Why are you the only one?

 Years ago I attended a dysfunctional yeshiva. It's known even today to be a crazy place. Several formers students who are no longer frum have blogs on line where they complain about it. The head of the place, an insurance salesmen who used his uncle's money to start a yeshiva, was a mess of a person. He could not give a class in Gemara or halacha or anything. He had almost no experience in education, was anti-intellectual, viewed all questions as coming from the yetzer hara, and restricted his 'program' to two classes - Chumash and Gemara, even though it was a school for baalei teshuvah. There was no library. Guest speakers were not allowed. It was located on an isolated hilltop. When I asked for classes in Hebrew, halacha, mishnah, history, I was denied. When I complained about the place he said to me, "Why are you the only one?" Since 1/3 of the guys left in my year, I wondered how I could be the only one, but that's what he said to me. 

Decades later a young man was sent to me who also had gone to that yeshiva. This young man was no longer frum. He had bitter experiences with this yeshiva head who deemed himself the wise expert who could fix everyone. When he was ailing in the hospital in his final months, he paid for a taxi to send this young man to his hospital room so he could 'straighten out' the young man, who today is very bitter about the condescending and heavy handed treatment he received. He told me that the yeshiva head said to him, "Why are you the only one?" I said, "He said that to you too?" We laughed. Turns out he said it to all kinds of people. The young man told me of others who were told the same thing. Each one was the only one,

This might be a line used in yeshivas to shame a bochur, to make him feel that there's something wrong with him.  The yeshiva can't possibly be wrong or even wrong for him. And the proof is that he's the only one who doesn't like it there.

There's a school principal in my town that warns olim against moving children above the age of 7 to Israel,  He said, go out to such and such street on Shabbos at night and you'll see all the olim who are now off the derech. The street is full of them. And it's true, I was out late this Shabbos and I saw all kinds of rowdy off the derech American olim. They were too old to be brought to Israel and they got messed up. Are they each the only one? 

The phrase why are you the only one puts the failures of the institution on the child, it puts the failures of the society on the child. It's a horrible thing to say and it's never true. Life is complicated and there are all kinds of reasons why a child might not fit in a certain school, why he might be struggling in life. And there are all kinds of people that struggle in life. Nobody is the only one. 

When a social worker utters a phrase like that you really have a problem because a social worker is where we go to fix the damage done by school heads that say, "Why are you the only one?" When you find out that the social worker worked in a yeshiva, on the rabbinic staff, a light flashes: Oh that's where he learned that phrase. 

Social work is not rabbanus. It's an entirely different profession. It requires listening not preaching. It requires listening, not talking over people. A social worker helps the client to find his own voice. He doesn't critique the client's thoughts. He certainly doesn't shame him by telling him or his parents that he's the only one.

If a yeshiva guy is to become a therapist he has to transform himself. In yeshiva, he argued all day long. He has to drop the arguing. In yeshiva he was taught essentially that bochurim are not much more than a yetzer hara that needs to be fixed by the rabbi. He has to drop that or he is liable to really damage already damaged people. Few make that transition because they don't really respect the profession. They just see it as a decent parnassah. They really want to be rabbis or in full time learning and this will have to do.