“if a kollel person is a zionist they are being a hypocrite”
Really? Why? (I’d better tell the post-hesder kollel people I know, as well as the friend whose husband is in a charedi hesder yeshiva…)
LUU- I think someone might have pointed this out on the other thread, but I think that you’re coming at this from a slightly different angle here. I am NOT going to make any statements on who’s right here- completely above my pay grade- but the fact is that for many charedi Israelis, kollel is the easy way out, in much the same way as that for many DL and chiloni Israelis, the army is the easy way out. Communal life is structured around it- communal expectations are focused on it- familial hopes are centered on it. A child is, through their upbringing, given a certain set of steps on how to succeed in the world, a bunch of implicit or explicit expectations which they are expected to adhere to. For a charedi boy, that expectation is to live the poverty-stricken life of a kollel yungerman, but at the same time to receive that communal praise and internal satisfaction. A DL boy is expected to serve in the army, which includes risk of serious physical and emotional injury, but in turn he will receive the praise and affection of the community for that. Either one switching to the other is at risk of serious alienation and abandonment, though we hope it wouldn’t happen. First, they lose the communal support which comes with the path that they grew up with- something pretty important to all of us. There may even be outright resentment- the soldiers who have been attacked in chassidishe shtibelach or the newly minted kollel yungerman who is blasted as a shirker- and even potential loss of family support. So in its own way, each is extremely hard, and to put it down to one or the other being empirically harder is virtually impossible. And, in general, charting a new path and making a decision to do something different and difficult is always going to be incredibly challenging. So while I don’t deny that much of what you say about the difficulties inherent in kollel life is true, there’s also that other angle, even without examining the positives or negatives in either lifestyle.