Staff members at Renfrew, where 12 percent of the patients are Jewish, said they noticed an uptick in Orthodox clients in recent years.

The main pressure, they said, is on the Jewish mother, who is responsible for keeping a kosher kitchen (a mammoth amount of work), providing a generous Sabbath dinner and dessert for not only her household, but various guests who wander in at any point during a Friday evening.
Jewish holidays are the worst, they said, as the amounts of food required take weeks to prepare. A woman’s worth often rests on the quality of her cuisine.

Well, I may not like it but there is a lot of truth to that last line.

The Orthodox Union got so concerned with this trend that it produced a film, “Hungry to be Heard,” warning viewers to watch for signs of these afflictions, particularly among teenage girls who feel their looks aren’t good enough.
In Orthodoxy, I was told by Adrienne Ressler, one of the panelists, the Orthodox girl wants to be chosen “by the best groom and by the best groom’s family.”
“So the pressure is to be very thin.”
In some cases, the prospective groom’s family not only wants to know the girl’s dress size, but that of her mother, so they can project what the potential bride will look like in 18 years.
“Sometimes, they put a girl’s health records online,” she said. “It’s like buying a horse. I think women can be silenced in that community. The eating disorder is the red flag.”

Many factors lead to eating disorders in the Orthodox community, and most of them are universal. I think the best thing mothers can do for their daughter is to exercise and eat wisely and share why it’s important. But when women talk about diets, and complain about the way they look, their daughters (and sons) get the message.

Related: Putting Food in Perspective (at Cooking Manager)

Teens, Sex and Eating Disorders: Interview with the Therapy Doc

Photo credit:Roland

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The other night I went to a talk at my daughter’s high school by Dr. Meyran Boniel-Nissim. Boniel-Nissim is a Haifa University researcher on teen internet usage  and its psycho-social connotations.

In the old days, teens had to get out of the house to get into trouble. Now they can do it from the comfort of their bedrooms. Parents think that as long as they know where their children are, everything is fine. But the reality is different.

Teens know more about cyber-space than adults. Only a handful of the hundred or so parents in the room had a Facebook acount. So they don’t come to us with their questions and problems. The anonymity of the net allows teens, especially girls, to try out different personalities on the anonymous net. And while teens may be reticent at home, according to Boniel-Nissim they all pour out their hearts to strangers online.

Parents don’t have a clue. In an Israeli study of 500 teens and their parents, each pair was asked about the teens’ internet behavior. 70% of teens described themselves as consumers of porn. Only a small percentage of the parents thought their children viewed porn.

Facebook is a popular site for teens. They want to appear popular, especially when they first join. So they are quick to accept friends, but they allow access to personal information. Impersonating a real-life friend by stealing a profile picture is easy too.

Some parents think they are safe because they have “friended” their children to keep an eye on their activities. But some teens have two accounts, one for show and one for their real activities.

We’ve all heard the stories of cyber-bullying and it has even led to suicide. A teen can wake up one morning to find epithets and unflattering pictures on her wall, and a friend count back at zero.

Teachers in the audience shared disturbing stories. In one case, students used a cellphone to take embarrassing pictures during gym class. Then they uploaded them to Facebook. Others made up a quiz, “Which [insert name of school] Teacher are You,” with multiple-choice questions based on  clothing and other personal quirks.

Boniel-Nissim considers cyber-violence to be equivalent to real-life abuse, and recommends reporting it to the police. Apparently it’s illegal to upload pictures without permission from the subject, and someone who refuses to take them down can be prosecuted. But that is a privacy issue, not cyber-violence. Hacking into computers, which is apparently common and easy, is also an issue of privacy and perhaps theft. It is certainly an attack and should be illegal, but I still can’t see it as the same as physical abuse.

Bullying, ostracism, embarrassing your classmates and making fun of your teachers have been with us long before the internet. It’s true that the public nature and speed of the internet take these cruel behaviors to a different level. But I am not sure what cyber-violence is, and how a judicial system could rule on it. You can’t hit someone via the internet. You can threaten someone with violence, but you can do that in the newspaper or by anonymous letter. So the same rules should apply.

