Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions

Students at Risk
Substance Abuse in Yeshivot:
Jewish Education Facing the Challenge
Sunday, April 30, 2000

Session II: Clinical Views

Dr. Dodi Tobin: Good Afternoon, my name is Dr. Dodi Tobin, and I am the Director of Admissions and Recruitment at Nishmat.  I am also a psychologist and an ATID fellow.  On behalf of ATID, I would like to welcome you to this very important event. Substance abuse is nothing new; we see it portrayed in the media, we see drugs dealt on the city streets, we have heard about the problems in the public schools, perhaps we have been acquainted with someone who has had a drug problem or heard of someone’s child who has been in rehab. While we may be familiar with the damage substance abuse can do to families, to academic performance, to our bodies, for so many years we have considered substance abuse as a problem existing out there in the secular culture. Not in our Frum community. Unfortunately, we have come to a time where we can no longer ignore that the problem of substance abuse exists in our midst. Like other societal ills, substance abuse has become a reality in our yeshivot. It is up to us, administrators and educators, to understand the nature of the problem and to intervene for the sake of our students, their families, and the Jewish people. Coming as I do from both the world of psychology and Jewish education, it is clear to me that on the issue of substance abuse Jewish educators must look to mental health professionals for information, guidance and support. Today at this conference we get the opportunity do so. I would like to introduce Yonah Pollack. Yonah Pollack is a licensed addiction counselor and therapist. He has served as the Assistant Director of Nachas Ruach the Fred Stark Institute for Drug Rehabilitation and lifestyle change in Jerusalem. In his private practice he has counseled hundreds of yeshiva and seminary students, their parents, rebbeim, and teachers regarding issues of substance abuse. He has participated in numerous workshops and conferences in Israel and abroad on the topic.

Yonah Pollack: First, I would like to thank ATID and all of the people that are involved with ATID, Rabbi Brovender, and particularly Rabbi Saks who I have had a chance of getting to know and work with, for inviting me to this extremely important conference.  The issue of substance abuse, students at risk, and how it affects our yeshiva today is probably in my opinion the single most important challenge that the frum world has to deal with; to actually to have an opportunity where we can discuss this all of us together in one facility, for that to be facilitated and brought about by Rabbi Saks and ATID I am very grateful for, and I am glad to be able to participate to whatever small extent I might be able to help in this process. If I were to tell all of you that there is no speaking, all the speakers are leaving, all the presentation material we are putting away, and all we are going to be doing is eat dinner and schmooze a little bit, in my opinion, just that would make this an extremely successful event.

Aside from the talking and learning and interfacing and sharing and all the rest of that stuff, just the fact that we are all sitting here together and we are going to get to know each other a little bit and we are going to walk out of here with maybe a little bit more contact, I think is probably, the most important part of this entire Yom Iyun. 

After all, we are each others resources; we are one system. I work with many different Yeshivot, many different Rabbeim, different individuals, different programs and I don’t see it is as all different programs. I see it as one program. Like a hospital, a hospital has 10 different floors and 50 different doctors and if one doesn’t know that the others exist then the goal can’t be accomplished. And in my opinion, people that work in this field, whether it is professionally whether it is in terms of chinuch are all doing this l’shma. And therefore we need to be aware of each other and be able to work together.

Before we can talk about substance abuse in yeshivot, we need to understand a little bit about what substance abuse is. So I am going to do the impossible, but I am used to doing the impossible in the work I do anyway. You should see some of the kids that they drag into me and say "Yonah, fix them". But I will try again here and what I am going to do is try to do a quick crash course in the basics of substance abuse which believe it or not, with Rabbi Saks’ help and this wonderful material that he presented, I think we can actually do it.

First, I ask each of you to get this packet out because we are going to go through it. You eat later, you work now. First of all, substance abuse, chemical dependency, addiction, you have heard all of the terms. They are pretty much the same thing. Okay, substance abuse is basically an inability to control the use of any mind or mood altering substance. Regardless of consequences.  Addiction, there are many different definitions for addiction, but the one I like, that basically comes from the World Health Organization is that addiction is "a reoccurring, pathological relationship with a person, a thing or event with life damaging consequences.”

Now, who would like to volunteer what is the most critical word in that sentence that describes what addiction is?

Relationship. It is very important because addition is about a relationship that is established with the substance. It is not about the substance. There is alcohol, which is legal, which is used wonderfully by most of the population. There is no addiction there. So addiction is not about alcohol.  Addiction is about the use one has with alcohol and other substances. 

When we are talking about addiction, it is technically considered a disease. It is an illness. It is characterized by denial, rationalization, manipulation, and justification. All of that kind of stuff. It does respond to treatment. And there are many different forms of treatment. It is progressive, and curable and fatal. Which means that you can’t get rid of the addiction. You can allow the person to live a good life, but you can’t take someone who is an alcoholic and make them not an alcoholic.  It doesn’t happen. 

The basic different forms of treatment for it are anywhere from outpatient counseling, to residential rehab, to long term therapeutic communities. Everyone of these treatments is designed for a specific type of client and at a specific time in his process.

Basically, when you are talking about addiction, classical addiction, the only way to really successfully treat it is through complete abstinence. Complete abstinence means no taking at all of that substance, and any other mind or mood altering substances. Which means that if a person if classically has an addiction to marijuana he can’t use any drugs, including alcohol, ever, for the rest of his life. One day at a time.  That is the way it is done.

Okay, now let me give you some quick statistics just so you have some idea of what I am talking about because somebody told me that if you don’t give statistics at these kinds of things then you don’t really qualify as really having done anything. So I have to do a little bit of that. First I am going to talk basically about marijuana because that is the substance that most yeshivas that are dealing with this at least to start with. And I am not talking now in the frum world, but just generally speaking. 

50 million Americans have tried marijuana at least once. That is 20 percent of the American population. 

Marijuana today is about 10 times as strong as it was years ago. So we are talking about a much more powerful substance. 

1/3 of all the people who have used marijuana even one time, have gone on to some period of daily use in their life. 

80 percent of all college students have tried it at least once.

When we are dealing with educators and rabbeim, and I believe that most people here are involved in that area, you all are what I call on the front lines, whether it is outreach professionals or people in yeshivas. You are all on the front lines. You are the first contact that many of these kids are going to have in terms of being able to know whether or not there is a problem and how do you know if there is a problem. 

Well, we can easily say, kids smoked up one time there is a problem, addict, rehab. That is not going to work very well and if we do that our Yeshivas are not going to have any kids in them. 

Which isn’t going to work very well. So, in order to understand that a little better, that is where this material comes in handy. So, I am going to encourage everyone to go home and read this. Most of you won’t.  That is just the way we are. So therefore I am going to take you through it very quickly. Because once you have seen it once and you understand that it is what we call "user friendly" then I think you will have the time to look at it a little further.

