Wednesday, April 25, 2018

The kollel system in Israel is collapsing?

Mishpacha magazine in Hebrew published an interesting article a few weeks ago. The accepted practice in the Litvish Charedi community in Israel is that the girls parents buy the couple an apartment. The parents generally have to take out a mortgage to do this and it is very difficult financially for them. The article wrote about a trend where teh couple agrees to take on paying the mortgage. This week there was an valanche of letters in response. I would like to quote some of them with my comments [in brackets].
Letter 1:
I'll begin with introductions, out of courtesy.
I am married, BH, to a talented and learned husband. We are both in our 50s. We have married off 5 children and have 2 more still at home.
When we married, there was money. It is not pleasant to say, but we had money from the German reparations. That money helped our parents get us on our feet. We got an apartment near my parents, I found a job as a teacher and my husband learned for some years in kollel and then became a "Ram" (ie a rebbi/teacher) in a known yeshiva.
For 20 years we lived in a cloud. In a dream. We earned some nice money. It was enough to save a little bit. [Of course they did. They had no housing costs, paid for by her parents and received all kinds of government benefits see It's all about money]. We thought we were smart and successful. [they did no real financial planning and had no understanding of how the world works so they were ignorant in bliss]
Then we married off one daughter. Then the second. Then the third child, a son. Then the fourth, another daughter. They were all loved, successful and smart. Each one came with a mountain of debt and obligations. The money we had saved was barely enough for the down payment of our eldest daughter. For the second daughter we had to borrow money, a horrible thing and something not recommended to do. [but they did it anyway because they believed they had no choice] This concluded with us selling our beautiful apartment. We have moved between small rental apartments since then. The third child was a son, but he had some health problems so we had to take on ourselves more obligations than normally done. Today, with the fourth, there is no more money. It is all gone. There are no more sources of funding for us. That's it. We are paying 4 mortgages, plus rent. We start each month about 20,000nis in overdraft [that is pretty good considering that they are paying 4 mortgages and rent]. I work at 3 jobs. If the students I teach in the morning would know that in the evening I am working a shift at a far away nursing home, they would faint. My husband is broken. He learns privately with students from morning to night. He has no satisfaction. He is embittered and grumpy. He feels no self-worth  and also feels that he cannot support his children as others supported him. Our marriage has gotten very shaky. When we are alone for Shabbos we do not buy fish and meat, though when our children come we buy 2 types of fish and 3 types of meat!
And I am frightened of the day when we will start talking about shidduchim for our next child! Forgive me Hashem, but I fear that moment! I am writing in tears. My husband is a tzaddik, he knows I am writing this and he is praying that someone will read it and do something about it. Do something! [Hashem should do something???? You should do something. Stop this ridiculous system of providing apartments to your children.]
Why in Belz is it legitimate to buy an apartment in har Yona for 600,000nis, in Zanz to buy an apartment in Tzfat for 500k, and Gur in Arad for 300k, and Vizshnitz in Afula for I dont know how much? [And how is this a solution??? You admitted that after your first daughter you were already out of money. Lets assume that the Chasidim are paying half of what you paid or even a third, you would still have run out of money after the second or third child. This is bandaid solution at best]. Why by the sefardim is it ok to get married and live in Netivot and in Yerucham, and only by us, the "quality", if you buy an apartment in Bet Shemesh and Modiin Ilit - for 1.1 million shekels - you feel like you are compromising??!
I am certain that by the hassidim they also have problems with this issue, but by us it is a catastrophe!

Yasher Koach for bringing the issue to the forefront, and Hashem should help all of us.
This letter is so sad because the letter writer sees the problem but refuses to see the solution.  Cheaper apartments won't solve anything, instead of running out of the money after the first child they will run out of money after the second or third. The bottom line is that the current system is completely unsustainable.
Letter 2:
It is very easy for you to write that the children should take the mortgage payments upon themselves. But forgive us for asking: how exactly are to pay these payments? Why do you think that a young couple getting married at the age of twenty-something and the system sends them to learn in kollel and his wife to work at a tiny salaried job, can possibly consider paying mortgage payments? [He is absolutely right. The Charedi world educates their boys to shun secular education, to learn only Torah and aspire to sit and learn forever, and then bans university studies for girls. With what should they pay the mortgage? They haven't been prepared in any way shape or form to do this.]
If there are stories about people earning a good living, and they still let the shver pay the mortgage, they should be ashamed! but the rest of us - what is even the suggestion that we should pay?
I ask for forgiveness and will be a bit extreme: who educated us in this way that we just want to learn and go to kollel? Was it not our father? Of course it was! Our entire lives our fathers have put into our heads that their desire is just that we should build houses of torah. And now suddenly you are sending us to pay mortgages? Maybe it is difficult for the parents, but this is what they want! That we should sit and learn! Not that we should be looking for other things! This is a complete disconnect! This is not connected at all to our lives! [Again he is right. You can't educate your kids that the only way of life is sitting and learning in Kollel and then expect them to get a job and pay their mortgage]
I am not saying this is ok in relation to our parents. But what at all is the thought that these young people will be able to pay? How exactly? Do we have some secret parnassa that brings us money? No, not at all. We sit in kollel exactly as our parents dreamed for us. As they educated us. We are the good results of our education. For the ones that left, nobody pays their mortgage.  So now that we have done everything they wanted from us, people are coming with complaints.
I dont understand it!

While the letter writer is correct, the young couples are doing what they were brought up to do, there is no question that the current generation is very much overly entitled. See these posts from the Jewish Worker for example, http://jewishworker.blogspot.com/2015/01/why-is-charedi-poverty-in-israel.html, http://jewishworker.blogspot.com/2007/03/whos-cleaning-for-pesach.html, http://jewishworker.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-are-you-turning-into-schnorrer.html.

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