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September 09, 2003

More Than Meets The Eye (1)

Here are my thoughts on this story.

Which parts of the story are true? I don’t know. Most of us don’t. I refuse to believe all the stories about Arabs and boys and so on. As far as I’m concerned they left of their own volition. The word on the street is that one of them was kicked out of camp in middle of the summer for talking about things ‘she shouldn’t have been talking about.’ I can understand the girls’ reasons for doing what they did without my knowing the entire story. I know more than I can write about but I can’t believe everything I ‘know’ anyway.

What is important now is not to dwell on what happened. - I do pity these girls and I think that if the chinuch situation stays the way it is now, and if the way ‘at-risk teens’ are dealt with in the heimishe communities stays the same, they will not be frum in two years time. AND, they will be right as well, as right as one can be in such a situation anyway. – What is important now is to take a lesson, to WAKE UP. Most important is that the Rabbonim should admit, to themselves at first, that there are problems that need to be dealt with. They have been shoving problems under the carpet for way too long. Teenage years present way more nisyonos now then they did when these Rabbonim were at the same age. And at the same time, society as a whole, heimishe communities in particular, are going down. The level of Emunah in chasidishe circles for people under 25 is probably at an all-time low. Yeshivos are busy teaching the importance of learning, halochos are a high-priority only in the ‘better’ yeshivos, and Emunah is not being taught OR transmitted in any chasidishe yeshivos. Ask a few “feine bucherim” about the reasons behind the halochos and all you’ll get is “because Hashem wants us to do it.” That is true, we need to do everything simply because Hashem told us to, even if we don’t understand. But the same G-d who wants us to do is mitzvos wants us to learn his reasons behind it. Hashem does not ‘need’ our mitzvos, we do. And we need to at least try to understand what we’re doing.

We need to be open and understanding to teenagers going thru tough times without the support they should be getting. We need to stop judging teenagers doing things we see as bad. A teenager on drugs is not a “bad kid.” If the right support system was in place the number of teenage drug abusers would have been way lower. A teenager on drugs is a sign that there are problems to be dealt with, not a sign that we need to ex-communicate him/her. The same goes for all the other “bad things” teenagers do. When we hear of these “bad things” we should be asking the mechanchim to do something to help them, not to throw them out. Throwing them out MIGHT prevent them from ‘influencing’ other kids, it won’t fix the problem that caused the kid to do what s/he did. If the underlying problem is not confronted, more kids will go the same way.

We need to admit to ourselves that the frumest of communities have cases of child-abuse. These cases not only need to be dealt with, they also have to be seen as a sign that there is an underlying problem. When a Rav doesn’t want to listen or do something about a child-abuse case, what kind of Rav is he? What kind of Rabbonim do we have anyway? How can one respect and look up to a Rav that is involved in machlokes? Can there really be a Rav that has the right to machlokes? Can a Rav really be ‘righteous’ and ehrlich if people do what they do in their names? Can a Rav really be trusted on ANYTHING if he gets paid to put his name on a product that it’s kosher and then doesn’t go to inspect the manufacturing process? Can a Rav really be the person to ask sheilos when he sits on a corrupt Beis-Din?

Of course with Rabbonim like the ones we have, mechanchim like the ones we have, chasidishe girls want to run away from home and forget about yiddishkeit. Who WANTS to live for sixteen years and just be told what to do, without rhyme or reason? How can anyone really be frum, when there is no one there to see him, if he doesn’t understand the basics of Yiddishkeit? When politics is given a higher priority than the foundations of yiddishkeit? When the Rabbonim with the largest following are constantly fighting with one another, it becomes a nisoyon just to remain frum.

And when they do get to that point, who is there for them to speak with? Who is there to listen and advise them and show them that someone really CARES? No one. Because we can’t admit that there are underlying problems. Because we want to believe that each case is a separate story, that some kids are just bad. That is not true. It is our society that causes these teenagers to fall in yiddishkeit, and by extension in life, it should be our responsibility to get people to do the necessary damage-control. It is our responsibility to get our Rabbonim to install mechanchim that understand, Mechanchim who will do something to change our society.

The story continues here.

Posted by notepad at September 9, 2003 11:56 PM

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