[Here, Yonah reviewed some printed materials which were distributed]

One of the things we will want to know when working with a student is his or her history, not a formal history, in terms of the way your relationships are and my relationship is more of a formal history. So that we can understand what is going on here. Once you have gotten that and you know a little bit about the progression of the kid through the different numbers of using. Number 1 alcohol to number 6 and things of that sort.  You can sit down and do this Am I an Addict with them and ask them all of these questions and actually give them a copy if you want, or do it off the record and check the answers. Then when you have got all of them you can say to him that every no answer that you have checked that is not the right answer. And the kid will look at you and say what do you mean, did I ever do this, no I never did that. And you will play with him a little bit and say well that is not really the right answer. And you will go through the thing and now you know he knows that it is not kosher. And then you sit down and say to him, well given the choice of yes or no as the right answer, you chose no, you didn’t do it., or, yes you did it, but if there was another column, yes, no and something else then that would be a better answer for everyone of these. And he will say, Well what would that column say and you will say, that column would say Not yet. Not yet, and then you take him through the questions again. And you say well did you ever do this, no I never did this, but I am telling you the answer is not No, it is not yet, but I am never going to do that, Yonah. I will never do that, I will never do this and I will never do that. And by having his history there you can say, you know but you started smoking marijuana at age 15, at 13 would you ever think you would do it? And he will say no, and at 15 did you ever think you would get into it for a year straight? Which you did, he will say no, but you did didn’t you. And he will say yeah, and before you ever tried ecstasy did you ever think you would take ecstasy?  No, but you did, didn’t you. Did you ever think you would be talking to someone like me? No, but you are, aren’t you? And this is usually the first time, in my experience, that you are able to touch on this kids denial a little bit. Because there is no way out. In other words, you put him in a situation and he has got to look at it now. And that is a good tool to help you get kids into some kind of process. I call that idea the YET’s: Haven’t done it yet. 

Now, so, right about now you are probably going to say, so I got my crash course but what does this have to do with us, we are Jewish and frum. What are we talking about? Feed us and let us go home.  Well, we are not safe, and shiker is not a goy. We have our denial problems in the Jewish community, which the addict has in his own way as well. Unfortunately, the disease of addiction, of substance abuse, doesn’t respond the way the makos did in Mitzraim, it doesn’t respect Pesach, it doesn’t skip over Jewish homes. The makos bechoros, we were lucky enough to put on our doors today to stop this from affecting us. The closest we have is a Torah lifestyle, things of that sort but that has been and is being permeated through the times we live in. What is happening in the states, we are a by-product of the states, through the media though all these different things. So we are not isolated the way we were. 

Diseases don’t discriminate. They don’t respect race, they don’t respect religion, they don’t respect financial bracket. So, that is why we are here, because it does effect us. Now, okay, Yonah, fine, you have convinced us it does effect us, but to what extent?
So, what is the big deal, a kid here a kid there. So now we go back to statistics, we can’t get away from statistics now matter how much you try. 

First, Jewish Observer.  Most of you are familiar with this, there is a lot of material in these handouts that was printed up and copied from here. 50 thousand copies of this magazine were sold; that is unheard of! It doesn’t happen. U.S. News and World Report, March, many of you are familiar with that as well, this article here, Moshe Feiner, olav hashalom, was in Eretz Yisrael for a time. Son of a Hassid, heroin overdose. You wouldn’t have seen that years ago. I attended a conference New York a couple of months ago. Ohel Nefesh conference.  Ninety frum professionals together in one facility second annual conference of its sort, for one purpose only. To produce this. This is a manual made by Jewish frum mental health professionals for our yeshivot, our professionals, in order to deal with kids in crisis, kids off the derech and kids involved with substance abuse. The second conference that I went to was the purpose of updating this, and this document which is about 25 pages is now going to be 50. And this is really a manual on how to deal with this problem; you don’t make manuals if there is no problem.

This kind of a workshop that we are doing now, this is the third one of these in six years.  I was fortunate to have done the first two when I was involved in Nachas Ruach and both of those Dr. Twersky was available for. This is the third one. The attendance at this one is about 5 times the others. This coming May, as a matter of fact, about 10 days from now, there is going to be a conference in New York, a two day conference/work shop on adolescent substance abuse. For this specifically,  for this purpose.  Dr. Twersky, and Benzion Twersky, his son, and all of the American professionals are going to be there. JACS which is Jewish Alocholic Chemically-dependent Significant others, a non-profit support group for Jews and their families and significant others involved with addictions did research that said that 10-12 percent of the Jewish world is affected by alcohol and substance abuse. Now we are talking Jewish world not frum world. Those numbers are the same in the secular world, about.  They are about similar. The article in the US News and Report, states that about 1,500 Orthodox kids in Brooklyn are involved in substance abuse, dealing, stealing, and another 2,000 are at risk, and that is only Brooklyn. And that drug related offenses, crimes  and things like that have gone up 50 percent in areas like Brooklyn, Borough Park, etc.

And probably one for the most important signs that there is a problem and that it is a big problem is that there now is a project underway in NY to open up the first major large scale Jewish rehab for adolescents. Which is going to be somewhere around a 12 million dollar facility. Most of it is going to be raised through private donations through the Jewish community. You don’t put out 12 million dollars on a rehab if there is not a problem. 

Now we now what substance abuse is, now we know that it effects us and now we know that there is a problem. What does it have to do with our Yeshivot? Okay, our Yeshivas are basically by-products of the States. We get what comes off of their production lines. And the products they are producing today are not as kodesh as they were years ago. Things like assimilation, opulence, media involvement, internet, moral decay, all of these things have resulted in many kids that come over here and go to our Yeshivot have been exposed to some degree. Now we combine with that the fertilization ground of Eretz Yisrael. Freedom for the first time, extended time, not one week away, but months at a time. The kid doesn’t go home throughout the year, almost 9 months. No real responsibility in terms of job, or performance even in the tighter misgerot there is still freedom and Ben Yehuda where alcohol is easily available, no real restriction on it. Access to the opposite sex, in a different way than what was available at home. Shabbos drinking, Purim, Simchas Torah, acceptable. L’chaim, the Rebbes Tisch. We are dealing with a difficult population. Our Yeshiva’s are dealing with a very difficult population and this presents a real challenge, and in order to meet that challenge I hold that we as a community have to be more creative. We can’t just sentence a kid to rehab, we have to be able to deal with them in different ways and different forms. Not much full blown addiction, in terms of what we see here with the kids that are coming. We are not talking usually about addicts. Some of the kids turn out, over time, to really go that route. The thing is that we don’t know who is going to go where. Most of the time they are coming not with level 4,5 and 6 usage.  It is usually more alcohol, marijuana, some ecstasy or LSD.  But that is where they come and now they get their fertilization of Eretz Yisrael. When we talk about applying these kids to the 12 step model it is too strong for them. It is a very effective model but it is based upon a person realizing that they have hit bottom. That his life is unmanageable. You try to take a 17 year old kid and tell him that his life is unmanageable and he is going to laugh at you, what do you mean, I have no responsibility. I am showing up, what is the problem. That makes it difficult. You say addict to these kids and they run out the door. So we have to be careful about how we talk to them and what we do with them. It doesn’t mean anything.. It means we have to be more creative but we have to be involved with them. The thing is how to do that in a way that is going to work.  

Next, we have the problem of the population we are dealing with. These years are very volatile years, they are not emotionally developed to the degree that they will be, they are subject to very quick moves in both directions, down and up. You can have a very quick up move, think everything is fine and three months later, down again. So, we have to understand that. They don’t have the obligations and responsibilities holding them in that grown-ups would have. A grownup that would go in a downward spiral might take 10 years to go down to what a kid can do in a year and half or two. 

Next we have contributing factors. This is why we really need to involve professional evaluation. We are dealing with things like ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder, learning disabilities, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and oppositional-defiant disorder which are common things which many of these kids have. Sometimes they are self –medicating, there is a lot of low self-esteem; sometimes there are abusive homes. To the degree that this is present it has to be picked up. Even if we are not talking about an addiction problem, or a serious substance abuse problem, it might manifest itself out in first stages. But we have to deal with the depression or the OCD. By getting a kid into a professional that is capable of spotting this stuff, then we can put him on the right track.

