14 Responses

1. The writer bemoans the new system as leaving kids behind. Duh. That’s nothing new. Not a sour grapes comment, just realism. Yeshivos have been doing precisely this for 2 generations. The exceptions are a limited few yeshivos that devote themselves to providing the talmidim the tools to succeed. This might not be those that complete Shas or are otherwise exemplary. Just placing the hatzlocho of the talmid before everything else, such as finances, the image of the yeshiva, the popularity, etc. Real chinuch was not about the institution, the Roshei Hayeshiva, the $bottom line. It was only about the talmid. Creating “Gedolim” was never the mission, and was accomplished more often. I recognize the chaos in the farher – admission system. It matters little how this gets resolved. The real problem is in the mission of the yeshivos. Until that gets revisited, we will be just changing the colors of the chaos without reducing it.

2. I wonder why all these problems always come from Lakewood

3. I can’t figure this writer out. Irony? Inconsistency? Hypocrisy? Immaturity?

   First, the assessment is that the boys are calling their own future:

   ” In practice, it has created a rigid, one-sided system that places the full weight of risk on thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys while insulating institutions from accountability.”

   But after burdening the hypothetical bochur with the wrong outcome, the mosdos are the ones making the call for them:

   “The system centralizes power in the hands of mosdos and removes meaningful agency from bochurim.”

   Make up your mind! which one is it? Does the new system require the boys to call their own future, or is still largely in the hands of adults?

   I don’t know what is actually going on, but this letter seems to be incoherent (AI?) and seems to have been intentionally placed in the wrong venue. I was very independent at that age and still had very little input into which mesivta I applied to.

   So I will ignore the build up in the letter and assume that the second part of the letter is closer to the reality: the burden of acceptance and rejection still falls upon the mosdos; both yeshiva ketanos and mesivtos.

   The mosdos will continue to sort out the remaining issues until every (hopefully!) bachur finds a suitable place.

   When Elul comes around again, everyone can put their efforts to their son’s and talmidimim growing in Torah (Is this still a thing? It was slipping away in my days.) and nothing else.

4. I would like to understand the Lakewood system but it is difficult to understand from this letter what the system is and why it does not work. I would appreciate if someone could translate how the system was in the past and what changed.

   If a boy applies to 3 mesivtos will he likely get a faher in all three? When are mesivtos required to respond to applications? Is it unified or does every Mesivta do its own thing? Are mesivtos not responding to applicants?

   It is a horrible thing for a boy (or girl) to feel left behind and not have an option for high school. It surely does not help if Lakewood is on a totally different schedule than the rest of the high schools in the US.

5. Lots of fancy phrases and catchwords. And loads of hype.

   Lets hear actual facts and figures. How many boys took farhers this past week. How many were accepted and accepted their acceptance. How many refused their acceptance because they wanted somewhere better, And how many boys were stuck completely unaccepted. What percent of boys did the new system work well for? For what percent did it not work well?

   No system is perfect. There will always be some cracks. The question is how large is the crack. The OP doesn’t say.

6. Might be time for the people in Lakewood to start looking out of town for their boys to go to if they can. Obviously it’s difficult for a 13 or 14-year-old to go out of town but there are many other places where they can go. Even if they stayed in New Jersey, Carteret and Englewood come into mind. If they can get into one of the five locations in Passaic / Clifton that’s an option as well. I’m sure there are more than I’m not thinking of but that’s a start. You don’t have to put up with Lakewood if they don’t want to put up with you just so you could say oh I’m a kid in Lakewood.

7. This year my fifth son applied to Mesivta. I found the process the smoothest this year.

   Perhaps there are issues that need to be resolved. However I believe there was a marked improvement over previous years.

8. Top US colleges were found by court to illegally colluding when they were coordinating tuition discount offers to students “making admission more orderly”. Maybe, the system that require students to disclose full information is also not kosher? Let schools compete for best students. At the end, the goal is teaching students, not comfort and convenience of the teachers.

