brooklyng

I am already 5 years out of a seminary in brooklyn. Almost ALL my friends went to Israel. Out of a class of about 100 girls maybe 10-15 stayed and I’m being liberal. For the girls in my class who went to Israel (about 90 girls) there were no radical frumkeit adjustments. If you were really frum to begin with and you went to a really frum school, you stayed that way and if they would have stayed in Brooklyn and gone to a really frum school here they would have turned out the same. And the girls who didn’t care and went to one of the “camp” type seminaries in Israel had a great time, again no change. So no point in going to Israel the serious girls stayed serious and the girls who want to have a good time just spent 20-25k on a wonderful Israel vacation that lasted a year.

My experience in a Brooklyn seminary is that there is almost little or no point in going. They have a lot of text based classes (2 chumashim, 2 nivim, halacha…) Most of the teachers were high school teachers and frankly they weren’t as good as the ones I had in 12th grade. At a time when I was supposed to be done with HS and entering adulthood the seminary treated us like we were in 9th grade again, and it was more than obvious that most of the girls were there just for shidduch purposes. I found that the shiurim I went to at night on my own time were much more interesting and growth inspiring than what we were learning in sem.

All in all I’m against seminary all together. Not that it can’t be a good thing, but most sems in brooklyn aren’t up to par and most of the girls going there are also working and in college and just don’t care about it enough for it to be worth the money it costs.

Now married with a baby, I don’t see how my friends who went to Israel were more prepared than I was to handle “real life.” If anything I went to college and got my degree much faster. I had to juggle work school and sem which teaches you more about real life than any year in Israel could.