If we are going to dream, let’s envision what frum donors— not others— can do
I can’t say that this rosh yeshivah never missed a shiur in 17 years — professional athletes get many more days off than roshei yeshivah and aren’t expected to also raise the funds necessary to keep their institutions afloat — but I do know that more than 25 years later the example of Cal Ripken still affects his attitude about missing a shiur.
This came to mind recently with the news of Ruth Gottesman’s billion-dollar donation to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine to allow students to attend tuition free. Before the Gottesman gift, medical students there had to pay more than $70,000 annually, and most left school with hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.
In conversations and online, I repeatedly heard versions of If only.
If only Dr. Gottesman had contributed to yeshivos so that their students could attend tuition free. If only Dr. Gottesman had supported schools and other programs for unaffiliated Jews, so that they could be exposed to the beauty of Judaism. If only Dr. Gottesman had undertaken to alleviate the financial burden facing those who devote their lives to the Jewish community rather than to subsidize future medical students.
This lament misses the mark. We would be better served by pondering a different set of If onlys.
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