When Did One Kollel Year Become the Lubavitch Standard?

Article by Levi Yarshevsky: We've convinced ourselves that leaving kollel after one year is the Lubavitch way. The Rebbe's own words say otherwise.

By Levi Yarshevsky

Every Lubavitcher yungerman getting married today has one thing on his mind: shlichus. Where he will go, what he will build, how he will make it happen. That urgency is real, and it is right. But somewhere along the way, that urgency started bleeding into something else entirely.

Picture this. A Shabbos farbrengen, a table full of yungerleit. One mentions he is in his second year of kollel. Immediately, the questions start. “Nu, what are you looking at? Any options? Anything developing?” The subtext is unmistakable: the clock is already ticking, and he is running behind.

Then someone mentions he is in his third year. The table goes quiet for just a moment. The look that crosses someone’s face says it all without a single word being spoken: nebach. He still hasn’t found something. And if a yungerman is sitting and learning in his fourth or fifth year? There will always be someone nearby ready to shake his head and say it plainly: “That’s not Lubavitch. In Lubavitch, we go on shlichus.”

And underneath that pressure is a real feeling. There are Yidden out there with no Chabad House, no shliach, no one knocking on their door. There is a fire burning, and you could be there helping put it out. Instead, you are sitting in kollel. That is the accusation hanging in the air, spoken or not.

Here is what nobody stops to ask: why does nobody say that to an eighteen-year-old in his second year of zal? Why does no one walk over to a bochur and demand to know why he hasn’t opened a Chabad House yet? Because we all understand, without needing to explain it, that those years of building yourself are not time stolen from the mission. They are the mission. The moment a yungerman gets married, that logic vanishes completely. Kollel becomes a waiting room. A placeholder. Something you do until the real thing begins.

We have convinced ourselves this is the authentic Lubavitch position. It is not. And the Rebbe’s own words make that unmistakably clear.

Before תשכ”ב, there was no broad kollel system in Chabad. The Rebbe’s letters from those years were pointed and urgent about the desperate need for rabbanim, mechanchim, and leaders in communities starved of Torah life. In Igros Kodesh (Vol. 14, pp. 30-31), the Rebbe openly questioned how talented yungerleit could sit and learn while communities were facing a spiritual hatzalas nefashos. The question back then was not how many years to spend in kollel. The question was whether there should be a kollel at all.

Then came 11 Nissan 5722 and everything shifted. The Rebbe publicly invoked the Alter Rebbe’s ruling in Hilchos Talmud Torah: a man should dedicate two to three years to serious Torah study after marriage before taking on worldly responsibilities. That same year, the first Lubavitcher kollel opened. The framework was established. Two to three years. That was the baseline.

From that point on, the Rebbe’s position was reiterated with striking consistency. Also in the sichah of Rosh Chodesh Nissan תש”מ, the Rebbe quoted the Alter Rebbe’s ruling directly and called on yungerleit to live by it. In private letters and yechidus sessions across decades, the Rebbe directed yungerleit to learn for two or three years, or more. In one handwritten response, the Rebbe specified “לערך שנתיים,” approximately two years. In another letter, he wrote plainly that the longer one remains in kollel, the better, and that at a minimum one should be there for two or three years. The standard the Rebbe set was two years at the floor, three years for a yungerman who is genuinely growing, and longer still for someone truly thriving.

There is one well-known letter where the Rebbe tells a yungerman to stay for one year. This is the letter that is constantly pulled out to justify the modern one-year norm. But the context of that letter tells a completely different story. It was written to a specific individual who had no intention of going to kollel at all. The Rebbe was not establishing a standard. He was coaxing a reluctant yungerman into the kollel with the lowest possible bar to clear. Taking that letter and turning it into the blanket ruling for all of Lubavitch is not learning from the Rebbe. It is cherry-picking to confirm what we already decided we wanted to do.

Now, to be fair: the Rebbe was never rigid about this. Not every yungerman is cut from the same cloth. Someone who is genuinely struggling in his learning, who is not growing and not finding his footing, should not be pressured to stay. The Rebbe himself would direct such a person to move forward. Those situations are real, and they matter. But they are individual exceptions, not the standard’s definition. They do not change what the Rebbe expected from the average capable yungerman who is succeeding in his learning.

The institutions the Rebbe built tell the same story. The kollelim in Eretz Yisroel and the kollel in Australia were built around a two-year framework, with the possibility of extending for those who were excelling. Kollel Menachem She’al Yad Hamazkirus had no fixed time limit. That was not an accident. The Rebbe did not set a cutoff there precisely because growth cannot always be measured on a calendar. The open-ended structure was itself a statement: stay as long as you are genuinely building yourself.

As recorded in Yemei Temimim, the baseline was two years across the board. The Rebbe allowed only for successful learners to extend into a third year or beyond. Nobody was debating whether to stay past year one. That was taken for granted. Today, we have somehow flipped the entire conversation. We debate whether a second year is even justified. In the Rebbe’s world, the second year was never in question.

There is also a practical reality that rarely gets acknowledged. When a yungerman enters kollel already planning to leave after twelve months, he does not actually get twelve months of learning. By the time winter hits, he is on the phone with communities, interviewing with head shluchim, looking at cities, drawing up budgets, and starting to raise money. Strip all of that out, and a one-year kollel often amounts to a few months of real, focused learning. That is not what the Rebbe built kollel for.
The entire point of kollel was never kollel for its own sake. It was to send out shluchim who were genuinely equipped. Men who could pasken a shailah, teach with real depth, counsel a Yid through a crisis, and carry a community on their shoulders. You cannot give what you do not have. And you cannot build that depth in a few rushed months while half your mind is already on the move.

Based on everything above, the conclusion is straightforward. The average yungerman should be spending two to three years in kollel. Two years is the minimum, not the goal. Three years is not excessive for someone who is genuinely succeeding. And for the yungerman who is truly thriving, still growing, still building real keilim, the Rebbe’s message was consistent: stay longer. The question worth asking is not whether to leave after one year. It is how much more a yungerman can invest in himself before he goes out to give to others.

We have quietly turned the Rebbe’s vision on its head. Today, a yungerman who stays for three years is seen as if something went wrong. But read the sichos. Read the letters. Look at what the Rebbe actually built. The real surprise should be the one who rushes out the door after twelve months. The real nebach is not the yungerman sitting and learning. It is the culture that forgot why he was there in the first place.

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