TRADITION’s Winter 2024 issue (now fully open access) featured a review by R. Gidon Rothstein of R.  Elisha Aviner’s Hebrew volume, Dor Tahpukhot, whose English title might read A Guide for Parents Whose Children Have Distanced Themselves from Observance (Sifiyat Hava).

The book is a practical, philosophical, and halakhic compendium of advice to parents who have struggled to educated their children to a life of religious commitment, and the often painful and complicated realities of what happens when some children choose their own path “off the derech” (as the saying goes).

Elisha Aviner is Rosh Kollel at the Birkat Moshe Hesder Yeshiva in Maale Adumim, and rabbi of that local community. He is also well known in Israel as a speaker and writer on the array of issues involved in educating adolescents. In his review, Gidon Rothstein, an author and educator, unpacks some of the complexities of this new book, and gets to the heart of some of the issues, especially how the book presents divergent approaches when offering general advice, encouragement, and support versus when speaking in a more formal halakhic context.

Read Gidon Rothstein’s review of Elisha Aviner, Dor Tahpukhot.

In this podcast we discuss Rothstein’s thoughtful and sensitive review; consider the book’s very specific Israeli focus; and consider how its lessons might be adapted – or not – for an American audience.