The Radziminer approach to dealing with "at-risk" children (received via e-mail)

הרה"ק ר' אהרן מנחם מענדל גוטערמאן מראדזימין זצ"ל

Hirshel:

The issue of OTD = Off The Derech - kids is unfortunately a common discussion in many a household around town. Go back to yesterday's blog post if you doubt what we're saying. Or to last week's screaming match in a Meah Shearim shtiebel. No neighborhood, no chassidus, no kehila, no matter how insulated or isolated, no matter how high the walls or how many internet takonos,  is pure - did you hear the cries of the Lakewood Satmar dayan? He was clueless as to how to react to chilul shabbos in Lakewood by frum kids, he was just thinking about chiyuv to be mocheh. But he's an oldtimer, what more can we expect? The Monsey Rebbe's view is "out of sight out of mind. Just forget about them. He claims His grandfather the Ahavas Yisroel and his father had to deal with their own family members, and they did it the same way, ignoring them. It's a strange way to remember a zeide who passed away when he was 15, to remember his grandfather who was famous in the whole region for the big Ohev Yisroel in such a way ; sounds like selective memory. But maybe he's right?

In this sefer,written by the Rebbe Reb Mendele Radziminer, he writes that you should never ever give up on you son, do whatever it takes to keep him close, since his neshamah will one day hear the Kol Koreh for teshuva, like the Toldois Yankev Yosef says in the name of the Besht. Moreover, in a more "Rebbishe" way, what he says is that by the father putting all of his soul and energy here in Olem Hazeh into educating his son, that will wake up the Isaruso del'yalo of his father in Heaven, the father of rachmunis , to pity his soul and give him a ruach Tahara, and he will still become a lamdan and a tzadik. And I VOUCH for the father, says Reb Aron Mendel, that it will be so. This is a view that has to be publicized...