Don’t Get Comfortable in Egypt: Galut Mitzrayim, Affluence, and the Quiet Spiritual Cost of “Keeping Up"
On a recent visit to the United States, I felt an unfamiliar disorientation. It began with the mundane: a quick trip to the grocery store and the shock of seeing how much more expensive everything felt compared to just a year or two ago. But it was a frum podcast that truly unsettled me. The hosts casually asserted that an average Orthodox family earning less than $250,000 annually is not merely struggling but verging on poverty — and that true financial security requires at least $400,000 a year. I listened, baffled. I have never earned anything close to that so-called “poverty line,” and yet I raised five children, paid tuition, married them off, and even managed to send some to camp. My instinct was to dismiss the discussion as an affluent echo chamber — the language of a small segment of the community projected onto everyone else. Conversations with friends, relatives, and acquaintances quickly disabused me of that notion. Far from rejecting the figure, many endorsed it, describi...