When Your Children Are Struggling with Judaism: Amudim Panel Discussion

the yeshiva.net i am honored to be able to be here today with rabbi y yy jacobson ms allison josephs and rabbi yakov horowitz each one of them is doing incredible work uh in the area of outreach and helping especially jews who have felt disenfranchised and estranged from orthodox judaism i welcome rabbi yakov horowitz who is the founding dean of yeshiva darcy noam of munsi and also the director of bright beginnings we welcome rabbi y jacobson who's a prominent rabbi and speaker in new york and miss allison josephs the founder and director of jew and the city and of project macomb welcome it's wonderful to be able to see you all and thank you for working together and coordinating your schedules for amudine thank you we are going to be speaking a little bit about over the next few minutes we're going to be speaking about the whole phenomenon that unfortunately has not gotten better if anything perhaps covid has exacerbated this issue the issue of many of our youth leaving the fold of orthodox judaism of leaving from kite and going in different directions and uh many parents are very distraught over this communities are distraught over this and we're all seeking to be part of uh some kind of of way of addressing the issue and so i'd like to ask each and every one of you from your experience what are some of the root causes of children for a lack of a better term going off the derivative today is it even fair to bunch all those who leave our communities into one group i'd like to ask rabbi jacobson if you wouldn't mind commenting first as you uh said accurately i think it would be very unfair and difficult to put them all into one group but i think it's important to point out some at least some and i'm sure my esteemed colleagues can elaborate or point actually to other elements i think one major one major component has to do with uh sexual molestation uh even if it's not so dramatic in my eyes or in your eyes it may not be dramatic but the question is the experience of the child the boy or the girl which can create tremendous internal dysfunction and sometimes the parents don't know about it they're clueless the child himself or herself doesn't know how to process it and by the time they reach a level of maturity with their bodies change things in their brain become transformed dramatically and the way they look at themselves is changed forever as a result their relationship to their friends to their teachers to hashem to judaism to their parents to the community to the family this itself can happen from one extreme to another extreme but this is very very serious it's very very acute but there is molestation of different forms dysfunction trauma abuse internal anxiety that creates situations that don't have to do with judaism they don't have to do with yiddishkai they don't have to do with shabbos or yamtif or twillin or davening or relationship with hashem or terida mitzvas in general but because the person is broken inside they somehow cannot adjust or they cannot live up to the standards or they blame it becomes a smoke screen and many other factors so i think that is uh one one major major source thank you ms josephs yeah so i would uh totally agree um that a lot of what we see at project macaum is trauma-based a high percentage of sex abuse i won't speak for people that don't come to our organization because i can't claim to know the entirety of this phenomenon but um certainly the people that we see and people that don't come to our organization but people uh within our organization that have told me about some of their friends that have chosen to not stay within orthodoxy because our group is trying to come to terms with their judaism um in addition to the trauma i would say the box being too small i would say no room for questions being asked um i would say um the not just the learning about the fear of god but a terror of god almost to the point that i've seen a lot of our members almost like their bahira has been removed from them they are so um just completely scared out of their minds about what might happen if they were to deviate um and yet um doing mitzos is so painful to them so um really lots of different levels of trauma whether it's the um sort of most obvious of the sex abuse kind or what i've learned now over the years not making room for the child to be able to say their real thoughts to be able to have their real feelings um to not have a place to like be hugged and kissed and feel nurtured both physically and in emotional nurture so there's sort of many levels and layers of that and we see you know it's obviously not all cases in the homes there's sometimes abuse outside the homes but a lot of times the person's relationship to their parents is how they relate to god and so um if they see their parents as harsh and full of judgment um and not full of love then um they see you know hashem that way as well um and so um it's really along the same lines of uh you know the trauma idea thank you rabbi horowitz i absolutely concur um with with robert jacobson and and ms joseph um i i i like to think of it in really in two buckets into two separate categories and this is how i've been thinking about it and responding to it for for almost 25 years now um there's uh children or adults who abandon religion only and then it's that they're leaving life and i think it's important for parents and educators to to to understand the difference between them and and be able to help diagnose it a little better so means that you have you have an adolescent or a young adult who's who's in college in school they have friends they have a social life they're happy they're looking forward you know the the gears are moving forward just god's not part of that so i think of that as us i think there are many different reasons i'll share a few with you i did i did many surveys over the past 23 years with with youngsters who you know exit interviews to find out and what their opinion is and it usually was not exactly what the adults think it is but is what you know when you see kids who are not functioning they're not happy they're they're they're not um they're not moving forward they're just they really abandoning life um i felt for many years now that it's way over 90 percent uh uh close to 100 