From a mother with a child in Seminary!
by Sandy Eller
Over the past few days, our airports have been filled with Bais Yaakov girls whose years-long seminary dreams were about to come true as they scanned their boarding passes and headed to Eretz Yisroel. Their jam-packed suitcases weren’t anywhere near as full as their hearts, which were overflowing with enthusiastic visions of the experience of a lifetime.
But there are other girls, too – broken-hearted Bais Yaakov graduates who are sitting teary-eyed in their rooms, knowing that they are being left behind. They are solid girls who never got that coveted acceptance letter from a seminary that aligned with their hashkafos, no matter how much their schools, their family rabanim, and concerned community members advocated on their behalf. While their friends floated blissfully through school and camp as they counted down the days to their seminary’s group flight, these girls sank lower and lower into the depths of despair, the pain of their rejection leaving them crushed and humiliated.
Let me tell you about those girls, because I know quite a few of them and have no doubt that there are others as well. I have spent hours on the phone with parents and rabanim trying to find placements for those girls, who have been served a triple dose of rejection after submitting their seminary applications, their choices approved by their twelfth grade mechanchos. These are girls whose dreams and faith in our educational system have been shattered, and I promise you, if you sat down and spoke to any of them, like I have, you would feel the same way too.
For the record, these aren’t the angry ramblings of a disgruntled parent – my daughter went to seminary, but the fact that my child has a place doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility to advocate for those who don’t. Right now, we have a window of opportunity, before seminary season starts again, to re-evaluate the entire process, before it destroys yet another group of girls. Let’s open up a conversation and see what we can do to make sure that next year, there are no girls being hurt and abused by the system.
Maybe we should be presenting a united front, making it clear to seminaries that we won’t be sending them our daughters until every girl is accepted.
Maybe the time has come to put an end to the notion that parents are expected to cover the astronomical cost of a year in seminary, an experience whose $30,000+ price tag is choking the average person and becoming unaffordable even for those who are doing well financially.
Maybe we should start steering our girls to other post-high school choices, quality domestic options that can offer girls a phenomenal and rewarding experience at a fraction of the cost of a year in Israel.
Maybe we need more seminaries so that the supply of slots can keep up with the demand, since we know that the number of girls graduating high school increases each year. And who knows, maybe if there is some real competition in the market, existing seminaries might be forced to rethink the exorbitant prices that they’re currently charging.
Maybe we should leave the Israel seminary experience for those who need it most – girls who are struggling in their Yiddishkeit, and create a new normal for the remainder of our high school graduates.
Maybe we need our daughters to step up to the plate and stand up for their fellow high schoolers, refusing to commit to a seminary until every girl is accepted to a school that is appropriate for her.
I don’t know what the answers are – I just know that the current seminary model isn’t working anymore and is becoming a black mark on our community.
We need to put our heads together and come up with a better alternative, because our girls are priceless treasures. I know that for most people, it’s easier to just look away than to try to change a system that has been in place for decades.
But imagine for a minute that it was your daughter watching all her friends flying off to Eretz Yisroel, while she stayed home, alone and rejected.
Would you still stay silent? Or once the problem touches your life, would you become part of the solution? The time has come for us to teach our daughters an important lesson that seems to have fallen by the wayside – kol Yisroel areivim zeh lazeh – by making sure that none of their friends or sisters will ever be left behind.
