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Grand River, East Lansing (810) 738.5291 (517) 333.4000 Next time you feed your face, think about your heat Go easy on your heart and start cutting back on foods that are high in saturated fat and cholesterol. The change'II do you good. „kt 1101 American Heart Association WE'RE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE S hlomo won't give his last name or even say which city he lives in. He doesn't want to go public and hurt his family, especially his father, a revered rabbi in Meah Shearim, the antiquarian, hare- di (Orthodox) quarter of Jerusalem. Nine years ago, when he was 16, Shlomo, then living and studying at a Meah Shearim yeshiva, began asking questions like, "If God created the universe, who created God?" He couldn't get an answer and was warned not to ask the questions. A year later, still attending yeshiva classes by day, he se- cretly rented a room for $50 a month in a non-haredi neigh- borhood of the capital. He made secular friends, began studying things he'd never studied before, like mathematics, science and lit- erature. In a gradual, wrenching process, he broke away from the black-robed, pious, closed world of Meah Shearim. "I thought I was the only per- son in the world who had ever done this," says Shlomo, who now works in a defense-related job, after having become an officer in an elite army combat unit, then attending college. But Shlomo isn't the only hare- di who has changed his life so radically. No one involved with ex-haredim can estimate how many there are. But Hillel, a pri- vate, volunteer organization that tries to ease their process, has guided about 100 young hared- im into mainstream Israeli so- ciety since it was founded four years ago. Many more make the transition on their own. Malcom Acher (A Different Place), a Tel Aviv shelter for runaway youths, has temporarily housed about 15 haredim this year. Hannah Cannon, a Jerusalem psychologist who has counseled about 25 haredim in transition, says only about 10 percent of them leave the community be- cause of a spiritual crisis. "A large proportion leave because they have terrible problems with their families — they're subjected to violence, and harsh pressure on them to study." Many complain of having had little contact with their families — they return home from yeshiva only for occasional Shab- bat weekends, then have no con- versation with their parents. "A lot of them have had ho- mosexual experiences at the yeshiva, or been exposed to or tempted by it, and they can't live with themselves. About half of them speak about this," Ms. Car- mon added. Safi Shabi, director of Makom Acher, says he found the same phenomenon, in the same proportion, at the shelter. Boys outnumber girls 5-1, says Sarit Barzilai, who is doing her doctoral dissertation on the sub- ject at Jerusalem's Hebrew Uni- versity. "The girls are at home, where their families can control them more, while the boys are away at yeshiva," she explained. Also, haredi girls are deterred be- cause they are taught to think of secular girls as "cheap whores," Ms. Barzilai added. A minority return to the hare- di world, like Shai Horowitz of Bnei Brak, who founded Hillel. Some become modern Orthodox. But most "go all the way" to sec- ularism, said Ms. Barzilai. The hardest part of their tran- sition is dealing with their fami- lies. "Some parents threaten to send them to an insane asylum, and use violence on them. They employ emotional blackmail, telling their children they're shortening their lives, sending them to their graves. They haul them off to be lectured to by teachers and rabbis. The ex- haredim are seen in their com- munity as aberrant, crazy," said Hillel spokesman Itai Nevo. After Shlomo went into the secular world, his parents didn't speak with him for a couple of years. Now about once a month and on holidays, he puts on a black yarmulke and visits his parents' home in Meah Shearim. "Our re- lations are good now, but there's a certain tension. We don't talk about what I did, and we don't discuss religion," he says. Hillel runs a telephone hotline, and when it feels sure the caller isn't having a temporary spat with his parents, and seriously wants to change his life, it brings him together with haredim who have made the break. They spend holidays and Shabbat weekends together to ease the doubting haredi's loneliness. A few of the more liberal haredi rabbis are engaged to mediate be- tween the youths and their fam- ilies. Psychological counseling is arranged, as are classes in basic education. Many are placed at various kibbutzim, including modern Orthodox kibbutzim, which pro- vides a safe, ordered environ- ment, and an "adoptive" kibbutz family to look after them. Most go from there into the anny. 7' \