you know very very high percentage is trauma related um so and and on the other hand the people the kids who are abandoning religion the top answers that i've gotten it's been almost consistent over 20 years um some of them have questions of faith some of them actually it's not that they're leaving they were never in you know it's not that they're abandoning religion it's that that they were never sold you know we we make a mistake when we have for five-year-olds coming into our school we we assume that they're customers and all you got to do is just cover ground with them and and i i think many of them just weren't sold in the first place they're just not convinced it's it could be a faith issue it could be it could be other things um a lot of the kids it's just not yet meaning they're they they plan on settling down and and having and leading religious lives at 17 they're just not interested yet like like i have some analogies i don't want to go into all of it now but i found a significant percentage of the kids if you ask them even while they're abandoning religion and not keeping a shot of us or whatever if you ask them where would you want to send your kids to school very often it might be two clicks to the left of the parents uh but but they eventually want to settle down they're just not ready yet um and i think inflexibility on the on the part of parents meaning that you have a child that's clearly not cut out for x and you give them z or why and and um it's just being rigid with them and saying that everybody's got to be doing the same thing uh poor parenting um you know not being able to uh um effectively parent the challenging child there's nothing there's nothing in anyone's life that prepared them to deal with a teenager who's you know who's having a difficult time so i think i think um inconsistencies by the way was was a big one that they you know no society is perfect they see inconsistencies among the adults and you hear about that a lot when you when you when you talk to them so again i think there are two there are two groups and and i think it's really important that we that we really reflect on what the issues are and and how to how to remediate them how to fix them thank you thank you to each one of you i just wanted to reflect um each one of you has commented to one degree or another on root causes of why some people leave the throne community and each one of you points to some kind of either trauma or something dysfunctional going on in the upbringing of the of the young man or the young woman and i want to provoke you for just a moment and perhaps you can engage each other in this in this idea is it possible that there are certain people who are brought into this world who simply are not meant to fit into the from world in other words even if the child had an idyllic upbringing in the most loving caring uh family the best school the best education is it possible that even such a child would leave the faith simply because they are themselves a free spirit and and in particular this would lead us to if the answer is yes or no to this question it would lead us to come up with different strategies let me just give you an example how should a family deal with a family member who has left yiddish and there's always that concern that this young man or young woman is going to be a negative impact upon the other siblings that are around the shabbos table and how do we deal with that person does that person deserve to be distanced from the family or it should or should there be a space carved out for that individual around the shabbos table even if they're not charming toru mrs and to extend that even further what about an entire community does an entire community make space for someone who's not from or or to what degree should that person be distanced from the community to what extent should we be working on bringing those disaffected people back into yiddish night versus trying to find a place for the non-observant jew within a torah community and and and are there sufficient types of orthodoxy today to accommodate everyone who doesn't find themselves fitting into that i think ms joseph's talked about the box being too small so these are issues that we say are big adult so if you wouldn't mind going first please let us know your thoughts so number one um it's possible that there's someone that could be born and just wasn't meant to fit into the firmworld i haven't met that person yet but it's possible that person exists so i certainly i think it would be foolish to say that that is impossible this is my sense um even for my own children some of my kids well all my kids are questioning all my kids have you know big questions philosophical questions but i see for one of my kids right now um they're in the middle of a lot of questions right now and sometimes they don't feel like governing but the way that they talk about themselves it's like being jewish is so part of who they are because they love where they come from they love their family they love what they're part of and it's just so embedded in who they are that it's hard to imagine that there would be a break there now is it possible for someone i i can't say that it's not possible but my sense is that if you love who you are and where you come from you want to continue that um in terms of should we um distance ourselves from people who have left as a family as a community no we should not um we should love our fellow jew we should love our family members our children unconditionally um we should not try to um parent other adults um when someone is an adult god gave them bakira and it's up to them to use um and you know people write to us sometimes and tell us a project malcolm you know i have this relative or this friend you know who's otd you know can you reach out to them and we always tell them no we don't do recruitment we are here for the people that um that are looking for what we have to offer so the question is what can you do you can be a great example of a torah observant you um you can be you know put out loving kindness you can be a walking kid is hashem you can be a person that engages in complicated questions and complex answers and and makes room for different opinions and maybe that will be appealing to the person that has left and maybe it won't but ultimately it's