Praise them! --- So the idea that praise or lack of it alone can help your child succeed is overblown. Instead, the Cornell University child psychologist Kenneth Barish insists that the real problem is criticism. ‘I have met many discouraged, angry, and unhappy children. I have met demoralised kids who were unable to sustain effort when they encountered even mild frustration or disappointment, and others who had developed attitudes of entitlement. And the culprit is not praise, but criticism. Most of these children were over-criticised; very few were overpraised.’

Everyone thinks that too much praise can turn children into entitled monsters but the science isn’t nearly that simple...

In praise of praise.

How much should we praise children?

When I took my son to visit my parents in South Carolina six months ago, my father yelled out ‘Good job!’ after I finished rinsing some dishes one night. It was a running joke at my expense – I had earlier exclaimed ‘Good job!’ when my son ate a handful of blueberries, and then again later that evening when he leaned forward and, after a brief struggle, pulled off his own sock. He was eighteen months old at the time.

Sure, I knew the drill: Generation Y had been turned into a challenged group of narcissists and entitled praise-junkies by parents who called them proto-Picassos and Einsteins. So what? I bestow a lot of praise on my child and I’m not ashamed. I’m proud to point out how talented he is when he bangs away on his mini-bongos or scribbles on the walls with his crayons. I want to express my genuine delight and affection for my toddler as he makes his tiny strides forward. My own parents rolling their eyes won’t stop me.

What do we really know about praise? Some findings and a dollop of advice come from the biological anthropologist Gwen Dewar’s Parenting Science, a website for people like me: when we praise children for ability rather than effort they come to view talent and intelligence as givens, not skills to be cultivated and learned. Insincere praise could send the message that parents don’t understand their child. And praise that merely casts a judgment –‘Good job!’– is less effective than specific compliments pointing out what the child has done right.

Over-praising children (You’re amazing!) can make them feel your standards are very high, causing the fear that they won’t be able to keep living up to them, say the psychologists Jennifer Henderlong Corpus of Reed College and Mark Lepper of Stanford. Praising them for easy tasks can make children suspect that you are dumb (don’t you know how easy this is?) or that you think they are dumb. Here’s an especially tricky finding: praising them for things they naturally enjoy can backfire if you do it too much, sapping motivation instead of urging the child on.

Doing it all wrong, I was a worthy recipient of this self-professed rant by the University of San Francisco psychologist Jim Taylor: ‘Good job? Well, it’s lazy praise, it’s worthless praise, it’s harmful praise… If you’re going to be lazy with your praise, at least say Good effort! because it focuses them on what they did to do a good job… The reality is that children don’t need to be told Good job! when they have done something well; it’s self-evident… Particularly with young children, you don’t need to praise them at all.’

But were the praise critics right? The first wrinkle in such harsh critiques is that praise affects small kids and big kids differently. For instance, a 2007 study led by Paul Hastings, now at the University of California, Davis, found that parents who praise their preschoolers for good manners have kids with better social skills, contradicting Taylor’s belief that preschoolers don’t need praise at all.

Another study, published in 1997 and led by Sue Kelley at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, found that two-year-olds who were encouraged by their mothers to explore on their own in a lab experiment were more independent a year later than those whose mothers didn’t praise them in the first study.


As for effusive overpraising, Ellen Winner of Boston College and others have found that younger children (under the age of seven or so) are not sophisticated enough to doubt a mother or father’s sincerity, meaning they likely wouldn’t run into the ‘too-high standards’ problem that older kids might.

The second wrinkle in the anti-praise argument is more nuanced and difficult to grasp. A study published this year from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and led by Eddie Brummelman, a PhD candidate in developmental psychology, shows that, indeed, overpraise (That’s incredibly beautiful! versus That’s nice!) can be harmful for children with low-esteem, but be helpful for those with high self-esteem.

Children with high self-esteem who received inflated praise were more likely to choose the challenging task.

First, the study confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that parents would be more likely to overpraise children with low self-esteem than those with high self-esteem. Then they had children between the ages of eight and 12, all previously rated for self-esteem, visit an art museum. The children were asked to paint pictures, which were then critiqued by a supposed ‘professional painter’. As a final step, they were asked whether they wanted to attempt a second, more difficult drawing exercise or a relatively easy one. All children receiving inflated praise viewed that praise as sincere, regardless of their level of self-esteem. Yet as predicted, children with low self-esteem who received inflated praise were less likely to accept the difficult challenge than their counterparts who received non-inflated praise. On the other hand, children with high self-esteem who received inflated praise were more likely to choose the challenging task than their counterparts who received non-inflated praise.

