Doni Silverstein at the Torah Umesorah Presidents Conference 12-22-2017 (Part 5 of 5)

Sweet. Thank you. Rabbi Blatt, thank you. When Sweet asked me to speak here this year at the Tom Sawyer Presidents Conference, so I asked him, I said, "Well, you know, what do you want me to say? You know, we're starting off a new project in Israel and in Israel." And I said, "You want to hear about cases? Should I discuss some of the numbers that we see? It's not so different than what you see in in in America." And he said to me something very interesting. That's really what I'm going to talk about. Is that where does the stop for the children in our school systems? At what point do we say, "Okay, we've done enough." High school? Seminary? Yeshiva? First year of the marriage? Kyle? When? And the truth is that it never stops. The of a child continues until maybe they have children, maybe after they have children, even for his grandchildren. And I think it's part of the reason why it was started is because we found that there was a huge gap and a big problem just for the American students in Yeshiva, the guys who came to Israel. And they would get there and unfortunately a lot of things would come out. And unfortunately a lot of issues would come up and there was no place to turn to. They were getting calls from Israel, from America about horrible stories that were happening without any without any work. Those of you that got the email, I sent the email out the other week about an 8-year-old girl from an Anglo family who was raped by an American Yeshiva boy who was there learning. He was a friend of the family. Apparently he was there quite often. We know right now it's only the girl, but there are other issues in some of the other children and we might find out that there was more. Right now the authorities are dealing with it, but we're dealing with the family. We're trying to focus on what they need and how we can help get them services. But where was everybody else when this guy went off to Yeshiva? Where was he? Where was his Rabbi? His friends? His from America? Nobody knew. He had no history. I personally find that hard to believe. But it's not our job to do the investigation. Our job is to help the people that are victims. We've heard from Rabbi Blatt and Sweet and Zev about the idea of data collection and the importance of what the numbers say. And many times we can throw numbers around and they sound like they're they're completely blown out of proportion. And there's part of those numbers that when they're when they're mentioned it makes us very uncomfortable. And the first thing we say is we deny it. It's not really true. They're blowing it they're making it more They get X amount of calls. They get calls they hang up. Or the calls are about something else. Or it's the same person calling about the same case. And in the beginning I have to be honest I was also very skeptical. And I went to the office in New York and I sat there for a week. And I sat with Sweet and I sat with the case managers. And I was there for hours upon hours upon hours and there were hundreds and hundreds of calls every single day. Different calls. You can't even keep track. Every single thing that comes into the offices, just like in Rabbi Blatt can attest to this, is documented, is written down, is cross-referenced. If it's not new, it's an old one, it goes in the old pile. If it's a new call, it is written down as a new call. The person Rabbi Blatt was telling me I was talking to him before about earlier years and the what they're doing with some of their numbers and belief and he's saying that they're many many more calls years ago for bipolar disorder. Recently they've had a lot less. He said one of the reasons they think is because they had a backlog and a lot of people who had bipolar disorder called way back when. But today they're getting they're getting those calls and they're dealing with them, but they're not getting the numbers that they once had because they had no place to turn. I just want to touch upon, I know it's getting late, the idea of you know, important metrics. We've been discussing a lot about data and metrics and understanding it and the amount of knowledge and transparency and accountability that it can actually give an organization. For people to understand it and to see it and you can find out exactly what is going on at any given time in those organizations. So two examples I just want to talk about where data could help. Rabbi Blatt earlier spoke about alcoholism in the from community. Balabatin, Kiddish clubs. But in Israel there's a phenomenon now that both men 17, 18, 19, 20 that is across the board, every Yeshiva from the best from the Aleph to Bet to Gimmel, it doesn't make a difference, where alcoholism is completely accepted. Nobody talks about it. Nobody says it's a problem. Says it's just part of life. Nothing's being done. So the fact that you're seeing it on a Balabatin level isn't really surprising because we're seeing it much earlier. Yes, there are many reasons why in the Yeshivas like there's a lot of freedom. There's a lot of bars. Alcohol age is lower, the legal age, but I don't think the legalities of it has ever gotten into the way of somebody who wants to get it. So we don't know. So I have a hunch, but I don't know what the truth is. One of the ways to find out what the truth is is to be able to follow and to document and to see the cases and to see what happens and to follow through with them and then we'll actually know where it starts from. What's the cover-up? Are they using alcohol as a means to numb the pain of abuse, of a broken family? Or are they addicted? And the flip side of that is really good research in the from community, which today is actually happening as Zev alluded to. There's a phenomenal institute it's called the Institute of Applied Research and Community Collaboration, ARC. It's actually run by Dr. Yitzchok Schechter, somebody who I worked with when I was working in Monsey as a clinician. And Dr. Schechter did an unbelievable study. I think it was the first study that was done to understand was the divorce study in the from world. In the from world, some of the numbers that he came out with, they interviewed 500 respondents to the study. There were 310 divorced respondents and 194 is actually 404 504 194 respondents who were married. And they asked a slew of questions to find out what are the contributing factors to divorce in the from world. There's a lot of data and he's still mining the data and going through it. But these are some of the early results from his research. First of all, divorce in the from world in this study is holding at about 10%. You think about it compared to the rest of the world, that's amazing. The marriage rate in the from world is at about 80 to 85%. It's most of the people in the from world it's part of our value system to get married. But the 10% that gets divorced, what he uncovered was that 57% of those divorces were acrimonious, contentious, and had tremendous issues going along the way through the divorce process. Why that is, everyone can have a guess. But in terms of the contributing factors to what actually causes or potentially causes divorce, verbal and emotional abuse was one of the highest metrics. 