As you well know, very often there is an attendant roller coaster ride involved where they may be married rapidly or, as David has been pointing out, involved in joining a yeshiva (or both). David is adding to the equation the problem that perhaps youth are being targeted here, without their parents’ knowledge or wishes, to take on this lifestyle and devotion to a particular line of Judaism. One of the consequences is their removal from the mainstream culture and its related career paths, including attending college or at least attending top colleges.

This is done in the name of bringing people closer to Judaism, but it’s being done to people who may be at a place in their life where their vulnerability may cause them to be making a wrong choice. It’s very difficult sometimes to undo wrong choices like marrying too young or the wrong person or not going to a top college in favor of a good college. All of this is very troubling and should not be condoned.

I have sympathy for the “frum zombies.” I do not want people (secular Jews) being fed bad advice and sent on unsatisfying trajectory. No college and inferior college or just a wrong college — will do that.

But, you know, people make their own choices.

And in true Aish fashion, I’ll remind you to examine the alternative set of assumptions critically as well. Yes, I was a star, went to the best college, so an investment in my college and law degrees looks pretty good. But most of the time and money spent on college below the first tier, and even in the soft zones below the tippy-top, are of very questionable economic benefit. Rather college is assumed because it is part of the standard track, a four year waiting room in the offices of adulthood. Okay, the research suggests suggests it does, for most people. BT’s are not, after all, the ones in the frum community who are going to go into Zeydie’s real estate, jewelry or im/ex business.

But you know, people can and do make choices. If they’ve thrown away their ability to think critically and to take control of their own lives with their blue jeans then they are simply what Reb Noach calls frum zombies, and I have no more respect for them than you do. Okay, maybe a little more. Because if they’re going to be zombies, yes, they may as well do it on the right side of the line. Most people in this world are zombies, and I know from my little exposure to your outlook that you know this (and that it pains you).

OK, we again press the limits of what may be accomplished in HaloScan. Have a good Shabbos!

I got something out of some of my courses in college. I did. I’m sure you did too.

But my real issue is poverty. Haredim seem real good at making poverty, and hating secular education of many forms outside of college. And this is a core issue for me. They are related.

All too often, their institutions preach a poverty and ignorance ethic. The differences between them is how much, and how intense.

It’s all part of the social downward mobility. You were a star, so it’s different. But you must have seen what they preached to the masses.