It never fails.
You can start a clock by it.
Question the present day Yeshivish/Kollel lifestyle and you will get blasted-personally attacked. Be called an idiot and a know nothing-anti-Torah.
This is the way it works with the Jews of the 21st century.
Suffice it to say there are two camps. One camp believes that the current yeshiva structure of today is the way to go. This camp believes in the study of Torah, living a Torah lifestyle, with Torah, Avodah, and Gemilos Chasadim. However, they also are subjecting our naive, idealistic, children to a life of struggle and poverty and listening intently for the next restrictive edict from a Rabbinical leadership starving to hang on to it's power. Not so much because they believe it's the way to go, but because that's just the way it is done.
The second camp believes in Torah, Avodah, and Gemilos Chasadim. They believe in a Torah lifestyle. They do not believe in the canard of modern orthodoxy as it's defined by the far left wing on that spectrum, just as they reject the leanings of the far right wing in the yeshiva structure. They just long to be Torah Jews who service Hashem out of love and call out the evil of all who have other agendas.
I myself am lost. I like to think I am in the second camp, but unfortunately, there are not many people there with me. I used to believe in the infallibility of Rabbinical leadership. Those days are gone now. I have witnessed too much. I get a chuckle out of seeing advertisements for a camp where, under the picture of each Rabbi involved, is a caption like Adom Godol or Talmud Chacham. I turn the page and see pictures of more Rabbis who USED TO BE WITH THE others from the previous page, but are now on their own in a new camp, due to a fight between the groups. I used to think that someone earned the name Gadol Ba'Torah-I didn't think you got invited to become one.
Interestingly enough, talk to any Rabbi nowadays, and he'll tell you that we are definitely at the end of days, all the while wanting us to ignore that at the end of days, the Talmud says, the rabbis will be like a pig with a golden ring in it's snout, as if to say check out my Torah and how much I know. The rest of you know nothing.
I believe the study of Torah is a beautiful and spiritual pursuit. I also believe like Abaye, Ravina, Rava, Rambam, Rav Ashi And Rav Shmuel before me that MY NUMBER ONE JOB AS A TORAH TRUE JEW, IS TO FEED MY FAMILY. For support on this issue, I find solace in the Gemmorah Kesubos around 40 blatt in as well as hilchos Talmud Torah from the Rambam, 3rd perek, where he states that a person should find a job, find a house, find a wife. WHAT? The Rambam said that? Doesn't he understand how hard it is in this society? Like living in Egypt was a day at the beach. Today we do the exact opposite. Find a wife, find a house find a job. I'm amused by Kollel and Bais Medrash students who constantly quote the Rambam, but seem to ignore his prescription for life.
I'm told now that a young man needs to learn longer in this brutal society to get a foundation for life. I do not disagree. Here is my answer to fix all of it. Learn to your hearts content if that is how your parents have raised you, but do not involve our daughters and grandchildren in your selfishness. Let me be very clear. It is extremely selfish to demand of one's parents and in-laws that you be supported. It is extremely selfish to demand of your wife, that she supports you for x number of years and after that you'll see where you are at. Yes, the study of Torah is very important. IF YOU BELIEVE IN IT SO MUCH, DO SOMETHING SELFLESS AND WAIT TO GET MARRIED UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO SUPPORT A WIFE AS THE TORAH AND TALMUD SAYS.
It used to be in years past when a boy was in yeshiva his rebbe would quote him that a person who is kovayah iitim l'Torah is like a person who learned all day. The Rebbe assumed that the boy would follow in the footsteps of his Jewish ancestors. Today they are told that a person can't really be Koveah iitim because he would have to do it the same time each day blah blah blah...What are we doing?? When will this stupidity end??
I wish I could learn Torah all day. There is nothing better for a man to do. I cannot. The Torah commands me to feed my children and take care of my wife and that is what I must do. In the meantime, I will continue to learn at least a daf a day in Bavli and dabble in Yerushalmi, as I have for the last 10 years and find my peace in that. While I understand that the Yeshiva world looks down upon Daf Yomi, I will live with their ridicule and their arrogance. In the meantime, I will do my best to make sure we straighten out the lives of the starry eyed youth who have bought into this broken and dangerous system and hope and pray that I don't get a knock on my door in 22 years from now because my relatives don't have enough money to pay for the first of the ten childrens' wedding. Habait M'shmayim oraeeyh....
