There are probably 3,000 men between the ages of 27-35 in Lakewood in a very similar situation. And the answer to his question – what should a man in his 40′s who finally realizes he needs a job do with his life to earn a living?

It’s all comes down to one’s perspective. Do you feel that you deserve a comfortable job or other form of parnossa? Well then, forget about the opportunities in the business world. Continue searching for the elusive shteleh that you feel so sure about.

But with the right attitude, there are actually plenty of great opportunities out there waiting for the right people to come along and scoop them up.

Here’s a recent example I’ve come across in my line of work. (Minor details are skewed to protect identities):

A business run by two former BMG kollel yungeleit provides a service to large businesses which can save them thousands of dollars in property taxes annually. The typical sale is around $100,000, with an astounding 60-70% of the sale as gross profit! All they have to do is make 3-4 such sales a year to cover their salaries and company expenses. However, this business is struggling. They don’t have a sales process in place to bring leads into the pipeline that they can attempt to sell to, and therefore they have to survive on the few referrals that come from friends and former clients.

They need a good salesman to bring them in new clients, and would be more than happy to pay him $10,000 for each sale. Imagine – make one sale a month and earn a very comfortable living of $120,000 a year.

What are the skills needed for this job? Do you need a masters degree in business administration? No. Do you need 2 yrs. minimum experience in advanced programming languages? No. You don’t need to have even graduated high school. Here are some characteristics of a qualified candidate for the job:

• Speaks confidently 
• Courageous 
• Makes a good impression
• Can present a convincing argument
• Able to make connections
• Get through to the decision makers

That’s all. No degrees, no intricate knowledge of complex systems. Just some basic people skills will get you a $120,000 a year job, with no limit on income potential either.

As a matter of fact, being in kollel actually trains one pretty well for this kind of job. If you ever had to say a chabura to a crowd, or even tried to convince someone “good” of your shtickel torah, you have already practiced these skills. 

Opportunities like this are all over the place. Don’t paint the future black with negative attitudes. If you really have the desire to create value, there are so many businesses that are in desperate need of your help, and will reward you handsomely for your contributions.

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The answer is simple: They were simply scared to go out and start fresh. The world literally had been destroyed, and they were facing the scary proposition of going out and making something of themselves in a brand new world. Both animals and humans tend to cling to the familiar and “safe” territory – as bad as it is – instead of the new and unfamiliar.

Sometime in your days in Yeshiva you must have heard one of your rebbeim or mashgiach describe a Yeshiva as a Tayva. It protects one from the outside world and all the negative influences that can wreak havoc on a young yeshiva boy. Yes, a yeshiva is a Tayva. Just like the Tayva, there is a time that one must leave the Tayva. After the many years of insulation and the spiritual development that took place in the insulation and protection of a yeshiva, there comes a time for one to go out of the Tayva and set out to accomplish his purpose.

So if your Rebbeim don’t kick you out of the Tayva when it’s time – you have to get up and leave on your own. When it’s time to go, there is no mitzvah in staying within the cocoon and the perceived comfort of a yeshiva. As a matter of fact, it’s even a mitzvah to leave.

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Why is this kind of activity permitted and even accepted? Isn’t this also a form of “leaving learning”?

Some will say that by doing these jobs they are able to manage learning in kollel the rest of the year. This however, is a poor disguise of the real truth.

One who willingly and truthfully wishes to dedicate his life exclusively to learn Torah, and forgoes the normal behavior of grown married men to earn a livelihood should only do so for the proper reasons. If one feels his life’s calling is to only learn and not do anything else, then he should only learn and do nothing else. The same mesirus nefesh which dictates their choice of occupation the rest of the year does not take a break for anything.

The real truth is that these people have had enough. They don’t really want to spend their entire life in kollel, and are just looking for a “socially acceptable” way out. They feel if they do these kinds of seasonal work, no one will consider them as having left kollel, since they are only temporary jobs.

What is sad about this is that they are only fooling themselves. If they would be honest about their situation, they would realize that its time to “officially” leave kollel, and get themselves a real job. Then they would not have to endure the low wages and poor working conditions that are the norm in these socially-acceptable-I-didn’t-really-leave-kollel jobs.

If you want to stay in learning, then learn. But if its time to leave, don’t fool yourself into staying longer than you are able to. The conditions are poor, and you’re only doing it for the wrong reasons. The only person you are fooling is yourself. Meanwhile, your wife, children, and most of all -yourself – are enduring the pain.