50% of women said it was one of the highest. 28% for men. Being put down and demeaned, 49% for women, 37% for men. Sexual issues, 42% for women, 32% for men. Mental illness, everyone knows that mental illness is big. 40% for women and 29% for men. Financial differences, almost no discrepancy, 29 to 28%. Different life goals, also very low, 29% to 23%. But what they found in the study is that in 50 seven, I'm sorry, is that is sexual abuse after asking these respondents, sexual abuse was seven times more likely and more common among divorced respondents than married individuals. Let me repeat that. It's seven times more common. Not one, not two, seven times more common they found it amongst the divorced couples than amongst the married individuals. Physical abuse was only three times more common in the divorced couples. Sexual abuse is something that destroys a person when they're young. Destroys a person when they're an adolescent. Destroys a person when they're a young married person. It destroys families from the top down or from the bottom up. It doesn't differentiate between what type of Jew you are, what type of person you are. It has an ultimate destructive factor. One of the ideas was that, you know, there could be an implementation of specific protocols for chosson kallah teachers to notice, to figure out, to see signs of abuse. People who have been abused, been sexually abused, they can have wonderful marriages and amazing lives. But it has to be detected and it has to be treated. And it has to be speech. Svie has broken down all the barriers. But there's always more to do and there's more to go. You know, in Israel, one of the things that we found and one of the calls, very common calls that we get are from seminary and yeshiva students. Discussing, finally disclosing for the first time in their life to anybody that they've been abused. Why? I've heard that Eretz Yisrael makes you a maskim, but why are they disclosing this? I have a theory. Other people have theories. One theory is because when they come to Israel, they're thousands and thousands of miles away for the first time from their abuser or from the environment of their abuse. From reliving that trauma over and over and over again for the first time in their life, they're actually free. And they're able to open and ask and reach and hopefully receive the treatment that they need and it's better late than never. If we can reach them then, we can reach all those divorced couples, all those people, all those marriages, all those children of divorced couples. And hopefully be able to treat them and help them through it. My own theory is that I think when you go to Eretz Yisrael, for many of us that learned in yeshiva in Israel, in the seminary girls, you you you go to many different places for Shabbos. You go to cousins, friends, uncles, aunts, friends of cousins of uncles and aunts and uncles and aunts of friends and cousins and you end up in so many different places in Eretz Yisrael from top to bottom, everywhere on the religious spectrum. And you see, sometimes for the first time, multiple types of normal, healthy relationships that some of these people have never seen. You're exposed to what healthy life looks like in a different prism. And that is very jarring for a child who's 18, 19 years old and is used to their parents or their family or their environment and that's all they know and that's all they see. So it's no wonder that they're able to open and realize there's something else here and I don't have it and I want that. And that call, that hesitancy to call or to have a place to call, that's the need for them to be able to come out with it and be able to get it because we are saving the next generation. I just want to close with a small idea. I know the idea, the the slogan for the conference is that I'm not alone because Where do we find the first place in the Torah that it talks about friendship? Where is the first place that it actually talks about a type of relationship that is not a father, not a mother, not a brother, not a sister, not a husband, not a wife. Friends. I think, don't quote me, but I think the first time we find the idea of friendship in the Torah is when Yehudah was basically excommunicated from his brothers. And he finds himself in a foreign place and he has a friend. The Torah calls him Chira who was Re'eihu Ha'Adullami. Was his friend. What What Who cares? But listen to the type of friend that he was. We know the story with Yehudah, he goes and there's he meets a prostitute and it's Tamar. He doesn't know who she is. And what happens he comes back, he gives his coat, he gives his staff, he gives his ring as collateral. Eventually he's going to send payments. He gives the collateral to Chira and he says, "Go pay her." And he goes. And he doesn't just pay her, he looks for her, he tries to find her, he looks here, he looks there, he comes back, comes back, he says, "Yehudah, L'einah lo matzasi osah. I didn't find her. She's not there." And Yehudah says, "Okay, it's meant to be." What is the root of the word Re'eihu? It doesn't call him chaver. Re'eihu, the root of that word is rah. Is bad. A true friend, this is the first time the Torah hits on it, the true friend, the true relationship is there when a person is in a bad situation. That is a friend. That is a person who will go no matter what my friend needs, no matter what he's he Whatever it is, I have to go for the zeinah? I will do it cuz that's what he needs. And right after that, we find that he admits and everything is amazing. But that's the first place we find it. When somebody is in crisis, when somebody is in their deepest depths of Gehenna and they have nowhere else to go and nowhere else to turn. It's easy to be friendly with somebody and to be there for somebody when everything's fine. But you're there for them and you are there, that is Re'eihu. And we know the mitzvah of v'ahavta l'rei'acha kamocha. So I hope we'll be able to continue to grow and to continue to break down barriers and not to take no for an answer and be the friends for the people that need it. Thank you.