9. “ A system that requires families to accept permanent consequences for temporary uncertainty is not responsible. It is reckless.” love this.

10. As a parent of an 8th grader I actually thought it was super smooth this year.

    The communication and partnership between the rebbeim was remarkable. We had a few weeks to research where we would like to go and what our first choice was. If our sons rebbi didn’t think it was suitable he told us parents so.

    Once the farher took place, in our case it didn’t go great. However the rebbi and Mesifta menahel were in touch throughout the day.

    They realized together that my son was just struck with fear. That communication was key.

    We discussed option b and our menahel said he can hop on a call with the Mesifta menahel if needed at any moment to arrange a farher. Our first choice did take us and we look forward to a beautiful Mesifta experience.

    Overall I would rate this process as phenomenal. It was all done in one day.

    In my sons particular yeshiva the menahel announced that BH all 3 classes every boy is placed. I am sure not every single person is happy but the overwhelming majority that I spoke to were thrilled.

    My son didn’t want to go to top tier yeshiva. He was looking and we were looking for the right place for him and BH that worked out.

11. I agree with the letter writer (though I would not have written on this site as many readers are not in Lakewood and don’t understand the system). The system is completely broken and unfair to the boys. As the mother of a number of boys I can say that while the system did not “crash” like last year it was extremely hard on the boys! It was definitely better a number of years ago when the Mesivtas did not ask if their Yeshiva is the boy’s first choice. Farhers were given over a few days and they did not give answers on the spot, they waited until the next day.
    The way things are now put tremendous pressure on everyone! Why should the Mesivtas decide before they meet the boy whether they want to accept him or not? Why should we have to tell them what our first choice is? So many things are wrong with this system but what bothers me is that no one thinks of our precious sons. It is extremely unfair to them. I don’t understand why the Menahalim of the chadarim can’t get together and demand that the system changed dramatically to protect our boys! Even going back to the way things were 8-10 years ago would be better.

    To those who don’t live in Lakewood, the system is complex. Before commenting, first find out the facts from “someone on the ground”. Most of us who live in Lakewood choose to do so because it is a wonderful place to live. Living in the largest frum community outside of EY definitely has its flaws but overall the benefits outweigh those flaws. In my experience, those who bash Lakewood usually just feel left out…

    @rebEmes – when there are so many like minded people living in a city there is going to be peer pressure but it is definitely worth living here. Come join us! I’m pretty sure you will like it here.

12. Leave Lakewood and do the mitzva of living in Israel. Much better schools, much wider variety of choices for families for their childrens education and tuition maybe 10% of what it costs in the US.

    Torah MTzion not MLakewood

13. I experienced an equally disturbing scenario with girl’s high schools in Yerushalayim. It feels like the schools’ goal has become promoting the success of the their institution, as opposed to the success of each student’s chinuch and growth.
    Life felt simpler 35 years ago, when we went to high school (in America). Most of the neighborhood girls went to the neighborhood Bais Yaakov high school, regardless of scholastic prowess. Nowadays it appears that the schools want to establish and/or maintain their reputation of being a “top” school, and that can only occur if they accept students who have been graced by Hashem with superior intellectual abilities. The rest of the students are being relegated to “second rate” schools, whether in quality of religious observance or overall level.
    The current situation is that a girl’s academic success at age 11-12 are the determining factor in her choice of schools, which will direct the trajectory of her future life.
    Something needs to change…
    We need to have many schools, and all of them to accept girls of all scholastic levels. We should not promote dividing up our girls into top and bottom tiers, based on their scholastic performance in 6th grade. This is not college, this is a frum educational system for the building and growth of the future mothers of klal yisrael.

14. @Rocky,
    I’ll explain a little.
    Firstly though, to the nasty commentors here (not you rocky), you guys are either ostriches with their head in the sand, or just angry at no one.
    You know very well why the system is BROKEN and bad, which causes so many to fall away r”l. @The little I know, touched on this a bit.