It makes sense, since people with high self-esteem are generally self-promoting and seek out situations to demonstrate their abilities, while those with low self-esteem are afraid of failure and avoid situations that might reveal their worthlessness.

The authors write: ‘Thus, inflated praise can cause children with low self-esteem to avoid crucial learning experiences – a process that may eventually undermine their learning and performance.’ Here’s the complicated flip-side, though: ‘Non-inflated praise may reduce fear of failure for children with low self-esteem and thus foster their challenge-seeking, but it might fail to provide sufficient impetus to seek challenges for children with high self-esteem.’

Yet do parents really know whether their children have low or high self-esteem? If not, should they get an assessment, and add or subtract flattering adjectives accordingly? I certainly don’t know how my two-year-old feels about himself, and for good reason. The authors write: ‘Although young children have a rudimentary sense of “goodness” or “badness”, only from late childhood can children form and express self-esteem.’ If my son is merely able to form a concept of either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, I’m glad I’ve been praising him so much… perhaps I’m now fostering the self-esteem that, later on, such tests will measure.

I posed the possibility to Brummelman. He said that this experiment hadn’t been done, but he tended to agree, speculating that ‘inflated praise might not be harmful and could even be helpful in early childhood because young children typically hold unrealistically positive expectations for future performance. When they receive inflated praise, they might perhaps feel able to meet the high standards set for them, and thus seek more challenges.’

So my son likely has positive expectations for future performance – good! I hope he continues along those lines. I myself took another path: once I left my parents’ house for college, my cheeks would start burning as soon as I raised my hand to speak in class. So I didn’t raise it much. The blushing continued when bosses addressed me directly throughout my 20s. I wish I’d had better self-esteem. I’ve known people whose confidence has outstripped their knowledge or intelligence, and I’m not sure that it’s really hurt them in life. A study led last year by Jessica Kennedy, then at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, found that people who project confidence, even when they don’t perform well at the task in question, are perceived by others to be skilled and also of higher social status on average. Some complain that too many people are overconfident these days, but it seems to be working for them.

‘The child determines how parents behave. There is a complex feedback loop in which biology and behaviour are intertwined’

I’m also not convinced that the source of my self-esteem deficit was anything my parents did or didn’t do. So why should I fear ruining my son? Other adults are raising him too, as well as other children and peers, plus he’s raising himself, and all of this is occurring in a world in constant flux.

And here’s where the third wrinkle in the anti-praise argument appears: worrying about one’s own behaviour as a parent reflects a misunderstanding about the many influences at work on a child’s development. Parenting is a two-way dynamic, one influenced by the environment and genes of both the parent and the child. In fact, a meta-study by Ashlea Klahr and colleagues at Michigan State University published in Psychological Bulletin in 2014 found that genetic influences account for anywhere from 23 per cent to 40 per cent of the variance among three basic measures of parenting behaviours: warmth, control, and negativity, each associated with such future outcomes as antisocial behaviour, anxiety, and substance abuse. Warmth, as you’d imagine, is a big predictor of good outcomes (lower rates of behavioural problems, anxiety or depression, and more academic readiness and success) and includes verbal expression of affection. This is some of the strongest evidence yet that genes play a big role in parenting behaviour and in the child that results.

Most striking, however, was the evidence found to support how a child’s own characteristics affect a parent’s style – in other words, beyond the influence of genes, the child him or herself determines how the parent behaves. This is a complex feedback loop in which biology and behaviour are intertwined, and it is different for each parent and child.

It’s an argument for an individualised approach. ‘You should think about your own characteristics, and the things that bother you, and then develop a parenting style and strategy that fits both you and your child,’ Klahr told me. ‘If you’re trying to do something that doesn’t feel natural to you as a parent, it’s going to be difficult and make the process more stressful for you. We know of some things for certain that are good for children, and some things that are bad, but there is a lot of room in the middle for individual differences.’

Especially if you see praise as a motivator for healthy change, Klahr suggests tracking how you’re doing in terms of eliciting positive behaviours from your child and even writing it down to analyse what’s working and what’s not working. ‘Conduct a mini study in your own family,’ she said.

