Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
yehudayona – in terms of descent after two generations the chain is considered broken, since there wouldn’t be reliable information more than two generations back. The issue isn’t as uncommon as you might think. Intermarriage in this kcountry is no longer a new phenomenon. I know of one person who had been close to his Jewish grandmother but was brought up Catholic and only found out at age forty that he was Jewish and decided to return. Unfortunately there were already a non-Jewish wife and child involved, so it became very complicated for everyone.
zd – 🙂
CTL – good advice re classes. I would add a course in math and statistics, though. We’re bombarded with statistics on a daily basis and most people don’t know enough to evaluate them.
I didn’t realize that online classes are so interactive these days. I last took one 20 years ago, so I’m a bit out of date.
And I would still encourage the young man to consider careers besides law. Career choice can be strongly influenced by what “the other guys” are doing, and law is popular, but it might not be the best choice for this particular person, and as you mentioned it isn’t the greatest parnassah in terms of money. The Agudah’s Project COPE in New York used to have all sorts of info and advice on job prep/hunting. Maybe contact them for advice. If he’s at BMG he shouldn’t have trouble getting into NYC.
Glad that you realize he needs more secular skills to make a good parnassah. Too many bochurim need remedial classes and never get them, which really handicaps them in the job market. I’m not too sure about doing them online – the interaction between prof and student is important, but if there aren’t any other options, it’ll do. And watch out for for-profit colleges that promise a degree/certificate in a couple of semesters. They aren’t accredited in the “real” world. Mostly they get you to take Pell grants and loans to pay them and then leave you without any good credentials.
Reconsider doing a law degree. The field is already over-crowded. Children of some of my friends have done law school and then had a terrible time finding jobs. And stay away from real estate, financials, etc. I have friends who lost their jobs and everything else in the 2008 crash, and don’t believe that there won’t be another. They come around every ten years like a lunar eclipse.
Touro College in New York City has a good reputation. They probably also have online courses. I would assume they also have career counseling, so he can find a field that’s a good fit and not over-crowded.
And it might be a good idea to take a year to focus on finishing his secular education and starting serious college work. Trying to keep up a full-time beis medrash schedule and still do well in college can keep someone from doing well in either. Let him learn how to keep up a good learning schedule outside the yeshiva and learn to manage his time well. That’s a skill he will need no matter what field he goes into.
Good luck to him!
Don’t knock the “public health establishment” and the CDC. If they weren’t on the job you and I would have died of SARS years ago. (Google that, and know real fear.)
The CDC doesn’t talk about second hand smoke out of doors, but they have plenty to say about air pollution (including diesel trucks). Check out their website at cdc.gov, which gives health information about almost all the problems you could meet living in the US. Give it a visit and see what they have to offer.
And yes, as an ex-smoker who quit after a bout of pneumonia, I would classify anyone who inflicts second-hand smoke on someone else as a “rodef.” (Disclaimer – I’m not a posek, but that’s my personal feeling.)
My right to breathe beats your “right to do want I want.” You can do without smoking (try it). I can’t do without breathing.
Vaccines. I remember the days of polio epidemics every summer, when every parent (including mine) lived in terror of their child dying or being permanently crippled. My parents had already lost one child to pneumonia, so you better believe I was at the head of the line for the shots. 🙂
And then there’s smallpox, which up until a century ago was still killing millions in the most gruesome way possible. Even after developed countries vaccinated everyone there it still hung on in poorer parts of the world until the 1970s.
Measles, mumps and whooping cough (pertussis). Back in the 1930s My poor older sister had all three at once and wound up in an isolation room in the hospital. Now – almost unheard of.
Pneumonia vaccine – for old people like me. Pneumonia was – and to some extent still us – a major killer of older people.
Flu – in most years either you won’t get sick at all or it will be much milder.
I agree with all those who mention all the advances in health and sanitation, that save lives every day.
This is a great thread and the responses are funny and thought-provoking at the same time.
