Letter from a Mother to the Monsey Community!

I found the following letter on facebook ...... posting it without comment!

"Most people here have no idea what has been happening in my life the last few weeks, and that is usually how I keep my Facebook life - completely generic and separate from my everyday life. However, I have decided that this issue is too important to keep to myself, and I am posting this after a few weeks of mulling over my actions.

The last few weeks have been incredibly stressful as we battled it out yet again with yet another school in this oh so holy town of Torah. Below is letter I have written and sent to them. Since spoken words seem to have no effect, hopefully the written word, which others are able to read and pass along, will have a greater effect. May this post go viral and a change made. Amen.

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I'm sitting on my couch, pondering what to do with the pile of letters I have received over the years from numerous schools and yeshivas in Monsey, politely (or not so politely) informing me that we are no longer 'a good fit' for their esteemed school. My children have been in the frum school system for 7 years, and I am holding the fifth letter informing us that we are no longer welcome in yet another school.

As one institution put it, a family such as ours is not good for their overall image. When I was still stupid enough to beg these pompous educators for a chance to educate my precious child, I was told it is not their problem if she doesn't have a Jewish school to attend. In the words of Rabbi XXXX of Bais Yaakov XXXX, 'it is not my business to care about the people who do not meet my standards and are forced to send to public school'. I beg to differ. You have established a school in Monsey, undertaking to educate our precious Jewish daughters. It IS your business that there are Jewish girls left without a school when you have available slots in yours. You should spend sleepless nights worrying about these girls, not worrying about your image.

This is the person we are entrusting our daughters to. Let's ask ourselves a question - is this how we want them to grow up? Are these the people we want them to emulate??

I now know why there are so many people in Monsey that are disillusioned with the chareidi school administrators and principals, and everything that is associated with it. I know this because I have been added to their pile of castaways, their pile of people they threw out in the cold, because I wasn't good enough. Because I'm perhaps not rich enough or powerful enough or know the right people to buy my daughter another year at school.

There is a reason the class sizes at XXXX are shrinking instead of growing, and why every year there are less and less people banging on their door begging for the honor and privilege of having their daughters educated by people that care only about their image, their egos, the bottom line of their bank statement. Because people are tired of being treated like cockroaches, like they don't matter.

The fact that a child's life and stability can be so easily dismissed boggles the mind. It is abominable that a child's life should be turned upside down because of your personal hatred toward a certain sect of Judaism. What do I tell my innocent 8 year old the reason she cannot go back to her school come fall? That she is not good enough? That the administration of a school that preaches ahavas yisroel does not practice all that they teach? How many times does a little girl have to hear this line before she starts believing it? My daughter is 8 years old. She has been in the school system for 5 years. This is the third time she will be hearing the line that she is not good enough for one reason or another. Something is very, very wrong here.

I am sitting here wondering what exactly makes someone the right 'type'? Did the Chofetz Chaim ever worry about anyone's 'type'? Did he turn away Jews who were not exactly like him? If the Chofetz Chaim would be alive now, would he be pleased with the premise of how a school in his name is run? That only certain Jews matter, while other who do not fit neatly into a little box can be thrown away as 'not our problem'?

These very Bais Yaakovs that we send our daughters to teach them about Sarah Schenirer and the movement she started. Yet they leave out the details of the core of this movement - that every Jewish daughter matters. Not only the ones that are born into money, prestige, and the 'right' family. They teach about gedolim and rebbetzins, and how great they were. My daughter came home the last day of school with a 'gedolei yisroel' notebook, where she learned about different gedolim throughout the ages. I flipped through it, and amazingly, while the girls were taught about the many virtues of these rabbonim and how we should emulate them and strive to be like them, the hanhala that set this curriculum was conveniently picking and choosing which virtues apply to them. Compassion, ahavas yisroel, viyahavta l'rayacha k'mocha, do not do unto others what you would not want done to you. I don't think I have found any of these in the chareidi school system, in the people educating my most precious possessions.

Rabbonim, principals, educators, and countless others constantly decry the internet, smartphones, and pointing to these offensive objects as the reason so many people are going off the derech. Excuse me for disagreeing. People are not frum today because they have become disillusioned with our rabbonim. When a principal of a yeshiva has the guts to look you in the eye and tell you 'your son cannot attend my school anymore because you look like a goyta', the problem obviously lies elsewhere. Looking back, I find this comment amusing. I was so frum and naive back then, and I sincerely believed in the system at the time. Now? Not so much. Now I am jaded, disillusioned. There is only so many times you can hear something without it having an effect on you.

My deepest wish is that a revolution start in Monsey, the town we've lived in for so long yet never really accepted us. A revolution that people demand change, and stop enabling our so-called educators to continue bullying parents because we don't meet their standards of perfection, and don't fit into some preconceived little box we're expected to fit into.

And now, as I neatly add the fifth letter from a school sending us to places unknown to my pile, I know that I have reached that time. That time that the system has failed me, and I know I will be leaving it. I am no longer willing to bring up my children in this system that will likely not treat them any better than it has treated their parents."