Which is exactly what the New York University sociology professor Dalton Conley chronicles in his funny book Parentology (2014). After he spent years bribing his son and daughter with gummy bears, video-game time and cash to get them to do additional math problems, his daughter got more and more into reading and literature, and less interested in mathematics, while his son stopped reading fiction and researched fractals in his own time. ‘Thus, I had plied one academic arena (math) with extrinsic rewards and left another (reading) devoid of such contamination, but in the end, the presence or absence of a reward system did little to affect their passion for the subject matter.’ In other words, the praise heaped on one child will have a different effect on another, depending on their interests, their personalities, the parent’s interests and the parent’s personalities, among other factors.
‘We’d never want to say praise is bad,’ Klahr said. ‘We want parents to praise. We know that positive reinforcement – noticing and praising good behaviour – leads to optimal outcomes, and that harsh, unpredictable discipline leads to increased rates of behavioural problems, parent-child conflict, and depression.’

So the idea that praise or lack of it alone can help your child succeed is overblown. Instead, the Cornell University child psychologist Kenneth Barish insists that the real problem is criticism. ‘I have met many discouraged, angry, and unhappy children. I have met demoralised kids who were unable to sustain effort when they encountered even mild frustration or disappointment, and others who had developed attitudes of entitlement. And the culprit is not praise, but criticism. Most of these children were over-criticised; very few were overpraised.’

The backlash against overblown self-esteem gained strength because it showed that it was counterproductive: coddled kids who were always applauded grew up not knowing how to self-correct their behaviour, not knowing how to deal with rejection and failure. They lacked grit, and grit, researchers now say, is the real key to success. But how am I to raise my son in a way that will put the odds of success in his favour when I don’t know what will be needed in our rapidly changing world?

I grew up playing classical violin and studying diligently. I went to a great university and grad school, and have worried quite a bit about the future for as long as I can remember. My husband took school very lightly, played music and composed it without being bothered by the fact that he doesn’t know how to read notes, went to art school in lieu of a university, and has long had an abiding sense that he is a lucky person whose future will work out well, no matter what. We’ve both had disappointments and triumphs and, as far as I can mentally compile all the factors one might use to judge success, I’d say our prospects for worldly success are roughly the same. Which of us should be my son’s role model? The fact that he is a ‘he’ might hold some weight. Following mine and my husband’s pattern, men generally estimate their abilities to be higher than women do, even in experiments where their actual abilities are about the same. Yet girls are more socialised, helped by the world at large. My son might need extra praise to acquire good manners, but still end up more sure of himself than his female peers whether I praise him or not.

All this data sheds some light. I resolve to be more specific in my praise from now on, and to point out my son’s effort in defiling the furniture rather than his natural flair for choosing interesting crayon colours with which to do so. But the walls are his. For now I’ll let him watch cartoons, put a cookie in his outstretched hand and watch the slow progression of his smile into full jack-o’-lantern, admire his concentration as he colours, and praise him when he’s done.

‘Of all the things that could go wrong,’ Khlar said, ‘overpraising is not something parents should be stressed out about. Really, the only way you can go wrong with praising a toddler is if you say “Good job!” after they’ve done something you don’t want them to do.’

Don’t most children turn out fine? Won’t my son figure out that walls are not to be coloured on someday, no matter what I do or don’t do now? Let me bask in gratitude for my little boy, who, after all, might have died or could die at any moment (ever-present awareness of that fact is the maternal instinct). I’d at least like to fatten him up, emotionally speaking, before the cruel world starts to eat away at him.

AND YOU KNOW THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WOULD DO!

Carlin Flora

 

is a journalist and former features editor at Psychology Today. Her work has appeared in Discover and Scientific American Mind, among others. She is the author of Friendfluence (2013).

https://aeon.co/essays/are-kids-today-praise-junkies-or-is-that-just-a-myth?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=2c118337a8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-2c118337a8-68752181

What really causes addiction -- to everything from cocaine to smart-phones? You're not going to do that, and the reason you're not going to do that is not because anyone's stopping you. It's because you've got bonds and connections that you want to be present for. You've got work you love. You've got people you love. You've got healthy relationships. And a core part of addiction, I came to think, and I believe the evidence suggests, is about not being able to bear to be present in your life.

 What really causes addiction -- to everything from cocaine to smart-phones? And how can we overcome it? Johann Hari has seen our current methods fail firsthand, as he has watched loved ones struggle to manage their addictions. He started to wonder why we treat addicts the way we do -- and if there might be a better way. As he shares in this deeply personal talk, his questions took him around the world, and unearthed some surprising and hopeful ways of thinking about an age-old problem.

 TRANSCRIPT:

One of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives and not being able to. And I was just a little kid, so I didn't really understand why, but as I got older, I realized we had drug addiction in my family, including later cocaine addiction.

