The solution is obvious- quit work and go (back) to kollel in order to get affordable tuitions.

I really want to get back on topic with ADD and its effects on people in – hey what’s that flashy thing?

Joseph, no less an authority than Rabbi Fuerst got up and publicly declared that Rav Elyashiv was fooled on the metzius of Indian hair sheitels. That is why one needs a rav, this is why one needs an actual kesher with gedolim, and that is why one doesn’t pasken based on askan-produced kol korehs. The Yated had an article about askanim and gabbaim manipulating gedolim recently. I trust gedolim. I don’t trust askanim. Kol korehs are done by askanim, not gedolim. Many times, the lashon of the kol koreh is changed from the lashon that was shown the gadol. That is why I have a Rav, and that is why I keep up my kesharim with my previous Rabbeim- to know when something is emes or sheker. I follow Daas Torah. That Daas Torah is decided by my Rav and Rabbeim, not by a kochleffel askan.

aaa, the exact words are ba zachar leolam upito beyado, as opposed to a girl. The mefarshim say this is because a boy can work the fields, earning his keep.

Ah, Morah Torah. Like shalach manos needs to be 2 separate brachos.

Torah is learned whether in poverty or in wealth. Supporting a family in learning takes money though.

Cranberry juice on the rocks- I’m a stiff drinker…

A little vodka on purim doesn’t hurt though…I’m not a davkanik, but i’m a vodkanik…

I’m glad you think it’s funny, Joseph. I envy your temimus. Every tzedakah now is chasing a pool of shrunken resources, Joseph. the S&P500 is now at levels not seen in 13 years. Many of the high-flying investments have crashed. The home loans that many baalei battim used to get to finance their children in kolel are no longer available. 10% of people are unemployed in many communities. In Israel, they are experiencing a double whammy of government funding cuts and a lack of outside dollars, to the point where large families are bringing home half a chicken for shabbos and splitting it for their entire family. People who used to provide fopr both their families and many others are now in serious trouble. The money has to be triaged. Yeshivas will have to start making significant cutbacks or close. There just is no money for every son-in-law to be a maggid shiur. This is economic reality. Hashem provides, but the litvish poverty model of kollel life is making a comeback. Hashem provides, but that doesn’t mean we should be wasteful with spending.

Joseph, there are madreigos in bnei torah. there are “chaverim” -type Bnei Torah and there are tzurvei merabbanan- type Bnei Torah. This is a pashut chiluk, and I’m disappointed that you didn’t comprehend this. Surely not everyone in your area is a tzurva meirabanan, even if they are Bnei Torah.

Torah=necessity.

Kollel is a form of Torah. There are many other forms of Torah. There are also multiple forms of kollel. In Europe, the big gedolim who sat and learned were supported by their wife. Was their learning less because they weren’t supported by a father-in-law? The tannaim and amoraim who worked and learned are still quoted in the gemara despite the fact that they worked for a living. Additioanlly, the Yeshiva knesses yisroel (later to become “Slabodka” was started as a kollel, but became a yeshiva when they realized they could pay for 4 bachurim for the price of 1 kollel yungerman. Finally, the Chazon Ish was willing to lose the draft deferment for Yeshiva students to keep the sheirut le’umi law from passing. As he said, “Torah can survive without yeshivas, but yeshivas can’t survive without Torah”. and if that’s what he said about yeshivas, kolellim would go double. I’m not saying kollel isn’t important. It’s very important. But the days of the wife sitting at home and the in-laws paying the bills are gone. Kollel will go back to being done the way it was meant to be- pas bemelech tochal. The in-laws just don’t have the cash anymore. I work for a tzedakah, and I can tell you that the free-flowing cash just doesn’t exist anymore. The community will have to triage its financial tzedakah priorities, and kollel has to come on bottom of aniyey ircha (10% unemployement in many communities R”L), yeshiva ketanas, mesivtas, and yeshivos gedolos.

