Drink And Market Responsibly.

First a confession: I spent most of my life living in two countries where the drinking age is 18. I believe it should be like that here. I went to pubs in England from the age of 15 and, as long as we behaved and drank responsibly, we were tolerated. We did drink responsibly, reserving our focus for debates about politics, justice and women.

Second, when my sons go to a bar and order their first drink, I want to be there. I want to treat them and I want to be a part of their rite-of-passage. If they are 18, I might be able to slip this in before they leave home. If they are 21, there is less chance.

I enjoy my beer (a stout if you’re ordering), Johnnie Walker Black, and wine. I was always the designated driver (first kid with a driving licence and a mother who gave me access to her car) and before I was given the keys, I was warned about drinking by parents who cared.

I work with students and I see the intense pressure they are under to drink. I see the repercussions of over drinking and the guilt and damage that follows. They choose to imbibe, but we as a society allow them, as teenagers, to build an everyday experience into a mythical and dangerous campus ritual. Over-drinking and driving, sex or drug experimentation bring life-destroying trauma and damage.

So I was pissed (there’s a pun there if you speak the Queen’s English), when I saw that Urban Outfitters decided to market a new line of t-shirts just in time for young women filling their wardrobes before a new academic year with messages that encourage drinking and is modelled by young women who are quite possibly under drinking age.

How Old Does She Look?

These so-called cool and humorous messages are no joke. In fact, they reflect a reality that alcohol use is associated with increased rates of sexual activity for teens as well as decreased condom use.

A just-published survey showed disturbing results including one out of five teens is drinking, using drugs, or smoking during school hours. Urban Outfitters know what they are doing. Most of their customers are between 18 and 24 and the second largest demographic is under 18.

Their stores will be flooded with young women buying their T-shirts and Urban Outfitters will make plenty of money. But profit doesn’t allow you to sleep at nights and I hope those who made this ruthless decision to market such a message come to realize what they have done and change it.  

And if the high-ups in the company are awake in the wee hours, tossing and turning, maybe turn on the news or open a newspaper. You might find stories that will give you nightmares, but the reality is, most of them will not even be reported. And you will be too busy anyway drooling over your stock portfolio and how you plan to spend your bonus.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).

Real Men Don’t Cry

This is how we are brought up. Men used to wander around with a club, bringing down mammoths and dragging a female back to the cave. We have progressed a bit since then, what with vegetarianism and on-line dating, but there are certain mores that we don’t expect to cross. 

I’ve done the ‘man’ things – play and watch sports, hit the gym, enjoy beer, fish, served in a combat unit, wooed a beautiful woman, and fathered two wonderful boys. I have a good job and plenty of friends.

Last month, my eldest son had his bar mitzvah and put on a flawless display of teaching, chanting, and schmoozing. He stood before our community and talked about the need to educate and not punish, to pursue social justice, and his desire to make the world a better place.

He was great and I am very proud of him. He worked very hard for two years to reach the level in which he could achieve this. Then it was time for his parents to bless him.

My wife won the toss (soccer reference) and chose to go first, knowing that I am confidant and used to standing before an audience and speaking into a microphone. Her blessing was modest, genuine and heartfelt, a reflection of her as a mother, wife and friend.

Over the hump, right? Wrong. I had written my blessing for him a while ago. I told him meaningful the project we had pursued together (we wrote the first Wycaan Master novel together) and then imparted how I saw him as our coming-of-age protagonist. And then I choked up…and cried. When I stopped and stole a sip of his water bottle, he leaned over and gave me a hug.

The first thing that went through my mind was shock. I hadn’t expected this, even though I have been known to cry at a Simpson’s episode (another story). I actually wasn’t embarrassed for myself: I was embarrassed for him. I struggled through and he still talks to me. Moreover, many people came up to me and gave me loving reinforcement.

But it was the comments from the men that I remember. There were some who admitted to shedding a tear themselves, others who said that I had done something they would like to be able to do. Some admitted they could never allow their mask to come down like that in public, or maybe any time. 

In the struggle for equal rights between the sexes, we have seen a necessary push for women – equal opportunities, equal pay, and legal protections. All this stems from societal mores that favored men and allowed us to exercise a ‘power over’ that is unacceptable in a modern society.

