There is probably no greater imaginable tragedy than to lose a child. It is even more tragic when children are being lost because of abuse within the Yeshiva world. This is not a topic anyone likes to speak about openly. It is only because I am self-employed that I can do so without fear of losing my job. But I feel it is necessary to do so because of fear that more lives will be lost if no one speaks out.
Consider this heart-rending letter from the parent of Yehoshua Ben Moshe a”h, which has been edited only slightly with permission for clarity and brevity.
My son Yehoshua’s Yahrzeit was Daled Adar (February 25, 2023), 14 years ago. He died from a drug overdose. My son was bright, talented, and was busy doing a lot of chesed. Unfortunately, I put him in a system that did not meet his needs. Yes, he was bright and gifted but the schools were ill-equipped to handle his reading problem or the fact that he didn’t fit “the mold”. The children who don’t fit in are left to walk the hallways or sit in a class with a few other “misfits” and a Rebbi that can be very well-intentioned but has no clue what to do with his class of “misfits” so the very basics of Yiddishkeit are lost for them.
Sometimes we have a bigger problem of traumatized and abused Rabbis who have never dealt with their problems and learned to keep quiet about their trauma, but still function within society. Eventually, these troubled rebbeim need to let out those emotions, and the only way they know how is to inflict that trauma and abuse on their students and teach them to keep quiet about it. The poor children learn only how terrible and good-for-nothing they are. Their only option to get noticed is to act out in a disruptive manner and abuse other children or themselves. They are taught nothing about the beauty of Yiddishkeit or the geshmak of learning.
Shua was very bright and talented, he had a popular talk show where people would call in on a major ethnic Philly AM radio station when he was 19, he helped his father rebuild his business after losing a lot of his money in a ponzi scheme. Yehoshua opened up a safe house for teenagers to go to in Lakewood when they were thrown out of or ran away from their houses.
Yehushua helped many kids get into rehab and helped pregnant girls, some still in school from our community find solutions and people and people to help them. In December when Israel went into Gaza in an operation called Cast Lead he got over a hundred boys who had long ago dropped out of our system to put tefillin on again to show support for their brothers going to war. Right before he was niftar he started a campaign for a sober Purim which, again over 100 teenagers kept. He was special, but we have so many exceptional children we just throw to the streets because they don’t fit into the mold we have created.
Our children and teens who are struggling need love, not rejection. They need to be loved for how they are and not constantly traumatized by a system of rules and ideas that they have to live up to. Kids are dying from drugs because they need to numb their pain. They find crowds where little is expected of them because too much is expected of them in our school system. We don’t allow them to ask the hard questions that are bothering them.
A child cannot feel close to Hashem and keep mitzvos if their basic emotional and physical needs are not even being met. The judgment teens feel is too much. A 13-year-old having to apply for school and being rejected is outrageous.
Children need unconditional love, not a love that is dependent on their level of religiosity. I believe that the antidote to going off the derech and addiction is a connection but the community disconnects children that are having issues. It should be illegal to throw children out of school without acceptance into a suitable school and the help they need, we need to really internalize “acheinu kol beis Yisrael ” and stop rejecting so many precious neshamas.
Children, and especially teens, need healthy outlets and different methods of education. They also need resources and help. In more modern schools they drug test the students and if they are found to be using drugs they HELP them, they don’t throw them out of school They have programs that bring in speakers to educate them about peer pressures and drugs, this is an important first step but it’s not done in our system. If it works it should be done.
We need to teach our children Hashem loves us more than we can possibly love ourselves, and He wants us to be happy and connect to him in any which way that we can, we don’t need to be the Gadol Hador for Hashem to love us. Hashem knows and loves us in spite of our shortcomings, and He’s not looking for excuses to send us to Gehinnom. We need to emphasize Hashem created us all unique with our own very special purpose.
The frum publications are full of calls to ban the internet, texting, and sheitlach. We are striving to become a very holy society and we are holy compared to the world that is out there, but we can do better. No one is speaking out about the abuse that goes on in our institutions. People are too afraid to harm someone’s parnassah or image. Meanwhile, kids’ lives are being ruined in unimaginable ways. It is a literal sakanah as there are plenty of gangs well-placed to sweep in and give these kids the unconditional attention they crave and something lethal to numb their pain.
Where are the calls to ban throwing kids out of school? So many kids (and parents) are suffering from the pressure of getting into schools. Parents have to reserve school placements before the child is even born and suffer years of anxiety about whether they will get into a high school Yeshiva.
