I am a child of immigrants to the United States of America. In general, the immigrant generation had a hardworking, no nonsense attitude about life and a strong hakaras hatov (gratitude) to this wonderful country, a true medina shel chesed. Recent historians and pundits have labeled this group “The Greatest Generation“ for having successfully endured the adjustment to the new country, survived the economic hardships of the Great Depression, fought and won World War II, and then became part of creating the greatest post-war economic boom in American history.
When it came to their children’s career options, there was no mistake about their priorities. The words we heard over and over again from a very early age were “What will be your tachlis?” Tachlis was the code word for career. That generation worked with their hands and backs, but their children and grandchildren would strive to become professionals, merging yeshiva learning with a profession. This urgency was even more pressing when the parents were Holocaust survivors. In most cases, the yeshiva bachurim who came of age from1960 to the 1980s were successful in achieving both serious yeshiva learning and a professional degree. The “learning only” yeshivas in the United States were much smaller than the yeshivas that combined Torah study with acquiring a profession. In that era, traveling to Israel was uncommon.
Today, things have changed. The paradox is that the professional generation’s children, the grandchildren of the “Greatest Generation,” have different priorities. Parents – many of whom have Ph.D.s or advanced degrees in medicine, law, finance, economics, business – seem tolerant of, and even support their sons being engaged in full-time Torah learning without acquiring any technical or marketable skills to earn a parnassa to support their families. What are the intended and unintended consequences of this new paradigm?
I am not an economist or a demographic futurist. If we assume that everything that occurs in the Torah world today is lehefech min hatevah (outside the laws of nature), then the rest of this essay is moot. But if you believe that, even in the world of Torah, events are played out al pi derech hatevah, in accordance with laws of nature, read on.
The Law of Supply and Demand
Using a little common sense, and thinking globally, we can surmise that this new paradigm cannot be sustained much longer. Why is that? The answer is very simple: The current paradigm of large numbers of full-time and even short-term learners who avoid acquiring the necessary job skills to support their families will exceed the ability and/or willingness of their extended families and the government to support their learning. In short, the demand for economic support will exceed the supply of funds to meet that demand.
Baruch Hashem, it appears that most of today’s long-term kollel families have adjusted their economic issues, finances, and material expectations to reflect their desire to lead simple, debt-free lives. They are focused on sustaining long-term learning. They are not the main economic problem facing klal Yisrael today. The main group that remains at economic risk is the short-term learners and those who wear the “uniform” of learners but are not really kollel material. In increasing numbers, this group has avoided acquiring any relevant job skills until the sudden economic realities and an impending financial crisis stare them in the face.
For example, the phone calls I receive from kollel men seeking federal job and career assistance often involve a husband aged 27 to 32 with a few children at home, a wife who may no longer be able to mix full-time working and child care/home management, and declining family financial assistance which is about to end. When I ask these young men about their educational background, it is often only a “yeshiva degree” with no practical work experience.
What is such a person going to do? What practical and honest advice can I offer such a person when his family is facing such an immediate financial crisis?
My first thought is usually to ask myself a series of short questions. They are: 1) Where are the parents? 2) Where are the in-laws? 3) Where is the spouse? Let’s try and focus on these three questions.
Where are the Parents?
Frankly, I’m at a loss to answer this question. It is without a doubt the responsibility of parents to provide their sons with the ability to earn a parnassa. Let’s consider a few pertinent gemaras:
- “A father is obligated to do the following for his son: to circumcise him, to redeem him if he is a firstborn, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a trade. Others say: teaching him how to swim as well.” (Kiddushin 29A)
- “Kol mi she’eino melamed es beno umnus k’ilu melamdo listus – Anyone who does not
- teach his son a profession, it is as if he has taught him to be a thief” (Kiddushin 29a).
- “Rav Meir omeir le’olam yelameid adam lebno umnus kalla unekiya – Rav Meir says that one should teach his son an easy and clean profession” (Mishna, Kiddushin 82a)
It is time for parents to wake up and have an honest dialogue with children about their future career options before that financial crisis hits home. Kollel learning in the early years of a marriage is wonderful, but what about articulating a “kollel exit strategy?” The couple needs to know their future direction before events dictate their uncertain financial future. The couple that begins a non-long-term kollel life but after a few years faces termination of family financial support may also face a real life crisis, one that impacts their shalom bayis and their domestic relationship.
At a wedding a few years ago, I ran into an old friend who moved to another city. He told me that he had been supporting his son-in-law and daughter in kollel for the past 15 years but that he plans to retire in two years and that support will end. I asked him if he informed his daughter and son-in-law of that fact. He replied that he had not. I urged him to do so sooner rather than later. To leave a family with multiple children without their anticipated financial support, where the husband has no readily available job skills is unfair and just not right. Parents and in-laws need to be up front and honest about their financial commitments to their married children so that a realistic kollel exit strategy can be developed and the shock of a sudden end to their kollel life can be averted.
