So this is what I was thinking about today:
1] I heard that in a Jerusalem hotel this Succos meals cost $225 dollars a person.
2] I saw [on the train!!] that minimum wage in the US is being set at 15 dollars an hour.
So I thought [because I was on the train and there wasn't much else to do]: PLENTY of our rabbeim in Eretz Yisrael are working for less than the minimum wage which means that a black lady chashier at the local supermarket ["Tamicka"] who dropped out of high school is earning more than a yeshiva rebbi.
Yet some of the people sending their kids to yeshiva can afford to drop a thousand and more dollars on a regular shabbos or yuntiv lunch [and a total of 40 plus thousand on a week long vacation] while the people teaching their children are making starvation wages. It is IMPOSSIBLE to live off a full time salary [at least at all the yeshivos and seminaries where I taught - 4 all together. Maybe other places pay more. Or maybe I was just getting undercut. I don't know what anybody else earned because it was always a big secret. This way they could pay whatever they wanted without having to worry that people would realize that others are doing the same job and getting paid a lot more].
So sweet friends!!! This isn't a tzdaka request. Why aren't rabbeim, the people with whom our children's Jewish education is being entrusted, being paid like human beings [even Tamicka]. They work hard and earned it. It is impossible for them to live day by day. It is more impossible for them to get through yomim tovim where the expenses are through the roof. It is even harder to make a simcha. [I would tell you personal stories of twenty years in the system but this is not about me].
Who picks up the burden? The wife of the rebbi who is raising 7 children?? That is too much for her very often. The parents and in-laws? Some have but don't want to help. Others don't have. And when help is given it is often not enough.
So this post is being sent into the World Wide Web in the hope that it will save so many good people from the financial distress in which they find themselves.
Donations can be sent to the yeshiva where you studied and earmarked for "rabbeim's salaries".