Joseph, i agree 100%. there’s a difference between not being in favor and banning. Last year they banned. this year they did not. No gadol would endorse the “all-you-can-eat” nights at restaurants, as it is a violation of “kedoshim tihyu”, but they don’t ban it. If you would ask your rebbe, he would tell you not to do it, but you don’t make bans that cause a zilusa debei dina, like last year’s concert ban did. If you’ll argue that it didn’t, then feel free to speak to a local shul rov who will tell you the damage it caused. Many people who had no problem following Daas Torah had tremendous issues after that one. My rav confirmed this, the comments on the blogs confirm this, and the articles in various papers confirm this.

In short, I’m not saying it’s a mitzvah to go. But it’s not banned.

Something else to be aware of- According to my rav, bottled water is NOT a min for shalach manos, as it doesn’t count as mashkeh for kiddush.

Joseph, I go by whose name is on the kol koreh and whose name was not on it last time. There are some clear delteions this time around. I highly doubt any of the roshei Yeshiva who didn’t sign have enthusiastically endorsed the concert. They just didn’t ban it, which is a big difference.

Agreed, Jaymatt19. I have yet to see a mekor that mattirs getting so drunk that one end up missing krias shma and bentching. If someone has it, please provide it. Otherwise, it’s pashut no such shita exists, and ?? ???? doesn’t count.

Their names are not on the kol koreh, and frumreport is clearly a mikveh neias-lashon hara site that should be blocked by all shmutz filters. That said, there’s no stira between not banning a concert and telling Bnei Torah not to go, just like there’s no stira with Rabbi Belsky giving a hechsher to chalav stam but telling bnei torah not to eat it, or giving a heter to OU tuna but telling bnei torah to only buy mashgiach temidi tuna. The tzurvei merabanan are always held to a different standard than the amcha.

I saw this once from a great acharon or early Rosh Yeshiva, I forgot who it was. There is a machlokes by Avraham Avinu what “Beirach bakol” means. One shita says he had a daughter named Bakol. Another shita says he did not have a daughter. The Rov said the proof that he didn’t have a daughter is that it says “Zaken Ba Bayamim”, meaning he was old due to age. If he had a daughter, he would have aged early trying to marry her off!

A new kol koreh came out against the Lipa concert. the names of Rav Shuel Kaminetzky and Rav Dovid Feinstein are not on it. An article from elsewhere about it:

This year, like last, there were some people who wished to stop the efforts of the concert organizers and performers. (the website) has discovered that virtually every single Litvishe rosh yeshiva refused this year to sign any letter or kol koreh banning a specific singer or The Event concert.

Gedolim have faced tremendous pressure from certain so-called activists and have maintained their position despite fabricated stories that all other roshei yeshiva would be signing against concerts and/or singers.

One particular rosh yeshiva whom (website this was swiped from).com was in contact with mentioned that these activists sat with him for over an hour, not willing to let up, and telling him that they have signatures from every other rosh yeshiva. This particular rosh yeshiva had the foresight to pick up a phone and contact a few other roshei yeshiva only to find out that they too were told the same stories but refused to sign.

Of course, at the same time, these rabbonim have said that it is vital to reinforce the idea that concerts should be comprised of kosher entertainment that does not contradict the spirit of the Torah.

Joseph, if kollel is a necessity, why were there so few kollel guys in Europe? Why did most bachurim go out and get a rabbanus or get a job along with being a moreh tzeddek as soon as they got married? After all, our mesorah is from Europe. Learning Torah is the necessity. Kollel was for the yechidei segula who were willing to live a life of extreme poverty, or who were chashuv enough to earn the support of a gevir. Today’s system, where everyone is expected to learn in kollel, is a chiddush for America. It was a very welcome development to help a Torah community shattered by the Holocaust recover. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that it’s an historical outlier, supported by a lot of excess wealth that has simply vanished over the last 16 months. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that the gemara paskens that for most people, Talmud Torah im derech eretz is better than Toraso umnaso, simply because most people couldn’t survive on Toraso umnaso. I’m not saying to skip kollel. I’m just saying that it’s ludicrous to expect other people to support you comfortably in that lifestyle, especially when money now is extremely tight, unless you’re ready to live a life of very little gashmius, the way kollel was meant to be lived. When I first started married life in kollel, I had tevios on my father-in-law for not helping me out. Then I realized he was right. I had a right to learn in kollel, but I didn’t have a right to demand that he pay for it. I gained a lot from my years in kollel. I recommend it to anyone willing to do it. But be aware that you won’t be living la vida loca anymore. The excess cash is gone.

