by Michele Chabin

For some U.S. students in yeshivas, Jerusalem can be a tempting place; last week’s arrests are shining a light on a taboo subject.

Jerusalem — When the parents of North American yeshiva students learning in Israel for the year visit their children, they often frequent the restaurants in Nahalat Shiva, a picturesque neighborhood just a block away from Ben-Yehuda Street.

What few if any realize is that the neighborhood, with its gentrified century-old buildings and cobblestone alleyways, is also a hangout for visiting yeshiva kids and others in search of alcohol and drugs.

Last month an undercover Israeli police officer is said to have purchased drugs not far from there from four American young men spending the year at two local yeshivas. The four, who allegedly sold marijuana to Israeli and North American students from several yeshivas, were arrested last week.

The arrests and the unrelated death by overdose of a student at the Neve Tsion yeshiva, have sent shock waves — though perhaps not surprise — through Jerusalem-area yeshivas and seminaries.

The incidents, which are believed to be unprecedented, have raised questions over just how widespread drug and alcohol abuse among North American students really is; whether the Israeli yeshiva environment fosters substance abuse in teens living far away from homes; and over who exactly is responsible for the estimated 1,500 college-aged students from New York and elsewhere who spend their post-high school year learning in Israel.

Long considered a taboo subject, the issue of substance abuse among visiting yeshiva students is not one that yeshiva administrators like to discuss. Despite this, several administrators spoke candidly to The Jewish Week about their attempts to keep their institutions drug- and alcohol-free.

Following last week’s incidents, many administrators called meetings to discuss whether alcohol and drug use might be taking place in their schools or find solutions to a known problem.

“It’s no secret that drugs are being used in some yeshivas,” said Jonathan Feldstein, the executive director of the Israel Anti-Drug Abuse Foundation. “There’s a drug problem in Israel, just as there is in the American Jewish community.”

Caryn Green, director of the Crossroads Center, whose social workers scour the haunts of downtown Jerusalem for English-speaking youths in distress, said that more than half of the 700 kids her program regularly assists are studying in yeshivas. The center offers crisis intervention, therapy and professional counseling.

Crossroads’ third-floor walk-up office is located almost directly opposite Zion Square (at the corner of Ben Yehuda and Jaffa streets) and nearby “Crack Square” (at the corner of Jaffa and Rivlin Street), two notorious hangouts.

Green is convinced that the vast majority of substance-abusing yeshiva students arrive in Israel with a pre-existing problem, though not necessarily a hard-core one. The student who overdosed last week, as well as two of four students arrested, attended the handful of yeshivas that specialize in helping “at-risk” teens.

The other arrested teens attended Or Yerushalyim, a mainstream yeshiva where about 20 of the 70 students smoke pot, according to one of its students.

“It’s very, very rare when someone who was doing well in America comes here and loses it,” Green said. “Still, it happens.”

While the vast majority of the young people who walk through Crossroads’ doors are enrolled in yeshivas for teens who demonstrated at-risk behavior back home, Green estimates that 90 percent of the so-called “mainstream” yeshivas have “two or three kids” who regularly use marijuana “but who no one suspects because they go to class every day.”

She could not determine how many abuse alcohol.

Green believes Jerusalem is an accommodating place for young adults prone to substance abuse.

“America is a really scary place; the inner city of New York or Chicago is gang infested,” she said. “Here, drugs are readily accessible in the center of town, which apart from terror attacks is quite safe. And there’s no enforced drinking age.”

“You can go to bars at any age and no one will ask how old you are,” agreed a New York-based yeshiva administrator, who asked that her name not be published. “A lot of the yeshivot don’t really check up on the guys. They trust them to be independent. It’s a bit like when a teenager goes away to college.”

‘Parents Must

Be Responsible’

But post-high school yeshiva study isn’t college, the administrator stressed, at least not from the parents’ perspective.

“Parents have a different expectation. They figure they’re sending [their child] to a yeshiva and hope that someone is looking after him. That’s not always the case,” the administrator said.

Sometimes, the administrator said, “parents turn over too much responsibility to the schools. That’s especially true of parents of at-risk children, who hope that sending them to Israel will turn them around. Ultimately it is the parents who must be responsible for their child.”

Shonny Solow, the dean of the Machon Gold seminary, agreed.

“There are a lot of problem kids today throughout the world, and Jewish parents often think the easiest solution is to send them to Israel,” Solow said. “It is important for Israeli schools to be careful about who they accept.”

Solow said her school carefully screens prospective candidates and will not accept those deemed to be at high risk for substance abuse.

“We aren’t equipped to deal with such students. The schools that deal with this population are a wonderful gift to the families and to the Jewish community,” he said.

