So your son is finally out of the house, headed toward his dorm-in yeshiva! Finally! I mean, you love him, but it’s definitely better right now to love him from a distance. Like the sun. He’s your sun. And if he stays too close, you will erupt in flame.
But there are things to be aware of before you put him in a dorm. It’s not like you can just send him off and forget about him, unfortunately.
You’ll have to be on top of things incredibly ahead of time.
One thing about having a kid in the dorm is that you have to think about certain things way too far in advance. Like, “Oh, Chanukah’s coming in 3 ½ weeks! You’re going to need a menorah!”
The stores don’t even have wicks yet. It’s Rosh Chodesh. I’m going to have to dig wick scraps out of last year’s leftovers and maybe buy oil in the baking goods aisle.
In fact, right at the beginning of the year, before you even send him the first time, you have to remember to send him with a Selichos. Selichos? I don’t think of Selichos for myself until about the Friday before Selichos starts.
And if you don’t wake up that far in advance, the best you can hope for is that you’ll find a parent who’s going back and forth. At my son’s yeshiva, which is about 40 minutes away, there always seems to be one parent who’s driving in for no apparent reason, and everyone sends up clothing and menorahs and food, and I feel like we’re the bad parents, because it’s never us. Maybe we should forget to send a Selichos in advance so we look like better parents.
It will be impossible to reach your son ever.
Many yeshivas don’t want the students to have their own phones, but there are a couple of public-use phones in a few central spots in the yeshiva.
Those are great if he wants to call you, but you will never be able to reach him.
First you have to dial the number and listen to about 25 rings while you hope that someone walks by the phone bank who either coincidentally knows where your son is or has a very good work ethic.
And if someone does pick up, he’ll say, “Hello, yeshiva,” and you’ll say, “Can I please speak to my son?” and he’ll say, “I have no idea where he is. Did you try the dorm phones?” Hopefully, though, he’ll put down the phone and try to find your son. And that’s assuming he’s even willing to run around when chances are that he picked up because he was waiting for a phone call himself.
And then you’ll wait on the phone for 45 minutes while the kid you spoke to forgets that he’s on a mission or fails to find your son – who could be literally anywhere – or it suddenly dawns on him that he has absolutely no accountability to you, because he doesn’t work for a call center. This is his recess. You didn’t get his name, and you’re not going to report him to his supervisor.
He’ll have to figure out his own wakeup schedule.
Your son will need to figure out how to wake up in the mornings without you there to threaten him and keep walking in to remind him to get up in various stages of dress.
I have a second teenager who, a lot of this summer, routinely stays out really late at night playing basketball, and then he comes home late, goes to sleep late, and consequently wakes up late. And I reprimand him about it: “You have to get home earlier.”
“Why?”
So I explain: “You know why you wake up late? It’s because you go to bed late. And you know why you go to bed late? Because you wake up late!”
And he says, “I know. Why are you yelling back to me a schedule that I’m doing on purpose like it’s a problem? It’s only a problem because you’re yelling it.”
But in yeshiva, it is a problem, because there’s only one Shacharis, for some reason. You’d think with all those people there could be more than one. Give more kids a chance to practice davening for the amud.
So they have to work out a sleep schedule – something that allows them to wake up at 7:30 so they can daven until about 8:30 so they can have breakfast until about 9:30. Even though every teenager would rather daven Shacharis at 8:30 and have no breakfast at all. Or have it during the mid-morning break at 11:15. This is a very antiquated system. In fact, there’s no reason that yeshivas can’t start two hours later and end two hours later. Everyone’s dorming. There are no carpools.
You’re going to have to deal with his FOMO.
Last year my son started dorming, and thus far, he has serious FOMO.
If you don’t know what FOMO is, boy are you missing out. It’s all the rage. All the cool kids have it.
So what happens is that every single thing that we tell him happened when he wasn’t around, he whines, “Really?!”
We’re not going to stop doing things. Should we just stop telling you things?
And now it’s a knee-jerk reaction, wherein every piece of news that we tell him, he says, “You’re telling me this NOW?!” Even if it’s the summer and he’s home and we just found this out now.
I wonder if he does that in yeshiva too. Like when the Rebbi says, “So the Ran asks a kasha on Tosfos…”
“And you’re just telling me this now?!”
“Well, this is when you woke up.”
There are way more rules.
A dorming yeshiva has to have a lot of rules. For example, there might be a rule that all bochurim have to stay on the grounds between sedarim, if only so people can find them when they get a phone call.
And a lot of boys get frustrated by the rules. Though not my son. My son said early on, “I’m not going to break the rules; I’m going to help them create new ones!”
Like what do the rules not mention? Can I do construction? Can I have potted poison ivy plants in my room? Can I do evil science experiments?
Randomly, my son called me one night to ask me what the melting temperature is for pennies. I don’t know why. So I told him, “1,984 degrees.” And I heard him tell someone, “You can’t reach that on the stove!”
Most of last year, he was determined to get a pet. In fact, he asked the menahel if they could get a cat. And the menahel clearly didn’t know what to say. It’s a lot easier if the kid doesn’t ask, and then he can confiscate the cat later. So the menahel said, “Um… the minhag hayeshiva is not to have pets.”
What minhag hayeshiva? Is this another way of saying, “No one’s asked me this before, so no”?
So my son said, “Well, can’t you just do Hataras Nedarim?”
I don’t think there are any yeshivas that start off with a pet: “This is going to be the minhag hayeshiva: Everyone’s going to have a pet. It’s going to be like Harry Potter. Let the dorm smell worse than it already does.”
He’ll need a constant influx of food. Or cash.
Yes, you’re paying a lot for meals, but your son is not just hungry during meals. And even during meals, he doesn’t actually like yeshiva food, because he’s used to eating much better home-cooked meals. Whose fault is that?
Maybe you should stop making things your kids like. It only causes problems.
But even the nights you made things that he didn’t like, you made him eat it anyway. No one in yeshiva is making your kids eat things anyway.
Why isn’t this one of the jobs of a dorm counselor?
And if you decide to be cost-efficient and send a ton of extra food to yeshiva with him, he’s going to go through all of it in his first week. Basically, you have to dole out the food little by little by finding rides for it with incoming parents. It actually does not pay to be organized.
“What do you mean, you used up your olive oil?! It’s not even Chanukah!”
“Someone had potatoes.”
Your entire limited relationship with him is going to be based around getting him clothing.
And I’m not talking about the fact that he’s always going to forget his suit. Both ways.
Bochurim grow in yeshiva. They constantly need clothes unexpectedly. Let’s put it this way: As I mentioned, I have one son who dorms. Every Shabbos that he comes home, he’s bigger than he was the previous Shabbos. Whereas, as I mentioned, I have another son who doesn’t dorm -- he comes home every night -- and he’s bigger than he was in the morning.
So every single time your son comes home, you’re going to have to buy him clothing, sometime between 1 p.m. on a short Friday and about an hour after havdallah.
At least there’s an off-Shabbos. Bochurim want to make big, fun plans for the off-Shabbosos, but it’s basically just about buying clothing. And he has no idea that he grew; he comes home, and you say, “How come I can see your calves? Is there a flood in your dorm?!”
“Yeah, why?”
How is he growing so much? He’s not even eating!
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