But we, as men pay a price. Most of us still shoulder most of the burden of material provision, or at least feel we should even when our partners are better qualified and can pursue better jobs. We are mostly the warriors from defending our country to our family,

We all respected George Bush for shedding tears at 9/11 but we still expected him to go blow someone up as a consequence for us being attacked. President Obama’s status rose when we took out bin Laden. He did not gather the intelligence or undertake the mission, but in making the decision, he became a warrior chief.

I have worked closely with my son over the past few years, preparing him for this rite-of-passage, and I will continue to work with him, preparing him to enter society as a man.

To ignore our role as the hunter/gatherer would be foolish. To ignore our rights as men to be sensitive and nurturing would be sad.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).

Tomorrow – My Son The Man

They grow up so fast!  Why I remember when…

Tomorrow morning, my son will stand before our family, friends, and the Jewish community. He will fulfill a 700-year-old rite of passage, as he declares himself a man in G-d’s eyes and the eyes of the Jewish community. He will take on the responsibility to be counted as one of the 10 adults needed for community prayer, lead prayer and study, and will be accountable for his actions before G-d and the Jewish community. In fact, Ariela and I will actually renounce our responsibility for such actions as part of the ceremony.

Rites-of-passage mean a lot for me and I have enjoyed ceremonies at every junction of my life. Some are fictionalized in A Gardener’s Tale. But as Winston Churchill said after the Battle of Britain: “This is not the end. Neither is it the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.”

Changing diapers, making egg-in-a-nest and nursing scraped knees are behind us. Discussions on the fairer sex, fashion, image, values, and politics, have replaced them and I have learned to embrace the change. But the responsibilities relinquished are replaced with the responsibilities of cultivating a young man who will be a kind and generous person, an activist, a philanthropist, a world-changer.

I have tried to be a nurturing father, a supportive husband, a fair boss, and an inspiring leader. My son has seen me succeed and fail. He has seen me address crowds as an author, rap my annual speech to students, celebrate my friends and students successes, and cry at their failures and losses.

Tomorrow, I will offer words of wisdom, hugs of love, and nods and thumbs up of support. Tomorrow, I will relinquish my responsibilities as a father, and take up my responsibilities as a friend and companion. In a world where so many young men are denied the positive role model of a father walking alongside them, where masculinity is ensconced in the unforgiving rule of law, the scavenger economy, and the uncompromising street, I have nothing to offer but myself and my example.

I can only hope to be worthy of the task ahead.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).

The Ones Not Executed

June is a special month for my family. In a few weeks, my eldest son will complete a rite-of-passage as he stands before our community and fulfills three obligations as he becomes an adult in the eyes of Judaism. He will lead the community in prayers, read from the Torah (Old Testament), and teach a lesson from the passage he had read.

The Torah portion deals with the death penalty as a man found gathering wood on the Sabbath is stoned by the entire community and the Israelites are condemned to die in the Wilderness and never enter the land of milk and honey.

As my son read this and we talked about the scenarios and lessons that could be gleaned, we discussed the death penalty and ways of punishing people when they do wrong.

What happens, however, when the wrong person is condemned? We are discovering, with the help of technology, that people who have been arrested, tried and convicted, are sometimes simply the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Last year, during my annual week of service on the Gulf Coast with students, we met two men who had each served over 20 years each in jail for crimes that neither had committed. One had been on death row. These two men were exonerated because of the use of DNA testing in post-conviction criminal cases. DNA testing has proved that more than 250 people had been innocent and had sat in prison for an average of 13 years – the age my son is as he reaches his bar mitzvah (his rite-of-passage).

It is hard to imagine. My eyes filled with tears when one told us of the son or daughter that he had never held. He was now in the process of getting to know his now grown up child. How can a person be compensated for this? Any aspiration he once had for a good education and career have long disappeared.

The Innocence Project is an advocacy group who would like every state to have an exoneree compensation law that reflects the guidelines set out on a federal level (23 states do not at the time of writing). Current federal guidelines provide the wrongly incarcerated up to $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration, and $100,000 per year served on death row. “The beauty of a compensation statute is that it provides a formula that treats everyone equally,” says Rebecca Brown, policy advocate for The Innocence Project.

I believe it is important to financially compensate exonerees and ensure that they can live out the rest of their lives with dignity and meaning. There is an important place for an advocacy group such The Innocence Project.

But I can’t loose the image of the man in New Orleans, who never got to hold his child and now must pick up the pieces with his adult child. I will soon stand by my son in front of our community, a son that I have stood by for thirteen years and will for many more. There are some things that you cannot put a price on.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).