Drinking on Purim

JERUSALEM – As the director of an organization that helps teens at high risk for self-destructive behavior, Caryn Green never has a stress-free day.

Still, some are harder than others, and Green is expecting the daylong holiday of Purim – which begins tonight in the U.S. and Sunday night here – to be one of them.

“Purim is a time when, according to Jewish tradition, it’s OK to drink till you’re oblivious,” Green, a transplanted Texan, says of the religious mandate to drink “until you cannot distinguish between Haman and Mordechai” – the holiday’s villain and hero, respectively.

“A lot of rabbis even tend to supply alcohol to their students or tell them to bring their own bottle. A kid told me last night that he thought it was OK to drink on Purim until you throw up because it’s just one time a year.”

Green’s counseling center in downtown Jerusalem works with nearly 1,000 troubled teens every year. She isn’t the only one concerned with the general upsurge of drug and alcohol use among Orthodox Jews, a community that once saw itself as almost immune to these problems.

“There has always been the belief that Jews drink less than members of other communities, and although historically this may be true, we still have a problem,” said Rabbi Tzvi Weinreb, executive vice president of the New York-based Orthodox Union).

Those who work with addicted Orthodox young people attribute the rise in substance abuse to several factors, including the community’s increased affluence and exposure to the secular world through television and the Internet.

“The pull of the street is very strong; the atmosphere is very strong,” says Rabbi Eitan Eckstein, founder of Retourno, an Israeli rehab center where 90 percent of the 80 in-house patients come from modern Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox homes.

Esther Ostroy, who facilitates the entry of overseas patients to Retourno, says foreign yeshiva (seminary) students with pre-existing problems find them exacerbated by an unfamiliar culture and newfound freedom in Israel.

“These kids are away from home for the first time. Their parents give them a cell phone and a credit card. But how many parents actually check the report to see exactly how their child is spending their money?” she says.

Weinreb says the denial started to end about 10 years ago when it became hard to ignore Jews overdosing during Purim and Simchat Torah, two holidays when alcohol is part of the celebrations.

He saw the scope of the problem firsthand while a rabbi in Baltimore, when a hospital chaplain presented emergency room intake records to area rabbis.

“It showed that half a dozen Orthodox teens, all males, had been treated for serious toxic reactions to alcohol on Simchat Torah,” Weinreb says. “One was in serious condition.

“That was a wake-up call for the Baltimore community and, later, in other communities.”

Orthodox leaders launched a campaign to convince parents, educators and rabbis that drug and alcohol abuse were real and widespread. Frank seminars were hosted at Yeshiva University, the premier seminary for Orthodox rabbis, and the Orthodox Union released several brutally candid letters admonishing parents and teachers to keep closer tabs on young people.

The OU also urged its 700 member synagogues to ban so-called Kiddush Clubs, where members leave Shabbat services and make the ritual blessing over the wine on hard alcohol.

“Kids have told us that seeing their parents drunk during the Kiddish Clubs encouraged them to drink,” Weinreb said. “Educators have told us the same thing.”

Between 80 and 100 OU synagogues now prohibit all alcohol consumption, says Rabbi Seven Burg, national director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, the OU’s youth movement.

“There are synagogues that bury their heads, and those that don’t, but there are some very courageous rabbis out there,” Burg says. “They use grape juice for kiddush rather than alcohol.”

A 20-year-old American yeshiva student who asked that his name not be published says he used to “get smashed” during Purim.

“In the yeshiva I attended the first year, the cool crowd drank until they passed out,” he says.

The student, who spends a lot of time at Crossroads, said his days of drug abuse are over and that he is dealing – slowly – with his alcohol problem.

“I realize now that Purim is a holy day,” he says, “and while it’s OK for a person to drink to be happy, everything needs to be done in moderation.”