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My friends,
As is probably the case with many of you, I’ve been working remotely for the past couple months. There is a high possibility that I’d be able to work remotely, permanently. Yeshivas and schools are also remote, and with enough time and logistics, I’m sure the switch to permanent remote learning can be a possibility, and even be successful.
The question, then, is obvious: Why not move to a cheap small town somewhere and start a new community?
We can work remotely. Our children can attend school remotely. There are several online frum schools that already exist, so it can be done. Our housing costs would be minimal, if we find the right place. Building a shul / mikvah / community center wouldn’t be that big of deal, cost wise, given enough time to accrue funds. Basic kosher food is readily available in almost any Walmart and Trader Joes across the country, and we can arrange co-ops if needed.I’m done with high costs of living, high costs of school, traffic, the social and economic pressure of the large communities.
I’m all in. Who’s joining?
Personal interaction is very important in child development. People are social beings, so social distancing is done as a necessity not as a primary behavior.
Visit Kansas City.
Overland Park to be precise.
a couple of points:
“I’m sure the switch to permanent remote learning can be a possibility, and even be successful.”
I doubt it, it is clear (to me and all I’ve spoken too) that remote learning is not nearly as effective as in person. This is even more true for “weaker” kids that need more individualized attention.
“The question, then, is obvious: Why not move to a cheap small town somewhere and start a new community?”
Schools is but one item keeping people in larger communities, shuls easy access to kosher food are probably the first 2.
“I’m done with high costs of living, high costs of school, traffic, the social and economic pressure of the large communities.”
So go for it!
Why re-invent the wheel? There are numerous communities across the US with all the small town meilos you listed. Baltimore, Silver Spring, Dallas, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Phoenix, Richmond, South Bend, and Norfolk are only some of the places that come to mind. These places already have a lot of frum infrastructure, like shulls, schools, and kosher food.
Sorry, but remote learning should never be a permanent replacement for the real deal. It’s extremely important and healthy for kids to learn social skills and the kids can’t pay attention to the material nearly as well.
If you want to open up a real yeshiva in an out of town community, then that should be a fine solution (although there are many good out of town places that actually do currently exist if you feel the need to move).
There have been rural frum communities in the US for hundreds of years. It’s estimated that 4% of the frum in America live rurally. There are small frum Jewish communities in the heart of Appalachia, AZ and all across the west and here in the PNW where I live. I think that it’s a rather unsuitable lifestyle for folks from the known Jewniverse of NY and NJ. who are used to walking around the corner to a shop to buy your kosher chicken, most of these communities live more than a convenient drive from a Walmart or Trader Joes. And listen to the women on Imamother complaining because their kids are home all day because of C19. Home schooling isn’t an alien concept in rural America regardless of your faith. And of course there are the wandering rabbi’s of Chabad who visit once or twice a year and the wandering shochet serving those Jews who raise their own animals for food.
My late husband and I received wise counsel from our rabbi when we were considering our move to the rural PNW and we were able to network with other Jews who lived rurally on how to solve some of the unique problems of Jews living rurally. As technology advanced and the internet became more available to rural areas, many issues of supply and demand were solved. The only time I resented driving an over 30 mile trip to work over mtns was during ice storms.
With my husband gone I downsized and moved closer to town onto what would be described as a rural residential property on the far edge of town. It, for me, is infinitely nicer than in town, with few close neighbors, less noise and traffic. It’s also less than a 30 mile drive to a grocery store which is even better.
I agree with MOST of your points regarding yidden leaving the NYC metro area ard relocating to less densely populated areas with a higher quality of life. When I left years ago there were certain challenges but others followed and we now have a thriving community. Depending on your mesorah and hashkafah, you may want to consider one of over a dozen smaller metro areas noted in the above posts rather than going “off the grid”. Yes, technology has made it easier to escape the city, but its hard to do virtual mikvah, and “remote hakofos and ” shalosh sa’udos.with a crowd of yidden. Physical activities and interactions are part of yiddeshkeit. .
I live in South Carolina. It’s a total midbar and miserable. Atlanta, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh are great options. Florida too if you can stand the heat and humidity. Follow the infrastructure. More really is more.
“the known Jewniverse of NY and NJ”
As someone who has made aliyah, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this.
No offense, but remote learning is the most hideous suggestion right-minded people of our planet have heard in decades, maybe even in centuries!!
B) Hypothetically speaking it would be a great idea, until- it doesn’t work, which is inevitable, and then you and your hoard of similarly minded, stary eyed young entrepreneurs will be out in the sticks!!!NICE TRY HOWEVER!!
As a Rebbe, I can tell you that, while distance learning has been better than nothing during this crisis, it has also proven that homeschooling can not replace the school experience.
