"It happened to me!"

we're all here as friends we're all here on a journey with a sense of acharas a sense of beauty and with the awesomeness of the trust that the abster has given us beautiful sweet pure nasty that are having fairness join us i'd like to give a big to avi fischoff and to the entire team of kashanashi [Applause] and i'm honored to be um the first speaker plus i have a wedding to run to so uh together it works out very well it is a sense of optimism that kashanavshi has given each of the parents in the room to let everyone know that you're just in the middle of the book and the book is going to have an amazing ending i'll tell you why i know this i often tell them i tell me them whoever else will listen that when you put in good ingredients good ingredients come out sometimes they get a little evolved they get a little mixed up and it takes a while for the oil and the water and the this to settle till it gets until it's all mixed it takes a little while longer but if you know as a parent that you put in good ingredients good ingredients will come out sometimes like very delicious wine it takes a little longer but i want to tell you from experience sometimes those are the ones that taste the sweetest in the end because of their journey i used to be a rabbi at ucla in the college i did outreach over there and i had a program once a week where i'd get balabatham to come and speak to my bale chuva and the best bala bottom the ones that i wanted were the ones who went through journeys as teenagers many of them would talk and went off the thera had issues with drugs had these kind of issues and when they came back what they were able to give my college students was better than anyone else it was more sincere it was more pure and it was more hard fought they fought for everything they battled and they overcame and they gave it to the students i'm going to tell you a little bit of my story my wife and i and i'm going to tie it into a plastic that we say all the time and we're going to see exactly what mahalo we should use to not only not get depressed but to understand where we are on the roller coaster where are we our great dream is mashiach should come that's our dream we just passed this above we know of it'll be clear to everyone so we turn to hashem we say hashem you're the one who builds your shalom new and so we passed tish above our family put out a video i don't know if any of you saw the video you saw some of the video you saw the video with the miktash the burning and with the something you liked right hashem i'm glad i got around thank you thank you it was made with love hashem you're the buena yerushalayim but not only are you the buena yerushalayim you're the nidhi israel those who are far flung from yiddishkait those who are the nitkay israel that could be the non-from kid in gainesville florida or in wichita kansas or it could be our own yingala medalla who lives down the hall in the bedroom but doesn't come down for the shabbos meal they're all nitri israel so hashem we turn to hashem and we say hashem new buena yirushalam i have another character trait and you have to not forget this character trait isam hashem you're the one who heals the brokenhearted and gathers in their sorrow bark hashem we have 11 children a lot of nakas we have 12 grandchildren even more on the way levi many more my students sometimes you know my college students are not from they say rabbi when are you going to stop having kids over a population when you get a stop overpopulation in the world i say we'll stop at six million otherwise the world owes us i'm not worried we'll populate plenty six million will stop really we won't if my wife mask him hashem is the right felish for a lave we have 11 children in bark hashem we have so much nachas many of our children are shashidan our our second son is a bucky toyota not a guzman rama mila bamila and our next children made sassy um at their khasanas our oldest son our bahar went through something in yeshiva i don't want to get graphic but something that was hard something that was a a breach in snooze by somebody older than him and that began a journey that was very very difficult it was all of a sudden a good yeshiva alephs like the rest of his brothers the kia's bien awards and in one month everything changed we couldn't explain what happened this was not planned i'm sorry i'm sorry this is not okay um not okay that's not what i'm here for um and he ended up leaving the yeshiva right at the end of this month and we didn't know what was going on just things things that he had never been interested in a certain anger and he ended up in two other yeshivas not terribly mature we thought you know teenagers we didn't know all the details we know that when he complained he wasn't believed it wasn't believed it was downplayed it was downplayed and he ended up going to a few different yeshivas and finally we thought we'll send him to eric's trial he's still very good in learning he was like his brothers like he you know this is this is a bucker to understand there's a bugger when he was 16 17 years old on one shivers he finished massachusetts twice the entire message was twice over one shivous this this is a good booker and he ended up we ended up sending him terrorist israel and he was you know he got into he got into pot at that time there were guys smoking he was