How YOU Can Save A Teenager From Leaving Judaism! (A Personal Story) - Rabbi Eli Karmel

a little while ago there was a teenager I knew very smart kid who came from a very fir religious family but he was very clearly becoming less and less religious he was out of yiva and he would always have this negative energy and I could tell that he was clearly in a lot of pain and I honestly felt very bad for him and one day we both happened to be waiting around together and I told him you know I don't really know your personal life that well but I think I know what's going on there's someone in your life that is supposed to be a role model and they are doing things that you think is just plain wrong and hypocritical and they blame it on Judaism and on Hashem and you're smart and you know it's wrong and you don't want any part in this anymore that's what's happening right and he smiled and he said yeah you're in the right direction but then you put his frown back on he says so what so I told him to imagine for a second that you wake up in the morning and you make yourself a nice fresh cup of hot coffee and you ask your friend to pass you the sugar but he decides to prank you and he spills out the sugar and he fills it with salt and you take it and you pour it in and you take a sip and of course you spit it out all over the floor and your friends are all laughing and they think it's hilarious now if this happened to you what would you do the next morning you would simply double check that a sugar before you pour it in and you would move on with your life but what if I told you that this happened to me and I decided that I'm never going to have sugar ever again because from my experience sugar is really bitter you think I'm crazy why would you deprive yourself of sugar just because somebody claim that sugar is really bitter but really that is exactly what you are doing because that person Who's acting like a hypocrite they may want you to think that they are doing what Hashem really wants but it's not true they're pranking you Hashem is not bitter Judaism is not bitter that person who's being a hypocrite he's the only one who's bitter and what a shame it'll be if you threw away something so sweet just because somebody fooled you into thinking that it was really bitter so if you want to channel your feelings of rebellion in a way that'll make you happy too then the same way you were smart enough to realize that what they were doing was wrong you need to take that smart head of yours and go back to Yeshiva and figure out what exactly it is that Hashem does want you to be doing and then you could explain to the world very clearly why the things they were doing are wrong and a misinterpretation of what Hashem really wants us to be doing wouldn't that be the biggest slap in the face of hypocrisy anyways I met him a few weeks later and he looked like a new person he looked happy he told me he was back in Isa and I was a bit shocked when he even asked me if we could discuss some of the te he was learning so of course I know that it's very possible that his change had nothing to do with me but if you happen to know anyone who looks like they're struggling then it's definitely worth a shot to try to share this with them [Music]