As in this example:

So Froylein, where’s the yeshiva with just 2 hours of secular studies you were lying about?

q.e.d.

It’s a trick question, since by law they are not allowed to do this… so I’m pretty confident there is no such school in New York. Maybe New Jersey, but that’s Jersey for ya.

further:
You appear to assume that secular students inevitably are poorer performers academically than Jewish students.
- – - – - – - – -
You obviously have not heard yet about the decades-long flight of middle-class students from New York public schools. You should try googling phrases like “white flight” and “charter schools” for some background.

You will then understand why your original comparison between (underperforming) NY public schools and Yeshivas was such a howler.

I’m sure students in the many non-sectarian private schools perform admirably.

Again:
When someone sets themselves up as a self-proclaimed “expert” it’s no insult to call them on the facts.

You haven’t disproved me but reported on your experiences that I could identify as experiences not made among Charedim in New York (that I do hang out with every couple of weeks – not just look at at a distance).

I haven’t insulted an entire community as I outlined what I was talking about from the start. You chose to ignore that as much as you all of a sudden tried to act as a spokesperson of a group you’re obviously far less involved with than I am.

If you cannot see how you have used insults above, then your education is clearly lacking and it reflects worse on Orthodoxy than any of my pieces of criticism of the Charedi world ever could.

Send me your postal address and I’ll forward this weeks Israeli papers to you – so you can review the advertisements for Haredi college and career programs.

And the articles that describe the REAL scope of anorexia and other problems in the haredi world.

Cite some statistics. You don’t because there aren’t any that support your out-of-a-hat claims. You’ve been disproven on every demonstrable point so far.

Now you take the last refuge of the modern intellectual charlatan – claiming I’ve *insulted* you. When it’s you who’ve insulted an entire community.

Sorry – when someone sets themselves up as a self-proclaimed “expert” it’s no insult to call them on the facts.

Send me your postal address and I’ll forward this weeks Israeli papers to you – so you can review the advertisements for Haredi college and career programs.

And the articles that describe the REAL scope of anorexia and other problems in the haredi world.

Cite some statistics. You don’t because there aren’t any that support your out-of-a-hat claims. You’ve been disproven on every demonstrable point so far.

It’s not an insult to call someone on the facts.

To recap:

The Things Froylein Got Wrong
(for brevity, this list is limited to errors in the current thread)

Haredi girls DO NOT get married at age 15

They DO NOT suffer substandard education – they overwhelmingly receive high school diplomas that prepare them for higher educational opportunities.

They ARE NOT prohibited from pursuing careers or higher education.

There IS a variety of “quality” career training paths available to haredi women, around the world.

These training options ARE NOT limited to traditional women’s professions.

Haredi women DO NOT suffer from anorexia in alarmingly high numbers – certainly not compared with the numbers in secular society.

It is not anti-Semitic to be critical of apparent flaws within the community. It would be anti-Semitic to hold a generalising pre-conceived negative view (aka prejudices) towards the world’s Jewry as a whole. I don’t call you anti-Semitic for your often-times rudely expressed disdain for certain varieties of Judaism.

If you had anything of substance to say, you’d refrain from insults and aggression.

Nor does she have the sense to shut up when faced with an actual member of the groups she’s lying about.

So:
The only difference between the programs for Haredim and those for other students is sex-segregated classes.

My niece still had to pass the Israeli Bar exam, her friends still had to take the accountancy and psychology exams, and all the women who study education still have to pass the certification exam and do the student teaching. I know several women who went on to advanced degrees and are school principles and district admins.

Similarly, the frum female programmers I work with in Israeli hi-tech have all had to prove their chops just like everyone else. They’re working in companies like Amdocs, Cisco, Microsoft, Motorola – and in the US, firms like Bell Labs and IBM actively recruit Haredim in the NY metro area because their smart and reliable workers.

Not sure what parallel universe you’re living in, but it is scarily anti-semitic.

And it’s just stupid to persist – you must know I will grind your nose in the sh*t you’ve been spouting.

