Reply To: Sherut Leumi… I don't know what to do

I am from the midwest… also, my rabbi isn’t completely against me doing sherut leumi, neither are most people who know me well.

My situation is a bit more complicated than people here seem to think it is. At the moment, I am in a seminary program within a larger seminary program, and I chose the smaller program because unlike the bigger program, it has more chareidi staff (the assistant director is lubavitch, and some of the teachers are a bit more yeshivish, but since this program is different in nature than the other program, that makes sense) I do take classes through the bigger program as well in order to get college credits while I am here because I want to take as many college courses as possible in English in order to make it easier on me when I go to a college in Israel, and have to take courses in Hebrew so that I can get the scholarship benefits from making aliyah.

Again, I would love to go to seminary next year, but not everyone is capable of taking loans out. The reason that my senior year I had to go all over the place and eat, breathe, and sleep my fundraising campaign is because I am not able to take out loans because I don’t have a cosigner, and therefore could not participate in an Israel experience college (I applied to one, but I saw the fee to participate was a ton of money and I didn’t want to spend $1,500 to be in debt, when I could not even get a cosigner, plus I know I am going to a Jewish College regardless, so I don’t need to do that sort of program).

I understand that there are a ton of amazing people like Rabbi Wallerstein, who could theoretically guide me, but I don’t really have these people’s numbers…

At the end of the day, my mom says I should do sherut leumi because she knows that even though I did not grow up religious, that I feel that it is important to help other people, and for most of my life, I haven’t had so much time to devote to doing chessed, and as a result, I have had to either sign up for classes with required chessed hours, so that I had a reason to drive to a nursing home on a sunday to help with bingo and spend time with the residents (I am typically very busy), or I have been growing out my hair, and since I was ten, have donated my hair four times, and am growing it out again to donate a fifth time.

Bottom line, if someone has money to finance this theoretical “shana bet”, I would be more than delighted to go. But I am not going to actively chase it as a dream.