    To you @Rocky: In short, the system currently in place was not built as a long term system, it was built after the war, to rebuild Klal Yisrael, which was in shambles, and each Kehilla had their own system, the Chassidish Kehillot were based around the Chassidus or Kehilla setup, so their Yeshivot revolved around that, but the Litvish world, which, depending on which part of Europe you look at- took the biggest hit, both from the reform/bundists/zionists etc etc before the war, and the nazi’s during the war, which caused them to be more or less decimated afterwards.

    In the urgency to rebuild afterwards, a hasty system was built that served to get Bachurim to concentrate on learning, learning and learning, and ignore other matters which were “trivial”, like mental and emotional health (see the apostrophes).

    Therefore, in the generation growing up with parent survivors, they were detached from their parents, and the underlying and sub-conscious mental/emotional love and health they would receive from their parents usually was non existent, as their parents were dealing with their own crises, nightmares etc all due to the war toll on them.

    These children, lacking in not chinuch, but what I call the silent chinuch, the mental and emotional tools a child gets from viewing and living with their parents was many times non existent due to this, think of it like growing up in a dysfunctional home (to no ones fault other than the nazi’s ym”sh obviously, these are just the facts).

    This then carried on into the next generation, and the next finding us where we are.

    Here we have a system, which is built on trying to educate every talmid that they should strive to be the next Gadol, which is extremely bad and unhealthy, as those that will be don’t need the “encouragement” they have been destined to be and will be regardless, and those that not, you are just setting them up for “failure”, where they feel like they didn’t succeed because they don’t learn 15 hours a day or whatever. Not everyone is built to be that. Imagine if every single male was a “chashuve Rosh Yeshiva/dayan” and female a Rabbanit, who are the talmidim??

    And from the talmidim/talidot side of things, here you have so many of them growing up 2 or 3 generations down the line from the gap in the “sub-conscious” chinuch I mentioned, and don’t have these basic skills, and instead they are pushing to sit and learn all day, imagining this would remove all problems.

    It would be true had this been done in the right way, at the end of the day, Torah is reffered to a tavlin, literally meaning a remedy. However, if the tools how to understand and use it as such are not provided, and instead the talimd just told that all that matters is his above 90% farher, hard-to-get-into Yeshiva to secure a good shidduch, the whole system had become astoundingly megusham, revolving around money, popularity and materialised success, rather than an ‘option’ that will help the boy build his spiritual side (Torah, Avodah, Gemilut Chassadim, Midot etc), PREPARING him for the outside world, whether he’ll sit and learn all day or work.

    Now we have a mix of boys that are not wanting to go to Yeshiva, but have to in order not to be looked at as a dropout (and ask why don’t they want to?), or they can’t be bothered to fight the system knowing they will loose, and just hodge podge their way through it, hoping they won’t come out the other side fully burnt out and crispy.

    As others have said, it’s time things are changed, no not to close Yeshivot, not to even change how much they learn or what they learn, but how they operate, how they deal and help Bachurim, what their attitude to Bachurim is etc.

    Here in London, even though things are on a much smaller scale, the issue is still current. About 2-3 years ago, things erupted when a certain well known big Yeshiva in London decided from one day to the next they would throw out tens of their Bachurim as they wanted to make a 2cleanup” (sick).

    I personally know some of these boys, they were active, but in no way rebellious or bad.
    Either way, it didn’t take long, and their yiddishkeit started swaying, after the whole town was talking about them being thrown out- lets say this, I hope they all keep Shabbat now.

    Some serious men, seeing the issue and the catastrophe that would follow, got together and set up a good few new Yeshivot, which have been very successful in branding themselves as a strong and well respected Yeshiva that the ‘regular’ not next-Gadol-in-line bachur can feel comfortable and build himself. And boy have they been successful.
    The letter was TOTALLY justified, now for the remedy……