their decision um and i think um i mean look i was very sort of with the fiddler on the roof type of idea not observant but like if we intermarry my parents would said shiva even though they fed us uh you know cheeseburgers but i don't think that that's where the world can be today i think we have to you know make the tent much bigger let people make their own decisions um and really embody what torah jews are and give people the space to come back should they want to thank you rabbi horowitz um so i i definitely think that there are there are children it's basically really small adults you know they have a certain personality package that they they're just contrarians and that they just uh they challenge whatever they're learning if you whatever it is that that they're around they're just challenging so and and you know you asked if it comes from a perfect family i i've been dealing with a a fantastic rabbi who who has a beautiful family life he has a number of children and it is one of them that's just challenging every person he calls me up every partisan that he has the kid has like complaints like social justice type complaints why is it what's with this car bonus so how could rum throw a kid out of the house you know and and and he's just tearing his hair out and i told him i said i think your kid has a hakuna sharma he has elevated the chummies i said it's not phony he really feels this way and and he's he's he's expressing himself in ways that that are challenging and sometimes you know he can't say that adults don't have these questions also so i think there's a group of people that that i wouldn't say that they're not um that they're not that not meant to belong in the firm world we have to be more tolerant and and give them space that's what i meant about being rigid i was on a panel with rabbi ozeri from the safari from the syrian community in brooklyn um ed and i go to convention friday night it was in the late 90s and we were talking about teens at risk and it was friday night we weren't being recorded so we were able to be more candid and he got up he said something so fascinating he said look he says look folks he's talking to everybody he said look folks i'm not going to tell you that we don't have problems with our children of course we do everybody does he said the one thing we don't have is this this stigma thing we don't put our children in in boxes like as miss joseph said we don't put them in boxes he said that we said we have a bad knesset they have a shoe everybody's welcome if somebody's not observant and comes in and wants to pray for 10 minutes and and walks them with you know with clearly coming in off the street he's welcome he sits next to the rabbi nobody bats on eyelash he said we don't have this we don't have these these gradations we don't have these boxes that we put people in so that they have a more difficult time if they're not conforming to exactly the way the way their family or their community is used to so you know and my response to him was that i said you didn't have the haskala you didn't have the enlightenment period and and that i think that did make us us more wary of change and more more um when a child asks a question or or refuses to do certain parts because they don't mean anything to him or her we tend to extrapolate that they're not interested in religion or they're they're going to wind up being non-religious completely when maybe it's just a phase or maybe it's something they need to talk about or maybe it's something that really are that that is questionable i mean you know how many of us read through amalek and like oh okay you know like these are these are legitimate questions and and our greatest leaders had issues of faith like you know why bad things happen to good people or vice versa so i think i think to to allow uh children especially teenagers to be able to talk candidly to be able to ask their questions like the seminaries do in israel right that the especially the girls seminaries they went to twelve years to basiaco where they were basically you know taught and taught and taught and then the teacher says you can ask anything you want and they're not we had three daughters went through the you know they're just not accustomed to that type of thinking so i think that's that's that's just an important piece of it thank you and rabbi jacobson please thank you for your fee thank you for the beautiful i think and uh extraordinary relevant and powerful insights i don't want to repeat what my esteemed colleague said because you heard it and we all should internalize their precious words i would just maybe emphasize a few points and additional points number one sometimes you have extraordinary parents and beautiful homes and beautiful families who do quote unquote everything right and yet the apple falls far from the tree and as one of the great rabbis said apples don't fall far from the tree when there's a regular weather outside outdoors but when there's a thunderstorm then apples sometimes fall far from the tree so sometimes parents right away blame themselves you know it's our fault it's my fault maybe they're right maybe they're completely wrong that doesn't help to blame yourself it's very painful you need a good support system when you have such a child or such children you need to be vulnerable you need to learn to cry you need to learn to laugh and most importantly the marriage has to be strong because it's the marriage when there's a good powerful marriage that can carry a family and it can ultimately help that child and help the father and mother and the other siblings so i would always encourage you focus on your marriage and very often problems in the marriage subconsciously affect the children very deeply sometimes it's not a child issue it's a parent issue sometimes it's not so everything could look wonderful on the outside don't blame ask yourself what does hashem want from me right now number two every neshama has its journey says in small base the shallow rights and many of the greatest kabbalists and mystics and rabbis right every neshama ultimately is a kami mao it's divine it's sacred so the question is not if they're going to come back in a way they're never separated there's nothing i can do to sever my co the cord with my child the is ben so the relationship is always there