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WolfishMusings, I agree with Feif Un that any task one does for his/ her family–feeding, diapering, and bathing children; cleaning laundry; grocery shopping, cooking, & baking; driving carpools; general house maintenance; and earning income–are holy tasks if done with the intention of performing the chessed of supporting & raising a Torah family. It doesn’t matter if a man or woman is performing the task.
I think the reason the holiness of these tasks is emphasized more wrt women than men is because women don’t have the same mitzvah of limud torah as men do. Also, often women perform many of the repetitive, seemingly mundane tasks of family & household maintenance, so reinforcement of this concept is important.
I also agree with the point oomis1105 raised that women often help their children with their homework in Jewish & secular subjects. Certainly if I hadn’t received the wonderful education I had, my 9-year-old son’s mishnayos homework would’ve been incomplete on the four nights out of five that my husband worked late (no, I did not learn mishnayos in school, but learning chumash & navi with commentaries taught me what I needed to know to read the mishnayos text & commentaries). But that’s not the primary reason for girls to receive an education.
Feivel, great post. Wives are supposed to cook, bake and keep house for their husbands and children. Moshiach must be coming if women don’t understand this concept. I work and still cook dinner and shabbos because that is what women are supposed to do. (Yah, we eat late most nights.) BY should teach more useful classes. I learnt most halacha at home from asking my father and husband. When I attended college, I was far behind the other students. BY does not provide an intensive, good education in hebrew nor secular subjects.
hey i didnt manage to read the whole thread but ive read most and im really upset with what everyone is saying… i as a beis yaakov girl find is so important to learn torah and really delve into it…. the reason that we need that now in the 21st cent and not b4 is bc we have yeridat hadorot, if girls dont learn more, the jewish feeling will b left out at home…. from where i come from i know many ppl who didnt go through the ‘modern’ bj system and their house is devoide of the ‘torah air’. there is so much tuma in the world now that we have to give the equivilant amount of kedusha…. yes its imoportant that we learn things thatll b usefull at home and i agree that this is a great prob in the us, and something should b done about it, but if the mother doesnt have torah how could the children fulfill ‘al tishkach torat imecha’
now-days there is very little siadadishmaya of the mother, and a woman has to work for it…
yes i did learn home ec. at my school but that could b learnt from home, thats really the mothers job, and everyone who complains that the school doesnt teach their daughters to cook, should involve them in the kitchen themselves.
sara shneira’s vision was so that the girls would b able to have a torah’s education, not HOW TO B A GOOD COOK!
I’m tempted to jump in but…
Gaffligle, what goes into that education is broad general knowledge and skills, halacha and hashkafa to give the girls a bren to value the previous two.
Nowadays, not only are many mothers not in a position to teach, there are many home ec skills they don’t know. I’m grateful my kids got sewing, and even cooking, which I can do. Probably to use up elective hours or similar requirements by the state.
SJS, I can’t resist the temptation.
Gafflige, I hope when you get married you, you can afford to have your own personal chef. I come from a sephardic background where the Women all pride themselves on their cooking skills and their hospitality. Most of the grandmothers did not even know how to read, yet somehow most managed to raise orthodox families.
As far as kiruv is concerned, most families involved in kiruv realize that good cooking brings people back to Yiddishkeit along with teaching them Torah, they invite the non-observant to their homes for Shabbats and Yom Tov meals so they can experience these special times. But let your husband do the teaching and you do the cooking. When your children see how you treat your guests and you show them all the Chesed that you are doing, that is Torah in it’s self that you are teaching to your children.
Of course! What’s that statistic again? Oh! 75% of Baalei Teshuva are from
Matzoh ball Soup, the other 25% is from Hummus.
gaffligle: One thing they didn’t teach you was grammar. Can you at least make an attempt at it?
How do you know what Sarah Schenirer wanted? I doubt she wanted girls to spend hours memorizing meforshim on Nach, and agonizing over the fact that they might get under 90% on a test. She wanted girls to have a firm foundation in Yiddishkeit. Memorizing Navi won’t give that to them.
feif . then what are girls supposed to do in scoohl?? learn how to bake??hehe
Actually, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
But seriously, in girls’ schools they should be teaching hashkafah and halachos which are needed, such as kashrus. A woman should know basic hilchos kashrus so she can be sure of keeping a kosher kitchen.
