Sex, Drugs and Trimmed Beards

Skeleton asks: “Have you ever noticed, that Hasidic rebellious teenagers, like secular teenagers, have no ambitions beyond scoring weed and women?”

The answer is two pronged but first; I find it disheartening that someone like Skeleton, a person very much capable of critical thought and inquiry before accepting dogma would not realize that her statement is seeped in the ignorant widespread belief of the Orthodox community, belief that if isn't intentionally misguided, still is necessary to keep their other beliefs intact.

It wouldn't be the first time I hear this statement, and while it isn't directly directed at me (not because I have never occasionally experimented weed, but because I'm not officially OTD, and am no longer a teenager), I take offense in the name of truth.

First, scoring weed and woman is not as frightening as they set it out to be. There's a strong biological drive for a healthy human to copulate – otherwise we wouldn't survive beyond the first generation. Weed, a recreational drug, less harmful and less addictive than alcohol isn't all that great it is made out to be by myth in the Chassidic yeshiva (“A drug that makes you forget all your problems – you feel as if you're in Gan Eden”), in fact I find it sickly and it induces paranoia and irrational scares. But some, arguably, take real pleasure in it, while others relish its sacredness, or illicitness. So, seeing someone actively perusing one the above and thinking what he would do otherwise, as a yeshiva bocher – had he stayed one, the conclusion must be “good for him”.

Yet, the generalization of the statement, the fact that most people within the confinement of the Chassidic ghetto think of all the OTD'ers as “drug addicts” has nothing to do with the real facts. It is just as valid as the statement concerning “secular” youngsters. While many are definitely not the scholarly type, not only secular kids, but most kids in general, including Chassidisher kids, there are countless brilliant kids who attend some of the greatest schools in this country. (Yes, most seek carnal pleasures in their spare time too, and there's nothing wrong with that.) And of course, there are some, if not many, young teenagers who believe that they will conquer the world, they will be the next Einstein, they will cure cancer, or reconcile science.

The make up of these kids in college is probably more than its share in Chassidsher yeshivos, only for the reason that teenagers who aren't interested in higher education in the secular world, for the most part, won't go to school. They have no shiduchim fear, or “past nisht” fear.

(After writing it up I get the feeling that Skeleton was kidding, and meant something that I must have missed – in which case I apologize.)