-Mods it doesn’t allow me to edit my original post. Please post this instead.-
This is part of a letter I just sent to my high school principal.
The school does try to teach a lot of hashkafa. However there was in my day a big discrepancy between torah and hashkafa. The reality is that torah and hashkafa are the same; torah essentially IS hashkafa, hashkafa Is Torah. One is not better than the other because they are one and the same. However it comes across that there is one or the other. If something is Torah, it is not hashkafic and if something is hashkafa then although it is Judaic, it is not actually Torah. One thing the school can do is when the Chumash class gets sidetracked and most of the period turns into hashkafa, the teacher should not complain that they didn’t ‘cover enough ground’. Such a response teaches the students that it is not ideal that the Torah should feel too personal nor that it should have too much relevance to their lives. I remember leaving such classes thinking that Torah is just a text and, not only that it didn’t but that it actually shouldn’t be something I could connect to on a personal level. When I left bais yaakov I decided that the Torah is entirely outdated and had no relevance to my life. Seminary thank God changed that for me. If I hadn’t gone to my seminary (not bais yaakov by any stretch) and had my amazing Chumash teacher, I would likely not be observant. This teacher made the Torah so down to earth that I felt like the Torah was written this year, for me specifically.
Another thing they can do is widen their hashkafot. (To be clear i dont mean that they should lessen their standards; they should be very firm on their standards.) For example the school is litvish and when they mentioned hashkafa that was more in line with chassidus it was told over in a way that implied strongly ‘this is not us’. Although they would say the words ‘it is okay if you are not cookie cutter’ when they are teaching in such a judgmental fashion that if your hashkafa is a little different then ‘you are no longer one of us’ it sends the message that if I can’t connect with Judaism in the same way as my teachers, for the rest of my life I either have to fake it or be ostracized. I personally connect more with chassidus but I hadn’t known there was an option. The way I was taught it seemed that in order to connect to Hashem through the teachings of the Baal Shem and others, I would have to dress different and declare that I am not part of the community. However a teenager who has the courage to make such steps to leave the community and is going to be ridiculed may as well leave the community for other venues, not such holy ones. They should allow the girls to discover that there are many routes to serve God and that dress is just dress. The heart is what counts and whether you connect through the kuzari, arizal, rav hirsh, rav elyashiv or, dare I say the Baal hatanya or rabi nachman, it is all torah and all their derachim are acceptable if they bring you closer to hashem. They should allow the students to discover that there are many acceptable hashkafas as long as it is line with Halacha.