What An Interesting Concept... An Open Minded School

Eeees and I have an 8th grader, who, for blogging purposes, is named George. As you can imagine, we've been looking at various high schools for George. Usually, George accompanied us to these open houses so that he could see what the school was like, but there was one open house to which we did not take him. Sadly, George was sick that day.

As it turned out, Eeees and I were somewhat impressed with what we saw that day. We were a bit sad that George missed the open house as it seemed like the type of school that would be just right for him.

Fortunately, the school held a "Spend the Day" program this past week for potential incoming students. And so, I drove George to the school for Shacharis that morning. Since I was in the neighborhood, I also stuck around for davening as well.

While I watched the students enter the shul and get ready for davening, I noticed something very interesting -- the lack of uniformity among the kids. Some wore hats and jackets with white shirts. Others wore hats or jackets. Some didn't wear either. Some kids had the big black velvet yarmulkes. Some had leather yarmulkes. Some had knitted. One kid had the large knitted cap that some sephardim wear. While all the boys wore button-down shirts, some wore white, while other wore colored shirts. Some even had stripes (sometimes of numerous colors).

I found it very interesting that this school is willing to accept (and seemingly embraces) kids from a wide variety of derachim (paths). In addition, it seems that they are willing to let each kid be who he is and not try to force him into a mold that he might not be comfortable with.

Quite refreshing to see. I think we might have a winner here.*

The Wolf

*Not for that reason alone, of course... but the seeming open-mindedness was a nice surprise.

THE NUMBER and My Irrational (or is it?) Fear...

Eeees and I are now in the process of looking for high schools for our two children (a boy and a girl) who are graduating elementary school this year. That means that next year we will have three high-schoolers at once (including Walter, who is already in high school).

Part of the process that we are going through is attending the open houses that various schools have. We've already pretty much narrowed the prospects down to about two or three schools for each kid. However, as we attend the various open houses and get the information for each school, the thing that strikes the greatest fear into our hearts is the number. You know which number I mean -- THE NUMBER -- the one with a dollar sign in front of it, followed by five digits and then the decimal point. Usually, the first digit is a 1, but sometimes, after transportation and all the other "miscellaneous" extras are added in, that first digit could easily blossom into a 2.

I did a rough, off-the-cuff calculation and figured that, at full tuition, we're looking at about $55-60 thousand dollars next year in tuition. I don't mind telling you that this is *significantly* higher than what we are paying now and there is simply not the room in the budget for it. Short of us winning the lottery, it ain't happening - at least not if we want to keep eating. Perhaps in about two years, after Eeees and I both graduate from grad school such a sum might be possible, but for now? No - it's just too large a sum to include into our budget along with the other required expenses. That being said, we'll be applying for tuition breaks from all three schools (yes, it'll be three different schools).

Have you ever had a fear that was completely irrational -- and yet, you were still afraid? For example, when I was a younger pup, I had a horrible fear of vampires. Eeees and several freinds can vouch for the fact that I didn't do very well when we watched The Lost Boys together many years ago. The fear was completely irrational -- there was a 0% chance of my actually being attacked at any time by a vampire -- but nonetheless, I was terrified.

Well, I have a tuituion fear that is probably irrational, but certainly has a greater chance of happening than being attacked by a vampire. What is that fear? Very simply, the fear is that when we apply for tuition breaks from the schools, they will simply tell us no -- that we should get the other two schools to give us breaks. "Why should we subsidize your sending your other son/daughter to a different school?" is what I'm afraid I'm going to hear. School A will tell me to get a break from B and C -- B will say to ask A and C and C will tell me to go to A & B. In the end, no one reduces their tuition and that's that.

Yeah, I know... in reality they will (hopefully?) take other tuitions into account. But this irrational fear actually sometimes keeps me up at night. Anyone else have any experience in this area? Is my fear truly irrational? Or am I headed for a big heap of financial trouble next year?

The Wolf

What Do You Do When There Is An Incentive To Be Irresponsible?

I have a friend (I'll call him Steve) who manages an IT group at a Midtown company. I don't know Steve's salary, but I have to imagine that he makes a decent salary -- certainly above the median for New York.

Steve also has three kids, the oldest of which is three years old. The kids are, obviously, not yet enrolled in a yeshiva, but at some point in the not too distant future they will be. I don't know where Steve would want to send his kids, but from what I know of him hashkafically and the location of his house (not in Brooklyn), I'm fairly certain that he'll be facing steep annual tuition bills. Assuming he has to pay his mortgage and other bills, it may well be beyond his ability to pay despite his above average salary.

For the moment, however, Steve's kids aren't yet in school. Steve is a pretty astute guy when it comes to finances. He's not a CPA, a financial planner or anything like that, but he has enough common sense and brains to be able to analyze a situation and a see what lies ahead in the future.

Let's assume (since I don't know this for sure) that Steve has the ability to put away some money from his job each month for savings. Simple logic would tell you that a person facing a long road of expenses in the future but with a current surplus would be wise to start putting away some money for that future expense. That's the entire basis of some of the various savings plans (IRA, 401(k), 529, etc.) that are out there - you put away now when you have excess to pay for a later expense (be it retirement, college education, etc.). So, if Steve can sock away a few hundred each month now to pay for yeshiva education for his kids later, he should do it. That would be the responsible thing to do.

The problem is that unless Steve's salary is very, very high, he actually has a disincentive to save.

If Steve's salary is very, very high, and he's able to carry the three tuitions in full (plus the tuitions of any other kids he may have in the future) in addition to his other expenses then he might have an incentive to save. But, in all probability, Steve does not have a salary quite that high. Three tuitions can easily add up to $25,000 a year or more -- quite a big hole in just about anyone's budget. So, in all probability, Steve (along with lots of other people) will be asking the yeshiva for a discount.

When Steve sees the financial aid application, there will probably be a question on there about how much he has stocked away in a savings account. Assuming that Steve has been responsible, he'll probably have been saving up and have a few thousand stashed away by the time his oldest hits first grade. The administrators will probably take this into account when they evaluate Steve's application for a reduction in tutition.

Now, Steve is an honorable, stand-up kind of guy. He's the type of guy who, if he could pay full tuition, would. He's not out to deliberately "cheat" the schools out of money that they owe. He's also not going to use the money that he would have otherwise put into the savings account to go on an expensive vacation, buy a big screen television, or go on a gambling trip to Atlantic City. He would put the money to use in ways that most of us would consider responsible -- he might pay off a high-interest credit card, or make an extra payment on his mortgage. But he probably can't help but notice the difference between himself and his less responsible neighbor - let's call him Mike.

Steve and Mike earn the same amount. Their houses are roughly the same price and they pay similar amounts in mortgages, bills, etc. Both have young children coming into the yeshiva in the next few years. Steve, being responsible, knows that he should begin saving now for the big upcoming expense. Mike, however, doesn't have a long-range vision. He knows that he's going to have to start paying tuition in a few years, but for now, it's not "on the books yet." He can take his discretionary income and spend it on whatever he needs or wants. So, Mike's family goes on a vacation this year -- because he knows that in a few years he won't be able to. He may purchase large-ticket discretionary items now. Heck, he may even be responsible and take the money and pay off his credit card bills. But whatever he uses it for, it's not going to be there when he enrolls his oldest in the local yeshiva.

Steve looks at Mike and his purchases and wonders to himself how he can buy these things. Doesn't he know that his kids have to go to yeshiva in a few years? He's just about positive that Mike doesn't have some outside source of income. He figures (correctly) that Mike isn't saving any money to pay for yeshiva in a few years. A casual conversation with Mike about the subject a few days later confirms his suspicions -- unless Mike hits the lottery in the next few years, he's planning on asking the tuition committee for a break on his kids' tuition when it's time to enroll.

Steve has to wonder to himself. He has the ability to make sacrifices to his lifestyle and to scrimp and save perhaps $30,000 over the next three years to pay tuitions. Of course, as the younger ones start enrolling and the savings account begins to deplete, he'll eventually have to ask for a tuition break himself - but for the first few years, if he really watches the pennies, he can probably pay the full tuition for his oldest. And that would be the honorable thing to do. But then he looks at Mike and thinks to himself -- "why should I save all that money when Mike will probably get a discount because he has no money in the bank? Why should I be "punished" financially for being responsible and being a roeh as haNolad*?" And so, Steve not only has no incentive to save -- he actually has a disincentive to save -- because if he does save, he'll either have to pay the entire tuition out of pocket or else the administrators will see the savings account on Steve's financial aid application and reduce his tuition based on the fact that he can draw on those savings.


