What does a parent do when his or her day-school-educated college student says that he's giving up his grant, postponing graduate school, and moving to Berkeley to study Sanskrit? In finding the answer to this question, I got a big lesson in what it means to be a parent and how to communicate when I (a native Midwesterner) visited my son in Berkeley, California.

    I k'velled when David graduated with honors in Hebrew and Near Eastern Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dream was to go to grad school in California. So when he was offered a grant at Berkeley, he packed his back pack.

    But when David shaved his head, became a vegetarian and stopped wearing leather shoes, I knew a challenging road lay ahead. I knew that David would never have a 9-5 job. As a child, he had always been exceptional-highly gifted and a brilliant student. He was headed toward a Ph.D., but now I wondered what the likelihood would be of his getting a job with a degree in Sanskrit and advanced meditation? So I went to Berkeley for Purim to spend time with David and try to understand where he was coming from. Since I am Sabbath observant and a baalas teshuvah, I recognized his need to search for truth. I remembered that when I was 20, I, too, set out from my home in Milwaukee on my quest for the meaning of life. Only I wound up singing Shabbat songs and eating cholent with Lubavitchers in Crown Heights, not chanting mantras and eating brown rice with Buddhist monks in Berkeley.

    So like all Jewish mothers, I took action and made a trip to Berkeley (with my husband who was on a business trip). We checked into a small hotel on Durant Street, a few blocks from the University.

    For the uninitiated, Berkeley seems to be stuck in a time warp of the 60's. Only in Berkeley do you find a mutual funds executive who is making more money selling "medicinal magnetic" products than he is selling annuities.

    Visiting Berkeley on Purim is an enigma. It seems that every day is Purim in Berkeley. One cannot tell who is in costume and who is wearing his everyday attire.

   When my son agreed to attend the Megillah reading, I felt this was a major accomplishment and a step in the right direction. It had been many years since he had attended a shul. My husband and I spent Shabbat with an exceptionally dedicated and innovative rabbi-one would have to be to succeed there. Rabbi Yehudah Ferris and his wife Miriam (with nine children, k'ninahora) operate a small Chabad House, located right on the main drag on College Avenue in Berkeley.

    As the minyan gathered, I quickly learned how to greet and welcome Shabbat visitors by observing the technique demonstrated by the Ferris' 12-year-old daughter: "Hello, is this your first time here? Here is a siddur; let me help you find your place. Do you have plans for lunch?"

What to Do if (r"l) Your Child Strays Rabbi Yehudah Ferris "It is essential to bombard the child with love. Try to recognize that inside the core of every Jew is a piece of G-d. Be patient and consistent and always accentuate the positive. The child will respond and reciprocate. "The mother of a friend of mine recently passed away. The mother wished to be cremated. This friend was very adamant in his refusal because cremation is against the Torah, but his sister (a Jew who became a Buddhist) insisted on fulfilling her mother's last wishes despite the religious conflicts. My old secretary, a "Jewish Buddhist" herself, happened to be the roommate of my friend's sister. The secretary agreed to speak to the sister, who later agreed to give her mother a proper Jewish burial. "This story illustrates the essential Jewishness which exists inside every Jew. This secretary, while having no outward connection to Yiddishkeit, went out of her way so that my friend's mother would have a Jewish funeral. She was the one who stayed the execution."

    So when the next young woman student wandered into the small, tidy frame house, I smiled and said "Shabbat Shalom, would you like an English siddur?" She returned my smile and proceeded to tell me her life story: she'd become a documentary filmmaker, gone to a baal teshuvah yeshiva in Israel "to get turned on to Judaism," and was now trying to learn more about her heritage.

    Meanwhile, as I glanced into the men's section, there was no sign of my son, who was to meet us at shul.

    After services were completed, we walked a mile to the Rabbi's home, where about 30 guests (students and young professionals) gathered to enjoy Shabbat together. After Kiddush and Hamotzie, Rabbi Ferris asked each guest at the table to introduce him or herself. The guests included a mother/daughter pair and a father/son pair (both children were baalei teshuvah who bring their parents to the shul and the Rabbi's home on a regular basis.)

    The young man sitting next to me wore a baseball cap that read "Lucasfilm." I asked him if he was employed at the famous movie studio. I quickly dropped my matza ball in my soup when he nonchalantly told me he was part of the staff who was designing the new Star War movies which describe the childhood and adolescence of one of the series' characters, Darth Vader. He explained the plot of the films to me: Darth Vader had once been a young Jedi knight on a quest, searching for truth and justice throughout the galaxy.

    I thought that the themes of the Star War movies (l'havdil) paralleled the passages in a person's life. I looked around the Shabbat table and saw that everyone there was on a great quest-searching for spirituality and meaning in his or her life.

    But unlike Darth Vader, they were lucky enough to bump into Rabbi Ferris. (If Darth Vader had bumped into Rabbi Ferris, he'd be using his light saber to kasher kitchens. Imagine what Darth Vader could have become if someone had taken the time to teach him about middot [improving one's haracter] and hachnasas orchim [inviting guests to your home]?)

    At his vast Shabbat table, Rabbi Ferris told his guests: "In Berkeley, we say, ‘Speak to your inner child.'" And he continued to explain the meaning of Purim and the Torah portion, relating it to every person. Still no sign of my son who was supposed to meet us for dinner.

