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{"id":4008,"date":"2016-06-01T09:57:46","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T09:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.priority-1.org\/?p=4008"},"modified":"2022-09-01T08:41:32","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T08:41:32","slug":"a-decade-at-risk-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/priority-1.org\/a-decade-at-risk-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Decade at Risk, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

by: Tzvi Abraham
\nIntroduction<\/strong>
\nIn his best selling book, The Tipping Point, author Malcolm Gladwell\u2014a former Washington Post reporter and New Yorker Magazine staff writer\u2014sheds light on how minute, seemingly unrelated events sometimes lead to rapid, wholesale social upheavals.<\/p>\n

With astonishing detail, Gladwell identifies the circumstances immediately preceding various social transformations such as the precipitous drop in New York City\u2019s crime rate and the revolutionary impact of Sesame Street on pre-school education, among many others. He calls these lightening-fast, unforeseen social shifts \u201ctipping points.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Gladwell doesn\u2019t mention the problem of at-risk youth, the sudden ubiquity of young, frum boys and girls eschewing frumkeit, family, and community for substance abuse and the worst depravities of secular culture, which surfaced in the mid to late 1990s, would have certainly qualified for inclusion. Indeed, by the latter part of 1999 and early 2000, the problem of youth at risk transfixed the Orthodox Jewish community.<\/p>\n

All At Risk\u2026 All At Once?<\/strong>
\nSuddenly wherever one looked, in every Jewish newspaper and hanging on every street corner lamppost, one saw notices for conferences, family seminars and workshops, books, articles, and weekend retreats devoted to the subject. A low-grade urgency gripped Brooklyn\u2019s neighborhoods, when it appeared any family could be struggling with some form of at risk behavior. Parents began looking at their own children in a different light, each, after all, could be a ticking time bomb.<\/p>\n

Underscoring the pervading sense of crisis, The Jewish Observer, a monthly magazine published by the Agudas Yisroel of America, sent shockwaves through Orthodoxy when it devoted its entire November 1999 issue to the problem of \u201cchildren on the fringe.\u201d Page after magazine page described observations of the \u201cat risk problem\u201d by lay leaders and Torah educators, advice from gedolim and mental health professionals, and gripping accounts submitted by parents.<\/p>\n

Throughout the magazine were articles describing the merits and methods of therapy, calls for cooperation between yeshivas on behalf of the greater Jewish community, and detailed warning signs of at-risk behavior and alternatives for intervention. Additionally, there were pages of ads sponsored by dozens of different Jewish outreach agencies, grassroots organizations, and alternative yeshivas offering services and resources to children and families.<\/p>\n

Clearly, \u2018at-risk\u2019 was now a mainstream problem\u2014everyone\u2019s problem. But what brought about this sudden rash of awareness? More important, why did it seem that all of a sudden, everywhere one turned, there were frum kids falling off the derech into the deadly path of drug abuse, rebellion, and delinquency?<\/p>\n

At Risk \u201cRecruitment\u201d<\/strong>
\nThe answers to these questions contain a road map to permanently keeping the problem of at risk youth at bay. David Pelcovitz, Ph.D., the Straus Chair Professor in Education and Psychology at Yeshiva University\u2019s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, and a leading expert in family trauma and at-risk youth, indicates that the crisis seemed to appear almost overnight because it practically did.<\/p>\n

He describes how shifts in economics, technology, education, and other areas in the early to mid 90s led a growing number of children to feel a sense of alienation from their upbringing. While it\u2019s likely that initially, only a few turned to drug use, with meager community resources available to mitigate their problems, those few grew in numbers and visibility. \u201cThe more visible the disenfranchised youths were, the more \u2018recruitment\u2019 they can do,\u201d says Dr. Pelcovitz. \u201cFrom there numbers grow quickly and exponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viewing it from a strictly mathematical point of view, the emergence of the at risk youth crisis took place relatively fast, just out of view, and fully surfacing within a few years from 1996 to 2000. In terms of how so many people became so abundantly aware of this problem all at once, the concept of critical mass was at work here, too.<\/p>\n

Bringing the Drugs Out of the Closet<\/strong>
\nFor some time, as problems first began to occur in limited, isolated areas, individuals\u2014a parent, a rebbe, a concerned community member\u2014would resort to creativity and sheer personality to breakthrough and connect with a specific troubled teen. At first, these efforts operated as islands, secluded and relatively unaware of one another. As more and more spontaneous start-up programs formed, and as more and more individuals became increasingly vocal about what they realized was the tip of the iceberg, momentum began to occur.<\/p>\n

\u201cI credit Rabbi [Shaya] Cohen as the pioneer of this whole effort to reconnect with at risk youths,\u201d says Dr. Pelcovitz. \u201cBy devoting the resources of Priority-1 to open the high school (Torah Academy of Lawrence Cedarhurst), and so early in the game, he really took a leadership role.\u201d Priority-1\u2019s alternative high school program was initially geared to anyone with any problem. The high school offered a relaxed atmosphere, mentoring from Priority-1\u2019s Beis Medrash and Kollel, and access to resources, drug counseling, and mental health professionals. The program became the standard that nearly every other alternative high school has been modeled after.<\/p>\n

Despite the breakthrough approach, there was plenty of friction to withstand. \u201cI remember when we first opened,\u201d says Rabbi Cohen, \u201cpeople used to scream at me for bringing drugs to the Five Towns. But after a while they changed their tone a bit. People started to realize what was really going on; they acknowledged that what Priority-1 did was \u2018bring drug use out of the closet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Other organizations were quick to follow. Agudas Yisroel, after being inundated with calls for help and resources from heartbroken parents and overwhelmed educators, established Project YES\u2014a mentoring program targeting the needs of at risk youth. MASK (Mothers and Fathers Aligned Saving Kids), a resource and referral agency, was established by a single mother who wanted to prevent any other parent from having to face the heartbreak and isolation she felt while caring for a son who was at risk. Our Place, on Avenue M. in Brooklyn, opened it doors to at risk teens offering recreational facilities, food, job assistance and other services to keep them connected to the Jewish community and to a core of concerned community members.<\/p>\n