In short, we've created a system where people are often rewarded for not being responsible and people end up worse off, financially, for doing the honorable thing and being responsible. And, perhaps, that's part of the problem that we have with the "tuition crisis" today.

The Wolf


* Literally "one who sees that which will be born." Figuratively -- somone with a longer-range vision than next week.

Furthermore, if what Steve hears about tuition committes are true, then he might be in even bigger trouble once the savings account is depleted and he has to start asking for a discount. Most committees are loathe, from what he hears, to give up their "full payers."

A Small Note on Mandatory Minimum Tuitions

If you read my blog, you'll find that every now and again, I go back to my high school days and complain about it.

The fact of the matter is that I was miserable in high school. My hashkafah was entirely different than that of the yeshiva I went to. I did not believe, as my high school did, that there was value only in learning Torah and nothing else. I actually had interests that did not fall squarely in the Beis HaMidrash. I knew that many of the myths that the rabbeim spouted about non-Jews (or non-frum Jews) were downright silly and false. I did not fit the mold of a typical student. I was not the best learner -- in fact, it could be safely said that I was a rotten learner -- and not one rebbi in high school made an effort to try and help. And yes, in the end, my rosh yeshiva acted dishonorably in trying to renege on a deal that he made with me to allow me to graduate on time.

But despite all that, there is one thing that needs to be said -- I went to that high school for four years for free. My mother spent the majority of those four years in the hospital either having or recovering from numerous back surgeries. She had no income to speak of during those years. I still don't know how she managed to pay the rent* or put food on the table during those years - but she somehow found a way. And yet, no matter how much "trouble" I was at the school (I was only troublesome because I didn't fit the mold, not because I was truly troublesome), they never (to my knowledge) sent a letter asking my mother for money or threatening to not allow me back because she did not (and could not) pay tuition.

I'm often left to wonder what would have happened to me if I were forced to go to public school becuase my mother could not pay tuition. Would I still be observant today? Would I have an interest in learning Torah today? Truth to tell, I can't say. In some respects, my high school nearly destroyed my faith in Judaism - and the conflict between the more fundamentalist attitude in the school and my more "modern" attitudes is a conflict that has greatly shaped who I am today. I don't think this blog would exist, for example, if I went to a school like YU which would have been more in-line with my hashkafah. In addition, I could safely say that most of the four years that I spent there were wasted as far as Torah learning goes. I did not really begin learning until I went to yeshiva after high school. In that respect, my high school experience was a vast negative influence on my life.

And yet, would I have gone to yeshiva post-high-school had I not been in a yeshiva during high school? Would I have maintained my level of observence if I were in a public high school with a tutor (I don't know how it would have been paid for) after school? I don't know and, in truth, I don't know if I ever can know.

So, what is the point of all of this remeniscing about the past?

There is a lot of talk around the blogosphere about the fact that minimum tuitions are needed to keep our yeshivos afloat. There has to be the idea that every parent has to commit to a certain financial obligation if yeshivos are going to be able to continue operating. On an intellectual level, I understand the need for this. And yet, even though I understand the need, I cannot, in good conciense, support the idea, simply because I was allowed a free ride for four years in high school (and, I should point out, in a small high school with fewer than fifty students). How could I be a hypocrite and demand that parents pay a minimum amount *regardless of circumstances* when such a policy did not apply to me?

The Wolf


* It should be pointed out that my mother's landlords were the nicest, kindest people you could hope to meet. For the nearly twenty five years that she lived in their house, they did not raise the rent on her -- even though they knew they could have gotten a much higher paying customer.

Are Yeshivos Economically Viable?

Unless you've been living on the third moon of Rigel VII for the few months or so, you're no doubt aware that we are in the midst of a severe economic downturn. As can be expected, the frum community has been hit hard by this recession. The extra costs that accompany an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle have severely allow for a much smaller economic margin of error than in a typical American household.

MoChossid commented that yeshivos and other Jewish institutions are usually the first ones to feel the pinch. He writes:

When people start to feel financial pressure, the monthly payment that goes first is invariably tuition. This, of course, is not surprising. As among missing mortgage payments, real estate taxes, car payments and tuition, the one with the fewest consequences is tuition. Schools will not toss a kid out for failure to pay tuition, particularly under these circumstances.

What he says is, for the most part, true. Most schools won't toss a child except in the most egregious cases of non-payment. They usually won't hit you up for late fees (although one of my kids' yeshivos does), and they certainly won't up your finance rate to 29.99% for missing a payment. They aren't going to toss you out of your home, throw you in jail or repossess your car. They're not going to turn off your lights or have your family living in an unheated house in the dead of winter.

Is it right that the yeshivos are on the bottom of the totem pole, so to speak? No, it's not. They should be at the top or on top. On the other hand, when the financial pie of any family is only so big, it's hard to fault a family for choosing to pay the mortgage, or the electric bill or the grocery bill ahead of the school; especially when the consequences for missing any of them are so much greater than the consequences of missing a tuition payment.

On the other hand, schools aren't merely buildings and institutions. They are actually made up of people - people who deserve to get paid (and paid on time) for the work that they do. But when parents begin to default on tuition payments*, and especially when that is coupled with a downturn in donations, it's usually the teachers and other employees of the school who suffer first. Most schools, when faced with a choice between paying the electric bill or the teachers, will go for the former.

All this comes to forefront this week as the teachers of Bais Faiga in Lakewood are now in the third day of their strike. They haven't been paid in quite a while and have finally decided to take matters into their own hands. 1800 (yep, that's one thousand eight hundred) girls are now out of school until the matter is resolved.

Ezzie asks an interesting question. He notes that schools are heavily dependent upon donations to meet their annual budget. Donations, of course, rise and fall with the general state of the economy. To insulate schools from the effects of an economic downturn, the majority of thier income would have to come from more... consistent sources, such as parent's tuition. He asks (bolding his):

The real question is: Is it truly economically viable - in any Orthodox community - to support and maintain a school within its own budget? Does anyone know of a school whose revenues outside of donations exceed its expenses? If so, let's see it! If not... what must the approach be? Store away the donations in good years to make up the gap in other years, like the Yosef/Pharaoh analogy a commenter said yesterday? Is that realistic? What changes are possible within the frum community to make it possible to keep a school afloat on its own?

I don't know the answer to his question, but my first guess would be that there are no such schools. If they did manage to somehow meet their expenses based on tuitions alone, then the excess funds from donations wouldn't have been saved, but would probably have been spent on capital projects and the like. Unfortunately, that seems to be human nature -- you see this phenomenon in government all the time -- in good years, rather than save money (or give some of it back to the taxpayers), programs (worthy and not) get expanded, and when bad times come, huge deficits spring up.

Of course, all this is contingent upon parents actually *paying* the tuition. If they cannot (things happen in life -- job loss, disability, death, divorce, etc.) then the system collpases again. But I think that if a school can get to the point where the vast majority of parents pay their tution, they should be able to ride out the odd cases where things go wrong.

So, where does this leave us? Assuming that schools must collect tuitions to stay viable, how do they deal with parents who cannot pay? Unfortuantely, I don't have an answer to that. You don't want to toss a kid out of school because of factors that are beyond his/her control (or even the family's control), but the school has to pay it's bills too.

A basic rule of personal finance is that you cannot (or should not) spend more than you earn. If you do, you are going to wind up in trouble. Of course, in any large population, people are going follow this rule to varying degrees -- some will be very fiscally responsible while others will continue to spend, spend, spend as if there is no tomorrow. As much as we might wish that it were otherwise, yeshiva tuition is a form of spending, and must be accounted for in the budget. Tuition payments, as a budget item, fall into one of three categories for most people:

1. Payments that can be made comfortably (i.e. affecting no other items in the budget other than savings)
2. Payments that can only be made by cutting other non-essential items in the budget (i.e. belt-tightening).
3. Payments that can only be made by cutting essential items from the budget (like the electric bill, or the mortgage payment).

For most of us, I'm willing to bet that tuition falls into the second category. However, as the economic situation worsens, I'm willing to bet that more and more families are sliding into the third category. For families in that category, there are a few options:

a. Find ways to earn extra income, dip into savings, or go into debt, so that the extra income can go to the essentials, sliding tuition back to category #2.
b. Ask for a tuition reduction, sliding the tuition payment into category #2.
c. Not pay and hope for the best.

