Bein Hazmanim Advice to Kollel Yungeleit
Dear Kollel Yungerman,
As a former kollel guy, I know how tough life can be. Money is tight, and you have to live off your parents/in-laws/wife’s generosity to support you while you spend your days and nights learning. Now is bein hazmanim, and you are “busy” getting everything together so you can go for Yom Tov to your parents/in-laws. It is also a time to relax a bit from the very strenuous schedule you have all year, so you kick back a bit and take it easy.
When you visit your parents/in-laws for Yom Tov, just make sure to appear as a masmid. You see, they are spending their hard earned money to support your learning, and it is only fair that you give them a glimpse of what their money is going for. They don’t get a chance to see you up close all year, so here is your chance. If you were working for a boss and the only time he sees you is when you are taking it easy, that wouldn’t make for a good situation. Listen up – you are exactly in that boat right now.
Yes, I know there is a 9:00 shachris minyan especially for bein hazmanim. When you are at family, please make sure you daven earlier. There is no better ammnunition that a father in law has than to exclaim sarcastically to his friends – “I was already at work for an hour when my eidim woke up for shachris!”
A mother-in-law once remarked to me how strange she finds it that her supposed masmid son-in-law who is “learning shtark” in Lakewood all winter will stay at her home for 3 weeks during bein hazmanim and she won’t see him opening a sefer effer.
Go enjoy Yom Tov by the shver, but for goodness sakes try to make a good impression.
Or in the very least, don’t give him more reasons to want to pull the plug for good on kollel support.
A gut Yom Tov,
Kollel Guy
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Support Your Kids at Whose Expense?
When parents support their married children in kollel, even if they can afford it, there are others who are hurt by their choice. Since they are supporting their children, they have less money to give to tzedaka, and those institutions suffer.
Every community needs basic infrastructure in order to maintain frum life – shuls, yeshivas, girls’ schools, mikvah, kashrus, etc. These are vital for a community to function, they are not optional. Most community institutions need all the financial help they can get, and they often struggle just to cover their budgets. In terms of priority, there is no question that these institutions take precedence to any other kind of tzedaka, because without them, the community could not exist. Many rabbonim have ruled that a person’s tzedaka should first be given to their childrens’ schools before any other cause.
But when parents are spending so much money on supporting their children, often much more than the required maaser of 10%, how much is left for the community institutions? When they allocate all their tzedaka to their own children, the institutions that need it the most suffer the greatest. This is happening in out of town communites such as Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, and Toronto, and even in Brooklyn and Monsey. Schools and yeshivos complain that their parents say they cannot afford to give generously to their own institutions since they are sending so much money to their children in Lakewood.
If giving support to your children did not harm anyone, that would be one thing. But when the support comes at the expense of these vital institutions that a community needs to survive, it is clearly wrong. Every day these mosdos struggle just to stay open. If they had only a fraction of the money that is being sent by parents to support their children, how much easier would it be for them? How much more good could they do for their community if they only had a little more money?
TweetAdding Stress to Shidduchim
In our ongoing series of posts listing the negative side effects of supporting children in kollel, this one is painfully obvious. The suffering of thousands – yes thousands – of single girls waiting for a shidduch is unbearable. And yet, we as a society are doing absolutely nothing about it. Everyone knows of an older single or two, whether its your neighbor, friend, cousin, or sister.
The problem is a difficult one to solve, and the causes of it are demographic in nature. But nevertheless, the added stress of requiring money to be able to afford a good boy only makes a bad situation even worse. While it is true that wealthy families are also affected by this, support for learning in kollel causes more hardship and difficulty to the shidduch process.
In the past, shidduchim were based mostly on the traits and characteristics of the boy and girl, and less emphasis on the families. It was quite common for a shidduch to occur between two very different “types” of families. Now, partially because of the need for financial support, it becomes more of a business partnership instead of a shidduch. The father of the girl needs to be reassured that his investment is suitable for his kind. And the boys parents want to really be assurred that their “precious son” is going to be well taken care of. So instead of opening up the market and easing access for the boys and girls to meet each other, another layer of complication is added to the mix, which takes time to be carefully considered, and often is the reason many matches are rejected.