and you have to believe in it believe in those children believe in their souls even if the journey is painful and difficult and i would also emphasize something that the stipela gone they had article of rocco on the street with your bianca golinski i thought it was a very moving insight i said it not long ago at the torah missouri um uh convention one of the toronto missouri conventions the stipa said to him fascinating insight it says that yaakov rashid brings yaakov crossed the jordan river kibben makli of artia sayardin he ran away from asov and he only had a stick his father couldn't give him anything else a couple of dollars talis and villain nothing else he had a lot of things he had a lot of wealth but alif was the son of asaf alifa's the son of asaf pursued yaakov to kill him because asap wanted yaakov dead but rashid says lefisha god albert because alifa's grew up in the bosom of heze the yitzhak therefore he couldn't get himself to murder yaakov instead yakov told him take my money and a poor man is like hush of camaze is like lifeless he gave him a shirt of commerce and yakov remained alive that's why he was broke the stipa said let's think about this yitzhak knew that yeshmal was thrown out of the house because of him sorrow wanted it and hashem told avraham listen to sarah you always listen to your wife here he had an asap throw him out of the house at least his grandson alifa's deposit defines him was engaged in the most heinous immoral promiscuous acts you could learn the rashes at the end of ayesha i won't elaborate every level of incest was in eliphas's life in his biography his resume was quite rich with immorality mela asa is your child but your grandchild throw them out of the house eliphaz remained in the bosom of yitzhak said the stifler you would think it was inconsequential yitzhak was maybe a nice man he kept the ankle there cyprus says no because of that yaakov was not killed which means all of claudia israel every drew living today we can have a program today and sit and learn and grow together because yitzhak made sure to hold on tight to elifas you don't sever your cord with your child narration or two ago it really was common for families to to circle the wagon if a child be abandoned religion thinking that it's going to affect the other family members um thankfully most the vast majority families are not doing that anymore and and i have not found it to be contagious you know where where other children catch it so to speak and and become a you know leave abandoned religion because of another sibling there may be some things in the home that cause the first person the first child to go out that aren't being addressed um but but i haven't found it to be uh you know to directly correlate um i think the best thing parents can do like ravi jacobson was saying was talking about family units and marriages and to to to sit down with you know to sit down with the child and say look we love you unconditionally this is a journey we're here for you you can talk to us about anything and and we're with you and everybody says so what do you tell the other kids so my feeling is first of all if you abandon the child because they leave religion what does that say about religion and you're telling all the other children that my love for you is conditional and you are you keeping uh tara amidst us so what kind of love is that um but i think i i advise parents to tell the other children look you know rifky yes he's going through a tough phase right now and it's difficult for us but we're going to close an eye because that's what we're supposed to do because we're a family i was at a i was at a recovery retreat in boca raton run by a wonderful karachi it was a few years ago and you know you never all the people there were addicts and you never ask who you know who you're here you know of course you know it's completely confidential you don't say anything but there was an entire table of about i would say probably 20 people all hasidis but genuine real qasidam um and there were three generations they were like grandparents and and you know 30-somethings and and some grandchildren and of course i like it didn't say anything but i walked by the table and one of the young ladies a daughter a daughter-in-law there she said you're probably wondering what we're all doing here we're not all at she said she said they had a brother there um who was struggling with addiction it so happened he wasn't religious and very visibly so he's the only one in his family and this woman said it was it was remarkable i asked her if i could come join the table i sat there for an hour just talking to the people there to the family but they said we're a family this is what families do and and they sent the message to this kid that says that whatever however you understand this that hashem goes to goddess with us and it was it was i i was so i moved now a few years later it was so moving when they said his name and they just said it matter-of-factly this is what this is what families do um and i i would certainly say for so many different reasons first of all practically speaking er and the giving the right message to the rest of the family all we know we know that the best results happen when parents do this um i would just encourage if anybody wants to read this this is just a remarkable article written by the son of eloise elisha have any of you seen the piece yeah it's called just be he he writes about his about i'm going to lose it again about his rebellion and how his father dealt with it and and it was it's it should be a must read for every single parent that was in the jewish week if you just look up elisa wiesel uh you know eli rebellion it'll come right up and and he said that that he he he said specifically i rebelled against my parents and i didn't want to listen and his father just said he said just be meaning i love you i'm sorry and the amazing part of that piece is his father had died he wrote it on the first the outside of his father and he says that how it motivated him to move closer to religion and be more spiritual because of his father's love for him and he told the story of a young of a friend that has a female woman who's who was went to an ivy league school and she was a fantastic student that her parents never had enough it was always another degree