Mutual Aid groups seems like a natural development in the Christian world since kindness towards others is considered the major goal in life and the major way of serving God. But when this is applied to the institutions that are supposedly learning Torah,the whole concept seems to fall flat on its face. As my learning partner expressed it "They are just private country clubs."
But to gain respectability they do have to present an image of helping others. But in fact the whole thing seems like a kind of scam. Naive people of college age are drawn in by the scam but later experience shows that they are not what they present to the outside world. And woe to the individual that gets taken in by the scam.
There are however legitimate places like the great NY Litvak yeshivas [e.g. Mir, Torah VeDaat, Haim Berlin] that pretty much stick with the basic formula of Reb Haim From Voloshin about what a yeshiva is supposed to be.
I am wondering about the issue of yeshivas and I can see the point of Reb Haim in starting the Yeshiva Movement. [That seems all the more important in so far as the contracts that the "Kahal" had held in Poland were about to be nullified starting with the Russian Czar.]
Still outside of the few great Litvak Yeshivas in NY and Bnei Brak, the whole things looks like a scam. A way to make easy money. Besides the fact that almost every yeshiva in Israel was made by vegetable stand owners that could not make living any other way than getting a few people to sign up and getting an automatic income--and the people that signed up were mainly interested in getting out of serving in the IDF.
[However I have heard great things about off shoots of Ponoviz, like Tifrah [תפרח] and in Netivot I was very impressed with Rav Montag's yeshiva which is continuation of Yeshivat HaNegev.
But to gain respectability they do have to present an image of helping others. But in fact the whole thing seems like a kind of scam. Naive people of college age are drawn in by the scam but later experience shows that they are not what they present to the outside world. And woe to the individual that gets taken in by the scam.
There are however legitimate places like the great NY Litvak yeshivas [e.g. Mir, Torah VeDaat, Haim Berlin] that pretty much stick with the basic formula of Reb Haim From Voloshin about what a yeshiva is supposed to be.
I am wondering about the issue of yeshivas and I can see the point of Reb Haim in starting the Yeshiva Movement. [That seems all the more important in so far as the contracts that the "Kahal" had held in Poland were about to be nullified starting with the Russian Czar.]
Still outside of the few great Litvak Yeshivas in NY and Bnei Brak, the whole things looks like a scam. A way to make easy money. Besides the fact that almost every yeshiva in Israel was made by vegetable stand owners that could not make living any other way than getting a few people to sign up and getting an automatic income--and the people that signed up were mainly interested in getting out of serving in the IDF.
[However I have heard great things about off shoots of Ponoviz, like Tifrah [תפרח] and in Netivot I was very impressed with Rav Montag's yeshiva which is continuation of Yeshivat HaNegev.
