Dear Mrs. Bluth,
With your permission, I’d like to comment on the recent letter (Chronicles 12/30/16) in which a young newly-wed pours out her frustrations. She was married off via parental pressure to a young man she really didn’t care for (and still doesn’t) and sent off to Israel so that her husband could sit and learn, though this was not the condition of marriage her father had promised her. Coming from a very comfortable home, this eighteen year old wanted a working boy, yet, and found herself, instead, married to a “bench-presser” while she has to work to pay the bills. Five months into this unwanted marriage, she is pregnant, frustrated and unhappy. Your response points an accusatory finger at unrealistic parents who either repeat the mistakes made by their own parents, or are simply not tuned in to what their children really need in a spouse. You note the sad, but true, reality of many young girls/women returning home to their mothers, albeit with a babe in their arms and possibly another in tow. You urge roshei yeshiva and rabbanim to find solutions to this growing problem. Here is where I’d like to add my two-cents.
Mrs. Bluth, roshei yeshiva are a great part of the mushrooming problem. They are the ones nurturing the concept that every yeshiva boy needs to sit in kollel and every wife aught to embrace such a bachur and sacrifice health, life and happiness for him. The girl’s buy into the concept because, supposedly, a working boy is not as desirable as the exalted “learner” and that this is the true Torahdik home every young couple needs to strive to attain.
Roshei yeshiva will never change this warped mind-frame. They have instilled in their student body that notion that every single boy is so gifted a learner that he has earned the right to make kollel his life’s work. The same holds true for the girls who are force fed the idea that their destiny and life ambition should be to marry a kollel boy. Never mind that the boy hasn’t looked into a sefer in earnest in five years or that his interest in learning borders on zilch. Sitting and learning will guarantee him an easy life upon marriage, with five “employees” catering to his needs: her parents, his parents (maybe) and a wife who will work the rest of her life to make up the slack. Can everyone become a lawyer, a rav, a doctor? Obviously not! Why then should every boy sit and learn in kollel?
You really cannot depend on the roshei yeshiva to resolve a problem that they created. There is a vast amount of ego invested here and the thought of changing the system will be devastating to them. Were they, per chance, to accept your challenge to seek a solution, they would be tarnishing the reputation of their yeshivos by acknowledging that not every talmud is a metzuyan. They would have to admit that their student body includes both the iluy and the young man who wants to go to work and provide for his family and hopefully an involved community member and baal tzedakkah.
And so the cycle is doomed to continue. The here-to-fore mentioned problem is one of the major reasons why so many children are denied registration to various yeshivas and seminaries. This is one of the foremost reasons boys and girls fall through the cracks and end up on the streets – they don’t fit the mold the yeshivas want to present. This is why the Amudim organization is swamped with rejected, disillusioned and drug addicted children and why Footsteps is, trying to save these youngsters from going off the derech. Whom do we hold accountable for these destroyed and discarded yiddishe neshomos?
The answer to the growing disease of young girls not able to cope with this convoluted system lies with us, the parent body, the philanthropists, the donors who fund these yeshivas and seminaries, we have largely become enablers, feeding the machine that causes the problem. We are the ones who must insist that a true merit system be adopted by yeshivas to determine who is genuinely worthy of sitting in kollel and who should be given the right tools to succeed in the outside world.
As long as we grudgingly sit back and allow this flawed and false ideology to continue, nothing will change. As parents, we understand that each of our children excel in different venues. We are obligated to teach them how to swim (literally) and to give them a craft by which to support themselves, thus behooving us to expound on any talent or G-d-given gift that he or she has been blessed with.
As far as choosing a partner in life is concerned, it is for the parents to do their hishtadlus in finding out all there is to know about a prospective shidduch, taking into account, of course, what their child is looking for in a spouse. The ultimate decision should rest with the young man or woman. It is for the parents to be supportive and offer their expertise, when asked, to help an unsure child with this important decision. Otherwise, you may want to leave the door to your home unlocked, so that your child and his or her children can move back in, challila, because you pushed, prodded or made false promises that goaded him or her into marriage. Divorces happen without our help. Laying the groundwork and creating the potential for the break-up is criminal.
Isaac Kohn, SVP
Prime Care Consultants
Dear Friends,
Mr. Kohn is a long-time contributor to this paper and is a well-respected champion of many causes, primarily those dealing with agunah, marital and child abuse and addiction. The two of us have a history of seeing the world as it is and not as we would like to it to be. We have long ago stopped living in denial, a popular mind-frame that shields us from all the ugliness. Mr. Kohn’s good work goes largely unheralded, as he goes about his business quietly, without fanfare or want of kavod. His heart is great, his will is greater, but the greatest of his desires is to see the end of suffering and needless injustice. And for this he has my greatest respect.
Many people have written in response to this particular column and you all have my thanks. I believe that most of you were upset at the multifaceted problems present in that letter and the introspection it brought about seemed to awaken memories in many people’s lives. That is the amazing part of a column such as this. People tend to see bits of themselves in someone else’s letter, often problems they could not address, talk about to anyone and thus had no closure or a way in which to deal with their situation. Strangely, the underlying sentiment has been that they found these answers in my responses to the weekly letter-writer. Thus, I sometimes tread a broader path in my response so as to reach out to others suffering a similar situation. Mark it up to writer’s license.
Thank you for trusting me with your problems, dilemmas and secrets. Know that your privacy is protected, your situation is respected and your secrets are safe and well hidden.