Some parents have tried to advise and lead their adult children towards a financially responsible and independent lifestyle, only to be unsuccessful in gaining their children’s compliance. These parents are to be commended for at least trying to do the right thing.
Where Are the In-Laws?
As a potential shidduch reaches the serious stage, but prior to an imminent engagement, the girl’s parents have a right and an obligation to ask the young yeshiva bachur the following simple question: “How do you plan to financially support our daughter after your marriage?” I am told that this simple question is often not even articulated or hinted at. Is this not a legitimate question that the parents of the girl have a right to ask? Why is it considered inappropriate and thus “off the table”?
Where Is the Spouse?
We need to return to the basics. Which marriage partner is responsible for the financial support of the family? It is the husband. If the husband is not sure of this requirement, he needs to simply reread the kesuva he gave his wife under the chupa. It is plain and simple. It is not the wife’s role to support the financial needs of the family. The wife can help out and assist in earning income towards the family’s financial needs, but it is the husband who has this responsibility. It is time for the ezer kenegdo, the spouse, to be an ezer, a helper, as well as at times being kenegdo, a reality checker. The time to speak up is years in advance of that crisis period. Marriage must be an open partnership; that requires honest and realistic communication and direction from both partners. The family’s parnassa plan is a legitimate topic for this couple to discuss.
Conclusion
We face many challenges in today’s frum society. We must begin to face the economic realities of living the frum lifestyle in order to sustain and support our families, our mosdos (institutions), and our communities. Let’s avoid the situation where our young people “wake up” at age 27 to 32 with no real education, no practical job skills, and no realistic career goals, only to suddenly face the reality of navigating the difficult financial world for their families. Let’s avoid becoming a low-technology community, with substandard income, in a high-technology and highly skilled job market and economy.
1) Our yeshivas and Bais Yaakovs need to devote some time, probably in the senior year of high school for the girls, and in the first few years of bais medrash for the boys, regarding practical economics of living in today’s frum society. Both yeshiva boys and post-seminary girls need a realistic view the day-to-day economic costs of our lifestyle today.
2) We must face the economic realities of our communities with a mature and realistic series of answers. We must restore the balance between parents, older children, and our mosdei hatorah. Parents, together with their children, need to examine, with a careful and critical eye, the career options presented to both the yeshiva boys and post-seminary girls. In order to allow our young people to compete with their peers in the current very limited job market, professional career planning must include real credentials from real colleges and universities.
We must avoid the out-of-state credit processing programs that cloak themselves as a “college” but lack real acceptance among hiring officials and most graduate programs. These for-profit credit processing programs may claim to grant credits and even degrees, but corporate and government recruiters, headhunters, and other gatekeepers know the difference. Just because some past students of the institution found positions in a career field does not assume that the same opportunities will be available to current students. In addition, note that an “accredited” degree does not automatically mean “recognized” by a given industry, graduate school, government agency, or career path.
While some good online programs exist, as part of a legitimate university, many worthless products are available on the web. It is definitely a “buyer beware” situation.
3) Our high technology economy increasingly requires skills in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The bulk of future jobs will be found in these areas. A degree in humanities or general studies is of questionable value today. Obtaining any degree by accumulating huge student loan debt is also of questionable value. I advise young people who contact me that they should pursue what they like and do best, with as little debt as possible. For example, I recommend that they consider the use of local community colleges for general courses rather than high end expensive universities.
4) Parents and their older children need to do their own independent “due diligence” about the current job market and the specific position requirements needed to compete and be considered for vacancies in various career fields. They need to survey the job postings on corporate and government web pages and read the specific requirements for the jobs posted there. This will provide a realistic view of job requirements that can be the basis for career planning. Note that job postings are quite literal, and requirements are based on objective criteria rather than “potential” or presumed intelligence. Today’s job market is tight and competitive. There are plenty of young people out there, either American or foreign born, who have not only already accrued skills and experience but whose intelligence matches or exceeds those in our community.
5) We need to reintroduce emes into our post-high-school-age young people’s career options. That is the joint responsibility of our institutions, our yeshiva and post-high school leadership, and our parents.
6) Most important, we need to pray for siyata dishmaya – that what we decide to do as young men, post-seminary young ladies, parents, and young marrieds will prove to enrich our families, our communities, and klal Yisrael.
Stuart Hoffman is a senior Human Resources Specialist in the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. He also serves as a volunteer for JobLink.
