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. 

hang in there

"If you stay at the table long enough, the chips come to you."

Skip Brittenham

 A little while back, a neighbor of mine, a rabbi, gave me a lift in his car. He asked me what I have been doing lately. I said "mitzvos." He countered, "Torah and mitzvos." Evidently, it was not exciting to him that a Jew is doing mitzvos (even though Torah study is a mitzvah). You know and I know that if I had answered, "Torah," he would have said, "great, what mesechta?" He wouldn't have said, "What about mitzvos?"

I was at bar mitzvahs simcha, and the father kept talking about how his son is shteiging in Gemara. We heard nothing about the boy doing mitzvos. Even a bar mitzvah isn't about mitzvos anymore. I wanted to tell the father, it's not a bar Gemara, it's a bar mitzvah. Of course, the main subject of the Gemara is mitzvos, but people have found a way to get around that by turning all Gemara study into abstract lomdus. I don't blame the father really. He has been conditioned to ignore mitzvos. He gets propagandized constantly. 

It is quite amazing that a person should be made to feel like an apikoros only for asking that mitzvos be mentioned from time to time in the yeshiva world. As for mentioning Hashem, that's a dream. I have sat through multi-hour fundraising dinners for yeshivas where Hashem wasn't mentioned even 1 time! That includes Ohr Yehoshua dinners. 

The Chofetz Chaim, who was a yeshiva man, wrote an entire book for baalei batim about mitzvos. Evidently, he deemed the topic worthwhile. Times changed from the days of the Vilna Gaon, in whose time everyone did mitzvos, but maybe didn't study enough Torah. 

And long before that, Shlomo the king wrote, "The end of the matter, everything having been heard, fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the entire man." So I am going with Shlomo, the wisest of men, and with the Chofetz Chaim. We must value the mitzvos. And we talk about whatever we value. And if we don't talk about it, we don't value it. 

A Russian describes the BT experience

 "Hoped for better, turned out as always." Viktor Chernomyrdin

the difference

 This woman did a prank on her mother, asking people to honk and flip off her mother during a drive. Here are some of the hilarious and clever comments people left.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Rx6cfGtDyoA

She went from angry driver, to the Road Rage Warrior, to full on conspiracy theorist in one short drive.

She went from mildly annoyed, to truly angry, to genuinely concerned for the entire planet

“You know what? Fuck you! You goof!” Has got to be the best mom line in history

If I did this as a child I probably wouldn't be an adult right now.

You would not see funny and fun comments like this if the commenters were frum. You'd hear, what about civud av 'vaim? This is a chilul Hashem. It's not respectful. It's a sakanah.

All shame and being uptight. 

There's no humor, no fun, no happiness in the frum world. 

Doesn't have to be that way. But it is.  

In my view, narcissistic abuse means essentially that you are living in somebody else's world, prevented from being or developing yourself. Your own ability to think is crippled and your emotions twisted and repressed. This can happen when a megalomaniac has significant power over you. A parent certainly has significant power, but so can a religious leader or team of them with whom you have daily contact, particularly if you surrender your free will to those people as baalei teshuvah sometimes do. It’s that much worse if all this happens in a controlled and isolated environment. When religion is imposed on you forcefully, playing on your sense of guilt and fear, tremendous damage can occur to the psyche. You are trying to reconfigure your entire life to match a demanding religion to which you have opened the doors to your soul. However, when that religion is portrayed to you in a distorted way, a way that robs you of your individuality, autonomy and perhaps even your basic humanity, then you can become a kind of cripple. You are no longer you, and you can’t even make basic decisions about your own life. Your judgement has been undermined and your instincts shut out of the room of your life.

Kim Jong Un