Of the three possible options (and, granted, I might have missed some), all but the first (the hardest to implement) put additional economic pressure on the school. While the school may be able to absorb a certain percentage of parents whose tuition payments fall into the third category, there is a breaking point, beyond which the school can no longer operate. At some point, as the tuition checks stop coming in, the school will be forced to stop paying its own expenses (including salaries). Even if there is no finanical mismanagement in the school (yes, I know that's a big if), a school will eventually be unable to meet it's expenses.

That's where Bais Faiga is today.

Many people would like to blame the situation in Bais Faiga on the kollel lifestyle, but I'm not certain that the kollel lifestyle is really the problem. It's certainly arguable that because of the kollel lifestyle, Bais Faiga is the among the first instituions to come to this, but I believe that it will eventually spread to the "working communtiy" as well. The question is, when (and if) it hits the working community, at what point does the whole system become unsustainable? At what point will yeshivos be forced to make the difficult decision to turn away kids or close? Or at what point will parents have to make the decision to send their kids to public school?

In short, is the entire concept of everyone going to yeshiva sustainable? Or have we ran it as long as we can and now that the bills are coming due, it can happen no longer?

The Wolf

I Guess Most Yeshivos In Brooklyn Are Like Amalek...

In this week's Yated, Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz, has an article (posted on YeshivaWorldNews) dealing with media bias and Agriprocessors. However, tucked away in the article, he takes a potshot at Yeshiva University. In his article, Rabbi Lipschutz writes:

Amaleik appears in so many different guises. When a Jewish university maintains on its payroll a person who openly lives an immoral lifestyle and the institution’s president tells the New York Post that he is “proud of my university and all my faculty,” is that not an expression of “asher karchah”? Such a person is conferring legitimacy on behavior the Torah considers abhorrent.

What he is referring to is the case of Jay Ladin, a professor of modernist American poetry who left YU two years ago on a leave of absence and who recently returned as Joy Ladin, having undergone hormone treatments (although she has not yet had sexual reassignment surgery).

I don't want to get into whether she was right or wrong. You're free to your own opinion on the matter. Rabbi Moshe Tendler has come out against her, while others have supported her. What I want to get to is Rabbi Lipschutz's gratuitious pot-shot at Yeshiva University.

He maintains that Yeshiva University is comperable (in at least some ways) to Amalek because they maintain this person on their staff. His argument is that by doing so, they are conferring legitimacy on behavior the Torah considers abhorrent.

However, in his little pot-shot, Rabbi Lipschutz has cast most of the yeshivos in Brooklyn as Amalek as well.

I went to a very right-wing yeshiva for high school. I don't think that there is anyone on earth who would mistake it for being "modern" in any possible sense of the word. And yet, when I was in high school, I had teachers (for secular studies) who were not frum. I also had teachers who were Christians. I'm sure that if you asked the principal (a frum Jew), he would have told you that he was proud of his teaching staff as well. And yet, according to Rabbi Lipschutz, my high school conferred legitimacy on a Jewish non-frum lifestyle, or worse, an idolatrous lifestyle! My high school is like Amalek! Not only that, a great many yeshivos in Brooklyn (and certainly in other communities as well) use teachers from the public school system who may not be frum or even Jewish to teach secular studies. I guess all these yeshivos are also like Amalek!

So, thanks Rabbi Lipschutz. I always knew that my high school didn't fit me. Now I know why! They were like Amalek.

The Wolf

Orthodox Jews and Ferengi: Two Of A Kind?

Eeees and I have spent the last two years or so watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (IMHO, by far the best-written of the five Star Trek incarnations) on our Netflilx subscription. We started with the beginning of the series and have now finished season six. If you get a chance to watch the series from start to finish, I highly recommend it.

In the series, there is an alien race known as the Ferengi (Quark, the most well-known Ferengi to Star Trek fans, is pictured at right). The Ferengi are a race that are pretty much interested in one thing and one thing only -- making profit. Their entire culture is built around it. Their "bible" is called the Rules of Acquisition. (Rule #1: Once you have their money, you never give it back.) The favorite game of Ferengis is Tongo, a game where you try to financially outmaneuver the other players. The Ferengi ruler lives in the Tower of Commerce, which is a part of the Sacred Marketplace. If one has been a good Ferengi in life, then you go to the Divine Treasury in the afterlife.

There is, however, another side to Ferengi culture - the complete disenfranchisement of females (Ferengis are always referred to as "males" and "females;" never as "men" or "women."). Females are not allowed to wear clothes, are required to stay at home, are forbidden to work, enter business or earn profit, and are expected to be the servants of the house. In fact, they are expected to pre-chew the tube grubs (a common Ferengi food) for the males in the household. Needless to say, no females are ever involved in Ferengi government.

Over the course of the series, this slowly begins to change, when the Ferengi leader is influenced by a female who actually has a brain and business acumen (Quark's mother, incidentally). He begins to realize that the Ferengi are completely failing to utilize half of their potential workforce and human capital. Females, he discovers, can sometimes be just as capable as males of making good business deals, earning profit and running a household. Influenced by Quark's mother, he begins making reforms in the Ferengi government.

Some have tried to point out that the portrayal of the Ferengi in Star Trek is antisemitic. In his book, The Religions of Star Trek, Ross S. Kramer writes that the Ferengi "almost seem a parody of traditional Judaism." He argues that the emphasis on greed and the oversized facial features (ears for Ferengi) are negative stereotypes for Jews. While I don't think that the Star Trek creators were being antisemitic with the portrayal of Jews, I do think that there is something to be said about some of the commonalities between the Ferengi and some segments of Orthodox Judaism.

I think you can easily equate the Ferengi obsession with profit and business with the the obsession in some Orthodox communities with learning Torah*. The Ferengi's entire existence is built around commerce and profit. It occupies their every waking moment. Earning as much profit as possible is the ultimate goal in life. It's what a proper Ferengi male should be doing with his time. Any activity that does not earn profit is considered a waste of time.

The same could be said for some communities in the Orthodox Jewish world. Their entire existence is built around learning Torah. It occupies their every waking moment. Learning as much Torah as possible is the ultimate goal in life. It's what the proper Jewish male should be doing with his time. Any activity that does not involve learning Torah is considered a waste of time.

Another interesting correlation between the two cultures is the exclusion of females from the very activity that is considered the most important and vital in the community. Ferengi females are forbidden to earn profit under any circumstances. They cannot participate in business, they cannot talk to strange males, and are relegated to being the caregivers to children. A female who earns profit is subject to extensive penalties from the ruling authorities.

Interestingly, similar things happen with women in some Orthodox Jewish communities. They are excluded from learning Torah, the one thing that matters most in the community. They are strictly limited in which books they can learn, and, in some cases, cannot learn from books at all. In conversing with a woman online once, I found out that when she went to a Satmar school as a child, they were forbidden to use any sefarim (books) to learn from. Not even a chumash (Bible) was allowed. When I asked her if this was still the situation in her school today, she affirmed that it was**. The girls learn from photocopied sheets that the teachers and/or administrators create. The result was that when I was discussing a point with her, she made an assertion that I didn't agree with. When I asked her to back up her assertion with some proof text, she quoted an Avraham Fried song as her proof. When I pointed out to her that Avraham Fried lyrics can hardly be shown to be a proof of anything, she responded that it was all she had, because Satmar girls are forbidden to learn from texts. Any educational system that results in a person being unable to come up with a better proof text than an Avraham Fried lyric is just utterly sad.

Even among those communities that do allow girls to learn from books, there are very few that allow girls to learn Torah SheB'Al Peh (defined as Mishnah, Gemara and their commentaries). In most schools they are limited to Chumash, Navi (with the result being that they know Navi far better than most yeshiva boys), basic hashkafah and halacha (I don't know if they learn halacha from standard texts or in the "recycled" form of summary sheets and the like). However, for the most part, they never learn the reasoning behind the halachos that govern their lives and how they evolved to their modern form. Very often it becomes just a set of dry instructions (do this, don't do that, do this...). The classic arguments that are behind those dry lists, however, are closed off to them. In short, they can't participate in what is the very raison d'etre of the community.

Hmmm... kind of makes me wonder if some of the creators of the Ferengi were Orthodox Jews after all.

