I did not want to write this e-mail. I really didn’t. I didn’t want to upset you, or have you start some kind of investigation as to my real name and identity.
But I found the words of this e-mail going through my head for a long time now and it is actually forbidden by the Torah to “hate your friend in your heart”. So here it goes:
This did not just start a few weeks ago. It stared beforehand. It started at least during your parashas Noach drasha when you said something to the affect that “anyone that refrains from having children is like a murderer”. The negative feelings that I felt then were exacerbated a few weeks ago when you spoke about “bitachon” and “tuition”.
The reason I am writing this is because people are leaving. In one way or another people are leaving. To a large degree da’as Torah is dead. It is. And the fact that there are those like yourself that dismiss people like me and don’t really care what I think actually proves my point.
Because according to the halacha the tuition of the children of a city is actually NOT supposed to come only from the parents, but rather, the monies are to be raised BY THE RABBONIM of the city. The Rabbonim are the ones that need to approach the gevirim of the city and have THEM pay the tuition.
But they don’t.
A number of years ago, there were two different “Rabbis” in the city of Baltimore that were both involved in building campaigns for their shuls. And both of them made some sort of statement to the affect that “the majority of your ma’aser money should go to the shul” [ one of them was the same guy that told me that birth control was “assur” ] . At them same time they signed “the pledge” that says that most of a person’s ma’aser should go to the chinuch. So which one is it? You can’t have it both ways.
When Rabbanim don’t have to pay full tuition [ and they don’t – if you go into a bullshit argument to the contrary that just proves my point ] and yet they tell people to “have more kids” it, quite frankly – pisses people off.
It is this kind of bullshit that is making people leave.Sincerely,
Winston William Solomon Smith
P.S I have children already. And we send them to Torah day schools. And we can’t afford it.
winstonsmith5744 
‘s the culture, not the rabbinate, that is pushing large family sizes. As a general statement, there is much that rabbis don’t say because no one is ready to listen.
And they do pay for tuition — we pay kelei qodesh less up front because we pay in services like subsidized or free tuition. And if we didn’t, and had to pay teachers an O living wage, tution would go up by more than the scholarship amount. (Minimally, the community is saving taxes on the rabbi’s kids’ tution. But there is also the second law of thermodynamics — money is always lost as entropy in every exchange.)
Third, the rabbinate doesn’t have the power to collect taxes. Even in the Vaad Arba Aratzos, to pick a comparatively successful autonomous community, the people who handled the money weren’t the rabbis. The notion of daas Torah and a Moetzes wasn’t invented yet. As I said above, they don’t even hold the power to define the culture today; Without a central institution and with today’s level of cynicism toward the rabbanite??? Might as well blame the rabbis for the fact that putting someone in siruv doesn’t produce a gett.
Last, the truth is that as a whole, the community can afford tuition. It hurts, but it’s not like keeping your kids home all summer — the norm during my parents’ childhood — has become a norm. (Yes, the norm went from the 8 weeks of my youth to 4, but that’s about it.) If the economics forced it, the child whose parents couldn’t really afford camp would have friends at home to play with. Staying home would be a real choice.