Brooklyn, NY – Stale cigarette smoke hangi ng in the air behind him, the sounds of weights clanging and billiard balls crashing in the background, Motti sits on a frayed couch in the heart of Flatbush one recent night and talks about what it is like — or was — to be an at-risk Jewish teenager.
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Now 17, he came to Brooklyn seven months ago from the Midwest, where he was failing at school and fighting at home. Here, he says, he lived with a member of his family, but was still lost, “chilling on the streets, doing drugs.”
That changed a few months ago, Motti (not his real name) says, when “a friend,” someone he’d hang out with wasting time, told him about Our Place, a drop-in center for teens, many from Orthodox backgrounds.
He came one night, one of the more than 5,000 troubled teens helped by the center in the last dozen years. And he kept coming back.
“Every night,” Motti says. Shooting a little pool, watching some TV, talking with the adult volunteers and teenage peers who hang around the center, down a flight of stairs, through an unmarked door on Avenue M, a business center of Brooklyn’s heavily Orthodox neighborhood.
The teens, mostly from Modern Orthodox and black-hat backgrounds, have the classic street look — garish T-shirts, jeans or cargo pants, suspicious eyes that give every visitor the once-over. Some of the boys are bareheaded; some wear stocking caps.
Were it not for Our Place, a 12-year-old independent institution under Orthodox auspices, “I’d be on the street,” Motti says.
Continue reading at The Jewish Week
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Watch below YouTube clip about Our Place a Brooklyn, NY org. helping frum runaway kids.
What is needed is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary program for these wayward, troubled teens. How is it that, as chronicled in the Wall Street Journal, well over 100,000 orthodox Jews head to hundreds of glatt kosher hotels for Pesach (to be entertained by rabbis, musicians, scholars in residence, etc), while programs like this flounder for lack of money?
Please call these kids – KIDS WITH HOPE – not kids at risk.
shouldnt be happening. If the schools have to hire the teachers they do, then they must be the ones to pay for this. Its the damage they cause
Our Place is “hope” Reb Chaim your amazing Ive watched you do the holy work for ten years keep strong
This story stings my heart. These children are OUR responsibility in every way. We have a duty to help them. Every one that is lost is the fault of ALL of us. Period.
My wife’s grandfather was homeless living in America in the ’20s. He came here with nothing and would take any bit of work he could find. He could not read or write in English. Over time, he went “off the derech” (to use a modern term). My wife’s OTHER grandfather met him on the street one day and they started talking. The story he told over to us was that he would see this homeless man sitting on a bench all day and would go talk to him. After months of their “park bench” chats, he told him about a job opening at the garment factory where he worked (somewhere near the Bialystocker shul). Not only did he take the job, but he found a life of Torah again by working alongside others and spending shabbos with friends. Needless to say, they both built beautiful families and their children were married… and so on.
Don’t ever think for one second that a person cannot be brought back, or that someone is lost for good. When you look at someone and think those things, YOU have failed twice over.
Harvey: you seem to know that it’s the teachers fault. I think it’s time for the schools to close up and have the parents do all the teaching. I’m sure we’ll see how much better of a job you’ll do. This way u also can’t complain about all that tuition money. Home school harvey!
IF WE CAN RAISE MILLIONS FOR RUBAHKIN WE CAN CERTAINLY HELP OUR PLACE LETS HELP THEM
We can’t blame anyone. Not the parents, not the school, not anyone, because we aren’t allowed to judge. But whatever happened, this is very very sad and it makes me cry…
Most of these “children”?are adults and should be responsible for their deeds. I don’t think that our whole society shall get down on our knees and shep nachas whenever these men do a small token mitzvha .
We always like to blame everybody for these kids problems and yes many of it is true. But when we go to shamayim we are not going to be asked why we didn’t solve more problems on these blogs, they are going to ask what you did to alleviate them.
As a wife of a man who has been very dedicated and committed to Our Place and made sacrifices on many levels for the boys over many years, I can personally attest to the sincere commitment, concern, care, goodness and incredible lengths that those in Our Place have gone to in order to help the boys. I can also attest to the unbelievable successes they have been blessed to experience along with the inevitable pains for when it may not have been enough in certain cases. I agree that blaming is not worthwhile and too simplistic. There is no doubt in my mind, that if ever there was a place and cause worth rallying our collective resources to try to save, this would be it. I don’t know what will be, Hashem should help and support anyone’s efforts. Thay’s all I can say.
#6 when our young men leave their homes at 6:30 in the morning to attend yeshiva and come home after 7:00 on an early day who else is to blame the yeshivas killed parental control and if you dont meet their image you are nothing more then waste
the elitism of our yeshivas and the shrinking tolerance is to blame its interesting we hear from the cause of the problem but we never hear from the children themselves because no one really cares we give lip service until it hits home
our lace is a blessing but at the same time good kids that go there could get messed up no your child talk to them not yell and if they change friends and attitudes good luck you are in for a ride.
2 things we have to do in regards to this issue.
1) We Must support our place.
2) We Must stop degrading other brothers (even not at risk) instead we must keep on giving everybody a good word. for who knows, he might just have had a really bad day in school at home, and the good word gives him the simchas hachayim, the will to go on in good ways!
I do know Reb Chaim, I also know Reb Yankel, They are truly amazing people! Really give our troubled brothers some warmth really working on them feeling good about something!
wow,old memories. i remember when it was alex sternberg’s karate school about 30 years ago.