Thread by @Doc_RPS

Following up on @DBashIdeas, the Jewish Action issue, and @themishpacha supplement that I haven't read yet, I want to say one thing about cost-of-frum-life discussions: enormously underrated in this conversation is the choice of where to live--*not* in the cost-of-living sense.

In the setting your barometer of what's normal, acceptable, adequate, and setting your kids' barometer of what's normal, acceptable, adequate.

I think people consider a lot of factors when they choose a community in which to live and raise a family, and "how will this set our family's materialism-barometer" is not necessarily one of them.

I know we all like to think we're independent thinkers, and we'll decide for ourselves what a kitchen or a minivan or a bar mitzvah or a vacation should look like. But it's just not true. A cursory examination of either behavioral economics or mussar literature will back me up.

What goes on all around us sets our sense of what's adequate, what's respectable, what's embarrassing. And even if we adjust down (or up) from there, that's where our thermostat is starting. (Yes, I know I just switched measuring instruments.)

With no credit to me, I raised my kids in Washington Heights. (It wasn't planned this way, but it's how things turned out.) It's funny that we can live on the island of Manhattan and be out-of-town, but so it is.

We mostly drive used vans. (Why lease a new one to subject to NYC street parkers?) We all live in rented apartments. No one's apartment is all that fancier than anyone else's, and our bathrooms and kitchens look like whatever the landlord was putting in that year.

Shabbos clothing is Shabbosdik, and very modest. (Okay, not my hats.)

Simchas up to weddings are all celebrated in the same YU simcha room, with the same caterer.

It's not that I was smart enough to plan for this. I take no credit for it. But having it, and watching my siblings' and friends' kids--in yeshivish, Torah homes, but whose barometers are being set in very different communities--I see how much of a difference it makes.

It's just not true that you can say to your kids "these are our values and we do things differently." There's a limit to how many times you can ask your kids to be different than all their friends. At some point, it's not fair. And some kids will be fine with it, and some won't.

(Rabbi @yakovhorowitz once spoke to a YU Rebbetzins' conference about raising kids in a rabbinic fishbowl. A rebbetzin asked about not letting her kids play ball on Shabbos when other community kids were allowed to, but conveying a sense of pride in to the family's standards.

Rabbi Horowitz was not a fan. Having you child sitting inside on Shabbos, face pressed to the window glass, watching the other kids playing outside, is not conducive to positive religious or family development.

I don't think it was what the Rebbetzin expected to hear. In essence, he said, you can raise your kid to be 1 or 2 clicks off the communal norm, but not more than that.)

If I lived in a community in which everyone was driving a new car all the time, my 10 year old, 130,000+ mile Odyssey would be embarrassing. If I lived in a community in which everyone had renovated and decorated homes, my apartment would be embarrassing.

My kids wouldn't have been willing to have the bar and bas mitzvahs that they had.

But I don't--again, no credit to me. And so the van's fine, the apartment's fine, the bnai mitzvah were fine. This was an accident, but a very fortunate one. It has made an enormous difference.

I wish we were more explicit about how important that decision it is, and what an enormous difference it makes.

It's not enough to say "Don't spend so much on bar mitzvah/car/vacation/house." We have to say "Put yourself in a context in which it will be reasonable, do-able to spend less on a bar mitzvah/car/vacation/house." We don't do this alone. It takes a village with shared values.

(I thought I was done, but I want to say one more thing. For a while, I was traveling the circuit giving a talk about Frum Women and the Juggling Act. My kids still tease me about it, even thought I haven't given it in years. You can find various versions up on YUTorah.

I was speaking in Riverdale about this topic, and outlined what I identified as various factors that contribute to the freneticism, the juggling, the demands. A woman whom I know well, who is wise and compassionate and deeply invested in the community, came over to me afterwards.

"You talked about many things that contribute to this," she said. "But one thing you didn't mention was envy."

I thought about it and said, "You're right. Because from my life in Washington Heights I don't see that, I didn't think about it. But it is a driving force." /fin