smoking part of that culture the house that he lived in with the bakr was not a pleasant house it was a filthy house and we you know being naive it's our oldest we didn't have experience so we you know it'll be okay i'll get over it he'll get married he'll find his way it'll be okay i had a young lady who we were making very elegant lady from europe we we sent her to seminary she came she was stark she was honored that we would consider her for our son she knew oh glasgow let's do it that's we were happy that we were happy that they he shall find this and they had a marriage that lasted a few years first they didn't have children and then they went for treatments and it was against people's better judgment that they should have because at that point she had noticed certain things so she recommended somebody psychiatrist and the psychiatrist began prescribing things you know the way they did until they're buckling down now all sorts of pills maybe this may be that son didn't need it the whole thing was just but why not it made him feel good so that together with the pot and slowly but surely we saw we saw a book or just disappear and so did his brothers and his sisters and after a few years didn't come home one night he was always on the derek not only that he sat and learned day and night kabbalah i don't know what he was learning i don't know if he knows what he was learning kabbalah day and night sitting in this taking smoking kabbalah and then eventually one night when he didn't come home she said his wife we were very close like we were mcarver she said she said tati i can't do it i said you don't you shouldn't have to i said you'll have your gut within 24 hours and we gave her right away it wasn't her fault plus it wasn't her fault and he moved back in and it just got crazier it got crazier we didn't know what to do this is this is a this is a a good boy with the good art and he's in his room and he made lights in the room and shiny things and and then eventually he didn't want to be bothered bother him maybe she get a job now the child's support he had to he now he has a daughter so he moved to the backyard he built the tent he built the tent and he lived in the tent with swarms for him in the tent at any time he'd come and he he was just sitting and learning but it was babbling like it was you know it was in his mind that's what it was word play that's very common the word play and it was incredibly incredibly painful and we were lost and you know being a family that does kiruv undoubtably would say well that's a that's because you let people in the house that's because this that's because that i want to tell you we were never ashamed of our son we were sad but we always always always loved him who had something done to him and it threw him off a cliff i spoke to somebody who was involved with these and young he said 90 percent of the kids go off the dark something happened to them ninety percent i don't know if that's true but i know the numbers high so this lasted for a few years when i first spoke when i first spoke for kashanovshi i spoke about my son living in a tent in the backyard and it was it was madness and we tried to understand why it made sense and then winter came and it snowed so he brought more blankets to his tent there were times where it was the coldest coldest and my wife and i used to wake up in the middle of the night to make sure he was alive that he didn't freeze to death because in his mind his mind was so full of this medication that he didn't have the cycle to go inside got him jobs got fired got because they saw they saw it had it had made his brain crazy eventually we decided you know no more tense this is madness and we came and we we one day when you know we had sent him to one of these jobs that was temporary we came we ripped down the tent he came home he was so upset he was he was he was beyond but it wasn't him it wasn't him it was it was the medication he says he was a sweet he is a sweet sister boy but the medication that made him crazy and i realized it could happen to any family i realized that you could bring your kids up was that with the best with the most love with caring and doing homework and benching with them when they sit on your lap and making contests with them we made contests constantly this merced and every seem that they made we would make stakes make it levitic that's why barakash from the other kids they're they're so excited and so is he eventually so he moved back in and we realized that he's beginning to have a hashball and at that point this is after i spoke in kashanavshi i called him in and i said you know i had thought about it you always wanted to move to eric's israel i think that's a good idea and of course i wanted him to move i didn't want him to be mashipia but i said we're going to pay for you we're going to give you set up money you're going to go we realized that the only way he's going to find himself is if he finds himself by himself but we with love with caring we sent him and i've siblings who live in earth israel and after a little while his medication ran out and of course these things are addictive incredibly highly addictive so he called up tatia to send the medication i i said i can't you know we don't and he got starved out of the medication you know start for four months he said worse than gandam but with love and be a