I want to say something that many people may have a difficult time with but I believe it. I hear a lot of our Yeshivas and what goes on in Eretz Yisrael very much criticized. We give the kids too much freedom, we let them use, we enable. I think we are doing a very good job, a much better job than we were doing years ago. I think the fact that we are here is an indication of it. It is not an easy problem. Many of these kids are moving through our Yeshivas that have some degree of substance abuse.  In coming out in considerably better shape than when they came in. And it is happening because of this awareness and because there is the involvement that you all understand needs to be done. It is not happening because we are throwing them out and putting them into rehabs. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of rehabs, I worked in rehabs but rehabs are for particular kids at a particular place in time. And if you take a kid that doesn’t need rehab and throw him in rehab you are showing him that you don’t understand him and he is basically done with you. Because it is crazy. It doesn’t work. So we have to deal with them in a way that is going to work.

Now, one of the benefits of Yeshiva’s is that they deal with the spiritual void. And there is a big spiritual void and there is a big spiritual void in this problem. Because this problem needs a spiritual solution. And the spiritual solution can be effected very, very well when we have got Torah, Judaism, Eretz Yisrael and these kinds of people involved in our lives. So, what we need to do is stay with these kids and support them in what they are going through. The professionals are going to be able to determine the extent of the problem, how to respond, which approach. He is going to be able to guide the rabbeim the way they need to be guided and help them work with these kids. The professional is going to be able to pick out who has the clinical disorders and who doesn’t. 

How can we help you deal with parents, low self-esteem, big issue. Judaism is restrictive. I can’t. Full of all I can’ts. I can’t do this, I can’t do this. Tight parameters. It’s a sense of right or wrong very clear in Judaism. In Orthodox Jewry, you are either right or you're wrong. You did this or you didn’t do this. And then kids get “I’m bad, I didn’t do it, I don’t fit in.” What I like to deal with this, and this is the second tool I am going to give you, besides the YET’s tool, which I think is very effective in dealing with parents.

This is used for dealing with parents that are really very, very rough on their kids and I give it to kids as well because it helps them to understand a little bit about how they ended up in this situation. Now I am not saying substance abuse is a parent’s fault but you know certain dysfunctional relationships and the way that things happen in Orthodox homes sometimes creates problems. So I call this idea "the names idea". Everybody has two names, I am not talking about Hebrew/English. I am  talking about first name/last name. We have it in secular, we have it in frum. Let’s take a case, theoretical case, Goldberg family, lives in Monsey, father is a doctor, rabbi, mother is on all the chesed organizations. Well known family, 5 kids, little Moshe 18.
What usually happens a lot is that Moshe Goldberg’s parents are doing what I call, last name work, Goldberg work. Goldberg…. This is the way Goldbergs dress, this is the yarmulke Goldbergs wear. Is that bad? Now, I don’t think that it is bad, as long as it is coupled with first name work. Moshe work. We have to give kids guidance, chinuch, mesoret, structure, without that we haven’t done what we are supposed to do. Parents a lot of times say that I don’t care about Moshe, he has all his life to be Moshe, I have to give him all the Goldberg stuff right now or he is going to be unconnected to his heritage. But if you give him too much Goldberg stuff right now then he is also going to disconnect. That is the problem, and to the degree that we don’t make room for Moshe at home, then that is the degree that he is not going to make room for Goldberg outside of the home. And then we get what I call the Superman act. Where the kid leaves the house and Clark Kent and rips off his things and becomes Superman. And these kids have taken clothes and t-shirts and shorts and put them in plastic bags and bury them outside by trees. Outside of their house under trees and go and change into their Moshe identity. We have to give this kid room to do Goldberg Moshe style. Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave us the need of identity and we can’t ignore that and if we don’t institute it we are going to have a problem. Now it is a good idea, everybody buys it. It sounds great. But if you don’t support it in Torah then you haven’t really done your job, so we got to support it in Torah. We have to support it somewhere, Jewish source, where do we find the support for this? We don’t find it hidden in a pasuk in Dvarim with a Rashi on it. 

No, we find it in Tfillah, it is so important that we find it in Shemona Esrei. We say it 3 times a day. Where in Shemona Esrei, first pasuk. 

What is the first pasuk of Shemona Esrei? Baruch ata Hashem, Elokeinu velokei avotainu , Blessed are you G-d, our G-d, G-d of our fathers, G-d of Avraham, Yizhack and Yaakov. We asked the question why do we need to say G-d of our fathers, Avraham, Yizhack and Yaakov of our fathers, and our G-d, why not just say blessed are you G-d, our G-d, G-d of Avraham, G-d of Yizhack and G-d of Yaakov or say blessed are you G-d of our fathers, G-d of Avraham, G-d of Yizhack and G-d of Yaakov.  Why do we need to say both? 

Because the Shemona Esrei realizes that we have two different relationships with the Kadosh Baruch Hu. We have a first name relationship, our G-d relationship, elokeinu relationship, a Moshe relationship, a yarmulke over here relationship and we have a last name relationship the G-d of our fathers, elokay avoteinu relationship, a Goldberg relationship. We need both.

If it is only our G-d and when it stops becoming our G-d, and for whatever reason when the shikse looks good, and the traif food looks good, then we are out because we have nothing holding us in. And if it is G-d of our fathers and not our G-d, then when we leave our fathers’ home then we don’t have any G-d. And that is the problem and that is one of the major things that we do in our yeshivot over here, in my opinion, very well, is we give these kids a place to do our G-d - Moshe relationships. And I think that is an important concept we can use and an important concept that we do over here without realizing it.  Of course we have the Jewish sources that are in your material that I want you all to understand because as Rabbi Shaya Cohen, says in his article on the Jewish Observer and in the US News and World Report, nobody ever told these kids drugs isn’t kosher. Nobody ever told them. And Rav Moshe, zichrono livracha, clearly says, it is completely prohibited, finished, end of story, nothing to talk about. So, I encourage you all to look at that and understand that and the last point I am going to make is that it is important to stay with these kids even if we move them out of yeshivot.  There was a whole discussion at these Ohel conferences that said instead of kicking the kid out, we transfer kids. Find him another place because when the kid ends up on the street that is when trouble comes. And we have the obligation to try and do that. 

Dr. Tobin:	Now I'd like to introduce Dr. Edwin Goldstein, the respondent. Dr. Edwin Goldstein is an adolescent psychiatrist in private practice in for over 30 years in Englewood, New Jersey. He is an assistant clinical professor at Mount Sinai Medical School. Formerly he has been a psychologist with the clinical genetics program at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital as well as the director of the Hawthorne Cedars Knoll School, a residential program for emotionally disturbed and delinquent adolescents. In his private practice he treats many adolescents from the broad Orthodox community in the New York- New Jersey area. Dr. Goldstein:

Dr. Edwin Goldstein:	I feel like I should start with the anecdote of the blind man and the elephant. It isn’t so much that Yonah and I are going to disagree, I think we are going to be describing different aspects of the problem and perhaps reaching somewhat different conclusions but that is because we are talking about different parts of the problem. It is a very wide problem. I also feel a little bit like when Hillel got up to speak after Shammai and was about to say "and now I am going to tell you like it really is.” And there is a lot of stuff that is going to overlap and there is a lot of stuff that is perhaps from a slightly different point of view. I think Yonah described very well the 12-step AA program which is only one part of the action. I think that the statistics in the studies have shown that the AA program is very appropriate for about 30 percent of people and it has to do with their diagnosis with the issues that they bring with them to the treatment situation.  For the other people it doesn’t work, it works very well, it is a superb program for those that are able to use it for others it simply doesn’t work. The same thing can be said, maybe said for rehab. Rehab the percent of recidivism; the number of people who get back on drugs after a rehab program is enormous. The number of kids who go into rehab program and who learn more from the experience, you know they come out more experienced. I have talked to kids on some occasion who feel just terrible I have to go into that rehab group meeting and I haven’t done anything terrible this week. How can I show up to the meeting without saying all the awful stuff I have done, all the stuff I have stolen, all the sexual activity what have you. Which is that which is going to gain them the respect and admiration of the individuals in the peer group.

