High-achieving teens admit to cheating The second challenge is being cool. You do it because it gives you standing, and gives you credibility, and immediate physical gratification. Trying to combat the appeal of unethical or immoral choices, Reform movement leaders, meeting at a conference last year, called for a code of ethics to be developed and taught to children. At the conference, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, pointed out incidents of downtown Toronto hotels refusing to book bar and bat mitzvah receptions unless private security guards were hired, because the kids attending these celebrations were destroying the premises. There's an ethical crisis in our society.
Jewish tradition has strong things to say about what's ethically right and wrong.
We have a firm obligation through our camps, Israel programs, youth groups and religious schools to provide guidance for studying what Judaism has to say and to make appropriate ethical decisions. Communicating moral guidance to youth is not an easy task, but the executive director of the Mitzvah Corps Foundation in Phoenix, Bob Liebman, has been dishing it out in a soft-handed way. Since 1979, the foundation has run an annual camp for economically disadvantaged youth between the ages of 8 and 11, at which local teens from Temple Solel and other area synagogues are the camp counselors. Things like the Mitzvah Corps provide opportunities for teens to be role models, and it brings an appreciation of faith and values. These are Jewish ideals.