8 comments:
if all these guys needed support to go to college you would be a bit more ameanable?...
Interesting question lakewood shmuck. First let me suggest to you the same thing. A person needs to be set before he gets married.Period. A job. An income. I would say that if he was in college or Kollel.
In case you are wondering, I have told my children I will let them starve. They need to be independent. You can throw love out the window if you don't teach your children to be independent.
See, unlike the rest of the people you might deal with in your neighborhood, I have a minimalists consistency. I believe you expected me to say yes I would be, but the same thing applies. Have an income-follow the advice of the Rambam.
There is an issue of having a plan and I hear that to a point. A plan is not, "well I'll learn a few years and then we'll see"...or "I'll learn a few years and then I'll be a rebbi"...you and the 10,000 other youngins who are vying for the same 2000 jobs.
A plan is not to have the most precious thing I have in this world, my daughter, work all day and take care of her home all night, while you live off my dime. You need to take care of my daughter, not turn her into a breadwinner with no say.
You want to get married? Have an income...otherwise do your own thing and leave our children out of it.
I apologize for being consistent.
Actually, the college example is a good one to work with. My parents supported me through both undergraduate and professional school but in each case, I was in a defined program with a degree at the end of both and a job at the end of the second one. So yes, I leeched off my parents but it was towards a defined end - being able to support myself and my family. One day, IY"H, I plan to support my children as they train for their life's employment so that they won't have trouble acheiving success.
When a boy enters beis medrash/kollel, it's a very different story. How long is he going for? No one knows. Is there a degree or some kind of formal recognition at some point? Nope. Not even the title of Rabbi? Oh no, he's not on that level yet. Instead of a defined study program with a specific goal, it's an open-ended money pit.
The biggest problem with the kollel society will come in about 25 years. Right now this holy civilization that looks down on all other parts of our people is financed by the parents of those same "learners". Yes, because papa worked and succeeded, Yingl can sit and learn all day. But Yingl, he's not going to ever work because that would be wrong and goyish which begs the question: who's going to support him when papa's money's all gone? Who's going to support his kid when the teat's run dry?
Chazal tell us that a man who doesn't teach his son a trade teaches him theft. What does that say about rabbonim who davka teach boys not to work?
Chazal say that any Torah without accompanying labour is meaningless and attracts sin. What does this say about these people who davka refuse to labour?
There has been middle ground in the past in the Jewish world but much of it was destroyed in the Holocaust and only a few remnants of it remain in and around Washington Heights, more as a historical curiousity than as a dynamic growing movement. Something must be done to resusitate it so that a real Torah alternative to endless parasitism can be offered to our people.
SUPER Rock Star
Very well said.
You are the example I was refering to as far as having a plan. Like a doctor or a lawyer, there is something to be said for when it's all over, my grandchildren will be fed and warm and my daughter will not be the husband and the wife in the relationship. You stated the case much better than I.
I have always wondered, when a girl marries a Kollel guy, do they change the Kesuba so that it reads correctly, that SHE will pay him?
Isn't it interesting how the kesuba reads that the husband has to support the wife. Shouldn't it read that the wife's father has to support them both? Seems to me even the sages who put together the language for the kesuba, understood that the husband has to support the wife...what am I missing here?
The kesubah was designed for a normal, functioning society in which the average man worked to support his family and children. Our ancestors could never have forseen the development of today's current "Torah society".
While it is true that our holy sources discuss the ideal Jewish community as being one in which eveyrone learns Torah all day long, they also note that this will occur at the end of days when G-d Himself will provide for us so that we don't have to work. According to one major opinion that, in turn, will only happen when we become worthy of His blessings through meticulous behaviour and observance of the mitzvos, not selective fanatic observance of some combined with scandalous transgression of others. Clearly today's "Torah society" is not on that level, yet they act as if they are deserving of it.
Not on my dime, buddy.
For another blog with similar thoughts, please check out the one I just opened:
www.garnelironheart.blogspot.com
In any discussion of this nature, a few important concepts are relevant. They are (1) a path; (2) a plan; and (3) options.
