Insight

JODIE KAUFMAN

Special to the Jewish News

y

ehuda Fine was living in
California in 1965, learning
how to grow grapes as he
prepared for aliya to Israel.
But he became involved in the plight
of migrant workers and their families.
He founded a school for them and an
alternative high school.
That experience inspired Fine to
earn a degree at the Ackerman Family
Institute and then to be ordained as a
rabbi at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin in New
York. That led to his founding the
Jewish Family Institute, but he
wanted even more direct involve-
ment in the lives of troubled
teenagers.
He found it by wandering the
streets of Manhattan once a
week, offering food, compassion
and friendship to teens who had
turned to running away, drugs,
violence and prostitution. The
work was satisfying and success-
ful, earning Fine the sobriquet of
"Times Square Rabbi."
After a decade, he stopped -
the work was too physically
demanding, he said — and
focused on working preemptively
with families to keep children
from being driven to the streets.
Now Rabbi Fine travels the
country, discussing issues like teen
violence and family communica-
tion. Cominp, to Detroit in June
to speak with parents at a National
Homeschooling Conference, he
told the Jewish News about his
experience and ideas.

YF : Kids get violent not from televi-
sion or from seeing or listening to
strange and weird music. Kids get into
trouble from getting deeply ignored,
becoming anonymous in their family,
anonymous in their peer group, and
suffering from the lack of love and
ability to express feelings.
People who grow up in violent soci-
ety, violent family life, they really suffer
from a lot of low self-esteem and they
think that the only way a lot of times
to express their needs, or get their
needs satisfied or get somebody to lis-
ten or to empower themselves over
somebody else, is to become violent.

JN: How do you encourage parents
to stop or prevent violent behavior?
YF : I help empower parents to re-
cement and re-establish their family
time by helping them get over a lot of
the hesitancy they have talking about
a lot of the really hot-button topics
kids are asking today, to re-engage
around their kids' lives. I help parents
understand that they don't have to be
perfect, they have to love and care.
I most of all stress to parents that
their children want them to be
involved in their family life today —
all teens want to know that. Second of
all, [teens want parents to share] their
values, including their mistakes,
how they face adversity, how
they deal with the struggles that
they have in their life.
If they don't learn the nuts
and bolts of transcending into
adulthood and see how their par-
ents deal with the world outside,
then who are they going to learn
it from?
Most of the teenagers today
don't have any adults in their life,
and it's my job to get the most
important adult, or adults — the
parent or parents — back in
their kids' lives.

`Times Square Rabbi'
Talks About
Kids, Violence

JN: Could the shootings at
Columbine High School in Colorado
have been prevented?
YF: A lot of these things can be poten-
daily prevented if we recognize that
children should not become anony-
mous. There were warnings; there were
signs; there were people that knew.
All you hear about in the media is
that we are going to sue a video game
company. We point the finger out-
ward. We are making a big mistake by
saying, 'Oh, it's the Internet or
Marilyn Manson.' We're going to miss
the whole thing, because the truth of
the matter is, it's none of those things.

JN: What is your philosophy about
violence coming from the home?

Rabbi Yehudah Fine

JN: How do you coerce troubled
youth to move away from violent
behavior?
YF : You can't coerce anybody to do
anything. Everybody has free choice and
free will. That is the nature of who we
are and how we are born in this world.
But it is possible to touch another
person's heart. You have to build trust.
Trust means you become more than
simply a reliable person. You have to
help kids who have come from very
difficult circumstances to learn to take
risks again; to learn to see themselves
as something, not as a nothing.
That takes a lot of love, compas-
sion, kindness and caring, and the
ability to be there for them in all
kinds of situations, any time of the
day and any time of the night.

JN: Is there anything in your
childhood that inspired you to
go out and help these kids?
YF: My father was an extraordi-
nary physician in Seattle and he
loved his parents ferociously.
I used to, as a little kid on the
way back from Hebrew school,
sit in the car while he made
rounds at peoples' homes visiting
patients. He was leaving the home in
the night, and I would lie awake and
hear the car start up.

JN: How did your spiritual Judaism
drive you to wanting to help children
and families?
YF : Anyone who sees any kind of suf-
fering in the world and feels that they
can do something about it has to lend
a hand, especially when it comes to
children.
The Torah boils down to one prin-
ciple: love your friends like you love
yourself. That is called the abiding
principle; that's good enough for me.
My job is to try as best I can to get as
close as I can so that I can encourage
people to take a risk and find them-
selves and be who they need to be.

Remember
When

From the pages of The Jewish News

for this week 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50
years ago.

1909

The Oakland County Probate
Court dropped the use of the term
"A.D." on its legal documents after
Phillip Applebaum wrote to corn-
plain about this "religious term"
being on government documents.
Israel deported eight Palestinians
to Lebanon on charges that they
were organizers of an uprising, now
in its 19th month.

19'79

Former U.S. Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger left Israel for
Jordan with a message from Premier
Menachem Begin to King Hussein,
urging him to join the peace talks.
North African Jewish musical
ensembles and dance groups joined
with Arab entertainers for the first
Jewish-Arab musical festival in Paris.

1969

A proposed merger between Beth
Hillel and Beth Abraham was turned
down by the Beth Hillel membership,
precipitating the resignation of eight
members of the Beth Hillel board.
Irving Herman of Oak Park was
appointed trust consultant on the
trust business relations staff of
Detroit Bank and Trust.

1959

Plans were made to transfer the
remains of writer Sholem Asch to
Israel.
All Jews in East Germany who
held official positions as government
officials, or had party posts or com-
missions in the East German National
People's Army, have been dismissed.

1949

The Israel consul general warned
people writing to residents of
Jewish sectors of Jerusalem to
address the mail "Jerusalem, Israel."
Letters marked "Jerusalem,
Palestine" will be delivered to the
Old City, which is in the hands of
the Arab Legion, and such mail will
not reach the addressees.
Harry C. LeVine was elected
president of Temple Israel at the -
annual meeting of the congregation.

7/2
19'

Detroit Jewish News 31