I am a child of immigrants to the United States of America. In general, the immigrant generation had a hardworking, no nonsense attitude about life and a strong hakaras hatov (gratitude) to this wonderful country, a true medina shel chesed. Recent historians and pundits have labeled this group “The Greatest Generation“ for having successfully endured the adjustment to the new country, survived the economic hardships of the Great Depression, fought and won World War II, and then became part of creating the greatest post-war economic boom in American history.
When it came to their children’s career options, there was no mistake about their priorities. The words we heard over and over again from a very early age were “What will be your tachlis?” Tachlis was the code word for career. That generation worked with their hands and backs, but their children and grandchildren would strive to become professionals, merging yeshiva learning with a profession. This urgency was even more pressing when the parents were Holocaust survivors. In most cases, the yeshiva bachurim who came of age from1960 to the 1980s were successful in achieving both serious yeshiva learning and a professional degree. The “learning only” yeshivas in the United States were much smaller than the yeshivas that combined Torah study with acquiring a profession. In that era, traveling to Israel was uncommon.
Today, things have changed. The paradox is that the professional generation’s children, the grandchildren of the “Greatest Generation,” have different priorities. Parents – many of whom have Ph.D.s or advanced degrees in medicine, law, finance, economics, business – seem tolerant of, and even support their sons being engaged in full-time Torah learning without acquiring any technical or marketable skills to earn a parnassa to support their families. What are the intended and unintended consequences of this new paradigm?
I am not an economist or a demographic futurist. If we assume that everything that occurs in the Torah world today is lehefech min hatevah (outside the laws of nature), then the rest of this essay is moot. But if you believe that, even in the world of Torah, events are played out al pi derech hatevah, in accordance with laws of nature, read on.
The Law of Supply and Demand
Using a little common sense, and thinking globally, we can surmise that this new paradigm cannot be sustained much longer. Why is that? The answer is very simple: The current paradigm of large numbers of full-time and even short-term learners who avoid acquiring the necessary job skills to support their families will exceed the ability and/or willingness of their extended families and the government to support their learning. In short, the demand for economic support will exceed the supply of funds to meet that demand.
Baruch Hashem, it appears that most of today’s long-term kollel families have adjusted their economic issues, finances, and material expectations to reflect their desire to lead simple, debt-free lives. They are focused on sustaining long-term learning. They are not the main economic problem facing klal Yisrael today. The main group that remains at economic risk is the short-term learners and those who wear the “uniform” of learners but are not really kollel material. In increasing numbers, this group has avoided acquiring any relevant job skills until the sudden economic realities and an impending financial crisis stare them in the face.
For example, the phone calls I receive from kollel men seeking federal job and career assistance often involve a husband aged 27 to 32 with a few children at home, a wife who may no longer be able to mix full-time working and child care/home management, and declining family financial assistance which is about to end. When I ask these young men about their educational background, it is often only a “yeshiva degree” with no practical work experience.
What is such a person going to do? What practical and honest advice can I offer such a person when his family is facing such an immediate financial crisis?
My first thought is usually to ask myself a series of short questions. They are: 1) Where are the parents? 2) Where are the in-laws? 3) Where is the spouse? Let’s try and focus on these three questions.
Where are the Parents?
Frankly, I’m at a loss to answer this question. It is without a doubt the responsibility of parents to provide their sons with the ability to earn a parnassa. Let’s consider a few pertinent gemaras:
- “A father is obligated to do the following for his son: to circumcise him, to redeem him if he is a firstborn, to teach him Torah, to find him a wife, and to teach him a trade. Others say: teaching him how to swim as well.” (Kiddushin 29A)
- “Kol mi she’eino melamed es beno umnus k’ilu melamdo listus – Anyone who does not
- teach his son a profession, it is as if he has taught him to be a thief” (Kiddushin 29a).
- “Rav Meir omeir le’olam yelameid adam lebno umnus kalla unekiya – Rav Meir says that one should teach his son an easy and clean profession” (Mishna, Kiddushin 82a)
It is time for parents to wake up and have an honest dialogue with children about their future career options before that financial crisis hits home. Kollel learning in the early years of a marriage is wonderful, but what about articulating a “kollel exit strategy?” The couple needs to know their future direction before events dictate their uncertain financial future. The couple that begins a non-long-term kollel life but after a few years faces termination of family financial support may also face a real life crisis, one that impacts their shalom bayis and their domestic relationship.
At a wedding a few years ago, I ran into an old friend who moved to another city. He told me that he had been supporting his son-in-law and daughter in kollel for the past 15 years but that he plans to retire in two years and that support will end. I asked him if he informed his daughter and son-in-law of that fact. He replied that he had not. I urged him to do so sooner rather than later. To leave a family with multiple children without their anticipated financial support, where the husband has no readily available job skills is unfair and just not right. Parents and in-laws need to be up front and honest about their financial commitments to their married children so that a realistic kollel exit strategy can be developed and the shock of a sudden end to their kollel life can be averted.