Mental health professionals stepped up their involvement, too. Dr. Pelcovitz, who is also vice-President of Nefesh, an international network of nearly 500 Jewish mental health professionals, notes how the level of alarm among Nefesh members over what they term \u2018children in crisis\u2019 grew in the latter half of the 1990s. \u201cIf you looked at the growing amount of time we dedicated to this problem. You could clearly see that something big was happening,\u201d recalls Dr. Pelcovitz.<\/p>\n

As these grassroots efforts and the involvement by mental health professionals grew to become effective resources, the sense of shameful solitude felt by parents trying to manage a child at risk that characterized the earlier years began to lift. The community was responding with a level of acceptance and awareness that grew stronger and stronger with each passing month.<\/p>\n

Help. Don\u2019t Pity.<\/strong>
\nSeventeen years ago, Rabbi Dovid Weissman, founder of Yeshiva Toras Yisroel in Flatbush, an alternative yeshiva high school for boys, began working with a group of boys who, had they been born seven to ten years later, would have been called \u201cat risk.\u201d \u201cBack then,\u201d says Rabbi Weissman, \u201cdrugs weren\u2019t really the problem. They serious issues I dealt with, for the most part were lack of emuna and waning interest in frumkeit. Drugs really became more of a problem in the 90s.\u201d But this was the beginning of Rabbi Weisman\u2019s long career helping at risk teens.<\/p>\n

Today, still, boys in Rabbi Weissman\u2019s yeshiva don\u2019t abuse drugs. \u201cYou can\u2019t work with a kid who\u2019s on drugs. It doesn\u2019t work,\u201d he says. The only way to help is to get them off drugs first.\u201d But Rabbi Weissman doesn\u2019t view this perspective as uniquely his own. \u201cThis is something we all needed to learn when we first started working with the youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi Weissman recalls how when the crisis was first widely identified, many entering the field favored the approach of taking pity and showering troubled youths with unconditional love and acceptance, but asking nothing in return. \u201cThe problem with this approach is you\u2019re not solving the problem,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019re enabling the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTeens at risk are lacking personal validation they need to function as happy, productive people,\u201d he continues. \u201cIf you only give pity and unconditional benefits, they\u2019re not growing. In addition to love and understanding, they also need conditions, demands, goals, structure, and responsibility. Everything, but pity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Handle With Care?<\/strong>
\nAnother problem, explains Rabbi Weissman, is that he found youths who would start to emulate at risk behaviors because they saw it came with all kinds of benefits. Rabbi Weissman chuckles about a story that typified this attitude.<\/p>\n

Told by Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, the Morah D\u2019yasrah of Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere in his \u201cInspired Parenthood\u201d lecture series about a rebbe who was in the unpleasant position of having to expel a student from a yeshiva Shabbaton for smoking marijuana on Shabbos, a violation, in one fell swoop, of the two previously stated, immutable rules of the event: no chilul Shabbos and no drugs.<\/p>\n

The rebbe asked the boy, \u201cWhy would you do that? Now I have to send you home!\u201d The boy responded, \u201cYou\u2019d better be careful what you do to me, Rabbi\u2026you know I\u2019m at-risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi Weissman doesn\u2019t necessarily think the boy in the story wasn\u2019t without his share of problems, but his point is that normal, well-adjusted kids were starting to see at risk as a means to an end. \u201cIt became: if I\u2019m at risk, look at all this attention I\u2019ll get.\u201d Instead, Rabbi Weissman feels that working with a troubled youth must be a two\u2013way street.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have to know that my attitude is, \u2018This is your life. It\u2019s your free will. I can give you confidence and show you that you have value and that your current state isn\u2019t necessarily your fault. But you need to work to build yourself up again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Validation Is All You Need<\/strong>
\nAnother drawback in the efforts to addressing the needs of at-risk youth was addressing the fears parents had toward at risk youths. Dr. Pelcovitz observed that the response of other people in the community who saw these oddly dressed kids with multi-colored hair and all sorts of odd piercings hanging out in the street would be to practically grab own their kids and run the other way. They were afraid their own kids would get dragged in.<\/p>\n

But, according to Rabbi Shaya Cohen, this isn\u2019t the case. \u201cDrugs are not the problem. Their use is a symptom of spiritual emptiness and a lack of simcha in serving Hashem. When a child feels empty inside because his neshomah is crying out for some spiritual food, the mind misunderstands and tries to feed the hunger with drugs, and booze, and physical gratification.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Rabbi Cohen says about a child who sees joy in his or her yiddishkeit, a child who feels validation, purpose, and meaning, \u201cyou could dump all the temptations and filth and drugs and secular depravity over their head and they\u2019re capable of withstanding the temptation. That is how important and how powerful happiness and validation are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Pelcovitz agrees. \u201cKids who have joy in their lives typically don\u2019t drift,\u201d says Dr. Pelcovitz. He sees youths at risk as youths who are in pain and crying for help. \u201cOnce we posed a question to a group of teens I was helping,\u201d says Dr. Pelcovitz, \u201cI asked, \u2018If I could give you a pill that would transform you overnight into a normal, functioning member of the community, who fits in and feels comfortable with other people, would you take it?\u2019 Every single one of them said they\u2019d take it in a second.\u201d<\/p>\n

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