Why are they making us into boys?

Whats a high school girl doing up at 2:15 am?

It’s to prepare you for the rest of your life as boys… you know, getting a good education, including a masters degree, so you can support your family… working 8-12 hour days just to make ends meet… training your mind to be analytical so you can understand the insurance policies, mortgage documents, and retirement/bank accounts your tzaddik won’t have a clue about…

It is the Torah that God gave to his Chosen People. Isn’t it wonderful to study and know as much as possible of it?

blabla, why dont you go ask you pricipal? she prob wont have an answer for you… when i was in high school my parents came down to speak to my principal how ridiculous my teacher was being- she was nearly teaching us gemara… and guess what?? she didnt have an answer for them! go figure;) she just said ‘her hands are tied and there is nothing she cld do abt it’!!

There is another thread on this topic, see

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/girls-learning-gemorah

There are hundreds more practical subjects girls should be learning instead of Abarbenels, Ramba”ns, and Kli Yokors.

Rav Sternbuch writes in Halachos V’Hanghogos, that if there is only one choice between opening a Kodesh school for girls or a kodesh school for boys, the girls Kodesh school takes precedence nowadays.

The reason is that the street influence has become more immoral,since World war 1 (which Chofetz chaim said the world fell tons of Madreigo’s after), and ‘sechof’ (garbage) of foreign ideals which penetrate into the Jewish homes, women like Sarah Schneerer, it is known all the opposition to her movement, faded after World war 2, and a Rabbi i hear Shiurim from said, if you are going to Poland make sure to visit her Kevurah, she is responsible for tens and thousands of Bnei and Bat Torah and many more for eternity.

Although Chofetz Chaim himself said women should only learn (many types of ) mussar sefarim (which is based on a Rishon that says this), i suppose the street influence has become worse, and top Gedolim have given Haskomas to organisations like Or Navva which teach women many types of Torah.

Hi blabla.

You make a great point in that what you have to do now requires some study skill background

that girls are not necessarily taught.

Just try to do your best. The best way to learn something, long term, is to do the footwork

yourself.

Popa: I think she has a valid point. After all, we are not supposed to solicit geirim!

She’s complaining that she is a girl and we are trying to turn her into a boy. But if women are not Jewish, aren’t we then trying to convert them?

I am with you all the way! I hated it when I went through the system and my (very learned) father disapproved of many aspects including A) girls should not be opening gemaras, B) Torah She B’Chsave should NOT be memorized for the sake of memorization eg kapitlach Tehilim which you will NOT remember the day after the test (despite the holy rebbetzin’s claims).

Our girls are being tortured. Do they need something to fill their time and minds with? Yes. But the amount of pressure and piles of mifarshim that they are taught go way beyond that. The top 5% can handle the workload? Fine – let them take the time they are spending looking up gemaras and mishnayos and spend it helping a weaker classmate master the basic chumash and rashi. That will give her what to do, and challenge her in more, and useful, ways. Fore example, getting along with those they wouldn’t choose to, teaching (or even only homework help!) skills, patience, perseverance, tolerance.

Kudos and Hatzlacha to anyone who has the gumption to open up a girls high school where the girls actually ENJOY learning and don’t spend three hours a night after a long school day on homework. They’re KIDS!!!

Maybe it’s just me but I never minded learning Meforshim like the Kli Yakar, Malbim, Ramban… I found it made class more interesting. I hated it at the beginning because it was really hard but then i grew into it.

Who says the Torah is exclusively for men? Why should they be the only ones who know how to open up a Ramban and understand it? It’s YOUR Torah too, don’t you want to be able to learn it??

I’m not saying that in my spare time I open up a sefer and learn but I do realize now that it’s important for girls to learn. I hope that you can grow to enjoy the different meforshim and really gain from them.

All the best.

“It’s to prepare you for the rest of your life as boys… you know, getting a good education, including a masters degree, so you can support your family… working 8-12 hour days just to make ends meet… training your mind to be analytical so you can understand the insurance policies, mortgage documents, and retirement/bank accounts your tzaddik won’t have a clue about…”

the best post!!!

Girl schools by nature our competitive, they need to compete with each other so the level of learning keeps going up. Never mind the fact that most students dont realy look things up themselves. (I used to do my sisters limudei kodesh homework all the time, her teacher had no problem with it as long the homework was handed in on time…)

Knowledge as a whole is supposed to be unisex (accessible to both genders). Leave it to us Jews to mess up that concept too….

Who says the Torah is exclusively for men? Why should they be the only ones who know how to open up a Ramban and understand it? It’s YOUR Torah too, don’t you want to be able to learn it??

That’s interesting, but the fact is that the mitzva of limmud torah, which is the mitzva to learn and study torah just to understand it, is a mitzva that only applies to men. And all those chazal and mosholim about the king’s letter to the people and reading it, and whatever, are only addressed to men.

If you want to do something intellectual, why don’t you do something useful like applied mathematics? I know a whole crew of frum french guys getting Phd’s in that.

I once asked a poseik about this, as it looks like all seminaries and girls’ schools are coming around to Rav Soloveitchik and against the poskim.

popa- Fine, take the mitzvah. I’m doing it Lishma. (and I prob. get sechar too. It’s just a commandment for men cuz they need the whole requiring thing to actually do it. Unlike… oh right, women.)

Note: that last part was in a mocking tone too

I was under the impression that we do have a chiyuv to learn in order to be able to fulfil what we were metzuveh in. Considering that the 6 mitzvos temidios are for all yidden, then we do have a pretty big chiyuv to learn even if it’s just to understand better the mitzvah of H-Shem Echod. I’m not talking about learning gemara or the pressures girls are under to learn so much in school, but stam a woman opening a sefer, even if it’s chumash with meforshim seems a pretty basic skill that all women should be able to feel competent in. We don’t need to go back to only learning from the Tzene U’rene (sp?).

personally, i loved looking things up in sefarim! granted, i did find it hard many times but i really feel i learned a lot from it.

Nechama, I’d like to respond to that.

I was under the impression that we do have a chiyuv to learn in order to be able to fulfil what we were metzuveh in.

That is the case. The reason is in order that you be able to fulfill.

Considering that the 6 mitzvos temidios are for all yidden, then we do have a pretty big chiyuv to learn even if it’s just to understand better the mitzvah of H-Shem Echod.

Ok, that is a big jump. You are saying that one needs to understand Torah in order to understand Hashem’s oneness. I would respond two things:

A. Where do you get that from?

B. Look, it must be wrong, because our parents and grandparents didn’t do it that way. So whatever the theory we need to answer it, the answer isn’t that Nechama in 2011 thought of a great new svara which reworks our entire theory of women’s avodas Hashem.

I’m not talking about learning gemara or the pressures girls are under to learn so much in school, but stam a woman opening a sefer, even if it’s chumash with meforshim seems a pretty basic skill that all women should be able to feel competent in.

That is not the same as you were arguing. Having the skills you refer to certainly is unconnected to understanding Hashem.

We don’t need to go back to only learning from the Tzene U’rene

Why not? It was good enough for mine bubbe. It is true that my bubbe lived in an unheated shack with an outhouse and owned only one dress. But, I don’t assume that her judaism was backward.

skiaddict:

I agree, the world has changed quite a bit. And I do support girls schools teaching girls basic chumash and navi skills, so some extent.

I was responding to nechama, who seemed to think that this is the real way it is supposed to be.