In a recent study published this week by the OU's National Creation of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) an alarming trend has been discovered in the Jewish community of New York City and surrounding areas:

A scourge of teenage pregnancy.

The study reports that this alarming phenomenon has been occurring for years in communities where one would least expect it. And it seems to be widespread, from Satmar to even some Conservadox..

One woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, detailed the downward spiral culminating in her daughter's current condition..

"Boruch Hashem, when she was 17, we were able to find a wonderful shidduch for Breindy. They went on two dates to a hotel lobby and the mishpochas decided it was bashert. It was mamish a beautiful chassenah and now, bli ayin hara, she’s expecting my first aynikel! Boruch Hashem! We were so worried that the fact that her great uncle once went to a modernishe summer camp would ruin her chances and shed be an old maid of 20, but the Ribbono Shel Olam heard our tfilos and now, at 18, she’s going to be a mother."

In the depths of Boro Park, an outraged man who would identify himself only as "Yossi" told a similar shocking tale of the daughter of the Hoovereh Rebbe himself!!

"We all saw it! Little Shaindel, the tochter of the Rebbe, walking along the streets of Boro Park, obviously pregnant, at only seventeen years old!"

When asked if anyone knew who the father was. Yossi responded, “Avadeh! We were all there when it started, under the chuppah at Madison Square Garden. Leiby Tzefoigenflatt, the son of the Flatulancer Rebbe, put some sort of ring on Shaidel’s finger! In public! In front of thousands of chassidim! This shocking display of negiah obviously started something that they couldn’t control and this teenage pregnancy is the result!.

There are no report statistics available yet, but if the anecdotal evidence is to be believed, this sad phenomenon is quite common, though rarely discussed with outsiders. In a cruel twist, some daughters are getting pregnant at the same time as their mothers. It is now not unusual to see a mother and daughter walking along the street together, wheeling carriages with an uncle and nephew alongside each other, both newborns! This warping of all norms of reality has taken place with no effort to halt it and very often even with the encouragement of the community."

Rabbi Horace J. Cohn, President of UHRNTTC, United Hebrew Related Nondenominational Temple Type Congregations, expounded on the trend. "Well, as Reverend Paul Christian said, There is no way out other than going in. Jesus Saves. "

When asked how that related to the increase in teenage pregnancy in the Ultra-Orthodox community he responded, "Well, as Imam Mohammed Muslim said, Allah is great and all infidels will die. Furthermore, the Madonna said Like a virgin, touched for the very first time."

How can we stem the tide?

"I don’t know," Cohn answered, "but I can tell you, it doesn’t happen in OUR community. There’s something wrong with those Orthodox, I tell you!"

Further research led, finally, to the place where this sad development has made its most recent inroads, the Modern Orthodox Community. A distraught mother, who offered the author a latte as we sat on her balcony in Riverdale.

"I don't understand it. Liora was an exemplar of the Modern Orthodox community. She went to Ramaz, worked for several years as a junior congregational intern at Kehillat Nashim BTfila, where we put the men in back of the mechitza. I even took her to the first two Edah Conferences as well as every JOFA conference!"

At this point she broke down but after a cappuccino managed to compose herself enough to continue.

"We sent Liora to Israel, to study for a year after high school in the advanced super curriculum program of Hebrew University. Somehow, she fell in with the wrong crowd and without consulting me dropped out of Hebrew U and instead enrolled in Beis Hashidduch of Har Nof. She returned a changed girl, wearing only long skirts and insisting on going on… on…" The mother lowered her voice to a whisper. "Shidduch dates. Now she’s 19, married to a guy in YU semicha who wears a black hat on Shabbat and she’s knocked up. She claims she’s still modern, but YU? They haven’t been modern in years. I had mapped out her life for her, and now she wallows in the gutter. She was going to go to Columbia and study feminist theory of the late 20th century and after receiving her PhD she’d get married and her husband would stay home with their child! I don’t understand where it all went so wrong!"

Such sad teen stories are just the tip of the iceberg. No one is sure when it started, but based on hearsay, innuendo and an OU study, one can reliably report that such pregnancies number in the thousands at the very least.

Rabbi Cohn of UHRNTTC made a final point to sum up this disturbing issue and startling study.

"As the Guru Mali Dalai said, 'All beginnings of the end are really the ends of the beginnings which are really the ends.'"