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December 27, 2014 / 5 Tevet, 5775
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Bullying Must End Now: A Follow-Up


At the request of many readers, this column is a follow-up to my recent interview with Captain Eilon Even-Esh of Israel on the issue of bullying. The interview’s purpose was to seek solutions to the bullying problem in the frum community.

Here are two stories from Captain Even-Esh about bullying:

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Learned victimization: A Brooklyn mother complained that her son was acting “not like himself.” He was talking disrespectfully to her and his rebbeim. This was an entirely new phenomenon since the mother reported that, “he has always been such a respectful boy.” She thought that he was simply feeling restless and perhaps a bit stressed from his studies. Since her son recently showed an interest in mixed martial arts, she thought that the exercise and discipline would help alleviate his outbursts. She called me to set up a lesson.

Every first lesson is different as each person has a different history. My first question is: “Have you ever been physically threatened? If so, what happened?” If the reply is in the affirmative, I deconstruct the event and show the client a technique that could have been used as a defense in the situation. In his case, the boy mentioned an incident whereby a stranger pulled up in front of his house and asked him and his brother to get in the car. The man almost came out of the car to grab them.

During the lessons he told me about a bachur in his class who picks on everyone to the point that he was threatened with expulsion. I asked the obvious question: “Does he bully you?”

“He bullies everyone,” he answered. “No big deal, really.”

I asked him to describe exactly what transpires that makes him feel that he is being bullied. As the boy offered the details, his voice became quieter and his face reddened. I noticed that he was holding his breath. Yet he still maintained that it was “no big deal.”

But it was a big deal. This very nice boy was at the receiving end of constant psychological and physical abuse. In essence, he learned to play the role of victim. Continuing our conversation, he realized that this was a problem that bothered him more than he was ready to admit. He and I immediately started training in the relevant techniques, and I informed his mother that we might have found the reason for her son’s behavioral change.


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A story that touches the heart: This disturbing story is not a classic case of bullying; rather, it is a story of one child’s sociopathic act of cruelty toward another.

A mother from Queens confided to me that her child was brutally molested and sexually abused for three years without her knowledge. My gut reaction was to visit the Megan’s List website for registered sex offenders in that area (www.criminaljustice.ny.gov). To my horror, the mother said that the abuse was at the hand of another minor who, thank God, was now removed from their life.

With the blessing of the family’s rabbi and help from proper therapists, we started the training under the mother’s watchful eye. We focused on how to defend one’s self against a larger attacker in very close quarters. It was a pleasure to see the child’s eyes brighten upon realizing that there was an answer to his very difficult situation. Between drills, the child would smilingly run to his mother and hug her.

The child and I are still training under the mother’s close attention. The sense of empowerment and improved wellbeing I have witnessed in this child is truly humbling.

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5 Responses to “Bullying Must End Now: A Follow-Up”

  1. A person is, between all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. Bullying is difficult to define, because in today's society it extends much farther beyond someone taking your child's lunch money or pushing him or her around on the playground, and the affects of this type of behavior go much deeper than a black eye. Teasing, taunting, ethnic slurs and sexual harassment is all forms of bullying. Bullying behavior is generally repetitive hostility and aggression directed toward a victim who is physically or mentally weaker than the bully. Thus, being a parent I've learned to be vigilant and more particular on the safety of my teens especially when it comes with bullying cases. Then I found this cite that provides a protection for children from a safety mobile protection that can access family, friends and 911 in times of emergency. I just downloaded their service on their iPhone. Here’s where you can find it: http://www.SafeKidZone.com/

  2. That first kid had some rough experiences, but the man pulling up in the car to kidnap him and his brother is frightening. With bullies though, i wonder how much of it comes from their parents' teachings (either directly or indirectly) and how much comes from animal nature to be the dominate one in the pack. Or how much comes from a culture that praises alpha traits. Good for you guys teaching kids how to stand up for themselves…until empathy creeps into them, fighting back is the only way.

  3. Karen Berger says:

    I've discovered that educating kids about bullying gives them fresh ideas. Incentives? That brings to mind my daughter, a well-behaved child, who noticed all these ill-behaved kids getting lots of cool gifts because they were "caught" being good for about a minute. She noticed the good kids were ignored because they were already good. How's that for an incentive to be good? If you really want to stop bullying you have to work at it from all fronts. Imagine a child bringing treif to school. Imagine what would happen to that child? This is spiritual treif but it is not really considered important because the sin of it is not tangible to the adults in charge. When it becomes tangible the adults, for the parents of the bully, and the bully, the bullying will stop.

  4. Thank you for all the comments. To address Karen Bergers point about incentives, the incentives are to encourage the children witnessing the bully incident to not stand idly by as another child is bullied. Take away the silent approval of a complacent crowd in order to remove the fuel to the bully's fire. The bully's incentive is to not get themselves or their ego hurt. Because if the crowd doesn't do the right thing and stand up to the bully, the victim must be able to protect his or herself in a very effective manner. I hope that helped. Feel free to contact me with questions. Eilon Even-Esh

  5. In my assumptions that all bullies are taught to be bullies, I overlooked the first kid in the article whose mother sought your help. I never gave much thought about how some kids may be lashing out because they were bullied. Like wounded animals lashing out, it's sometimes a way of venting their own frustration and not an act of cruelty. Some parents would just pay a therapist to see what's going on with the kid, but if you can get self-defense at the same time as getting at the root of the problem, why not? I wish I had taken martial arts as a kid…instead, I had to combine the three-stooges fighting technique with the karate kid's crane-kick…as the bully was mocking my fighting stance, I would run away by adapting the crane-kick into a chicken-run.

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