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Today, one who wishes to learn for an extended length of time, there are plenty of options. In Lakewood there are hundreds of chaburas learning everything and anything under the sun. One who wishes to find an exciting topic to learn doesn’t have to look far. Even areas that were once off limits for yeshiva guys, such as practical halacha, shchita, and hashgacha are very popular and well acccepted.

This leads us to the following observation:

If you are in kollel and feeling unmotivated, it may just be that you are looking for something exciting to learn. You may have had enough of the lomdus and the yeshivishe reid. Go choose from the endless possibilities that are available to you. Figure out what it is that entices you, that something which resonates within you, and go become the biggest specialist in that field. (Think of R’ Chaim Zvi Gorelick in T’chumin or R’ Eliezer Stefansky in Mikvaos.)

But if after choosing amongst all the possibilities you are still feeling unmotivated, and staying in kollel no longer excites you, that is a sure sign that it may be time to move on. Every person needs to feel special about themselves, especially about what they do. If it is in learning, go out and make a market for yourself by conquering a topic of learning that will be “yours”. But if nothing in learning excites you, it’s time to seriously consider moving on.

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“Started with nothing and became a multi millionaire.”

You’ve heard this phrase many times, and often it is said about people that you are intimately familiar with. So many holocaust survivors came to this country with less than nothing – no family, no money, totally unfamiliar with the new country and its language – yet managed to build beautiful families and highly successful businesses.

The reason they succeeded is because they had nothing. There was no plan B, no failover safety escape. If they didn’t make money, they would starve. If they didn’t help themselves, no one else would. They were driven to success because there was no other option.

What stands in your way when you know that it’s time to leave kollel, yet you never leave? More often than not, it is the fear of failure, of not being successful at whatever occupation you will enter. Instead of pursuing your dreams, you remain in the “safety” of kollel, where there is no measurable standard of success or failure. Ironically, kollel becomes “Plan B”, which ironically becomes the very problem instead of the solution.

Becoming successful takes lots of hard work, persistence, and dedication. If you have a safety hatch to escape from, you are almost guaranteed not to win. When its time for you to leave – leave. Only when you leave yourself no other option, is when you begin to become successful.

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photo credit: The Lakewood Scoop

Recently, Mishpacha magazine interviewed Rabbi Aaron Kotler, the CEO of Lakewood yeshiva. He discussed how the Jewish (frum) community of Lakewood has grown drastically over the past 25 years, which he credited much of it to the work of his father Rav Shneur Kotler. He also spoke about the current economic environment, how former talmidim of the yeshiva go out and develop businesses in all kinds of fields, and how they remain connected to the values they received from their days in yeshiva.

The truth is, Lakewood’s exponential growth has less to do with the encouragement of its Roshei Yeshiva, and more to do with the talmidim themselves. It is well known that Rav Ahron Kotler ZT”L vehemently opposed former talmidim settling permanently in Lakewood after leaving yeshiva. He felt that the yeshiva area should remain entirely devoted to Torah, and if a community would settle around it the yeshiva would lose its insularity and purity. The great big “city of Torah” with all its bakeries, pizza shops, restaurants, take-outs, and fancy stores was not what Rav Ahron desired. I have heard from former talmidim of Rav Ahron how he strongly encouraged his talmidim to leave Lakewood after 4 or 5 years in kollel, move elsewhere, and be an influence on the Yidden there. Not in Lakewood, and not near the yeshiva.

So what is the cause of Lakewood’s (the city) growth? The talmidim of the yeshiva are the cause. In the past, the economy of Lakewood was simply non-existent. The only jobs available 25 years ago were to man the counters of 7-Eleven. There were no corporations or high-paying jobs within a 40 mile radius of Lakewood. Anyone leaving kollel back then was forced to move elsewhere in order to get a job or join an existing business.

So what do frum yeshiva guys do when there is no economic opportunity? They create some. Some started businesses, such as nursing homes & hospices, others began developing real estate, and pretty soon a community developed. Then came more schools, who needed rabbeim and teachers, and then came the builders to meet the needs of the growing community. It didn’t take long for the pizza shops, clothing stores, and sushi places to follow suit. With all the growth, came more businesses that opened, and more jobs that were created. 15 years ago most working balei batim were commuting to New York for their work. Today, there are more people that work in jobs within Lakewood than those who travel to the city.

When facing the inevitable “What should I do” when leaving kollel, just look around the city that you live in. It wasn’t built by Rav Ahron, Rav Shneur, or any of the present-day Roshei Yeshiva. Rather, it came to be from the courage, daring, and entrepreneurship of the many former kollel yungerleit who started with nothing – no money, no community, no support team – and yet they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

They did – and so can everyone else. The opportunities are all over the place. Go ahead and grab some for yourself.