A well-known doctor in a fairly large Jewish community told me that the suicide rate among frum teens is one a month. Most of the cases are kept covered up so as not to ruin the families’ chances for shidduchim. The pressure these young people are under from our Yeshiva system is unreal. I would even say evil.
Schools today are so obsessed with maintaining their good image because many parents are under the illusion that their children haven’t been exposed to the world and are pushed to unrealistic expectations, and will only send their kids to the best Yeshivas, they don’t realize they are harming those neshamos, and are left wondering what went wrong when their children with all the yichus go off the derech. As Rav Steinman z”l pointed out, it’s pure ga’ava. But it’s life-threatening ga’ava and must be stopped. Schools insist they only reject a student for the good of the other students. But I have seen over and over in my work that this argument never applies when the “offending” student is a child of a board member or a rebbi. This is not the Torah way. Torah is a morasha kehillas Yaakov, a birthright for every Jew. We are obligated to teach it with love and care to all our children in a way that they can understand and feel Hashem’s love for them. No institution has the right to refuse a child a Torah education. Lives are at stake. It is time to speak out and take a strong stand before more children are lost.
May this publication be a לעילוי נשמת – a dedication and everlasting loving memory for the soul of Yehoshua Ben Moshe a”h and in its merit be a turning point for our schools/yeshivas to stop being in denial and mend their ways once and for all.
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Couldn’t have said it better!!👏👏👏 Thank you for speaking up for such an incredibly important matter!! I agree this is mamash sakanah what’s going on and there needs to be changes ASAP!!!
Sad. We should never know from such pain. The lines about abusive Rebbeim and Rebbeim “taking it out ” on the Talmidim are a complete broadside to our very dedicated mechanchim. In this generation, we have much more training and vetting of chinuch candidates. 1 Rosh Yeshiva told me that his mosad success rate is close to 100% “when the parents are on board “. Instead of blaming mechanchim(publishing the letter makes you a party in this), why not discuss whether out of the box children get mixed messages.
Rabbi Abenson attempts to use this tragedy as a teaching moment. The idea he is proposing that lack of unconditional love Somehow explains/rationalizes, the phenomenon of OTD and worse , drug use and overdose, Is logically faulty.
None of us have perfect childhoods, Some of us just less than perfect, since our are parents were not perfect, Some of us due to sickness and other life’s hardships very unperfect… most, if not all of us have not received unconditional love, And most of us despite the fact lead model lives.
And those who don’t, according to Rabbi Abenson idea, should really be given a pass. For example this teacher who Because he was abused as a child and did not receive unconditional love and takes it out on his students, why doesn’t he get some sympathy? Some understanding?.
Is it because he is faceless and nameless and you can just talk about THEM and disparage THEM without looking at the human being?
Or is it because he is an adult and despite whatever childhood he might have had he is responsible for his actions?
Which leads to a second point, never in history and nowhere on Earth is there an institution where you’re not judged constantly, by your leaders, by your colleagues by your friends.
Politics, finance,medicine,law,accounting. Try to pass the bar, CPA Or the medical exam, With unconditional love… Try to make a sale… Either you got the goods at the right price or no sale… Try to get married without your father-in-law and mother in law and perspective spouse judging you. Your wife will judge you, so will your children and in laws, friends And coworkers and neighbors. Yes it is brutal, Sometimes down right mean.
Coddling your child and not exposing him ever so slowly to the realities of the real world is a great deservice.
Chinuch It’s all about preparation For life, for the real world, Children ought to know that when they fail, There is a price to pay.
Giving them unconditional love and shielding from the realities of life and then at some point they go out to the big world totally unprepared. That is abuse.
There is no study or research which claims that Drug abuse has anything to do with lack of unconditional love. None.
And in closing please note how the blame is squarely put on the school. There was no other factor. Myopic.
Looks like you need therapy!
We should have pity on the poor rebbi that had hard childhood??
Teens just have to used to get rejected from school because it prepares them for life????
(You’re right about one thing, if they don’t die from OD in their teens, they usually become amazing adults!)
What coolermindsprevail Is arguing that according to rabbi abinson’s logic you would have to have some pity on the teacher too. You obviously missed the point.
The teacher shouldn’t be a teacher if he still has issues to work through!
I see a big difference between teens and teachers.
@coolermindsprevail
You are 100% correct
we live in a generation of “nothing is my fault”.
Its the biggest cognitive dissonance in the world.
It protects US from facing our own failures.