And regardng Rabbeinu Gershom’s ban. The way I heard it, he had two wives, one old and one young. The young one pulled out all his gray hairs so he would look young, and the old one pulled out all his black hairs so he would look old, leaving the poor man completely bald and beardless. In other words, if you want peace in your home, stick with the wife of your youth.
Not reading other people’s mail and knocking before entering are just common courtesy, and that he had to codify them in a ban probably just means that people in his time were getting lax about some aspects of derech eretz.
It’s interesting to me to note that many aspects of “Western sensibility” were actually influenced by Jewish values, and our discomfort with them actually stems from our having been influenced by the talk-radio lack of courtesy and glorification of toughness and force that has leaked into our camp. Perhaps we should try to emulate R’ Yaakov in gentleness and courtesy, rather than talk-radio guys who always have the perfect insult.
FYI – in public schools it has been forbidden to hit children since at least the 1950s (personal experience here), except maybe in parts of the South, where violence among adults was also considered normal.
Check out R. Rosenblum.s biography of R’ Yaakov Kamenetsky, on his time as a melamed in a small European town. He was criticized by the parents because he never hit, yet the children learned even better for him. There were no “Western sensibilities” involved, just the instincts of a true rebbe.
Hey guys, tonight is Rosh Chodesh Tammuz. That means pretty soon it’s Av. Then Tisha b’Av.
K-cup – got it in one. Fox knows its customers/readers. “White” people don’t consider us properly “white.” To quote someone I knew growing up: “Jews are OK. They’re almost as good as white people.” And since we’re all supposed to be rich, why are we taking food stamps, Section 8, etc.? To quote an old Yiddishism: “A half truth is a whole lie.”
I’ve heard (don’t remember where) that the forces of good and evil have to balance out, so just as our generations are inferior to those before, so the level of possible evil has gone down, and there is nobody around any more who has the power to do serious witchcraft. Same with dybbuks.
Ayin ha’ra might be another matter, since envy certainly seems to find a place in the modern world. Maybe, since the Three Weeks are coming soon, we should make an effort to separate ourselves from any envy we might feel.
BTW – the war between the Xtian West and Islamic believers has been going on since 700 CE. It heats up and cools off over the centuries but it never goes away. The struggle between Sunni and Shia Muslims has been going on for almost as long.
I heard one opinion (from the times of the Rishonim) that Islam arose as a counterbalance to Xtianity. When the Xtians persecute us we run to the Muslims (e.g. after the expulsion from Spain in 1492) and when the Muslims persecute us we run to the Xtians. Nimshal? Like Avos says, don’t get too chummy with whoever is in power, because they’re only using us for their own aims. Be friendly and respectful, but always a little suspicious, because sooner or later the weather is going to change.
Mentsch & Company – dream on. The vast majority of the country is not going to rise up against the government, not even in Kentucky or Idaho. And we have here a career military. Their allegiance is to the military, i.e. the government. Unless the Joint Chiefs of Staff decide to hold a military coup there isn’t any question of the military mutinying. In Israel, with a draft, and many of the officers coming from the settler movement, there might be a chance, but not here.
And please, read some history. The US passed the Second Amendment to DEFEND THE GOVERNMENT against uprisings by rebellious groups. Look up the “Whiskey Rebellion.” Go to your local library (not the internet) and ask the librarian to tell you what that was. And if you try to tell me that you can’t trust librarians because they’re part of some conspiracy, I’ll call your doctor 🙂
Gun owners outnumber the US Army 80-1? A bunch of civilians with no military training is going to take out Special Forces units? You ever see a tank up close? I have. No group of civilian “gun owners” is going to have a chance against a tank, let alone a battalion of tanks and artillery. In the Yom Kippur war the Egyptian soldiers with RPGs were able to stand up to the tanks of that time, but current tanks and APCs have been re-engineered to be proof against anything like that. We really do have the premier military establishment in the world, and to think that it could be stopped by a bunch of random guys with AK-15s is just plain delusional.
