More than a decade has passed since Jewish Observer ran their landmark “Youth on the Fringe – and Beyond” issue. With society spiraling ever-downward, educators now warn that the “at-risk” phenomenon is no longer the most difficult challenge parents and mechanchim face. Rather, a much more insidious danger lurks just beneath the surface of frum society and threatens to destroy the chain of Jewish generations.
The “kids-at-risk” phenomenon in which children rebel against their family’s mesorah in an external manner has been in the headlines and headspace of the chareidi community for more than a decade. But astute mechanchim from around the globe warn that a far greater challenge is plaguing our youth today one that hides beneath the surface: they are inundated with cases of seemingly mainstream boys and girls who exhibit no external signs of rejecting Yiddishkeit but are sorely lacking some basic elements of Emunah and Yiras Shamayim that were assumed a given not long ago.
There was once a truism that being immersed in yiddishkeit would ordinarily prevent a person from doing aveiros unless they were ensnared in the temporal glow of one of the “isms” that rocked the world. Mechanchim and mentors say that this no longer holds true. They consistently encounter boys and girls who don’t express any doubts in Hashem and His Torah or show any form of rebellion but will secretly transgress grave aveiros. Some of these teens even grow animated during a hashkafah shmuess. Yet when it gets down to actually keeping the Torah they exude a nonchalant attitude. Some of them will be medakdek with some of the mitzvos but display a stunning level of indifference when a mitzvah doesn’t suit their mind or will.
For instance mentors relate that there are bachurim who would never carry on Shabbos even when no one else would see but will carry cellphones with the inane (and blatantly wrong) excuse that it’s “less than a shiur.” Girls who would never talk on a cellphone on Shabbos write off text messaging because “it’s not a real melachah.” Some won’t wait the necessary period between meat and dairy. Others don’t keep to an acceptable standard of kashrus content that an item isn’t known to be treif. And so on.
“There have always been apikorsim and people who do aveiros or go off the derech” clarifies Reb Chaim Glancz who as co-founder of Our Place in Brooklyn has closely followed trends among troubled teens for decades. “But the vast majority of children and adults in mainstream frum environments absorbed the bedrock basics of yiddishkeit by osmosis. Today’s troubled youth generally are not apikorsim or children who want to rebel. Rather to them yiddishkeit simply means nothing.”
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