Are there any yeshivos in Riverdale?

Yeshiva of the Telshe Alumni (a.k.a Telshe Riverdale), Yeshiva Ohavei Torah

Do not, under any circumstances, go to Yeshiva of the Telshe Alumni. Do not allow anyone you know to go there either.

jwashing – not harsh at all. I’m being caring and sympathetic.

for what reason are you saying this (Seriously i want to know)

I don’t know how much of this the mods will let through, but I learned there and it was an incredibly unhealthy place. There is immense pressure to conform in things like clothing, speech, mannerisms, even haircuts; there is crazy pressure to learn all day regardless of one’s mental/emotional ability to deal with it, the idea that the yeshiva and the rosh yeshiva are the center of the world and nothing and nobody outside of it are worth anything.

Some of the rebbeim are nice enough, though even the ones who are not hateful and manipulative are not really capable of helping the talmidim deal with the intense emotional trauma that everyone else is engaging in.

edited. If you can rewrite this in more general terms, without specifics, it can get posted.

Also, we had mice in the dorm all the time, and squirrels too. When we would complain about it, we were told that it was our fault because we had food in the dorm.

The answer to all problems was to forbid things. If the rosh yeshiva didn’t like someone’s shoes, the rebbeim would all disappear during first seder one day, and then that afternoon we’d hear that those shoes were now assur. The meetings were for more important things too, like when someone was caught smoking. One boy in my class was caught, and he was left hanging for weeks while the rebbeim had meeting after meeting in the rosh yeshiva’s office. As this went on, the entire yeshiva knew what was happening and rumors flew about the consequences. Finally, he was suspended for a week.

Of all the things that were discouraged, prosecuted or straightforwardly punished, perhaps the worst offense was having a personality that the yeshiva frowned upon. Regular offenses like smoking, staying up late, even adult magazines, they could deal with. But if you were not the kind of person who could just turn the other cheek to this sort of treatment, or even if you were a “shtickmacher” who pushed the lines a bit, then the most minor offenses would result in you getting kicked out for good. IIRC (this goes back some time…) a friend of mine was suspended for listening to the Yankees on someone else’s radio, while the owner of the radio was not punished. I’m not 100% if the reason was that the owner was wealthy or that he had no personality to speak of, but neither difference speaks well of the yeshiva.

As I type this out, I realize that it seems like the kinds of things that I would think must be embellished if I were hearing them from someone else. I assure you that they are not exaggerated at all.

If there is anything good to be said about the yeshiva, it’s that they do try hard to be super elite. The result is that each shiur has a few boys, sometimes as many as five or so who are truly special. On the downside, the really gifted ones mostly leave. If you come across someone who was in Telshe Riverdale for a couple years of high school, and left after 11th grade or so, odds are good he’s a special person – or was before his capabilities were beaten out of him.