But again not really in religious Israeli DL circles. There are always the shabab in every group - Efrat has been known for it for ages, again beause it's american...just look across the road to Alon Shvut, there you don't find a drug problem or a liquor problem because the yeshiva had great influence as it does in many places....in yishuvim, which is what Makor Rishon was basically targeting, there is a general problem of a whole generation of young people with gung ho mitnachel DL parents who just aren't like that...the kids are often very not frum, very not connection to their parents whole ideology, and stuck out in the boondocks with very few outlets.
In Efrat you can point the finger at one person...for many years, with all his good qualities, Rabbi Riskin did everything he could to make sure that a competing DL school for boys wouldn't open up there. He wanted a monopoly...uma la'asot, there was a whole group of boys who just weren't suited for Neve Shmuel and the like....and they got thrown to the wayside, it was known for years that on friday night you couldn't walk into the mercaz for the smoke....there was substance abuse of all kinds and by the time they got around to opening up a DL school it was too late for a whole generation of kids who went totally OTD there. But Efrat really isn't an example simply because it was so influence by what was happening in America, and it was a shtetl run religiously by one big sherrif to whom everyone bowed without question for many years...Rabbi Riskin. Not too many american upper middle class towns here in EY....
In the cities at least and in most smaller towns from what I know there really still isn't any kind of drinking problem here among the religious kids, and certainly not among college students like in America among frum kids. Why? Because here they are older, most of them go to work and they can't afford to get wasted and then have to get into a car and go to work...it's also an age thing and at the irresponsible age of 18-22 when american religious college kids are having a blast, here kids the age of american college kids (I'm talking DLs of course, not charedim) are in the army.
But here we are talking High School, however one is the outgrowth of the other. I've never heard of kids in any numbers "abusing kiddush wine" at shul except this story of Efrat. That's also not the kind of "drinking problem" most people are talking about , from what I know the Efrat "shabab" kids would go and buy a bottle of cheap Israeli brandy, they wouldn't even BE in shul in spite of the fact that they still have the kipa on their heads in their parents' home..
Table I'm surprised at what you write about religious boys going to a chiloni high school. That kind of thing went on here in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly among sefaradim, but today we see the opposite trend, the ones who are mesorati are sending their kids to dati leumi high schools. Are you sure you are talking about totally secular high schools? Because there is almost no where in the country where a regular dati makif - not a yeshiva tichonit - doesn't exist, so there is always an alternative to dorm yeshiva tichonit schools...and the hours in a place like Genogli in Yerushalayim are no different than at the local chiloni high school, no "hours and hours of gemoro" kind of stuff...so if they are frum why in the world would they go to a chiloni school unless they were on the way out already?
I do know a few boys like that. Boys from religious homes who used all sorts of excuses to get their parents to allow them to leave the local religious high school, usually in 11th grade when the megamot started (claiming for existence that they wanted to take 15 yechidot of computers and the local dati high school only allowed 5, the normal amount)...but in truth by 12th grade every single one of those boys had taken off his kipa and wasn't frum anymore and it turns out that basically they weren't frum for a long time and had only kept on the kipa because they were afraid of their parents.
So are those "religious boys"? Is what they do representative of the mainstream DL world? I really don't know.
chanchy, I think Efrat is a bit different because it's so heavily American. Which affects both the drinking culture, and the steps parents think are appropriate to try to stop it.
Not that drinking isn't an issue here, but it's not the same issue. I do think that many Israeli teens drink and even get drunk, but if you look at American-Israeli, Russian-Israeli and Israeli-Israel circles there still is a noticeable difference in the nature and degree of the problem.
Efrat was just an example.
A recent (few months ago) article in Makor Rishon was dedicated to the problem in regualr mainstream Israeli DL teen society, and judging from my teen siblings FB pages this is an actual problem.
This problem has leaked from immigrants (Russian and others) into all parts of society.
Israel is currently the second largest consumer (per capita) of vodka.
