Bar mitzva poker parties. Synagogue casino nights.
The gambling craze is giving religious leaders fits.

 

When New Jersey resident Shari Goldstein (not her real name) walked into her nephew’s sports-themed bar mitzva party in December, she was “flabbergasted.” There was a separate kids’ area with gambling tables among the batting cages and baseballs.

“I was walking around with my [seven-year-old] daughter and I saw a Wheel of Fortune. I thought, ‘Wait a minute.’… Then next to it there was blackjack and next to that, poker. I was speechless.…

“And then I walked over and saw my nine-year-old and 13-year-old nephews playing Texas Hold ’Em. The kids were glued to the table.”

Texas Hold ’Em, a poker game, is now the rage not only at b’nei mitzva parties but also among high school and college students. According to several NJ party planners, requests for poker at bar and bat mitzva parties have at least doubled over the last two years, particularly for boys.

“The kids go gaga for the tables,” said Daniel Rose of Advanced Entertainment, a Montville party planning business. About 90 percent of that company’s business is bar and bat mitzva celebrations. Of the 250 parties per year the company arranges, about 45 are casino parties. “We used to do half that amount, and poker wasn’t even one of the games.”

But that was before the continuing coverage of gambling on ESPN, columns in The New York Times sports section on poker, television shows like Celebrity Poker and the World Championship of Poker, and widespread access to gambling on the Internet.

“It’s logical that as more and more kids play Texas Hold ’Em, more and more would want it as a theme at their b’nei mitzva parties,” said Rabbi Mark Kaiserman of Temple Emanu-El of Livingston.

And high school students spend plenty of recreational time playing, according to Rabbi Eliezer Zwickler of Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David in West Orange. “Gambling is out of control in our schools and our community. Our kids are gambling and playing cards and not just for chips or for fun, but for money. Not a couple of dollars but big money. Hundreds of dollars. Sometimes thousands. It’s a dangerous road, and parents are in denial.”

Experts warn that compulsive gambling is fast becoming a major issue among adolescents and college students. Any portal to gambling, not to mention games of chance linked to bar and bat mitzva celebrations and synagogue fund-raisers, is one too many.

“There’s been an explosion of gambling in the Jewish community,” said Arnie Wexler, a certified compulsive gambling counselor and former executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. He is also a recovering compulsive gambler who placed his last bet in 1968. Today one third of the calls he gets come from people under 25. “Television is creating the explosion among high school and college students. And parents don’t know how to handle it,” he said.

Educators at area day schools agree. “Gambling is an up-and-coming addiction,” said Barbara Deutsch, principal of the middle school at Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston. Kushner and Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange have both imposed bans on card playing and any kind of gambling.

A letter from SSDS that went home to parents last year stated in part, “Our faculty and administration have become aware of the frequency of card playing, specifically poker games, during study breaks, recess periods, lunch times. It is also clear that an alarming number of these games are played for money.” The letter informs parents that “playing cards, specialty cards … and any kind of gambling entertainment … is outside of acceptable behaviors in our school.” Even games like Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, and Harry Potter have been banned.

Rabbis react

Local rabbis have a variety of views on the issue. Zwickler has taken the hardest line on gambling. He has spoken from the bima on the ills of gambling and banned all forms of card playing and gambling at the synagogue, including at casino night fund-raisers for adults.

He acknowledged that his position has not always been embraced by the community. “Parents initially say poker sharpens their children’s minds, and they’re only playing with chips,” said Zwickler. “But it’s really dangerous and appealing, and if we’re the ones providing it, we’re taking a major risk of disaster coming to us. I absolutely put this together with substance abuse.” He added that some parents who initially opposed his position have shifted their views and come back to him to apologize and endorse his stand.

At the other end of the spectrum, Rabbi Joel Abraham of Temple Sholom in Fanwood says education, not prohibition, is appropriate. “We don’t ban wine because someone might be an alcoholic, but we do provide grape juice. We’ve never banned behavior that might be addictive. That’s not the way to combat a problem,” he said. “With addiction, it’s about knowing how to make a diagnosis and then making recovery available.”

Abraham knows college and high school kids are gambling, but he sees the behavior, particularly when supervised, as “better than some of the alternative teenage behaviors, from driving around knocking mailboxes over to anything else you can think of.”

Most, however, fall somewhere in the middle, finding the trend of gambling “somewhat troubling,” as Kaiserman of Emanu-El put it. These rabbis generally allow carefully controlled casino nights, with fake money, either as fund-raisers or purely for recreation at their synagogues.

“I have a concern about gambling and having the congregation be a role model,” said Rabbi Donald Rossoff of Temple B’nai Or in Morristown. “There can’t be gambling for money.” His synagogue recently held an event called Cafe Mazal, where people gambled for raffle tickets. “Cafe Mazal stretched me to the edge, but not over the edge,” he said.

But rabbis who permit these kinds of events for adults generally take a dramatically different view of gambling as a youth activity.

Rabbi Avi Friedman, religious leader of the Summit Jewish Community Center, recently permitted its men’s club and young couples club to hold a casino night. But, he said, “if Kadima or [United Synagogue Youth] had come, it would have been a real problem. This is not what kids need to be doing, just like I wouldn’t want them wine tasting. There’s a maturity level involved.” Before he left his previous pulpit in Pittsburgh, Friedman declined to support a Hillel fund-raiser involving gambling. “I was asked to sponsor a student at a poker table where the winnings would go to tzedaka. I refused. I felt there were a lot of other things they could do to raise money. I didn’t think gambling was appropriate.”