The Wolf

* I am not condemning this obsession.
** I don't know if this applied only to her school or to all Satmar schools. However, considering the fact that she told me that this rule (of girls being forbidden to learn from sefarim) came from the Satmar Rebbe, I'd guess that it applied to the majority, if not all Satmar girls' schools.

UPDATE (5/12/2009): I just came across a web page that links to this post. On the page, the author makes the claim that I am stating that the creators of the Ferengi in Star Trek meant the race as a "slam" against Orthodox Jews. That is not the case. I am merely pointing out some commonalities between the two cultures. My apologies if that is not clear.

The Wolf

Dr. Yitzchok Levine Speaks About the State of Secular Studies In Our Yeshivos

Dr. Yitzchok Levine recently spoke at the Talmud Torah of Flatbush on the topic of secular studies in our yeshivos. The title of the lecture is "Why Can't Yankel Read, Write and Do Arithmetic?" I was not at the lecture, but it can be heard online here. A question and answer session followed. I *highly* recommend that anyone who cares about the state of secular studies in our yeshivos listen to the lecture.

In his lecture, Dr. Levine observes something that we all know... that our boys' yeshivos (in Brooklyn, anyway) don't train children in the basic life skills that they need. Fractions, percents and basic math are unknown by a good percentage of bochrim "graduating" from the eighth grade. When he asked one high school student whom he was tutoring what a third plus a half was, the student answered two fifths (he simply added the numerators and the denominators). He could not tell Dr. Levine how many inches were in a foot, how many ounces in a pound or how many feet in a yard. And what's worse, many of these students don't even *care* that they don't know these basic facts. They approach math with a "what do I need this for" attitude?

Heaven forbid you try to teach something like algebra, geometry or trigonometry, subjects that don't have practical applications at an immediate glance -- that's viewed as a complete waste of time. Dr. Levine mentions that when he encounters this attitude, he brings out the Vilna Gaon's sefer Ayil Meshulash, a treatise on geometry and trigonometry. This, he says, usually holds the student for about a week until they respond to him by telling him that either (a) the Vilna Gaon wrote it in the bathroom (showing that the student has no idea what types of bathrooms the Vilna Gaon had in his day) or that he wrote it before he was Bar Mitzvah (and hence there was no bittul Torah). Needless to say, neither objection is factual.

Part of the problem, unfortunately, is that the secular studies department is being undermined by the Rabbeim in the yeshivos themselves. In one case, Dr. Levine tells the story of an acquaintance of his who was a teacher in a yeshiva. The boys in the yeshiva gave him a terrible time. However, the straw that broke the camel's back and which prompted him to finally quit, was that he found out that the eighth grade Rebbi was advising the kids not to attend secular studies in high school. When one boy asked the Rebbi how he would support himself in life, the Rebbi answered that he's going to marry a wealthy girl.

I personally, can back up some of what Dr. Levine says. I, personally, have seen secular studies denigrated by rabbeim as being unimportant and unnecessary. When I was in high school, the rosh yeshiva would, on occasion, pay lip service to the idea that secular studies are important, but we all knew that he was lying through his teeth and that he didn't really believe a word he said. It was well understood that he and all of his staff would get rid of the secular studies in an instant if they could and that they viewed it only as a necessary evil dictated by the state. Sometimes, the rabbeim would state this openly, other times in hints and attitude. But it was well known in the school where the secular studies department stood. And, of course, this attitude was passed on from the rabbeim to the students. I once asked a friend of mine how he would earn a living when he grew up he said "nu, I'll open a store." Opening a store is nice, I suppose, but I'm fairly certain that you still need basic math and life skills to operate a store.

Of course, no one in my yeshiva ever thought of entering the sciences. That's because science, in many black-hat yeshivos is equated with things like evolution which fall outside the pale of traditional Jewish thought. Of course, by not studying science, they were completely closing themselves off from any possibility of a professional career, such as law, medicine or the like, since any undergraduate degree is going to require some basic science courses. Unfortunately, however, the idea exists in much of the yeshivish world that scientists are either (a) engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide the truth of God's existence or (b) are dumber than potted plants and can't even recognize the basic evidence that the Torah is true. Because of these attitudes, the sciences (and all secular studies by extension) are relegated to the garbage heap of knowledge. However, Dr. Levine brings an interesting quote from an article by R. Shimon Schwab, in his essay "The Jews in Galus: How High A Profile." R. Schwab said:

If all the nations of the world (and it is a tendency today to think this way) are depraved foolish and wicked, it is no distinction to be better than those who are depraved, foolish and wicked. That is no basis for praise to the Ribbono Shel Olam. By the same token, gratitude for being given the Torah cannot be meaningful if all non-Torah science is nonsense, if all secular knowledge is without value. What glory is ascribed to Torah knowledge if it's distinction is simply that it is superior to nonsense. To the contrary, Chazal have told us that there is chochma, wisdom, amongst the nations. As a matter of fact, upon seeing a wise non-Jew one pronounces a blessing, praising God for having given of His knowledge to a creature of flesh and blood. But all their knowledge, all their sciences and all their wisdom shrinks into absolute nothingness before the majesty of one kutzo shel yud, one small stroke of the sacred Torah.

Indeed, as Dr. Levine points out, it must be made clear to our students that Torah study is the most important function of a yeshiva. When Walter was entering first grade, there was one yeshiva that we were somewhat impressed with. We ended up not sending him there for a few reasons but my main objection was this: For the first year or two the secular studies would be taught in the morning and the limudei kodesh in the afternoon. This was done strictly for scheduling reasons -- from a practical point of view, I couldn't argue with it. But I felt uncomfortable with this approach -- I feel that the raison d'etre of a yeshiva is to teach our kids Torah. No matter what my sons and daughter will do in life, they will first and foremost be Jews and have to live according to the Torah. It doesn't matter whether they go on to learn full-time, work full-time or find some happy medium in the middle -- regardless of what they do and where they go in life, they have to know that they are Jews and have to know the Torah. As such, I felt it extremely important that a yeshiva have Torah studies first in the morning, sending the message to my kids that their Torah studies are more important than their secular studies.

That doesn't mean, of course, that I think secular studies are unimportant. Anyone who has spent any time reading my blog knows my feelings regarding the acquisition of secular knowledge. In fact, when we were looking for a high school for Walter, we wanted a place that had an excellent Torah studies program AND an excellent secular studies program. We wanted a place that would prepare him for learning after high school at the beis midrash level AND prepare him for college, should he choose to go. Sadly, there was no place that we found in Brooklyn that met those requirements -- and as such, he has a *long* commute to school every day and back. He's not happy about the commute, but he loves the school. He's happy that he's found a place where he can flourish in both departments. And, he's in an environment, where the Rabbeim are not undermining the secular studies department. He's in an environment where the Rabbeim understand and appreciate the value of a good well-rounded education.

So, what can we do to change this situation that exists in our schools? I don't know. I wish I did. Dr. Levine gives some interesting suggestions in his lecture (again, I highly recommend that you listen to it). But I think the main thing we can do is to try to make students realize that there is value in a good education and that we have to make sure that they get the message that knowing the sciences, math, history, etc. help one to be able to learn Torah better.

The Wolf

P.S. Dr. Levine's publications, writings and lectures can be found on his web site.

Diversity

Yesterday was a busy day for Eeees and myself. In the morning, we had an opportunity to sit in our Walter's shiur (Gemara class). We got to meet the Rebbe and I got to see some of the kids who are in his Masmidim (Honors) class.

Firstly, I like the rebbe very much. He's a young clean-shaven guy (can't be much older than I am) who really connects with the kids and makes the learning enjoyable for them. He involves them in the class and, instead of just teaching them the Gemara, is instead teaching them *how* to learn the Gemara on their own. Of course, at the ninth grade level, they're not ready to sit and make a laining (preparation of the text of the Gemara) just yet, but he has clearly got them started on the right path. He talks to the kids, instead of talking down at them and involves them in the discussion at all times. Of course, the fact that Walter likes him as a rebbe is also very encouraging. (He even makes reference to topics the kids can relate to -- at one point, he mentioned the Riddler and the fact that he is OCD.)