And if you have a gun in your house to protect against burglars, make bloody well sure your kids – or the neighbor’s kids – can’t get at it. Gun accidents are a major killer of children in the US. Let’s not add our own kids to that number.
Forty or fifty years ago every child was considered a precious neshamah that we had to guard and educate to join the Torah world – a replacement for one of the many lost. Now that we have, BH, so many children, it seems that no one child is really that important. Schools refuse to admit or expel children no matter what the impact on the child. Children go without school at all because they don’t “measure up.” There is currently an effort in Brooklyn run by a prominent person to make sure that no child starts the school year without a school.
We have been blessed beyond what would have been our wildest dreams in 1946. Can’t we at least show HKBH gratitude by caring for the children he has so miraculously entrusted to us?
Don’t troll, Sh. He asked a legitimate question. Since he’s probably spent the vast majority of his time learning Gemara, he hasn’t had practice writing independent papers or speeches. As far as spelling, a) it looks like a typo b) most people can’t spell English. It has the most illogical spelling conventions on the planet. (And shouldn’t it be ShAbbesonian, not ShEbessonian?)
Remember we lost the Second Beis HaMikdash because of sinas chinam, and R’ Akiva’s students died because they didn’t show each other enough respect. Not to mention that Avos says that everyone prefers a “soft tongue” (i.e. pleasant speech)? It’s Tammuz already, maybe we should start worrying about correcting our midos.
akuperma – got it in one. HKB”H runs the show. And yes, it was much, much worse in the past. When I was a kid during the Cold War if you asked a child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” they were likely to answer “IF I grow up….” We didn’t know from one day to the next if all of us could be incinerated because of a malfunctioning radar set or some political leader’s bad judgment.
And no, guns aren’t going to help. It’s like the guys in the militias who think that a few assault rifles could hold out against the US military tanks, helicopters and ground-to-ground missiles. They outnumber us, they always have, and that’s not going to change. 1967 was a miracle. The time-on-target air strike went off without a hitch, with HKB”H suspending Murphy”s Law for the first time in recorded history.
Yes, we are “the voice of Yaakov,” not the “hands of Eisav.” There is a big difference between the IDF defending Israel as an army of the Jewish State and your neighbor buying a .22 thinking he’s going to hold off a marauding mob. Torah, Tefillah and Tzedakah/Chesed are our only defenses. Let’s concentrate on those and leave the Rambo fantasies and trivial machlokes to other people.
This thread makes me want to cry, literally. I am of the same generation (I think) as CTL, and forty years ago he would not have been considered MO in an out-of-town community. (Brooklyn I can’t speak for.) He’s also old enough to remember how we got this way, and what we had to go through on the way. In my neighborhood the older houses all have restrictions in the deeds – no selling to Blacks or Jews. Hotels routinely refused Jews rooms. And so forth. The younger generations, who never had to deal with this, feel entitled, when it’s the previous doros who fought the battles.
Furthermore, the whole business of labeling other Jews with denigrating labels – MO, Chassidish, Litvish – or any label at all, is revolting. It’s sinas chinam. Remember that? It’s how we lost the Second Bais HaMikdash. We’re reading Avos these days, which tells us a lot about machlokes and it’s consequences. Yet it seems that nowadays people make machlokes just for amusement. Let’s stop playing with labels and get back to the emes – kol Yisrael areivim zeh l’zeh.
The shandeh is that they force these poor people to tell their life stories, and make videos and post them online. It’s embarrassing people b’tzibur. It’s forbidden to embarrass a person even with the intention of doing them good, and like R’ Reisman, I have serious doubts about the reality of some of the ads, and exactly how much of the money actually goes to the people portrayed as in need.
And the idea of, “You’re guaranteed the segulah if you just give us the money,” is outright kefirah. HKBH makes the cheshbonos, not us human beings.