Some parents have tried to advise and lead their adult children towards a financially responsible and independent lifestyle, only to be unsuccessful in gaining their children’s compliance. These parents are to be commended for at least trying to do the right thing.
Where Are the In-Laws?
As a potential shidduch reaches the serious stage, but prior to an imminent engagement, the girl’s parents have a right and an obligation to ask the young yeshiva bachur the following simple question: “How do you plan to financially support our daughter after your marriage?” I am told that this simple question is often not even articulated or hinted at. Is this not a legitimate question that the parents of the girl have a right to ask? Why is it considered inappropriate and thus “off the table”?
Where Is the Spouse?
We need to return to the basics. Which marriage partner is responsible for the financial support of the family? It is the husband. If the husband is not sure of this requirement, he needs to simply reread the kesuva he gave his wife under the chupa. It is plain and simple. It is not the wife’s role to support the financial needs of the family. The wife can help out and assist in earning income towards the family’s financial needs, but it is the husband who has this responsibility. It is time for the ezer kenegdo, the spouse, to be an ezer, a helper, as well as at times being kenegdo, a reality checker. The time to speak up is years in advance of that crisis period. Marriage must be an open partnership; that requires honest and realistic communication and direction from both partners. The family’s parnassa plan is a legitimate topic for this couple to discuss.
Conclusion
We face many challenges in today’s frum society. We must begin to face the economic realities of living the frum lifestyle in order to sustain and support our families, our mosdos (institutions), and our communities. Let’s avoid the situation where our young people “wake up” at age 27 to 32 with no real education, no practical job skills, and no realistic career goals, only to suddenly face the reality of navigating the difficult financial world for their families. Let’s avoid becoming a low-technology community, with substandard income, in a high-technology and highly skilled job market and economy.
1) Our yeshivas and Bais Yaakovs need to devote some time, probably in the senior year of high school for the girls, and in the first few years of bais medrash for the boys, regarding practical economics of living in today’s frum society. Both yeshiva boys and post-seminary girls need a realistic view the day-to-day economic costs of our lifestyle today.
2) We must face the economic realities of our communities with a mature and realistic series of answers. We must restore the balance between parents, older children, and our mosdei hatorah. Parents, together with their children, need to examine, with a careful and critical eye, the career options presented to both the yeshiva boys and post-seminary girls. In order to allow our young people to compete with their peers in the current very limited job market, professional career planning must include real credentials from real colleges and universities.
We must avoid the out-of-state credit processing programs that cloak themselves as a “college” but lack real acceptance among hiring officials and most graduate programs. These for-profit credit processing programs may claim to grant credits and even degrees, but corporate and government recruiters, headhunters, and other gatekeepers know the difference. Just because some past students of the institution found positions in a career field does not assume that the same opportunities will be available to current students. In addition, note that an “accredited” degree does not automatically mean “recognized” by a given industry, graduate school, government agency, or career path.
While some good online programs exist, as part of a legitimate university, many worthless products are available on the web. It is definitely a “buyer beware” situation.
3) Our high technology economy increasingly requires skills in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The bulk of future jobs will be found in these areas. A degree in humanities or general studies is of questionable value today. Obtaining any degree by accumulating huge student loan debt is also of questionable value. I advise young people who contact me that they should pursue what they like and do best, with as little debt as possible. For example, I recommend that they consider the use of local community colleges for general courses rather than high end expensive universities.
4) Parents and their older children need to do their own independent “due diligence” about the current job market and the specific position requirements needed to compete and be considered for vacancies in various career fields. They need to survey the job postings on corporate and government web pages and read the specific requirements for the jobs posted there. This will provide a realistic view of job requirements that can be the basis for career planning. Note that job postings are quite literal, and requirements are based on objective criteria rather than “potential” or presumed intelligence. Today’s job market is tight and competitive. There are plenty of young people out there, either American or foreign born, who have not only already accrued skills and experience but whose intelligence matches or exceeds those in our community.
5) We need to reintroduce emes into our post-high-school-age young people’s career options. That is the joint responsibility of our institutions, our yeshiva and post-high school leadership, and our parents.
6) Most important, we need to pray for siyata dishmaya – that what we decide to do as young men, post-seminary young ladies, parents, and young marrieds will prove to enrich our families, our communities, and klal Yisrael.
Stuart Hoffman is a senior Human Resources Specialist in the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. He also serves as a volunteer for JobLink.
