What happens when money reshapes not just our definition of success, but our very identity?
Avi looked up from reviewing the numbers for the third time, his face ashen. “We’re not going to have enough for the car payments if we continue like this,” he told Malky. “Are you sure we need everything that party planner said?”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “You make a nice salary — a very nice salary. And we’re making a normal, standard bar mitzvah. It’s not the party planner who’s making the decisions; this is what everyone in our neighborhood does. Do you want to look like a nebach? Do you want Menachem to feel ashamed in front of his friends?”
It’s a story that’s become more common in the younger frum community in America. And it’s one that is taking a heavy toll.
“The silent majority are choking. Pashut choking.”
This is the stark reality described by a Rabbi A., a prominent rav based in Eretz Yisrael who is consulted intimately by hundreds of bnei Torah in chutz l’Aretz. Daily, he hears from couples being strangled by an impossible choice: Keep up with the spending habits of their peers, or suffer the ignominy of being seen — in their own eyes, if not that of others — as miserable failures.
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