Utopia called 888

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Kovi writes on 7FC:

Before there was Chulent, before there was Corporate Raider, before Pearl Gluck unsuccessfully ran for the office of Queen of the X-Os, there was this “utopia” called 888 where a group of Lubavitcher “explorers” and “dropouts” hung out. Most of us were convinced that no one “truly understood” our “matzev” outside our close knit incestuous bunch. But little by little we discovered others, chasidim and litvishe that were just like ourselves. We met guys and girls and our little chevre grew.

As I look back at those days I realize that the women tended to do far better than we men. The girls assimilated faster, they were quicker to land jobs, graduate college, enter into meaningful relationships. Thirteen years later, one of the original 888-ers is a doctor, her dream back then, while another is working on her doctorate in English, after a detour in radio journalism, and a gig as a producer for a show on WNYC. On the whole we men with our delusions of grandeur, come in a distant second to our female counterparts.

This is not only true of 888, but of the whole X-O, chulent, etc. etc. movement, as I look back now.

My theory of why this is true is oversimplified like this. While men’s yeshiva prepare us for nothing, seminary, and even high school, prepare women (or at least put them in the mind frame) to work hard, bear children in order for the great zechut of marrying a “ben torah” and slaving away while her dead beat “kollel yungerman” is osek in torah.

When we drop out, we men are unprepared, so we replace one stream of learning with another. But even then, our Torah learning was never goal oriented, other then the “farher” we had to take every other month. Nor was it structured. As so we do what we do best, engage in mental masturbation and expect everything to be handed to us.

Women, on the other hand, who were trained to be goal oriented and providers, do what they need to do to survive and provide for themselves. Plus, and this is the case of far too many women, they see their deadbeat fathers, how hard their mothers had to work to make ends meet and they want nothing to do with this. Is it any wonder that Gitty realized that Chulent and its chevre didn’t offer much?? You guys (no different then myself 13 years ago) probably reminded her of her dead beat dad, step-father, and her probably even her husband. Chances are she wanted no part of that. Cut the girl some slack. She has a little girl to think about and the awesome responsibility of raising her.

Let the ridicule begin!