Avi is right. If you look at the statements of Jewish leaders during the war, that’s exactly what they heard from the US government. In fact, a lot of his enemies tried to spread the rumor that FDR was a Jew, using the similarity of his Dutch name to Jewish ones. Google Father Coughllin and his anti-Semitic radio show for a sample.
And to quote someone I knew years ago, a non-Jew from a previous generation: “Jews are OK, they’re almost as good as white people.” No, we aren’t “white,” and plenty of “white” people still think we’re a different race and believe that Rothschild, or Soros, or some other fictional conspiracy, are actually running the country from behind the scenes. Some things don’t change. The world was horrified by what they learned about the camps, but there’s a new generation of non-Jews who don’t remember, and the Holocaust-deniers are flourishing.
Yes, a child with severe ADHD can get medication and be helped, but too many kids who are just “outside the box” are getting dosed with powerful medications just to make them easier to handle for the school/parents. Giving Ritalin to a child who doesn’t need it is also creating a risk for addiction and depression. Most “difficult” children will benefit from behavioral methods, but those cost effort and money. It’s cheaper and quicker just to give the kid a pill.
Poe’s Law?
A nes galui – I agree with Joseph. Some schools have developed a strategy for dealing with “difficult” children – send them for a Ritalin prescription and keep them quiet that way. Sure, there are a few kids who would find medical benefits from meds, but they’re being prescribed because, in some cases, the school insists on it for disciplinary reasons, and sometimes because parents are having trouble coping with a “difficult” child. The first choice for helping a child should always be a behavioral and psychological evaluation and counseling. Meds should only be a last resort. What if all the kid needs is a gym class to burn off extra energy? Or he has a vision or hearing problem that hasn’t been diagnosed? The meds won’t help, and will keep the real problem from being addressed. Only if a child is depressed, and in danger of self-hurt, would it be advisable, and then only short-term.
Don’t ever, ever start your kid on meds without a thorough non-medical workup, and ALWAYS get a second opinion. We worry about what marijuana does to a developing brain, and feel fine exposing our kids to heavy-duty stuff like Ritalin.
Contact Amudim. They have resources for helping you deal with your problem. And find something you like that you can do instead of going to a casino. Casinos make a science out of taking your money, and you don’t stand a chance. I know the math involved – they make a profit because no one can beat the odds for more than a short period.
Rabbi Dr. Avraham Twerski also has books and resources for helping gambling addiction.
Good luck in your fight to beat your addiction.
Toi – how do you know? First hand, second-hand, or over the internet. It makes a difference, because a lot of people don’t know the difference between “fact” and “I heard it at the kiddush club,” or “My cousin forwarded it to me.”
Toi – how do you know? You saw it? Someone you know personally saw it first hand? Or you just heard about it on the grapevine?
For a first-hand look at the situation then read “Mischling, Second Degree: My childhood in Nazi Germany” by Ilse Koehn. Her father’s mother was Jewish, and they managed to avoid deportation because her father was a civil engineer that the Nazis decided was too useful to kill. Ilse was brought up not knowing she was part Jewish.
I suspect that number of 150,000. There were some, sure, but 150,000? Sounds like somebody was looking for click-bait and you fell for it.
Kinderspiel. How many people are on the level of R’ Levin? I doubt if there are more than a handful of people now on the madrega to do the Goral HaGra. Certainly not anyone who takes time away from learning to post on the CR! Let’s stop with the mofes-stories and segulos. Learn, keep the mitzvos, and help other people. Leave the sensationalism to the secular media.
Unless you have medical issues, a simple standard multivitamin a day should be all you need. Drinking milk will also give you vitamin D, since milk is fortified with it.
Best bet: ask your doctor to refer you to a licensed nutritionist. Not someone who simply hangs up their shingle, but someone who works with the doctor if there are special needs. And if the nutritionist tries to sell you the supplements him/herself, run! Some supplements can put you in the hospital, and some vitamins can make you very sick if you take too much.