However, what also impressed me was the diversity in the student body and in the class. Here was a class of boys that didn't all look like clones of each other. The boys all wore button-down shirts (as required by the dress code), but of all different colors. The yarmulkes ranged from knitted, to leather, to suede to velvet and in different sizes. Some were all black, others had designs and logos. There were kids from all different extractions -- Ashkenazim, Sefardim, (some who looked) Yemenite and probably from different levels of observance as well. It was quite a difference from the school where he came from, where all the kids were Ashkenazim (there may have been the occassional Sefardi in the school, but they were few and far between -- I think there was one in Walter's class), all wore white shirts/dark slacks, all wore the same yarmulkes and all, for the most part, had the same backgrounds and behaviors (or so we thought, anyway). This, I feel is a good thing. I would like Walter to understand that there are different types of people in the world and that not everyone has to be "just like him" to be a good person and that he shouldn't turn up his nose at someone just because they dress differently, have a different hashkafah or different ethnic background. I'm hoping that over the next four years, he learns the valuable lesson of accepting people despite their differences, rather than attacking them for being different from yourself (as we've seen in the news lately).

Later on in the day, Eeees and I went to a reunion. When we were both in college, we both served on the Emergency Medical Squad in the college. Yesterday, there was a reunion of the members of the squad, going back to its founding 30 years ago. We got to meet with old friends, reminisce and swap stories with the old members, catch up on what was happening with their lives (Mike married Mary Kay??!!) and have a wonderful time. Since many members of the squad over the years were Orthodox, all the food was kosher.

In many ways, I consider the time I spent in the squad the most valuable time that I spent in college -- in many cases, even more valuable than my class time. Having come from a high school much like Walter's elementary school (only much more so, if you can truly believe it), I never had much exposure to non-Orthodox Jews (except for family members) and non-Jews. As such, while I certainly a lot more tolerant of other people than my classmates in high school, it was here, in the squad, that I learned to form friendships with people from other backgrounds. It was here that I had the first opportunity to socialize with people who weren't strictly from "my own type." And it was here that I learned, for the first time, to accept people for who they are -- not for what minhagim they observe, or which religion they practice, how they dress or what they think about evolution or the origin of the world. When you're working with a team to save lives, you don't really care what religion the EMT next to you is. When you ask the dispatcher for the status of local hospitals, you don't really care whether or not she's dressed in a completely tznius fashion. You focus on one goal -- saving lives. And even when you're not actively involved in the saving of lives -- even if you're just hanging around in the office waiting for a call to come in -- you realize that you can work together and get along with and even be friends with people with whom you have no religious connection -- people who may be Jewish and non-Orthodox, people who may be devout Christians, Muslims or Hindus, or even those that are completely non-religious. *This* was what I learned in my time in the Emergency Medical Squad (along with lifesaving skills, teamwork skills, etc.) and, in many respects, that was far more valuable than the coursework that I took.

The Wolf

Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum: Kids Need To Have Fun

Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum wrote an article which appeared in The Yeshiva World today. In it, he decries how it has become standard operating procedure to ban anything that is remotely fun. Concerts, trips, sports and other youth activities which are, in varying degrees, banned in our communities, should be allowed and encouraged in a kosher environment. He correctly points out that kids need an outlet for their energies (aside from learning) and that if one removes all such outlets, kids will find other outlets... and they will be far worse. If you don't allow kids to participate in sports or cultural activities and the like, then they will be gathering in pool halls in the Catskills. Or, as he succinctly puts it:

When sports and concerts are forbidden, and all forms of kosher entertainment are off limits, we are asking for trouble. If our kids can’t find a place to vent their energy within a kosher environment, then they will find it elsewhere.

Amen.

In his article, he gives examples of times that he organized youth activities and met with resistance. In one case, he tried to have the boys in his Pirchei organization put on a play based on the book Family Aguilar. When people tried to have the play banned, the matter ended up being escalated to R. Moshe Feinstein. Instead of issuing a ban, R. Moshe gave it his blessing.

In another example, he arranged for a two-day trip to Washington at low cost for boys. The trip was going to be taken on the two days that the yeshivos gave off for Channukah. One Rosh Yeshiva wrote R. Teitelbaum a nasty letter accusing him of encouraging bittul Torah. Fortunately, R. Teitelbaum was able to fend him off.

It's very interesting that the difference between R. Teitelbaum's point of view and the point of view of others in our community is brought to my attention right now. Walter just began high school this week and it looks like he's going to have a great time there. He's encouraged about the learning programs, the secular education and the extracurricular activities. Indeed, when we went looking for a school, we purposely went looking for a place that had all three of these elements -- we wanted a school that had a great learning program that would keep him challenged and interested; we wanted a school with a quality secular studies department that would show him the possibilities that exist in our world, and a school that had supervised extracurricular activities for him to be able to channel his creative energies. I purposely didn't want to send him to a high school such as that I went to: where the learning was boring and uninteresting, where the secular studies were a joke, and the word "extracurricular" didn't exist because the school day went from 7:30 in the morning to 9:30 at night every day without variation; where the word "trip" didn't exist and the word "activity" might as well have been in Mongolian. In my old school, if it didn't involve learning, it shouldn't be done (although I suppose they did allow for some recreation -- boys were allowed to play basketball during recess). In looking for the type of school for Walter that recognizes that kids are kids and need kosher extracurricular activities, I find that I have explicitly rejected the opinions of the "banners" and embraced the opinion of R. Teitelbaum.

I can only be thankful that there are rabbis out there, like Rabbi Teitelbaum, who have not forgotten what it is to be a kid and to need an outlet for youthful energies.

The Wolf

Lakewood Buses -- This Can't Be Real, Can it?

Lakewood Kollel Veib reports that there is an effort underway in Lakewood to only have Jewish bus drivers drive the kids home from Yeshiva. The Yeshiva would also supplement the drivers' salaries (above the standard salary paid by the state) to bring the pay to about thirty dollars an hour. The Yeshiva would then pass the cost along to the parents.

Personally, I'm finding this one a bit troubling. Can't the people in Lakewood see that this is something that is totally illegal and discriminatory? Don't they realize that this is just a massive lawsuit waiting to happen?

Personally, I'm wondering if there is such a serious campaign or if this is just a bunch of idle chatter. Does anyone have any concrete information on this?

The Wolf

(For an alternative take on this subject, see Rabbi Maryles' blog).

A Rant on Parental Responsibility and My Son's Classmates

Some recent events have forced Eeees and I to have a talk with Walter, our oldest, about birds, bees and other similar topics. He is approaching an age where he has to learn to cope with certain urges and understand certain feelings that his body is giving him. He has to learn how to properly deal with women and what are the healthy and unhealthy ways of dealing with them.

During the conversation, the topic took a detour from him to his classmates. To be honest, I was kind of surprised to hear the things that I heard. I've been told that the vast majority of his classmates spend a fair amount of their free time discussing "hot babes" with each other. Some of them have pictures of "hot babes" on their cellphones, including some that are unclothed. Many of them, it seems, have seen movies or television shows that are highly inappropriate (IMHO) for thirteen-year-old boys. All this in a yeshiva that, while, not at the outmost fringes of the right-wing is certainly on that side of center.

To be honest, I'm kind of shocked and a bit angry. I'm shocked that there are parents that are so clueless as to what their children are doing. I'm not saying that Walter is an angel -- heaven knows (pun intended) that he's not -- he's got his own teenage issues to deal with -- but I can honestly say that we have a pretty good handle on what he sees, listens to and reads, and we do screen for inappropriate material. We didn't let him see the latest (fourth) Harry Potter movie because we felt the bath scene with Moaning Myrtle was somewhat inappropriate for his age. Maybe in another year or two... but not yet. I know that most (all?) of his classmates have no doubt seen it. One kid in his class carries around episodes of Family Guy (a funny show, but not for kids) on his MP3 player. The kids in the class talk about Borat (they saw Borat??!!) and some of the reported homosexual content in the movie (I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it one way or the other. However, according to the report from CommonSenseMedia, it's fairly explicit).

Do parents know what their kids are doing? My son sometimes complains that we won't let him watch this or that. But in the end, we believe that it's for his benefit and that he'll thank us in the end. After all, isn't that what responsible parents do -- shield their children from things that are inappropriate?