and another this that they always were disappointed with what she had and how it affected her later in life about sorry i lost it thank you robianki that was beautiful um so you know but we have this whole history as you pointed out and it goes back far beyond the 19th century with the haskallah you know of sitting shiva for children who became or you know that's the old the old-fashioned way of saying that they left yiddish kind and so what each one of you has reflected upon how logical it is to only embrace the child who has left you to strike even more and yet we have this historical backdrop of distancing ourselves for self-preservation to be able to like you said rather horowitz to circle the wagons so how do we balance that and what what has changed what has changed in the 21st century uh that gives us license to be able to look back on our past and say that was then but it doesn't work anymore and this is now can you reflect on that please so as i'm hearing about these parents loving the children unconditionally which is gorgeous i'm thinking about the scene in the the netflix movie unorthodox where the main character is given a gun and basically told you know take care of yourself like we don't want you here and we have members who said they've been explicitly told by their parents like i wish you would just kill yourself so um i mean it's obviously like horrifying and um you know how how do you sort of come back when the people that were so brought you here that were supposed to um sort of hold you and um love you your whole life um don't want to because you haven't ended up the way they want you to and by the way the people coming to us are looking for religion still so they're still even trying to be observant but not in the exact mold their parents want um but i think um we've made a lot of progress in mental health mental health understanding we have more of an understanding now of sex abuse than we did you know a long time ago we have more of an understanding of suicide of all different mental health issues and i think it's actually the torah way is using the best science and medicine of the times to um you know uh reflect how we make pesky halacha so while we may have thought in previous generations at the sea if this thing was to circle the wagos and push away you know the kid that left um it's in the question that comes up during the seder it's sort of an uncomfortable question we made a mock seder for our project motto members who were in um solid you know staying alone during coronavirus um we filmed the seder ahead of time that they could um play before uh youngseth began and we were thinking like how do we deal with uh you know the uh the child that doesn't want to be a part of the the nation anymore but because we've made now a lot of progress and understanding um just the human psyche i think it is so clear that um it's the right thing to do um and it is also it happens to be an effective way because the pushing away i don't think that ever leads anyone back um and i don't think it should be sort of so go um goal oriented that oh if i do this thing and sort of act like i love them maybe i'll get what i want no you should act the right way and love unconditionally because that is the right thing to do and it additionally it may be the most helpful way for the child to return thank you um rabbi jacobson do you want to reflect on that further yeah i'll just make uh i'd make three uh three uh i think important points number one i just think uh as as my esteemed colleagues spoke about the importance of the connection and the attachment and the love but let's not confuse that you have to know who the child is sometimes a certain structure and discipline and challenging the child may be very very healthy and productive sometimes it could be a disaster if i'm demanding my child to run a marathon and god forbid both of his legs are broken it's abusive it's torture but if i'm challenging my child to be able to bring out inner potential that exists but he or she may need that healthy structure don't be afraid of that if your child needs that love does not mean there's no structure and there's no discipline depends what age depends if there's trauma there's no trauma depends what the circumstances are and it's very important to have a good and healthy support system not every therapist gets it he may be a great therapist he may not understand your child he may not understand the circumstances make sure go get help advice but make sure the advice resonates make sure it's effective if somebody's giving you advice and the relationship is deteriorating and the house is becoming even more catastrophic and there's no light at the end of the tunnel you got to change the doctor you got to change the prescription don't become subservient completely and lose your personality mama knows best daddy knows best if they're healthy people i'm not talking about if they're abusive and they themselves maybe have to be incarcerated that's number one another important point i should just say is as follows if you study and i am quite an assidious student of this literature the entire literature of uh the early hasidic movement the baal shem tov who was born in 1698 that's exactly the time that the enlightenment begin began the language of judaism in all of the literature of the balshempth and all of his students throughout the generations even though many hasidan don't know this was completely directed on the unconditional relationship that god has with every soul and that we have to have with ourselves and with our children and with every jewish soul so you're talking about 300 years ago did we always follow it i don't think we always followed it and i'm not here to judge anybody but sometimes remember people worship religion instead of god if i am a very firm person i can become intoxicated by religion instead of hashem hashem has no image so when my child is not living up to my standards i have to go deep into myself and be introspective and ask myself is my disappointment here because of the neighbors the family the reputation the shidduchim the image or my expectations of what i wanted to have in order to feel good about myself and my nakas or maybe it's time for me to transcend my ego and realize that i am a messenger of hashem to take care of this neshama to