David P. has a saying he lives by: Rule 62—don’t take life so seriously. He’s spent years mastering that philosophy, blending humor with heart, mischief with love, and a rebellion with commitment. If you’ve met him, you’ve laughed with him. If you’ve spent any real time with him, you’ve probably also seen the depth of his love—not just for the mission of Beit T’Shuvah, but for the people that make it possible.
“I like to think that I’m a good person with a big heart, who’s very giving of my time, of my energy, of myself to other people. Generally, to people that I love but even people that I don’t love as much.” That generosity has always been part of him. But it took a long road—one filled with addiction, expulsion, homelessness, and chaos—to get to a place where he could truly live it.
David grew up between two worlds— the modern orthodoxy of Los Angeles and the ultra-orthodoxy of New York. When his family moved from LA to NY in ‘94, it wasn’t just geographical—it was a shift into a stricter religious world. “The LA Orthodox Jewish community here was very different than it is today. There was a bigger shift in terms of the modern Orthodox versus the super religious Orthodox… When I moved to New York, my parents moved more to the right.” That shift created an internal conflict that would shape much of David’s young life. In New York, he was expected to conform to a rigid religious structure, one that didn’t align with what he knew or felt in LA. “It was very conflicting. I struggled with that in my personal identity of who I was, as well as the values that I believed in life.” He would never wear the classic suits and hats that orthodox Jews are known for—refusing to live in the black and white.
His struggle played out in whoopee cushion rebellion. David was, by his own admission, a born troublemaker. “I was a clown my whole life…I still am.” From flooding kindergarten toilets to melting crayons on radiators, he spent much of his youth testing limits and challenging authority. The Orthodox schools didn’t take kindly to his antics. “There was a theme in my life,” and that theme was being expelled from school. By the end of high school, David had annoyed half the rabbis in New York and been kicked out of more schools than he attended.
Pushing boundaries, running from structure, finding the invisible line and crossing it with a smile—bled into his addiction. After being kicked out of one school, he enrolled in another that was so far from his home that his dad needed to rent him an apartment closer to campus. Only 15 years old. A place to yourself. A budding drug addiction. You fill in the blanks.
Eventually, David and his father moved back to LA and that’s when the leash came off. It was a homecoming party and King David had arrived.“When I got back to LA, I had my friends here, I wasn’t in some rigid Orthodox community anymore.” You’d think that’s when he started using, but no. That’s when he started using heavily. His first sip of alcohol was a gulp he took at his family’s Sukkot. After that, he’d steal a bottle of wine whenever he’d get the chance. When the sun would set and Shabbat would start, David would begin his blackout. But, back in LA, everything seemed normal. He was sneaking pills from his cousin’s medicine cabinets and not thinking twice about it. “
When he was 17, he went to Israel for a gap year—a common rite of passage in the Orthodox world. But instead of a religious awakening, he found a playground for addiction. “It was a joke,” he said with an ear-to-ear grin. “We’d go out drinking every night. If we weren’t getting high, we were getting drunk. And it was so easy.”
Then came the night that changed everything. David and his friends were drinking and taking GHB, not realizing how dangerous their doses were. One by one, they started collapsing in the middle of, what David referred to as “Crack Square,” which, in reality, was a very public square in Jerusalem. “The first one hits the deck that was doing G with us. The second one hits the deck. And then all of a sudden, the third one hits the deck… they’re grabbing these guys and they’re throwing them in an ambulance.” David panicked. “I thought I was next. I did the same amount as them.” He walked back to school in a daze, knowing that he had crossed a line. The next day, he was expelled and put on a plane back to LA in fear of the Israeli government. But instead of slowing down, seeing his faults, and correcting them, he spiraled further, doubled down, and took another shot. Enter the toxic relationship. (no good spotlight can live without one)
“She was slinging coke, I was slinging Oxy—it was a match made in heaven.”
When she got sober, David lost everything—his home, his stability. “I lost my clientele most importantly! How could they do heroin? They were upscale citizens doing Oxy!” They were grown adults, after all. But times were changing, and so was his drug habit. “That’s when I started using heroin. Oxy was getting harder to find, and heroin was cheaper.” From there, the descent was rapid. He couch-surfed, crashed in abandoned buildings, and slept in public restrooms. “I’d sleep in Canter’s bathroom upstairs…I’d get high and pass out in one of the stalls.” For two years, he drifted between moments of desperation and fleeting attempts at sobriety. “I had been to jail, I’d been to numerous institutions. It was just a matter of, am I going to die?”
In July 2011, after years of plenty of false starts, David found himself on Beit T’Shuvah’s doorstep. “I remember showing up and demanding to see the rabbi like I was someone important. Rabbi Mark came out and was like, ‘The fuck do you want?’”
David told him the truth: “I need help saving my life.”
Rabbi Mark laid it out simply: “If you can piss clean, you can stay.”
David couldn’t. But instead of walking away for good, he came back a few days later and tested negative.
At first, he treated Beit T’Shuvah like summer camp. “I had a great time.” But over time, something shifted. He started seeing Beit T’Shuvah for what it really was: a place to rebuild, to reconnect, to live with purpose. Granted, he didn’t learn that in time for one of his many jokes to get him kicked out…but he was told on his way out that this would always be his community. He heard those words and ran with them.
Today, David is a pillar of the community. He’s spent over 13.5 years giving back—mentoring newcomers, showing up for Shabbat, and performing in Freedom Song, Beit T’Shuvah’s traveling play about addiction and redemption. “I get a lot out of it,” he says. “And one thing that’s always been instilled in me is that you don’t forget where you came from. You pay it forward in any way that you can.”
David’s path also led him to Shira, his wife, though their first encounter was far from a love story. “I was the first junkie she ever saw,” recalling how they met years ago when mutual friends picked him up from a dope dealer’s place. “I was nodding out in the backseat of the car with a bunch of fentanyl patches on me.” Years later, their paths crossed again through Beit T’Shuvah, but this time, David was sober. “Fast forward, we’re married, mansion.—27 kids,” he jokes. But beneath the humor, there’s a real love story—one built on recovery, redemption, and the kind of connection that lasts.
If you ask David what makes Beit T’Shuvah different, he won’t give you a sales pitch. He’ll tell you the truth. “There’s no other place in the universe that melds these worlds of community, of recovery, of support and of love and of a desire to heal. I think that when you put those pieces together, there’s a magic that happens.”
David’s humor has always been his shield, his coping mechanism, and his greatest gift. It got him through a childhood of contradictions, through the chaos of addiction, and, ultimately, into a life of purpose. But what makes his laughter truly powerful is that it doesn’t just heal him—it heals the people around him. Whether it’s a perfectly timed wisecrack in a Freedom Song performance, a sarcastic jab that breaks the tension in a tough moment, or just his ability to make anyone feel at home, David’s humor is his way of giving back.
“Life is too short…So it’s unproductive to live another day without gratitude.” And that’s what he does—he lives with gratitude, with laughter, and with a love for this community that never wavers. Because for David, laughter isn’t just a joke—it’s survival, it’s connection, it’s recovery.