Dear YWN,

How many times are we going to keep writing about the seminary insanity before someone actually does something about it?

I am not even addressing the degrading application process, the subtle humiliations, the endless interviews, the social competition over which “name” you were accepted to, or the tired lines about “rebranding” and suddenly taking fewer girls from certain schools.

I am talking about something far more dangerous: the financial catastrophe.

This is no longer $25,000. It is no longer $30,000. We are staring at $40,000 — and sometimes more — for ONE year. For what? Who can afford this? Which normal family with multiple children can absorb this without crushing debt?

Enough is enough.

Why are we silent?

Why are schools and teachers pushing this as if it is some automatic next step in life? Since when did a year in Eretz Yisroel become a mandatory luxury item that families must bankrupt themselves to provide?

Thousands of families are quietly drowning. Credit cards. Loans. Second mortgages. Borrowing from relatives. Parents losing sleep at night. Younger siblings’ futures compromised — all to fund one year that somehow became “non-negotiable.”

And for what? So a handful of seminaries can continue raising prices unchecked? So owners and administrators can operate in a system that no one dares question?

Where is the leadership?

We see kol korehs for every issue under the sun. Where is the collective voice addressing this crisis that is pushing families into debt year after year? Where is the clarity that this is not a halachic requirement, not an obligation, and certainly not something that should come at the expense of financial stability?

Why are we not strongly encouraging local seminaries that have opened in the Tri-State area? Why are we not investing in quality chinuch closer to home at a fraction of the cost? Why is the default still sending every girl overseas regardless of a family’s circumstances?

This has spiraled into pure madness.

It is time to stop pretending this is normal. It is not normal for middle-class families to feel forced into crushing debt to maintain social expectations. It is not healthy. It is not sustainable. And it is not fair.

STOP THIS MADNESS NOW.

Signed,

A Concerned Parent

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