The Right Way To Flip Out…

What if the biggest mistake we collectively make about the year in Israel is assuming that longer skirts and tzitzis hanging out tell us a success story? What if, beneath those very real and often beautiful religious changes, there is sometimes something far more complicated going on? And what if our inability to recognize that isn’t just a failure of chinuch, but something that allows our children to continue developing an unhealthy relationship with themselves and, ultimately, with Hashem?

There are few experiences in the life of a young Jewish adult with as much potential for personal and religious transformation as spending a year learning in Israel. It is an extraordinary opportunity to step outside the familiar, encounter new ideas, challenge long-held assumptions, and begin developing a religious identity that is genuinely one’s own. Priorities shift, aspirations evolve, and sometimes religious practices begin to look noticeably different from those of the families and communities in which students were raised. The colloquial term is ‘flipping out,’ which is usually accompanied by some mixture of parental anxiety, communal amusement, and educational pride. But I think the conversation deserves a more serious examination.

Let me be clear. I think it is a beautiful thing when young people become more religious during their year in Israel. I want students to fall in love with Torah, to become more serious about halacha, to deepen their commitment to mitzvos, and to discover dimensions of avodas Hashem they never knew existed. We should celebrate greater religious commitment, not apologize for it or treat meticulous observance as inherently suspicious. My concern is not that students are becoming too religious. It is that sometimes we celebrate the external transformation without paying sufficient attention to the person undergoing it. I don’t want less religious growth. I want deeper religious growth.

The phenomenon is hardly new and has been explored in Flipping Out? Myth or Fact: The Impact of the Year in Israel, by Shalom Z. Berger, Daniel Jacobson, and Chaim I. Waxman. I want to approach it from a different perspective. After decades working with adolescents and studying religious adolescent development, I am convinced that when it comes to the religious growth of adolescents, we often ask the wrong questions. We measure transformation through what we can see: clothing, increased observance, newfound chumras, a greater commitment to learning. These can be wonderful expressions of genuine growth. But external change alone tells us surprisingly little about what is happening internally. The flip side is that someone who appears to have changed very little may have undergone a remarkable transformation in their relationship with themselves, with other people, and with Hashem.

This distinction begins with something we do not ordinarily associate with becoming more religious: adolescent rebellion. For much of childhood, our identity revolves around our parents. We absorb their beliefs, mirror their behaviors, and see the world largely through their eyes. We’re satellites orbiting the family structure. At some point, a young person recognizes something enormously important: I am not my parents. I can love them, respect them, and share their values while developing my own understanding of the world. The pushing away that follows is not necessarily a rejection. Often, it is the beginning of a healthy, independent identity.

That search can sometimes take unhealthy and destructive forms, including but not limited to drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity and other deleterious behaviors. However, what we typically find in the year in Israel is that it can take a profoundly religious one. A student arrives in Israel, discovers new ways of learning Torah and serving Hashem, and begins exploring a religious life different from the one inherited at home. I think that is wonderful. We should want young people to choose their religious identities rather than simply inherit them. The problem begins when we confuse change with growth, or when a new identity is borrowed rather than developed.

I wish more of us would recognize that changing one’s social circle does not necessarily mean discovering one’s voice. Before the year in Israel, a student might dress or behave in ways that win approval from one group. In Israel, there is a new environment with its own language, clothing, expectations, and measures of success. Because that environment is more religious, everyone assumes the student has grown. Maybe the student has. But maybe the audience has changed while the insecurity remains. The student who once measured worth in Instagram and TikTok likes, can begin measuring it in admiration for newfound frumkeit. The real question is whether the choice would remain the same if nobody were watching. We need to help students move from validation-based behavior to value-based behavior.

Part of the messaging that I believe needs to be recalibrated is that religious evolution need not require rejecting everything that came before. If a young person loved playing guitar, painting, basketball, hiking or writing, before seminary or yeshiva, there is no reason those parts of life must disappear. Genuine growth may demand serious changes in behavior and priorities. But there is an enormous difference between growth that expands an identity and growth that erases it. Nor should greater commitment to Torah produce contempt for the people who raised us. Parents may not share every new practice a son or daughter embraces, and that can create real tensions. But becoming more religious should not mean becoming less grateful.

So, what should a successful yeshiva or seminary experience actually accomplish? I keep returning to three fundamental relationships: our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with others, and our relationship with Hashem. We cannot assume that strengthening one automatically strengthens the others. Good religious education must cultivate all three deliberately.

Our relationship with ourselves requires more than teaching students what to do. It means helping them ask what they believe, why they believe it, what matters to them, and who they are becoming. It means creating a setting where thoughtful questions are taken seriously and where a teacher’s job is not to produce another version of the teacher. Hashem does not need another copy of someone’s rebbe, Morah or favorite speaker. The goal is a student who can learn from inspiring role models without surrendering the responsibility of becoming an individual.

