Dear Incoming High School Students, High School Students, and Parents:
 
We write to you as the school year concludes to share some personal thoughts, fears, and worries that we rabbis and cantor have had recently in the wake of the series of tragedies that began at the time of homecoming at Deerfield High School last fall and continued into this spring. 

We have shared some wonderfully positive experiences with virtually every one of you.  In particular, every time we called one of you or one of your sons or daughters to the Torah as Bnai Mitzvah, we exulted not only in your accomplishments, but also in the hopefulness of the moment.  We saw achievement, promise, and endless possibilities.

Yet we have also seen the pain of friends and parents when that remarkable promise was snuffed out because a bad choice led to permanent and irreversible consequences.  We are terrified that peer pressure will result in deadly decisions.

While we cannot control everything in life, decisions to drink or to serve drinks to kids, to try some benign looking pill, to get behind the wheel after using alcohol or other substances, to get in the car with a driver who is impaired are well within our control. Children and parents owe it to each other to exercise control over these decisions, to do what is right, and to avoid taking foolish and unnecessary risks.

As rabbis and cantor, we are prepared to be present at unspeakably tragic moments.  We do our best to offer comfort and support in times of terminal illness or accident. These moments are indescribably painful and seemingly beyond explanation.  When deaths and funerals result from bad choices and unnecessarily risky behavior, well, there are really no words…Too many of you have experienced this kind of loss and pain this year and we think you know what we mean. Right now the best we can say is: enough is enough.  We all - parents and young people, rabbis, cantors, teachers, and counselors - must learn something from such events: Therefore, we write with the following pleas to our students and their parents:

To our kids: Take control and have the guts to affirm life. No one is invulnerable or invincible. Your potential to make a difference for good in the world far exceeds the momentary thrill of a brief high. You know how to make good choices. If you find yourself in a situation that worries you, take out your cell phone and call home…or call the temple if you don’t want to call your folks.  If it’s after hours, press 0 and our 24-hour answering service will call one of us. We will come and get you and bring you to a safe place –no questions asked.

To our parents: Take control and set limits, be your kids’ parents, not their friends.  As adults, we have to be obtrusive and persistent on this issue, so there is no doubt in our kids’ minds that the consequences for engaging in risk taking behaviors will be real and intolerable.  Our love for our children has to come out in a willingness to say “no” with firmness and resolve. Our kids need to know clearly that we stand first and foremost as parents who want to teach the value of life.  The pundits say that our kids are faced with more choices than they can handle.  That may be true. So let us be even more “in their faces” as they learn to decide what is right and what is wrong. Do not be afraid to help them by limiting their choices.

In part, we write this selfishly. We rabbis and cantor want to go to graduation parties, to officiate at weddings, to celebrate “big” birthdays, and to know the joy that comes from seeing our children progress through their teens into adulthood. There may be a time later to try new things….but there is never a time to take the kind of risk that really and truly jeopardizes life. 
 
Join us in making sure that we are a community known for preserving and enhancing life and not taking risks with unspeakable and permanent results. Summer is coming.  Some proms have yet to take place.  Dance. Enjoy the warm weather. Celebrate with your family. Have fun with your friends. But do not put your life or another person’s life at risk.

 L’chaim u’l’shalom,

 To life and in peace,
 
 Rabbi Steven S. Mason                   Rabbi Lisa S. Greene

Rabbi Wendi S. Geffen                    Rabbi Judith Spicehandler

Cantor David M. Goldstein