In the past, shidduchim were often made between the boy and girl themselves, without any intervention of the parents. While that may not be feasible today, we should not lose focus on what is the most important factor in shidduchim – do the boy and girl actually like each other? Eveything else is really just icing on the cake. Shidduchim should not be sidelined with matters like money and support, which in the scope of a lifetime are really insignificant.
Is our insistence on college degrees for girls and financial support for kollel from the parents really a good thing? Or are we causing more harm than good by increasing the pain and suffering of the thousands of good girls who wait endlessly to find their shidduch?
TweetSupport Your Son in Law so he Should Hate You
Parents support their children in kollel with the dreams that their money is going to good use, and that their children will feel a tremendous sense of gratitude and respect for their sacrifice on their behalf. But the reality is, this dream rarely happens. The sad truth is that supporting your children in kollel increases the likelihood of them having a poor relationship with you, than those parents who don’t support their children financially.
People have an inherent pride that makes them feel uncomfortable when they are on the receiving end. Because of that, anything and everything that is said or done to them by the givers is interperted as negative, even if it is only their imagination. Take for example, the following exchange between a father in law and son in law:
It is the first day of Sukkos, and the family is going from the house to the sukkah to eat the Yom Tov meal. There are lots of people eating at the meal, so the father in law starts to shlep some chairs to the sukkah. The son in law happens to be sitting nearby looking into a sefer. The father in law, seeing his son in law sitting there, gently asks him if he can help him. The son in law immediately interprets his request in a negative way, and thinks to himself, “My father in law thinks that because he gives us money he can make me do work for him! If he wouldn’t be giving us money he never would have asked me for help.”
The parents also feel awkward in their giving of money, and that also adds to the negative feelings. Since they are giving money without receiving anything tangible in return, there is a negative balance created in the air which surfaces from time to time. Parents tend to ask their married children to do things for them which the children may not be most interested in doing. But when there is support in the relationship, the parents feel as if they have the right to demand their compliance.
I was sitting with two friends who both received money from their in laws during the early years of their marriage. They both expressed their fervent wish that they become rich so that they can bring all the money their in laws gave them over the years and “dump it back in their face!”
Money does not create a healthy relationship. It skews things and causes tremendous stress and hard feelings. Parents need to let go so their children manage on their own, even when it seems to them that they aren’t capable of doing so. When children fend for themselves, they realize what struggle their parents and in laws went through, and it creates a newfound respect for them.
Bottom line – don’t think your superstar son in law will love you for all the money you give him. Chances are – the more money you give him, the more he will hate you. When you let him fend for himself, maybe then he’ll start to actually respect you.
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Every Girl Needs a Good Degree
In addition to providing support for their kollel son-in-laws, parents must also give their daughters a degree so they can have the ability to bring in parnossa for the family. This is the opposite of what chazal instruct us to teach one’s son a trade – instead we are teaching the daughters and not teaching the sons.
In the desparate search of people looking for ways to boost their daughters’ income ability, it has become the norm to require a degree of some sort. When a girl is considered for shidduchim, her degree is one of the most important qualities taken into consideration, much more than her middos or even her intellect! If a girl chas v’shalom doesn’t have a degree, its often a strike against her, leading to an outright rejection.
This custom has not been copied from the secular world, as many tend to think. This emphasis on college degrees for girls is only because of kollel support. If the woman is to provide parnossa for the family, she must have the means of which to earn a decent salary – which a regular teaching job or office position cannot provide.
What is the result of all this? Due to time constraints and the hectic lifestyle of most frum girls, there are not many options for degrees available. That has led to the creation of programs such as Sara Schneirer and Raizel Reit, which are designed to get the girls a degree with the most minimum of standards. These programs graduate hundreds of girls a year, all of them with similar degrees who are looking for jobs in the cash strapped state of New Jersey, in the vicinity of Lakewood. Because of the enormous supply of qualified candidates, salaries for these positions are lower than they should be for the qualifications needed.
The negative consequences of this situation are both numerous and destructive. First of all, it puts another barrier in the way of shidduchim. It also puts a delay in their earning money, requiring them to spend up to 2 years of college studies to earn their degrees. It puts an additional financial burden on parents who are already cash strapped. It causes great harm to the life of a newly married couple, who have to deal with the new wife studying and traveling into class during the first crucial months of their marriage, often while being pregnant and holding down a “temporary” job. In short, the custom of earning a degree has come at a great expense, physically, emotionally, and financially.