take care of this soul this is a very deep painful introspective process that we have to do when we throw people away and we negate them it looks sometimes holy but sometimes it's coming from a deep ego where i'm not in tune with what hashem really wants from me as a father or as a mother at this moment and finally the last point i would mention is and i don't mean to invoke this lightly but it has a lot i think it's important to mention the holocaust the holocaust was a unique phenomenon in history it targeted not religious jews not rabbis not sadiq not rosh yeshivas them too it targeted every jew including an atheist a left-wing socialist communist agnostic anti-religious anti-jewish you know half the jews who died in the holocaust i don't know if it's half or a little less whatever the number is many of them or a huge amount of them have not been involved in judaism quite to the contrary and yet the hatred to them was identical like the venom and the hatred to the holiest greatest most righteous religious observant mystical sadiq or rabbi or shiva and i think it taught us one of the profoundest lessons about the jewish people and that is if hitler was ready to hunt down every single drew in hate no matter right wing left-wing religious secular liberal conservative believer non-believer our duty in our generation is to hunt down every single jew in love regardless of the circumstances the background the affiliation or the way they seem today externally believing in that eternal kedusha and holiness that exists in every misham thank you each and every one of you hashem has a steady flow of traffic to your email inbox uh to your phone um and there are very very conscientious and loving parents out there who are seeking out organizations like amudine which is doing an outstanding job in what it does as well and each and every one of you is working towards those same goals what would you say to a parent or a a family member who is watching this uh and is just feeling too ashamed or too stigmatized like rabbi jacobson was referring to um they're they're worried about the shibufam they're worried about the the bad name that the family might acquire what words of advice or physic actually can you offer to a family member who sees one of their children or siblings in tremendous pain and turmoil and yet doesn't feel that they can they don't feel the strength that they need to be able to stand up and say i need help so i usually um i tell parents um you know you said it will be provocative i sometimes depending on the situation but often i'll tell parents that if they make decisions that are not in the child's best interest because they're worried about being embarrassed which is absolutely normal and and we're all humans and we live in a fish bowl and all of it but if they're making decisions because they're getting embarrassed my husband many or most times they wind up getting much more embarrassed about much bigger things later on that that the child is dressing a little a little bit inappropriately or doing some things that are you know pushing the limits and the parents clamped down and they wouldn't if they lived on a farm you know i asked parents imagine you lived on a farm by yourself would you say something about this or is it only because you're understandably embarrassed about about the others but it usually works that that they wind up never these they get more embarrassed for bigger things later on um and and the kids by the way very the kids very much respect that the parents are closing an army they get it and and it it only makes them feel more positive towards religion i i just wanted to uh say something let me tell you what a cover that is to be with with with all three of you really it's such a pleasure um on the first point you said about the changing therapists i absolutely agree 100 you said about i remember the exact words you used but you very well said you said very well that you should trust their instincts right what were the words you used something like that right i said mama knows best mama knows best right and trust your instincts but i i just wanna not always i guess not always not always but yeah there's not none none of none of what we're saying all through it has to resonate you have to feel that the advice you trust but i i just want to point a message to parents whose kids are struggling um and i'm not disagreeing with what you said reverend i'm just offering a different perspective on it um i was at a wedding of of a very contrarian kid a few number of years ago and um i've been coaching the parents literally for 10 years and they did they really were model parents they closed the night to so many things and in barcelona got married i just happened to see him um earlier this week with the childbirth i'm wheeling a carriage um so i a number of people in the audience had adolescence it was very very interesting response and they they right after the hoop i got a prophet but that they they knew from their friends that i've been coaching the parents and they came home and they said well howard what's fast what did you do what did you do how'd you do this but not me it wasn't me the parents did so i told them i said i never talk about any individual children but i just want to tell you one thing that when you get good advice to close an eye and all the things that the four of us would tell parents to do very often the first year two or three it gets it gets worse not better right away in other words the children are doing level x or whatever they're three clicks away from their family now the parents sit down with the child and they go to someone one of us the therapist or or whomever and they they find out what works and they do the hard work and they sit down and they say look sweetheart we're with you um we you have our unconditional of at that point very often the child says okay i only did three clicks because i was afraid of getting thrown out of the house now that my parents are cool with it so they go five clicks away i i've noticed this hundreds of times literally hundreds of times and the parents come back and they say rabbi haru it's a miss joseph or rabbi jacobson or ravi corruption we're doing what you said and it's so much worse than just flagrantly doing it right in front of us they were listening you know and i that's