Similarly up and down the line, I think that one needs to understand and I think that Yonah touched on it, the precursors. The precursors of drug involvement, and we have talked about all different kinds of drug involvement. There is experimentation, there are people that are more heavily involved and there are people who are physically addicted. The precursors of it I think are the essence for the kind of a program we are talking about. I don’t think the purpose of this conference would be to turn all of our expert and committed teachers into drug counselors but it is to increase their sensitivity and awareness to those issues which go into a kid becoming involved with drugs in any degree whatsoever. Worse yet, whereas in the world at large, when a kid gets involved with drugs, there is easy access to go back home. When you are expelled from the Orthodox community the rope, unless we are careful, the cords are cut and the relationships are destroyed and that is exactly what I think the principals, the teachers and the educators need to be aware of. There are all kinds of statistics that are involved in this. Take heroin for example, most people who get involved with heroin to any extent, including addiction, are off the drug spontaneously without help within two years. That figure is close to 80 percent depending which statistics you read. The problem arises with the accumulative 20 percent that continues to grow and grow and grow but the basic issue is that we have to be able to keep the doors open to maintain the Jewish connection, the Orthodox Jewish connection throughout the time that the individual is troubled and to be there and to be there for them to get them back into the community. I am sure all of us are aware of solid citizens, terrific parents, or rabbanim, all kinds of families whose kids have gone off in some direction which often, more often then I think we’ve been aware of, includes drug usage of all sorts and then if their patient and if the family deals with it and is willing to work on the issues then the youngster comes back. And it is almost miraculous. What you do with the 20 percent that remain is a different issue then what we have to do to be available for those kids who need our help. The basic issue if we follow the non-Orthodox model, and we have to talk about the Orthodox model as a separate issue, if we follow the non-Orthodox model, the single largest number of drug-involved kids come from families where there is alcohol involvement. Alcohol involvement, where one or both of the parents have been alcohol involved and the same is true about drug usage involved. When there is drug usage, when the parents have used drugs openly the likelihood of the kids becoming drug involved is far higher than under other circumstances. Now, somebody is going to say that that’s not the Orthodox Jewish program, but I am afraid that it is. To a greater extent than we like to believe these problems have been around for a long time. Including closet alcoholism in Jewish families people who drink too much, people who have their first schnapps each and every morning, a couple of times with a Kiddush each morning, something like that. 

The problem is also not new.  We just need to quote one of the sedras’ recently to indicate that the problem has been in the Jewish world for a long time. “And the Lord spoke to Aharon, saying: Do not drink wine or strong drink, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, lest you die—it shall be a law for ever, throughout the generations” [Lev. 10:8-9]. That goes back a long way and is clearly reflective of something—no matter how you explain that pasuk, or what is going on with Nadav and Avihu. This is clearly reflective of some drinking issue, and there are other issues, midrashim, of all sorts which when you look at them in any detail, there have been more or less a degree of alcohol problem. One of the earliest cases I remember, 25 years ago, a call in the middle of the night from a Hasidic family in one of the frum neighborhoods in the Greater New York area where it turns out they had their 20 year old son chained to the bed while they were feeding his heroin addiction because they didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do with it. The notion that we are talking only about marijuana is not correct. We are talking about all kinds of drugs.  We are talking about heroin, hallucinogens, mescaline, LSD and we are talking about ecstasy and cocaine. It is a major problem one of the frustrating parts of being a psychiatrist in private practice is that the roles get reversed. You get a call from a Yeshiva, and I don’t mean a day school, I mean a Yeshiva, Yeshiva the whole spectrum of Yeshivot and they have a kid whom they suspect is on drugs. We evaluate and true enough the kid is on drugs. The first thing that they do is throw the kid out. And suddenly the roles are reversed. I am negotiating with them arguing with them, pleading with them how can we afford to throw away Jewish kids. These kids tend to be from terrific Jewish families; the Hasidic kid chained to the bed was a very caring warm family who just didn’t have the foggiest idea about how to deal with this particular problem. The result in that instance was terrific. I am not saying that it is always going to be terrific, but part of the problem within the Jewish community is secrecy. You don’t talk about it. If you have a problem and you don’t talk about it. It is going to effect your child’s shiduch. You know you won’t be able to, if there is someone in the family with a problem, and you see all kinds of things out there. I have seen families where there is somebody locked in the attic whenever they have a particular episode. A particular related kind of episode that nobody even knew that there was anybody up in the attic and it sounds funny but it is a reflection of how the community deals with secrecy and deals with the problem of opening up to people on the outside and that is where I think you people, the educators, are the first line of defense. Again, not as drug counselors, but as teachers and rabbeim. And again to look at the non-Orthodox model, what are the issues. The issues are the issues that we have, you have always been hearing all along. Okay, let’s start from the top. 

Kids who have experienced physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, those are the kids when you study the drug populations, those factors appear far more often than in the general population. You talk to kids who have, go down the whole list, kids who have economic deprivation, kids who have broken homes. And these are among us, these are not out of the Orthodox world, the people we are talking about. Once upon a time I think the Orthodox world had the luxury of thinking these are a few deviant individuals. We will throw them out of the community, send them michutz l'machane, and then the rest of us will be safe. That is simply not the case. The individuals who are in involved in this epidemic are people just like everybody else in this room. They are good people, well meaning people, they are people under stress, they are people who have all kinds of problems and they don’t know how to deal with them and as a result the kid suffers. Worse yet, we have kids, as Yonah mentioned, kids with learning disabilities, kids with Attention Deficit Disorders, but these are kids who feel themselves to be non-achievers. Kids who believe themselves, can’t make it in the community. Particularly in some of the more frummy yeshivot where they are expected to learn all day long and you run into kids who can’t read. What is a kid do, when everybody else in their circle is doing well and is achieving and they just can’t make it and nobody is even tuned into their particular problem and they don’t do anything. They find some way of achieving notoriety of achieving the respect of their peer group. It is the same in the public school education. If a kid is flunking out of school those are the kids who start dating earlier who get more involved with drugs earlier, who drop out of school. If there is nobody tuned into their agony then they have to find someway to make themselves special and different.
There is another level here, and Yonah mentioned that frequently the adolescents that are drug involved have ups and downs all over the place. The jargon word is co-morbidity. 

Worse yet, you know G-d has blessed the Ashkenazi Jewish population with certain genetic disorders that they have more genetic disorders of those varieties than other groups do. One of them is familial depressions, is bi-polar reactions, all of these are turning out to be additional Jewish genetic disorders. A factor that we need to be aware of, tucked into the back of your head and these kids the numbers of individuals with these diagnosis’ and they are all over our yeshivot and all over our frum communities; I know because I see them in the office. They are all over the place. They are more susceptible to self-medication to using drugs that when they are depressed they want the uppers to get out of the depression. Up until this point, the Jewish community has been very reluctant to come out and deal with these problems. I think that that is getting better, maybe I am deluding myself. I think it is becoming easier. The frum community has to understand that good treatment, good mental health treatment does not involved ripping the kid away from their frum backgrounds or frum roots. It doesn’t do anything of that sort and it doesn’t mean that if somebody is from this segment of the Orthodox community that you are going to convert the patient to that segment. It doesn’t work that way. That would be terrible psychiatric care. You need to be able to deal with the individual in terms of their own alienation from their own community. Alienation is what drives these kids away. They are fine in terms of where the religious practice is concerned, usually, but suddenly when they run into a brick wall and feel rejected in the absence of friends, in the absence of an appropriate peer group that is when they find all these other ways. This isn’t for me. Suddenly they find the irrationalities or this doesn’t make any sense or the inconsistencies. One has to deal with them within the community, within whatever their shitah is. In terms of why are you feeling this alienation. What is this alienation all about. An enormous number of times, the blind man and the elephant, the drug problems that might come into my office, enormous family histories. And if you deal with the family history you will ultimately impact on what is going on for the kid. But it is not easy and it is certainly not easy . There are many, many factors that go into this, I think that the final word I would like to mention is the extremely frustrating part that comes when the principal or the rebbe, for whatever the reasons are, says, "get this kid out of here. This kid is going to contaminate my otherwise, beautiful program". I think that the key issue that ought to come out of this sort of meeting is the heightening sensitivity of educations and those involved with children as to the early symptoms, let’s not wait until we are talking about heroin addiction or marijuana habituation; marijuana is habituating not addicting. Earlier on to be able to recognize and to be able to provide the special rebbe, the special teacher, the special caring to recognize that this is a child at risk. We can’t afford to continue to lose Jewish children. That is what the programs up until now have been doing is throwing out Jewish children and then you see them on the street. 

