Share your opinion without bashing please...

aricelli ↓

Tue, May 28 2019, 8:36 pm

DVOM wrote:

Ahhh… another edifying conversation about my dear hometown, Lakewood!

I’m exhausted. My boys all had stomach viruses this week, and I have scrubbed all sorts of bodily fluids out of all sorts of surfaces more times than I can count. So take the following with a healthy heaping spoonful of salt. I get very wordy when I’m this pooped (hah! Pun intended!). And I know I'm really not answering the OP's question. Sorry OP! Here are my rambling, sleep-deprived thoughts:

We too moved into a Lakewood neighborhood that seemed, at first glance, to be a good fit for us. We were young and dumb, bright eyed and bushy tailed, nerdy and naive. We were told that the crowd was 'very Frum,' mostly Kollel families. We took 'very Frum' to mean very simple, very spiritually inclined, very focused on what is really important in life, very kind, very honest, very accepting and loving and warm. Well, we though, we're very Frum too, or at least we aspire to be, if that's what Frum means. We'll fit right in!

It took a lot of heartache and the gnawing feeling of not belonging before we upped and moved. The strollers! The fancy shmancy Shabbos pajamas! The matching weekday and Shabbos outfits, matching down to the sox and hairbows and jewelry! The looooong park-bench conversations about finding the right pacifier clip! The kiddushes and bar mitzvahs with ice sculptures, masses of fresh flowers, ice cream sunday bars, dozens of teeny tiny cakes shaped like itty bitty pink ballet slippers or torahs or boys' initials! The time and effort and attention given to professionally perfect family photos, to window dressings, to kitchen appliances, to Shabbos 'tablescapes'! The looks that I got in my comfy maxi skirts and sneaks and scarves when everyone else dressed in heels and loooong wigs and designer sunglasses! Many of our new neighbors were, in fact, kind, spiritual, honest, accepting, loving and warm. I grew to call several of them close friends. But precious few were living anything close to a simple lifestyle.

I don't begrudge anyone their little or large luxuries. I don't mind if you want to buy a stroller that cost more than my family spends on food in a few months or go on vacations that cost more than we spend on food in a year. Right or wrong, I have my own luxuries that I’d like to afford, my own materialistic dreams, my own extravagant splurges.

What did (and does!) get under my skin is the tacit and sometimes not so tacit invitation that these living-large Kollel families seemed to broadcast, an invitation to the rest of us to admire them and their lifestyle, to, in fact, look up to them. I have seen families whose outsides match their insides; whose bar mitzvahs and pajamas and wigs match their dedication to Torah learning and Torah values. I truly admire these women. They’re walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

But families who are living richly while learning in Kollel seems to me like… like a friend of mine who has full-time live-in cleaning help who once told me that she ‘prides herself’ on having spotlessly clean floors. You could walk on her floors barefoot, she told me, and you toes would stay as pearly pink as if you’d just hopped out of the bath. I marveled at her perspective. She does not clean her own floors. She does not even earn the money that pays for her cleaning lady; it is funded by her wealthy dad. What exactly is she proud of? Or a couple we met who ooohed and aaaahed about the beauty of the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the majesty of the changing colors of each rock layer as you travel deeper and deeper into the earth, the towering walls high above you when you reach the bottom. We were very impressed, envious even, and asked how difficult it was to do the climb, how many days it took to accomplish it. They responded that they went in and out by helicopter. No doubt the Canyon was still beautiful, but our admiration and respect for them was gone.

I’ve always believed that hard work buys pride in one’s self, wins the respect of others. There’s no accomplishment without hard work. Kollel with a bugaboo just seems too easy to me to feel like there’s much to admire there. I know what you’re all going to say, and it’s true: each person on their own level has their own struggles, and that a stay at home Kollel wife with a huge home, a doona, two late model cars, two yearly vacations, extensive cleaning help, a healthy budget for food, clothing, toys, therapies, extracurricular activities for her kids and herself can still be sweating, sacraficing, striving, working really hard to support her husband’s Kollel learning. I know it can be true, and yet, I still have difficulty finding any respect or admiration for that Kollel lifestyle. I can admire her for many other things: her kindness, her chessed, her respect for others, her parenting, her heavenly chocolate cake recipe, her tact and sensitivity towards her neighbors, the ways she puts on makeup. But please don't ask me to admire the fact that her husband is in full time long term learning.