part of it so so i just wanna uh again mother knows best ravi jacobson and i agree with what he said yeah but i think parents should know that very often when they do what needs to be done and the incredibly difficult part of doing this don't expect instant results quite to the contrary usually gets worse for a little bit and then when they're ready then it starts coming back together i just want to add beautifully said rabbi yankee thank you and all the panelists i will just add i think one important point the jew told me he's a very prominent jew a very special person he told us to me today literally mama two hours ago he has eight children six of them could not go through what you would call the mainstream yeshiva system they could not they could not be successful they could not find satisfaction and they ended up leaving the system struggling with yiddushkite and he told me that he was once speaking to the masjid of lakewood hagon outside mata salomon schlitter he should be chevrolet for schlemmer crava and he told me he had matissio looked at me he was a mentor he's a mentor of his a rebbe of his and he told them these words he said if i was god mata said to this jew he said if i was god if i was the rebinance of i would send you and your wife all these types of souls i would not send you a soul that can go through the system i would never do it if i was god you know why because i know you are a trusted shleah you and your wife will fulfill the mission that i need you to fulfill for these nishamas and of course he said i was thinking thanks but no thanks but then we both had a chuckle now i don't think he was being dismissive of the pain it's very very painful my dearest friends it's very painful we have mysterious nephesh to inculcate in our children yirusha mayam avas hashem ava satyara ava's israel to be early eden it's the blessing the wish of every mother when she lights candles and sheds tears that her children should grow up to be proud jews permeated with love of god and love of humanity and love of torah and then the dream shatters it's very very painful and it's at this point i share with all of you myself and all of us we have to make a metamorphosis a spiritual metamorphosis and ask not what god can do for you but ask what you can do for god it's not any more about satisfying my community the uncles the ants the shidduchim fitting in it's much deeper than that hashem has given you these souls who are struggling he entrusted these souls with you fasten the seat belt and go on this journey with pain but with dignity with resilience with fortitude with wisdom and with a lot of compassion to yourself to the child and with a lot of love thank you that was beautiful beautiful sentiments the last question that i have for each of you and again with tremendous gratitude to amudine and to each and every one of you for giving of your time for this important discussion um ms joseph's touched on it that we are living during a pandemic which we bas rats hashem hope that will be over very soon uh with the vaccine and that god willing by this time next year it'll all be a a memory but um how has this affected i mean there are articles i've seen coming from erits israel discussing how the closure of our yeshivas and our shulls to to one degree or another has really contributed to young people leaving the fold and just going on their own way and i'm just wondering if you can reflect on that and how even amidst the pandemic we can keep our children uh loved and close to the ribonus shalom please if you could first of all i uh i completely concur with that the corona has been a big messiah and a big challenge and uh and i have to say you know as much as i am a fan all of us you know care first and foremost about pikachu which is the health the considerations of health we also have to realize the other side and that is that having the kids the boys and the girls the teenagers the best of the girls quarantined posed and poses tremendous psychological emotional social spiritual and physical challenges the biggest issue that i see is the technology everybody started to use technology a lot of schools went over to technology and even if there's filters those kids are brilliant so there's issues of addiction to pornography very very serious issue addiction to pornography just screen addiction gaming addiction just being glued to screens sometimes kids who are anyway struggling not having a social life anymore it exasperates it intensifies the pain and the brokenness so much more a kid who is completely healthy and happy he'll get through it but a kid who was anyway broken without that structure on screens for hours sometimes all night beyond what the parents know had and continues to have catastrophic catastrophic results and i would say the first thing is it's very very important when you could still prevent to know exactly what's happening in the house in terms of internet in terms of filters in terms of screens in terms of phones don't surrender to pressure that is dysfunctional and can ruin children it's very very important again every child is different they have to know who you are but don't be afraid preventive medicine to create standards that will allow them to grow and not to really socially deteriorate which according to even adults i see adults and i'm not excluded adults are addicted you can't have a conversation with them families don't sit together we're all addicted this is a serious problem you have to learn to put away the phones we have to learn to connect as people connection is the deepest thing and i would just add one more point and that is when we're quarantined the family relationship becomes more vital than ever have dinner together exercise together dance together jog together play games together daven together learn together go on walks together there's play monopoly together play football or frisbee but bond connect talk eat together barbecue together make bonf whatever you could the bonding between a husband and a wife and the children the emotional bond between tatis and kinder and mommies and kinderluch is probably the most powerful antidote and remedy to combat the adversity that we're all facing rev daniel you know i i think ultimately a lot of it has to do with self-confidence and you know we we think of the best teacher you had in