The “Avenue J Boys” is a major institution in Brooklyn. Yeshiva boys dressed as yeshiva boys who sell drugs on Avenue J and everybody knows where they exist and that they exist but everybody sort of ignores their existence. I once had a "Sheilah" as to whether a girl could go out on a shidduch date with a boy who was a member of the Avenue J boys. So these problems are not new and they need to be explored and you guys are on the front line. The mental health people are not on the front line. There needs to be a lot of back and forth consultation about those issues.

Questions:

Avi Feldman: Without short of being a policeman, I am not quite sure of what you really expect us to do, we are not trained psychologists and even if we were, trained psychologists cannot stand on someone’s head, deal with problems and deal with families that are anywhere from 200 miles to 8000 miles or where they are away. And there is a real serious problem here somebody telling us don’t throw the child away. There is no real school setup, certainly not on the girls side, I am not so sure on the boys side, which can handle kids of this nature in such a way that we don’t throw them out.

Dr. Goldstein: The issue is by the time you are faced by that dilemma it is far along in the game. I think that there needs to be a lot of sensitivity training before you get to that point. I am talking about simpler cases. Twenty years ago, I was called to see a kid and instantly they heard the word marijuana and the kid was thrown out of his school, a very reputable yeshiva. In order to provide material for today, just before I left for Israel, for Pesach, a kid from a very frum girls school, enormously troubled family, delightful young girl was found to have a marijuana cigarette, her principal greeted her with if we get any real evidence that you are involved with marijuana we are going to throw you out immediately. Now that is inappropriate. They need to have somebody who puts an arm around the girl’s shoulder, who talks to her, and who recognizes her agony and says we are going to help you through this. This is a kid in enormous turmoil and we are throwing her away. We are going to throw her away. I recognize the administrative need. I recognize that the principal needs to know exactly where his peer culture is and what the make up of the group is and you can’t have a group which is 100 percent drug involved. There needs to be somebody to see what you can do to form a relationship with this kid, with these adolescents so that it is possible to keep them. They are not so different from the rest of us, from our children, from our relatives. A bit of bad luck, a bit of bad genetics, a bit of who knows what, and that goes into their predicament and we’re losing numbers and we are no longer talking small numbers. There are no good statistics of the level of the problem in the Orthodox community. The best, ridiculous guess is about 12-15 percent of the schools are drug involved, whatever that means. There are no good statistics because everybody lies about it. Nobody is open enough to tell you that this is the problem and lets deal with it as a group. Nobody is willing to do that. I agree with you that it is hard to do that; it is difficult to deal with the parents. But this is something that very strangely, usually it is the other way, the principal that wants to keep the kid, the psychiatrist says the kid is too who knows what, literally with so many principals I have to find the reason to keep the kid. I am not talking about murder incorporated or someone who is really going to contaminate. I am talking about rachmonis kids, kids who need our help.

Question:  We are not talking about the one-time users, but how do we deal withy the more major cases?

Dr. Goldstein: I think you are describing the issue. There needs to be on ground a new sensitivity, and I think it works. I think it is doable. It isn’t like in the office I am doing some fantastic thing, we are relating to the kids. I think part of the issue in the psychiatric is you have to get the confidence of the principal and the rabbis that you are on the same team. It is not always easy in a psychiatric office. You have to work hard to get the hechsher of some central rabbi or some central group so that the rabbi knows that you are okay and you are not going to be doing anything damaging to his program. Over the years one is able to do that. You’re stating an excellent problem. I don’t pretend there is an easy answer that’s worth a lengthy discussion as to how to proceed to deal with it but it is deal able. With many, many instances it is deal able. We are still dealing with the middle group. We are not dealing with the physically, chemically addicted part. Although in the public school studies, the non-Orthodox group studies, the kids who sell drugs are in a different category, it is a far more advanced involvement in drugs and much more difficult to deal with. These are just coincidences. Things that work together. There are so many different components to this. One needs to develop different strategies for different subgroups just like Yonah has the AA component. The 12 step component is for a certain type of kid. We need strategies for all of these kids and we also need to have a lot of family involvement. 

Yonah Pollack: First of all, as I said earlier, we are one system and there are specialty programs that exist in Israel, men and women, that do deal with different elements of this population. We don’t have programs that deal with kids that are full blown addicts and that just lets kids use all day long but we have programs that are a little more tolerant and that have more professional involvement that have more rabbeim that have a higher staff ratio to its students. And that work more closely with professionals that even use a combination of drug testing and things of that sort, when necessary, in order to deal with this population. So I don’t think the answer is to ignore it and leave them in the system so that the one bad kid ruins 70 good kids. I don’t think it is throw them out. I think it is put him into rehab. I think that there are fine places in the system that work. That is why we need to encourage programs that are dealing with different elements, not just mainstream, and there has been a lot of that happening lately. There have been more development of specific programs to deal with marginal kids, or kids that are more on the edge or things of that sort.

Another point I want to make is it was pointed out in the conference I attended in the States that removing a kid from a yeshiva, even if it is substance abuse, whatever it is, doesn’t necessarily eliminate the risk to that yeshiva or to those other kids. That kid is still there. He is still in the community and he still has access. So we just have to understand that.

Benjamin Phillip (Hineini youth drop in center):  I just want to confirm what you just said. Two things I really want to point out here. We deal with mostly homeless youth, youth who actually don’t have a home, have nowhere to go, sleep in the streets, or have drug problems. I was very much amazed when interacting with the youth, how many of these youth actually came on the one year program or came to study in the yeshiva and by the time they had a drug problem they were afraid to talk to their educators about it. They kept it quiet. And unfortunately, since they were unable to come out with the problem, no help was available and by the time a problem came to the surface it was so bad, they were thrown out of the yeshiva, and instead of going back to the States they first stay with a friend and go so on so on…. And end up homeless, floating along the streets of Jerusalem. We, daily, have people coming to our center for a free meal, counseling and other therapies, who started off in Israel as yeshiva people and wind up homeless because they were thrown out. I hope the educators in the near future will consider twice about throwing out someone because you not only throw them out of the yeshiva but you actually throw them into a life even worse and next to that as you mentioned before, they still go out with their friends from the yeshiva. And they get the kids into trouble because they have something against the yeshiva since they have been throw out. And they go like, I have a better place to be, and you can be cooler. To all of the educators here, be careful because once you throw them out you throw them into something else and which can cause problems for the kids and for the people they used to study with.

