All Entries in the "Going to Work" Category
Don’t Even Know Where to Begin
I received a letter from a concerned aunt of a 30 year old Lakewood yungerman. She wrote:
How is a young man of 30 to leave kollel when all he can do is work in a very menial job, when he has little English skills, a bit of arithmetic, and no experience in dealing with anyone [...]
Day # 8 (and beyond): Back to Routine?
Every year it seems that we go through the same routine. Cry our heads off during viduy, promise to do better, and then life comes back to routine. Is there any meaning to all of it, if on Tuesday morning we all go back to our old selves?
The truth is that there is hardly such [...]
Day # 4 – Relationship with Friends & Relatives
Leaving kollel invariably will cause a stir amongst your friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and relatives. Its not every day that a serious learner picks himself up and goes out to work. During these Aseres Yemei Tshuva, you should make it a point to decide how to deal with all this gossip and incredulous stares that you [...]
Day # 3 – Open Communication with Your Wife
After you established your own goals and priorities and bolstered your spiritual faith, its time to work on the most important person in your life – and that would be your wife.
Leaving kollel often places a huge stress on your shalom bayis. First of all, there is the turmoil that you are facing, which tends [...]
Loving Your Work vs. a J-O-B
Ask anybody if it is important that a person love their work. It their answer is yes, most likely that person has a positive attitude on life, and is a high achiever. But if they answer no, most likely they hate their work and are only there because they feel trapped by their reliance on [...]
Summer Vacation = Vacate from Learning (R”L)
Leaving kollel is often referred to as “leaving learning”, meaning of course, that when a person leaves kollel to go work, he is no longer solely occupied with learning, and will be spending a large part of his day occupied with worldly matters. However, there is a sinister undertone to this expression which lends much [...]
Anyone Can Start a Business
Let’s talk tachlis – there are many fields you can go into that can turn into a successful source of parnossah for your family, without having to go to college.What you go into should be largely dependent on your personality, skill sets, and income potential. I already explained how you should be using this time [...]
The New Reality for Kollel Support
Our parents’ generation, when kollel was a novelty, a kollel family could manage to get by with the meager kollel salary, the wife’s meager earnings, and a very simple lifestyle. Parental support, either from the husband’s or the wife’s parents, was unheard of, aside from occasional gifts.
Today, the situation is vastly changed. A kollel stipend [...]
30 Days to Get Out of Kollel Challenge
Where do you want to be in 30 days? If you do nothing, chances are that you will be in the same place that you are now. Take a 30 day challenge – there is no better time than now. In 30 days from now, bein hazmanim officially starts. The last 30 days of the [...]
Kollel is Going Extinct
During the difficult financial situation we find ourselves, kollelim are begining to close – making it very difficult if not impossible for an older yungerman to find a “well-paying” kollel that will accept him.
For years, anyone who was considered good in learning and who wanted to stay in kollel “long term” was always able to [...]
