The Good Salesman.

"In de icker iz eir zol learnen torah" And with that parting message the teacher left the classroom. That is the sentence that is the bottom of the page of so many Sem girls notes. One would think that in England especially when a girl is the finale years of the ALL the education she is going to receive, the parting words of Shiur should not be something slightly more substantial than that.

When will they see that girls of today need more of an education? That telling them that Torah is the be all and end all of it, is like denying them air to breath. They get married and when there husbands don’t go to Daven 3 times a day they panic? When will these girls realizes that there are some monsters in the world? When they are packed in a 1 bed room flat in the center of the hill?

I may be bitter… who knows. I may have seen my fair share of abuse and suffering. But does my daughter have to see it too. We can not protect our beautiful princess for ever. One day you have to cut of the apron strings and close the door of the house? But the question is, do we also have to close the doors of our heart?

Say what you may, we both know that the divorce rate is souring. In our small knit community, where everyone knows exactly what and where you go, we deny our daughters the right to know what marriage brings. If a 17 year old girl is getting engaged, does she not have the right to have some lessons before hand that boys are different to you? That among the fairy tale and glamour there is such a thing as a man hitting his wife?

Fine you’ve managed to put it into her head that this is the one for her and all the more laughable is that she has also chosen him….. Has she really?!!! It reminds me of the time the sale lady tried to sell me a sweater. First she laid it against me; she examined how beautiful the color looks against my skin. Then she went into the fine qualities of the store. How they only use the highest quality of wools for there products and so she went on.

So too YOU, first you showed your daughter how beautiful she will look in the white dress, with the Sheitle beautiful styled to perfection. Then you went into the fine qualities of the boy. How boys from that yeshiva or family are the finest. After all the Chinuch is impeccable, what else can go wrong?. And then we let her 'try' it on. In a 2 hour meeting? The question remains…. Do we ever look into that particular sweater? To see if that one perhaps has a few stitches out of place. A temper perhaps? Or a fondness for trips to Vages?

No. We are so over whelmed by the 'family' or the 'yeshiva'. Or in some cases the changes that the boy has supposing made, that we forget to look at the label too. Handel with care. Or if placed in the washing machine may shrink. How many of these boys will shrink under pressure?

What happens once you’ve passed the honey moon stage? Then what? When the true colors do come out? Are we girls really equipped for the 'shrinkage?