I recently saw a flyer in my neighborhood advertising a yeshiva week break trip to Panama, which is guess is the latest fad after you've done Florida, Cancun, etc. I see the Bahamas has minyanim 3x a day, thank G-d. Can you believe yeshiva week even has a wikipedia entry?
I guess I should say Baruch Hashem, our community has people with $$$ to spare for these things while still paying an arm and a leg in tuition. Baruch Hashem there are minyanim and daf yomi shurim available on cruises and resorts all over the world so that there is no need to make compromises when you travel.
But on the other hand...
In "our" community, and when I say that I mean YU as well as the yeshivishe olam, we lionize R' Chaim Brisker. We all want to be able to learn like R' Chaim, to say chiddushim like R' Chaim.
But what about the R' Chaim Brisker who, when there was a fire in Brisk, did did not sleep on a bed so long as poor people were displaced? Do we lionize that R' Chaim? Do we want to be like that R' Chaim?
Would that R' Chaim be relaxing in the Bahamas when our nation is at war?
I don't know if you could stand it, but The Lakewood Scoop recently had a very strongly felt exchange about the incongruity of ostentatious extravagance in the Lakewood area, especially during the oddly named "yeshiva week," when so many go on exotic vacations so as to not feel left out.
ReplyDeleteEven better. They just published a letter titled "Just be Happy" reminding us about לא תחמוד and the value of fargining your neighbors and being דן לכף זכות. Most comments were positive and appreciative. But one was hilarious, in the sense of absurdity. He wrote, with bitterness dripping from every word, "Thank you for another altruistic TLS better than thou letter," and the sarcasm gets worse fromt here. The irony of being wrathfully jealous of someone who asked that we try to be less jealous was delicious.
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