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January 29, 2010

Gap year troubles in Israel

MICHELE CHABIN

It’s 2 a.m. in Israel’s holiest city. Do you know where your children are? Probably not, if your kids are learning in one of the dozens of yearlong post-high school yeshiva or seminary programs in Israel, an increasingly frequent rite of passage in many Orthodox communities in the Diaspora.

While some Israel-based “gap year” programs have strict guidelines about where their students can go during their free time, as well as curfews, others give their 17- to 20-year-old charges free rein to hang out wherever they please.

“If my parents knew where I was right now, they wouldn’t have sent me to Israel,” a very drunk 17-year-old yeshiva student confided during a night out with his school buddies at “Crack Square,” a well-known downtown hangout for thousands of young Jerusalemites in search of a good time.

The teen, who said his father is “a very Orthodox” American rabbi, explained that his parents sent him to a mainstream Orthodox yeshiva “to get me back on the derech,” the Hebrew term for path. He spent part of the previous year in the States “drunk and high a lot.”

The rabbi’s son comes to Crack Square – a picturesque plaza on bustling Jaffa Road leading to a warren-like series of alleyways with dozens of bars – “a few nights a week,” where, he said, he throws back “six or seven drinks” a night.

How can he buy a drink when you have to be 18 to drink in Israel, the year Israelis are drafted into the army?

“A lot of the bartenders don’t check our IDs,” one of the 18-year-olds at the table confided. “And if they do, one of the older guys buys the younger ones a drink.”

In the last two decades, spending a year, sometimes two, in Israel after high school to concentrate on Talmud and religious studies has become normative for many Orthodox young people – girls as well as boys – and community leaders say the impact has been profound, with many positive aspects. Chief among them is the grounding in Judaic studies and the influence of rabbinic educators at a key period in their spiritual lives. The result often translates to a deepening of commitment among the students when they return to North America, sometimes with an interest in making aliyah.

Observers of Jewish life say the gap-year programs have been a major factor in the rightward turn of modern orthodoxy in North America, with returning students more devoted to ritual observance and a conservative lifestyle, including marrying at a young age through shidduchim, or arranged matches.

Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University professor of American Jewish history who is on sabbatical in Jerusalem, noted that while the lack of supervision problem is real, the larger picture shows that most young people come back from the year “better educated and with a greater sense of responsibility for Jewish life and leadership.”

While only a small percentage of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 yeshiva and seminary (Torani) students spending their gap year before college in Israel frequent places like Crack Square on a regular basis, up to a third of them will face some type of potentially serious problem during their time abroad, according to the experts who counsel them.

Caryn Green, director of Crossroads, a Jerusalem organization that assists troubled English-speaking youth, estimates that at any given time a significant percentage of yeshiva and seminary students are dealing with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, overwhelming religiosity (commonly referred to as “flipping out”), a crisis of religious faith or substance abuse.

Of these, “a few hundred,” some of them enrolled in the handful of yeshivot that deal specifically with problematic behavior, will engage in “hard-core risky behavior,” Green said.

According to professionals who work with troubled gap-year teens, seminary and yeshiva students tend to be under far more academic pressure during the day, and be far less supervised during the evenings, weekends and holidays than their peers in other long-term programs. This fact can make it easier for the most vulnerable and impressionable Torani-program kids to overspend on their credit cards and to eat poorly – or almost not at all. It also gives them the opportunity to hang out with their friends and, in some cases, to purchase alcohol or drugs.

The problem, long known about in Modern Orthodox circles in North America but rarely confronted, is breaking into the open. And some day school administrators are demanding answers from gap-year administrators in Israel.

In a recent post to an online Jewish educators forum, Arthur Poleyeff, principal for general studies at the Torah Academy of Bergen County, a boys yeshiva high school in Teaneck, N.J., criticized many Israeli yeshivot for inadequately supervising their young charges.

“Drinking is rampant. Many yeshivot deny that their students come back to their dormitories long after curfew (if there is one), drunk and sick,” he wrote. “Others look the other way. Other inappropriate behavior, including illicit drugs and boy-girl issues, are rampant as well.”

In a follow-up interview, Poleyeff told New York’s Jewish Week that he was not describing the conditions in all, or even most, Israeli yeshivot, but that the scenes he depicted can be found in a number of Torani programs.

“It’s the elephant in the room nobody’s talking about,” Poleyeff said bluntly. “It’s an uncomfortable issue that can involve the police. There have been drug busts.”

