All Entries Tagged With: "Parental Support"
Harming 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 [...]
Peer Pressure – Keeping Up With Friends & Neighbors
Another negative consequence of parental support to young kollel families is the tremendous pressure it places on everyone else. This problem is readily apparent in Lakewood, but it occurs even in Eretz Yisroel. It is hard enough for an idealistic young couple to begin marriage with the plan to “live with nothing” while learning in [...]
Kollel Support Even After Divorce?
Sometimes you hear a story that shocks you so badly you can’t believe it to be true. But when it happens to close people you know, it becomes even more difficult to believe. Yes, it is the norm that young men are supported by their parents and in-laws during their first years of marriage while [...]
How NOT to Support Your Kids
There are a few different ways of doing kollel support. Some are better than others, but then there is the type that is just plain stupid, and also very harmful to the family who is being supported. A well known g’vir had been supporting his son-in-law and daughter for over 20 years by simply giving [...]
Lesson From the Parsha: Ki Seitzei
The ben sorer u’moreh never was. But its lesson remains clear. A 13 year old boy gets dragged into court to be sentenced to death – by none other than his parents. If one of them refused to bring him, he would not get killed. The punishment is only given if both of his parents [...]
Frum Publications Obsession with Kollel Life
Have you ever picked up a Yated or Mishpacha lately? It seems that these and other frum publications are obsessed with kollel and its impact on people’s lives, such as parnossah, shalom bayis, in-laws relationships, and anything else. In the Yated, the Readers Write is full of letters that are both for (hardly any) and [...]
Is it Better to Drive a Bike or a Train?
A train seems much better. It’s big, fancy, has lots of buttons on the control, stretches very long, makes loud whistle noises, and can travel great distances. However, from the driver’s perspective, a train driver doesn’t really control anything. He just pulls the lever down to go faster, and pulls it back up to stop. [...]
Fending for Yourself When Times are Hard
For years now, kollel has been indirectly funded primarily by the boom in real estate that so many of our bretheren had investments in. Now that the economy has dried up and real estate prices have gone south, funding for kollel has taken a big hit. This affects both the kollel stipends themselves, forcing them [...]
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 [...]
What is Kollel all About Anyways?
I know, the question itself is pure kefira. But that is something that crosses my mind countless times a day, when I am awake, at night trying to fall asleep, or during davening. What is the goal of spending so many years in Kollel? I am a 29 year old yungerman in Lakewood, having spent [...]
