When you're a teenager trying to cope with conflicting
emotions, frustration, anger and a low self-image, it hurts
to call a crisis hotline. But, as one popular ad says, it
hurts more not to.
This is the dynamic that has turned Lev Shomea, a crisis
hotline for boys and girls in their teens run by Lev L'Achim,
into one of the fastest-growing operations of its kind in
Eretz Yisroel.
"In recent years, a lot has changed," says Rabbi Tzvi
Greenbaum, director of the hotline's boys division. "More
people are open to the idea of calling a crisis hotline. It's
more legitimate to speak to people like us. The period of
staying in the closet is over."
The hotline, set up five years ago on the advice of the
gedolim, receives more than 5,000 calls a year. Rabbi
Greenbaum says that on an average night, he and his 20-member
staff handle about 20 new callers. This is in addition to
dozens of ongoing cases.
What Rabbi Greenbaum doesn't tell you is that he and his
staff work a lot more than the evening shift. They devote
every spare moment -- from early in the morning to the wee
hours of night -- reaching out to kids on the fringe. Why?
They feel they have no choice; the need is just so great.
Call Me Tzvika
Lev L'Achim promotes the Lev Shomea hotline with ads in
religious newspapers, but its staff has found that most teens
hear about it through word of mouth.
"A boy who had been in contact with me for several months,"
says Rabbi Greenbaum, "said to me one night recently that he
thinks he doesn't need my help anymore. I was overjoyed to
hear this and then, right before we said good-bye for the
last time I asked him, `By the way, how did you hear about
us?'
"He told me that a friend of his noticed that he was looking
depressed. The friend wrote him a note: `I see that you're
not your usual self. I was feeling the same way a couple of
years ago. Here is the phone number of some people who helped
me. Call after eight p.m. and ask to speak to Tzvika. You'll
see -- you'll thank me.'"
The fact that the boy called Rabbi Greenbaum "Tzvika" is a
good indicator as to why Lev Shomea is succeeding.
Its caseworkers say they don't have any tricks up their
sleeves, nor are the telling the boys anything they haven't
already heard from their mashgichim and rosh yeshivas.
"I think what makes us unique," explains Rabbi Greenbaum, "is
not what we're saying, but how we say it. We use a
conversational style that puts the boys at ease and helps
them open up."
Everyone Has Problems
Rabbi Greenbaum is quick to concede, however, that making a
boy feel comfortable is just a starting point. The callers
are looking not for style but for substance, and they want
real answers.
"The first message we get across to a caller is that every
single person in the world has a problem," says Rabbi
Greenbaum. "Most people handle their problems on their own.
Some do it by resolving them, others try to ignore them,
others eat themselves alive and develop ulcers.
"So number one, we tell the boy that the fact that you have a
problem doesn't make you strange or different. On the
contrary, it's totally normal to have problems. You are not a
rosho for thinking those thoughts. It happens to
everyone. You just have to learn some basic tools that will
enable you to gain control over negative thoughts and then
you'll be fine. That's how we begin the relationship with the
boy. Most of them find it incredibly refreshing."
As a first step in building trust, this basic clarification
of how the boy should view himself in relation to society
goes a long way, Rabbi Greenbaum says. It opens the channels
of communication and makes the conversation flow.
After the trust-building stage, Lev Shomea staff members move
on to the all-important "let me get inside the boy's skin and
feel what life looks like from his perspective" stage in the
relationship. At no stage do staff members tell the boys what
they think they ought to do. The conversation remains adult-
adult throughout.
Staff members undergo training to resist the temptation to
shift into the parent-child mode and tell the boy a thing or
two. Instead, they focus their mental energy on gaining an
intimate understanding of what makes the boy tick and
isolating the real source of his problem by keeping him and
his feelings at the center of the conversations.
"Half the battle for the people who man our hotline,"
explains Rabbi Greenbaum, "is knowing what to say and what
not to say. There are some situations that have to be turned
over to professionals. The truth is that, in most cases, the
kids don't want to talk to professionals. They want to feel
that the person on the other end of the line is someone they
can relate to -- they want to hear him say, `When I was
bochur I also had some problems, let me tell you about
them.'"
Missing the `Why' of Yiddishkeit
After a teen has called the Lev Shomea hotline several times,
a Lev Shomea caseworker will attempt to set up a meeting with
the caller and help him on a personal, one-to-one basis. This
is where the caseworker really "talks" to the teen.