    After the meal, Rabbi Ferris accompanied us on the walk back to our hotel and told us that he had counseled many students: those who had come from secular and religious backgrounds who had lost their way, lost their faith, and lost themselves. As an example of one of many students who had come to him, he told us of a religious student who escaped to Berkeley from Boro Park, New York, and who came to the Rabbi asking if it was proper to live with his non-Jewish girlfriend.

    These college students come to Rabbi Ferris and his wife with life crises. They come to him initially with shoulder-length hair and torn clothes. Later he can hardly recognize them when some return in a suit and tie and kippah and ask him for help in kashering their kitchen.

    I didn't give up hope of seeing my son get a dose of Yiddishkeit in Berkeley. Shabbat ended and we called David. He had had two emergencies: a plumbing disaster and an allergy attack. But he was fine now. We picked him up and went to hear the Megillah reading at Rabbi Ferris' shul. After the Megillah reading, Rabbi Ferris played his guitar and sang Avraham Fried songs. He asked my son to sing along with him. I was amazed as he joined in, clapping and singing along with the Purim celebrants.

    The next day, after an 8:00 a.m. Megillah reading, my son took me to Chinatown in San Francisco. On the bus ride there, he tried to explain where "he was coming from." He told me he was working to improve himself, seeking wisdom and compassion in Buddhism.

    I tried valiantly to explain that Judaism has all these components: davening, middot, mitzvot-all aimed at improving the world. This is the concept of Tikkun Olam (completion and perfection of the world). But so many of our young people don't know that Judaism has so much to offer. And as a result, there are a highly disproportionate amount of Jews practicing Buddhism today.

    As author Roger Kamenetz tells us in his book, "The Jew In the Lotus," (Harper Collins Publishers, 1994) "[this] is such a loss for the Jewish community." It is the loss of leadership of these gifted Jews who now are involved in Buddhism. As Kamenetz points out in his book (p. 227), "Since fewer than five percent of American Jews define themselves at all religiously, Jewish Buddhists do represent an abnormally large percentage of a precious pool of energetic, talented and spiritually committed Jews."

    I looked at my son and agreed wholeheartedly.

As a native Milwaukeean, Buddhism is as unfamiliar to me as compassion is to Darth Vader. My son explained that Buddhists are seeking wisdom and compassion through meditation. I tried to understand what it was that appealed to David about Buddhism so I could show him that Judaism had all that and much more. But that realization would have to come from David, not from me.

    So after four days in Berkeley, it was time to say "zei gezunt" to my son. I kissed him and felt a great weight being lifted from my heart. As I flew home to begin Passover preparations, I felt that I had communicated with him. I had succeeded in keeping the channels open. I had listened to him and he had listened to me.

    So nu, what now? I would like to tell you that he's coming home for the Seder. But no, he won't be coming home for Pesach this year. But he would visit in a few months and we would talk on the phone every week.

    I don't tell him that I cry every Yom Tov for the lost little boy in tzitzit and long peiyos who knew the Four Questions at three years old. Or that I cry for the boy who won the school mishnah contest at eleven years old and won the trip to New York.

The Runaway Lamb And Moses was a shepherd Exodus 3:1      Says the Midrash: G-d tested Moses with sheep. Once, when Moses was shepherding Jethro's flocks in the Sinai Wilderness, a lamb ran away from the flock. Moses chased after it, until it came to a spring and began to drink. When Moses reached the lamb he said, "Oh, I did not know that you were thirsty..." and tenderly carried it to the flock. Said the Almighty: "You are merciful in tending sheep-you will tend My flock, the people of Israel."     Said the Lubavitcher Rebbe: In addition to demonstrating Moses' compassion, this incident contains another important lesson: Moses realized that the lamb did not run away from the flock out of malice or wickedness-it was merely thirsty.     When a Jew alienates himself from his people, G-d forbid, it is only because he is thirsty. His soul thirsts for meaning in life, but the waters of Torah have eluded him. So he wanders about in foreign pastures, seeking to quench his thirst.     When Moses understood this, he was able to become a leader of Israel. Only a shepherd who hastens not to judge the runaway lamb, who is sensitive to the causes of its desertion, can tenderly lift it into his arms and bring it back home. Reprinted with permission from The Inside Story, by Yanki Tauber, VHH Inc. 1997

    Still, I feel the loss of the little boy I once knew.

    So, if you find your college kid Jewishly "in a galaxy far, far away," don't give up hope. Go visit him or her. Bring along a Gan Israel T-shirt, an Avraham Fried CD, and some hamentashen. Take the time to show him you care. Make the effort to rekindle some sparks. But most of all, you must have faith. And it wouldn't hurt to find a caring rabbi like Rabbi Ferris along the way.

Deborah Wicentowski resides in Milwaukee with her husband, Jerry. They are the parents of four sons. She is the editor of a quarterly publication, The Jewish Community News, published by the Jewish Community Funeral Home of Milwaukee. She learned about Shabbos and Yiddishkeit at the home of Rabbi Israel and Rebbetzin B. Devorah Shmotkin, Director of Lubavitch of Wisconsin.