Question

Hello Rabbi, I’m a young man and I’m about to be discharged from the IDF, and for a long time I’ve been struggling over what comes next and about academic studies. In high school I mainly studied Torah, and my matriculation results aren’t impressive, and I also have no desire to go back to studying mathematics, mainly because I have no passion for degrees and work in realistic fields. From what I’ve looked into, the only fields that interest me—and very much so—are things like Bible, the Land of Israel, Jewish thought, and the like. I really love, and have always loved, researching these subjects, and I invested less in practical skills. So no job or occupation in things that don’t require a degree attracts me either. I’m under quite a bit of pressure because of this dilemma: whether I should invest in what I do love and hope that I’ll become a researcher or lecturer (and of course take the not insignificant risk that I’ll end up with nothing), or not take that risk and force myself to develop in other directions that don’t draw my heart, but then risk finding myself working at something simple and missing out on the skills and passion that I do have.