I grew up in Israel in an American family who moved from New York in pursuit of ideals that were more real or high or a bunch of other adjectives…. Although there is a trace of cynicism in that last statement… I will add that i hope i have internalized some of those values…. Having said that….
I have been following this post here and there and i can tell you two things for certain. From different things that you write I can tell that your mindset and how you view Judaism has been strongly influenced by Charedi culture. The flaw in Charedi thinking is that one should separate between things that are naturally important to them and those that are values that you strive to be a part of. The underlying mindset of our self righteous world does not believe that and especially in Charedi Israel. Someone smart once said that in America Judaism is a part of life, by some even a great part of it and in Israel it’s life… the down side of that is that it isn’t …. Before you jump over me What I mean is hopefully it should be but should is the key word. if it is Ma Tov and I look up to people like that but where the charedi world goes wrong is that the reality is that Torah should educate the person and when I say that by definition that means that naturally the person has his/her own identity which isn’t Torah. Obviously the state of the human being left without the guidance of the Torah is doomed as we see in popular culture, which is why most of us are trying to be practicing Jews. But if we start making the values we hear and are inspired by, our identity per say, that only stems from insecurity and inability to deal with ourselves as people first of all. Your son maybe be rebelling becasue he needs to know that your love for him is moe real than anything your teaching him. Eventually this in itself will ironically bring him to believe in those values.
Your son needs to know, and I repeat, know, that for you the humanistic part of being his mother/family is more important than Judaism and I’m not sure you know that so how can he? He is in the streets because it’s all the same in this culture. I know it because Ive been there. There is nothing called being a normal person in that society. once he’s not in yeshiva than there is nothing else… What he’s telling you is that there is something in his basic identity that he resents and that that identity associated with Judaism and the basic culture that he grew up on, Right now he’s on a mission to find an identity that will be a relief for him and he’ll just keep on going until he finds that.
My second point is that your son is obviously very angry and in pain but it is deep and in my opinion from what it sounds like, telling him you love him, although better than getting into any sort of argument with him, isn’t really helping. It’s time to really devote yourself to understand what he really is angry about. You must be 100% honest and not the least bit defensive when it comes to this.
I feel your pain but I feel your son’s pain too. I wonder what he would think if he read all this….. “People are only mean when they are threatened” someone once said. What is your son going through for real inside of him?