 

I'd been thinking about it a lot lately, partly because it's now exactly 100 years since drugs were first banned in the United States and Britain, and we then imposed that on the rest of the world. It's a century since we made this really fateful decision to take addicts and punish them and make them suffer, because we believed that would deter them; it would give them an incentive to stop.

 

And a few years ago, I was looking at some of the addicts in my life who I love, and trying to figure out if there was some way to help them. And I realized there were loads of incredibly basic questions I just didn't know the answer to, like, what really causes addiction? Why do we carry on with this approach that doesn't seem to be working, and is there a better way out there that we could try instead?

 

So I read loads of stuff about it, and I couldn't really find the answers I was looking for, so I thought, okay, I'll go and sit with different people around the world who lived this and studied this and talk to them and see if I could learn from them. And I didn't realize I would end up going over 30,000 miles at the start, but I ended up going and meeting loads of different people, from a transgender crack dealer in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to a scientist who spends a lot of time feeding hallucinogens to mongooses to see if they like them -- it turns out they do, but only in very specific circumstances -- to the only country that's ever decriminalized all drugs, from cannabis to crack, Portugal. And the thing I realized that really blew my mind is, almost everything we think we know about addiction is wrong, and if we start to absorb the new evidence about addiction, I think we're going to have to change a lot more than our drug policies.

 

But let's start with what we think we know, what I thought I knew. Let's think about this middle row here. Imagine all of you, for 20 days now, went off and used heroin three times a day. Some of you look a little more enthusiastic than others at this prospect. (Laughter) Don't worry, it's just a thought experiment. Imagine you did that, right? What would happen? Now, we have a story about what would happen that we've been told for a century. We think, because there are chemical hooks in heroin, as you took it for a while, your body would become dependent on those hooks, you'd start to physically need them, and at the end of those 20 days, you'd all be heroin addicts. Right? That's what I thought.

 

First thing that alerted me to the fact that something's not right with this story is when it was explained to me. If I step out of this TED Talk today and I get hit by a car and I break my hip, I'll be taken to hospital and I'll be given loads of diamorphine. Diamorphine is heroin. It's actually much better heroin than you're going to buy on the streets, because the stuff you buy from a drug dealer is contaminated. Actually, very little of it is heroin, whereas the stuff you get from the doctor is medically pure. And you'll be given it for quite a long period of time. There are loads of people in this room, you may not realize it, you've taken quite a lot of heroin. And anyone who is watching this anywhere in the world, this is happening. And if what we believe about addiction is right -- those people are exposed to all those chemical hooks -- What should happen? They should become addicts. This has been studied really carefully. It doesn't happen; you will have noticed if your grandmother had a hip replacement, she didn't come out as a junkie. (Laughter)

 

And when I learned this, it seemed so weird to me, so contrary to everything I'd been told, everything I thought I knew, I just thought it couldn't be right, until I met a man called Bruce Alexander. He's a professor of psychology in Vancouver who carried out an incredible experiment I think really helps us to understand this issue. Professor Alexander explained to me, the idea of addiction we've all got in our heads, that story, comes partly from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century. They're really simple. You can do them tonight at home if you feel a little sadistic. You get a rat and you put it in a cage, and you give it two water bottles: One is just water, and the other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drug water and almost always kill itself quite quickly. So there you go, right? That's how we think it works. In the '70s, Professor Alexander comes along and he looks at this experiment and he noticed something. He said ah, we're putting the rat in an empty cage. It's got nothing to do except use these drugs. Let's try something different. So Professor Alexander built a cage that he called "Rat Park," which is basically heaven for rats. They've got loads of cheese, they've got loads of colored balls, they've got loads of tunnels. Crucially, they've got loads of friends. They can have loads of sex. And they've got both the water bottles, the normal water and the drugged water. But here's the fascinating thing: In Rat Park, they don't like the drug water. They almost never use it. None of them ever use it compulsively. None of them ever overdose. You go from almost 100 percent overdose when they're isolated to zero percent overdose when they have happy and connected lives.

 

Now, when he first saw this, Professor Alexander thought, maybe this is just a thing about rats, they're quite different to us. Maybe not as different as we'd like, but, you know -- But fortunately, there was a human experiment into the exact same principle happening at the exact same time. It was called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, 20 percent of all American troops were using loads of heroin, and if you look at the news reports from the time, they were really worried, because they thought, my God, we're going to have hundreds of thousands of junkies on the streets of the United States when the war ends; it made total sense. Now, those soldiers who were using loads of heroin were followed home. The Archives of General Psychiatry did a really detailed study, and what happened to them? It turns out they didn't go to rehab. They didn't go into withdrawal. Ninety-five percent of them just stopped. Now, if you believe the story about chemical hooks, that makes absolutely no sense, but Professor Alexander began to think there might be a different story about addiction. He said, what if addiction isn't about your chemical hooks? What if addiction is about your cage? What if addiction is an adaptation to your environment?

