Don’t close the door

Haredi society's harsh treatment of those who decided to leave religion drives adolescents to life on the street

Tali Farkash|Published: 06.07.07 , 16:20

One Jerusalem evening several years ago I met Racheli. You’ll excuse me if I don’t go into great detail about the circumstances of the meeting so as to save her and her family from exposure. I didn’t figure her for more than 18 years old, red hair, fragile, very thin in a tiny mini-dress, with lots of freckles, defiant. For the previous two years she had been subsisting mainly on whiskey and grass, “living” every day in a different place, with a different person.

She says that it always starts in small ways. Here a sleeve that gets shorter, there a skirt with a higher hemline, shoes with a thick heel, a pair of shiny earrings that come out of nowhere—small infractions, but consistent ones, of the school rules. The parents get angry, attempt to explain, to warn. The girls in the class keep their distance, fearful of getting a bad reputation by being friendly with “damaged goods.” Until the expected, inevitable step occurs: she is expelled in disgrace.

What does a bad girl from a good home do? A girl who rebelled just a little too much, sealed her fate, and was kicked out of an educational institution that was unable to train a wayward youth? She’s sent home, and very quickly home turns into the street.

If once upon a time we used to report anxiously, in a whisper, that “he has sinned,” today it’s become banal, he’s just one more of many. He quickly gets lost in one of the black holes into which others have been drawn. There are those who manage to survive outside, and there are those who fall between the bar stools. Like Racheli.

Many people choose to excuse this by saying it’s a fringe phenomenon: “he was hyperactive,” “she didn’t get enough love at home,” and other such explanations. It is true that there are cases in which this is the root of the problem, but I’m sorry to disappoint you: to give offhanded answers in every such case sins against truth.

No immunity

It happens in the best of families, the most supportive, the most focused on education. It does not pass over smart and clever children, and certainly not children with emotional problems. No one has received immunity from on high to ensure that this won’t happen to him. Along with parents who accept, albeit with great pain, the fact that their son has chosen to go in a different direction, and keep some sort of connection with him, openly or secretly, there are those who have a hard time allowing themselves the “luxury” of such a relationship, especially when their milieu is not supportive.

There is a lack of appropriate educational frameworks for those who have left, and it is well known that boredom in many cases leads to crime, which leads to increasing hostility from those around them.

It’s very sad when these families discover that the principals of haredi educational institutions have long since forgotten that responsibility for these children does not start and end in the yeshiva. Where are the forgiveness and the caring?

And what about us? Are we not on the side of those who banish these young people, who want to live in a sterile environment without rebellious youth, without conflicts and unpleasantness, even if it means stepping hard on these parents’ wounds? Perhaps we are among those who choose to ignore the desperate cries for help from families that live through this and find themselves fighting for their child’s future, so that even if he is no longer haredi, at least he won’t be a drug addict.

A monthly pass

We must not abandon these children to the mercies of various organizations, secular and haredi, that have a clear agenda, which doesn’t necessarily correspond with what is good for the child and what he wants. In other words, if he doesn’t feel like studying till 10 pm in the yeshiva every night, this doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of studying, and he should be studying carpentry. Or the fact that he has taken off his kippah does not necessarily mean that he has truly lost his faith.

They’re adolescents, which doesn’t mean that their decisions were well thought out. They need time to test themselves and what they want without worrying where they will sleep tonight and what they’ll eat. And most importantly, they must know that the door is always open, and that no one will kick them out.

The one-way ticket given to a youth who leaves the fold, real or fictional, is a tragedy. A person who fails to adapt himself to his milieu doesn’t need to lose his family, his home, his sister’s marriage prospects. Belive me, he is already suffering enough. I propose changing the one-way ticket to a multiple-entry ticket or a monthly pass. Perhaps then Racheli would feel comfortable enough to come to me for Shabbat.