Is this really what kollel is all about? When we talk about mesirus nefesh for Torah, does it mean earning a degree too? Perhaps the true reason boys demand the degress has less to do with mesirus nefesh for Torah and more to do with their wishing to be “taken care of”. If that is the case, we are certainly headed in the wrong direction with this, for all of the reasons mentioned.
Yes, the world does things without thinking. Requiring a girl to earn a degree so her husband can learn in kollel fits into this category.
TweetHarming Your Childrens’ Future by Supporting Them in Kollel
It was only 70 years ago that our nation went through the torturous holocaust, and the scars will remain in our spirit for a long time. The survivors were mostly young and had no one to care for them. When the came out, they were determined to build families and start life anew. With the memories of the pain they had to endure, they swore to protect their children and care for them with every part of their being. Even to the point where their protectiveness actually causes them harm, although not intended.
Protecting children is a natural instinct that parents have. But when parents try to remove all pain from their childrens’ lives, they are actually causing them more harm. Children cannot remain in their parents’ nest forever. They need to be pushed out of the nest and be taught to fly on their own. For the moment, it is painful to watch them struggle as they discover their inborn abilities to run their own lives, but in a short while they are free and independent, and capable of fulfilling their own destiny.
Supporting kids in kollel is an excuse used by parents to delay teaching them how to fly on their own. Parents think back to their own years of struggle, and wish to shield their children from that momentary discomfort. But in the long run, they are causing them much more harm, since they will never learn how to manage their own lives and take care of their own needs. Forever they will be dependent children who come running home to Mommy & Daddy every time they need something, always expecting it to be handed to them, without having a clue of how to care from themselves.
Eventually, the parents will realize the harm they are causing, and out of a sense of disgust they will terminate their financial support. But by then, the process of learning how to fly is much more difficult, and the suffering they were trying to prevent will be even greater.
So next time you sit down and write your married children a check, think long and hard why you are doing so. Are you really doing it to support learning, or is it to help your children along in life? Because every month you give them money, you are delaying the inevitable and making their “flying away” a bit more painful and difficult.
A lot more on this topic and the ill effects financial support has on children can be found in the book The Millionaire Next Door
Tisha B’av – Lack of Vision
The destruction of the beis hamikdash is not just what we lost on this day. We also lost our connection to Hashem. Prior to this day, when we were confused or unsure about things, the nevi’im sent us messages – sometimes in great detail – which described what we were doing wrong, and how we needed to fix things. We lost that on this day, and now when we are lost, we don’t even know that we are indeed lost.
Kollel is a great example of this. Kollel seems like a great idea, a plan to ensure continuity of Torah in klal yisroel. But like many things that start out good, it has created a monster of a problem by casuing many hundreds if not thousands of bnei torah to have no decent way of supporting their families.
In the olden times, we would ask the navi what Hashem wants from us. In our golus, we cannot. And so we are left to follow the dictates of da’as torah, which is our alternative in the absence of a navi. But in our case, da’as torah is very unclear. Our gedolim do not rule publicly in this matter. They choose to tell each individual privately what they should do in each circumstance. As a community at large, we have no clear guidance. As a result, we have thousands of families living in confusion and chaos.
This confusion and sense of loss is an outcome of not having clear guidance from nevi’im, which is a direct result of golus. So that gives all of us something tangible to mourn about this Tisha B’Av.
TweetWorking Longer & Harder to Support the Family
To provide for their family’s needs, a woman whose husband is learning in kollel almost always needs to work outside the home, even if they are being supported. Unless they are fabulously wealthy, even the most generous parents cannot afford to contribute more than $10-15,000 a year. Assuming the husband can bring home a kollel check of up to $10k (which is a very generous assumption – and if he is learning in BMG he brings home next to nothing), there is still a massive shortfall which needs to be filled by the woman’s income.
Those of you who are supporting their children in kollel, are therefore greatly increasing the length of time their daughters need to work. Now it is true that even in many non-kollel families the woman also works. However, in most cases the burden of the income is borne primarily on the husband, not on the wife. But in the case of the kollel family, the pressure on the wife to work is immense. Many women have said that this great pressure to work is more difficult than actually doing the work. Knowing that if they ever stop working they will be putting their family in jeopardy is really a burden that a woman should not have to carry.