 

Looking at this, there was another professor called Peter Cohen in the Netherlands who said, maybe we shouldn't even call it addiction. Maybe we should call it bonding. Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond, and when we're happy and healthy, we'll bond and connect with each other, but if you can't do that, because you're traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now, that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that's our nature. That's what we want as human beings.

 

And at first, I found this quite a difficult thing to get my head around, but one way that helped me to think about it is, I can see, I've got over by my seat a bottle of water, right? I'm looking at lots of you, and lots of you have bottles of water with you. Forget the drugs. Forget the drug war. Totally legally, all of those bottles of water could be bottles of vodka, right?

  We could all be getting drunk -- I might after this -- (Laughter) -- but we're not. Now, because you've been able to afford the approximately gazillion pounds that it costs to get into a TED Talk, I'm guessing you guys could afford to be drinking vodka for the next six months. You wouldn't end up homeless.  

You're not going to do that, and the reason you're not going to do that is not because anyone's stopping you. It's because you've got bonds and connections that you want to be present for. You've got work you love. You've got people you love. You've got healthy relationships. And a core part of addiction, I came to think, and I believe the evidence suggests, is about not being able to bear to be present in your life.

 

Now, this has really significant implications. The most obvious implications are for the War on Drugs. In Arizona, I went out with a group of women who were made to wear t-shirts saying, "I was a drug addict," and go out on chain gangs and dig graves while members of the public jeer at them, and when those women get out of prison, they're going to have criminal records that mean they'll never work in the legal economy again. Now, that's a very extreme example, obviously, in the case of the chain gang, but actually almost everywhere in the world we treat addicts to some degree like that. We punish them. We shame them. We give them criminal records. We put barriers between them reconnecting. There was a doctor in Canada, Dr. Gabor Maté, an amazing man, who said to me, if you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design that system.

 

Now, there's a place that decided to do the exact opposite, and I went there to see how it worked. In the year 2000, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. One percent of the population was addicted to heroin, which is kind of mind-blowing, and every year, they tried the American way more and more. They punished people and stigmatized them and shamed them more, and every year, the problem got worse. And one day, the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition got together, and basically said, look, we can't go on with a country where we're having ever more people becoming heroin addicts. Let's set up a panel of scientists and doctors to figure out what would genuinely solve the problem. And they set up a panel led by an amazing man called Dr. João Goulão, to look at all this new evidence, and they came back and they said, "Decriminalize all drugs from cannabis to crack, but" -- and this is the crucial next step -- "take all the money we used to spend on cutting addicts off, on disconnecting them, and spend it instead on reconnecting them with society."

  And that's not really what we think of as drug treatment in the United States and Britain. So they do do residential rehab, they do psychological therapy, that does have some value. But the biggest thing they did was the complete opposite of what we do: a massive program of job creation for addicts, and microloans for addicts to set up small businesses. So say you used to be a mechanic. When you're ready, they'll go to a garage, and they'll say, if you employ this guy for a year, we'll pay half his wages. The goal was to make sure that every addict in Portugal had something to get out of bed for in the morning. And when I went and met the addicts in Portugal, what they said is, as they rediscovered purpose, they rediscovered bonds and relationships with the wider society.

 

It'll be 15 years this year since that experiment began, and the results are in: injecting drug use is down in Portugal, according to the British Journal of Criminology, by 50 percent, five-zero percent. Overdose is massively down, HIV is massively down among addicts. Addiction in every study is significantly down. One of the ways you know it's worked so well is that almost nobody in Portugal wants to go back to the old system.

 

