“Torah is a way of life, not a profession.
Yet many are of the belief that one should be uber holy at the expense of the parent’s paycheck.”
Yes, I know this is an old thread, but I just felt the need to comment-
Torah is a way of life. The way of life of every frum Jew, not just the ones in kollel.
I’ve heard too many lectures about how I should only marry a guy who will learn for a few years “to give my family a foundation of Torah.”
No, sorry, my home will have a very clear foundation of Torah whether my husband learns in kollel first or not. IMHO, every frum home NEEDS a foundation of Torah, no? What else is it founded on, Greek philosophy? Nicholas Sparks novels? If the only way for a family to have a foundation of Torah is for the husband/father to learn in kollel, then all those families whose husbands/fathers did not must be worshipping idols or something. I don’t think that that’s the case, at least with my dad. But I must not know.
My goal, when I’m married, is that my family will be built on Torah because everything we do will be filtered through that lens- whether it happens to be that my husband will be learning in kollel or not. Anything else, obviously, is fake.
Sorry, but as a (nearly ex-) twelfth grader, I’ve been hearing too much about “the kollel mystique” and how it’s necessary for this “Torah foundation” and it’s getting me mad. I call hooey. Perhaps kollel’s good for a certain kind of life (in fact, I’m sure it is) but don’t be overly simple and exclusionary about defining what a “Torah foundation” is.