Three men’s yeshiva programs — Neve Tsion, Ner Yaakov and Kesher — openly specialize in at-risk youth with a myriad of problems ranging from substance abuse to behavioral problems and clinical depression. Two programs, Michlelet Esther at Neve Yerushalyim and Tivkva, are designed for at-risk young women.

During an interview in his modest office, Rabbi Yehoshua Liff, the rosh yeshiva of Ner Yaakov, where two of the four arrested students study, said his school began accepting large numbers of substance abusers about five years ago.

“When we opened 17 years ago, our mandate was to help scholastic low achievers, bright boys not reaching their potential,” Rabbi Liff said.

The rabbi said he decided to shift gears five years ago after parents and educators, having seen his success with boys with motivation and behavioral problems, asked him to accept boys with a history of drug or alcohol issues.

Though clearly pained by his students’ arrest, Rabbi Liff is unapologetic about his program or its mission

“If we don’t do it, who will?” Rabbi Liff asked as the sounds of prayer from the yeshiva’s packed study hall made their way to his adjoining office. We’re responsible to the Jewish Orthodox world and we’re not going to run away.”

Roughly two-thirds of Ner Yaakov’s students recover and go on to lead productive lives, Rabbi Liff said, stressing that the arrests were the first in his school.

From what his own students and some fellow rabbis have told him, Rabbi Liff is convinced that substance abuse in the religious community “is not confined to at-risk yeshivot, it’s also in highly regarded institutions,” though the numbers may be very low.

Rabbi Liff insisted that “not all students should be sent overseas unless there is proper supervision by a mental health professional and/or an Israel-based family member who takes an ongoing interest in the child.” He noted that many parents are unwilling or unable to pay for the psychotherapy their children desperately need, and that the children suffer for it. While the problems his students face are out in the open, Rabbi Liff said, those of students at the mainstream yeshivas are less evident.

“Many times students are sent to Israel by educators who are not willing to provide full disclosure or who have been inadequately trained” to deal with the warning signs. “In the majority of cases the parents are not fully aware of what’s going on,” Rabbi Liff stressed.

Dr. David Pelcovitz, an expert on at-risk teens in the Orthodox community who teaches psychology and education at Yeshiva University, said last week’s incidents “were a wake-up call” for many yeshiva rabbis.

“Many are eager for guidance and continuing education on how to deal with the problem. Of course,” Pelcovitz added, “there are some rabbis who prefer to view this as a problem only of the yeshivas that deal with at-risk kids.”

Many yeshiva and seminary students also seem to be in denial, if the scene at Crack Square last Saturday night was any indication. At midnight, scores of North American kids could be seen hanging out in the street and sitting in bars.

“Almost all the girls from my seminary hang out here,” said a curly-haired 18-year-old near Crack Square, clutching an almost empty bottle of white wine in her left hand.

Asked whether her rosh yeshiva knew about the weekly pilgrimage to Crack Square, the seminary student, who like most of the others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity, replied, “there’s a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. They figure that by the end of the year we’ll stop doing what we’re doing. I’m not doing anything illegal and I don’t have a drinking problem,” the young woman added, suddenly defensive. “I’m 18, which is the legal age for drinking here.”

“I don’t drink all that much,” said a red-faced, obviously drunk 18-year-old student from a mainstream yeshiva, who said he had consumed a half-bottle of vodka that evening to celebrate his birthday.

“Our rabbis don’t tell us what to do, but they try to convince us not to come here,” said the young man’s friend, who attends the same yeshiva. “But sometimes you want to spend time with friends. Not all of us use drugs or alcohol,” he said.

Many students with substance abuse problems do recover in Israel, and they credit the professionals they have encountered here for turning their lives around. “I dropped out of school at 13 and became addicted to cocaine for two and a half years,” related a clean-cut-looking 18-year-old who decided to attend a yeshiva for at-risk teens because his once-addicted brother had gone there. “My brother is clean now and recently got married.”

The young man, who comes from a fervently Orthodox New York family and supported himself from the age of his bar mitzvah through odd jobs and dealing drugs, recalled how “when I got to Israel I was using, and the rosh yeshiva told me to leave. He let me back in after I came to Crossroads and Caryn [Green], and I worked out some boundaries.” He said he had been clean for five months.

This student’s apparent recovery does not surprise Jerusalem psychologist Vel Reinfeld, who often works with North American yeshiva students.

“If anything, a large percentage of the boys see coming to Israel as an opportunity to be away from all the stimuli that helped create the problem. A number of boys see friends who have come home having dealt with their problems and it encourages them,” Reinfeld said.

Solow from Machon Gold urges people to keep the recent incidents in perspective.

“It’s important not to let five students reflect on the other 1,500 kids,” he said. “The vast majority spend their year in Israel learning, growing and doing chesed. Let’s not lose sight of that.”