“I see myself in my son. I know what it’s like to be in that...

“I see myself in my son. I know what it’s like to be in that teenage stage when you feel the need to prove yourself. One day when I was about his age, I was hanging out with some friends after school, and they wanted to go to the mall, but I had to go back to school and work on a project. A few hours later, they all ended up getting arrested for shoplifting. When I got home, my father was crying. He’d gotten a call from one of the boy’s fathers, who told him everything that happened. He told my dad: ‘Barak didn’t get arrested because he went to school.’ My dad dropped to his knees and started hugging me, and telling me that I’d made the smart decision, and that night he took me out to dinner. Today, every one of those friends is either dead or locked up.”