"When I meet a boy in person after having had a few telephone
discussions with him," says Rabbi Greenbaum, "I say to him,
`Look, let's wipe the slate clean. Let's forget about your
problems in the yeshiva for a second. Tell me what
Bereishis boro means to you. What do you think about
when you say Krias Shema? Tell me how you understand
Avraham Ovinu's message to the world. What does Shabbos mean
to you? Wouldn't you like to build a real connection with
Hakodosh Boruch Hu, not just a kesher built on
obligations and prohibitions?'
"Often, it's the first time anyone has ever spoken to him in
this way. Usually the problem is not one of academics. It's
not the `what' of Yiddishkeit that they're missing,
it's the `why.' "
According to Rabbi Greenbaum, most boys who call Lev Shomea
are missing what he calls "messarim pnimi'im shel
Yahadus -- the inner concepts of Yiddishkeit."
He explains that, while they understand the external
structure of the life their parents and teachers want them to
live, they often lack understanding of the overall purpose --
either because no one ever bothered to teach these concepts
to them, or because the concepts were taught by people whom
the boys perceived to be insufficiently sincere.
Rabbi Greenbaum is quick to point out that parents and
teachers are not always at fault, and he stresses that he is
against the present-day tendency to automatically place the
blame on the boy's parents and teachers.
Besides, he says, that's not the point. Lev Shomea does not
judge anyone -- its only objective is to provide crisis
assistance to boys who are going through a difficult period
in their lives.
And that is done by reintroducing the boys who call the
hotline to the fundamental principles of
Yiddishkeit.
But wouldn't one expect boys who spend as many as 14 years in
and around Torah learning to have at least a basic
understanding of the nuts and bolts of Yiddishkeit?
Not necessarily, says Rabbi Greenbaum.
"Most chinuch institutions teach the `what' of
religion -- the teitch of a posuk, the pshat
of a Mishna, the sikum of a sugya,"
he says. "Unfortunately, the old-style mechanchim
who teach the `why' together with the `what' are now few
and far between."
On the other hand, Rabbi Greenbaum says, Lev Shomea
caseworkers make it very clear to the boys that the yeshiva
system must remain unchanged -- it is first and foremost an
institution of academic excellence, just like the ones the
rabbonim of today attended in their youth.
"We have to be mekabel the tradition of Slobodka, of
Novardok, of Telshe," he says. "This is how the great
gedolim of the past transmitted the mesorah to
the next generation, and we must follow in their
footsteps."
According to Rabbi Greenbaum, the respect that Lev Shomea has
for the yeshiva system in general, and mashgichim and roshei
yeshiva in particular, is a major component of the hotline's
success.
"We act as a buffer between the boys who call and the
yeshivas they attend," he explains. "In order for us to be
able to walk this tightrope, we have to earn the respect and
trust of both sides."
He adds that only when a boy feels that he is missing the
fundamental messages of Yiddishkeit, which he should
have picked up along the way but evidently didn't, should an
outside group such as Lev Shomea step into what until
recently has been considered the yeshiva's domain and help
the boy gain chizuk.
"In the past, bochurim would pick up these basic
principles on their own," Rabbi Greenbaum says. "Today, more
often than not, it doesn't happen that way. Lev Shomea's
primary role is to fill this vacuum."
Siyata DeShmaya is the Key
Although the majority of cases Lev Shomea deals with have
happy endings, not all of them do. And those are the toughest
moments of all for the staff.
"It's a very hard moment when you realize you've lost a boy,"
says Rabbi Greenbaum, his voice catching a bit on the last
three words. "What do I do at such times? I daven for
the boy. I drive myself crazy thinking what I could have done
differently. I loose sleep. I try to convince myself that I
did everything in my power, and that if my kavonoh was
sincere, he will somehow come back to me one day and I'll get
a second chance.
"We see a lot of siyata deShmaya like that. Sometimes
you think you've lost a kid -- and then months later he calls
you up out of the blue and you get another crack at it."
What motivates Lev Shomea staff members to keep going, day in
and day out?
Rabbi Greenbaum laughs. "A psychologist will say that doctors
are attracted to medicine because they are afraid of death. I
guess the truism applies to me as well. I had a case in my
family. I helped the bochur and I discovered that I
have some of the tools needed in this kind of work. I want to
help others."
