During my final semester of college, planning the next stage of life was front and center in my mind. Influenced and affected by the economic recession, and having had no shortage of exposure to the costs of an observant Jewish lifestyle, I was determined not to let money call the shots on the quality of my own.
For the four years leading up to that moment – one year dedicated to earning and saving money, one and a half at community college, another one and a half in a public university – my focus was on gaining the tools, connections, and experiences needed to stand strong and stable in an ever-changing world, as both a professional and a Jew.
Living in a high-in-resources Jewish community seemed to require two upper middle-class incomes just to scrape by. Communal necessities such as synagogues, Jewish cultural centers, and mikvehs all held their own fundraising dinners. It seemed like everyone with kids in day school was joking – but not really joking – about how tuition was killing them.
As I got older, it seemed like my day-school peers grew increasingly apathetic or unimpressed with the lifestyle presented to us – and who could blame them, given all the expenses complained about at almost every simcha and communal gathering?
For me, there wasn’t a question of whether I wanted a Torah-committed lifestyle. My question was, What long-term decisions can I make to give my future family the best chance at developing a genuine love and appreciation for Judaism?
So when I sought guidance from a trusted rabbi and mentor, I asked him about aliyah. He’d lived in Israel for decades at that point, and had seen hundreds of students grapple with the quest of building lives there. When was the best time to go? Young and single without many responsibilities? Married and more established, with enough money for a down payment on a house? Sometime in between? What was my best bet?
I was expecting words of reassurance – affirmation that along with the struggle that accompany living a Torah-observant life in Israel comes tremendous nachat and accomplishment. Instead, he told me this:
In life, people want guarantees. That’s human nature. But I want to tell you that there are no guarantees. With everything in life, there has to be mazal – being the right person, at the right place, at the right time.
Still if you’ve made up your mind that you’re going to succeed, you’re going to succeed.
I don’t say this lightly. It may not happen overnight…but if you’ve made up your mind, it’s going to work out. You’re going to work it out.
While ultimately I decided to make aliyah, that’s not the point of this article. (In general, I’m not a proponent of one-size-fit-all answers for the issues facing Orthodox Jewry; from my perspective, life is too complex and nuanced for one solution to work for every family or individual).
The point, rather, concerns the attitude we take toward shaping our futures.
Perhaps a reason that Orthodox life has become cripplingly expensive, increasingly exclusive, and evidently anxiety-inducing is because we, like all human beings, crave guarantees.
If my kids’ school takes only this kind of student, then they’ll be in the best possible environment and they’ll stay religious.
If my kids’ school has exotic senior trips, monogrammed polo jerseys, and extensive in-house extracurricular activities, they won’t feel like they’re missing out and they’ll stay religious.
If our shul has a kiddush every week and a brand-name rabbi, people will come consistently, and our kids will stay religious.
If our kids go to Israel for a year, study at the best universities, earn the most advanced degrees, and land the highest paying jobs, they’ll be able to buy a house in a high-in-resources community (or make aliyah), send their children to day school and summer camp, belong to a shul…and they’ll stay religious.
We’ve been able to build up a wealth of communal necessities and amenities, all with the earnest intention of making life better for ourselves and our children. But in the process, we’ve neglected to pass along a critical component of living as a Jew: Life, as my mentor noted, doesn’t come with guarantees.
Jewish life can be challenging and demanding. It asks us to make difficult decisions – and yet, if we’ve made up our minds that this matters, this is worth the effort, no matter the outcome, then somehow we’re going to succeed, as a nation and as individuals
It may not happen overnight. It probably won’t. But if you live with the attitude that it’s going to work out, and that’s the message you stress to your family, it’s going to work out, with God’s help.
It may not work out the way you envisioned it. You may end up living in a community you didn’t initially consider. Your child may end up in a charter or public school, for reasons beyond your control. But when the focus is on fostering connection to Judaism despite uncertainty, risks gone sour, and unforeseen challenges, you’ll find a way to keep going, with a sobering sense of mission and purpose.
Sometimes that comes from going to Jewish schools, and sometimes it comes from being the only Jew in the room.
Sometimes that comes from having a shul down the block, and sometimes it comes from walking 30 minutes each way to the only minyan in the area.
Sometimes that comes from living in Israel, and sometimes that comes from being one of the few observant families in your “Out of Town” neighborhood.
Yes, we have fixing up to do. I don’t claim to have brilliant solutions for these issues. But I do know that in the meantime, if we internalize the truth that each and every one of us has a God-given purpose, and that because we have no control over outcome it is the effort that matters most, then somehow, some way, each of us will come to see how he or she is the right person, in the right place, at the right time.