My niece who is the age of being in seminary decided to be one of the first to forgo seminary. She and a friend are currently working in a Moisad being mentors and running school youth programs for a fine institution. The whole seminary acceptance idea has become mentally and financially exhausting. Adding up the costs of going to Eretz Yisroel includes: TUITION, Airfare
(2 tickets) beginning of school year and coming home Pesach, cell phones, taxi bus and food money, spending money etc. This all adds up to about $20,000 plus for barely 10 months (more like 8 and half) withPesach vacation and only half of June month for school. Parents are being choked by this. I don’t want to sound old fashioned…but going back 25-30 years ago the whole concept of seminary in Eretz Yisroel was not on the table. Girls just continued on to a local Seminary and Boruch Hashem if you look around these girls have raised fine Mishpochas and were none the worse for “not having had the Israel experience”. After spending over $20,000 on Seminary…just a year later the girls are entering Shidduchim and making it even harder for the parents to now come up with thousands more dollars to make a wedding.
We are so stuck in the system and trying to keep up with the
Joneses(Cohens) and worried what would someone else think…that we are creating financial hardships for Parents. Kudos to my niece for daring to make it easier for her parents and not going to expensive Seminary while choosing to still be in a Chinuch environment and helping a Moisad enrich their students and being involved in Youth Leadership while also making sure to learn in the evenings and attend shiurim.