Miriam Reisler:  I taught in a high school in the US before I made aliyah this year. One of the problems that is prevalent in girls high schools is eating disorders and an eating disorder is an addiction of a sort. It is a very seductive addiction to young women who are trying very, very hard to be perfect and other girls who see a girl with an eating disorder recognize that she is hurting herself but at the same time, they wish that they had the will power to pull off that kind of dieting so that they could have that flat stomach, that thin figure, that supermodel look. So it is a very destructive thing and yet when a girl is identified with an eating disorder in a school she is not thrown out. The approach is definitely the one of putting an arm around that student and trying to find a way to help her cope, within the context of the school and trying to help find a way to help the other students cope with her eating disorder. I think, though that one of the differences is, that an eating disorder, even as seductive as it is to the other people in the school, it is recognized as something that is destructive and the kids understand that it is a real problem. One of the problems that I have heard when it comes to drug use and alcohol is that the dangers are not clearly demarcated in the minds of the kids who getting started with them. If I use marijuana seven times in the course of my high school experience at a couple of parties I go to, so? And so I think that what was termed experimental use, the kids sometimes, I think, call it recreational, but let’s say it is experimental use, which maybe for us we should be picking up that this is the first sign of a problem. A) it is very hard to pick it up and B) I don’t think the kids recognize it is a problem the way that they recognize eating disorders as a problem. What can we do to articulate the dangers more clearly so that kids won’t have the problem of starting because "it is really no problem at all"?

Yonah Pollack: It sounds like what you are talking about is called prevention. And when we did this first workshop in this field six years ago with Dr. Twersky, he said that prevention is usually not that effective. Particularly because you will say to kids don’t use drugs and they will say why not, what else is there. And if you try to point out the dangers, look at cigarettes. We can’t clearly more point out dangers there than anything else there is. And look. So the whole way the mind works and rationalization and it won’t be me. It is hard. The way we can do it is through maybe making, the only product we do have to offer, a Torah life style, our family environments, our schools, and our relationships in those regards as fulfilling and as healthy as we can make them. Other than sitting down and enumerating the dangers of substances and things like that sort. Eating disorders, I agree with you is a serious problem, unfortunately though, it is not looked at, people pay more attention to what will hurt other people than what hurts the suffering person. Someone with an eating disorder might suffer more than someone at a certain stage of substance abuse but because it is not a threat to other people.  It is hard to sit down and convince another girl to drink twenty milkshakes and then throw up, put her finger down her throat. Unfortunately, that is the way we tend to look at things.

Dr. Goldstein: I think one of the things you mentioned is that the staff might not feel that selling marijuana cigarettes was a lot, so what. There needs to be the staff education. I don’t think we can stress that enough. I think it is extremely important that nobody should be permissive. Not being permissive doesn’t’ mean you go around hollering all day. It means that you are aware of the fact of where the kids are and you need to be able to talk to them and relate to them and help them see what the realities are. Prevention is a double- edged sword. By bringing up the subject you bring it to some peoples attention and groups have tried it both ways. They have tried to ignore the problem that doesn’t work. There has got to be a committed staff that is committed to prevention, that is committed to talking to the kids, alerting them to the facts. Sure you are going to open up problems, sure you are going to have the little kid in the back row who feels that he has no status at all. Hey I might get some status if I take on marijuana cigarettes. There might be some rabbi or faculty members that believe that occasional pot is not so terrible, the kid is still doing well but in the scheme of things you need to alert people to the problems and the problems are multiple depending on where the kid is coming from and what segment of the population he is in but if you can’t trust your teacher and your rebbe then where are you going to get it from. You are going to get all of your facts from Ben Yehuda street and from other parts of town rather than getting it from a committed source. Telling somebody just offering them a Torah way, that is terrific, but these kids feel rejected by the Torah way, which is the problem that they feel that the Torah way is not open to them, has not accepted them as they are. That is part of this enormous alienation that they feel. I think we need to be aware of the kids. The fact that we are talking about them and developing sensitivities to their needs is a step in that direction and it is extremely important that the staff relate to kids and that the immediate response not be throw the kid out, it is not the solution.

Heshey Grossman (Yeshivat Ner Yaakov):  I teach in a yeshiva where none of these anecdotal horror stories apply. We have patience, we don’t throw out the kids, we deal with them. They relate to the rebbes and still I think you are doing something unfair. You are putting all of the burden on the educational institutions and I think there is one point where we are really not capable of dealing with this problem which means basically take it for what it is. A yeshiva is a yeshiva and despite the fact that we try to deal with the whole individual and we try to solve his problems, the bottom line is we are an educational institution and I am trying to teach them Torah. Now, we are simply over our heads. It is impossible for the school to do everything you are demanding that the school handle. 

Dr. Goldstein: I think there needs to be input from mental health professionals, I am sorry to talk about the States again, but that is where my experience is, there are more and more yeshivot where the faculty, where the rebbe will call me and ask what should we do or send in patients for consultation, not for me to treat but for them to relate to. Yes, I completely agree with you that you may be in over your head and I said initially, I think, that the idea is not to train you to be a drug counselor or a mental health person but to how do we approach this kid. What are the strengths, what are the weaknesses? Is this salvageable, is this kid salvageable? I will say it again because some people think I am suggesting being permissive. I don’t believe in being permissive. I think kids need to know where the rules are but that has to be administered with a velvet glove, with a lot of warmth, with a lot of ahavah, and a lot of good things. Then it works and you have to know what the context is for that kid how does it work for that kid. You are raising a superb question that can’t be dealt with in a minute.

Yonah Pollack: The only comment I want to add on that is just that we have got to change, the yeshivot have to adjust themselves, staff wise, to the type of kids they are getting. And more kids are coming in with different kinds of problems. We have to adjust either the staff, the kinds of people we involve in our staff, we have to open up relationships with other people, professionals, mentors, people of this sort that are knowledgeable in these areas that can help the yeshivas deal with these problems. If that means that we have to increase funding, if that means we have to have a bigger budget, if it means that we have to let parents know before they send their kid to Israel that they might be putting out $100-$200 a month for additional help in certain cases then that is what we need to do. We are getting a certain kid and we can’t turn back reality, deny reality and say we don’t want these kids anymore we want the kinds of  kids we were getting 10 years ago. We are getting what we are getting and we have to deal with what we are getting.

Dr. Tobin: As our time is limited, we will take a few questions all at once and let panel discuss them.

David Katz (Michlellet Mivaseret): It is several issues. I think part of the issue that a lot of us are expressing, while I think that we all agree in the Jewish community at large, and even in the Orthodox Jewish community at large there is a major problem.  A problem of much higher proportions that it was even five years ago and certainly ten years ago. Perhaps in our individual institutions we are not seeing that percentage and perhaps if many of us were dealing with institutions where we were dealing with a much higher, if we were dealing with a 20 percent, 30 percent, or even 10 percent ratio of our student body suffering from an acute problem we couldn’t just throw out all of our kids. But when you are dealing with an institution of let’s say 100 students and perhaps you get one every couple of years where you have to deal with this then our attitude is going to be very different than perhaps you, the professionals, who are seeing the Jewish community at large. But that having been said, if in fact that is the reality then first of all I think there is a way to give ahava and still throw the kid out of the school at the same time. Another words, if I am the bad guy, and us as an administration of a school are throwing the kid out, then we have a wealth of faculty members, who even as we are throwing the child out, are then on another phone getting the child into another institution, maintaining a connection. I don’t think that  throwing a kid out of school has to be cutting the cords. Particularly, in yeshivot in Israel, I think, American high schools, in particular, are putting too much pressure on the year in Israel as if we are the be all and end all for this kid. We get the same thing when it comes to admissions. If you don’t take this kid, even though he doesn’t meet the your standards where is he going to be, you are cutting his cords. The answer is, we are only the schools in Israel and I can understand perhaps, and maybe it is my perspective, throwing the kid out of high school in New York, where is he going to go, he is branded for life. But if the kid doesn’t function 7000 miles away from home, he goes home. There are plenty of kids who don’t make it through their year in Israel for all of those other contributing factors that you had mentioned, and this in fact maybe one of them.  So I don’t see why the pressure to keep the kid in our systems either by other systems in Israel, or sending them back to America where their parents, ultimately, have to bear the responsibility here and hopefully even if you are dealing with a semi-dysfunctional family, it is not a completely dysfunctional family; let them deal with it. I don’t think the issue is access. I think that is an issue we are all prepared to deal with, limiting access and educating against the things in the society we want to protect them from. The issue is that when you have a kid with a substance abuse problem or any other behavioral problem and it is effecting their roommate and it is effecting the entire close circle who suddenly become the mommy and daddy’s for this kid immediately. It can pull down the atmosphere in an entire school and it is not just the kid versus, it really can have a negative impact on an entire year. And I think therefore, we as administrators, unlike teachers, have to be able to deal with that. 