school you know he or she projected a certain image that they were in control and there's nothing that you can do to rattle them and when you get rattled you lash out in ways that are that are not productive so i i know it's hard when you have a child that's struggling but i i think we do have a derivative a path um that that could could make things much better and and try to have the self-confidence in yourself that that you're you're able to get your kids through this um i said a number of years ago for the first time in public that i um i really can tell with pretty pretty good accuracy within three five ten minutes of meeting a couple if they're if their child is going to make it or not and what it usually sounds like is that the parents that come in and they say we have an issue in our family we're going to work on this together what should we do and they express that they're going to be flexible and they're going to do whatever it takes and that the love for the child and the love for the children and the family unit is going to supersede everything somehow somehow the vast overwhelming majority of those parents make it and when i hear parents coming and saying you know our first two three kids are are fantastic and everything and this one and they project everything on the child um i cringe because you know it usually doesn't end up well so i i just encourage you to be positive think of it as a family think about about doing this together and that your love for your family is going to get you through this um and and try not to blame that child even though look some children are are you know are just easy to raise and some children aren't that's just the way it is um but but do you best you know the kids the kids that are sometimes the hardest to raise um often turn out to be fantastic adults i tell parents when they say i'm i'm tearing my hair out with this kid i said be careful you're going to stay in his house or her house for long periods of time so you know just kidding i completely concur many times it is the restless spirit that has the greatest potential for accomplishing amazing things in the world right um we uh we we've been discussing the issue of how the pandemic has uh exacerbated in to many degrees the ability to maintain one's religious commitments and some some of our youth are are disaffected simply because they've been quarantined or cooped up or kept out of the schools and the schools so i know ms josephs you made reference to this because uh you said that project macomb had done a pesach seder for a number of people even amidst covid can you reflect a little bit about how this pandemic has uh perhaps changed the nature of the way that uh we should be doing business with our kids and with our youth um i mean i can speak you know the people that we're reaching are 18 and older and the people that we're reaching a lot of them do not have families to go back to so it's a little bit of a different conversation but i can just speak to a little bit about what we're seeing first of all our rate of signups have doubled since the pandemic started so um we see that sort of connection that we mentioned before that uh trauma and difficult you know sort of emotional situations um kind of maybe forces the issue on religious struggles so um you know that's not a surprise at all one of our most impactful ways to help people that were struggling was with shabbos placement finding homes um that were full of love and full of non-judgment and just places to you know welcome our members in um to um be able to just be taken care of and we can't do that for you know for the most part during the pandemic and that's really been a very difficult thing because one thing that we didn't mention before i would like to say i would say a lot of the people that we're getting also are very bright have a lot of great questions and this is a thing that came up before well what about my bright kid that has a lot of questions that didn't leave what's the distinction and i think um for the kid that has a lot of questions but has that space and love to ask them and also sometimes even live with discomfort but it's sort of in a loving accepted space they can live with the questions they can live with challenges in the torah they can live with difficulty in halacha because they just sort of have room to be when you have that child or that person that has those questions that great intellect but has no space to feel loved or to be that's when they start to i would say come out so um or fallout so um i would say you know it's sort of the parallel to the listeners if you can be that space um you know to be of love of refuge of space for the child that you may have in your home i would say that's really the biggest distinction our members are lacking that we normally find them surrogate parents and surrogate families to fill in that gap but if you are a parent that's listening that is prepared to you know really do anything for your child's health and wholeness um you know just kind of making your home space as healthy and happy and sometimes when my family sits around and we just laugh together like on a friday night meal and we're all just giggling about something i think this is this is what um i think like imprints some of the most positive memories of childhood that you know the family just sat around together laughing and enjoying each other's time and and joking together and that is the stuff like our members were reflecting about how little laughter was in their home and some of them said well at least on sukkah on sukkas in the sukkah we had had like a glimmer of hope we sang a song and then one member said even on circus even then there was never a laugh there was so laugh with your family and and try to make you know good times as much as possible and and be that space and that refuge for them to come home to and that's a beautiful way for us to to conclude our discussion for today again i want to thank each one of our panelists rabbi yaakov horowitz rabbi y jacobson ms allison josephs thank god that we have you as resources and thank god that we have a mudim to be able to assist you in all of your work and to be able to help all of those people who are looking for some spiritual connection and thank you all for 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