Like I said, it's also a question of the nature of the drinking problem. As freidasima is saying, how is drinking perceived. Not whether or not anybody does it, but who does it, what their position in the school social structure is, what part of society they belong to, what pressures are on the "good" kids, etc.
The fact that it's Efrat is relevant because you were saying that parents put a stop to alcohol at kiddush as if that was a sign of how severe the problem was. But I would guess that they came to that idea because they're American, not because of the severity of the problem necessarily.
I don't think consumption of vodka is a good indicator of anything. Drinking specifically vodka instead of tequila or beer doesn't mean people are more drunk here than elsewhere, just that they're more eastern European in their tastes (unsurprising). What about how many people have alcohol poisoning here per capita, how many drunk driving incidents there are per year broken down by segment of society, etc.
All this has nothing to do with my argument about supervising teens, BTW. I just think it's absurd to say that the drinking culture in Israeli DL circles is like that in America. Not that we have no issues, but it's still very different.
chanchy, you didn't need to take such extreme steps to get to page 74, you know.
I'm sorry
I've never been so far in a thread.
I meant the accidental quadruple posting and it was supposed to be funny. I guess it's my British sense of humour (with a u) again that I think everyone will understand.
chanchy, you didn't need to take such extreme steps to get to page 74, you know.
I'm sorry
I've never been so far in a thread.
I meant the accidental quadruple posting and it was supposed to be funny. I guess it's my British sense of humour (with a u) again that I think everyone will understand.
Everyone knows the Brits aren't funny
Chutzpah. Now you've managed to aoffend a whole new segment of people without the help of some of the more aggressive people on this thread.
The Brits have such a refined sense of humor that the upstarts from the colonies are just getting around to understanding and appreciating it. I, for one, appreciate it very much.
So now it's time to turn to Britain. All you Brits, ex-pat Brits and wanna be Brits, is there a drug problem among religious teens there? Do they need to be sent to camp to get away from it all?
An no one from America has answered my question regarding any drug or other substance abuse at camps and why then would that be better than keeping the kids home under parental guidance? Actually send a nice clean 9 year old off to camp and they could come back having learned to sniff glue. Isn't that where everyone learned all the things you weren't supposed to know? Like the birds and the bees, where to get racy magazines (I don't mean RACING I mean just what you think I mean) and all sorts of stuff...JUST BECAUSE YOUR PARENTS REALLY WERENT AROUND THERE AT CAMP and there was this illusion of "freedom" from so many normative things being in a different physical environment?
Seriously. Just to get us back on track here so that we can make 100 pages legitimately.
chanchy, you didn't need to take such extreme steps to get to page 74, you know.
I'm sorry
I've never been so far in a thread.
I meant the accidental quadruple posting and it was supposed to be funny. I guess it's my British sense of humour (with a u) again that I think everyone will understand.
Everyone knows the Brits aren't funny
Chutzpah. Now you've managed to aoffend a whole new segment of people without the help of some of the more aggressive people on this thread.
I'm 50% german so I might know a sense of humor if it bit me on the rear.
How can you actually bring yourself to admit that?
The Germans and the Swiss Germans are the most humourless bunch of pple I ever met. I think the Swiss girls at Sem used to really hate me because they found my humour way too strange ...
Why do all Yanks bring up Monty Python whenever anyone says "Britain"? I mean, it's funny and all that, but it's so old!!!!
The thing about us Brits (which is very funny considering I've now lived half my life outside the Old Country and probably wouldn't even recognise it anymore) is that we're innately funny anyway!
Yes just trying to figure out the accent has most Americans holding their sides in paroxysms of laughter.
Monty Python is a classic.
Black adder is a classic.
Upstairs Downstairs is a classic.
Are you being served is a classic.
Coronation street is boring as H$ll.
The Brits have such a refined sense of humor that the upstarts from the colonies are just getting around to understanding and appreciating it. I, for one, appreciate it very much.
So now it's time to turn to Britain. All you Brits, ex-pat Brits and wanna be Brits, is there a drug problem among religious teens there? Do they need to be sent to camp to get away from it all?
