WATCH: Rav Yaakov Bender Slams Friday Toameha Gatherings and Rising Drinking Culture – “BAN IT”
Speaking at an event in Toronto, Rav Yaakov Bender, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway, NY, delivered a sharp warning about the growing culture of alcohol consumption in frum communities, singling out Friday afternoon toameha gatherings as a dangerous and destructive trend.
Rav Bender opened his remarks with a stark assessment. “The drinking is a shrecklich problem. It’s a terrible, terrible problem. I blame the parents for that. I really do. Very heavily.”
He then shared a tragic example to underscore the consequences. “There was a boy that, I’ll explain to you, a boy was in a car accident, Rachmana litzlan, and he killed somebody, in one of our prominent communities, and he’s looking at jail time of a very, very, very long time. You know where he got it from?”
According to Rav Bender, the boy’s first exposure to drinking came through a toameha group. “He went to a Toameha, I think, in a very chashuva city. Toameha should be stopped.”
Rav Bender then described the gatherings bluntly. “Those who don’t know, Toameha means you get together, seven, eight men get together, and they drink, they buy very fancy— not the women, they’re wonderful. Erev Shabbos, when a wife should be going home to his wife, helping her out, unless the wife doesn’t want you home, you know— helping her out and doing what you got to do, they go to a party, AND they call it Toameha.”
With biting irony, he added: “It’s a mitzva d’oraisa. And they eat kugel and they fress cakes and zachen, and they drink to their hearts content.”
Rav Bender said the fallout reaches the home. “I have mothers who have told me, again, not many, but [some] have told me that the husband comes drunk to the Friday night, to the Friday night Shabbos table. And Toameha is a mitzva? You got to ban it.”
He urged communities to take action. “If you find out that there’s a Toameha in your neighborhood, go and protest against the family. Put up signs. The kids are going to kill a kid afterwards.”
Parents, he said, often complain about their children drinking, without acknowledging the source. “They come to me complaining about, my kid is drinking. I said, Daddy, do you drink? And Daddy says — that means you’re drinking.”
Rav Bender broadened the critique to communal norms. “We have a society, why do we have Kiddush clubs? Kiddush clubs is bad because in the middle of davening. Why should we serve anything at a Kiddush on Shabbos? Why? You want to give beer by a Shalom Zachar? …We have made a society where drinking is chashuv.”
He expressed astonishment at the luxury liquor culture that has become common. “I don’t believe it. I haven’t gone into a liquor store maybe 30, 40 years. I haven’t ever went in also. There’s bottles today that sell for five to ten thousand dollars, and people are buying it.”
He described the status culture surrounding these bottles as hollow. “The gadlus by a Toameha club is the guy who knows he could tell the difference between a $10,000 bottle and a $5,000 bottle. I don’t believe him for a second. He thinks he can tell the difference. And we glorify these things.”
Rav Bender then made a bold proposal. “There should be no kiddushim in shuls, I’m sorry. You’re very quiet. I liked it better when we talked about the kids. So I’m telling you the kids are seeing this.”
He insisted the drinking problem among teenagers is learned behavior. “I’m telling you right now, the kids by us in yeshiva who drink, let’s say on a Friday night sometimes, there are a few, right? On a Friday night or during the Shabbos and they put them together, they’re getting it from home. They’re seeing it by their parents.”
The problem then spreads socially. “Then other kids do it, other kids see it, they also become, yeah, it spreads from kid to kid. I blame the parents.”
Rav Bender emphasized that his criticism was not directed at the host community. “I’m not talking about this shul right now. I think you don’t know, you don’t know me, you do know what you have over here. You have a posek acharon. You have someone I hope should become the posek acharon in this town for all yeshivas. He should be that. Don’t let him get away with it. He should be doing it.”
He then added, “We glorify drinking. I blame it on the parents, I’m sorry.”
Rav Bender described the calls he receives. “Am I wrong? The kids who drink, I have parents who call me, my kid is drinking.”
Often, he said, the problem begins at home. “The mother calls me and her husband gets shikker every week. I can’t tell it to the wife, you know why? I’m causing shalom bayis problems. I’m sure the wife is already screaming at the husband already. That’s why he’s drinking, because she’s screaming at him.”
WATCH:
{Matzav.com}