And don’t forget Hilchos Shabbos! The more you know Hilchos Shabbos, the easier Shabbos is. How many times have I heard a parent say, “You can’t do that, it’s Shabbos,” when what the child was doing was either perfectly okay, or could have easily been okay if done with a shinui. Keep telling your kids they can’t do anything on Shabbos and how long do you think they will want to keep Shabbos.
If we want the girls to be good mothers, they need to learn Hilchos Shabbos.
I’m getting off my soapbox now.
first of all for your info mazal77 im also spharadi, and tg my mom has taught me to cook very well, ive had many compliments about my cooking…. thats besides the point.
oki feif un about gemmara, i tg have a really good relationship with my dad and bn able to learn some sugias in gamara with him, and i understand y girls shouldnt learn gammara, cos eventhough im able to think more like a boy and my rabbis tell me i souldve bn a boy and bn able to learn gamara women usually tend to get more emotional and cant figure out halacha in that way, and i know girls dont like the sound of that but its true…. about tanacha and that stuff, im sure you know how much mussar and hashkafa you can learn from every word, eventhough girls dont learn gamara they still wanna know where halachot are from and so on, it help have the right intention to do things…. how are we ment to have the right hashkova eitherwise? brainwashing? i know personally if i didnt learn with meforshim and learn things by heart it wouldve bn harder for me to learn where things are from and understand them properly, but thats a personal perspective….
anyway im not sayint that you shouldnt have home ec at skl, on the contrary i had lessons at skl but the main part of house hold lessons should b learnt at home, if a mother doest know its up to her to find a way to teach their daughters whats nb in the house, its up to the mother to b able to take what the girls learn in skl and teach them to incorperate it at home….
besides the fact that you all against the bj system but i dont think any yeshiva bocher would marry anyone less than a bj student, if the girl went to a basic hashkofa skl that taught etiquet and cooking only they wouldnt look once never mind twice, no matter how good her kesher to hashem, so deap down everyone knows the importance of the hectic sylebus of the bj system…
ps: Feif Un sorry i didnt realise you said grammar, when get heated up i sometimes mis read words… im sorry that im not perfect in grammar but thats not the skls fault its a personal fault.
gaffligle: Well, please make an effort to actually spell-check before you post. It’s in the rules page:
http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/rules-of-the-ywn-coffee-room-please-read
Please try to post in a language somewhat resembling English. Visit spellcheck.net if you need help. Mozilla Firefox browser also offers a spellcheck option. If your comment is not written in normal English, it will not be approved.
It’s very hard to make sense of your posts.
As for Yeshiva bochurim not wanting to date someone without a BY education, I think you’re wrong. The issue is that there aren’t many other schools out there with good reputations. If a new school started that didn’t call itself a BY, but had a good name, I’m sure guys would have no problem with girls from that school. Also, a school can teach more hashkafah and halacha and less Tanach and still call itself a BY. As far as I know, there is no official organization of Beis Yaakovs that would be able to stop someone from using that name.
One last point: I happen to be a Baal Teshuva. I come from a very frum family, went completely off the derech for a while, and found my way back. I can tell you from my own personal experience, the girls who rebelled the most, and who I used to hang out with, went to Beis Yaakovs. They would want to do everything secretly, so nobody would see them, but they rebelled more than girls from any other crowd. Maybe memorizing Tanach doesn’t give you as firm of a foundation as you’d like to think.
To Feif Un: there are fine girls’ schools that aren’t called Bais Yaakovs, e.g. Bruriah. I think BJ means Orthodox girls’ schools in general, and it’s quite reasonable to ask about the educational background.
tzippi: I’m well aware of that, and I have no problem with it. I was responding to gaffligle’s view that yeshiva guys would only date a BY girl. I happen to have a lot of issues with the BY system, and when I was dating, I actually preferred a girl who didn’t go to BY.
I agree with Mazal and Feif here. A bais yaakov shool and memorization of navi does not necesarilly give you right skills for raising a true torah home. A woman should have the right hashkafah and the right ideas in her mind. She should know in what direction she wants her family to grow in.
…temptation too strong 🙂
The Tanach classes I learnt the most in were more idea based then memorization. Our tests were more essay like (comparing situations in Tanach and discussing the miforshim) rather than things like “who said this?” IMHO, its the way Tanach should be taught. There is no need to memorize, but it is important to understand the flow, “story” line, juxtaposition, hidden meanings etc.
I think its important that women who want to maintain a high level of learning be given the skills to do so. In today’s day and age, I think for many women knowledge is key to keeping them observant.
