There Will Be Blood: Corporal Punishment in Yeshivos and Chadorim

We have a lot to be proud of. The advocates, professionals, and other caring souls in and around the Chareidi communities have managed to keep the talk of sexual abuse going long enough that the painfully slow wheels of change might finally be starting to turn. And yet, that vice has an advantage over the other pieces of our collective dirty laundry: the disgusting factor. People can pretend that sexual abuse does not exist in our communities, or that if it does we shouldn't talk about it. But no one in their right mind would actually justify it. No one would say that molesting a child serves some higher purpose, or any purpose at all for that matter, other than the selfish perversions of the perpetrator.  

That is not the case, however, for the other abuse that our children continue to face. To this day yeshivos and chadorim (religious boys' schools) routinely employ corporal punishment as regular, first-line means of discipline, leaving scores of helpless children traumatized and turned off to the very Yiddishkeit (Judaism) that the rebbeim (rabbis) and menahalim (administrators) are so pathetically trying to beat into them. These "educators" make no excuses about their "hands-on" methods: "This is just the way that we teach our boys." It is the only system they know: the one to which they were subjected when they were helpless children themselves. They blindly regurgitate the same simplistic readings of rabbinic sources that their own abusers relied on and the shailos (rabbinic opinions) that they have asked to help allay their guilt. All the while, the very real trauma that they inflict on their charges is somehow ignored.

The scars of sexual abuse run as deep as any. However, even when children are molested in a school, they are the exceptions, certainly not the rule. (As an aside, the majority of sexual abusers are not teachers, but family members or "friends.") The most egregious part of rebbeim's beating up on their students is that the abuse is institutionalized, the maltreatment systemic and universally divvied. This is an offense perpetrated by the community as a whole: institutions, leaders, parents, and culture alike. 


That has several important ramifications. Obviously, that means the wealth is spread nice and widely; no child in a "beating cheider" is immune from the blows. It also means that there are likely to be few sympathetic adults to support traumatized victims. Like the rebbe who'll smack you a second time for crying, school personnel in these offending institutions are more likely to retraumatize the victims and deepen the wounds than they are to have anything sympathetic, let alone therapeutic, to say. Finally, it means that rooting out this vice will take much more than exposure. It will require a fundamental shift in the pedagogical culture. For starters, elementary school teaching positions will have to be filled by more than simply "those who can't." Rebbeim will need to begin to meet certain basic qualifications, such as (a) liking children, (b) wanting to teach, (c) being (somewhat) able to control a classroom, and (d) being (somewhat) able to control oneself. "The way we've always done it" will no longer suffice as justification for blindly continuing practices that ruin human beings' lives without being at all effective.


Rebbeim and menahalim would do well to listen to their talmidim's (students') perspective on all this. For, despite their cynical assumptions, these kids are far from stupid, and they see perfectly clearly what this is all about. As one 11-year-old client told me recently, "even when they hit us, unless it's really hard, we don't cry. We just laugh. We all know that the rebbi's just hitting 'cause he has no control at all. He just gets so angry, and he doesn't know what else to do. It's so pathetic it's kind of funny."


So for now, I submit, until we can change this pitiful practice, there are two things we caring souls can do with the battered boys of our community: laugh and cry. For the terrorized boy who swallows his tears, afraid to lower his head lest he attract another smack, we can cry with him. And for the boys who laugh at the poor rebbi whose dignity was lost along with his self-control, we most certainly can laugh with him, too.

-PsyJew