As many have noted, social interaction is a tremendous part of childhood and of education, and homeschooled children are deficient in this part of their growth. This is true even in the best circumstances, in a vibrant community and many neighbors, and with proactive parents who make it a priority to provide opportunities for social interaction for their children.
Moreover, the real key to teaching Torah is the relationship a Rebbe builds with his Talmid, and this is exponentially more difficult to achieve through distance learning, if not impossible. If the Torah education of your children is one of your top priorities, I do not think you should even consider putting them in a position where they will not be in real contact with their Rebbeim and Moros.
As takahmamash implied, come to live in Israel. It’s God’s country.
I’m glad remote learning is working for you. My SIX kids ages 3-16 all hate it, most are learning close to nothing
Chaim Shulem –
1) Of course, no system is perfect. Schools and educators are constantly evolving and working to make the educational experience best suited for every student. For some students, online education is truly the answer. In fact, one of my current students was barely passing until the lockdown, and has flourished in our distance learning. However, he is an exception. For the overwhelming majority, the opposite is the case. Online learning does not present them with the same education as learning in person.
2) Without question, given significant investment and training, schools can create an online learning experience far superior to what we have scrambled together in this situation. Again, the difference between learning in person or online is qualitative, not quantitative. It is impossible to create the same relationship with Zoom that I can in person. Adult education such as your degree is irrelevant to this discussion, just as General Studies education is immaterial to Limudei Kodesh.
3) In Torah Education, we invest much time, effort, and resources to ensure not just social interaction but healthy social interaction which is guided and inspired by Torah values. I am skeptical that this can be replaced in another setting.
It is Assur Min H’Torah for a Jew R’L to move out of Brooklyn Ir Hakodesh.
The only MAYBE Heter is if one moves to Yerushalayim, maybe there is a heter for that, but ask your local Posek to see if that is permitted
Takahmamash re Jewniverse. I grew up in NJ, and got my undergrad degree at a uni in NJ. It has been my experience that many Frum and not so Frum Jews think the NJ NY metroplex be all end all for frum. For example, even on this forum (or Imamother) Frum don’t consider or even think that there are communities OOS whose lifestyles are quite different than NJ or NY Frum. That doesn’t mean our practices are different but when you live outside the metroplex there are variants in lifestyle. BTW I thugged that term after I read it here many years ago.
Toco hills, suburb of Atlanta, is booming. Great yeshiva, there is full spectrum of amenities including kollel, kosher Market, kosher delis and sushi within grocery stores, and Jewish retirement home. Much more affordable than northeast and folks friendlier.
Chaim Shulem. I do not live near a metro area. Neither my husband nor I wanted to live near a metro area. I live on the edge of city limits in an area that will not be developed any further (The town has about 16K fulltime residents,) The PDX and Seattle metro areas may be cheaper than Bklyn but the suburbs are nothing close to small town living. Houses are built on top of eachother, poorly constructed, traffic sucks, property taxes are high and every house looks the same.
Thanks Mod 29!
I did want to address the complaints about remote learning. Unlike some public schools Jewish schools were very unprepared to adopt remote learning. The teachers lack training in developing remote learning classes or how to manage them. Many of the schools were/are late to adopt technologies that make remote learning possible. Mind you I have no idea how big city school districts are handling remote learning. I do understand how smaller districts spread across large areas have gradually adopted learning technologies and had back up plans should remote learning be necessary. Frankly it sounds prehistoric that one would think they could successfully deliver class material to 7 yo’s over the phone. And I’m pretty sure that many of the teachers were never trained in the pedagogy of online teaching and learning.
Chaim, what’s “appreciate what kosher amenities they have a lot more” mean? What is there to appreciate about it?
Amil, the city public schools were utterly unprepared to implement remote learning.
As far as the Yeshivos are concerned, they do not use remote video learning for religious/philosophical reasons. Earlier or more preparation would not have changed that fact.
Amil – with all due respect (seriously) it never to fails that someone laud the public schools superiority over our schools in regard to whatever the topic of the day is. I’m not sure what sparks the need to generate these comments but it is obviously not fact based, as you cannot have spoken to even a random sampling of each, nor read any studies. Usually it just comes from people’s stereotypical beliefs/thoughts/imaginations of what they have decided about the Jewish system at large versus what they imagine the public school system to look like everywhere.
I obviously cannot speak for the larger Jewish world, but I will say that among the 8 or more frum schools that I have first hand feedback from, the feedback drastically varies from teacher to teacher, not Jewish school to public school. And in addition to that, I have heard from public school teachers that they have about a 50% attendance rate (again, a very small sampling) and there is not much learning getting done.
In the 10 public schools I worked at over this decade, I would say the ability of the teachers just to put together a classroom website varied from highly skilled to barely capable. Your situation of school preparedness sounds wonderful and unique.