In 2005, four gap-year students were arrested for selling drugs to an undercover police officer. The four Americans sold marijuana to Israeli and North American students from several yeshivot. That same year, another American yeshiva student, spending the year at Neveh Tzion, died of a heroin overdose. There have been other, less-publicized, arrests as well.

Other educators interviewed concurred with Poleyeff, but would not speak on the record, for fear of upsetting parents.

Can’t tie them down

Four years after the arrests and heroin death, not a great deal has changed, Poleyeff said. “It’s not popular to say so, but Israel isn’t for everyone,” he added. “Slowly, people are starting to understand this.”

He and several other educators noted that while the gap-year program started out in the 1970s geared only to the highest level of high school Talmud scholars, those destined to be rabbis and teachers, it is now expected of all graduating seniors, both boys and girls, in many Orthodox yeshivot and seminaries in North America. But the reality, experts say, is many of the young people today are not candidates for 12-hour days of rigorous Talmud study; they come for the opportunity to live in Israel before starting college, be with friends and be open to new experiences, some of them not so wholesome.

In broaching the matter of lack of supervision with Israeli yeshiva administrators, Poleyeff has been frustrated. “When I discuss the matter with yeshiva heads, they say, ‘They’re 18 years old and are legally allowed to drink. I can’t tie them down.’

“I’m not asking them to tie them down. I’m asking them to take the responsibility entrusted in them while these students are in their schools. It’s also up to us, day school administrators, to insist that the yeshivas have a zero-tolerance policy.”

Sarna noted that “it is easy to blame the yeshivot, but there are limits to what can they legally do” in terms of curfews and lockdowns, not to mention the resentment factor among students. But he also pointed out that “there is an economic disincentive” for yeshivot to send students back home if they break the rules – the most effective form of discipline, he believes – because the schools receive government funding based on how many students are enrolled.

Shoshanah Selavan, overseas office manager of Yeshivat HaKotel, a centrist yeshiva in Jerusalem, said she knows of schools whose students hang out half the night at Crack Square, but that her students are rarely among them.

“It’s not that it hasn’t happened, but we attract more serious learners,” Selavan said. “The boys who come here want to be here.” She said that was also true of other well-known yeshivot with programs for American and Canadian students, like Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush), Shalavim and Keren B’Yavneh.

Selevan said that Yeshivat HaKotel doesn’t have a curfew. “Our students enjoy themselves, but if someone starts staying out late, he’ll be called to order. There will be meetings with the rabbis.”

Crossroads’ Green said that some of the stricter yeshivot expel wayward students while others suspend students for certain infractions – including curfew violations, alcohol consumption and spending time with the opposite sex – for a cooling-off period.

The problem with the latter is that “the school doesn’t necessarily know where the students are. They may end up sleeping on dorm floors or homeless, and sometimes things get worse because they don’t have the tools to find a safe place to stay,” Green said.

Rabbi Yisrael Blumenfeld, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Neveh Tzion in Telz Stone, outside Jerusalem, said that the troubled boys who come to his school sometimes do go to Crack Square, but usually under supervision.

“The dorm counselors usually hang out with them in town, so we usually know what’s going on.”

Blumenfeld added, “We’re a yeshiva that takes boys that need motivation. Many were already off the derech. They need direction, incentives, inspiration. Every student has a close relationship with a rebbe. We have a ‘midnight’ rebbe who stays with the boys all night. We have dorm counselors who take attendance at 1 a.m., the curfew time. We’re constantly trying to get them to learn in the morning.

“The boys that we’re working with, we feel they need the freedom to work things out, to take responsibility for their actions. We try not to impose things on them. We want them to motivate themselves.”

Usually, the rabbi said, the boys “were doing much worse in America than they’re doing here. Their parents know it doesn’t work to lock them up.”

Pre-existing problems

Professionals on the ground insist that the vast majority of students with problems developed them prior to their arrival in Israel. Often, however, parents and educators back home either didn’t recognize that a problem existed or, in rare instances, made a conscious decision to withhold the information from

Israeli administrators. In other instances, the stress of being far from home worsens previously mild conditions or triggers new ones.

There are also a growing number of cases where gap-year administrators will permit students with pre-diagnosed anorexia or bipolar disorder, for example, to attend their programs, provided the student finds a team of Israeli specialists prior to their arrival in Israel.

While many of these young people would have developed the same problems at college, “there are major differences between the college and gap-year experience,” especially a yeshiva experience, according to Caroline Peyser, a Jerusalem-based psychologist who has treated many Orthodox gap-year students over the years.

