyn, and became deeply religious. Beginning at age seven, Kasher and David spent six weeks each summer with their father in Sea Gate, an insular enclave of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Forced to fake his way through religious rituals, Kasher felt caught between incompatible worlds. His childhood aggression gave way to pervasive shame and a conviction that something was fundamentally wrong with him.

In Oakland, Kasher attended Claremont Middle School as one of very few white students. He became the class clown to deflect bullying and mask academic failures. His best friend, Richard Lilly, was another troubled white kid from a broken home. When Richard moved away, Kasher was left friendless, and a special education placement further eroded his standing. After a public humiliation at a classmate's party, he started smoking stolen cigarettes and fell in with Donny Moon, a fearless kid from North Oakland who led a crew of outcasts from broken homes. The group, which included DJ, a hulking enforcer, and his brother Corey, became Kasher's surrogate family. He especially idolized Joey Zalante, an older kid on the group's periphery.

Kasher's first real marijuana high was transformative: For the first time, his shame and brokenness disappeared. He describes the euphoria as filling in "every gaping crack where your humanity didn't fuse" (61). Kasher told Richard, who issued an ultimatum. Kasher chose drugs and never saw Richard again. The group moved on to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), eventually selling it at Claremont. The operation collapsed when a seventh grader named Justin Sabarro had a heart attack after buying their acid. His family therapist orchestrated an intervention, sending Kasher to Ross Hospital, a psychiatric lockdown facility. He spent two weeks there, diagnosed with drug addiction, depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and described as "on his way to becoming a first-class sociopath."

Returning to Claremont, Kasher was beaten by a younger student. His mother applied makeup to hide the bruises, but a classmate discovered the concealer and announced it to the school. Kasher dropped out at 13. He was sent to the New Bridge Foundation, an outpatient rehab, with no intention of getting sober. After clashing with counselor Tim Hammock, he was expelled. He cycled through restrictive placements: the Seneca Center, which had padded cells in classrooms; Maybeck High, a private school where he relapsed and was expelled; and Children's Learning Center, where he was the only student without an intellectual disability.

The group's activities grew more dangerous. DJ and Corey were arrested after a girl named Leah Krauss accused the entire crew of gang rape. The case collapsed when evidence showed her injuries were self-inflicted, but Donny had already fled to New Mexico to hide with his estranged biological father. At home, Kasher stole from his mother and scaled the walls of the house to bypass the locks Bea installed on every door and window. His rage erupted in violent confrontations with his mother and grandmother, and he recognized he had become the abuser his grandmother always warned him about.

His mental state deteriorated. He began hallucinating and urinating in cups rather than walking to the bathroom. At Oakland Technical High School, he slept through every class. He describes the central paradox of his addiction: The drugs that once made life bearable had stopped working, but he could not stop because feeling his pain unmedicated was unthinkable.

He and Donny, back from New Mexico, checked into the Kaiser Adolescent Chemical Dependency Program in Walnut Creek. Tim Hammock was there as head counselor. Kasher continued getting high after sessions. One night, a fight with his mother ended with him biting her hand until it bled. She called the police. After another violent incident at Kaiser, he was expelled. His mother stood, told the group that if they could not help her son they could not help her, and walked out with him.

In the parking lot, Mike Hicks, a sign language interpreter who was also a child of deaf parents and a person in recovery from alcohol addiction, pulled Kasher aside. Mike told him he was not a bad person but a sick one, showed him a 10-year sobriety chip, and said that someday Kasher would have to "take a right turn" and "walk alone."

Months later, expelled from a third rehab, Kasher gathered with the group at a station on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system. DJ suggested going to a bar that did not card minors. Everyone agreed except Kasher, who told them he could not go. Donny looked into his eyes, recognized the change, and gave him a half hug. The group turned toward the bar. Kasher turned right and walked home alone.

Six months sober at 16, Kasher enrolled in Spraings Academy, where director Dr. Violet Spraings handed him The Catcher in the Rye as his first assignment toward his General Educational Development (GED). Three years later, he entered community college and eventually applied to the University of California, Santa Barbara. Initially rejected for repeated failures in pre-algebra, he wrote an appeal explaining his past and five years of sobriety. He was admitted and graduated with honors, signing "I love you" to his mother from the stage.

In his 20th year, his father was diagnosed with cancer and died in May. Kasher was present. In their last conversation, Steven signed, "I'm so lucky that you are my son." A year later, Kasher returned to Sea Gate for the final Kaddish, the Jewish mourning prayer. Panicking about his long hair in the Orthodox setting, he began stuffing it into a child-sized hat, then stopped. He let his hair fall to his shoulders and walked to synagogue as himself.

Donny eventually got sober, married, and had a daughter. Joey, unable to stop drinking after a motorcycle accident, was found dead in his apartment. At 25, now a sign language interpreter and stand-up comic, Kasher was assigned to a session at the very Kaiser rehab from which he had once been expelled. In the elevator, a sullen teenage patient stepped in. Kasher told the boy he was not bad but sick, echoing Mike Hicks's words. The kid told him to leave him alone. The elevator doors closed, and Kasher studied his own reflection, recognizing, for the first time, a good person looking back.