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Recently, I received a reader comment that spoke about kollel being a “system” – and although the system doesn’t work for many of those within it, it nevertheless is in place and cannot be changed.

The truth is, fighting a system takes lots of energy, devotion, and perseverance to succeed. But taking oneself out of the system that doesn’t work doesn’t need any of that. My point is not to overthrow a broken system in its entirety, instead, everyone on their own has the ability to remove themselves from being trapped inside it.

You don’t need to kill the system in order to beat the system.

Everyone who is in kollel and is feeling unfulfilled, whether it is because they don’t feel their learning is as good as it should be, or they are sick and tired of living off their parents, or they are feeling old – you don’t have to be like that anymore.

The world is silently changing. People who had lots of money just 2 years ago, are bankrupt. And those who were dead broke 2 years ago are making millions. Opportunities exist everywhere. But staying in a system that doesn’t work for yourself is denying yourself and your family the chance of succeeding and making something of yourself.

Don’t stay somewhere just because its a “system”. Especially when you know that its a broken system. Life is too short to squander it away. Leave the system, and see for yourself how much better life can be.

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On top of all the other good reasons for a person to leave kollel, this can even affect those that are learning well, have good sources of parnossah, and feel fulfilled with what they are doing. A person’s tendency is to be drawn after others around him (Rambam De’os 5:1). A kollel by its nature is a group of poeple learning together. If a person begins to feel old, he starts losing his connection to the group around him. This causes him to slip away from the communal aspect of kollel, which means that he no longer is adding much to the kollel in which he learns.

Back when I was in kollel, I used to notice how one person that was much older than everyone else there would habitually come later than everyone else. This struck me as odd, since we were the ones with young children to keep us busy, while this man’s children were already grown.

I later understood why he was coming late. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy learning, on the contrary, this person would stay up late every night learning. However, with respect to the kollel, he was feeling too old. When you are one of the sailors, its easy to show up to the boat on time to get it going. But when you are just an onlooker, it’s fine to show up late even after the boat has already pulled away.

If you are staying in kollel longer than most of your friends, even if you are learning well, perpare yourself for the inevitable. There will come a time that you begin to feel old. Once you reach that point, it will become very difficult, even impossible, to continue being a valuable contributer to the rest of the group.

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Ever wonder why there are deadlines? Because if there wouldn’t be any, nothing would get done. Imagine if you had 5 years to pay a parking ticket, or if you could pay for airline tickets up to the day of departure at no extra cost. When would you pay for them? It doesn’t take a genius to know that the answer is – “At the latest possible moment.” Which is precisely why deadlines exist – to get things done.

When you are in kollel, and its really time to leave, but you are still living off your parents/in-laws/wife’s job, and it’s working (sort of), there is no hard deadline forcing you to take the plunge that you really should be doing.

So how do you light a fire under your seat? The only sure method is to change the status quo by telling everyone you know of your plans. That means telling your wife, parents, chavrusa, and just about anyone you know that you are leaving kollel by the end of the zman.

Once it becomes expected, you will play it out. The line has been drawn in the sand, and you will not cross it. That’s the beauty of peer pressure working in your favor. Getting you to do what you really should be doing – without pushing it off indefinitely.

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However, one must be very careful when presenting the issue that he does so in an open and straightforward manner. Why is this so?

From my experience in interviewing many friends and acquaintances who went through the gut wrenching process of departing from kollel, there are many pitfalls to be avoided at all costs when presenting the matter to a higher authority.

First of all, it is very important to be open and honest about your feelings. Its not time to act self righteous or make believe you are something that you aren’t. If you do, you will be causing the advice giver to err in his response to you, since he will be basing it off an erroneous assesment of where you are holding.

Second of all, it is crucial that he hears your wife’s side of the story. The best situation would be if she could come and speak for herself and present her feelings about this issue, but that is not always so practical. Your wife’s feelings play a major role in the advice he will give you, and most of the time the husband is not fully aware or capable of giving over a true picture of her side of the story.

We have seen time and time again, especially with regards to the issue of when and how to leave kollel, that the response is what the person asking the question wants to hear. The biggest favor you can be doing for both yourself and your choice of daas torah, is to fairly and honestly present your feelings – and your wife’s feelings. That way, the person can hear you out and give you an answer that is the best for you.

Being honest about your feelings is probably the hardest part of this whole process. Work on yourself BEFORE you get advice. Otherwise, you will cause untold harm to yourself and your family.

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