aishes chover and godolhadorah:
Both of your comments give yeshivos a pass for being brutal to talmidim. I wish to set a few things straight, as priorities that should exist in chinuch.
AC: You posited that the issue of denying admission was based on matters of kedusha, not elitist attitude or shirt color. My simple reaction – I wish that were true. Sadly, it is certainly not true. One case I know involved a school trying to reject a student because the father was seen with a blue shirt. He happens to work in construction, and this was a working uniform. He never appeared in shul without appropriate dress. It took intense lobbying effort to get the school to accept a perfectly normal student from a normal family. Does any yeshiva administrator truly know anything at all about someone’s kedusha? I know way too many cases in which clergy have been playing around where no one should go, yet their children are universally accepted, and get great, newsworthy shidduchim. There is quite a bit of conceit in believing that we can estimate the level of kedusha anytime, anywhere, anyone. The reality is that the bigotry is thriving. It goes under different labels, which sound appealing to the frum ear, but are actually bluff. Length of shaitel? Really?
gadolhadorah: You wrote, “Yeshivos are a business in a highly competitive market and must operate to at least break even and earn a profit. They cannot afford to antagonize their customer base any more so than other businesses absent some fundamental issue of ethics or borderline illegality. If this girl was mamash admitted without the proper vetting to the yeshiva’s standards or would have resulted in conflict and brogias with the school’s existing student base and families, they were within their rights to reverse an admissions decision. ”
If you listen to the rhetoric that gets repeated by the administrators and leaders at the annual fundraiser events, you will hear the wonderful accolades about how this yeshiva is so successful at providing a desperately needed service to the tzibbur, and how dedicated they are to the youth of Klal Yisroel. That is a shameful lie, and they know it. Your characterization of yeshivos is painfully true. They are competitors in a marketplace, and want to everything conceivable to make their name and image second to none. That is the elitist attitude that gives special dispensation to wealth and political clout. You referenced their “customer base”, which consists only of existing parents, but excludes the rest of Klal Yisroel. Your description gave all the power to the parents and their opinions as the real customers, without a trace of the dedication to the children. The children are only incidentals. Can anyone believe that this concept even exists as a passing thought? Well, it is not just a passing thought, but one that has become the unwritten mission statement. One that defies every statement by Gedolei Yisroel about chinuch. The video clip of Rav Shteinman shlit”a is very telling, and only a single example of what many have been saying for generations. But it barely exists in Klal Yisroel today, and this is a source of great shame to us all.
Some of these “Yaffas” have gone on to become great, going against the odds, and pouring their pain into the fuel tanks of motivation. Others went to forms of anesthesia, drowning their pain in drugs, street life, the fantasy (and its inherent dangers) of the internet. Yes, some died of suicide and overdose. Those who survived physically may have perished emotionally and spiritually. But this blood was spilled, and was murder, not real suicide.
You nailed the situation quite well, and you should be commended for it. Yeshivos are a business in a competitive environment. But should this be true? I believe that Torah should be available to all, and that chinuch should be, as the Chazon Ish ZT”L proclaimed, geared to the yochid, no longer the tzibbur. Are the yeshivos doing a public service?