Charlie Brown, I assume the gemara in Sotah was quoted in a Reb Chaim somewhere 🙂

We know that ??? ????? ?????? ??? ????. So the big question is, we see in most yeshivas that when it comes to appointing Roshei Yeshiva and maggidei shiur, ?????? ??? ????? ????? ??? ??? ????. And even if you say that ?? ????? ?????, it’s only a ????, and then we have to say ????? ????? ???? ????

So I was thinking that one teretz is if you ask the better person to leave, it becomes a ???? ????? ???. The other teretz I have is that mishpacha is a ????? ????? ???.

Sounds like from the letters in the Yated that between the rising truition costs and the scary nisyonos now caused by going to Israel, the whole “Israel” scene is being reconsidered. Israel now is not Israel when I went.

I had a friend who once got into ham radio. He had a license, his own callsign, etc. You either get it or you don’t. The internet is cheaper, and it’s easier to find “your own”. I did get involved in helping a friend star an illegal pirate radio station which still broadcasts Jewish music over a few-block radius.

Ham radio? The internet made it obsolete. Only old-time truckers have them.

In reference to the original topic of this thread, here’s another interesting tidbit from the mishpacha article on Reb Chaim Shmuelevitz (search mishpacha.com for “Shmuelevitz”). I am appreciative that Mishpacha’s articles are OCR-searchable, allowing me to cut and paste from the PDF’s. Quote:

It is almost inconceivable how this

giant, a man who lived in a rarified, sublime

world, who scaled the loftiest heights, was

so aware of the realities of this world, was

able to address the uglier side of the human

heart in such a normal way.

He once remarked to a talmid that he

thought the practice of certain Yerushalmi

families to have their children don

shtreimlach at the age of eight or nine was

Children needed to be children and

then, only then, could they be adults.

On pages 42-43 of “In Their shadow”, Rav Shlomo Lorincz is describing how the Chazon Ish gave a sizable donation to trade schools set up to teach a parnassah to those who couldn’t learn full-time. When Rav Shlomo Lorincz expressed his surprise at this, being as the Chazon Ish was the one who pushed for full-time yeshivos in Bnei Brak where none existed before, he said, “We must show concern for those who need a vocational school, in order that such students remain within our framework and do not become dropouts from our ranks, chas veshalom”. This is why he was a gadol. While he very much believed in the supremacy of Torah, he fully understood that there are those who aren’t suited, and they should not be pushed away from the ranks of klal yisroel. Contrast that to today, in which many yeshivas get more and more elite, and the dropout problem gets bigger and bigger. Halevai that Gedolim could run our yeshivas, eliminate the protektzia, and treat our children the way they were meant to be treated.

I spent a few years learning in kollel before leaving and joining the workforce. It is mentioned by many gedolim that someone who works all day and learns at night is a much bigger masmid than someone who learns all day but doesn’t learn a minute more than he has to, or hangs out in the yeshiva (or YW)coffee room. I have personally found that my learning, while much lower in quantity, is a much higher quality since I have to struggle for every minute of it.

I am happy that my tax money is going to kollel families instead of to welfare queens or Wall street bonus millionaires. If the government is giving away money, why shouldn’t people take advantage? All of the rich people have advisors telling them how to maximize their college scholarships and minimize their taxes. The big banks gladly take the government money and use it for bonuses and junkets. I’d rather my kollel friends get my money than my Wall street friends.

Let those who want to learn go ahead and do so. But it has come to the point where someone who isn’t cut out for learning his whole life is viewed as a second-class citizen. No wonder so many kids feel like failures. As for the dismal math of everyone learning, the Torah is omeid al haneis, meaning yeshivos should never do well bederech hateva. If we turn today’s kids into successes instead of failures, we might find ourselves with less dropouts and less kids turned off to Yiddishkeit. That was the point of the article. In Lita, many balabatim were big lamdanim. Not everyone is on the level of Rabbi Shimon Bar yochai of “Toraso umnaso”. It’s time we realize that when the gemara says Rabbi Yishmael’s way of talmud torah im derech eretz worked out better, the gemara knew better than us.