Second Chances

My older sister taught me not to use the words “off the derech” when describing kids who aren’t Torah observant at the moment. She prefers “teens on a detour in life,” or perhaps more delicately, “teens taking the scenic route.”

When I was a teen many moons ago, it was common to go through what we called “idiot years,” normally around the years of 16 and 17. Today, I warn parents that “idiot years” can begin after bar or bas mitzvah. (But they needn’t worry. It almost always gets better somewhere in their late twenties!)

Rav Noah Weinberg ztz”l famously said, borrowing metaphorically from a pasuk describing Makkas Bechoros, “Ein bayis asher ein sham meis (Shemos 12:30), you (almost) can’t find a (Torah-observant) home without a child who is (spiritually) dead.”

They come from the best of homes. (What really makes a home the “best of homes”? They’re the ones with a healthy balance of love and boundaries, where each child feels respected, getting individual attention l’fi darkam. Homes where parents are happily married and rarely raise their voices.) In Yerushalayim, in a hangout near the Old City tragically nicknamed Crack Square, the sad quip is, “You’re a nobody here if your father isn’t a rosh yeshivah.”