And yes, check if you should be taking a supplement without iron. Most men and older women don’t need it, and too much of it can also make you sick.
Reading this thread makes me very optimistic that we are finally catching on to the below-the-radar assimilation that’s plaguing us. This whole segulah-for-whatever is straight out of Marketing101 and a simple extension of the secular idea that you can “buy” happiness. Or in this case, a specific result. Davening is the real segulah, as are chesed and giving tzedakah l’shem shomayim. If you give tzedakah in return for a specific result, you are not performing a mitzvah, you are making a purchase. Perhaps publicizing that there is a particular family is in need of a lot of help is all right, but putting their faces and life stories on the internet is demeaning and an invasion of privacy. Chazal say that when you give tzedakah you must be careful not to embarrass the recipient. Putting a young lady’s face on the internet is certainly not respecting her privacy, nor is exploiting the tears of an orphaned child. We should be prepared to help without any promises of reward in Olam HaZeh.
Besides the minhagim involved, there is another hazard in telling people a due date. – nobody’s told the baby! Babies generally arrive when they’re ready. They don’t have a little calendar in which they faithfully count down to the date the doctor gave. And the doctor gives the date based on averages, and each mother is different.
If you give out a specific date, and the baby decides to be “late,” what then? You’ll just have a lot of worried friends and family.Give the kid (and the mother) a break. Give out only a vague date, and save the worry.
I don’t buy the “you can’t trust people with it.” What does bother me is the addiction angle. And that’s all cell phones, not just smartphones. Walk down the street in a frum neighborhood on a day that isn’t Shabbos. You’ll see the majority of adults walking with head down, phone jammed to ear, oblivious to the world and other people. Or the adult at home taking care of children that he/she is only half aware of, because of the phone, again jammed to ear. Or the spouse who feels cut off. Or the driver who just almost ran you over at the corner. Fortunately teachers aren’t allowed to use their cells during class, otherwise we’d have neglected students, too.
As the not-so-old Lipa music video says, “Hang up the phone!”
Remember that next time your local political candidate makes a big deal about “cutting welfare.” Think about the families with kids, the seniors, and the young (and not so young) men in kollel, whose families only survive financially because of government aid. Voting for someone who wants to “cut entitlements” is simply shooting ourselves in the foot.
The majority of people “on welfare” in this country are white, because, after all, most Americans are white. A majority are also children. So let’s quit letting ourselves be hoodwinked by politicians who think we’ll vote for them even if it’s against our own interests.
Random – good summary. Practical advice – consult your rav or mashgiach as to what is appropriate for you. And never, never let your kids listen to something until you’ve listened to it yourself. (This includes Jewish music too. As noted, some is just as bad as secular.)
RY23 – Have you taken the kitten? How is it going?
It isn’t just the BDS people who don’t want Eurovision in EY next year. A lot of frum people in EY itself don’t want it, because it really is pritzus, maybe not by non-Jews but definitely by us. I was very sad to see that a bas Yisroel was the winner and was celebrating that she won a contest that, if she were really aware of her own worth as a Jewish daughter, she would never have entered.
Lightbrite – I don’t think it’s stock. Either the photographer that did the shoot for them was non-frum, or they were trying to mimic mainstream stuff, not realizing that there’s a whole issue these days of using children in provocative ways in ads. It’s nowhere near as bad as some of the stuff I’ve seen in mainstream-targeted ads, but it’s a dangerous precedent. Even if we fall into secular commercialization ourselves, we’ve got to protect our chlidren.
Glad someone else has caught it, too.
Whoops, forgot to read the OP thoroughly. As for children, I would allow them to listen to classical, well-vetted children’s tunes, and maybe a few of the “cuter” classical rock, Ron Eliran, etc. But I really would draw the line at a lot of what is currently considered “Jewish.” It’s terrible musically, Hebrew words or no words, and if you’ve ever watched the way some bochrim dance to it at chasunehs, I’m not so sure it’s good for ruchniyus, either.
