Haircuts, Hearts, and Second Chances: What a 'Rebellious' Teen Is Really Worth

Rabbi Uri Zohar shlit"a recounted that at his grandson’s wedding—he studied at the Mir Yeshiva—the Rosh YeshivaRabbi Aryeh Finkel zatzal met him and said with great enthusiasm, "I really love your grandson—he’s honest."

Sensing it was an unusual reaction, Rabbi Zohar later told his grandson what the rabbi had said and asked why he had merited such closeness and warmth from the Rosh Yeshiva, and what that honesty was about. The grandson said: When I was learning in yeshiva, I once went up to the Rosh Yeshiva and told him openly: "I have a problem—I think about girls all day..."

The great gaon, Rabbi Aryeh Finkel, replied immediately: "Me too! Now let’s think together about what to do!..."

"That response, which radiated acceptance and raised my self-worth, because the rabbi was revealing a ‘secret’ of his to me and even ‘consulting’ with me about what we could do," the grandson said, "won me over. From then on, we became very close, and I opened up to receive from him and to hear anything from him and his Torah."

A modern-day update to the Hindik tale we’ve merited to see in our generation, this story underlines how crucial joining with someone and elevating their self-image can be—a kind of universal medicine to spark a positive, forward-moving process.

It All Starts in the Head!

For years I wondered why one of the clearest signs of rebellion in a teen who is openly dropping out shows up as a different, even odd, haircut—the kind that often sparks friction at home and with the system.

Once, I mustered the courage to ask the teen sitting across from me that question, plainly and honestly.

The answer I heard stunned me for a long time: "You rabbis always claim you don’t care about the outside—only the inside. So here you go... Let’s see if what interests you now is just my haircut, or if you also know how to look at my inner self!"

I discovered that—at least for the teen in front of me—the haircut was a last cry for help. "Save me from myself." Help me find my inner self within all the knots and confusion around me. Prove to me you love me and see me beyond the ‘mask’ I put on...

One of the central challenges we usually see in teens who are further along the path of drifting is their self-image and self-perception.

The problem doesn’t start with the haircut—it starts in the head.

So before anything else, it’s worth clarifying for ourselves what the Torah’s stance is toward people in their situation. That way, it becomes easier to pass that message along, to help them recognize the real, essential inner point that exists within them, within us, and within everyone—beyond the loud, popular stereotypes.

The Real Worth of a "Yisrael she-chata"

The Gemara in Sanhedrin (44a) teaches that every Jew—even if he has sinned—"remains a Jew". It likens this to how people speak about a hadas (myrtle) found among thorns: it still retains its name in the world; it’s still called a hadas. This Gemara is the source that there is inherent value even in a Jew who has deteriorated and sinned.

The novelty of the parable is that we don’t say he himself has become contaminated or filthy; rather, it’s all external (the thorns are around him). He himself remains whole—like the beauty of the hadas that remains, at its core, a hadas as at the start—while the thorns are around it. (Notably, the Gemara didn’t bring a parable of, say, an apple that rotted.)

This point is vital when working with a teen who’s drifting—and as our own first, personal stance: separating the teen—who is entirely good—from his deeds, which are often not good.

We must make a clear distinction—in our heads too—between the teen and his actions, as in "yitamu chataʸim" (let sins cease) and not "yitamu chotʸim" (let sinners cease).

In the Gemara in tractate Arakhin we find two categories of consecrations: "erki alai" and "dami alai".

The difference is that an "erech" is a fixed value set by the Torah (based on age). Between ages 20 and 60, a person has the same set value—righteous or wicked, attractive or unattractive, and so on.

By contrast, with "dami alai" we assess a person’s individual market value. One slave polishes diamonds and is worth a great deal; another sweeps stairwells.

Human worth, broadly speaking, includes both dimensions.

There is a basic value of a "Yisrael shalem" that (almost) everyone has—"Kol Yisrael yesh lahem chelek"—and it remains always, even in a Jew who has sinned.

At the same time, of course there’s another dimension—a difference in personal work—that’s valued differently. The work of a righteous person is not the same as that of a wicked one. But that’s an entirely separate, additional assessment of outcomes, personal to each individual.

In Parashat Ki Tisa we see something similar with the "machatzit ha-shekel"—a uniform contribution shared by all. No one could give more or less than that half-shekel, and that money went specifically for building the sockets—the foundation. This teaches that the foundation is uniform and shared by all, and remains in every situation.

