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