A few years ago I overheard a conversation between a father of a 34 year old kollel wife and her high school principal. The father was speaking of his daughter’s daily schedule. She lives in Lakewood with her kollel husband and 6 children, the oldest who is 9. She wakes up 6:00, feeds her baby, prepares clothing for her sleeping kids for school, puts supper up for later that evening, and takes the 7:00 bus into Brooklyn so she can go to her teaching job where she earns a $28,000 salary. She returns home at 4:00, gets home about 6:00, feeds the kids supper, does homework, laundry, and other tasks until she collapses into bed at 11:00, when after a few short hours interrupted by a crying baby who needs to be fed, the cycle will repeat itself again.
The father was telling this to his daughter’s prinicpal, waiting for his positive reaction. That’s not what he got. “You call that amazing? That’s not something to be proud about your daughter! I call that meshugah!” he bellowed. “She is working herself into oblivion, and is becoming a shmateh in the process. It is not possible for her to be a good mother or wife under these circumstances.”
No father or mother would willingly subject their daughters to such conditions. But by continuing to support them in kollel, that’s exactly what you are doing. By keeping the husband learning in kollel longer and out of the workforce, you are subjecting your daughter to continue working even as her family grows.
Another thing to think about when supporting your children – am I really helping them, or is my “help” creating just more unpleasantness for them?
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(Belated) Thoughts on the Tragedy
What does the Leiby Kletsky tragedy have to do with the topic of this blog? Absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, there is not a Jewish blog out there that has not wrote something about this senseless and heartbreaking story. Why this happened to us, we cannot know, and there is no point in speculating. But one interesting observation to make is how everyone reacted to the story. As soon as the events became known, everyone knew everything there is to know about the story, in spectacular detail.
How did everyone become an expert in every minute detail? Simple. Because everyone was so touched by this tragic story, they became emotionally involved. And when one becomes emotionally involved with something, they internalize the matter. Scrape every website out there for any bit of news and hearsay, listen to every broadcast, and read every newspaper just to get the latest update. As if that would somehow help the situation.
Of course it won’t bring back little Leiby, but nevertheless we all were glued. Being emotionally attached is a super powerful force. From the countless conversations held in yeshiva hallways, businesses, and street corners in the days following the story, simple laymen were transformed into criminal law experts.
That is a small lesson that can be taken out of this tragedy. If we want to really achieve excellence, we must become emotionally attached to what you are doing. Whether you are learning or working, you won’t become an expert unless you connect emotionally to it. All you need to do is to discover what that “thing” is. And then you’ll be the real expert.
TweetHow a 20 Yr. Old Yeshiva Guy Gets $100k Job With No Education
I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who is does very well in the various businesses he oversees. He told me how he got started in business at the young age of 20. At the time, he was working in a yeshiva doing odd jobs, never having been the biggest masmid. He was newly married, and got the “itch” to go out and get a job. Through a series of (un)fortunate circumstances which will not be detailed here, he never managed to graduate high school…or elementary school for that matter.
A friend told him of a sales job opportunity in a nearby city, at a huge Fortune 500 manufacturing company. Their campus stretched for blocks, and when he entered their immense building he was overwhelmed. At the interview, the no-nonsense hiring managers peppered him with questions. Then came the moment of truth. “We noticed you didn’t fill out the education section of the application. What is your education?” The young yeshiva guy is ready. “My education is NONE. No college, no high school, no elementary school.”
The shocked managers recoil with horror. “What do you mean by no education? Without education you can’t possibly be successful.” To that he replied smoothly, “I always felt that to be successful in business, you have to be in business. Give me a chance and I’ll show you how even a guy like me can prove himself.”
After a stunning interview performance, which he did without the benefit of any education, he landed the job. And boy did he prove himself. He dove into the work, calling purchasing managers and scheduling meetings all over the area. By the end of the year he was earning well over $100,000 with his bonuses and commissions. And he was on tap to be the highest growth sales rep in the Northeast.
Anyone can get themselves an education. But to be really successful, you have to go in and kill it. And for that, you don’t need a whole lot of education.
(Did you hear that, Reb Kollel Yungerman? Think just because you are 32 with no degree you have no chance of being successful? If he did it, why can’t you?)
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