Beyond that, each person donated "according to the generosity of his heart" and according to his ability toward building the Mishkan, in a non-uniform way—again teaching that while the foundation, the basic worth of every Jew, is the same for all (which is why a "Jew who has sinned" still remains a Jew), there’s another, entirely different layer where each person can be more or less—the practical, outcome level of what’s required and what emerges from the person.

Outside the Lines

One of the biggest problems in drifting, as noted, begins in the head.

A boy who has crossed certain lines and sinned imagines he’s already outside the boundaries—that he’s gone so far he has reached the point of no return, beyond the normative consensus he grew up with socially or in his family. That he has changed, and from here there’s no way back—only further decline.

There are also cultural facets. In very broad strokes, one might think that a more Sephardi-leaning culture shows greater openness to difference. It wouldn’t be unusual to see that diversity in the synagogue or in many families; the warmth and closeness can help keep a drifting teen feeling more "normal."

By contrast, a more Ashkenazi-leaning approach will, more often than not, instinctively distance and restrict a teen who looks and acts differently—so he doesn’t "spoil" the other siblings, or worse, so he doesn’t harm the family’s image and the siblings’ shidduchim. There can be an element here that’s positive too: clear boundaries can sometimes keep a teen from dropping out further and help him stabilize later—knowing he won’t be accepted in this state—unlike what might happen in a typical Sephardi home.

There’s criticism today of that colder, stricter approach, and even there the winds are changing in many places.

This week a friend told me a story: A man—father to two drifting sons—matched one of his other children with a very prominent, well-regarded family. He couldn’t understand how the future mechutan agreed to a match with such a "case", but he was afraid to ask during the engagement...

At the wedding, when the perfect moment came, he gathered his courage and asked the mechutan straight: "You saw I have two sons who, unfortunately, left the path?" The mechutan answered: "I saw."

"And you weren’t afraid?" the man pressed.

"I was very afraid," replied the mechutan. "That’s exactly why I went to ask the advice of the Gaon R. A.Y.L. (HaGraI"L) Shteinman zatzal... and he told me: ‘That there are two sons who, unfortunately, left the path—that’s not awful; this generation is hard... But I suggest you check whether they keep in touch with them—and how. If they know how to receive them with love—go ahead and make the match!..."

Torn Inside

A teen who drifts feels torn inside. He’s already carrying the weight of one big experience of failure.

He isn’t as good at Gemara as his little brother, whom the parents praise every Shabbat. He can’t even function at school or in yeshiva like his younger siblings, and he’s constantly scolded by rabbis and teachers, disappointing his beloved parents again and again, hearing the worried whispers from his grandparents—and the truth? He’s the most disappointed in himself, and in the friends around him, the topics that come up and the things they do together.

(צילום: shutterstock)

He isn’t at peace with any of it, and it doesn’t feel good. He lives in painful contradiction and dissonance, and at some point he thinks that if he throws off the yoke on one side pulling at him—the side that’s easy to shed and that he "hates" so much right now—it’ll be easier. Maybe then life will feel better? A short trial run even shows him he’s getting reinforcement from the negative crowd, and for the first time he feels he has "found his place"—and at least in one thing he excels: acting out.

Feeling different and out of place, he thinks he has already created a tear that can’t be mended. But the truth he needs to hear right now—his guiding light—is that a Jew who has sinned is like a hadas.

Yes, there are thorns around him, and his natural environment has changed—but it’s all external, like a peel. He isn’t rotten inside, because one cannot rot out of the status of being a Jewish Israelite. A Jew remains a Jew at the core. It’s only his surroundings that have turned to thorns. These are just peels that can be peeled away in the light of his inner "I"—that self which sometimes bursts out for mere minutes in a moment of spiritual elevation on Yom Kippur—and whose essence is unaffected. We have to believe in him—that he will yet find the strength and reconnect to that inner "I."

The Midrash teaches that Israel are likened to an egoz. Just as an egoz can fall into mud and what’s inside doesn’t become loathsome, so too Israel can be exiled among the nations and suffer many blows, yet their deeds don’t become loathsome. Again we see that the mixture of bad with good is merely external—the hard shell of the egoz. It has no foothold, no access to the inner nut, which is filled with goodness. So too, external influence on a Jew is only "external"; deep in his heart, a Jew remains a Jew, whoever he is.