Sorry to pick on you as an example, but this undertone of inferior Jewish schools, inferior teachers, inferior Jewish music, inferior Jewish books etc is just a mantra that some people inject into conversations all over the place, like subliminal messages inserted in frames of a movie reel, and repeated often enough, it lays a false and unfortunate foundation for further negative attitudes toward the Jewish communities at large.
Chaim: Not only is that factually inaccurate, it isn’t what I asked you. I specifically asked you about food. Not about religious necessities. Can you address my above question regarding restaurants?
Chaim, if you’re looking to leave the city only because of cheap housing, then consider Detroit or Rochester. So long as you don’t mind the cold, and you have a job that you can do remotely, those are both excellent communities with very cheap housing. The reason for the cheap housing is the lack of jobs, but if that’s not a problem for you then it’s an advantage.
For those that are complaining that I’m using small unified regional public school districts as an example, oh well. I’ve sat on our local board of ed as well as the curriculum committee locally. I’m guessing that with smaller regionalized districts there is far more community involvement and perhaps even more $$ devoted to teacher training. For those of us who choose to live rurally or semi rurally (Jew or gentile) we do not want to emulate the failures of public or private education that are evidenced in metro or suburban areas.
Chaim, we have a private mikvah and a community mikvah. The private came long before I got here.
@Chaim Schulem
I live in small town Connecticut, having been brought up in New Haven which was a large city for CT.
There are no kosher restaurants within a 30 minute drive, no local kosher prepared food or butcher (those days are gone), no local independent kosher bakery, as opposed to the bakeries in the regular supermarkets under KVH supervision,We buy our kosher provisions in bulk, cook from scratch (our choice). I have eaten in the Dtamford Kosher restaurants only when it is for a meeting. We are 60 minutes from Manhattan, 90 to Queens or Brooklyn. Close enough, but far enough away.
Growing up, New Haven had 12 kosher bakeries and more than 20 kosher butchers, 6 kosher delis and a couple of dairy restaurants. BUT we still cooked at home. We didn’t do takeout and it wasn’t a matter of cost. Just not our style. We have a vegetable patch and a smokehouse. I love to pickle what we grow as well as smoke meats.
This lifestyle is not for everyone, BUT like Amil Zola I have been involved in local government and school boards for a long time. Some of us like living in a mixed community. It didn’t harm my children’s marriage choices, nor my grandchildren….first grandson is getting married IYH soon as=after Shavous and due to COVID 19 it is happening in our gardens.Chaim: Pray tell, how is Oak Park or Southfield unsafe?
Chaim your interest where I live is becoming creepy. FWIW I know of 2 more ‘unlisted mikvah here in my state and at least 4 more in neighboring states. CT Lawyer said it best, ‘Some of us like living in a mixed community.’
@ChaimShulem
There is a rebirth of frum Jewry in a couple of CT mill towns that had Orthodox synagogues and days schools dating back 100+ years, but when industry left so did most Jews.
You may want to consider looking at Waterbury (Mikvah, shuls, yeshiva, food) or the neighboring town of Naugatuck that just established a yeshiva and shul.
Housing is not expensive, Brooklyn less than 2 hours by car and it is on the Metro North RR of you commute to work in Manhattan.Just a consideration, not pushing it, but these are often overlooked
@Chaim Shulem, actually Boise and Bozeman both have mivkahs, miyanim there are sporadic, [mostly Chabad and limited to yomtov and occasional Shabbos] I use to come annually to Montana when I was doing business there, friendly people, very pro business environment and contrary to what you hear I had no issues there being a visible frum yid whereas I get plenty of hate in the outskirts of Monsey, if you love amazing views and outdoors this is the place.
Chaim Shulem, yeah its true, you probably have less 1000 Jews in either of these states, and to top it off Montana is the 4th largest state in the union, just to get from one part of the state to the other can take hours even with high speed limits that are nominally enforced. [ I have a picture I took at the rest area of a cow and the caption read “just because you see more cows then cops does not mean you cant get a ticket”]
So the shilaich focus is on Kiruv and serving the guest at Yellowstone along with the shilach at Jackson Wy.Three years ago I spent a Shabbat in Norwich, CT. Very nice small community. The couple that hosted me had just moved from Manhattan. They bought a 5 bedroom Victorian house in move in condition for $160K. The shul maintains an eruv and a mikveh. There aren’t a lot of jobs in Norwich itself but there are lots of jobs in Groton or Hartford, both commutable.
It’s hard to believe, but Lakewood used to be an OOT community too.
Looking for something cheap? In the words of R. Lefkowitz, become a shtikel pioneer. In the words of some baseball movie I never saw, “if you build it, they will come”.
I have seen the dangers of remote learning, most kids need the social interaction. But homeschooling has many more options than just online learning. Pick a town with in Middleofnowhere, USA with a shul and a mikvah, and start it becoming the next Lakewood. Future generations will thank you.
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