Jews seeking spiritual renewal bowled over by sixth grader seeking ice cream

On a personal note:

I’ve been working for two weeks washing dishes at a Jewish retreat center and farm in Connecticut. We host a variety of programs throughout the year–this autumn an ecology-focused camp for Jewish 6th-graders called "Teva." The Teva counselors live onsite from September to December, and a new group of 6th graders comes every Monday and stays for a week, during which time they learn about the synthesis of Jewish and environmental values.

These campers are 11 or 12 years old, which means that in about a year each will have a "Bar Mitzvah," the Jewish rite of passage. In the ancient era (when the tradition was founded) this would have meant leaving their parents’ homes and becoming apprenticed to a master of a trade. In the 21st century, it means a big party and then return to life as normal.

This dichotomy is reflected intimately in my interactions with the campers. Talking individually to one of these young men is like talking to a small, inexperienced adult–but an adult nonetheless. We can chat back and forth about school, religion, vocation, girls, you name it. I have to remind myself not to offer him a beer. But put them in a group and a setting that reminds them of their status as children (as most activities at camp do) and they revert to animals, screaming and howling as they ricochet off me, each other, and my laboriously stacked dishes.

As they lay waste to the freshly mopped dining hall, I think to myself: "Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to put a hundred and fifty of these energetic, impressionable creatures in one room with only a dozen adults?" With that kind of ratio, the only means of supervision is crude crowd control: systems of shouting and singing that we normally reserve for groups of dogs. Back when kids this age were learning to be blacksmiths and bankers and scribes, there would have been two or three experienced workers for every apprentice, and the dominant culture would have been one of mutual maturity–not herd and herder. "That’s how these kids could really learn something," I think, "working in small groups under close supervision, doing essentially adult activities."

But hold time–we have a program exactly like that, going right now! It’s called "Adamah" (Hebrew for "the land") and runs quietly in the background of the more dynamic Teva. Fifteen "Adamahniks" live onsite, rotating in small groups between kitchen, housekeeping, maintenance, and farming tasks, always under the supervision of a professional. They get room and board in exchange for their work: a modern apprenticeship model.

So what’s the catch? The Adamahniks aren’t sixth graders–they’re mostly in their mid- to late-twenties, the same age as the Teva counselors. They come from wealthy families and hyper-successful university backgrounds, and aren’t sure what they want out of life or where they’re going next. So they’re here, learning the life of a socialist Jewish farmer crossed not-so-smoothly with the life of a capitalist Jewish retreat center (capitalist enough to charge almost $200 a night for guests not associated with a specific program).

So while we’re treating our twelve-year-olds like animals, we’re treating our twenty-somethings the way we used to treat twelve-year-olds. The phase of odyssey and search for vocation has been pushed back more than a decade, and the personal anachronisms are bizarre to witness: a biological adult bowling over his peers to get first dibs on ice cream, or a 28-year-old with a master’s degree reflecting that when this program ends he’ll probably go back and live with his parents. Even as children in the inner city learn to grow up faster, the larval stage of the upper middle intellectual class is getting longer...and longer...and longer.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: in biology successful organisms often have longer childhood phases (and even the most politically correct among us can’t deny the upper middle class intellectual is a successful organism). But it’s a strange thing, a little unprecedented, and I wonder what it bodes for upcoming generations. Will these post-adolescent wanderers settle down to careers in business and law sometime in their thirties, have children in their forties, and achieve full bourgeois-dom by the time they’re fifty? Or will they form networks of utopian spiritual communities that raise their children on campfire songs and compost bins? Or will the entire system implode with all the grandeur of Rome burning?

Needless to say: only time will tell.