I'm also a bit angry, but I suppose that it's somewhat my own fault. I'm angry because for years the yeshiva has been making me feel (or, perhaps more correctly, I've been *allowing* the yeshiva to make me feel) like a sub-standard parent because we have a television in the home and we allow our kids to watch DVDs, read secular books, etc. But now, I see what other kids in the class are doing and, with perhaps one other exception, I find that our child is probably the most "shielded" kid in the class -- and I'm angry. I'm angry because (a) I feel like I've been stigmatized by the administration for no reason and (b) instead of needing to screen the other kids from mine, I find now that all along it's been my kid who has been needing screening from the other kids! And yet, Eeees and I were the ones who were told that we run a "liberal household" by a former principal at the school. If only he knew what would become of this class five years later!

I just don't get it. Who is in the wrong here? The "good parents" who "don't have a television" or "don't watch movies" but have their kids watching things that are highly inappropriate and who have pornographic pictures on their cell phones; or me, who openly has a television, who openly goes to movies (although my kids don't) and who does his level best our guide our children in what they should watch and see and try to teach them that some media are just inappropriate for them at the present time?

The Wolf

Average Kids

Rabbi Horowitz had an article last week (OK, so I'm somewhat slow...) about kids who are average learners (even if they are excellent in middos and yiddishkeit) finding it more and more difficult to get into mainstream yeshivos. More and more often, these kids are being pushed into "alternative" yeshivos where they are often grouped together with "at risk" kids when, in reality, they don't suffer from the same problems that many at-risk kids suffer from.

As the parent of an eighth grader who is less than stellar in Gemorah, his article certainly struck a chord within me. Eeees and I were dreading the high-school application process because we knew that our son was average at best in Gemorah.

Maybe it's because we didn't apply to schools like Mirrer, Chaim Berlin, Torah V'Da'as, etc., but it seems that B"H, we were matzliach. He applied to four schools of a more "modern" bent (how I hate that word in that context) and he was accepted into three of them.

Sadly, the way Rabbi Horowitz reports it, it's a vicious cycle -- parents demand more excellence, so more "average" kids get left out. As the schools are increasingly populated only with excellent students, the average is pulled ever higher.

Truth to tell, I think that it is the responsibility of parents to try to find the best school that their son will fit in, and not necessarily the best school. We certainly could have applied to a school such as the type I listed above, and who knows, maybe he would have gotten into one -- but he certainly wouldn't be happy there. He needs a school that will work with him on his level of learning, challenge him to grow in learning to the best of his abilities and provide direction for post-graduate learning -- in limudei kodesh AND limudei chol. Simply going for the "best" school because of fear of losing social standing or future shidduch issues is incredibly counter-productive and the harm that you can cause a child far outweighs the benefits. Engaging in such behavior does far more to put a kid "at risk" then sending him to a yeshiva that accepts "average" students.

The Wolf

Punishing Children for the Parent's Misdeeds

Vos Iz Neias is reporting that the children of one of the attendees of the Iranian holocaust conference have been kicked out of their school in Vienna and their father has been told that they will not be welcome in any schools in Austria.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that this is only based on one side of the story and that not all of the facts are in. However, if the plain facts of the story as presented are true (i.e. that his children were asked to leave because of his attendance), then the school is making a grave mistake.

I think we can all understand the need to ostracize someone who participates in an event such as the Iranian holocaust conference. I am in full favor of asking him to leave his shul, not giving him any kibbudim in the community, etc. I think that any and all non-violent measures should be taken against the people who participated in that event.

However, the punishment has to start and end with him alone. Punishing his children for acts that they had no control over is completely wrong. And yes, I'll agree that having his children in school is a convenience to him; but, nonetheless, the fact remains that the expulsion punishes the children for something that is completely not their fault.

The same principle can be applied to many of the yeshivos here in America. Many yeshivos today would threaten to kick children out (or refuse admission) for things that are not their fault. One such case happened with me personally -- my parents are divorced and my father is not frum. When looking for a yeshiva for me in Brooklyn after the divorce, my ba'alas t'shuva mother found that one yeshiva would only admit me on condition that I wasn't allowed any contact with my father. In another case that I am aware of, a family was threatened with expulsion from a yeshiva because they had a dog. They were told that "either the hunt goes, or you go." Considering that I went to the same yeshiva at the same time, I should consider myself lucky... we had two dogs!

But the fact of the matter is that punishing children with expulsion because of their parents' level of observance, because of household factors over which the children have no control (and, furthermore won't "corrupt" other children -- how is having a dog a danger to classmates?) is wrong - for several reasons:

Firstly, it's wrong because punishing someone for something that have no control over is simply wrong.

Secondly, it can potentially turn a child off to Judaism. Seriously, would you want to belong to a society where you will be ostracized by something your relatives may do tomorrow and over which you have no control? Do you want your children thrown out of yeshiva because your brother decides to marry a non-Jew? Or because your sister doesn't cover her hair? Of course not - every person wants to be judged on his or her own merits - not the deeds of others.

Thirdly, we see that even in the Torah there are cases where a punishment is set aside because it would affect his children. A classic example is an eid zommeim (a specific type of false witness) who gives testimony that so-and-so the Kohen's mother is a divorcee and that he is therefore not a Kohen. If he is proven to be an eid zommeim, he should be subject to the same penalty that he tried to subject the person to - i.e. that he (and his children) should be considered non-Kohanim (assuming that they were Kohanim to begin with). However, the Gemara points out that the Torah says to punish *him* and not his children - and so the punishment to him is altered to one that punishes only him and not his children.

So, to sum up, I have no problem with punishing someone who went to this conference; but the punishment has to start and end with him - not his children.

The Wolf

Buying a son-in-law on the open market! Madness!!

I suppose that this isn't anything new, but when I saw this article on Ynet, I felt that I had to comment. It involves the old issue of brides' families paying top dollar for a top groom.

Now, let me be clear about something up front - I have no objection to parents helping their married children out. Just to be fair and offer full disclosure, Eeees and I received help in the purchase of our house and still receive help from my in-laws. However, I never expected it from them, nor asked (or, heaven forbid, demanded) it of them. It was done strictly out of their love for their daughter and me (yes, I always got along very well with my in-laws).

That being said, the fact is that in some segments of our community in Israel, grooms are being bought (literally!!) by the fathers of marriageable age girls. In order to get a top groom, the bride's family has to pay for the entire wedding, an apartment for the young couple and furnishings.

As the article notes:

An apartment in an ultra-Orthodox complex in Betar Ilit or Modi’in Ilit costs about USD 90,000. If you add the wedding expenditures and the purchase of furniture and electrical appliances, the expenses come to USD 110,000. If we assume that a family pays for only half a package, every ultra-Orthodox family has to part with some USD 200,000 within a few years just to marry off its daughters.

The problem is that the more impressive the groom, the higher the demands. Very high-quality grooms demand an apartment in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak that is as close as possible to the head of their yeshiva. In Jerusalem and Bnei Brak apartment prices are about USD 150,000- USD 250,000. Grooms who are outstanding students with a lot of chutzpah demand that the wife’s parents also pay a small stipend to allow them to live decently.

If a family has several girls to marry off within the span of a few years (as many Chareidi families do), the family could end up with expenses totaling from a half a million to over a million dollars in that very short time span - and then pay for support for the young couple afterwards.

Lest you think that it is only the very top grooms - the elite of the elite - who are making such demands, the article continues:

Before the wedding the terms of the match are negotiated. The ultra-Orthodox Bakehillah newspaper, which writes a lot on this issue, has published the price list for a groom. For a prodigy in a prestigious yeshiva such as Kol Torah or Hevron in Jerusalem, Or Yisrael in Petach Tikvah or Bet Matityahu in Bnei Brak, you have to pay for the whole package.

In yeshivas such as Grodna, Be’er Ya’akov, and Haknesset Hagedolah, which are a bit less prestigious than Hevron, they demand two thirds of an apartment for a prodigy and half an apartment for an average guy. In the average yeshivas they demand half an apartment.

For a groom who is half a prodigy you pay somewhere between the whole package and 80 percent of the apartment. For a good guy you have to pay between half of the package and two thirds of it, and for an average guy you have to pay for half an apartment.

So, in order to get an "average guy" in a yeshiva, you have to shell out somewhere in excess of $50,000 (on top of the actual wedding costs).

However, the blame here doesn't rest solely on the boys (who should bear a great deal of the blame) and on the girls (for being suckered into thinking that anyone who isn't learning in yeshiva full time is good for nothing). A fair amount of the blame lies with the yeshivos as well (bolding mine):

“In the Lithuanian yeshivas there’s a situation in which the more guys in the yeshiva get an apartment, the more prestigious the yeshiva becomes,” says Rabbi Silman. “The yeshiva heads encourage this to some extent, and in order to preserve the yeshiva’s reputation, they demand of their students that they make a match conditional on getting an apartment.”