Beautifully put! Are you enjoying your new neighborhood more? How is it different?

amother

↑ Plum

Tue, May 28 2019, 9:02 pm

DVOM,when can we meet up?

southernbubby ↓

Tue, May 28 2019, 9:32 pm

Personally I feel more comfortable with the humble folk. My current dining room table and chairs are those plastic folding Lifetime ones.
My car is from 2001 and still runs. Many of my clothes were from friends and relatives. I don't exactly exude wealth. I wash and set my own sheital.
I would not feel comfortable in a community where I was always viewed as not fitting in with the material standards but as I get older, it becomes less and less of an issue. If you don't want to be my friend because you don't like my car and my dining room set, too bad.

amother

Blue ↓

Tue, May 28 2019, 9:45 pm

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

Tznius is as much about not showing off by having the fanciest house or clothes as it is about hemlines.

THIS! I wonder if anyone has heard any tznius programs about this point.

crust

Tue, May 28 2019, 10:03 pm

southernbubby wrote:

👍🏿
I love this line!

amother

Pumpkin ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 12:28 am

DVOM wrote:

Ahhh… another edifying conversation about my dear hometown, Lakewood
I’m exhausted. My boys all had stomach viruses this week, and I have scrubbed all sorts of bodily fluids out of all sorts of surfaces more times than I can count. So take the following with a healthy heaping spoonful of salt. I get very wordy when I’m this pooped (hah! Pun intended!). And I know I'm really not answering the OP's question. Sorry OP! Here are my rambling, sleep-deprived thoughts:

We too moved into a Lakewood neighborhood that seemed, at first glance, to be a good fit for us. We were young and dumb, bright eyed and bushy tailed, nerdy and naive. We were told that the crowd was 'very Frum,' mostly Kollel families. We took 'very Frum' to mean very simple, very spiritually inclined, very focused on what is really important in life, very kind, very honest, very accepting and loving and warm. Well, we though, we're very Frum too, or at least we aspire to be, if that's what Frum means. We'll fit right in!

It took a lot of heartache and the gnawing feeling of not belonging before we upped and moved. The strollers! The fancy shmancy Shabbos pajamas! The matching weekday and Shabbos outfits, matching down to the sox and hairbows and jewelry! The looooong park-bench conversations about finding the right pacifier clip! The kiddushes and bar mitzvahs with ice sculptures, masses of fresh flowers, ice cream sunday bars, dozens of teeny tiny cakes shaped like itty bitty pink ballet slippers or torahs or boys' initials! The time and effort and attention given to professionally perfect family photos, to window dressings, to kitchen appliances, to Shabbos 'tablescapes'! The looks that I got in my comfy maxi skirts and sneaks and scarves when everyone else dressed in heels and loooong wigs and designer sunglasses! Many of our new neighbors were, in fact, kind, spiritual, honest, accepting, loving and warm. I grew to call several of them close friends. But precious few were living anything close to a simple lifestyle.

I don't begrudge anyone their little or large luxuries. I don't mind if you want to buy a stroller that cost more than my family spends on food in a few months or go on vacations that cost more than we spend on food in a year. Right or wrong, I have my own luxuries that I’d like to afford, my own materialistic dreams, my own extravagant splurges.

What did (and does!) get under my skin is the tacit and sometimes not so tacit invitation that these living-large Kollel families seemed to broadcast, an invitation to the rest of us to admire them and their lifestyle, to, in fact, look up to them. I have seen families whose outsides match their insides; whose bar mitzvahs and pajamas and wigs match their dedication to Torah learning and Torah values. I truly admire these women. They’re walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

But families who are living richly while learning in Kollel seems to me like… like a friend of mine who has full-time live-in cleaning help who once told me that she ‘prides herself’ on having spotlessly clean floors. You could walk on her floors barefoot, she told me, and you toes would stay as pearly pink as if you’d just hopped out of the bath. I marveled at her perspective. She does not clean her own floors. She does not even earn the money that pays for her cleaning lady; it is funded by her wealthy dad. What exactly is she proud of? Or a couple we met who ooohed and aaaahed about the beauty of the bottom of the Grand Canyon, the majesty of the changing colors of each rock layer as you travel deeper and deeper into the earth, the towering walls high above you when you reach the bottom. We were very impressed, envious even, and asked how difficult it was to do the climb, how many days it took to accomplish it. They responded that they went in and out by helicopter. No doubt the Canyon was still beautiful, but our admiration and respect for them was gone.

