The time between Sukkos and Chanukah is one of the best stretches of the year for learning. It’s seven straight weeks with no interruptions, no snow days, and a full return to routine after the Yomim Tovim. This is when kids and yeshivos settle back into the daily grind and really pack in the learning. And it’s not only the children adults also get back into their regular sedorim, with no Yom Tov or vacation days breaking the momentum. For working families too, this is the period where the steady 9-to-5 rhythm shines.
Yet even during these precious weeks, we get mixed messages. High-end Yarchei Kallah programs and luxury vacations are constantly promoted and highlighted, adding pressure to a time that should remain simple, focused, and free from the push toward extravagant getaways. It creates the feeling that maybe now is the season to spend money and travel when in reality, this stretch is perfectly designed for stability, consistency, and growth.
There’s another point that blurs the real picture: we’re told that true chizuk requires flying off to another country, being wined and dined, hearing exotic shiurim from star maggidei shiur, and getting VIP access to gedolim as if that’s what gives a person the spiritual charge to carry them through the winter after the Yamim Noraim.
But the truth is far simpler. You can walk into BMG or any yeshiva or local beis medrash and see real people learning, day in and day out, with no fanfare and draw the exact same chizuk, if not more. These programs unintentionally send the message that what the average person is doing at home isn’t enough, that real growth requires a high-end getaway costing thousands of dollars. In reality, the opposite is true.
If we would only realize that everything we’re searching for inspiration, consistency, and renewal is right in our own backyard.
true true, but as the saying goes the grass is always greener on the other side of the world
ReplyDeleteRoutine is boring it doesn’t make headlines. We live in a ‘man bites dog’ world, where only the sensational gets attention.
ReplyDeleteLive and let live some people get inspiration from elsewhere
ReplyDeleteeveryone is different what works for some don't work for others and vice versa
Why should Yom Tov affect one's learning schedule? This is not our massorah.
ReplyDeleteIf one learns everyday from 9-1, one should learn every day of Yom Tov (and Cholo shel Moed) from 9-1. Same for Shabbat and Sundays. Possibly Friday different, but not really.
Family and other obligations should not interfere. No trips to the zoo. No fixing minor plumbing or other renovations on Sundays.
Did Slabodka or The Mir change their daily schedule?
Many Gedolim did not visit their parents for their bar mitzvah, an Aliyah and sponge cake was enough. No sushi, yapchik or meat boards. If you want guests on Shabbat meals, go to the Rebbe or RYs. RYs too busy, go to a smaller Yeshiva where you get to know the RYs. Not one of 5,000. This was never our mesorah. Next thing you know, you'll have musical Hallel on Rosh Chodesh or Chol Hamoed.
Y"t is chatzi lachem. Fridays very much have a mesorah to learn less. I believe mentioned in M"B....vcho vcho
DeleteTo xyz -- that was not the mesorah in Lita.
DeleteMost people don't go on these trips.
ReplyDeleteIts only a problem if you make it into one.
Very well written. However everybody needs a pick me up and boost moment that what a rebbes Trish si for and that’s what these events are for be it the siyum hashas, siyum amid yomi or yarchei kallah to give people an uplifting experience to concitune on their journey in avoid as hashem
ReplyDeleteWhy do I get the feeling that the writer here is jelous of someones trip
ReplyDeleteHe is trying to give value to the regular humdrum yossel who is ignored. No flashy photos in the mags.
DeleteAs well he should.Good for him!
We’ve become a society where a tiny group of rich, famous, powerful people monopolize all the attention and the media is just as guilty for endlessly glorifying their lifestyles. Meanwhile, the huge population of simple, honest, hardworking people gets ignored, overlooked, and stepped on. Somewhere along the way, we lost our values.
ReplyDeleteThank you watsapp.
Society is and was always like that.
DeleteThe difference is that nowadays people don't know their place and the poor want to live like the rich. Stop the jealousy, they are not that happy or successful. In fact, many of them are on pills, and most of them are not very happy with their lives at all.
5:41grubbe millenial,
DeleteFrum society wasn't like that! Even a generation ago.& if you tried to be you left.Or were pushed away.& ridiculed.If you chose to stay you pulled your standard down to the normal decent frumme crowd !
BTW for the places/communities on the periphery who were 'always like" that
what the definition of insanity is?
We're still spinning around & around over & over in galus. & still not getting going!If anything we are sliding from earlier progress! But that is how you materialist attention monopolizers like it.That makes them & their lifestyle mortally dangerous .
'Society was always like that[sic]'
Delete"The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced.
"We’ve been saturated with cultural images and a kind of cultural deification of wealth and those who have wealth. They present people of immense wealth as somehow leaders, oracles even. We don’t grasp internally what an oligarchic class is finally about, or how venal and morally bankrupt they are."
"Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy"
I think you are a little unfair. Many people were inspired in yeshiva in EY so returning to the same beis medrash could be inspiring to that person as a return to teh makom where they felt a hisorerrus.
ReplyDeleteOh come on that's not what they go back for
DeleteWould they sleep in a dirah and eat in yeshiva dinning room as was when they were there as bochurim
To paraphrase R Aharon Leib: kinah kinah kinah!
ReplyDeleteJust who was he referring to, might we ask? Those who use their rich clout to get their kids or grandkids into frummer places, where normally they would be excluded from
DeleteHe was referring to sfardim being refused admission.
DeleteReason not disclosed was that Ashkenazi parents don't want their children in yeshivot with sfardim.