Last comment, just regarding the eating disorders. Our attitude in school is to try and deal with the eating disorders but I do know that there is a wealth of people out there, professionals, that are of the opinion to send them home. I know that I have sometimes been accused of being too dangerous with eating disorders because there are professionals that say send them home. So I don’t know if it is as black and white as it is. And if I had a kid with an eating disorder who was disruptive in school, like often the kid with the substance abuse problem, it is not just the substance abuse problem, it is manifesting in his attendance, in his behavior, I would have to get rid of the girl with the eating disorder also. Not because of the disorder for the disorder but because of the behavior that surrounds it. So, I think it is one big issue.

Izzy Fogel (Board Member, JACS): I heard this conference was taking place so I took the liberty of attending. I do want to give you a tremendous yasher k’oach and chizuk. 15 years ago, when we tried, as JACS, to present this issue at a Torah U'Mesorah conference, we were denied access. Today at Torah U'Mesorah, we cannot fill the request for yeshivas to have speakers speak at the yeshivas. I think what you need to know is that there is a denial process that needs to be broken on the educational level. In all of the issues that you have raised I have heard 15 years ago and 12 years ago as the issues become more and more aware. But the most important thing is that we have an open mind that the problem exists, solutions are not going to be created this afternoon but at least the opening that maybe we have to be open to the fact that we have to create solutions. I can’t expect every yeshiva to put up with every substance abuser that walks through the doors of the yeshiva. It is just not realistic. It wouldn’t happen in any culture but I think that the idea of where years ago, where yeshivas would not allow the educational process to take place because they were afraid that that would be a stigma that if a yeshiva allowed discussions about substance abuse to take place that that means that that was an activity that took place. Today that denial has broken in the States. 

Yehudit Spero (Midreshet Moriah): There is a great cover-up going on in the States and I am sure that many of us can attest to this. I don’t want to be put as the boogey man if we do have to throw somebody out. We are put under a lot of pressure.  The students all have cell-phones now, the minute something happens they are on the phone to the parents and then I get a call a few minutes later or somebody on the staff; what are you going to do about this problem in your school and I thought your school was not going to have this sort of problem and I don’t want my child going to that kind of school. So it is very complicated.  Now Dr. Goldstein talked about family support, which is very important, very difficult to do though when a child is 6000 miles away. What I am talking about with a cover up is that I can get a beautiful application from a girl, who has maybe had a drug problem, seeing a psychiatrist or a psychologist and it is completely covered up and we don’t get the full information when they come here. I happen to be married to a clinical psychologist who talks about many of these kids who are sent here, knowingly, by their parents with a problem. He calls it "Israelese" therapy. My kid has a problem, I want to go to shul on Shabbos and I am going to be able to tell my friends in Brooklyn that my kid is learning in Yerushalayim, knowing full well that you sent a child with a big problem. So, I can’t necessarily solve a problem as much as I want to be kind and ahavas chesed and ahavas Yisroel. I can’t fix a problem that maybe if you would let me know that I am going to be getting a problem that maybe I could be sensitive. I could be on the look out for this child. I would know who this person is supposed to room with. I would know that this kid needs to be able to speak to somebody, but there is a great cover-up going on and we are all effected by it and I don’t know what to do about it.

Alex Israel (Midreshet HaRova and Midreshet Lindenbaum):  In response to this whole cover-up and the question about rejecting students, we have heard from this psychologist here that rejection is a serious problem and we hear about policies of rejection and I begin to ask myself whether the problem is whether we are worried about the influence on the students that we have or we are worried about the stigmas that our institutions will have. Are we worried that maybe if we admit the problem, that our enrollment for next year will be half. I think this relates to the problem and admitting the problem. Why don’t we all make a decision here, that in every yeshiva and in every seminary, we say we all have a problem let’s turn around on all of our applications that we have a policy to deal with drugs within our institution. Don’t be surprised if it is going to happen. It is going to happen and let’s all say it and then there won’t be any stigmas. We don’t need to pretend that we are squeaky clean, it won’t be squeaky clean. Let’s face the problem because that is what everybody seems to be saying. Let’s just say that we don’t care about stigmas. 

Speaker: On that line of stigma, many of us are coming from Jewish education, I think that the stigma is in the institution itself, when a child gets kicked out of yeshiva or a seminary, the yeshiva often covers up why they are being kicked out. I think it is the responsibility of all the yeshivas and all of the seminaries to have an open policy where they are sending a kid on to. To tell them what is happening, why they got kicked out so that when you get the kid from another institution you are not getting any surprises and you can do what is best for the kid.

Shani Solow (Machon Gold): On the issue of openness of institutions to other institutions I think the bigger problem is that most of the schools don’t ask. If I ask a kid to leave, I sit and wait by the phone for the administrator of a school the kid is applying to, to call me and check what the problem was. More often than not, I never hear from them. If I make the contact with another institution to try and make a transfer, I obviously discuss the problem. But frequently, parents don’t want to hear about the schools that I am suggesting because those are the schools that already have the stigma of being the schools with problematic girls. They then try to get their daughters into other institutions and those institutions, for whatever reasons, don’t bother to check why the kid has left. I think that it needs to work both ways. I think that many of us, most of us, are quite open about what’s happening when a kid leaves the school, but we need to be asked. 

David Glickman: I was wondering if you could talk about two issues here regarding families. One, is the increase in the prescription drugs being given to the children, mind altering prescription drugs such as Ritalin, etc., and the over prescription of those and how that effects drug culture and two, how to deal with issues of shame, guilt and feelings of failure amongst families with children with drug problems.

Debra Solomont (Pardes): I am going to speak, not as a professional right now, but as a layperson, somebody who hosts many of these young people. Since we have come on aliyah we have had an open home and I have noticed over the past few years in particular tremendous change. There is too much free time, students come, and I don’t mean to bash the yeshivot because I think the yeshivot are great, but I think that somebody did point out the fact that the yeshivot need to look at the change in the population and change their schedules accordingly. Having a student come, Rosh Chodesh Elul and two weeks later is Yom Tov, a student who has no place to go. Three weeks later it is Sukkot and the yeshiva is closed. Where is this child going to go? And then Chodesh Nissan it is off, so they go home or if the parents have that extra $1,000 then they can go on Heritage but it becomes a real problem because these are young people who have been home or in camp for 18 years and suddenly get off a plane. They are 6,000 miles away and don’t know what to do with themselves. That really needs to be looked at and as host families, we have a tremendous burden ourselves. When we get the call on a Thursday night from a young person who suddenly has no place to go on a Shabbat that the yeshiva is closed. Or suddenly on Erev Chag, their plans changed or suddenly because the yeshiva’s policy is two days of a Yom Tov.  Where are they going to eat on the last day of Pesach when everybody is eating chametz. These are issues that are simply not addressed and looked at and we as the hosts have that burden and we don’t get the support of the yeshivot either. The yeshivot should have a listing of the host families and should provide us with support as well, check and see if you are having problems with these boys or girls or whatever and that is my feeling. But I feel very strongly that the scheduling needs to be looked at and needs to be reviewed much less free time, much more tiyulim and much more supervision.