Now, that's the political implications. I actually think there's a layer of implications to all this research below that. We live in a culture where people feel really increasingly vulnerable to all sorts of addictions, whether it's to their smartphones or to shopping or to eating. Before these talks began -- you guys know this -- we were told we weren't allowed to have our smartphones on, and I have to say, a lot of you looked an awful lot like addicts who were told their dealer was going to be unavailable for the next couple of hours. (Laughter) A lot of us feel like that, and it might sound weird to say, I've been talking about how disconnection is a major driver of addiction and weird to say it's growing, because you think we're the most connected society that's ever been, surely. But I increasingly began to think that the connections we have or think we have, are like a kind of parody of human connection. If you have a crisis in your life, you'll notice something. It won't be your Twitter followers who come to sit with you. It won't be your Facebook friends who help you turn it round. It'll be your flesh and blood friends who you have deep and nuanced and textured, face-to-face relationships with, and there's a study I learned about from Bill McKibben, the environmental writer, that I think tells us a lot about this. It looked at the number of close friends the average American believes they can call on in a crisis. That number has been declining steadily since the 1950s. The amount of floor space an individual has in their home has been steadily increasing, and I think that's like a metaphor for the choice we've made as a culture. We've traded floorspace for friends, we've traded stuff for connections, and the result is we are one of the loneliest societies there has ever been. And Bruce Alexander, the guy who did the Rat Park experiment, says, we talk all the time in addiction about individual recovery, and it's right to talk about that, but we need to talk much more about social recovery. Something's gone wrong with us, not just with individuals but as a group, and we've created a society where, for a lot of us, life looks a whole lot more like that isolated cage and a whole lot less like Rat Park.

 

If I'm honest, this isn't why I went into it. I didn't go in to the discover the political stuff, the social stuff. I wanted to know how to help the people I love. And when I came back from this long journey and I'd learned all this, I looked at the addicts in my life, and if you're really candid, it's hard loving an addict, and there's going to be lots of people who know in this room. You are angry a lot of the time, and I think one of the reasons why this debate is so charged is because it runs through the heart of each of us, right? Everyone has a bit of them that looks at an addict and thinks, I wish someone would just stop you. And the kind of scripts we're told for how to deal with the addicts in our lives is typified by, I think, the reality show "Intervention," if you guys have ever seen it. I think everything in our lives is defined by reality TV, but that's another TED Talk. If you've ever seen the show "Intervention," it's a pretty simple premise. Get an addict, all the people in their life, gather them together, confront them with what they're doing, and they say, if you don't shape up, we're going to cut you off. So what they do is they take the connection to the addict, and they threaten it, they make it contingent on the addict behaving the way they want. And I began to think, I began to see why that approach doesn't work, and I began to think that's almost like the importing of the logic of the Drug War into our private lives.

 

So I was thinking, how could I be Portuguese? And what I've tried to do now, and I can't tell you I do it consistently and I can't tell you it's easy, is to say to the addicts in my life that I want to deepen the connection with them, to say to them, I love you whether you're using or you're not. I love you, whatever state you're in, and if you need me, I'll come and sit with you because I love you and I don't want you to be alone or to feel alone.

 

And I think the core of that message -- you're not alone, we love you -- has to be at every level of how we respond to addicts, socially, politically and individually. For 100 years now, we've been singing war songs about addicts. I think all along we should have been singing love songs to them, because the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.

 

Thank you.

The rabbi would sometimes take advantage of the meetings and of his position in the community to engage in sexual acts with women, including minors, according to the charges against him....

Convicted sex offender rabbi sued for NIS 4 million in civil case

 

Three women claim Eliezer Berland's wife, leaders of Shuvu Bonim group covered up rabbi's crimes

 Eliezer Berland  at the Jerusalem District Court in Jerusalem

Three women filed a civil suit Wednesday against a convicted sex offender rabbi and fifteen others who they claim enabled him.

The women are suing Eliezer Berland, 80, for NIS 4 million ($1.1 million) and also demanding that he be barred from leaving the country until the case is concluded, Channel 2 reported.

The suit was filed in Jerusalem District Court by the two women, who Berland admitted to and was found guilty of assaulting, along with another woman who was not involved in the criminal case against the rabbi.

 Eliezer Berland at the Jerusalem District Court

Berland, who is the leader of the Shuvu Bonim Bratslav Hasidic group, was sentenced to 18 months in jail in November 2016 after being convicted on two counts of indecent acts and one case of assault.
He was released earlier this year after serving five months behind bars, in part due to suffering from cancer. He was given permission to move to a hotel next to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus, where he was placed under house arrest. His sentence is due to end next week.

“There are not enough words to denounce the defendant,” the petition read. “There is no real way to atone for what he did, and no amount of money in the world can will fully and completely compensate for the indescribable suffering that he caused the plaintiffs (and others).”

The suit was filed against the rabbi and his wife as well as rabbis and others associated with Shuvu Bonim, the ultra-Orthodox news site Behadrei Haredim reported.

According to the court document, seen by the news site, these people knew of the crimes but covered for him. “Not only did they give the defendant a framework and platform to advance himself, but they explicitly justified and vindicated his actions,” the petition said. “They even went so far as to praise his actions as ‘lofty’ and ‘elevated’ and as ‘rectifying supernal worlds.'”