“We’re seeing more students coming who don’t know why they’re here,” Peyser said. “They have no clear goals for the year, so they follow the crowd. They’re not really here to learn and, therefore, have a harder time.”

Even the overwhelming majority of students who are in Israel to learn and grow must deal with newfound independence.

“They’re in a new social setting, in a dorm or an apartment, having to make new friends and, for the first time in their lives, have responsibility over when to sleep, when to wake up and when to go out,” Peyser said. Students often have to fend for themselves, particularly when they must vacate the dorms of some yeshivot for the week of Sukkot.

One of the major issues, particularly for young women, is eating disorders, said Peyser, author of Body and Soul: A Guide for Addressing Eating Disorders in a Jewish Education Setting (Atid Press, 2005). She estimates that “between five to 10 percent” of female gap-year students have eating disorders, and that the phenomenon is on the rise. “There is a lot of negative peer pressure,” Peyser said, in the all-girl dorms, where the students sometimes are charged with preparing their own meals.

“Esther,” 18, a current gap-year student who was bingeing and purging in high school, sees a psychiatrist in Israel. She said all of her peers at seminary are “constantly talking about food and being thin,” and she thinks that many take laxatives or make themselves vomit at times.

Despite her struggle with anorexia and bulimia – a battle she feels she’s winning – Esther isn’t sorry she came to Israel. “I’m having the time of my life. I’m loving my classes, I feel so spiritually connected to Judaism. I just have to hang out with the right people and go to therapy once a week.”

Sense of responsibility

Chana Stroe Sachs, a clinical psychologist who ran the Tikva seminary for troubled girls for a decade, before it closed in 2008, believes that students cannot develop a sense of responsibility unless they are given responsibility.

Her students, she said, came from all types of backgrounds. “Some were floating around Jerusalem. Some had been in other seminaries that weren’t a good match. A lot of girls come for the year and think, ‘Hey, I have a year off. Let’s have a good time and party.’ They would hang out in Crack Square, hang out with the opposite gender. Many had issues of drugs and alcohol. Many had experimented at home, but their parents either didn’t know or thought being so inundated with Israeli spirituality would straighten them out.

“Sometimes it worked, a lot of the time it didn’t,” she admitted.

Sachs said she gave the girls “a lot of freedom” in their personal and religious lives, and also some boundaries combined with individual and group therapies. The psychologist is proud that “a high, high percentage” of Tikva’s graduates “managed to get their lives together. Many have opted to stay religious in one way or another.” 

Some administrators are critical of parents who, they say, give more thought to their child’s wardrobe than to where – or even if – they should spend a gap year in Israel. Too often, administrators say, parents allow their child to decide which yeshiva or seminary to attend based primarily on the answer to “Where are your friends going?”

One yeshiva principal criticized some parents and yeshiva high schools for being “too lazy” in preparing for “this pivotal year in a young person’s life.” He said the parents should do their homework about the wide choice of programs available in Israel and determine what is best for their child, and that the high schools should not “leave it to the yeshivas in Israel to prepare these students for religious observance and serious Torah learning.”

Most parents interviewed for this article who had serious criticisms of the Israeli programs declined to speak on the record, but cited lack of communication with the rabbis and administrators as a major source of tension.

Henry London, a father who has sent three children on gap-year programs, said two had very positive experiences. The third’s was decidedly mixed. He said his youngest daughter enjoyed her first year at a seminary in Jerusalem and began a second year there full of excitement. Early in the year she told her parents that the second-year girls were not being treated with respect and, when the situation did not improve, “she said it was a waste of her time, and came home.”

London said the seminary was not responsive and has yet to refund the tuition.

Shalom Berger, an Israeli educator and co-author of Flipping Out (Yashar Books, 2007), a book that explores the impact of intense religiosity on gap-year students, advises that “the different programs are built for different needs, and a parent should recognize his or her child’s strengths and weaknesses.”

Educators assure parents that there is probably a good match to be made between their child and the many yeshiva programs available in Israel. The trick is to do the research, and be realistic about having a teenager living far from home.

Berger urges parents to remember that a child attending college out of town “isn’t supervised when he goes out on a Thursday night.”

In the meantime, Crack Square in Jerusalem is an ongoing reminder of the dangers of falling through the gap during a year in Israel.

Michele Chabin reports from Jerusalem for the Jewish Week of New York. This piece was made possible through the Jewish Investigative Journalism Fund. For more information and to suggest stories for coverage, go to jewishinvestigativefund.com.

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