Are we losing our minds?

This article is extremely disheartening.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873185.html

It is bad enough that a large segment of the male Yeshivish community in EY is voluntarily unemployed, they now want to restrict them further and create a real crisis.

A few years back I met up with one of my old Roshei Yeshiva who when I was a student had a whole philosophy about full time learning. He was a Chazon Ishnick and one of the more right wing theologians in Yeshiva. He told me that he has belatedly realized that it was a great mistake. Yungeleit who start out full of ambitions, reach their middle age, burdened with children and now potential children in law, without any hope of taking care of them or himself. He told me you have no idea the despair and depression many of these families go through. The happy face they show to the public, is just that, a front. He then said to me that we chose to ignore a Mishna in Avot - Kol Torah she'ein imah melacha sofa beteila vegoreret avon. He repeated heatedly "Vegoreret Avon". [ Paraphrase/ Translation :Torah without work eventually is abolished and causes one to sin].

In a conversation with R. Simcha Wasserman A'H on another subject he explained that sometimes leaders put in place things to address a specific problem they see and want to address. It is comparable to one who has a cancer and has to take strong drugs to stop it. Those drugs have major side effects but there is no choice. Once the cancer is arrested and goes into remission, the side effects have to be taken care of otherwise the patient will die from them.

Here too, the surviving leaders after the holocaust, R. Aron Kotler here and the Chazon Ish in EY developed the "learning religion". They saw a need of mass learning to rapidly develop a generation that could know and teach the Torah. The side effect was the large number of mediocre talmidei chachamim who remained in Kolel without any hope of excelling. One can imagine what that does to self esteem and coupled with economic hardship you have a very painful mix. Once the problem was solved, and it was, because we now have a generation who know Torah, the side effect should have been addressed and antidotes administered. Our leaders forgot to do that. instead they increase the Chemotherapy dosage! Hashem Yerachem!

I believe that is the source of the Chumrot craze, and worse the witch hunts and machlokot that we witness in EY. It also has created a generation that has no ethics in business. Desperation opens the door to breaking small rules which blossom into a total breakdown of ethics and morals.

Let us hope that sometime soon they will see the light.