Welcome to TheHolyThief.com!

I met this rabbi.

Picture the rabbi from central casting. Long white beard. Long black robe. Hunched over. Myopic. Soft-spoken. Inaccessible.

That's not him. Sixteen years ago Rabbi Mark Borovitz was in a prison cell... for the second time. He was a mobster, gangster, con man, gambler, thief, and drunk. Then trapped in a ten-by-twelve-foot cage, he found his soul. Rabbi Mark's incredible story is something no fiction writer could make up. His life is larger than life. It is TONY SOPRANO MEETS HAROLD KUSHNER.

Rabbi Mark's synagogue, Beit T'Shuvah, "The House of Return," is no ordinary synagogue. It is a combination house of worship and halfway house. Currently, a hundred residents live there full-time, all battling addictions to drugs and alcohol. Many are people on the edge; some are dangerous to themselves and others. Rabbi Mark turns his back on none of them.

I interviewed several of the people he counsels and sat in on their sessions. He meets everyone -- all ages, backgrounds, lifestyles, and professions. You can be an adolescent or a senior citizen, a studio head or a crackhead. No one is more important and no one is less important. These are people seeking to control their addictions and learning to take control of their lives. Some are trying to pull themselves out of the black hole of despair; others are seeking merely to live life on a higher plane; some are looking for a lifeline, others are at the end of their ropes. They are Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists.

In other words, us. All of us.

THE HOLY THIEF is a true-life gangster story and a case study of redemption, written in a unique voice, the voice of a man who has taken the journey from Hell to Holiness. The book is uplifting, funny, and deeply emotional.

Rabbi Mark is a wrestler and a thief. He wrestles your devils and steals your sins, then sends them adrift into the sea. He is there, in your life, giving you a hug, a push, whatever you need. He is a force. He is my friend. He is my rabbi.

And regardless of your faith, through this book, he will be yours.

--Alan Eisenstock