A groundbreaking approach to mental health and emotional well-being for struggling teens 

Photos: Jeff Zorabedian

Back in 2000, two young BMG avreichim, Yishai Ghoori and Binyamin Greenspoon, decided to create an extreme summer program for bochurim without a framework. Little did they imagine that a few years later, they’d be running a “Kollel” for boys who haven’t found their place in mainstream yeshivos, and would lead a center with a groundbreaking approach to mental health and emotional well-being for struggling teens and their families

Shlomi is a Lakewood businessman who was spending his morning at a local café with his laptop recently, when he noticed a teenage boy sitting at a nearby table. Although Shlomi had a project to finish, he managed to keep a careful eye on the bochur, who was clearly at an age where he should have been in school or mesivta at that hour. This boy’s obvious pain triggered something in Shlomi — it had been years, but he’d been there too at one point in his life, feeling disenfranchised and not able to succeed in the mainstream environment he’d automatically been placed.

Finally, after an hour, Shlomi snapped his laptop shut and walked over to the bochur. “You know,” he said as he helped himself to a seat across from the boy, “I had my own story. And if you feel like you want to talk, I’m here.” The teen grabbed on to this lifeline and told his new friend how he’s been out of school for several weeks. His family was going through their own rough time, and no one even noticed how he was falling.

When the two stood up and parted ways, Shlomi knew he had to do something — he couldn’t just leave this boy to flounder. And so once out the door, he made a quick call to his friend Rabbi Yishai Ghoori.

“We found him a new school and a mentor,” says Rabbi Ghoori, a Lakewood educator who’s spent the last two-plus decades helping challenged teens. “But the credit goes to the guy in the café. He noticed something, opened his heart, and most importantly, reached out. He may just have saved this boy’s life.”

Back in 2001, Rabbi Ghoori and his partner Rabbi Binyamin Greenspoon founded a work-study kollel for bochurim for whom the mainstream yeshivah system wasn’t working, and a few years later they created Nesivos, a Lakewood center for guiding both youth and their families onto a path of healing and success.

Yishai Ghoori and Binyamin Greenspoon regularly field dilemmas from parents such as, “My teenage son just informed me that he wants to drop out of yeshivah and get a job,” or “My 14-year-old daughter has locked herself into her bedroom for a week and refuses to go to school.” Over the past several decades, they’ve met and helped thousands of struggling teens and their families.