Telling someone you learned in the Mir Yeshiva has traditionally been looked at as a big achievement, involving a long expensive flight to Israel and a steep walk down from the central bus station, but there are those that really don’t care if you went to the Mir for 10 minutes or 10 years.
In recent years it has become popular to say one learned at the Mir when in fact, they merely stepped in for a quick maariv after a quick munchie run from the Ohr Someyach dorm room to the 24 hour bakery. “I learned at the Mir” could merely mean that you stepped inside with your greasy brown bag filled with borekas and rugalech and picked up a sefer for 3 minutes before maariv.
Many folks in the frum community are comparing learning at the Mir to eating pizza in Brooklyn, in that everyone does it at one time or another – no matter what part of the community you come from – there is a pretty good chance that you learned in the Mir.
So does learning at the Mir help you in any way? It used to greatly affect your shidduch market value, but since finding out that everyone from YU guys to off the derech chabad kids have learned for sometime in the Mir – it has been shrugged off as a faker yeshiva, a place where people go to hop in so they can say they learn there or anywhere.
Experts say that tellings folks you went to Lakewood, or even better a Lakewood feeder yeshiva like Long Beach, Riverdale or Scranton goes a much longer way than learning at the Mir.
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