The Ultra-Orthodox Summer Mission: Free Pizza, Snooker, and Even Trips

The average Israeli parent has no shortage of reasons to lose sleep during the long summer vacation. Recently, Channel 2 introduced a new nightmare to parents of teenagers, worse than any previous ones. If the myriad dangers facing teens today weren't enough, the channel reported that "quite a few teenagers have now found new friends, ultra-Orthodox ones. Some parents don't even know their kids are going to small rooms behind synagogues to talk with Baalei Tshuva who promise prizes and food to secular teenagers willing to listen to lectures."

Channel 2's reporters did not slack off in producing this piece. Instead of settling for a dry report on the new threat looming over teenagers during the hot, uneventful summer days, they apparently managed to infiltrate those "forbidden" meetings between ultra-Orthodox and secular youth. Thus, they could provide an inside view of how the 'dark mission' operates: "A look inside the room reveals the method: every two 14- and 15-year-old boys have one older yeshiva student mentoring them energetically and deepening their faith. Some, it turns out, didn't come to the yeshiva to strengthen themselves: 'There was cornflakes, desserts, and cola, and there was also a room with games, with snooker and PlayStation,' said one child who attended. The yeshiva students try to encourage the teenagers to bring their friends: 'We'll treat them, take them to restaurants, take them on trips.'"

How do these enthusiastic yeshiva students find the teenagers? According to Channel 2, the meetings often happen in malls, where yeshiva students "attach themselves to groups of youngsters", offering them pizza and burgers in exchange for learning Torah together. Further conspiracies involve bribes in the form of ice creams, fidget spinners, and drones, and sometimes even trips. Heaven forbid.

(Photo: shutterstock)

If all of this wasn't enough, it seems the reporter even managed to find a teenager who complained about an ultra-Orthodox man who taught them that according to the Torah, the punishment for Shabbat desecration is stoning, and another teenager whose mother intervened alarmingly after her son brought home undesired content, like the idea that everything is recorded in the Torah and known in advance, including disasters like the Holocaust.

Since we weren't present at any of these activities, it's impossible to state with full certainty that every ultra-Orthodox person engaging in summer activities to bring young hearts closer was indeed maximally wise. It can be stated with complete certainty that no such ultra-Orthodox person is a significant danger parents in Israel should fear, despite the panic tone of Channel 2.

Just a few weeks ago, a headline on one of the websites read slightly differently: "Drugs and Alcohol: The Dark Side of Summer Vacation." In this report, reporters joined police officers patrolling Tel Aviv at night and discovered drunk teenagers carrying drugs. The descriptions, to say the least, don't help parents sleep peacefully at night: "The next point in the patrol was Park Wolfson in the city. When the officers entered the area, they were met with jeers from local teenagers. Three teenagers who had just begun selection for elite IDF units were caught smoking a joint. During a search of their belongings, a pencil case with cannabis flowers and smoking equipment was found," the article noted. Further noted: "One resounding fact - marijuana was found in all encounters documented between the police and teenagers. In another encounter with a 16-year-old girl and the police in the Shikun Ha-Tikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv, marijuana was found among her possessions. In her friend's bag - hashish was also found."

This article, of course, doesn't reveal America to any Israeli parent in this country. The police haven't suddenly started patrolling the streets of Tel Aviv just out of the blue. Even before this year's summer vacation began, a conference of fifty commanders of municipal policing units took place to discuss thwarting juvenile 'quality of life' offenses. The reports presented at this meeting spoke of expected "parks and club areas filled with bored and drinking teenagers", as well as "preparations for brawls in clubs and violence in the promenade and port areas in Tel Aviv". And it's not just Tel Aviv: Jerusalem, Haifa, Ashdod, and Ashkelon were mentioned with concern, with specific 'alcohol points'.

For young children, summer vacation might be a pastoral time of sea and pool visits, amusement parks and zoos. But adults in Israel have long known that the summer break for average teenagers contains nothing pastoral. If you search Google for 'summer vacation' and 'teenagers', you'll soon reach the websites of lawyers advising parents on how to keep their child out of jail during the summer, with specific details about carrying knives, drinking alcohol, drug consumption, and online crime. Indeed, to the glory of the State of Israel.

When you remember all the real dangers lurking for teenagers during the summer vacation, when you understand how many parents wait with a trembling heart for their wandering child who doesn't answer the phone and uses their free time for getting drunk and brawling - an article trying to turn free pizza handouts into a hate crime seems like a new peak of absurdity. Yes, it's quite possible that some parents aren't particularly enthused about their child learning Gemara on their vacation. The question is what their alternatives are, and to how many parents free Gemara study and pizza seem more dangerous than aimless wandering in the streets at best and dangerous, illegal fun at worst.

In any case, for anyone still preferring their child to be engaged in hiding forbidden substances from police rather than studying Torah, there is always an easy solution: according to the Channel 2 report, all they need to do is offer their teenager pizza and a fidget spinner on the house. The rest will follow.