Let me elaborate how they fit together. I am a big fan or Torah study. It gives one the foundation for not only life, but for continued intellectual growth within our Mesorah. The tools as well as the substance are planted from a very young age in one’s Yeshiva/Day School education. (so far, so good, right?) However, there are two other critical components that need to be cultivated as part of chinuch. They are a positive, healthy social environment in which one grows and hopefully matures. To be positive and healthy, it must be balanced and age appropriate. The third component is Secular Education, K-12. That’s because unless one plans on not dealing with people throughout life, that knowledge and those skills are essential for communication and functioning.
Exiting one’s HS years, there is still room for growth in Torah and socially. In fact, an effective model has been for boys and girls to spend 1 or 2 years studying it full-time to help reinforce those foundations built earlier. In our community, this is often done in Israel, where there is special siyata D’Shemaya to grow both intellectually and in terms of independence and social maturity. This is where the PATH comes in. By definition a path will lead to some goal. This point of transition from HS to beyond (or sometimes even at the end of HS) is a critical one where parents have to start to push the right buttons. And I’m not talking about pushing them in order to get the right shidduch. I’m talking about in order to get the right life! To what extent are parents checking out of that role, putting the important decisions in the hands of others? So often, they do what is popular or what some HS Rebbi/Morah tells him or her to do? Who made that individual the parent? Doesn’t the parent have more at stake? How did it come to a situation where the parent has less say in the child’s future than the school? What has evolved in many parents is based on short-sightedness, cluelessness, and optimism that somehow the kid will pick up their same values. Consequently, the parents lose touch. Each parent needs to help define a realistic PATH, based on realism and life experience. If that path is allowed to be constructed by those with limited reality and life experience, well then the parents got what they had coming to them.
This is where the PLAN comes in. The plan needs to be consistent with the goal and the path that leads to it. So many young men and women have either no plan or a distorted one. Where does the kid want to end up? If the kid expects to eventually have a job, what is the plan to get there? The attitude is after I’ve finished learning, then I’ll find a parnasa (as if a guy with no broad life experience, no degree will be able to find a job that will support a wife with expensive expectations and 5 kids.). It is no wonder that our generation is full of undereducated and underemployed individuals.
[Parenthetically, it used to be that women who would want to support their husbands in learning would go to college and get the training to do so. Even that formula has deteriorated. College is not a place for a Bas Yisrael. And if the girl wants to go to college and obtain a serious marketable degree, she runs the risk of being relegated to the educated 22+ year olds who are mired in the shidduch crisis. One of the reasons for the crisis is the system that has been created. Parents feed into this panic and we are left with a generation of undereducated, underemployed girls as well.]
Finally, there is OPTIONS. To what extent have parents provided through the plan and the path, suitable options? Of course, we need talented mechanchim and educators who are professional and not burned out. But how many such teachers are there because they had no options. Let’s create an environment where those who choose the path of chinuch do so, not because that is the only intelleectaul skill they have—but because they want to be professional mechanchim?! If you look at some of the great mechanchim out there, they certainly could have done something else with their lives. But, they decided that this was their passion and they aspire to be the best.
What I’m saying here is the emess and I don’t believe is controversial. For positive change the System and Establishment decide to be introspective. And parents need to wake up and see the big picture a bit more.
Good posting, Dr. E.
Some answers to your questions, although you're not going to be happy with them.
First of all, once upon a time kids used to have some idea of what they wanted to do when they grew up. I remember going through high school and pretty much everyone in my class had career goals. They might have changed over time but they were always going somewhere.
Nowadays, that just isn't the case. Kids drift through school with no thought about what the future will bring. Why should they? They know they're missing something, i.e. a life's goal, but they don't know what it is. Then they go off to Israel at precisely the most vulnerable time in their lives and they meet their rebbeim who give them that goal - learning Torah forever. If we sent them to a college for biology, they'd all become biologists! It's no wonder that if they even come back they head straight to Lakewood.
Secondly, there is soclal pressure. A person's standing in any large Jewish community is determined by two things: how much money he has, and how many sons and sons-in-law does he have learning full time? One upon a time, the Jewish Holy Trinity was having one child become a doctor, the second a lawyer and the third an accountant. Not anymore. That would relegate you to second class and no one wants that, so they allow their kids to throw away their lives for social vanity.
This certainly has to change.
garnelironheart.blogspot.com
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