Okay, I made that number up. I don’t know what number she is. But she deserves a special public congratulations, because according to her high school teacher, she wasn’t ever supposed to get engaged.
You know how bais yaakov teachers roll. It’s all “Do what I say or you’ll never get married!” Heck, I had a Tefillah teacher in 12th grade who told us she got a shidduch call about a girl who didn’t pay attention in Tefillah class and, well, “I just couldn’t think of anything nice to say about her.”
I can’t think of anything nice to say about that teacher.
So, moving right along. NEF #21 really wanted to go to Michlala in Israel to study for a year. But her teacher told her that if she didn’t go to a bais yaakov seminary, nobody would ever want to date her.
NEF thought about that a bit. She realized that, in fact, people who study in Michlala do not comprise the entirety of the “shidduch crisis” pool. Moreover, if she went to a bais yaakov seminary, she’d probably wind up dating the wrong kind of people. The type who think like her teacher, perhaps. So she went to Michlala, learned a lot, had a great year, and now, guess what? She’s engaged!
I don’t know her, and I like her already. Mazel tov!
Mazal tov! Incidentally, a very large number of my Michlalah class got engaged within 3 years of seminary, so at that point, I knew many more engaged/married Mich girls than girls who went to Bais Yaakov schools. Good for NEF #21 for making her own decision!
I have to say, though, that I find the bias against the school perplexing. It gets a lot of “good Bais Yaakov” types and a lot of the teachers also teach at Bais Yaakov seminaries, so even though it’s not Bais Yaakov, students could probably take very similar courses of study.
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