A Tribute to our Girls - Part II

The following anonymous comment was received regarding the recent post on A Tribute to our Girls:

"I think that its beautiful so many girls have chosen to further their studies in Torah, and not just in secular studies.
But it tears me apart when so many brilliant minds get themselves into the Ashkenazi (i love all Jews) seminaries, where so much of the philosophy and halachot are different in addition to the depth of learning. I personally know many who are not inspired by most of the teachers are Neve, and need some more depth which can be gotten from more culturally similar sephardic Sages. I highly recommend a beautiful seminary in Israel for young sephardic girls to get in touch with their heritage.
February 15, 2006"

I thank you for your sincere and heartfelt comment about the feelings of many Sepharadi girls attending Ashkenazi seminaries. Of course, it goes without saying that we all appreciate the good work that seminaries like Neve are doing for girls of varied cultural backgrounds, and I agree with you that it would be great to have a world-class seminary for Sepharadi girls.

But now we have an interesting situation! I am an anonymous blogger and you are an anonymous commentator to my blog. How can 2 anonymous individuals work towards such a lofty goal? To set up a brand new seminary, or perhaps even a sepharadi branch of an existing seminary such as Neve, requires strong financial muscles and management. I am not sure that this can be done by some anonymous people. Therefore, I would like to call upon the good and competent leaders of our community to please step forward and become active to get this project off the ground. It is obvious that the need is definitely there to raise a generation of bright, happy, and proud young Iranian ladies who will closely identify with the Jewish heritage of our forefathers. They will be educated in the ways of our Torah and become proud Jewish mothers, sisters and community leaders of this generation in order to guarantee the survival and enrichment of our Jewish Persian heritage, by raising proper Jewish families, and best of all, they will have fun doing it.

Please use resources at your disposal to publicize and promote this cause, and certainly, if the Almighty wills it, even some anonymous people like us will be able to help turn around the tide of confusion, assimilation and intermarriage in our community. Additionally, it will be great to hear first-hand opinions of the seminary girls themselves. So, if you are one, or know of someone who has attended a seminary or planning to go to a seminary, please share your views, thanks.

Positive Self Image

It is a fine balance between motivating our children, and downright stressing them to the point of break-down. Very often we want our kids to accomplish in areas that we ourselves failed to accomplish, educationally, professionally, socially, etc. In effect, we push our kids to make up for our own shortcomings. We subconsciously give negative messages to them that they do not measure up to our expectations. And of course, we do all this damage in the name of caring for our beloved children.

This type of parenting can devastate our children by eroding their sense of self-esteem and worth. This phenomenon is very much alive and common in our own success-driven Jewish Persian communities. It is therefore not surprising that many of our kids are depressed and attracted towards unhealthy activities to make up for their poor self-esteem. If we could just open our ears (and hearts) and listen to our own kids, we will be shocked to hear as how much pain they are going through.

One such wounded soul just wrote to Rabbi Brody and sought his advice. You can read all about it here.

Emunah, Emaan, Faith

It is evident that the simple Jew, even though not very learned and well-versed in Jewish law, has a high level of emunah in the Creator of the world. Our own Jewish Persian history is full of incidents in which the simple Jew in Shiraz, Isfahan, Tehran or elsewhere strengthened his emunah in Hashem, in spite of all the anti-Semitism against him. Entire Jewish communities were threatened with annihilation and muss-murder, but they managed to hang on to the faith of our forefathers. Even the Mashadi Jews, who were forcefully converted to Islam for a while, managed to observe the mitzvot in clandestine fashions.

So, what is our source of emunah in Hashem? Where does our emunah come from? How is it nourished? How does it manifest itself in our daily lives, in our jobs, in our interaction with our families and others?

In a fantastic 25-part lecture series, Rabbi Moshe Wolfson, a master teacher of emunah, discusses all aspects of Jewish faith. You can listen to these lectures on-line or download them and listen in your car as you drive down 405, thanks to the great efforts of our friends at 613.org, who have offered Torah wisdom to many Jews for many years.