RY23 – Oh yes, we can exclude Wagner too. He was a rabid anti-Semite when alive, so it’s really superfluous that the Nazis ym”s adopted him. He was bad enough in his own right.
“Non-Jewish” music covers a lot of ground. It runs from old-fashioned classical (Bach & Beethoven, through 20h century like Stravinsky and Debussy) through some of the obscenity-laced raps of people like Eminem and his mentors and the “white-supremacist” rock groups. Let’s get specific.
Classical? Why not (excluding music intended specifically to be religious, like masses and whatnot).
Old time popular (pre-rock)? Most of it is OK, even if it seems obsessed with (clean) romance. So it depends.
Classical rock? Again, it depends on the song.
60s rock? Many of the songs not, since they have pritzusdik lyrics. Still, some are OK.
Metal, rap, etc.? Definitely not. Some of this stuff would have been considered unprintable/unplayable back in the day.Which brings us to modern “Jewish” music. Except for the words, which have been changed, a lot of it seems to have been simply lifted from secular sources. (Trust me – I’m an amateur musician myself.) In fact, some of the “Jewish” music played at chasunehs these days is musically more extreme than most rock. “Barbaric” is the adjective that comes to mind. Not to mention the ear-damaging volume. All of it, of course, with a rock back-beat behind it.
So we really have to consider the inyan – “non-Jewish” according to what standards? So much of what passes for Jewish music these days isn’t really Jewish at all, we’ve got to think a little further than just whether the musician wears a yarmulke.
If it’s the ad I’m thinking of, that was my first impression too. They should have audience-tested it before posting. Another creepy ad is the one of a young girl for a children’s clothes company. She’s staring into the camera with wide eyes like a zombie and it looks like it’s posed like some secular ad company’s style. I thought about emailing them that it isn’t quite tzniusdik to pose a small child that way, but then figured they probably wouldn’t understand what I was talking about.
For a group that prides itself on keeping apart from mainstream mishugas, we seem to be losing our bearings when it comes to the ad business. Creeping assimilation?
RY23 – kudos to you if you’re willing to take care of a kitten. (Just be careful – you may not want to give it up later! They’re dangerously cute.)
Sorry, Dovid, I stand corrected. May they have many more years of youthful antics.
But cats are better at catching mice (and roaches and whatnot). They’re also playful, affectionate and you don’t have to walk them. But make sure you’re ready to accept the commitment before you get one. They can live up to 10 years and if you get it and then give it to a shelter, it would most likely be killed.
If you’re pet-ready, cats make excellent apartment pets. Just know what you’re getting into so neither you nor the cat have any regrets.
Depends on the age of the kitten, and if it still has to be bottle-fed. You’ll also have to box-train it. It’s better if you don’t let it out to roam around to get hit by a car or pick up something. Your best bet is to go to your local library and ask the librarian to help you find books about cats and raising kittens. You can also try the internet but you risk getting inaccurate info that way.
Just remember that kittens do grow up into cats, so unless you have someone to give it (back) to when it’s grown, find out about grown-up cats too. The best argument is that you’ll never have to worry about mice!
yitzchokm – Agree 100%. Every shul should have a box by the door, where mispallelim are required to deposit their smartphones (or any cellphone) before they enter. There is no excuse for a phone going off in the middle of Shmoneh Esreh.
As for addiction, maybe someone can do some research in the frum community about smartphone use? Given our very different life-style, I’m not sure research done on other groups would apply to us, but we definitely need to do something. I see people walking down my street on this beautiful spring day – with a phone glued to their ear, oblivious to HKBH’s wonderful world, and I feel terribly sorry for them.