In most cases, what drifting teens lack most is will. Until they reach their own emotional maturity, they are considered anusim in every respect. There’s no place for additional, alienating "religious coercion," no place for guilt-tripping—there’s a lot of room for patience, trust, and faith.

Except for "Acher" (?)

Alongside all this—that any sinner remains equally valuable—there’s a highly unusual, extreme case we must examine as the exception: the story of Elisha ben Avuya, "Acher," in the Gemara (Chagigah 15a). It seems to contradict everything we’ve seen so far, and we especially need to clarify the reason for that difference.

Elisha ben Avuya’s starting point is unimaginable: he was a Tanna—and not just any Tanna, but one who entered and exited the "pardes" safely, as it says there: he invoked the explicit name of an angel and was assisted by it. Even after he studied and then left the path, Rabbi Meir would still walk after him on foot on Shabbat, while "Acher" rode on a donkey and publicly desecrated Shabbat. Rabbi Meir argued that it was "pikuach nefesh" for the Torah world to lose Elisha’s Torah—that no one else at his level could teach him such Torah—and that it was his life; he simply had no choice.

When "Acher" reached the edge of the techum Shabbat and told Rabbi Meir to turn back lest he cross the boundary, Rabbi Meir kept trying to persuade him to return from the path he had taken—as related there in the Gemara. Elisha replied that he had already heard, from behind the curtain, "Return, wayward children—except for Acher", meaning that he had no remedy.

Rabbi Meir persisted and insisted that children recite verses for them (a "small prophecy"). Each child cited a harsher verse than the last (one implying the damage was external, another that it was internal), and this went on in thirteen synagogues, until the last child rendered the final blow: "And to the wicked, said Hashem..."—a final expulsion by Hashem.

The Gemara explains that the child stuttered, and Elisha heard (a kind of Freudian slip) not "to the wicked"—but "to Elisha, said Hashem..." According to one version in the Gemara, Elisha rose in fury and murdered that child.

What do we see from this?

A fundamental contradiction—a confusion in self-image and self-perception.

On the one hand, from his reaction we see that even though he himself had said he heard a heavenly decree, still, when he heard it from someone else (the child), he raged—perhaps to the point of murder. Because even when a person says the worst about himself, deep inside he leaves a small door of faith in himself—that he can still return in teshuvah. He wants to hear that from someone else, too, to affirm and strengthen it in him. When he hears the same thing from someone else, it sounds more definitive—sealing his fate—and it triggers a brutal, uncontrollable outburst.

On the other hand, why did Acher hear "to Elisha" instead of "to the wicked"? Because that’s what fit what he wanted to hear! That he had no chance. That he was a "victim."

People hear what they want to hear. He wanted to be "Acher"—and therefore, when the heavenly voice said "except for Acher," he decided and defined himself as that very "Acher".

He himself turned himself into the Other, driven by the extreme belief that he was exceptional, different, beyond repair. He deliberately did this to himself—hearing it everywhere—to seal his own fate.

But in truth, for every single person, wherever he is and whatever he has done, when he sins, the call is "Return, wayward children"—except for one who sees himself as "Acher"—as different, as someone beyond hope. For anyone who wants to and believes in his own repair, no matter where he finds himself or how far he has gone, he is still that clean, beautiful hadas. All the muck and thorns are only on the outside.

The Strength to Shed and Renew

Our parasha is the root of all the souls of Israel who stood at Mount Sinai—the core that binds every Jew to the root of his soul, to himself, and to his potential. And so too the divine promise in this parasha: "And I carried you on eagles’ wings."

The defender of Israel, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, explains in his Kedushat Levi: "The eagle (nesher) is so called because, from time to time, all its feathers fall (noshrim) and regrow anew. And this power Hashem gave to Israel at the giving of the Torah: even if one falls into sin, God forbid, he can still renew himself like an eagle..."

This power exists not only in the "nesharim" (eagles) but also in the "noshrim" (those who have fallen).

We have the ability to guide them and help them renew their strengths, to help them learn about themselves, to change how they see themselves—for the better—to learn from their stumbles and failures and channel them onto a path of success and growth, with Hashem’s help.

Rabbi Avi Avraham is a counselor and therapist, director of the Koma Center for Advancement and Empowerment.