Recently I attended a multi-faith symposium on youth crime prevention with the specific focus “Tackling Radicalization in Faiths.”  Speakers included the Imam of the host mosque; faith leaders offering Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Sikh perspectives; and the local mayor and chief of police. The organizers invited me to offer a Jewish perspective. Here are my remarks:

The problem of raising teens is not new. In Jewish tradition, the problem goes at least as far back as Biblical times. The Biblical book of Deuteronomy asks, what should a parent do with a rebellious teen? And it answers: the parents should bring the child to the gates of the city to see the community’s elders, who will direct the entire community to stone the child to death, so that “the entire community may hear and see” (Deut. 21:21).

Without exception, our Biblical commentators wonder: “As no parent would ever do this, why is this useless ancient law on the books?” And they answer: it’s there to remind us to hear and see. We should not receive and transmit our tradition on autopilot. Instead, we should look at what is important in our time, at the situation in front of us.

My colleagues have spoken about the social and political causes of radicalization, so I will choose a different focus. Drawing on my experience as a parent, trained educator, and long-time teacher of young teens and older teens, in both secular and religious contexts, I’d like to articulate some of the needs of teens.

• Teens are growing and changing – really fast. In a given year, teens change as much as they did in the first year of their lives. That’s part of the reason why many of them need so much food, and why they need to sleep long hours. Brain development requires sleep.

• Teenage brains are not fully developed. Teens are not usually long term thinkers, who see ahead to the consequences of their actions.

• Still, teens want to be adults. That’s why they do forbidden adult things: smoke, drink, stay out late. And, despite their ambivalence and, for many, their shyness, they want to make a difference in the adult world.

• They want to be both independent and dependent. Many teens want to be independent of parents, but dependent on friends. They want to move away from the life they imagine their parents set out for them, and forge a new social community with new values, where they can live out the intense peer relationships they crave.

• Many teens engage in intense existential questioning. Who am I? What are my values? Are the things my parents, caregivers, and authority figures taught me really true? What can give my life meaning?

• Sometimes, when they answer their questions, they tend to be extreme in their thinking. They may be extremely idealistic, on fire for a cause; or extremely nihilistic, despairing, worrying that nothing really means anything.

It’s not hard to see how youth with these characteristics could be attracted to an extremist cause, or even sneak off and travel far away to a what they imagine will be an intense, meaningful community of peers. They are not thinking about crippling injury, or becoming widowed multiple times by age 19, or never being legally allowed to come home again. They are thinking about the teenage developmental yearnings they have.

Youth in our Canadian culture will go through this developmental stage, asking these questions, no matter what we do. So it’s important for us to be clear on the answers and opportunities we offer them. We are on fire with our own idealistic commitments, or we would not have joined tonight’s multi-faith gathering. We have good ideologies, radical in their own right, reaching for peace, justice, respect, and multi-faith collaboration. And we need to continue to learn how to package them.

To that end, I would like to share some things that we have learned through our research and practice in the Jewish community. All of our research shows that the program most effective at keeping youth involved in Jewish religion and community their whole lives is a Jewish overnight summer camp experience. The summer camps most effective at producing future community leaders operate on a youth leadership model. Teens begin leadership – helping younger kids and creating camp activities – at age 14, just as they enter their own vulnerable mid-teen years. If these teens stay involved, as they enter their 20s, they run the camp. The older adults in charge stay behind the scenes. Teens experience an intense community of peers, a meaningful project, and a safe space.

We also greatly emphasize the bar and bat mitzvah coming of age ritual, at age 13, just before youth enter the vulnerable mid-teen years. Explicitly, we acknowledge that they and their families are about to change. Youth work together with family and friends to learn to chant scripture, lead prayers, and create a community service project. At the final ceremony, a youth leads the community in prayer and study, shares what they learned through community service, and is welcomed into the community as a religious adult. We now expect them to lead prayers, comfort mourners, visit the sick, and feed the hungry. In one sphere, at least, we try to treat them as the adults they yearn to be.

These tried and true practices are not foolproof. They certainly won’t stop teens from experimenting with all edgy practices. They won’t grant instant skill in long-term thinking. The communal embrace they offer cannot fully heal a traumatic childhood. They don’t substitute for compassionate policing or psychological services. They don’t remove the need for brave parents who do everything they can to break a cycle of family dysfunction. They don’t prevent radicalization in all environments, such as the politically charged region around Jerusalem. And they do require a communal commitment to a cultural infrastructure, and wealthy donors who step up to help make the experiences available to everyone.

And, though there is no Indigenous First Nations voice on the panel this evening, I want to note the positive role that bravery and rebuilding of cultural infrastructure have played in supporting the youth of that community.

In the year 1910, American philosopher William James wrote an essay called “The Moral Equivalent of War.” Professor James argued that every country should create a peacetime project that is as demanding, urgent, and exciting as war, that can unite people into a group with a shared purpose. That’s an excellent mission statement for what we, in our communities, need to offer our teens to ground them in our ideologies of nonviolence, cooperation, and multicultural peace.

Thanks so much to Umar Chaudhry of the Baitur Rahman Mosque in Delta, BC for hosting and organizing this event that attracted 150 people. Thanks to fellow speakers Mr. Usman Malik, Mr. Don Sorochan, Mayor Lois Jackson, Chief Constable Neil Dubord, Acharya S.P. Dwivedi, Mr. Balwant Singh Sanghera, Pastor Chris Lenshyn, and Imam Balal Khokhar.