part we we set up in the makolet that he should have a way of buying food and we set up all sorts of things only with love for him to find himself and i want to tell you why this is so important you have to continue with the puzzle you know how you gather in sorrow do you know how you take a kid who should be somebody who's an emerging guddell a good husband somebody cares you know how to get them back you have to understand that they have to understand that they are special you know the next puzzle doesn't seem to make any sense the next puzzle right after machiavelli's voice some gathers in their sorrow the next posture is my name is what's the kesha between buena you shalim and my name is bar it seems like there's no kesha at all i count stars my friends how many stars exist in the world in the universe the known universe 10 to the 23rd that means one with 23 0 10 with another 23 zeros afterwards 23 zeros that's an astounding number of stars there's actually 10 million stars for every one person in the world 10 million stars for every person that's alive so what do we care hashem you count stars you give them you you you give them names what does that mean and the answer is that a star is just gas it's just that nuclear fusion it's hydrogen becoming helium that's all it is it's just nuclear fusion it's a ball of fire who cares how many there are and for sure who cares how what their name is their name what do we care about the name of a star and jana eckveld who cares the answer is hashem is saying if i care so much about a star which is nothing but a ball of gas imagine how much i care about your child imagine how special and how precious and unique this child who's lost who's trying to find themselves or doesn't even know that they're supposed to be trying to find themselves hashem says they're more special than 10 million stars and i gave every one of those stars names and your child is more special than the stars in the universe what is the name a name is a tough kid a name is attackless a name says you have a purpose in this world you're supposed to accomplish something great you have a name hashem says not only do starving stars have names but your husky and your miriam and your barak and your rising they all have names they all are supposed to do something great so at some point we're gonna say you know what you're struggling but can i be honest with you i also struggle my struggles are not your struggles but i also have struggles but i'm gonna love you regardless i want to tell you that after those four months he was weaned off he didn't like what i did to him that's for sure but he was weaned off and now he's still not married but he has traverses in in him that we would understand kimarara he has an apartment that he does he's off of i would say most things i can't say for sure but every arab shabbos he calls to speak to tell us how he did that week every hour of shabbos he video calls can i tell you what i do as we're speaking i take my phone and i screenshot his face many times you know what a screenshot is i just take pictures i can my phone is full of screenshots of his face because i love his face and i love what's behind his face it's your dear sweet goodness what happened to him but i'm more confident than ever that all the ingredients that i put in that my wife put in that our family put in that is obeying put into tequila put in that is god there and put in all those ingredients are coming to the fore and what will emerge will be a prince of a man so our story is not over our story has just begun and all of the difficulties and all of the trials and and all of the hurdles that he had to overcome he's going to one day use to give other people hezuk and i'm telling you my friends whoever you are out there that's going to be the story with you your kindle will emerge you know how i know because you're here today a parent that didn't care wouldn't be here a parent that didn't love a parent that didn't listen to the message of kashanavshi they would think they know better or they would write off their child i don't want to know i did my best i got other kids to worry about but that's not you you understand that every child is an oil and mullet every child is the biggest acharias and every child is worth it to spend a sunday afternoon here listening perhaps maybe possibly you'll hear one word of hezek and that one word of hezek will lift you up and let you come home and love your child just a little bit more because of the end of the day and the end of the day children need the results from their parents to grow up we give them the resources we tell them i give eurasia's you're a grown-up and when a child goes off on his own they're still a child they're wandering here and there even if they're 26 years old they're a child today you'll be a child in 45. you're giving them their issues by saying i will never give up on you and i will love you i know you have fears even if you remain the way you are the rest of your life this is not an agenda driven i i i'm not telling you this because i'm hoping of course i hope i'm i have a i have a job and i have a passion you this guy is my passion but i will love you to the end of the world because you're in the shama and the every star has a name and your child is a star as much more beautiful and much more precious i thank you all so much for listening