Reply To: Bnos Yaakov newsletter

The head of Camp Sdei Chemed wrote another story in response to this letter – a story that shows the proper way to educate young girls, and make them WANT to keep mitzvos because they choose to, not because they’re scared:

This girl was one of the sweetest and well-behaved girls you can find and so of course all we could think about throughout the summer was why would she not have wanted to dress according to proper modesty guidelines. Something just didn’t seem right.

The riddle was explained on the last night of camp, when during the banquet the girls open their hearts and tell us the private journeys of their lives. This is understandably an emotional time, but her story left everyone teary eyed. It goes back to the time just after her bas mitzvah. During a summer break she got into a major accident where she almost lost her life. Happy to be alive, in the hospital she was told she might not have use of her legs anymore. As she sat in the hospital bed and visitors came by, she promised Hashem that she would do whatever He wants if he would give her the use of her legs again. That she would use them only for doing good things and nothing else. At this point you could just imagine how strange it was to us that it was this very girl who was unwilling to dress modestly. That’s because of what happened next.

She took back the promise that night and said she will once again put a long skirt on because she believed she has grown up and moved on. She said that this decision was the hardest one to make, but the new counselors and rabbis she met during the summer in Sdei Chemed showed her that there is another kind of Judaism that exists. One of love and kindness.