But pride DOES have a way of making people stupid…

My comments are based on my experiences, which I happen to share with lots of frum people. The sister of a Bobover friend of mine was married off at 15, and she wasn’t the only one among her peers this happened to. Anorexia is raging among NY frum girls; turning a blind eye to the problem won’t solve it. Maybe you could drag up and sneak into a women’s restroom at a kosher restaurant to understand what I mean. Just to give one example, two years ago I accompanied a friend of mine to a kosher restaurant in one of New York’s Chasidishe neighbourhoods. The bathrooms were right adjacent to the dining hall. There was a large table occupied by several young couples with kids. Two of the women there went to throw up (you could clearly hear it) twice respectively thrice in between their meal. This is just one of many instances I’ve encountered something like this, and Chasidishe female friends of mine of already tiny figure were encouraged by their elder female relatives as well as their matchmakers to “maybe lose a few pounds” in order to be more “attractive”. I think it’s a safe bet that if you conducted a study on eating disorders in those circles, the findings would be horrifying.

Also, please learn the difference between the quantifiers “all”, “many”, and “most”.

And no, being critical of certain aspects of a culture doesn’t make one anti-culture.

And yeah, I have private documents / documented conversations between Charedi communal leaders and me in which they clearly state that women need / should not get an education. When I asked two of them how that could be as Rashi’s daughters notoriously were well-educated, the unanimous answer was that those women today are not Rashi’s daughters.

But as least she’s backtracked from her previous claim – ungracefully, and scattering distracting sand in all directions (yes I know what “frum” means… what a pathetic attempt at maintaining the air of intellectual superiority!)

Earlier she wrote:

In many frum communities, women are still not permitted to pursue higher education. Many frum girls in NYC don’t even complete high school.

Now she admits career training IS available, but sniffs at it’s “quality”.

Well, Froy – I also have friends (and female coworkers!) from Bnei Brak, Ramat Beit Shemesh, and other communities. I also keep up with my connections in the New York frum circles I grew up in.

I consume all the major media products of Israeli Orthodoxy – from newspapers to shabbat leaflets to radio and internet – all of which regularly feature ads by almost every Israeli university/college/teacher’s seminary/professional school describing their programs for Haredi women. In New York similar offerings from YU, Touro/Lander College, and other institutions are popular.

So let’s just string together all the hateful bits of misinformation, shall we?

Please cite a documented case of a girl getting married at the age of 15 – in Israel or any other frum community.

Please cite a documented case of a frum girl’s high school in New York that does not offer a NY State Regents diploma, or an Israeli school that does not give matriculation (bagrut) certificate.

Can you cite documented evidence that anorexia is more common among frum girls and women – compared with the general population?

The spite you display would be revolting if your ignorance were not so laughable.

Can you document a single hasidic court or haredi communal leader who has issued a blanket prohibition on career training for women?

BTW, BT is not Charedi.

If my stating that women in NY frum (and by that I mean Charedi; it’s a Yiddish word coined and exemplified by those for who Yiddish is the mother tongue to this day) communities usually receive below average education hits a weak spot with you, I suppose it does so for good reason.

I’ve also got friends that are beis din rabbis. You’d be amazed at some insight into what matters are taken into consideration when decisions are made. Maybe you’d even be disillusioned.

Middle:
Silence is not golden – nobody hear representing the O point of view has suggested brushing the aguna issue, or any other issue, under the rug. Please refrain from straw man arguments.

And the rate of progress depends on the community’s capacity to absorb change, not on the exhortations of utopian hotheads. The previous century is strewn with the human carnage resulting from forcefully imposed social revolutions.

Focusing specifically on women’s issues, the brakes applied by halachic caution and skepticism have allowed those pressing the feminist agenda to reveal the radical, anti-family, anti-Torah underpinnings of their seemingly innocuous claims – saving the Torah community untold grief.

This is in distinction to Reform and Conservative movements, whose adoption of change is not a model of Torah leadership, but of capitulation to another society’s values and norms.

