Teaching boundaries and self-discipline with love
I t is said that in a prewar European shtetl as everyone was leaving shul one Shabbos morning they were stunned by a scandalous spectacle. A chassidish-looking man dressed in his Shabbos finery — shtreimel beketshe high leather Shabbos boots and a gartel — was driving a horse and buggy.
A shocked bystander bellowed “Yankel bist meshige gevorn? Are you off your rocker? It’s Shabbos! What are you doing?”
“I decided to quit Yiddishkeit” Yankel explained. “So I thought to myself why change my shoes one week and get condemned take off the shtreimel the next week and get condemned again the gartel the third week and get condemned the beketshe the fourth week and get condemned once again and on the fifth week drive the horse and buggy and get condemned for the fifth time when I can drive on the first Shabbos get it all over with eintz-tzvei and avoid a full month of mockery?”
Our teens who go off the derech do not let us know they have given up on Yiddishkeit by showing up one day to the Shabbos table dressed in shorts and a tank top minus the yarmulke and tzitzis sporting the latest hairstyle and maybe even a tattoo or a piercing. They did not quit Yiddishkeit all at once as the wagon driver did. And when we catch them high on pot or liquor you can be sure that this is not their first time. Their deterioration started a long time ago progressing slowly over the years and we did not see it coming. Now we ask ourselves what we can possibly do to change what has happened. We’ve tried everything and nothing has worked.
Create a free account to keep reading.