Our relationship with others matters just as much. I personally find it troubling when we celebrate someone becoming more meticulous in mitzvah observance while overlooking a decline in patience, gratitude, or respect. A student may become more machmir about the lettuce on the plate while becoming less sensitive to the person sitting across the table. If we believe every person is created B’Tzelem Elokim, growing closer to Hashem ought to deepen our sensitivity to the people He created. Religious seriousness and emotional maturity are not competing ambitions. We should demand both.

This is why I believe the inner worlds of Torah deserve the same educational seriousness as its practical demands. Mesilas Yesharim, Chovos HaLevavos, Rebbe Nachman, the Piaseczner Rebbe, and the extraordinary worlds of mussar and Chassidus are not simply about doing more. They challenge us to confront our egos, acknowledge our struggles, cultivate humility, and take responsibility for the way we treat ourselves and others. If our religious standards become increasingly sophisticated while our emotional maturity remains stuck in high school, something is missing.

And then there is our relationship with Hashem, the heart of the Israel experience. I love a good kumzitz. I love the energy of a beautiful Shabbos, the electricity of an extraordinary shiur, and moments when something awakens inside a young person’s soul. Those experiences are real, and they can change lives. We should create more of them. But just because something moved us does not mean it has become part of us. Inspiration opens a door. Walking through it, understanding what lies on the other side, and building a life around what we discover takes time. This means educators must sometimes resist the urge to turn every emotional high into an immediate and permanent commitment. A student can leave a shiur deeply moved and still need time to learn, ask questions, seek guidance, and understand what a new practice will mean in ordinary life. Sometimes a beautiful moment can simply be a beautiful moment. Giving inspiration room to mature does not diminish it. It protects it. If religious identity depends entirely on emotional intensity, what happens when that intensity inevitably fades?

Modern Orthodox adolescents face a particularly complex challenge. Their world strives to combine deep commitment to Torah and halacha with meaningful engagement in the broader world. There is enormous beauty in that vision, but there are also tensions and ambiguities that cannot always be resolved with easy slogans. Much of my research focused on these challenges in adolescent religious development. For a young person searching for a stable identity, a more black-and-white approach can be very appealing. Clear answers and firm expectations feel reassuring. But clarity and rigidity are not the same thing, and complexity does not need to be a sign of weak conviction.

We also need to recognize that religious anxiety can sometimes masquerade as religious passion. A student may take on demanding practices out of deep love and conviction, or out of fear of making mistakes, discomfort with uncertainty, or an overwhelming need to belong. Meticulous observance is not evidence of anxiety, and we must be careful not to pathologize serious frumkeit. The issue is what is driving it. Is it love or fear? Is it helping the student grow in their avodas Hashem, or leaving the student increasingly frightened of failure? There is an enormous difference between taking our responsibilities to Hashem seriously and living in constant terror that He is disappointed in us.

Religious growth should challenge us. It often demands discomfort, discipline, and responsibility. But it should not systematically destroy our sense of self-worth. Hashem is not asking young people to hate themselves into becoming holy. A student consumed by fear or self-contempt may need more than another reminder to be careful. That student may need help remembering that a relationship with Hashem is, first and foremost, a relationship.

These observations should change the way we educate. We must certainly raise the bar in learning and observance, but we also need to ask students to explain the meaning behind their choices. We should make room for honest questions without treating every uncertainty as disloyalty. We should help students distinguish their convictions from peer pressure, guide them in making thoughtful commitments, and prepare them for differences with family and community without encouraging judgment or disrespect. None of this softens religious education. It makes the expectations higher and the work more demanding.

A beautiful teaching attributed to the Maggid of Mezritch captures the balance. In Shemoneh Esrei we say Elokeinu v’Elokei avoseinu, our God and the God of our fathers. The teaching describes two pathways toward faith: the Hashem we discover through our own learning, exploration, and understanding, and the Hashem we encounter through the spiritual inheritance of earlier generations. Both matter. Understanding without lived spiritual experience can become dry; inspiration without understanding can be fragile. A mature religious identity needs roots and personal ownership, conviction and warmth.

The Shabbos is beautiful. The kumzitz is moving. The potato kugel is delicious. But what happens when students return home, when those friends and teachers are no longer beside them, and the extraordinary becomes ordinary again? Sometimes a student changes dramatically in Israel and then swings back afterward. That does not necessarily mean the growth was insincere. Perhaps it simply never had the opportunity to become fully integrated. Preparing students for life after Israel should not be an afterthought. It should be part of the educational mission from the beginning.

I want students to come back to their houses and communities more committed to Torah, more meticulous in mitzvos, more passionate about learning, and more deeply connected to Hashem. I also want them more self-aware, kinder, more emotionally mature, and more confident in their convictions without needing to invalidate someone else’s. I want their Judaism to be demanding and joyful, rooted and personally chosen. We should never be satisfied with choosing between those outcomes.

The problem with flipping out was never that young people were becoming more religious. The problem is that we sometimes mistake becoming more religious for the completion of religious growth, when in reality it should be the beginning. The real accomplishment of a year in Israel is not simply learning how to be religious in Israel. It is developing a deeper, stronger, more authentic relationship with Torah and Hashem that remains one’s own wherever life takes us.