Channel 1 tweeted what it said was a recording of Berland’s wife in which she describes her husband as a “sadist” and said that others warned her to keep away from him.

Last week the rabbi was authorized to travel to Uman for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Each year tens of thousands of Jews converge on the Ukrainian city, which is the final resting place of the Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, an 18th-century luminary who founded the Bratslav Hasidic sect.

While there it was reported that his followers were involved in clashes with other Bratslav Hasidim.

Hasidic pilgrims praying near the burial site of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in Uman, Ukraine

Long considered a cult-like leader to thousands of his followers from the breakaway sect Shuvu Bonim, Berland fled Israel in 2013 amid allegations that he molested two female followers, one of them a minor.

According to the criminal indictment, Berland would often receive people in his homes in Jerusalem and in Beitar Illit and held private meetings intended for spiritual guidance, counseling or benedictions. The rabbi would sometimes take advantage of the meetings and of his position in the community to engage in sexual acts with women, including minors, according to the charges against him.

The trial ended with a plea deal in which the rabbi admitted to the charges and was sentenced to jail and to pay NIS 75,000 in compensation. Berland reportedly told the judge that according to biblical law “such acts are punishable by burning and stoning. Today times have changed and there is a lot of leniency, but it does not detract from the severity of my actions.”

He was on the run from authorities until 2016, eluding several Israeli attempts to extradite him. He moved between Zimbabwe, Switzerland, the Netherlands and South Africa, accompanied by a group of devout followers numbering around 40 families.

Following a plea bargain the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court convicted and sentenced him in November 2016, though some seven months that he spent in jails in South Africa and the US were counted as time served.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/convicted-sex-offender-rabbi-sued-for-nis-4-million-in-civil-case/?utm_source=The+Times+of+Israel+Daily+Edition&utm_campaign=098fe8f65c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_adb46cec92-098fe8f65c-55186525

It felt like he was being a yutz!

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Men Wear Blindfolds At Airport To Avoid Seeing ‘Immodest’ Women

It's just the latest example of religiously-motivated unusual behavior involving airports and planes. 

 

 

 Left: Hasidic travelers wear blindfolds at an airport Right: A Kohein man covers himself in plastic on a flight

A group of young Hasidic Jewish men was seen traveling through an airport blindfolded, apparently so they would not be exposed to the potential sight of ‘immodestly’ dressed women.

Reddit user ‘thenewyorkgod’ posted the image Monday morning, which has since amassed over 5000 comments. Most of the commenters expressed shock over such conduct, but some of the users have been posting their own similar experiences or pointing out how common these occurrences are.

In 2013, an Orthodox Jewish man completely covered himself in plastic sheeting during a flight to avoid being exposed to the dead should the plane fly over a cemetery.

This man was believed to be a Kohein, who are religious descendants of the priests of ancient Israel. Kohanim are banned from having any sort of contact with the dead in order to remain pure. This includes visiting cemeteries or even flying over them.

To try to save themselves, Kohanim employ a controversial solution that is not entirely allowed in the church — wrapping themselves in plastic bags. The bag is said to create a sort of barrier between the individual and the ‘tumah,’ or surrounding impurities.

The controversy exists mostly due to safety concerns. Even if they can be seatbelted in, the passenger wouldn’t be able to reach an oxygen mask or escape from the plane quickly if an emergency situation were to occur.

In addition, the question remains as to how they can breathe, as air holes are not allowed in the bag because they would invalidate the barrier.

In 2015, another controversy arose when a Hasidic man refused to sit next to a woman on a plane because she was a woman not related to him.

Laura Heywood was flying from San Diego to London in the middle seat while her husband sat in the aisle side. The window seat originally belonged to a man who happened to be a Hasidic Jew.
The man refused the seat as his faith prevented him from sitting next to any woman who wasn’t his wife. He asked the couple to switch places, but Heywood, believing the man’s request to be sexist, refused.
 
The flight ended up being delayed due to the disagreement.

Even fellow members of the Jewish faith find instances like these to be confusing.

Jeremy Newberger, a passenger who witnessed a similar episode on a New York to Israel flight, expressed his concern over the issue.

“I grew up Conservative, and I’m sympathetic to Orthodox Jews,” he said to the New York Times. “But this Hasid came on, looking very uncomfortable, and wouldn’t even talk to the woman, and there was five to eight minutes of ‘What’s going to happen?’ before the woman acquiesced and said, ‘I’ll move.’ It felt like he was being a yutz.”