TLIK – It wasn’t so long ago that some gedolim were all for banning computers. For various reasons that didn’t work. I suspect the same thing will eventually happen with smartphones. One thing that does alarm me is that schools are punishing kids for the perceived transgressions of their parents. Throwing out kids because of their parents’ phone use sounds like a good way to make those kids wonder about Yiddishkeit, and sometimes go off the derech. Being machmir in a negative way isn’t always productive.
DY – we’re not looking at 100 boys and 100 girls. We’re looking at one year’s worth of boys at 23 going out with five years’ worth of (younger) girls. I’m all for the new movement to start boys in the parshah at 21. That will cut down the number of ‘extra” girls by almost half.
Starting boys earlier may also avoid some going off the derech, too. And no, every boy doesn’t need to learn a year or more in EY, any more than every girl needs to go to seminary in EY for a year. Sending a young person who’s never been away from home to a different continent where they know few if any adults is a good prescription for trouble. Just because everybody else is doing it doesn’t mean it’s sensible. Keeping up with “yenem” isn’t a good criterion for our behavior.
Haimy is making a good point. The choke points in shidduchim are the shadchan and the boy’s mother. the shadchan wants the easy shidduchim because she needs to make a living. The mother wants a fantastic shidduch so she can feel worth-while and successful and have bragging rights with her family and friends.
As far as the math, say there are 100 boys and 100 girls in each age group, and the boys begin shidduchim at 23, and the girls at 19. So: age 23 – there are 100 boys who are looking at a pool of girls 19-23. That’s five years worth of girls, at 5 x 100 = 500. But the numbers never even out, because as the boys age they keep looking for girls who are younger. so inevitably there are going to be girls that never get matched. From what I’ve seen, a lot of the older unmarried boys are unmarried because they’ve gone off the derech but are keeping it quiet because they don’t want to hurt their families, particularly the younger siblings’ shidduch opportunities.
So what’s going to happen to those “left-over” girls as they get older and realize they’re never going to make a match in the frum community, and will never have the chance at marrige and children? Some of them will marry non-religious Jews. And probably some of them as they approach 40 will give up and marry non-Jews. Our next crisis may be a couple of decades down the line when we’re trying to figure out what to do about a group of young people who are halachically Jewish but whose fathers are non-Jews.
I suggest we get working on possible solutions fast, unless we just decide that those older “girls” and their potential children are expendable, so kol Yisroel areivem zeh l’zeh is irrelevant. I wonder what the One Above would think of that kind of attitude? I’d rather not find out.
You have to talk it over with someone who knows you personally. Some people are ready at 20, some are never ready. Family and parents are another factor to consider.
If you don’t have a rav or rosh yeshiva you can talk with, call NEFESH and get a professional. Marriage is the most important decision you’ll make in your life. And the problem is that if you decide wrong, it’s not just your own life you’re messing up, it’s also the life of the person you marry and any kids you may have.
Play it safe. Talk to someone who knows you or will get to know you and your situation well. Anonymous advice on the CR isn’t the best way to go about it.
Unfortunately, it seems that many careers that have been popular with yeshiva guys have become overcrowded. Law is one. If you go to law school you have to go to a really good one or get really top grades in order to get a decent job. Accountancy is also one of those “easy and light” fields that attracts an overabundance of frum students. Computer-related fields may be growing, depending, but you’ll need computer expertise (not just knowing what key to push) for any job nowadays. Stay away from for-profit schools. They take your Pell Grant and frequently don’t tell you that most of their graduates don’t get jobs.
Get professional job counseling before you spend any money. Agudah has Project Cope in New York, Baltimore has Joblink, and if you don’t live in either area, I’m sure if you call them they’ll give you contacts in your area. Don’t let anyone talk you into spending money until you’ve thoroughly checked out the job prospects for the field and the employment rate of the graduates of the school. “Asking around” is a good way to get information that’s misleading because people only have the knowledge of their personal corner of the job market. Get advice from the frum pros. That’s what our kehillahs pay them for, and they’ll help you find the field that suits your interests and will make you a respectable parnassah.