I’ve always believed that hard work buys pride in one’s self, wins the respect of others. There’s no accomplishment without hard work. Kollel with a bugaboo just seems too easy to me to feel like there’s much to admire there. I know what you’re all going to say, and it’s true: each person on their own level has their own struggles, and that a stay at home Kollel wife with a huge home, a doona, two late model cars, two yearly vacations, extensive cleaning help, a healthy budget for food, clothing, toys, therapies, extracurricular activities for her kids and herself can still be sweating, sacraficing, striving, working really hard to support her husband’s Kollel learning. I know it can be true, and yet, I still have difficulty finding any respect or admiration for that Kollel lifestyle. I can admire her for many other things: her kindness, her chessed, her respect for others, her parenting, her heavenly chocolate cake recipe, her tact and sensitivity towards her neighbors, the ways she puts on makeup. But please don't ask me to admire the fact that her husband is in full time long term learning.

DVOM, body fluids notwithstanding, are you a professional writer? If not, you missed your calling!!

amother

Powderblue ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 1:00 am

I'm from a right wing Modern Orthodox background (right wing YU). I grew up in Teaneck, which has plenty of gashmius. I also have Yeshivish, Rebbish, and Charedi family (they live in Passaic, Lakewood, Yerushalayim, etc).
I am always surprised when I visit my very very frum family and see the materialism. What I always find fascinating (and off-putting) is that the gashmius has a religious element. It's ok to spend outrageous sums of money on shabbos socks, because it's for shabbos. It's important to have this beautiful sheitel because a bas melech should be beautiful. The gashmius has been incorporated into being frum. It is frum to dress your children in Italian clothing.
Where I grew up, people liked nice things, spent money on nice things, and no one thought it made them a better Jew, just someone who liked nice things.
I look forward to visiting my very frum family because I love them, but also because I find their communities and values fascinating

mochamix18 ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 3:18 am

b]Rav Kotler specifically built Lakewood to keep gashmius out.
Maybe his thinking was warped too according to you.
This. A really good read on this the book Builders by Rabbi Hanoch Teller. It documents the lives of R’Aaron Kotler ZT”L, The Ponovezer Rav ZT”L and Sarah Schnerir ZT”L.

↑ DVOM ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 6:27 am

thunderstorm wrote:

Did I ever tell you how much I love you? You expressed it so well. We share the same mindset .

Oh gosh! Thank you thunderstorm!!

↑ DVOM ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 6:40 am

aricelli wrote:

Beautifully put! Are you enjoying your new neighborhood more? How is it different?

We are happy in our new neighborhood, though I think there is always going to be a part of me that pines to live in Flagstaff, Arizona or Mooresville, Alabama or Ocracoke, NC and homeschool my barefooted children until they turn 18.

The main differences in our new neighborhood? It's a working crowd, actually pretty wealthy (this according to my husband), but you wouldn't really know it to look at it. Houses are older, simpler. Bar mitzvah's are simple, lovely but simple. I have yet to see an ice sculpture in the 1.5 years we've been here. The crowd is a mix of religious types, or as large a mix as you'll find in Lakewood. There's an atmosphere of inclusion that I admire. Most of all though, it doesn't have the...hipocrocy of a community calling itself something that it isn't. I know those are harsh words. I'm not sure how else to express it. There's an edge, a defensiveness, a constant twisted defensiveness, a cognitive dissonance, to a community reveling in materialism while priding itself on being the epitome of spirituality and religious observance.

↑ DVOM ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 6:41 am

amother [ Pumpkin ] wrote:

DVOM, body fluids notwithstanding, are you a professional writer? If not, you missed your calling!!

No, I'm not, but you made my day! It's one of my dearest wishes to write a novel some day!

↑ DVOM

Wed, May 29 2019, 6:42 am

amother [ Plum ] wrote:

DVOM,when can we meet up?

Sometime after shavuot, I'm going to work on a Lakewood meetup Smile

Got jealous of the Israeli and Brooklyn and Monsey IMAs....

amother

Oak ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 7:16 am

amother [ Cerulean ] wrote:

I live on a block with very few houses, basically all like minded yeshivish families, no pressure whatsoever on anthing (beside maybe one family), but my kids are exposed to peer pressure in school! Big time!!!
It comes with raising children. No matter where you live unless you live in a bubble you will have to be mechanech your children not to compete with "the Jones"!!!
And ultimately, it is our responsibility to teach them what's important and what's not and which message we want them to be left with.
Not an easy job!