Many times the grooms don’t want complete apartments because they know how their parents suffer, but the yeshiva heads push them to take the apartments with no apologies. After all, the whole package is evidence of the yeshiva’s prestige, and a guy who compromises harms the yeshiva’s good name.

In addition, a guy who compromises has to go to work in order to pay for the apartment, and then he can’t sit and study in yeshiva, which also harms the yeshiva’s good name.

In other words, the idea of a shidduch isn't to make the man and the woman happy and to encourage them to build a bayis ne'eman b'Yisroel - it's to protect the reputation of the yeshiva! The reputation of the yeshiva is more important than the families of the bride or groom or the sholom bayis of the in-laws. It's simply outrageous!

Lest all the news sound bad, there are some voices calling for sanity. There are some voices in the Israeli chareidi world calling for an end to the madness (apologies to Chananya Weismann):

The grandson of Rabbi Haim Kanievsky, one of the most important rabbis in Bnei Brak, was recently quoted in the ultra-Orthodox prss as saying, “My grandfather is unequivocal in his opposition to the demand for the whole package.”

“My grandfather’s opinion is that all expenses, including the purchase of an apartment, must be divided equally between the groom’s side and the bride’s side. As for the apartment, my grandfather says that it’s better for the bride’s side to pay a bit more in order to show respect for the Torah, even a thousand dollars more.”

To be perfectly honest, even that's not far enough, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Personally, I find the whole situation bewildering (to use kind terms). The only reason that brides' fathers pay such exorbitant amounts is because they feel (or perhaps their daughters feel) that without such payments they won't get married, or they'll have to marry someone from the Dalit.

But what is it that fuels this madness? What is that makes a father of a bride pay such a high price for a groom who is considered less than "top notch?" I suppose that there are several mindsets at play here:

The grooms are not being taught the true meaning of marriage. The point of a marriage is not to see how much money you can get out of your future in-laws. The point of a marriage is not to score political "points." The point of a marriage is find a spouse who will make you happy, whom you are physically attracted to, whom you share the same hashkafos with, someone with whom you can raise a family that will transmit the Torah and it's teachings from one generation to the next.

The brides are being brainwashed into believing that only men who learn all day are worth marrying. Seriously, if that wasn't the case, why the demand for an enormous payout for a boy who doesn't even go to a "top yeshiva?" Why would a boy who is simply average at best (or possibly even below it?) command so much more than a working boy (who, presumably doesn't command such prices)? The only reason is simply because the girls are taught that the only type of boy to consider is a learning boy. They too are forgetting that they're not marrying the boy's rebbi or the yeshiva he learned in - they are marrying the boy himself - and, like their future husbands, are forgetting the things about their future spouses that should matter the most - and which yeshiva he learns in should not be a top priority.

The brides' fathers are being extorted by their daughters and their sons-in-law. These poor guys (who are still workers in this generation -- I'd hate to see what's going to happen in the next generation when the fathers-in-law are learners) are being given unreasonable demands by their future sons-in-laws and emotional pressure by their daughters to pay out huge sums of money that in many cases, they cannot afford. If all the fathers banded together and agreed, as a community not to give in to demands, the whole system would collapse.

In the end, everyone loses. The groom simply becomes a piece of meat to be auctioned off to the girl whose father presents the most attractive package. The bride and groom both lose what is important in a marriage. The brides' parents lose any money that they may have managed to save over the years (perhaps looking toward retirement). And, of course, while the groom's family may not lose out this time around, almost certainly they have several daughters who are of marriageable age - and then the shoe will be on the other foot. In short, everyone loses.

This situation simply has to stop, and it will.

It will begin to come to a stop when the first yeshiva bochur tells his Rosh Yeshiva that his future sholom bayis and the sholom bayis of his in-laws is more important than the reputation of the yeshiva.

It will begin to come to a stop when the first father sits his daughter down and explains to her that an extortionist is not a good person to marry, and with the first daughter who understands what her father is telling her.

It will begin to come to a stop when fourth and fifth daughters find they cannot marry because their parents have been financially tapped out.

It will begin to come to a stop when boys and girls begin to learn what is truly important as the basis for a marriage - that who the chosson or kallah is as a person is far more important than what yeshiva they learn in.

It will begin to come to a stop when fathers begin to get sick (and they will) of paying huge amounts of money just so their daughter can marry someone who is an average bochur.

It will begin to come to a stop when people begin to realize that people who work are not unmarriageable and that one can have a very fine, distinguished and successful son-in-law who will make their daughters happy even if he is only kovea itim.

At the latest, it will have to come to a stop when the current generation of bochurim have their own daughters of marriageable age, limited job skills and a limited income and simply cannot pay what the next generation of bochurim demand.

It will end, either on good terms - with reason and sensibility, or on bad terms - with bankruptcies and good girls who simply cannot get married. But it will end.

The Wolf

High School Yet Again... One More Fear Of Mine

As you no doubt know from my previous posts, Eeees and I have been looking for a high school for our eighth grader. We've seen several that we have been impressed with and we will be applying to them.

However, I personally have one big fear about the whole processes... and I don't know if it's because I, personally, had a very bad experience or if this happens more often. Perhaps others who have gone through this process can give me some help or insight.

Our son goes to a fairly RW Chareidi, black-hat, white-shirt/dark-pants only school. The high schools that we have looked at are not like that at all - they all encourage their students to go to college, they allow clothing with colors, many of the kids wear kippot s'rugot, many of them have televisions (well, so do many in the current school, even though it's officially highly discouraged), and most of the schools are Zionistic.

Part of the application process for just about every school that we are interested in involves having the principal fill out an evaluation on the student. Now, to be perfectly fair, my son is not the greatest student - when he's not sufficiently interested or challenged. I've found that when he has an interest in the gemara that they are learning, he is usually pretty capable of understanding it. However, if it's not so interesting, then his grades will start to plummet.

The menahel has spoken with us about this several times. Usually we can crack the whip on him for a while and get him to pay attention, but then he sometimes slides back as his other interests take over his attention. The result was that in seventh grade, his grades in Limudei Kodesh were less than stellar.

The menahel thinks our son has a problem. He thinks that because our son has an interest in animals and other things aside from full-time learning, there must be a problem with him. He's advised us to seek professional counseling for him. To be honest, Eeees and I don't see that as his problem - he's pretty well adjusted, has friends and acts like a typical adolescent (meaning that he alternates between being very good and making our lives miserable). He enjoys reading anything he can - Judaic and secular. He does learn on his own sometimes (although not gemara). However, he's not going to be a Rosh Yeshiva (at least based on his current temperment - in the future, who knows?) and learning doesn't occupy his every waking moment. As with me in high school, the harder he is pushed in one direction that he doesn't want to go in, the more he will recoil in the opposite direction. The menahel thinks that is a sign that the kid needs therapy. We think it's the sign of a teenager.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I have a real fear (possibly unfounded) that when the menahel sees the application forms and the schools to which we are applying, with their radically different hashkafos than the present yeshiva, he may try to sabotage the process.

Why do I say this? Because it happened to me. Allow me to present my story.

As many of the readers of this blog know, I was pretty miserable in high school. I had little in common hashkafically with the administration or my classmates. I did not have the skills or the interest to learn at the level of the class - and no one thought to actually try and help me out. That's not to say I was not at fault - I certainly could have tried harder - but I didn't. With few exceptions, my learning in high school was pretty non-existant. The only reason I can learn today is because of the yeshiva I went to after high school. And therein lies the tale.

When I was in twelfth grade, my mother was ill. She spent most of the school year in the hospital with various related health issues. Since I hated school, I took unfair advantage of the situtaion and played hookey - quite often. One time, I missed an entire week, hiding out in the house. That was no one's fault but my own. Sure, if the yeshiva had made more of an effort to reach out to me and include me in the learning it might not have happened, but I was more than capable of knowning that my actions in skipping school were wrong.

About February, the Rosh Yeshiva called me into his office. "Wolf," he told me, "I want you to know that we can legally hold you back. You've missed enough days of school this year that you can be held back another year."

I gulped. Being stuck in this school another year was the last thing I wanted. I had had it up to here being the square peg that they were trying to pound into the round hashkafic hole. I wanted out - as should have been evidenced by the fact that I was missing school to begin with.

