I am writing this anonymously because I suspect many people feel exactly as I do, but are too embarrassed or frightened to say it publicly.

I am a baal teshuvah, and today I serve as a Rov and shaliach. From the outside, many people would probably assume we are managing fine. The reality is very different.

I love Torah. I love Yiddishkeit. I love my family more than life itself. I do not regret my children for one second.

But I genuinely no longer understand how the current frum financial model is supposed to work.

My wife and I have ten children. We built our family because we believed in the values we were taught: that Jewish children are a blessing, that building a Torah home matters, that sacrifice for ruchniyus is noble and worthwhile. We listened to the encouragement to build large Jewish families and embraced it wholeheartedly.

Now I lie awake at night trying to work out how we survive the next few years.

Our household income is around $150,000. I know to many people that sounds like a huge income. I know there are families surviving on far less. But in the current frum world, especially outside America and in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, it disappears instantly.

Tuition alone is crushing.

Mesivta can cost $500-$1,000 per month per child. Yeshivah can cost $1,500 a month or more. Next year I may have four or five children simultaneously in yeshivah or high school.

Do the math.

Four children at “only” $1,000 a month is already nearly $50,000 a year after flights and basic expenses. Five children at yeshivah-level costs can easily approach or exceed $75,000-$100,000 annually once tuition, airfare, spending money, clothing, and travel are included.

That is before rent or mortgage payments, utilities, food, clothing for the rest of the family, Yom Tov, insurance, medical expenses, car costs, or any normal cost of living.

Then comes camp. Six children want to go this summer. Another thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Then kosher food. Yom Tov. Clothing. Simchas. Shidduchim approaching. The expectation to fly to New York for l’chaims and weddings. Gifts. Apartments. Every year the costs rise further.

Meanwhile tuition keeps increasing too.

People will say, “Apply for scholarships.” But we are in the strange category where on paper we earn “too much” for help while in reality we are drowning. Once tuition, housing, food, and basic frum life are paid, there is nothing left.

Our credit cards are maxed out. We already owe months of tuition. My parents help where they can, for which I am deeply grateful, but they cannot carry us forever. I cannot realistically take on more work than I already do. My wife cannot either at present.

This is not a temporary crisis anymore. It is structural overload.

And here is what nobody says publicly:

I suspect huge numbers of frum families are surviving only through some combination of debt, overdrafts, parental subsidies, hidden gemachs, credit cards, second mortgages, inheritance, or sheer financial panic.

Yet publicly we continue acting as though this is normal middle-class life.

I am not accusing yeshivos of greed. Most mechanchim are underpaid. Most mosdos are struggling too. I understand the schools are under enormous pressure. Buildings cost money. Teachers need salaries. Chinuch matters.

But if families cannot survive the system, then the system itself is broken even if nobody involved is malicious.

What especially frightens me is the message our children absorb.

What are young frum couples supposed to think when they watch their parents drowning financially for decades?

What happens to baalei teshuvah without wealthy parents or generational support?

What happens when grandparents cannot subsidize anymore?

What happens when children associate frum life with relentless financial anxiety?

What happens when only the wealthy can comfortably sustain the expected lifestyle?

Have we normalized emergency-level financial stress as though it is somehow spiritually virtuous?

Have we confused Torah obligations with communal lifestyle inflation?

And perhaps the hardest question of all:

Can middle-income frum families realistically survive long-term under the current model?

I am not writing this because I have solutions. I honestly do not.

But I think the silence is becoming dangerous.

We need honest conversations about tuition reform, communal priorities, simcha expectations, scholarships, local alternatives to expensive overseas norms, and the reality facing large frum families in 2026.

Because right now, for many families, this is simply unsustainable.

And quietly, behind closed doors, more people know it than are willing to admit.

Signed,

C.R.

The views expressed in this letter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of YWN. Have an opinion you would like to share? Send it to us for review.