I’ve asked Meyran, my newest Facebook friend, to respond with more examples. In the meantime, I’d like to hear your opinion:

• How is bullying different on the internet than in real life? At what point, if any, should it become a crime?
• Is there such a thing as cyber-violence?
• How do you help your teens to deal with all of this, if they are on the net?

Meyran is skeptical about internet filters because they can’t block one-on-one interaction, which is the main source of the difficulties.

Whether our kids are on the internet or not, there is only so much we can protect them. With teens there’s no substitute for communication, awareness, education, and setting limits.

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I had 3 sons when my oldest daughter was born. When the boys became teens everyone told me, “Just wait till your daughter reaches that age.” I was worried about mother/daughter issues,  clothing, boundary issues, surliness, rebellion. Now she is 12 and what I’ve gotten instead is sudden, unexplained, intense sadness,  usually in the evening hours.  It’s not every day, and I haven’t found a pattern. I’ve done blood tests and thank G-d all is fine.  In general she is a happy, friendly, busy, responsible, independent  kid.

Recently there have been social issues, which I assume is normal at this age, but nothing extreme. A lot of her friends have become interested in clothes, music, and other things that she’s not interested in. There seem to be cliques forming, and she has to refind her place.  I’ve been encouraging her to invite friends she has more in common with to sleep over, and that’s been helpful.

I am looking for advice in dealing with girls this age. Have others had similiar experiences, with sudden sadness and/or social issues and how have you have handled it? I’m not looking to solve her social issues for her, but to encourage her to find her own social circle.

Don’t you hate when more experienced parents tell you to “just wait until you get to the next stage”? Somehow, that never makes me feel better. Every child and age has its own challenges. If you have one child, you spend all of your energy worrying about the one. If you have ten, you divide up the worry among the ten but end up worrying an equal amount. And when a child is unhappy, it affects everyone in the family and usually the mother most of all.

I’ll share a story from when one of my children was about the same age as yours—it may or may not be helpful.  At the time the child spent hours lying on the sofa and complaining dramatically about how miserable he was. I was sure he needed psychological or even psychiatric help. When I described the situation in detail to a professional, she said he was doing it to get attention. Long-time readers know that I don’t usually like the idea of ignoring a child. If a child needs attention, I try to give it in a positive way. But the next time he came to me with all of his anxiety I  said a few sympathetic words and went back to what I was doing. After I did this a few times the long discussions ended and he became an even-tempered child again. Okay, that’s probably not true as he was still a teenager. But things did improve considerably.

I think that a teen’s emotions can be like a roller-coaster. If we’re not careful, we end up going along for the ride.

Insights or suggestions for this mother are welcome in the comments.

(Photo credit: *clarity*)

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His decisiveness surprised me. “How do you know my way is always right?” I asked. He smiled and said he’s lived with me long enough to know.

Even if there’s some truth to his comment, I have mixed feelings about it. I hope he won’t say it to his wife.

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Chaya Rosen is a young woman living in Israel. She recently published Backstage with CBC: The Chaverim Boys Choir Live (Targum Press), a book for religious preteens.

Each chapter of Chaverim describes a member of the fictional choir, the boy’s family situation and a personal challenge he encounters: One is under pressure to help his mother with his younger siblings, one loses his grandfather, and another recognizes an unpleasant truth about himself.

Rosen describes the feelings of the children as each one learns his lesson, and I think children will identify with them. The central character, choirmaster Daniel, holds the book together. But he is idealized too much for my taste.

When a sister is jealous of her brother’s participation in the choir no reason is stated, as it’s meant to be understood that Orthodox girls won’t sing publicly. Chaverim is published by Targum Press and has a specific audience in mind.

Each chapter begins with the names and ages of the children in the family, even those that don’t appear in the story. Since the author went to the trouble of choosing the names, I’ll comment on them. The oldest children in two of the families have secular names, while the rest have traditional Hebrew or Yiddish names. Are these families supposed to be baalei teshuva (religious returnees)?