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/hasidic-blindfolds

Ezra Schwartz, 18, of Sharon, Massachusetts was one of three people killed when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire with a submachine gun at cars stuck in a traffic jam at the Alon Shvut junction, just south of Jerusalem.

Watch: Bereaved Father in Moving Letter to His Son: “You Have Inspired Me”

On Sunday (Sept. 17) the family and friends of Ezra Schwartz, who was killed in a terrorist attack in Israel 2 years ago, gathered to commemorate his memory by completing a Rim Run course. Team Ezra have competed a course of 33 km from the North Rim of Grand Canyon to the bottom and back up to the South rim (20.6 miles in total). The event was also dedicated to OneFamily, an Israeli NGO which helps victims of terror. Thirteen thousand USD were raised to help bereaved families in Israel.

Ezra Schwartz, 18, of Sharon, Massachusetts was one of three people killed when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire with a submachine gun at cars stuck in a traffic jam at the Alon Shvut junction, just south of Jerusalem. Ezra was a US citizen and a student in Beit Shemesh. Ezra came to Israel as part of a nine-month volunteer program. The group of volunteers had traveled to the area in order to help clean up the Oz Ve’Gaon park, named after the three boys who were kidnapped and killed a year earlier, in a terror attack after which Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

After the run was completed, Ari, Ezra’s father read a letter he wrote to Ezra on the occasion of Ezra’s 20th birthday this year, a birthday he never lived to celebrate.

.“The reporting of reasonable suspicions of all forms of child and adult abuse and neglect directly and immediately to the civil authorities is a requirement of Jewish law. There is no need to seek rabbinic approval prior to reporting,”

Chabad leaders: Report child abuse to secular authorities

Chabad rabbis rule Jewish law permits abusers to be reported directly to non-Jewish authorities, say no reason to ask rabbi first.

Rabbinic leaders of the Chabad-Lubavitch hasidic group have signed a proclamation calling for the immediate reporting of child sexual abuse and other kinds of abuse to secular authorities.

“We recognize in light of past experiences that our communities could have responded in more responsible and sensitive ways to help victims and to hold perpetrators accountable,” reads the document released Monday.

The proclamation outlines policies that all Lubavitch institutions, including schools and synagogues, should adopt immediately. These include educating staff in identifying, responding to, and reporting sexual abuse, and teaching “body safety” to students.

The document also states that members of communities must be made aware when a sex offender moves in to a community.

In addition to child sexual abuse and other forms of child abuse, the document includes domestic abuse, elder abuse, and abuse of the disabled.

“The reporting of reasonable suspicions of all forms of child and adult abuse and neglect directly and immediately to the civil authorities is a requirement of Jewish law. There is no need to seek rabbinic approval prior to reporting,” according to the document.

In 2016, 300 Orthodox rabbis signed a proclamation urging those suspecting child sex abuse to notify secular authorities and calling on Jewish institutions to take preventative measures to prevent abuse. The signatories included members of the Orthodox Union, Rabbinical Council of America, and Yeshiva University.

Members of Orthodox communities have traditionally hesitated to involve outside authorities because of injunctions against “mesirah,” or turning over a Jew to non-Jewish authorities. As well, these communities are wary of publicly airing allegations against fellow Jews, especially communal leaders.

“Regardless of the standing of the abuser, accusers and their family members must be treated in an accepting, nonjudgmental manner so that they feel safe and can therefore speak frankly and fully,” said the Chabad statement.

“This is necessary for them to receive suitable therapeutic support, and in order to facilitate proper investigation and pursuit of justice. Shunning or encouraging social ostracism of victims, their families, or reporters is strictly forbidden.”

Among those signing the document are Rabbis Yehoram Ulman and Moshe Gutnick, senior dayanim, or judges, of the Sydney Beth Din, or rabbinical court, in Australia; Rabbi Yosef Feigelstock, senior dayan of the Beth Din, Argentina; Rabbi Baruch Hertz of Congregation Bnei Ruven and the Chabad community of Illinois; Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, dean of Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh; Rabbi Yosef Shusterman, senior Dayan and director at Chabad of Beverly Hills, California; and Rabbi Mordechai Gutnick of the Melbourne Beth Din, Australia.

The document concludes: “Ultimately, it is the halakhic (pertaining to Jewish law) and moral obligation of the entire Jewish community, individually and collectively, to do all in our power to safeguard both children and adults by preventing abuse and responding appropriately once instances of abuse have occurred.”

Dovid Nyer, a licensed clinical social worker and activist from New York, has coordinated the
 project.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/235788?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl