In time, too, because I lived in Brooklyn, I became feared by a portion of the Jewish Orthodox community. In that world, some leaders protect predators and protect rabbis and parents who prey on kids. Remember these people are protecting predators, not innocent victims. I became a real problem. My book was unofficially banned in every Jewish bookstore; I was unofficially excommunicated by persons I did not know. Death threats and people targeting me became a way of life even around my home.
That was the dark side. But there was another side that wasn't dark at all. In fact, being in that world with those kids was probably the highest and most profound place I've ever been in my life. That's the ultimate paradox. How could it be so meaningful if everybody was dying? The answer is that, in a world like that, all the boundaries get erased and anything and everything can come out, including all of the goodness.
Life changes when you are the only person sitting in a hospital room late at night with a kid dying of AIDS. I learned more about forgiveness at death's door than any other place in my life. Often kids were saying to me at the end, "You know what my parents did to me. I can never forgive the horror that began when I was just a young child, but if they walked into the room and I saw some contrition on their faces and felt it in their hearts, I could find a place to forgive them."
But of course, they never came. And when I decided to take what I learned from the street to high school kids and parents across America, I carried those memories with me. I told kids just what their contemporaries dying on the street had to say to them. It changed a lot of kids' hearts. I was at ground zero at the Columbine massacre. I spoke to over 24, 000 high school kids in the space of several years. It formed the centerpiece of my second book, The Real Deal - For Parents Only: The Top 75 Secret Questions Teens Want Answered Today (UP Publishing)
What I learned is that, no matter how bad things get, nothing can ever wipe out the golden goodness and the innocence that dwells in a person's heart. I am a witness to this fact. I've seen it and lived it on a daily basis.
It's one thing to decide on a quest like this for yourself, because of what you've seen, what you strongly believe. But you are married and had young children at the time. How did it work straddling both worlds, exposing your family to that underworld and vice versa?
Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah, codifies the oral teachings of Judaism and the writings of great sages. Years ago, I stumbled onto a powerful guide to spiritual awakening, the Hilkhos Teshuva, or in my free translation, the path to meaning and hope. The text helps us face our stumblings, our pains and our failures. It tells us how to turn inward to discover that contained within each of us are the keys to inspiration, hope and the ability to change. It is the model of recovery for anyone today.
I often started by bringing the kids home with me. Not all of them, of course. For some, seeing a loving family would create the opposite reaction to what you might think. It would be overload to their emotional system, too much of a contrast. Also, they were not ready to move past shelter. Everything has to happen step by step. Detox, rehab, shelter, all these steps are on the path to healing.
You have to understand that even today, or more so today, there are no refuges for street kids, other than a shelter or two. You have, of course, Covenant House, the Reciprocity Center which is the most profound center for street kids to not only recover their lives but to roll onto fascinating careers and an assortment of smaller shelters.
I did a lot of work out of my home because I believe family and relationships are at the center of everything. Being with my family, besides for refuge, safety and help, they can see the rhythm to life in context of normal family and not in a rarefied atmosphere of a shelter or living in some shooting gallery or squat, loaded with junkies.
As for the effect on my wife and children, it has only been positive. My children thrived in a sea of kids coming to our home. Playing with them. Laughing. Seeing them gain their lives back for the very first time. Seeing the power of hope. My daughter, now a middle school teacher always says,
"Knowing all those teenagers in trouble has taught me the importance of being a nonjudgmental person and that caring is not a concept; it can mean risking it all to help someone in deep trouble. I learned that no matter how out of control a person's life might become, they can always turn it around. Growing up with Yehudah Fine as a father has taught me that everyone deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt. We owe it to ourselves and our friends to be there when they need us."
My wife was always worried when I went on the streets, but she saw such amazing results she learned that I was tough enough, street smart, and that you really do have to trust God to make it through the darkness.
Most people think you have to shelter your kids from the truth of the world. The truth is, kids know everything that is going on out there. I learned that with a strong family life, it would vaccinate my kids against much of the chaos that you find out there out in the world.
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