Rethinking the Obvious

Minchah had concluded and I was about to leave shul when I encountered an old acquaintance. We had been close friends in yeshivah but had kept up only sporadically since. After some small talk about how quickly the years had passed, the conversation turned to my friend’s 17-year-old son.

“So what is your plan for him for next year?” I asked him.

He seemed taken aback by the very question.

“He will go to a yeshivah in Eretz Yisrael, of course,” he answered confidently.

His reply evoked a flood of memories going back more than two decades, to when I had learned in Yerushalayim.

In particular, I thought of a specific bachur whom, for the purposes of this article, we will call Yanky.

The yeshivah in which I learned at the time was an oasis of tranquility, an ideal place for those bachurim seeking to learn with great hasmadah. Like many larger yeshivos, it had a wonderful Mashgiach who tried his hardest to keep track of where the bachurim were during sedarim. However, unless someone alerted him, he had no way to keep track of what an individual bachur was doing on his own time.

Though we weren’t close friends, I had always thought highly of Yanky. A fellow New Yorker, he was an average learner, a refined boy, somewhat on the quiet side. About halfway through the zman, I noticed subtle changes in his demeanor. While he still was in yeshivah during seder, he seemed distracted and was rarely seen during meals, evenings, or Friday afternoons.

“Yanky is slipping,” a worried mutual friend told me one day.

At first I brushed off his worries. Many bachurim have ups and downs, I told him.

I soon learned how tragically right he was when I discovered that Yanky had somehow become close to a group of bachurim from a different yeshivah whose hashkafos and conduct were, to say the least, deeply troubling. He was spending hours each day in their unsupervised apartment, often staying until late at night. Soon his appearance began to drastically change. He shed much of the traditional levush of his family and kehillah. Shortly thereafter, his level of Torah observance slipped as well.

The hanhalah and devoted friends tried their hardest to reach out to Yanky, but he made it clear that it was too late; he had chosen a different path. He left the yeshivah shortly thereafter, and while I sincerely hope he found his way back to Yiddishkeit, I have never been able to discover what happened to him.

Initially, I believed that Yanky’s story was a most unusual exception. After all, I reasoned, Eretz Yisrael was the perfect place to grow in Torah and yiras Shamayim.

Unfortunately, I later saw firsthand that while, baruch Hashem, relatively few fall as far as Yanky did, sending bachurim to learn in Eretz Yisrael carries very considerable risks. Indeed, this is a land filled with holiness. But zeh l’umas zeh — the powers of evil are also present and try their hardest to ensnare precious souls. Eretz Yisrael is blessed with countless mekomos kedoshim and is the world’s center of Torah learning. But it also has no shortage of dangerous distractions and spiritual traps.

Of course, many bachurim blossom in Eretz Yisrael. But tragically, far too many others actually experience a severe spiritual decline. This was true to a certain extent 20 years ago, but for numerous reasons the risks have grown exponentially in the past few years.

In a recent conversation with a prominent Torah leader in Eretz Yisrael, I raised the topic of bachurim staying in unsupervised apartments.

“It is a churban,” he told me, sighing deeply. While his own yeshivah has a dormitory, a prestigious yeshivah located nearby, doesn’t. He told me that he used to try to help bachurim get into that yeshivah, but he has stopped doing so.

“I have been burned,” he painfully said.

Let us not delude ourselves: In this era filled with stormy winds of temptation, every bachur learning in any yeshivah needs much siyatta diShmaya to be able to stay on the right path. But when a bachur learns in a yeshivah that is within driving distance of his home, his parents have a far greater possibility to keep close tabs on how he is faring. They get to see him every few weeks, either on an “off Shabbos” or a family simchah, and usually encounter members of the hanhalah as well on a frequent basis.

There have been far too many cases of parents dutifully sending money to their sons who they thought were diligently studying in a yeshivah, when in reality they weren’t even stepping foot into one.

Four years ago, more than a dozen prominent Rebbes and Rabbanim — including the Kiviashder Rebbe, zy”a, and, ybl”c, Harav Moshe Wolfson, shlita, and the oldest son of the Skulener Rebbe, shlita — signed an open letter detailing some of the grave spiritual risks of sending bachurim to learn in Eretz Yisrael. The Rabbanim — while praising the quality of the yeshivos in Eretz Yisrael, stated that whenever possible Americans should send their sons to local yeshivos. At the very least, the letter urged that parents should send their sons only to those yeshivos with full dormitory and meals.

It is time for our community to stop assuming that sending our children to learn in Eretz Yisrael is the “only” option. There are some wonderful alternatives right here in New York and New Jersey, and if more bachurim will stay, more local yeshivos will be established. Parents should carefully weigh all options and remember that even the most responsible bachurim can use some level of supervision. Ultimately, daas Torah must be consulted in each individual case, and regardless of what the final decision is, parents must keep in regular, close contact with the hanhalah of whichever yeshivah they choose.

This article appeared in print in the June 10th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.