On My Mind

No, it isn’t Israel; it’s freedom after a lifetime in a pressure cooker.  It’s a bunch of kids who have been raised in a culture where we attempt to tightly control their lives and try to shield them from the outside world by pretending that they can remain “pure” through ignorance.  When we send young adults of 17 and 18 to a foreign country without real knowledge, supervision or support is it any wonder that many of them can’t cope with the first real freedom that they’ve ever experienced? When there is no rebbe, principal or parent looking over their shoulder, even the best of kids can be tempted to go wild, because they really don’t understand the consequences. Go to Ben Yehuda on an average Saturday night and count the stoned-out yeshiva/seminary teens. Ask any returning kid and they will be able to tell you about someone they know who couldn’t resist the lure of the forbidden. You may be surprised how many good kids from good families you meet on those streets.  I know I was.

Anon are you blaming their visit to israel for their serious addictions? I think you need to look a bit deeper buddy.

It’s not just private parties, Phil.  It’s happening in yeshivas, at weddings, at Shabbos tables and anywhere liquor is available in an unsupervised fashion. How many kids are going away for their year in Israel and come back with serious addictions?  Something’s extremely wrong if they need to escape from their realities so badly that they are willing to put their lives and their futures at risk. There’s a void in their lives that they are trying to fill somehow.