In brief (very brief!), Rabbi Wolfson goes on to explain that there are 2 types of knowledge in the world; the knowledge that one is born with, and the knowledge that one acquires during one’s lifetime. The in-born knowledge is not limited to the human experience. The mama spider does not teach the little baby spiders how to make a web, they just do it. The baby bees never go to engineering school to lean how to build perfect hexagonal structures, they just do it. The birds, monarch butterflies, etc., etc., are all born with an instinctive knowledge which guides them as how to live their lives. Similarly, the human-infant knows nothing about the laws of mechanics when fed by his mom. The infant is born with the perfect face- and lips-muscles coordination to allow him to create just the right amount of vacuum to get milk from his mother’s breast.

Similarly the Jew is born with the knowledge that there is a creator to the world. He has spiritually inherited this knowledge from Avraham and Sarah, who devoted their entire lives discovering G-d’s existence, and perfecting this knowledge in order to pass it on to us. That is the reason that it took years for them to have a son- Itzchak, since they had to be re-born (as it were) with perfect emunah and without connection to Avraham’s physical father (Terach), who was an idol worshiper.

What happens then, when Jews loose their faith and become “non-believers”? According to Rav wolfson, it is primarily the partaking of non-kosher food that closes the heart of the Jew to believe in G-d. But, in an astounding revelation, Rav Wolfson declares that there is no such a thing as a true non-believing Jew! The word in Hebrew for a non-believer is Kofer (kaafar in Farsi). The root of this world means to cover up, as it is used in Parashat Noach when Noach is instructed to “cover-up” the arc with tar. Therefore, the Kofer, the supposedly non-believing Jew, is doing nothing but covering up his in-born knowledge of the Almighty, consciously or otherwise, because he wants to go on to live his life as he wants in order to maximize his physical pleasure index. It is therefore not surprising, that so many Jews at different stages of their lives find the true path of G-d and return to their own believing selves.

This is a beautiful set of tapes, each one packed with golden nuggets of wisdom, which will help us uncover our emunah; that which came easily to our grandparents in Iran and elsewhere.

A Tribute to our Girls
What do they do when they go to a "Seminary"?

It is customary that many North American Jewish girls spend the year after high-school graduation, in Israel, in an accredited college of Jewish studies for women, otherwise known as a Seminary. Upon their return, they can use the credits earned in the seminary towards their degrees in many universities and colleges of their choice. When Chana from NY left her home to study in Israel for a year, she decided to set up a blog to let the world know of her experiences. You can read all about it in the Sem Girl.

Although not very fashionable among us the Persian Jews, this custom has already prompted many brave Persian girls from NY, LA, etc. to spend a year learning in Jerusalem or the vicinity. The question is, why do they do it? Why do the leave the secure bosom of their parents and communities, to spend a year away from home, friends and loved ones? In brief, they do it because they have reached the conclusion that they would like to explore Judaism in a serious and scholarly way in order to make important life choices about careers, motherhood, living with Jewish values, etc. But, what do they learn whet they get there? Below is a sample of studies offered in one such seminary called Neve Yerushalayim:

JEWISH PHILOSOPHY:
Jewish Laws and Customs and The Meaning Behind Them;
Role of Women in Judaism;
Free Will vs. Determinism;
Jews and Non-Jews;
Human Potential in Judaism;
Jewish Mysticism;
Existence of G-d;
Judaism and Science;
Philosophy of Jewish Prayer;
Sources in Jewish Law;
Classical Texts in Jewish Thought

BIBLICAL and RABBINIC TEXTS:
Language and Concepts of Biblical Texts;
Parshat HaShavua (weekly Torah portion);
Rabbinic texts such as Ethics of the Fathers;
Midrash and Commentaries.

PRACTICAL JUDAISM:
Kashrut and Its Spiritual Relevance;
Shabbat and Holiday Observances;
Jewish Law in Relation to Contemporary Issues;
The Soul of Jewish Law;
Transmission of the Oral Tradition.

HEBREW LANGUAGE:
Modern Hebrew (multi-level ulpan);
Classical Hebrew Texts;
Meaning and Mechanics of the Prayer book.

JEWISH HISTORY:
The Holocaust;
Meaning of Jewish Nationhood and Its History in the Land of Israel;
Historical Verification of the Torah

But apart from all the academic learning and lively discussions with brilliant rabbis and educators, they get to have a lot of fun traveling up and down the country and meeting a lot of interesting people. These girls come back as committed young Jews, with a resolved sense of Jewish pride and purpose in their lives.

So, next time you see a bright and serious minded Jewish Iranian girl, there is a good chance that she just came back from a seminary in Israel.