Friday, January 22, 2010

great cause - ideas are a bit off...


Eizer Bachurim - Come back home

Please follow the above link and watch the entire clip - if you can. No pressure.

The video here is a very mixed bag, IMHO. There's the idea that two types of kids frei out, or just get into trouble. One is a Yosem and the other is the one whose father doesn't understand him, and just worries about HIS Shabbos and HIS meals. As if that's the extent of the issue with kids leaving the fold. That's the way I see their portrayal of the problem. We all know that's not the case. There are no rules anymore. Any kid is vulnerable. So if a group that claims to help such kids doesn't get it - then we ersht have a problem. Then we have the problem of what they consider signs of the kid dropping out, namely the smoking. Now, I don't smoke, I never have, I mean I never smoked regularly. I may have smoked 2 packs in my entire life, including Purim. Cigarettes give me headaches, which is why I never did it, not because I'm such a tzaddik. But a kid smoking cigarettes is not what is the problem here, so why does every such video and picture include the kid smoking? And then there's the baseball cap and the peyos behind the ears; why do they need to perpetuate the silly 3rd grade stereotypes that a guy that puts his peyos behind his ears is freying out.

Then there's the idea that only through tricking this kid into believing that his parents care can we get them back home. As if he'll come home and everything will be peachy again. What about the fact that he's suffering, he misses his mother, so does his father, and none of them can continue like this. They both need to do something drastic to help them, a warm word and a smile won't cut it - as much as they're important. I can understand that the video can't show the real things that some of the kids do today, but they do stretch the limits there, they do show the music, the drinking. I also can understand that they cannot show all the trials and tribulations that an eizer leBachurim professional will have until he reches the young man. And I know that I should not be talking, since I never did anything myself other than nit-pick and criticize those that do. But please - good people there, please leave the mindset of the charedi street at the door, don't bring it along when dealing with these kids. Don't measure success by him now wearing a hat and jacket and finding a shidduch, which is often the only reason that people worry about their children...

הצלחה רבה בעבודת הקודש

13 comments:

  1. Ditto. You picked up on all the nuances. Hopefully you readership will take this the right way.

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  2. Hershel,

    This is the first time I’ve heard of this organization so i can’t comment on their philosophy or outreach approach.

    However, I could say that putting a story line in a video has nothing to do with their actual approach. They picked a story that would be good for fundraising.I don’t think it reflects on anything.

    Watch some of the videos chabad recently produced and you’ll conclude that chabad is a humanitarian relief fund for Nigerian children.

    Though, I agree with your second point, There is this misguided belief that success is measured “by him now wearing a hat and jacket and finding a shidduch” sometimes that is the very reason the child left in the first place.

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  3. every kreiz has different signs. in the hungarian etc. kreizen, yes, a bochur smoking is a major red flag. the bochur is saying "in your face" i am free, i will do as i please, and whatever it is that pleases me.

    and..

    ditto the baseball cap. and, yes again, ditto the long peios dangling from behind his ears. and (though you didn't mention it) ditto, the 3-button polo. it makes him feel "cool" and gives a sense of being mega attractive (i dont want to use the "s" word). a bochur or even a yungerman feels "the wind blowing in his face" and the world is mine - to enjoy to the fullest - and nobody telling me do this or don't do that.

    the fact that you dont recognize these as danger signals, doesnt mean that it is like taht all over.

    other than this, just keep up the good work

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  4. Which substance abuser drinks Glenfiddich?

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  5. Is this akin to Lakewood's Minyan Shelanu ?

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  6. -Tzig: Spot on that so many people latch on to the wrong things in regards to signs of 'danger.'
    In general frum people tend to be very superficial when looking for reasons why people leave the fold - the idea that people will turn their back on Yiddishkeit threatens their own beliefs and ways of life, so they look for easy and convenient answers for what happened - the family is "broken", the kid was too smart for himself, mental instability etc. etc.
    In all honest, the sooner we grow up and realize that people are complicated and so are their issues - that simple answers and easy excuses aren't the trick - the sooner we'll actually be able to make headway in helping those that are hurting.

    -Nemo: I taka wondered that as well - then again, it makes sense that without our training in finer alcoholic beverages from Lubavitch, a person looking for a cheap drink wouldn't know their single malts from their malted beverages.

    I once read a book where a good bochur turned bad . . . and the sign was that he kept playing cards. Oh the horrors of youth leaving the fold - a game of poker.

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  7. I've noticed that these types of organizations in general do more harm than good, usually by proving to the bochurim incontrovertibly that the "activists" for these organizations have no hasaga of what sechel is. Since said activists present themselves to the bochurim as the best of the frum community, a bochur who already thinks the frum community is full of it will easily be convinced further. Paradoxically the only way to "bring these people back" is to have no interest in bringing them back.

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  8. Firstly, you recognise that the video is a fundraiser for frum people so they are giving a simplistic dramatisation that people can relate to.

    Secondly, it is not a demonstration of what they do

    Thirdly, your valid point shows how little our youth can relate to the outside world which is why so many think it is so attractive. They think that all the scare tactics to stay away have the opposite effect and make the youth run to it ....Most young marrieds have trouble making a parnasa anywhere outside Boro Park, Crown Heights, Monsey, etc... My first few months at work people thought I was a immigrant from Europe....

    You must admit that not living in Boro Park for many years and mixing mainly in Chabad circles, you are no longer an expert on the inner workings of a Boro Park bocher going off...


    I know from first hand experience that many work mates tell me how much untrained teenage kids on mivtzoim have put them off yiddishkeit by not being able to relate to them and by speaking to them in a unsophisticated way or condescending manner.

    I heard a bochur who frayed out made a real movie about what many of them really get up to including all the shmitz many bochrim from all communities get up to and I don't think the frum community is really ready to face that truth, otherwise leaders would organise and monitor groups like cholent a lot more closely.

    I think this has been happening for centuries and there is no single cure. Every bochur who frays out has a unique story. Ksheim shepartzufeihem enu domos....

    They say in the times of the Chidushe Harim the men went to the Stibel to learn with their spodik and the women went to the goyish theatre...that was over two hundred years ago....

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  9. What's with yud shvat?
    Seems Lubavitch may be waking up to the craziness they have been living in.
    Lubavitch has tried to keep people in a high of ot ot,mivtzoim,rebbe etc but they seem to have lost steam, lately.Yud shvat with the rest of the Lubavitcher yomim tovim are tired and cliched.Crown Heights is a Modern Orthodox community, with very low halachik standards and the cat is out of the bag with how crazy the meshichists are,not fasting etc.
    Where is Lubavitch headed?

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  10. "Lubavitcher yomim tovim are tired and cliched."
    I have news for you that for most people all yomim tovim are tiring and they need Hischadshus

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  11. Yoni,
    "with very low halachik standards"
    did they stop saying berochos? starting touching Miktza on Shabos,
    In the meantime the Rabonas of Crown heights is by a Bies Din and the holy brothers of Willi are in court on at least 4 issues, the 3 hundred women of that go with covered heads will not be mechaper on the Haromas Yad betoras Hashem, this is not some Midrash in Shir Hashirim, its Halacha

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