Time to Rethink Learning Abroad

Dear British Jewry,

Among our chief current challenges is a financial one: The communal infrastructure we all rely on is dangerously strapped for cash. We need well-functioning mosdos chinuch for our children and all the other crucial organizations that are part and parcel of kehillah life; but inflation has driven up their operating expenses, and we as a kehillah are struggling mightily with the dilemma facing the individuals who are unable to absorb the increased costs being passed along to them.

Tzedakah is an essential part of the answer, but we as a responsible kehillah must take another important avenue: reducing costs. The cost shops that some wonderful individuals have set up offer a prime example of this. They have largely offset the monthly increases in food prices.

It is in this vein that I bring up a delicate subject: Perhaps the moment has arrived to rethink the time our children spend learning in Eretz Yisrael.

I will preface this by saying that it is our fervent collective wish for our erliche Yiddishe children to learn and keep the Torah and mitzvos, and there is nothing like the Torah of Eretz Yisrael. The following is not intended to negate that in the slightest, chalilah. The intent is rather to consider whether the circumstances Hashem has created necessitate that we regretfully implement change.