An no one from America has answered my question regarding any drug or other substance abuse at camps and why then would that be better than keeping the kids home under parental guidance? Actually send a nice clean 9 year old off to camp and they could come back having learned to sniff glue. Isn't that where everyone learned all the things you weren't supposed to know? Like the birds and the bees, where to get racy magazines (I don't mean RACING I mean just what you think I mean) and all sorts of stuff...JUST BECAUSE YOUR PARENTS REALLY WERENT AROUND THERE AT CAMP and there was this illusion of "freedom" from so many normative things being in a different physical environment?
Seriously. Just to get us back on track here so that we can make 100 pages legitimately.
Drug use at camp is generally confined to junior counselor and counselors on their days and nights off, at least to the best of my knowledge. Campers don't have enough money with them to buy drugs.
And not to break your heart, but smut magazines aren't doing all that well these days, with the ready availability of internet [filth].
Why do all Yanks bring up Monty Python whenever anyone says "Britain"? I mean, it's funny and all that, but it's so old!!!!
The thing about us Brits (which is very funny considering I've now lived half my life outside the Old Country and probably wouldn't even recognise it anymore) is that we're innately funny anyway!
I actually have hardly read any of the 74 pages on this thing but I'm quite bemused by its ever growing length! And I still don't understand why camp is making Tamiri ill as I never saw the original thread!
Table I'm surprised at what you write about religious boys going to a chiloni high school. That kind of thing went on here in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly among sefaradim, but today we see the opposite trend, the ones who are mesorati are sending their kids to dati leumi high schools. Are you sure you are talking about totally secular high schools? Because there is almost no where in the country where a regular dati makif - not a yeshiva tichonit - doesn't exist, so there is always an alternative to dorm yeshiva tichonit schools...and the hours in a place like Genogli in Yerushalayim are no different than at the local chiloni high school, no "hours and hours of gemoro" kind of stuff...so if they are frum why in the world would they go to a chiloni school unless they were on the way out already?
I do know a few boys like that. Boys from religious homes who used all sorts of excuses to get their parents to allow them to leave the local religious high school, usually in 11th grade when the megamot started (claiming for existence that they wanted to take 15 yechidot of computers and the local dati high school only allowed 5, the normal amount)...but in truth by 12th grade every single one of those boys had taken off his kipa and wasn't frum anymore and it turns out that basically they weren't frum for a long time and had only kept on the kipa because they were afraid of their parents.
So are those "religious boys"? Is what they do representative of the mainstream DL world? I really don't know.
There are many, many places in which a dati mekif does not exist. (They often have a yeshiva tichonit which is not a boarding school, but a yeshiva tichonit is often until 5:30, whereas secular schools finish by 2:30, on average).
And then in cities where you do have a dati mekif, it's often considered third class. All the 'good' kids go to the boarding schools or the yeshiva tichonit, leaving the 'problematic' or academically weak or almost OTD kids to go the dati mekif. Which means the mekif itself doesn't have a strong student population.
Of course this doesn't happen everywhere and I know of cities where the dati mekif is the best there is. But, sadly, there are also places (plural, not singular) like those I mentioned above. I know quite a few regular boys who decided to go to the local secular school because they wanted a good 5 pt bagrut but just didn't have the koach or desire to study gemarra till 5 every day. Or to spend their morning hrs studying gemarra, leaving physics for the 2 pm heat. And they didn't want to go to a dati mekif which had a 'loser' stigma. Some of these kids are really frum, some far less, but they all show up at the secular school with the kippa on their head and graduate with that kippa. What happens later I don't know.
FS, for some reason I never noticed these problems in summer camps. I don't know why. I went to frum, traditional, non Jewish camps (my was it fun for the food...) and it was MUCH cleaner than the equivalent school would be.
I do not think going so extreme as banning alcohol at kiddush is the way to go (for info, we don't drink ever, because we don't like).
Swiss German humour does exist... I just don't get it.
and it was supposed to be funny. I guess it's my British sense of humour (with a u) again that I think everyone will understand. 
