Last Tuesday I wrote a post about the indoctrination that is so prevalent in most seminaries in Israel. While there are a few exceptions to this rule, some seminaries being better than others, I strongly felt, and still feel that my words are for the most part accurate. But at the same time I failed to emphasize the positive side, which I freely admit is there. If one ignores the prohibitive expense and attends one of the better seminaries, indeed the experience can be very powerful. Here now, I present a post relating the experience of someone very near and dear to me and her comments about my words:
Seminary: The Way I See It
My year in seminary was the single most growing of all my years to date. Growth not only in academia and spirituality, but growth in my love for Eretz Yisroel that no family trip or summer program could have provided. I lived in Israel...nothing could replace that experience. I shopped in the grocery stores, spoke with the natives, and bought stamps at the post office (in the years before cell phones when we actually wrote letters home). Then I went to classes that were taught by dynamic and brilliant rabbeyim and teachers who encouraged me to learn more and know more. For the first time in my life I was excited about learning.
I sharpened my skills Judaically in both reading and writing. I will never forget the sense of accomplishment I felt after preparing a Dvar Torah of my own idea, to be delivered to the entire school. I was able to support my own ideas with maarei mekomos and meforshim which I found on my own. I still have that hand written Dvar Torah and read it from time to time to remember that awesome feeling.
In addition, this incredible year of academic and spiritual growth was also a year of growth in maturity...The opportunity to be away from home and everything and everyone I had known all my life. I was enriched with new friends, a new found love for learning Torah (one I had not received in high school), and the opportunity to live on my own and fend for myself before I actually became the adult that I am. This taught me so many life lessons that I still carry with my to this day.
True, then the cost was not as steep...this was after all, 16 years ago. But it was worth every penny that my parents had saved for tuition, and every cent I had put away for spending money. Although I have no idea how I will afford sending my kids to Seminary and Yeshiva in Israel when it's their turn, it is certainly my hope and goal for them to go and gain as much as they can in so many ways.
The school I attended was a growth oriented school. There were some more charedi teachers and some less. The topic of kollel did come up and so did the topic of considering Aliyah. I took what I wanted and what I did not with a grain of salt.
In the secular world, it is considered appropriate to leave home and live away at college. Many of us women (or then girls) would have never had that opportunity being in the frum world. Without our "year abroad" we would go from our parents' home to our spouses' with no chance to get to see and experience new things as single young adults.
I do agree with one position of yours... It's sad that there is a majority agenda out there which encourages and celebrates the girl who marries the kollel guy and that no celebration is made for the girl who marries the guy who works/goes to school and learns in his spare time. I wish it were not the case and this is not what we are teaching our own children.
In addition, I feel it's essential to stress to girls at this age what it really means to live a real kollel life, as my brother who has been learning in the Mir for 15 years does. The beauty of a life and home where the husband can learn so many hours in kollel should be attached with the struggles and hardships it can come with.
However, as my sister in law often points out to me, there are so many young couples learning in Kollel full time with full monetary support from parents/in-laws. While I often use my brother and sister-in law as the poster family for real kollel life, she reminds me that today, there is no such thing as "real kollel life" in that so many young couples are being supported by parents/in-laws making living a kollel life seem like a dream life...an easy life with all the amenities...and since that is the case, its hard to make the case to young girls these days, about the difficulties of real kollel life...today real kollel life can look like a dream life....an extended honeymoon with parents footing the bill. But that's another discussion.
Whatever the case is, I think you should direct your energy at a push to educating the masses about teaching real life to young girls, which includes presenting a real world view of what it takes to support a family and celebrating all the possibilities for life after marriage, emphasize the beauty of having a Torah home in whatever form that takes.
This is what you did in your home. This is why your daughters "came out relatively unscathed." They had parents with an agenda to teach them to search for the emes, find themselves, and appreciate all facets of yiddishkeit.