A third family has two daughters named Orit and Basya. Now I’ve never heard of an Orit being called Oris, and it’s hard to imagine a family with a Basya even considering the Israeli name Orit. Orit is older, so maybe the family became ashkenazis, or ashkenazis American,  in the interim?  (The t in Orit and the s in Basya are the same letter in Hebrew; the pronunciation depends on the community.)

It’s clear that much effort went into writing and editing Chaverim. Sometimes you can see where Rosen tried too hard, like substituting for “said” too often. But Rosen’s talent and enthusiasm for her characters and stories shine through.

Chaya Rosen kindly answered my questions by email:

1. When did you get the idea to write a book of stories? I’ve wanted to be an author since I was little. I have been writing stories in notebooks for years now!
2. What kind of books do you like to read? Is there one in particular that inspired you? I really like to read pretty much everything! I have a nice collection of books, and I get library books every two weeks. There is no book that I can think of that especially inspired me, but I think that every book I’ve read (or article, or the back of a cereal box!) has inspired me in one way at least – in my writing, and in my day-to-day life.
3. What other interests do you have? I have lots of hobbies. I love acting, reading, and writing most of all, but I also enjoy drawing and singing. I like observing people, too!
4. When did you make aliyah? Can you tell us about your experience? We made Aliyah when I was nine years old. I remember it pretty clearly. I was very excited and looking forward to living in Eretz Yisrael. We’ve actually moved around many times. For the most part, I remember moving as something fun, exciting, like an adventure.
5. What made you decide to write about a boys’ choir? I was sitting in my bedroom about two years ago, reading. I had just received my first music CD of my own, ever – Miami Boys Choir’s “One By One”. Suddenly, at a particularly good solo, I looked up from my book and thought, “Hold on for a second, that’s a kid singing this. In order to sing it, he had to practice. But he also, obviously, has a family, and friends, and a life – and his own problems, too. In short, he’s a kid just like me. But on the other hand…he has to practice, perform, record…” The mixture between a “regular” kid and a “choir” kid intrigued me. I thought about it a lot. He was “famous” yet “normal”. He had concert tours, yet he had to do homework, too.

Finally I sat down and started to write. I wrote a forty-page story about a choir kid, but then it ended, and I got pretty upset it was over. I told my best friend that I enjoyed writing about choir kids so much – I wanted to continue. She answered calmly, “So write a book about choir kids!” The rest, as they say, is history.

6. What is your next project? I’ve written a few sequels to the book, but I don’t know if any of them will ever get published. In the meantime, I am working on a couple of new books with different characters and themes that I am enjoying writing.
7. I don’t think I would have had the guts to publish a book at your age. Has there been criticism of the book, and how have you handled that?
   For the most part, Baruch Hashem, the comments have been positive. After the book was published, a couple of technical mistakes were found. Well, that’s how we learn!
8. How long did it take from the time you seriously began to write until the book was published? I started the first story that I told you about before (the forty page one) about two years ago. I began the actual book that was published about a year and a half ago.
9. Any tips for aspiring authors, teenagers and others? Firstly, you have to trust in Hashem! I daven to him when I need ideas, and miraculously, an idea always appears – from the strangest places! And you have to read a lot. I love reading. You absolutely have to have a love for books, and words, and stories – and, I’ve discovered, of people and all of Hashem’s creation. I love creating my characters, thinking about them, wondering about them, talking to them. Sometimes I even dream about them. I enjoy describing the places that my characters go to, or live in. I like picturing my characters out of the book’s settings – I find that helps me get to know them. If I’m bored, or stuck in a doctor’s waiting room or something, I talk to them, wonder what they’d do if they were there. I’m always interested about everything going on. You have to keep your eyes and ears open – Hashem will always send you a good idea!
10. What kind of feedback have you gotten? Baruch Hashem, people have really been enjoying the book! My favorite feedback has been when people tell me they enjoy the realism of the characters – probably, because they feel so real to me!

Chaya, thank you for answering the questions and we wish you a lot of success.

Another talented young Jewish woman: The editor of Yaldah Magazine.

