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Matzav Inbox: My Letter to Sarah Schneirer – School Trauma
September 5, 2024
======================================Dear Sarah Schneirer,
I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I need your help.
Sarah, I need you to look at me. I was a frum chassidishe girl
who grew up in the system. I did everything right.I put my kids into a frum chassidishe system,
and look at the pain I carry with me.My daughter was all of twelve and a half years old
when she was already rejected from school.
I’m not going to go into detail about that — just the dry facts.Fast forward four years, and my next child, at sixteen,
was also rejected from her school. It’s one year later,
and now my fifteen-year-old is without a school
one week before the new year is supposed to start.Yay, there’s a school willing to take her, but it comes with a big price tag…
Sarah, did you know that one day, sending our girls
to frum schools would become a luxury for the rich?Did you ever imagine that the introduction to our interviews
wouldn’t be as you envisioned, with:“We are so happy to have you here! It’s a z’chus to have you with us!”
Instead, what we hear is, “These are the rules you need to follow
in order for us to even glance in your direction.”But these rules are made up by some twisted regime to quash our individuality.
It’s not halacha. It’s control! Who can outdo the other with rules and chumras
to suck out any bit of joy from these girls?
“How long is your ponytail?” or “Which shoes are you allowed to wear?”Is this what you fought all the great Torah giants of your time to achieve?
That I have to cry bitter tears year after year for someone to have pity
on my innocent girls and allow them to attend and learn in a school —
a frum school, no less? And then they say their goal is to instill
a true happiness in being a religious Jew and how beautiful Yiddishkeit is?
Where is this beauty? You’ve sucked it all out! Where’s the happiness you promised?
You’ve ripped it away from these well-meaning parents and girls!Sarah, do you see the anguish of so many girls
going off the derech because of the school system?Do you see fathers and mothers having heart attacks because they
can’t afford the exorbitant tuition fees, and their complete devastation
of going from school to school, being rejected and sent away?
Children as young as four and five are being turned away!Tell me, how can an innocent child of five already taste such harsh realities
and still believe that Yiddishkeit is beautiful and happy?
These schools tear them away.
They rip off their cloak of innocence and young joy.Sarah, do you see the suicide rates of our girls in pain
because they’re made to feel useless and unworthy?Do you also see the cruelty of the school administrations when
the money isn’t delivered in a timely manner?
The lengths they’ll go to shame and harass the children!
Making them leave the room to call home for money,
or handing out admission cards to everyone
except for one child, leaving them mortified in public.Is this what you wanted when you trudged through the frigid streets of Krakow,
trying to find the young women of your time to give them a true Jewish education?
Is this the cornerstone you set for our generation?Did you ever imagine that this would be the reality for the future mothers of Klal Yisroel?
I have news for you. We are headed for the complete annihilation of our nation
— not through Nazis or Communists, not through the Crusades or Bolsheviks,
but through our very own educators and school administrations.Sarah, you used to knock on doors to get girls to come to your school.
You knew that otherwise our nation was lost, our heritage gone.
Now we are the ones banging on doors. But we only think they’re doors.
In essence, they’re thick, heavy brick walls with no compassionate mother
to open them and welcome the girls with a warm embrace.
There are only cold people who crave power and control.
They savor the image of mothers and fathers prostrating themselves
at their feet, begging for mercy like slaves in chains:
“Please, please take my child into your holy mosad.”You would pay us to come to your school.
And look where we are now.
Sarah, you need to intervene. I’ve surrendered!
I may have a few girls home this year for lack of the finances needed
to send them to school. I will not take responsibility for the trauma
this may cause them. I have no means to support them or pay these fees.
I cannot beg anymore! I cannot fight for a culture and community
that has failed me and my family—as I’m sure it has failed many others.Sarah, you are my last hope. Take this information and do with it
whatever you see fit. I am bowing my head, but don’t say I didn’t try
every avenue out there for us. Now, I surrender it to the universe.[Sincerely]
A Mother in Pain[The letter writer can be reached at [email protected]]
======================================
NOTE: I did *** NOT *** write this!
It appeared recently on Matzav (dot) com, exactly as it is shown here.@ SR, you need to get a life and stop cutting and pasting random stuff that you find in the internet.