As far as Texas Hold ’Em at b’nei mitzva parties go, while few see poker as an appropriate activity for 13-year-olds, many said they would spend their moral capital focusing on overly lavish bar mitzva parties in general rather than on particular trends. “I’m not wild about the poker craze at b’nei mitzva parties, but frankly I don’t look at it as any less healthy than any celebration that is excessive and inappropriate for a 15-year-old,” said Rabbi Clifford Kulwin of Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston.

Rabbi Mark Mallach of Temple Beth Ahm in Springfield now includes a session on gambling in his annual seminar for sixth-graders and their parents in advance of their becoming b’nei mitzva. He added the gaming discussion to the three-year-old seminar this year, after reading and hearing about the phenomenon. “Are we opening the possibility to create an addiction among our children?” he asked. “This is not what our children should be doing.”

One reason rabbis give for their generally mild stance is that Jewish law does not strictly forbid gambling, although it is frowned upon. It is considered a form of stealing, as well as a waste of time. Still, rabbinic law only prohibits professional gamblers (mesahakei kubiya) and people who bet on pigeons (mafrihei yonim) from testifying in court — a traditional rabbinic measure expressing disapproval of taboo behavior.

As Friedman put it, “playing blackjack, or visiting a Web site, or having a regular poker game with your buddies” is not prohibited.

A passing trend

Some in the community see the increase in gambling as a passing trend. “I’m sure it will pass,” said Rabbi George Nudell of Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains. “Something else will come along soon and replace it .… Kids will experiment, find the negative side, and pretty quickly they say that’s a stupid way to spend the evening, and move on.”

Others, like Kaiserman, think it’s just beginning. “I think we’re going to start seeing more and more kids running up huge debts gambling. I expect to see a time soon when everyone knows a kid 15 years old who has run up thousands of dollars in debt .… In fact, I’d be surprised if it’s not already starting to happen.”

Even if it does pass, Nudell understands the damage that will be done. “Those who will get burned will pay a steep price. For those who will get addicted, it’s not going to pass.”

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, founder and medical director emeritus of Gateway Rehabilitation Center, would like to see the Jewish community begin to emphasize prevention education and the development of sensitivity to what it means to be a compulsive gambler, when even a favorite holiday game of chance can pose a challenge. A game of dreidel he said, is an innocent thing if you’re a compulsive gambler like drinking a l’chaim at a kiddush is an innocent thing if you’re an alcoholic.

As for Goldstein, who attended the bar mitzva party with the gambling tables for kids? Her distaste only deepened when she found herself sitting at a table next to a family friend who has what she called an addictive personality. “He said, ‘This is awful. Take it from someone who knows addiction. Introducing children to a terrible vice at such a young age sets them on a bad path.’”

Addiction: a game of chance

THE PROBLEM with games of chance, say experts, is not that everyone who gambles will become addicted, but rather that introducing gambling as a social norm provides the opportunity for those predisposed to addiction to get hurt.

Lewis Abrams, a member of Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David in West Orange and executive director of the Yatzkan Center, the only residential rehabilitation center designed for Jewish teens, estimated that out of all the kids now gambling, 15-20 percent will develop problems.

Abrams compares the process to that of drug addiction and said that the effect of gambling on brain chemistry for compulsive gamblers is similar to what happens with drugs for a cocaine addict. “There’s the high, the rush, and the crash afterwards …,” he said. “Kids can lose thousands of dollars, depending on their resources and where they go to get their money.” Even if they don’t reach that level of financial loss, however, they face a downward spiral. “Digging a hole in gambling can involve significant loss in self-esteem, guilt, shame. They lost friends and destroy relationships, and there is the worrying, planning, lying, and concealing information. And if they need a loan, they may go to a deviant part of the community. They’ll go to places they never dreamed they would.”

And Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, founder and medical director emeritus of Gateway Rehabilitation Center, a not-for-profit drug and alcohol treatment center, added that “kids have difficulty concentrating, and their grades start dropping.”

Addictive behavior can start early, according to Abrams. “It starts at the time they learn to play cards, sports, and are watching television. It can certainly start under 10 years old. Mostly, it happens later, but the seeds can be planted very early.”

Kids get involved in gambling for a variety of reasons, ranging from mimicking adult behavior to following social norms. Abrams suggested that kids learn this behavior from their parents. “A lot of it is role modeling. Kids are watching adults. Adults need to hold themselves accountable. It’s just like drinking and drugging. What they say is not as important as what they do. Parents have gambling parties in their basements. Kids watch and get excited. They watch and they want to do it.”

Twerski, author of a soon-to-be published book on gambling in the Jewish community (tentatively titled It’s More than Dreidl), pointed out that “kids are risk-takers and while adults have a sense of responsibility, adolescents don’t have it yet,” and they get into trouble. He also cited the legalization of state lotteries, televised gambling, and the enormous increase in gambling in the general population.

He added that a contributing factor to all addictive behavior is a general “hedonistic” attitude in society. “In the 21st century, we celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of pleasure …. In this culture, how can we expect kids not to search for a high? Some will go for alcohol and drugs. Some will go for sex. And some will go for the high of gambling.”