In the end, he offered a deal. I had to move into the dorm, be in school *every day*, be present at every davening and learning seder. If I could do that, I'd graduate in June. If not... I had no choice; I took the deal. I moved into the dorm (oh, how I hated that dorm) and was there every day since then. I missed one day in May due to a family member having an operation - but I got permission from the Rosh Yeshiva in advance to be out that day. I kept my end of the bargain to the letter.

In June, the Rosh Yeshiva called upon me again and asked me what I had planned for next year. I informed him that I planned to go to a small local yeshiva (I didn't mention that I planned to go to college at night - I wasn't *that* dumb) that was recommended to me by someone who knew my family, and I mentioned the name of the Yeshiva and it's head. His response: "Why don't you go to a normal yeshiva next year?" I had no idea what he was talking about. True it was a small yeshiva - it wasn't a Chaim Berlin or Mirrer, but still it was pretty RW hashkafically. However, the school wasn't to his liking. He threatened me that if I didn't make plans to go to a "normal yeshiva" (with him defining the word "normal") that I would not graduate.

I was heart-broken - I nearly left the office in tears. I had kept my end of the bargain faithfully. I did everything that was asked of me - and yet I was going to be stuck in that school again for another year. It just wasn't fair! It would be one thing if he just held me back because of my absences - that would have been his right since I did play hookey. But he offered me a deal - and I kept my end of it! It wasn't right of him to use threaten the graduation I had earned.

My mother, upon hearing the news, called the RY and asked him to reconsider. How could he do this, she asked? What was she going to tell her son about frumkeit when he sees that a rabbi's word means nothing. How would she keep her son on the derech if he sees that honesty means nothing? His response to my mother was "I don't tell you how to cook rice, you don't tell me how to run a yeshiva."

As it turns out, my mother knows the wives of some influential rabbanim in the community and she called them and literally poured out her heart in sorrow to them and their husbands. All this, of course, happened behind my back, but wheels were set in motion; phone calls were made.

About two days later, the RY called me over and said "Wolf, who started this rumor that you're not graduating? Of course you are. In fact, I'd like you to speak by the graduation." I was stunned and speechless.

In the end, I graduated, and I spoke by the graduation. But the whole process left me scarred and contributed a great deal to the some of the skepticism and cynicism that I have today about the frum community.

It wasn't until next year that I found out what the problem with the new yeshiva was -- the RY of the new yeshiva (unbeknowst to me) used to be a rebbe at this high school and when he left, it wasn't on the best of terms.

So, that's my story. Someone in a position of authority tried to interfere with my choice of yeshiva after high school and used his considerable power to force me to attend a yeshiva of his choosing.

And, I fear, the same thing may happen here with my son. To be honest, it could be (and I'm hoping) that my fears are unfounded. Maybe this doesn't go on all the time and I just had someone who, for whatever reasons, felt that playing with my life was good. Maybe I just had one rotten apple and other Roshei Yeshiva and Menahels are not like that. I really have no idea whether the Menahael will torpedo our son's chances of going to a different school because he thinks it'll be better for him in a school of his choosing and of like hashkafah. It's something that I really am afaid of.

Or, it could be that based on my experience, I'm just being paranoid.

The Wolf

High School Regrets

Eeees and I have spent the last two weeks looking at various high schools. Our oldest is now in eighth grade and will be attending high school next year. We've already ruled out the yeshiva he's attending now for high school, so we've been looking at alternatives.

We're purposely steering away from the "black hat" type yeshiva that he currently attends. He's not terribly happy there and it's fairly clear that he's not cut out for learning ten hours a day. In addition to that, we want a place that will teach him to be able to learn on his own, and prepare him for both college and post-high-school yeshiva. I think that if he remains where he is now, he may be marginally prepared for the first two, but not for the third; I think he'll be "burnt out" on learning in that type of atmosphere. I have other reasons as well for steering him away from there... I'll get to those a little later.

And so we're looking elsewhere. We've seen three high schools in the New York area (sorry, PT, we're really not keen on sending him to Wisconsin) and have been favorably impressed with all three. They all stress learning, have different levels of shiurim to accomodate students that are stronger or weaker in learning, offer real secular studies classes, AP courses, electives and generous extracurricular activities. He's really liked what he's seen by two of the schools (we didn't bring him to the third, although we now regret that decision - we know him well enough to know that he'd love what he saw by the third school as well) and we'll probably be applying to all three.

In short, I'm hoping for him to have a vastly different high school experience than I had. My high school experience was... well... let's just say that it works for certain communities, but not for me. The high school I went to was very small - about 40-50 boys at any one time. Since it was so small, there was only one class per grade - there was no room to try to accomodate those who were weaker in learning - of whom I was one. I was usually left behind by the third daf in any given year. It was rare that anyone tried to help me out. Eventually, I just stopped trying.

The day was as follows:

7:30 Shacharis
8:15 Halacha seder
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Morning Seder (15 minute break in-between)
1:15 Mincha
1:30 Lunch
2:30 Second Seder
3:45 English
6:20 Dinner
7:00 Night Seder
9:15 Ma'ariv

English consisted of four subjects in ninth and tenth grades - Math, Science, Social Studies and English. In 11th grade, Science dropped out, extending the Second Seder to about 4:20. In 12th grade, there was no Math, and so Second Seder went to about 5:00.

Every other Sunday there was no English. Second Seder ended at 4:00 and if you had no Night Seder that night, you were done for the day.

If you had no Night Seder at night, your day was done at 6:20. 9th grade had Night Seder two nights a week, 10th grade had three nights, 11th grade had four and 12th grade had five nights - Sunday to Thursday.

There were no extracurricular activities, except one. On Lag B'Omer, we'd take a field trip to the park for a softball game or some such activity. The only other break in the routine was that once a month the Rosh Yeshiva would give a one-hour lecture on the sugya the Yeshiva was learning. Of course, the lecture was given in Yiddish - and I didn't understand a word of it. One time, the Rosh Yeshiva said to me after the lecture "Wolf, if you can tell me what I said in the lecture, I'll give you twenty dollars." I wanted to punch him in the nose.

But that was it - that was my high school experience for four long years. Long days, long learning hours, barely-there secular studies classes (it's a minor miracle that I made it into college), no help at all from the rabbeim who looked at me as largly a consumer of space and oxygen, and disdain from the administration. Any mention of anything that was out of their definition of the "torah world" was verbotten. The day after the Challenger shuttle exploded, I got in trouble for discussing the fact that I had seen news replays of it on television. My attempts to (secretly, of course) play Strat-O-Matic baseball were secretly taped by school spies, as I related in a previous post). I dared not bring in any book that I might have been reading at home.

Of course, one is entitled to ask why I spent four years at that school if it was so miserable. Well, there is an answer to that too. Without going into too many details, suffice it to say that my mother (who is disabled) was unable to work. My father (who isn't frum) didn't contribute anything toward my yeshiva education. The one thing that I give the administration of the yeshiva credit for was that they allowed me to remain there for six years (including two years of elementary school) pretty much for free. For that act of chesed, I can thank them, but not for much else.

In short, for four years, I barely learned anything and was miserable. In looking at the yeshivos over the last two weeks with my son, I could not help but feel extreme regret for my "misspent" youth. I can only imagine what I would have accomplished when I was younger if I was in an enviornment such as what these schools presented.

Don't get me wrong - an intense learning schedule such as the one above may be right for certain individuals - but it was wrong for me. The extremely long schedule*, the monotony, the attitudes of the teachers and the administration, the spying, the conniving and manipulation that went on nearly caused me to go off the derech altogether. That's something that I desparately want to avoid for my sons. I just wish I could have avoided it myself.

The Wolf

(N.B. - Just to be fair, I don't want anything to think that I was a completely not at fault in high school. I was certainly no angel - but I do place the fault of my experience largely on the yeshiva I went to).

* One time, the Rosh Yeshiva called everyone into the Bais HaMidrash and lectured us that there was too much battalah (time wasting, non-learning) going on in the Bais HaMedrash during learning time. "I don't understand it," he said. "You have a half hour for breakfast, an hour for lunch, forty minutes for dinner and fifteen minutes recess in the morning. Get all your battalah done then." After the lecture, a friend of mine turned to me and said "I'm surprised he didn't mention the ten hours between Ma'ariv and Shacharis"