Cooking and basic life skills should be taught at home.
I think it would be better to eliminate a lot of homework for coursework that doesn’t require it (math needs homework frequently, but other subjects do not). I would make it a policy to eliminate homework for Limudei Kodesh unless kids are not paying attention. I don’t know if this would work, but teachers could then spring pop quizzes on kids they don’t think are actually paying attention.
SJS, looking at my kids’ work, sometimes I wonder if today’s teachers know how to compose GOOD tests. Sure, there is the need to make sure there is a solid grasp of the material, but there should definitely be some thinking questions, requiring manipulation of the material.
There is NO Mekor for the curriculum taught in these schools. However it’s very difficult to have the girls feel accomplished by just learning cooking and Hashkofa (especially in this world we live in that home ec is looked at as extremely petty). and it would also be “a Shanda” that the only accomplishment they feel is from their english classes. so we need to teach them unneccesary things that they can study, do homework on(another thing with no mekor) and memorize so that when they get their “A” they will feel good about themselves. And what about the girls that cant get “A”s because they are not cut out for this(which is totally normal because thats not what they were created for and have no obligation) they feel like failures when they can be the best wife and mom. another example of our chinuch system sacrificing the average students for the top ones.
one last thing,
Memorize the Chofetz Chaim’s introduction to the Hilchos Shabbos in Mishne Brurah vol 3? who thinks up this stuff??!!
It seems to me that a lot of the discussion that went on here missed the main point.
While the exact curriculum that was in the Bais Yackov’s of Europe may be a matter of dispute the cause that gave rise to the dispute is not.
The Haskala was sweeping through Europe and the Bais Yackov system was founded to combat it which it unarguably did.
Nowadays though we face a growing trend of “at risk” and another of divorce and a lack of true sholom bayis, based upon this one must ask the question are the Bais Yackovs accomplishing their goals?
Ben Levi; No! I do not think Bais Yaakov’s are addressing the Shalom Bayis Issues.
I think maybe if the girls are Zoche to go to Seminary, then it they may have some training into what that entails, though not enough, but then again, other then some shmoozes in certaain Yeshivos, that is not mandatory, the Yeshiva boys are also lacking in the education of maintaining Shalom Bayis,
Proper classes in Chinuch Habonim V’habanos, isn’t either particularly addressed.
Shalom Bayis issues and the such should not even be mentioned in high school. These are a bunch of teenagers who have yet to grow up (rightfully so). Let them be kids.
i dont know if this is specifically a BY problem but from comments made by female relatives of mine and things ive read, it seems the plan in girls school to keep the girls on the strait and narrow is to drown them in homework so that they never have a free second to do s/t wrong .
my friend told me his sister had to do s/t ridiculous like go thro the whole breishes and note every time the ramban mentioned someones name.
it also seems that any actual intelligence is not tolerated, bec any question asked that indicates a girl isnt at the highest level of emunah and bitochon at the ripe old age of 15, elicits a reprimand. (could it be that the teacher feels challenged bec she doesnt know the answer)
anecdotally, i was walking with my sister in the street, (sorry to all the tznius police) she saw her teacher coming and hid behind me, how sad is that. as a guy the rebbeim are always trying to have a kesher with the guys (having an oneg or just being friendly) that is the most important part of chinuch in my opinion. the best affect a teacher has on students is thro a relationship that the students feel the teacher loves them and cares about them.
(Mrs. Telegrok here): My mother went to public school back in the days when there was no such thing as a B.Y. in America outside of major cities. She learned halacha and TaNaCh from her father and congregational rabbi, and enjoyed a strong and rigorous secular program in public school. Which, by the way in those days, included mandatory Home Economics classes for the female students, which included courses in household budgeting, rudimentary sewing (for mending garments, including stockings), cooking, and baking – there was a complete kitchen in the school, and they took field trips to supermarkets to learn how to select produce.
Balanced
I know what you mean when you say that the girls want to hide from their teachers out of school. I have seen the affects of girls having so much resentment towards the teachers and school that once they graduate they completely rebel.
mybat thanks for the feedback. isnt that sad when the main purpose of chinuch is to equip ppl with the love for judiasm so that when they finally have choices they will make the right ones.