My neighborhood is also simple. Which is why we stay even though our home is way too small (2 bedrooms, 6 kids).
While there is peer pressure in school it’s much easier when it’s not in the neighborhood.
And it’s not like people are dirt poor. They just choose not to live like that.

Everyone shops cheap. Doesn’t need Shabbos shoes for little kids. No one has the latest gadget. Most kids ride used bikes. No one goes on vacation. There are old (good) cars in driveways. Our simchos are so beautiful and down to earth and shared with everyone. (I just made a bar mitzvah and spent $150 total on the women’s kiddush and it was considered beautiful I can’t imagine what I’d spend in other parts of town ). It’s a mixture but at this point most fathers work, half in klei kodesh.

I find there is a lovely simplicity in just not being swept up in materialism in the neighborhood and kids coming home to this everyday.

Simple1 ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 7:20 am

Dvom, I do like a lot of what you wrote, but helicopter rides? That's not really the norm. The only neighbor I know who does expensive vacations is not in kollel. Same with Simchas. There is too much emphasis on looking put together, matching and all that. And many are going after high end brands, But plenty of others are buying from cheaper places, Target, Primark etc. But there is that social pressure to look right- wherever you get your stuff from.

Mommyg8, you bring up an interesting point about the silent majority.

amother

Firebrick ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 7:35 am

This is a fascinating thread for me to read.
I feel the same confusion/disappointment as op describes.
I moved to Lakewood 15 years ago right before it turned around to what it is now.
I would love to be living a life of Torah and simplicity. You almost don’t see that combination here anymore.
Perhaps by the yeshiva apartment area? I’m not sure...
At this point I have started the craziness of shopping for my kids before pesach and succos (matching,shoes and all). I am against it and don’t agree one bit but my girls were standing out as being different and I did not want that for them. I dream of it being normal to pick up a shabbos outfit in target and some nice hand me downs but in my neighborhood it’s just not done like that.
Recently, much to my great dismay I turned down hosting a shiur for women in my house. I don’t have a fancy home, although it was new and big 15 years ago, we never made any upgraded changes since then. Suddenly I saw my house through the eyes of other women and I just couldn’t invite everyone into my living room/dining room. I was embarrassed of my old worn out carpet and our second hand out of style dining room chairs...
It bothers me that I even care..,
My neighbors all around me have beautiful landscaping. We mow our own grass/weeds 2-3 times a summer. I can’t believe that I was recently thinking to use the small amount of money I got from a yerusha to do landscaping around my house!! I wish I didn’t feel this pressure that I don’t have it. Why can’t I feel proud of my decent size house with nice size property in Lakewood???!
Why have I begun to feel so inferior???
These things shouldn’t matter when living in a neighborhood steeped in Torah.
I’m all for living in a clean and neat fashion; fixing things when broken.
The hardwood floors, upgraded appliances, moldings, light fixtures, window treatments and furniture is not something I can’t financially keep up with.
I’m with you op. Where did Lakewood go??

amother

↑ Firebrick ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 7:38 am

amother [ Oak ] wrote:

You live in Lakewood?? If so, please tell me where!!

amother

↑ OP ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 7:45 am

Firebrick it's so hard that you feel this way. Its honestly embarrassing that the level of materialism has a lot of people feeling inferior and embarrassed as you do ..

allthingsblue ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 7:47 am

All of us lakewooders who value modesty and simplicity should band together and form the New Lakewood Society.

amother

↑ Pumpkin

Wed, May 29 2019, 7:49 am

DVOM wrote:

No, I'm not, but you made my day! It's one of my dearest wishes to write a novel some day!

I say, go for it! You have a voice, a real ability to express nuanced thoughts clearly...
And I'm a big literary snob! Wink

↑ Simple1 ↓

Wed, May 29 2019, 8:00 am

I don't see any pressure to landscape. That probably depends on location. So many developments hardly have any lawns to even landscape and is done by common maintenance. I found the opposite, every time we wanted to fix our grass (DIY style), it was a challenge to keep kids off our lawn.

I've seen the occassional person who's into gardening and planted their own flowers. But that's more of a personal thingy than a pressure.