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Aaron was quoted today in the Wall Street Journal, in an article on poems about the economic downturn:

Wall Street bards are also writing about the economy’s victims. Aaron Katsman, a financial adviser, saw a panhandler on the New York City subway and penned “What’s a Dime?” a four-stanza poem about the encounter:

He’s probably just down on his luck,
What’s wrong if I give him a buck?
I’d help out a friend who is stuck,
Perhaps he won’t see me when I duck.

He posted the verse to his Web site and says “clients thought it was cute.” It also helped ease the tense conversations about frantic markets. “People don’t expect their licensed financial adviser to call up about the latest in iambic pentameter,” Mr. Katsman says.

I guess this shows that you have to branch out if you want to be noticed. You can find the whole thing here.

At the party, my teenage niece wanted to play a game she had learned at her father’s family’s party, so her mother and I made up the game boards. Each team gets a paper with nine numbered squares, with each square containing a word or phrase. The items in each team’s numbered squares match–i.e., they both fit into a particular category. For instance, if the category for square #1 is birds, Team A’s page will say Robin and Team B’s page will say Cardinal. The teams take turns guessing what is on the other team’s board–the winner is the first to fill in the terms in other team’s nine squares correctly. There’s no need to guess or name the category, but broader categories make the game harder. Our categories included gates of the Old City, first names of cousins (we chose siblings but no one realized–there are 22 cousins so far), and flowers. The kids, especially the teenagers, were completely engaged.

It can be hard to find games for mixed age groups–Mafia works well. I would love suggestions for next year.

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In the meantime:

Have you ever felt untzniusdik when wearing a stunning Shabbat or Yom Tov outfit on the street? Wolfish Musings and Parsha Blog have the solution.

Follow-up (Hebrew) to the Modiin Azrieli Mall “nursing in public” fiasco. The management changed its policy and claims to be reeducating staff on the subject. I don’t know why the article mentions that the mother making the complaint was religious. Hat tip: Nursing in the Negev.

Can you spot a nursing mother in this picture?

Lion of Zion refers to my post on the jailed teenagers, in the context of early marriage among Jews. He writes, “As an aside, I would like to know where all the Israeli/Jewish human rights advocates were while the (minor) settlerettes sat in jail.” I believe that Yitzchak Kadman, Israel’s best-known child advocate, did speak out on the subject at the time.

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Hat tip: Serandez

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According to Arutz 7:

The girls were held in jail for several weeks and were released after the courts caved in to public pressure. Soon after, the story of abuse and humiliation the girls experienced while incarcerated came out, including their being denied sleep, and stripped and searched for drugs in the presence of a male officer.

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The fact that they are still being held is an outrage and an embarrassment for the country. The girls should be released.

On the other side we have the parents, who could identify the girls and file a petition for their release. They have refused. In a Makor Rishon interview one mother said it would be like stabbing her daughter in the back. The parents have gotten together and agreed that the girls would be “hurt” and would get the feeling that the parents “don’t agree with their decisions.”

Parents should not let young teenage daughters fight the community’s ideological battles with jail time. Let the parents sit in jail instead (although one mother says that she’s proud of her daughter for her actions, as she could never sit in jail herself). They are not encouraging their children’s autonomy by subjecting them to prison. The parents’ job is to look at the big picture and get them out of jail, before there is any more psychological and (hopefully not any) physical damage. It’s possible to explain, even to teenagers, that you support their cause but that you cannot let them pay such a price, and that until they are 18 they cannot make such life-altering decisions without their parents’ consent.

In the religious community we discourage adult women from going into the army. How can we let 14-year-old girls sit in jail?

Either the parents are afraid of their teenagers’ reaction, or they believe so deeply in their cause that they are willing to sacrifice their children’s well-being to it.

My husband says I’m being too harsh on the parents, some of whom are still traumatized by the eviction from Gush Katif (the Jewish communities in Gaza). The article quotes a mother who said that the disengagement turned her daughter from a girl into a young woman who “needs to take responsibility because the adults failed.” My husband says this demonstrates a sense of failure on the part of the parents, who are pinning their hopes on the next generation.

My husband is right; I’m being too harsh on the parents. Because they are getting implicit or explicit support from many others in the community, including rabbis and political leaders, who should be telling the parents to do what they have to do to get those girls out of jail.

Update

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