Which brings us to SarKE’s great post.

The kind of leadership we need is not necessarily about embracing change… I like your image of the broad shoulders better.

If you believe in divinely inspired Torah and Halachic processes, then you must also believe that those tools are equal to take the measure of the modern world.

What has happened since the Enlightenment/Industrial Revolution is that (Ashkenazi) Torah circles have lost that faith – or you could call it confidence. Observance is then a retrospective exercise – and leadership view their task as preservation/conservation rather than exploration.

Combined with the post-Enlightenment tendency to box off religion from the public square… the result is an ennervated leadership.

We hoped that a generation of rabbis with broad secular backgrounds of their own would have the tools to engage this new world, and ‘process’ it for the community using the tools of Halacha. That has only worked partway – here in Israel, many of these Religious Zionist rabbis have a severe inferiority complex (and real political troubles) vis-a-vis the haredi camp.

Fro – are you aware of how your last post reads like a anti-semite’s rant about New York Jews? oooooh those parasitical Jews!

So: the deadly compound of ignorance and pride has boxed you into increasingly untenable positions. Lucky for you that individual blog threads have such a short lifetime…

Get a clue, dearie…

1. Each side commenting here gets more hard line and digs in deeper as the debate progresses – just like the sides in the very issue they are discussing. Read thread from beginning and see.
2. I’m pretty sure the Prushim, redactors of the Oral Law / fathers of Orthodoxy, wouldn’t recognize the people who claim to be guarding their tradition today… Because the hallmark of the Prushim at the time was actually flexibility and HUGE shoulders / Rosh Gadol (as in: problems need to be fixed by US and God has given us the Torah to do exactly that) as opposed to the rigid, defensive, ascetic “Haredi” positions of surrounding offshoots and cults, which seem to be once again prevailing. So in that sense, much of Orthodoxy is actually very reactionary – not conservative as is generally assumed. IRONICALLY: NOT BEING WILLING TO CHANGE IS A CHANGE FROM HALKHIC TRADITION. BUT:
3. On the other hand, nor would the Prushim recognize the Conservative / Reform diluted versions of Judaism which have become so forgiving / flexible / porous that the continuity quotient is barely a few generations, at very best, and the religion at times unrecognizable. These movements are largely perceived as a failure because they consistently lose Jews and Judaism, even if they seem “kinder”. On keeping people Jewish and Jewishly immersed / engaged for many generations, Orthodoxy has done rather well.
4. So now what? The question then becomes how to maintain the spirit of a living Torah, with leaders who can and will, without looking all over the place at who signed first, enact necessary, life saving, adaptive change and prevent the cruel results of the ossification of the system, WITHOUT losing the tradition, the structure of the system, the respect for the ancient and the textual, and half of the Jewish people along the way.
5. Anyone with real answers to #4: Share!

As for the advances for women in Orthodox circles, that’s great. Really, it is. You know it’s not enough and I know it’s not enough, but I guess you’re pleased with the progress and if I say anything, it’s “Ortho-bashing.”

Silence is golden. Shhhhh.

If you want to see some Ortho-bashing, by the way, you should visit here. I assure you that you’ll reconsider your accusations quickly enough.

BTW, emotional parental violence is also a form of violence. The widespread anorexia among frum girls in NYC is only in part due to peer pressure.

In many frum communities, women are still not permitted to pursue higher education. Many frum girls in NYC don’t even complete high school.

Regarding Muslim misogyny, I just go by what I read in the papers. Haven’t heard of any bat mitzvah girls getting killed by their fathers to preserve family honor – and the Jewish girls get to keep their clits…

Middle – As pointed out earlier, there are now numerous opportunities for women to learn Talmud. There are also women taking on halachic advisory positions (yo’atzot halacha) and women arguing cases before the Bet Din (to’anot).

All of this is welcome growth FROM WITHIN Judaism, in accordance with Halacha.

I will ignore your mention of agunot since it has already been demonstrated that this is not a Conservative issue, and you are simply soap-boxing and Ortho-bashing.