We keep hearing stories along these lines. Why not simply go to a school that actually wants you, even if the school is not the popular choice or even if it’s considered “less Frum”? If you consider the people running these elite mosdos as being money hungry and kavod seeking, why would you want your child to go anywhere near the place?
Any school acting in the way described in this letter has NO connection to TORAH or JUDAISM no matter how long their beard and Peyos are. Hashem in his kindness is sending you the clearest message to stay far away from these fakers. Look for a genuine Jewish school that follows the original and traditional Torah.
This “letter” makes no sense and is borderline incoherent. Any Bais Yaakov school has the right to set its own rules and admission criteria, presumably with guidance from the local daas torah supervising its operations. If the school rejects several of your kids, its presumably for reasons that relate to the hashkafah of the parents and the home. If they don’t want your kids, for whatever reasons, take you business elsewhere.
GUZMA alert:
We are headed for the complete annihilation of our nation
— not through Nazis or Communists, not through the Crusades or Bolsheviks,
but through our very own educators and school administrations.@Gadolhadorah
We’d like to think that you are correct. But unfortunately, this isn’t always the case especially for “in-town” schools. Its often the case that image and money play a role. Schools will often ignore the less “shtulzy” simple family even if just as ehrlich. Meanwhile they may have rules but if you have money they will take you even if you don’t follow the rules. This all being said, it seems like the letter writer’s daughter was in school already and got thrown out because pf rules. At that point its often because you don’t follow the rules. But even there sometimes schools are quick to accuse a child withoiut taking the proper caution to research.First, Ms Schneirer did not offer olam habo to anyone. She tried to help others the best way she could. Some rabonim, like Chofetz Chaim (*) and Beltzer Rebbe, favored her efforts, many others did not and made it not easy for her. Be realistic – she is not supervising BY brand min hashmayim, the way McDonalds Corp does with their franchise. So, a school claiming BY label is run by specific people the way they see fit, within certain limits. OOT BYs are different from in-town ones, for example. And what is “asur by gedolim” in one, would be OK in others.
So, the main lesson from Ms Schneirer is that educating girls is important. To clarify the problem she was solving: boys went to schools that were paid for by relatively affluent Yidden and poor ones got included. As there were no established schools for girls, rich Jews used tutors and poor ones were left ignoramas. So, maybe apply the same approach today. Find a small group of girl parents who can afford paying tuition and want companionship of several other girls and start your own classes. Find a kollel yungerman who will teach them chumash and Rashi, his wife to teach them davening and middos, enroll online to get English and Maths. This will not be a full-blown BY with entertainment, but you can always enhance it later, maybe apply for Jewish Federation grants to help you or find a Rav who will be willing to give high quality classes a couple of times a week. This is way better that sitting around, complaining about out-of-control school admins. Think what lessons you want your children to learn.
“there were no established schools for girls”
There were Jewish schools that educsted girls in Germany snd in America before Sara Schneirer was born. Unfortunately it took another two generations to turn things around in Eastern Europe and who knows many more it would have taken had it not been for Sara Schneirer.
modern, true, I neglected to say – talking about where Sara Schneirer lived. Chofetz Chaim wrote several letters addressed to women in general and women assemblies in 1920s Poland – he asked them to support kosher hedorim for their sons; he asked them to learn halochos niddah; and to read this halochos (that he summarized in 1-2 pages of the letter) to other women who are not fortunate enough to know how to read. In none of these letter I found him suggesting to teach those women alef-beis or to open schools for poor girls. As he obviously valued women literacy, maybe he saw no hope in calling for women’s school or thought that limited resources should be spent on boys. That resources were severely limited is demonstrated in his other letters where he asks Polish authorities to suspend sanitary regulation on mikvaos explaining that Jewish communities will not be able to afford having clean mikvas.
Did you fall on your head? In 1883 there was no Jewish education in America. There were no religious schools for Jewish girls anywhere!
Started in 1853, Samson Raphael Hirsch School was a Jewish Orthodox school in Frankfurt am Main . It was a secondary school for boys and a lyceum for girls of the Israelite Religious Society .
Mizrachi Yavne started in 1902 in Vilno, girls school was in Slobodka, Kovno; not sure of the founding year.
BY schools had 50,000 students in 1934 Poland. Seems like BY achieved mass attendance comparing with other smaller schools. that probably means poorer girls. But the idea of girl education was clearly there before. And note that better off people might have used private tutors.
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