Balanced it is really very sad. I just hope Hashem should guide our children on the right way.
hehehe tell your wife her place is in the kitchen and see how long it takes before she hits you in the face with a golf club…lol anyway, while housekeeping skills are important, so is a strong knowledge of tanach. think about…a mother is the main teacher of a child until they get into about third grade…
as my friend likes to say
you make the BY girls work extra hard in high school to make up for after they are finished with high school and go off to get married while all their peers are in college getting training for jobs in real life ( and no graduating,going to sem, then returning to your school to teach pre 1A is not a job in real life)
All education is important (in the right setting)
no,gabby-
girls should have no education at all other then dealing with the household.
EDITED
Maybe the higher level learning is Bais Yakovs can be a bit much for the average student but I garauntee you, the smarter and more gifted girls would not survive in an understimulating environment. Gone are the days where a girl is born and bred in the kitchen. Like it or not, we live in an open world. We don’t want them to go elsewhere.
And many of these gifted girls are future “influencers” for Jewish women. Trust me, they’d be gone if Bais Yakov’s were only teaching how to sew and bake. Besides, Hashem runs the world, not goyim. If there is a differnt trend, universally, that women’s lives today are differnet – it is obviously part of Hashem’s plan.
EDITED
Brucklyn Jewess, you say that, yet Chareidi Jews refuse to accept most changes. They encourage women to learn, and force it in the Beis Yaakov system, yet when Avi Weiss makes a woman into a Rabbah, they all go crazy. If a woman can’t be a posek (and I don’t think they should be!), why make them memorize Tanach? Let them learn the skills that they need in life. They have no mitzvah of talmud Torah, and they won’t need it after graduating, so why teach it to them? Why not teach halacha, hashkafah, and other things that will do them some good over the rest of their lives?
Feif, without substance (AKA learning from the source) most people wouldn’t take it as is. We already have a societal problem in transmitting chumra as halacha, and learning things inside helps negate that effect. Without education for women (and a real solid understanding of how to learn), you will not keep most of the intelligent women as Orthodox Jews.
SJSinNYC, Beis Yaakovs today are taught most chumros as halachos, and aren’t taught anything to negate it. Their learning inside doesn’t help it. If they learned halachah inside, instead of memorizing Tanach, maybe it would help.
Feif, but as long as you give women the tools they need to seek out information for themselves, they can start to branch out of their own sect within Orthodoxy. They can say “Hmm, chassidus doesn’t make so much sense to me. Let me learn about the Litvish path.” etc etc
No amount of education will stop people who just want to be free from going off the derech. But the education will help those who are struggling with the “who, what, where, when and why” questions. Not everyone just wants to hear “this is how we do it” – many people want to learn where it comes from, why it evolved the way it did and have true meaning to it.
Minhug k’halacha.
Volvie, there is a difference between MINHAG and CHUMRA. And, there are ways to negate your minhag and pick up others. Its generally not done, but its possible.
Re: Plays
Hi, I’m sort of starting another issue about BYs. Does anyone have any idea why some BYs put on plays, and why the plays are considered such major productions? Shouldn’t the girls be spending their time learning Torah, or household skills, or how to make a living, or getting healthy exercise?
Aren’t plays from the goyim? What’s the hashkafa here? We should tell our girls watching movies aren’t for them, but its okay to spend countless hours on producing and acting in plays? Anyone get it?
Plays give the students a sense of accomplishment and responsibility as well. Of course its important for girls to be learning but students need a break from their studying sometimes. I remember when i was in high school we were responsible for any tests and homework that came up during rehearsals and the actual play itself- it was still a priority. I think it was a great outlet for us to let our talents shine!
Many schools are set up in a way where academics is put on a pedestal, a play gives someone who isn’t a 100 student a chance to make a name for herself. I remember a certain teacher telling us that one year the play director gave someone a pretty big part and that completely changed the girl for the rest of high school. There is a tremendous amount of talent in the frum community that would go to waste if there was no kosher entertainment. Think of how many people have a parnassa from this. And how many schools raise money from productions they wouldn’t be able to raise otherwise.
Gavra-at-work, your comment from 2 years ago about not asking Gedolim shailos is absolutely ridiculous. There are here to teach Klal Yisroel. And not just so that we be in awe of them, and yungeleit being afraid to ask them questions on Tosfos.
MDD:
Depends on the type of shaila, as I said there.
You would not ask Rav Elyashiv about your pot if you saw him, not without asking your own Rov furst. You would probably ask for a bracha.
But hey, if you would rather ask about your pot, and waste the opportunity, when you could have asked your own Rov (since the answer is Pashut) Kol Hakavod. When you win the Lotto, I’ll buy your ticket for $5.
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