Cross currents has a review of the book Flipping Out by my good friend Steve Brizel. It deals with what happens to young people who go to Yeshivos in Israel for a year or two after high school. Flipping out usually means that their children have become too religious… rejecting the values and/or lifestyle they had before they left.
I have not read the book and was very interested in what it had to say. Now I know. Based on his article, it seems like the year spent there is all good. It is all about growth in Judaism and thereby the increased commitment to it. I think that’s probably true. The year in Israel is transformative for most students. They go to Israel with ‘a head full of mush’ (to quote John Houseman’s famous line in the movie The Paper Chase) and return more idealistic and committed than when they left. Or to put it another way, they come back more religious. I think that’s right. The experience I had with my own children bears this out.
But if this is all the book says, I think they are missing a key factor that gave rise to the very term ‘flipping out’. I agree that the term is often misapplied. As Mr. Brizel pointed out from one of the authors:
Dr.Waxman also notes that what many consider as “chumra” is really a more stringent practice than what one had been previously practicing publicly or privately.
I’m sure that’s true in most cases and that this is misinterpreted by many parents. The misinterpretation happens in families where commitment to Orthodoxy is what I like to call Modern Orthodox-Lite. These are observant Jews who are either Jewishly under-edcuated and/or don’t care all that much about that fact. Their observance is more sociological than religious in nature. These are parents who are more modern than Orthodox.
Unfortunately much of the modern Orthodoxy is like that. To such parents it is a defeat for them if a child comes back from Israel in any way changed more religiously. If for example a child changes his plans to attend an Ivy League college in favor of a Yeshiva University or a Ner Israel or just entirely rejects college, from their perspective their child has flipped out. The values they learned in the home if not entirely rejected have become subordinate to the values they picked up in Israel.
From the perspective of someone who takes his Judaism more seriously however, they are not seen as flipping out at all but merely as becoming more committed!
The truth is that flipping out is relative to the kind of background one comes from. It really isn’t fair to characterize it any other way.
But what about families that do take their Judaism seriously? What about the right wing modern Orthodox or the ultra Orthodox? Do they ever see their children flipping out? I think that the answer is yes in many cases.
What if a child goes from being a right wing modern orthodox Jew who has a high commitment to his Judaism and becomes a Charedi? What about a moderate Charedi whose child becomes an extreme Charedi? I know both kinds of families where this has taken place.
A moderate Charedi family who sent their child to Charedi Yeshiovs and Beis Yaakovs and basically supports the Charedi world view, might still want his son to have Parnassa. And to that extent to attend a college like Touro. If that son ends up in Brisk or Lakewood eschewing college completely, is that flipping out?
When a Charedi parent sees his son coming back from Israel and deciding that a life of learning Torah is for him… when before he had plans to at some point go to college to learn a profession and now completely rejects that, I think that might be seen by a moderate Charedi family as flipping out.
I’m not saying that learning isn’t a value to moderate Charedim. Of course it is. But most of them want their children to be able to make a living at some point.
What about a right wing modern Orthodox family that seriously values Torah and Mitzvos but also values college and western culture. How do they look at a child who decides to chuck college and either stay in Israel or go to a very right wing Yeshiva in America that blasts all the values they were taught in the home. Would that not be considered flipping out? I think it would.
If the book does not address these issues it has only done half of its job. It has only looked at the good and not the bad. There are usually two sides to every coin.
Based on Mr. Brizel’s review I don’t think that this book addresses these issues. And they deserve addressing. The phenomenon of ‘moving to the right’ most is definitely influenced by the year in Israel. In far too many cases the indoctrination they get from many of the institutions and their Rebbeim during their year in Israel is far different from what they have gotten at home.
If they come back much Frummer than they left it can be more than just a better appreciation for Torah learning and Mitzvah observance. It can be a rejection of the ideology of one’s parents and the embracing of the ideology of their charismatic Rebbeim in Israel.
There are very Charedi Yeshivos that cater to modern Orthodox students. And in some cases they slowly but surely try wean them away form the Hashkafos of their parents and indoctrinate them to their own. And parents often don’t realize that until it is too late.
The best example of that kind of indoctrination is an incident that I wrote about a while back. It was related to be by a former student of such a Yeshiva. The charismatic Rosh HaYeshiva called the students together to speak about the comments made by the Rosh HaYeshiva of Gush, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein.
Rav Lichtenstein is very favorably disposed to secular studies. He had publicly written that his knowledge of English literature had helped him understand certain portions of the bible much better than if had he not studied them.
That Charedi Rosh HaYeshiva had heard a corrupted version of what Rav Lichtenstein had written. He wasn’t going to allow his students to be influenced with that kind of Hashkafa for even one moment. So he called an assembly of his entire Yeshiva together just so he could condemn what Rav Lichtenstein said. Though he did not mention him by name he said the following. Not only does that Rosh Yeshiva not know Tosephos, he does not even know Shaekespeare. Those young men who came to that Yeshiva with a head full of mush just ate that up unquestioningly!
That my friends is flipping out in my book. One cannot deny that a form of indoctrination takes place in some institutions that recruit in modern orthodox environments.
The bottom line is the following. The year in Israel is an inspiring experience to most students. There is growth in their seriousness about the Torah and their commitment to it. But commitment isn’t the only thing that is going on in some places.