R. Yeshai Koenigsberg (Ohr Yerushalaim): I just want to add one more comment concerning this dilemma we face in yeshivot. We need to establish red lines. We need to say that certain things are not acceptable behavior. If a student is using drugs, even casually, and we allow him to remain in the student body and the student body is aware of that, that sends a certain message to the students. We are on a student level condoning that behavior. Now on the other hand we are trying to say it is assor, we don’t want to be permissive. We want to say this is not acceptable but on the other hand by allowing the student to remain, other students are getting a certain message. So we want to say that 10-15 percent are having this problem but on the other hand we find ourselves in a dilemma how do we get across to the rest of the student body that this is not acceptable behavior. I think that this is part of the dilemma. It is not just stigma. We are not just out to save our own skins. It is not that we can’t admit that there is a drug problem. There is an educational philosophy behind the secrecy and behind this idea of not allowing the student to remain in the student body.

Dr. Tobin: Okay, now I would like to ask our speakers to take a few minutes each to sum up.

Dr. Goldstein: I would just like to answer a couple of the questions that came up. I don’t think that the last comment, for example, helping a kid realize a mitzvah is what the yeshiva is all about. If you had a kid that wasn’t so ay ay ay on some aspect of Shmirat Shabbat or masturbation or whatever. You would not say chok v’lo Yaavor. Get him out of here. You would educate him. You would relate to him. You would express your philosophy in the particular area and over a period of time the kid would come over to your way of thinking. By all means, do not accept a kid using drugs in your program. Then you proceed to educate him. The issue is not that he is some sort of, who knows what, he can’t stay here. That is exactly what the educational process is. If we were all Tzadikim we wouldn’t need a yeshiva. It is because the educational process that moves us towards that.

Question: Are there are no red lines Dr. Goldstein? 

Dr. Goldstein: No, no I am not saying that. There are absolutely but it ought not be the first thing that comes to mind. We are not going to save every kid, but a lot of these kids are salvageable. They are salvageable and we need to put in the energy and the drive. These kids are not different from any of the other kids, only we know about them and their particular action is more noticeable, is more difficult, has more pitfalls than others. I don’t disagree with you. I think a yeshiva has to be aware about what next year’s enrollment is gong to be. If there is a kid who is committed to who knows what, of course the kid can’t be in the yeshiva and there are always administrative red lines. If you have a program, again where 99 percent of the kids are terrific on an issue, you can allow another kid there to be influenced by the 99 kids. Why is the influence all the other way? Being permissive never works with any of these issues. Somebody questioned Ritalin. Ritalin, there is only one problem with Ritalin. When prescribed appropriately, it works terrifically well, and if you see a kid who can’t focus and can’t learn and you prescribe the right amount of stimulant and it works for him then there is no greater achievement for that kid than Ritalin. Up until recently, I don’t know how recently “recently” means, Ritalin was not abused. It is now abused, it is second cousin to ecstasy, it is second cousin to a whole bunch of things. Kids are now stealing pills from younger kids who are prescribed Ritalin. To my knowledge, when prescribed appropriately, it is a terrific medicine and nobody needs to apologize for prescribing it to kids when it allows them and enables them to learn. Is there an abuse possibility? Absolutely, there is an abuse possibility for Robitussin, there is an abuse possibility for any one of a million things that we don’t take off the market, only because of that. Ritalin is not an over prescribed, over used medication and when prescribed correctly it is really terrific.

Yonah Pollack: A couple of points that I think are important. First of all, I am not impressed, but very happy, because I wouldn’t expect less really from the kinds of people that are here with the questions that have been asked and the issues that have been brought up. It is very good stuff. We are dealing with hard, hard questions. The answers are not so simple. We have an expression in the recovery business, we say that recovery is a process it is not an event. It doesn’t happen like that like a birthday. A birthday comes and then it is gone. Recovery is a process and dealing with these problems that we have as a community as rabbeim as professionals, as out reach people is also a process. We are not just going to fix it like that, because we recognize there are problems and we have to get the problems fixed right away. As Izzie Fogel said right over here, it took 15 years before you could get somebody. The Jewish Observer, as I understand, was contacted 5 years ago, to do an article on this problem. They denied there was a problem. They said an article would make the problem worse. Now, there are two ways to look at things. The cup is half empty and the cup is half full. We also got to understand that it is half full and it is getting fuller with good stuff and good people, and time and with process and funding and it is also important and hopefully it can get fuller. 

Next, I wanted to say that this gentleman that spoke about a policy statement. I think it is an excellent idea. It is not so simple though but I think it is a very good point and I think that what is happening though, is as a result of these types of conferences, and these kinds of articles, and more and more of these workshops and more of these gatherings, it is being known that there is a problem. There is a problem in our yeshivas everywhere and there is a problem in Israel. I think that a lot of people know today that Israel is not the answer to American’s problems. We are known as America’s garbage can. Chas v’shalom, but we are. That is unfortunate. You take a kid, he’s got a problem, he has got any kind of problem and send him to Israel and either he is going to get it in the army and that is going to fix him or he is going to the Kotel and it will make him religious or he will end up going to a kibbutz and make a mensch out of him, where he will meet a nice Jewish girl and he will eat chicken soup forever. That is a problem it is not true. We don’t have to take that role. We have enough good parts to Israel that we don’t have to accept that unfortunate responsibility. We don’t have to fix every kid. We have to understand though, that we are limited and we move and we try and we keep working to the best of our ability to do it. Statement over here, about getting problems and not knowing you are getting problems. Psychological, psychiatric not substance abuse, whatever types of problems. Okay, in line with some type of policy statement, which I mean, I don’t think was so far away from maybe putting on an application to any yeshiva that unfortunately, in Eretz Yisrael, since we are receiving American kids that we do find from time to time that we are getting certain kinds of problems which we don’t know about before we get them. Whether they are substance abuse, eating disorders whether they are psychological or psychiatric and we are letting you know if you tell us there is a problem before, whatever way we are able to do this we are more prepared to deal with it. We have professional staff, professional people that maybe can help us. If you don’t then at that point, we may have to tell you that we have to remove your kid from the yeshiva unfortunately. I don’t know the answers but these questions are good questions. You know, the point over here about red lines. Red lines, are there no red lines. It is a very good point. We have to follow, I think, in anything we do, is we have to follow chazal, we have to follow Torah. We see in Torah we have two midos upon which the world was created. rachamim and din, not just din. If it was din it wouldn’t work. We have 613 mitzvahs and we have Yom Kippur. Were there red lines in Yom Kippur? I am not saying there are no red lines. That is part of the system. We have a system that understands that. This is what we expect of you but when you can’t do it we understand how to deal with that. We have to build that into our systems. It is very nice to say throw a kid out or don’t accept a kid. We are not in that world anymore. Unfortunately, we have a different population we are dealing with and we have to accept that population. We have to get out of denial as much as the addict and the rest of the Jewish community. We don’t have to like it. I tell kids I work with, you don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.  Same thing here. 

Dr. Goldstein: Just one last sentence I feel like I have to say.  Many years I send numbers of kids to a lot of the one-year or Shana Bet programs here in Israel. They do spectacularly well. The rabbanim relate to them. They are warm. They come away committed Jews. It erodes a bit when they come back to the States and get back to the yeshivas there, but that is a different story. It is a terrific program. I don’t know why we are only talking about the lack of success. I can tell you many positive identity successes from sending kids to one-year programs in Israel. I just wouldn’t want the impression to be doom and gloom because that’s not the case.

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This transcript was prepared by David Beker.
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